Chapter Nineteen
Jasper was, naturally, satisfied with his performance at the regatta. The point had been to win, and he had won. Though, he was cognizant that if he and Randolph had not had a prior experience of being rudderless, he would have been in the same predicament as everybody else. Still, sometimes luck lent a hand in things.
When he had joined the guests who had watched the race and took his congratulations from the queen, he’d been disappointed to see the duchess leading Lady Jemima away.
He could not understand the cause of it. Was she ill? Was she on the verge of an outburst or some other setback?
Varnay, despite the obvious cautions of his sister, had muttered, “Using the centerboard? Seems a bit of a cheat, if you ask me.”
Jasper supposed Varnay somehow hoped to discount his loss. It had been a stupid thing to say, though.
The queen had stared him down and said, “Lord Varnay, are you determined to find yourself thrown out the doors and furthermore, if it please me, have every door in London shut against you?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Varnay said, bowing low.
“Then my advice to you is, act like a gentleman, not a toddler who has lost a toy. I grow weary of you.”
Varnay was such a fool. At the very least, he ought to have a care for his sister and her future. Miss Pickering appeared ready to faint.
The party broke up soon after. Jasper thought to retire to his room and get out of his damp clothes, but he was waylaid by the Duchess of Ralston before he got into the house. It was strange, she’d led Lady Jemima away, but then she’d been milling round the front doors.
“Duke,” she said, “do walk with me in the gardens, if you will indulge me.”
Jasper was surprised by the request, but he acquiesced. She directed them down the paths to a small arbor with an ironwork bench. “Do sit, if you please.”
Jasper sat down. He did not know the cause for this wandering round the garden, but he thought there must be one.
“Well,” the duchess said, “at least your face has seemed to return to normal.”
His face? What did she mean? He was sure his eye was looking terrible, as was his nose and his bottom lip.
Seeming to note his confusion, she said, “You know what I refer to—all the grimacing and the odd expressions. What do you suppose caused it?”
“Oh, that,” Jasper said.
“And?”
Jasper suppressed a sigh. Would he really have to tell her what it was? Or rather, what it was supposed to be?
“Come now,” the duchess said. “This is getting too mysterious. If it is some sort of malady, it must be faced. I have an excellent physician I can send you to.”
“Yes, well, a doctor will not be required, Duchess. I am afraid I was only…I was only…it was simply an attempt to appear…jolly.”
The duchess stared at him as if he were a specter. “Jolly?” she said. “Jolly? Lord help us, Duke, you could have scared the mane off a horse with your version of jolly.”
“I realize that particular mien does not come very natural,” Jasper said, a little annoyed at the duchess’ mirth. Certainly, she was exaggerating.
“Not very natural? That’s an understatement,” the duchess said. “Now, tell me, what was this heroic attempt at jollity made for? Or rather who was it made for?”
The duchess was incredibly prying! Was he really expected to answer such a question?
“Oh, never mind,” the lady said. “I already know who it was for. Lady Jemima. Tell me if I am wrong.”
“You are not wrong.”
“I did not think so. Lady Jemima tells me that she informed you that she never did have a head injury. She also tells me that you did not believe her.”
Jasper nodded. “She is prone to varying ideas and moods because of the accident. This denial of it ever happening is just the latest idea. I do believe her recovery continues, though. After all, setbacks are only to be expected. In any case, however it may go, I am determined to stand by her.”
“Gracious,” the duchess murmured. “Never were two people so misguided.”
“Duchess?”
“She’s told you the truth. She never did experience a blow to the head. The lady before you now is the lady she has always been.”
Jasper was momentarily stunned. Was it possible that he’d been laboring under such a misapprehension? Lady Jemima had told him she’d not had a blow to the head, but then it seemed it could not possibly be true. The idea of the blow to the head had been so firmly cemented in his mind.
But what if it was true?
“So,” the duchess said, “I suppose the question is, is this the lady you wish to win?”
“Yes it is. Of course it is. I was even hoping, though this will sound odd, that her recovery would stop where it was. I understood she had been very reserved before the accident and I quite like what she is now…. which you say she has always been?”
