Page 21 of Denying a Rakish Duke
Why should she ever want such a thing? She needed to stick to her decision; the other night had been a mistake. A momentary lapse in sanity. Though, he did not look at Amanda in the same way that he had looked at her in the conservatory … that was a look she would remember for the rest of her days.
After dessert, Tobias stood proudly from the head of the table and toasted the room at large, “Thank you all for coming; I would like to invite each and every one of you into the ballroom for a specially prepared treat!”
Vanessa found the statement amusing considering that, despite it being his idea to have something to make this small event the talk of the morning gossip, he had lamented having people over to the Manor in the first place. Vanessa could remember when their doors were far more open and when their social calendars were endless. Not that she had been old enough to attend much of anything before father passed.
Uncle Tobias gestured for Petunia to join him by his side, and she grimaced but complied. Her hands clasped neatly in front of her as she affixed a polite smile onto her lips and waved the guests toward the ballroom.
Vanessa wondered if she would be able to excuse herself and steal away into the entryway and up the stairs to her chamber. She doubted that she would be much missed as everybody felt that she was just constantly in the way anyhow.
Vanessa walked slowly, taking her time to slip to the back of the grouping as best as she was able, only just behind the Widow Thompson who was gossiping loudly with the younger lady to her left. “I do not suppose that there is any way out of this? I fear that whatever the Earl finds entertaining is guaranteed to be a snore.” The woman to her left laughed.
“Though, I suppose if I can find my way toward the Duke, the evening might not be lost. I pity the young Farbridge girl if she is really fooled by the charming act that he is feigning. I should hope that she would not be quite so naive.”
They exchanged knowing looks, and Vanessa suppressed the urge to rip the woman’s hair from her head for speaking about her sister that way. She knew that Lady Thompson was not a kind woman; she always had a cruel opinion for every possible subject, but Amanda was above reproach. She had never done anything to harm anyone.
Vanessa’s teeth gritted together as the Lady Thompson started to weave her way through the straggling guests until she could place her hand on the Duke of Willow’s arm with a feather-light touch. He smiled brightly and leaned down to kiss the air on either side of her face, but Lady Thompson held tightly to his arm so that he could not pull away fully and whispered something else to the side of his face. Joseph’s lips parted in surprise before his smile turned into something darker.
The Dowager Duchess glared at her grandson from across the room, her eyes thin as slits as she silently dared him to leave the room, and she finally caught his attention for only a moment and jerked her head in the direction of the open ballroom doors … but he did not comply.
Vanessa’s mouth was dry. Perhaps she misinterpreted the situation, perhaps she was seeing the entire thing in a wholly incorrect light, and the widow merely needed assistance with something … or perhaps she was fully correct, and the Duke was even more deplorable than she had ever assumed.
She watched as the remaining guests entered into the ballroom to listen to Uncle Tobias reading passages from his favorite novel, but Vanessa could not follow. The widow and the Duke seemed wholly oblivious to her presence … even when they turned down a hallway, they were not invited to be in.
“Absolutely not,” Vanessa muttered to herself. She would be damned before she allowed such a rake to come into her family home as a guest and watch him disrespect her sister in front of her eyes. Before she could talk herself out of it, Vanessa started to follow them.
ChapterThirteen
“Where are you, you slimy cretin?” Vanessa asked the empty room around her. She was certain that this was the only space that they could have gotten to. The hallway that they had turned down only had three doors, and the other two were locked. This room had originally been furnished to serve as an office but had never actually been formally occupied. This was the only space that they could have snuck off to and used for their dalliance.
The whole room smelled a bit like lemons, perhaps from the hot toddies that father used to like to drink so much. He had filled this room with books and large bound rolls of parchment because he had thought that having a very formal working space would encourage him to be more business-minded, but he had continued to take all of his meetings outdoors instead. He liked to walk while he was making deals, no matter what they might be. He said that the physical activity kept his mind clear, and that sitting behind a desk tended to make him feel like a caged rat, stuck and stagnant. Vanessa had always thought that was a trait that she had in common with her father, something that she had inherited from him.
