The Other Wife (The Dunne Family Series Book 3) Read online

  Helen tittered nervously. “Oh, well, one must make allowances for those who have not been much in society! Don’t you think, Auntie Aurora?”

  Aurora smiled. “One must make allowances for ignorance, Helen, but no allowances can be made for poor character.”

  “Miss Linden, perhaps, if you are free, you might grace me with your next dance,” Mr. St. James suggested, clearly uncomfortable with the situation.

  “Yes, Helen,” Aurora agreed. “The two of you should go and dance. I think I shall return home for the evening. I feel a bit of a headache coming on. Lady Deerfield will see you home. I shall inform her to do so.”

  “Thank you, Auntie Aurora. I hope you feel better,” Helen offered with a gentle smile that highlighted just how young and tender-hearted the girl was.

  “I’m certain I will. I’m just not fit for company tonight. Pity more people don’t recognize that about themselves. Good evening to you, Mr. St. James.”

  Gavin didn’t know what it was about the woman that had instantly put his back up. She was too prim, too proper, too perfect. With her elegant chignon, a gown that likely cost more than he’d ever earned in his life prior to becoming a duke, and her perfectly modulated and precisely enunciated words, he’d acted out of temper and his own assumptions. He’d assumed she’d be looking down at him. He’d assumed she’d be angling for gossip about him to share. In short, he’d made an ass of himself, and that had only made things worse. At some point, he’d have to apologize.

  “I hate this infernal city,” he murmured to himself. “I hate it and all of its damned rules.”

  Catching a passing footman, he instructed, “Tell Mr. Stephan St. James that I have gone home. I will leave the carriage for his use.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the footman replied with a slight bow.

  Gavin strode from the ballroom and through the entryway of the Trumbles’ lavish home. He didn’t stop or slow his steps until he was outside in the cool, if not entirely fresh, night air. Once there, away from the crowd and away from the curious stares, he felt he could breathe again.

  And that was when he saw her. Lady Sheffield. She was waiting for her carriage on the steps outside.

  “I was an ass,” he said simply as he walked up behind her. “I hate these blasted things.”

  She turned then, her surprise quite clear. “Is that an apology?”

  “It probably should be, but no.” Gavin sighed. “I made an assumption about you the moment I laid eyes on you. That you would be vain and full of conceit, only concerned with power and position and wealth. I can’t apologize for that, as I do not yet know whether or not it was accurate. That being said, I should not have behaved as if it were a fact.”

  She frowned at him, her perfectly arched brows drawing together in an expression of disbelief so exaggerated it might have been comical. It would have been comical if she were still not so ridiculously beautiful. “So your adherence to the standards of what is and is not acceptable behavior when meeting a stranger is dependent upon whether or not you deem the stranger worthy of being polite to them? If that is so, Your Grace, then you have entirely missed the point of etiquette. Etiquette is not in place that you may be gracious to those you like. Etiquette exists so that you be gracious to those you do not know and even those whom you do not wish to know. It is what allows society to function rather than to have people running about like wild animals, planting facers and starting duels!”

  “I’m not much for society,” he replied. “Just ask St. James. He despairs of me ever grasping the intricacies of it. I believe that had been his intent when introducing us, that you might, for whatever reason, take on the task of teaching me to function better within it.”

  She laughed then, the sound light and musical, despite the fact that it also sounded a bit mean. “I shall not,” she finally managed. “There is no power on earth that would convince me to spend more time in your company, Your Grace. The fact of the matter is I find your manners deplorable. More than your manners, I find your close-minded dismissal of myself and others as unworthy of your time, attention, or even civility, to be insufferable. So, I bid you good night. And wish you all the best in your endeavors.”

  How wishing him the best and wishing him to the very devil could sound so much alike, he had no idea. But it did. She might well have told him to go straight to hell. Puzzling over that and perhaps even a bit amused by it, Gavin watched as she stepped toward an approaching carriage, was assisted into it by a waiting footman, and then disappeared into the night.

