“Does love have no place, then, in those marriages you deem successful?” Merry inquired.
A little stir reached them from the other end of the room, and Trent knew without turning to look that his brother had finally arrived. Cedric never slipped into a room. He issued salutations and compliments the way a priest doles out Communion wafers. Everyone lined up, and everyone was blessed.
Interestingly enough, Merry’s eyes didn’t shift from Trent’s face, though Lady Caroline was leaning sideways to see around Trent’s shoulder.
“I am firmly of the opinion that it does not. I haven’t experienced the emotion and I shouldn’t care to.”
“One needn’t have love for a marriage to be successful,” Lady Caroline agreed, smiling at him so lavishly that he could see her upper gums. She had been listening, then, even if she had been gawking at Cedric.
“What do you think of love and marriage, Miss Pelford?” Trent asked, in the brief interlude before Cedric, who was making his way down the room, came within earshot.
“How can you ask me that when I am betrothed to your brother?” she asked. Her words may have been playful, but her eyes were not.
“I am inquiring in the abstract,” he said, “with no reference to the particulars. I am aware that yours is a love match.”
“In the abstract, then,” she replied, “I would worry that a marriage arranged purely on the grounds of suitable lineages and property contracts would be like the circus: very gay and shiny on the outside.”
“And on the inside?”
“Prosaic at the best, and torture at worst. At least, from the point of view of the animals forced to dance for their dinner.”
Cedric had reached them and was bowing so deeply that his chin nearly touched his knee. Trent found himself staring blankly at his brother’s hand tracing flourishes as he bowed.
Miss Merry Pelford had a steel backbone. She would survive marriage with his brother, for all of Cedric’s flaws. If anyone could save Cedric, it would be Merry.
But, for the first time, he thought about what that marriage would be like for her.
What kind of marriage would it be? Once a bear is trained to dance for his dinner, what does he think of his trainer?
That might have been the question in her eyes, but perhaps it was only wishful thinking on his part.
“Your Grace,” Lady Caroline said, her hand on his sleeve again. “Mrs. Bennett has signaled that we should remove to the dining room.”
Sure enough, their hostess was trilling something about how formal processions by rank were fusty and old-fashioned, and they should all proceed at their leisure.
“Yes, of course,” Trent said. Mrs. Bennett had claimed Cedric; they were walking from the room together, his head close to hers.
Lady Caroline’s hand tightened on his arm. “I am sure neither of us considers such rules passé.”
Trent didn’t give a damn who reached the dining room first. He didn’t respond, just began towing her to the door.
“I trust that you are not worried that your brother will be left at the altar, Your Grace,” the lady said, changing the subject. For whatever reason, she had decided to mount a campaign against Merry.
“That is for Cedric to worry about, not me,” Trent pointed out.
“But, Your Grace, you do realize that Miss Pelford is betrothed for the third time?”
Trent shrugged.
Merry had taken Kestril’s arm. He was a decent fellow, though young and—now Trent thought of it—fairly dim. His lands ran along the western border of Trent’s country seat, and they’d always maintained an amicable relationship.
Even so, the way Kestril was looking at Merry made Trent’s eyes narrow.
If she were his fiancée, he would never allow her to sit at a different part of the table. Hell, he wouldn’t like it if she smiled at another man the way she was smiling at Kestril.
He might become shameless, holding her hand in public. Kissing her in public. Worse, even.
In carriages.
Trent suited his stride to Lady Caroline’s mincing steps while he deliberately allowed the devil to tempt him. Between a gap in the couples ahead of them he could just see Merry’s back.
Back?
Who cared about backs?
He did. It turned out that he cared about necks as well, because her hair was swept up and then fastened to the side in ringlets that bared her neck. It was a delectable neck. A kissable neck.
Below that was a sweep of creamy back, and then below that, a rump as rounded and perfect as he’d ever seen.
“Do you agree, Your Grace?” Lady Caroline asked.
