Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

“ W elcome, Your Grace,” a footman bowed as he took the invitation. “Lord and Lady Treston are eager to meet you upon your arrival. May I bring you to them?”

He had expected as much. Holding back an exasperated sigh he nodded. “I would enjoy meeting the hosts.”

They passed through the grand foyer of the Treston country house, up the polished grand staircase and into an elegant cameo blue drawing room.

The overabundance of grey marble and ash wood lent the room an unwelcome coldness, but Frederick overlooked it and trained his gaze on the people milling about with glasses of champagne in their hands.

A lady, somewhere in her late forties, rose from her chair. She was tall, statuesque and familiar. It was the same woman who had tried to machinate a dance between him and her daughter. She wore a stylish emerald shot-silk gown that complemented her hair as it cascaded across her shoulders.

“Your Grace,” she curtsied. “Welcome to my home. I am so thankful that you are here.”

“Why would I not be?” he asked.

She paused to take two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter and handed him one. “According to the latest on-dit, well, rumor has it that you are one of the hardest men to get hold of. Some say you are mercurial while others say you are reclusive, but I continued to hope that you would attend this evening. ”

Over his shoulder, she gestured for someone to approach them. The lord who joined them was a short fellow with wire-rimmed spectacles and brown hair that was beginning to turn grey at the temples. His waistcoat, patterned in loud stripes, strained at the buttons.

“My husband, Samuel Clarke, Marquess Treston,” she introduced him. “My love, His Grace, the Duke of Blackridge.”

“Very pleased to meet you, Your Grace,” the man said, enthusiastically shaking his hand. “I regret not meeting you at your ball earlier in the month. My dear wife and daughter have told me all about you; only good things, I assure you. Welcome to my home.”

“Thank you, Lord Treston,” Frederick replied, before sipping his drink. “Would you excuse me? I see an acquaintance I have been meaning to meet for months.”

“Oh, oh, please, of course,” the Marquess bobbed his head and shook Frederick’s hand again before he stepped aside.

Moving away from his hosts, Frederick hailed a man who was as slippery and untrustworthy as an eel. Upon hearing his name, the man’s head popped up from the crowd of guests much like a weasel’s would do from a pile of rubble.

“Portsgate. You and I need to have a long discussion.”

The man, who had conned one of Frederick’s tenants out of their worldly wealth, went as pale and yellow as seaman sick. “Your Grace, I must?—”

“Stay right here before I send for the constables,” Frederick said coldly. “You dared to steal from my tenants? You might as well have stolen directly from me. Now, let us find a seat, hmm?”

“The business venture with Treston sounds interesting,” Lord Drayton said. “I am surprised that he is willing to risk that much on a new investment, with his wife being as she is.”

Frederick frowned, “What do you mean?”

“Well, she had been married to another earl before. When the poor man died, she dumped him into a pauper’s coffin, and waited the bare minimum of eleven months and twenty-nine days before she swanned off to marry Treston. Might I also add that, during those months, not a stitch of a widow’s black garb ever graced her person.”

“Highly inappropriate, but not unusual for the ton,” Frederick replied. “We like to lie to ourselves that we marry for love when the truth is we marry for rank, fortune, and political connections, only to live a life of scheduled intimacy and discussions of weather over the breakfast table.”

While righting his onyx cufflink, Drayton added, “you may say that now, but rumor has it that she had a daughter with the man that no one has heard from or seen since the man passed.”

“Sent the girl to live with relatives,” Frederick scoffed. “Another commonality.”

“I suppose,” Drayton replied. “Her current daughter is sly, obnoxious and as much of a fortune-hunter as her mother is.”

“Fortune-hunter?” Frederick’s left brow lifted in feigned shock. “How callous of you.”

Laughing, the viscount added, “you have known me from Eton and Cambridge. When was I ever a ball of levity and optimism?”

“ Touché ,” Frederick grinned at Drayton and turned, wondering if the girl had managed to slip inside the billiards room; a bastion of male seclusion.

