Elizabeth Beacon - The Duchess Hunt

‘Thank you, Brandt,’ she said once she had almost shaken off the nerve-tingling effect of sitting by his master long enough to remember the name of Jack’s head groom.

‘It’s always a pleasure to help a true lady into one of our carriages, Miss Pendle,’ the middle-aged man said, as if he didn’t think much of the females who usually graced the ducal curricle, and Jess bit back a chuckle at hearing his grace the Duke of Dettingham being scolded about the company he kept by his groom.

‘Indeed it is,’ Jack muttered blandly, then informed Brandt he could walk home as a reward for his impudence.

‘Aye, your Grace,’ the man said equably and took off at a brisk pace as if he relished the task.

They set off and Jessica tried not to look surprised and a little bit scandalised when Jack left the Park in order to set down his tiger not far from his house in Grosvenor Square, although she couldn’t help but be amused at the swagger in the diminutive tiger’s step as he doffed his cap to her with elaborate courtesy and cocked Jack a knowing glance before strolling off towards the Dettingham House mews.

‘Where on earth did you find him?’ Jess asked as she waited for the greys to admit Jack was indeed their master and fully in control before he gave them the office to move off.

‘The stews, but he’s going to be the best jockey I ever had if only he’ll learn to listen to those who know more about the art than he thinks he does.’

‘So you punished his intransigence by making him your tiger? Your servants must tremble in their boots when you lose your temper with one of them, your Grace,’ she teased, but secretly thought his leniency admirable, especially in contrast to the appalling way some powerful householders treated their servants.

‘I don’t have to lose my temper, Miss Pendle; all it takes is one of my ducal frowns and they all run about doing my bidding as if I were a king in his palace.’

‘How things must have changed at Ashburton,’ she said with a mock sigh. ‘I shall look forward to witnessing it.’

‘You’ll do so in vain,’ he said with a rueful smile that made her recall how likeable she might find him if she dared let herself. ‘They’re all convinced they know how to run the place far better than I do.’

‘They’re probably right,’ Jessica pointed out helpfully. ‘I doubt you had lessons on how to order a china cupboard or keep a linen cupboard supplied inflicted on you as a boy.’

‘Something for which I am truly thankful,’ he said and turned his team out into the traffic.

‘Where are we going?’ Jess asked, clutching her best bonnet, then tying the ribbons a little tighter as he set the restless team to as fast a pace as was safe in the London traffic.

‘Somewhere they can have a half-decent run and we can breathe in clean air for once,’

he told her rather distractedly as he skirted a wagon and restrained his high-spirited team as they took offence at a lady’s parasol in a virulent shade of green that would have made Jess do the same if she had to stare at it for long.

‘Won’t there be gossip?’ she protested half-heartedly.

‘Isn’t there always gossip?’ he said cynically.

‘About you, yes,’ she agreed, but not very often about lame and respectable Miss Pendle. A rebel voice within whispered it was about time she gave them a little fodder for their ever-more-ridiculous tales, so she might as well sit back and enjoy it.

‘I doubt even the tabbies will believe Lord and Lady Pendle allowed me to abduct their ewe lamb in front of their eyes, so you can relax, Princess. I promise to get you home in one piece with your name relatively unsullied before anyone even notices you’re gone.’

‘Since this is my last foray into society, I suppose it doesn’t matter what they say about me any more,’ Jess replied half to herself.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I should have thought it perfectly plain.’

‘Not to me.’

‘I am on the shelf, your Grace—not that I was ever truly off it—and I have no intention of taking part in any more social Seasons as I don’t particularly like London at this time of year. It always seems absurd to me that we all up sticks and move to town, when the countryside is at its most lovely and busy with new life, so we may spend that precious time of year being overheated and bored in a city that can’t help but be malodorous in the wrong weather—which seems to be most varieties of an English spring and summer so far as I can tell.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but you’re far too young to be at your last prayers. Not that you ever made the slightest push at being a successful débutante when you were younger and I can’t help but wonder why.’

‘Isn’t that perfectly obvious as well?’ she asked exasperatedly.

‘Again, not to me, which means that either I’m being particularly stupid, or you’re wrong. How to walk the fine line between arguing with a lady when she says black is white and I know it to be otherwise, I wonder?’ he mused as if his interpretation of events must be right, just because it always was, presumably.

‘You could try silence.’

‘Is that how you do it, Jessica? Use that quiet, sceptical manner of yours to frighten off all the sprigs of nobility who don’t comply with your high standards?’

So now he thought her a snob, incapable of finding any man fit to be her ideal pattern-card of a husband?

‘What a very high opinion of me you do have,’ she tried to joke.

‘It can’t be any lower than the one you appear to have of yourself,’ he said impatiently and finally gave his team more rein as the traffic thinned at last.

‘I am a realist,’ she stated bluntly.

‘If that were the case, you would be Lady Something or the Countess of Somewhere by now,’ he scolded as if her single status actually mattered to him.

‘And Lord Something or the Earl of Somewhere would simply overlook the fact they’d saddled themselves with a lame wife, I suppose?’ she asked caustically.

‘Yes, the only person who refuses to do just that is you, Jessica Pendle, and I’m weary of the whole tableau of the brave beauty, meekly accepting that her role in life is to make others feel pleased they are more fortunate than she is. It’s almost an insult to those of us who value you as you are, rather than as you think you should be.’

‘I’m lame, that’s how I know myself to be,’ she sparked back and tears she told herself were of temper threatened to undo her under his sceptical gaze.

‘You limp a little, that’s all,’ he argued. ‘It could have been so much worse, considering you spent a day and a night out in the pouring rain lying injured. You could have died, or been seriously crippled for life,’ he said, the passion in his voice making his now-calm team jib again.

‘I have never denied it was my own fault,’ she offered a little too meekly for her own taste.

‘Yes, it was, in so far as you took a horse you were forbidden to ride and dashed off on him into weather you should have known would terrify the poor beast. You had a quick temper and a wayward heart in those days, but none of us thought you set out to do yourself and that unfortunate animal injury. We would have been fools if we had, considering how well we all knew your fiery temper and tomboyish ways. No doubt you thought such an impulsive and ill-considered exploit would prove to the world you were every bit as good as any of your brothers at the time. Us Seabornes and your own doting family were only relieved you were alive, so why can’t you accept it as a minor miracle you survived relatively unscathed as we all did at the time?’

‘I had no idea you even knew I had gone,’ she said faintly.