He had no idea what she had asked him. Glancing down at her, he saw her eyes were eager. He hedged. “I expect so.”
“Your brother is so, so beneficent and altruistic.”
He murmured something.
“You can even see it in his choice of bride,” she said, with a touch of malice.
Trent looked up just in time to see Merry smiling at Kestril and then slipping away down the hallway, likely heading toward the ladies’ retiring room. Sure enough, as they reached the door to the dining room, he caught sight of her gown’s floating hem disappearing up the stairs.
He drew Lady Caroline into the room, started automatically for the head of the table, and paused. As the highest-ranking gentleman and the highest-ranking lady, the two of them would ordinarily be seated close to their hostess.
As with most time-honored conventions, there was rhyme and reason behind the rule of precedence regarding entry to the dining room: to wit, it dictated the order of seating down the table.
Mrs. Bennett’s dismissal of the usual order of things had resulted in guests’ seating themselves hirdy-girdy. Cedric had seated himself in the place that, strictly speaking, should have been occupied by the highest-ranking gentleman in the room: himself. The empty seat next to Cedric would do for Lady Caroline.
The only other unclaimed seats were toward the opposite end of the table—beneath the salt, as the old saying went. For a second he entertained the idea of escorting Lady Caroline to one of them, just to see her outraged expression.
Mrs. Bennett hopped to her feet. “Oh no,” she cried, recognizing the problem too late.
“That’s quite all right,” Trent said cheerfully, depositing Lady Caroline next to Cedric with no further ado. “Precedence is out of mode, as you say, and I’m happy to sit wherever there’s a free place. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I shall return directly.”
He tried not to exhibit undue haste as he made his way from the room. The butler started toward him, but Trent waved him aside.
What the hell was he doing?
He climbed the stairs, cursing himself. He was following Merry Pelford like a damned lapdog.
As he reached the top he had a moment of clarity. He was following her because, of everyone in London, Merry met his eyes squarely and didn’t look away. She didn’t cringe or fawn.
In fact, she was downright disrespectful. She lived in a universe where men were not adulated simply owing to an accident of birth.
No one he’d ever met had looked at him and seen anything other than his duchy, like a medal on a heavy gold chain, determining his every interaction. Even Cedric saw only the title that had been snatched from him by an accident of birth, not the twin brother who stood before him.
He turned the corner at the top of the stairs and there she was, just closing a door behind her. She had rubbed a dark rose color on her lips.
She didn’t need it. On the other hand, it made her look naughty . . . and absurdly enticing.
“Your Grace,” she said, her voice clear as a bell in comparison to Lady Caroline’s. Merry’s thick black lashes framed eyes that seemed as changeable as the weather. You could see emotions going straight through them. Right now, she was surprised.
He’d be damned if she was in love with his brother, as she claimed to be.
“I wanted to thank you privately for not
informing Lady Caroline about the consummation that I certainly do not wish for,” he said, walking toward her. “I spoke carelessly.”
“Trying to be witty by spouting quotations,” she said, grinning at him. “Tut, tut, Duke. Your pretension could have had grave consequences.”
“More than grave,” he said truthfully. “Lethal.”
Her eyes crinkled. Since when did crinkling eyes send a bolt of desire through a man’s body?
“I am so sick of Shakespeare,” she confided. “To be honest, I wish the man had never written a line. I’m starting to hate him.”
“There’s many a schoolboy who agrees,” Trent said, abandoning caution and taking another step toward her. “Hereafter, I shall curb my cleverness.”
“There’s a sacrifice that will change the world,” she said, laughter running through her voice. It was heady stuff, that laughter.
Something must have showed on his face because she went still.
“It’s remarkably easy to make an idiot of oneself trying to show off for a lady,” he admitted, the huskiness in his own voice surprising him. “You’d think I would have learned that lesson in my salad days.”
