It's Hard Out Here for a Duke Page 17

  She overheard things—like that he was paying yet another call to Lady Jemma. The newspapers reported that they were seen riding together in Hyde Park, attending a horse race, or waltzing more than once at a ball.

  I taught him that.

  Meredith was glad she hadn’t joined the family at Almack’s. It would have been torture to stand on the sidelines with the duchess and all the other old matrons, while watching James dance with Lady Jemma and all the other proper young ladies.

  No, she did not need to witness that.

  She was happy to have spent the evening quietly at home in the drawing room, reading silly novels—the ones that gave her ideas and dared her to dream and ultimately led to this wretched state of heartache.

  When Meredith heard the family arrive home, she rose and stood near the slightly open doors of the drawing room, and peeked through to the scene unfolding in the foyer.

  The family was in a mood unlike she’d ever seen. Usually they were all in good spirits, if fatigued, upon returning from a ball. But tonight the air was thick with tension and their faces wore grim expressions. Something momentous and terrible must have occurred.

  She waited, listened, and did her best to gauge the mood and see how to be of service.

  “Well Amelia, I hope you enjoyed yourself this evening,” the duchess said crisply while she handed her satin cape and gloves to Pendleton. Meredith recognized the voice; Her Grace was most displeased.

  “Immensely.” Amelia’s voice was thick with sarcasm.

  What had she done? What had happened?

  “You needn’t take such a tone,” the duchess said sharply.

  “Of course,” Amelia said wearily. “Sarcasm and taking such a tone are unbecoming of a lady. I’m so bloody bored of being a lady. And don’t tell me ladies don’t say words like bloody because I am well aware.”

  Bored of being a lady . . . Meredith knew the feeling.

  “Then why must you persist in using such indelicate phrases?”

  “Because I must have something to amuse me. When I am so bloody bored. All the bloody time. Sorry, Duchess, but husband hunting is not my preferred sport.”

  “Amelia . . .” Lady Claire started.

  “Oh, don’t Amelia me,” she said, stomping up the stairs. “Not tonight. I am in no mood for more lectures on how exactly to smile, or the precise tone of my voice or whatever other stupid rules I happen to break because I am some ignorant and uncivilized girl. I won’t bend over backward trying to please people who are determined to laugh at me anyway.”

  “They aren’t . . .” Lady Bridget’s voice trailed off in her halfhearted defense of the ton. “You don’t have to make it so easy for them to laugh. Or hard for me to succeed. And you don’t have to be so childish, either, Amelia.”

  “Expecting that you not divest your footwear at a formal ball is not an outlandish request,” the duchess said dryly. Meredith wondered: What the devil had that girl done now?! And then, echoing the sentiments of the ton, she added, “At least, not in England.”

  “You are lucky it was just my shoes, when I’d really like to remove this blasted corset, douse it in brandy, and set it afire,” Amelia muttered.

  “Just don’t use the good brandy,” James said dryly.

  “You’re not helping,” Claire, Bridget, and the duchess snapped at him in unison, as Meredith also whispered the words under her breath.

  Meredith could see, through the crack in the door, that Amelia was halfway up the stairs, on her way to at least removing the offending garment.

  “Between her language and the shoes, everyone will think you were raised in the stables,” the duchess lamented.

  “To be fair, we practically were,” James remarked from where he leaned idly against the wall.

  “And everyone already thinks so,” Lady Bridget muttered.

  “Please, do not remind me of that fact,” the duchess said, closing her eyes. “I am trying very hard to forget it and very, very hard to ensure that the rest of the ton forgets it as well.”

  “You could always send me back if I’m such an embarrassment to you all,” Amelia challenged.

  “Amelia, we agreed . . .” Lady Claire started. “And you did say you wanted to see more of the world. Think of this as an adventure. A chance to explore.”

  “I do want to see the world,” Lady Amelia said. “Not every drawing room and ballroom in London. I mean, honestly, how much damask wallpaper, gold-framed portraits of dead aristocrats, and fancy tea sets does one girl need to see?” Her voice was rising now, trembling a little. “I want more,” she said.

  I want more.

  Amelia’s words echoed in the vast marble foyer. The force of them went straight to Meredith’s heart. Me. Too.

  I want more.

  That was the feeling she’d been feeling. That was the hot, irritable sensation—it was that of always wanting, and feeling trapped; always denying or being denied.

  She’d felt it that night in Southampton.

  She had wanted more than a steady pulse and a perfect reputation. She wanted passion. That night she had wanted it so much that she couldn’t deny it. With a man like James to indulge with, why would she?

  She felt it every day that she woke up under the same roof as James—but not in his bed. Always, always wanting more than they could give.

  And she suspected that not even Just James could satisfy this relentless, driving need for more. Because it was a desire for more than just a man; she wanted more for her life than to be in the duchess’s shadow.

  Meredith wanted to step into the light and be seen. For herself.

  Lady Amelia was ranting now, clearly having reached the end of her tether, and the family stood by.

  She ranted about the injustice of a woman being deemed hysterical for wanting more from her life than to marry some inbred Englishman.

  Yes! I want more, too.

