Before her stood the austerely dressed man from the balcony. Or, as he had been introduced, the Duke of Trent.
Cedric’s twin brother.
His hair was dark and gold, the color of winter wheat, whereas her future husband’s hair was lighter, like chaff in the sunlight. She hadn’t see his eyes clearly in the dusky light outdoors, but now she discovered they were blue—not Cedric’s lazy, sweet blue, but a dark, demanding hue.
He was more muscled than Cedric—she disliked exceptionally muscled men, she reminded herself—but she would guess that he was the same height, to the half inch.
She should curtsy.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she exclaimed without thinking. “Did you know who I was?”
“You’ve met,” Lady Portmeadow cried, her head swiveling between them. “Your Grace, why did you—”
“We had not been formally introduced,” the duke bit out. “And no, Miss Pelford, I had no idea who you were.”
He appeared unamused. Merry’s heart sank to the bottom of her slippers. Likely he thought that Cedric should have introduced the two of them. Merry had to admit that she agreed.
But he bowed, so Merry responded with a hasty curtsy. As she straightened, she glanced around, hoping to see Cedric. Her mind was reeling with the fact that she had unwittingly engaged in a tête-à-tête with her fiancé’s brother.
It was unthinkable. How could the laughing stranger on the balcony, the man who made her feel witty and desirable, be the brother whom Cedric had described with such disdain?
There was something very unsettling about having had a flirtatious conversation with one’s brother-in-law.
Almost brother-in-law.
“I look forward to dancing with your daughter later this evening, Lady Portmeadow,” the duke said, his tone strongly suggesting that their hostess withdraw. The lady’s eyes were eagerly darting between the two of them as if she were taking notes for the twopenny press.
There was no need to be impolite to their hostess merely because she was a bit nosy, so Merry gave the duke a look that said as much. “I expect you’ll wish to ask Miss Portmeadow for a minuet, Your Grace. She is one of the most accomplished young ladies of my acquaintance, and she dances beautifully. ”
“Spoken like the sister you shall soon be!” Lady Portmeadow exclaimed. “Now that your brother has found a wife, Your Grace, you must look for a duchess. Why, we scarcely see you in society!”
“I do not enjoy dancing,” the duke stated.
“Ah, but Miss Portmeadow is divinely graceful,” Merry insisted. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that she didn’t want the duke to think that she had any interest in dancing with him.
“Miss Pelford, when will you marry Lord Cedric?” Lady Portmeadow asked brightly.
Merry winced inwardly. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that her third engagement would be her last.
“We have yet to make plans.” She forced her mouth into a smile.
The duke’s expression darkened as if he might explode. Apparently, he disapproved.
Cedric had described his brother as dictatorial, not to mention ill-disposed toward Americans. As head of the family, he might believe that he had power over his brother’s decisions.
If that was the case, His Grace would have to learn differently. American women did not allow themselves to be pushed about by a man simply because he was titled.
Merry straightened her shoulders and turned to their hostess. “You must put the duke down for Miss Portmeadow’s supper dance,” she said sweetly. “As part of the family, I shall make it one of my first tasks to see that His Grace finds a wife.”
Lady Portmeadow seemed surprised by the suggestion, but as Merry surmised, she was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If the Duke of Trent took Miss Portmeadow in to supper, eligible gentlemen would take notice. She smiled, waggled her fingers, and slipped away before His Grace could say yea or nay.
They stood looking at one another silently. The duke had a cross look on his face. Even so, he was wickedly handsome—as handsome as Cedric.
In that instant she realized exactly why he didn’t care for the idea that Cedric was marrying her. It had nothing to do with her nationality or his right to approve of his brother’s spouse.
It was their conversation on the balcony. The duke thought she was a trollop, a woman who accosted utter strangers and flirted with them in the near dark.
It was unfortunate—indeed, it was humiliating—that they had met under such improper circumstances. But it had happened and there was no wishing it away. They had to acknowledge it and move on.
With that in mind, she pushed her untouched glass of wine into his hand. He took it, looking faintly surprised.
Then she put her hands on her hips, just as Aunt Bess always did when she was vexed. “Why on earth are you dressed so plainly? You don’t look like a duke.”
“How would you possibly know, Miss Pelford? I can assure you, if you didn’t grasp it yourself, that the Duke of Villiers’s sartorial foibles are not representative of those of his rank.”
“I cannot be the first person who has misconstrued your rank. You look like a Quaker—certainly not ducal.”
“I needn’t dress to advertise,” he said dryly. “People give me the same admiration as a five-legged calf without prompting.”
Well, spit. He was a living example of why people bowed and scraped in front of dukes. There was something so powerful and just plain imposing about him that even she had the impulse to try to assuage his temper.
She took her hands off her hips, because the posture wasn’t natural for her.
“May I return your lemonade now?” he asked, a sardonic look in his eyes.
The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was as impressed as everyone else. As a member of the peerage, His Grace was used to being fawned over. He would need some time to grow accustomed to a sister-in-law who treated him as though he walked on the ground with the rest of humanity.