“However, I am hardly interested in their family dynamics. I already know that her daughter has set her cap to try and sway me, but I regret to say… well, no, I am confident when I say that she will be sorely disappointed.”

Drayton’s eyes lowered. “When was the last time you were at the club?”

He stuck a hand into his pocket and sighed regrettably while swirling his drink. “It has been far too long.”

“You should drop by one night soon,” Drayton replied. “I know you desire women who have the same proclivities as you, but the average woman will not understand unless she holds the same desires as you have and craves the guidance you can give. I have not had much luck myself.’

Frederick hadn’t exposed the depth of his proclivities to many. Who knew who was a friend and who was a foe?

Lately, his stint of celibacy had not bothered him much, but now that he realized how long it had been, he felt the need to acquire a partner begin to prickle under his skin.

“I think it is time I leave,” Frederick said. “I will see you around.”

“And I know exactly where,” Drayton grinned.

Laughing under his breath, Frederick handed his glass off and left the room, nodding to the few men he had made connections with before exiting the room entirely.

It did not take him long to get to the foyer, request his coat and call for his carriage. He had nearly gotten away when Lady Trenton called out to him. This time she had her daughter with her.

The girl was pretty but had the look of a spoiled, over-pampered, petulant child in her large blue eyes.

“Your Grace,” Lady Trenton said. “Are you leaving already? Heavens, no. I would love for you to stay for dinner.”

Her daughter had changed into what could only be described as a ballgown of blue silk, her hair artfully pinned into a fetching updo.

“I do apologize,” he said unapologetically. “But I have a prior engagement that I must attend. Good day, ladies.”

The clip-clop of hooves on a gravel drive told him the carriage had arrived, and with a nod, Frederick left for the vehicle, pausing to rub his hand over the side of one of the four dappled greys before hopping inside.

Once inside, he trained his gaze out the window and wondered if he should attend Drayton’s club that evening and stay at his London townhouse overnight rather than return to the estate.

His palm itched to deliver well-regulated slaps to a trained woman’s behind, while she was rendered motionless by the red rope he would artfully twine around her body.

He envisioned Gemma’s sweet face contorted in pleasure as his hand squeezed her backside. He groaned hungrily as he fantasized slapping the supple mounds and reddening the skin. He inhaled sharply as he saw her wrists bound in red rope and her full breasts surrounded by the red satin cord.

Heavens, Blackridge. Compose yourself.

Rubbing his face, he reluctantly packed away his burgeoning urges and vowed to unleash them another day.

For now he had to return to the estate.

By the time he returned to the manor it was still reasonably bright outside, but the air was once again becoming charged; the electrical current from an impending storm raising the hairs on the back of his head and arms.

He made a quick stop in his bedchamber to change into fresh clothes before seeking out Gemma.

Although he checked her room and looked in the library, where he had expected to see her, she was nowhere to be found in the manor. Frederick stopped one of his footman in the corridor to ask whether he or any of the other staff had seen her leave.

“No, Your Grace, she did not leave,” the man said, frowning. “Matter of fact, I think I saw her earlier, helping some of the grounds men plant a new section of the garden.”

Surprised, he strode to the gardens to search her out. As he rounded the gazebo, he saw her sitting in the shade of a majestic old tree, a large sunhat on her head and her gown covered in soil and grass stains. Beside her on the grass lay a small spade, a pitchfork and a hand-rake.

“Your Grace,” she looked up, startled by his sudden appearance

He waved away her attempt to get to her feet, then crouched near her for a while and shifted the rake, sparing a look at the sky.

“You have been occupied, I see.”

“I was never one to lie in bed for long, despite what the nuns thought.”

Sitting on the blanket beside her, he bent his knees and rested his arms on top of them.

“Do you have a favorite flower, Your Grace?” she began, “Mine have always been roses. I would see them in drawings, effigies, the stained glass in the chapel, at the town church and at times in books.

I asked a nun why Mary, depicted in a beautiful painting in the church, was holding a rose because I did not imagine they had such roses in those times. She told me that the rose was mentioned in Solomon’s love poem, the Song of Songs.