Perhaps it was why this room was never locked or sealed off. Uncle Tobias had once spoken about converting this into an office or a study for Thomas so that he would be able to do as he liked in his own space back when Uncle Tobias was attempting to make this Manor feel like it had always belonged to him. Thankfully, he had never gotten around to working on redecorating the room.
The door was still partially open when Vanessa entered it, her hands on her narrow hips as she spread around in a half-circle. It was foolish to think that they would simply fall out of the carved woodwork, just as she did not have any sort of plan as to how she would have confronted them if they had been doing … whatever it was that they had snuck off to do. She should be relieved.
If she had walked in on them in a compromising situation, she would be forced to do something about it. She would have to act and alert everybody that she could. It certainly would be one way to claim him ineligible as a suitor for her sister. Amanda was the definition of modest and chaste, and a scandal like this would be something that Petunia would not be able to overlook.
Vanessa pushed the heels of her hands into her forehead with a sigh. “Well done you; now you have to sneak off into the office with your tail between your legs … very good Vanessa,” she lamented to herself and started back toward the door. She could only imagine the look that her mother would give her when she suddenly showed up at the tail end of the reading and drew even more unwanted attention to herself.
A thump from nearby stopped her. Her heart leaped to her throat at the possible threat of discovery. Anxiously, Vanessa glanced around the room for anything that she might be able to take cover behind. Now that the moment was upon her, she decided that she could not stomach seeing whatever was about to come through that door. At best, it would be her Mama to scold her further for being rude but at worst it would be Joseph with his lips on another woman.
The room divider was pushed up against a bookshelf near the door, folded in on itself. The chairs were far too small to hide even her small stature, and there was nothing else … save for the desk. “Drat,” she swore and bundled her skirts up in her arms hastily and ran for the desk. There was nowhere else that she could go, and she could not allow them to see her.
Vanessa fell to the floor, her shins pressed against one side of the cubby while her neck was forced to remain at a strange angle. Sweat beaded across her forehead from her nerves as she frantically scrambled to collect all of the bulk of fabric into her arms as her legs folded carefully up into the small space. She scrunched her eyes shut as if somehow by some miracle, they would not see her if she did not see them.
Lady Thompson was the first one in the room; Vanessa could hear the rustle of her bulky skirts and the high-pitched, obnoxiously fake laughter that she forced in response to whatever the Duke had said in the hall.
The nerve of him, making some other woman laugh in private while Amanda was just in the other room. Was her dear sister looking for him? Was she wondering where he had gone off to? Had anybody other than Vanessa even noticed that they were missing?
Vanessa hated that he might court Amanda, but the fact that he was abusing the opportunity vexed her even further. He should be sitting downstairs with Amanda, whispering silly comments about the quality of Tobias’ reading or the passage that he chose. They should be getting to know one another if Joseph had been actually planning on courting her.
How foolish she had been for allowing his nice-gentleman act at dinner to make her doubt herself. She had always known that he was a liar.
“Had I known that you were going to be in attendance this evening, Your Grace, I would have worn green, I know how much you liked to see me in green.” Isadora Thompson teased. Vanessa could practically feel the widow running a knobby finger down the Duke’s chest.
Following the death of her husband Humberto, she had enjoyed a chunk of the limelight and decided that she liked it. She liked those who sought to woo and bed her for a piece of her late husband’s massive fortune— a fortune which she had been rather liberal with over the years since. She wore the latest fashions and bought herself anything that had a high price tag for the simple fact that it was expensive and therefore must inherently be the best. She had allowed many men under her now very loose skirts while regaling them with stories of her golden years when she had been the most sought-after lady in all of theton.
“Though, I think I also recall howfondyou were of seeing meoutof my green dresses as well!”
