Page 5 of A Duke Never Tells

CHAPTER FOUR

MEG PINWELL

The moment the Duke of Earnhurst left the room, Clara hurried over to shut the door. “Good heavens, Meg, how badly are you injured?” she whispered, striding back to the bed and bending down to take a closer look at her wounded ankle.

“I don’t even care about that, Clara. We’ve made a horrible mistake in coming here.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she wiped at them with one hand. How could they have been so stupid?

“You had questions. We are in the process of answering them,” Clara said in her most matter-of-fact tone. “Now. To my eyes it’s either broken or badly sprained. If you still want to flee, I could fashion you a splint. If we’re continuing to investigate, however, I’m supposed to be a helpless, hand-flapping lady, and we’ll have to wait for the doctor.”

“I don’t want to stay, but neither do I want a splint made out of a bedpost or something.” Clara was supremely capable, but at the same time she could be quite outrageous. It was an endearing combination, but very unpredictable.

Her auntie snorted. “A bedpost, pish. Not when there’s a perfectly sound chair leg available.”

“That’s the rub isn’t it, though? Nothing is sound here. It’s all ruined. And so is the duke. He’s a ruin.” As she spoke, a tear ran down her cheek and into her ear, making her shudder.

“He’s certainly not what I expected,” Clara commented, sitting carefully on the foot of the bed.

“‘Not what you expected’? He’s old—much older than he’s meant to be—and he’s declared himself to be a drunk and a blackguard. On top of that, this house is a nightmare! I am not going to marry him.”

“Yes, I agree that first impressions were not… ideal.”

Meg scoffed. “In addition, we thought him dripping with wealth, but from the look of this place it’s my dowry he wants. Not me. Papa would never sell me for a title, for heaven’s sake.”

“I’m sure that’s not—”

“If not for that rude, handsome man carrying me back up here,” Meg broke in, trying to remember to keep her voice down because no one here could ever be allowed to learn who she and Clara actually were, “I would have crawled on my elbows down the rest of the stairs and out the front door to be away from here.”

While she recognized that she was being overly dramatic, if any circumstance merited being such, it was this one. The duke was meant to be in London. Aside from that, the new duke hadn’t looked at all like the man she’d imagined. His fellows called him the Pirate, for heaven’s sake. That invoked a certain… air of devil-may-care elegance that didn’t match at all with a sturdy, muscular silhouette, close-cropped dark hair in the military style, or the stern, unsympathetic mustache slashing across the middle of his face like a hand broom.

Indeed, the new duke looked more like a chest of drawers than a bedchamber buccaneer—solid, buttoned up, and with a patina of age and experience that said he’d seen some things. She’d read the newspapers wrong, clearly, or they’d been swayed by his rank and power, because looking at him she would estimate his age somewhere close to forty, when she’d thought the new duke to be a decade younger than that.

The way he’d declared himself to be a drunk and a gambler and a blackguard who didn’t care about anything had set her hair on end. She had no idea how any respectable woman, or a young woman trying to behave respectably, would go about making a marriage to such a man even if she’d been inclined to do so.

Her aunt took her hand, squeezing her fingers. “It’s true that Earnhurst Castle more resembles a pile of rocks than the jewel it’s purported to be, my dear, but he has spent the last year in mourning, just as you have. Perhaps things got away from him, is all.”

“Excuse me, but who are you and what have you done with Clara?” Meg demanded in a loud whisper, trying to flex her ankle and immediately giving up when pain shot up from her toes to her knee. “You’re the one who keeps telling me that a woman doesn’t need a man, and that no woman should settle for a man who requires reformation before he can be deemed to be acceptable to her or to Society. And your oft-repeated opinion of families who trade their titles for money. Or the way you’ve been hounding me for the past year to break off the engagement. Which is what we’re looking for evidence to do. Evidence I would say we’ve found.”

“I’m aware of that, Meg.” Clara made a face. “It’s just that he seemed a bit… sad about it all. Don’t you think?”

“No!”

“I did. But whatever our opinion, your decision will determine the rest of your life. We must be thorough. There is a logic to everything; we simply haven’t discovered it yet in this instance. Perhaps your injury will prove to be the catalyst that convinces him to change his ways and set things right.”

“And then what, we reveal our true identities to him?” Meg flung an arm across her eyes. “He wasn’t supposed to be here! Then I could have made an honest assessment of this wreck, talked to a few of the servants about him and his drinking and his lack of funds, and returned home without ever having to encounter him.”

