Chapter Fourteen
“Too many of these airs are gloomy,” Julian said. “Sing something optimistic.”
Radnor sat beside him on the piano bench and leafed through more music, for they were rehearsing in case of rain. The weather thus far had been as accommodating of the house party as Welsh weather could be. Julian was preparing for the afternoon his guests were shut up indoors, with nothing to do but eat him out of house and happiness.
“The gloomy songs show off my voice to best advantage,” Radnor said. “Besides, you can’t abide an optimist. Said so yourself.”
Well, yes, Julian had made some such proclamation, but that was before. Before Miss Elizabeth Windham had shown him the view from the parapets, so to speak. Yesterday afternoon, Julian’s world had undergone a fundamental shift.
Radnor set a piece of sheet music on the pianoforte’s rack. “This one’s in a minor-ish key, but not gloomy.”
“Ca’ the Yowes,” a Scottish tune that celebrated the joys of herding ewes by the full moon with a lover.
“As if shepherding is a nocturnal activity in Scotland,” Julian said, placing his hands on the keyboard. He began the introduction, and Radnor did justice to the tune. By the second chorus, a feminine voice had joined in.
Glenys stood in the doorway to the music room, her contralto finding nuances in the music that Radnor’s baritone had left hidden. They sang every verse and chorus, their duet growing in beauty and complexity with each phrase.
As the final notes died away—Fair and lovely as thou art/thou hast stolen my very heart/I can die, but canna part/My bonnie dearie—insight smacked Julian.
Glenys returned Radnor’s esteem in full measure. Julian’s best friend and his sister were in love, did they but know it. Radnor had only to find his courage, and the right moment, and Glenys would see that the happiness she deserved had been right next door all along.
Elizabeth would be pleased for them and for Julian.
And yet, true love had chosen an inconvenient moment to bloom: The bachelors at the house party would take on mightily should Radnor win the fair maid too soon, and the debutantes would go into a decline en masse if Radnor were spoken for.
“You should play a repeat of the chorus, Haverford,” Glenys said. “More softly, and end on a tierce de Picardie.”
She referred to ending a minor song with a major chord, a metaphor for the possibilities this house party presented.
“I’ll do exactly that,” Julian said. “You two must rehearse more duets. Your voices blend well, probably from long practice.”
Radnor and Glenys exchanged a look Julian couldn’t fathom. They were either preparing for a verbal duel, or united in their consternation at his encouragement.
“I haven’t time,” Glenys said. “Have either of you seen Elizabeth Windham? Her sister was looking for her to form a fourth at whist after supper.”
“I’ll stop by the Windham sitting room on my way to the estate office,” Julian said, rising. “I can leave a note, if nothing else. Radnor, you’re in good voice. Perhaps Glenys can accompany your next selection.”
“First you’ve grown tolerant of optimism, and now I’m in good voice,” Radnor said. “Yesterday’s expedition with the kites must have agreed with you.”
“Exceedingly.” Julian bowed and withdrew, leaving Glenys and Radnor to their bickering. Perhaps for them, flirtation required an acrimonious edge. He had yet to see Elizabeth, and the afternoon was advancing.
“Do you have a moment?” he asked, coming upon the lady alone in her sitting room. “I’d like to show you something.”
She wore a cream dress with pink and green flowers embroidered about the bodice, hem, and cuffs. The look on her was youthful and demure, though the roses reminded Julian of the wild blossoms on the parapets. The effect of those memories was to accelerate his breathing and make his hands itch.
“Your Grace, good day.” She set aside a letter and stood, remaining by the escritoire. “I’m free at the moment.”
And she was uncertain. Julian glanced up and down the corridor, saw not a soul, and stepped into the parlor.
“I am not free,” he said, closing the door all but a crack. “I am followed everywhere by thoughts of you. You, striding across the park to meet Griffin by the oak. You, marching up Tudor Hill in the middle of the night because I asked you to. You, cast away with passion, cradled in my arms, sweet with repletion. I would love to take you up to the rooftop again, but I am determined to honor the promise I made yesterday.”
