The Golden Lord

The physician’s frown deepened, as if to prove the gentleman’s words true. “She still does not appear to know her name or any details of her situation, Your Grace.”

Jenny gasped. “You—you are the Duke of Strachen?”

“Ah, Gristead, mark how she does know what’s important!” exclaimed the gentleman she now realized must be the very duke himself, his gaze still so intent on Jenny that she felt her pale cheeks warm. “You should know who I am because I told you myself, there under the trees this morning.”

Her flush deepened. Already she’d misstepped, and all she’d spoken was a single sentence to the duke. The duke. How had this man become a duke, anyway? Oh, her head still hurt far too much for sorting out puzzles like this one! Dukes were supposed to be old and gray and dozing in their places in the House of Lords. They weren’t supposed to be young and appallingly handsome and wear dashing silk waistcoats with Chinese dragons.

“I wish to thank you for your largesse, Your Grace,” she said finally with a wan smile. “Largesse” was one of those words that Rob always made sure to use: it was fulsomely French, and sounded much more impressive and flattering to the largesse’s possessor. “You have been most kind to me, and I promise not to take advantage of your hospitality any longer than is necessary.”

“You shall remain here at Claremont Hall as long as is necessary,” he declared with a lordly sweep of his hand. “You’ll stay until you are quite recovered or your friends or family have fetched you away.”

“Or until you tire of me, Your Grace.” She sighed sadly, taking her hands away from her forehead to better display her bruise—which, if it looked even half as hideous as it felt, would be an undeniable way to prove she’d no business going anywhere. “I won’t burden you, Your Grace. I’ll leave myself rather than do that. I’m not your prisoner, and you can’t keep me here against my will.”

Most gentlemen—especially the gentleman she remembered rescuing her this morning—would have made a gallant protest against her even considering leaving, but not this duke.

“You’re not my prisoner, sweetheart, no,” he said evenly, his expression not changing even a fraction. “But since you met your misfortune on my land, you are my responsibility, until someone else comes forward to claim it, and you.”

“But to be a mere tedious responsibility!” She sighed dramatically. She hoped he wasn’t truly as chilly and arrogant as he seemed. Chilly gentlemen were never generous, and again she wondered sadly what had become of the kind gentleman with the dogs.

“Tell me for yourself, Your Grace,” she continued, striving to sound pitiable enough to rekindle that well-hidden kindness. “How should you like being deemed no more than a charitable obligation?”

“Consider before you speak to His Grace, young woman!” scolded the physician, his brows bristling severely beneath the front of his wig. “You are unwell, true, but that is no excuse for such…such familiarity. His Grace would be perfectly within his rights to send you to the almshouse!”

But the duke himself did not seem to agree. Instead, for the first time, his smile seemed genuinely amused as he studied her with new interest—interest enough that Jenny felt her cheeks blushing all over again.

“Oh, don’t frighten the lady, Gristead,” he said softly. “And you don’t listen to him, Miss—Miss—now whatever am I to call you if we don’t know who you are?”

“But indeed we do know her name, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Lowe, eager to help. “This was tucked in her shift when we undressed her earlier.”

Jenny let out a little sigh of relief as the attention shifted away from her, even if only for a moment. The woman was holding a folded handkerchief out to the duke, and she’d turned it so the letters stitched in red thread in one corner were neatly facing toward him for his convenience. But the duke was far too important to bother to read the name for himself, brushing the handkerchief back toward the housekeeper with an impatient flick of his hand as he looked once again at Jenny.

“Tell us all, Mrs. Lowe,” he said with that same smile seemingly for Jenny alone, as if the request were more of a secret jest between the two of them. “Enlighten us as to the lady’s name.”

“Corinthia, Your Grace,” volunteered Mrs. Lowe promptly. “It’s stitched right there, plain as can be. A lady’s name on a lady’s handkerchief. It’s next to new, likely from her having so many of the same, the way ladies do. You can see how fine the linen is, Your Grace, and this lace trimming—that’s the kind the French nuns used to make in the convents over there, what can’t be bought now for love or coin.”

