Chapter 2
Addy was finally dry and warm, and she was more convinced than ever that the Duke of Marchingham was indeed an arrogant, haughty arse.
Perhaps worse.
Strike that.
Definitely worse.
He was a despot, a supercilious, unkind jackass, and that was simply that. How dare he insist upon her precious darling sleeping in the cold stables? And more importantly, how had two vibrant, wonderful ladies like Lila and Letty been cut from the same cloth as such a terrible man? It defied logic.
Bundled up in a blanket before the merrily crackling fire in the room she’d been given, Dandy in her lap, Addy pressed a kiss to her beloved French bulldog’s head. The only way Dandy was sleeping in the cold was if Marchingham pried her from Addy’s dead hands.
“I’m thankful the duke found you when he did,” Aunt Pearl said from the other wingback chair flanking the hearth.
Like Addy’s chair, and like every part of Marchingham Hall she’d seen thus far, the elegant pieces of furniture were worn.
Elegant and clearly of excellent craftsmanship.
But in need of loving attention. Despite the exterior clearly in need of repair, she hadn’t expected the inside of the manor house to be so shabby.
“Anyone with eyes could have found me,” Addy grumbled. “I was sitting in a carriage in the midst of the snow. It isn’t as if he committed some manner of impossible feat.”
Aunt Pearl tutted. “You could have suffered frostbite, or, heaven forbid, even worse. I never would have forgiven myself if anything ill had befallen you, and I daresay neither would your mother and father.”
“I’m persuaded that being forced to rely upon the dubious hospitality of the Duke of Marchingham is worse than frostbite,” Addy drawled, feeling far from magnanimous where he was concerned.
The man was colder than the wintry snow he had helped her to escape.
He was rude. Conceited. Icy. He had scarcely even deigned to speak to her, apart from issuing edicts. And his response to Dandy had been particularly infuriating.
“You mustn’t exhibit such ingratitude, Adelia,” Aunt Pearl reprimanded with an uncharacteristic sharpness in her voice. “The duke likely saved your life.”
“I could have walked the distance with ease,” she sniffed, even though her assertion was far from true.
The carriage had mired in the deep snow a fairly significant distance from the manor house—and by horse. With her impractical skirts and silk boots, she wouldn’t have made it far. But the notion that she was somehow indebted to the duke wounded her pride. She refused to accept it.
She didn’t like the man.
“I doubt it very much,” Aunt Pearl insisted. “When Alfred, Dandy, and I arrived without you and explained we’d left you behind in the carriage with your trunks, he wasted no time in riding out in search of you.”
“I’m sure it was with great reluctance,” Addy said stubbornly. “I’m surprised he didn’t send a servant instead.”
“It would seem there is a dearth of domestics here,” Aunt Pearl noted.
“It’s almost as if the manor house is abandoned.
The room I’ve been given was closed up, the furniture all under covers, with a lone maid sent to ready it for my use.
However, I do believe His Grace rode off in search of you himself because he wanted to see to your welfare personally. He recognized your name at once.”
Addy could only imagine how the conversation had gone.
The duke would have been initially confused and then no doubt in a rage.
According to Letty and Lila, he blamed Addy for their dismissal from Académie Clairemont.
It was the reason he continually refused to allow them to visit her in New York City despite years of invitations.
“I suppose that I am rather infamous,” she muttered.
Dandy looked up at her, gold-flecked brown eyes adoring. Addy kissed Dandy’s head a second time. “Mama is quite well-known, and sometimes for dubious reasons,” she crooned. “Yes, she is.”
Dandy opened her mouth and then closed it in response.
“I know you don’t believe it, darling, but it’s true,” Addy told Dandy in a singsong voice.
Dandy launched herself at Addy, frantically licking behind her ears. Addy laughed and clutched the muscular pup to her, lest she fall off the chair. Dandy’s affection was, like everything else she did, unfailingly exuberant.
“You should know better than to speak to Dandy like that,” Aunt Pearl chastised, clicking her tongue. “She gets far too excited.”
Addy felt the sharp edge of a tooth on her right ear. “Down, you little scamp. No eating my diamond earrings.”
“How are you going to keep her from the duke?” Aunt Pearl asked, frowning. “He was most aggrieved when he spied Dandy at our arrival and only allowed her to remain within until she was warmed with Alfred and me.”
“I can imagine.” Addy wrestled Dandy back into her lap. “Apparently, he has an aversion to dogs, which also means that he doesn’t have a soul. I could have guessed as much, given his treatment of his poor sisters. The duke has the personality of a pile of frozen horse dung.”