“I think it’s good that you’ve encountered him. A direct assessment is far more reliable than servants’ gossip.”

“But even if I did decide to marry him, he’s seen me pretending to be a servant now, and he’ll know I lied to him about my identity, which will never do. What a turnip patch this has all become!” Meg shuddered. And to think that for a bare moment, when the front door had opened and she’d set eyes on that tall, lean man with the disheveled dark hair and sleeves rolled halfway up his arms, she’d… Well, her first thought hadn’t been unpleasant.

“In my experience, my dear, important men do not spend a great deal of time or energy memorizing the faces of servants. No one notices servants, really. That was the reason for you choosing that disguise in the first place. Put you in one of your lovely gowns with your hair done up and a bit of rouge on your cheeks, and I’d wager he wouldn’t know you from Queen Charlotte.”

Meg thought about that for a moment. At the time it had seemed daring to arrive at her future husband’s home uninvited and wearing a plain gown, plain shoes, a plain bonnet, a plain bun in her hair, and no makeup on at all, but now it seemed more fortuitous than anything else. And all she wanted to do now was flee before her subterfuge could be discovered. The idea that pretending to be a servant might save her from embarrassment on the chance that she ever set eyes on the duke again was the only positive thing about today she could conjure.

“I would be exceedingly pleased never to have to put that to the test,” she muttered, wondering if the servants’ staircase at the rear of the house might be sturdier than the one that had nearly murdered her. “We will leave as soon as the doctor has seen to my ankle and then either continue on to London or return home. My parents will have to get me out of this, since they’re the ones who arranged it.”

“That would do, even if it does seem rather… cowardly to flee without a parting word or two. You’ve certainly done nothing wrong here.”

Meg looked up at her aunt and dearest friend. “Perhaps it is cowardly, but we aren’t here to storm the Bastille. And I have done something wrong. I—we—lied to gain access to this house. Declining to announce our true motives until we’re well away seems quite sensible to me.”

“There is that.”

“Aside from the logic of that plan,” Meg went on, recognizing the stubborn set to Clara’s jaw and so using the words “logical” and “sensible”—her aunt’s favorites—as often as she could manage, “given that he might well be desperate to wed my dowry, leaving here without revealing my identity makes a great deal of sense. We are here without allies other than our coach driver. And Wilson is hardly a match for a duke’s entire army of servants.”

Clara stood. “I will agree with that. We are definitely outnumbered.” She rapped her fist against a tabletop. “Blast it all.”

“I’m not entirely certain his mind is sound, either,” Meg went on. “Who goes about announcing all his faults to a complete stranger? And if he is mad, we cannot risk confronting him.”

“His comportment was quite odd,” Clara mused, making her way to the window. “It made no sense to me, at least, but it would have to make sense to him, unless he is a madman. But while the newspapers have all happily reported his drinking and womanizing and wagering, they’ve said nothing at all about him being a Bedlamite. And to me that indicates there’s something in the equation I haven’t yet grasped because the gossips love to call everyone mad.” She poked at the window glass. “This is about to fall out of its frame,” she noted. “And the garden is… hideous. It looks like a giant rat’s nest.”

If it was the idea of solving a puzzle that kept her notoriously curious aunt from confronting the Duke of Earnhurst, so be it. Meg only needed the confrontation not to happen. Not while she stood—or hobbled—beneath his roof, anyway. “It’s agreed, then. We will say nothing until we’re well away from here and safely at Pinwell House or Brundon Hall.”

“Yes, yes. You only prove the point that I often make, that women are the more sensible sex.”

Thank goodness that was settled. The sooner they could escape from this horror of a day, the better. Meg flung her arms out on the soft bed. “I don’t feel very sensible at the moment,” she admitted. “I fell down the stairs. My skirt was over my head. And I think that pretty man who put me back together was at least as drunk as the duke.”

“He’s the butler, His Grace told me. And he’s new.”

“Well, I suppose I should be glad that he’s young and fit, though I suspect he must have served at a brothel prior to this, given his nonchalance with straightening women’s clothing and toting them about in his arms. The way he flung me up into the air made me feel like a sack of potatoes. Or feathers, I suppose—he said I weighed as much as a mouse.” That had been rather nice, really, though she didn’t entirely appreciate being compared to a mouse.

