Page 20 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Fifteen

The most surprising betrothal this season: a hasty love match between the Earl of D and a mousy, flutist spinster. Maggie? Maisie? Assuredly, the widows and opera singers are mourning their loss.

- Scandalous Lives of London scandal sheet

* * *

The following morning Moria languidly laid in bed past the ninth hour and missed breakfast altogether until Miss Kelley and Olivia entered with a tray.

“For me?” Moria said, sitting up in surprise. Her plait fell down her back and the blankets fell around her.

Olivia set the tray down on a table by the window, then dove onto the bed next to Moria and pulled her into an embrace.

Moria tucked Olivia around her the way her mother used to when they were young.

How she’d give anything to lie in her mother’s bed once again with all three of her sisters and dream about the one days and maybe some days and not yets.

She’d redo the days in between in a way her mother might be prouder of, that she herself might be prouder of.

Olivia’s blonde head was on her shoulder and her arms tightened about Moria.

Moria thought suddenly of the daughter she’d almost had, but how could she ever tell Olivia that?

So, she planted a kiss atop her head, and pulled back, under the pretense of stretching and getting ready to dress. Olivia tugged on Moria’s long braid.

“Not like you to have a lie-in past seven am. Anything you want to tell me?”

Moria only sighed and took the hot tea with a slice of lemon that Miss Kelley offered on a saucer.

“Being so popular is tiring.”

“Well, you must make haste, calling hours start soon and His Grace’s sister told me he intended to call today to see you off before you leave for the country.”

Moria’s eyes widened and she set down her teacup and saucer and ran to the mirror.

Did she look like a woman who’d come close to being ravished by a different man the night before?

Olivia came to stand behind her. Miss Kelley, who had already gone to the wardrobe, laid a dress out on the bed for Moria to change into.

It was the two colors of an orchid. Like the flowers he’d sent.

Moria ran her fingers over the lines beneath her eyes. “I think I’ll need to borrow some of your…cosmetics today, Libby.”

Olivia smiled and disappeared.

By the time calling hours came around, Olivia and Miss Kelley had Moria more than presentable and all were seated seemingly unbothered and peacefully reading or sewing in the sitting room when the Duke was announced.

Moria barely heard any of the words or pleasantries that were exchanged between any of them, including (especially) Jasper, until the tea tray was brought around, and the piquant smell of cinnamon spice buns broke her from her torpor.

They smelled like the back of Devyn’s neck.

She sunk her teeth into one, imagining it tasted the same as Devyn must.

“So you lived in the Congo…for nearly a decade?” Olivia was asking Kate Herring, whom Moria had forgotten she had invited.

“My mother met my father in the Cape Colony,” the Duke joined the conversation. “They were married in a tribal ceremony, and then in our parish church when my father brought her to England.”

Moria knew this already, but she liked hearing him talk about his origins. She wanted to hear more of the man and not just the Duke, but he was like a steel vault. A pretty one, but uncrackable.

“Have you ever visited?” Kate asked.

The Duke looked away from her and at his folded hands. “No, I haven't. As my father’s sole heir, I haven’t traveled extensively. He was in ill health for a long time, and I didn’t want to leave him.”

“Such a dutiful son,” Kate said.

It was an unlikely scenario, Moria hadn’t thought that the two of them would have much to talk about, but she’d been wrong.

The Duke seemed to find her stories about growing up in the African bushlands with her missionary father and botanist mother riveting, Moria felt that some of the details of her story seemed far-fetched.

If anyone were to spot an imitation, would it not be her?

A career false diamond? Everyone had secrets, secrets that might be useful to her purposes.

The topic of conversation moved to the Dowager Duchess and the culture she’d shared with her son.

“So, you’re the product of a love match?

That must be how you got such lovely bone structure,” Moria said, eyeing him flirtatiously.

The Duke’s eyes fell down to Moria’s lips.

She had him on the ropes now. It wasn’t Kate that Moria was wrestling with exactly, it was Moria’s own pride she was battling.

How could she let this Duke fall from her grasp, literally, when her every step the last few years had been for this very moment?

“And your hair,” she turned to the redhead watching with reddened cheeks, “Kate, doesn’t His Grace’s hair look sinful pushed back like this?

” she said, leaning to push a stray strand of The Duke’s dark hair out of his face.

Was she dangling him in front of Kate? Maybe a little, just to see what she or The Duke of Andover would say.

Kate didn’t move or speak, but radiated discomfort from her seat. His Grace cleared his throat, took Moria’s hand, and kissed her fingers. Her bare fingers.

Two dimples, one in either cheek, had her own cheeks flushing.

Behind them, Moria heard the sound of clattering teacups and saucers.

Olivia was calling for a maid, Miss Herring was apologizing for dropping her tea saucer.

The Duke asked if Kate was alright, noting her wringing her hands and downcast eyes.

In front of Moria was her beau of over a year who was still somewhat an enigma, a woman who wanted his attention, and a cinnamon bun that smelled like the man she’d kissed the night before. She chose the cinnamon bun.

“Are you going to eat that?” She broke through the melee to point at the last treat untouched on the Duke’s plate.