“All that knowledge from a single scrap of linen, Mrs. Lowe?” The duke studied the handkerchief and shook his head with wry amazement. “I must take care with my own belongings, lest you begin spinning tales about my cravats. But if ‘Corinthia’ marks her linen, then Corinthia her name must be. Would you agree, Miss Corinthia?”

“I—I suppose it must be so, Your Grace,” said Jenny, marveling at how much the housekeeper had concluded from the single handkerchief. None of it was right, of course, but every wrong guess helped build her credibility as a true-born lady. “My name must be Corinthia.”

“It’s a start, Miss Corinthia,” said the duke as he idly smoothed the ruffled cuff on his shirt. “Or perhaps I should rather address you as Lady Corinthia, the way Mrs. Lowe so desperately desires?”

“The given name is sufficient to begin inquiries, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Lowe firmly. “Discreetly, so as not to upset her family any further. Although a lady’s name must not be made common, surely there cannot be too many Corinthias gone missing in Sussex last night.”

“That would be most kind of you, Your Grace,” murmured Jenny. To the best of her knowledge, there hadn’t been any Corinthias gone missing last night, but Mrs. Lowe’s discreet inquiries would serve to let Rob know where she was, and that she was safe. For that matter, she wished she knew if and how he’d escaped the jealous grenadier, and as she thought of her brother, the sum of her family, she felt a single and quite genuine tear slide down her cheek to splat upon the sheet.

“There now, Your Grace, you’ve made her unhappy,” said Mrs. Lowe, reaching over to blot away the tear with Corinthia’s handkerchief. “The poor creature might not be able to recall her home or family, but she still can pine for them.”

Not that the duke cared.

“Tell me, Miss Corinthia,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“You cannot, Your Grace!” sputtered Gristead indignantly before Jenny could answer. “Given this young woman’s perilous condition, it is not wise for her even to consider eating!”

“And I say it is unwise for her not to,” said the duke with the easy assurance of someone accustomed to always having his own way. “Especially when I’m so hungry myself. Mrs. Lowe, have a table brought, so I might dine in here with the lady. What would you like, Miss Corinthia?”

“Tea, if you please,” she said, realizing she was in fact very hungry, indeed. “And toast, with jam, if that is possible.”

“Anything is possible at Claremont Hall,” declared the duke. “You’ve only to ask. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Lowe?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” said the housekeeper, already backing from the room to begin fulfilling his orders.

“But, Your Grace,” protested the physician again, his chins quivering over the top of his neckcloth. “The young woman is my patient and—”

“Clearly she is out of danger, Gristead,” answered the duke, “and I’m sure you have other patients to see, as well. You can be sure we shall send for you if there is any change.”

After such an obvious dismissal, Gristead could only bow a red-faced farewell and follow the housekeeper from the room.

And leave Jenny alone with the duke.

“So,” he said, pulling a chair closer to the bed. “Here we are, Miss Corinthia.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said softly. “Here we are, indeed.”

Indeed, indeed, she thought glumly. It wasn’t just the setting, or the fact that they were alone together, for her unconventional life often tossed her in and out of riskier situations than this. No, what worried her now was how she’d become so acutely aware of the man beside her, of each gesture and word he made. Every detail of him fascinated her, from the way his light hair slipped across his forehead, to the small wavy scar along his jaw, to how his fingers rested lightly on the arm of the chair. He hadn’t so much as hinted at touching her, yet still her heart was racing and her palms were damp, merely from being here with him, and that—that was what put her at such risk and made her feel so uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“You are improved, aren’t you?” he asked with concern, misreading her silence. “I can call Gristead back if you need him.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace,” she said quickly. “I am much better, truly.”

“I’m glad.” He leaned back in the chair with his legs stretched comfortably before him, his elbows on the arms of the chair and his fingertips pressed lightly together in a little tent over the red waistcoat. “But you’re anxious about being here alone with me, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.” She smiled, ordering herself to put aside her giddiness and concentrate, concentrate. If she didn’t, she could very well find herself in that county almshouse or even the gaol. “My position is not an enviable one, Your Grace. I’ve no sense of who I am, my head aches abominably, and I am undressed and lying in a strange bed, unchaperoned, with a strange man beside me. Isn’t that just cause for anxiety?”

