all,’ Lady Sulby murmured distractedly once Olivia had departed for her walk in the garden. ‘Especially as it has caused me to rearrange all my dinner arrangements for this evening. Still, the influenza is the influenza. And I do believe that the Duke was rather taken with Olivia himself,’ she added with relish. ‘Now, would that not be an advantageous match?’
Jane was sure that she was not expected to make any reply to this statement—that Lady Sulby was merely thinking out loud while she plotted and planned inside her calculating head.
But Jane’s silence on the subject did not mean that she had no thoughts of her own on an imagined match between Olivia and the Duke of Stourbridge. Her main one being that it was ludicrous to even think that a man as haughtily arrogant as the Duke would ever be attracted to, let alone enticed into marriage with, the pretty but self-centred Olivia.
‘Why are you still standing there, Jane?’ Lady Sulby demanded waspishly as she finally seemed to notice her again. ‘Can you not see that my nerves are agitated? I shall probably have one of my headaches and be unable to attend my guests at all this evening!’
‘Would you like me to send for Clara?’ Jane offered lightly, knowing that Lady Sulby’s maid, a middle-aged woman who had accompanied Gwendoline Simmons from her father’s home in Great Yarmouth when she had married Sir Barnaby twenty-five years ago, was the only one who could capably deal with Lady Sulby when she was beset by ‘one of her headaches’.
A regular occurrence, as it happened, but usually relieved by a glass or two of Sir Barnaby’s best brandy. For medicinal purposes only, of course, Jane acknowledged with a rueful grimace.
‘I do not know what you can possibly find to smile about, Jane.’ Lady Sulby threw herself down onto the chaise, her hand raised dramatically to her brow as the sun shone in through the window. ‘You would be much better served returning to your room and changing for dinner. You know I cannot abide tardiness, Jane.’
Lady Sulby’s comment on Jane changing for dinner caused her to frown. ‘Did you not tell me earlier that I was to dine belowstairs this evening—?’
‘Have you not been listening to a word I said, girl?’ Lady Sulby’s voice had once again risen shrilly, and she glared across at Jane, not even her faded beauty visible in her displeasure. ‘The Duke has arrived without his brother, leaving me with only thirteen to sit down to dinner. A possibility I cannot even contemplate.’ She shuddered. ‘So you will have to join us. Which will make an imbalance of men to ladies. It will not do, of course, but it will have to suffice until our other guests arrive tomorrow.’
Jane’s own face had lost all colour as the full import of Lady Sulby’s complaints became clear. ‘You are saying, ma’am, that because Lord St Claire is indisposed you wish me to make up the numbers for dinner this evening?’
‘Yes, yes—of course I am saying that.’ The older woman glared at her frowningly. ‘Whatever is the matter with you, girl?’
Jane swallowed hard at the mere thought of finding herself seated at the same dinner table as the formidable Duke of Stourbridge, sure that after their disastrous meeting on the stairs earlier it was probably his fervent wish never to set eyes on her again!
As Lady Sulby had already remarked, it really would not do.
‘I am sure I do not have anything suitable to wear—’
‘Nonsense, girl.’ A flush coloured Lady Sulby’s plump and powdered cheeks as she bristled at this continued resistance to her new arrangements. ‘What of that yellow gown of mine that Clara altered to fit you? That will do perfectly well, I am sure,’ Lady Sulby announced imperiously.
Jane’s heart sank as she thought of the deep yellow gown that Lady Gwendoline had decided did not suit her after all, and which had been altered to fit Jane instead.
‘I really would not feel comfortable amongst your titled guests—’
‘I am not concerned with your comfort!’ Lady Sulby’s face became even more flushed as her agitata-tion rose. ‘You will do as you are told, Jane, and join us downstairs for dinner. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Lady Sulby.’ Jane felt nauseous.
‘Good. Now, send Clara to me.’ Lady Sulby lowered herself down onto the cushions once again, her eyes closing. ‘And tell her I am in need of one of her physics,’ she added weakly, as Jane moved obediently to the door.
Jane waited until she was outside in the hallway before giving in to the despair she felt just at the thought of going down to dinner wearing that horrible yellow gown. Of the arrogantly disdainful but devastatingly handsome Duke of Stourbridge seeing her in that bilious yellow gown.
Chapter Two
‘Is this some new sort of party game? Or is it just that you are contemplating what singular delights you might have in store for me later this evening?’ Hawk mused derisively to the woman standing—hiding?—behind the potted plant at his side. ‘Perhaps you intend spilling a glass of wine over me during dinner? Or maybe hot tea later in the evening would be more to your liking? Yes, I am sure that hot tea would cause much more discomfort than a mere glass of wine. That potted plant really is an insufficient hiding place, you know,’ Hawk added, when his quarry made no response to any of his mocking barbs.
His humour had not been improved when he’d come downstairs to the drawing room some minutes ago, to meet and mingle with his fellow house guests before dinner. His bath water had been hot, but of insufficient quantity for his needs, and his valet, Dolton, was no happier with his present location than Hawk. In his agitation he had actually caused the Duke’s chin to bleed whilst shaving him, an event that had never happened before in all his long service.
But Hawk had found his darkly brooding mood lightening somewhat a few minutes later when, while in polite conversation with Lady Ambridge, an elderly if outspoken lady he was long acquainted with, he had spotted what appeared to be an almost ghostly yellow being flitting from behind one oversized plant pot to another. He had assumed it was in an effort not to be noticed, but it had actually achieved the opposite.
It was testament to how bored Hawk already was by the conversation of his fellow guests that he had actually excused himself from Lady Ambridge’s company to stroll across the room and stand beside the plant at that moment hiding the elusive creature.
A single glance behind the terracotta pot had shown her to be the earlier perpetrator of the painful bump in his chest followed by the even more painful dig in his stomach with a parasol. Hawk’s surprise that she was not a maid after all but was obviously a fellow guest was completely overshadowed by the strangeness of her behaviour since entering the drawing room.
He was also, Hawk realised with not a little surprise, more than curious to know the reason for it. ‘You may as well come out from behind there, you know,’ he advised, even as he continued to gaze disdainfully out at the room rather than at her, impeccable in his black evening clothes.
This time, at least, he did receive an agitated reply. ‘I really would rather not!’
Hawk felt compelled to point out the obvious. ‘You are only drawing attention to yourself by not doing so.’
‘I believe you are the one drawing attention to us both by talking to me!’ Her voice was sharp with indignation.
He probably was, Hawk acknowledged ruefully. The fact that he was the highest-ranking person in the room, and so obviously the biggest feather in Lady Gwendoline Sulby’s social cap, also meant that he was attracting many sidelong glances from his fellow guests while they pretended to be in conversation with each other.
As the Duke of Stourbridge, he was used to such attention, of course, and had learnt over the years to ignore it. Obviously his quarry did not have that social advantage.
‘Perhaps if you were to explain to me why it is you feel the need to hide behind a succession of inadequate