An American Duchess

He relieved Julia of her unlit cigarette, plucking it from her lips. “Smoking is a man’s habit. A lit gasper has no place near a delicate lady’s mouth.”

“Really, Nigel?” Julia crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So? What do you think of her?”

Julia was never so direct or blunt. Nor had she ever considered raiding his cigarette case before. Good God, were American ways contagious?

At least their manner of dress was not. His sister wore a demure gown of dark blue silk and it reached the middle of her calves. Her hair was long and rolled into a chignon. She was very like their mother, though her hair was jet-black, not gold, but she was just as beautiful with her oval face, her curling dark lashes and her wide pale pink mouth that she never touched with paint.

“Since you have seen her, I don’t think I need to say more.”

“Nigel, you can be hopelessly stuffy.” Julia sighed and walked to the windows of his dressing room, pulling back the faded velvet curtains.

He followed. The rain had blown in hard. It ran down the windowpanes, turning the world beyond into a blurry palette of subdued color. Sheets of it sliced through the dark skies and slammed into the stone terrace and the green lawns.

“I showed her and her mother to their rooms,” Julia said, arching a brow, “since you appeared to have abandoned them.”

“I instructed Mrs. Hall to take her and her mother to their apartments. It is customary for the housekeeper to do so.” He frowned. “Sebastian is nowhere to be found, of course. I have no idea what to say to either of them. The mother was chattering on about the paintings and fixtures as they went upstairs—it sounded as if she were cataloging the contents of the house to auction them off. Miss Gifford finds me both prejudiced and irritating. However, she is determined to say things that both irritate me and prove my prejudice well-founded. The woman is Sebastian’s fiancée. He should be here to keep her entertained.”

He felt Julia’s stare and he turned to her.

His sister regarded him with an amused expression. “I thought you’d only spent a short time in her company, Nigel. It sounds as if you had a lot to discuss.”

“American women are not backward in coming forward.” He raked his hand through his hair. He couldn’t tell Julia the whole truth about this damnable, scandalous business. “She told me she proposed to him.”

“Nigel, women in America—”

“Are not ladylike.”

Julia laughed. And that was a rare treat these days. She was usually quiet, somber, troubled. He wished she would fall in love again. Yet he could not do his duty as head of the family and ensure she was presented to eligible men. Her dowry was quickly evaporating, along with the rest of the money.

“I thought she looked very ladylike,” Julia argued. “Even you can’t deny that she is very lovely.”

“Her skirts are too short. She paints her face. Her hair is cut like a boy’s.”

“It is the fashion now, brother dear. It is called the Eton crop.”

“That’s because schoolboys have their hair cut that way. It’s hardly feminine.”

“I do love you, Nigel,” Julia said. “Miss Gifford has what the Americans call ‘it.’ You know—sex appeal.”

He did know what was meant by “it.” But the word sex on the lips of his sister brought a strangled cough from his chest. Nigel sputtered, unable to catch his breath. He had to stalk to the chest of drawers, where he’d set a glass of brandy, and down a mouthful before he could stop choking. Suddenly, he saw what Miss Gifford was already bringing into his household.

The bloody modern world.

He didn’t want it here.

He’d come back from war to find that, while he spent four years in mucky trenches, the world had changed—it was as if he’d stood still while the planet had revolved around him at top speed. There had been too much change, enough to upheave the world. At his home, at Brideswell, he’d planned to ensure change never breached the ancient walls.

Instead it had slithered in wearing an abbreviated skirt and scarlet lips and carried with it an absolute fortune.

“Julia, you cannot speak like that. You are an—” Another sharp cough. He had been about to say “unmarried woman.” What in God’s name was he thinking, to remind her of how much she’d lost?

“So you still disapprove of the marriage?” Before he could answer, she added quickly, “The thing is, Nigel, I think I disapprove. I think this is wrong. You know what...what Mother was like. How terribly unhappy she was with Father.”

Here, Julia wasn’t being blunt. She was being careful with her words, but he knew how miserable their mother had been because of their father’s infidelities.

“I like Miss Gifford,” Julia rushed on, almost defiantly. “I think I will like her even more as I grow to know her better. I don’t want to see her unhappy.”

He had wanted to dislike Miss Gifford, and the woman had given him every reason to do so. She intended to disgrace his family because it was convenient to her.

But he also could not forget how she had looked him in the face without a gasp or flinch after he’d doffed his hat. Or the composed way she had told him she had lost a brother to combat.

There had been no gushing, no display of emotion at all. Just a cool acknowledgment she had experienced the destruction and loss that came with war, and in her direct American gaze, he’d felt she understood something of what he’d been through.

It was a moment in which he’d respected Miss Zoe Gifford. A very brief moment.

“I think Miss Gifford will get her heart broken.” Julia’s soft voice broke in on his thoughts. “Sebastian has never fallen in love with any woman. I think he’s incapable of it.”

Nigel almost dropped his glass. Only quick juggling saved him from throwing brandy on his chest. His heart thundered like it had when shells had been exploding around him.

Could Julia know about Sebastian? Four decades ago, Oscar Wilde had gone to prison for the same appetites he knew Sebastian possessed, under a charge of gross indecency. That scandal still reached delicate female ears. Had Julia guessed what Nigel knew for a fact—that their brother was in love with a Captain John Ransome? Good God, how did he ask her?

“I mean Sebastian is rather selfish, and he’s exactly like Father was,” Julia said pensively.

Nigel relaxed. She did not know. Their father had been a womanizing rogue.

“I love him dearly,” she went on, “but I would never let one of my friends marry him.”

“Miss Gifford went into this proposition so she could get hold of her inheritance, as it is held in trust until she marries. I do not believe our steely-eyed American heiress is going to have her heart broken,” he said coldly.

“And most heiresses want titles. If she wants Sebastian, she must be in love with him.” Julia lifted her head and stared at him with huge, stricken blue eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know I am shirking my duty by avoiding marriage. I was doing it as a favor to both myself and any prospective bride. I will not do so any longer.”

“You are going to marry?”

“I am going to have to,” he said grimly. “Sebastian agreed to this marriage to obtain funds. It is my responsibility as duke to find a way to support Brideswell. I have to do my duty.”

Julia touched his shoulder. “I know losing Mary broke your heart, Nigel. I know what that feels like.”

He clasped his hands gently over Julia’s. He had frightened Mary away when he’d come back from war, scarred, haunted, wounded. Frightened her so badly, she’d married someone else.

Julia frowned. “No, you can’t make a duty marriage. I hate to think of you doing that. I don’t want you to be as unhappy as Mama and Father were.”

“You need not fear I will make a wife unhappy. I will keep my distance from her. After all, as you say, she would be in it for the title.” He had to keep his distance. He certainly couldn’t share a bed with a wife, to sleep the night with her, the way some couples now did. Not when he screamed with nightmares or had to fight to control the shaking of his body when a loud noise erupted.

“You cannot keep your distance from a wife and have children, Nigel. That simply won’t work. If Sebastian and Miss Gifford are in love, why not let Sebastian go through with marriage?”

“I cannot.” At her frown, he added, “I have a very good reason.”