spells, perhaps merely a thin slice of fowl. But on this occasion the courses came and went with bewildering speed. A tall footman with his hair caught back in a bag kept whisking away her plate before she had even tasted it and replacing it with another. And then, just after she would try the new dish, it would vanish. The footman had removed little pastries bulging with chicken and lobster before she finished one, then a turtle soup briefly appeared, and now they were all contemplating sweetbread pie.
The sparkling drink in their glasses was champagne. Tess had read about champagne but had never seen it before. The footman poured her a second glass. It was entirely delectable. It fizzled on her tongue and seemed to increase the pleasure of the moment immeasurably; Tess even found herself forgetting the fact that she and her sisters looked like so many black crows perched around the table.
‘Miss Essex,’ her guardian said, when Lady Clarice finally turned to the Earl of Mayne, ‘it is truly a pleasure to have you in my house.’
Tess smiled at him. The duke’s slight air of exhaustion made him quite appealing, and the way his hair fell over his eyes was a welcome contrast to the faultless elegance of his friend, the Earl of Mayne.
‘We are tremendously lucky to be here, Your Grace,’ she said, adding, ‘rather than in your nursery.’
‘Your claim to luck is generous, given that you father’s death has brought you to me.’
‘Yes,’ Tess said. ‘But Papa was bedridden for some time before he died, you know. I do believe that he is happier where he is. Papa would not have been content had he been unable to ride.’
‘I understand that Lord Brydone simply did not wake up, due to a head injury,’ the duke said.
‘He did wake several times,’ Tess explained. ‘But he was unable to move his limbs. That would not have been a happy circumstance for him.’
‘No, I can see that would have been difficult for one of his temperament. I have vivid memories of my first meeting with your father. He had a horse running at Newmarket, years ago. I was a mere stripling. His jockey was lamed in an earlier race so your father leaped onto the horse and rode it himself.’
‘I would guess that the horse didn’t win,’ Tess said, smiling at the image of it. That was just like Papa – both in the bravado and in the foolishness.
‘No. No, he was far too heavy to win. But he had a wonderful time, nonetheless, and the entire crowd was howling for his victory.’
‘Alas, Papa rarely won,’ Tess said recklessly, feeling as if the champagne had loosened her tongue a bit. ‘I feel — I feel quite ashamed that he asked you to be our guardian, a man who scarcely knew our family. It’s altogether too much to ask of you, Your Grace!’
But he was grinning at her. Really grinning! ‘As I told you earlier, it’s a pleasure. I no longer have family of my own other than my heir, a second cousin who’s more trouble than he’s worth.’ He looked around. ‘And I have no plans to marry. So this house and everything in it … no one is enjoying it except me. I much prefer it like this.’
Tess looked down the table at her sisters, trying to see it through his eyes. Annabel was sparkling, her eyes alight with the pure joy of flirting with the Earl of Mayne. Imogen was glowing with a more subtle happiness; her eyes drifting to Lord Maitland’s face, then jerking away. Tess only hoped that Lady Clarice didn’t notice.
‘This is what the dining room was presumably like when my parents were alive,’ the duke said. ‘I’m afraid that I’ve become something of a solitary man, without realising it. I must say, I am enormously pleased to find that my wards are of an age to converse, rather than simply reciting nursery rhymes.’
‘Why did you—’ Tess asked and hesitated. Was she right in thinking that proper English ladies didn’t task personal questions? But she had to know. ‘Why did you say that you’ve no plans to marry, Your Grace?’
Then she realised that he might guess that they had discussed marrying him, or even think that she had the ambition herself. ‘Not -’ she added hastily – ‘that I have any personal interest in the question.’
But Holbrook was looking at her with all the oblivion of an older brother. It was clear that he had never even considered the possibility that he might make her, or one of her sisters, for that matter, a duchess. Annabel would have to look to one of the other seven dukes if she wished to be a duchess. Or perhaps – Tess looked down the table again and caught Annabel laughing at the earl -perhaps she could simply turn to their guardian’s friend.
‘There are a few of us who eschew the whole process,’ Holbrook said. ‘And I’m afraid that I’m one of them. But it’s not due to misanthropy, Miss Essex.’
‘Do please call me Tess,’ she said, drinking a bit more champagne. ‘After all, we are family now.’
‘I would be more than pleased,’ he said. ‘But you must call me Rafe. I loathe being addressed as Your Grace. And may I say that I am tremendously happy to have acquired a family.’
She smiled at him, and there was a moment of perfect ease between them, as if they’d been siblings for life.
‘I’ve never had a sister,’ he said, nodding to the footman who wished to refill her champagne glass. He was drinking a large glass of something golden and quite without bubbles. ‘I believe it’s quite a different relationship from that one has with a brother.’
Their Debrett’s may have been two years out of date, but it did list the duke’s brother, with a little note, ‘deceased’, beside it. Tess’s champagne sent tingling chills down her throat; the very idea of losing one of her sisters was inconceivable. ‘I know that you once had a brother,’ she said rather haltingly. ‘I am sorry, Your Grace.’
‘Rafe,’ he corrected her. ‘To be honest, I think of myself as still having a brother. He simply isn’t with me any longer.’
‘I know just what you mean,’ Tess said impulsively. ‘I keep expecting Papa to walk in the door. Or even my mother, and she’s been gone for years.’
‘A maudlin pair of us, then,’ he said, his eyes twinkling.
But Tess could see the sadness at the back of those grey-blue eyes, and felt another sudden surge of liking for their unkempt, rather lonely guardian.
‘Now tell me what it’s like having sisters — and so many of them,’ he said, drinking from his glass again.
‘Sisters are very good at keeping secrets,’ Tess answered. ‘My sisters and I keep reams of them amongst ourselves.’
‘Of what sort, pray?’
‘These days, they are mostly to do with matters of the heart,’ Tess said, wondering if perhaps she had had rather more champagne than was entirely wise.
‘Ah,’ he said. And then: ‘Should I be expecting a group of Scottish suitors to arrive at my doorstep, then?’
‘Not for me, alas,’ Tess said, devoting herself to a piece of plaice in a delicate cream sauce. ‘In fact, not for any of us. Papa had great plans, you see. Once he won a truly large purse, he was going to bring us to London for the season. He wouldn’t listen to the suits of local gentlemen.’
‘If