  Lady Amelia carried on about damask-papered prison walls and the interchangeability of corsets and straitjackets.

  Yes! Her life so far had been spent pouring and sipping tea in drawing rooms all across town. She spent her hours stitching samplers, writing letters, and arranging flowers. But surely there was more?

  Lady Amelia next started pulling the hairpins from the elaborate coiffure. She flung the hairpins one by one around the foyer. They skittered across the marble floor. They ricocheted off crystal sconces. They plunked against portraits and fell to the floor.

  “Well,” the duchess said. “There is only one thing to do, I suppose. I shall send up Miss Green with some laudanum.”

  That was her cue to enter and get to work, quieting the girl who shouted out the words that named the feelings in Meredith’s heart.

  The next morning, Amelia did not come down to breakfast. Since the girl never did miss a meal, James, Bridget, and Claire thought this odd. It was then discovered that Amelia was missing.

  It should not have been a surprise that she’d run away, given the disastrous events of the previous evening. She had caused one hell of a scandal at Almack’s. Even James knew it was bad.

  James had badly wanted to commiserate with her—he knew how bored and stifled she felt, and how life in London society didn’t leave enough room for their big American spirits. But as the Duke of Durham and Head Of The Family he felt he couldn’t indulge her behavior.

  And now she was missing.

  Amelia, whom he’d had to rescue from any number of scrapes—stuck in a tree after trying to rescue a climbing kitten, rescued from a field after falling from an untrained horse and spraining her ankle, rescued from Bridget’s wrath after reading her diary aloud at village school—had now embarked on a scrape of previously unforeseen and epic proportions.

  Or so he hoped.

  The alternative—that she was taken—was too horrid to consider.

  Sisters. Usually James said the word with a sigh and an eye roll toward the heavens.

  But today his lament of sisters was halfhearted. He was too sick wit
h worry to be actually vexed.

  After arguing with the duchess over the best way to find Amelia—she favored discretion, while he wanted the city blanketed in Bow Street Runners searching for her—he stormed out.

  It was impossible and inconceivable that he sit idly at home, sipping tea and waiting for Amelia to return. James knew his baby sister; it would be a while yet before she became too hungry, tired, or scared and overcame whatever need it was that sent her running in the first place.

  But London was no city for a young woman alone—especially one like Amelia, a magnet for trouble.

  He had to find her.

  Not as duke, but as her brother.

  As James strode briskly through the streets of Mayfair, hat low over his eyes that skimmed the streets for signs of her, he thought how this was entirely his fault.

  If he hadn’t brought them to England in the first place . . .

  They would all be happy, at home in America.

  If he had fought back more against the duchess as she tried to mold them into Perfect English Ladies when anyone could see they were never cut out for that . . .

  They would all be happy, just as they were.

  If only he hadn’t been so consumed and distracted by Meredith . . .

  James would have been able to see sooner that Amelia wasn’t happy here and done something about it.

  If only he hadn’t been busy with this duke business . . .

  He would have been able to be a better brother.

  James walked the streets for hours, almost getting lost, and then getting caught in a sudden torrential downpour. There was no sign of Amelia, and eventually he returned to the house, hoping to find that she’d returned in his absence. Instead he found a different kind of torment.

  If a duke struggles to resist temptation, he should avoid it at all costs. Nothing or no one must interfere with his duty to the estate.

  —The Rules for Dukes

  For Meredith, and presumably the rest of the Cavendishes, it was one of those days where every second was torture and every minute felt like ten. The family fought—the duchess urged discretion in their search to protect Amelia’s reputation, whilst James wanted to call in the Bow Street Runners and probably the cavalry, army, and navy, to boot.

  He stormed out, and she knew he would be a one-man rescue mission, stalking the streets of London in search of his beloved sister, for as long as it took, or at least for hours.

  Meanwhile, Meredith was confined to the drawing room.

  Again. As always.

  She sat with the duchess, embroidering only to keep her hands busy, and ensuring the pot of tea was always hot. One could handle anything if fortified with a pot of hot tea. Or four.

  They were up to four pots now, and it wasn’t even time for luncheon.

  After the fifth, Lady Claire decided she needed a walk, and Meredith was more than happy to accompany her. The walk was eventful—the rainstorm they were caught in was the least of it—but they hadn’t seen Lady Amelia.

  Upon their return, they learned that Lady Bridget had returned from a carriage ride with Lord Darcy—neither of them had spotted Amelia, either.

  While everyone was drying off from the sudden storm, Meredith noticed that the door to James’s study was slightly ajar, and candles were lit within.

  He had returned. Alone.

  She shouldn’t bother him. More to the point: she should not be alone with him. She was on thin ice with the duchess as it was. She was in a fragile state herself.

  But he was hurting, and it had been plain to see all day long. She’d been able to help him before, so why not now?

  In the end, she couldn’t stay away.

  The room was dimly lit. Rain slashed against the windowpanes.

  James sat behind the desk. She noted a decanter of whiskey, more empty than full, and a glass.

  He looked up when she entered, and then stood, because a woman was present. He looked drawn and tired. He looked sick with worry.

