To Pleasure A Duke (The Husband Hunters Club #3)

Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“A re you sure Annabelle has eloped? I thought she had more sense than to act so impulsively, Sinclair. Wasn’t she marrying that Salturn chap? Worth a mint.”

Lord Ridley, Sinclair’s maternal uncle, was fifty and a bachelor. Sinclair’s mother always said he was far too selfish to think of settling down and giving up his freedom. He’d been injured in the Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars and walked with a limp, but other than that he was in good health, and the injury gave him a certain cache among the ladies.

“She’s young,” Sinclair answered now, “and the man she’s run off with is very persuasive.”

“Ah yes. Miss Belmont’s brother.” Lord Ridley smiled, more inclined to be amused than shocked by the revelation that his nephew was traveling with the sister of the villain of the piece.

“I assure you she is very different from him,” Sinclair said stiffly.

“Of course, of course,” Lord Ridley agreed, but there was a twinkle in his eye Sinclair found slightly offensive. “Tell me again how a slip of a girl managed to persuade you to carry her off into the night?”

Sinclair’s mood had plummeted since they left the woods and traveled in the coach Robert had provided for them to Framlingbury. It was truly the worst contraption he had ever been in. There were so many things wrong with it he ran out of fingers to count them, and when he began yet another rant, Eugenie had turned to him with sparkling eyes and said, “Enough! It is not nearly so bad as you make out.”

“How can you say that?” he’d retorted. “It is so ancient it must have been built for Elizabeth Tudor, and I’m willing to bet it hasn’t been resprung since.”

Georgie, who was riding up on top with Robert—who seemed to have become his new hero, another reason for Sinclair to feel out of sorts—laughed loudly at something the coachman said. Robert cracked his whip and the coach began to jolt alarmingly as their pace increased. The coachman was showing off, Sinclair was certain of it, and in a moment they would be smashed to pieces in a ditch.

He reached up and pounded his fist angrily on the wall. “Slow down, you damn fool!” he roared.

Eugenie leaned toward him. “Stop it. You are behaving like a spoiled child.”

“Like Georgie you mean? He is certainly spoiled. He robs me, holds me to ransom, and now he’s treated like a prince.”

“You know he had no choice. You said so yourself.”

The coach went around a corner, rocking so violently Eugenie clutched the strap with both hands, her face blanching.

“Not too fast for you?” Sinclair mocked her with a savage smile.

“M-maybe just a—a little,” she agreed.

He thumped his fist on the wall again, roaring at his coachman. There was a sharp crack and the wooden paneling under his hand broke off, leaving a gap between the inside of the coach and the cold air outside. He could see the folds of Robert’s coat and then Georgie’s face appeared in the gap, cheeks pink, eyes shining, grinning at them.

“You’ve broken it, Duke,” he said.

“Slow down, will you,” Sinclair ordered through gritted teeth.

“Robert was just showing me how fast we can go. If we ever needed to outrun highwaymen.”

“I’m glad we’ve got that sorted. Now slow down.”

Georgie sighed, as if Sinclair had spoiled his fun, and his face disappeared. But at least the coach had begun to slow to a more reasonable pace.

“When we reach Framlingbury I am going to make a bonfire of this pile of rubbish,” Sinclair announced. “And I will probably dance around it.”

Eugenie wasn’t amused. “This is exactly like the Belmont coach. In fact it is probably nicer. Just because you have always had the very best does not give you the right to whine when you are forced to make do. It shows a distinct lack of character, Sinclair.”

Whine! He had never whined in his life. But her words gave him pause. Was he such a snob? He hadn’t thought so but perhaps he was a little bit spoiled by everything always being exactly as he wanted it. He remembered seeing the Belmont coach but apart from noting it was rather shabby he hadn’t given it much thought. He hadn’t had to ride in it, of course—if he had then things might have been different. Would he have complained? Probably. Eugenie was right, he was used to the best, but that was hardly his fault, was it?

“Am I supposed to go about in rags just to show my compassion for others less fortunate?” he asked gruffly. “I can’t help being a duke. That’s what I am.”

Her mouth twitched, as if she might be about to smile. “I know that’s what you are, but you could spare a thought now and again for those of us who aren’t dukes and are never likely to be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.

“Apology accepted.”

A silence fell and it remained for most of the journey. The pleasures and terrors of the woods now seemed a long way behind them, even if they were not forgotten. Not by Sinclair, anyway.

“She sounds very like your mother.” Lord Ridley’s voice interrupted his memories and brought him back to the comforts of Framlingbury.

“Eugenie?”

His uncle raised his eyebrows. “Lord, no! I meant Annabelle. She sounds very like your mother when she was that age. Did you know she rebelled against marrying your father?”

