The Hazards of Hunting a Duke Read online

  Naturally, he gave Harrison a brief account of the latest argument with his father and the luncheon he’d ruined.

  “Sounds frightfully tedious,” Harrison agreed. “Does he still threaten to disown you?”

  Jared laughed wryly. “Not only does he threaten it, I would suspect that as we are speaking, he is drawing up the order for the king’s signature.”

  Harrison smiled a little, then looked at his friend. “What if he carries through with his threat? Have you determined your course?”

  Oh, he’d considered it. Through many sleepless nights, he had wandered Broderick Abbey’s halls, considering it. He had his own title, his own seat. Granted, he did not have nearly the wealth his father had, and would lose the substantial stipend he received as the son of the Duke of Redford. But he was ready to face it—he had studied agriculture and was brimming with ideas for improvements to his estate. And besides, what he valued and wanted more than anything on earth was not a fortune, but the freedom to be who he was.

  Yet the duke had raised the stakes with his latest threat.

  “I have considered it,” he said simply, and meant to say something more, but a sound brought his head up—a laugh, a word, he wasn’t certain what—but his gaze landed squarely on the woman with blond hair and pale green eyes.

  Fair…Fair…Fair-something.

  He could not bring her name to mind, but he remembered her quite clearly. She was in the company of two young women who resembled her, and all three of them were dressed in the black bombazine of mourning.

  “Her name,” Jared said, taking in their black gowns. “I don’t recall it.”

  “Fairchild,” Harrison offered.

  Fairchild, of course. Lady Ava Fairchild. “Who passed?”

  “Her mother, Lady Downey,” Harrison replied, and glanced at Jared from the corner of his eye. “You should pay more attention to the society pages, Middleton. Occasionally, there is an interesting on dit about someone other than you.”

  “Astonishing.”

  Harrison chuckled and looked again at the three young women walking toward them. “I have heard that Lady Downey died suddenly and without provision for the fortune she’d brought to the marriage. By law, it reverted to Lord Downey. Unfortunately, that has left the three of them somewhat destitute, save a small dowry for each of them. It’s a pity, really, for they seem to be agreeable young women—yet I daresay the lack of fortune won’t help them in the marriage mart this Season.”

  “Perhaps,” Jared said thoughtfully. “But there are some men among us who don’t care a whit for fortune—yourself included,” he remarked, glancing at his friend.

  Harrison laughed. “Ah, but I’ve neither a father pushing me to wed a fortune nor a fortune so entailed that I must wed for money, as Stanhope will likely do one day,” he said, referring to the fact that Stanhope’s fortune was entailed to the hilt, leaving to him very little real income. “As my circumstances stand, I have the luxury of time to wait for the perfect wife.”

  The perfect wife. Jared snorted. The perfect wife, to his way of thinking, had little to do with fortune. The perfect wife would be a comely woman with an agreeable personality and a lusty appetite in his bed. She would have a sufficiently high birth to satisfy his father, but for God’s sake, without a fortune so large as Lady Elizabeth as to necessitate what felt like the joining of nations. And she would be an orphan if he had his way, so that she would not have dreadfully dull parents who could fill an entire hour of conversation with talk of repairs made to the east wing—

  A jarring thought suddenly occurred to Jared and he looked at Ava Fairchild again. A moment later, he abruptly swung off his horse.

  “What are you about?” Harrison asked.

  “Bloody hell if I know,” Jared muttered, and stepped into the path as the women came upon them.

  Ava Fairchild, deep in conversation with her companions, glanced briefly at him, then jerked her gaze up again, the surprise of recognition glimmering in her eyes. He was instantly and rather warmly reminded of those lovely green eyes in far more intimate circumstances.

  That sultry, seductive kiss in his carriage—what had it been, almost a year ago?—had been an impetuous act just like dozens before it, nothing more than a bit of harmless flirtation. But looking at her now—the faint blush in her cheeks, the clear green eyes, the blond hair peeking out from beneath her black bonnet, he recalled that the kiss had stayed with him well into the next day because she’d been so…delightfully fervent about it.

