Page 111 of The Ladies Least Likely

The girl bobbed a quick curtsey and clattered down the stairs. Amaranthe thought her last words might have been a muttered, “If only he would,” but she couldn’t be sure.

Mal followed her into the parlor, looking about curiously. “We are unchaperoned,” he said, his voice deep and low.

She met his eyes and saw in them a glow she recognized. An answering heat rose within her. “We have been unchaperoned before.”

“But never alone in a house together. I cannot recall a single instance.”

She set her gloves, bonnet, and pelisse aside on one of the chairs and went to her work easel, lifting the cover.

She removed the sheet that stood there with its orderly lines of script and dark, fresh ink.

From the rack beneath the window she retrieved a different page, the title page for the Book of Secrets that Mal had caught her finishing the other day.

She uncapped her ink, dipped her quill, and in the small space between the elaborate border and the line crediting Theocratus for the English translation she wrote, “Prepared by A. Illingworth from the Hunsdon MS MDCCLXXVI.”

“Proper credit,” Mal commented, standing at her shoulder.

She recapped the ink and cleaned her quill. “No more forgery, or anything close to it,” she said. She turned to face him. Her nose reached his shoulder. He smelled of wig powder and Eau de Cologne, a scent she had come to find as pleasurable as ink.

He cupped her cheek with one hand, fingers sliding into the hair around her ear. His thumb brushed her chin. She swayed on her feet, feeling an instant lift of her heart. She wasn’t afraid of where this might lead. Not with him.

“In fact,” she said, her voice softening, “I have been thinking I might join the Stationer’s Company.

At the very least, I should record my works in their register.

It occurred to me, when you were so magnificently defending me in court, that if I register them myself, no one else may be allowed to copy my work. ”

He slid his second hand around her waist and stroked up her back. Heat darted from every place his hand touched.

“No more lies?” he inquired.

She bit her lip. “No more lies.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, and his mouth followed his eyes.

Amaranthe lifted her lips to meet his, eager and shameless.

His kiss was better than the memories she had relived for the past week.

He was a wall of flame and yet solid to the touch.

She wanted to wrap herself around him and hold him tightly. She wanted to hold him for all time.

She lifted her head, a thought teasing the back of her mind. There was something important—something that required attention before she could go back to kissing Mal. What had it been?

“We need to talk to the children,” Mal growled, brushing his lips along her neck.

She shuddered but nodded. Somehow it did not surprise her that he so exactly shared her thoughts. He was as different from her as could be and their acquaintance covered a span of mere weeks, yet he made perfect sense to her.

He was perfect for her, Amaranthe realized as they untangled from their embrace. It was as though some heavenly hand, guided by divine inspiration, had shaped in every part the man who was the match for her, then breathed life into him and set him upon earth.

She’d never felt this way for anyone, and some deep, solid certainty told her she’d never feel it for another. It was he, and he alone, who could bring her alive like this.

Too bad the divine inspiration had gone ahead and made him a duke .

They drove in silence the short distance to Hanover Square. A small crowd of spectators had formed in front of Hunsdon House. A haphazard pile of luggage sat in the street. The front door opened and Hugh marched down the stairs carrying a small leather case.

He pitched the case atop a wooden trunk bound with brass, then turned toward the house just as Ralph charged out the door into the street and seized the small case.

They both had a grip on it, Ralph earnestly pleading, and Hugh, white-faced, shouting at him.

Amaranthe struggled down from the carriage and hurried toward them, a step behind Mal.

“Not my home anymore, is it!” Hugh shouted. “So I’m clearing out! Put it down, Ralph, so I can get the rest of my things.”

“Why is the duke’s luggage in the middle of Hanover Square?” Mal demanded, turning on Ralph.

“Because I’m not the duke anymore!” Hugh howled. He swung on Mal, dropping the case to clench his hands into fists. “She says I’m nothing, that I have nothing that belongs to me. Not even this house. Nothing.”

“Who says?” Mal barked, but Amaranthe already knew. From inside the double doors, which stood open to the world, she heard a woman’s high-pitched shriek.

“Sybil?” Mal snarled. “She has no say here. This is your house, Hugh. Pick up your things and carry them back inside.”

“That’s as what I been telling his lordship!” Ralph grunted as he heaved up the trunk, which appeared to be heavy.

