Page 8 of A Tale of Two Dukes

‘You appear pensive, Duchess,’ a cool voice said at her side, making her start.

‘It’s a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you, and you are magnificent as ever, but perhaps a little…

abstracted? I conjecture that you are remembering with regret how dull London is out of season, and wondering why you have made the effort to be here. As indeed is everyone else.’

Viola turned with a fair assumption of delight to greet her interlocutor, ignoring the ambiguity of his last observation.

He wasn’t the man she’d come to see, but he was a personality, an arbiter of society still, and could not be snubbed.

Not that she wished to snub him. She might find herself the target of one of his famous witticisms, but at least he could be relied upon not to peer down the front of her bodice; his manners were too good, where ladies were concerned, to commit such a solecism.

‘Mr Brummell!’ she said. ‘How can you say that London is dull when you are present?’ She hoped she didn’t sound flirtatious; that was not her intention.

To be out in company was a sad trial to her, and she wasn’t confident she always hit the right notes when speaking, but she’d only herself to blame for being here tonight.

‘It’s true,’ he sighed, apparently taking her comment as no more than a simple fact, ‘but there is only so much that one can do alone to make a tedious evening memorable. I will require your aid, I think.’ He was immaculate as ever, the cut of his coat and the perfection of his linen making most of the other men present appear shabby or over-dressed.

He’d be five and thirty now, and despite the sober splendour of his dress, he looked it; his eyes were shrewd as ever, but perhaps a little tired.

It would not be fanciful to say that his countenance held a slightly dissipated appearance.

She’d heard rumours of huge gambling debts and vast sums owed to tradesmen, of a fortune wasted and public quarrels with his princely patron.

‘Everyone is wondering why you honour us with your company so unexpectedly, madam, but they will not be rude enough to ask outright. Nor will I.’

He hardly needed to. ‘Might I not just have wished for a change of scene?’ She was striving for tranquillity, and a well-bred ease of manner to match his.

‘Of course you might – the country is so dreary, all those vulgar, noisy farm animals making the place untidy, one shudders to think of it, and you have had years to grow thoroughly weary of a rustic existence – but the question is, why now?’

‘I felt a little restless suddenly,’ she said frankly. It was the truth, though not the whole truth.

Trust him to take her up on that. ‘If your understandable discontent with life should carry you so far as the contemplation of matrimony once again, might I suggest myself as a possible husband? You wouldn’t be a duchess any more, regrettably, but think what you would be.’

Such a suggestion would be outrageous, if he meant a word of it.

This was her month for shocking proposals, it seemed.

‘I would be the woman who captured George Brummell at last – what a triumph! It is a deliciously tempting offer, sir. But I don’t think I can afford you, much as I might wish I could.

I am no great heiress, you know. I have a jointure sufficient for my own needs, but that is all.

’ He was not serious – she need not be either.

Timid little mice did not do well in his company. This cat had claws.

‘It’s such a pity,’ he responded, smiling slightly, entirely unabashed.

‘You make a good point, madam, but think what an outstandingly handsome couple we would make, which counts for a great deal. Penniless – or at least we would be, once I’d swiftly run through your modest fortune – but so very stylish and admired.

And would it not almost be worth it to picture Lord Marchett’s face when he heard the news?

He would instantly be possessed with dark imaginings of how I would surely try to play at ducks and drakes with your sons’ patrimony, compromise his position as guardian, and make his life a misery in his twilight years.

You’re far too sensible to marry me, but the old man won’t realise that.

If you were lucky, an apoplexy might carry him off at the mere thought, and then I should have done you a great service to outweigh all the rest.’

‘That’s perfectly true,’ she said, laughing aloud at the thought. ‘I wonder I did not think of it years ago. It would be worth a larger sum than I can scrape up to be rid of him forever.’

‘Perhaps we should merely announce our engagement, and see how that serves,’ he said lightly.

She barely heard him, suddenly distracted.

