Least Likely to Marry a Duke Read online

  ‘I marked it,’ Althea said. ‘I tore a scrap of paper from my notebook and dropped it at every turn.’

  ‘Very clever, Althea.’ The Duke gave her an approving nod and received a brilliant smile in return. ‘But pick up all the paper as you go.’

  They filed out obediently, then there was a yelp from Basil and the sound of running feet.

  Verity suppressed a snort of laughter and sat down on the bench. ‘I suspect your sisters are taking their revenge on Lord Basil. Shall we sit for a moment? That will allow them to get clear of the maze, then you will not have to see anything requiring a reproof.’

  ‘They must feel I spend my entire time reproving them.’ The Duke sat down heavily on the veranda steps.

  ‘You love them and want the best for them. And they know that.’

  ‘Do you believe so?’ For a moment she thought he was going to lean back against the supporting post, but he recollected himself in time. Doubtless sitting on the steps was quite casual enough for his dignity.

  ‘That you love them? That is obvious.’ And, surprisingly, she realised it was true. ‘That they know it I can tell from the way they respond to you. They do not sulk or send you unpleasant looks when your back is turned. Are the younger three as intelligent as these?’

  ‘They are bright,’ he agreed, as though reassuring himself. ‘And, yes, the others are as intelligent. They all were,’ the Duke added, his voice so soft that she thought he was speaking to himself.

  Verity guessed she had not been intended to hear those last three words, but she answered the pain in his voice anyway. ‘There were others?’

  ‘Just one. My eldest half-sister, Arabella. She would be seventeen this year. She died just before my grandfather took me to live with him.’

  ‘An illness?’ He had fallen silent. Verity suspected he wanted to talk, but was simply unused to speaking to anyone about such an emotional subject. Or perhaps did not think such revelations proper.

  ‘It was a virulent fever. It is not something that we speak of in case it distresses the children.’

  You cannot admit that it distresses you, of course.

  ‘You may be assured that I do not repeat confidences, Your Grace,’ she said as she got to her feet. ‘Perhaps we should be making our way back.’

  ‘Indeed. We should return to the sunshine or you will become chilled,’ he said as they began to wind their way back to the entrance.

  The Duke seemed happier reverting to his starched-up self, she thought. A pity—she had almost liked the man who had confessed to his anxieties over his siblings, had allowed a little humour to touch him.

  ‘Is the Bishop fit enough to travel a short distance?’ he asked as they emerged into the sunshine and Verity waved across the garden to where her father sat with Mr Hoskins. ‘Might I hope he will be able to return my call? I would be pleased to entertain him at Stane Hall.’

  ‘On a good day, certainly. He usually drives to church every Sunday and the Hall is only a short distance beyond that. His health is not entirely predictable, however. I would not want to commit him to any specific day long in advance.’

  ‘You must be congratulated on your daughterly devotion in keeping house for your father. His indisposition, coming as it did, I believe, at a time when you must have been making your come-out, would have been most difficult for you.’

  Verity opened her mouth and closed it again with a snap. Dukes, presumably, thought themselves as entitled as archbishops to make pompous personal observations. A lack of response, she hoped, would choke him off.

  ‘It is an uplifting example of daughterly duty and devotion to see you sacrificing your own hopes of marriage in this way,’ he continued, finally finding something about her he approved of, it seemed.

  Apparently silence was not a strong enough hint. ‘I had no particular hopes, as you put it, at the time of my father’s seizure and I am most certainly not sacrificing anything.’ By the time her father had suffered his stroke her heart had been broken, her hopes betrayed. ‘So many women are yoked in marriage and lose all their freedoms by it. I fully intend to retain mine, Your Grace.’ Her head told her that marriage was too great a gamble and she had proved to herself that her judgement of men was so faulty that she could not trust her heart.

  ‘Do I understand that you do not approve of marriage?’ The Duke’s tone now was as frosty as she had made hers.

