stared at her in absolute horror. “You haven’t dragged our brother into this crackbrained scheme of yours, have you?”
“No,” she admitted. “Benedict is too stuffy. He wouldn’t even let us use the library at Wayborn Hall for a theater. We’ve had to take Silvercombe. No, it’s not Benedict. You’ll never guess who it is, not in a hundred years.”
Cary smiled. “In that case, monkey, you had better tell me.”
“Mr. Rourke!” she said, unable to contain her triumph any longer. “Lord Ravenshaw wanted him for his private theatrical, but who wants to spend Christmas in Cornwall?”
Cary looked at her blankly.
“The actor! Mr. David Rourke, Cary. You remember him. He was Shylock last year.”
“Oh, yes. I thought you hated him. Didn’t he run off with your maid?”
Juliet frowned impatiently. “That is all forgiven. He’s returned Fifi to me, and my hair has never looked better, not that you men take any notice.”
“He’s costing me a fortune,” the Duke put in. “Rooms at the Albany. Private hairdresser. Open-ended accounts with Mr. Weston and Mr. Hoby. Pretty well for an Irishman!”
“I see,” said Cary, whose own accounts with the famed tailor and bootmaker were firmly closed, at least until he got his estate back in the black. “But I’m afraid that not even Mr. Rourke can entice me to Surrey this Christmas. I shall be at Tanglewood.”
“But you always come home for Christmas,” said his sister, “except that one year when you ran mad and enlisted in the Army. We were so very annoyed with you.”
“My tenants and neighbors are expecting me to give them a Christmas Ball,” said Cary, “and a New Year’s Day Ball, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Not to mention a St. Stephen’s Day treat.”
“You never bothered with all that before,” she said suspiciously. “What’s really keeping you in Herts? Don’t tell me the artless Rhoda Mickleby has captured your heart!”
Cary glared at her. “Juliet, as you have pointed out to me over and again, I’ve neglected Tanglewood for years. I’m trying to correct that now. As for Miss Rhoda, I’m quite safe from her. Some old aunt of hers has promised her a Season in London, and, as you know, catching husbands in the country cannot possibly compare to chasing them around Town.”
“You can start afresh at Tanglewood in January,” said his sister, refusing to give up her scheme. “There’s no point in turning over a new leaf this late in the year.”
“The trouble with January,” Cary told her, “is that it has two faces. One looking into the past and the other to the future. No, I’m sorry, monkey, but it will be a great scandal if I don’t keep my word. I won’t see you at Christmas. I shall miss you nearly as much as you miss me, but it can’t be helped.”
Juliet reacted to this disappointment with a petulance unbecoming to a duchess in training. “You needn’t play Sebastian, you know, if you don’t wish to,” she said waspishly. “You can be Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch. Or Sir Andrew Aguecheek—no, no, he courts Olivia as well. I know! You could play the part of Feste, Olivia’s Fool.”
Juliet was a fine-looking girl with a cloud of dark hair, wide gray eyes, and a slim athletic figure. Pique only served to enhance her natural beauty, but, as her brother, Cary was immune to both her tantrums and her charms. He still remembered her as the disgusting object that, at the age of three, had broken his favorite toy horse.
“I shall take my leave of you now, you little beast,” he said. “Kiss me goodbye.”
“I want you to come to Surrey!” said Juliet, in case he had not understood her. “I hate to think of you all alone in that drafty old pile at Christmas when you ought to be with your family. But I suppose you have a mistress there,” she went on spitefully, “and a half-dozen brats, too!”
Cary laughed bitterly. “As a matter of fact, I’m up to my ears in involuntary celibacy.”
It was no more than the miserable truth. There was not even one obliging widow in his neighborhood. His cousin the Vicar kept a very tight rein on the private lives of his parishioners. Wherever Dr. Wilfred Cary saw even a hint of impropriety, he took ruthless action to eliminate the threat. As for the artless young ladies Cary had boasted of knowing, he could not say two words to any of them without raising expectations he had no intention of fulfilling. Worst of all, he lacked the disposable income one needed to secure temporary love in London.
“You have in me a kindred soul,” the Duke said sympathetically.
Juliet flashed him a warning look. “What keeps you in the country, if not a woman?” she demanded of her brother.
“Duty, monkey,” he told her resolutely. “Duty. I owe it to my tenants. I owe it to my neighbors. I owe it to dear old Grandmother Cary, who left me the drafty old pile. I owe it to her memory not to let the place fall to ruin.”
“If you could just forgive Serena,” said Juliet, overriding his protests. “She has money, Cary. She could help you with the place.”
“No, Juliet,” he told her curtly. “I will make that estate turn a profit by main strength if I have to, and I don’t want to hear another word about it from you.”
Juliet remembered that commanding voice from childhood. It was her father’s voice, and both her brothers seemed able to summon it at will. It always made her tremble and want to cry. “All right,” she sulked. “You needn’t shout at me.”
Cary had always been fond of Juliet, even when, at the age of eight, she had found his battered copy of Fanny Hill and showed it gleefully to their eldest brother, Sir Benedict Wayborn, who had proceeded without delay to burn it. “Cheer up, monkey,” he said gently. “I’ll be with you in spirit. And I got you a nice present.” He handed her the gaily wrapped package from Hatchard’s. “Everyone else is getting a dead pheasant, I’m afraid.”
“What a pretty package,” said Juliet, her suspicions renewed. “A woman must have done it for you. Who is she, Cary? Some opera dancer, I suppose.”
“Cheeky madam! The clerk at Hatchard’s did it for me, if you must know. It’s a new service they’re offering. I actually met the young lady who thought it up.”
Juliet grinned. “I knew there had to be a girl. What exactly did she think up?”
“Christmas wrap.”
“Nobody invented Christmas wrap,” Juliet scoffed. “Christmas wrap has always been.”
The Duke suddenly laughed. “You mean like the stars and the mountains?”
“If you don’t mind, sir, I’m interrogating my brother,” said Juliet, refusing to be thrown off the scent of a promising new trail. “Was she very pretty, Cary?”
“Actually, she’s one of our Derbyshire cousins,” said Cary, avoiding the question. He knew from experience that telling his sister he had met a pretty girl was the surest way to turn her into a Cupid’s helper. “Lord Wayborn’s her uncle. You must know her. You know everyone.”
“I do know everyone,” Juliet said smugly, “but his lordship must have two dozen nieces, if not more. He had a dozen brothers and sisters. What’s her name?”
“Don’t know,” said Cary. “I didn’t think to ask.”
Juliet stared. “Didn’t think to—! And, of course, a lady couldn’t volunteer the information,” she said, exasperated. “Who was with her?”
“No one.”
“No one?” said Juliet, in disbelief. “She must have been with someone. Her mother? A chaperone? A maid?”
“No one,” said Cary. “Unless one counts Lord Dulwich.”
The