Chapter 2
Chapter Two
David Hill, the Duke of Cresswell, was not ready to be back in England.
“If you do not mind my saying so, Your Grace, you look as if you have been sniffing something most unpleasant,” David’s butler, Ian said with a smug smile.
Were he anybody else, David might have taken some sort of offense for the way that he was speaking so informally with him, but as it was his friend, David allowed it. Furthermore, Ian had a point.
“Can you blame me? I was never supposed to return here again,” David huffed, his focus turned out of the carriage window at the painfully familiar scenery nearing his estate.
“And still, here we are.”
He knew that it was only natural for most people to miss their home while traveling or to even long for their own bed to lay their head down upon at night, but David was simply not one of those people.
Traveling fulfilled something within him that he had not been able to find anywhere else.
It had kept him happy and satisfied, filled with a hunger for life and a craving for adventure… among other things.
“It is duty, and duty alone that called me home again. You know that.”
The Duchy needed him, and while he had never regretted being an only child before actually inheriting his title, he certainly did now.
It was only right that the old, miserable man had finally died.
He must have made a pact with the devil to have lived as long as he had…
but now, it was all up to David to repair all of the messes that his father had left behind for him.
Boarding school had been a blessing. Traveling had been even better.
Now, standing in front of his own two front doors — he could not bring himself to cross the threshold.
His fingers twitched down at his sides, irritation with himself growing higher and higher with every moment that he delayed.
He had not told the staff of the exact date of his return, and that had been deliberate.
He had not wished for a grand, fancy arrival.
Nor had he wanted to announce his return to London in a way that the ton would find out about it until he was good and ready.
It was the perfect time to start putting his affairs in order and working on rebuilding.
If only he could walk back into the home that was the source of every single one of his nightmares when he had been a child. He had almost no happy memories of these four walls.
Cursing himself for his weakness, David could not do it.
His aunt and uncle’s estate mercifully neighbored his own.
It was far more of a true home to him than the one he had left.
The horse ride between their properties did wonders to help clear his mind.
He had grown up in Lord and Lady Verimore’s home, and she was almost more of a mother to him than his own mercurial minded one.
Not that they ever spoke about such things. Both his aunt and uncle had made it clear at a very young age that David was free to visit whenever and however often as he wished. A standing invitation that he was going to abuse now… just until he got the guts to go back home again.
Perhaps there would be a nice bottle of brandy that he could liberate and use as liquid courage.
He did not wait to be announced in her house either.
He was not even sure that they would be in this home this time of the year.
At least, not until he heard his aunt’s voice calling down the hallway after one of her servants.
The closer to the ballroom that he got, the more obvious that it was that Lady Verimore was in the process of a rather serious looking redecoration attempt.
“Oh no, no! This is all wrong!”
The older woman had to do a double take to ensure that she was actually seeing her nephew and not a ghost. “David?” She even blessed him with a very rare smile, a gesture that brightened her face considerably.
“When did you arrive?” She hurried over to him, taking his lapel into her surprisingly strong hand and pulling him down to meet her height more easily as she kissed his cheek.
He had to fight the urge to wipe the lipstick print off of his cheek on habit.
“Just now, actually.”
“Then you are just in time to join me for tea!” Lady Verimore continued, linking her arm through his own.
It seemed that her decorations no longer mattered to her as she started to lead the pair of them out of the ballroom and down the main hall toward the formal parlor.
“I expect that you have a great many stories to tell me about your travels? It has been years since you have been home, has it not?”
“It has indeed, yes,” David answered, his eyes drifting to the new art on the walls and the various other furnishings that had been updated since the last time that he was here.
He wondered if she had still kept the room upstairs reserved for him or if she had remodeled or redecorated that area as well.
He rather hoped that she had not. That room was important to him.
Lady Verimore was one of the only constant people in his life who had provided him with a sense of stability, who had protected him when he was younger — even from his own father when the occasion had called for it.
More things that they did not speak about.
Perhaps now that the man was dead and rotting in the ground, it would be easier for her to explain, to give him context, or to finally share the things that she had always said he would find out ‘when he was older’.
That was yet another large part of the reason that he had not wanted to go into his own home.
They had nearly reached the parlor when there was a crash back from the direction of the ballroom that they had just left.
Lady Verimore hissed and spun quickly on her heel. David, naturally, turned to go with her, but she placed a hand up to stop him. “Go and get comfortable in the parlor; tea should be being set at this very moment. I shall figure out what that was and catch up with you in a moment.”
David shook his head. “Why don’t you wait in the parlor, Aunt, and let me see to it?”
“Nonsense, you have been traveling. I insist that you go and start tea without me,” Lady Verimore instructed in her no-argument tone of voice. David gave her a tired smile and nodded his head, knowing better than to test her patience.
“As you wish,” he replied and waited until she was back down the other corridor before stepping into the parlor.
But it seemed that his aunt had a secret or two up her sleeve as well.
They were not alone for this afternoon’s tea, it would appear. On the far side of the room was a woman, kneeling down in front of the modest bookcase that his aunt kept full of various books that would cater to any type of guest that she might host.
The young woman had a small collection of books balanced on her lap and another few stacked on the floor beside where she was kneeling.
He supposed that he ought not to be surprised that his aunt had hired more staff while he was away.
He was not likely to know all of them by their faces any longer.
David shrugged his jacket from his shoulders and let the fabric slide down his arm before striding over to the young woman, coat extended.
He added his hat to the offering and cleared his throat pointedly.
The young woman looked up at him quizzically, and he could not help but to feel a little bit irritated by the fact that she looked so confused. Does she not know how to do her job?