  ‘It seems to me an excellent way of perpetuating the human race in an orderly manner. It provides for the civilised upbringing of children and shelters the elderly. It certainly contributes greatly to the comfort of men. It is unfortunate that all of this is so often achieved by the sacrifices of the woman concerned.’

  ‘Sacrifices? A lady is protected and maintained by marriage. Her status is usually enhanced.’

  ‘And in return a woman loses all freedom, all control of her own money and lands, all autonomy. She becomes utterly subject to the wishes and whims of her husband. I love my father, and will always care for him, but beyond that, I live my life as an independent woman, Your Grace.’

  ‘None of us is independent, Miss Wingate. Freedom is an illusion. Ladies are restricted by their natural delicacy, gentlemen by their duties and obligations.’

  ‘Some of us have more freedom than others, it is true,’ she said.

  Natural delicacy, my hat! The temptation to say something very indelicate indeed was great, but she controlled it.

  ‘A duke has a great deal, a married woman very little. I have the privilege of birth and prosperity and I am fully aware that if I were the daughter of an agricultural labourer or a weaver as disabled as my father is now, my life would hold very little freedom. My delicacy, as you put it, would have to be disregarded. I am fortunate and I do not intend to throw away that good fortune simply because social pressure dictates that I should be married.’

  The words, And who would be foolish enough to ask you, with that attitude? were almost audible, she thought.

  The Duke closed his lips on them. That clearly caused him a struggle because it was a moment before he spoke. ‘I trust that you find the freedoms are worth the sacrifice, Miss Wingate. I see that the children have extricated themselves from the maze. I must bid the Bishop good day and remove them before they disturb his peace any further. Thank you for a most delightful afternoon.’

  Liar, Verity thought, as she walked with him towards her father’s seat. He thoroughly disapproves of me and he is clearly regretting those indiscreet confidences in the maze. He never intended to make them so he will like me the less for that.

  She kept a smile on her lips as she showed the party out, but it took several minutes pacing up and down the hallway before she could recover it sufficiently to go out to her father. It was a shock to find herself so upset at the unspoken disapproval. She did not like the man, so why should it matter what he thought of her?

  ‘What did you think of our new neighbour, Papa?’ She exchanged a quick glance with the Chaplain over the Bishop’s head and he nodded encouragingly. Her father was not overtired, it seemed.

  ‘A fine figure of a man,’ Mr Hoskins translated as her father’s hands moved. ‘A considerable asset to the neighbourhood. He has suffered two bereavements in a short time and finds himself with many responsibilities in addition to acquiring the care of six younger siblings. I feel confident that he will rise to the challenge.’

  Her father nodded and mouthed, Most impressed.

  ‘And what do you think, Mr Hoskins?’ It was too easy to forget that the man had opinions and a voice of his own and she always tried to bring him into the conversation in his own right.

  ‘His Grace’s reputation does not lie. He seems a perfect paradigm of what a nobleman should be. One cannot envy him the responsibility of so many brothers and sisters as well as having to assume the burden of his great rank at so young an age.’

  ‘He m
ust be twenty-seven and he behaves as though he is fifty-seven,’ she muttered.

  Her father was speaking again. ‘Charming children. Intelligent and lively.’

  ‘Yes.’ She could agree with that. A pity their half-brother did not have the natural charm to match theirs—or his own looks and breeding.

  ‘There will be quite a fluttering in the dovecotes when all the hopeful mamas in the district realise what an eligible bachelor has landed in our midst,’ Mr Hoskins said, then bit his lip and gave her father an apologetic look. ‘Most frivolous of me to consider such a thing. And, of course, the poor man is in mourning.’

  Her father chuckled and moved his hands slowly enough for Verity to translate. ‘He will not be in mourning forever and there is nothing to stop him looking in the meantime. You never know, he might find a young lady he likes in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Papa, really.’ There was a twinkle in his eyes as he looked at her.

