Jillian Hunter - The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

“Liam. Get up, idiot.”

The head groom, who’d been following at a distance, splashed up beside him in his thick riding boots. “Move aside, my lord.”

The mare scrambled up the embankment. Griffin grabbed his brother’s riding coat at the shoulder, turning him onto his back. “Please,” he whispered.

The groom pulled off his jacket. “His neck is broken. It was an accident. Let me lift him onto the rocks.”

Griffin sank to his knees. “Did you see it?” Their eyes met.

“Aye,” the groom said. “And so I shall swear.”

He hadn’t seen. No one but Griff had witnessed what happened. It was inevitable that some of the villagers in Glenmorgan would ask themselves if he’d done more than entice his brother into taking that fatal jump.

Wasn’t that enough?

He would be the one who had to tell Edlyn and the rest of the family. She had lost her mother, and now he was responsible for her father’s death.

After the funeral and a suitable period of mourning, they would travel to London together-he, the seventh Duke of Glenmorgan, to find a wife, and Edlyn, to learn the rules she would break for the rest of her life.

The red salon filled in moments. Ladies buzzed about, footmen swarmed, and a sharp-eyed scullion at the hearth swept up the few ashes that Harriet had missed. Griffin would never have recognized Charlotte Boscastle, as they had both been in the cradle at the time of their only acquaintance. She stood almost as tall as he, her blond hair drawn off a delicate oval face that could have graced a cameo. Miss Gardner was easily the most arresting person in the room, with her tightly knotted red hair, piquant features, and marked lavender dress. Her disheveled charm drew his eye so often he feared he would be caught.

She did catch him once as he looked up from the fireplace.

Her brows rose. Calmly, she turned to the tea table, concentrating on the cups as if one of them contained a gold sovereign. His gaze slid down her creamy décolletage to the damning brand above her bosom. Not only did it appear that the smudge had darkened, but the ruffled hem of her ruined dress had not escaped the soot, either.

He gazed down into his goblet at his reflection. He’d made another fearsome first impression, and he hadn’t even tried. It seemed to get easier every time.

“Are you looking in the River Styx?” a throaty voice asked at his elbow.

He glanced around in hesitation at his niece, who never missed the chance to spread her personal gloom around.

As was so often the case, it was his aunt, Lady Primrose Powlis, who quickly intervened before anything worse could erupt.

“Do I smell smoke? I hope something hasn’t gotten caught in the chimney. You weren’t puffing on one of those vile cheroots again, Griff?”

He glanced good-naturedly at his aunt. She was a small woman, whose spirit increased as her physical self diminished every year. Her booming voice could chill his blood. Her sweet wrinkled face was a beloved comfort. The rain had fortunately destroyed her atrocious hat. Her silver-white hair was flattened beneath an intricate netting of tiny ivory pearls, showing a bald spot here and there.

Annoying, intrusive, she manipulated her family without a thought, making up stories and heartrending fibs as served her purpose. And it was because her purpose nearly always derived from a genuine concern for those she connived that Griffin adored her.

He rarely admitted this to her, however. She took enough advantage of him as it was.

She was also uncannily observant. He was not at all surprised when in her next breath she accused him of setting Miss Gardner on fire with an imaginary cigar.

“Did my nephew drop ashes on your dress, Miss Gardner?” she asked in a horrified voice, leaning from her chair for a closer look.

Griffin smiled. The River Styx might need to be refilled tonight.

“It was my fault,” Harriet said quickly. “I fanned some papers I hadn’t noticed in the grate. His grace was good enough to air out the room.”

Lady Powlis settled back in her chair. “Hmmph.”

“But everything is fine now,” Griffin added, suddenly afraid it was anything but. Thanks to Aunt Primrose’s meddling, his cousin Charlotte now appeared to be on the scent.

She had excused herself from chatting with Lady Dalrymple and was making a quiet assessment of Harriet’s crumpled gloves, her dress-and heaven only knew how Charlotte put two and two together, but all of a sudden she was looking right at Griffin’s cravat.

He coughed into his fist. “I hope no one will take offense if I slip away for the rest of the day? There are matters of my aunt’s comfort that I have promised to attend on Bedford Square.”

