Elizabeth Beacon - The Duchess Hunt

‘I think we all know that.’

‘Then you must also know I’m not the sort of person you want at Ashburton if you’re intent on persuading one of the guests to become your duchess,’ she said recklessly and knew the instant it was out of her mouth that it was a dare too far.

His green-gold eyes darkened until they resembled obsidian and his mouth hardened into the look of arrogant superiority that had always raised her hackles. His unspoken contempt for her plain speaking was intimidating, as if she’d lost his good opinion so effectively it wasn’t even worth him explaining why. Her hand shook and her breath hitched as she bit back the apology threatening to tumble from her lips.

‘Perhaps you’re exactly the sort of female I need to goad me into finding your exact opposite, Miss Pendle,’ he said after a pause that somehow made it worse.

He was offended and furious, but at least she’d hidden her instinctive horror at the idea of him taking a lovely and obliging female to wife. This was exactly the sort of scene she’d warned herself against at sixteen, but could it be she hadn’t buried the romantic idiot she’d been then deeply enough? If she was about to watch some innocent succumb to his quick wits, spectacular looks and powerful masculine aura, then grown-up Jessica Pendle had better steel herself until she was as far from her immature self as Herefordshire was from Hispaniola.

‘I’m already all that your duchess will not be,’ she stated flatly, ‘so why bother?’

‘And I shudder to think how dangerous you could be, Princess, if you ever let yourself off the role of martyr for long enough to find out,’ he replied enigmatically.

‘True,’ Lady Pendle interrupted with a sage nod that made Jessica flash her mother a furious look instead of him.

‘At times like this, I should be able to rely on my mother for support,’ she told her with as much dignity as she could manage.

‘You will always have that, my love,’ Lady Pendle replied, ‘but it’s high time you tried out your own wings.’

‘Even if they’re broken?’ she was shocked into protesting a little too revealingly.

‘Nonsense, you always did refine too much on that damaged ankle of yours,’ Jack told her impatiently.

‘And you have rarely been more wrong, your Grace,’ she informed him sourly.

‘Not as wrong as you are if you let a few featherheaded fools make you see yourself as less than you are. You’re as idiotic as they are if you have,’ he said bluntly.

‘Am I indeed?’ she asked regally.

After enduring years of hot rooms, laboured conversation and pitying looks, with the occasional glimpse of his Grace the Duke of Dettingham in flight from a pack of eager young ladies to enliven her evenings, she was very familiar with her limitations. She refused to accept his opinion of her status from a man who only had to hint he wanted to marry to be chased by every eligible female in the British Isles.

‘Yes,’ he said, as if in no doubt about his omnipotence and her stupidity.

‘At least I don’t think it’s my prerogative to dictate the lives of others.’

‘Such heat, Miss Pendle—could it be that my faults are more important to you than you’re prepared to admit?’ he asked slyly.

‘No, and you’ve got so many it would take me a lifetime to list them all,’ she informed him, fixing a bland smile to her lips to disguise her ire from spectators.

‘And how well you would get on with my grandmother, if only she was able to attend this little affair Aunt Melissa is organising so diligently on my behalf,’ he said.

Recalling how much she disliked the dictatorial and often downright rude Dowager Duchess of Dettingham, Jessica would have laughed at the thought of them agreeing upon any topic under the sun, if his words didn’t echo her mother’s earlier ones and make her feel like crying instead.

‘Then there’s someone else in this world who refuses to take you at face value,’ she defended herself haughtily.

‘And such a handsome face it is as well, my boy,’ Lady Pendle intervened with a repressive look for her daughter that spoke of what she might say when they were alone. ‘Tell your Aunt Melissa that of course we shall come and, if I can drag Pendle away from his acres and our dear Rowena, he will lend you his support as well.’

‘Thank you, my lady, I am truly grateful,’ he said and Jessica felt an unladylike urge to kick him on his nearest perfect and lordly ankle, just to watch him limp away for once, instead of feeling so ungraceful in her own departure, which her mother signalled at last by rising to her feet and accepting Jack’s arm when he declared it his opportunity to escape as well.

‘I shall look forward to welcoming you to Ashburton once again then, Princess,’ he murmured by way of farewell as he handed them into their town carriage with the effortless ease that somehow made Jessica even more furious.

‘You won’t notice I exist among so many beautiful and accomplished young ladies,’ she replied ungraciously.

‘Oh, I always notice you, Princess,’ he said as if he should be congratulated.

Then he stood back with an insufferably superior smile on his handsome face as the footman slammed the door. Waving a careless farewell, Jack sauntered off into the night without so much as a walking cane to protect himself with, probably whistling carelessly as if to actually invite any waiting footpad to make the attempt to rob him as he went, Jessica decided crossly.

‘If you always kept your word as diligently as you did just now, your father and I would soon be forced to disown you,’ her mother told her acidly.

‘What do you mean? I always live up to my promises,’ Jessica protested, stung by the genuine anger in her mother’s voice.

‘You swore you would be civil to Jack not half an hour ago and you have just treated him to a display of childish temper I can only categorise as shrill and disagreeable.’

‘I wonder why I feel this compulsion to go to bed without supper?’ Jessica asked as lightly as she could. Part of her knew her mother was right; she had let the odd feeling that Jack marrying might rock her own world to its foundations overtake good manners. ‘I will try to keep a curb on my tongue from now on,’ she promised and hoped she could hold to it for the two weeks of Jack’s house party.

Jack Seaborne was probably too much of a gentleman to hold her ill temper against her and she didn’t matter enough for him to bother holding a grudge. He wasn’t the sort of man who nursed a slight anyway and after this visit they would not meet other than by chance or at the odd dutiful occasion. She had seven brothers and sisters and he had five first cousins—four if you excluded Rich—and a legion of more distant connections, so there would be christenings and engagement balls in common with the Duke and Duchess of Dettingham, but Miss Pendle, the maiden aunt, could fade into the background until the great left the good to their celebrations.

Of course she pitied whichever deluded girl let herself be blinded by the allure of the handsome Duke of Dettingham to the true Jack Seaborne underneath. He had a tyrannical will and an unbending determination to run the lives of those around him for their own good. No doubt he would make the poor child a very uncomfortable husband, but watching him court his bride would not be an ordeal, more another duty to get through before she could retire to the country and breed pigs, or maybe finance canals and steam engines and make a name for herself as an eccentric lady of means.

‘What more could a mother ask than your promise to try to be civil for a whole two weeks?’ Lady Pendle mused ironically and Jessica shifted uncomfortably on the well-upholstered cushions as she reviewed her behaviour over the last hour or so. ‘And you are not to play the old maid at Ashburton when the family will expect you to enjoy yourself as usual. I know the place is lovely at any time of year, but I have always found it especially so during high summer,’ her mother offered, as if the natural and contrived beauty of the setting ought to console Jessica for renouncing the right to be rude to her host whenever the fancy took her.