When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,90

please let her know that company awaits in the family parlor.” Because Matilda was family now and should meet her prospective in-laws in as comfortable a setting as possible.

“She’s usually in the study at midday,” the maid replied. “Poring over them manuscripts. Likes to open all the draperies and sit by the fire.”

“Right, the study. My thanks.” Duncan spun on his heel and made for the study, where he should have thought to look first.

Matilda wasn’t in the study, she wasn’t in her bedroom—though her personal effects were still hanging in the wardrobe, a shamefully vast relief—and she wasn’t in Duncan’s apartment.

Hiding? Rummaging in the attics? Napping in some quiet corner because Duncan had twice interrupted her slumbers to make love with her?

“Cousin Duncan!” A high voice bellowed. “We came to see you!” Booted feet beat a rapid tattoo as a small female barreled toward Duncan.

He caught her up in his arms. “Elizabeth, a pleasure to see you.” And to hug her, and to enjoy again the little-girl reality of her.

“Am I almost grown up yet?”

“No, thank the celestial powers. You are still your delightfully five-year-old self.”

“I want to be grown up,” she said, squeezing him about the neck. “Then I can have a fine coach, and waltz, and never, never, never have to sit still in church. Cousin Stephen said I was to fetch you, or you’d be forever trying to put your old self to rights. Is this your new self?”

“What do you think?”

“You are not the same,” she said, wiggling to get down, then seizing Duncan by the hand. “You smell happier. You smell of climbing trees and making dams in the stream, not books and coal smoke, and boring old lessons. Cousin Stephen says you have a new friend.”

Bitty stopped at the top of the steps and speared Duncan with a glower. “Friends aren’t cousins. You are my cousin.”

She held up her arms and Duncan sat her on the bannister. Down she went, skirts flying, right past a startled Manners.

“Cousin Duncan, come along!” Bitty yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

“That one has a fine set of lungs,” Manners said.

“If she directs you to saddle her dragon, you will deposit her on the nearest bannister and bid her good hunting.”

“Yes, Mr. Wentworth.”

Duncan took the stairs at his usual decorous pace, but where on earth could Matilda have got off to? The niggling fear that she’d bolted had no basis in fact. She’d left her effects in her room, she’d had no reason to leave, she’d—

“Mama, I found him!” Bitty bellowed, taking hold of Duncan’s hand when he reached the bottom stair. “I told him we have come to pay a visit.”

The family parlor door opened to reveal Jane, Duchess of Walden, looking as serene and benign as a Renaissance madonna. Jane was dark-haired, on the tall side, and a mother three times over. If anything, years of marriage had gilded her beauty with humor and a certain wily tenacity that often masqueraded as graciousness.

“Jane, a pleasure.” Duncan kissed her cheek and endured a hug, Bitty still kiting around on his hand. “I hope the journey was uneventful.”

“With three children? Surely you jest. Fortunately, Elizabeth was up on the box or in the saddle with her father from time to time. She was vastly disappointed that no highwaymen presented themselves for target practice. You look well.”

Duncan felt well, but for his worry regarding Matilda. The morning’s exertions in the garden agreed with him, putting Brightwell to rights agreed with him. Spending the night with Matilda agreed with him very much.

“Thank you. I hope somebody thought to order a tea tray.”

Bitty towed him into the parlor. “I told Uncle Stephen not to be a hog with the tea cakes or you would be very disappointed in him. I am never a hog, but sometimes I am an adorable little piglet, right, Papa?”

Quinn turned, a sandwich halfway to his mouth. Still no gray in his hair—he and Duncan had something of an unspoken contest in that regard. With his free arm, he cradled an infant, who surveyed the room with the equanimity any ducal child ought to claim from birth.

“Duncan.”

“Quinn.”

They did not embrace. They had never embraced. They’d lived under the same roof for years without even speaking much. Duncan’s job had been to keep Stephen out of trouble, and he’d done that to the best of his ability. Quinn’s job had been to not make Duncan’s task more difficult. Then Jane had come along, and Quinn’s responsibilities had