She tidied correspondence that already sat in a neat stack. “What promise is that, Your Grace?”
“To treat you to every evidence of my esteem, to cherish you, and dote on you.”
That earned him a smile. “Never has doting sounded like such a fierce undertaking, sir.” Still she remained on her side of the room.
“Elizabeth, are you well?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Julian closed the door—bedamned to propriety if he’d made Elizabeth cry—and crossed the tower. “Tell me. If I’ve upset you, I’m sorry. If I can make it right, I will.”
“It’s Griffin,” she said, going to the window and turning her back. “We talk of many things when we converse, and I try to focus on words that will be useful to him. He has his own agenda, though, and he’s determined that we address it.”
The St. David menfolk were creatures of planning and organization. “Griffin upset you.” Except, Griffin was also the soul of consideration.
“He asked me today how to say, ‘I miss you,’ and ‘I will miss you.’ He wants to say those words to you, Julian, and I ought not to share his confidences, but I will miss you. Yesterday was a revelation, and I cannot bear the thought—”
Julian had hurried her too quickly down from the parapets yesterday. “My doting is out of practice,” he said, taking Elizabeth in his arms. “Is this revelation unhappy, Elizabeth?”
His capacity for doting was as newly discovered as her capacity for erotic pleasure, in all likelihood, an unexpected talent that bewildered even as it pleased.
She laid her head on his chest as if weary to her soul. “I have spent the day considering my feelings, and I conclude that in my ignorance of the pleasure a woman can share with a man, I was safe. Disappointment kept me from giving my heart away, or even thinking of—I’m making a muddle of this.”
A thought clamored for expression: You’re lovely when you’re muddled—which blather would comfort the lady not at all.
“You and I have little tolerance for being muddled,” he said, “and yet we’re far beyond where the rules of deportment apply. Perhaps you are saying that what passed between us yesterday was more intimate than your previous encounters, despite the nature of my participation.”
She gave him a measuring look he’d occasionally seen from Griffin. “Possibly. The others…I could not lose a sense of self-consciousness with them, and with you…I would like to become very lost, indeed.”
She was unhappy about that, but Julian delighted in her honesty, for he shared her sense of having stumbled upon far more than he’d bargained for.
“I would like to become lost with you, too, Elizabeth, but not in this parlor, where anybody might chance upon us. Will you come with me?” He stepped back and offered his hand.
She linked her fingers with his, then stole a kiss to his cheek. Julian reciprocated by kissing her on the mouth, then preceded her to the door. The corridor was still empty, so he bowed her through the door, and prepared to share with her what many regarded as the Haverford ducal treasures.
* * *
Elizabeth felt an echo of the pleasure she’d experienced yesterday. The physical sensations weren’t there, but her mind was almost as overwhelmed with delight—almost.
“I cannot believe you have all of this, just sitting up here, gathering dust.”
The room was small, but it was crammed floor to ceiling with books. Old, rare, precious books, each one of which could have absorbed her for days.
“They are dusted regularly,” Haverford said. “If the book has a red string tied about it, then it’s fragile. A white string means it was acquired in my father’s lifetime, a purple string means my grandfather was the purchaser.”
The white strings outnumbered the purple by a wide margin, but the most plentiful color was red. “And the blue strings?”
“My great-grandfather. They could not resist an interesting book, regardless of cost. I have not added to the collection, but I do make certain it’s adequately cared for.”
Elizabeth turned in a slow circle, admiring another tower room, this one on the castle’s highest story. The walls were lined with shelves, and in the center of the room sat an enormous desk dark with age. The panels were carved with fantastical flowers and leaves, and the leather of the blotter looked as old as the desk.
A wide daybed took up the only wall not lined with books, and the sole source of heat was a small fireplace into which a parlor stove had been fitted.
“Do you spend time here?” she asked.
