“Oh, Mama! It looks like a fat, brown goose waddling up a country lane.”
Swathed in black lace, the dowager Marchioness of Bamph was seated at the escritoire in her boudoir, her handsome face completely innocent of rouge. Lady Bamph loathed black almost as much as she had loathed her dead husband, but she had made herself as plain as possible for the occasion, not wanting to spoil her daughter’s chance to become a duchess by accidentally attracting the duke herself.
“When I am Duchess of Fanshawe, I shall put all my footmen in pink,” sighed Belinda, smoothing down her pink skirts and patting the pink silk roses woven into her red-gold curls.
“Yes, my love,” Lady Bamph murmured absently.
The duke’s carriage, meanwhile, had arrived at the house. “Mama, he’s getting out,” Belinda reported, pressing her pert nose against the window. “Mama! He’s wearing trousers!”
The dowager’s hand jerked, causing an ink blot on the page. “Trousers!” she exclaimed. “You must be mistaken, child. Only shopkeepers and bank clerks wear trousers.”
“Hurry, Mama!” cried Belinda, jumping up. “He’s coming inside!”
Lady Bamph signed her letter with a flourish, and mother and daughter went down to the drawing room to greet their visitor.
They discovered the duke consulting his pocket watch. Upon seeing the ladies, however, he instantly pocketed his watch. Unlike the many dukes of Belinda’s acquaintance, this one was a very good-looking man, with patrician features, a strong, square chin, and the most breathtaking blue eyes she had ever seen. According to Belinda’s information, the duke was hideously old—six and forty!—but, in the flesh, he did not look a day over twenty-five. Incredibly, he was not fat. Even more incredibly, he was tall, the perfect height and build for a dance partner, she decided. His spiky chestnut hair had been cut too short, and he was much too plainly dressed for Belinda’s taste, but these were minor defects, easily corrected, and quite overruled by his beautiful eyes. Overall, Belinda was delighted with her prize.
“Oh, you’re handsome!” she cried, almost before the requisite bows and curtseys had been exchanged. “I’m so relieved! That is to say, so glad!”
Although not immune to the young man’s eyes, Lady Bamph had a cooler head. “I must apologize for my daughter’s exuberance,” she said, smiling. “She is young and impetuous. What a pity we cannot follow her example and say exactly what pops into our heads at any given moment,” she boldly added, fingering the pearls at her throat and staring directly into his eyes.
Unaware that he had been mistaken for his employer, Julian Devize smiled faintly at Lady Belinda’s exuberance, but her mother’s subtlety seemed to leave him cold. “Is Lord Bamph not at home?” he asked, addressing the mother with an air of courtesy rather than preference. “As your ladyship may know, I have come on behalf of Lady Viola Gambol to negotiate her marriage settlement.”
Lady Bamph felt the sting of rejection, but Julian was so handsome, she could not resist trying again. “Perhaps, when you have concluded your business with my son, you will allow me to show you the grounds,” she suggested archly. “There are many beauty spots in my garden.”
Julian smiled thinly. “When I am done, I don’t doubt you will all wish me in Hades.”
“No, indeed!” said Belinda, taking him quite seriously.
Lady Bamph laughed lightly. “A man like you must be welcome wherever he goes,” she said, looking at him hungrily. “Now do stop teasing me and sit down.”
Her fingers released the pearls at her neck and trailed down to rearrange the black lace draped across her bosom. How vexing that her maternal instincts had led her, on today of all days, to disguise herself as a grieving old widow!
“Your ladyship is very kind,” Julian said firmly. “But I am come to deal with Lord Bamph. If his lordship is not here, it would be better if I went away again.”
“Oh, no!” cried Belinda, seizing him by the arm. “Please don’t go. We have so much to talk about before the wedding.”
“Her brother’s wedding, she means,” Lady Bamph said quickly. “Please stay, Your Grace. My son has been a little delayed,” she went on quickly, as his eyes flickered, “but he will join us presently. I apologize for the inconvenience. Won’t you join us in a cup of tea?”
“Your ladyship has made a mistake,” Julian said gravely.
The dowager blinked at him. “Mistake, Your Grace?”
“I’m not his grace,” Julian said bluntly. “My name is Mr Devize. I’m the duke’s…er, financial advisor.”
Lady Bamph’s voice was shrill. “You are not the Duke of Fanshawe?”
“No, indeed, my lady.”
All the joy went out of Belinda’s pretty face, and she sank down onto the sofa. “You look like a duke,” she accused him petulantly. “That is to say, you look like they ought to look, but somehow never do,” she corrected herself. “How vexing!”
“I’m very sorry to disappoint you, Lady Belinda,” Julian said gently.
“I was prepared for disappointment,” she said glumly, “but you got my hopes up.”
“Indeed, it was very wrong of you to deceive us, sir,” said Lady Bamph, embarrassed that she had fingered her pearls at a good-looking nobody. “You should have exposed yourself the instant you came into the house!”
“I apologize for my reticence,” Julian said dryly.
“Where is his grace?” she demanded.
“His grace stepped out into the garden to attend a call of nature,” he replied. With the barest movement of his head, he indicated the French windows.
The dowager recoiled. “What do you mean? Do you mean he’s…? On my terrace?”
“In your shrubbery, I think,” Julian answered calmly.
“My rhododendrons!” she gasped, darting toward the French windows as a rotund silhouette appeared at one of them.
“Oh no,” Lady Belinda said sadly as the real duke came in through the French windows rubbing his hands together. “He’s fat and bald, as usual. Is that blood on his stock?”
“Gravy, I should think,” Julian said reassuringly.
Belinda’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh fie! Nothing ever works out the way it should!”
“That is the tragedy of life,” Julian agreed, offering her a clean handkerchief. “It always leaves us wanting more.”
Lady Bamph, meanwhile, had gone forth to meet the duke with plenty of daggers concealed in her dazzling smile. “My lord duke! How did you find my rhododendrons?”
“It wasn’t easy, but I managed,” he answered, averting his gaze from her voluptuous black-clad form. “You should speak to the gardener about those bushes, madam. At Fanshawe, we always remove the thorns.”
“My roses!” she gasped, turning gray. “How could you? You vile little gargoyle!”
“Ah, Dev,” the duke said, hurtling quickly past this overwrought, emotionally incontinent female. “Where’s Bamph, then? I haven’t got all day.”
“Lord Bamph is not yet arrived, Duke,” said Julian.
“You’re so ugly,” Belinda whined, briefly claiming his grace’s attention.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
She blinked in surprise. “I’m Belinda, of course.”
“I’m not ugly, young Belinda,” he corrected her sternly. “I have a unique manly beauty that few can appreciate.”