Bachelor Duke

‘Even two dumpy travellers and a mousy companion in that hired coach, which followed us all the way to London. But perhaps you were right; they could have been in disguise.’

‘Those! That was no disguise. It was Lord Myers, one-time ambassador to somewhere or other, his lady wife and Miss Sophia Langford, or Sophie as she prefers to be known.’

‘You are acquainted with them?’

‘Until today I was not. Miss Langford is a cousin of mine, though I don’t know how many times removed, but the number of removes seems not to weigh with her. She has turned up from Italy, having just buried her father, and expects me to welcome her with open arms…’

‘And her mother?’

‘Died some time ago. She was my Uncle Robert’s granddaughter.’

‘Then the relationship is not so distant. It is not like you to be uncharitable, James.’

‘Oh, I have taken her in—had no choice since Harriet has taken a liking to the girl, and I felt sorry for her. Not that she invited sympathy; she has the Dersingham pride and obstinacy, no doubt of that. Said if I didn’t take her in, she would become a governess. Couldn’t let that happen, could I?’

‘No, you could not. So, what is the problem? Lady Harley will do the necessary.’

‘I have no doubt Harriet will expect me to give her a come-out and that means escorting her to whatever occasions my sister deems necessary.’

‘And from what I remember when I met her at Dover, she is too plain for you. You were always known for having the most beautiful women on your arm.’

‘Her plainness or otherwise has nothing to do with it. Nor will she be “on my arm”, as you put it; I shall be her sponsor only. It is simply that I do not know how I will find the time. His Highness expects me to be everywhere at once. Goodness knows what he will think of doing when the Tsar and the King of Prussia pay a state visit later in the year. London will be crawling with foreign royalty and all of it expecting protection, not to mention the return of Wellington, which will be a far more popular event. It will need a whole regiment and more to keep order and since I no longer have a command, I will have to liaise with the military and give way to them on the grounds that I am a mere equerry.’

‘You are far more than that and everyone who matters knows it. Why, if it hadn’t been for you, Boney might never have found himself with no choice but to abdicate.’

James had once been a soldier, and a very good one, but Wellington had soon realised his potential as a spy and he had found himself out of the army and wandering about Europe under a false name, pretending to have a grudge against his own people in order to gather intelligence. It had been dangerous and secret work. It was still a secret except from those who had worked with him at the time and that included Richard, who had been his contact with their commander. When his father died and he had been recalled to become the next Duke of Belfont, he had thought to see an end of it, except that the Regent, on being told of his exploits, insisted on having him in his entourage.

‘And if you think that is the end of the man, you are mistaken, Dick, my friend,’ he said grimly. ‘He will not take his defeat as final. I have already heard rumours…’

‘Oh, that old chant, “I will be back.” Wishful thinking.’

‘We shall see and before another year is out.’

‘Twenty guineas says he stays comfortably on Elba writing his memoirs.’

‘Done.’ James beckoned to one of the waiters to fetch the book of wagers, and, when it was brought, carefully wrote in it, ‘The Duke of Belfont bets Captain Richard Summers the sum of twenty guineas that Napoleon Bonaparte will leave Elba and attempt to regain his throne before a year is out.’ They both signed and dated it.

‘That will put the cat among the pigeons,’ James said. ‘It might even bring the worms out of the woodwork.’

‘Oh, I see, you engineered the wager. I might have known. You are not one to make foolish wagers. But watch your back, my friend.’

‘Oh, I leave that to you, I shall be far too busy.’

Richard grinned. ‘Taking a young lady out and about, I collect.’

‘It is my duty as head of the family,’ he said, so pompously that Richard, who knew him well, laughed.

‘You never know, you might end up leg shackled yourself and it won’t be before time. You should have set up your nursery ten years ago.’

‘How could I? I was in no position to offer for anyone, and, since returning to England, I have met no one with whom I would want to spend the rest of my life.’

‘You will.’ Richard paused, then, deciding he had teased his friend enough, added, ‘Are you dining here tonight?’

