It's Hard Out Here for a Duke Page 22

  “Your Grace, it is time to get ready for the ball tonight.”

  “She thinks you’re the duchess,” Mrs. Bates said with a smirk. “She must be off on another one of her flights of fancy again. Happens more and more these days.”

  This just made Meredith sigh. And oh, what a sigh. Her mother thought her the Duchess of Durham, a role Meredith was at once trained to play and yet could never truly embody. So much for her efforts to escape.

  “Best just play along then,” Mrs. Bates advised. Grumbling under her breath, she added, “She never mistakes me for the duchess.”

  “I’ve pressed the blue dress for you,” her mother continued, reenacting some scene from her day as a lady’s maid. “And we must decide whether to wear it with the diamond parure or the set of emeralds.”

  “The problems some people have,” Mrs. Bates muttered. Privately, Meredith agreed.

  Meredith didn’t know the blue dress of which she spoke, but she was familiar with the diamond parure—a set including a tiara, necklace, and earrings all made with diamonds and deep blue sapphires.

  “The tiara doesn’t quite fit,” Meredith said. They’d confirmed this just the other night at the Cavendish ball.

  “That’s right. It was made for the dowager duchess’s fat head.”

  Her mother cackled.

  “Clara,” Meredith said reprovingly, as she imagined the duchess might do.

  Then to no one in particular, her mother said, “Her Grace usually tucks into the sherry after the ball, not before.”

  “Better than before breakfast,” Mrs. Bates muttered.

  Meredith gave a small huff of laughter.

  But she also felt a pang of homesickness for life with the duchess and a newfound kinship with her mother as she thought of all the evenings she’d handled that diamond parure with the too-big tiara and poured Her Grace a glass (or two) of sherry and listened to her recount the evening. Like mother, like daughter.

  “We talk about the dowager’s fat head all the time,” her mother said.

  Well this was a side of the duchess Meredith had never seen. A younger, less restrained side. She could scarcely imagine it.

  “Perhaps it’s not so much fat as stubborn,” her mother continued. “With all her rules and nagging for an heir and all that. Lord knows you’re trying. I’ve never seen anybody try so hard at anything.”

  Meredith glanced over at Mrs. Bates, who was presently concerned with a knot in her thread. Perhaps she’d heard this scene a thousand times before or maybe she simply didn’t care.

  But Meredith blushed slightly, considering the intimacy that must have existed between the duchess and her lady’s maid—how much her mother must have known of Her Grace’s efforts and failures to conceive, all her hopes and heartaches, and all the pressure the duchess must have been under to not only produce an heir, but to rule society and manage multiple households.

  “You are so determined to be the perfect duchess in every other way,” Clara said sagely.

  Knowing the duchess as she did, Meredith couldn’t imagine the duchess confiding such stresses in anyone else. But as her lady’s maid, Clara must have observed so much, and what she said now rang true today. No wonder Her Grace supported her mother in her mad old age; it was only fair as her mother had supported her.

  “I don’t suppose you know if the earl will be attending the house party?” Clara asked. Was she still reliving her memories? Was this a continuation of the same scene or a new one? And which earl?

  “Why do you ask?” Meredith inquired.

  “You know why, Duchess.” Her mother gave her a sassy wink. Meredith raised an eyebrow at the audacity, the familiarity.

  “Remind me,” Meredith said.

  Her mother shrugged and said, “He seems to have taken a liking to me.”

  Mer’s breath caught in her throat. As a lady’s maid, did she really speak of earls and romance to the duchess like that? Or was this a fantasy scene? Meredith was confused, but intrigued, by this window into the past or at least her mother’s inner life. Too much rang true for her to immediately discount it as merely fantasy.

  “What kind of liking?”

  “The kind that makes a girl dream of better things,” her mother said. And Lud, if that didn’t start a crack in Meredith’s heart because she knew all about that kind of liking and loving. “But don’t worry, Your Grace, I know my place. And his place. He’s just quite handsome.”

  “He won’t marry you,” Meredith said. Surely that is what the duchess said then, just as she said it recently. And, because she knew how this story played out, Meredith added, “You’ll marry someone else.”

  “That’s probably true. Doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun first.” Her mother burst into a girlish laughter, which was something else coming from her mouth, lined with wrinkles.

  Meredith was momentarily mortified to be faced with the prospect of her mother being young and wild and potentially having flings with handsome lords. There were some things a child did not want to consider about her parents.

  “The lax morals of the upper classes . . .” Mrs. Bates clucked.

  “What do you mean, upper classes? My mother was a lady’s maid. Not quite the same.”

  “But the earl is upper class,” Mrs. Bates said. “And Lud, do my ears burn when she gets started on reliving those encounters between her and the Earl of Cambria.”

  “The Earl of Cambria?”

  Her heart stopped beating. Truly, for a moment, it stopped. The air stopped rushing in and out of her lungs. It couldn’t be . . .

  Before Meredith could even think through the implications, Mrs. Bates was chattering away.

  “How can a London girl like yourself be shocked by some lord dallying with a lady’s maid at a house party?”

