Chapter Eleven
Her voice was low and full of invitation.
For some reason he was reluctant to accept with his usual enthusiasm. Vulnerable and sexually curious, she was asking for his attentions in the most elemental way. She was also out of her country, out of her culture, and totally out of her depth. There were so many ways this could go wrong for her, and he was bound by his family’s orders to seek out every bloody one of them.
For the first time since he’d accepted his elders’ ignoble charge, he acknowledged true distaste for this mission. A moment of panic ensued, but he wrestled it back into the depths of his stained soul and squared his shoulders.
“I desire a good cigar, a stout Scotch whiskey, and a good book.”
She drew back as if she’d been smacked, reddened, then marched over to her uncle to riffle through his breast pocket for one of his treasured cigars. Thrusting it into Ash’s hand with enough force that it broke in half, she glared and then reached for Huxley’s book.
“Well, you have two out of three right here,” she said, using the hefty tome to smack him hard enough in the midsection to cause him an involuntary grunt. He scrambled to catch the book before it tumbled out of hand and watched with a mixture of relief and regret as she shook the countess and her uncle awake and bundled them out of the hall.
He stood for a long moment holding the book against him, staring at the doorway, and listening to her angry departure. Taking a deep breath, he felt himself settling back into his insulating worldliness and began to tidy up the documents, placing velum carefully between the pages of the letters as he returned them to the folios.
It was a good quarter of an hour later that he stood looking at the tidy pile of historical mystery he had just uncovered. Struck by a thought, he searched for that square of paper with the Temple Church citation and found it missing. He looked again. Then, a third time.
She had taken it. The minx.
He grinned.
He knew exactly where she was headed.
* * *
The next afternoon, in the midst of preparations for Bristol, Daisy and Red managed to take Dancer and Renegade for a good ride. She spent some time in the stable afterward, brushing Dancer and making certain he was well fed and treated to a carrot. At every sound of hooves on the brick alley or rattle of harness chain, she turned, half dreading and half anticipating Ashton’s appearance. She refused to admit disappointment at his absence but, in her heart, she knew it was there.
She had spent a long, fruitless night going over the lineage she had copied from Uncle Red’s ramblings. It seemed there were indeed a couple of Howards several generations back, but her attention was repeatedly diverted by the way every name she read called up an annoying association with him. The way Ashton Graham corrected the names of her forbearers, the disdain in his aristocratic face, the physical hunger he either didn’t bother to hide or hid too well . . . every encounter between them had left a trace of longing in its wake. When she finally turned down the lamp and slid between the cool covers, she felt hot and restless and beset by memories she had spent five years trying to purge.
The sweet smell of new hay, the dark velvet of the Nevada night sky sprinkled with stars, the feel of a man’s hands on her bare skin, a tongue circling her nipples, a young, hard body between her naked—
“No,” she said aloud, and turned over to bury her face in the down pillow. “Absolutely not. Never again. Not until I’m a damned duchess.”
That night became one more sacrifice on the altar of family ambitions. As she lay there, tortured by what might have been and what would never be, she turned Ashton’s words over and over in her head. He had laid out in no uncertain terms the sacrifices she would be making in becoming the Duchess of Meridian. Her life would become an asset to the title. Every bit of her wardrobe, every friendship she made, and every social occasion she attended would be accounted as adding to or subtracting from some invisible tally of ducal prestige. If Ashton were to be believed, even her future children would be little more than property of the damned coat of arms. The closer she came to her goal, the more alarming those prospects seemed.
But as the night wore on, her spirits sounded the depths and started to rise. Yes, she would have to make sacrifices as the duchess of the house of Meridian, but she was no stranger to the grind and constraint of duty. Daily, she made sacrifices that were required by her family’s fortunes and future—for her beloved sisters and generations yet to come, who were depending on her. Did his fancy-pants lordship think being a younger son was harder than being an eldest daughter?
She rose from her bed, lighted a lamp, and wrote a letter to her mother asking for any information she might be able to find on the Howards that Red claimed as forbearers. On impulse, she added that if all went as planned, a certain duke would soon be making a happy announcement in the Times.
By the time Collette knocked discreetly on her door the next morning, her letter was ready for posting, and she had banished both her doubts and her troublesome desires. She was determined once again to complete her quest. She was going to prove her lineage, delight the Duke of Meridian, and wrangle him to the altar. See if she didn’t.
