Page 19 of The Duke
The carriage rumbled up out of the park, onto a domestic street dotted with trees.
“We are on our way to pay a call on his mother, Lady Pecke. You see, Miss Genet, I don’t wish to wait months for some callow swain to bring himself up to scratch. If we spend the next two weeks wisely, making Lord Burnley our goal, you will have your engagement.”
“Yes,” she said quickly, wetting her parched lips. “Yes, that’s what I want.”
Nervously, she touched her hair, her necklace. She was minutes away from meeting the woman who might very soon become her mother-in-law. But every detail was perfect; the duke’s valet had seen to that.
A pricking sensation made her look up, but the duke’s eyes were fixed somewhere over her shoulder, cold and distant.
She had, again, the claustrophobic sense of being bound to a caged creature that would savage her the moment it won free. She gripped the door and looked away. They were passing the entrance to another large park, and she glimpsed a pretty, old cottage by the river, a flash of white fence.
She was distracted suddenly by the idea that she would become familiar with this park. She would drive in it when she and her spouse were in London; this foreign city was to be her home. She felt the sudden wrench of being uprooted from everything she knew. But then, she hadn’t been able to thrive in her native soil.
The stone wall surged up beside them again and the park was gone. She turned to the duke, determined to dwell only on what made her happy.
“What can you tell me of Lord Burnley?” she said. “What is his character? His ambitions, and proclivities?”
“I don’t know. He spent the past four years buried in books at university and has just this season emerged. He’s your age, more or less.”
Impatient, she said, “You must do better, that is unsatisfactory in the extreme!”
The duke stared at her, a banked emotion flaring before her face became once more expressionless. Cold. “He resides with his parents, so perhaps you may take your own measure of him this very hour.”
Before she had time to adjust to the speed with which her future, her brand-new life, was now rushing at her, the duke said, “We have arrived.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
They pulled up before a brick house with an alarming number of windows. It was the first in a row that bordered a large green square. Grand, and yet… The duke’s London house was fully as big as this whole row, if bent into a horseshoe, within its own extensive gardens.
The duke stepped down from the carriage and then, with a great show of courtesy, offered Celine her hand.
Celine stared at it, nonplussed.
The duke murmured, “Your loving guardian wishes to hand you down from the carriage, little vagrant witch. Do take my hand and show those watching from the window how sincerely I wish for you to go to a good husband.”
She resisted the predictable urge to look for faces in the window and instead took the duke’s hand (firm and impersonal, not particularly warm through two gloves). She felt almost giddy, playing the biddable miss. To biddable misses came offers of marriage.
The duke tucked her hand securely into the crook of her elbow, and together they crossed the moat from street to front door, in which yet more windows murkily appeared. The duke rapped on the door with the wolf’s head cane—how perfectly ridiculous, she should just go ahead and threaten to blow the lot down.
A servant opened the door with such alacrity that she and the duke nearly fell inside. The servant had a wide, white moustache and pink cheeks. He accepted the duke’s card with a starchy “I shall enquire if my mistress is home.”
The commotion upstairs suggested she was. Something hadsmashed and was being tidied. Celine’s hand began to warm as the duke’s heat seeped through shirt and jacket and glove. The moustachioed servant returned and showed them upstairs to the parlour.
The room was small but very elegant. The window overlooked the street, and Lady Pecke occupied the chair nearest to it; here was the face at the window. Celine studied her. She wasn’t good-looking, but like her house, she was elegant. Celine’s heart began to beat harder. The pleasure houses where she had worked had mimicked this kind of room, and the madames had mimicked this kind of lady. But Lady Pecke was the real thing.
Could she really do this? Could she pass herself off as someone so far above her station, in a country she barely understood?
Beside Lady Pecke was a young woman of a species Celine had never personally encountered: a gently bred English miss who always had enough to eat, and who was innocently unaware people like Celine existed.
The young woman stared at the duke and dropped her embroidery on the floor, its dull thump underscoring the general awkwardness of the moment. Near it was a wet stain on the carpet and tiny crystals of sugar, where a quick brush hadn’t dislodged them. It seemed someone had dropped an entire tea service upon learning who had come to call.
“Lady Pecke, a pleasure,” the duke said, nodding her head in brief acknowledgement (the woman was a countess, for God’s sake!). “May I present my ward, Miss Celine Genet. Miss Genet, our hostess Lady Pecke and…” She gave a brief, uncurious glance at the young woman who had bent to retrieve her embroidery.
“My…” Lady Pecke’s voice petered out. She cleared her throat and tried again with somewhat more success. “My cousin, Miss Finemore. She was good enough to accept my invitation to stay for the season.”
I’ll bet she was, Celine thought enviously. Imagine having the refined Lady Pecke to take one into society! She could feel the duke at her side radiating barely leashed impatience, as out of place inthis room as a cliff. She thought a little hysterically,Perhaps Miss Finemore would like to swap?
Lady Pecke said gamely, “Won’t you please have a seat?”
