An American Duchess

That shattered the mesmerizing spell of his sapphire eyes. “You’re a relic from medieval times. Sebastian and I both need a marriage of convenience. You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”

“No bold, calculating American heiress is going to disrupt my family.”

“Your Grace, my arrangement will help your family. But it’ll be a pleasure to disrupt you.”

He glowered. “You are exactly what I expected of an American woman. Americans set my teeth on edge with their explosive, vulgar emotion. You gush, you flaunt and you have no idea of proper restraint. Your behavior in this is both vulgar and repugnant, madam.”

She yearned to slap him. But with his scars, she could not bring herself to smack her palm against his face. Apparently, she’d been misled on another aspect of the British. They were more blunt and straightforward than she’d expected.

Taking a step closer to him—her eyes were on level with his lips—Zoe lifted her chin with pride. “You set my teeth on edge. You are the most irritating and prejudiced man I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. I’m visiting my fiancé’s home. It’s unfortunate you happen to be in it. And I suppose you don’t intend to send a car for my mother and me now.”

He bent toward her. A warm, exotic aroma clung to the duke—sandalwood, she believed it was, and he smelled of leather. For a moment, they traded breaths, his scented with tooth powder and smoke.

“I will, Miss Gifford. What sort of host leaves guests stranded in the countryside?”

She almost laughed. “Good.” She flung back her arms and stretched, as if thoroughly bored with the whole conversation. “I am looking forward to a long, luscious, hot soak.”

“A what?” the duke asked sharply. His boot twisted in a rut on the road and he fell forward an inch, his mouth almost bumping against hers. Up close his lips were full and sensual, and she was suddenly, breathlessly waiting for their mouths to collide. But before it happened, he jerked back and she did, too, and in a heartbeat they were two awkward steps apart, each standing at the edge of the cart track that was called a road.

Her stomach felt as it did when her airplane hit wind shear and suddenly dropped.

She had to be out of her mind. She hadn’t let a man kiss her since Richmond had, just before he took off on his flight over the Atlantic. She hadn’t even done it with Sebastian. She was hardly going to let it happen with an obnoxious, insulting duke.

Zoe jutted out her hip. “What I meant was a bath. You know: turn on the tap and fill a nice big tub with a lot of hot water and then soak in it. You do have baths over here, don’t you?”

Abruptly she was looking at the duke’s back. Without a word, he had swung away from her. Then he stopped and motioned for her to follow. “We do, indeed, have baths, madam. What we do not have are taps.”

2

DRESSING FOR DINNER

The first dinner gong sounded.

Nigel Hazelton, the seventh Duke of Langford, stood in front of the mirror of his dressing room as his valet adjusted his collar and white bow tie, then gave one final tug to the shoulders of his coat.

“Very good, Your Grace,” Higgins said.

Even dressing for dinner had become a battle—a clash between the old ways and modernity. He wore full dress for dinner, which meant a tailcoat, white waistcoat and white tie. Sebastian usually appeared for dinner in the style of the Prince of Wales: a tuxedo jacket, once considered too vulgar for female sensibilities, and a black tie...and he slouched around with his hands stuck in his pockets.

Sebastian would look effortlessly elegant and laugh at his brother for being overdressed.

“A relic of an antique age,” Nigel muttered.

“Not at all, Your Grace,” Higgins assured him. “Such classic attire is always correct.”

Since Higgins had been his father’s valet, and now approached eighty, Nigel merely said, “That will be all, Higgins.”

With a bow and another respectfully murmured “Very good,” Higgins disappeared through a connecting door like a shadow into darkness. Nigel ran his hand over his now-smooth jaw, having been shaved within an inch of his life in preparation for dinner.

He believed in formality. He believed in the old ways, the old standards, in showing respect to one’s class and position.

But facing the mirror, he had no doubt Miss Gifford thought like Sebastian, considering the fashionable hat crammed on her short, sleek blond hair, the bright red mouth that smirked at him, the astoundingly short skirt she wore. When she’d swung her leg over the wall, the skimpy skirt had flown up, showing the entire length of her shapely legs, right up to the garters securing her stockings at her suntanned thighs.

