The remainder of the journey to Little Kidding passed quickly—at least it did for Langham. He had known from their brief meeting in London, when she’d been acting in her role as Lady Katherine Eversham’s assistant at The London Gazette, that the lovely Miss Poppy Delamere was intelligent and in possession of a quick wit. Further conversation with her did not disabuse him of the notion.
But it was also clear that despite having left her family behind for London, Miss Delamere was deuced loyal to her sister. As someone who, despite his at times fractious interactions with them, would lay down his life for his brother or sisters, Langham could understand Poppy’s determination to come to her sister’s aid.
“You’ve barely told me anything about your siblings,” she said now, as if guessing the direction in which his thoughts had wandered. “I know you are the eldest, but where do the others fall? Will they be at the abbey this week?”
“I have two sisters, Charlotte and Eugenia, and one brother, Adrian,” he said simply. “The order is just as I listed it. Charlotte is married to Viscount Felton—a bit of a stick to be honest—but they seem to hold one another in affection. And Genia is wed to the Earl of Bellwood. He’s a bit livelier than Felton, and much better suited to Genia in that way. You’ll meet them and their respective broods once we’re settled in the abbey.”
He had hoped she’d leave her questions there—he and his brother Adrian had yet to fully repair the quarrel they’d had over the younger man’s decision to place himself in danger by working for the Foreign Office—but again with an unerring ability to sense just what he was thinking, Miss Delamere asked, “And what of Lord Adrian? Will he be in attendance this week?”
“I am unsure,” he said brusquely. Then, recognizing that as his supposed future duchess she would need to be prepared in the event someone at the party pressed her on Adrian’s absence, he continued, “Adrian is nearly a decade younger than I am, and we are not close. He was an infant when our parents died and I was away, first at Eton, and then at university, for much of his childhood.”
In point of fact, they’d got along well enough until he’d made a misstep in forbidding his brother’s choice of career. He should have known, given the family tendency toward stubbornness, that it was the wrong way to dissuade the younger man from embarking on a career that would take him to the other side of the world. In the end he’d relented and gave Adrian his blessing, but the damage to their relationship was done. He’d tried to mend fences since then, but they were still not back on the easy footing they’d enjoyed before their rift.
But even given their false betrothal, he was hardly going to divulge that to a lady he’d only ever really had a proper conversation with today. They were meant to be focusing upon her sister’s plight, not his brother’s continued coolness toward him.
Miss Delamere looked as if she wanted to press him further, but he’d not spent the greater part of a lifetime perfecting a forbidding demeanor to fail at it when he truly wished to be forbidding.
His decision to offer Miss Delamere the engagement in order to soothe her pride at accepting his help had seemed like a good idea when he’d proposed it, but as it was unfolding he was suffering all the discomfort of having an actual fiancée without any of the benefits.
“I suppose if Lord Adrian does attend then I can learn more about him when we are introduced,” she said primly, though there was something about the downturn of her mouth that made him feel guilty for shutting her out.
This, he reminded himself, is what comes of letting down your guard with people.
The conversation moved on, and though they’d continued to discuss the household at the abbey, perhaps sensing his retreat, Miss Delamere did not press him about his brother again.
As they got closer to the tiny station in Little Kidding, she straightened her spine, and though she was shorter by several inches, he could have sworn she looked down her nose at him.
“You’re certain you’ll be able to remember all this?” she demanded, her lovely blue eyes narrowed with concentration. “It’s not as easy to play a role as you think. It takes a great deal of energy and concentration to get it right.”
Langham could have told her he was well aware of how difficult it could be, considering he’d been performing in one way or another since he was a boy. Instead he simply waved a dismissive hand at her, knowing it would annoy her and thus hopefully distract her from her own worries. “There is no need for such concern, Miss Delamere. I do intend to pull the wool over my grandmother’s eyes, but it’s hardly a matter of life and death. It’s a fiction to save me from the annoyance of a betrothal I have no wish for, not an attempt to discover state secrets.”
Her first reaction was to frown more deeply, then, perhaps realizing she’d taken the matter a tad too seriously, she sighed. “You are right. I suppose I’ve spent so much time over the past two years trying to keep my own identity from being discovered that I infused this situation with the same gravity. I apologize.”
He could see from the slump of her shoulders that the day’s emotional turmoil was beginning to wear on her. “No apologies necessary. Indeed, if I were planning to travel into enemy territory, there’s no one I’d rather have coaching me on how to hide my true intentions.”
“Thank you, I think?” she said with a shake of her head. “I have to admit, it never occurred to me as a child that I’d one day have garnered the skills necessary to spy for England.”
The image of Poppy Delamere as a child, with golden pigtails and a propensity for asking questions, popped into his head, and Langham couldn’t help but smile at the notion. He’d wager she’d been a handful.
