Love Match by Maggie MacKeever

chosen to disturb our honeymoon. The devil is in it that she must decide to go off on one of her starts right now. I’m sorry to confess I cannot trust her. There is nothing for it but that she must be with us for a time.”
    The devil was in it that St. Clair would want his cousin with them. Because the duke was of a disposition that if he did not want Augusta with them, she would not be there. Naturally he expected his wife to accept his decision. Elizabeth recalled his hands in her hair, and immediately lost her appetite. “Why is that, Your Grace?”
    Did his duchess question his decision? Justin must have misunderstood. At least she had spoken to him, which she hadn’t done for some time. “You know Augusta is my cousin. What you may not also know is that her brother gambled away the family fortune, and her dowry with it. Afterward he fled the country, throwing her to the wolves. She despises him for it, nearly as much as she despises me.”
    No wonder Lady Augusta was as sour as a lemon. Elizabeth forgot for a moment that she was annoyed. “I can understand why she is angry with her brother. But why should she be angry with you?”
    Justin shrugged. “Augusta is dependent on me, and that stings her pride. I have restored her dowry, and make her an allowance, the majority of which she loses at the tables. She would gamble away even more, did I not keep a sharp eye on her. Unfortunately, Augusta shares her brother’s addiction to play.”
    First a Cyprian, now a gambler. Then there was the parrot. St. Clair’s household grew more and more strange.
    “Augusta thinks she is of an age to do as she pleases,” Justin continued. “I think she is not. Therefore, we are forever at odds. I knew the moment my attention was directed elsewhere she would be at the gaming tables. I did not anticipate she would follow us to Bath.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “And I am sorry that she did. You must not let her get to dagger-drawing. Augusta will go to any lengths for the sole purpose of creating a scene. Fortunately, Nigel will soon return and divert some of her spleen.”
    Perhaps Elizabeth would box Lady Augusta’s ears rather than the duke’s. “Your cousin and Mr. Slyte do not like one another?” she asked.
    Justin guided the horses down a side street to avoid a traffic snarl involving a sedan chair and a produce cart. “We all grew up together. Augusta was more amiable in those days. Nigel would have wed her once. She’d have none of it because he is a younger son.”
    Lady Augusta was not only a crosspatch and a gambler, but a pigwidgeon as well. Elizabeth imagined it might be amusing to be wed to Mr. Slyte. A pity he hadn’t married her for her fortune. Although she suspected Mr. Slyte would not be half as handsome as the duke in a dressing robe. Hastily she asked, “And now?”
    “And now Nigel takes delight in baiting Gus, for she is even poorer than he—Nigel has expectations from his aunt. You have not married into an easy family. I trust in your great good sense to keep above the fray.”
    Elizabeth trusted her great good sense to keep her from saying something she would later regret. St. Clair had told her everything but what she longed to know. Who on earth was Magda? Elizabeth would allow herself to be nibbled to death by rabbits before she mentioned the woman’s name.
    “You will be curious about Magdalena,” added the duke, with unnerving prescience. “Whom you met last night.”
    Elizabeth hadn’t met Magda, precisely; she’d been hustled off to bed. She refrained from pointing this out. It would be interesting to hear how St. Clair meant to explain the introduction of his inamorata into his household. Elizabeth was intensely aware of the duke’s muscular body, so close to her on the carriage seat.
    Justin was intensely aware of his bride’s silence. If she were older, wiser in the ways of the world— But if she were older, wiser, she would have been introduced to the ways of the world by