Page 28 of Never Dare a Duke
Now if only she could handle the results of the charade she’d begun.
Chapter 8
After dinner, the men decided to retire to the billiards room for the rest of the evening. Abigail stood at the edge of the drawing room, watching as the ladies brought forth embroidery, walked by twos about the perimeter of the room, and even read.
Then she saw that the duchess was alone, watching her. Abigail straightened, and to her surprise, the duchess motioned her forward. It was at moments like this that she truly regretted the underhandedness of her behavior.
The duchess graciously offered the seat beside her on the sofa. “And how are you enjoying yourself thus far, Miss Shaw?” she asked, her faint accent making her intriguing and different.
Was that one of the things her husband had seen in her—that she was so different from the English-women he’d known?
“Everything you have done for me has been so gracious—Your Grace.”
They exchanged smiles.
“Your home is warm and welcoming,” Abigail continued. “How could I not be enjoying myself?”
“I know little about you, Miss Shaw, except that Lady Gwendolin said you are from Durham.”
Abigail briefly—and nervously—recited the lies she’d created, about her life as a gentleman’s daughter on the outskirts of theton.
“So you have never met my son before?” the duchess asked, watching her too closely now.
“Only briefly, in Hyde Park, Your Grace.” Abigail decided to be forthright. “He has been very kind and attentive. Has he always been that way toward a lost young lady? I had heard that in his youth he was far more bold and adventurous.”
“Some would say wild,” the duchess responded dryly.
“But those were simply rumors,” Abigail hastened to say.
“With a basis in fact, Miss Shaw. You’ll have your own children someday, and will understand that with youth can come rashness and a belief that nothing bad will ever happen.”
A brief sorrow crossed the older woman’s face, and Abigail wasn’t even sure she would have seen it if had she not been paying such close attention.
“But he is a man full grown now, and so well respected,” Abigail said. “It is obvious nothing baddidhappen to him.” She let her voice trail off, hoping subtly to encourage the duchess to continue speaking of her son.
When the duchess only smiled and shook her head, Abigail had a sudden revelation that something bad had happened to someoneelse.And the duke had been involved.
The story had not been written about in the newspapers. She had recently read all the articles that referred to the duke’s family, back through his entire life. But perhaps it was so terrible a scandal that few knew. And that was perhaps the reason money changed hands.
The Ladies Swarthbeck and Greenwich approached, and Abigail used the interruption to curtsy and leave the duchess. Her mind swimming with thoughts, she found an unused table, withdrew from her reticule the notebook on the duke, identical to the notebook she kept on the ghost, and began to write. For several minutes she looked over her shoulder, but no one was paying her any heed.
Christopher stood in the corridor outside the drawing room, his shoulder braced against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. No one had spied him so far, and he was free to watch the unfolding tableau.
He had arrived in time to see Miss Shaw speaking with his mother, had seen the sorrow his mother couldn’t hide. What had they discussed? Whatever it had been, it had inspired Miss Shaw to a frantic scribbling in her notebook. And it made him uneasy—uneasy enough to be curious about her writing.
Many men would not care about a woman’s thoughts, but there was something about her need to put them into words that intrigued him—perhaps because he himself always felt the same way.
He walked purposefully into the drawing room, nodded to his mother, ignored the way the women seemed to preen their feathers in anticipation, and headed straight for Abigail. He was paying too much attention to her, he knew, even for their ruse, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. She was bent over the table, concentrating hard on what she was writing, so she didn’t see his arrival—and obviously didn’t realize what her position did to her décolletage. Her breasts almost overflowed the gown, as if with one deep breath she’d—
And then she looked up and saw him, her eyes going wide as she straightened. She closed the notebook and smiled up at him. “Your Grace.”
“Would you care to walk with me, Miss Shaw?”
She blinked in surprise, then slid the notebook into her reticule as she rose to her feet. “Of course.”
He gestured toward the great double doors at the far end of the drawing room. “The night is beautiful. We can enjoy the moon.”
Though she nodded, he saw the momentary look of confusion, the way she glanced at the other women.
