A Duke in Need of a Wife Read online

  He mounted the front steps and rapped on the door. Putting this inconvenient fascination for Miss Underwood to bed was what he would accomplish this afternoon. And then he could return to his well-ordered existence where his every move was dictated by duty, honour and reason.

  Not emotion or desire.

  * * *

  ‘Here he is!’ Aunt Agnes was practically jumping up and down on the spot. She’d spent all morning deciding what to wear. If there had been time, she would have gone out and purchased an entirely new carriage dress and bonnet. ‘Oh!’ She clapped her hands to her chest. ‘He has come in the most ridiculous vehicle. There can hardly be room for us both in it. I hope he doesn’t intend...’ She whirled round to look at Sofia with narrowed eyes. ‘It is the height of impropriety to go driving, alone, with a single gentleman to whom you are not related.’

  ‘You had better inform him of that fact when he comes in,’ said Sofia, tongue in cheek.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! As if he needs telling. He must have changed his mind about the outing, that is what it is,’ she said, trotting over to the mirror and fluffing her hair into place. ‘At least he is gracious enough to come and inform us.’ She plopped herself down and arranged her skirts only a moment before Babbage came to announce their visitor.

  The Duke strode in on the tail end of the butler’s words. He glanced at Sofia, where she was sitting on the sofa, Snowball next to her with her muzzle on her lap. ‘Good afternoon, ladies,’ he said, bowing to each of them. ‘Are you not ready?’ He shot a rather irritated glance at Sofia. ‘I did specify three o’clock and I do not wish to keep my horses standing.’

  ‘Oh, but we thought you must have changed your mind,’ said Aunt Agnes.

  He whirled on her. ‘Why should you think any such thing? Besides, if I had done so I should have sent a note. Well?’ He turned to Sofia again.

  ‘I have only to don my pelisse and bonnet,’ she said, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on his and pretending not to notice the frantic, yet furtive, way Aunt Agnes was trying to attract her attention. If she wanted to forbid her from going out with him unchaperoned, then she should jolly well have told him that it was highly improper behaviour the moment he’d suggested it. Sofia had never been invited to go out for a drive with a gentleman to whom she was not related. And she had no intention of letting such a treat slip through her fingers. Hadn’t she promised herself, when Uncle Ned had finally agreed to bring her to the seaside, that she was going to make the most of every opportunity for enjoyment that came her way? And start putting the past behind her?

  ‘Well, hurry along, then,’ said her means of escaping her aunt and uncle for an hour or so.

  Sofia hurried into the hall and into her pelisse and bonnet. Snowball, who recognised these signs of human behaviour as the prelude to going for a walk, ran around and around in circles, almost tripping the Duke when he came into the hallway himself.

  ‘Here, Snowball,’ said Sofia, bending down to scoop her dog up into her arms. ‘You do not mind me bringing her along, do you?’ Belatedly, she considered that the Duke might not like to have an animal of such dubious heritage perched up on the lap of the lady he was about to parade about the lanes in his curricle. A lady, moreover, who was sporting a rather spectacular black eye.

  The Duke looked at the wriggling bundle of fluff in Sofia’s arms, then looked into her face, as though his thoughts were following the same path her own had just wandered down. ‘Not at all,’ he said with chilling politeness. ‘Though would the creature not prefer to take a walk? With a footman?’

  ‘Oh, I shall take Snowball out again later for exercise,’ she said, airily ignoring his hint. ‘This carriage ride is just an extra treat for her. She absolutely loves carriage rides.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said drily, eyeing Babbage in such a way that the butler went and opened the front door for them to exit.

  ‘Oh, yes, you should have seen her during our trip here,’ she said, making her way down the front steps. ‘She kept her nose to the door the entire time, breathing in all the smells wafting in with her eyes half-shut as though she was in some sort of doggy heaven.’

