Tamed by her Duke (Seductive Mysteries #4)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

N o matter what the little pest claimed, Caleb was not avoiding his wife.

He was merely not…putting in an effort to seek her out.

And if he happened to know where she was some of the time, and if he happened to be elsewhere, that was merely because he was a very busy man.

For example, he had those roofs to fix because—damn her eyes—Grace had been right about that. He’d seen at least three houses in a shocking state of disrepair, and then he’d had to send all the way to bloody Edinburgh for someone to come fix things, because the local man had gone off and died .

“It is, of course, very sad to have lost such a valuable member of our community,” the vicar had informed him solemnly, looking only mildly alarmed to speak to the duke. “Though Edgar had lived to the ripe old age of ninety-four, so at least he has a good life. We shall remember him fondly.”

When Caleb had demanded to know why, given the old roofer’s age, nobody had thought a new roofer might soon be needed, he’d been met with an uncomprehending look.

“He was healthy as a horse, Edgar was,” the vicar had told him. “Until he wasn’t, of course.”

Caleb’s only consolation was that at least he’d be able to give the business to a Scotsman. Though likely his wife would whine at him that this was not local patronage.

Not , Caleb reiterated to himself, that he was avoiding her so that he didn’t have to listen to said complaints. Not at all.

And he was, moreover, not avoiding her so that they did not find themselves kissing again.

Because he was not avoiding her at all. Clearly.

Even though he hadn’t seen much of Grace, signs of her presence were increasingly obvious throughout the house. She had taken to redecorating, which she was apparently doing with things already to be found around the house, since she’d not applied to him for any funds. Still, he could scarcely turn around without finding that a settee that had once lived in the front parlor was now in the library, or that the maids had swapped about wall hangings, or that the ugly rug from the entrance hall had disappeared (to be burned, Caleb hoped).

Worse, the staff seemed to be oddly cheerful about this.

Caleb decided he didn’t care. If Grace was happy and not underfoot, well, good. That was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?

So he ignored it all.

Right up until he saw the portrait gallery.

“What in Christ’s name is going on here?” he seethed as his wife directed footmen to re-hang the portrait of Caleb’s grandfather.

The footmen exchanged a look, gently lowered the portrait, and beat a hasty retreat. Smart men. Caleb would need to give them an increase in their wages.

“Hello,” the little termagant said cheerfully, as if he had not last seen her fleeing like prey from a wolf. “If you could not terrorize the staff while they go about their business, I’d consider it a personal favor.”

To hell with that. She’d not earned any bloody favors from him. He glowered.

She ignored it.

“And, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could we blaspheme slightly less? I myself am not terribly religious, I confess, but I did recently catch one of the maids praying rather feverishly over a crucifix, and I think they might be fretting over your immortal soul.”

“Ye are not,” he said tersely, “in any position to be making demands.”

She propped a hand on her hip, which had the irksome effect of reminding Caleb how luscious the soft curve had felt under his hand that night in the library.

“As a point of order, I did not make any demands,” she pointed out. “But fine. I’ll be happy to get back to what I was doing. Have a good afternoon.”

She turned her back on him.

In another situation, with another woman, Caleb would have thought her the most unforgiveable idiot. She would have to be, to think she could get away with dismissing him like that.

But Caleb was starting to think that his little wife knew exactly what she was up to. Which meant, instead of an idiot, she might actually be a bloody genius.

An impossible, frustrating little witch of a genius, but a genius, nonetheless.

“Grace!” he snapped.

She looked over her shoulder at him like she’d quite forgotten he was there. “Yes?”

“The portraits. Take them back down.”

She looked surprised. “Oh, I’d be happy to.”

Caleb paused. This seemed too easy.

And indeed it was. Grace smiled innocently. “Just as soon as you tell me why you don’t want them up,” she said sweetly. “I assume you have a good reason for wanting this hall to look like we’ve taken to pawning the frames to buy our bread?”

She blinked guilelessly. What a little liar .

In honesty, he didn’t know what her goal was. He was an army man; he was accustomed to facing an enemy with clear goals. Land, resources, money. That kind of thing.

But Grace had resources, and money, too, if one counted her pin money, which Caleb decided he did. Besides, she couldn’t obtain those things by asking him annoying personal questions, which left her motives a complete mystery.

Thank the saints they didn’t let women in armies. Battles were chaotic enough, what with all the noise and the guns and the death. Adding in women and their mysteries would be quite beyond the pale.

