Page 19 of Dukes All Night Long
T he man from the neighboring estate had been here for dinner again, and Wolf had come up to bed ready to pack his bags and go back to London. “She doesn’t love me,” he told Garry. “She is going to marry the neighbor—he told me himself that they have had an understanding for years.”
He was prowling back and forth across the bedchamber—one of the finest in the house, which was one of several indications that the servants’ gossip was accurate. The Earl of Congleton had assumed that Wolf was going to propose and had welcomed Garry’s friend as a favored suitor.
Had he misinterpreted his daughter’s interest?
He certainly wasn’t the sort of father to force a marriage she did not want.
A little vacant, perhaps. His six daughters were left largely to their own devices.
The younger four were still in the schoolroom.
The eldest occupied herself with ladylike pursuits such as music and painting, and the second—Garry’s Jenna—ran the house, her sisters, and her father like a field-marshal.
No. There was something wrong. Sabina, from what the servants said, didn’t like Sir Thomas Carter, the next-door neighbor, above half.
And Jenna despised him, according to her maid and to the way the lady herself looked when the scoundrel turned up at the door yesterday evening and again this evening.
Garry had been in the upstairs hall on both occasions, knowing it would be his chance to see Jenna as she made her way down to the parlor where they gathered before dinner. She had heard Carter’s voice from below, snarled before she composed her face, and descended the stairs.
“Something about this makes no sense,” Garry said. “According to her maid, she sleeps with your miniature and the handkerchief you gave her under her pillow.”
Wolf stopped his pacing and glared. “Then she is fickle,” he said. “She gave her promise to Carter, decided she liked me better, and has changed her mind again.”
“Something is wrong,” Garry insisted. “Tell me what they are like together, Wolf. From what the servants say, she does everything she can to avoid him short of outright rudeness. Tell me, does she hang on his every word? Watch him when she thinks no one is looking? Exchange longing glances?”
The glare turned to a thoughtful frown. “No,” he said, slowly. “In fact, the opposite. He pursues her, and she tries to hide behind her sister. Or her father, but her sister more. Now that I come to think of it, Lady Jenna keeps getting in his way.”
He resumed pacing. “For example, this evening, he started talking about some childhood escapade that involved him and Sabina, and Lady Jenna interrupted with some cruel tricks he’d played on both ladies.
She presented them as amusing stories, but he was a bully to them, apparently.
Then later, he offered to turn the pages for Lady Sabina when she went to play the piano, and Lady Jenna asked him to tell her father about his new horse and went to turn them herself. ”
“When he told you they had an understanding, did either lady hear? Did her father?”
Another slow “no” from Wolf. “He took me aside as he was leaving. Do you think he lies?”
“I think something is wrong,” Garry repeated. He left Wolf more hopeful and made his way to the trundle bed in the dressing room attached to Wolf’s sumptuous accommodations. Valets must, in general, be shorter and less robust than Garry. And accustomed to thinner mattresses.
He did not expect to sleep any better than he had for the last two nights.
Worse, in fact, for the situation with Sabina and Wolf worried him.
Furthermore, he had met Jenna a couple of times in his persona as Wolf’s valet.
How foolish of him not to consider that she might be the sort of lady who noticed servants.
On the first occasion, she had seen him exiting the dressing room into the passageway with Wolf’s boots, and had asked him if her father’s servants had made him comfortable, and if he had everything he needed.
On the second occasion, just this evening, she had stopped and spoken to him again. “Mr. Garry, how are you this evening?” It had never occurred to him that he would have to explain his masquerade when he turned up in a few weeks as himself. How would she react?
For Jenna was precisely the wife he would have chosen for himself, if he had been five years older and looking for a wife. She was the wife who reconciled him to marrying now, as his grandfather wished, making certain of her before some other man recognized her as the treasure she was.
And he was concerned that, in coming here in disguise, he might have shot himself in the foot.
It was no use. He wasn’t going to sleep.
Perhaps a cup of hot milk would help. He would make his way to the kitchen.
Even if the stove had been banked for the night, it should have enough heat to warm a cup of milk, and heaven knew that he’d raided enough pantries for midnight snacks to be sure of finding milk, a pot, and a few spices to make it interesting.
He pulled on his pants and a coat, and slipped his feet into shoes. If he bumped into anyone, he wanted the armor of being decently clad.
He didn’t, but when he ventured out of the guest wing onto the servant stairs, it was to see Lady Jenna Elliot, dressed in a dark cloak, making her way down the stairs ahead of him.
Garry wasn’t dressed for outdoors, but he could not waste time going back to his room. Not if he was going to follow Lady Jenna, which he was.
Out of a small door at the foot of the stairs, into the utilitarian courtyard beyond the door, past the line of outbuildings, down steps to a large kitchen garden, all the while taking advantage of every shadow, every hiding place to keep his presence hidden.
Not that Lady Jenna looked behind her. She was focused on reaching a destination, and they were not there yet, for she opened the gate at the other end of the garden, and disappeared through the gate and out of his sight.
Garry ran to catch up. The gate led to a path that ran down the hill and was so shaded by trees that, when he stepped out of the moonlight and into the wood, he had to slow down to allow his eyes to adjust. Even so, as he came out of the wood, Jenna was in front of him, perhaps fifty paces ahead, climbing a hill on the other side of a stream.
The path crossed a little flat bridge, and so did Garry, hurrying up the hill, watching Jenna closely so that, if she began to turn, he could drop to the ground and hope the curve of the hill would hide him.
He was catching up when she crested the hill and could no longer be seen. He threw caution to the wind and ran the rest of the distance, though he was winded when he reached the top.
And there she was, partway across a lawn to another mansion. The neighboring estate. Thomas Carter’s house? Had Garry entirely misread the relationship between them?
He would not make any assumptions. He would continue to follow, and find out.