Page 3 of Lady Graceless (A Series of Senseless Complications #2)

G race had so far enjoyed their travels as they headed toward London. They were a regular caravan of carriages, two of their own and the rest rented. Her own carriage carried herself, Serenity, Valor, and Mrs. Right. Another carriage held Winsome, Patience, and Verity, and she supposed the arguments in that coach went on all day. Verity would pose some new fact that was likely not a fact, Winsome would challenge it, and Patience would toe-tap over the tediousness. Her papa was ensconced in his own carriage with the two footmen and his valet, Reynolds.

Lady Marchfield had last year pointed out that a duke should not be riding with his footmen and his valet, but the duke had inquired who he was to talk to if they were shunted off elsewhere. Lady Marchfield had suggested herself so that they might discuss plans for the season. The duke had marched her to another carriage and shouted, “Not on your life!”

Just now they traveled down a rather narrow bit of road and Grace felt as if they were taking a very roundabout way to Town. However, the duke had told them he had a reason for it, he was to show them something special. She wondered if they were getting close to it as she could not see why else they had left the wider and better maintained roads.

She did feel they had traveled into a county they had never been through. The air smelled somehow different. It was not unpleasant, but it was less grass and hay and more… she could not even come up with a word for it. It was very fresh and invigorating.

The lead carriage carrying the duke slowed and stopped. Grace peeked out the window and saw her father hop out and stride over, standing between the two carriages carrying his daughters.

Patience hung out the window. “Are we almost there, Papa? What I mean is, are we almost somewhere?”

The duke nodded. “In another quarter of a mile, you shall see the secret I’ve held close. Keep your eyes wide open and prepare to be amazed!”

The duke hopped back in his carriage and the caravan set off again.

“Mrs. Right,” Grace said, “I feel certain you know where we are going. You will know what it is that our mama was so fond of.”

“If I did, I would not spoil the duke’s surprise for the world,” Mrs. Right said.

Valor slipped her hand into Mrs. Right’s and clutched Mrs. Wendover with the other. “Is it a scary surprise?”

“My girl, I have told you ten ways to Sunday that when you are by my side, naught can hurt you.”

“Oh that’s right, you do tell me that a lot.”

The discussion then fell to all the times Valor had been certain disaster was poised to strike but didn’t.

There was the time she became sure that the bull who ruled their farthest field had figured out how to unlatch the gate and would bide his time. When nobody was looking, he would free himself and trample them all. That bull had grown old and his only interest in life was grazing—he would not be inclined to gin up the energy to trample Valor or anybody else.

Then there were the endless amounts of times that she could not be convinced that the woman’s screams she heard in the middle of the night were just a fox’s cries. She had even consulted the vicar on the matter, who explained that a fox’s cries could sound very like a woman frightened or suffering. Valor hinted to the vicar that she very much feared that it must be him torturing all those screaming women if he wanted to cover it up instead of rescue them. The duke had to step into the ensuing set-to and remind the vicar that he owed the duke his living.

Just three days ago, Valor had woken Grace with the sad news that they had a terrible ghost. That unearthly creature had kidnapped Mrs. Wendover and she was now likely lost forever. Valor had been very against going back to the scene of the kidnapping, but Grace had marched her back to her room. The stuffed rabbit had been in her usual lost location, which was under the bed. Valor claimed she had not been able to check there before imagining a kidnapping because everybody knows that under the bed at night is scary.

Faced with all these false alarms, Valor shrugged. “You will be sorry, though, when I’m right. I still don’t believe it’s foxes.”

Grace giggled and peered out the window. They had just gone down a lane hemmed in with tall trees. Very suddenly, the vista opened.

“Is that… is that the sea?” Grace asked, nearly breathless from the sight.

This caused Serenity and Valor to fling themselves to her side and look out the window.

“It’s so big!” Valor cried.

A tear rolled down Serenity’s cheek. “Who ever could have imagined such wonder and majesty?”

Both of her sisters were right. Though they had all known of the mighty ocean, though they’d all seen drawings and maps galore, though a painting of it tossing a mighty ship sat over their drawing room mantel, this… it was almost too much to take in!

A deep blue endlessness in either direction leading off into a horizon. The Netherlands, Belgium, and France were out there somewhere and they could not even see them, the sea was so vast.

The duke had hopped out of his carriage and called to Grace. “The carriages can go no further else they will not be able to turn round—we go on foot!”

They piled out of the carriage and hurried down the lane to the duke. Patience, Winsome and Verity were out of their carriage. The footmen had wasted no time either. Only Reynolds took his time and attempted to look dignified—the duke’s valet was a rather grim specimen in every situation.