The duchess nodded. “There is another question hanging in the air too. Lady Jemima had been under the impression that you had experienced your own blow to the head. She had been told you had grown very serious and prone to disapproving due to this accident, but you were slowly recovering. Then she discovered that was not at all the truth.”
A series of circumstances flashed through Jasper’s mind. All the times he had displayed disapproval. Then the night of the duchess’ Secrets Dévoilés when she had apologized for the poem she’d composed and both she and her mother had inquired how he was feeling. They had both even urged him to sit down! All of that was only because she’d thought he’d suffered a blow to the head.
“Your garden party would have been right around the time that she discovered you did not in fact receive a blow to the head. Rather, you thought she did, and you were eagerly awaiting her return to, as she described it, “a paragon among women.” You can imagine how that might have affected her.”
Of course it had. The very night he was working up to a proposal, she’d arrived furious. Then, things had taken their alarming course.
“Where did all these rumors come from?” Jasper asked.
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Well, I do not know where to go from here,” Jasper said.
The duchess rose. “Do not give up hope, Duke. I suspect all this strange grimacing you’ve assaulted us with today is the best thing you have ever done. Though for all of our sakes, stop doing it.”
With that, she strode down the path and left him sitting on the bench.
Jasper sat there for quite a while, thinking through everything that had happened. He did not know where the rumors of blows to the head had come from and he would happily pummel their author if he could discover it.
What he did know, though, was his frowning and disapproval had added fuel to that fire. Why had he even done it?
He supposed he had concocted an impossible list of requirements. He’d invented ridiculous notions of what would be required for his duchess. It had been all very logically done but it had not had anything to do with him. It was just a list that could apply to anybody and nobody.
Jasper realized he’d really been wound very tight ever since taking on the mantle of duke. Why should he care if a lady wanted to pour lemonade on her cake or laugh loudly or eat a full plate of food, or gallop her horse, or anything else that made Lady Jemima who she was?
Then, she had given him the only hint he needed. Stop being so tightly wound. Start being a little bit fun.
Had he done it? No, he’d completely ignored the hint and put his full attention on her becoming less than what she was. Because she was recovering from a head injury.
Somehow, he was going to have to learn to smile without scaring people. And he was going to have to mean it. He used to know how to do it. Perhaps it would all come back to him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jemima had been dressed for dinner, an out of doors dinner of all things, and she’d gone in to keep the duchess company while the lady herself was dressed.
Though the duchess had given her maid instructions to forgo arguing with the queen’s lady’s maids, it did not seem as if that directive had been strictly followed.
“As you asked, I say nothing of words, Your Grace,” Fleur said. “I only look at them and they understand my look. My terrible look says they are heavy-handed English nobodies and they are nothing to me. What would Paris make of those two loaves of underdone bread? Paris would look down its nose and make nothing of them. They are nothing.”
“Your terrible look says all that, does it?” the duchess said with an exasperated sigh.
“Oui, and more,” Fleur said pertly.
The duchess, seeming to view it hopeless to control her maid, turned to Jemima. “I have discovered what the duke’s odd expressions were caused by, my dear.”
Jemima waited to hear what it was, very much hoping it was not some sort of disease.
“It seems the duke decided to appear jolly.”
Jemima wrinkled her brow. “I see. Well, that is surprising. He is never very jolly. But what were the expressions caused by?”
“That was it. That was the duke trying to look jolly.”
Jemima sat back. Nothing she had seen from those odd expressions had seemed jolly. Frightening, yes. Jolly, no.
“Now, I realize he landed very wide of the mark in that effort,” the duchess said. “Nevertheless, you may take it as a compliment.”
“I may?”
“Indeed, he got the idea that you’d prefer a jollier sort of gentleman, so he took a run at it. I am afraid that if you are set on an always jolly fellow, the duke is not your man. As so clearly evidenced by that unsettling display.”
Jemima stayed very still, though nothing in her mind was very still. Her thoughts raced to and fro and this way and that. They were rabbits zigzagging away from a stoat.
Those expressions she’d found so off-putting had been the duke trying to seem good-humored. He’d tried to seem more fun. For her.