“Not much anymore. As a child, I often found my father in this room, and I have memories of his father reading to me at that desk. They were never happier than when among their books, or sharing their collections with other enthusiasts. This is the personal ducal library, and I offer it to you for your enjoyment while you bide at Haverford.”
He produced a heavy iron key nearly six inches long.
“You are giving me the keys to your family’s private collection?”
“Who better to enjoy these books?” he asked. “You’ll find the Shakespeare quartos here somewhere, two of the Welsh Bibles, a pair of King James Bibles, one inscribed by the sovereign. My father was very proud of these books.”
A sentiment that clearly puzzled the present duke.
Elizabeth gripped the key, wrapping her fingers around not only the cold iron, but also his hand. “I will disappear up here for hours. May I tell Charlotte and Aunt Arabella where I am?”
“Of course, but please keep the door locked when you’re elsewhere. I can vouch for my staff, but I would not want to put temptation before somebody else’s footman or abigail.”
The duke was temptation incarnate. “Thank you, Your Grace. I will allow no harm to come to your heirlooms.” She plucked the key from his grasp and tucked it into a skirt pocket. “Do you regret what transpired between us yesterday?”
Elizabeth hadn’t meant to ask that, hadn’t meant to further betray the extent to which a half hour on the parapets had completely upended her concept of herself. Her only consolation was the suspicion that Haverford was at sea as well.
“In a sense,” he replied, “I do have regrets. Shall we sit?”
Which meant, in a sense he did not. Neither did Elizabeth. “You sit at the desk, and I’ll take the chaise.” She wanted to have an image in her memory of him sitting where his grandfather had read to him, where one day, Haverford might read to a grandson.
He went so far as to prop a hip on the desk. “I’ll not ravish you uninvited, Elizabeth, much as I might long to.”
Haverford was back to being fierce, which Elizabeth found reassuring. “You’ll only ravish me if I invite you to?”
“Exactly, and with respect to the reciprocal pleasure, you have a standing invitation, despite that offer embodying a certain novel spontaneity on my part.”
“You are quite on your dignity, or possibly shy. I’m invited to ravish you?”
His reply was a look so…pleased, that Elizabeth subsided onto the chaise lest her knees fail her.
“We are in the presence of at least four Bibles, Your Grace.”
He sat upon the desk. “Do you know how much fornication takes place in the Old Testament?”
Rather a lot. “We did not fornicate.” Even saying the word caused Elizabeth to blush.
“I’d like to. I’d like to fornicate, swive, tumble, and copulate with you, Elizabeth. Mostly, I’d like to make love with you, and beyond even that, I want you to be happy.”
There were apparently degrees of carnality about intimate encounters. Two weeks would not be long enough to learn them all. As for being happy…
“I am determined,” Haverford went on, “that your wishes and wants, not mine, shall guide us. I will leave you to the books, but please don’t deprive me of your company at dinner tonight.” He pushed away from the desk and bowed over Elizabeth’s hand.
The books called to her with the insistent lure of rare jewels, but they would have to wait. Elizabeth rose and wrapped her arms around Haverford, then kissed him as if he’d offered not only his personal collection of books, but the right to share them with him for all time.
He was shy. What a delightful insight.
“I want it to be here,” she said. “When we make love. I want the first encounter to be here, and I want it to be soon, Haverford. We have such a short time.”
“If I kiss you the way I long to, soon will become now, and no less personage than your aunt has commanded my company on the hour for a cup of tea. I cannot arrive to her sitting room in a state, Elizabeth, nor will I allow intimacies with you to be rushed. I should have spent at least another hour with you yesterday afternoon, and instead I left you to fret. This is what comes of neglecting to plan a lady’s pleasures. Not well done of me.”
Elizabeth looped her arms around Haverford’s neck and gloated. She was not the sort of woman who put a man in a state, and yet, Haverford was aroused.
“Aunt is looking you over,” Elizabeth said. “She’ll report back to my parents, and to my aunt and uncle, and I daresay she’ll admit to approving of you.”
