Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,104

she said, what a prick for a maid!

Do, pray, come look at it, Cary !

But I will have one drive, if I’m ripped up alive,

By the great Plenipotentiary.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Hyacinth said.

“That’s probably for the best,” Cassandra said. “I had better let him know I’m in safely.”

She opened the window and stepped out onto the narrow balcony. “Stop your noise,” she called, “or I’ll summon a constable.”

He looked up at her and waved the bottle.

“Yes, yes, you’ve delighted us for long enough,” she said. “Go serenade someone else.”

He laughed and let go of the lamppost. Moving into the shadows, he made an elaborate bow, then staggered into King Street and out of sight.

After walking about the neighborhood for nearly an hour in a misery of indecision, Mr. Owsley at last returned to his rooms. There he wrote a short note to Lady Bartham, asking to meet with her on a highly confidential matter.

Accordingly, Saturday morning found the pair in St. James’s churchyard, where the only possible eavesdroppers were belowground.

Mr. Owsley was sobbing. “I thought I had found my partner for my life’s journey, but she has thrown herself away—”

“You’re absolutely certain it was Miss Pomfret?” Lady Bartham said. Another woman might have sobbed, too, in frustration, but she was made of more obdurate material. “You stood at a distance, on a dark night. So easy to be confused.”

“It was she. I should know her voice anywhere. And once I heard the voice, I understood why he—she—had seemed familiar. It was she, beyond a doubt, though she contrived somehow to walk in the manner of a man.”

“You had had a shock.”

“Not enough to blind my senses. Certainly I tried to make myself believe it wasn’t she. But that became impossible. There is no mistaking her, particularly her voice. A feminine version of her father’s.”

“Her father. Ah, yes.”

Her ladyship had discovered only last night that Humphrey would not be traveling with the Duke of Ashmont after all, because he’d had a note from Lord deGriffith appointing to meet with him today.

“He might have a place for me,” Humphrey had announced, to his father’s great astonishment. While Lord and Lady Bartham loved their children, they had never regarded Humphrey as one likely to rise in the world, let alone one to be taken under Lord deGriffith’s wing.

“I can scarcely believe it,” he’d said. “But it seems I’ve made a good impression, although I can’t say how, exactly. I rather suspect Miss Hyacinth had something to do with that, although again, my mind can’t take it in, quite. Me, of all fellows. But she has been so kind.” Thence he’d launched into a rambling speech about her numerous perfections.

This made no sense to Lady Bartham. Hundreds of men sighing after her and Hyacinth Pomfret chose Humphrey? Not a troublesome son, by any means—his two older brothers were more of a trial—and not unattractive. But even Lady Bartham would not go so far as to call him dashing. Or in any way exceptional. A third son! Her son.

Bartham, naturally, had been delighted. This spared his having to stir himself on Humphrey’s behalf. He had his hands more than full with the elder two.

Lady Bartham was not delighted. It did not take her long to discern whose hand was behind this. After she’d visited deGriffith House yesterday, Lady deGriffith must have gone straight to her husband and used her wiles on him, to keep Humphrey dangling after Hyacinth. As though the girl needed more suitors!

That was it. Not the girl, but her manipulative mother.

While she boiled with outrage inwardly, the countess was all concern and sympathy outwardly. She only glanced now and then at the crumbling headstones and thought about what an agreeable world she’d live in, if only certain persons might soon lie beneath them.

“You upset yourself needlessly,” she told Owsley.

“Needlessly! She’s ruined! Beyond the pale.”

“That I strongly doubt. Miss Pomfret has hoydenish tendencies, as you well know. She only went to his house to stop him from leaving London. It is the sort of reckless thing she’d do. Once there, she persuaded him not to leave. This is simpler than you’d think. She need only give him a taste of what he might hope for if he stayed and married her. Minor favors, no more. But if you are too fainthearted to take her in hand—”

“A soiled dove!”

Lady Bartham sighed mentally. Men could be so tiresome. They might do as they pleased in that way, but their brides must be virgins. As