Annie Burrows - A Duke In Need Of A Wife

‘But not former years?’ He glanced down at her, as though assessing her age. ‘You look as though you should have made your debut some time since.’

She gasped at his effrontery.

‘Why has the Countess of Tadcaster not given you a court presentation then? She is surely a most suitable person to do so.’

Had he been investigating her background? Or was he just one of those people who knew the intricate web of families that made up the haut ton so well that the few casual references to her family, made by her uncle and aunt, had been enough to place her exactly?

‘Well, when my father first died, Uncle Barty was a bachelor, so everyone thought it more appropriate for his sister to take me in charge, especially since she already had two daughters.’ She’d heard Uncle Barty say as much to the subaltern whose invidious task it had been to convey her to the head of her family. And heard the subaltern subsequently repeat the message to Aunt Agnes. ‘And then last spring, when I might have made my debut, Lady Tadcaster was...er...in a delicate condition.’

‘Ah, yes. She presented the Earl of Tadcaster with an heir during the summer months, did she not? It escaped my mind. And this year, you were too ill to endure the rigours of a Season...’

‘I most certainly was not!’

He crooked one of his eyebrows at her. She pondered the fact that they could crook. They were remarkably mobile, considering that in their resting state they relaxed back into a completely straight line. Not that relaxed was really the correct word to apply to brows which managed to look so aggressive even when they were perfectly still. Or when he was staring at her, pointedly.

She sighed. ‘I can see you are going to carry on badgering me until I tell you the truth which is...well, over the winter months, I did fall ill.’ Or perhaps it was more truthful to say she’d made herself ill. So stupidly.

It had started with hearing Jack and his friend discussing her in such derogatory terms, while she’d been crouching, hidden, underneath the jetty on which they’d been standing.

‘Sorry, I’ll have to spend a bit of time dancing attendance on the heiress,’ Jack had apologised to his friend, ‘since my family expect me to marry her. But don’t worry, it won’t take much time out of the vacation. I’ll only have to toss her the bone of a few moments of idle chat, a smile and a compliment or two and she’ll be content to chew on it for days on end, like the mongrel bitch she is.’

‘Don’t sound as if you like her much, old man,’ the friend had said, sounding almost as shocked as she’d felt.

‘Like her?’ Jack had sounded offended. ‘She’s as dull as ditch water and about as attractive.’

She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to stumble home after hearing that. And she’d shut herself in her room unable to bear the thought of facing anyone, knowing what she knew. Especially not with eyes red from weeping. After only a few days, during which she’d totally lost her appetite as well, she had started to look so ill they’d finally sent for a doctor, who’d bled her and cupped her until she really was so weak that when one of the housemaids had sneezed while lighting the fire, Sofia had caught the infection which had developed into a fully fledged inflammation of the lungs.

‘Coming to the seaside was supposed to have a tonic effect upon me,’ she said wistfully, recalling her Uncle Barty’s last visit to Nettleton Manor.

‘Not surprised you are fading away,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘Stuck out here with no company but such as that dolt my sister married and his infernal relatives. What you want is to get some sea air and go to some assemblies where you can dance with a few men in scarlet coats, eh, what? Stroll along the promenade and flirt with a beau or two.’

That had sounded good. Sea bathing. And having some beaux. That would show Jack that there were men who found her interesting. Pretty even. That would prove she was not pining away. Not that he had the slightest idea his attitude was at the root of her illness. She hadn’t told anybody what she’d overheard. It would have been too humiliating. And anyway, what would have been the point?

She suspected that Uncle Barty had only made the suggestion to cause trouble. He never left Nettleton Manor until he’d practically come to blows with Uncle Ned about something—the way he was managing Sofia’s fortune, or his treatment of Aunt Agnes, both were frequent grist to his mill. Usually she did her best to stay out of the quarrels which erupted on the slightest pretext. Especially if they concerned her. But during that last visit, she’d seen that he was the one person who could give her the answers to all the questions she’d been reluctant to ask Aunt Agnes for fear of offending her.

‘Is it a lot, the money that will come to me when I marry?’ she’d asked him, linking her arm through his as they’d strolled down to the rose garden.

‘Good Lord, yes. You’ll be rich enough to buy an...that is, yes—yes, it is.’

She’d begun to suspect as much, upon hearing how keen it had made Jack to marry her, in spite of what he thought of her. She’d never truly felt like an heiress before that day under the jetty in spite of hearing the word bandied about. In fact, she’d felt far more like a charity case, considering the way her cousins passed down their gowns from the previous Season to her each year when they went to buy new ones.

‘And what will happen to it if I don’t marry,’ she’d wondered aloud, ‘or if I die?’

‘You ain’t going to die, my girl, so stop thinking along those lines.’

‘But if I did?’

‘Well, in such a case, it would all go back to your mother’s family, where it came from,’ he’d said. Just like that. His honesty had stunned her, for everyone else had said, in the days when she’d still tried to talk about her parents, that it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

‘You...you know how to contact them, then?’

‘Of course I do,’ he’d said with a puzzled frown. ‘Why should you think anything else?’

‘But I thought that all contact was lost when...when Mama married Papa.’

‘Ah. Well, it was given out that was the case. On account of them being Catholic and your father refusing to allow you to be brought up in that religion. They had to appear to cut their daughter out of their lives. And you, as the offspring.’

‘Mama was a Catholic?’

‘What did you think she was?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I was so little when she died. Papa could not bear to talk of her and Aunt and Uncle won’t have her name mentioned. So I thought...well, the only thing I did hear was that she was some sort of...trader.’ The only words used to describe her mother’s origins had actually been of such a derogatory variety that Sofia had been half-afraid to find out any more.

‘ No, no, very good sort of people, the Perestrellos. They do own vineyards and their wine graces the tables of the wealthy all over the world. But they come from aristocratic stock. The mismatch was one of religion, not class. Unless you consider her race, which some do, the fools.’

Fools like Jack. Who’d always appeared to be sympathetic to her for being of what he called mixed heritage.

‘And if I never marry,’ she’d persisted, determined to get the full facts. ‘What then?’

‘Not marry? Pretty little thing like you?’ He’d pinched her chin. ‘Course you’ll marry. Fellers’ll be queuing up to court you.’

‘No, but seriously, Uncle Barty, I really want to know. Will I ever be able to have it? Just for myself? To do with as I please?’

‘Well, if you reach the age of thirty without getting hitched, then, yes.’