‘No, I am expected at Carlton House, some banquet or other. I will be glad when the season is over and I can retire to Dersingham Park and look after my estate. In the meantime, duty calls. Keep your eyes and ears open, Richard. Contrary to the Regent’s belief, I cannot be everywhere at once.’

The two men parted and James strolled back to Belfont House, but strangely it was not his problems at court that occupied his mind, but a pair of lustrous brown eyes. How could anyone be described as plain who had eyes like that?

Chapter Three

Sophie’s arrival at Belfont House with all her belongings the following day did not go as she expected and planned. She had hoped only for a garret room, where she could sit and write, not the sumptuous bedchamber she was given. It was furnished in mahogany and walnut; its thick carpet, in shades of blue, reflected the pattern in the curtains at the windows and those about the large four-poster bed. Adjoining it was a small sitting room. ‘I have had a desk and some shelves brought in,’ Harriet told her when she conducted her there after Lady Myers had been entertained with tea, been bidden goodbye and left, promising to call in a day or two to see how Sophie did. ‘Then you can write if you feel the inspiration. But I do not want you to think that you must do it. Look on it as a pastime when you have nothing better to do.’

‘I do not see it as a pastime, my lady.’

‘No, of course not. How foolish of me. What I meant was that I want you to make this your home. Write if you wish, but I should like it very much if you would accompany me on outings. There is so much going on in London this Season, it is beyond anything the capital has seen before, and it is not much fun if you have no one to share it with. The Duke is too busy.’

‘Is your husband not able to accompany you?’

For a moment her bright smile vanished. ‘He was killed at Oporto in ’09.’

‘Oh, I am so sorry. I did not know…’

‘No reason why you should. It was a comfort to know that James was with him when he died. He stayed abroad until last year when our father died and he became the next Duke. It was a relief to have him safe home again.’

‘I am sure it was,’ Sophie murmured.

‘I have two darling daughters, Beth and Olivia, but I left them at home in Suffolk. I cannot imagine they would find London in summer to their liking. They are more interested in ponies and country walks. When the Season is at an end, you must visit us and meet them.’

‘I should like that very much.’

‘Now, here I am prattling on about myself when what I really want to know is all about you. What was it like to be in Europe when Napoleon was Emperor? Did you ever meet him? Some people here say he was an ogre and others that he was a hero. I cannot find that very patriotic, can you?’

‘No, and I never met him. I saw him in the distance when we were in Paris, and we were in Austria when his son was born and there were tremendous celebrations. But I did meet some other interesting characters. Papa seemed to attract them. He was such an affable man and was always bringing people home for dinner.’ She did not add that it had stretched their housekeeping money to breaking point to entertain them.

‘And is that what is going into your book?’

She had not consciously thought of doing that, but she did know a simple travel book would not interest a publisher; there were dozens of those already. She must make it different, and interesting characters might do that. People lived abroad for many reasons; some, like her father, to escape their creditors; others to get over an unhappy love affair or to run away with someone else’s spouse. Some eloped when parents refused to countenance their marriage and some moved to a warmer climate for the sake of their health. Whatever the reason, there was always a nucleus of expatriates in the major cities of the continent, even during the war. ‘Yes, but I shall have to be very careful not to name names, I do not want to antagonise people. And they will only be part of the descriptions of how we travelled and the interesting places we saw.’

‘It must have been very exciting for a young girl to see so much of the world, almost like a Grand Tour.’

Sophie laughed. ‘It was never like that. And when Mama died—’ She stopped, unable to go on.

‘I feel for you, Sophie. Lady Myers told me a little of it, when we had a few minutes alone together, but you must put all those difficulties behind you now. I am going to enjoy dressing you up and taking you out.’

‘Really, my lady, there is no need…’

‘I want to, and please call me Harriet. Your mama was our cousin and that makes you a cousin too and families should not be formal with one another.’

Sophie laughed suddenly. ‘But when one of them is a duke…’

‘Oh, James is nothing like as top lofty as he pretends. He stands on his dignity to keep the doting mamas and their simpering daughters at bay. Being a bachelor and a duke, he is the target of every ambitious mother of an unmarried daughter.’ She chuckled suddenly. ‘I have told him he will have to marry soon and he ought to be looking for a wife, but he remains stubbornly unwed.’

