girl was on the receiving end of such an epiphany. Not that she was going to let it have the devastating effect upon her that the last one she’d had about Jack had done. No, for this was more in the nature of a deepening of a truth she’d already learned.
That Jack was a vile, vile person. And not the romantic hero of her girlish dreams. At all. Oh, yes, he might have told his sisters not to be so beastly to her whenever he caught them out in some petty act of spite. But she’d been mistaken in thinking his motives were the slightest bit chivalrous. It was far more to do with how much he disliked them.
‘Miss Underwood?’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I was wool-gathering.’ On receipt of this admission, the Duke’s lips thinned and his ferocious brows drew down until they almost met one another over the great beak of his nose. Clearly he did not appreciate women wool-gathering when he’d done them the signal honour of taking them up in his curricle. And that after casting aspersions upon his prowess as a driver! ‘That is, I was wondering how best to answer your question, without...that is, I hardly know you.’
‘I do not wish to hear any details of your ailments,’ he snapped.
‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’ After all, nobody else ever did. All she’d had to do that day she’d come home from learning exactly what Jack thought of her was claim to have a headache and feel sick—which was the perfect truth—and they’d left her alone in her room for days.
‘I am assuming that it is on account of your poor health that you did not appear in London this spring.’
‘What? I mean, why should you have thought I would be in London?’
‘To make your debut. I should have thought... I mean, you look to be of an age to make a come-out. And your uncle is the Earl of Tadcaster, is he not?’
‘Yes...’ Though nobody would think so to look at her today, in one of her cousins’ cast-off walking dresses, a bonnet that did nothing to disguise her black eye and a dog of indeterminate heritage sitting at her side. Certainly not the couple of scarlet-jacketed officers who were loitering on the corner where the Duke was slowing down to take the turn down to the seafront.
‘To be honest,’ she said, turning to look at his profile so that she could pretend she hadn’t seen the scornful looks directed at her by those officers, ‘Aunt Agnes did use my poor health as a pretext for not taking me to London this year.’
‘But not former years?’ He glanced down at her, as though assessing her age. ‘You look as though you should have made your debut some time since.’
She gasped at his effrontery.
‘Why has the Countess of Tadcaster not given you a court presentation then? She is surely a most suitable person to do so.’
Had he been investigating her background? Or was he just one of those people who knew the intricate web of families that made up the haut ton so well that the few casual references to her family, made by her uncle and aunt, had been enough to place her exactly?
‘Well, when my father first died, Uncle Barty was a bachelor, so everyone thought it more appropriate for his sister to take me in charge, especially since she already had two daughters.’ She’d heard Uncle Barty say as much to the subaltern whose invidious task it had been to convey her to the head of her family. And heard the subaltern subsequently repeat the message to Aunt Agnes. ‘And then last spring, when I might have made my debut, Lady Tadcaster was...er...in a delicate condition.’
‘Ah, yes. She presented the Earl of Tadcaster with an heir during the summer months, did she not? It escaped my mind. And this year, you were too ill to endure the rigours of a Season...’
‘I most certainly was not!’
He crooked one of his eyebrows at her. She pondered the fact that they could crook. They were remarkably mobile, considering that in their resting state they relaxed back into a completely straight line. Not that relaxed was really the correct word to apply to brows which managed to look so aggressive even when they were perfectly still. Or when he was staring at her, pointedly.
She sighed. ‘I can see you are going to carry on badgering me until I tell you the truth which is...well, over the winter months, I did fall ill.’ Or perhaps it was more truthful to say she’d made herself ill. So stupidly.
It had started with hearing Jack and his friend discussing her in such derogatory terms, while she’d been crouching, hidden, underneath the jetty on which they’d been standing.
‘Sorry, I’ll have to spend a bit of time dancing attendance on the heiress,’ Jack had apologised to his friend, ‘since my family expect me to marry her. But don’t worry, it won’t take much time out of the vacation. I’ll only have to toss her the bone of a few moments of idle chat, a smile and a compliment or two and she’ll be content to chew on it for days on end, like the mongrel bitch she is.’
‘Don’t sound as if you like her much, old man,’ the friend had said, sounding almost as shocked as she’d felt.
‘Like her?’ Jack had sounded offended. ‘She’s as dull as ditch water and about as attractive.’
She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to stumble home after hearing that. And she’d shut herself in her room unable to bear the thought of facing anyone, knowing what she knew. Especially not with eyes red from weeping. After only a few days, during which she’d totally lost her appetite as well, she had started to look so ill they’d finally sent for a doctor, who’d bled her and cupped her until she really was so weak that when one of the housemaids had sneezed while lighting the fire, Sofia had caught the infection which had developed into a fully fledged inflammation of the lungs.
‘Coming to the seaside was supposed to have a tonic effect upon me,’ she said wistfully, recalling her Uncle Barty’s last visit to Nettleton Manor.
‘Not surprised you are fading away,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘Stuck out here with no company but such as that dolt my sister married and his infernal relatives. What you want is to get some sea air and go to some assemblies where you can dance with a few men in scarlet coats, eh, what? Stroll along the promenade and flirt with a beau or two.’
That had sounded good. Sea bathing. And having some beaux. That would show Jack that there were men who found her interesting. Pretty even. That would prove she was not pining away. Not that he had the slightest idea his attitude was at the root of her illness. She hadn’t told anybody what she’d overheard. It would have been too humiliating. And anyway, what would have been the point?
She suspected that Uncle Barty had only made the suggestion to cause trouble. He never left Nettleton Manor until he’d practically come to blows with Uncle Ned about something—the way he was managing Sofia’s fortune, or his treatment of Aunt Agnes, both were frequent grist to his mill. Usually she did her best to stay out of the quarrels which erupted on the slightest pretext. Especially if they concerned her. But during that last visit, she’d seen that he was the one person who could give her the answers to all the questions she’d been reluctant to ask Aunt Agnes for fear of offending her.
‘Is it a lot, the money that will come to me when I marry?’ she’d asked him, linking her arm through his as they’d strolled down to the rose garden.
‘Good Lord, yes. You’ll be rich enough to buy an...that is, yes—yes, it is.’
She’d