  He bowed. She blinked and looked nervously about. He lifted a quizzical brow as he put his hand out to receive hers. She managed to gather her wits and stepped forward to give him her hand.

  “Good afternoon, my lord,” she said, curtsying.

  “It is a pleasure to see you again, Lady Ava,” he said, and noted that her companions looked at her with great astonishment as he bowed over her hand. He deduced, judging by the way she closely watched him as if she expected him to confess how he’d made her acquaintance, that she had not told anyone about their carriage ride together—an encounter that was now playing itself out in his mind’s eye.

  When he let go of her hand, she gave him a brief and anxious smile. “I, ah…may I introduce you to my sister, Phoebe, and my cousin, Greer?” she asked, gesturing to each companion in turn, her eyes never leaving him.

  The two curtsied politely but peered at him suspiciously.

  “How do you do,” he said, and turned back to Ava. “I offer you my condolences for the loss of your mother.”

  “Oh,” Lady Ava said, her lovely face falling. “Thank you. It’s been almost a year since she left us, yet she is still greatly missed.”

  “Lady Ava.” Harrison had come down off his horse and stepped up to greet her. “How do you do?”

  “Lord Harrison,” she said, smiling warmly. “So good to see you again.”

  “Is Lord Downey still in France?” he asked. “When we last spoke, you rather thought he’d return for the Season.”

  “At present, he is still in France, but we do expect him in the near future.”

  Not thinking clearly and terribly uncertain what he was about, Jared asked, “Will you attend the Season’s events?”

  Ava Fairchild blinked. “We are in mourning.”

  “For one month more,” her cousin hastily interjected. “When we come out of mourning, we shall be pleased to accept invitations.”

  Lady Ava jerked her gaze to her cousin.

  “Then I shall very much look forward to seeing you again in a ballroom, Lady Ava,” he said with a smile. “I recall that you enjoy dancing.”

  Her eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. “I do indeed, my lord—particularly a waltz.”

  He almost laughed. “Then perhaps you will allow me the honor of reserving a waltz now?”

  “How very kind of you to ask,” she said, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a beguiling little smile. He understood, of course, that she did not necessarily agree to his request. He smiled with amusement, and noticed that she was indeed quite fair. He hadn’t really recalled just how fair.

  Lady Ava’s cheeks flushed an appealing shade of pink at his scrutiny; she glanced at the timepiece pinned to her breast. “Oh dear, we really must be on our way.” She lifted her gaze to him, her green eyes shining with some delight. “If you will pardon us?”

  “Of course,” Jared said, stepping back to allow them room to pass. “I look forward to seeing you during the course of the Season—and to the dance you have promised me.”

  “Good day, my lord,” she said, smiling coyly. She shifted her gaze to Harrison and curtsied, as did her sister and cousin. “Good day.”

  “Good day, ladies,” Harrison said, lifting his hat. He and Jared watched as the three of them walked on, their heads together, their arms linked.

  Jared’s mind was whirling around the improbable, inconceivable idea that had popped into his head without warning and now refused to dislodge itself.

 
; As if he were reading Jared’s mind, Harrison sighed playfully. “Well,” he said, glancing sidelong at Jared. “She is an earl’s daughter. I suppose you could do worse.”

  Jared smiled.

  “Have you considered, old chum, what a certain widow will make of it?”

  “I’ve not considered a blessed thing,” he said truthfully. But as he admired Lady Ava’s derriere as she moved away, he was struck by the peculiar feeling of being particularly intrigued, just as he had been the first time he’d met her. He glanced at Harrison and winked. “Miranda…” He shook his head, reaching for his horse. “I will speak with Miranda.”

  Five

  “B ut how did you meet him?” Phoebe demanded for the hundredth time since they’d arrived home yesterday afternoon. “I don’t recall your being introduced.”

  “Don’t you? I suppose it happened before Mother died,” Ava said as she quickly dressed to go out, her mind on an extremely urgent matter.

