The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness Page 7

  “Is his grace still in bed?” Max asked, handing the parlor maid his hat and gloves.

  “No, sir,” Venable replied. “His grace is in the drawing room with Miss Waverly.”

  Venable spoke without inflection, but his doubts were betrayed by a slight lift in the brows and a slight question in the eyes.

  “What?” Max echoed in disbelief. “She had the audacity to come here?” Without waiting for any reply, he started up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “Max! There you are at last!” cried Pru, jumping to her feet as he burst into the room. “I have been keeping your uncle company, as you can see.”

  If Venable had seemed a little doubtful, the Duke of Sunderland seemed amazed. “Miss ... er ... Waverly tells me she has been here before ... ?”

  “Oh, yes,” Pru said eagerly. “Max gave me the grand tour! It makes our little house in Clarges Street look like a mean little hovel! I won’t tell you what it makes our house in Philadelphia look like.”

  Max looked at her coldly, but Pru took no notice of that. “I thought I saw you in Bond Street!” she went on happily, seizing Max by the hand. “Did you not see me? Well, no matter! I knew you must come home eventually. I have been getting to know your dear, dear uncle! He kept you away from London so long that I was afraid he didn’t approve of me. You do like me, don’t you?”

  “I like all of Max’s friends,” the duke answered, casting his nephew a look of appeal.

  “Miss Prudence,” Max said coolly, “what are you doing here?”

  She blinked at him. “I told you: I saw you in Bond Street. At least, I thought I did. That was my first inkling that you were back in town. Perhaps I didn’t see you at all. Perhaps it was a sign from heaven!” She giggled.

  “It most definitely was not a sign from heaven,” said Max.

  “No, I suppose not. I just wanted to thank you,” she went on, “for the invitation to the first drawing room. You just don’t know what it means to me! You haven’t forgotten that you promised to give a ball, too?”

  “I have not forgotten,” he said coldly. “The ball will take place the night after your presentation. That is the done thing, I believe.”

  “Oh, heavenly!” said Pru. “I don’t mean to remind you of your promise,” she added quickly. “Lady Jemima says I should not remind you of any of your promises to me. But I did want to make sure that you had not forgotten. I wondered why you did not arrange for me to be included in the first drawing room before the invitations were sent out. You did say you would give me every possible assistance in society.”

  “It must have slipped my mind.”

  “I would not have minded the fourth drawing room,” she went on. “But Patience is invited to the first drawing room, and it hardly seemed fair! Especially when she doesn’t even want to go.”

  “Miss Prudence, my uncle is very tired. Please allow me to show you out.”

  Pru smiled angelically at the duke. “Of course! I can come back tomorrow, when you are feeling better. Good-bye! Parting is such sweet sorrow, don’t you think?”

  “It would be better, Miss Prudence,” said Max, “if you would allow us to call on you in Clarges Street. My uncle’s health does not always allow him to receive visitors.”

  “Of course. I understand,” Pru whispered. Startling them both, she backed out of the room in a series of deep curtsys better reserved for the throne room at St. James’s Palace.

  “There’s no need for all that, Miss Prudence,” Max told her curtly. “A simple curtsy would have sufficed.”

  “I know, but I need the practice,” she replied. Outside, she drew his attention to the Waverly coat of arms painted on the door. “Isn’t it handsome? Patience calls it ‘the mystery of the missing lion’s paw’! She’s so impertinent. Honestly, I wish she would abdicate and let me be the baroness. I’d be so much better at it than she is.”

  With a curt bow, Max put her in the carriage and closed the door. Then he went back to the drawing room to face his uncle.

  “What a pretty girl,” the duke congratulated him. “Lively, too. She has such ebullience! Such joie de vivre! I—I quite like her. The two of you might have been made for each other!”

  Max was not in the least bit deceived. “Don’t worry, Uncle. I have no intention of marrying her.”

  The Duke of Sunderland heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, thank heavens!” he cried weakly. “Twenty minutes in her company and I’m quite done in! I like conversation as much as the next fellow, I’m sure, but there is such a thing as overdoing it.”

  “I am sorry she imposed on you.”