  He’d thought her a snob, and she might well be. He’d thought her haughty and proud, and she was both of those things. He’d presumed she’d be boring. And on that score, he could count himself entirely wrong.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was late when Aurora awoke. She’d had a fitful night once she’d managed to go to sleep. In truth, she’d spent the better part of the evening lying in bed, tossing and turning, all while fuming over the presumptuousness, highhandedness and vanity of the Duke of Westerhaven. The man was an absolute lout.

  The maid had come earlier and brought her breakfast. She’d directed the woman to set it on the table and now it had long since grown cold. Ignoring it with a wrinkle of her nose in distaste, she walked to her dressing room and found her riding habit. She was too impatient to call for her maid. She wanted to be out of the house, breathing fresh air and avoiding her own thoughts for a bit.

  Once she’d donned the riding habit, she began brushing her hair and securing it into a simple knot. Perching her hat jauntily atop her head, she then made her way downstairs. A giggle from the drawing room halted her progress.

  Aurora glanced at the clock on the hall table. It wasn’t even eleven and Helen was already entertaining callers. It wasn’t inappropriate really, but it was certainly suspect.

  Moving toward the room in question, Aurora opened the door and stepped inside to find Helen perched on the edge of the settee and Mr. Stephan St. James sitting near her. Very near her. Too near her. As if, in fact, they might have been more than just sitting next to one another just before she had entered. Helen’s fichu was out of place, her hair was mussed and Mr. St. James’ waistcoat was quite rumpled.

  “Mr. St. James,” Aurora said. “You are certainly out and about early.”

  “He brought flowers, Auntie,” Helen said, pointing to a small posy laid on the table. The girl offered up a smile that was all beatific innocence.

  Aurora’s only response was to cross her arms and arch her eyebrow.

  “Well, I was out walking this morning,” Mr. St. James explained, apparently feeling compelled to defend their actions in the face of Aurora’s very obvious doubt. “I found myself near the markets and someone was selling those lovely posies and I thought to myself that those violets were precisely the color of Miss Linden’s eyes. What was I to do but purchase one for her?”

  “What indeed… aside from waiting for respectable hours to pay a call,” Aurora reproached. She wasn’t without sympathy to young love, but theirs was a hopeless case. Her brother would never allow Helen to marry someone he deemed beneath them. And given the current state of their fortune and Helen’s not inconsiderable beauty, he had very high expectations for her indeed. Still, Aurora didn’t feel that it was her place to forbid them to be in company with one another, but neither did she feel she could be complicit in their assignations. “Do I need to pose a question about your intentions for my niece, Mr. St. James? Though it is not my place to do so, it would be her father’s. And we all know he would not ask the question, he would simply forbid all contact. I urge you, Mr. St. James, be circumspect enough in your behavior that I do not need to inform my brother of it.”

  With a guilty flush, the young man ducked his head. “I assure you, Lady Sheffield, that I hold Miss Linden in the highest of regards. My intentions toward her have never been anything but honorable.”

  “Then, I suggest you return to your lodgings and you may visit again when Helen has a chaper
one present and during hours where callers would typically be received,” Aurora stated. “Good day to you, Mr. St. James.”

  The young man rose, sketched a bow, spared one long, lingering look for Helen, and then vacated the room.

  “How could you be so cruel, Auntie Aurora?” Helen cried as soon as the door had closed behind him. “Mr. St. James—”

  “Was taking liberties. Liberties that you no doubt were giving freely to him,” Aurora replied firmly. She wasn’t so foolish as to think that Helen had elected to come for an extended visit because she enjoyed her company so much. It had been a calculated effort on the part of her niece to have greater access to the young man she apparently fancied herself in love with. “I will not forbid your seeing Mr. St. James… unless you behave in a way that forces my hand. Are we clear, Helen?”