Everyone followed the duke through a twisty tangle of a path that ended in stone steps leading down to a narrow beach.

Along with the majesty of the sea, they were now cognizant of a thing they had not seen from their prior location above the shore.

There was a boat on its side with waves crashing over it and two men staggering up the beach. Both men had their jackets off and were soaked through, so they had clearly been the crew of that boat. Despite being jacketless and wet, they both seemed to be dressed rather fine.

Particularly the gentleman on the left. He was tall and athletic looking. Even with his dark hair plastered to his head, he looked very dashing. The one on the right seemed to be having a breakdown of some sort—he was jumping up and down and shouting something. Grace began to wonder if he were the gentleman’s butler, as in her experience butlers were always so prone to hysterics.

They had all hurried down the steps and though Grace paid close attention to her footing she missed the last as it was covered in sand and she went down with a thud. This caused Charlie to trip over her and then Thomas to fall over Charlie.

“Causing another pile up, eh Gracie?” the duke said, helping her to her feet.

Grace did not answer, because of course she had. The two gentlemen were staring in their direction and she hoped they’d not seen how it happened that three people had fallen down.

The duke turned to the two gentlemen and shouted, “What-ho! Shipwrecked, are you?”

The dashing man shouted back. “I suppose we are, though we’ve at least managed to land on the right island.”

The duke turned round and said, “Well, it seems we encounter more excitement than I’d planned. Let us go see what has gone on with these two fellows.”

Very naturally, they were all in eager agreement with this plan and set forward to meet the two shipwrecked gentlemen.

Grace’s shoes filled with sand and small stones. While she did not know what footwear would be suitable for walking on a beach, these rather flimsy slippers could not be it. Charlie gave her his arm while Thomas assisted Mrs. Right. The duke picked up and carried Valor, else she would have fallen behind. Reynolds would no doubt have assisted either Patience, Serenity, Winsome, or Verity, but they had run on ahead.

By the time Grace reached the party, Winsome was interrogating the gentlemen regarding how they were shipwrecked and Verity was interrupting her with the idea that shipwrecks were a very common thing. Patience had gone down to examine the boat, while Serenity wept at the shoreline over the majesty of the view.

“The Duke of Pelham,” the duke said heartily. “And you are?”

Both gentlemen bowed. The dashing gentleman said, “Viscount Dashlend, son of the Earl of Gravesend, Your Grace. This is my valet, Moreau.”

The duke laughed. “Dragged your valet out to sea, did you? What say you, Reynolds? Would you ever put up with such shenanigans?”

Reynolds shook his head gravely, as the last thing he would ever be involved in was shenanigans.

“This man understands Moreau!” the valet cried, pointing at the duke. “Merci, Your Highest and Most Holy Grace.”

This caused the duke to laugh even harder. “Well, Dashlend, you’ve got yourself a hysterical man there—maybe the sea is not the place for him. And you,” he said, pointing to Mr. Moreau, “I am just Your Grace, do not add holy to it and hint I’m the pope, thank you very much.”

Mr. Moreau seemed nonplussed with the duke, though Viscount Dashlend looked rather amused.

“Now,” the duke said, “you might as well meet all these setbacks by way of progeny—there is Patience, staring at your boat and wondering how you managed to tip it over. Serenity stands next to her, weeping as usual, probably to do with the majesty of nature. Here is Valor, the youngest, do not worry about her, she’ll be terrified of you. You already met Verity and Winsome—one names a fact and the other sets out to prove it wrong. Here is our good Mrs. Right, my housekeeper—she runs the whole circus. And finally, the eldest still left at home, Lady Grace. I am taking her to Town in the hopes of getting her off my hands at the earliest possible moment.”

Though this was quite a usual speech for her Papa, Grace could not help but hear it as a stranger might hear it. Felicity had told her of that odd feeling, as she had experienced the same herself. It was one thing to know what the duke meant, and another to take what he said on its face.

The viscount looked as if he were working hard not to laugh. His valet was looking with alarm back and forth between the duke’s daughters.

Viscount Dashlend bowed and said, “Charmed.”

Was he, though?

“I suppose we’d best get you out of your current predicament,” the duke said. “We are going to an inn not a mile off—I’ll put you up while you make whatever sort of arrangements one makes when involved in a fiasco such as this.”

“That is exceedingly kind, Your Grace,” the viscount said.

“Patience! Serenity!” the duke called to the shoreline. “Come now, we have two wet people to transport.”

