When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,15
unofficially. He dealt in the gentlemanly business of procuring art, which was in truth a matter of looting the treasures of European aristocratic families left destitute by war.
“She’s not in East Anglia,” Wakefield said. “She’s not hiding out in any of the ports. She’s not in Edinburgh. I doubt she’s in Paris for I’ve too many friends there. I fear she’s gone to Boston in truth.”
This was the story they’d concocted. Matilda had seen much of Europe, but had supposedly developed a fascination with the New World. She was enjoying the hospitality of French friends who dwelled in Boston, and no date had been set for her return.
And thus no date had been set for her to wed her dashing lieutenant colonel, hero of the Battle of Colina Azul.
“I’ve sent inquiries to the American seaboard,” Parker said, rising from the table. “Your daughter agreed to marry me, and her disappearance will soon grow awkward.”
“My dear colonel,” Wakefield replied in his most patient tones, “she might well be dead, and a little awkwardness is hardly the greatest of my concerns. Perhaps if you’d been a more doting fiancé, we might not be in this coil.”
As long as the weather had been decent, Wakefield had maintained a sanguine confidence in Matilda’s self-sufficiency, perhaps too sanguine. His testiness now was reassuring, suggesting that he had not, in fact, hidden away his only offspring.
“Matilda evidenced no desire to be doted upon.” A relief, considering Parker hadn’t the least notion how to dote on anybody save perhaps his horse. One could learn to waltz from a dancing master, but from whom, especially in the army, did one learn to dote on a female?
He hadn’t regarded this shortcoming as a problem because Matilda was singularly lacking in dote-ableness.
“The self-possessed ladies,” Wakefield said, “are precisely the ones most in need of cosseting. I speak not as a diplomat, but as a man once happily married. Shall we to the chessboard?”
Ever the statesman. “I promise, when we find Matilda, I will dote, cosset, and fawn endlessly, if she’ll assure me she’s done with her adventures.”
Wakefield led the way down a paneled corridor to his study. The town house was a monument to understated good taste. Fine art was on display—a Chinese vase here, a Dutch landscape there—but without ostentatious staging. The domicile was quietly lovely, much like the lady who’d dwelled here.
“Shall you be black or white?” Wakefield asked, taking down a chess set from shelves behind his desk. “Guest’s choice.”
“Which would you choose?”
“Both have their charms.”
Matilda had learned chess at an early age, presumably from her father, and she was a devoted student of the game. Parker himself had only occasionally won a match against his affianced bride, though her game was by turns measured and erratic.
That combination of impulse and logic did not bode well for his efforts to locate her, much less before her father found her. Nonetheless, Parker would persist. This was not a battle he could afford to lose, even if that meant drastic measures where his prospective father-in-law was concerned.
* * *
The snow began to melt, and Matilda knew the time had come to take her leave of Brightwell. In less than a week, she’d made little progress organizing the shipwreck that was Mr. Wentworth’s estate office, another regret added to the many she already carried.
The difficulty lay in his journals, which were by turns keenly insightful, jocular, philosophical, and compassionate. He of the brisk pragmatism, resented acres, and half-empty house had created that most tempting of lures, good literature.
Though Mr. Wentworth’s penmanship truly was atrocious. This, oddly, made him less objectionable in Matilda’s estimation.
“I intrude only to ensure you haven’t perished beneath a mountain of books or been tripped by the feline demons haunting my realm.”
Matilda peeled Mr. Wentworth’s spectacles from her nose, for there he stood in the doorway, letting out all the warmth and looking unexpectedly dear. He lacked charm, he wasn’t genial, he had little in the way of witty banter, but he’d shown her more honor and decency in a week than she’d encountered in the previous four months.
“Please close the door, sir.” Had she been so engrossed in the wonders of Tuscany in summer that she’d not heard him knock?
He obliged but remained across the room. “That fellow you mentioned from the fairy tale must have dropped by, the one who brings order to chaos in exchange for a squalling infant.”
Mr. Wentworth had missed supper the past two nights. From what Mrs. Newbury had said—and left