A Vixen For The Devilish Duke (Steamy Historical Regency Romance) Page 9

  The Duke quirked an eyebrow but nevertheless took the letter and opened it. He read the contents without surprise, knowing full well that he had painted himself into this corner. He sighed, his eyes rising to stare at the door through which Miss Raby had disappeared. He looked to the messenger—he had not looked at the girl as he came in and so perhaps that was why his expression remained impassive and undisturbed.

  But what if he had seen her?

  Harry was suddenly not eager to share Miss Raby with anyone— especially if these people might take her away from him. Not only for his own sake, but for his mother, who was responding well to her presence. For all he knew, these people had no interest in the possibility of a close relative rejoining their family. Alexander Cohen had sent no word yet so he knew nothing for sure.

  Would it even be fair to apprise the Earl and his family about the reason for his interest, if it all turned out to be a storm in a teacup? Perhaps Miss Raby and Lady Dorothea simply resembled each other a lot. After all, the reason the word doppelgänger even existed was that there were people in the world who simply coincidentally resembled each other closely.

  So perhaps he could get away with not speaking a word of this to anyone.

  Not yet anyway…

  “Your Grace?” the messenger said tentatively, “the Earl was very insistent on getting a reply.”

  Harry sighed, knowing full well that nothing but the truth would suffice. But he could have her to himself for one more day.

  He looked up at the messenger, resigned. “Very well then.”

  Picking up a paper and a quill, he wrote the Earl a short note and gave it to the messenger. “Give him that message.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” The man bowed, and then left Harry alone in his office to brood. If what he suspected turned out to be true, he would very likely be losing Miss Raby tomorrow. He had a faint hope that they would not want her, but recognized it as selfish and self-serving. If he was any kind of gentleman, he would hope that his news would result in Miss Raby being restored to the bosom of her family. Unfortunately, he had to admit, if only to himself, that he fell short of that idyll.

  Chapter 10

  Once Upon a Time on a Farm

  “Hey, Adelia, get in here!”

  A small, scrawny child with messy tawny hair looked up. It was hard to make figures out in the sweltering summer heat, but Adelia managed anyway. Adelia's mother was standing on the porch, waving her arms. It was dinner time, and that meant outside time was over. Adelia gave the donkey one last pat and moved to go back inside.

  “Don't worry, I'll be right back.” the child promised the animal. Of course, the donkey never replied. But Adelia liked to think that the donkey was acknowledging the statement when it nodded its head.

  “What have you been doin' all day? You're filthy!” her mother scolded.

  Adelia was washing her hands and barely acknowledged her angry words.

  “You shouldn't be rolling around in the grass. It's not ladylike of you!”

  Adelia's cousin, Alexander, looked up and grinned. “Can't say our Adelia's the most ladylike person I've ever met!”

  Her mother glared at him. “I told you to stop saying that to her. It only encourages this silly behavior. No man will ever want to marry you, Adelia.”

  Adelia made a face at this. “Well, I guess I'll never marry a man then,” she said defiantly.

  Alexander snorted and made a thumbs-up gesture at Adelia. For only being six, Adelia was very sassy. And it only made Alexander love her more.

  “Just you wait 'til your father hears about this nonsense, Adelia Raby,” their mother warned.

  Adelia and Alexander both looked at each other and gulped. Her father was truly a formidable force, and they were both a little scared of him, even if they tried to convince themselves otherwise.

  Her mother was clearly not impressed. “More potatoes?” she asked, ignoring where the conversation was heading.

  “Where is Uncle John?” Alexander asked after both children nodded enthusiastically and were rewarded with a spoon of potato.

  “He's working.”

  “Now? But it's dinner!” Adelia whined.

  “Yes. And he's working late, so don't bother him when he gets in.”

  The rest of dinner was eaten in silence, the only sounds being the scraping of spoons against wooden bowls. Adelia and Alexander were dismissed and made their way back to their sleeping mats. They shared the barn with the pig. It was warm and dry in there, and there was plenty of hay to cushion their bodies.

  “You know; you don't have to marry anyone you don't want to,” Alexander said quietly.

  “I know. I wasn't going to.”

  Alexander chuckled at his cousin. They were close, and ever since the farm started to fail, and both Mary and John Raby had to venture out to other farms to work, they were left alone a lot of the time. So even though Alexander was almost a teenager, they were still quite close. Adelia had no idea how she had the good fortune to have such a good big cousin. Alexander was never mean, only teasing her occasionally. Life was pretty good. Adelia didn’t know why he had come to live with them, all she knew was his parents had died in some tragic way and he had no other living relatives.

  “Night, Alex.”

  “Goodnight, Addy.”