Patience, never one to linger as a habit, came running back. Serenity was a bit slower, as her weeping over the majesty of the sea had no doubt clouded her vision.

“Reynolds,” the duke said, “I leave it to you to rearrange the carriages in some suitable fashion.”

Reynolds nodded gravely and set off to do the duke’s bidding. Grace did not know what arrangements the valet would make, but Reynolds was one for quiet efficiency. She did not suppose he would come up with any whimsical ideas like putting the viscount in her own carriage.

“Let’s get this caravan going,” the duke said.

“Lady Grace,” the viscount said, “may I escort you to steadier ground?”

Grace nodded and had every hope that her pink cheeks could be attributed to the brisk sea air.

Her sisters were all very wide-eyed at the idea, especially Valor. “Be careful of rogues, Grace,” she whispered as Grace went by.

Grace pretended that she had not heard that. The idea had come from Mrs. Right. Before Felicity’s season, she had told them all what they could expect in Town. The men were feckless rogues, and the women were fan-waving furies.

Their opinions on the matter had veered wildly over the course of that season—one moment they were convinced it was not true, then it was true, then it was not true again. Mr. Stratton had turned out all right for Felicity, but who really knew?

“Lady Grace,” the viscount said, “I presume from your father’s speech that this is your first foray into Town?”

“The first where I will be out,” Grace said. “I was there last year when my sister, Felicity, had her season.”

This seemed to register something in the viscount’s mind. “I was not there, I was on the continent on business for my father…but, Lady Felicity? I seem to have heard about a tiger and then she wed Stratton?”

“Yes, that is right,” Grace said.

They had come to the steps and Grace was determined not to fall over. She leaned heavily on the viscount’s arm.

He seemed to perceive her trepidation over them and said, “There now, well-worn steps like these only require one to go slowly and not get ahead of oneself.”

Grace nodded, really very gratified at his consideration. How extraordinary that she would have met with her first single gentleman in such a situation. At least, she supposed he was single, but then perhaps he was not—how to find it out?

They had reached the top of the steps with no tippings over, which was just as she hoped for. Viscount Dashlend escorted her through the twisting track and it was really very narrow in some places. Grace was not certain she’d ever been so close to a gentleman outside of her papa. In truth, she was sure she had not. There was one moment where really they should have gone in a single file. Their shoulders touched. It was rather exhilarating.

Reynolds had made arrangements with the carriages. One of the luggage coaches had been rearranged to permit just enough room for two people. Horse blankets had been laid down on the seats to accommodate the wet passengers.

“Jump in, sailors,” the duke said to the viscount and his valet. “We’re off to The Dolphin and the Dove—what a name for an inn, eh? What does a dolphin want with a dove? Nobody knows, least of all the innkeeper!”

With that genial assessment, Grace went to her own carriage and very slowly and elegantly got in.

*

The carriage door was shut by the duke’s valet, who gave both Miles and Moreau a very stern look before making his dignified way to the duke’s carriage.

They stared at one another.

“Well, how propitious that we are rescued so easily,” Miles said. “I had thought we’d be roaming up and down the coast looking for help from the local people. I imagined we’d end up spending the night in somebody’s hayloft.”

“What is this family?” Moreau asked.

“Were you not listening? The Duke of Pelham and his daughters.”

“You know what I ask.”

Of course, Miles was pretty certain he did know. What an extraordinary introduction. He’d been introduced to ladies by their fathers hundreds of times. In all of those times, he’d never heard a father refer to a daughter as a setback and then describe them in further unflattering terms. He’d wondered if the duke was drunk, but then he’d decided that was not the case.

“Was he drunk?” Moreau asked.

“I do not believe so,” Miles said thoughtfully. “I believe he may only be eccentric. Highly eccentric.”

Moreau narrowed his eyes. “Moreau is eccentric. This is something else.”

Naturally, Moreau was eccentric. One had to be eccentric to talk about themselves by name, as if one were Louis XIV using the royal we. The duke’s was a different sort of eccentricity, though.

“This is English ducal eccentricity,” Miles said. “Something you will not be familiar with.”

As Miles expected, this brought an end to that particular line of inquiry. Though Moreau claimed he knew quite a lot on nearly every subject, he freely admitted that the habits of the English were beyond his understanding.

They fell into silence as Moreau became distracted by examining his wet clothing and quietly sighing over it.

Miles did not give too much thought to his clothing, as that was Moreau’s problem. His thoughts were much more taken up with Lady Grace.