Her heart soared at the idea, until it dropped down again. She remembered one salient fact. The duke was attempting to impress the lady he thought she was, the lady she would return to when she was fully recovered. Not the lady she really was.
“Furthermore,” the duchess said, “he has now been convinced that you have never had a blow to the head. Interestingly, he had been hoping that your recovery would stop where it is.”
“Where it is?”
“Indeed, where it is. It seems he prefers you as you are now, rather than the reserved lady you used to be, which he now understands you never were.”
As a usual thing, when Jemima’s emotions were struck, she went purple as an aubergine. At this moment, though, she thought she must be white as undyed muslin. It felt as if all the blood in her face had packed up and gone elsewhere.
“But after…after setting my dress on fire…and then he threw me into a fountain…and then I had to be secreted out of the house. I had far too much to drink and named myself a pirate…”
“It seems the duke likes that sort of thing,” the duchess said. “I think that underneath that buttoned-up fa?ade, the duke hides a rather wild beating heart.”
“Wild? The duke?”
“Oh dear, I see it is a lot to take in. You are as white as the curtains. Fleur, pour Lady Jemima a small glass of the sherry.”
Jemima watched as if she were watching a dream play out before her as Fleur hurried into the duchess’ dressing room and came back with a half glass of sherry.
She drank it down gratefully and it did settle her a bit. At least she did not feel as if she would fall off her chair in a dead faint.
The duchess named it a lot to take in. It was everything to take in. It turned all her ideas upside down.
“So now the question is, Lady Jemima, are you prepared to accept a buttoned-up duke and discover what’s underneath all that formality and reserve?”
“Do you mean to say, that he intends to ask?”
“I imagine he will do so at the first opportunity.”
“Then I will say yes.”
“Excellent, I thought that would be the case. Well! We may not get out of this house before my lady’s maid comes to the queen’s attention in some awful manner, but we should at least leave with a well-matched lord and lady to brag of. Rest assured, I will be telling all and sundry that I had a hand in it.”
The duke would propose. There was a marvel in it, as it had seemed so impossible.
And then, what the duchess said might be underneath his buttoned-up exterior. Well, she was very interested to discover it.
He would propose.
All she need do is keep steady and not set herself on fire and he would propose.
When she had been young and found herself bored, her grandmother used to say that life could turn on a farthing. One never knew what was around the next corner.
Her grandmother was right—she had never imagined what was just around the corner.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lord Varnay watched his sister pace back and forth. She had slipped into his bedchamber, terrified that the queen would send them both home.
“We would be ruined, brother,” Miss Pickering said fretfully. “Everybody would know of it. Our standing, which is precarious already, would plummet.”
“Sit down, if you please. Your pacing gives me a headache.”
Lord Varnay poured two glasses of brandy from the decanter he’d taken from Lady Dudmore’s library. He handed one to his sister. “If the queen were going to send us away, she would have done it already. She does not mull things over; she makes decisions on the spot.”
“You should not dare to test her patience again,” Miss Pickering said. “We must not put a foot out of place going forward.”
“Well, we’ll have to put one foot out of place, at least. This evening will finally present an opportunity for me to speak at length with Lady Jemima. The tables will only accommodate four people and I have paid off a servant to make arrangements that suit—place cards have been rearranged. My table will be myself, Lady Jemima, Lord Graydon, and Lady Hapsworth. Those two old people are both deaf as a post. I will be, for all intents and purposes, alone with Lady Jemima.”
“But brother, she did make herself very clear when I broached the idea of a match.”
Varnay downed his brandy and waved his hands. “Nonsense. No lady is clear in her thoughts until a proposal is on the ground. I will make her laugh, which Barstow can never manage to do. That, coupled with whatever disease he’s got that is distorting his expressions, will do the trick.”
His sister looked very dubious over the idea. Let her, she was an excessive worrier. He was so close to his aim—he must just get over the finish line.
He may not have won the stupid regatta, but he would win Lady Jemima.
Barstow would be murderous, but then he had every hope that the duke was dying of something anyway. Nobody could make such faces as he did this day without suffering something very grave.