“Indeed,” Clara agreed, then chuckled. “And now that you’ve touched on the servants, I believe you’ve found fault with every corner of Earnhurst. Very thoroughly done, my dear.”

“Just a moment,” Meg protested, lifting up on her elbows again. “Our goal here was to find evidence enough to justify me breaking this engagement. I think between this wreck of a house and the old, mustachioed duke fondly reminiscing about his own sins, we’ve done that. I would call this expedition perfect, if not for me possibly breaking my leg.” She scowled as another thought occurred to her. “Oh, dear, what if it is broken? I won’t be able to dance again this year. Another Season ruined, and because of the same blasted man.”

Clara eyed her. “Of course you didn’t want to be injured. And I applaud both your resolve to take this marriage decision back and put it into your own hands, and your clear-headedness at discovering an unacceptable match before you could be leg shackled to him.”

“Is it odd that for the first moment or two I wanted to find him acceptable? The countryside here is quite lovely.”

“Mm-hmm. As was the man who opened the door.”

“Clara.” Her aunt was correct, of course, but it would take more than a pleasant-featured butler to render Earnhurst acceptable.

“Very well. I shall relent. I will note, though, that your actual plans never included meeting your betrothed. Sticky personal drama or not, this is much better. Because now you don’t have to make a decision based on more rumors and stories, and you can depart without confronting him.”

“But you’re back to making me sound cowardly.”

Perhaps she’d been reasonably sure from the outset that the new Duke of Earnhurst would never make her an acceptable husband, but she had attempted to be logical about it. And logically, she’d be a fool to bind herself to a man who prided himself on improper behavior when she had a great deal of difficulty with holding her tongue herself. He would amplify her own faults. That would not make her parents proud of her, to be the duchess snickered at from behind people’s hands. And when everyone discovered that she’d only been married for her money, anyway, that would make it ten times worse.

Meg took a deep breath. “I suppose I can accept being labeled a coward, however, because at least now we do know for certain. I’d trade an injured foot for the truth about an impending horror of a marriage, any day.”

“Agreed,” Clara said firmly.

“And to think, I was worried that I would arrive here and do or say something disastrous. Thankfully everything has gone as smoothly as cream.”

Clara’s mouth quirked. “You should give yourself more credit for being an original. They are rare, you know.”

“I think it’s more likely I’m just a nodcock.” But at least she could be a nodcock who’d hopefully managed to save herself from what would surely be a dreadful marriage.

“You’re not a nodcock, Meg.” Clara took a breath. “But as you say, the sooner the doctor arrives and the sooner we can leave here, the better.” She grinned. “Mabel Gooster and Lady Sophronia Frumple have served their purpose, at least.”

Meg smiled, wincing as she shifted her leg. How could an ankle ache all the way up to her thigh? “That they have. And considering Mabel’s clumsiness, I’m glad to see the last of her. You know, I think we need to continue on to London. We’ll inform Mama and Papa about Earnhurst in a letter so I can be concise and logical, and then I will need to prepare for a very belated debut where I’m not already engaged.” She stifled her sigh as she caught Clara’s raised eyebrow. “Yes, with one feather in my hair. I’ll have enough gossip to overcome by breaking with a duke without giving myself more trouble.”

“I suppose you will. I, for one, though, will miss Lady Sophronia. She lived too briefly and is gone too soon.”

The same couldn’t be said for Mabel, Meg thought, but kept it to herself. The companion hadn’t had much to do except for being ready to step in when Lady Sophronia became too flamboyant and tried to chat about the military, and then she’d cartwheeled down the staircase and very nearly landed on her head.

She didn’t even feel disappointed that she wouldn’t be a duchess. Not when the alternative was wedding a drunkard who looked to be twenty years her senior and who seemed content to see his ancestral seat in shambles. And she truly disliked mustaches. If there was one good thing about this, it was that she would face the Season with the knowledge that however badly she showed, it could have been worse. She might have married James Clay, the Duke of Earnhurst.

“We won’t even have time to miss Lady Sophronia and Mabel,” she said aloud. “We begin as our more enlightened selves again this afternoon.”

“Indeed.”

Meg lay there for a moment, staring at the white-painted ceiling, which she now noticed was flaking at the edges of the cornices. “I half expect the roof here to come falling in and bury us,” she commented into the silence.

“I was actually thinking that this room is rather pretty,” Clara countered. “Fresh flowers, windows open, and… hmm, a man’s shaving kit on the dressing table.”

Meg sat up again, startled. “A what?”