Even so, Caleb had the army in his bones, and so he knew two things: one, only a fool would underestimate an enemy when she was doing something strange; two, sometimes one had to sacrifice the battle to win the war.

“Do what ye want,” he grumbled, turning on his heel, clenching his fists at his side.

He stalked away, telling himself that a dignified retreat was best. His little wife may think she’d won something this time, but soon enough she would see who really had control in this household, mark his words.

The next nearest gentlefolk were a baron and his wife. Once she got the house into something that was starting to resemble a respectable state, Grace invited them to tea. “Thank you so much for coming, Lord and Lady Fenwick,” she said effusively as she led them into the duchess’ parlor. She’d decorated the room to correspond more with her own personal states than through a strict adherence to current fashions, and the effect was warm, comfortable, and full of soft places to sit.

Grace never wanted to be cold again. She intended to find all the comfort she could in life and cling to it. Thus, she felt rather proud of her little room, with its soft lighting and warm colors. It was a nice place to just be .

She felt inspired, furthermore, to spread comfort where she could. Hence, today’s meeting.

She still didn’t know what was going on with her husband and the other nearby residents, but she intended to get to the bottom of it. With or without the duke’s help.

Well, she allowed mentally, ‘without’ is more likely .

“We appreciate the invitation ever so much,” tittered Lady Fenwick, a woman in her late thirties, perhaps, who was, despite her relatively advanced age for such things, quite massive with child. She had a nervous aspect about her, one echoed by her husband, who hovered at his wife’s side.

Although, Grace thought, this was perhaps necessity rather than solicitousness, as it took Lady Fenwick several tries to get herself safely lowered onto the settee.

Grace watched this procedure with some trepidation. Surely the woman should have politely declined, given her state? It was, of course, hideously rude to mention a woman being in the family way, but it seemed somehow even more rude not to mention it.

“I hope it was no inconvenience to make the journey,” she said gently, hoping the rest could remain implied.

Lady Fenwick looked a bit less uncomfortable at that, despite the allusion to an uncouth topic.

“Oh, because it seems like I’d scarcely fit in the carriage?” she asked with a self-deprecating little laugh. “Don’t fret. I’m quite used to it by this point. This—” She gestured at her curved middle. “—is our eleventh.”

“ Eleventh!” Grace exclaimed before she could stop herself. “My goodness—I’m very sorry. That’s merely…”

“Quite a lot of children?” the lady offered, a touch of dryness creeping into her tone. “You are quite right there, Your Grace.”

“I suspect it’s twins again,” the baron murmured. If his wife seemed retiring, this man seemed outright shy.

Though apparently not shy enough to avoiding getting eleven—or possibly twelve —children on his wisp of a wife.

“This would be the third set,” Lady Fenwick explained at the wide-eyed look that Grace, who was no longer even attempting to hide her reactions, gave her. “They rather run in the family.”

“I should say so!” Grace exclaimed. She pushed the plate of sandwiches and cakes that Mrs. Bradley had prepared in the woman’s direction. “Do you like cakes? I feel somehow that you deserve cakes.”

Lady Fenwick’s smile came more easily each time it appeared on her face.

“I very much do like cakes, Your Grace,” she said warmly. “I appreciate it.”

The ice thus broken between the three, they set upon the provisions contentedly, Grace drawing out the conversation as they ate. She learned about her neighbors’ children, starting with Matthew, the eldest, away at school at sixteen, down to Eloise, the baby (though not for long) who was not yet two years old.

It was, Grace was charmed to note, the baron, not his wife, who spoke with such open affection about each child—though this was possibly, she allowed, because the baronet had not had to give birth to all eleven of the brood.

“Do you often take the children into the village?” she asked politely, dabbing gently at her mouth to ensure no shortbread crumbs lingered. “I am afraid I have not yet visited; His Grace has not yet had the opportunity to escort me about.”

She watched as husband and wife tried very hard—and resolutely failed—not to make meaningful eye contact with one another.

Grace leisurely took another sip of tea and waited.

“I do believe,” Lady Fenwick said cautiously, “that His Grace does not frequently travel into the village.”

“No,” Grace agreed, giving the other woman a slightly conspiratorial nod. “I know that, of course. I am hoping to get to explore the place sooner rather than later, though. I am very eager to get to know my new home.”

She was, quite transparently, angling for an invitation. Though, as a now-married woman, she no longer technically needed a chaperone, she strongly suspected that if the new duchess waltzed into the village all by herself, without the husband that apparently loomed like a ghoul in local imaginations, she would be met with little more than aggressively frosty politeness.