Merry put her hands back on her hips, the better to show off her indifference to his title. “You don’t appear to be happy that I’m joining your family,” she observed.
“I am not.”
His voice was a growl.
If Merry’s voice were capable of that register, she would have growled right back. He was making her a little nervous, so her breath felt tight in her chest and her voice was a near whisper. “You don’t feel your brother has made a suitable choice?”
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t reply.
It had to be said. “I much enjoyed our earlier conversation, Your Grace. I should be sorry if you feel I am an inappropriate spouse for Lord Cedric in light of it. Let me assure you that I do not make a habit of conversing with strangers.”
“You misunderstand me.” Something almost violent, a kind of controlled fury, colored his words and ran over Merry’s skin like the touch of his finger.
“I am aware that you and your brother are not on good terms,” she observed, taking the bull by the horns.
The duke was again silent.
“I expect you underestimate him,” Merry suggested. “He does the same of you.”
His jaw tightened. Perhaps the duke didn’t know that Cedric’s characterizations were so harsh. “I’ve noticed that siblings are often blind to each other’s best qualities,” she added hastily. “But surely you are aware that your brother is a very kind and thoughtful person.”
The duke just stared at the floor for a long moment. Cedric was right; bitter jealousy had divided them. What a shame. A drop of confusion slid down her back like icy water. The duke was so very different from Cedric’s description of him.
But it was true that they were opposites. If Cedric dazzled, his brother was dark, and possibly dangerous.
Well, that was overstating it.
“I suppose that is possible,” the duke said finally, lifting his eyes to hers.
“I was an only child, but I gather it is q
uite common. In time, you will come to recognize each other’s good qualities,” she said encouragingly. “Why, I expect you have no idea that Lord Cedric is deeply romantic.”
A moment of silence followed. “You are right about my ignorance of that trait,” His Grace said.
What did it say about her own character that she could scarcely recall why she had agreed to marry Cedric? At this very moment she was having trouble remembering to breathe properly; she found the duke’s glower absurdly thrilling.
She wanted to make him laugh again. She wanted to lean forward and tempt him into looking at her breasts.
She wanted . . .
“I think I fell in love with him when he compared me to a summer’s day,” she cried, rushing into speech. “A summer’s day,” she repeated firmly. For some reason, it didn’t sound quite as romantic as it had when Cedric, kneeling at her feet, had first murmured it.
Another silence. Then: “I certainly didn’t know my brother was capable of quoting Shakespeare,” His Grace drawled.
Of course, Cedric had been quoting poetry. How stupid of her not to have recognized it. The English were forever trotting out a line or two of the Bard and then waiting for her to applaud. She was getting sick of the man’s name.
“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’” the duke recited in a flat monotone. “‘Thou art more lovely and more temperate.’”
His intonation made it clear that he found her neither lovely nor temperate, whatever that meant.
“Cedric’s poetic nature makes it easy to understand why I fell in love with him so quickly!” The sentence came out in a chirping voice that didn’t sound in the least believable.
“‘Cedric’?” His Grace repeated.
“We are not so ceremonious in America,” she said, defending her informality. “Indeed, as we will soon be family, you may address me as Merry, if you wish. Not Mary, as in Mary, Queen of Scots,” she added, “but Merry, as in Merry Christmas. My mother was a rebel.”
He gave her a questioning look.
“She was English, and Christmas was not well regarded in Boston when she first arrived,” Merry explained. “Observing an English holiday was considered rather inflammatory at that time. I never knew my mother, but my father told me that she wanted me to have a name that reminded her of home.”
“I gather she would have approved of you marrying an Englishman.”
Merry nodded. “I think so. It was one of the reasons that I—that I came here. Besides the reason I told you about, I mean.”
The duke had forgotten that the glass he held was actually hers, because before she could warn him, he took a swallow, then sputtered. “Bloody hell, what is this?”
“Canary wine,” Merry said hastily. “But I hadn’t yet tasted it, Your Grace. You may drink the rest.”
He put the glass down on the table. “You were telling me that you fell in love with my brother after he quoted some lines from Shakespeare.”
“I must confess that I didn’t recognize the quotation. I could never bring myself to read poetry, let alone memorize it.”
“Shakespeare wrote that poem for a young man,” His Grace observed.
Merry wasn’t sure what to make of that. “My governess despaired of me,” she said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “I can’t make poetry stick in my head. I managed to memorize only a line or two, and those badly.”
“You, who have all those facts at your command, can’t remember more than two lines of poetry?”
“Not even that. ‘Ye little birds that sit and sing amidst the shady valleys . . .’ something, something . . . ‘Go pretty birds about her bower, sing pretty birds, she may not . . .’ something . . . followed by a lot of warbling.” She wrinkled her nose.
For a second, she saw a gleam of laughter in his eyes, but then it disappeared. “Yet Cedric’s use of poetry was persuasive. Were your other fiancés similarly literary?”