“No duke worth his strawberry leaves would allow his niece to marry me,” Haverford replied. “My financial situation is not sound.”
“But mine is,” Elizabeth retorted. “I have decent settlements, and I’m in a position to choose a spouse based on factors other than worldly riches.”
He took her hand, his grip warm. “You could have anybody you pleased, and we haven’t spent nearly enough time together for you to be throwing caution into the moat. Marriage is a decision that should involve planning, forethought, consideration, and written agreements.”
She’d expected arguments, not entire lectures in miniature. “Haverford, you can’t admonish a woman to choose for herself, to not settle or compromise, then take issue with her choice.”
“Elizabeth Windham, I brought you up here to admire my library, not to start an altercation. Enjoy the books, madam.” He kissed her lingeringly. “If you can.”
He was out the door before Elizabeth had stopped laughing.
She’d enjoy his books, and she’d enjoy arguing with him again soon too. His Grace was determined to be honorable and gentlemanly and a lot of other codswallop, but he was Elizabeth’s choice. She had two weeks to explain to him that he was worth more to her with empty pockets than any other man would be, despite commanding a duke’s ransom in riches.
* * *
“Bother the tea, Your Grace.” Arabella Windham, Lady Pembroke, waved a hand that bore a single diamond ring. “At my age, you come to detest tea. Let’s have a restorative tot. I daresay you could use one.”
One didn’t argue with a lady. “As you please, your ladyship.”
She poured two glasses half-full of amber liquid and passed one to Julian. “To my health.”
“Your health.” The Armagnac was brisk and confident with a gracious suggestion of spice and wisdom—like the lady.
The marchioness downed a portion of her drink, and set the glass on the table with a solid thump. Julian mentally braced himself for a dowager’s version of arm wrestling.
“You’ve caught Elizabeth’s notice, Haverford. What are your intentions?”
Not arm wrestling—outright pugilism. “If I have found favor with Miss Windham, I can assure you that I esteem her in equal measure. This is very good potation, my lady. May I inquire as to its origins?”
“Haverford, I am twice your age. I haven’t time for dithering. Inquire of Andover regarding the spirits, for this bottle is a gift from him. About your intentions.”
This parlor, like much of the castle, was genteelly out of date. A week ago, Julian would have ignored its faded elegance, though it bothered him now and doubtless made an impression on her ladyship as well.
“I am not in a position to have intentions, such as your ladyship intimates. Miss Windham deserves a man who can offer her every comfort and security, and I am not that man.”
Her ladyship snorted. “A fine speech, very gentlemanly, and you even mean what you say, you daft boy. My Peter died when he wasn’t much older than you.”
“Peter” had to have been the late Marquess of Pembroke, the husband who had left her ladyship widowed decades ago.
“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
She finished her drink in one swallow. “You have no idea of my loss, no idea what it feels like to surrender your entire heart into the keeping of somebody who wants nothing more than to treasure you for the rest of his life. Then he’s taken from you, day by day, fading into a shadow of the handsome specimen you married. Your sorrow is vast, but most of it is for him, who must live knowing he’ll not see his daughters make their bows. Peter wasn’t in much physical pain, but he suffered greatly.”
As had her ladyship. “Did he die of a wasting disease, my lady?”
“A bad heart, or so the quacks claimed, but do you know, as handsome, charming, and utterly irresistible as he was when we became engaged, his illness showed me exactly what a fine choice of husband I’d made.”
Was this how Griffin felt when Julian got to prosing on about a point of protocol? For her ladyship had a point of some sort, and Julian was at a loss to fathom it.
“Your husband was heir to the Moreland dukedom, was he not?”
“He was, which mattered a very great deal to my parents. What mattered to me was that Peter could make me laugh. He made me feel special. When he proposed, he made me feel as if he was getting the better of the bargain, though I wasn’t the wife his parents had in mind for him. My papa was a mere ruralizing viscount, and not even wealthy.”