Packing and making travel arrangements consumed much of the next morning—that and posting both her letter and the endless stream of notes Lady Evelyn was penning to acquaintances in Bristol’s environs, announcing their visit. She explained to Daisy and Red that they needed to make advantageous friendships in places other than London, and since much of the Royal Navy was berthed at Bristol—not to mention commercial trading companies that used the port—it seemed prudent to call on the countess’s dear friends in that city. Until they had a firm invitation, they would have to postpone progress toward that destination. It dealt a blow to Daisy’s hopes of hot-footing it to Bristol on horseback and discovering the truth about the mysterious Gemma Howard.
* * *
“What is all of this?” Daisy stopped in the middle of her chamber at Holloway House to stare at the slew of garments laid out on the great four-poster bed. Collette stood nearby with her hands clasped, looking eager, while the countess rose from a chair at the tea table and smoothed her skirts.
“It is high time you got back. That beast of yours is better groomed than most men I know.”
“Shouldn’t all this be packed?” Daisy scowled and indicated her favorite pale sea-foam-blue dinner gown.
“We still haven’t heard from Lady Regina and so we’re attending a dinner party tonight,” the countess said, drawing herself up to face what she was certain would be opposition to her announcement. “At the home of my dear friends the Viscount Shively and his wife, Lady Esseme.”
“This evening?” Daisy thought of a rebuttal based on the countess’s emphatic rule: “Never accept an invitation on short notice.”
“Lady Esseme and I were girls together in Sussex. She only just learned we are in town—my own fault for not contacting her earlier. I had to plead urgent family business and beg forgiveness. But the invitation is in hand and while we wait for word from Bristol, this will be a perfect opportunity for you to cultivate acquaintances in this area. You never know when they may become important.” She must have sensed Daisy’s looming objection, for she stated flatly: “I have accepted for the three of us.”
Daisy’s mouth worked silently. The countess had already sealed the deal; there was no backing out now.
“Fine,” she said irritably, looking to Collette. “Draw me a bath, then.” She looked closer at the sea-foam-colored satin gown lying on the bed and shot a narrow glance at her satisfied sponsor. “And I see you’ve already decided what I’m to wear.”
* * *
Daisy straightened and peered at herself over her half-bare shoulder, inspecting the rear view of her best dinner gown in the pier glass. The blue-green satin shone in the lamplight, seeming almost iridescent when she moved. Thank Heaven the delicate drape and lace-crusted rear required no frame. The countess and old Chuck Worth were united in their disdain for the current craze that made women look bizarrely misshapen in the hindquarters. Only her most expensive dinner and ball gowns had rear drapery of any consequence. Most of her dresses lacked bustles altogether.
She had overheard enough of the countess’s and the couturier’s whispered consultations to realize they hoped the simplicity of the styles he created for her might make her seem more demure and girlish. That had amused her at first, but it seemed less entertaining now. It was probably a portent of the judgment and constant scrutiny yet to come.
Clothes. Mere clothes, she told herself. Not something she felt strongly about—as long as they didn’t require her to be laced too tightly. But when she turned to face herself in the mirror, she realized there was method in their madness. She did look younger and “fresher” and better still, eligible.
Uncle Red was less than thrilled to be stuffed into his white-tie dinner clothes and trundled out to meet a bunch of stiff-necked, long-nosed nobs. A word he’d picked up in the local alehouse: “nobs.” Short for “nobles.” When he voiced that sentiment, the countess pounced on him like a duck on a junebug. He was not to utter that word tonight or ever again. These were people of a rank and class that could aid his niece’s progress toward a most advantageous marriage.
Then, as they rocked along toward the viscount’s comfortable home, the countess’s conscience got the better of her and she turned to the sulking Red with a bit of salve for his pride.
“Just think,” she said, proving how closely she had read his nature, “this will be a new audience for your Nevada stories.”
He froze for a moment, studying her before breaking into a sly smile.
“I knew it.” He sat up straight with a wicked laugh. “You listen to my stories.”
The countess gave him a haughty look. “I could hardly escape hearing them. You tell the same ones everywhere you go.”
“And you like ’em, don’t you, Evie girl?”
The countess clamped her teeth, looking like someone was trying to pull them out by the roots. “They do, I suppose, have a gritty, simpleminded sort of charm.”
Red laughed, smacked his knee with his hand, and sat back, wholly untouched by the barbs in her compliment.
“You like me, Evie. You know you do.” And for the rest of the ride, Red hummed a bawdy saloon ditty Daisy prayed he’d forgotten the words to, and he watched the countess’s irritation with undisguised pleasure.