Sinclair felt uncomfortable, remembering his mother’s anger and her tears after Annabelle ran off, and her confidences when she feared he might be going to make his own misalliance.

“Our father had more or less run through the family fortune. I was supposed to find an heiress but there never seemed to be one about when I wanted one. Thing is I always went for the disreputable sort of girl, just like our father. He was a Bohemian, Sinclair, which is why your mother is so down on them. He was only a gentleman by name; at heart he was a ruffian and didn’t care who knew it. Anyway, the time came when we were about to be evicted from Framlingbury and the family clubbed together and told your mother she had to marry your father, the duke. He was the only one who’d come up to the mark at that point, though there was another chap she was keen on. Handsome and penniless, that sort of thing, no good at all in the circumstances.”

“I didn’t realize,” Sinclair said quietly. “Poor mother.”

“Yes, well,” his uncle looked uncomfortable, “she didn’t like being forced into marriage. Your father was a lot older than her, very staid in his ways, but he was a duke, damn it. There was no other solution to our problems and your mother knew it.”

“So she was the sacrificial lamb.”

“I suppose she was. The experience made her bitter, though, Sinclair. She never forgave us, and especially not our father. If he hadn’t spent all his money on his own pleasures, running with the Bohemian set, she might have married for love. You know she still has a horror of such things? Well, of course you do. Remember the way she went after you when you took to painting your ladies?”

“I remember.”

“You don’t know the half of it, though. She came up here, so cross there was no reasoning with her. I tried to explain you were nothing like our father but she wouldn’t have it. And it was my fault, of course, for leading you astray.” He shook his head. “She had changed, Sinclair, and not for the better. We might have saved Framlingbury but I lost my sister.”

It was horrible to think his mother could lose all warmth and humanity, could turn from being as warmhearted and reckless as Annabelle into a woman who no longer cared for anything but appearances. But at least Sinclair could understand why she was as she was, even if he didn’t agree with her.

“I like your lady friend.”

Lord Ridley’s words reminded him that as long as he had Eugenie he would never turn into ice, like his mother. But he shook his head rather regretfully.

“She’s not my lady friend. Not that I haven’t tried. But she informs me she will be no man’s mistress. She values herself far too highly.”

“Hmm. I like the sound of that. A woman like that should be treasured and pampered and thoroughly loved.”

“That’s as may be, uncle,” he said bitterly, “but the Belmonts are rather low on the social scale.”

Lord Ridley eyed him curiously. “Good God, Sinclair, are you thinking of marrying her? Your mother really would throw a pink fit.” He paused, stroking his chin. “Might be worth seeing.”

“Uncle, I hardly think this is any of your business—”

Lord Ridley waved a hand. “You’re very touchy on the subject. Is she really so very ineligible? Her manners and deportment are ladylike. Indeed she could pass for an aristocrat, if she wished.”

Why was it that one’s relations thought they had the right to discuss personal matters with one? Sinclair thought irritably.

“If you must know then yes! She is completely ineligible. Her father is a baronet but he is penniless and sells horses at the local horse fair. Her mother seems to be permanently locked in her bedchamber with hysterics and she has four brothers . . . Well, one of them is acceptable. One of them has eloped with my sister. The other two are the devil’s twins.”

“No relatives who can be called upon to raise the tone?”

“Her aunt is married to a soap manufacturer.”

“Oh dear, it gets worse.” He eyed Sinclair sympathetically.

“And her great-grandmother was a chambermaid at the palace who became a mistress of George the Second.”

Lord Ridley laughed. “Capital!” he said. “You genuinely admire this girl, don’t you?”

The St. Johns weren’t a close family, but his maternal uncle had always been fond of him and Sinclair had reciprocated the feeling. When he was young Lord Ridley was the only one he felt he could open his heart to, and he had done so, much to his mother’s anger. It was true, his uncle had encouraged him in his artistic talents, advising him to follow his heart and be damned to the rest. It had been good advice, although at that age Sinclair hadn’t been strong enough to defy his mother and follow it.

“Perhaps I may be able to help,” Lord Ridley said. “I know a bit about females, you know. I’m in the market for a wife myself.”

Sinclair swallowed his spleen and gave a sickly smile. “You’ve been in the market for a wife for twenty years, uncle.”

Lord Ridley looked surprised, and then he laughed. “So I have, so I have. Well, take warning from that. You don’t want to still be a bachelor at my age.”

Sinclair couldn’t be bothered arguing. His uncle might play at matchmaker but he was afraid of his sister, the dowager duchess. He wouldn’t do anything to bring her raging down upon him. Lord Ridley enjoyed the quiet life.

