Page 10 of The Truth About Love and Dukes

“Irene, how can you say that? He’s a duke.”

“A duke. Well, my word and la-di-da.” She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “I shall need my smelling salts in a minute. I’m that overcome.”

Before her sister could reply, there was a tap on her open door, and she looked up to find Annie, their parlor maid, standing in the doorway.

“If you please, ma’am,” she said, dipping her knees in a quick curtsy, “Mrs. Brandt’s compliments, and I’m to tell you tea will soon be ready for you and your guest in the drawing room.”

Irene and Clara exchanged bewildered glances at this message from their housekeeper, but it was Clara who spoke first. “Annie, I already had Mrs. Gibson make tea for us. As you see,” she added, nodding to the tray in her hands, “I’ve brought it here.”

“Begging your pardon, Miss Clara, but Mrs. Brandt what says I’m to take that away and have you bring His Grace to the drawing room. She’s ordered Mrs. Gibson to make him a proper tea.”

“A proper tea?” Irene echoed, her anger fading into a sort of amused irritation. “Heavens, does that mean we’ve been having improper tea all these years? Who’d have thought?”

Clara laughed, but Annie didn’t. Jokes were wasted on their parlor maid, who took everything said to her at face value. “Mrs. Brandt says a duke what comes to call ought to be given a proper tea. She promises she’ll bring it in once you’ve brought His Grace upstairs to the drawing room.”

“The duke is gone, Annie,” Irene explained patiently, gesturing with her hands to indicate the lack of that august presence in her office.

“Oh, ma’am, Mrs. Brandt will be ever so disappointed. She told Mrs. Gibson to put sugar icing on the cakes and told me not to worry about serving. She’d wait on the duke personally, she said.”

“Wanted to see him for herself, no doubt,” Clara murmured.

Annie nodded, looking sorrowful. “It was a right disappointment to me, Miss Clara, I don’t mind saying.”

“There is no need for disappointment, Annie,” Irene assured her as she came around the desk. “You are more fortunate than you could imagine. Please go back down to the kitchens and tell Mrs. Gibson she doesn’t need to put icing on the cakes—”

“Now, Irene, let’s not be hasty,” Clara cut in, shoving the tray into Annie’s hands and hooking her arm through her sister’s. “It seems Mrs. Brandt and Mrs. Gibson have gone to a great deal of trouble. I should hate their efforts to be wasted.”

Irene sniffed, but she allowed her sister to propel her out of her office, out of their former library, and along the corridor to the stairs. “In any case, I doubt even Mrs. Gibson’s sugar icing would have impressed Lord Insufferable.”

Clara laughed. “Oh, dear, he seems to have gotten under your skin all right. But, Irene, you can’t call him Lord Insufferable. He’s not a lord. He’s a duke.”

She waved a hand, not needing another lecture about proper forms of address. “A minor quibble, Clara. Lord Insufferable is a title that suits that man admirably.”

“Still, it’s a shame for poor Annie,” Clara said in a whisper.

Both of them glanced back, but the parlor maid had already vanished behind the baize door that led down to the kitchens. “I wouldn’t want to be the one who has to tell our temperamental cook and grenadier housekeeper that their efforts to impress a duke have been in vain,” Clara went on as she and Irene continued up the stairs and entered the drawing room. “Now, Irene, you must tell me everything.”

She gave her sister a rueful glance as she sat down on one end of the horsehair settee. “Must I?”

“Was he so very horrid?” Clara asked, sinking down beside her.

“Worse.”

“Did he come about his mother?”

“Yes. She’s eloped with the Italian, apparently.”

“So she did follow your advice? You weren’t sure she would, if I recall. Oh, won’t this make a sensation for the paper?”

“Yes,” Irene agreed, but the word was barely out of her mouth before the Duke of Torquil’s question rang in her ears.

If she suffers ridicule, disgrace, and pain because of you and your publication, what consequences should you face?

The question was nonsense, of course. A mature woman like the duchess would surely appreciate all possible consequences of the choice she was making. Irene could not be held accountable for those consequences.

“But why did Torquil want to see you?”

She had no chance to answer, for Mrs. Brandt arrived at that moment with a laden tea tray, and Irene shoved the duke’s accusatory words out of her mind.

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