Did Elizabeth know this story? For all that Lady Pembroke was widowed, Julian suspected she would have chosen the same man and the same marriage, given the chance.
“Yours was a love match, then.”
She tipped up her empty glass, examining the dregs. “Pour me another tot. Ancient history leaves one with a thirst.”
Julian obliged.
“Peter told me after our younger daughter was born that before we married, he was already tiring more easily, and the social season had become drudgery. He attributed his symptoms to advancing age—he was in his twenties, for God’s sake—and then to his father’s growing insistence that the heir take over the business of the dukedom. Even as Peter married me, he was dying. We simply didn’t know it.”
“You are sharing this unhappy story for a reason.”
“This is not an unhappy story, you simpleton. Peter was the love of my life. I had more than fifteen years with him, and I treasure each and every memory of those years. He gave me two children, his family became my family, and he left me well provided for. By the time he was your age, he could no longer sit a horse for even an hour, and we’d danced our last waltz. You are wasting time, Haverford.”
Elizabeth would be this fierce on behalf of family, if she ever saw the need.
“Your husband left you well provided for, but I can’t promise my duchess the same security. What sort of titled husband expects his bride to take that risk?”
Her ladyship sat back, her drink in her hand. “Half of polite society is living in dun territory at any given time. Your situation is neither unusual nor hard to discern for anybody who looks closely.”
There was a cheering bit of news. “Not hard to discern, how?”
“Your castle needs repairs, your sister hasn’t been in London for a full season in years. I don’t know what you’ve done with your brother, but I doubt he’s eating off gold plates.”
Julian had been prepared to endure pointed questions from her ladyship—Elizabeth had warned him—but not a reckless invasion of his family’s privacy.
“What do you know of my brother?”
“Ah, now you take off the gloves. About time. Lord Griffin St. David appeared in Debrett’s for the first five years of his life. Your papa was enormously pleased to have a spare, but then he became enormously quiet about his second son. Most people concluded the boy had died—these things happen. I had a cousin who ran off to the Continent with another man. Grandpapa paid Debrett’s to misplace his entry too.”
“I have not misplaced my only brother. Griffin has his own household nearby and he’s in good health.”
Her ladyship refreshed Julian’s drink. “Is he the reason you’ve not found a duchess? I’ve heard he’s not right in the brainbox.”
Anger burned off the last of Julian’s tolerance for this inquisition. Had Sherbourne let that detail slip in her ladyship’s company?
“Where did you hear that?”
“In the ladies’ retiring room at some ball or other more than twenty years ago. The St. David spare was said to be daft. A rumor of bad blood or inherited weakness in a ducal family never dies. Peter knew that, and kept his situation quiet as long as he could.”
Lady Pembroke slid Julian’s drink closer to his side of the table, and he ignored it. “Who else have you told about my brother?”
“Nobody. Benedict Andover is well acquainted with your family history, but we’re not your enemies, Haverford. I bring up his lordship—Lord Griffin, that is—because I’ll not have Elizabeth making decisions without all the facts. Your brother attends services, I take it, so you haven’t made a secret of him.”
“You’ve made inquiries regarding my brother?”
“My niece’s happiness is at stake, Haverford. Her parents aren’t thinking clearly because two younger daughters have recently married, and Elizabeth is determined to be contrary. If Lord Anthony and his wife believe you’re interested in Elizabeth, and she in you, they’ll be eager to see a match made. Moreland will stick his oar in, his duchess will have to have her say…and priorities will be obscured.”
In other words, nobody would see Elizabeth. Nobody would focus on her well-being, her security.
Julian rose, though the sitting room was tiny, probably a dressing closet in an earlier century, and he had nowhere to pace.
“I informed Miss Windham on the day she arrived that I’m not interested in matrimony. She assured me she wasn’t looking for a husband.”
Her ladyship worked at the label on the bottle with one thumbnail. “Young people.”
“We were trying to be honest with each other, and our mutual lack of interest in matrimony formed the basis for an accord unique in my experience, and very likely in Miss Windham’s as well.”
