The Very Daring Duchess Part 1

The Very Daring d.u.c.h.ess.

Miranda Jarrett.

For Susan of the South (relatively speaking, anyway).

A first-rate friend, art historian, and commiserator.

This one had to be for you, didn't it?

Prologue.

Winterworth Hall, Suss.e.x 1778.

"Bad news always comes in hired chaises," said Edward Lord Ramsden glumly as he peered through the boxwood to the drive where the plain black chaise was waiting, there before the front steps. Tomorrow was his tenth birthday, and sure as blazes here was wretched luck to spoil it. "I don't like this, Will. I don't like it at all."

"Maybe it's only a tradesman," suggested William, Viscount Carew and Edward's best friend in all the world, crouching beside him here where they wouldn't be seen by the footmen or the grooms. Before them lay the sprawling expanse of Winterworth, the country seat of the Dukes of Harborough. Winterworth was Edward's home, too, seeing as it was his considerable misfortune to have been born the present duke's fourth and final son. "Maybe it's the tailor bringing down new shirts for you from London."

"Tailors don't come in chaises, you ninny, and never to the front door." His mood darkening by the moment, Edward shifted the h.o.r.ehound drop in his mouth from one cheek to the other, working it against his teeth. There were often things he had to explain to William, who was still nine, and would be for another fifty-six days. "Physicians come in hired chaises. Solicitors, too, and tutors, and dancing-masters. No one you wish to see."

"I know, Ned!" exclaimed William, thumping his elbow into Edward's arm. "I'll wager it's some special surprise for your birthday!"

"Not b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l likely," said Edward, borrowing one of his older brother's more wicked expressions to convey his own gloomy certainty. "Maybe in your family, sure, but not mine. Think on it, Will. What's the only real reason that chaise would be here? Who'd anyone come to see? Who's likely already here?"

"His Grace your father." William let out a low whistle of commiseration. "Did you know he was coming back today?"

"I never know," said Edward, already beginning to pluck the twigs and leaves from his hair. "Likely he's only on his way somewhere else, anyway, and won't stay beyond tonight. But best I go in now, before he raises h.e.l.l and I get double the thrashing."

"Stinking luck," said William solemnly. "Before your birthday and everything."

Edward nodded, grateful that he wouldn't have to say any more about his father to his friend. As quickly as he could, he brushed the worst of the dry gra.s.s from his jacket and breeches, straightened his waistcoat, and tugged the stickers from his stockings, trying to undo all the damage that building a fortress in the elm tree behind William's house had wrought upon his clothes.

"Good enough?" he asked, standing before William with his arms outstretched. He hoped he'd be able to run up the back stairs to his room to wash and change, but his father had waylaid him in the kitchen before, and it was better to be prepared for the worst. Some manner of the worst was already inevitable, since Edward hadn't seen his father since the last reports had come down from school. It was not going to be a pleasing encounter.

"You'll do." William sniffed, wiping his nose on the cuff of his coat. "Come back to Charlesfield as early as you can tomorrow, Ned. We can finish the palings on the fortress, and Mother said she'd have Cook bake you a special cake for tea. That orange and cocoa one you like best."

"Mates forever, then," said Edward, tapping his fist twice against Will's in the secret signal they'd invented. "I'll be there tomorrow whenever I can get away."

"Mates forever," said Will, his grin lopsided with missing and half-grown teeth. "And don't be late."

Silently Edward nodded, not letting himself think too long about either the orange and cocoa cake or the celebration that William's mother and his sisters would doubtless lavish upon him in honor of his birthday. That would come tomorrow, his reward for surviving today.

He pushed through a break in the boxwood, and hopped and ran his way down the hill toward the back door to the kitchen. In the courtyard, the road dust was being scrubbed from the Duke's green traveling coach, while the grooms were still walking the four matched gray horses to cool them from the road. Clearly his father hadn't been here much longer than whoever had arrived in the hired chaise. His heart thumping, Edward raced through the kitchen and past the bustling servants into the hall, determined to reach the stairs before he was noticed.

He didn't succeed.

"Ah, here's the little snot now!" brayed his brother St. John, his mouth half-filled with a cream biscuit he'd filched from a tea tray. St. John was the third brother, seventeen, tall and gangly in his still-new regimentals, and a perpetually terrifying force in Edward's world. "Obey your elders, snot, and come here directly."

"You're supposed to be in Bath," said Edward sullenly, considering whether or not he was fast enough to dart past St. John and escape. "You're supposed to be there stationed with your regiment, not here."

"I was, but I'm not now, am I? Father was lonely, and so he's taking me to London with him for a fortnight of whoring and gambling. Of course Colonel Hodges obliged when Father asked." St. John looked scornfully down at Edward, licking the cream from his thumb. "Not that he'd do anything like that for you, you disgusting little worm."

Edward's hands tightened into fists of helpless frustration at his sides, hidden beneath the skirts of his coat where St. John wouldn't see them. There was never any point in fighting St. John, who had on his side size, strength, and years of experience in the refined torture of his younger brother. Like contentious c.o.c.kerels, there had always been a pecking order among the four Ramsden brothers, encouraged by their father, and Edward's place was perpetually and painfully at the bottom of the roost.

"I hope some London wh.o.r.e gives you the pox, St. John," he muttered now, his bitterness overcoming wisdom. "I hope you get the pox, and your eyes fall out and your ugly nose rots clear off your face."

Instantly St. John grabbed him by the back of his neck, bunching Edward's coat and queue tightly into his fist, worrying him back and forth like a terrier.

"I should pound you senseless for that, snot," he said imperiously. "Maybe I will still, once Father's done with you. Come now, he's waiting for you in the front drawing room."