He grinned, clearly pleased by her answer in ways she hadn’t intended. “Not if you trust me as a gentleman.”

“Which is exactly what I keep telling myself, Your Grace.” She slid her shoulders up higher against the pillows until she was almost sitting, being sure to keep the sheets tucked modestly under her arms. “You are a gentleman, a great lord, a man of honor and integrity, and therefore worthy of my trust. Besides, if you’d wished to take advantage of my position, you would have done so already.”

“Ha,” he said, still smiling. “That doesn’t sound like you trust me at all.”

“But I do,” she insisted, though there was something to his smile that warned her against trusting him at all. “I must. What other choice do I have, being that I’m a charitable obligation?”

“I thought we’d already agreed that you were my guest,” he said. He swept his arm through the air, encompassing the entire room. “A lowly charitable obligation would not be put into a bedchamber such as this. My guests, however, are.”

She seized on that. “Have you many guests, Your Grace?”

“Almost none,” he said with a careless shrug. “My brothers, their wives and children. That’s all.”

“All?” she asked, surprised. Most people with grand houses in the country entertained an unending stream of guests for their own amusement as well as for hospitality’s sake. “I should think a lord like you would have an enormous acquaintance!”

“Oh, I do,” he said easily. “But I prefer to see them in London, where they are more manageable and less demanding. I would rather keep Claremont Hall just for me, not them. Here I must please only myself.”

It was very hard for Jenny to imagine a gentleman as elegant as this one living alone among the Sussex fields as a veritable hermit. “Then you must be the prize of every squire’s daughter in the county.”

He grimaced. “Which is precisely why I avoid all contact with the local gentry. I’m certain my neighbors judge me the worst kind of inhospitable recluse and spoilsport. I don’t care. I have more than my fill of society when I am in London.”

Jenny’s smile widened, this time with unabashed relief. She couldn’t begin to guess how far Claremont Hall was from the inn she and Rob had fled in Bamfleigh, or from poor, abandoned Sir Wallace and his library, either. But if the duke didn’t believe in speaking to his country neighbors, then she should be safe enough here, hiding in plain—or rather, grand—sight.

“You are amused that I am a recluse?” he asked dryly.

“No, Your Grace,” she said, twisting the end of one of her braids through her fingers. “I simply do not believe it.”

She meant it as lighthearted teasing to relieve the tension between them, no more, but he didn’t laugh the way she’d expected. Far from it.

“No?” he asked, the edge to his voice a warning that made no sense. “Would you rather believe my interest in this estate is mere country playacting, like the French queen with her beribboned dairy cows before the Bastille fell?”

“No, no,” she answered quickly. She didn’t want to offend him, especially over something as foolish as this. “I only meant that no matter how much any of us pretends to be someone else, in the end we always are what we are.”

“Ah.” For whatever reason, he relaxed. “Then you are a fatalist? You believe that we can never change from what we’re born? That our destiny remains always the same, with no hope of growth or improvement?”

“No, no, no!” She shook her head, then winced and pressed her fingers to the bruise again. “It’s not so complicated as that, Your Grace. I only meant that no matter how many changes you may make for the world to see, you are still at heart, or in your soul, the same creature you were born. That’s all.”

He nodded solemnly. “Then you are a fatalist, if that’s what you believe.”

“That’s what I know,” she said with conviction. She did believe it, too. How could she not, when so much of her life was unabashed deception? If she didn’t believe in herself—Miss Jenny Dell!—independent of whatever new identity Rob had concocted for her, why, then, she’d have nothing at all. “But you don’t agree, do you?”

“On some days I would,” he said lightly, “and other days I wouldn’t. Look, here’s our dinner at last.”

Mrs. Lowe reappeared, leading a little parade of servants. Two footmen came first, carrying a narrow dining table already set with a pressed cloth, followed by more footmen and maidservants bearing cutlery, candlesticks, napkins, even a porcelain bowl full of pink and white flowers, as well as a silver tea service and several covered dishes, each fragrant with wisps of steam.