  “No, I don’t,” Phoebe insisted. “I am certain I would have recalled it. And why should he ask for a place on your dance card now? It’s not as if you are out in society, and even if you were, he rarely attends the balls. I don’t quite understand it.”

  “There is nothing to understand,” Ava said. “He was just being kind. And really, we have far more important things to think about than that.”

  “Perhaps you do, but I am rather curious,” Phoebe said, and looked up from her sewing. “It seemed as if he knew you.”

  “Dear lord, will you please think of something else?” Ava said. “Think of a butler. We must have a butler if we are to reenter society.”

  No one argued, for the three of them were perfectly aware that every fine house in Mayfair had a full coterie of servants, and if a house did not have them, it was a foregone conclusion that the house no longer had its fortune. And if the poor souls of a house were thought to be without fortune, they were thought to be without prospects.

  As it happened, they had reached the most desperate of moments several months ago, one that called for the most unthinkable actions, but nevertheless, Ava and Greer had begun to slowly and steadily fill the house with servants. They had done it by joining the Ladies’ Beneficent Society, their only escape during their long months of mourning suffered under Lucy Pennebacker’s watchful eye. She was never far from their side, hovering about them like a vulture, taking her charge to look after them very much to heart—she was fiercely determined to see after them and their virtues.

  Their only way out was through charitable works, for even Lucy couldn’t object to that. The society was a group of women formed under the auspices of St. George’s parish church, whose function was to help those less fortunate than themselves. Each week, the ladies assembled to visit a small parish workhouse, where they took fruit and sweetmeats to the poor souls who had come from what the ladies assumed were wretched dens of iniquity. In exchange for the fruit and sweetmeats, the parish wards were asked to listen to the ladies’ recitation of select Bible verses, and at the conclusion of the readings, to affirm that they had dedicated themselves to leading proper, God-fearing lives.

  Lady Downey used to laughingly say that this practice was the least the good church ladies could ask, being so astoundingly free of sin and poverty themselves.

  The members of the Ladies’ Beneficent Society were delighted to see Ava and Greer among their number, and spoke fondly of Lady Downey and her wonderful sense of charity. It was something the girls had never really known about their mother. Honestly, Ava had believed it to be a social club.

  At the parish workhouse—which was, surprisingly, situated behind the public stables on Portland Street, near the fashionable Regent Street—Ava and Greer handed fruit to the residents, read aloud the Bible verses, and shrewdly studied the inhabitants when they weren’t working to appear very pious.

  Through a series of visits to the parish poorhouse, they managed to convince a few carefully chosen inhabitants to come to the Downey house on Clifford Street, where they would be given food and shelter in exchange for their service.

  The lack of wages, however, made it a difficult proposition to even the poorest of the workhouse’s denizens. Ava and Greer had managed to coax only three into their home. Sally Pierce, a reformed harlot, had become their lady’s maid.

  “But what if she is not entirely reformed?” Phoebe had fretted the first night Sally was in their employ.

  “Best hope that she is, darling, for we shall all be completely ruined if she is not,” Ava had whispered.

  They had also managed to retain Mr. William Pell and his son, Mr. Samuel Pell, who had both been injured in a horrible carriage accident. Mr. Pell the senior had lost a leg and therefore could no longer light lamps, as was his profession. His son, an apprentice, had a mangled arm that hung at a strange angle on his left side. But between the two of them, they managed to make one fairly decent footman.

  The Fairchilds did not, however, have the services of a butler, and Ava could imagine nothing worse than if someone were to call and be greeted at their door by Lucille Pennebacker. She was determined to pluck a suitable butler from the ranks of the poorhouse at once, so that she might teach the lucky man a bit about butlering before they reentered society.

  She was preparing to do just that when Greer stood. “Ava. Before you go, there is something I must tell you.”

  Both Ava and Phoebe, who was working to hem a gown—she was altering old gowns to make them look new for their reentry—turned and looked at her.