He’d done the gentlemanly thing and looked away—at everything but those stunning legs. As a result, he’d jerked on Beelzebub’s reins and almost unseated himself.

He had almost embarrassed himself again when she’d stretched like a seductive houri and he’d stumbled and almost fallen against her vibrant, scarlet-painted mouth.

It had been a misstep, not an attempt at a kiss. With his scars, he wouldn’t think to kiss any woman.

“I should have known I would find you skulking in here,” chided a soft female voice, “when you should be in the drawing room.”

No American accent flattened the words and drew out the vowels, and he smelled the subdued scent of ladylike lavender. Not Miss Gifford. Nigel knew it was Julia, even before he saw his sister’s reflection in the mirror.

“I am not skulking, I am dressing.” He turned, and his eyes almost popped out of his head.

Julia had his silver cigarette case open in her hand. She took out a Turkish cigarette and put it between her lips.

“What are you doing?” He stalked toward her.

His sister picked up his lighter. “Attempting to smoke. Miss Gifford does it. She claims that smoking calms nerves. She also claims it keeps a woman thi—”

He relieved Julia of her unlit cigarette, plucking it from her lips. “Smoking is a man’s habit. A lit gasper has no place near a delicate lady’s mouth.”

“Really, Nigel?” Julia crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So? What do you think of her?”

Julia was never so direct or blunt. Nor had she ever considered raiding his cigarette case before. Good God, were American ways contagious?

At least their manner of dress was not. His sister wore a demure gown of dark blue silk and it reached the middle of her calves. Her hair was long and rolled into a chignon. She was very like their mother, though her hair was jet-black, not gold, but she was just as beautiful with her oval face, her curling dark lashes and her wide pale pink mouth that she never touched with paint.

“Since you have seen her, I don’t think I need to say more.”

“Nigel, you can be hopelessly stuffy.” Julia sighed and walked to the windows of his dressing room, pulling back the faded velvet curtains.

He followed. The rain had blown in hard. It ran down the windowpanes, turning the world beyond into a blurry palette of subdued color. Sheets of it sliced through the dark skies and slammed into the stone terrace and the green lawns.

“I showed her and her mother to their rooms,” Julia said, arching a brow, “since you appeared to have abandoned them.”

“I instructed Mrs. Hall to take her and her mother to their apartments. It is customary for the housekeeper to do so.” He frowned. “Sebastian is nowhere to be found, of course. I have no idea what to say to either of them. The mother was chattering on about the paintings and fixtures as they went upstairs—it sounded as if she were cataloging the contents of the house to auction them off. Miss Gifford finds me both prejudiced and irritating. However, she is determined to say things that both irritate me and prove my prejudice well-founded. The woman is Sebastian’s fiancée. He should be here to keep her entertained.”

He felt Julia’s stare and he turned to her.

His sister regarded him with an amused expression. “I thought you’d only spent a short time in her company, Nigel. It sounds as if you had a lot to discuss.”

“American women are not backward in coming forward.” He raked his hand through his hair. He couldn’t tell Julia the whole truth about this damnable, scandalous business. “She told me she proposed to him.”

“Nigel, women in America—”

“Are not ladylike.”

Julia laughed. And that was a rare treat these days. She was usually quiet, somber, troubled. He wished she would fall in love again. Yet he could not do his duty as head of the family and ensure she was presented to eligible men. Her dowry was quickly evaporating, along with the rest of the money.

“I thought she looked very ladylike,” Julia argued. “Even you can’t deny that she is very lovely.”

“Her skirts are too short. She paints her face. Her hair is cut like a boy’s.”

“It is the fashion now, brother dear. It is called the Eton crop.”

“That’s because schoolboys have their hair cut that way. It’s hardly feminine.”

“I do love you, Nigel,” Julia said. “Miss Gifford has what the Americans call ‘it.’ You know—sex appeal.”

He did know what was meant by “it.” But the word sex on the lips of his sister brought a strangled cough from his chest. Nigel sputtered, unable to catch his breath. He had to stalk to the chest of drawers, where he’d set a glass of brandy, and down a mouthful before he could stop choking. Suddenly, he saw what Miss Gifford was already bringing into his household.

The bloody modern world.

He didn’t want it here.