  They rolled themselves in their blankets and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Through the summer and autumn of Adelia’s tenth year, they had worked to exhaustion on the farm. They hired workers, cut wood, raised fences, built walls and bought the first three cows, the sheep, chickens and the great bristle-haired sow that Mary had named Clotilda.

  None of them had done anything quite like it, not having been able to afford it before. It was hard work even for those who were accustomed to it, and yet gratifying because they were doing it for themselves.

  Before they even looked for it, the autumn winds were sweeping across the downs, setting the golden leaves of the trees along the valley dancing and rattling. Soon the hired workers were gone, paid with firewood, with the squealing piglets that Clotilda had proudly produced and led out into the Oak Wood to fatten on acorns, and with a few of John’s precious and dwindling store of coins. Then John, his wife Mary, and the children Adelia and Alexander, were alone on the farm, with the winter ahead and the cold wind blowing over.

  The land now was too wet for much to be done in the fields. The autumn sowing had been done, though how much of it would survive the winter was another matter. The rain beat down, grey and endless, filling the lane to the new house with pale rivers of mud, and the nights grew long.

  Standing outside the house after the sun set, John could see no light anywhere in the long, shadowed valley that fell away below him. There was only the firelight that showed in the cracks of the shuttered windows behind him to break the absolute darkness of the cloudy night.

  He could hear no human voice. It was as if the busy world of men and light had gone away, leaving only the little house and John outside it, alone in the dark with the wind blowing. He turned and went inside.

  That autumn they fought an extensive, but silent battle with the mud. The horses’ legs and feet had to be endlessly washed and dried, in an attempt to prevent disease. In order to keep the drainage clear enough to keep the land from becoming a swamp under the cutting hooves, they had to move the horses from field to field. At the end of the day, they came in worn out and soaked, time and again, as the light faded.

  John patched and re-patched the leaking thatch and cut withies to strew across the new yard. He cleared the over-burdened drainage channels with Mary’s and the children’s help, because they channeled the ceaseless rain down to the engorged stream.

  Watching the jackdaws flung on the wind across empty skies at the end of another fleeting grey day, John wondered yet again if selling the land and finding a job in London might not, on balance, have been a wiser choice.

  Then they lost a filly, the promising chestnut that Mary ha
d especially favored, when the young horse spooked at a shadow on a wet slope, slipped, and broke a leg. After that, the pregnant sheep began to lose their lambs.

  John began to wonder secretly if the farm was cursed with ill-luck, although he did not speak of it to Adelia or to Mary. One does not risk attracting the disfavor of the Lady Fortuna by speaking ill of her—and after all, he had never expected farming to be easy. Still, the thought weighed on his shoulders.

  Only Adelia and Alexander were still of good cheer. Adelia brought in some more logs of firewood, she fed Clotilda, and nurtured the grubby red hens roosting grumpily along the rafters of the new-built barn, and did it all with a smile. Her jovial mood did not dissipate even as she scraped mud from boots and coats and carted heavy laundry baskets of sodden but more or less clean clothes back from the stream.

  “Farming suits you, Adelia,” John said one evening as he and Mary sat, exhausted, by the raised fireplace, listening to the rain drum down on the thatch. She turned and smiled at him, and across the small dark room, the red firelight caught and shone in her straw-colored hair, and glinted on the golden orbs of her eyes.

  “I like to help out on the farm,” she said. “It is nice to have you here all the time... and I know a prosperous farm will mean you can stay.”

  She came back to the fire with four wooden bowls on a tray, walking carefully across the darkened floor, for they were saving oil, and so there was only the fire to light the way.

  “Of course,” she said to John, very solemnly but with a spark of mischief in her eye. “Aunt Barbara would be very shocked. I have not told her that there is nobody here this winter but for us.” She looked ruefully at her cracked red hands. “Not that it would not be pleasant if someone else would do the washing.”

  She began to ladle out food from the big iron pot. Alexander, who was sprawled by the fireside, warming himself from a long day outside, looked up hopefully at the smell of the soup.

  “Here you go, greedy one!” Adelia said. John smiled at their antics.

  Now that Alexander is fully grown, it will soon be time for him to go off and start his own family.

  Soon they would only be three.

  * * *

  Adelia was woken early by her mother on her sixteenth birthday, her expression grave.

  “Addy, my dear, get up.”

  Adelia shot to her feet. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  Mary sighed. “I have some news, my dear. News you may not like.”

  “What’s wrong?” Adelia gripped her mother’s sleeve like she was five years old.

  “Your father…” she gulped, swallowed. “He…”

  Adelia shot out of bed, “Please, is he all right?”

  “He left us, Adelia.”

