The Duchess Hunt

At the top of that suddenly endless flight of steps he stood at ease, superbly muscled under the loose, to-hell-with-fashion clothing he insisted on wearing in the country. He looked so much more mature than he’d been last time she visited him in his lair and in the bare two weeks since she had seen him last he seemed to have become even more potent and formidable, so much so that a craven part of her wanted to scramble back in the carriage and order it to race for home.

It didn’t matter what she thought, she reminded herself. He was hosting this party to find himself a wife and most females seemed to like overlong sable hair and loosely tailored coats, at least on him, and the débutantes pursued him in packs whenever he set foot in town. At least he followed the fashion set by Mr Brummell in maintaining scrupulous cleanliness at all times, she conceded reluctantly, her critical gaze centred on his frowning countenance as she shivered with foreboding. A new sense of unease ran through her in fierce competition with the old now that she knew how it felt to have his acute gold-and-green eyes flare with interest on hers.

Warmth ran over her in a mortifying flush at the memory of heat shuddering through her the day he took her for a drive and she made herself avoid thinking of it so he couldn’t read her wayward thoughts now. Confound the man, but why did he affect her so potently without trying? Even if she wasn’t a plain spinster, he had every beauty for miles around sighing over his manly charms and legendary vigour and casting shameless lures in his direction.

‘Oh, there you are, dearest,’ her godmother remarked as she felt her goddaughter stiffen and turned round to look for a cause. ‘Hughes said you had gone to inspect the bullpens at Home Farm with Givage,’ she said with a warm smile for her nephew Jessica would never dare replicate even if she wanted to.

‘We saw a travelling carriage pull through the South Gate. How could I not be present to greet Miss Pendle when she is our honoured guest, Aunt Mel? Surely you brought me up better than that?’ he teased. ‘I take it Lord and Lady Pendle rushed off to meet their latest grandson and left you to honour the family obligations, Miss Pendle?’

‘Indeed, and it seems to me as if everyone knew how my sister and her babe fared long before I did, your Grace,’ Jessica informed him stiffly and wished she could be as natural with him as she was with gentlemen who didn’t make her heart beat at the speed of a runaway horse and her knees wobble anew.

‘The messenger arrived this morning,’ he told her as if soothing one of those runaway horses. ‘We hoped your mama might be able to follow you here, but she says she must stay at Dassington lest poor Rowena be driven half-mad by her doting husband and assorted well-wishers,’ he added, descending the steps with such fluid ease Jessica frowned, then lifted a hand to rub it away before it betrayed her.

‘Good day to you … Martha, is it not?’ he greeted with a respectful nod that made her maid blush with delight and look at least ten years younger. ‘Had we known you were looking after Miss Pendle’s well-being, my aunt would have fretted a lot less.’

‘Thank you, your Grace, you are very kind and we all knew Miss Jessica would be safe as houses once we were under your roof,’ Martha replied with a curtsy fit for a king.

‘And here’s Miss Jessica all present and correct,’ he added redundantly as he stepped down to her level at last. ‘Welcome, Cousin.’

‘We bear no relationship to each other whatsoever, your Grace,’ she objected, getting a sharp look from Martha and a disappointed sigh from Melissa, but no discernible reaction from the man himself.

‘How unforgivably forward I was in danger of being, Miss Pendle,’ he countered.

‘And think how flattering that would have been for me, your Grace,’ she said, ironically feeling that blush threaten again as his gaze became sardonic.

‘I dare say the flattery would have been all mine,’ he said so smoothly that an observer might think he was being charming.

‘It certainly would,’ she defended herself.

His gaze seemed to grow sharper and she did her best to breathe defiance at the idea she was an easy target for his charm. Reminding herself the Pendles had been robber barons when the Seabornes were still little more than pirates, she tried her best to fight off her own wicked, deep-down notion that there was little point hanging on to those defences when she was marked for a life of spinsterly solitude. She did her best to ignore the very notion of letting herself ever be so undefended in his presence and instead imagined his wild rover ancestors squaring up to the ruthless overlord who had been her grandparent at many removes.

From what she knew of them, it would have been such a hard-fought contest their retainers would have had to pitch their tents and settle in for the night before their leaders conceded neither could win and shook hands on their mutual villainy. Suddenly the thought of swordsmen and spearmen on one side and trident and cutlass-wielding sailors on the other, falling asleep propped against their weapons and their rascally fellows, as their principals snarled defiance at each other, seemed so irresistibly funny she giggled, then did her best to pretend she hadn’t.

‘Spring fever,’ she explained as he raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘It’s come on a little late this year then, has it not?’

‘Maybe the sign of a golden summer,’ she offered a battered olive branch.