Merry was wrestling with herself, because it seemed that, contrary to her previous conviction, she did like muscular men, at least the one standing before her. The mere sight of the strong column of his throat as he drank had sent a shiver straight through her. She’d never felt that before—not with Bertie, nor Dermot, nor Cedric. She tried to banish the thought the moment it surfaced, but panic spread through her like black oil across a puddle.
What’s more, the duke was close enough that she could smell wintergreen soap again, and it was intoxicating.
Far more than Cedric’s musky cologne.
The evidence was inescapable. She truly was an awful person, fickle in every way. She was attracted to her fiancé’s brother, which probably broke some sort of ecclesiastical law.
She could control these disgusting urges. It was simply a matter of taking her marriage vows. After she and Cedric were wed, it would all be different.
Avoiding the question of literature—Bertie’s “red wagon” spoke for itself—she answered his real question. “As I mentioned on the balcony, I believed myself to be in love before, but it feels very, very different this time.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Do look at my betrothal ring,” she chirped, lifting her hand so that the diamonds caught fire from the chandelier. “Cedric—darling Cedric,” she amended, “chose it for me because he said I remind him of—well, of some duchess who was given a diamond ring by an archduke.”
The duke’s large hand lifted her small one toward the candlelight. For a moment they both stared at the sparkling cluster of diamonds she wore. “It was the Archduke Maximilian of Austria.”
“You know the story?” She was surprised. Cedric was interested in objets d’art, jewelry, and fashion, but His Grace didn’t seem to be that sort of man. She’d assume him to be an expert about horses, politics, science . . . things of that nature.
“Our father gave a diamond ring to our mother, and so he liked to tell the story of the first such token.”
Merry felt her lips curl into a genuine smile. “You see how romantic Cedric is? He must have bought me this ring because your father did the same for your mother. My mother died when I was born, but . . .” She trailed off.
“But?” The duke shot her a look.
“My father buried my mother with her wedding ring. He told me that she was so happy on their wedding day that he knew she would haunt him if he took it away from her, even to give it to me.”
His Grace said nothing, so Merry gave him a crooked grin. “Theirs was a love match, you see. A mésalliance.”
“How so?”
“Oh, my mother was from a respectable English family, visiting her cousins in Boston when she met my father. His ambitions were not small, but he wasn’t wealthy when they wed.”
The duke’s eyes were intent on her face, making her heart skip a beat.
“I would guess that your father became highly successful,” he observed.
“He was a member of our Constitutional Congress.” Merry raised her chin, as proud of her father as she was of her country’s fledgling republic, where there was no House of Lords, and no one was born into power.
“If he was anything like you, I suspect he would have become president.”
Something about the duke was turning her into a woman she wouldn’t recognize. A dishonorable woman, who thought it would be a good idea to smile at her own fiancé’s brother.
Not just smile, but smile.
“I like to think so,” she said briskly. “Your Grace, it is nearly time for your dance with Miss Portmeadow. I haven’t seen your brother in some time, so I must find him.”
She tried to infuse her voice with adoration for Cedric but ended up sounding like a bleating goat.
The duke’s mouth tightened, then he said, “Of course. It is hard for lovers to be apart for long.”
There was definitely a rough edge to him. It was as if that Mohawk warrior had put on a coat and strode into a London ballroom. He didn’t belong amid all these polished gentlemen. Cedric was right about that, at least
.
“Do you know,” the duke said conversationally, “that no one except yourself has gone head to head with me in years?”
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling at him. “That is all too apparent, Your Grace. Clearly, you have been shamefully cosseted. Your mother is likely to blame.”
His mother must have adored having little twin boys. Merry could just imagine what they had been like, with hair like shiny golden coins, blue, blue eyes, and sweet smiles.
To her surprise, the duke’s expression turned bleak. A footman came past, offering a tray with glasses of lemonade. Merry shook her head.
“You don’t care for lemonade?”
“No, thank you,” she said cautiously. Something had changed in the very air. His Grace looked as if he’d come to a conclusion—one that didn’t please him, but one to which he was grimly resigned.
“Your choice of beverage, canary wine, is not customary for English ladies, as I suspect you are aware.”
He was cooler, distant. She hadn’t realized his eyes were warm until they were . . . not.
“I find lemonade unsophisticated,” Merry said, managing a careless smile. “I prefer something stronger.”
“I wasn’t aware that Lady Portmeadow offered a choice.”
“She doesn’t. But Cedric brought me a special drink. He is most thoughtful.”
“‘A special drink,’” the duke echoed, his voice neutral.
She was starting to feel nettled. “Do Englishwomen restrict themselves to lemonade? Because my English governess unaccountably neglected to teach me that rule.”
“Am I to take it that American ladies drink fortified wine on each and every occasion?”
“What if we do?” Merry retorted, raising her chin. “What possible reason could you have to condemn or approve the practice?”
His eyes drifted over her, and not in an agreeable way, not in the appreciative manner that he’d looked at her before. Something was different about him now. He looked every inch the aristocrat.
“As you mentioned earlier, Miss Pelford, you are clearly in need of instruction about how to comport yourself in English society. Permit me to note a rule that your governess overlooked: young ladies do not drink spirits. You will have to take care not to display inebriation.”