‘No doubt he is particular. His wife will be a duchess and he must be sure she is up to it.’

‘True.’ She rose and shook out her blue taffeta skirt. ‘Now, I shall leave you to settle in. Dinner is at five and afterwards I have an evening engagement that I cannot cancel, but tomorrow we will go shopping. Shall I send a maid to help you unpack?’

‘No, thank you. I can manage.’

She left and Sophie sat on the bed and regarded her trunk, sitting in the middle of the floor, where the footmen had left it. It was scuffed and scratched, its straps wearing thin, proclaiming her poverty. In it was everything she possessed. She could not bear for a servant to see that. Sighing, she unpacked it, putting the gowns in the wardrobe, her other clothes in a drawer and her writing things on the desk with the miniature of her mother. She had just finished when a maid arrived with hot water and an offer to help her dress and to do her hair. ‘My name is Janet, miss,’ she said. ‘Lady Harley says I am to look after you until a maid can be found for you.’

Dinner would be an ordeal, she knew that. It was not that she did not know how to behave; she had dined with some very aristocratic people when her father was in funds, but this evening she expected the Duke to be present and he would quiz her, or perhaps ignore her; either would be mortifying. She found a spotted muslin that was not too creased, draped a silk shawl that had been her mother’s over her upper arms and followed the maid down to the first-floor drawing room, where she had been received the day before. The Duke and Lady Harley were waiting for dinner to be announced.

‘Miss Langford, good evening.’ He rose politely. ‘I trust you have settled in.’

He was dressed formally in a blue long-tailed coat, an embroidered waistcoat, over which a froth of ruffles tumbled, powder blue silk breeches and white stockings. She noticed how well cut his coat was and how it showed off his broad shoulders and that his fair hair, though in the latest short style, curled over the high collar. He was the most handsome man she had ever met and she could understand his popularity with mothers of marriageable daughters. She wondered why he had not married before now; after all, he had admitted to being four and thirty, long past the age when men in his station of life married and set up their nursery. He would naturally be particular, but surely there were dozens of young ladies with beautiful faces and trim figures who would make elegant duchesses?

This reflection made her acutely aware of her own poor garments and she felt like turning tail, but then her pride came to her rescue and she bent her knee. ‘Yes, thank you, your Grace.’

‘And are you satisfied with your accommodation?’

‘Entirely,’ she said, unwilling to admit she had expected much less considering his lack of a welcome.

‘I have given Sophie the blue room,’ Harriet said. ‘The little boudoir next door to it is ideal for a writing room.’

Sophie turned from her secret contemplation of the Duke to face her hostess, whose gown was of forest green silk with deep lace ruffles round the hem. It had a very low décolletage and huge puffed sleeves. Her hair was piled up in a complicated knot and threaded with gems and there were more studded into a pendant around her neck. She patted the sofa next her. ‘Come and sit down, Sophie. I wish I were not going out this evening, I would much rather have stayed at home to talk to you, but I am promised and cannot disappoint my friends.’

‘Oh, please do not think of if,’ Sophie said. ‘I shall be quite content. I think I might do some writing.’

‘Ah, the book,’ James said in a tone that made her hackles rise. He might treat it as a matter for jest now, but one day she would make him take her seriously. ‘You must tell us all about that.’

‘I do not think it would interest you, your Grace.’

‘Why not?’

‘It is but a little thing and you must have been to all the places I have and seen it all.’

‘When?’ he asked sharply. Did she know something he would rather not have made public? He had never met her before, had he? She was never in any of the places he had been operating in, was she? Always alert to danger, from whatever direction, he suddenly felt threatened.

‘When?’ she repeated, puzzled. ‘I assumed you went on the Grand Tour before the Continent was closed to travellers.’

‘Oh, yes, a rather curtailed Grand Tour, as I remember. It was 1799, Napoleon was on the march and Europe was in turmoil.’ He was being foolish, he told himself. What could a chit like her know of espionage and those engaged in it? She would have still been in the schoolroom when he was sent to Austria. Or was it something else altogether making him feel he ought to take more interest in her? Her vulnerability in spite of her efforts to hide it?

