When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,47
Best be on your way now. Snow’s coming.”
The tollkeeper raised the turnpike and waved to the coachman, who took up the reins. The groom clambered onto the back of the carriage, while Parker lingered, wondering what else he might have said, asked, or threatened to improve the odds of finding his intended.
“John Coachman,” he called, “pull up at the next inn we pass that caters to the wealthy.”
The coachman nodded, his hands full of a team eager to be down the road. Parker climbed into the coach, the footman closed the door, and the next instant, the team was trotting off to the west.
Parker’s past dozen stops had been fruitless, and the next dozen likely would be as well, but at a fancy coaching inn, he would doubtless find a copy of Debrett’s. With some study, he could create a list of dukes who’d died in the past ten years, and their holdings immediately to the west of London.
The list couldn’t be that long, and through diligence and determination, Parker would flush dear Matilda from her covert before she stumbled into a dire fate on her own.
* * *
For years, Duncan had told himself he wasn’t like the other Wentworths. His cousins were a noisy, bickering lot toward whom he felt a reluctant affection while maintaining a dignified distance. Long before becoming a duke, Quinn Wentworth had presided over that branch of the family like a papa lion. For the most part, he pretended an aloofness that fooled nobody. Let one of his siblings be threatened, and he roared into the affray. Where those Wentworths went, some sort of mayhem was always in progress. The cousins could be impulsive, unpredictable, bold, and self-centered. They had a morality all their own, and seldom apologized or looked back.
Duncan had spent most of his adulthood looking back, second-guessing himself, and apologizing to a woman long dead. As he crossed the parlor to join Matilda by the chess set, he was focused on the future for once, and glad of it.
“I suspect marriage to me would solve many of your problems,” he said.
“While it would compound yours.”
How much trouble could she be in, if no legal authority sought to find her? “On the contrary, Matilda, marriage would simplify my life considerably. For example, this house is a mystery to me. I’ve never lived in so grand an edifice and have no idea how one goes about managing such an establishment. Relations with the neighbors loom as equally daunting. Except for a short stint as a curate, my situation has never called for socializing in any regard. In the country, one must socialize.”
“You haven’t a cousin or sister who could be your hostess?”
Duncan sought much more than a hostess. “My lady cousins bide in the north like a pair of Valkyries. They fly down for the social Season and leave the ballrooms littered with fallen men—half the fellows smitten, half of them reeling from the worst setdowns of their pampered, arrogant lives—and half the shops in Mayfair reeling with orders.”
Matilda finished lining up the chess pieces. “These would be Lord Stephen’s sisters?”
She had the black king and the white queen paired, as they’d been on the chessboard before the game had concluded in a stalemate.
“And that brings us to another reason why I’d be well advised to marry.” He took her hand, curling her fingers in his. “My ducal cousin chose for his duchess a woman of unassailably Christian inclinations. Jane would like to see me wed.”
“I’m no saint,” Matilda said, studying their joined hands. “On the Continent, in France especially, women are permitted much more freedom than they have in England. Even here, a widow has some latitude.”
Color rose to suffuse her cheeks and even her ears. How un-saintly had Matilda been, and had she enjoyed those encounters? The unhappy curate from Duncan’s past scolded him for having such impure thoughts. The man holding Matilda Wakefield’s hand mentally told the curate to sod the hell off.
“My sense of French women,” Duncan said, “is that nobody permits them anything. They do as they please and all of French society is happier for it.”
Matilda smoothed a hand over Duncan’s lapel, and the resulting sensation somehow managed to register behind his falls.
“I did like France,” she said. “I liked a few fellows there too. French men aren’t possessive, in the usual case, unless you marry them. Then they can be a bit ridiculous. My husband was affectionate when he recalled he had a wife, but we were