  The duke drew his shaggy gray brows together. “I rather got the impression, from the young lady’s conversation, that you had been imposing on her! Long, romantic rides in the park. Trips to the museums, the circus, Madame Tus-sauds.”

  “I didn’t see the harm,” said Max. “Not until it was too late.”

  “Well, you have promised her a ball,” said the duke, “and a ball she must have. I suppose we will have Soho to make the arrangements.”

  “No, no,” said Max. “You must leave everything to me. You are not to lift a finger.”

  “I wouldn’t mind arranging an engagement party,” grumbled the duke. “I would not have you marry without love, dear boy—you know I would not! I quite learned my lesson with your poor father, God rest his soul! But I’m not getting any younger, you know. I would like to see you married before I go. I do not mean to pressure you in any way. Only consider! If you were a married man, this young lady would not be bothering us.”

  Max’s gray eyes twinkled. “Wife as shield,” he mused. “Why did I not think of it before?”

  “There must be someone you like,” the duke said, exasperated.

  “Oh, dozens,” Max said lightly. “But in all seriousness, you have been very good in allowing me to choose my own wife. No, you have,” he insisted as the duke protested feebly. “I do appreciate it. And, I think, it would be churlish of me to keep you waiting much longer. Do you remember a tall, auburn-haired girl at our Christmas Ball?”

  The duke’s eyes lit up. “Dear boy! It is enough for me that you remember her. Has the lady a name?”

  “Isabella Norton. The Earl of Milford is her brother.”

  The duke made a face. Endowed with a set of features not unlike those of a toby jug, he was quite good at making faces. “Toady Norton?” he said incredulously. “If he has a sister, why, she must be seventy at least!”

  “You are thinking of old Lord Milford,” Max told him. “I was at school with young Lord Milford.”

  “Indeed? My, how time flies! It seems like only yesterday I was sending you off to school. Well, well! My nephew, in love with Toady Norton’s girl! What a small world it is.”

  Max shook his head, alarmed. “I did not say I was in love with her, sir! Don’t order the wedding breakfast just yet! But she may suit. She has birth, breeding, and manners. She is not a beauty, perhaps, but she is handsome enough. She looks like a duchess. More to the point, she behaves like a duchess! I make no promises, but I am engaged to call on her tomorrow.”

  “An excellent beginning!” said the duke.

  After Pru’s invasion of Sunderland House, Max found the quiet serenity of Lady Isabella’s drawing room enormously attractive. The lady herself was very cool and polite and, after Pru’s histrionics, Max had a new appreciation for the cool and the polite. He felt that life with Isabella could not fail to go smoothly, and he even envied her brother a little.

  “How odd my behavior must have seemed to you yesterday, Lady Isabella,” he began. “I believe I owe you an apology as well as an explanation.”

  “You owe me neither, sir,” she answered. “I trust my maid did not hurt you? Porson can be a little overzealous in defense of her mistress, I fear.”

  Max touched his scalp briefly. Under his black, curly hair there were some sore spots, but nothing too painful. “It was no more than I deserved,” he said. “I had no right to enter you
r carriage, but my situation was truly desperate. If need be, I would have taken a dozen beatings from your excellent Porson.”

  “A dozen beatings?” she said lightly. “The young lady frightens you that much?”

  Max shuddered. “Yesterday I was only frightened,” he said. “Now I am terrified.”

  Lady Isabella listened attentively as he described returning to Sunderland House, only to find his uncle in the clutches of the exuberant Miss Waverly.

  “I am amazed!” said Lady Isabella, shaking her head. “Is there no one to check the young lady? Has she no guardian? No chaperone?”

  “She has both,” said Max. “Lady Waverly is her guardian, and I myself engaged Jemmie Crump to act as duenna.”

  “And yet Miss Waverly runs wild in the streets,” Lady Isabella said, clucking her tongue.

  “Quite literally.”

  “It is most improper. It is one thing for a young lady to pursue a gentleman,” Isabella added, with a glint of humor in her steel blue eyes. “It is quite another to chase him down Bond Street! She must have been quite out of breath!”