* * *

Framlingbury was small by Somerton’s standards but Eugenie found the golden stone and airy rooms far more pleasant than Somerton’s stilted glory. This was a house one could live in, where one could be one’s self. She doubted the same could be said for the duke’s residence, where everything was designed for show, to display the grandeur of the St. John family and remind one of their importance and, in the Belmont’s case, one’s own inferiority.

How could anyone be happy living in a house like that? Certainly not warmhearted Eugenie. Not that she’d ever have the chance! She’d long ago come to accept that.

Lord Ridley, too, was a great deal less stiff and proud than his sister and nephew. Unlike the dowager duchess’s rude stare, he had greeted Eugenie amiably. He’d asked her polite questions and then listened intently to her answers, genuinely interested in what she had to say. He had an easy way of laughing, too, and there was a certain gleam to his eye she found rather flattering. Although it left her wondering why middle-aged men like Lord Ridley and Major Banks found her so enticing while younger men wanted to be her friends.

Apart from Sinclair, of course.

She smiled to herself and lifted her face to the sun. The weather had returned to some semblance of summer since they’d arrived, as if the incident in the woods had never been. That was how she thought of it now. “The incident.” Although in her dreams she went over every word, every touch, every glorious moment, until her body was flushed and feverish and she longed for Sinclair to burst into her bedchamber and claim her.

She was fairly sure he wouldn’t. He was too much the duke for that, too steeped in proper manners and proper ways of behavior. And of course that was what had drawn her to him in the first place, she reminded herself. He was so much more respectable than her own family. Was it wrong of her to wish that he would behave with just a little less propriety?

When they had begun to play their game of dares he’d been quite reckless, deliciously so, but she’d never felt as if she might be hurt by him, at least not intentionally. He made her feel safe. She knew that was something she’d been lacking all her life, that sense of stability and security. At Belmont Hall anything could happen and frequently did.

Now they were here at Framlingbury, it seemed that Sinclair had turned back into the cold and arrogant duke he’d been before. Eugenie felt as if he was growing far too distant, far too lofty for her. Oh yes, he’d changed. But had he done so on purpose? Was he withdrawing himself from her, hiding behind an icy wall of privilege?

If only . . . But she stopped that thought before it could form. It was no use wishing for what could never be. She was here to save Terry and bring him home. Anything else was unimportant.

* * *

Lord Ridley sent out spies to try to discover which way Annabelle and Terry had gone, but as yet there had been no word. The northern highways were empty of anyone resembling the couple and their chaperone, so they must have taken a lesser route. Eugenie hoped Terry knew what he was doing, that whatever the outcome he might be happy living with his decision.

Meanwhile Robert and Georgie had become quite a team, and Robert had asked Eugenie’s opinion on whether it would be possible for him and his wife to take on the boy. They had no children of their own and they’d always longed for one.

“He can be a little rascal, miss, but I don’t mind that. I can steer him in the right direction, just like I did the duke, many years ago.”

Eugenie had looked at him in surprise. “Have you known the duke that long, Robert?”

“Yes, miss, since he was a little nipper.”

“I always think of him as the perfectly behaved child.”

Robert had eyed her cautiously. “Well . . . I can say he weren’t no angel, miss. They sent him off to school and he hated that, but I suppose every boy in his high position has to bear the bad with the good. Then he got that painting lark into his head . . .”

“What painting lark?”

Again Robert considered his words. “I could be speaking out of turn here, miss.”

“I promise I won’t repeat anything you say, Robert.”

He nodded, accepting her at her word. “He wanted to be an artist, miss. A painter. You can imagine how well that went down with the duchess, as she was then. If he’d gambled his inheritance away on the cards they would have been upset, but at least that was what gentlemen do. Artists, according to the duchess, are Bohemians, not respectable at all. She made sure the tutor who’d encouraged him was sent packing and Sinclair was told to pack up his paints and never put brush to canvas again, unless he wanted to be disowned.”

Eugenie felt herself trembling with righteous anger on Sinclair’s behalf.

Robert saw her feelings clearly enough and tried to sooth them. “He recovered,” he assured her. “Went on to find other hobbies, more fitting for a gentleman.”

“Well, they have certainly done a good job of turning him into the perfect duke,” she said. “More’s the shame.”

Robert’s eyes sparkled. “Don’t you believe it, miss. He still has his days . . . and nights, when he’s off painting away. No one to stop him now, see. He hasn’t changed that much, not underneath.”

Sinclair the Bohemian? Eugenie tried to imagine what sort of pictures he’d painted. They must have been risqué if they caused such consternation in his family. Perhaps, if she asked him nicely, he would paint her?

She thought she’d like that.

She’d like it very much.