The table was placed between Jenny’s bed and the duke’s chair, and as one of the footmen lit additional candles, she was able to see more of the details of how well His Grace treated his infrequent guests. She made such appraisals automatically, almost without thinking, for her father had trained both her and Rob in how much such niceties could reveal about their owners’ personalities as well as the depth of their fortunes.

The bedchamber was large and square in the old-fashioned way of country houses, but the furnishings were in the latest London style, delicate and airy, fit for any fine lady. So was the table being set before her: costly new porcelain rimmed with gold, damask linens so spotless she doubted they’d ever been used, and double-weight sterling for the spoons and forks, also so new that the ducal crest engraved upon each one was still crisp and sharp.

In fact, to Jenny’s surprise, everything seemed new. In her experience, titled folk tended to surround themselves with ancient bric-a-brac and gewgaws that had been in their family since at least the days of the Conqueror, another way they separated themselves from jumped-up merchants and mill owners. She’d never expected to see so much that was fresh from the shops in the house of a peer.

But because of the quality of these belongings, new or old, Jenny could come to a most cheerful conclusion: that the handsome Duke of Strachen must be rich as Creoseus, and, even better, that he didn’t mind spending the fortune he so obviously had.

Yet at once she reached a second conclusion, less cheerful, more startling, and terribly disloyal to Rob. As pleasing as her brother would find the duke’s title and wealth, she herself would selfishly trade it all for the return of the smiling country gentleman and his two black dogs.

Clearly the bruise to her head must be more serious than it felt.

“Here you are, miss,” said Mrs. Lowe, plumping Jenny’s pillows herself. One maidservant poured her tea and handed her the cup, while another solemnly buttered triangles of toast and spread strawberry jam exactly to the crusts. The duke’s fare was considerably more substantial, and while Jenny’s toast and tea were just what she’d asked for, she still looked longingly at his dinner: a ragoo of oysters, veal Florentine, roasted artichokes and forced mushrooms, with the wines to go with it all.

Yet though everything was perfectly presented, the servants did not remain to attend while she and the duke dined, the way servants in most such households did, but once again left them alone together. Had this been pre-arranged for her sake, wondered Jenny uneasily, or was it simply another way that His Grace chose to reinforce his solitude here in the country?

“The toast agrees with you, Corinthia?” he asked at last, sipping at his wine. “You feel more fortified, in spite of what Gristead predicted?”

Jenny smiled, and nodded, prepared to watch every word she spoke. Most gentlemen that she and Rob met were elderly and too enchanted with her youth and beauty to ask inconvenient questions. She could hardly expect the duke to be like that. “Much better, thank you, Your Grace.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, his eyes too serious to match his smile. “Do you think now you can speak of the grenadier who did this to you?”

“The—the grenadier?” she stammered, confused. “I do not recall any such man, Your Grace.”

“You did,” he said, swirling the red wine in his glass. “When I found you this morning, that was one of the first things you asked. Was I the idiot grenadier?”

Abruptly, Jenny set her saucer down on the table before her. “I told you, Your Grace. I have no memory of such a question, or of any such man, either.”

He tapped his fingertips lightly against the glass. “I’m not asking this to shame you, Corinthia. Pray note that for your sake, I waited until we were alone before I did. You certainly wouldn’t be the first lady led astray by some villain in regimentals.”

“But I wasn’t,” she insisted, trying not to panic as she wondered what else she might have mumbled in those first confused minutes this morning. If she’d spoken of Rob as well as the grenadier, or perhaps worse, climbing from the window of inn, then this ruse was done before it had begun. “I would know if I had.”

“Why, when you cannot recall so much as your own name with any certainty?” he asked with unquestionable logic. “Someone brought you to that remote corner of my land, Corinthia. You didn’t walk there, at least not in the kidskin slippers you were wearing this morning.”

“Is that more of Mrs. Lowe’s deciphering, Your Grace?” asked Jenny, her chin tucked defensively low against her chest. “Or did you determine the state of my slippers for yourself?”

“Be reasonable, my dear,” he said. “If this scoundrel is still prowling somewhere nearby, I need to know, not only for your sake, but for that of the wives and daughters of my tenants. He must be prevented from doing this again.”