  “And so was the gentleman,” he said, as the servant brought in the tea.

  Isabella prepared his tea exactly the way he liked it: black with a little lemon. “Would you care for a gooseberry tart, Mr. Purefoy?” she asked, handing him his cup. “I believe they are still warm.”

  “My favorite!” Max exclaimed, in surprise. “Ever since I was a child. How did you know?”

  “But I had no idea,” Isabella exclaimed in delight. “They’re my favorite, too!”

  “What a happy coincidence,” he said.

  “Your poor uncle,” she murmured presently. “How shocked his grace must have been! And how incredibly callous of Miss Waverly to insist on your giving her a ball, when his grace is not in the best of health! Could you not make her some excuse?”

  “I have no intention of breaking my promise,” Max said firmly. “My uncle shall not be inconvenienced. May I hope,” he went on, “that Your Ladyship will attend? I’d be most grateful.”

  “Of course I shall go, if you are good enough to invite me. But I must protest! Surely, you must realize, Mr. Purefoy, that, if you give Miss Waverly a ball at Sunderland House, everyone will assume you are engaged to her!”

  “Not if I am engaged to another lady,” said Max.

  “Oh?” said Isabella, raising her pale blue eyes to his pale gray ones.

  At precisely that moment, the doors of the drawing room opened and a short, rather heavyset gentleman with a large, handsome head, and thin, sandy hair came into the room.

  “You remember my brother, of course,” said Isabella. If she was annoyed by the interruption, she gave no sign.

  Max and Lord Milford had attended all the same schools, but they had always moved in different circles, Milford being four years older.

  “My lord,” Max said.

  “Nice to see you again, Purefoy,” Milford said, taking a cup of tea from his sister. “I have just come from the park. Not one in three of the women I passed were worth looking at! If that is any indication, it is going to be a very dull Season indeed!”

  “My dear Ivor,” Isabella murmured repressively.

  “You should have been in Bond Street yesterday,” said Max.

  Lord Milford looked interested. “Bond Street? Why? Did you see many beauties there?”

  “Only one,” Max replied. “But, then, how many do you need?”

  “Only one,” said Milford. “Well? And who was this beauty? Do you mean to keep her all to yourself?”

  “No, indeed,” said Max. “She is Miss Prudence Waverly, a great heiress from America.”

  “You did not tell me she was an heiress!” Isabella exclaimed.

  “Oh, yes,” said Max. “She and her sister have something like a hundred thousand pounds each.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Isabella said incredulously. “I was sure Lord Waverly died bankrupt.”

  “He did,” Max acknowledged. “The money comes from their maternal grandfather. He made his fortune in shipping, I believe.”

  “Beautiful and rich,” Isabella said lightly. “No wonder you ran away from her, Mr. Purefoy!”

  “And the sister,” Milford interjected, “this baroness everyone is talking of—rich, too? Are you quite sure about this, Purefoy? I had not heard that they were rich.”

  “Quite sure,” Max assured him. “But, I think you will find that the elder sister is not as pretty as the younger, if that matters to you.”

  Milford sighed. “I should like to find rank, fortune, and beauty all united in one person. Isabella tells me I must lower my standards or die a bachelor! But I will not compromise. She must be rich and beautiful and well bred, or I will have none of her!”

  “Very commendable, I’m sure,” Max said. “One should always aspire to achieve perfection, I suppose.” Rising, he quickly took his leave of Isabella, saluted her brother, and quit the house.

  No sooner had he gone than Isabella turned on her brother with cold fury. “Why did you have to come in at just that moment, pray?” she demanded.

  Unconcerned, Milford picked up a goosberry tart, then flung it down in disgust. “Gooseberry! You know I loathe gooseberry tarts!”

  “As do I,” she snapped. “But he likes them. That is what matters.”

  He snorted. “You think he will marry you if you feed him gooseberry tarts? You’re a damn fool!”

  She glared at him. “We were just beginning to discuss marriage when you interrupted us! He was just about to speak. Did the servants not tell you who was with me?”

  Milford snorted. “You told me Purefoy would marry you if I took you to Breckinridge for Christmas, but nothing came of it. I spent a fortune on your wardrobe, and he scarcely looked at you!”