It cheered Varnay to think of it. That was one funeral he’d be delighted to attend.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jasper’s valet staggered back and sat on the bed. “So the duchess feared you suffered a physical malady when you attempted to appear jolly, Lady Jemima never had a blow to the head, and you were meant to have a blow to the head which accounted for your less than jolly countenance?
“That’s right,” Jasper said.
“I see. Well, you were hoping the lady’s recovery would not go too far. I suppose that is no longer a concern.”
“She is just as she is, with no improvements needed. Prepare yourself, Randolph. If the lady can be convinced to accept me, the house will undergo a transformation.”
“I rather think it is you who will undergo a transformation,” Randolph said.
“Perhaps so,” Jasper said. He thought Randolph was probably right. After all, he wished to wed a very lively lady, it could not help but to affect him.
Suddenly, the dukedom did not seem to require all the seriousness he’d brought to it. Of course, there were many responsibilities to keep track of, but he did have a man for nearly everything. If luck smiled on him, he’d have a duchess by his side too.
Perhaps it had never been necessary to turn himself into a grim sort of person.
“I pray she accepts,” Randolph said. “You do not think Varnay is still in the mix do you?”
“I cannot see how,” Jasper said. “Lady Jemima is no fool, she must have taken his measure over the past days. He’s a bad sport, among other things.”
Randolph suddenly frowned. “The one thing that worries me, though, is what I hear below stairs. Miss Pickering and Lady Jemima are said to be thick as thieves.”
“Yes, she does have a fondness for Miss Pickering,” Jasper said. As always, he could not pinpoint what it was he had against the lady. It was something, though.
“There’s no telling how far a sister will go for a brother,” Randolph said. “My ma always said, ask a person to side with you over a brother or sister and you might as well hit yourself over the head with a hammer for all the good it will do you. That’s how my Uncle Freddie managed to live with us without doing a lick of work for ten years. My Pa would point it out and get told about brothers and sisters.”
“Another magical story from your idyllic childhood,” Jasper said drily. Though he claimed to dismiss it, it really could not be entirely dismissed. Miss Pickering did have Lady Jemima’s ear and had likely told her no end of flattering stories about her brother. But certainly, Lady Jemima was clever enough to see through it.
He ought to stop worrying over it. He had a proposal to make and all he had to do was find the right opportunity.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The duchess led Lady Jemima downstairs. As every clock in Lady Dudmore’s house ran on the queen’s time, they had been directed to gather in the front hall at precisely eight o’clock.
The sun had made its last appearance for the day and they were all to stumble out into the darkness for dinner and then somehow view blindfolded lawn bowling.
Considering how dark it would be, Jemima was not certain what the blindfolds would be needed for.
The hall was very crowded and she had scanned it, looking for the duke.
She’d seen him, and he stood very near the front doors. He must have come down early to be so placed.
He was looking both handsome and terrible at the same time. His features could not be entirely ruined by court tennis, but they had been battered. His eye had gone black.
Jemima had found him staring at her and had quickly looked away. She was such a ninny. Why had not she smiled? The duke had the ability to make her very stupid.
She must get hold of herself!
The queen descended at two minutes past eight. The crowd parted to allow her to the front and Her Majesty and Lady Dudmore led the way forward.
The lawn had been transformed and was not nearly as dark as Jemima had imagined it would be. Torches were posted at regular intervals around and between the small tables that had been set up.
With that many flames around, Jemima thought she’d better be extra careful not to set herself on fire.
She did not understand what the seating arrangements would be, as they had not lined up as they had the evening before.
But of course, Lady Dudmore had taken care of every detail. An army of footmen arrived and began to show the guests to the table they’d been assigned to.
Jemima had not thought of it before, but she had not the first idea of whether she would be seated next to the duke. Her mind had entirely skipped over that detail and she had just imagined that of course she must be sitting next to him.
“Your Grace, this way,” a footman said to the duchess.
Another said, “Lady Jemima, this way,” indicating the opposite direction.