‘And how very welcome that would be,’ he said politely, but somehow she felt as if she had disappointed him.

‘Speaking of welcomes, this is a very poor one indeed,’ her godmother exclaimed. ‘We are keeping you out here in all this wind, my dear, and it looks to me as if the heavens might open at any moment, whatever nonsense you two are talking about it being summer. Come now, Hughes …’ she turned to order the resident butler, who was hovering at the top of the steps ‘… have Miss Jessica’s luggage brought inside then conduct her maid to the Queen’s Room so she may supervise the unpacking. We shall take tea in the Blue Parlour as soon as Miss Pendle has put off her travelling cloak and bonnet.’

‘My aunt is undoubtedly right,’ the Duke told Jess as if making up his mind about something more important than the weather.

Jessica had only a second to wonder before he swept her up in his arms and ran up the steps as if she weighed little more than a feather. For a moment she was breathless with shock and a novel excitement that threatened to leave her blushing and overwhelmed in his arms. All his warmth, strength and certainty suddenly seemed hers to command and … and nothing was less likely.

‘Put me down,’ she demanded.

‘You’ll fall over if I do,’ he informed her coolly.

‘Then I’ll fall over,’ she said flatly.

‘Not on my steps you won’t,’ he said as if that ought to settle the matter.

‘I concede that would be mightily inconvenient, but we are at the top now, so will you set me down?’

‘Please?’

‘Why, what do you want?’ she replied childishly and felt the high ground of ladylike disdain fall away.

‘For us to be polite to each other for once, Hedgehog,’ he retorted, reverting to another youthful taunt for his aunt’s awkward godchild.

‘And you think this is a good place to start?’ she said, cross with herself for letting a note of hurt invade her words.

‘No,’ he conceded, shifting her in his arms as he seemed to decide his duties as host bade him finish what he’d started.

Jessica suddenly felt she would pay too dear for the fleeting pleasure of being in his mighty arms like this. ‘Please will you set me down now?’ she almost pleaded as they finally arrived in the Blue Parlour the family always used and he looked for the best place to deposit the awkward female he had literally swept off her feet.

‘Your wish is my command, Miss Pendle,’ he lied, as he deposited her on a sofa, then bowed with an overdone flourish that was obviously intended to defuse the tension that had drawn tight between them.

‘Hah! That’s a likely story,’ she said and saw relief in his eyes as the world shifted back on to its proper axis.

‘True, although anything reasonable you happen to want just now is probably within the limits of my patience,’ he said with a wry grin she did her best to resist.

He turned to greet his aunt. ‘Forgive me for leaving you behind, love, but I thought you’d feel better if your favourite godchild was safe in your parlour where you can fuss over her in peace while she recovers from her journey.’

‘I am prepared to wait for Jessica to put off her bonnet and spencer before I do that,’ his aunt almost scolded him as she swept forwards to deal with the former while Jessica wriggled out of her spencer. If she didn’t demonstrate some independence right away Jack might hustle her out of it himself and ruin the effect all the lovely distance she’d put between them was having on her jumping nerves.

‘Jack, take these into the hall for Jessica’s maid to deal with when she has settled in,’ Lady Henry commanded and Jessica almost laughed at the sight of his Grace the Duke of Dettingham meekly acting the lady’s maid.

The thought of him doing so in truth, helping her strip off her creased and travel-worn gown and all that lay beneath, struck her like a bolt from the louring clouds outside and all desire to laugh vanished abruptly.

Jack paused in the grand hallway of his ancestors and wondered if the sky was due to fall on him in the near future. Confound it, but he needed to pay a visit to his mistress if the mere feel of cross-grained, touchy little Jessica Pendle in his arms threatened to set him afire like some lecherous old satyr. He caught himself savouring the faint scent lingering on her spencer jacket that was so uniquely hers. Was it the hint of rosewater or something more sophisticated that seemed to warn his sixth sense she was by? If it was, then at least he might have enough warning to avoid her in future, he told himself, for a pricklier, more distracting guest to be inflicted with just at the moment he found it hard to imagine. The reason he’d been so glad to see her was yet another mystery he didn’t care to examine.

He laid her plain jacket and austere bonnet on a gloriously carved Carolinian chair as if they might sting him and fought to still his senses before he returned to the Blue Parlour to play the genial host. As if things weren’t already tangled enough without him suddenly wanting Jessica in every way a gentleman should never want a lady like her, he reminded himself disgustedly. Luckily he turned back towards the Blue Parlour in time to escape being caught musing over Jessica’s outer garments like a besotted lover by his butler and half the footmen in the household, streaming across the marble hall with enough tea and pastries to feed an invading army.

