Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,61
from it.”
“I’m not at all sure anything can be done. My niece is adamant. As to my brother, I doubt very much he’ll see the humor in it.”
“I tell myself that this is what Ashmont needs,” Lord Frederick said. “Difficulty. Disappointment. A shock to his damned conceit. Being forced to exercise his brain. But I fear he’s gone too far down the wrong road to find his way back. He’s never faced obstacles to getting what he wants. One doesn’t learn that way.”
“But he appears to have learnt something in recent days.”
Lord Frederick looked at her.
“The business in Putney,” she said. “Something changed. I wondered whether it had to do with his duel with Ripley.”
“He was unusually subdued when he came to my house.”
She nodded. “When he had a problem that truly mattered to him, he turned to you, and he did what you recommended. I don’t doubt he would have kept away from London, as you suggested, for a longer time, had my niece not summoned him.”
“Interesting that she did.”
“She knows. In her heart of hearts, she must know.”
“We do not always know what is in that place, Lady Charles. It is too often obscured to us.”
She glanced at him briefly. “I shall be the first to admit that matters at present do not strike me as propitious. On the other hand, I see more progress than I should have imagined, in my wildest dreams, not a month ago.”
He turned his gaze away from her, and smiled a very little. “Do you know, Lady Charles, I find myself wondering what, precisely, takes place in your wildest dreams.”
Think, Ashmont, think.
Miss Pomfret’s brain was large. Clearly it enjoyed more exercise than his did. He was going to have to work like the devil to keep up.
She didn’t trust him. Even when promised an army of lawyers to shield her from his disgraceful and evidently still disgusting self, she wouldn’t take the risk.
And this woman was fearless! He’d witnessed it how many times in the few weeks since he’d nearly killed her on Putney Heath?
Trust. Trust. How did one make trust? Five thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight points from now, but he hadn’t time. He hated her plan. It was devised precisely for her to be rid of him. Once she did that, he hadn’t the slightest doubt she’d never come back.
She wasn’t the sort to play coquette. She hadn’t a coy or missish bone in her body. She was more straightforward than most men he knew. Laid all her cards on the table.
I don’t trust you. The thought . . . fills me with horror . . . Children.
Respect. Esteem. Love.
Love. Her sister. She loved her sister. What was it Keeffe had said about Lord deGriffith’s rule?
Cut her up something bad.
Ashmont thought and thought some more. About her sister. About what he’d discovered this afternoon.
“Very well,” he said.
“You agree with my plan?”
“I don’t agree, but I’ll do it.”
He saw no alternative. On the other hand, he also saw a chance, a fighting chance.
He’d do as she wanted. He wouldn’t be pretending, though.
Chapter 10
Though the Duke of Ashmont had nothing to do with Parliament, he had an idea of Lord deGriffith’s fearsome reputation, thanks to Morris. Not that the gentleman’s personality was hard to decipher. For one thing, he couldn’t have been more unlike Lady Olympia’s easygoing father.
Lord deGriffith had a way of gazing straight through a fellow and making him feel like a worm, even when the fellow hadn’t done anything wormlike yet.
He didn’t approve of Ashmont, to put it mildly. His lordship had made that clear enough when Ashmont arrived to collect Miss Pomfret.
And so, considering the duke’s reputation, there was no question that Lord deGriffith would be at home, awaiting her return. Possibly with pistol or sword at the ready.
Now, seeing the group ushered into his house, he wasn’t likely to feel friendlier.
There was Miss Pomfret looking, despite Ashmont’s efforts with her dress, as though she’d been caught in a windstorm. There was Uncle Fred. There was Lady Charles.
Even a less astute gentleman would conclude that Something Had Happened. Furthermore, everybody knew that, where Ashmont was concerned, the things that happened were all too often in the nature of a cataclysm.
And so, after the first, stiffly courteous greetings were over, when Ashmont asked to speak privately to Lord deGriffith, he wasn’t surprised at the temperature’s dropping further while thunderclouds gathered overhead.
Leaving his lady to entertain the company in the drawing room, Lord deGriffith invited Ashmont to take a turn