He was staring at her the way a lad gapes at a buxom barmaid, not the way a gentleman—a duke—eyes a lady. But he couldn’t seem to turn away. Merry Pelford’s clear eyes smashed through all his defenses.
She finally broke their gaze by looking at the floor, color flooding into her cheeks. It wasn’t merely on his side, then. She felt it.
“If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace, I must return to the dining room.”
“As must I.” He offered his elbow and enjoyed it far too much when she slipped her hand through.
A large, overly ornate mirror hung facing the bottom of the stairs, presumably positioned so that the lady of the house could glance at herself one last time before leaving. It was impossible to avoid one’s reflection.
He never spent time gazing at his own face, but if he happened to catch sight of himself in a glass, he was accustomed to seeing an indifferent, sardonic aspect on the face looking back at him.
That expression was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, if he were given to poetic fancy—which he was not—he might have described his expression as smoldering. It gave him a queer sense of vertigo.
As they entered the dining room together, he had the uneasy feeling that the face in the mirror reflected things he’d rather not think about.
Emotions.
The idea was so perturbing that he allowed a footman to pull out Merry’s chair while he seated himself beside her.
“Your Grace,” said a feminine voice on his left. Please, let it not be a marriageable young woman.
Benjamin Trewell, a decent fellow he’d known since university, nodded to him from across the table. “My wife.”
Trent smiled at her. “Mrs. Trewell, it’s a pleasure.”
They chatted for a moment, but a footman intervened, pouring wine. Trent turned to Merry, and groaned inwardly. He could see directly down her bodice. Belying his earlier impression, she was wearing stays; he could see them as well. They pressed against her breasts, making them even plumper and higher than they would be naturally.
He shifted in his seat, cursing his damned silk pantaloons.
The gentlewoman beside him was talking on and on about a dog she was training. Or perhaps it was a child; he had missed a crucial detail.
Disgust curdled in his gut. What in the living hell was he doing at this dinner party? If he was honest with himself, he’d only come in order to see Merry Pelford.
That would be: to see his future sister-in-law.
Right.
Well, he’d seen her.
And lusted after her.
She was delicious. His cock was threatening to burst out of his pantaloons. If he wasn’t careful, he might finally see a lady faint—after glancing at his lap.
The hell with it. With an abrupt gesture he reached forward and flicked his wineglass so that it tipped over, sending a wave of claret across the tablecloth and into his lap.
Mrs. Trewell gave a little scream; Merry said nothing, but drew away slightly. He was sufficiently overheated that the cool liquid was a relief. And brought him under control.
“I must apologize,” he said, rising from his seat and handing his sodden napkin to the footman who had rushed forward to assist. The entire table stared at him, every conversation cut short. “I shall have to return home and change my clothing. I have no other choice.”
At the other end of the table, his hostess had leapt up with a look of horror; too late, Trent realized that she—and everyone else—would assume that he was leaving the party because he was insulted at being seated among less honored guests.
“I would prefer to stay,” he said, bowing to his hostess. His lie would have no effect; he could see people whispering to each other, and Mrs. Bennett looked stricken.
He gave a mental shrug and then a general bow to the table.
Chapter Fourteen
Merry watched in astonishment as the duke stalked from Mrs. Bennett’s dining room.
“Apparently, His Grace didn’t care to be seated with mere mortals,” Mr. Kestril remarked.
Had the duke overturned that wineglass on purpose? Could he truly have been so irritated at not having been granted the precedence he considered his rightful due that he’d left a dinner party before it even started?
She wrinkled her nose in disappointment. He hadn’t seemed like that sort of person, but he was a duke, after all.
“I am rather surprised,” Mr. Kestril said, echoing her thoughts. “My lands run beside his, and he’s never put on airs. But I gather he’s courting Lady Caroline, and perhaps he felt the meal was beneath his notice when he was not seated beside her.”