‘Ah, there you all are,’ he greeted his younger cousins with no surprise at all and some relief as he heard them thunder downstairs at the merest hint of treats.

‘Would that we were,’ the eldest of them said theatrically and he eyed Miss Persephone Seaborne sternly.

‘You will not mention Richard’s absence, or distress your mother in any way you can avoid, during this confounded house party of hers, now will you, Percy dear?’ he asked, meeting her willow-green gaze with a very direct look.

‘Of course not,’ she said as if he was some sort of monster to even think she might.

‘Promise?’ he asked, inured to the imitation of a wronged angel she could turn on and off at will.

Persephone sighed loudly, looked long-suffering, then nodded.

‘Out loud promise?’ he heard himself wheedle, because he knew her far too well to leave her the slightest room for manoeuvre.

‘I promise not to jeopardise the noble task of getting you off our hands and into those of some deluded female who might be persuaded to wed you, despite your many and varied faults,’ she told him pertly.

‘With you and Miss Pendle in the house, I stand little chance of being swollen-headed, however much the ambitious mamas fawn on me and their daughters fall over themselves to become my duchess,’ he told her wryly and noted the speculative glint in her eyes with an internal groan.

Let the little devil get even a hint of the odd feeling he’d had just now that Jess belonged in his arms and he’d never take an easy step during this house party for fear of her matchmaking schemes. Since they’d argued heatedly from the moment they had met, he couldn’t imagine anyone less like the comfortable wife he’d pictured when he finally agreed to this totty-headed scheme of his grandmother’s to marry him off and silence the scandal-mongers than Jessica Pendle.

‘Don’t forget how much depends on me finding a duchess, Percy,’ he cautioned her seriously.

‘Do you think it will work, though?’ she asked anxiously.

At least he didn’t have to pretend with her that this scheme was anything more than a desperate attempt to persuade Rich to come home, even if he was beginning to have very large doubts about the whole mad idea of marrying to please everyone but himself. He suspected his grandmother would be very glad to see him wed for the sake of the duchy, but he had seen the list of candidates for the post and was rapidly losing any enthusiasm for the business himself.

‘Rich is sure to come back once he knows there’s little risk of him ever inheriting my titles or obligations,’ he told her uneasily, cursing his cousin for putting them through so much by absenting himself so determinedly that it was nigh three years since anyone admitted to having seen him.

‘What if he isn’t doing this of his own accord though, Jack?’

‘Then we’ll know one way or the other,’ he said grimly.

‘And you will have put your head on the block for my heedless brother for nothing. Those silly gossips are plain evil, Jack, and you should not regard a word they say. Sometimes I wish I could challenge one or two to a duel since they hide behind their sex to spread rumours about you and Rich and suffer no consequences for their spite. If you offered for one of their repellent daughters, I dare say they would bite your hand off as soon as let you withdraw it, even if they truly thought you capable of the horrible crimes they only dare hint at.’

‘Such is the way of the world and I truly do have to wed sooner or later, love. I’m seven and twenty and will be left on the shelf before long if I’m not very careful,’ he joked with an inward sigh, knowing a single, solvent duke would be a magnificent prize on the marriage mart even if he was ancient, blind, senile and truly a murderer.

‘As much chance of that as the moon truly turning blue,’ Persephone said, looking unconvinced.

Luckily she gave up trying to challenge his sudden desire for a wife and turned towards the chatter and gaiety in the parlour so they could both forget they didn’t know where Richard Seaborne was or had been for three years.

‘I hope you scrubby brats left us some cake?’ Persephone demanded of her younger siblings as she entered the room.

Hard not to contrast the welcome she received with Jessica’s stony reception of himself, Jack concluded as he followed his lively cousin in. Jessica smiled a wide and rather enchanting smile and Persephone rushed towards her long-time friend and ally so they could embrace and coo over each other as if they hadn’t seen each other for years rather than a few weeks. He felt an odd gnaw of discontent; how strange to feel excluded by a pair of headstrong, awkward females he should be only too delighted to leave to their own company while he went wife hunting. Cook’s bounty provided a welcome distraction to his uncomfortable thoughts, but it was soon disposed of and the children dragged back to the schoolroom by their long-suffering governess.

‘So when are the rest of your guests due, your Grace?’ Jessica asked brightly.

‘Tomorrow,’ Jack replied gloomily.

‘Well, the weather seems set fair, despite Godmama’s dire predictions, so at least it won’t cause any delay in their journeys,’ she said as if that was a good thing.