Dandy’s mouth was open wide to reveal her alligator-like teeth as she presented her belly for a rub next. Addy obliged, trying to push all unwelcome thoughts of the Duke of Marchingham from her mind.
“And to think you traveled all the way to Paris to find such a wild dog,” Aunt Pearl said.
Addy covered Dandy’s silken ears. “She’s not wild, and you had better not let her hear you utter such blasphemy either. She’s merely high-spirited.”
Aunt Pearl chuckled. “Now you sound like your father defending you to your mother when you were a girl getting into all manner of scrapes.”
Papa had always been Addy’s champion. He spoiled her, and she knew it. Papa hadn’t wanted to send her away to finishing school. Mama had demanded it. And while Papa doted upon Addy, it was Mama who ruled him.
“I’m still high-spirited,” Addy said. “Nothing has changed.”
“Much to your mother’s dismay,” Aunt Pearl said fondly. “Although I must say, you know I have boundless tolerance for your adventures, dear.”
Ah, here was the reprimand Addy had been awaiting.
She winced. “Of course you do, and that is why you are my favorite aunt.”
“I’m also your only aunt,” Aunt Pearl shrewdly pointed out with raised brows. “I do find it rather poor that you lied to us all.”
“I prefer to think of it as a necessity rather than a lie,” Addie hedged. “If Mama or Papa or you had known that I was surprising Lila and Letty with my visit, I have no doubt they would have opposed the trip.”
“Hmm,” Aunt Pearl said, compressing her lips and regarding Addy in the way she had when Addy had been a naughty child who had played yet another trick upon someone in the household.
“What was I to have done?” Addie asked. “The duke refuses to allow Lila and Letty to visit me in New York City. I had no choice but to come to them.”
“But you didn’t come to them, my dear.” Aunt Pearl shook her head, looking august, tender, and disapproving all at once in the way that only she truly could. “They’re not even in residence.”
Addie huffed out a breath. “And believe me, I never would have come here if I had known that. Why, it’s soon Christmas, and now we’re to be stranded in the snow with the Duke of Arse-ingham.”
Aunt Pearl issued a long-suffering sigh. “You really ought not to call him that, my dear.”
“He’ll never know.”
Dandy chose that moment to leap from Addy’s lap and have a bout of animated running about the chamber. Her paws flew across the threadbare Axminster, taking her toward the closed door.
“Dandy, no,” Addy called.
But Dandy ignored her as usual, sliding into the door and then scrambling about to race the length of the room a second time before running back to the door again.
Dandy tended to have random bursts, and it was best to simply let her run until she collapsed on her side, her mouth hanging slack and her tongue lolling.
“I do think His Grace may discover her presence in your room sooner or later,” Aunt Pearl observed.
Addy crossed her arms over her chest. “Let him find her, then. I won’t allow him to send her to the stables. She’s too delicate for that. She requires warmth and love and baths.”
As if to prove Addy’s point, Dandy returned to the fireplace and lay on her side, her stomach toward the heat of the flames.
Aunt Pearl sighed. “Oh, my dear girl. I have a feeling you and the duke are going to be at daggers drawn.”
Addy glanced down at Dandy, thinking the little brindle French bulldog quite the most lovable dog in all the world. Far more lovable than the Duke of Marchingham could ever dream of being.
“We already are.”
There was, quite suddenly, a great bit of commotion in the room above Lion’s study. Thumps and a scrambling sound followed by a thwack, then more rhythmic bumps. He cocked his head toward the tumult, listening. It sounded almost as if someone were racing about the chamber.
He frowned at the report from his steward that he had been halfheartedly perusing.
Was someone running upstairs?
The notion was preposterous. And yet, as he listened, there was no denying what he was hearing. But who would do such an unseemly thing?
The moment the question occurred to him, Lion had his answer.
Miss Adelia Fox. No one else would be so daring, so outrageous, so insufferably uncouth.
He settled his pen in his inkwell and stood. Was the woman mad? Why would she be running about her bedroom and slamming into doors? Had she not already tortured him enough with her unexpected presence here at Marchingham Hall? Now she was rendering it altogether impossible for him to concentrate.
Lion stalked to the window, where the park beyond was blanketed in white and the snowflakes falling from the sky showed no sign of slowing.
If this kept up, the roads would remain impassable for days.
Perhaps even a week or—sweet God above—more.
He was as stuck with the dreadful Miss Fox as her carriage was mired in the snowbank.