  The girl looked mutinous for a moment then capitulated with a nod. “He’s a very good man.”

  “He is still a man.” In Aurora’s mind, that was enough to damn him. “Go upstairs and don your habit. We are going for a ride.”

  “But I don’t want to ride!”

  “And I didn’t want to come below stairs to find my niece cavorting on the settee with a gentleman her father would never permit to court her,” Aurora snapped. “It isn’t a choice, Helen. It’s direct supervision until you prove you can be trusted to be out of my sight.”

  One of the few things that Gavin had mastered long before taking on the role of duke was riding. He’d spent more time in his life on horseback than off. If ever there was an area where society matrons and his fellow peers could not find fault with him it would be his equestrian skills and his ability to shoot. When his father had taken him to America as a young man, he had dreaded that change. He’d thought of America as a wild and uncivilized place then. But as a younger son, the opportunities presented there allowed for a chance at financial freedom that would never be found in England. But now, those distant shores seemed far more his home than the upper echelons of English society to which he’d been born.

  As he rounded the bend in the path, he saw Stephan walking on a nearby path looking very dejected. Electing to dismount rather than ride his horse through a throng of pedestrians, Gavin led the beast toward his young protege.

  “What has you looking so down?”

  Stephan stammered a bit. “I was paying a call to Miss Linden this morning and I fear I may have given offense. Lady Sheffield… Well, she asked me to leave.”

  Gavin’s temper flared. “What?”

  “My visit to Miss Linden this morning was a bit early, and I confess that I may have been too eager to see her to observe the necessary protocol. When Lady Sheffield discovered that I was there, she suggested that it was not appropriate and that I should leave.”

  Gavin shook his head and laughed a bit, though it was hardly an amused sound. “So much for her lectures on the purpose of etiquette and how one should treat others. I have half a mind to tell her exactly what I think of her!”

  Stephan looked up, panic on his face. “You can’t. You can’t possibly. It isn’t… Well, she wasn’t without cause. Truly, I was in the wrong!”

  “What could you have possibly done? Clearly Miss Linden was amenable to your company,” Gavin protested. “This was spite on her part. It was a spiteful and hateful jab at me through you. I will not have it, Stephan.”

  As if summoned by his temper, Gavin saw her round a bend on the path. Both she and Miss Linden were on horseback, riding side saddle. It was stupid and dangerous and he couldn’t imagine why women consented to something that was clearly perilous. Oh, he did know why: because society demanded it.

  “Society be damned,” he muttered. Passing the reins of his mount to Stephan, he strode forward until he’d put himself directly in Lady Sheffield’s path. “A word, madame, if you please.”

  From atop her mount, she looked down at him. “That did not appear to be a request, Your Grace. Simply adding please at the end does not make it so.”

  “It was not a request. I will have that word, here in front of everyone or in a more private setting where we will not be overheard,” Gavin bit out. “The choice is yours.”

  “Then, you may assist me to dismount, sir,” she replied. Again, her words and the pitch of her voice were all that was proper. There was a bite underneath.

  Gavin helped her down, passed the reins to her mount to the groom who had accompanied them ,and then, he offered her his arm. She paused for a moment, looking at it as if it were a snake about to strike. Then she placed her hand upon his forearm.

  It was like lightning. That simple touch, her hand resting upon his arm through layers of clothing, and yet he felt it like a touch on bare skin. Heat. Spark. Fueled by anger and lust, it was undeniable because he knew, in that moment, he had not been alone. He’d heard her sharp inhale, seen her eyes cut to the side, glancing at him in surprise before quickly cutting away once more as a flush crept over her neck and up into her cheeks. Oh yes. She had felt it.

  Walking along the path toward a copse of trees, they stopped beneath one still in sight of other riders and pedestrians. Again, it was all that was proper.

  “What would you speak to me about, Your Grace?” Her tone was imperious and haughty. It represented everything he detested about society.

