Jillian Hunter: The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

It was her pinnacle of achievement. She was to be trusted to supervise the sacred ritual. Not even the thunder that rumbled over London could spoil the occasion.

“Miss Lucille Martout,” she said in mild reproach, “do remember that the first lady to the table does not attack her tea with the brutality of Genghis Khan.”

“Hear, hear, Miss Gardner,” one of the ancients concurred. “Let us nibble in due time.”

“Sorry, miss,” mumbled the shamed girl, sliding her lacy triangle of buttered bread and watercress back onto the plate. “I shall not do it again.”

The eleven other students, dressed by London’s finest mantua-makers in gowns of dreamy spring pastels, giggled demurely. Their kidskin-sheathed hands settled like wings in their laps. Miss Charlotte Boscastle, the academy’s current headmistress, walked between each table before returning to her place with the four young ladies who would make their debut this season. She nodded her fair head in approval.

Three of the accomplished quartet had received a half dozen offers of matrimony between them, with others pending. The fourth was a shy Yorkshire girl with solid connections at court. Her family had confided to the academy that they had begun negotiations with an earl. The prospect appeared to interest their daughter far less than the thickly iced cakes adorned with fresh violets that graced the table.

Charlotte took her seat, her willowy frame silhouetted against the tasseled silk curtains. She sent an encouraging smile across the room. “A final reminder, ladies. Tea is not a game of tennis. Serve those closest to you first, and do not use the silver tongs to pinch one another. If you are pinched, seek retribution at a later time. I was a student once myself.”

Harriet cleared her throat, then paused. It challenged the imagination to picture Charlotte as anything but a model of propriety-unless one happened to read the novel she was secretly writing, and that, indeed, was another story.

A brilliant display of lightning flickered behind the sash windows of the cozy drawing room. At once the skies that had bestowed a celestial blue upon the city dimmed. The candle flames danced as if to defy the elements.

“Taking tea is an art,” Harriet began, raising her voice in competition with another clap of thunder. Hell’s bells, what a clamor. Did she hear hoofbeats, or was the back door banging open? It sounded like the confounded apocalypse. She glanced around the room in rising irritation. She was anything but a model of propriety. She still struggled to shackle her tongue when something upset her. The coalman cheating Cook, for example. A nob whacking an apprentice with his walking stick. The prospect of a ruined practice tea. The students had started to wiggle, sensing that Harriet was not paying attention to protocol.

One of the girls sitting at the window gasped. “Oh, golly! Look at that.”

The dowager at the distracted student’s side sprang out of her chair. As the gathering watched on in happy apprehension, the distinguished guest parted the curtains for the entire assembly to behold a jet-black carriage with enormous wheels rolling to a dramatic halt at the pavement. A spume of mud splattered the lacquered red dragons emblazoned on the door panel. A man in a top hat sat behind the carriage window.

“Who is he?” Miss Martout demanded, craning for a look.

“I believe it is the Duke of Glenmorgan,” the dowager said after a pause. “I saw that same carriage pass through Berkshire two years ago when his brother was still alive.”

Harriet turned to question Charlotte, who had half risen, shaking her head in denial.

“But he isn’t meant to arrive until Thursday,” Charlotte whispered in panic. “I wrote it down.”

Harriet rolled her eyes. “This is Thursday.”

Charlotte pushed away from her chair, white as marble. “Assert your authority, Miss Gardner, lest we have anarchy on our hands.”

Harriet clapped her hands. “Ladies, please remain in your places.” That was futile. There wasn’t a single girl left at the tables. “Girls! There is nothing worse than lukewarm tea!”

“You’ll have to come up with a more dire threat than that to control them,” a cheerful voice commented over her shoulder. “A duke will trump a cup of hot tea any day.”

Harriet opened her mouth to reply, but it was too late. The stouthearted Lady Hermia Dalrymple had surged past the students to the windows as if she were a schoolgirl herself and not a widow in her late sixties. To look at her, one would never guess she was as celebrated for her painting circle, which featured half-naked Boscastle men posing as deities, as she was for her place in the family as a beloved aunt-in-law.

“Where is he from?” a younger student asked, climbing onto a chair to see above the other girls peering through the curtains.

“Why is he here?”

“No one has told me, but I saw him first.”

“How could you? He hasn’t even stepped out of the carriage.”

“For all you know, he isn’t even in the carriage.” Harriet strode across the room, snagging a sash here, an elbow there. “That could be his valet or his uncle. Back to your seats this very moment. I shall not tell you-”

“He’s stepping out of the carriage-”

“That’s a lady’s foot, you ninny,” another student noted. “And all those lovely feathers in her hair are going to be soaked and leave her battered like a wet hen before she reaches the front steps. Where are the footmen?”

From where she stood, Harriet could discern neither bird nor beast through the rain washing against the windows. The temperature in the drawing room dropped. Few of the candles had survived the frantic dash of a dozen girls at once. Harriet’s shawl had fallen to the carpet. A furtive shape moved in her peripheral vision. She turned to glimpse Charlotte sneaking toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked in alarm.

“I have to change,” Charlotte said quietly, pressing her finger to her lips. “I’ll only be a few moments.”

Change? But everyone looked so fresh, so lovely. Like a watercolor of fairies gathered under a rainbow-before a big nasty storm appeared to ruin the day.

“I know the duke is a distant cousin,” Harriet said in bewilderment. “But I thought he would only be leaving his niece at the academy, and-why do you have to change?”

Lady Dalrymple hurried after Charlotte, agile for a woman of her ample build. “It’s his aunt, you understand.”

“Understand what?” Harriet asked, suddenly feeling like the lone rat on a sinking ship. “Wherever are you going?”

“We have to freshen up, dear,” Lady Dalrymple whispered. “Lady Powlis and I attended school together long ago. I’d never dream of greeting Primrose without putting on a fancier pair of gloves. She notices things like that. Charlotte, you don’t mind if I share your dressing closet for a few moments?”

“Who is going to welcome the duke with all these girls gone wild?” Miss Peppertree, the academy’s senior instructress, a spinster, and a sourpuss, asked in an aggrieved voice.

“Miss Gardner won’t mind,” Charlotte called back distractedly.

Harriet frowned, staring at the academy’s finest shoving one another aside to stand on the highest chair. “I won’t?”

Lady Dalrymple paused to deliver an unhelpful bit of advice before disappearing into the hall. “It’s good experience, dear. One day you might be employed in a grand house and have to answer to a duchess.”

“But in the meanwhile I haven’t the faintest notion what to do with… a duke,” Harriet muttered, feeling more abandoned by the moment. Even worse, she sensed herself to be in trouble. As subdued as her street instincts might be, they rarely failed to warn her when her well-being was at stake. In her experience, people who caused this much bother when they arrived only meant a load of work for everyone expected to please them.