  ‘Hmmph. Dogs do tend to experience life through their noses,’ he conceded as he handed her up on to the seat of the curricle. As he went around to the other side to climb in, Sofia put Snowball down right in the middle of the bench seat. The Duke paused in the act of taking his own seat and raised his left eyebrow.

  ‘So this little bundle of fluff is in reality the chaperon I took such pains to exclude from our outing.’

  ‘A girl cannot be too careful with her reputation,’ she said, parroting one of her aunt’s most frequent homilies.

  ‘I have a groom to stand up behind, naturally. However,’ he said, settling into the seat and taking the reins, ‘you are to be commended for not attempting to take advantage of the situation.’

  ‘Take advantage? Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Most females in your position,’ he said, nodding to the groom to let go of the horses’ heads, ‘would be trying to take hold of my arm under the pretence of being afraid of the motion of the vehicle.’

  ‘We haven’t set out yet,’ she said, as he flicked the reins and set it in motion. ‘That is,’ she hastily amended as the groom leapt nimbly up behind, ‘there is a little rail here by my side which I can hang on to should you prove to be a careless driver.’

  Sofia could tell the Duke did not like the implication that she might dislike the manner of his driving by the way his jaw clenched, but fortunately before either of them could pursue that topic any further, Snowball caught sight of a cat sitting on the window ledge of one of the houses they were passing and let out a loud bark.

  ‘Hush, Snowball,’ said Sofia, tapping the dog’s nose firmly with two fingers to reinforce the command.

  The Duke snorted. ‘You cannot expect any self-respecting dog not to bark at a cat.’

  ‘On the contrary. I have trained Snowball to be silent when required.’ She’d had to. Aunt Agnes had at first objected so strongly to having the animal in the house that she’d spent hours and hours training her dog into total obedience. ‘Now that I have given the command she will not bark again until I give her leave, I promise you.’

  ‘A remarkable animal, then,’ he said, glancing down at Snowball. ‘A good deal of poodle in the family, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I have to have her trimmed regularly or she becomes completely circular in appearance. Like a snowball on legs, in fact.’

  ‘Ah, hence the name.’

  ‘No, when she was a pup, she just looked like a little furry snowball. And it was Christmas. The name just came to me.’

  ‘Her tail has the look of a spaniel, though.’

  ‘Yes, her mother was definitely a spaniel. It was the father who...’

  Oh, lord, why had she never seen it before? That was why Jack had given her the puppy. Because she was of mixed breed. It had been a cruel joke, referencing Sofia’s own background.

  Was that why Aunt Agnes had been so cross with him? It certainly explained why her aunt had not shown any great aversion to Snowball after those first few fraught minutes when she’d scolded Jack for being so thoughtless. Why she’d never once threatened to have the dog destroyed, or sold, no matter how many times Sofia had returned from walks dripping wet or covered in mud. She’d scolded her, yes. Said she despaired of ever making a Proper Lady of her. But never, ever threatened to part her from the pet she’d fallen in love with at first sight.

  In rather the same way she’d fallen for Jack.

  And later, when he’d told her that he’d taken one look at Springer’s latest litter and thought of her, she’d assumed he’d meant that he’d noticed how lonely and out of place she still felt in England and had wanted to give her something of her very own, to love her and be with her always.

  But all the time he’d b
een making fun of her mixed parentage.

  How...beastly of him. How cruel.

  And how stupid of her not to have seen it.

  The Duke cleared his throat. ‘I did not bring you out here to talk about dogs, however.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she said, distractedly running her fingers over Snowball’s crest. In spite of suddenly understanding what Jack had meant the dog to be, she loved her just the same. Snowball was loyal and loving, obedient and clever. ‘Good girl, Snowball,’ she said.

  ‘Are you feeling quite well? You seem a little distracted.’

  Well, it wasn’t every day a girl was on the receiving end of such an epiphany. Not that she was going to let it have the devastating effect upon her that the last one she’d had about Jack had done. No, for this was more in the nature of a deepening of a truth she’d already learned.