  “He danced with me twice!” she protested.

  “Danced with you twice,” he mimicked. “For the amount I spent, that is quite a handsome result, I must say! Only five hundred pounds per dance! Let me tell you, Izzy, this is your last chance. If you can’t get Purefoy this time—and I don’t see how you can with that long nose of yours and no fortune to speak of—then you will have to take Sir Charles Stanhope—if he will still have you, that is! You’ll take anyone who asks you, in fact. You won’t get a third Season.”

  “It is your fault we are poor,” Isabella said bitterly. “You gamble too much! You should have married Miss Cruikshanks!”

  His lip curled. “I? Marry the daughter of a draper?”

  “A very rich draper!”

  “I am the Earl of Milford,” he informed her loftily. “I do not marry with tradesmen’s ugly daughters. I care not how rich they are.”

  Isabella’s eyes glinted. “What lady of birth, beauty, and breeding would stoop to take you?” she sneered. “Let’s face it, Brother, you will always come up short.”

  Lord Milford glared at her. “Was that, perhaps, a reference to my height?”

  “No, Brother,” she answered. “It was a reference to your lack of height!”

  “Napoleon was not a tall man,” Milford said coldly, “and yet the Princess of Austria married him.”

  She laughed. “Depend on it, Brother! When you have conquered all of Europe, you may have your pick of the royal ladies.”

  “You were a fool to refuse Sir Charles,” he shouted at her, red in the face. “Who are you to turn up your nose at a rich baronet? You may never receive another offer of marriage. You are on the shelf! Stale goods!”

  “I shall marry Mr. Purefoy,” she said quietly. “I shall be a duchess. Have a care how you speak to me, sir.”

  “You?” he sniggered. “A duchess? You have nothing but your name to recommend you! Do you think you are handsome enough to tempt him? He has bedded the most beautiful women in Europe.”

  “And has married none of them,” she replied. “The Duchess of Sunderland must be a lady above reproach. Beauties, however virtuous they may be, always attract gossip. I would be a credit to him. I tell
you, he was on the verge of proposing to me.”

  “Nonsense. You have no dowry.”

  “It isn’t necessary for him to marry for money,” she said. “He wants a well-bred, quiet wife. Is that so strange? I shall be expected to nurse the old duke, of course, but I won’t mind that.”

  “Nurse him? Help him into his grave, you mean!” he snorted.

  Isabella quietly and firmly changed the subject. “Miss Waverly is rich and beautiful and well bred,” she said.

  “Well bred?” he scoffed. “She is American!”

  “Her grandfather was a baron.”

  He snorted. “And so was her uncle! I have an IOU from his lordship, but when I presented it to the attorney, he said there was no money to pay it. ‘Speak to the baroness,’ he said.”

  “If you were clever, Brother, you would call on her ladyship and forgive the debt.”

  “Forgive the debt! Are you mad? Lord Waverly owed me a monkey.”

  “You would be a simpleton indeed to let a mere five hundred pounds stand between you and a fortune,” said Isabella. “You heard Mr. Purefoy! A hundred thousand pounds!”

  “I heard him say she was not pretty,” he said, after a brief silence.

  “I have never set eyes on the baroness,” Isabella answered. “But her younger sister is a remarkably beautiful young lady. The blackest hair, the greenest eyes. She also has a hundred thousand pounds.”

  “Two heiresses? In one family? And neither is married?”

  “It does seem rather unfair,” said Isabella. “But shall we not call on them? They are in Clarges Street. No one knows about them yet. If you could get to them first ...”

  He jumped up. “Don’t just sit there! Get your bonnet on!”

  Patience sat at her desk studying the latest installment of Pru’s bills. “What is it, Mr. Briggs?” she called over her shoulder as the butler slid into the room.

  “Your Ladyship has a visitor,” he said, gliding toward her with a single card on his large silver tray.

  Patience sighed. “Mr. Briggs, how many times have I asked you not to call me ‘Your Ladyship’?”

  “More than once, my lady. What shall I tell the gentleman?”