“So, it was natural that Christian devotion should use the rose as a symbol of the beauty and the attractive power of the mother of God,” she added. “I still feel it was inaccurate and that, during the translation, they could not find the true word for that flower and chose roses instead.”

He chuckled. “Please tell me you said that to the nuns.”

“I did,” she replied then paused. “In my dreams.”

Shaking his head, he added, “it is abominable that you were not allowed to speak your mind.”

She fiddled with a seedling near her and trained her gaze away. “How did you fare today?”

His attention sharpened at her question. “At the meeting? It went well. The men there have some interesting options for earning money that I will consider, but I find the lady and the lord of the house are a curious pair.”

Gemma craned her head to him, her brows lowered. “Why would you say that?”

“I cannot say,” he shrugged. “I get the feeling that she is guiding him by the leading strings, like a parent would a child.”

“Oh,” she mumbled.

When she bit a corner of her lip, clearly to stop herself from speaking her mind, he found himself adding another question to his growing list.

A rumble in the air made him aware that the sky was becoming dimmer and darker as the minutes passed by.

The sun was setting and another storm was brewing. The clouds were heavy and rolling over the hills, dark with threat. His concern shifted from their conversation to ensuring they had enough time to get out of the incoming storm.

Gemma’s head tilted and she must have realized the same, as she set the tools and seedlings into her basket and stood up.

“I think we need to go inside,” she said.

“So do I,” he said, getting to his feet and taking the basket from her. “And we need to hurry.”

They hastened to the nearest entrance to the manor house, knowing that the grounds men were also hurrying to safety. They made it inside just before the thunder began to roll and crash like a cannon ball. The rain had not yet begun, but it was only a matter of time.

Hall boys and maids rushed to pull drapes and shutter windows as the pair headed into the warmer parts of the manor. The moment they entered the drawing room, they could see lightning cascading across the sky and hear the thunder as it reverberated from the heavens.

Gemma jumped.

“Scared of storms?” he asked.

She gave him a half smile as she swatted a loose curl out of her eyes. “I am not very fond of them.”

With an enormous crack, the skies opened up with a jagged fork of blue–white lightning that lit the entirety of the room in which they were standing. After several seconds of thunderous, rumbling sounds, the deluge began to pelt the earth with icy lancets of rain.

“Let us have dinner,” he suggested.

She took another look out of the window, then nodded. Frederick remembered Remus and told Gemma to stay where she was. As fearless as the dog was, he became quite nervous during thunderstorms and usually hid under Frederick’s bed or under his desk when they made an appearance.

Frederick could not leave him alone in his room to quiver with fear. The moment he opened his door, Remus came to him gratefully and sniffed his hand in thanks.

“Come on, old boy,” he said, and headed back to meet Gemma.

As the pair rounded the corner, Gemma’s eyes widened in surprise as she noticed the dog padding beside him. He anticipated her thoughts. “He is not aggressive.”

Gemma tucked in her skirts and crouched to reach for Remus. The dog sniffed her hands, then cautiously approached her to sniff her face. His tail began to wag with approval and Frederick smiled, pleased that Gemma had passed the test. As she rubbed his head and neck, Remus’s mouth hung open, his tail thumped with joy and his body wriggled with delight.

Remus launched forward, almost knocking Gemma off her feet while nosing at her hands, licking her fingertips and slobbering on her chin. Gemma giggled. “Friendly boy, are you not?”

“Remus, down,” Frederick ordered, and the dog’s rump hit the floor instantly.

The delight on her face; the simple pleasure she experienced from doing something he took for granted, warmed his heart.

She stood, pink-cheeked and brimming with happiness. “I believe I should wash my hands before we sit down for dinner. Where are we eating this time?”

“The same breakfast room,” he replied. “It makes no sense to use the formal dining room when it will only be the two of us, plus Remus of course. Grandmother is taking dinner in her rooms this evening.”

“I will be there shortly.” Gemma promised as she walked away to cleanse her fur-coated fingers.

Fredrick’s eyes followed her until she was out of sight.