She parted from the duchess and followed the footman. Jemima realized soon enough that they were not headed toward the duke, as he was already at the top table with the queen.
“Lady Jemima!”
Jemima was frozen in her tracks. She been led to a table with Lord Varnay and two older people. She did not wish to dine with Lord Varnay! She wished to be with the duke so he might say something.
The whole evening would be wasted.
She suppressed a sigh as she had no wish to be rude, despite her grave disappointment. “Lord Varnay,” she said rather flatly.
“May I present you to Lord Graydon, and Lady Hapsworth,” Lord Varnay said.
Jemima curtsied.
Lady Hapsworth said, “What?”
Lord Graydon said, “Who?”
Lady Hapsworth picked up an ear trumpet that she must have had laying on the grass and applied it to her ear.
“Lady Jemima Fornay, daughter of the Duke of Eddelston,” Lord Varnay shouted.
“Ah, Lady Jemima,” Lady Hapsworth shouted back.
Lord Graydon only nodded and motioned to a footman to refill his wine glass.
Gracious, it was turning out to be the worst sort of evening. Lord Graydon and Lady Hapsworth seemed to be quite deaf. She had of course noticed Lady Hapsworth’s use of an ear trumpet the evening before, but had not realized that Lord Graydon also could not hear well. That gentleman did not even bother with a trumpet, so seemingly uninterested he was in what anybody had to say.
She did not even have the benefit of being seated where she could view the duke at his table, as she faced toward the house, not the other diners.
Jemima surreptitiously peered over her shoulder.
Across the dozens of tables, she could see the duke at the right hand of the queen. He was staring at her table. He was staring at her. And, he did not wear the lunatic smile he’d donned earlier in the day.
He could not like it that she sat with Lord Varnay. She could only hope he had the sense to recognize that she had not made the arrangements.
Jemima took a sip of wine. Why was everything so difficult when it came to the Duke of Barstow? She really wondered if other ladies had this much trouble getting to a proposal.
“Very unfortunate, what’s happened to the duke,” Lord Varnay said.
“What’s happened? What do you mean, Lord Varnay?”
“You must have noted those strange expressions that came over him today. I expect he does his best to hide it, but the Barstow curse returns to visit another generation. It makes sense, when you think about it. Those sorts of maladies often do skip a generation.”
What on earth was he talking about?
Seeming to understand her confusion, Lord Varnay said, “Do not tell me you are unaware of the duke’s grandfather? He went mad as a spring hare and it started just the same. It all began with the old duke making odd faces.”
Jemima sat back. She had no idea if there had ever been a mad duke, but she knew very well the cause of this duke’s odd appearance this day.
“Lord Varnay, I am afraid you are mistaken. I know the cause of the duke’s peculiar expressions and it was nothing to do with madness.”
Lord Varnay raised his brows quizzically. “Are you certain?”
“Very certain. The duke was only, well he was wishing to appear…jolly.”
Of course when she said it, though she knew it to be true, it did sound rather preposterous.
“So that’s the story he’s telling, is it? Well, I suppose he means to keep his illness a very great secret until it can no longer be explained away.”
There was something in Lord Varnay’s tone, some sort of feeling in it, that gave Jemima pause.
That, coupled with Miss Pickering’s idea earlier in the day that they might become sisters, brought a certain idea to mind.
It was rather coincidental that, with all these people she might have been seated with, she’d been coupled with Lord Varnay and a pair of people who were deaf. All the way in the last table, as far as possible from the duke.
“Lord Varnay, have you perhaps had a hand in these seating arrangements?”
“A hand? The seating arrangements? How could I? I only view myself very fortunate that it has been done as it has.”
He was lying. She knew it in her bones. She did not know how he’d done it, but he did have a hand in it. It was highhanded. It was devious. It was not at all what she wanted.
She would very much like to remove her shoe and beat him about the head for it.
Though he still smiled, Lord Varnay’s cheerful mask had fallen from her eyes. He was a schemer.
The duke had named him a rogue and she should have listened to that advice. The duke had always known what Lord Varnay was.
She would somehow get through this deadly dull dinner and make certain that Lord Varnay never tricked her again.