Charlotte turned to him. “Of course. No one has stayed in the town house for years. I should have thought to offer Odgers.”

He lowered his hand. “I would appreciate a few hours alone, to be quite honest.” As only a man who had been trapped in a carriage with Aunt Primrose and Edlyn could understand. He’d rather have walked the distance to London, in fact, than have listened to his aunt prattle on about his future wife, about when they would have Edlyn’s debut, and about how she prayed Edlyn wasn’t going to make pets out of the pigeons in London as she had the crows in the castle turret. Yet while Griffin looked forward to a private evening, he would not have minded spending another hour or so with the young instructress who had unwittingly entertained him.

“Edlyn will do well here,” Charlotte assured him as they walked to the door.

“I hope so. She is not… easy.”

She gave him a knowing smile. “If you doubt our success, you have only to look at Miss Gardner for proof.”

“Proof. Of?”

“The academy’s ability to resurrect the sensibilities of one who might otherwise be considered dead by Society.”

Griffin didn’t know what to say. Harriet Gardner seemed anything but dead to him. She had certainly enlivened his arrival.

Charlotte bit her lip. “When you look at Miss Gardner, what is it that you see?”

He couldn’t very well answer, A winsome face with wicked hazel eyes, or A smudged dress. So he said, as gamely as he could manage, “A perfectly… perfectly… well, a gentlewoman.” Which was a safe reply that shouldn’t earn him or Miss Gardner a scolding.

“Did she give you a spot of trouble at first?” Charlotte asked shrewdly. He grinned.

“If she did, I probably deserved it.”

Harriet unstrapped the single traveling trunk sitting up against the bedchamber window. It didn’t occur to her that Edlyn had dragged it there herself until a few moments later.

“Shall we unpack and have your clothes pressed?” she asked.

Edlyn shrugged and wandered like a wraith to the window. The girl’s drab gray frock hung on her thin frame like a shroud. Thoroughly versed in the art of furtive escape, Harriet realized that Edlyn was assessing how dangerous it would be to drop to the garden. “You’d shatter your kneecaps and probably your back. It’s impossible since they cut down the old plane tree.”

“How do you know?” Edlyn asked, kneeling on the trunk.

Harriet hesitated. “One or two of the girls tried to see how far they could go without being caught.”

Edlyn glanced at her. “How far did they get?”

“Don’t you dare say I told you, but Miss Butterfield was brought home before she got past the gardeners. Miss Ruston landed in the philodendrons just below. They’ve taken a while to grow back.”

“And you?”

Harriet smiled. “I’m growing nicely, thank you.”

Edlyn slid backward on her knees, off the trunk. “I don’t care if it’s ever unpacked.” She curled her fingers over the windowsill. “Are there always that many people in the street on a rainy day?”

“That’s nothing.” Harriet came up behind her. “London doesn’t come to life until after midnight in some places.”

“What does one do during the evenings here?”

“Those would be for sitting by the fire, practicing the spinet, or reading.”

“I hate it in this house already.”

“That’s your right, I suppose.” Harriet rubbed the heel of her hand across the glass. “Still, you don’t want to be walking about London unescorted, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Would you like to escort me? I shall pay you.” Edlyn ventured a smile. Insincere as it was, Harriet decided that the girl would be beautiful if she didn’t go to so much trouble to make herself look like a corpse. She had to spend a fortune on rice powder, bleaching cream, and beetroot lip salve.

“You do know London?” Edlyn prompted.

Better than the landscape of her left ear. Harriet knew London from the vice-ridden alleys of the East End, where she’d been born, although no one had ever produced a certificate of birth to prove she existed at all. She knew the riverside docks where her father had worked when capable of rousing his soused arse into action. She knew the dirty warrens, the church bells, and the House of Corrections, at whose doors she’d waited in the rain for her half brothers to be released.

She’d gotten to know the West End, too, the elite squares and mansions of Mayfair where her father had finished her unwholesome education by introducing her to larceny.

“I know the city well enough to entertain you,” she said evasively. “As a student here, you’ll participate in many adventurous outings. There are circulating libraries, operas, and-”

Edlyn twirled a black curl around her half-bitten fingernail in an attitude of bored disinterest. “Will we see any duels?”