Page 27 of The Derbyshire Dance (Kendall House #3)

“I’m honoured,” said Nigel dryly, taking a perverse delight in leading away Miss Morrison just as the vicar appeared at her elbow. Mr. Townsend gave him a righteous glare, but the good man was not left alone long before Mrs. White shimmered closer to console him and listen to his complaints.

As Mrs. Brownlee had predicted, this dance was just about to end. Nigel had only a few minutes’ conversation with his partner while the musicians leafed through their music to prepare for the next set.

“The carriage wheel was faulty, your grace?” said Miss Morrison coolly.

“Yes, John said it looked like it had been tampered with.”

“So, not an accident? But who would want to keep the infamous Duke of Warrenton from attending our humble ball?”

“Who indeed?” said Nigel, not liking the tone she was taking. The easy familiarity with which they had spent the morning had disappeared completely. “It is a mystery.”

“Lud, I am so warm,” said Lady Maltrousse loudly as Mr. Brownlee led her off the dance floor.

Her mousy maid, who had been standing on the perimeter of the room, rushed forward to hand her a fan.

Lady Maltrousse waved it furiously directing the blasts of air towards her insufficient bodice.

“How peculiar that there are no chairs to sit on. ”

“Oh, but there are chairs, my lady, and refreshments as well.” Mr. Brownlee’s long arm gestured to the adjoining parlour as he exerted all his energy in pleasing their uninvited guest. “You were at Chatsworth for Christmas, you say?"

“Indeed! And a dull enough Christmas it was. The Duke of Devonshire is usually so droll,”—her tittering laughter was loud enough to filter into the main room— “but he’s sicklier and sicklier of late.

And it’s not been the same since dear Georgiana died—indeed, the duke is positively respectable now that he’s married to Elizabeth! ”

The strings struck up again, covering the sounds of conversation. “You have not greeted your friend from London,” Miss Morrison observed.

“I have no friends from London,” said Nigel. “At least, no true friends.”

“Lady Maltrousse claims otherwise. She says she is a longstanding friend of yours. I wonder, are you friends with her husband as well?”

Nigel winced. “Lord Maltrousse does not move in the same circles as his wife.” He led his incisive partner onto the dance floor, aware that each of her subsequent queries would cut like a scalpel.

“But you do. Is Lord Maltrousse as liberally minded as the Duke of Devonshire? As all dukes are?”

“Come now, that’s hardly fair,” said Nigel. “Devonshire is shockingly loose in the haft—always has been, with a wife on one arm and a mistress on the other.” Nigel took her hands to promenade through the set of couples and fell silent for a moment so as not to be overheard.

Miss Morrison, however, was hardly ready to let the subject drop. She waited until the dance brought them back to their own sphere of orbit. “Whereas you would prefer to keep a wife and mistress completely separate from each other?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?” She cocked her head and looked up at him as he walked around her in a slow turn.

“You think Lady Maltrousse is my mistress. She is not. She was my brother’s inamorata .”

“So, you acquired her as a…friend…when you became a duke?”

“In a manner of speaking. She was giving me lessons.”

“Lessons?”

Once again, the figures of the dance forced them to pause the conversation until they came back to a convenient corner of the set.

“Lessons on how to cut a dash in society. How to be a Lymington.”

“And what exactly does that entail?”

“Oh, a certain joie de vivre , a devil-may-care attitude. Wine, women, and song. And cards, never forget cards.”

“You were taking lessons on how to become a rake?” Miss Morrison’s voice was incredulous.

“In a manner of speaking,” he said, feeling utterly embarrassed but aware that if he wanted her presence, he could not escape her censure. “I had to uphold the family reputation.”

“Upon my word, what absolute rot!”

Nigel could see several curious eyes staring in their direction, no doubt wondering the subject of Miss Morrison’s outburst. But he had gone too far in his revelations to stop now.

“Yes, it was. I see that now. But at the time I thought it was all part and parcel of being a duke. My brother, my father, my grandfather—all men about the town. ”

“And all reasons that your finances are at such a low ebb.”

“Not exactly something I like to advertise,” said Nigel, wryly.

There were even more faces looking in their direction now, including Lady Maltrousse who had apparently recovered her breath in the adjoining room enough to return to the outskirts of the dance floor.

She had seized her lorgnette from the attentive maid and was looking at them haughtily through the jewelled spectacles.

As the set came to an end, she traded lorgnette for fan and advanced to where they stood in the centre of the room.

“My, my, I was afraid you would have forgotten all your town polish, but here you are arriving fashionably late and dancing with the only tolerable unmarried woman in the room. What? Aren’t you going to greet me, Nigel darling? ”