He’d come back from war to find that, while he spent four years in mucky trenches, the world had changed—it was as if he’d stood still while the planet had revolved around him at top speed. There had been too much change, enough to upheave the world. At his home, at Brideswell, he’d planned to ensure change never breached the ancient walls.

Instead it had slithered in wearing an abbreviated skirt and scarlet lips and carried with it an absolute fortune.

“Julia, you cannot speak like that. You are an—” Another sharp cough. He had been about to say “unmarried woman.” What in God’s name was he thinking, to remind her of how much she’d lost?

“So you still disapprove of the marriage?” Before he could answer, she added quickly, “The thing is, Nigel, I think I disapprove. I think this is wrong. You know what...what Mother was like. How terribly unhappy she was with Father.”

Here, Julia wasn’t being blunt. She was being careful with her words, but he knew how miserable their mother had been because of their father’s infidelities.

“I like Miss Gifford,” Julia rushed on, almost defiantly. “I think I will like her even more as I grow to know her better. I don’t want to see her unhappy.”

He had wanted to dislike Miss Gifford, and the woman had given him every reason to do so. She intended to disgrace his family because it was convenient to her.

But he also could not forget how she had looked him in the face without a gasp or flinch after he’d doffed his hat. Or the composed way she had told him she had lost a brother to combat.

There had been no gushing, no display of emotion at all. Just a cool acknowledgment she had experienced the destruction and loss that came with war, and in her direct American gaze, he’d felt she understood something of what he’d been through.

It was a moment in which he’d respected Miss Zoe Gifford. A very brief moment.

“I think Miss Gifford will get her heart broken.” Julia’s soft voice broke in on his thoughts. “Sebastian has never fallen in love with any woman. I think he’s incapable of it.”

Nigel almost dropped his glass. Only quick juggling saved him from throwing brandy on his chest. His heart thundered like it had when shells had been exploding around him.

Could Julia know about Sebastian? Four decades ago, Oscar Wilde had gone to prison for the same appetites he knew Sebastian possessed, under a charge of gross indecency. That scandal still reached delicate female ears. Had Julia guessed what Nigel knew for a fact—that their brother was in love with a Captain John Ransome? Good God, how did he ask her?

“I mean Sebastian is rather selfish, and he’s exactly like Father was,” Julia said pensively.

Nigel relaxed. She did not know. Their father had been a womanizing rogue.

“I love him dearly,” she went on, “but I would never let one of my friends marry him.”

“Miss Gifford went into this proposition so she could get hold of her inheritance, as it is held in trust until she marries. I do not believe our steely-eyed American heiress is going to have her heart broken,” he said coldly.

“And most heiresses want titles. If she wants Sebastian, she must be in love with him.” Julia lifted her head and stared at him with huge, stricken blue eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know I am shirking my duty by avoiding marriage. I was doing it as a favor to both myself and any prospective bride. I will not do so any longer.”

“You are going to marry?”

“I am going to have to,” he said grimly. “Sebastian agreed to this marriage to obtain funds. It is my responsibility as duke to find a way to support Brideswell. I have to do my duty.”

Julia touched his shoulder. “I know losing Mary broke your heart, Nigel. I know what that feels like.”

He clasped his hands gently over Julia’s. He had frightened Mary away when he’d come back from war, scarred, haunted, wounded. Frightened her so badly, she’d married someone else.

Julia frowned. “No, you can’t make a duty marriage. I hate to think of you doing that. I don’t want you to be as unhappy as Mama and Father were.”

“You need not fear I will make a wife unhappy. I will keep my distance from her. After all, as you say, she would be in it for the title.” He had to keep his distance. He certainly couldn’t share a bed with a wife, to sleep the night with her, the way some couples now did. Not when he screamed with nightmares or had to fight to control the shaking of his body when a loud noise erupted.

“You cannot keep your distance from a wife and have children, Nigel. That simply won’t work. If Sebastian and Miss Gifford are in love, why not let Sebastian go through with marriage?”

“I cannot.” At her frown, he added, “I have a very good reason.”

