meekly acting the lady’s maid.
The thought of him doing so in truth, helping her strip off her creased and travel-worn gown and all that lay beneath, struck her like a bolt from the louring clouds outside and all desire to laugh vanished abruptly.
Jack paused in the grand hallway of his ancestors and wondered if the sky was due to fall on him in the near future. Confound it, but he needed to pay a visit to his mistress if the mere feel of cross-grained, touchy little Jessica Pendle in his arms threatened to set him afire like some lecherous old satyr. He caught himself savouring the faint scent lingering on her spencer jacket that was so uniquely hers. Was it the hint of rosewater or something more sophisticated that seemed to warn his sixth sense she was by? If it was, then at least he might have enough warning to avoid her in future, he told himself, for a pricklier, more distracting guest to be inflicted with just at the moment he found it hard to imagine. The reason he’d been so glad to see her was yet another mystery he didn’t care to examine.
He laid her plain jacket and austere bonnet on a gloriously carved Carolinian chair as if they might sting him and fought to still his senses before he returned to the Blue Parlour to play the genial host. As if things weren’t already tangled enough without him suddenly wanting Jessica in every way a gentleman should never want a lady like her, he reminded himself disgustedly. Luckily he turned back towards the Blue Parlour in time to escape being caught musing over Jessica’s outer garments like a besotted lover by his butler and half the footmen in the household, streaming across the marble hall with enough tea and pastries to feed an invading army.
‘Ah, there you all are,’ he greeted his younger cousins with no surprise at all and some relief as he heard them thunder downstairs at the merest hint of treats.
‘Would that we were,’ the eldest of them said theatrically and he eyed Miss Persephone Seaborne sternly.
‘You will not mention Richard’s absence, or distress your mother in any way you can avoid, during this confounded house party of hers, now will you, Percy dear?’ he asked, meeting her willow-green gaze with a very direct look.
‘Of course not,’ she said as if he was some sort of monster to even think she might.
‘Promise?’ he asked, inured to the imitation of a wronged angel she could turn on and off at will.
Persephone sighed loudly, looked long-suffering, then nodded.
‘Out loud promise?’ he heard himself wheedle, because he knew her far too well to leave her the slightest room for manoeuvre.
‘I promise not to jeopardise the noble task of getting you off our hands and into those of some deluded female who might be persuaded to wed you, despite your many and varied faults,’ she told him pertly.
‘With you and Miss Pendle in the house, I stand little chance of being swollen-headed, however much the ambitious mamas fawn on me and their daughters fall over themselves to become my duchess,’ he told her wryly and noted the speculative glint in her eyes with an internal groan.
Let the little devil get even a hint of the odd feeling he’d had just now that Jess belonged in his arms and he’d never take an easy step during this house party for fear of her matchmaking schemes. Since they’d argued heatedly from the moment they had met, he couldn’t imagine anyone less like the comfortable wife he’d pictured when he finally agreed to this totty-headed scheme of his grandmother’s to marry him off and silence the scandal-mongers than Jessica Pendle.
‘Don’t forget how much depends on me finding a duchess, Percy,’ he cautioned her seriously.
‘Do you think it will work, though?’ she asked anxiously.
At least he didn’t have to pretend with her that this scheme was anything more than a desperate attempt to persuade Rich to come home, even if he was beginning to have very large doubts about the whole mad idea of marrying to please everyone but himself. He suspected his grandmother would be very glad to see him wed for the sake of the duchy, but he had seen the list of candidates for the post and was rapidly losing any enthusiasm for the business himself.
‘Rich is sure to come back once he knows there’s little risk of him ever inheriting my titles or obligations,’ he told her uneasily, cursing his cousin for putting them through so much by absenting himself so determinedly that it was nigh three years since anyone admitted to having seen him.
‘What if he isn’t doing this of his own accord though, Jack?’
‘Then we’ll know one way or the other,’ he said grimly.
‘And you will have put your head on the block for my heedless brother for nothing. Those silly gossips are plain evil, Jack, and you should not regard a word they say. Sometimes I wish I could challenge one or two to a duel since they hide behind their sex to spread rumours about you and Rich and suffer no consequences for their spite. If you offered for one of their repellent daughters, I dare say they would bite your hand off as soon as let you withdraw it, even if they truly thought you capable of the horrible crimes they only dare hint at.’
‘Such is the way of the world and I truly do have to wed sooner or later, love. I’m seven and twenty and will be left on the shelf before long if I’m not very careful,’ he joked with an inward sigh, knowing a single, solvent duke would be a magnificent prize on the marriage mart even if he was ancient, blind, senile and truly a murderer.
‘As much chance of that as the moon truly turning blue,’ Persephone said, looking unconvinced.
Luckily she gave up trying to challenge his sudden desire for a wife and turned towards the chatter and gaiety in the parlour so they could both forget they didn’t know where Richard Seaborne was or had been for three years.
‘I hope you scrubby brats left us some cake?’ Persephone demanded of her younger siblings as she entered the room.
Hard not to contrast the welcome she received with Jessica’s stony reception of himself, Jack concluded as he followed his lively cousin in. Jessica smiled a wide and rather enchanting smile and Persephone rushed towards her long-time friend and ally so they could embrace and coo over each other as if they hadn’t seen each other for years rather than a few weeks. He felt an odd gnaw of discontent; how strange to feel excluded by a pair of headstrong, awkward females he should be only too delighted to leave to their own company while he went wife hunting. Cook’s bounty provided a welcome distraction to his uncomfortable thoughts, but it was soon disposed of and the children dragged back to the schoolroom by their long-suffering governess.
‘So when are the rest of your guests due, your Grace?’ Jessica asked brightly.
‘Tomorrow,’ Jack replied gloomily.
‘Well, the weather seems set fair, despite Godmama’s dire predictions, so at least it won’t cause any delay in their journeys,’ she said as if that was a good thing.
Damn Rich! When the rogue finally came home and Aunt Melissa lost that haunted look, as if her worst nightmare was about to come true, he’d beat the living daylights out of him, after he’d reassured himself the care-for-nobody wretch was hale and whole and rackety as ever.
‘Excellent,’ he said hollowly. ‘Entertaining them will be much easier without the wind and rain we have endured so far this summer,’ he added pompously, as if he was Squire Countryman, obsessed by his crops and the weather to make or mar them and barely able to spare time to pick himself out a wife between haymaking and harvest.
‘How are you planning to keep them all amused?’ Jessica asked and his aunt rattled off a list that should keep an army of eligible young ladies busy for the rest of the summer, let alone a fortnight.
Jack left them discussing final arrangements for the guests’ comfort and escaped his duties one last time before the hoard of ton beauties and their various chaperons descended on them. Half an hour later he was galloping his latest acquisition over the hills above Ashburton, trying to pretend to himself everything was well with his world and Jessica Pendle’s arrival meant no more to him than all the other young ladies due to intrude on