if you please.’
They followed him and waited while he announced them. ‘Your Grace, Lady Myers and Miss Langford.’ Then he stood aside for them to enter the room.
A second later Sophie found her jaw dropping open because the man she faced was not the sixty-year-old duke she had expected, but the handsome equerry she had dubbed Lord Ubiquitous, elegant in dark green superfine coat and cream pantaloons, his fair curls brushed into attractive disorder. And he was looking just as astonished as she was.
‘Good God!’ he murmured loud enough for her to hear.
Before she could open her mouth to retort, Lady Myers spoke. ‘Your Grace?’ It was a question, not a greeting.
He recovered himself quickly and bowed. ‘At your service, my lady.’
Her ladyship curtsied. ‘Your Grace, may I present Miss Sophia Langford? You have been expecting her, I think.’ She gave Sophie a prod with her elbow because the girl seemed to have forgotten the basic courtesies.
Sophie, jolted from her contemplation of the man who had occupied so much of her thinking in the last twenty-four hours, dropped a curtsy. ‘Your Grace.’
James, who had expected a child, a schoolgirl at the most, found himself looking at a grown woman, a woman he had seen before, though for the life of him he could not remember where or when. It was hardly surprising; she was not particularly memorable. Her lilac dress was so plain, it could have been worn by one of his chambermaids and not been considered too grand. She had a hideous bonnet that hid most of her face and almost all her hair, but her figure was good. ‘I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage,’ he said.
‘How so?’ Sophie asked. ‘Did you not receive my letter?’ If he had not, then she would have to explain who she was and why she was standing in this magnificent drawing room and wishing herself anywhere but there. He was not welcoming and certainly not smiling.
‘I received a letter from Italy, yes, but I had not expected its writer to turn up on my doorstep the very next day.’
‘You may blame me for that, your Grace,’ Lady Myers said. ‘Lord Myers and I were returning to England; as poor Sophie had no one else to escort her, I undertook to bring her to you. I am afraid it was not possible to wait for your reply.’
That was where he had seen them, in Dover, trying to enter the hotel where the Regent and the King of France were taking refreshment and he had noticed them later, following the procession. Being anxious about security, he had been concerned they might be jeopardising that and had kept an eye on the carriage, until it had turned off north of the river. He had laughed at himself for his suspicions.
‘And now you are here,’ he said, wishing Harriet were on hand to relieve him, ‘what do you expect me to do?’
‘Nothing, your Grace,’ Sophie snapped. ‘I was mistaken in coming here…’
Again that defiance; it was almost a defensiveness, as if she expected to be turned away as she had been from the hotel in Dover. And so she should be, turning up at his door as if he should take in every waif and stray who claimed kinship! It was all very well for Harriet to say his father’s niece had married a Langford, but he had never met this cousin and there might have been a very good reason for the family not to acknowledge her. His uncle could have been a reprehensible reprobate who had disgraced the family name; his daughter might have been a demi-rep of uncertain reputation and her husband an unmitigated rogue, which was more than likely if they had to live abroad. Until he knew the truth he could not risk taking her daughter in. ‘If you expected me to fall over myself to offer you a home, then I am sorry to disappoint you…’
‘My disappointment is not on that account,’ Sophie said. ‘It was in thinking that I was dealing with a gentleman.’ She had no idea what made her say that. Perhaps it was the dismay which had been evident on his handsome countenance when they arrived, or the lack of a welcome. Why, he had not even offered them refreshment!
He had never met anyone, certainly not a chit of a girl, who was prepared to answer him back in that fashion and for a moment he was taken aback, and then it amused him. Beneath that muslin-covered bosom there beat a heart of fire. She was beginning to intrigue him. ‘Be thankful that I am gentleman enough not to entertain such a ridiculous idea…’
Lady Myers put her hand on Sophie’s arm to stop her answering. ‘Your Grace,’ she said placatingly, ‘we had no idea… We assumed… Sophie thought…’
‘What did Miss Langford think?’
‘That you were old,’ Sophie burst out.
‘Old!’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘I am but four and thirty.’
‘I can see that,’ she countered. ‘But Mama told me that the third Duke had died and his younger brother had inherited and so I assumed…’ Her voice faded away to nothing.
‘It is a mistake to assume anything,’ he said, remembering how he had assumed she was a child. If he had stopped to think, he would have realised it was unlikely. His uncle, her grandfather, had been the second eldest of the third Duke’s brothers and would have inherited if he had not died first. It would have made all the difference to the young woman who faced him now; her mother would have been a duke’s daughter and she would not be sitting there in that hideous gown, appealing to his softer nature. Perhaps it was as well he had, over the years, managed to stifle that. ‘The brother you mentioned was my father, the fourth Duke. He died last year and I came into my inheritance.’
‘And does that make a difference? Would he have been more welcoming?’
He suddenly realised how vulnerable she was, that she had the most lustrous eyes and they were bright with unshed tears. His conscience stabbed him. His problems were not the fault of Miss Langford and he could not expect her to understand them. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘We have not made a good beginning, have we? Let us start again. Please be seated. I will have refreshments brought in. Tea, perhaps, or ratafia? ‘He turned and tugged at the bell pull by the mantel. The footman arrived almost immediately and, on the ladies saying they would prefer tea, was instructed to bring the tea tray and some cakes. ‘If I had known you were coming today,’ he said, after the man had gone to obey, ‘I would have asked my sister, Lady Harley, to be present to act as hostess.’
‘You have no wife?’ Lady Myers had availed herself of one of the sofas, a pale green brocaded affair, and Sophie perched herself beside her, every sense alert, wanting to run, but conversely determined not to be driven away, simply because the man had taken a dislike to her. Why he should, she did not know. He was not completely unfeeling; she had seen evidence of his kindness on the way from Dover, but that was to other people, not herself.
‘No, I am single,’ he said, smiling at Sophie to try to mitigate his earlier brusqueness. It wasn’t like him to be impolite, but this pair had taken him so much by surprise, and, at a time when he had so much on his mind, he had been less than welcoming. Not that he meant to alter his decision, but he could have put it more kindly.
‘Oh, I see,’ Lady Myers said. ‘Then as you are a bachelor, we understand that taking in a young unmarried lady would be out of the question.’ She paused, unwilling to abandon her quest. ‘But you mentioned your sister. Does she reside here?’
‘No, her home is in Suffolk, but when she is in town for the Season, she stays here. She undertook to reply to your letter on my behalf, but of course that is of no significance now.’
‘And
