The Inconvenient Duchess

‘Of course I’m the duke. This is my home you’ve come to. Who were you expecting to find? The Prince Regent?’
    The other man grinned. ‘I think she was under the mistaken impression that I was the duke. I’d just come into the library, looking for the brandy decanter, and found her waiting here…’
    ‘For how long?’ snapped his brother.
    ‘Moments. Scant moments, although I would have enjoyed more time alone with Lady Miranda. She’s a charming conversationalist.’
    ‘And, during this charming conversation, you neglectedto mention your name, and allowed her to go on in her mistake.’ He turned from his brother to her.
    His gaze caught hers and held it a moment too long as though he could read her heart in her eyes. She looked away in embarrassment and gestured helplessly to the letter of introduction. ‘I was expected. I had no idea…about your mother.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ she added as an afterthought.
    ‘Not as sorry as I am.’ He scanned the letter. ‘Damn that woman. She made me promise. But it was a deathbed promise, and I said the words hoping her demise would absolve me of action.’
    ‘You promised to marry me, hoping your mother would die?’ She stared back in horror.
    ‘I promised to meet you. Nothing more. If my mother had died that night, as it appeared she might, who was to know what I promised her? But she lingered.’ He waved the paper. ‘Obviously long enough to post an invitation. And now here you are. With a maid, I trust?’
    ‘Ahhh…no.’ She struggled with the answer. It was as she’d feared. He must think she was beyond all sense, travelling unchaperoned to visit strangers. ‘She was taken ill and was unable to accompany me.’ As the lie fell from her lips, she forced herself to meet the duke’s unwavering gaze.
    ‘Surely, your guardian…’
    ‘Unfortunately, no. She is also in ill health, no longer fit to travel.’ Miranda sighed convincingly. Cici was strong as an ox, and had sworn that it would take a team of them to drag her back into the presence of the duke’s mother.
    ‘And you travelled alone? From London?’
    ‘On the mail coach,’ she finished. ‘I rode on top with the driver. It was unorthodox, but not improper.’ And inexpensive.
    ‘And when you arrived in Devon?’
    ‘I was surprised that there was no one to meet me. I inquired the direction, and I walked.’
    ‘Four miles? Cross-country? In the pouring rain?’
    ‘After London, I enjoyed the fresh air.’ She need not mention the savings of not hiring a gig.
    ‘And you had no surfeit of air, riding for hours on the roof of the mail coach?’ He was looking at her as though she was crack-brained.
    ‘I like storms.’ It was an outright lie, but the best she could do. Any love for storms that she might have had had disappeared when the rain permeated her petticoat and ran in icy rivers down her legs.
    ‘And do you also like dishonour, to court it so?’
    She bowed her head again, no longer able to look him in the eye. It had been a mistake to come here. Her behaviour had been outlandish, but she had not been trying to compromise herself. In walking to the house, she had risked all, and now, if the duke turned her out and she had to find her own way home, there would be no way to repair the damage to her reputation.
    He gestured around the room. ‘You’re miles from the protection of society in the company of a pair of notorious rakes.’
    ‘Notorious?’ She compared them. The duke looked dangerous enough, but it was hard to believe his brother was a threat to her honour.
    ‘In these parts, certainly. Does anyone know you’re here?’
    ‘I asked direction of a respectable gentleman and his wife.’
    ‘The man, so tall?’ The duke sketched a measurement with his hand. ‘And plump. With grey hair. The wife: tall,lean as a rail. A mouth that makes her look—’ he pulled a face ‘—a little too respectable.’
    She shrugged. ‘I suppose that could be them. If he had spectacles and she had a slight squint.’
    ‘And when you spoke to them, you gave them your right name?’
    She stared back in challenge. ‘Why would I not?’
    The duke sank into a chair with a groan.
    His brother let out a whoop of laughter.
    The duke glared. ‘This is no laughing matter, you nincompoop. If you care at all for honour, then one of us is up a creek.’
    St John laughed again. ‘By now you know the answer to the first part of the statement. It would lead you to the answer to the second. I