Page 2 of My Own True Duchess
Jonathan extricated himself from her grasp. “You are making a very great mistake.”
A door opened, and fury gripped Jonathan. He would not be dragged to the altar, would not be forced to wed a stranger, would not be forced to conceive children with her, even if the presuming little baggage turned out to be Wellington’s long-lost daughter.
“Mr. Tresham, has the supper waltz come around already?”
A brunette stood in the doorway to the study, a brandy glass in her hand. She looked to be about Jonathan’s age—approaching thirty—and she exuded a subtle, worldly amusement.
“Madam,” Jonathan said, bowing, though he’d never seen this woman before. “I was unavoidably detained by another lady’s mistaken ambitions. The young miss and I have not been introduced.”
The woman in the doorway took a sip of her drink. “Naughty, naughty, Dora Louise. Run along before I tell your mama what you’re about. She would disapprove of such a desperate scheme, and you would end up back in Dorset for at least the next two years.”
Dora Louise stamped her foot, making her ringlets writhe. “Mama would never chastise me for wedding a ducal heir! Nobody would!”
“I would,” Jonathan said. “You’d be miserable married to me, and no amount of consequence or jewels is worth being unhappy for the rest of your life. You’ve had a timely rescue, I assure you.”
As have I.
Dora Louise turned a quivering chin on him, and he had the damnedest, most abominable urge to pat her shoulder and pass her his handkerchief. Jonathan laid that absurd impulse at Lady Della Haddonfield’s feet.
“Dora Louise,” the lady with the brandy said, “you’d best not be missing when the introduction begins for the supper waltz. Be off with you. I understand your ambition, but Mr. Tresham is right. You deserve a spouse who finds you irresistible, not a fellow who objects to the whole undertaking.”
Dora’s gaze slewed from the lady to Jonathan, then she picked up her skirts and quit the library amid a righteous swish of embroidered hems.
“If that is not the definition of to flounce, I don’t know what is,” the woman said, leaving the doorway to pass Jonathan the brandy. “For your nerves, Mr. Tresham.” She’d dropped the air of sophisticated amusement and become a disgruntled governess.
“My thanks,” he replied, “for your intervention and for the medicinal brandy. Jonathan Tresham, at your service.”
She inspected him, her gaze traveling from his dancing slippers, up his legs, then taking in his evening coat, pausing at his cravat—a simple mathematical anchored with a small gold and sapphire stickpin. Her expression said she was critical of whatever she saw, rather than pleased or impressed.
Smart woman.
“Did you mean what you said, sir?”
What had he said? “Might we repair somewhere less likely to attract the notice of an aspiring duchess?”
The woman returned to the study. She moved like a governess as well. No mincing or swishing, but rather, an economical stride intended to cover ground. She was attired fashionably in deep blue velvet rather than virginal white, and her dark hair was done up in a smooth twist. A single strand of pearls wound about her chignon, and that simple adornment held Jonathan’s attention more effectively than all of Dora Louise’s curls and nightingales put together.
Jonathan joined his rescuer in the smaller room and closed the door behind them. The study had its own entrance to a corridor, though few guests would know how to locate the side passage.
“You have closeted yourself alone with a female of marriageable age,” the lady said. “Should I be insulted or flattered?”
In other words, was Jonathan immune to her charms or interested in them? “Neither. I accord you the good faith I’d attribute to any generous Samaritan. Would you like to finish your brandy?” He passed her the glass and poured a fresh portion for himself.
“It’s too good to waste,” the lady said. “I am Mrs. Theodosia Haviland.”
The brandy was an appropriate tonic for the aftershocks of alarm running through Jonathan. He could even now be at the center of a domestic drama involving a weeping Dora Louise and her indignant papa, with Lord Bellefonte and his countess in the role of judge and jury.
“May I have a seat?” Jonathan asked as the quartet launched into a lively introduction.
“Of course.” Mrs. Haviland took the chair behind Bellefonte’s desk, which left Jonathan a wing chair near the fire.
“Are you often accosted by ambitious debutantes?” she asked.
“Dora Louise is the boldest of the lot thus far, but the Season is only half over. I’ve been kissed twice without my consent, my dance partners are prone to tripping straight into my manly embrace, and any number of fathers have approached me, singing the praises of their ‘little fillies,’ as if Tatts were having a mare’s auction on Tuesday next. I’m told the ladies grow even more determined as the end of the Season approaches.”
Why hadn’t he seen this coming? Why hadn’t he prepared himself to be the quarry in a hunt where the hounds wore muslin and the hunt staff stood smiling on the edge of the dance floor?
A soft tap sounded on the door to the corridor, and Jonathan nearly spilled his brandy. Rescued from one ambush only to be laid low by another?