“There is a lovely little shop if you’re looking for ribbons or lace or other bits and bobs,” Lady Fenwick said eagerly. “No doubt it’s not as fine as what you will have seen in London?—”

Both husband and wife had treated the news that Grace had grown up in London with a sense of awe; apparently, as country gentry, they’d both been raised within ten miles of their current home, had conveniently married the closest neighbor of a similar class, and never regretted it for a moment, if the eleven to twelve children were any indication. To them, Grace coming from London was the same if she’d said New York, or India, or the moon.

“—but fine enough,” Lady Fenwick continued. “You would be more than welcome to join us for a trip, of course, so long as His Grace doesn’t object?—”

“So long as His Grace doesnae object to what?”

Grace closed her eyes briefly as her husband’s voice thundered through the room. Of all the times for him to suddenly appear, he had chosen now ?

Still, she drew in a breath and pasted on a smile.

“Lord and Lady Fenwick have invited me on their next journey to the village,” she said brightly. “Wasn’t that kind of them?”

She had made it so easy for him. He didn’t even need to respond, not really! A nod would have sufficed. Even a grunt! He was typically so fond of grunts.

Today, though, while Lord and Lady Fenwick visibly shrunk back in their seats, reedy Lord Fenwick looking like he was dreading the possibility that he would have to defend his beloved wife and the offspring they carried, Caleb decided to be chatty .

“Why d’ye want to go to the village?” he demanded.

Grace blinked at him. Was this revenge for asking him about the portraits? Because that was completely different—his thing was stupid and her thing was obvious.

“To see it?” she said, hoping her expression conveyed that it would really be best if he could just behave himself for, oh, five minutes or so.

Caleb did not seem interested in receiving any such message.

“It’s small,” he said. “You willnae like it.”

One of these days , she thought as she smiled at him through gritted teeth , he is going to speak, and I am just going to start screaming. Forever.

“I would still like to see it for myself,” she said with aggressive lightness. “I’m sure it would be nice to get to know some of the people who live in the area.”

“Hmph,” Caleb said.

Oh, now he was happy to grunt?

“I think we should bid you both farewell,” Lord Fenwick interjected nervously as Grace glared daggers at her husband. “Thank you so much for inviting us, Your Grace, but we should get back to the children, you see.”

“Hmph,” said Caleb again, which made the baron flinch just a bit.

“Of course,” Grace said, ignoring her husband in favor of smiling at the couple. “I loved having you. I do so hope you will come again.”

The lord and lady very much did not confirm their intent to return as they beat a hasty retreat from the room. When they were gone—which did not take long; Lady Fenwick moved with impressive quickness for someone so far gone in her pregnancy—Grace let her polite expression drop and scowled openly at her husband.

“What,” she demanded, “was that?”

“I can’t say I know what ye’re talking about,” he said. Thank goodness he’d been a soldier, not a spy, because he was a wretched liar.

“You do realize they’re never going to come back here again, right?” she asked. “Any chance I had at making a good impression was completely destroyed when you insulted the village.”

He shrugged. “It’s nae a very big village. I dinnae lie about it.”

Grace let out an incoherent sound of fury.

“Besides,” he went on, looking rather smug, “I daenae know why ye care about them liking ye or not. Ye had friends at our weddin’. Why would ye need more?”

“Are you being intentionally perverse or are you just really that unaware? My friends live in London . I might like someone to talk to who lives more than two days away .”

“Also,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken, “did ye not consider that perhaps it was those wretched portraits that scared them off? They’d not be the first ones to find the Montgomery line to be a bit alarming.”

Her eyes flared wide. “This was about those portraits! I knew it!”

And then the most incredible, terrible thing happened. Her husband smiled.

And then he laughed .

It was at her, yes, but, goodness, the way his face transformed when he laughed. It made him look brighter, younger, more carefree. It made him look, she realized with a sudden flash, like the curious man who had glanced at her across a crowded ballroom, not the cantankerous beast who had growled at her ever since.

It made him, she hated to admit to herself, remarkably handsome—so remarkably so, in fact, that she gaped at him for a moment before she remembered that she was cross with him. No, not just cross—furious.

Her cheeks flamed. She seized a pillow from the settee and chucked it at him.

Her aim was poor and her projectile ineffective; what was more, Caleb was used to dodging bullets, not embroidered cushions. Of course, he evaded it easily.

It had, nevertheless, the intended effect, for he left the parlor. And Grace, left behind, tried to banish from her mind the way those blue eyes crinkled when he grinned.