Page 62 of Guilty Pleasures

“You seem displeased by this news, Anthony. Why should you be? You knew she would be going to town.” She began to smile. “Been hoping to persuade her back to your clay pots and mosaics, have you?”

Anthony shot her a sharp look. “Did Miss Wade not confide in you?”

“Confide in me? I do not know what you mean. What confidences should she be imparting to me? Has something happened?”

Most women would have been eager to impart news of a duke’s proposal, especially to his sister, yet Daphne had evidently not told Viola. As guarded about his private life as a man could be, Anthony was pleased by her discretion, but Viola had to know the truth sometime, and it was far better for his sister to hear it from him than from the society papers. He told her.

“You proposed to Daphne?” A wide smile lit her face as she jumped up from her chair and came to give him a smacking kiss on each cheek. “How delightful!”

“Not so very delightful,” he replied as Viola returned to her seat. “She refused me.”

“Did she? I cannot imagine why, for she is in—” Viola paused in whatever she had been about to say, and her brown eyes narrowed on him. “You did not ask her, did you? You told her. Do not deny it,” she added as he started to speak. “I know you far too well, Anthony. You became all ducal and autocratic, and she told you to go to the devil.” Much to his chagrin, Viola began to laugh. “Oh, I knew I liked that woman.”

“I am gratified that you are enjoying this, but are you not supposed to be on my side?”

“No,” she answered at once, her smile widening. “I am wholly on Daphne’s. We women must band together in situations such as this.” Before Anthony could reply, she went on, “But one thing does puzzle me. If she refused you, why are you here?”

He found Viola’s amusement at his expense quite irritating. “If you think I am accepting no for an answer, you do not know me as well as you thought, dear sister.”

“Quite right of you, I say, but Daphne has the right to expect to be courted, you know. You cannot just order her to marry you. A wedding is not like an excavation. Oh, how I wish I could stay and watch all of this play out.”

“Yes, I am sure you do,” he answered, unamused, “but the society papers will be able to provide you with the details, no doubt. By the way, there is something I need to ask you. Did Daphne ever tell you the name of her grandfather? I shall have to locate this baron and discuss settlements with him.”

“Lord Durand. Estates in Durham, I believe, but I did discover that he is in town. I suggested that Daphne and I pay a call on him, but she did not wish to do so. She explained to me that Durand actually refused to acknowledge her. She wrote to him after her father’s death, and he had an attorney respond that she was not his granddaughter and never would be. Her parents eloped, and evidently, Durand never accepted the match. Can you believe it? I almost wept when she told me. There she was in Tangier or wherever, all alone with no money, and the horrid man wrote to her that she could expect no help from him.”

Anthony rose to his feet, rage flowing through his body like a flood, but when he spoke, his voice was hard, tight, and fully controlled. “Somehow,” he told Viola, “I believe Durand will be much more amenable to acknowledging his connection after a visit from me.”

“Yes,” Viola said, looking at him with obvious pleasure. “I expect he will. But Anthony,” she added gently, “I do not believe Durand is your problem. You still have to persuade Daphne to accept your suit.”

That was not going to be a problem at all, Anthony vowed as he left Enderby for London. By God, Daphne would be his duchess, even if he had to court her under the unwavering scrutiny of all London society.

“Heavens above!”

The exclamation caused Daphne to pause in her sketch of Elizabeth and Anne, who were seated on the settee opposite her in the drawing room of the Fitzhugh’s’ London house. She turned to look at Lady Fitzhugh, who was sitting in the chair beside her own, staring at the card the maid had just handed to her. Her other hand fluttered to her heart as she leaned back on the settee. “The Duke of Tremore has come to call.”

“What?” her daughters cried together.

“Well, that did not take long,” Daphne murmured under her breath.

“This must be due to you, Daphne!” cried Elizabeth. “All our lives we have lived in Hampshire, yet the duke has never come to wait upon us.”

“Indeed,” her mother added, tapping the card against the fingertips of her other hand, “I have scarce conversed with his grace half a dozen times in the seventeen years since he ascended to the title, and we have never received such condescension as this.” She tucked the card into the side pocket of her gown and straightened in her chair. “Show him in at once, Mary. It does not do to keep a duke waiting.”

As the maid left the room, Daphne could not help but notice how Lady Fitzhugh and her daughters began to pat their hair and straighten their gowns in anticipation of the unexpected guest. Daphne did nothing of the sort, and she almost wished she had raked back her hair in that efficient, tight little bun he despised. When she caught Elizabeth gesturing to her in a friendly reminder to take off her spectacles, she ignored the girl and left them on.

When he entered the room, she rose and dipped him a curtsy along with the others, then took refuge behind her sketchbook as Lady Fitzhugh introduced her daughters and invited him to sit down.

Over the top of her sketchbook, she observed the faces of Anne and Elizabeth as they stared at Anthony, who was sitting to her right. Looking at them was a bit like looking at a mirror image of herself, for their expressions seemed to offer a precise reflection of her own initial impression of him. Overwhelmed, ridiculously nervous, and caught up in the heights of a giddy attraction. He was looking every inch the handsome, elegant duke today, with his blue coat and darker blue trousers, his striped blue and gold waistcoat, and his immaculate white linen, and it was clear by the admiring faces of the Fitzhugh daughters that they wanted to pinch themselves for even being in the same room with him.

He is no doubt accustomed to this sort of feminine reaction everywhere he goes , she thought, lowering her gaze and noting with dismay that she had involuntarily pressed her pencil across her sheet of drawing paper in a thick, dark slash, ruining her drawing of Elizabeth.

“Ring the bell for tea, Anne,” Lady Fitzhugh ordered, but before her elder daughter could move to stand, Anthony protested.

“No, please, do not trouble yourself on my account,” he said, “for I cannot stay long. I paid a visit to my sister just before she left for Northumberland, and I learned you had brought Miss Wade to town with you. I wished to pay my respects.”

“That is very kind of you,” his hostess replied, only the tiniest hint of surprise in her voice, though the fact that the duke had wished to pay a call upon them clearly surprised her very much indeed.

“I have come to town to make my museum ready for its opening, for that event is only a few short weeks away,” he told her. “I do hope you will come?”

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