Julia rolled her eyes. Then she smiled—an impish smile that made his heart ache—and she waved her hand airily. “Then perhaps Miss Gifford has well-to-do American friends for you. I shall ask her—”

“I would not go near any woman who claims friendship with Miss Gifford.”

“That won’t stop me from asking her, unless you give your reasons.”

“I assure you that Miss Gifford would not attempt to marry me to any woman she calls a friend.”

The gong rang again—the final summons after the warning shot. He offered his arm. “Let us go for dinner.”

Julia sobered. “I am not looking forward to this, Nigel. Grandmama is appalled by Sebastian’s choice, and she has not been hiding her displeasure. Mama has been attempting to put it all in the best light, but you know how stubborn Grandmama can be. I think dinner is going to be a disaster.”

“It will not be,” he said darkly. But he could easily imagine the battle over dinner between the dowager and Miss Gifford. And he could readily guess how Miss Gifford would behave. Much like he had when he’d had to race through bullets to save one of his soldiers—too stubborn to duck.

Strangely, Nigel found he was actually looking forward to seeing how she handled herself.

What was he thinking? When he’d come home, he hadn’t wanted any more battles or confrontation. Brideswell had been the promise of normalcy after four years of living hell, albeit a far poorer normalcy than before the War.

Yes, he was a relic of an older age—of the way the world was before war had ravaged it. And he wanted his dinner in peace. There would be no wars tonight at his dining table.

* * *

“Zoe, you really must wear jewels tonight.” Mother sailed through the door. Encased in a formal gown that displayed her thin figure, her mother surveyed her with narrowed eyes. “That dress is all wrong. It’s too modern for the occasion.”

Zoe had dismissed the maid sent to help her dress—her maid and Mother’s were arriving later by train. The girl’s jaw had almost struck the carpet when she’d adjusted the skirt and discovered it went no lower.

“I like it,” Zoe said. “There’s no point in trying to make it look as though our family goes back to Henry VIII, Mother. We don’t.” She touched her neck. “I was thinking a string of white beads—”

“Diamonds, Zoe.” Lifting her gloved hand, rings sitting on top of the satin, Annabelle Gifford counted off the pieces that had been shipped by trunk and were now in the duke’s safe.

“Mother, it’s dinner, not a ball at Buckingham Palace. If I wear all of that I will look like a walking sandwich board for Tiffany & Co. Anyway, I want to look modern. I am modern,” Zoe added, suddenly aware of how coldly she said it.

Mother looked pained. “The duke himself is quite handsome, you know. Once you ignore his scars. He looked at you, my dear, with a great deal of interest.”

“If by interest, you mean dislike, then yes, he showed a lot of it. When the duke looks at me, it’s down his nose. He’s obnoxious and rude.”

“I am sure if you were to get to know him—”

“I would be even more likely to want to run him over with my car. Every word exchanged with that man feels like shots fired in a war.”

She would not think of that moment when their lips had almost touched. When she’d wanted their lips to touch. It had been a moment of insanity.

A modern girl kissed men—she had kissed a few. She’d known sizzling kisses. Her lips hadn’t even touched the duke’s, and the air had crackled like the aftermath of a lightning strike.

Yet the man was insufferable.

“Zoe, you must not antagonize the duke.” Mother’s large violet-blue eyes widened in panic. “Think of your father—it was his fondest dream that you be accepted in New York society. No one will turn up their noses if you have a title. No ballrooms will be barred to us; there will be no invitation list that does not feature our names.”

The things that drove Mother seemed so trivial. They had been through a war. The world was a place of manufacturing, of making things—airplanes, telephones, motion pictures.

That world had made Father a rich man—Zoe had grown up in Manhattan, after Father had made his money in steel. Columns and beams and rivets from his mills were used in most of the brand-new buildings that reached into the sky, and she knew a little of the ruthlessness that coup had taken.

What did it matter that Zoe, as a debutante, had been purposely excluded from most balls or that when her family hosted them, people took malicious pleasure in not showing up?

All that had mattered to her was following her heart. She’d fallen in love with Richmond DeVille, the famous and daring aviator. Richmond had taught her how to fly a plane. With him, she had touched heaven with silver wing tips. Every moment with Richmond had been filled with excitement and challenge. But they’d kept their relationship a secret, because Richmond had just got a divorce.