  “I wanted to see how you were doing,” she said softly.

  “Fine. I’m fine. Why would I be anything other than fine?”

  His voice was rough, but that might have been the whiskey.

  “You’re not fine.”

  “Of course I am not fine,” he said sharply, and she flinched. “My sister, my baby sister, is missing. Not only that, but she is missing in a large, foreign city, full of all kinds of danger. Rapists, murderers, thieves, do I need to go on?”

  Meredith shook her head no, not trusting herself to speak. She suddenly regretted the intrusion because this was not the James she knew.

  “Her life could be at stake, if it isn’t lost already. So, no, Meredith, I’m not fine.”

  “She’s a smart, resourceful girl. She’ll be fine.”

  Meredith reached out for him, just to touch his sleeve. It was only meant to be a little gesture to show affection and a tangible demonstration that he was not alone. But James jerked back as if burned.

  She dropped her hand, mortified.

  “You heard the duchess,” he said. “Even if she returns, she won’t be fine. She’ll be ruined. Do you know what that means for the rest of us?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She knew. It would not be good.

  “It means strategic marriages, quickly, to powerful members of the haute ton whom we might not love.”

  She knew that for the Cavendishes it would be an unwilling surrender to wed at all—let alone to do so for such mercenary means. And the thing was: each one of them would do whatever it took to protect the other. Even submit to a loveless marriage for a lifetime.

  “I can try to do that myself. And God Above, I am trying,” James said. And her heart leapt at the words and the strain in his voice because it seemed to her to mean that he didn’t love Lady Jemma. “But I cannot do that to my sisters. I cannot take their choices away from them.”

  If that didn’t make her heart skip a beat with something like love and admiration . . . and then fall and crash and burn when she remembered what it meant for her. Their happiness, for hers.

  “It means we could never be together,” he said.

  “I know that. We both know that.”

  James shrugged and turned away—but not before a flash of his blue eyes told her something new. Something she had only hoped for in the darkest, most secret corners of her heart.

  “You had hoped,” she whispered. “A small part of you still hoped and wanted.”

  She couldn’t tell if this realization made her feel better or worse. Because she, too, had hoped.

  “And now with Amelia gone, there is no more hope,” he said grimly. “So I hope you understand, Meredith, that I need you to go. I can’t stand the temptation. Not now. Not tonight.”

  The way he looked at her . . . oh, the way he looked at her!

  When those blue eyes of his fixed upon her, her knees felt weak. Her heart started to drum in a slow, steady rhythm of wanting. Her skin tingled in anticipation of his touch—one she would never feel again, she was sure. Meredith couldn’t move, not when she could barely stand, for melting under the intensity of his gaze.

  This is what she wanted. What she dreamt of. And she was just supposed to turn and leave?

  “Don’t tempt me, Meredith. Please, don’t tempt me.”

  His voice was rough. Desperate.

  If she left, he would empty that bottle of whiskey. He would stay up all night brooding. He would be miserable in the morning.

  But if she stayed, he would have one more regret to burn over, and she didn’t want to be a regret, she wanted to be his joy.

  She loved him. The man he was deep down. The man he was trying to be. She realized now that if she stayed, he was going to surrender to the temptation. She would melt against him, kiss him until she was breathless, make love to him on the floor. And they would both be disappointed in him. It was an impossible situation.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he warned once more.

  “I want to, but I won
’t,” she whispered. And then she turned and fled, for her own self-preservation as much as his.

  James watched Meredith go, carrying his heart and his hopes with her. It had taken every last inch of his self-control not to crush her against his chest, claim her mouth with his, tumble to the floor and lose himself inside her.

  Her warmth. Her softness. Her passion. He wanted all of it. Especially tonight.

  The way she moved with him, the way she touched him, the way she sighed with pleasure. He needed all of it. Now.

  He wanted to lose himself. Lose his mind. Forget everything.

  Destroying his family’s happiness. Denying his love and lust. And for what? Houses. Duties. Drainage ditches.

  James picked up his empty whiskey glass and hurled it at the mantelpiece. It crashed and shattered, and it didn’t make him feel better.

  The only thing that did improve his mood was the sound of Amelia returning home, which she finally did late, much later that evening.

  She was home. She was safe. And he was determined that something had to change.

  Chapter 14

  A duke makes an effort to ensure that his guests enjoy themselves. But not too much of an effort.

  —The Rules for Dukes

  It was absurd to think that the Duchess of Durham was nervous about hosting a ball, given that she was one of London’s most accomplished hostesses. Why, people still spoke about her Egyptian-themed event in 1818—Prinny himself had attended and declared it a success.

  But tonight was different: she was still trying to get the Cavendish siblings to “take” in society. And there was good reason to be nervous: the girls were hardly enthusiastic about the party they had helped to plan for the purposes of showing them off. None of them aspired to ton adulation for their skills as hostesses.

  “Tonight must go well,” the duchess said as her lady’s maid adjusted the tiara in her nearly white blonde hair. The piece was a little too big, but it was part of a breathtaking set of tiara, earrings, and necklace, all made of blindingly sparkling diamonds and deep blue sapphires. It was a family heirloom.