  You are not going to try matchmaking on my behalf. Not with that man. Or any man.

  But of course there was no danger of the Duke taking an interest in her, however much her father might wish it. She had shocked him with her outspoken views on marriage on top of demonstrating that she was an antiquarian hoyden who attacked upstanding aristocrats with mouldering skulls. Miss Verity Wingate was the last woman the Duke of Aylsham would want as a wife.

  * * *

  ‘I like her, she has a nice smile and she isn’t stuffy. Are you going to marry her, Will?’ Basil sat on the carriage seat opposite him and cocked his head to one side like a particularly nosy, and somewhat scruffy, sparrow.

  ‘Do not refer to a lady as her, Basil. And do not ask intrusive personal questions. I am most certainly not going to marry Miss Wingate.’

  Beside him his sisters sighed loudly. ‘But why not?’ Araminta demanded. ‘Miss Wingate is nice. And pretty and she is right next door, which is very convenient.’

  ‘Do I need to remind you that we are all in mourning? I cannot consider courtship until a year has passed from my grandfather’s death.’ He could well believe that they had no clear concept of the formalities of mourning because they did not even have the colour of their clothing to remind them. Their mother had put her foot down and refused point-blank to allow her daughters to be dressed in black, or even grey or lilac, on the grounds that it would depress their spirits. Will had pointed out that their spirits were supposed to be depressed during the mourning period and she had told him that he was cold and unfeeling.

  On the other hand, the children were mourning their father in their own ways, he supposed. Sometimes he came across the girls with suspiciously red eyes and Basil’s more outrageous feats might be a way of distracting himself from painful memories. He had an uneasy suspicion that their upbringing had given them a different, more natural, way of dealing with their emotions than was suitable for him.

  ‘How stuffy of you, Will,’ Althea said. ‘Being sad about Papa doesn’t alter the fact that you need a wife because of us. I overheard Miss Preston tell Mr Catford that your life would be so much easier if you had a duchess.’

  ‘Eavesdropping is unbecoming to a person of gentility, Althea,’ Will said automatically. Miss Preston was quite correct: life would be much easier with a wife by his side. And in my bed, a wicked little voice whispered in the back of his mind, prompting his imagination to present him with an image of Miss Wingate rising naked and dripping from the fountain pool. ‘We will not mention the subject again.’

  And you can stop it, he snarled at his own imagination as he crossed his legs. She is a hoyden, a bluestocking, an unnatural female opposed to marriage. Utterly unsuitable.

  It was bad enough having his stepmother inhabiting the Dower House and infecting the children with her madcap ideas. An unconventional duchess was the last thing he needed.

  ‘And the Bishop is nice, too,’ Araminta pronounced. ‘I like him. He’s got kind eyes and he talks with his hands and I’m sure he enjoys having visitors. I shall call on him again.’

  ‘He will come to us if he is well enough.’ Will tried not to contemplate his siblings descending uninvited and unsupervised on the Old Palace in order to observe the Bishop, or to try to enliven his routine. ‘It is not proper to call again until one has received a return visit. Now, tell me what you each learned in your last lesson.’

  That, as he might have expected, was greeted by a collective heavy sigh. Will refrained from joining in and reminded himself that no one had ever said that being a duke was easy.

  ‘Will,’ Basil piped up. ‘What have you done with your cane?’

  * * *

  ‘Who was that man and all those children?’ Melissa demanded as Verity closed the door and leaned back against it.

  ‘There were only three of them and they are sixteen and fourteen so hardly children, although I agree, they do manage to inhabit the space of about twelve.’ She pushed away from the door and went to flop, in an unladylike manner, into the nearest chair. An hour of the Duke was more than enough. ‘I am sorry if you were disturbed.’

  ‘We weren’t,’ Melissa assured her. ‘I was pacing up and down seeking inspiration for a truly horrid haunting and saw them out of the window. We had heard the young people earlier, of course, but who is ever disturbed by the sound of happiness?’