“Don’t lordship me!” Hugh railed at him. “I’m no grace, no lord, no nothing.” His voice broke, but he held Mal’s gaze with a tight, pleading look. “She says we’re all illegitimate. Bastards.”

There were any number of people crowding close to view the spectacle, but one could have heard a pin drop on the gravel in the sudden, awful silence that followed.

The boy, shaking with anger, held his ground against the larger man.

It was clear they shared blood: the same strong jaw, the same strong nose, the same blue eyes.

Mal’s face softened as he regarded his brother.

“Hugh,” he said quietly. “While I live this is and always will be your home, no matter what. Now get you inside.”

Amaranthe held her breath as Hugh didn’t move and the moment spun out.

Murmurs ran through the crowd, quiet now, but sure to grow and spread faster than coal smoke on a river breeze.

It was not her place, but she feared these two strong-willed Delavals were at an impasse.

She stepped forward and touched Hugh’s shoulder.

“Come inside and we will tell you what happened at court today,” she said. “Have you had your tea? I fancy a nice cream tea, and some of Mrs. Blackthorn’s scones.”

Hugh collected himself. His gaze swung over the avid faces of the crowd, and he flinched, then turned to Amaranthe with careful courtesy.

“I do not think I have ever had cream tea, Miss Illingworth. Please do enlighten me.”

He walked toward the house beside her, and Amaranthe breathed a sigh of relief.

“There’s a trick to it,” Mal said, walking on Hugh’s other side. “Cream tea. Something about where the jam goes, though on my life I can’t recall which way is correct.”

“You’ll never make a good Cornishman if you don’t learn,” Amaranthe scolded him, and between them they got Hugh inside. Ralph deposited the trunk inside the foyer and went back for the rest. The sound of shrieking floated from the formal parlor.

“I will have this clock, you saucy wench, and I’ll have your backside in the street without a character for crossing me!” Sybil’s voice, unmistakably.

“Ee ain’t yours, ee’s the duke’s, innit!” Eyde retorted. “You’ll have to answer to Mr. Grey do you help yourself to anything more under this roof, and I don’t care if ’er’s the Queen herself!”

“I am still the duchess!” Sybil yelped. “My marriage wasn’t a sham like the one that produced these miserable little bastards. I will have what I am due!”

“Hugh,” Amaranthe murmured, “perhaps you would run to the kitchen for me and tell Mrs. Blackthorn we’d like those scones.”

“And miss Mal taking on our stepmother?” Hugh answered. “Not for the world.” He straightened his back, and Amaranthe smiled.

She admired Mal’s air of command as he strode into the parlor. When he spotted Ned and Camilla in the far corner near the fireplace, a white-faced Ned holding his sister while tears rolled down her cheeks, Mal’s rage became magnificent to see.

“Sybil, by God, you will not take a thing from this house but what my father gave you. And I will have your things sent to your lodgings, where you will be waiting, since you are leaving this house this instant.”

“You would deny me!” Sybil lifted the heavy ormulu clock to throw at him. With alarm Eyde leapt forward and wrested it from her, cradling the ornate piece to her chest as if it were a baby bird.

“You would leave me penniless! You heard the will. You know what your father left me. An annuity, barely enough to keep a carriage. How am I supposed to hold up my head?”

“The annuity is more than enough to keep you comfortably, and if you were displeased with your jointure, you should have made that known when the marriage settlements were being drawn up,” Mal said.

“But you were so eager to be a duchess, I daresay you were only thinking of your immediate benefit, weren’t you?

You would stoop to rob Hugh’s inheritance, and leave the children without money for food or fuel to run off to the Continent with Popplewell, and then dare show your face in this house?

Truly, madam, your arrogance astounds me! ”

“My arrogance?” Sybil stabbed a finger in his direction.

“I don’t know how you manufactured those documents, but you will not get away with this.

Thief! Imposter! To think I thought you too witless and shiftless to ever be a bother to me, and to find you are capable of this .

” Her angry gaze swept to include Amaranthe. “And her, wearing my gowns!”

“I can assure you all your gowns will be returned to you,” Amaranthe said. “I see you have need of them, since you have put off mourning already.”

“I must have something to live on.” Sybil stomped her foot.