  That Jack was a vile, vile person. And not the romantic hero of her girlish dreams. At all. Oh, yes, he might have told his sisters not to be so beastly to her whenever he caught them out in some petty act of spite. But she’d been mistaken in thinking his motives were the slightest bit chivalrous. It was far more to do with how much he disliked them.

  ‘Miss Underwood?’

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I was wool-gathering.’ On receipt of this admission, the Duke’s lips thinned and his ferocious brows drew down until they almost met one another over the great beak of his nose. Clearly he did not appreciate women wool-gathering when he’d done them the signal honour of taking them up in his curricle. And that after casting aspersions upon his prowess as a driver! ‘That is, I was wondering how best to answer your question, without...that is, I hardly know you.’

  ‘I do not wish to hear any details of your ailments,’ he snapped.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’ After all, nobody else ever did. All she’d had to do that day she’d come home from learning exactly what Jack thought of her was claim to have a headache and feel sick—which was the perfect truth—and they’d left her alone in her room for days.

  ‘I am assuming that it is on account of your poor health that you did not appear in London this spring.’

  ‘What? I mean, why should you have thought I would be in London?’

  ‘To make your debut. I should have thought... I mean, you look to be of an age to make a come-out. And your uncle is the Earl of Tadcaster, is he not?’

  ‘Yes...’ Though nobody would think so to look at her today, in one of her cousins’ cast-off walking dresses, a bonnet that did nothing to disguise her black eye and a dog of indeterminate heritage sitting at her side. Certainly not the couple of scarlet-jacketed officers who were loitering on the corner where the Duke was slowing down to take the turn down to the seafront.

  ‘To be honest,’ she said, turning to look at his profile so that she could pretend she hadn’t seen the scornful looks directed at her by those officers, ‘Aunt Agnes did use my poor health as a pretext for not taking me to London this year.’

  ‘But not former years?’ He glanced down at her, as though assessing her age. ‘You look as though you should have made your debut some time since.’

  She gasped at his effrontery.

  ‘Why has the Countess of Tadcaster not given you a court presentation then? She is surely a most suitable person to do so.’

  Had he been investigating her background? Or was he just one of those people who knew the intricate web of families that made up the haut ton so well that the few casual references to her family, made by her uncle and aunt, had been enough to place her exactly?

  ‘Well, when my father first died, Uncle Barty was a bachelor, so everyone thought it more appropriate for his sister to take me in charge, especially since she already had two daughters.’ She’d heard Uncle Barty say as much to the subaltern whose invidious task it had been to convey her to the head of her family. And heard the subaltern subsequently repeat the message to Aunt Agnes. ‘And then last spring, when I might have made my debut, Lady Tadcaster was...er...in a delicate condition.’

  ‘Ah, yes. She presented the Earl of Tadcaster with an heir during the summer months, did she not? It escaped my mind. And this year, you were too ill to endure the rigours of a Season...’

  ‘I most certainly was not!’

  He crooked one of his eyebrows at her. She pondered the fact that they could crook. They were remarkably mobile, considering that in their resting state they relaxed back into a completely straight line. Not that relaxed was really the correct word to apply to brows which managed to look so aggressive even when they were perfectly still. Or when he was staring at her, pointedly.

  She sighed. ‘I can see you are going to carry on badgering me until I tell you the truth which is...well, over the winter months, I did fall ill.’ Or perhaps it was more truthful to say she’d made herself ill. So stupidly.

  It had started with hearing Jack and his friend discussing her in such derogatory terms, while she’d been crouching, hidden, underneath the jetty on which they’d been standing.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll have to spend a bit of time dancing attendance on the heiress,’ Jack had apologised to his friend, ‘since my family expect me to marry her. But don’t worry, it won’t take much time out of the vacation. I’ll only have to toss her the bone of a few moments of idle chat, a smile and a compliment or two and she’ll be content to chew on it for days on end, like the mongrel bitch she is.’

