The Duke's Wager by Edith Layton

Author:Edith Layton [Layton, Edith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-05T13:22:08.109000+00:00

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"Make a curtsy to your father now, My Lady, and greet him warmly, for he has come a long way just to see you," the governess commanded, and obediently the little sallow girl dipped and swayed, and executed a neat little mockery of a curtsy. Only there is no mockery in her eyes, her father thought, with a curiously unreasonable pang of discomfort somewhere in the region of his chest as he gravely regarded those clear blue eyes, so uncannily like his, yet so completely alien to his. For they gazed at him bereft of expression, vacant and cold.

Not an auspicious meeting, he thought wryly, wondering again whatever had possessed him, why in the world he had obeyed that vagrant impulse, as unnatural and beguiling as a breath of spring air in his December room; that maddening impulse to be quit of the Squire's vast company. And to quit that admittedly deadening company for a return to his ancestral home, for a return, as it were, to the scene of his capital crime in begetting this unloved, and unlovingly begotten child. Age, he reasoned sardonically, encroaching age, it must have been. Only that would account for this absurd urge to finally see what I have left this earth heir to, to see what I have given my name and fortune to. And, he admitted, a not unreasonable urge to free himself from the saccharine entanglements the Squire's unlovely daughters seemed to be inviting him to.

The ball being a fortnight away, the Squire and his dependents had regretfully let him go from their guest quarters, blaming the pre-gala commotion in the household for his unexpected departure and promising themselves a dead set at him the night of the ball.

"Oh, the carpenters make such a racket, I do apologize, Your Grace," the Squire's wife had lamented. "But, indeed, we must have lovely lacy indoor trellises around the ballroom to bedeck with lovely blossoms for the illusion of spring, you know?"

"The housemaids' deuced commotion, all that bustling about, and scraping and polishing, can't blame you for quitting us, sets a fellow's teeth on edge, all that smell of beeswax and soap. But you know how women are about such folderol," the Squire had commiserated heartily.

But they had been more than anxious about his departure, even though he had assured them of his return the weekend of the ball. They had been desolate at his leaving.

Amazing, he had thought, as the Three Graces waved him farewell with real tears in their eyes, amazing how acceptable I still manage to be. Not in the highest circles, of course, but then the Squire's household is far from those exalted reaches. But still, he had wondered in real bafflement, they have heard all the tales of my adventures in that demimonde which is as unreal to them as their little lives are to me, and yet, they positively yearn for me to bestow my tainted name upon one of them. "Come away from the Dungheap for a moment, My Lord Duke," they call, "and join us in wedded bliss.

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