Damn Rich! When the rogue finally came home and Aunt Melissa lost that haunted look, as if her worst nightmare was about to come true, he’d beat the living daylights out of him, after he’d reassured himself the care-for-nobody wretch was hale and whole and rackety as ever.

‘Excellent,’ he said hollowly. ‘Entertaining them will be much easier without the wind and rain we have endured so far this summer,’ he added pompously, as if he was Squire Countryman, obsessed by his crops and the weather to make or mar them and barely able to spare time to pick himself out a wife between haymaking and harvest.

‘How are you planning to keep them all amused?’ Jessica asked and his aunt rattled off a list that should keep an army of eligible young ladies busy for the rest of the summer, let alone a fortnight.

Jack left them discussing final arrangements for the guests’ comfort and escaped his duties one last time before the hoard of ton beauties and their various chaperons descended on them. Half an hour later he was galloping his latest acquisition over the hills above Ashburton, trying to pretend to himself everything was well with his world and Jessica Pendle’s arrival meant no more to him than all the other young ladies due to intrude on it tomorrow would do.

‘Trust Jack to slide out of his obligations the minute he could,’ Persephone said disgustedly when his escape was commented on indulgently by her mother, who seemed determined to take the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude to his sins.

‘There’s no need for him to stand on ceremony with me and he knows it,’ Jessica said as if she agreed.

‘You defend him, yet you two were at daggers’ drawn within half a minute of setting eyes on each other as usual, were you not?’ Persephone asked.

‘We always bring out the worst in each other,’ Jessica admitted. ‘Since his Grace must be on his best behaviour for the next two weeks if he’s going to find himself an amenable bride, I probably should not have come.’

‘Much better if he found one who wasn’t going to agree with his every word, if you ask me. He’s not the sort of man who will be content within a marriage of convenience for long,’ Persephone replied with a look Jessica didn’t trust one bit.

She shuddered at the idea of Persephone contriving devious ways to throw her at Jack’s head and even had qualms about him being forced to be brutally honest with her. Jack Seaborne was a fair and honourable man, under his arrogant, infuriating confidence that he was lord of all he surveyed even when he was away from his wide domain. Having to make it clear to a lady he’d known for so long that he wouldn’t be making her an offer would pain him nearly as much as it would her.

‘You would have thought his parents’ marriage would have given the deluded idiot a hint there is more to married life than finding a wife in much the same way he’d go about mating his racehorses,’ her friend went on in a voice too low to reach Lady Henry’s ears now she was consulting Hughes about when to serve dinner and the possibility of his Grace being home in time to eat it at a reasonable hour. Even sunny-tempered Lady Henry Seaborne would have indulged in the vapours or a storm of shocked maternal outrage if she’d heard such unsuitable remarks on the lips of her eldest unwed daughter.

‘I don’t recall them very well from staying with you at Seaborne House when we were young, but I do recall gossip that the late duke and duchess fought like cat and dog. Perhaps Jack’s intent on finding a more peaceable wife,’ Jessica said, hoping her air of lightly amused indifference would convince Persephone he was welcome to such a milk-and-water creature as far as she was concerned.

‘Which only proves my point, don’t you think?’

‘I might, if I only knew what it was.’

‘That arranged marriages are insipid at best and Jack is the last man who should consider making one. He has such a passionate, headlong temperament under that haughty indifference he shows the world and would be bored with such an empty-headed automaton of a wife before the marriage feast was over, let alone their bride visits.’

‘His Grace is also a wealthy and tolerably handsome nobleman, who would be hard pressed to find a lady who saw past that to the man himself. If they were still alive, no doubt his parents would have found a rich and lovely noblewoman who would understand his life, then contrived to throw them together long ago,’ Jessica argued.

‘Not they,’ Persephone denied with an emphatic shake of her head. ‘They would pick rival candidates and make Jack’s life a misery until he ran off with a farmer’s pretty daughter to prove he wasn’t going to be dictated to.’

‘Then since he can please himself who to marry, no doubt he’ll choose himself a conformable and agreeable wife he can be comfortable with.’

‘Such a pallid creature would never suit him,’ her friend said stubbornly and Jessica couldn’t help picturing Jack living with a female who forever agreed with every word he said and shuddered at the very idea.

Considering the vitality and impatience Jack Seaborne had struggled to contain ever since she first laid eyes on him, Jessica thought her friend was right. After such a stormy childhood, maybe it should be no surprise if he chose serenity over ungovernable passion in his own marriage, but it sounded so very dull.

‘Whatever we think, his Grace will go his own way—he always does,’ she said with a shrug and tried not to think of how she would feel if the Duke found himself a wife of character as well as beauty. Glad, she told herself stoically and did her best to look serenely content with her own lot in life.

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