With the duke’s abrupt departure, the party felt flat and tiresome. Cedric was seated far above her at the table. Lady Caroline was flirting with him with an ostentatious intensity that should have made Merry jealous. It didn’t.
Fortunately, Kestril was happy to talk. It turned out that he was a bird enthusiast who could list which birds she might glimpse in Hyde Park but would never see at home in Boston.
Seven courses later, Merry had become an expert on London’s winged residents, and the dessert course, an array of confections and sweetmeats, was finally being served. She sampled each of them, as etiquette demanded, but in truth the only thing she wanted was a piece of the pineapple in the center of the table. She had been craving a taste since she’d entered the room and seen it crowning an elaborate tower of more prosaic fruits, as unexpected and exotic a sight in damp, sooty London as a Mohawk brave in full regalia.
She had tasted her first pineapple the day after she’d arrived to live with her uncle and aunt. She had been a young girl, grief-stricken, tired, and lonely. Bess had told her that pineapples arrived on ships that sailed to Boston from islands where the sun always shone, and people wore folds of cloth around their middles and danced from morning to night.
For the first time since her father died, the heavy, gray cloud that had clung to Merry like a second skin lifted. To this day, she could remember her first bite, how it tasted like honey and happiness, an emotion she’d forgotten in her grief.
The tower of fruit was being dismantled, and a footman made his way around the table to inquire about preferences. When it was her turn, she asked for a slice of the pineapple.
As the footman retired to slice the fruit, she heard a very old man across from her say distinctly, “She’s asked for the pineapple!”
If Merry’s etiquette books hadn’t been so emphatic on the incivility of speaking across the table, she would have asked him why he was surprised. Instead she watched silently as he summoned back the footman and requested a slice himself as, indeed, did everyone else at her end of the table.
“They are devilishly difficult to grow in our northern climate,” Mr. Kestril informed her. “As you may know, they originate in the tropics, where th
e days are long.”
“I am surprised that they can be cultivated in England,” Merry said, taking a bite of the presumably English pineapple.
“They have to be grown in a hothouse with a pineapple stove. Chelsea Physic Garden has a number of thriving plants, I believe.”
“A pineapple stove?” Merry echoed, just as their hostess signaled that the ladies would now retire to the drawing room.
“If you are interested, I could arrange a visit to the garden,” Mr. Kestril said, as they all rose.
“That would be lovely,” Merry said, beaming at him. “I am interested in plants of all kinds, and I would dearly like to see that stove.”
Cedric appeared. “Kestril,” he said, bending his shoulders slightly, rather than bowing at the waist.
“Allardyce,” her dinner companion replied, bowing, though his countenance was cool.
“Mr. Kestril has kindly offered to arrange an outing to the Chelsea Physic Garden,” Merry told Cedric.
“Perhaps you will have time after we return from our wedding trip,” Cedric said languidly.
This was the first Merry had heard of a wedding trip, but she knew better than to question him in public. Besides, Aunt Bess arrived, slipping her arm through Merry’s to lead her away; the butler was waiting to escort the ladies to the drawing room.
Immediately upon entering the room, Aunt Bess was waylaid by a poetry enthusiast and drawn into a discussion of sonnet form, which left Merry to sit between Lady Caroline and Mrs. Bennett. How wonderful.
She had scarcely seated herself when Lady Caroline glanced at Merry’s midsection and said, “I do hope that pineapple was your own, Mrs. Bennett, since Miss Pelford was so hungry.”
Lady Caroline’s peculiar elocution turned simple vowel sounds nearly unrecognizable—but even after Merry untangled the “paheenawpple,” she had no idea what the lady was talking about.
“I would never buy a pineapple,” Mrs. Bennett replied airily. “Their appearance pleases me, hence I rent one to create my table’s centerpiece, but most people I know can’t abide the flavor.”
At that, the ladies all fell over themselves to assure her that they, too, loathed pineapple and had only accepted a slice from politeness.