Page 2 of Secrets of a Duke's Heart
Clarissa glanced down at her dress. “I need a moment to make myself presentable.”
“There is no time!” Monty roared. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“I don’t think it would be wise for me to go anywhere with a drunken bully, sir.”
He gaped at her. Clarissa smiled sunnily. Her cousin’s low chuckle prompted their visitor’s scowl to deepen.
“I am not soused,” he declared sullenly.
“I shall only be a moment, Thaniel,” she said, ignoring him and addressing her cousin by a nickname from childhood.
“Whenever a woman says ‘a moment’ she means an hour,” Mr. Monty grumbled.
“Not Clarissa,” her cousin said. “She doesn’t have a vain bone in her body.”
She did not take this as entirely a compliment.
* * *
Lord Jude Walsingham,the seventh Duke of Montague, huffed as that insolent mouse scurried off to change her dress. The amber liquid in his glass sloshed like a miniature sea ravaged by a storm. His hand shook, as did the associated arm. He was a furious and frightened ball of nerves, and he hated it.
“Drink up, old friend. I wasn’t joking when I said Clarissa would be quick.”
Jude scoffed. “She cannot know who I am or why I came here.”
“The secrets of the Wayward Dukes are safe with me. Without the Duke and Duchess of Cranbrook’s intervention, I might not have succeeded in my suit to reclaim the Prescott viscountcy.”
“Did your nefarious double get what he deserved?”
During the Wars, Thaniel—then a mere commoner—had been taken captive by Napoleon’s troops. A younger son, he’d been keen to join the army and had quickly risen through the ranks as a charismatic leader, but eventually his regiment was defeated and taken captive. During his imprisonment, a stranger bearing a strong resemblance to him had claimed the Prescott viscountcy after his older brother’s untimely demise in a carriage accident.
Nathaniel was Eleanor St. Giles, the Duchess of Cranbrook’s, great-grandnephew. She had rallied the Dukes to help free him from a foreign prison and evict the impostor—but not before he had nearly bankrupted the Prescott estate.
Jude had been too consumed with finding his own footing as a duke and covering up his younger sister’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy to be involved in the war, or the fallout from these events. The Montague name was to be cherished and protected at all costs. But he owed Nathaniel the news he had been sent to deliver, and Harriet’s wedding had proved to be a convenient cover to visit his friend in Cornwall—until she was kidnapped while he’d stopped to ask directions at a tavern in town.
He still couldn’t fathom it. Imagining the horrors his dear little Harriet might be enduring right now made his blood boil.
“He did,” the viscount said with satisfaction. “Transported to Australia. We will never see hide nor hair of him again.” He sobered abruptly. “Which is precisely the fate your niece’s kidnapper deserves. Clarissa can help.”
True to her word, the lady was back in record time. She had exchanged her sack-like pink dress that did nothing to flatter her appearance for a cream linen sprigged one. Pale green stripes marched down the skirt, elongating her curves and drawing attention to her elegant throat. The matching emerald spencer brought out the green flecks in her otherwise brown eyes. She was prettier than he’d thought at first glance.
“Charming,” he grunted. “Where are we going?”
She tucked her hands into her elbows—an unmistakable defensive posture—and started toward the door. “We are going to visit the owner of a cottage that used to be part of the Prescott estate. I have heard mention that the new occupant, Mr. Thomas Davies, was involved in smuggling.”
“Don’t you need a chaperone?”
“No one cares what Clarissa does with herself. She is a spinster and firmly on the shelf,” the viscount said bluntly. “Besides, you’re hardly leaving the property. No one will notice.”
A shadow flitted over the lady’s features. She smoothed her expression into one of placid pleasantry when she realized he was looking at her. Jude followed her outside. “That was a rude thing to say,” he mused.
“It’s true,” she shrugged. “I will be twenty-nine next month. I have been sent here to molder in the countryside lest my failure to land a husband blemish my younger sisters’ efforts this Season. I assure you I have no matrimonial designs upon you or anyone else, but if you need protection from an unwed lady, I can request a maid to chaperone us, Mr. Monty.”
She didn’t know he was a duke. He intended to keep it that way.
Dusk gathered on the horizon. As they strode briskly to the rear of the house and down the hillside, angry clouds hung low over the bay. Lightning flashed within the roiling gray mass. He found a measure of solace that nature matched his mood.
“The only thing I am liable to need protection from is the rain.” He sneezed. She set a brisk pace. The countryside here made his eyes water and his nose itch. He missed Acton Heath, his estate in the north. But he had a duty to fulfill and he could not return home until he had delivered Harriet to her intended husband.
