The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

princess, each step dainty and as effortless as walking on air. Her jaunty fox-trimmed hat sat at just the perfect angle to enhance her aristocratic features. Envy poisoned Harriet’s pleasure. She hoped Constance would get her slippers caught on the carriage steps and fall back into a pile of fresh horse droppings. She hoped Constance would stink of it and befoul the duke’s next breath.

Petty, she admitted it. But so it went. Lady Constance’s family claimed blue blood that harked back to a misty age when all it took to become royalty was to raise up an army of louts who would lop off the requisite number of heads and vanquish a country, allowing their leader to wed the daughter of the conquered king.

“Lady Powlis!” Constance exclaimed, in an elegantly pitched voice that made Harriet miserably aware of her own imperfect elocution. “How youthful you look! And Miss Edlyn, what a beautiful young woman you are! I shall glow with pride to introduce you around.”

Her emotionless gray eyes dismissed Harriet in a glance.

Last, but for the longest time, she bestowed her attention upon the duke. Her eyes lowered at his polite if indifferent greeting. With a brief but ladylike hesitation, she sank into the space beside him, Edlyn scrunching up in obvious resentment to make room.

It was then that Lady Constance took over the world. In dulcet tones she told the duke that she marched for prison reform. She described the cast-off clothing that she generously donated to street whores. She counted off the charities she sponsored. She spoke of her stand against cesspools. She named the various orphanages she visited until Harriet crossed her eyes, picturing this pretty thing blowing kisses to the waifs who gazed up at her like a good fairy. As if a tossed-off kiss could rid their lives of hunger, abandon, and loneliness.

Lady Powlis fell asleep.

The duke muttered something.

Constance cocked her head. “You do remind me of Liam,” she told him with a deep, sorrowful sigh. “My heart aches for what you have lost.”

And Harriet’s heart ached, too.

***

Women, Griffin thought in bemusement. They could torture and tease, provoke or please. Four of them, in varying moods, packed into a single carriage with an unwilling escort, did not an afternoon’s pleasant alchemy create. Or perhaps he was suffering from a case of what his aunt called the blue devils. Lady Clipstone’s unpleasant visit had cast a cloud over the day. Indeed, he felt the threat of rain in his bones.

He dared not look at Harriet again, in her garden-variety mint-green muslin gown with a bow knotted crookedly under the bodice. She had been shamed enough for one afternoon. Unadulterated anger coursed through him at the thought of it. Whatever doubts he harbored about her were his affair.

As one who lived under his protection-albeit not in the manner he might have privately wished-she would not again suffer insult in his presence. Did it matter that she had not been born a lady? She hadn’t pretended otherwise. She wouldn’t be working as a companion if she had greater expectations. He doubted his aunt would let her go at any price, however, even if it turned out Harriet was really a royal princess.

Which made him wonder suddenly why Primrose had been so eager to see him married off to the other woman in the carriage. The one his brother had expected to take as his wife along with the duchy.

Lady Constantly Chattering.

Poised, as full of herself as a champagne fountain. Beautiful. If one’s taste ran to the cool and calculating. Her first glance had surveyed him as if he were a stud to be purchased for breeding purposes. Which, in an amusing sense, he supposed he would be. He had not felt the slightest spark of passion when their eyes met. He didn’t care how well-bred or wealthy she was. Without passion, they might as well be two ceramic figures that graced a mantelpiece for display. The prospect of bedding her for the rest of his life appealed to him as much as did jumping into the Serpentine. And never coming up for air.

Lady Constance ignored the two footmen who stood waiting to assist her from the carriage. Griffin considered ignoring the slender gloved hand she waved in his direction. He was in fact more inclined to help the unfortunate Miss Gardner, who had ungracefully tumbled out the other side without benefit of footmen or folding steps. Fortunately, she sprang right back onto her feet, grinning up at the driver, who warned her not to slip.

“Shall we stroll?” Constance asked, glancing past him to the park.

Griffin watched his aunt abandon him, with her companion in tow. Edlyn wandered off alone. He glanced toward the path. A throng of well-heeled onlookers had collected against a row of curricles and phaetons as if to observe some momentous occasion.

“What are they waiting for?” he asked in amusement.

“Us,” Constance said with a sigh, as if he should have known.

Us. “Any particular reason?”

“Your grace has lived in that medieval castle far too long.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Nod at them.”

“Why should I? I have no particular fondness for strangers.”

“It is expected of you. Do it.” She smiled up at him, revealing an alarmingly sharp set of teeth. “You cannot disappoint the beau monde.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

“Your grace takes his peerage too lightly, I’m afraid.”

And he was rapidly deciding he’d like to keep it that way.

He looked down at the top of her high-brimmed hat and wondered whether she had hunted the animal herself. “May I be honest with you?”

“May honesty not wait until we have made our first public appearance?” When he refused to defer, she released another sigh. “Say what you must, then.”

“I detest your hat.”

“I detest your aunt’s companion,” she said without hesitation. “She will have to go.”

He smiled then, but not at her or at their audience.

She gripped his forearm, her reticule banging against his elbow. He couldn’t imagine what she was carrying- the Crown jewels, perhaps-but whatever it was clunked between them like a ball and chain as they strolled toward the water.

“That is Lord Bermond in the caped coat,” she said. “Invite him to go shooting. The woman holding the parasol is his mistress. Pretend she is invisible. And-” She frowned in displeasure. “Never mind. After we attend a soiree or two, you will forget your primeval village and let our civilized ways guide you onto a higher path.”

“But I’m somewhat primeval myself.”

“That is the unfortunate reputation that precedes you,” she murmured.

His eyes darkened.

She would have been wise to take notice. But she did not.

Harriet had no opportunity to venture an opinion of the graceful woman walking at the duke’s side. It would have been improper to use the words that came to mind. Moreover, Lady Powlis conveyed their mutual disapproval in an eloquent if profane outburst that rendered Harriet’s appraisal superfluous. She merely nodded at her ladyship’s spate of insults. After all, she was paid to be an agreeable companion.

“Why do you not like her, madam?” she asked when she could slip a word in edgewise.

Lady Powlis swung her cane in the air like a master swordsman. “There is not a sincere bone in her body.”

“But those bones are put together in a manner that his grace seems to find engrossing.”

The sword swung toward Harriet. “Save the sauce for another goose. You know perfectly well that what I say is true.”

“Quite so,” Harriet said, trying to anticipate at which point of the compass the cane would next aim.

Lady Powlis’s voice broke unexpectedly. “It’s all wrong. And it is all my fault. I have pushed him into that conceited vixen’s arms. I have used guilt and sorrow to encourage this match. I-” She paused, pale and out of breath.