  Meredith wasn’t shocked by that; it happened all the time, then and now. She knew that well enough, not that she’d share that with the judgmental Mrs. Bates.

  But she was shocked by what it might mean for her parentage. Because if she wasn’t the daughter of the duke’s valet, as she’d always assumed . . . if there was blue blood in her veins after all . . . if her father was the Earl of Cambria . . .

  She still wouldn’t have a name, or connections, or a dowry or any adjoining acres. But she would have one more thing to make her a little more of a suitable bride for James: blue blood pulsing through her veins.

  Because she still thought of James even after all these days and nights away. She thought of him struggling to make sense of being a duke and wanted to be there to help him through. She thought of all their stolen moments on the stairs, or kisses in the corridors. At the breakfast table or in the parlor, she wanted to look up and catch his eye. She had questions for him, about the horses she saw in the fields or how this little cottage compared to his home in Maryland. She craved his touch.

  He might have been out of sight but he was hardly out of mind.

  And now her mother—her mad, out-of-her-mind mother—was saying things that led Meredith to hope that her case might not be so hopeless after all.

  Meredith took a deep breath. She shouldn’t get ahead of herself.

  “Clara, do remind me what month and year it is,” Meredith said in her best imitation of the duchess. It was pretty good, if she said so herself. She’d had years of observation and practice. In a way, no one was more perfectly prepared than her to be the next Duchess of Durham.

  But her mother was now off in a different reverie and any questions remained vexingly unanswered.

  A few days later

  Days passed while Meredith helped Mrs. Bates with the housekeeping and kept her mother company. This usually entailed listening and playing along as her mother relived scenes from her past. It was illuminating—what better way to get to know her mother than to dramatically reenact scenes from her whole life?

  But it was also exhausting to be constantly performing various roles, leaping from the duchess, to her father (or so she thought), to shopkeepers and L
ord only knew who else.

  There were dull scenes in which she discussed what the duchess should wear and when she’d like her breakfast and recounting of gossip from over twenty years earlier.

  There were more troubling scenes in which her mother reenacted fights with her father—or the man she’d known as her father. Mr. Green had been Durham’s valet; he and her mother had met in service to the duke and duchess, had wed, and had Meredith—or so she’d been told. They had all lived in a small cottage on the estate, and from a very young age, Meredith was left to help run the household while her parents worked. She’d been close to her mother, but had scarcely any memories of her father. The ones she did have weren’t ones to warm the heart.

  At least, this is what she had known and the story she had been told.

  There was no mention of this earl, in spite of Meredith’s efforts.

  “Tell me about you and the Earl of Cambria,” she said again in her best impression of the duchess.

  “I’ll press the blue dress for this evening. Would you like to wear it with the diamond parure or the sapphires?”

  Sometimes Meredith answered the diamond parure, or the sapphires, or suggested the green dress instead.

  Sometimes, Meredith tried to prompt her mother to start on a particular scene or topic she wished to know more about. How had Mr. Green proposed? How had the duchess persuaded her to give up her daughter? Why had the duchess brought Meredith to live with her anyway?

  It was such an effort, a game, to set up these scenes in the hopes her mother would say something revelatory. If only she could just ask. Sometimes all Meredith wanted was to have a simple, basic conversation where her mother recognized her. Knew her. Saw her.

  “Do you know who I am, Mother?”

  “You’re the Duchess of Durham,” her mother said, having no idea how that rent a fresh tear in her daughter’s warm, beating heart. “Honestly, Josephine, what kind of question is that?”

  And so the days passed, full of maddening conversations that prompted questions that only Her Grace, the Duchess of Durham, could answer.

  And Meredith wanted answers.

  Chapter 18

  Very often dukes will excuse themselves with the pretense of important estate business. But sometimes there actually is important estate business.

  —The Rules for Dukes

  Durham Park

  When one’s heart was broken and one’s future seemed to be some vague disappointment, there was only one thing to do: take solace in drainage ditches.

  At least, that was James’s plan.

  Meredith had left, and it was not clear when she would return, if ever. The duchess was tight-lipped about it—not wanting to encourage him, presumably. There was gossip about him and Lady Jemma; it seemed that she and the rest of the haute ton were expecting a proposal, oh, any second now. But he just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

  But James did learn that important ducal estate business provided a very convenient excuse to avoid problems in London that he’d rather not deal with. He invented an emergency at Durham Park, had Edwards pack up his belongings, and left.

  Now here he was, digging drainage ditches with Mr. Simons and Mr. Sprock in what seemed to be a very fine pair of breeches and a linen shirt. Edwards would have an apoplexy when he saw the bottle green wool jacket lying in a heap under a tree, to say nothing of the long-lost cravat and the state of his boots.

  “It’s very good of you to come to assist us, Your Grace,” said Simons, eyeing him warily.

  “No need to call me Your Grace. Just James will do.” Then James winced as Just James brought back a storm of memories that he was trying to forget.

  The sight of her across a crowded room. Her shy smile. The soft click of the door closing. The soft sigh from her kissable lips.

