Miss Dane and the Duke

Antonia smiled sweetly back, refusing to be drawn. Doubtless Lady reed was one of those ladies who resented any other woman receiving masculine attention in her vicinity. She began to converse with Lord Meredith, who was offering her the dish of poached turbot. Marcus’s chef had excelled himself and the fish dishes were followed by elaborate entrées of truffled roast chicken, glazed ham and dainty savouries in pastry cases.

Antonia caught Donna’s eye across the table and smiled at her companion’s carefully schooled expression. After months of frugal housekeeping and good, plain fare culled from the land or their garden, this sumptuous menu with its rich sauces was almost overwhelming.

Lord Meredith proved to be genial and entertaining. Antonia guessed that he was less intellectual than his wife, and more concerned with his estates than with the arts or politics. He cast fond glances at his spouse, who appeared to be discussing the state of the Whigs with Sir John.

‘Intelligent woman, my wife,’ he confided in Antonia with immense pride. ‘Don’t understand why she finds politics so interesting. I’d rather go hunting, myself, but I like to see her enjoying herself.’

Antonia followed his gaze and thought how magnificent her hostess looked, her strong features animated by intelligence as she rallied Mr Leigh on his views on the government.

She was guiltily aware she had been talking far too long to Lord Meredith and should be devoting some of her time to Marcus. And she knew why – it was an effort to turn back into Claudia Reed’s glittering sights, but she did so.

‘Might I trouble you for the powdered sugar?’ Marcus asked. When she passed it he handed it on to Lady Reed who began to dip early strawberries into it before pressing them to her lips with little cries of pleasure.

Antonia regarded the spectacle with carefully veiled distaste, wondering exactly what was, or had been, the relationship between these two. Could she have been his mistress? Such things were not uncommon in polite Society, she knew. After all, Marcus was unmarried and no monk. She could not, however, admire his taste.

And, if Claudia Reed were his mistress, what was she doing here when he was courting Antonia? Was he motivated simply by his desire for her lands and a degree of attraction to her? Antonia acknowledged that her breeding, if not her present circumstances, made her an acceptable, although very far from brilliant, match. But she was never going to be able to employ the wiles and artifice of such a highly finished piece of nature as Lady Reed.

‘Renshaw tells me that you and Miss er… Dickinson have set up housekeeping in some quaint Tudor ruin.’ Lady Reed smiled sweetly with her lips, but her eyes remained cold. ‘How quixotic of you.’

‘Miss Donaldson,’ Antonia corrected evenly. ‘And, indeed, it would be most quixotic if the Dower House were a ruin, but in fact it is a most charming place, requiring only a little care and attention to make it a comfortable home once again.’

‘And that despite the headless ghoul,’ Marcus added, with a shared smile towards Antonia.

‘Will you never stop teasing me about my foolishness,’ she began but was interrupted by a squeak from Claudia.

‘A ghost! Oh, Renshaw, I am so relieved to be staying here at dear Brightshill. I know from past experience,’ she added to Antonia, ‘that there are no spectres here and, even if there were, I know Marcus would protect me.’

Only the memory of her own folly in flinging herself into Marcus’s arms saved Antonia from an acid rejoinder. Claudia’s intention was quite plain: she had established that she had been a guest at Brightshill before, and perhaps more than just a guest. She spared a passing thought for Sir George Reed, drilling his troops at Brighton. What was the man about to leave his wife to her own devices? Surely he must know her for what she was?

‘Ladies? Shall we?’ Lady Anne was on her feet, gathering the attention of the female guests. ‘I suppose we must leave these wretches to their port, and what they always assure us is not gossip but a serious discussion of affairs.’

Chapter Thirteen

In the drawing-room, Anne Meredith linked arms with Antonia and began to stroll up and down the length of the room. ‘What a charming gown, Miss Dane. May I ask who your modiste is? Surely not a provincial dressmaker?’

Antonia was saved from deciding whether to be frank or to turn the question by the intervention of Lady Reed. ‘Yes, charming simplicity. Almost naive, is it not? And that gold is such a difficult colour unless one is somewhat swarthy. For myself, with my fair skin, I have to choose only the purest colours.’

Antonia suppressed the desire to grind her teeth in the face of such comprehensive spite. She smiled instead, knowing that was the more provoking response. ‘How trying for you.’

Really, she fumed inwardly, men can be such fools. What does Marcus see in her? Then she looked at the perfect figure, the pert bosom displayed by expensive dressmaking, the pouting red lips and told herself not to be such an innocent. And with Sir George so safely out of the way in Brighton it would not be ghosts wandering the corridors of Brightshill at midnight.

Antonia’s first instinct was to have no more to do with Marcus. If he thought she was so complacent, or such a fool, as to tolerate him entertaining his mistress, then he had sadly misjudged her character. Then the doors opened and the gentlemen rejoined the party and she looked across the room and saw him.

Marcus was standing in the doorway, regarding her with a steady intensity that made her knees weak. Haughtily Antonia raised her brows and in reply, his lips curved into a smile so intense, so full of promise that her resolution melted and her pulse stammered. She smiled back into his eyes, seeing only him, conscious only of him, the sounds in the room fading into nothingness.

She was still arm-in-arm with her hostess and was jolted back to the moment by Anne exclaiming, ‘Ah, good! The gentlemen at last. Shall we make up a table or two of cards? Mead, set up the tables over here.’

As the butler directed the footmen, Miss Fitch murmured that she had no head for cards. ‘I am very foolish, I am afraid,’ she confessed.

‘I am sure you are merely being modest, Miss Fitch,’ Richard Leigh protested. ‘But will you not play for us, instead? I would be delighted to turn the music for you.’ He waved aside her blushing protests, lifted the lid of the pianoforte and adjusted the stool for her. ‘What piece shall we start with?’ he asked, coaxing her out of her shyness.

After a moment, under cover of the first bars of a Mozart air, Lady Anne remarked, ‘How charming. The child really does play beautifully.’

‘If one has a liking for the insipid,’ Lady Reed commented. ‘It is as well she has some talent to attract, I suppose, for she is otherwise unremarkable. So gauche.’

‘No more so than any girl of her age,’ Antonia retorted. ‘I find her refreshing. But then I have always preferred the natural to the contrived, and it would appear that I am not alone in my opinion.’ She nodded towards Mr Leigh, who was assiduously turning the pages, his dark head bent close to Sophia’s soft brown curls.

Lady Anne turned the conversation, but not before Antonia had caught a gleam of approval in her eyes. It seemed to Antonia that her hostess had no more liking for Claudia than she did, which made it even more obvious that the woman was there not at her invitation but at Marcus’s.