She looked down, dodging his scrutiny, her hands betraying her nervousness as her fingers pleated the edge of the sheet into a tight little fan.

Think, think, think! You don’t need Rob to tell you what to do here. Be your own lass, Jen. You know what chances to take, how to turn this inside out and around to your own advantage. When this blue-eyed lord asks you to remember, remember first that you’re clever, too, Jen, every bit as clever as he!

She took a deep sigh, soft and breathy, then began her gamble.

“You have two dogs,” she said softly, still not meeting his gaze. “I remember them finding me. Gus and Jetty, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said with such gruff pride that he might have been another dog himself, instead of their master. “Gus and Jetty, the greatest pair of canine rascals in Chrisendon.”

“Oh, but they weren’t rascals to me,” she said, now looking up from under the fringe of her lashes. “Not at all. They’re large, lovely, black dogs who licked my hands to rouse me where I lay, and made little worried noises over me until you came, too.”

“Rascals,” he murmured again, but the way his expression warmed with affection proved she knew she’d made him forget about the grenadier. Here, at last, was the man she’d remembered.

“Not rascals,” she said, that warmth in his face giving her the courage to go on. Now it wasn’t a game or a ruse. Now it was the truth, and infinitely more risky.

“They were gentle and kind to me, your dogs were,” she continued, more wistfully than she realized, and for the first time her smile was genuine, as warm as his own. “Rather like you were then yourself, Your Grace.”

But, instead of returning her smile, the warmth vanished from his eyes and, beneath the elegant clothes, his whole body tensed warily against her. She recognized uncertainty when she saw it, just as she recognized the defensiveness that went with it; but why should either be in a man like this, a peer whose entire world bowed to his wishes?

“Who are you?” he demanded hoarsely, as if she were the one threatening him.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, stunned by his reaction. “Who do you wish me to be?”

“No.” He shoved back his chair and rose, and in three long strides was already at the door. “Damnation, no.”

And before she could ask him to explain, he was gone.

Chapter Three

H e’d not made such a blatant misstep—or such a fool of himself—in years.

Brant stood at the tall, darkened window of the library where he’d fled, and swore again. As a rule, he wasn’t a man overly given to swearing, but this time he knew he deserved every single oath he could muster, and a few more that he invented spontaneously.

The girl had done nothing at all worthy of his idiocy. Without a murmur, she’d gone along with his inane impulse to dine together. She’d made a brave best of his attempts at conversation, and she’d answered his questions as well as her poor battered head permitted. That bruise must have pained her abominably, yet she hadn’t complained once. She hadn’t been able to remember her own name, but she had recalled Jetty and Gus, which was far more than a self-centered dunderhead like himself could reasonably expect from any woman in her situation.

She had, in short, behaved as perfectly as any true lady would, with grace, charm and wit, and an astonishing degree of loveliness. At least he could be objective about that. In London he’d known scores of famous beauties—actresses, titled ladies, courtesans—who’d never have the kind of innate appeal this girl displayed with her braided hair, upturned eyes and, yes, even with that great violet blossom of a bruise on her temple.

So why, then, when all she’d done was to mistake him for what he wasn’t, had he turned on her like some raving Bedlamite?

He groaned and swore again. At least if he were in Bedlam, he’d be safely under lock and key, unable to offend the rest of the world.

He felt something bump against his leg and looked down to see Jetty beside him, panting happily just to be at his side. With a final halfhearted oath, Brant reached down to ruffle the dog’s ears.

“We broke the rules, didn’t we, old Jetty?” he said softly. “Claremont Hall’s always been for us bachelors alone. You know the arrangement, the same as I. No females permitted, not ever. You shouldn’t have found that young lady beneath those trees, and I shouldn’t have brought her back here, so I could make a right flaming ass of myself.”

The dog gave a sympathetic low growl in the back of his throat, turning to look toward the doorway and the approaching footsteps that he’d heard before Brant.

“Good lad,” murmured Brant as the knock finally came on the door. “You’ve saved me from doing it again before another witness. Isn’t that true, Tway?”

The small, pale man in the black suit and snuff wig only bowed slightly over the salver full of letters in his hands. “As you say, Your Grace.”