  “I’ve been doing quite a lot of thinking about our situation, and…well, here it is: I’ve an uncle on my father’s side to whom I believe my father’s fortune was bequeathed when he passed,” she said, clasping her hands tightly together. “Uncle might be of some use to us, for if I am correct, there are no other male heirs to whom the family fortune would naturally go. There is a good chance that I may be the sole heir. Therefore, I have written my uncle requesting an audience and I intend to make a plea that he advance a bit of my inheritance now. An annuity or something very near to it, to help us make our own way. What do you think?”

  “It’s a marvelous idea!” Phoebe exclaimed at the same moment Lucy bustled in carrying an armful of freshly laundered linens. “Where is he, then? Berkeley Square, I should think—there are scads of elderly folk milling about there.”

  “Who is at Berkeley Square?” Lucy instantly asked.

  “Berkeley Square?” Greer asked incredulously, ignoring Lucy. “That’s not as much as a mile from here, Phoebe! Wouldn’t you suppose that were he in Berkeley Square, I might have called on him? No, no—he’s in the Marches, silly!”

  “The Marches?” Phoebe cried, clearly taken aback. “Greer! You cannot possibly think to go there! It’s practically all the way to America!”

  “No…but it is Wales,” Greer said with a thoughtful frown. “I’ve not seen it in some time.”

  “You’ve not seen it since you were eight, Greer,” Ava reminded her as Lucy dropped the linens and gaped at Greer.

  “But I’ve not forgotten it,” Greer said quickly. “I have rather a good memory of it, actually, and a letter with a direction in my mother’s things. I can make my way about.”

  “Dear God, she is serious,” Phoebe said, aghast.

  “I shall be away for only a few months,” Greer doggedly continued. “Perhaps three at the utmost. How long could it possibly take to reach Wales and then convince my uncle to loan me a bit of my own inheritance? I think it should be very tidy, really.”

  “Tidy? Don’t be absurd!” Ava cried. “How do you think to even get to the Marches?”

  “In a public coach…with Mrs. Smithington. She asked Lady Purnam for recommendations of a good traveling companion, and Lady Purnam thought of me.”

  “Oh, I am certain she did!” Ava exclaimed with great exasperation. Lady Purnam’s meddling in their lives had not abated in the least since their mother’s death.

  “But it’s so far away!” Phoebe said.r />
  “Don’t be a ninny, girl,” Lucy said harshly. “Let her go if she wants. She’s got a proper traveling companion and it’s one less mouth to feed, isn’t it?”

  “Lucy!” Phoebe cried.

  “What, then, you think it is easy to feed you and the poorhouse rats underfoot on what Egbert allots?”

  “Lucy, please,” Ava said irritably. “The parish pays us five pounds per person to take them off the poorhouse rolls, yet you won’t allow them to eat more than a few potatoes—”

  “I suppose I should give them your food, should I?” she responded, just as irritably. “Let her go,” she said again. “When Egbert returns, you’ll all be gone,” she added ominously, and turned on her heel, quitting the room.

  Her words sobered them all. No one spoke—they just looked at each other as the truth of Lucy’s words closed in around them.

  “I leave on the morrow,” Greer said quietly. “Mrs. Smithington desires to begin in Hertfordshire and leisurely make our way west.”

  “Oh no,” Phoebe said, and a tear slid down her cheek. “I won’t be able to bear your absence.”

  “Dear God,” Ava sighed, giving in, and moved to embrace her sister. Greer joined them, and the three of them held each other tightly for some time, whispering that they would reunite, that this would all one day be behind them like a bad dream.

  That afternoon, as Ava walked across town to the parish poorhouse, she struggled to hold on to her belief that these were only temporary circumstances for them, that there would come a day again, perhaps soon, when their lives would return to what they had always known. Ava had to believe it, for she had nothing else in which to believe.

  And besides, she’d had another idea, something she’d been mulling over for several weeks now.

  No one could possibly understand the weight of the responsibility she felt along with her grief of losing her mother, but she was keenly aware that as the oldest, she was the one who should look after Phoebe and Greer. She felt alarmingly unprepared to do that and terribly anxious about it—she fully expected Lucy was right, that her stepfather would want to rid himself of the three of them quickly. Worse, she had no doubt that she would be the first to be offered up in marriage.