And then after a tense moment, he added, ‘Or perhaps we should not, after all… I understand better now, Duchess. My apologies.’ He was so quick; he’d seen her face alter midway through his teasing speech, when Lord Ventris was announced.

She’d betrayed herself, to Brummell at least – but just in that moment, she didn’t care.

Richard Armstrong had been one or two and twenty when she’d last seen him, and though he’d reached his full, impressive height by then, he had filled out in the intervening years.

His shoulders were broader and his frame was more robust. Whatever he’d been doing, it seemed to involve a fair amount of exercise.

Riding, maybe, fleeing from pursuit – his thighs were unavoidably muscular in his tight black silk knee-breeches.

He hadn’t transformed into a tulip of the ton, or anything like one, nor even a dandy in Mr Brummell’s mode; his clothes were of good enough quality, tailored to his strong frame, but not at all extreme or luxurious either in colour, fabric or fit. He wore no jewellery, not even a fob.

Viola discovered in herself an odd reluctance to look into his face, and overcame it. She met his watchful grey eyes, trying to push away the thought that he must be assessing her too, refusing to wonder what he might make of her. She was older, of course she was. No longer the girl he’d known.

And him? He was an adult of three and thirty now, not caught between boy and man as he had been before.

His face had never been soft – it was too strongly boned for that – but it had taken on a certain added harshness in the intervening years.

He looked uncompromising, remote, and oddly formidable.

She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing for her purposes.

There was a sprinkle of silver in his dark hair now, as there was in hers, and new lines about his eyes and mouth.

He’d always looked a little like Edward, in features rather than in expression, and he resembled him more now that he was older. She wished he didn’t.

Time seemed to be suspended for a moment, both of them frozen, but inevitably, it restarted with a jolt.

He crossed the room with an athlete’s fluid grace and bent over her hand, brushing it with his lips.

She’d thought he might, and was prepared for the fleeting contact, which seemed to burn through her evening gloves to her sensitive skin beneath them.

‘You are lovelier than ever, your grace,’ he said, his voice seeming deeper than it had been years ago.

She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her.

‘I am more than a decade older, so I doubt that can be true. You said in your letter that you knew I preferred the word with no bark upon it. There’s no need to play off insinuating airs on me.’

‘I’m not,’ he said easily. ‘I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.

You were beautiful, and you are. I won’t say “still” – that’s an insult in itself.

I daresay you will be so when you are eighty.

’ If she had been inclined to blush and simper at this compliment, which she decidedly was not, she would have been vexed beyond all measure by his next words.

‘Your mother is everywhere spoken of as a remarkably attractive woman, so I expect you have inherited your looks from her.’

If George Brummell had spoken words of farewell, she hadn’t heard them, but he’d gone from her side without her noticing, though she could not doubt he was watching her still from the crowd, eager for gossip, missing nothing.

It must be a delicious sight – the widowed Duchess and the man of scandalous repute.

They were observed by many, she did not doubt it, but nobody was standing close and so they could not be overheard. Which was just as well.

‘My mother is a widow too, and even more notoriously fertile than I am, especially if you have no fixed objection to daughters,’ Viola said with a glittering smile. ‘But at fifty, perhaps a little too advanced in years for your purpose, Lord Ventris.’

‘I had considered that,’ he said, firm mouth quirking with inappropriate amusement.

‘It’s a pity, but there we are. I’ll have to make do with you.

I assure you, it will be no hardship.’ His voice caressed her, just as if he’d trailed his long fingers very slowly over the exposed skin of her neck and upper breasts, and she could only be grateful that her gown was thick velvet, not thin, clinging silk like Lady Caroline’s.

She felt quite naked enough in his presence.

Her skin was tingling as though he’d really touched her.

‘In point of fact, I have not said a word to make you so confident that I will marry you.’ This between gritted teeth.

‘But you are here – despite the fact that you so rarely come to London since you were widowed. That must count for something.’

God, had he always been so irritating? ‘I am free to come and go as I please. To socialise with whom I please. I am under no obligation to explain my movements to anybody.’