Page 26 of It's All About the Duke
Chapter 7
He could be a rake if he brings a young lady a gift she can’t show to her mother.
MISSHONORATRUTH’SWORDS OFWISDOMANDWARNINGABOUTRAKES, SCOUNDRELS, ROGUES, ANDLIBERTINES
A few minutes after Justine and Tut left, Marlena had finally settled on the first few lines of her article. It was so much easier to concentrate when she had silence. But after a few more sentences, she decided Justine had disturbed her thoughts so much she needed to take a walk in the back garden herself. Sometimes during the winter months it was difficult to come up with new gossip because most of Society wintered at their country estates. The parties in London were few. At those times she’d rely on a new twist to an old story to get her past the weeks neither Veronica nor Justine had anything new to tell her.
She supposed that is what she’d have to do today.
Usually she’d have the sheet finished and given to Eugenia before dark but she wasn’t sure that would happen. Not that it mattered much either way. Marlena couldalways use what they called theirnight plan. There was a side gate in the fence between their two houses. They often stopped there to chat, or to exchange books or other things during the day. It was also where, when necessary, their clandestine meetings took place.
When the scandal sheet was finished, Marlena would light a lamp in her bedchamber before taking Tut out for the last time in the evening. That was Eugenia’s sign that Marlena would be waiting at the gate for her with article in hand. Since it was a weekly sheet and not a daily one, as Mr. Trout had wanted her to do, their timing always seemed to work out. On the rare occasions they needed to have a nighttime exchange, it hadn’t been a problem.
Marlena opened the desk drawer, slipped her sheet of musings inside, and closed it. After capping the ink jar, she headed toward the back door to don her cape and gloves. Just after entering the corridor she heard a knock at the front door.
She stopped and listened. Her heart pounding in her ears was the only thing she heard.
Could it be the duke? Justine’s friend Lady Westerbrook? It could even be Mr. Bramwell since he lived next door.
Mrs. Doddle came out of the kitchen with flour on her hands, her apron, and her face.
“I’ll get that for you,” she told the housekeeper.
“Are you sure?” Mrs. Doddle asked. “It won’t take me long to clean my hands.”
“I’m sure,” she answered, realizing there was a knot of anticipation in her stomach. “You continue making the bread.”
After several deep breaths and much more expectancy than she should be feeling Marlena walked to the front door and opened it. She caught the duke with his hand midair, obviously ready to hit the door knocker again. Hesmiled at her and she would have sworn to anyone in the world that her heart flipped over in her chest.
There couldn’t be a man alive who was more handsome than the one standing before her in a three-tiered black cloak, his white neckcloth showing above it, looking as dashing, dangerous, and devilish as the rogues she wrote about. Feminine desires Marlena hadn’t known existed until she’d met the duke made themselves known again. Her pulse increased rapidly, her breaths grew short, and her lower abdomen clinched reflexively.
He removed his hat and said, “Miss Fast.”
She curtsied. “Your Grace.”
“May I come in?” he asked with a hint of humor in his tone. “Or should we stand on the steps for a few minutes and converse as we did the last time I was here?”
So as she remembered, he was a man who liked to tease and obviously not one to hold a grudge, either. She could accept that quite nicely. What she didn’t know was if she could handle the fast beating of her heart and the womanly desires curling inside her every time she saw him.
“Well, it is an unusually sunny afternoon,” she answered in the same light tone and easy smile he used. She deliberately looked past him to see a light-blue sky above the rooftops. “And it’s so near springtime there are probably a few bees buzzing about in the garden. I know of no reason for us to hurry inside, except I believe my cousin would be quite perturbed with me if I didn’t insist you join me in the drawing room without delay.”
“Then I shall.”
Marlena opened the door wider, stepped aside, and allowed him to enter. That’s when she noticed he was holding an unusual package. Something about the size of a loaf of bread, wrapped in white lace and tied with a fancy blue ribbon.
She shut the door behind him and said, “Allow me to take your hat and cloak.”
“I’ll handle it.”
He put his hat and the package on the side table and swung his expensive-looking woolen cloak off his wide shoulders, laying it beside the hat. He wore a dark-brown wool coat and a lighter-brown waistcoat. His neckcloth didn’t seem to be tied any better than it had been the last time she saw him, but there was something about the careless bow that added to his charm. Most gentlemen were very precise in how their neckcloths were secured, but obviously that wasn’t a concern for this duke. That more relaxed appearance appealed to her.
“I expected Tut to meet me at the door,” he said, looking down the corridor past her. “He must be in the back garden.”
“No,” she said, pleased that he’d missed her beloved pet and expected to see him. “He’s with my cousin visiting a neighbor.”
The duke then picked up the package and said, “This is for you, Miss Fast.”
Marlena looked at it. Flowers, confections, and books were about the only gifts appropriate to give a young lady, and this didn’t appear to be any of those things. But no matter that, she was fairly certain that nothing should be wrapped in such a fine stitching of lace. She reluctantly took it from his hands.
