Page 9 of His Tempting Duchess (Regency Wedding Crashers #4)

CHAPTER 9

C assian lifted his head, determined to ignore the eyes on him as he crossed the room.

Margaret Knight, the Dowager Baroness Rawdon, was famous for her beauty and talent. As the young and beautiful wife of the Baron Rawdon—a much older and less interesting man, but undoubtedly rich—she had burst into Society like a whirlwind. Even now, at almost forty years old, she was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. There was barely a streak of white in her golden hair, and what few wrinkles she had only seemed to accentuate her large, green eyes and soft, wide mouth.

She had taken up a place on a chaise lounge in the corner, her legs propped up, a glass of wine dangling from her fingers. A handful of gentlemen clustered around her, clearly hoping to draw her into conversation or perhaps tempt her onto the dance floor.

Since the baron’s death almost a decade ago, Margaret had been a target for fortune hunters all over the country.

They’d all met their match. She had no intention of marrying again, she said, and no handsome face or charming manners had ever managed to tempt her down the aisle again.

“You’re speaking to me, are you?” she said, once Cassian was close enough. She drained her wine glass in one gulp and lazily gestured for a footman to bring her another. “I am honored. Nice costume, by the way. Is it a tablecloth? It looks like a tablecloth.”

Cassian glared at the lurking gentlemen, and they wisely paled and shuffled away. He shot Richard a meaningful look, and his cousin tactfully melted into the crowd. He decided not to address her comment on his costume.

“Move your ankles—I’m going to sit down,” he announced, sitting down heavily on the end of the chaise, narrowly avoiding crushing her feet.

“Such a charmer,” Margaret muttered. “I hear you’re still pursuing that Belmont girl, despite her very public rejection of you at the altar. I would have thought you’d forgotten about her after that.”

“It’s not like that,” Cassian responded sharply. “I wrote to you and told you about the will, didn’t I? If I wish to inherit, I must marry and produce children. There’s really nothing to be done about it.”

“No, I suppose not,” Margaret sighed, sitting up properly. She rolled her shoulders, wincing at the audible pops . “I never imagined I’d be so old, you know. When one is young, one imagines one will be young and beautiful forever. Don’t waste your youth, Cass.”

Cassian swallowed thickly. “I’m not a youth.”

“Hm. I’m honored that you actually chose to speak to me, you know. You never visit us. Frances tells me that she never receives letters from you. It’s most cruel. Family is an important thing. She only has one uncle, after all.”

Cassian swallowed thickly, glancing around at the crowd. “Hush, Margaret. You’ve drunk too much. I assumed Frances would be too busy with her studies for letters. And you know very well that you must not call me her uncle . Not loudly. Not if she wishes to inherit the Baron’s fortune as well as whatever I settle upon her.”

Margaret smiled mirthlessly. Somehow, a fresh glass of champagne was in her hand, and she took a genteel sip.

“She’ll inherit, I’ll be sure of that. And with you to care for her, she’ll have as good a start in life as she could have wished. If I had a start like that, perhaps my life would have turned out differently.”

Cassian swallowed, glancing away. He avoided paying visits to Margaret for exactly this reason. He preferred to push the past away and forget about it, while Margaret preferred to live in it. He suspected that they both made each other’s pain worse.

Frances was the spitting image of her mother, with large green eyes, flaxen hair, and a delicate, round face. Like her mother—once a renowned opera singer—she had a clear and beautiful voice. Cassian had wondered, more than once, whether the late baron had ever suspected something, considering that his daughter did not possess a single one of his features. Did he notice? Did he guess?

Did it matter?

“Do you know what today is?” Margaret whispered, suddenly leaning close to him. She smelled strongly of sweet perfume and alcohol. Not champagne, but something stronger. Brandy, perhaps.

Cassian closed his eyes. “Of course, I know. Today is… is the day they found him.”

“That’s right.” Margaret leaned back. “Today is the day they fished Matthew out of that river. He went missing overnight, and he was found on the evening of the following day. The papers loved it. There were dozens of stories and all sorts of nonsensical ideas. One paper claimed that he’d been attacked by a highwayman who had subsequently panicked and thrown him in the river, without bothering to relieve him of his valuables. But you and I know the truth, don’t we?”

“Stop it, Margaret.”

“Matthew was never pushed or thrown into the river. No, no.”

