she did not dare take it home with her, Prudence Scott read textbooks and Jane Newnham, the artist among them, read books on the theory of perspective and colour or the lives of great painters. At the moment she was creating a set of studies of Greek muses, using her friends as models. Verity could not recall which muse represented literature, but Prue and her grammar book made a good enough representation.
Verity flitted between antiquarian papers, Gothic novels, her large embroidery stand where she was creating a tapestry of the fall of Lucifer in vivid colour, books on gardening and a wide drawing table where she was plotting the results of her excavations on the mounds. At the moment the skull perched on top of her notes like a bizarre paperweight, staring blankly at Prue’s exposed curves.
The tower chamber was situated over her ground-floor sitting room and bedchamber and the maids came in once a week to clean. When they did all traces of her friends’ work was locked safely away in cupboards.
There would, as Melissa said, be hell to pay if her father, the local squire, discovered she was reading novels, let alone writing them. He was set and determined on marrying her off well. The other parents were as determined to present perfect, conformable, young ladies to the Marriage Mart and were growing increasingly impatient as their daughters—all aged twenty-three—remained unwed and perilously close to being on the shelf.
When the Wingates had settled permanently at the Old Palace, Verity had made friends fast, but it had taken a month or so before she discovered the secret yearnings and ambitions of the four who became closest to her. Giving them a safe sanctuary to exercise their interests and talents fitted in well with the way she was living her own life, but she worried about what would happen to them. Sooner or later their parents were going to insist on arranging marriages and, unlike her, clearly remaining unwed to care for her father, the others had no excuse and would have to obey.
What her friends needed were liberal-minded gentlemen who would fall in love with them for their own sake, but where they were to find them in the limited society of rural Dorset, she had no idea. What would happen was that their fathers would decide on the most advantageous match among the gentry of the county and put pressure their daughters until they agreed.
And the problem was, they would all give in eventually, even if they did manage to hold out against the worst of the crop.
Then it struck her—none of the local gentry offered the slightest competition to a duke. No hopeful mama was going to settle for a mere esquire or baronet, or even the heir of a retired nabob or admiral, if there was the faintest chance her daughter might catch the eye of one of the foremost noblemen in the land.
She looked round at her friends and saw they were all waiting, with various degrees of patience, for her to tell them who the man with the children had been.
‘That man was the Duke of Aylsham,’ she announced. ‘He would thoroughly disapprove of us, but he is going to buy us almost a year of freedom.’
‘That was the Duke? Do you mean he is staying?’ Lucy was the first to gather her wits. She lifted her hands from the keyboard where she had been quietly improvising. ‘Mama said that she had heard that he had come to settle his stepmother at the Dower House and would be going back to Oulton Castle.’
‘No. Lady Bromhill is certainly living at the Dower House but the Duke has moved into Stane Hall with his six half-brothers and -sisters and, I believe, intends to stay, at least for the mourning period.’
‘Oh.’ Melissa’s face fell. ‘I had forgotten that the family is in mourning. I had been imagining balls and parties... Mama will be devastated when she finds he will be here, but not socialising. I cannot understand how his presence is going to be of any help to us.’
‘But do you not see? Every mother of a daughter of marriageable age will look twice at any other candidate for her hand because, until the Duke does become available, there is always the faint hope that she might be the one to catch his eye. And it will be almost a year before he is out of mourning and can begin openly courting. The man is such a stickler for proper form that nothing is going to make him choose a bride before then, even if he falls passionately in love.’ And the thought of the Duke of Aylsham doing anything passionately sent a shiver down her spine, even as her mind told her that he would never demonstrate an unbecoming show of enthusiasm, even when making love.
‘But that is marvellous. All we have to do is go home and tell our parents the good news—and then obediently fall in with every plan they come up with for encountering the Duke or his family,’ Jane said with a gurgle of laughter. ‘We will throw ourselves into it—and it is certain to provoke our mothers into a positive orgy of shopping.’
‘That’s—Aargh!’ At Melissa’s scream Lucy dropped her music scores, Jane stabbed her brush into the white paint and Prue sat bolt upright, sending her draperies sliding to the floor.
‘What is it?’ Verity demanded, then gave a started gasp of her own as a large, very hairy, black spider scuttled across the boards and vanished under a bookcase. ‘Goodness, that gave me a fright. I do hate the ones with the knobbly knees. Are you all right, Melissa? I know you do not like the things.’
‘Ghastly creatures,’ Melissa said with a shudder. ‘Do you think it has gone?’
Only as far as the back of the bookcase, Verity thought.
‘I am sure it will not come back with us here now. And I will have a word with the maids about cleaning more—’
The door on to the outer staircase that circled the tower banged open, thudded against the wall and sent a vase toppling from the nearest bookshelf. Melissa darted forward and caught it, collided with the man who burst through the opening and sat down with a thump on the edge of the chaise.
For a second everyone froze. Like Grandmother’s Footsteps, Verity thought wildly before she realised that the intruder was the Duke and that he was staring at Prue’s completely exposed bosom, which was, as Prue herself sometimes lamented, her most outstanding feature.
Everyone moved at once. The Duke spun round to face the bookcases, Prue ran for the door to the internal staircase and Verity, Melissa, Jane and Lucy came together to stand shoulder to shoulder, a wall of indignant femininity between their friend and this man.
As the door closed behind Prue, Melissa pushed the vase into Lucy’s hands. ‘I will take her clothes down.’ She scooped them up and left.
‘I apologise,’ the Duke said, his back still turned to them, his voice stiff with suppressed emotion.
Outrage, Verity guessed. He would not like being put in the wrong like this. Or being made to look ridiculous. A gentleman bursting into a room of young ladies to save them from danger was heroic. To rescue them from a spider, farcical.
‘I realised that I had left my cane behind and I was searching for it in the garden when I heard a scream. I thought a lady was being assaulted in some way.’ He removed his hat.
‘Only by a very large spider,’ Verity said drily. ‘But, naturally, we appreciate your, er, gallant defence.’ She moved Jane’s easel to face the wall. ‘You may turn around again, Your Grace.’
‘Ladies.’ His bow was a masterpiece.
Verity was not sure how it was possible to bow sarcastically, but she was certain that was what this was. It was just too perfectly judged to be anything else. ‘May I present Miss Lambert and Miss Newnham.’
They curtsied and he bowed again as Melissa came back. She rolled her eyes at Verity, then turned and swept into a graceful obeisance.
‘And Miss Taverner. Ladies, this is the Duke of Aylsham.’
And don’t you dare ask who Prue is, she thought.
But of course he did not. ‘My apologies