On the day of his departure, flashbulbs had popped everywhere, but she and Richmond had found treasured private moments. He’d slipped a diamond ring on her finger. With tears of joy and excitement in her heart, she had wished him a safe voyage. She had waved at his airplane until it had disappeared over the ocean into the early-morning sky like a silver star winking out. Then she had sat by the wireless for hours and hours, waiting for the word he’d arrived.

He hadn’t made it. Days later the wreckage of his plane was found. His body never was.

Zoe snatched up a brush and smoothed her hair. “I don’t care if they do snub us. Daddy might have come from a shack with a dirt floor, but he made something of himself. The duke hasn’t even earned his advantages. He has them because of the luck of his birth. I don’t need to wear diamonds, Mother. Everyone in the dining room knows I have a fortune. Money gives us the only things worth caring about in the world now—”

She was about to say the words freedom and independence, but in the large cheval mirror, she suddenly noticed how pale her mother was. She whirled.

Mother put her hand over her heart and took shallow breaths. “I know why you are doing this, Zoe. I know you are marrying to help me.”

Zoe rushed to her mother, suddenly feeling helpless. “It will be all right—”

Mother trembled. “Oh, Zoe, I am so afraid. Those letters I received...they got downright threatening. If your uncle were ever to find out about that check, I’d be ruined. He would never forgive me. Brother-in-law or not, he would prosecute to the full extent of the law. I might end up in jail. I meant no harm by it. I was so certain I would be able to put the money back right away—”

“He’s not going to find out. I’ll have access to my funds long before Uncle Hiram comes back. You made a mistake, Mother—” She said it softly and reassuringly, though she could not understand her mother. How could Mama have forged a check? How could she not have seen that would obviously lead to disaster? But recriminations would get her nothing but maternal hysteria, and that she couldn’t bear. “You will not go to jail,” Zoe said firmly.

“But I want you to be happy married to Lord Sebastian,” Mother said.

“Of course I’ll be happy,” Zoe lied smoothly.

“You aren’t in love with him.”

That startled her but she tried not to show it. “I will make the best of this, Mother.”

“If you don’t love him, there’s nothing to stop you marrying his brother. You could have him, Zoe, if you just try. The deal’s not done yet. You could still change your mind. And if you sew up the duke first—”

“Mother, no.”

Her mother took quick, fluttery breaths and her hand trembled over her heart. “Dear Zoe, I’ve been having such pains. I’m so worried about you. It would ease my heart to know you had married the right man.”

“Mother, you’ve been as healthy as a horse your entire life. This may have worked for Mrs. Vanderbilt, but I’ve heard Consuelo’s story, and it’s not going to work on me. You’re not dying, and I’m not going to be pressured to chase a duke because of a fictitious bad heart. I will never be a duchess.”

“What are you talking about? If the duke does not marry, you will.”

Zoe shook her head. Mother might use quivering breaths, batting eyelashes and tears to get her way, but she was as strong and formidable as the steel her father had been famous for producing. The duke knew the truth and he had probably told his family. Mother might as well know it, too. “I won’t be married to Sebastian long enough.”

* * *

Nigel escorted Julia to the south drawing room, where it was customary to gather for cocktails before the meal. They reached the open doors just as their grandmother, the dowager, exclaimed, “Good heavens, are those her knees? Is she in her shift? Where is her skirt?” Then, her voice higher pitched, “Sebastian, what are you doing on your knee? Are you rehearsing for a play?”

Julia looked around the doorway and gasped, “Oh, how romantic.”

Nigel saw the scene in the room and his gut twisted with anger. He agreed with his grandmother: What in hell did his brother think he was doing?

In front of his fiancée, his hair soaked from the rain, his tuxedo jacket obviously thrown on in haste, Sebastian had dropped to one knee. He held a small velvet box in the palm of his outstretched hand.

Smoothing her skirt with nervous hands, Miss Gifford sparkled like a handful of stars in the glow of the candles and lamps. A white-and-silver dress with delicate straps fell from her slim shoulders, coasted over her slender figure, ended in gauzy, floating bits of fabric that swirled just above her knees. She stared down at Sebastian with huge, surprised violet eyes.