She was very pretty, really. Her hair was a lovely shade of blond and not at all short of ringlets, as the sea breeze had helpfully revealed. Her cheeks were dimpled, which was charming. And then her eyes—so many blond ladies were blue eyed, but she was not. Her eyes were such that they might be taken for brown, but when one was closer one saw they were actually more olive with hints of gold. He really thought those eyes and her refined bone structure lent some sophistication to what might have been only a confection of blond curls and dimples.

Lady Grace also seemed a good-natured sort of lady. After all, she had not looked at all perturbed to hear herself described as a setback, nor the duke noting he was looking to get her out of the house as fast as possible.

Miles paused. Because, of course, that was why a lady came to London to begin. No father outright ever said it, but he supposed they all secretly harbored the duke’s ambitions. And then, the duke had quite a number of young ladies to settle. Miles had lost track of exactly how many of them had been on the beach as they’d seemed to be a regular swarm.

Thoughts of settling all those young ladies inevitably brought on ideas of his own situation. He really ought to get on with it. The squall they’d been through, how close they’d come to disaster, impressed upon him how each day could be his last.

Should that day come earlier than later, it would mean that a certain Rupert Burdock, known to the wider world as Baron Montclave, would step in as his father’s heir. That alone would send his father following Miles to the great beyond with all haste.

Miles’ father and his father’s brother, Cyril, had been oil and water since childhood. The earl had been the direct line in the earldom. Montclave’s father Cyril might have gone on as a mister all his life, but he had been gifted the barony for services rendered to the crown. Most unfortunately, their estates bordered one another. The barony was far smaller and that seemed to be a constant needle in that family’s side.

As neighbors, they could not avoid knowing one another. The earl had gone to great lengths to instill honor in his brother, to no avail. There had even been instances when the earl had wondered if an accident had been an accident, or some plan of Cyril’s to get him out of the way so he might move up a spot in life. If the earl had died without issue, Cyril would be next in line.

Cyril went on to wed a viscount’s daughter who seemed equally dissatisfied with their lot. Then Montclave had been born to Cyril and his lady.

It was said that when a son arrived, there had been much celebration in that household, as Miles was not yet on the ground and they had high hopes a son would never arrive to the earl’s household. As the years passed, it looked more and more likely. It almost began to look assured. The only circumstance they really feared was that the countess would die and the earl would remarry to a younger and more fertile lady, thereby producing a son at the last possible moment.

Miles’ mother was nearing thirty when she became with child, much to everybody’s surprise.

Still, Cyril and his wife held out hope that the earl’s offspring would be a girl. It was not though.

Since then, Cyril had died and Montclave had taken on the mantle of Baron.

Montclave went out of his way to be some sort of obsequious friend, but Miles was not particularly fooled. There was always an undercurrent of something there—anger, resentment, scheming…something untrustworthy.

How delighted Montclave would have been to get a letter that Miles was lost at sea.

“I’d really better do something,” he said quietly.

“Oh I see,” Moreau said. “We go out to the deadly depths of the ocean with no spare sail only to crash land in barbaric English wilderness and be taken away by an eccentric duke. But now , you would like to do something.”

“That is about the size of it.”

“Mon Dieu.”

“Mon Dieu all you like,” Miles said. “In the meantime, fix my clothes as soon as we get to the inn. I am all but certain the duke will ask me to dine with him. I must be presentable.”

“Fix your clothes?” Moreau asked, as if he’d just been directed to fly to the moon. “I see. So what do you imagine? Moreau will blow on them to dry them out?”

“I’ve not imagined anything,” Miles said genially. “You are the valet—it’s your problem to imagine.”

“Oh yes,” Moreau muttered, “it is always my problem. The world sits heavy on Moreau’s shoulders.”

Miles stopped himself from laughing. Moreau had one duty in life—to see to Miles’ clothes. If that was the weight of the world, he’d like to know about it.

Moreau peered out the window. “And here we are at the Dolphin and Dove, another eccentric English inn. What will they serve, I wonder? Oh I know, not dolphin and not dove, it will be beef. It is always beef.”

“Let us hope you are correct,” Miles said.

They had pulled into the yard and it was apparent the duke had written ahead that he would be arriving with a caravan of people and carriages. Staff swarmed the duke’s carriage as if he were the prince.

“We’d best take ourselves out and manage on our own, I think,” Miles said.

“Yes, why not,” Moreau said. “We are nobodies now.”

Miles was often fascinated by the workings of his valet’s mind. The highs and lows of it were dramatic, to say the least. He wondered how the fellow slept at night, with all these tragic musings running circles round his mind.

“Wallow in self-pity all day long if it suits you,” Miles said, jumping down from the carriage. “Just do something about my clothes.”