but bellowed. “For you are the plan!”
“Then why did she refuse my offer?”
“Because she’s a cunning little chit, and you are greener than grass if you cannot see it!”
“You are wrong, Chas. You only think so because Lady Cromley has played you false.”
“This has nothing to do with—” Charles caught himself in midshout, took a deep breath to calm himself, and went on, a muscle leaping in his .jaw. “It may seem to you that I am painting Lady Elizbeth with the same brush, but that, too, is due to your lack of age and experience.
“So, unless you wish to be locked in your room with a Latin tutor until you reach your majority, you will give me your word that you have abandoned all thought of marrying anyone—especially Lady Elizabeth Keaton—over the anvil.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Chas,” Teddy complained bitterly, clenching his fists for dramatic effect, “but you have my word.”
“Very well, then.” Charles gave him a stiff nod of dismissal. “You have my leave to go.”
Teddy took it and went, but only as far as the corridor outside the library. There, as he pulled the door shut behind him, he peered through the crack and saw Charles distractedly pacing the room, one hand on his hip, the other raking repeatedly through his hair.
“No desire to be a duchess,” he muttered under his breath. “No wish to wed anyone, indeed!”
“Oh, Chas?” Teddy pushed the door inward a bit and leaned his head inside the library. “I’ve recalled another remark I heard Lady Crom—”
“Not now, halfling,” Charles cut him off. “One scheming female at a time.”
“As you wish,” he murmured, and eased the door shut.
Grinning gleefully, Teddy took himself up to his room and the Latin grammar waiting for him on the writing table before the windows. With a pen knife drawn from his pocket, he peeled away the stiff backing on the inside cover, withdrew a sheet of Charles’s crested stationery filched from his desk in the library at Braxton Hall, then carefully resealed his hiding place, and laid the book aside.
“My dearest Caro,” he murmured ardently, still grinning as he dipped his pen in the well and sat down to write.
His imitation of Charles’s sketchy script was flawless, made perfect by years of forging replies to notes intercepted from his masters. The key was haste, for the Duke of Braxton’s thoughts always outpaced his hand. Scarce a minute and three quarters later, the seconds ticked off by the pocket watch inscribed to him by Charles on his last birthday, which lay on the table beside him, the note was penned, sanded, and secreted in his pocket.
Recalling the smash of Charles’s fist against the desk, Teddy suffered a momentary qualm of doubt as he pictured a fiery-eyed and furious Duke of Braxton swooping down unaware on the lovely Lady Betsy. Only once before, when the solution to a mathematical equation had eluded him for several days, had he ever seen Charles so angry.
But a storm was sometimes necessary, Teddy reasoned, to lift a becalmed ship from the doldrums. And Lady Elizabeth Keaton was, he felt sure, the perfect tempest, her wit and resolve equal to Charles at his most formidable.
Should all else fail, though Teddy didn’t think for an instant it would, there was her wonderful reticule full of oddments, one or two of which she’d shown him the night before. The memory brought a wickedly happy smile to his face as he pocketed his watch, fixed the fob to his waistcoat, and went out to post the note inviting Lady Cromley to London.
Chapter Six
Unaccustomed as he was to evening dress, Charles was quite accustomed to being stared at upon entering a room. So accustomed, in fact, that he scarcely noticed the sudden glare in Lady Pinchon’s ballroom caused by the dozens of quizzing glasses lifted surprisedly in his direction.
Nor did he sense the faint stir of air. Had he noticed the doors leading to the garden were shut against the evening chill,
“Then why did she refuse my offer?”
“Because she’s a cunning little chit, and you are greener than grass if you cannot see it!”
“You are wrong, Chas. You only think so because Lady Cromley has played you false.”
“This has nothing to do with—” Charles caught himself in midshout, took a deep breath to calm himself, and went on, a muscle leaping in his .jaw. “It may seem to you that I am painting Lady Elizbeth with the same brush, but that, too, is due to your lack of age and experience.
“So, unless you wish to be locked in your room with a Latin tutor until you reach your majority, you will give me your word that you have abandoned all thought of marrying anyone—especially Lady Elizabeth Keaton—over the anvil.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Chas,” Teddy complained bitterly, clenching his fists for dramatic effect, “but you have my word.”
“Very well, then.” Charles gave him a stiff nod of dismissal. “You have my leave to go.”
Teddy took it and went, but only as far as the corridor outside the library. There, as he pulled the door shut behind him, he peered through the crack and saw Charles distractedly pacing the room, one hand on his hip, the other raking repeatedly through his hair.
“No desire to be a duchess,” he muttered under his breath. “No wish to wed anyone, indeed!”
“Oh, Chas?” Teddy pushed the door inward a bit and leaned his head inside the library. “I’ve recalled another remark I heard Lady Crom—”
“Not now, halfling,” Charles cut him off. “One scheming female at a time.”
“As you wish,” he murmured, and eased the door shut.
Grinning gleefully, Teddy took himself up to his room and the Latin grammar waiting for him on the writing table before the windows. With a pen knife drawn from his pocket, he peeled away the stiff backing on the inside cover, withdrew a sheet of Charles’s crested stationery filched from his desk in the library at Braxton Hall, then carefully resealed his hiding place, and laid the book aside.
“My dearest Caro,” he murmured ardently, still grinning as he dipped his pen in the well and sat down to write.
His imitation of Charles’s sketchy script was flawless, made perfect by years of forging replies to notes intercepted from his masters. The key was haste, for the Duke of Braxton’s thoughts always outpaced his hand. Scarce a minute and three quarters later, the seconds ticked off by the pocket watch inscribed to him by Charles on his last birthday, which lay on the table beside him, the note was penned, sanded, and secreted in his pocket.
Recalling the smash of Charles’s fist against the desk, Teddy suffered a momentary qualm of doubt as he pictured a fiery-eyed and furious Duke of Braxton swooping down unaware on the lovely Lady Betsy. Only once before, when the solution to a mathematical equation had eluded him for several days, had he ever seen Charles so angry.
But a storm was sometimes necessary, Teddy reasoned, to lift a becalmed ship from the doldrums. And Lady Elizabeth Keaton was, he felt sure, the perfect tempest, her wit and resolve equal to Charles at his most formidable.
Should all else fail, though Teddy didn’t think for an instant it would, there was her wonderful reticule full of oddments, one or two of which she’d shown him the night before. The memory brought a wickedly happy smile to his face as he pocketed his watch, fixed the fob to his waistcoat, and went out to post the note inviting Lady Cromley to London.
Chapter Six
Unaccustomed as he was to evening dress, Charles was quite accustomed to being stared at upon entering a room. So accustomed, in fact, that he scarcely noticed the sudden glare in Lady Pinchon’s ballroom caused by the dozens of quizzing glasses lifted surprisedly in his direction.
Nor did he sense the faint stir of air. Had he noticed the doors leading to the garden were shut against the evening chill,
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