  “What?”

  “H-he said he could not take anymore. H-he ran off with some young chit he met in the mines at Tyne and Wear,” she said bitterly.

  “No,” Adelia whispered, shaking her head.

  “I’m afraid so, dear,” her mother said sadly.

  Adelia shook her head continually, unable to believe it at all. “No.”

  “Trust me, Addy, nobody wanted to believe it less than me. After everything we been through, all the ups and downs…” she shook her head. “I never thought he would ever do this.”

  “But…why? Why would he do this?”

  “We’ve had the bill collectors knocking lately. The bank’s threatening to take our farm…it hasn’t been easy.”

  Adelia blanched. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How would it have made a difference if you’d known?”

  “I could…find work…”

  Her mother reached out and squeezed her hand. “No! Not yet. I am not ready for you to go.”

  “I’m not ready to go either, Mama, but…if it’s the only way…”

  “It’s not. Alexander can take us in. We can stay with him for a bit.”

  “He lives in a hovel in London, Mama. With his wife. Where would we stay?”

  Mary sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Adelia reached out and patted her mother’s shoulder, “Don’t worry about me, Mama, we will survive.”

  Later that day, she went out to the market, basket in hand. They still had the old sow. Nobody wanted her. She was an ornery old thing, difficult to manage. But she and Adelia had an understanding. She didn’t try to bite Adelia and she in turn would feed Clotilda every day. It was a good arrangement, it worked for them. She’d just dropped her latest litter which were not old enough to take to market. They squeaked and complained when Adelia went to feed them, all bunched together in the small space but Adelia didn’t have the attention to spare for them. She was too lost in thought.

  How could he just leave us?

  It didn’t seem real. That wasn’t the father she knew. He was no quitter. She swallowed the tears that threatened to swallow her, and put a smile on her face. She would get to the bottom of this one way or another.

  Two days later, she had a small bag packed and had begged a lift from farmer Hume who was taking his produce to market at Convent Garden.

  She didn’t tell her mother where she was going.

  As soon as she got to London, she asked the way to Cheapside, where her cousin had rooms. She knew he worked as a messenger for a haberdashery but she wasn’t sure where. So she wandered around, asking strangers if they knew him.

  As she was walking past yet another business, her feet aching and full of despair, she bumped into somebody and almost fell.

  “Careful,” the person said, a strong hand gripping her arm to steady her. She looked up to thank them and her mouth snapped shut when she saw how diminutive the woman was. She was wearing a veil, and a habit, sharp eyes gazing out of a wizened face and strong enough to hold Adelia up.

  “S-sorry, Sister,” she mumbled nervously.

  The nun smiled benignly. “Tis no problem, dear. You were walking rather absentminded though, is something the matter?”

  Adelia opened her mouth to say no and was completely caught off guard when everything she was thinking came pouring out. The nun led her gently to a sidewalk bench and listened patiently to all of it.

  When she was finished, Adelia felt as if a huge weight had lifted from her chest. The sister covered her hand. “It seems as if you have several trials you are facing at the moment. Trials to your spirit and your flesh. I can’t help you with all of them, except to tell you to pray. But…”

  She glanced at Adelia who raised an eyebrow. “If you want to work, I know of an orphanage looking for a maid.”

  Adelia shook her head sadly. “I have no references.”

  The sister patted her hand. “Don’t worry. I shall be your reference. Now come with me.”

  “But…what about my cousin?”

  “I think you’d be best served by writing him a letter. Do you have an address to send it to?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “All right then. Do that and then he can find you.”

  Adelia nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, my dear. Now come let me buy you a pigeon pie. You must be hungry after all that walking.”

  “Oh no, Sister. I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t. I offered. Now hush. Come with me.”

  * * *

  “And that’s how I found myself in the orphanage,” Adelia finished, looking up at Harry. He sighed, leaning back.

  “That’s quite a story. I thought your parents were still together, I seem to recall you once saying that?”

  She shook her head. “Father came back last year. No explanation, nothing. And Mother, she just took him back. He had some money saved that they were finally able to use to pay their debts and get the farm back.”

  “That’s probably why she did not require an explanation.”

  Adelia shook her head slowly. “Well, I do require an explanation and I do mean to get one.”

  “Oh, you haven’t asked?”

  “No.
I haven’t been able to go back home.”

  “Well…that might change soon.” Harry said, looking away.

  Chapter 11

  An Ignominious Meeting

  Thank you for the invitation to tea. We shall be glad to take you up on it.

  Harry stared at the note, wondering why it seemed so ominous. It was a simple answer to his own invitation and yet, it was so much more. After hearing Adelia’s story, he was eager to speak with her parents.