Aloud he said, “I doubt any of us, as children, could correctly guess at what we’d become as adults.”
She tilted her head in surprise. “I should have thought a duke would have his life mapped out for him in detail, even as an infant.”
“Even dukes, Miss Delamere, have dreams of adventure and lives beyond the ones they’re given.” He was annoyed to hear the note of wistfulness in his own voice, and as the whistle on the train blew, he continued in a more sober tone, “We’ll go at once to see Stannings to find out where your sister is being held. He’ll order her released into my custody, and you’ll be able to learn more about the situation from her own lips.”
“It is customary in cases involving a member of the upper or middle class for the magistrate to allow the suspect to remain at home while awaiting further investigation,” Poppy said, worry etched on her brow. “Which means Violet is very likely with my mother and stepfather. I doubt they’ll be willing to relinquish her to you.”
“Surely your sister and Lovell will have had a home of their own where your sister could await the inquest,” Langham said, frowning.
“Of course I have no notion of the situation since they’ve moved to Little Kidding,” Poppy admitted, “but Violet’s husband is, or was, my stepfather’s private secretary. The fact that we would be expected to live in the same household with my mother and stepfather after our marriage was one of the many reasons I objected when Lord Short tried to force my own match with Mr. Lovell.”
Since the private secretaries of noblemen were generally younger sons unable to get by on the meager allowance afforded them by their own fathers, it seemed odd that Short would wish either of his daughters to marry Lovell. That the baronet hadn’t been more ambitious for either Poppy or Violet was suspicious in and of itself.
Before he could press Poppy further on the matter, however, she changed the subject. “The newspaper mentioned that Violet lives at Rothwell Grange, Your Grace. Do you know it?”
He was familiar with the grange, which had been inherited by old Squire Rothwell’s nephew upon his death. As far as he knew, the nephew rented it out year after year. But something else that Miss Delamere said reminded him of a small annoyance he’d been meaning to repair. “If we’re to make a convincing betrothed couple we should dispense with some of these formalities. No more ‘Your Grace,’ if you please. I will, with your permission, call you Poppy, and you will call me Langham. Or Joshua, if you prefer.”
The train had by then come to a screeching halt, and they both rose. Langham offered her his arm. As they stepped toward the door of the private carriage, she took his arm but didn’t look up as she said, “Very well, Your— Langham.”
For some reason he wasn’t willing to name, he felt a pang of disappointment that she hadn’t chosen to address him as Joshua. Most of his intimates called him Langham, so it was hardly worth quibbling over, but some part of him wanted to hear her slightly husky voice use his Christian name.
That his imagination suggested that the most pleasing occasion for this utterance of his given name would be while they were naked in bed together was not something he was proud of, but he had never been one to ignore the erotic possibilities of a beautiful woman’s proximity.
Any thoughts of bedsport with Poppy, or anyone else for that matter, were dashed almost as soon as they descended from the train carriage.
“Unca Josh! Unca Josh!” his niece Olivia cried as she broke away from a knot of what looked to be a mix of family and guests from Langham Abbey.
Marvelous.
His family had chosen, for the first time in his recollection, to meet him at the station. Beside him, he felt Poppy stiffen, as if bracing herself. A wave of protectiveness washed over him, and patting the hand she’d placed on his arm, he said in a low voice, “Don’t lose courage now.”
“I’m sorry, my lady,” a harried woman who was clearly the child’s nursemaid said as she rushed forward to waylay Olivia. “She was that pleased to see her uncle and broke away from me.”
“It’s all right, Maggie,” said his sister Charlotte with a laugh. “She’s very fond of her uncle, and I did promise her she could see him today.”
After glancing over to assure himself that Poppy had regained her poise, Langham reached down and lifted his niece into his arms. “Hello, poppet. Whatever are you doing here?”
“We comed to see you, Unca Josh,” Olivia said patting him on the cheek, as if assuring herself he was really there. “Me and the wadies ’n’ gen’mens.”
At her mention of ladies, he looked beyond where his sister and the nursemaid stood and noted that among the faces he recognized—his brother-in-law Lord Felton and a few cousins—were also some unfamiliar ones. They’d been greeted by a bloody welcome party from the house. This was Grandmama’s doing, or he’d eat his hat.
Thinking of the way the walk from the station to the abbey would have gone if the dowager’s plan had worked—no doubt with him fending off lures from more than one of the young ladies currently standing behind Charlotte—Langham gave silent thanks that rather than arriving here alone, he’d had Poppy by his side.
“What a lovely surprise,” he said, reminding himself never to underestimate his grandmother again.
Glancing toward Poppy, he saw that she’d taken a few steps backward and stood off to the side, as if planning her escape before she was noticed.
