Page 48 of The Matchmaker Meets her Duke
"We're going hunting with the Duke of Melbourne this evening," said Ashton, as if Emmett needed even more activities added to his plate to handle.
He huffed a breath. "Yes, how could I ever forget? And remind me again whyyouaccepted this invitation onmybehalf?"
"Because the word is his daughter the Lady Cecily is a goddess to behold, and she's just returned from France."
"Of course, she has," Emmett muttered. He was no longer interested in chasing beautiful women in skirts as he and Ashton did in the past, not when he had the most beautiful woman tucked away at Willcrow Manor, awaiting his return. Not when he was doing this for her. Going this far for her.
The coach came to a stop, and Emmett descended. He lifted his hand to his face, shielding his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun. Together they went in, and Emmett inspected.
It was a fine job so far. But he didn't just want the mirrors to sparkle and the floors polished, he wanted total refurbishment. The ceilings were repainted, decorative ironwork was added to the entrance porches, the balcony was enlarged. He wanted more. He wanted bigger and better.
They found themselves in the middle of a naked ballroom, squeezing between one or two servants with rags and construction workers with their hats and ladders and buckets laden with water.
"When do you plan to bring her here?"
"Hopefully before the next time she pesters me about her parties."
Ashton chuckled at that. Absentmindedly he added, "They really mean that much to her, hm."
They did. Even more than her gossip column where she bashed the most scalawag of rakes. And Emmett might tease her about it and might have forbidden it in the beginning, but he was not blind to her feelings and passion, and over time he was beginning to respect them. So much so that he was renovating Someries Manor to gift to her. To host her matchmaking parties. To do whatever that she pleased with it.
"We should get on," he said to Ashton, turning his back on the ballroom, heading for the coach. It was a long day ahead. And he had a wife to return home to.
ChapterTwenty-One
Think, Pandora, think,she urged herself. She could only imagine the look on Edward's face as he waited and waited and finally realized he was left to himself to host alone and entertain her guests. Poor Edward. He would not let her hear the end of it.
Pandora peered at the mantle clock in the Duchess of Kingsbury’s drawing room for the hundredth time in the last hour. If she faked a heart attack and slumped to the floor, would they believe it and let her go?
Beside her, Emmett's grandmother tapped her cane impatiently. The housekeeper made her way around the room, serving tea and strawberry lemon biscuits. Pandora liked strawberry lemon biscuits. But when she put them in her mouth, they tasted like ash. She forced herself to swallow. She supposed eating while incredibly laden with anxiety was not the best time to eat. She was a bundle of jittery nerves, and she almost jumped out of her chair as the Dowager lightly smacked her thigh with a cane.
"Are you even listening to me, Pandora?" she said in a huff of irritated breath.
"Of course, Your Grace."
Emmett's grandmother didn't for one moment look like she believed her. "I was just telling Rose of the Duchess' daughter who was seduced by an industrialist's son and ran off with him to America." She shivered onindustrialistas if the mere mention of the word was too much to bear. She scrunched her nose imperiously. "Of course, he's dead and she's returned here – and to her senses. But America corrupts, everybody knows that."
"Then why have we honored their invitation, Grandmother?" Rose's tone was more amused than curious as to if she already had an idea what her grandmother's response would be. Perhaps she did.
Pandora had to admire the ease between the two women, linked by blood, strengthened by an understanding free of ill intentions and conflict. She wanted that with Rose too. Why wouldn't Rose just have that with her?
"To see the corruption for myself, of course," the Dowager answered promptly. "A woman's skin fails to hide such things as corruption, it really does." She made a gesture to her own face wrinkled by age as if to further prove her point.
Rose nodded sagely, but Pandora knew she was trying hard to keep from smiling. Her grandmother would not be pleased that they found amusement in her words of conviction. And Rose looked better now too. The purple bags that had once encircled her eyes had all but faded, and there was a new lightness in her steps as if that night at the ball had never happened. As if she had too many bright things to look forward to. Maybe she had.
Pandora turned to the mantelpiece clock again, and her mind trailed back to Edward. How long would he wait for her? But at that moment the Duchess' butler announced her presence, and in strutted the thin, stiff-boned woman. She was elegantly dressed in a chartreuse gown, her lightly powdered hair dangling below her neck like coiling worms.
She took her place beside the Dowager. "Forgive my lateness, Your Grace. I had to answer to a letter as a matter of emergency."
"Oh, it's fine." The Dowager's face crumpled in a smile, as if she hadn't been tapping her cane impatiently and speaking of the woman'sseducedandcorrupteddaughter bare minutes ago. "One can only imagine how many letters you've had to write back as a matter of emergency since Amelia ran off with that boy, hm."
The Duchess smiled tightly and sipped her tea, and made a dramatic show of looking around the drawing room. "Oh," she said. Her tone had assumed an air of feigned surprise. "I assumed her Ladyship would have joined us by now."
Emmett's grandmother's eyebrows lowered in a suspicious glare. "Who now?"
Just then, the butler rapped at the door and announced, "Her Grace, Lady Brexley, Dowager Viscountess of Riverton."
Ashton's grandmother swooped in, her fan studded with little diamonds whipping in her face, the hem of her burnished yellow gown catching the glint of the sunlight from the windows. Pandora had to admit that the Dowager Viscountess and Emmett's grandmother's long-time rival were strong-looking and radiant, especially for a woman of old age. But she felt Emmett's grandmother stiffen beside her, and she stifled a frustrated groan.