He gave a small laugh. “If you want it, it’s yours.”

“You might have put up a bit more of a fight, your grace,” Olivia said in a conspiratorial whisper shout. That made him laugh, like really laugh, and something about the sound had Moria laughing too, even as she stole the cinnamon bun and put it on her own plate.

“But then Lady Moria wouldn’t get something she wanted, and then where would we be?”

Moria heard the bitter note in Kate’s rhetorical question, it took Moria back to every whisper and every cold shoulder when she’d come out of mourning.

There was her pride racing ahead of her good sense.

She paused her sensual onslaught of the cinnamon spice bun to ask the enigma of a man before her: “Would you like to take a ride on Rotten Row this afternoon, your Grace? Chaperoned, of course.”

Moria paused to lick a jot of cream from a finger. She watched as the Duke’s Adam’s Apple bobbed. She caught Miss Kelley’s eyes, frowning at Moria at the piano. Moria set down her now empty saucer.

He gave her a rare and genuine smile. “That would be sublime, the weather is perfect.”

* * *

The weather was not perfect.

Three and a half hours later, Moria, her dark blue riding habit, her horse, her groom, and her suitor were all nearly drenched before they could make it back to Pembrooke House.

“That downpour came out of nowhere,” Moria cried, huddling closer to the duke on her horse as he held his great coat over them both where they had pulled their horses under an outcropping of trees.

The edge of the path wasn’t perfect cover, but it was better than being exposed entirely to the elements, and worse, to the gossips.

“I can’t be terribly upset about it, my lady,” he said, a few drops of water running down the heavily-tanned skin of his neck and falling on the collar of her dress.

“It’s been fourteen months since I stole a dance to learn your name.

I haven’t been this close to you, this alone with you before. Though I’ve wanted to be.”

It had been his own badly timed and overly dramatic words on the floor of Parliament that had kept him from pursuing a match, but Moria didn’t point that out.

“Am I close enough now?” she asked. She wanted him to kiss her, so she could do a full analysis of his kiss versus Devyn’s.

Did soldiers kiss better than noblemen? But not all noblemen had the same lips as the Duke.

The full-bodied muscularity of Devyn led her to believe so, but she needed…

harder evidence…to reach a full conclusion first. Perhaps she was terrible, in the face of how much she was starting to, okay had already come to care for Devyn, but the cautious voice in the back of her mind wouldn’t be quieted.

“Too close for society standards. Not close enough for mine.”

There was no denying that the teasing note in his voice might have tantalized a version of Moria from the past. The current one felt like a stranger watching the scene play out from above as she dipped her head and blushed what she hoped was prettily.

“Your Grace, I’m sure I’m quite flattered you still hold such designs considering how utterly soaked and unpleasing a countenance I assuredly present at the moment. ”

A man who laughed so openly in response, so charmingly, couldn’t be a terrible husband. The Duke met Moria’s eyes, a smile playing at his lips. He leaned in, keeping his voice low. “You are quite the actress, my lady. I can see why the men of London are so besotted with you.”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning,” she said, stealing a glance at the bunched fabric as it stretched over the muscles of his arms as he held his coat over them. Dukes didn’t have such muscular arms, but this one did.

“You’ve turned down no less than eight marriage proposals, if the books at White’s are to be believed. All of which, had me feeling like such a cad for being…relieved.”

“Well, three of them were from the Earl of Essex who was rather persistent so it’s really more like…five. If one is being singularly technical about it.”

“He must have done a properly bad job of it then. I think I’d need only the one were I to take it in my head to propose to the lady of my choice.”

Moria’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “Quite the boast for a man who’s never made a proposal of his own. Who knew the Duke of Andover had such a cheeky wit.”

He did that thing where his lips flinched like he wanted to laugh but reined it in.

The rain let up finally, and the clouds opened up. Her groom called to her, “Your ladyship! You still alright?”

“I’m fine, Houndsley!” she answered, removing herself from her all-too-friendly vicinity to the Duke. She wiped away the hair plastered to her face and replaced her hat to conceal her mussed hair.

“Race you back to Pembrooke House!” she called to the Duke, spurring her horse on. With a muttered curse from him and a “you cheeky little she-devil!” from Houndsley, both men clamored after her. Regina was all speed and agility, a mount fit for a queen.

She turned her head to see the Duke trotting after her, laughing. She had the lead on him, but she was in side-saddle. (Or was she?)

Faster than wind, was Regina. Moria tossed her head back to the sky and let out a whoop. Finally, he came close enough to catch up to her and she slowed her horse with her reins. Houndsley was still lecturing her as she handed him the reins; but as usual, she wasn’t listening.

Andover came up beside her and said, “There’s no way you’re really riding side saddle or am I thoroughly embarrassed, my lady.”

Moria let out a girlish laugh as he helped her from her horse and into his waiting carriage.

When he placed his hand at her elbow, the other at her back to assist her with the stepping block, she felt…

warm. Wildfire didn’t race through her veins and her breath didn’t hitch.

But there was a kind of amiability, a companionship between them that perhaps she could grow accustomed to.