A footman arrived and announced that dinner was served and James moved forward and offered his arm to Sophie. She got up and laid her fingers on his sleeve and even that slight contact made her catch her breath. She was shaking with nerves and had no idea why. He was only a little above average height, but he had an overpowering presence, as if he was used to having his own way and would brook no argument, but she had no intention of arguing with him. He was her host, her provider, and, however much it irked her to admit it, she could not afford to alienate him.

‘We are eating in the small dining room,’ Harriet told her, as she took her brother’s other arm. ‘It is much less formal than the large room we use when we entertain, and we can talk comfortably without having to raise our voices.’

And talk they did. While eating their way through a delicious fish dish, roast beef, boiled potatoes and mushrooms in a cream sauce, they spoke about the celebrations, the visits of foreign royalty, the plight of the soldiers coming home to unemployment and hardship, about Wellington and Napoleon and the latest on dit, which meant nothing to Sophie, though Harriet did her best to explain who was who. The Duke was an affable host and seemed to forget his earlier antagonism. Sophie found herself relaxing a little, though not completely. She was only too aware that she was the poor relation, there under sufferance, though she meant to remedy that situation as soon as she could afford it.

‘Is it true that the Regent hates his wife?’ she asked, when everything had been removed in favour of fruit tartlets, jelly and honey cakes. She had been too nervous to eat heartily; in any case, she had become so used to frugality, her stomach would not take rich food.

‘I am afraid so,’ he said. ‘His father badgered him so much to marry, he agreed to marry her without ever seeing her and he disliked her on sight. How he is going to keep her from the celebrations, I do not know. She is related to half the crowned heads of Europe who are coming and expecting to meet her.’

‘I am sorry for her. How dreadful it must be to be despised and unloved in a strange country.’

‘She is hardly unloved,’ Harriet put in. ‘She is very popular with the people.’

‘It isn’t the same though, is it? The public face and the private one. I think it is very important to have a fondness for the person one marries and it doesn’t matter if you are a prince or a duke or the man who clears the middens.’

‘Love,’ he murmured, making Sophie turn to look at him, thinking he was laughing at her, but though he was not laughing, there was a slight twist to his mouth that might have been humour directed against himself. ‘Are princes and dukes allowed to fall in love?’

‘Of course they are,’ Harriet said bracingly. ‘The world would be a very poor place without it.’

‘Mama loved Papa,’ Sophie said. ‘And he loved her. He was brought so low when she died, he never properly recovered.’ It was said with a kind of defiance, which was meant to offset whatever tale Lady Myers had told Harriet, who would undoubtedly have passed it on to the Duke. She did not want him to blame Papa, or feel sorry for her. Or perhaps just a little, she amended, just enough to give her a roof over her head and food to keep her from starving until she could prove to him and the world that she was an author to be reckoned with.

It was as if her listeners understood her point, for neither commented and a minute later the footman came to tell her ladyship the carriage was at the door. Harriet rose to go. ‘I must be off. I will see you tomorrow, Sophie, and we will make plans.’ She bent to kiss Sophie’s cheek. ‘Sleep well. You are very welcome.’

Then she was gone in a rustle of silk, leaving Sophie to face the Duke. ‘Am I?’ she asked in the silence that followed.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Am I welcome? Or am I an encumbrance you would rather do without?’

‘You are certainly forthright,’ he said, laughing. ‘But I assure you, you are not an encumbrance. This house is large enough for two dozen guests; one little cousin who is determined not to be noticed is not going to upset my routine.’

‘Then I am glad of it.’ She spoke with a certain amount of asperity; it was so very difficult being beholden.

