The Duke Who Loved Me Read online

  On the night, he dressed with care. Having been told that formal evening dress was not required, and suspecting that this was some sort of test, he decided on buff pantaloons and a long-tailed coat of dark blue crafted for him by Weston. Standing before a long mirror, he arranged his neckcloth in austere folds and added a single sapphire pin. Hobbs had achieved his customary shine on his boots, and altogether James looked what he was, a Corinthian complete to a shade. James had been told often enough that he was handsome. He didn’t set a great deal of store by it, but women did. Cecelia would notice that he’d taken pains.

  He found Lady Tate greeting her guests in the doorway of her large, comfortable drawing room. The widow of an earl, she had pale eyes, nearer gray than blue, and what appeared to be a permanently satirical expression. Her white hair was piled up on her head under an elaborate cap, and her purple gown was richly simple. Now about sixty, she’d been left well provided for at her husband’s death and had famously stated that she intended to do as she pleased now that the “nonsense” of marriage and procreation was finished.

  “Tereford,” she said when James made his bow. “You did come. Not your sort of party, I would have thought. We discuss ideas, you know.”

  Did she suggest that he had no ideas? It certainly seemed so. “Most interesting ones, I’m sure,” he replied.

  “Are you?”

  What was he to say to this? “So I have heard.”

  “Indeed? Well, your request for an invitation made me curious, and I always indulge my curiosity. Once.”

  Apparently she indulged in rudeness as well. James imagined that she thought of it as plain speaking. Such people usually did. He was saved from replying by the arrival of another guest, a bearded man in a turban who was clearly a friend of the hostess.

  James moved forward into the room and joined a small but varied crowd. There were a number of dark-skinned individuals and several with Asian features. People’s dress showed no concession to current fashions and yet was opulent and colorful. One woman had on the flowing wrapped dress of India. The turbaned man who had entered after him wore a brocaded tunic of cerulean blue over narrow trousers. An aged gentleman seated by the fireplace sported the powdered wig and skirted coat of a previous generation; jewels winked in the lace at his throat. Altogether an interesting grouping.

  James was accustomed to encountering acquaintances at an evening party, if not good friends. But here he saw none other than Cecelia’s father, gesturing emphatically in a far corner. In fact, he had never seen Vainsmede so animated. For a moment he feared that Cecelia had chosen not to come tonight, and his effort was wasted. Then he saw her, talking with a group of four young ladies who didn’t seem to fit with this older crowd. They stood like a cluster of commonplace flowers in a bed of exotics.

  He made sure that Cecelia saw him. Her look of surprise was gratifying. James gave her a nod and smile, but he didn’t approach her at once. He intended to be more subtle than that. Instead, he went to speak to her father. As he crossed the room, he noticed the fellow Henry Deeping had introduced in another conversational group. The name came back to him—Stephan Kandler. No sign of Henry, however.

  Nigel Vainsmede started when James joined his group. He did not smile. Over the whole course of their association James couldn’t recall a single instance when Vainsmede had been glad to see him. At fifteen, this had bewildered and wounded him. It no longer did.

  They were about the same height, but Vainsmede was a soft man, not fat but well padded by indulgence, which had also blurred his features. His hair was more golden than his daughter’s and his blue eyes less acute. Or perhaps they only seemed that way because he habitually evaded James’s gaze. “I wouldn’t have expected to see you here, Tereford,” he said.

  “Broadening my experience,” James replied.

  “Really?” Vainsmede actually looked interested.

  A part of James wanted to say, “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” Just to see the older man squashed. But that wouldn’t suit his purposes, so he simply nodded.

  Vainsmede glanced at his companions. “Tereford, you know.”

  The two men clearly didn’t know. They looked at each other, at James, and then at each other again.

  Vainsmede murmured their names, but the sound was lost as Lady Tate called for everyone’s attention and began to urge them to chairs and sofas. Only then did James discover that the evening’s entertainment was a reading from a new work on philosophy, followed by a discussion of the ideas presented. He strove to keep the chagrin from his expression as Lady Tate herded him to a seat.

  James found he had made a tactical error. He was being placed far from Cecelia. He tried a lunge toward her, but he was trapped by the hostess before he took three steps and plumped down between two strangers—the man in the turban and one of Vainsmede’s group. He might have rebelled and shifted his position, but Cecelia was settled among her bevy of young ladies by then, with no space nearby.

  He fumed through the introduction of the writer and Lady Tate’s retreat. The author—stocky, pale, and earnest—stared out at his audience. James resigned himself to a stretch of boredom.

  The man began. “My topic tonight is Kant’s statement: ‘A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.’” He looked down at a sheaf of pages in his hand and started to read.

  Within five minutes, James was completely at a loss. Each of the words the fellow used was familiar to him, but they made no sense in the order presented. They were strung together—or rather woven into vast webs—that tangled in his brain and made him frantic to claw his way out. Now and then a concept wavered toward clarity, he thought, but it was at once overwhelmed by another spate of words, like a deer pulled down by a pack of dogs.

  Around him, people nodded and murmured as if they understood and approved. James thought of himself as reasonably intelligent, but he couldn’t make head nor tail of this argument. He became conscious of a longing to rise, flee the room, and run home at a pace that would sweep the confusion from his mind.

  After a seeming eternity, the reading ended. There was a smattering of elevated applause. Lady Tate indicated that refreshments were available even as the discussion opened.