  “Your mistreatment of my cousin,” he stated flatly. “That boy could not have given you offense and yet you tossed him from your home unceremoniously, simply to serve some petty vengeance on me in this unfounded feud that has erupted between us!”

  Her eyes widened and then she let out a bark of laughter. “Is that what he told you? Really? You speak of things about which you know nothing, Your Grace. Absolutely nothing!”

  Gavin stepped closer to her, so close that she had to tip her head back to look up at him and meet his gaze. They could just as easily have been fighters squared off in the ring as dancers on the floor in a glittering ballroom. “Then I beg of you to enlighten me, Lady Sheffield! What could he possibly have done to warrant such treatment?”

  She arched her brow and crossed her arms over her chest but did not glare at him. No, she looked past him, as if he were somehow beneath her notice. “A gentleman does not come to a home so early in the morning and closet himself alone in a room with a young and unmarried girl who is barely out in society! It simply is not done, Your Grace, and if you were more inclined to participate in society rather than to disdain it, you would know that.”

  “He told me you had discovered him visiting Miss Linden and asked him to leave your home!”

  Her chin jutted forward and she lifted her head imperiously. “Did he mention that when I discovered him they were completely unchaperoned? That the two of them were alone in my drawing room with the door closed? No maid, no footmen, no one present! They were sitting inappropriately close to one another. I daresay intimately close to one another and that numerous articles of their clothing were either rumpled or askew! Did he mention that, Your Grace?”

  Gavin’s face flushed. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Of course he would! And so would she!” Lady Sheffield snapped. “Have you really forgotten what it was to be that young and utterly smitten? If either of them had any sense about them to start, it has fled entirely by now!”

  Recalling precisely the sort of feeling she described and realizing that their own proximity to one another could easily be interpreted as inappropriately intimate, Gavin eased back a step. It provided distance but had the great disadvantage of allowing him a much clearer view of her. In her well-fitted riding habit, with her hair done up simply and the hot color of temper in her cheeks, she was lovelier than any woman of his acquaintance and far more appealing than she ought to have been. Especially given their inability to maintain a civil word to one another. “I am not so old that those memories are beyond recall,” he admitted softly. “I will speak to him and convey that he is not to see Miss Linden again.”

  “That’s hardly necessary. I do not hold my niece blameless in
this, Your Grace,” Lady Sheffield continued. “Make no mistake in thinking that I do not know she is leading that young man on a merry chase. He has stated that his intentions are honorable and I believe that with my whole heart. I think he is smitten with Helen and that, were he permitted to do so, he would offer for her immediately.”

  “When I am settled at my family seat, I intend to offer him a position that would provide a good living for him, should he choose to wed,” Gavin said defensively. He was quite sure of the same, but if she thought he meant to be miserly with the lad, he would disabuse of her that notion.

  “I know that. He told us that last night at the Trumbles’ ball.” She sighed heavily and looked away. “Were it my decision to make, I would allow Helen to marry where her heart directs. But it is not my decision. It is my brother’s. And he has very specific ideas about the sort of man his daughter should marry. Those ideas involve a title and a considerable amount of wealth. The funds are less important than the prestige she could bring to the family. Whatever my opinion of Mr. St. James—and, to be clear, that opinion is favorable—I cannot allow them through the impetuousness of youthful infatuation, to do anything that would circumvent her father’s will. Good day, Your Grace.”

  As she was walking away, Gavin reached for her. He caught her wrist with his hand. He didn’t have to pull her back. The moment his hand closed about her she’d halted.

  “Unhand me.”

  “I refused an apology last night. I will not refuse one to do. I made more assumptions, Lady Sheffield and they were wrong. I should not have done so, and I am sorry. I will speak to Stephan and try to curb his…enthusiasm for Miss Linden’s company. At the very least, I shall remind him that his honor as a gentleman precludes the sort of foibles indulged this morning.”