“I wouldn’t stay for all the tea in China.”
She wheeled, snatching her cloak from the hall-stand, and walked into the tall figure coming through the front door. Wisely, the duke had been gone all day, leaving Harriet to bear the brunt of his aunt’s distress. His black hair was ruffled from what must have been a hard ride.
“I’ve been knocking for ages. Where is Butler? The footmen? What has happened now?”
“Ask her ladyship,” Harriet said, flinging her cloak around her shoulders.
Lady Powlis scowled up at him. “Miss Gardner is threatening to leave me. What do you have to say about that?”
“I say it’s a blessed miracle she has lasted this long.”
“I’d dismiss you, too, if I could,” his aunt fired back at him.
“Go ahead,” he said, tossing his gloves at her feet like a gauntlet. “I’m fed up with you bellowing like a sailor night and day.”
“How dare you, you… wicked duke.”
He folded his arms in disgust. “You aren’t telling me you actually believe what you read?”
Harriet glanced from the duke to Lady Powlis in consternation. They looked as though they would face off like a pair of street brawlers at any moment. Over her. “Madam,” she said, positioning herself between the pair of them, “it is clear that my presence in this house is a disruption to his grace and-”
“Nonsense. Everything is a disruption to the duke. Where are you going with that cloak, Miss Gardner?”
“I’m leaving before I cause any more consternation.”
“You cannot leave,” Lady Powlis said. “I have paid you in advance. You accepted your wages, and I insist you work out what you owe me.”
Griffin bent to pick up his gloves, muttering under his breath, “I shall turn and walk out of this house forever, Primrose, if you confess that you actually believe what has been said of me.”
“And me,” Harriet said, suddenly tempted to sneak out to buy one of the papers that the servants had been ordered to destroy.
Lady Powlis shook her head as if she were waking up from a long nap. “Of course I don’t believe it,” she said in a rather unconvincing voice. “However, others will. And I cannot help but think that where there is smoke-”
“-there is usually a Boscastle in the vicinity,” Griffin concluded with a wry smile. “You’re the one who filled me in on the family’s notorious history.”
Her mouth pinched. “Yes. But even I did not expect history to repeat itself quite this quickly.” She regarded him with an unflinching stare. “You will find your every action closely scrutinized from now on.”
“I don’t plan to attend another social event in my life,” he retorted. “The scandalmongers will have a hard time keeping an eye on me if I hide inside the house.”
“That will only serve to heighten their curiosity. Furthermore, I shall be keeping an eye on you.”
He unfastened his riding coat, reaching over Harriet’s head to place his gloves on the hallstand. Harriet hazarded a glance at him, surprised to see a thick bundle of papers tucked inside the waistband of his trousers. Had he been buying up the gossip rags as fast as they were printed? Wicked of her, Harriet knew, but she had to smile at the thought.
Lady Powlis had calmed down considerably by the time a light dinner was served. She apologized profusely to the household staff, and to Harriet, for her bad temper. When Griffin inquired whether he was to be included in this act of grace, she scowled at him for several moments, then grazed his cheek with a grudging kiss. It did not take Harriet long to understand the reason for her employer’s lighter mood.
Miss Edlyn had come to spend the evening with them, apparently of her own volition. She was wearing yet another of her somber gray frocks. She still reminded Harriet of a lost wraith looking for a kindred spirit in a graveyard. But Edlyn took Harriet by complete surprise when, upon entering the house, she embraced not only Lady Powlis and Griffin but Harriet herself.
Lady Powlis’s eyes grew misty with emotion. “I think your brief stay at the academy has done you a world of good, my girl. We have missed you, though, I admit.”
They retired to the duke’s library after a dessert of raspberry trifle. His grace sat at his desk, sifting through his correspondences. Edlyn, dealing yet another welcome surprise, curled up on the sofa with her head resting upon Lady Powlis’s shoulder as they perused a stack of fashion magazines.
Harriet took out her beloved novel. A cozy fire burned in the grate. The duke brought a bottle of his best French brandy, pouring four glasses to offer around the intimate gathering. Harriet refused at first. As the daughter of an abusive drunk, she harbored a fear of falling prey to the lure of strong spirits. Her father became a right demon when he was soused. Still, she took a deep swallow to appear convivial and to join the duke’s toast to her ladyship’s health.
Her eyes watered as the brandy went down. Her throat burned like the blazes, and it was all she could do to catch her breath when she glanced up to discover the three others in the room watching her in mirthful expectation. Then Edlyn burst into giggles, and Harriet sputtered and started to cough, rising from her chair with her hand pressed to her throat.
“Help her, Griffin,” his aunt said, passing her glass to Edlyn.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, approaching Harriet with a grin that did little to ease her breathless embarrassment.
“Thump her on the back,” Lady Powlis insisted. But when he gave her a strong whack, Harriet only coughed all the harder and waved him away with the piece of paper she’d snatched off his desk.
A deathly hush descended upon the room. The duke-in fact, all four of them-stared down in horror at the sheet she had plucked at random from the disordered correspondence on his blotter. She could not have snatched up just any inconsequential paper. This, she soon perceived, was neither an invitation to another party nor a benign business letter from one of the solicitors who handled Griffin’s London affairs. To her shock, she appeared to have picked out one of the scandal sheets he had gathered from the streets and intended to destroy. Harriet doubted he had meant to keep it for his personal titillation. And yet, if she had not been in polite company, she might have been tempted to study the salacious print herself. Something indeed drew the eye to the illustration of an amorous couple engaged in-well, the vulgar position of their unclad forms spoke for itself. As did the caption emblazoned beneath, which read: The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife from the Gutters of St. Giles!
“I should burn this,” she said to herself, looking up inadvertently at the duke. “In fact, I shall do so right now.”
His eyes widened in warning. “I forbid you to set another room on fire, Miss Gardner. Give it back to me, if you would.”
She nodded, pretending not to notice that he carefully slipped the print into the top drawer of his desk. She wondered again if he intended to dispose of the thing or examine it during his private hours. Harriet found herself inexplicably flustered that he might derive pleasure from a depiction of their coupling. She felt, in fact, as though she could finish the rest of her brandy and not suffer any ill effects at all.
Again, oddly enough, it was Edlyn who sought to calm the storm of emotions that threatened to spoil the evening’s peace. With a tactfulness that Harriet could only attribute to the academy’s influence, Edlyn rose from the sofa and retrieved the book that had fallen from Harriet’s lap. “Is this the sort of novel that entertains you, Harriet?”
The duke looked up from his desk. “She is apparently attracted to the dark and horrible.”
“I enjoy a good fright now and then,” she admitted. “Would you like to read the book, your grace?”
“Not yet.” He paused as Edlyn returned to the sofa, leafing thoughtfully through the well-worn pages. “Perhaps I may borrow it after my niece has had the pleasure.”