  ‘Don’t sound as if you like her much, old man,’ the friend had said, sounding almost as shocked as she’d felt.

  ‘Like her?’ Jack had sounded offended. ‘She’s as dull as ditch water and about as attractive.’

  She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to stumble home after hearing that. And she’d shut herself in her room unable to bear the thought of facing anyone, knowing what she knew. Especially not with eyes red from weeping. After only a few days, during which she’d totally lost her appetite as well, she had started to look so ill they’d finally sent for a doctor, who’d bled her and cupped her until she really was so weak that when one of the housemaids had sneezed while lighting the fire, Sofia had caught the infection which had developed into a fully fledged inflammation of the lungs.

  ‘Coming to the seaside was supposed to have a tonic effect upon me,’ she said wistfully, recalling her Uncle Barty’s last visit to Nettleton Manor.

  ‘Not surprised you are fading away,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘Stuck out here with no company but such as that dolt my sister married and his infernal relatives. What you want is to get some sea air and go to some assemblies where you can dance with a few men in scarlet coats, eh, what? Stroll along the promenade and flirt with a beau or two.’

  That had sounded good. Sea bathing. And having some beaux. That would show Jack that there were men who found her interesting. Pretty even. That would prove she was not pining away. Not that he had the slightest idea his attitude was at the root of her illness. She hadn’t told anybody what she’d overheard. It would have been too humiliating. And anyway, what would have been the point?

  She suspected that Uncle Barty had only made the suggestion to cause trouble. He never left Nettleton Manor until he’d practically come to blows with Uncle Ned about something—the way he was managing Sofia’s fortune, or his treatment of Aunt Agnes, both were frequent grist to his mill. Usually she did her best to stay out of the quarrels which erupted on the slightest pretext. Especially if they concerned her. But during that last visit, she’d seen that he was the one person who could give her the answers to all the questions she’d been reluctant to ask Aunt Agnes for fear of offending her.

  ‘Is it a lot, the money that will come to me when I marry?’ she’d asked him, linking her arm through his as they’d strolled down to the rose garden.

  ‘Good Lord, yes. You’ll be rich enough to buy an...that is, yes—yes, it is.’

  She’d begun to suspect as much, upon hearing ho
w keen it had made Jack to marry her, in spite of what he thought of her. She’d never truly felt like an heiress before that day under the jetty in spite of hearing the word bandied about. In fact, she’d felt far more like a charity case, considering the way her cousins passed down their gowns from the previous Season to her each year when they went to buy new ones.

  ‘And what will happen to it if I don’t marry,’ she’d wondered aloud, ‘or if I die?’

  ‘You ain’t going to die, my girl, so stop thinking along those lines.’

  ‘But if I did?’

  ‘Well, in such a case, it would all go back to your mother’s family, where it came from,’ he’d said. Just like that. His honesty had stunned her, for everyone else had said, in the days when she’d still tried to talk about her parents, that it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

  ‘You...you know how to contact them, then?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he’d said with a puzzled frown. ‘Why should you think anything else?’

  ‘But I thought that all contact was lost when...when Mama married Papa.’

  ‘Ah. Well, it was given out that was the case. On account of them being Catholic and your father refusing to allow you to be brought up in that religion. They had to appear to cut their daughter out of their lives. And you, as the offspring.’

  ‘Mama was a Catholic?’

  ‘What did you think she was?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I was so little when she died. Papa could not bear to talk of her and Aunt and Uncle won’t have her name mentioned. So I thought...well, the only thing I did hear was that she was some sort of...trader.’ The only words used to describe her mother’s origins had actually been of such a derogatory variety that Sofia had been half-afraid to find out any more.

  ‘No, no, very good sort of people, the Perestrellos. They do own vineyards and their wine graces the tables of the wealthy all over the world. But they come from aristocratic stock. The mismatch was one of religion, not class. Unless you consider her race, which some do, the fools.’