“Margaret…”

“Nor was it an accident.”

“That is enough ,” Cassian snapped, rising abruptly to his feet. “I do not want to discuss this. You know this, Margaret. You know I don’t talk about it. Ever.”

Margaret blinked up at him, starting to look a little guilty.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, setting aside the champagne. “I… I just can never stop thinking about it.”

Cassian swallowed thickly, nodding. “I know. I know, Margaret. But worrying about the past won’t improve Frances’s future, will it?”

Margaret breathed in, blinking hard to force back tears. In a flash, the old Margaret was back—bright-eyed, smiling wryly, alert and alive.

“Oh, my daughter will have the finest life I can give her,” she murmured.

“The finest life we can give her,” Cassian corrected. “Now, Richard tells me something has upset you. Care to tell me what it is?”

Margaret eyed him for a moment, then a shutter seemed to come down over her expression.

“I have no idea what that wide-eyed, little fool is talking about,” she sniffed, tossing back her hair.

“Hm.” Cassian narrowed his eyes at her.

There was something Margaret wasn’t telling him, but there was no sense in trying to force it out of her. Nobody could force Margaret to do anything.

That was why Matthew loved her so dearly, I suppose. Her spirit. He thought she could never be broken and would never waver in her convictions.

If only he hadn’t been so wrong.

Cassian forced that thought out of his mind. “Well, if that’s everything…” he began, only to be interrupted.

“That lady is staring at you, by the way,” Margaret noted, gesturing with her glass.

Cassian turned to find Miss Belmont huddled together with her sisters a little way off. The two duchesses were whispering amongst themselves, but Miss Belmont was staring at him, a faint furrow between her eyebrows. When their eyes met, she glanced away and did not look back.

“Oh dear,” Margaret murmured, sounding almost amused. “Perhaps you’re not the only jealous one in this little tendre .”

“It’s not a t—oh, never mind. Just try not to embarrass yourself too much tonight, Margaret. Can you manage that?” Cassian snapped.

Margaret chuckled, tossing back her champagne. “I make no promises.”

Cassian turned around to find Miss Belmont again, but between one moment and the next, she’d vanished entirely.

Wonderful .

* * *

“Mama,” Emily said, tracking the duke’s progress across the room, “who is that woman? That one there, on the chaise lounge. Oh, the duke is sitting beside her now.”

Octavia glanced over and winced. “Oh. That is the Baroness Rawdon.”

“I haven’t met her before,” Daphne remarked, craning her neck. “She’s very pretty.”

Octavia sighed. “No, she generally is not introduced to impressionable young women. She might be a fairly respectable baroness, and a widow into the bargain, but nobody forgets that she was once an opera singer . You girls won’t remember, of course, but it was quite the scandal when the old baron—a confirmed bachelor, you know—abruptly married the girl. She wasn’t accepted in Society for years, and even now, there are plenty of doors that are firmly closed in her face.

“She has a daughter, although I can’t quite remember the girl’s name. She comes out next year, I think. The baron’s fortune is tied up in quite an odd way if I recall, but the pair of them seem comfortable enough. I suppose we ought not to judge. We all assumed the baroness would marry again, but she never did. She’s almost been forgotten, poor thing.”

Emily said nothing, staring at the duke. He’d dismissed the baroness’s would-be admirers with a steely glare. She hadn’t even glanced their way. Her gaze was fixed on the duke, and his on her. They were entirely focused on each other, conversing in low voices.

A lump was forming in Emily’s throat. She swallowed hard, trying to make it go away, but to no avail.

The baroness was such a beautiful woman, despite her age. Or perhaps because of it. She had a languid smile and large, heavy-lidded green eyes that seemed to draw a person in. Were they drawing the duke in?

Emily had never seen him concentrate so much on one person. And he’d even sat beside the woman, instead of looming over her with that knowing, amused smile.

He sat beside me earlier. Not that it meant anything.

To her horror, the lump in her throat was making tears prick her eyes. She swallowed again, trying to compose herself, but composure had never come easily to her. Or to Daphne, but Daphne generally had to fight down tides of anger, whereas Emily often found herself battling tears.

Her mother and her sisters were not paying attention. Anna had wandered off and was deep in conversation with the rest. Nobody seemed to notice or care what the duke was doing.

