Page 3 of About a Rogue
The duchess smiled, holding up the cat so they were face-to-face. “Never willing to be excluded, are you, my great beast?” She let him down and he curled up in her lap, lashing his tail across his face.
“Shall I put him out?” asked Pippa.
“No, no, let him be,” the duchess said, her fingers ruffling then smoothing the cat’s fur. “He is a comfort.”
Quietly Pippa took a chair beside her. She folded her hands in her lap and waited.
The duchess was grateful for that. Despite her youth, Pippa wasn’t one of those flighty modern girls, wild for dancing and flirting over cards with a beauty patch on her cheek. She was kind and sensible, with a tender, loyal heart. She had always been a sweet girl, from the first moment the duchess had seen her, on the day Jessica married Pippa’s father, Miles. Snug in his arms, young Pippa had gazed at her with big dark eyes and smiled, and the duchess had been instantly smitten.
“See, Mama,” Jessica had said with a luminous smile, smoothing the little girl’s hair. “I’ve got a husband and a daughter at one fell swoop!” Jessica had loved Pippa like her own, and the duchess had followed suit. The girl had grown up to be very like Jessica, and privately the duchess wished Pippahadbeen her granddaughter.
She sighed silently, sorrow flooding her again. She would never have grandchildren now. “Has Mrs. Humphries brought out the crepe?”
“Yes, ma’am. The maids are covering the mirrors.”
The duchess glanced at her, noting the color of her dress. “I see you’ve anticipated her.”
Pippa smoothed her hands over her black skirt. “Lord Stephen was always very kind to me, ma’am. It’s not right for him to be gone so young.”
“No,” murmured the duchess. Not right at all. “Edwards wanted to speak about the heir.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “So soon? Oh, madam, how inconsiderate!”
She flicked one hand, disturbing a meow from Percival. She resumed stroking his fur. “It’s not soon. I ought to have done it years ago, if I had not been so confident of Stephen...” She closed her eyes at the sudden memory of Stephen’s boyish laugh, his voice assuring her he knew his duty to Carlyle.Never fear, Mama, he’d promised when he came to tell her about his engagement to Miss Calvert.I shan’t let you down.
With an effort she wrenched her mind away. She was surrounded by ghosts today. “Now the likely candidates are grown men, most certainly set in their ways, and surely unequal to the responsibility before them.” She paused. “I have no intention of letting Carlyle descend to an ignorant fool. I may have no say in which of them inherits, but I can and will exercise all leverage at my command tomakethem worthy of the title. I have sent for them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Pippa after a startled pause.
“I would like your help,” continued the duchess. “They will be quick to grasp my role, and, I have no doubt, attempt to flatter and appease me. But you... you, they will not be so eager to please. You must be my eyes and ears for their true feelings and intentions.”
“Of course, ma’am. If you wish.”
The duchess turned to her, smiling ruefully. “I do rely on you so, Pippa.”
Pippa smiled back. “I shall do my best, Your Grace.”
“I know you will. That is why I depend so heavily upon you, poor girl.”
“Not poor at all! I’m pleased to be of some support to you.”
The duchess patted her hand. “You always have been, child.” She gazed out the window again in silence for several moments. “The most likely heir is a military officer. I have hopes for him,” she said at last. “Thin hopes, but there you are. Mr. Edwards reports that he is a respectable man, whatever that means in the army. But the other...” She clicked her tongue in displeasure. “A gambler! And only very distantly related. No, I have no good expectations of him.”
“They may surprise you, ma’am,” ventured Pippa.
“And they may not!” said the duchess tartly. “But either of them is preferable to a Frenchman, of all people. How my husband would turn in his grave, to think of Carlyle going to a Frenchman.” She brooded on that for a moment before rousing herself. “The gambler is most likely a hopeless case. Once a gamester, always a gamester. It’s like an infection in the blood. As for the Frenchman...” She sighed. “I shall hope he does not even exist, or at the very least refuses to be found. No, we must pray for the best, and that means we pin our hopes on Captain St. James.”
Chapter One
Maximilian St. James could see that his reputation had preceded him.
It was obvious in the face of the periwigged butler, stiff and disapproving as he ordered Max’s baggage conveyed to a guest room upon his arrival. He discerned it in the weary, jaundiced glance the solicitor gave him when they met, reminiscent of the tutors who had sized him up before trying, vainly, to instill in him some scraps of Greek and theology.
And he saw it mostly plainly in the face of the Duchess of Carlyle herself, who sat on her throne-like chair and fixed an unblinking, gimlet-eyed stare on him as if she expected him to slip pieces of the silver into his cuffs and steal them.
Well. Max was used to that. And he did not care.
After all, if the duchess didn’t want him here, she ought not to have sent a letter that strongly resembled a royal decree, imperiously demanding that he present himself at Carlyle Castle on this day, as if he were a servant or a dog to be summoned with a snap of her fingers.