He knew he seemed cold and heartless, but that was his way. He had taught himself to be self-contained, not by word or gesture to reveal what he was really thinking. It was all very well for people like the Regent to weep copious tears over nothing at all, but if he had been emotional when he was living with the enemy, when he had to pretend to be at one with them, a show of feeling, even the twitch of an eyelid, could have meant death. It had become a habit hard to break. ‘Do not be so prickly, Sophie,’ he said, trying to unbend a little. ‘Naturally you are welcome, you do not need to question it. And Harriet will love having you for company. Since her husband died, she has not been out and about so much as she was used to and I have not been able to accompany her as I would like.’

Did that mean she was to be an unpaid companion? Perhaps, though Harriet had given no indication that was what she expected. She had taken a liking to Harriet and bearing her company would be no hardship. ‘Thank you, your Grace.’

‘Now, I, too, must leave you,’ he said, rising. ‘I am afraid duty calls.’

‘I understand,’ she said, then laughed. ‘I must not disrupt your routine.’

‘Touché!’ He took her hand to raise her to her feet, then solemnly kissed the back of it. ‘Goodnight, cousin.’ And then he was gone.

She stood for a moment, looking at the back of her hand where his lips had briefly touched, wondering why the mark of it did not show; it had made her feel so hot, almost melting. Sighing, she made her way up to her room, where she went through to the boudoir and sat down at the desk. Drawing a sheet of paper towards her, she picked up a quill, dipped it in ink and then stopped. The flowing phrases she had rehearsed in her head refused to come. Her mind was blank. No, not blank, for it was filled with what had happened that day, from getting up that morning; breakfasting with Lady Myers, who chatted about the Duke as if she had known him for years; to the carriage ride and her arrival at Belfont House; the welcome of Lady Harley, who pretended not to notice the paucity of her luggage; and then the sumptuous dinner and her conversation with the Duke. The Duke more than anything filled her mind.

He intrigued her. One minute he was arrogant and over-bearing, the next trying to put her at her ease. He obviously did not think a great deal of her ambition to be a writer; he was probably one of those men who decried educated women. He had called her a blue stocking which was palpably not true; she was not learned. She could not converse in Latin or Greek, though she could chatter to her heart’s content in French, German and Italian. She knew only a smattering of mathematics and architecture, but she prided herself on getting on well with people. But the Duke wasn’t ‘people’, was he? He was different. He made her heart thump and her hands shake and yet she would not admit she was afraid of him.

Why had he never married? The romantic in her began to weave stories of unrequited love or unfaithful lovers. He had murmured about dukes falling in love as though he wished it were possible and knew it was not. Must he marry to oblige the family with an heir and nothing more? Did he enjoy the work he did for the Regent? Did he have to do it? Was his wealth and prestige dependent on it? Why did she think that was unlikely? Because he was proud, she answered herself, too proud to demean himself to anyone, not even a future king. Would that pride make a broken love affair harder to bear? She laughed softly at her own foolishness; why did she imagine he had been thwarted in love? He had been born and bred an aristocrat, one of the top one hundred, and ever since her mother’s father died, he had known he would be the next duke; it was his manner to be distant, nothing more.

It was no good sitting there being fanciful, nor to try to write; she was too tired to work. She put down her pen and moved into the bedroom to prepare for bed. Perhaps tomorrow she would feel more like it. Tomorrow she would go through her notes and that would start her off. Climbing between the sheets, she turned down the lamp and shut her eyes. Tomorrow…

The Regent was having one of his interminable receptions, showing off his opulence, being the jovial host, making jokes, flirting with the ladies, and James, keeping watch in the background, wished himself anywhere but where he was. He would rather be talking to that dowdy cousin at home than standing here, pretending to enjoy himself. It was strange he had never heard of her before now, yet he had little doubt, and Harriet none at all, that she was who she said she was. From what she had told them, his uncle had not approved of her mother’s choice of husband and Lady Myers had hinted that Lord Langford was a wastrel and a gambler and that, after his wife’s death, Sophie had been forced to work to keep them both. What father worth his salt would allow such a thing? Not that Sophie had complained, had not said a word about it, pretending it was the demise of her father that had forced her to seek sanctuary with her mother’s family. It could not have been easy for her to do that, being proud and wanting very much to be independent. As if writing a book, even if it found a publisher, would achieve that for her!