  ‘Very true.’ Prue peered over the top of her Greek grammar. She was lying full length on a bench, propped up on one elbow and naked except for a strategic length of muslin. ‘But you look exhausted, Verity. Come and sit down and have a drink. Bosham brought us some lemonade earlier, before we’d started.’

  As far as the staff and anyone else was concerned—including, most especially, the parents of her friends—they came to the Old Palace three times a week to form a reading circle.

  If their parents assumed this was a group studying religious tracts, sermons and uplifting works while sewing for the poor, then that, Verity considered, was entirely due to their own imaginations. No one had ever exactly described the nature of their meetings and they certainly all read at some point during those afternoons. Lucy Lambert read music, Melissa Taverner read over her work so far because she did not dare take it home with her, Prudence Scott read textbooks and Jane Newnham, the artist among them, read books on the theory of perspective and colour or the lives of great painters. At the moment she was creating a set of studies of Greek muses, using her friends as models. Verity could not recall which muse represented literature, but Prue and her grammar book made a good enough representation.

  Verity flitted between antiquarian papers, Gothic novels, her large embroidery stand where she was creating a tapestry of the fall of Lucifer in vivid colour, books on gardening and a wide drawing table where she was plotting the results of her excavations on the mounds. At the moment the skull perched on top of her notes like a bizarre paperweight, staring blankly at Prue’s exposed curves.

  The tower chamber was situated over her ground-floor sitting room and bedchamber and the maids came in once a week to clean. When they did all traces of her friends’ work was locked safely away in cupboards.

  There would, as Melissa said, be hell to pay if her father, the local squire, discovered she was reading novels, let alone writing them. He was set and determined on marrying her off well. The other parents were as determined to present perfect, conformable, young ladies to the Marriage Mart and were growing increasingly impatient as their daughters—all aged twenty-three—remained unwed and perilously close to being on the shelf.

  When the Wingates had settled permanently at the Old Palace, Verity had made friends fast, but it had taken a month or so before she discovered the secret yearnings and ambitions of the four who became closest to her. Giving them a safe sanctuary to exercise their interests and talents fitted in well with the way she was living her own life, but she worried about what would happen to them. Sooner or later their parents were going to insist on arranging
marriages and, unlike her, clearly remaining unwed to care for her father, the others had no excuse and would have to obey.

  What her friends needed were liberal-minded gentlemen who would fall in love with them for their own sake, but where they were to find them in the limited society of rural Dorset, she had no idea. What would happen was that their fathers would decide on the most advantageous match among the gentry of the county and put pressure their daughters until they agreed.

  And the problem was, they would all give in eventually, even if they did manage to hold out against the worst of the crop.

  Then it struck her—none of the local gentry offered the slightest competition to a duke. No hopeful mama was going to settle for a mere esquire or baronet, or even the heir of a retired nabob or admiral, if there was the faintest chance her daughter might catch the eye of one of the foremost noblemen in the land.

  She looked round at her friends and saw they were all waiting, with various degrees of patience, for her to tell them who the man with the children had been.

  ‘That man was the Duke of Aylsham,’ she announced. ‘He would thoroughly disapprove of us, but he is going to buy us almost a year of freedom.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘That was the Duke? Do you mean he is staying?’ Lucy was the first to gather her wits. She lifted her hands from the keyboard where she had been quietly improvising. ‘Mama said that she had heard that he had come to settle his stepmother at the Dower House and would be going back to Oulton Castle.’

  ‘No. Lady Bromhill is certainly living at the Dower House but the Duke has moved into Stane Hall with his six half-brothers and -sisters and, I believe, intends to stay, at least for the mourning period.’

  ‘Oh.’ Melissa’s face fell. ‘I had forgotten that the family is in mourning. I had been imagining balls and parties... Mama will be devastated when she finds he will be here, but not socialising. I cannot understand how his presence is going to be of any help to us.’