  James pushed his shovel into the dirt and heaved a pile of it off to the side. Drainage ditches. He needed to focus on drainage ditches.

  “Begging your pardon, Your Grace,” Sprock added. “But it seems improper to address you any other way.”

  “But we’re digging a drainage ditch,” James said, pausing to take a breath. Bloody hell, London was making him soft. Back home in Maryland, this labor wouldn’t even have him breaking a sweat. “I think we can do away with all that formality.”

  “But you’re still the duke.”

  A duke who was digging a drainage ditch as an escape from romantic troubles.

  “It is a bit odd to have the duke himself personally assist us with this manual labor,” said Simons. “This hot, dirty, sweaty, messy manual labor.”

  “Surely dukes have more important things to attend to,” Sprock added.

  “Just a lot of paperwork, mainly,” James grunted. Gasped, really.

  “Don’t blame you for being out here then.”

  James shrugged and got back to work digging. It was a known fact that drainage ditches didn’t dig themselves and if they were to be an effective distraction from romantic troubles, then he would have to focus.

  And so, he dug while Sprock and Simons chatted away while they worked.

  “The previous duke, may he rest in peace, would never concern himself with something like this.”

  “I dunno, Sprock, I reckon he would have done, but the duchess would never allow it. She kept him busy with all that important duke business.”

  “I shudder at what this place would be without her firm hand behind it.”

  “I thought the late duke was well regarded for his management of the estates and his work in parliament,” James cut in.

  At least, that was the impression he got from his review of the account books (very well, Claire’s review) and conversations with the late duke’s colleagues in government. By all accounts, he was an upstanding man who knew his duty and performed it well. No sins, no scandals. It was a tough act to follow.

  “Oh, he was a good man. Knew his duty. But he still understood that the life of an aristocrat wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  It’s not just me, James thought. He kept digging.

  “Not that we know.”

  “So we’ve heard.”

  “That’s why he let your father run off with that horse.”

  James paused in his digging. Let?

  “Whatever happened to that horse?” Sprock asked. “Mess something it was called. Can’t quite remember.”

  “Messenger,” James answered, picturing the tall black stallion. “My father took the horse and used him to establish his breeding and training program.”

  “Never saw a horse like that one before or since.”

  For once, James didn’t want to talk about Messenger. Or horses. Or home. He was stuck on a casually spoken string of words that weren’t compatible with the story he’d grown up hearing.

  “What do you mean the duke let my father run off with the horse?”

  What about the secret plans, galloping through the darkness at midnight? The risks if he were caught?

  “Oh, I thought you knew.”

  “Sprock, look at him: he obviously didn’t know.”

  “Your father was never very happy after he came back from the war. Everyone thought it was the aftereffects of battle, but the duke knew your brother was lovesick for a woman he met in the colonies.”

  For once James didn’t correct the saying of the colonies.

  “The duke was just married himself. Or about to be? I can’t recall, it was so long ago. I think he and the duchess figured they’d have an heir and a spare soon enough, so the duke let him go. Helped with the arrangements, but didn’t let the missus in on it.”

  “There was a scandal,” said Simons. “My wife read about it in the London papers. Months after the fact, of course, before we got the city papers out here. But then she told me and everyone. We all talked about it.”

  “Aye, the duchess didn’t like that. She had an aversion to scandal,” Sprock said, smiling at the memory. “Not one bit. Her lady’s maid told her husband, the valet. Or was it the other way arou
nd? Either way, he learned about it and he told us.”

  “Were they married then? I can’t seem to recall.”

  “It did happen awfully quick. One of those weddings.”

  James kept digging. And thinking. He was learning a lot from these two old tenants, not the least of which was that old men seemed to gossip as much, if not more, than young women.

  Later that day

  James spent the last hours of daylight in the portrait gallery. He didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly, but after listening to Simons and Sprock all day, he supposed he wanted something like understanding.

  He paused in front of a portrait of the duke, painted in the man’s later years. With his distinguished gray hair, strong pose, His Grace, the fifth Duke of Durham, looked so . . . ducal.

  Was he really the sort of man who would encourage his younger brother to leave everything behind for love in another country, on another continent, knowing they might never see each other again? If he was anything like the duchess it was hard to imagine it.

  Nearby was a portrait of his father as a young man, and James stood in front of it for a long time, marveling at how it was like looking in a mirror. He was the spitting image of his father in this picture—the same blue eyes, the same light brown hair (though worn in a different style these days), the straight nose and strong jaw. His attentions were fixed to something—someone?—off the canvas.

  Messenger was in the background. James recognized the shiny black coat and spot of white on his nose and the lively look in the animal’s eye. James grew up with that horse; he’d recognize him anywhere.

  That the animal should be in a portrait with his father suggested that horse belonged to him. One didn’t often commission a portrait with oneself and stolen goods. James began to wonder if perhaps there wasn’t some truth to what Sprock and Simons had said. On that note, it was remarkable that this portrait still had pride of place in the family gallery in the preferred family estate.

  But one thing was clear to James: his father hadn’t run off or escaped. He’d left with the blessing of his family. Otherwise, the portrait would be burned or in the attics.