That would never do. Gesturing to her with his free arm—the other occupied with Olivia, who hadn’t stopped chattering since he’d lifted her up—he said, “Come, my dear, this wasn’t how we’d planned things, but it’s best we get the introductions out of the way.”
Poppy’s mouth was tight, but as he’d seen her do earlier, she steeled her shoulders and stepped forward to take his arm. “Of course, Langham,” she said, a shy but adoring smile on her face. “I’m eager to meet your family.”
The group from Langham Abbey were still talking among themselves as they shuffled forward to make their greetings to the duke, clearly not having heard his words to Poppy or hers to him. But Charlotte had heard them, and her eyes were as round as marbles. She clearly hadn’t even noticed Poppy at first, and now that she had, she was not best pleased with what she saw. “Who is this person, Langham?”
Ignoring his sister, Langham cleared his throat loudly and called for the collected party’s attention. “We hadn’t expected to make the announcement on the train platform, but since Poppy’s presence needs some explanation, I’m pleased to inform you that this lovely lady by my side, Miss Poppy Delamere, has done me the honor of agreeing to be the next Duchess of Langham.”
For the barest moment, a silence the likes of which Langham had never encountered—especially not on a busy train platform—fell. Then a peal of laughter rang out which, like an infection, was soon spreading among the onlookers.
“You were ever a trickster, old fellow,” Langham’s cousin Lord Leith crowed, wiping his streaming eyes with a pristine white handkerchief. “Imagine you betrothed to a woman like that. A good joke, jolly good joke.”
“Badly done, Duke,” said one of the ladies, a tall redhead whose nose proclaimed her to be the eldest daughter of the Duke of Gerson—clearly one of the guests who’d been invited by the dowager as a potential bride. “What a tease you are.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Charlotte chided as she took Olivia from Langham’s arms. “I daresay these ladies felt their hearts drop down to their very toes. I know mine did.”
She turned to address Poppy, who still had her arm threaded through Langham’s. “We mean no insult to you, miss. But it’s clear from your attire that you couldn’t possibly be betrothed to my brother. It’s too bad of him to put you in such a position. I’ll make sure he pays you handsomely for your role in his little charade.”
Then, handing her daughter over to the nursemaid, she slipped her arm into his unoccupied one and made as if to lead him away.
When he failed to move, she looked up at him in pique. “What is it? We need to get back to the house in time for tea. The dowager is quite eager to see you.”
It was then that she saw Poppy hadn’t relinquished her hold on Langham’s other arm. Charlotte’s eyes widened, and she pulled away from her brother and raised a hand to cover her mouth. “No,” she said in a horrified tone. “You didn’t.”
“I’m not sure where the lot of you learned your manners,” Langham said, a cold fury running through him, “but you will apologize this instant to Miss Delamere. She has done nothing to earn this rudeness.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his revelation that they were betrothed—sham though it may be—but it hadn’t been the derisive laughter that had erupted no sooner than he’d got the words out. He glanced at Poppy to see that she held her head high, not wilting under the gathered crowd’s scrutiny. But that only made him feel more outraged on her behalf.
He placed his hand over hers where it lay on his arm, thinking to give her some comfort despite her seeming imperviousness to the insults. To his chagrin, however, she glanced up at him in surprise. Did she think he’d simply let them sneer at her without giving them the dressing down they deserved?
Langham looked up to see Charlotte was staring at him as if he’d begun dancing a jig. At his glare she blinked, then, perhaps realizing this wasn’t the time or place for the conversation she wished to have with him, she sighed.
“I do apologize, Miss Delamere,” she said with what sounded like sincerity. “We meant no insult. It’s just that Langham has a bit of a reputation as a jokester, and we all thought…what with your gown and…”
Poppy inclined her head, looking for all the world like a duchess. “Thank you, Lady Felton. And while we are being honest with one another, you may as well know that my sister is Violet Lovell.”
Langham closed his eyes. In for a penny in for a pound, he supposed.
It took Charlotte a moment to connect the dots. When she did, the horror in her eyes was genuine. “The woman suspected of killing her husband?”
Several of the ladies in the background gasped, and Langham thought he heard his cousin Ralph mutter an aggrieved “I say.”
But to her credit, Poppy didn’t bat an eyelash.
“The very same,” she said through clenched teeth. “So, unless you wish to insult some other aspect of my person—might I suggest my hair, which has no doubt slipped from its pins and was not styled terribly fashionably to begin with—we must go see about doing what we can to make her comfortable. I’m sure we’ll see you all later at the abbey, by which time you will no doubt have conjured a longer list of my failings with which to berate me.”
Torn between bemusement and amusement, Langham allowed Poppy to lead him away, leaving his sister and his grandmother’s party guests to gawp after them.