Abruptly, the duke got to his feet, the conversation between him and the baroness growing a little more heated. Emily was mesmerized, unable to look away. At last, the conversation seemed to end, drifting away to an amicable resolution. And then the baroness nodded in her direction, and the duke followed her gaze.

Before Emily could do the sensible thing of pretending to be looking elsewhere, she found herself caught. The duke’s gaze bored into her, his eyes languid and amused. Swallowing thickly, she pointedly glanced away. The ballroom was blurring, however, and none of the conversations made sense.

“Mama,” she whispered, tugging at her mother’s sleeve. “Mama, I feel a little too hot. I might go to the library down the hall and rest for a moment. I’ll find a book. Beatrice won’t mind.”

“As you like, dear,” Octavia responded, looking a little concerned. “Are you well?”

“Quite well, just hot and tired.”

“Hm. Don’t be long.”

“I won’t,” Emily lied.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the duke was once again wrapped up in conversation with the baroness. This was her opportunity, then. She turned and dived into the crowd, pushing her way across the ballroom and towards the yawning darkness of the hallway beyond.

It was much cooler out in the hallway, and much quieter, too. There were footmen posted at intervals, most of them smothering yawns. She passed a few other guests, too. There was a portly gentleman slumbering in a chair, a girl with a swollen ankle and tears on her cheeks, and a gaggle of young women pinning up the hair of another woman whose curls had come down and hung around her shoulders. They barely looked up as Emily walked by, pins bristling from their mouths like hedgehogs.

The hallway encircled the ballroom entirely and branched off in various directions to the rest of the lower floors of the house.

Emily had been to Beatrice’s home long enough to know where she was going. She took a narrow turn and found herself in a low, wallpapered corridor, with closed doors set at intervals. The final door was the one that opened up onto the library.

It was dark inside the library, with only a few candles set here and there for illumination. It was not expected that guests would venture this far into their hosts’ home. There were card rooms and quiet rooms for those who needed them, and alcoves set directly off the ballroom.

Those rooms were never entirely private, of course. A lady who found herself alone with a man—intentionally or otherwise—would find herself ruined the next morning, regardless of what had happened, or whether there was an entire ballroom of people on the other side of a curtain. Reputations, as Emily knew all too well, were paper-thin and fragile.

Her own reputation, of course, was in tatters. She had been invited tonight only because it was Beatrice’s party. A great many of her former friends had pretended not to see her, or cut her entirely. Aside from the duke and his polite cousin, nobody had asked her to dance. The implication was clear—she was not forgiven. No man would risk marrying a woman who had jilted another man at the altar.

No, it was worse than that. She had sent her twin sister to wed him in her place. It was beyond humiliating.

Swallowing back her misery, Emily stepped into the library and closed the door behind her.

You don’t have to think about this tonight.

Picking up a candlestick, she brought it over to the books on the shelf. She was looking for one title in particular, one Anna had recommended to her. Surely Beatrice would?—

Aha!

Brightening, Emily carefully plucked the book off the shelf. Setting the candle aside, she eyed her prize.

Frankenstein.

It was a short, sharp title, a little aggressive, and rather menacing. Anna had said that the story had the London book clubs in a chokehold, and critics were infuriated by the book. Well, there could be no better recommendation for a story, could there be?

The author had, of course, stayed anonymous. Anna and Beatrice were convinced that the author was a woman, but apparently, modern critics laughed at that idea. The story, they said, was so horrifying that no woman could have conjured it up. Intriguing, to be sure. Sir Walter Scott, apparently, adored the book.

Carrying the candlestick and the book over to a low sofa beside a long table, Emily prepared to settle down and spend the rest of the evening reading. However, she was barely able to open the cover before a floorboard creaked outside the door. She was on her feet in an instant.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, trying to sound outraged.

The door clicked open, and an all too familiar figure stepped over the threshold, eyebrows quizzically raised at her. Her shoulders sagged.

“Oh, it’s you, Your Grace,” she muttered.

The Duke of Clapton stood there, a tall shadow in the flickering candlelight, his expression shadowed. He glanced around the library, taking in every detail.

“You disappeared rather abruptly, Miss Belmont,” he remarked, closing the door behind him with a resounding click .

“Perhaps I wished to be alone.”

“Perhaps you did. But I would like to speak to you all the same.”