“Be careful with the fabric of my coat, would you? It wrinkles quite easily.”
Even upon him saying that, she didn’t move. She still did not take his coat.
Slowly, she set the books in her hands down into neat piles around her and stood in front of him, her expression wholly unamused. “You must be the Duke of Cresswell.”
He could tell by her tone that she was not impressed by him in the slightest. He took another moment to fully take in the sight of her humble gown, the lack of apron on her dress, and the almost irritated expression on her face.
What on earth could a woman like her be doing here if she were not under his aunt’s employ?
“That I am,” David said, holding his coat out toward her. “And you are a maid about to do her job, are you not?”
The woman ran her tongue along her teeth, clicking them in slight annoyance. “Do you presume that every woman you meet is beneath you? Or do you just think that all women are servants?”
David blinked, clearly surprised by her sharp tongue. A maid who would speak to him like that in his aunt’s home?
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yes. Perhaps you ought to do just that.” Her eyes blazed at him in defiance as she spoke. “I am no servant, and I would thank you to stop thrusting your belongings at me like I have some obligation to cater to you,” the woman answered, waving her hand at him as if she could shoo him away.
He tilted his head, wondering if the whole city of London had gone entirely mad in his absence.
“I truly cannot tell if you are merely belligerent or if this is some sort of game to you?” he spoke with as much patience as he could muster, but the travel had already taken a toll on him, and he was inches away from sending her to whatever home she had come from for speaking to him with such insubordination.
“I know that my aunt encourages her staff to speak freely, but this is preposterous!”
Though, he could not deny that he rather liked the forward way that she was speaking.
Almost nobody in his life would ever dare to speak to him in such tones.
If he was being perfectly honest, he had grown rather accustomed to the fact that men and women tended to cater to him in conversations.
No matter where in the world that he went, it was usually the same.
After a while, all of the disingenuous attention did start to wear on him, making him think that everybody around him was merely after his title, influence, or money.
Clearly, this woman could not care less about any of those things even though he had the power to ruin her life with one flick of his hand.
Fascinating.
“I suppose that I should not even be surprised that you would think of me with such instant judgement,” the woman sneered, and it seemed as if she were barely refraining from rolling her eyes at him.
“And you? Do you address all of those that you work for with such blatant disdain?”
“Yes and no,” she said, perplexing him even further, but that only seemed to fuel his desire to prolong this unusual conversation and see it to the very end, whatever it might be.
“I find that people generally have a tendency to be rather disappointing,” she concluded, folding her arms defensively across her chest as she stared at him.
“So, that is a yes,” he mused. “Why did you say no as well?”
“Because your assumptions are incorrect,” she said simply, as if she were telling him that the grass was green and not blue.
“Are they now?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Indeed,” she nodded. “Not that I would ever expect someone like you to admit it. Just as much as I would never expect you to put away your own coat.”
A flicker of rebellion burned in her beautiful eyes, the same ones he could not stop staring at. Just to spite her, he gently folded his coat and placed it on the chair in the corner. Then, he tucked the hat in the lying folds.
“There,” he said victoriously. “I would have admitted being wrong… if that were the case.”
She scoffed, “A duke is admitting that he might be wrong? Now that is truly shocking.”
David could barely keep himself from laughing at her.
How exhausting it must be to live each day with that kind of passion.
Never mind that her defenses must make her weary and automatically distrusting of those around her.
Why? he wondered. What must happen to a woman in order to make her this way?
“All right then… If you are not a servant in this house, then I have to wonder what you are doing here, mucking around my aunt’s personal things?
I have half a mind to call for the constables to come and question you.
” He couldn’t resist teasing her more. “Perhaps then you’ll be less inclined to offer such philosophical retorts. ”
“Actually, that would have been a far more reasonable first question. Or if you were any kind of civil, perhaps you might have introduced yourself,” the woman continued. Though he was very aware of the fact that she had purposefully not answered the question that he had asked of her.
Behind them, the parlor door opened once more, and Lady Verimore strolled inside. “Ah, good, you two have already met then. Saves me the tiresome introductions.”
David’s eyes widened, watching mutely as the woman crossed the room with a smile, a whole transformation from the way that she had been regarding him only a moment or two ago. She took his aunt’s hand and joined her at the tea table before his aunt turned to look at him expectantly.
“If you are awaiting a formal invitation, boy, I am going to start thinking that you became far more spoiled in Europe than I originally assumed.” She sighed as she began to help herself to tea and extended a plate of biscuits toward her, apparently, guest. “Try the lemon cakes, Lavinia; they are divine.”
Lavinia.
David tried to summon any memory or knowledge of a young lady named Lavinia, but he was coming up with nothing at all. He walked toward the tea table slowly, fully aware of the fact that he was staring at the woman.
If she noticed his eyes upon her, she made no note of it whatsoever as she seemed intent on ignoring him. David could not even fully register the conversion that the two women were having in front of him as he was too focused on placing the woman.
There was only one, now that he thought of it. He stared at her pretty face, trying to reconcile it against a memory of a young girl with a youthful pudge to her cheeks and flushed red skin from playing outside for far longer than any young lady was supposed to.
A young lady who had accompanied him on a great many forest adventures, despite her governess being very cross with them for sneaking away. Fun, energetic, and daring — if this was truly his childhood playmate, it would seem that she had not lost those qualities.
Well, minus the fun part.
How could that young girl with boundless imagination and moxy have turned into this… well, he did not even have proper words to describe the woman that was sitting beside him. His aunt poured him a cup of tea without so much as pausing their conversation.
What an interesting development.