Least Likely to Marry a Duke (Liberated Ladies)

‘Ghastly creatures,’ Melissa said with a shudder. ‘Do you think it has gone?’

Only as far as the back of the bookcase, Verity thought.

‘I am sure it will not come back with us here now. And I will have a word with the maids about cleaning more—’

The door on to the outer staircase that circled the tower banged open, thudded against the wall and sent a vase toppling from the nearest bookshelf. Melissa darted forward and caught it, collided with the man who burst through the opening and sat down with a thump on the edge of the chaise.

For a second everyone froze. Like Grandmother’s Footsteps, Verity thought wildly before she realised that the intruder was the Duke and that he was staring at Prue’s completely exposed bosom, which was, as Prue herself sometimes lamented, her most outstanding feature.

Everyone moved at once. The Duke spun round to face the bookcases, Prue ran for the door to the internal staircase and Verity, Melissa, Jane and Lucy came together to stand shoulder to shoulder, a wall of indignant femininity between their friend and this man.

As the door closed behind Prue, Melissa pushed the vase into Lucy’s hands. ‘I will take her clothes down.’ She scooped them up and left.

‘I apologise,’ the Duke said, his back still turned to them, his voice stiff with suppressed emotion.

Outrage, Verity guessed. He would not like being put in the wrong like this. Or being made to look ridiculous. A gentleman bursting into a room of young ladies to save them from danger was heroic. To rescue them from a spider, farcical.

‘I realised that I had left my cane behind and I was searching for it in the garden when I heard a scream. I thought a lady was being assaulted in some way.’ He removed his hat.

‘Only by a very large spider,’ Verity said drily. ‘But, naturally, we appreciate your, er, gallant defence.’ She moved Jane’s easel to face the wall. ‘You may turn around again, Your Grace.’

‘Ladies.’ His bow was a masterpiece.

Verity was not sure how it was possible to bow sarcastically, but she was certain that was what this was. It was just too perfectly judged to be anything else. ‘May I present Miss Lambert and Miss Newnham.’

They curtsied and he bowed again as Melissa came back. She rolled her eyes at Verity, then turned and swept into a graceful obeisance.

‘And Miss Taverner. Ladies, this is the Duke of Aylsham.’

And don’t you dare ask who Prue is, she thought.

But of course he did not. ‘My apologies for interrupting you, ladies. Good day to you.’ He resumed his hat, left by the door through which he had entered and closed it, very gently, behind him.

‘Hell’s bells,’ Melissa said faintly. ‘What a very beautiful, very frightening man.’

‘How is Prue?’

‘Resigning herself to imminent ruin. I told her a duke would be too much a gentleman to ever refer to the matter.’

‘He has gone.’ Prue came in, dressed, but pale-faced. ‘I saw him from your bedchamber window, Verity. Will someone help me with my hair?’ She held out her hand, shaking so much that half the pins she was holding fell to the floor.

‘I will.’ Lucy pressed her down into a chair and began to put up the brown curls. ‘He will not say anything, we are sure—far too much the gentleman.’

‘And it would lower him in his own estimation to gossip,’ Verity added, patting her friend’s shoulder in an attempt at consolation. ‘He is an absolute pattern book of proper behaviour. You will be quite safe, Prue, don’t worry.’

‘But I will be sure to meet him,’ she wailed. ‘And he will recognise me and I will just sink through the floor, I know I will. Even if he says nothing, Mama will guess something is amiss if I blush scarlet whenever I see him.’

‘I doubt he was looking at your face,’ Melissa said, with a significant glance at Prue’s bosom which was positively heaving with emotion. ‘You must just brazen it out, Prue. Tell your mama that you are knocked all of a heap by his rank and looks and your overwhelming urge to be worthy of him. Besides, he is in mourning, so you are unlikely to encounter him often.’

‘I suppose so.’ Prue began to look slightly less ill.

The clock struck four. There was a faint shriek from Lucy, who began to bundle up her sheet music while the others tidied their work away into the cupboard.

‘Leave it, hurry down,’ Verity urged. ‘Prue, blow your nose. And take some tracts with you, everyone.’ A pile of tub-thumping religious tracts had been sent to her father by a well-meaning curate. Papa, having scanned one, pronounced it badly written, inaccurate and guaranteed to make heathens of the most devout churchgoer. Verity had saved them as props for her ‘reading group,’ who went off downstairs, bonnets and gloves in place, each clutching a leaflet. ‘And the book for next week is Pilgrim’s Progress,’ she called after them.

‘But we all read that ages ago,’ Melissa stopped at the head of the stairs to protest.

‘Exactly. Which means we don’t need to talk about it again, but you know all about it if your parents ask what we have been studying.’