"I-I'll beat you yet, St. John!" gasped Edward helplessly as his brother dragged and shoved him across the marble floor. "Someday I-I'll win, and-and you'll lose!"

"Oh, yes, and someday b.u.g.g.e.rly little snots like you shall fly, too, upon the toe of my boot." St. John opened the door to the drawing room and shoved Edward stumbling inside ahead of him. "I found him at last, Father, though he didn't come willingly, as you can see for yourself."

"Where the devil were you, Edward?" demanded His Grace. "Am I so wrong to expect a genteel welcome from my own son? For G.o.d's sake, stop quaking like some blasted girl and greet me properly!"

Struggling to make his features impa.s.sive, Edward forced himself to lift his gaze to his father's angry face. The Duke was still considered by the fashionable world to be a most handsome gentleman, but to Edward he was a red-faced, furious deity in a white powdered wig and stiff brocade coat, a distant London-G.o.d that could never be pleased, and one who swept in and out of Edward's life at will to dispense terrifying justice.

"Good day, Father," he said, his voice turning to a wretched squeak as he bowed over his leg the way he'd been taught. "I pray your journey here was a pleasant one."

"Bah, and what pleasure am I to find in your disappointments, Edward?" said the Duke sharply, rocking back and forth on his polished heels. "Your schoolmasters have little good to say of your performances, sir, and less of your behavior. I had no hopes of a scholar, not with your dull wits, but I did expect your actions to suit your station as my son. Do you comprehend that much, Edward?"

"Yes, Father." Shortly before the end of the term, Edward and three other boys had crept out one morning before dawn to raid a local baker's stock of blackberry pies set out to cool. They had, alas, been apprehended, their undeniable guilt stained purple around their mouths. "It shall not happen again, Father."

"It most certainly won't," said the Duke grimly. "Since you have demonstrated so little regard for education, you may consider yours complete. I've made other plans for you, sir."

"Yes, Father." A faint hope fluttered through Edward's breast. When his brothers had been asked to leave school-and for far more serious offenses than pie-stealing, too, offenses involving strong drink and tavern wenches-their lives had improved wonderfully. George and Frederick had both been sent on extended tours of the Continent, while St. John had been bought a commission in a fashionable regiment. Edward stole a quick glance at St. John, at his fancy bespoke uniform glittering with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and fancy lace and a gilt dress sword at his hip: a thrillingly great improvement indeed over parsing Latin in a stuffy cla.s.sroom. "Thank you, Father."

The Duke grunted, and flicked his hand with the gold rings impatiently toward a short, stout man that Edward had neglected to notice. So this must be the visitor in the hired chaise, a man with a ruddy, weather-beaten face who wore his own unpowdered hair, not a gentleman. His uniform was dark blue, fading to a shabby gray at the cuffs and color, and though golden epaulets sat on his shoulders and a small sword hung from his waist, this uniform had none of the glittering appeal of St. John's.

"Edward, this is Captain Crane, of His Majesty's ship Andromache," said the Duke curtly. "Captain Crane, my son Lord Edward, as sullen and stubborn a boy as ever you shall meet. I give him to you, Captain, and if you can find some good in him, then you shall have succeeded where those d.a.m.ned costly catamite schoolmasters have failed."

"The navy, Father?" croaked Edward with horror. The navy was neither dashing nor alluring, and it most certainly wasn't St. John's jolly regiment in Bath. It was months, years, away at sea, hard work and bad food and constant peril, or so he'd heard from a boy at school whose brother was a lieutenant. "You are sending me to sea, Father?"

"He seems a good-sized lad, Your Grace," said Captain Crane, his eyes frankly appraising Edward as if he were a horse at the fair. "Strong, too, from the look of him. How old did you say he was, Your Grace?"

"Nine," said the Duke. "I am glad you find him agreeable, Captain, for I vow he is the runt of my own litter. You see one of my other sons here, sir, strong as a young bull."

"I'm nearly ten, Father," protested William. "Tomorrow is my birthday, and then I shall be ten."

Abruptly the Duke wheeled around to face him. "Don't you think I know that, Edward?" he demanded, practically spitting the words into Edward's face. "Don't you think I shall always remember that day of your birth, to the hour, to the minute?"

"Father, I didn't-"

"Silence, Edward." The Duke turned back toward Captain Crane, his back pointedly squared against Edward. "It is an old loss, Captain, but one that grieves me still. Against all the wisest medical counsel, my wife Her Grace did insist upon another child. A daughter for herself, she said. That was what she wished, though I swore three sons was family enough. But instead she died birthing this ungrateful little wretch, the fourth son that neither of us wanted, and one that robbed me forever of my wife."

Ignored and belittled, Edward refused to cry. He'd heard this all before, over and over, so many times he could have recited the story in unison with his father. All that mattered to Father was what his birth had taken away, the mother Edward hadn't had the chance to know or love; whatever he'd brought to this life in himself would never be enough to replace her. He knew that. How could he not? But it still hurt to hear the unhappy truth explained yet again, it hurt, worse than anything he'd ever felt.

But he was almost ten, and he would not cry.

"I am sorry for your grief, Your Grace," said the Captain, clearing his throat to hide his discomfort. "But the good Lord believes that every child is a blessing to his parents, and certainly every man-child is a boon to His Majesty's service. I shall see that Lord Edward is well treated in the midshipman's berth, Your Grace, and that he is-"

"Treat him same as you would any other boy," ordered the Duke with a dismissive wave. "Grant him no favors, no levity, for he deserves none. From this day forward, I have washed my hands of him."