Page 25 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

“Dear Aunt Beatrice, I am perfectly well,” Louisa assured her, rising from the seat in front of her aunt’s dressing table where the older woman had been fixing some golden combs into Louisa’s curls. “I walked all the way back from Mrs. Shaw’s without any incident, didn’t I?”

Well, that was true as far as anyone else could know…

Only Louisa was aware of how her heart had raced each time the Duke of Northwick had offered her his arm to help her over a stile or rougher ground. There was nothing wrong or even notable about this. He had done the same for Melissa, after all, her maid following behind them on foot after Louisa sent the carriage home.

Yet, still, there had been a strong magnetic thrill each time Louisa touched the duke. Perhaps it was only the bang on the head that had unsettled her emotions. Or perhaps it was the effect of the undeniably personal conversation she had inadvertently begun in Mrs. Shaw’s sitting room, temporarily forgetting her aunt’s advice and only following her own curiosity and compassionate nature.

It somehow pleased Louisa to know how much the duke had loved his mother, although it clearly pained him in some way to recall her. Grief was different for everyone, she supposed. The duke had been older when his parents died and probably remembered them better than Louisa remembered hers. He therefore had more to grieve for.

Likely, Louisa ought not to have asked him about being thought a rake. That was certainly an indelicate subject, but she had found the idea so puzzling after his demonstrations of virtue that afternoon.

Could a man who was so kind to children, solicitous of injured young ladies and respectful of the memory of his mother really be a rake..?

Louisa was inclined to think he could not. She would have asked Aunt Beatrice’s opinion but that would have involved admitting that she had not followed the older lady’s advice, again.

“Very well, but we will not stay up late tonight,” said Lady Esher. “We are eating early for the children in any case.”

“Exactly,” noted Louisa. “I could not miss dinner with Ezra and Fanny, could I? We had best make sure that the footmen bring big enough cushions for Ezra to reach the table.”

“Or we could have the high chair brought down from the nursery?” suggested her aunt.

“Ezra will not sit in it,” Louisa pointed out, “especially not now that he has been acknowledged as a big boy.”

“Unless we place it beside His Grace,” proposed her aunt with a mischievous smile. “I do think the boy will do anything if he can do it with the Duke of Northwick. How funny it is to think of Benedict Hale as a father figure! His London friends would not believe it.”

“Then they do not know him as we do,” responded Louisa, with a peculiar surge of loyalty.

Her aunt paused and looked at her with thoughtful eyes.

“Be careful, my dear,” Lady Esher cautioned her niece. “You might feel as though you know a man well when you have been thrown so much together as you have with His Grace of late, but remember that your acquaintance has still been a short one.”

“I would not presume upon his friendship,” Louisa said quickly.

“I know. It is only…”

Lady Esher paused and sighed before smiling again and shaking her head. She had evidently decided not to say whatever had been on her mind.

“Come, let us go downstairs to the dining room and make sure the places are properly arranged before the children are brought in.”

“What happened then, Aunt Beatrice?” asked Fanny, rapt as she listened to Lady Esher’s story. “Did you run away very fast?”

“Well, I couldn’t, could I? Little Louisa was asleep upstairs and I wasn’t going to have a burglar ransacking the place and frightening her out of her skin, was I?”

“Did you scream for help?” the little girl put to her and again Lady Esher shook her head.

“No, I already knew that the footman who was meant to be acting as night watch had drunk too much ale and couldn’t be woken. I’d found him asleep at his post when I heard the glass breaking. The other servants were all fast asleep in the attic, or over the stables. They could not have reached me fast enough.”

Louisa smiled at the children’s fascinated faces, glad that they had both finished their lamb, potato and peas before Aunt Beatrice began it. She herself had heard this tale many times before, including at breakfast the morning after the incident in question. She could still remember how marvelous it had seemed on first hearing.

“So what happened then?” demanded Fanny. “What did you do?”

“I seized an old sword from the wall on the staircase, and then I told him to get out of my house or I’d run him through.”

Fanny gasped as her great-aunt illustrated this narrative with a piece of silver cutlery.

“Did you kill the bad man?” Ezra asked hopefully, too young yet to make moral distinctions between adventure stories and real life. “With the sword?”

“No,” Lady Esher answered. “I only wanted to frighten the villain away. For a moment I thought he would try to rush me, but when I made a cut at him with the blade, he dropped the silver candlesticks on the floor and turned tail.”