Page 11 of A Duke to Undo her
Josephine had managed to avoid direct conversation with Cassius Emerton in the drawing room before dinner, mainly due to Benedict’s own intervention in joining her relatives and then steering them firmly away from his own family. The only distant impression gained of Dowager Duchess Nerissa was that she was close to fifty, had a pleasant voice, and physically resembled Benedict, especially in her faded blonde and silver hair.
The younger Emerton brother seemed actively disinclined to converse with his brother tonight. Despite this, or maybe because of it, the duke watched him like a hawk.
“Lady Josephine,” the Duke of Ashbourne acknowledged her once he was seated, inclining his head with a small but civil bow, his deep blue eyes far too interested for her liking.
“Your Grace,” she murmured, trying to keep her face blank as she returned his polite nod, a sincere smile being presently too much to feign.
Josephine felt that the duke was always deliberately watching and waiting for her to make a mistake so that he could find fault of some sort. No wonder she felt so nervous around him. She noticed smugly that his hair was already escaping the confines of any style that a comb had earlier imposed.
Men really ought not to judge others’ neatness so harshly when they struggled with their own…
“Unfortunately, my brother is a good friend of Philip Kemp too, and determined to sit near me,” Benedict Emerton whispered in her ear as she passed judgment on his brother’s appearance. “Never mind, hopefully we can just ignore Cassius. The lady on his right, the Marchioness of Hellington, could talk for England, although I doubt England would wish to listen.”
Again they broke into shared giggles of laughter, despite Josephine’s best resolutions to be calm and dignified tonight.
“Is something funny?” demanded Cassius at once, drawing the attention of Lady Hellington too.
“Nothing important,” Benedict answered airily.
“Oh, do share the joke with the table,” trilled Lady Hellington. “I so enjoy good humor. My late husband, well, my second late husband, always said that no one appreciated good humor as well as I did, may God bless his soul.”
Josephine’s cheeks burned guiltily as the Duke of Ashbourne continued to regard them expectantly. In her old-fashioned dress and grey-wig, Lady Hellington seemed the picture of a good-natured, if garrulous, lady of late middle-age. They could not possibly admit Benedict’s unkind comments about her and Josephine felt ashamed of laughing. Maybe they had both been too thoughtless and disrespectful.
“Yes, do share, Benedict. Or perhaps you would like to explain, Lady Josephine?” Cassius Emerton pressed pointedly. “An example of your usual wit, perhaps?”
From the duke’s accusing expression as he spoke, Josephine gathered that he rightly assumed that their laughter had been over something inappropriate. Worse, and wrongly, he assumed that it had been Josephine’s doing. Thankfully, Benedict Emerton came to the rescue.
“I have been telling Lady Josephine how very pleased I am to be sitting beside such an amiable and vivacious companion, Lady Hellington. I spend so much time in the company of my worthy and dutiful brother that such pleasant and light conversation as Lady Josephine’s is a relief. Truly, women’s worth is more precious than rubies, as the Bible tells us.”
“Why, you have quite the silver tongue, Mr. Emerton,” chortled Lady Hellington. “You are almost as charming as my first late husband, may he lie easy in his grave. Be careful around such an eloquent and handsome young gentleman, Lady Josephine. Why, I had no intention whatsoever of marrying my first husband when he came to propose, but after ten minutes of conversation, our wedding date was set…”
“Virtuous women,” muttered Cassius Emerton as Lady Hellington continued to tell the story of her first marriage.
Had he meant Josephine to hear that or had he been speaking to himself? She looked quizzically at the duke, instantly distractedfrom Lady Hellington’s story, to which Benedict was still listening attentively.
“Virtuous women?” she repeated, frowning. “What of them, Your Grace?”
“I was clarifying my brother’s Bible quotation. It is the worth of virtuous women which is more precious than rubies, not women in general.”
At this statement, Josephine had to bite her tongue in order to hold back her natural reaction. Was the duke actually slighting her virtue? How dare he! Josephine might not be the most conventional young lady in London but that was going too far. Or was she misinterpreting an innocent, if ill-considered, remark? With an effort she tried to imagine what Madeline might say.
“How well you remember your Bible study,” she responded politely, although not entirely succeeding in keeping the sarcasm from her voice. “Your mother must be very proud. How fortunate we are that you are here to remind us of the importance of virtue in the fairer sex.”
Cassius Emerton looked hard at her with those penetrating blue eyes and Josephine shivered inwardly but declined to look away, refusing to be cowed. She suspected that if they had not been at the table, he might have thrown back some further jibe or cutting remark. The duke certainly looked as though he was restraining himself as much as Josephine. What a truly impossible man!
“Cassius,” said the sweet-tempered but persistent voice of the Dowager Duchess of Ashbourne, Josephine vaguely realizing that his mother had been trying unsuccessfully to get his attention for some seconds. “Cassius?”
Finally, the duke broke from Josephine’s gaze and turned to Nerissa Emerton. While pleased that he had been the one who looked away first, Josephine felt peculiarly hot and breathless after their subtle battle of wills. Benedict was still engaged in conversation with Lady Hellington and had thankfully noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yes, Mother?” said the Duke of Ashbourne to the fair-haired lady in lavender silk who was addressing him from a little further along the table.
“Have you met Miss Peckford yet, Cassius? Margaret is coming to stay with our neighbors for a week after the Season. I’ve said that she must call on us at Ashbourne Castle while she is in the county.”
“By all means, Miss Peckford would be most welcome,” Cassius Emerton told his mother with a polite but distracted nod towards Margaret Peckford who was sitting across the table from the dowager duchess. “You must arrange matters as you see fit, Mother.”
Josephine glanced sideways at Miss Peckford, a thin, too-pale creature with large brown eyes and a silver crucifix at her throat. Her shy remark to the duke was inaudible, her voice being even quieter than that of Lady Rose. It seemed that Cassius Emertondidn’t hear her either as he turned away without paying any further attention to the young lady.
Instead, his deep-blue eyes met Josephine’s once more, and again she experienced the strong urge to tell the Duke of Ashbourne exactly what she thought of him, the result of which would undoubtedly infuriate him.