Lady Pembroke gave him the same owlish look Elizabeth and Griffin did, as if his accent had become indecipherable, or nearly so.
“You fell arse over escutcheon in love,” her ladyship said. “With the Windhams, it can happen like that. Strutting about full of their own consequence one day, and down on bended knee the next. They fall hard and fast, and are sometimes the last to know it.”
Would Elizabeth know if she was in love with him?
“Be that as it may, your ladyship, my prospects are not sound, there is Griffin to consider, and in case it has escaped your notice, we’re in the middle of the longest blasted house party ever to blight the Welsh countryside.”
“Elizabeth’s uncle Percival is a yeller,” Lady Pembroke said, finishing her drink. “Her father, Lord Tony, is more the kind to quietly skewer those who transgress. I gather you’re somewhere in between. What have you done with your brother?”
Julian resumed his seat. “I’ve tried to make him happy. Griffin lives on a tidy holding not a mile distant, with staff. His home is commodious—eight bedrooms, six hundred acres—and I see him frequently.”
“He can’t be that simple if he’s on his own property.”
“He’s…for Griffin to inherit the title would be a hardship for him. He’s aware that compared to others, he has limitations, and try though he might, being the duke is beyond him. I haven’t had him declared incompetent because in many regards, he’s quite capable.”
To subject Griffin to an inquiry, strip him publicly of all authority over his own affairs, hold him up to ridicule and pity…Papa had wanted to for the sake of the title, and Julian had fought his father to a stalemate for the sake of his brother.
Lady Pembroke patted Julian’s hand. “Many an idiot has sat in the Lords. Politics attracts the feebleminded, Peter used to say. Witness, dear Percival thrives on his legislative machinations.”
“You just insulted one of the most respected dukes in the realm.”
“His own children tire of his maunderings, and his daughters-in-law have written holiday poems mocking Moreland’s political rantings. The Countess of Hazelton has threatened to collect her sisters’ satires into a book and donate the proceeds to charity.”
She was telling him this for another one of her unfathomable reasons. “This does not sound like any titled family of my acquaintance.”
“And the lot of them are determined that Elizabeth should wed. Do you love her, Haverford?”
The window was open, and the only sound in the room was the Haverford pennant flapping in the wind atop the castle. The breeze was brisk today and scented with rain.
“I esteem Miss Windham very…”
Lady Pembroke folded her arms. She was an old woman who’d known much heartache and much love. She’d see through a lie, and through a man who told lies.
“I’ve fallen arse over escutcheon in love.”
“Have you told her about your brother?”
“They meet in the morning for a constitutional, and he plagues her with endless questions. She enjoys his company.” Julian took another sip of spirits, for those words had given his throat an ache.
“So Lord Griffin won’t be an issue. Now, what are we to do about your finances?”
The ache in Julian’s throat grew worse. “I am making progress, your ladyship, but my father inherited debts from my grandfather, and my commercial ventures are not the kind that yield a quick return.”
“So you’re truly rolled up?”
“I have a plan to bring the finances around, though progress is slow. By the standards of polite society, I am barely solvent.” For now, which was all the gossips cared about—thank you once again, dear Papa.
“That is a problem. Elizabeth can’t marry a pauper.”
“I’m not a pauper, and she can’t marry a man who only esteems her settlements or aristocratic connections. I won’t have it, but more to the point, neither will she.”
Her ladyship smiled, and Julian grasped why a ducal heir would toss aside all other possibilities and risk parental excoriation to marry a mere ruralizing viscount’s daughter.
“There’s reason to hope, then,” Lady Pembroke said. “Though I do despair of dear Charlotte. Don’t suppose you have any suggestions on that score?”
“Not a one, my lady.”
But there was reason to hope. Elizabeth’s dragon of an auntie had pronounced the situation salvageable, and that was the best news Julian had heard since…since forever. He had a plan, and he had hope, and soon, he might have a duchess too.