Chapter Nine #2
Such a gallant statement, and he tossed it off so easily. She must remember he was a roué. She must remember that he made a habit of propositioning women he met at parties, and because of his powerful charm and many personal attractions, they fell easily into his arms.
“You might tell your mother and sisters to call on me, you know,” the Duchess said pleasantly. “I shall have advice for your mother on marrying the girls well.”
Yes, because marrying girls well was the chief, in fact only concern of a mother’s life, and girls who had suddenly become sisters of a duke would be ready targets for alliance.
Louisa and her sisters had been no more than pawns for their own parents, pieces they might arrange on their personal chessboard to increase their own wealth and importance.
When Auguste Grenay had come to their door, the d’Estreaux had seen nothing but his title and his expensive chateau.
They had not questioned how he had enriched himself with the belongings of other fallen nobles, or what he had done to gain the favor of the Emperor.
They only saw the security of being close to power after the long years of revolution and war.
They had certainly not inquired whether the rumors were true.
They had signed the marriage settlements readily and handed over Louisa and her trousseau, and that had been the end of the girl known as Eloisa d’Estreaux.
The Duke of Barkham might equally be hiding a devil behind that dark beauty and seductive smile. It would behoove her to have a care how she made herself vulnerable to him.
The Duchess held out her hand for a kiss. The Duke did not bend as near, nor linger as long as he had over Louisa’s hand.
“She is high enough, you know,” the Duchess said, watching Louisa as she wrapped up in her shawl. “She’s a firm hand for running things and can conduct herself in any company. She would make you an excellent duchess.”
“I have no doubt of that,” the Duke said.
That small quirk of a smile played around his mouth as he conducted Louisa to the front door and into his coupe.
A carriage was a luxury she hadn’t experienced in a while, and the business of handing her in and getting her settled allowed him to touch her again.
Then his body was pressed all along her side as he settled himself.
There was no doubt this was a ducal equipage, with a driver in smart livery at the reins and a footman in matching livery clinging to the step behind.
“You must forgive Her Grace,” Louisa said as they rolled out onto the Knightsbridge Road, passing the barracks of the Life Guards, part of the King’s Household Calvary.
Louisa steered clear of the regiments, disliking the way they had fired on mourners who had interrupted the funeral procession for Queen Caroline, several years before.
“She does not believe the evening is a ruse devised by Your Grace.”
“Stop Gracing me,” he said. “My name is Gabriel. My friends and family call me Gabe. What few friends I have.”
A duke with many acquaintances but few true friends. Louisa knew something of feeling that one hid one’s true face from the world, and the people one trusted were a small, select group.
“Gabriel,” she murmured. “The archangel who dispatches messages from God.”
They passed the barracks of the Foot Guard, also part of the King’s Household Division within the Army.
Then St. George’s Hospital, which was a medical facility in truth, and currently undergoing expansion.
The stately old Lanesborough House had been demolished and the hulk of a new, grander hospital was rising in its place, its frontage columned like a Greek temple, its massive wings able to hold over three hundred beds, or so she’d been told.
Her stomach pinched beneath the tight stays, and she couldn’t take a proper breath.
Knightsbridge, once a bucolic village outside London, was slowly being engulfed by the spreading metropolis.
No wonder developers were eager for all the acres occupied by the sprawling Benevolence Hospital and its grounds.
“Perhaps the ruse is mine,” Gabriel said, staring straight ahead as the driver turned them down the broad boulevard of Grosvenor Place, which skirted the gardens behind the King’s Palace, the old Buckingham House. “Perhaps I am trying to induce you to become my duchess in truth.”
“You cannot mean that.”
“I might, if I knew more about you. Your past, for instance.”
Louisa struggled to feed breath into her lungs.
Steady, calming breath. Her bosom felt naked, pushed up like this and on view to the world.
So was she. Self-display was a hobby of the high-born; these carriages were made to promenade aristocratic women in their expensive gowns and fripperies while being pulled by expensive horses and attended by expensive servants.
She had known long ago she was not fit for the life of a woman of leisure.
It suited her talents and her need for industry to have an institution of her own to run.
No one would believe, looking at her installed in this carriage beside an English duke, that she had spent her afternoon deciding on menus for the next month, budgeting for the orders they would place for meat and fish, and walking through the gardens, pulling weeds as she went, estimating how well the spring crop of vegetables would bear and how long the produce would feed them.
No one would believe that she wouldn’t want to sacrifice that life, not for anything.