  James made a restrained leap from his seat and strode across the room to Cecelia. Two of the young ladies in her party had risen, presumably to seek sustenance. He captured a vacated chair and resolved to defend his place against all comers.

  “Tereford,” said Cecelia. They did not use first names in public.

  “Miss Vainsmede.”

  “May I introduce my friends?” She reeled off a set of names that James immediately forgot. There were far too many eager young ladies to keep track of in London. He wished they would all go away.

  “Charmed,” he muttered.

  The two who had stood departed for the buffet tables. The others gazed at James with bright interest, showing no sign of taking themselves off. James became more certain that he’d chosen the wrong place for his initial bout of wooing. But he’d had no way of predicting the horrors of philosophical discourse.

  “I must say I’m surprised to see you here,” said Cecelia.

  “Your presence was an irresistible attraction,” James replied.

  She blinked, startled.

  It had not been a first-rate compliment. The interminable prosing had thrown him off. He could do better. He had to adjust. He never spoke to her this way.

  “Not the philosophy?” asked one of the young ladies. Dark-haired and sharp-featured, she reminded James of someone.

  He shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t have thought so,” she went on. “Not your sort of thing at all.”

  How would she know this?

  James’s expression must have conveyed the question, because she added, “You a
re acquainted with my brother Henry.”

  Was he?

  “Henry Deeping.”

  “Oh, you are the girl who despises everyone.” He’d forgotten her first name. Henry had mentioned it. Charlotte, that was it.

  “I beg your pardon?” Her dark eyes skewered him.

  The remark had slipped out. But it wasn’t his fault. “Henry said so.”

  “To you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shall kill him when I get home.”

  He should not have repeated it, of course. But James didn’t think saying so would help. Best just to drop the subject.

  “I do not despise everyone,” the girl—Charlotte Deeping—added. “Only those who deserve it.” Her fierce gaze indicated that James might well be numbered among them.

  He needed to separate Cecelia from the feminine herd. But as James was concocting schemes to do so, the two young ladies returned with laden plates. He admired the red-haired one’s ability to juggle three at once. He didn’t rise, however. He was not going to give up his spot beside Cecelia, no matter how gauche this made him appear. There was no other place in the room he wanted to be.

  Plates were handed round. James endured a barrage of expectant and then annoyed looks. He pretended not to notice. Finally, the red-haired girl found another chair and dragged it over.

  The ladies began to eat. James kept his eyes off the delicacies, though he was rather hungry.

  “Would you like a lobster patty?” asked the one with fearsome eyebrows. She speared it with a fork and held it out to him.

  He was quite hungry, actually. He took it.

  After that, all four of Cecelia’s friends began to offer him food, as if he was a zoo animal or a pet dog. Cecelia refrained. She was suppressing laughter though. James could tell. It was ridiculous. This was why he never sat in the midst of a group of young ladies.

  Lady Tate approached with a tall, muscular young man in tow, clearly intending introductions, and they were all obliged to stand. “Prince Karl von Osterberg, may I present to you…” And she reeled off all their names with an ease that left James in awe. But she was the hostess, after all. She would know who she’d invited.

  The man clicked his heels and bowed. “You have the best place to sit,” he said to James. His appreciative gaze took in all the ladies.

  Blond, with pale skin, jutting cheekbones, and hazel eyes, he had a deep voice and spoke with a slight Teutonic accent.

  “Prince Karl is visiting London as part of his tour of Europe,” said Lady Tate. “And he was kind enough to join us this evening.”

  “A pleasure,” said the newcomer. He gazed at Cecelia. “You are the daughter of Nigel Vainsmede?” he asked her.

  Cecelia nodded. She was still bemused by James’s appearance at this gathering, when he certainly had no interest in this evening’s discussion. And to see him sitting in a cluster of debutantes and accepting tidbits from their plates! He never did such things. He never offered her silly compliments. And yet here he was, and so he had. Did he actually intend to pursue the idea of marriage? She would not have believed it. But she could see no other reason for his presence.

  “I was most impressed by your father’s commentary on Grund und Erfahrung,” said Prince Karl.

  He was ruddy, muscular, and confident. If the prince had been English, Cecelia would have put him down as one of the hunting, shooting, hard-drinking fellows who infested the countryside. But his hazel eyes were sharply observant. There was compelling intelligence in them. And Lady Tate chose her company for mind not rank, though she did not mind the latter, of course.

  Prince Karl certainly looked much more like a prince than the aging Regent, whom Cecelia had met when she was presented at court. The foreigner had the face and frame for a fairy tale, craggy and resolute. He was nearly as handsome as James in quite a different style.

  “Perhaps I may sit with you?” the prince added, including all of them with a gesture.

  Lady Tate signaled a servant, and another chair was brought. Once the prince was installed on Cecelia’s right, their hostess drifted away. James shifted his seat a bit closer on her other side.

  “Your father told me that you help with his work, Miss Vainsmede. You are a German scholar?”

  “Papa was being overly kind. I merely do fair copies for him when he has finished his essays.”

  “You are too modest, I am sure.”

  She was not, actually. Cecelia was no kind of scholar. But she was rather enjoying his appreciative gaze. And even more, the sense that James was practically…simmering on her other side. The combination was exhilarating. “Are you also a student of Kant, like tonight’s speaker?” she asked the prince.

  “Indeed I am,” he replied.

  “Who is Kant?” asked Sarah.

  “Perhaps the greatest philosopher of our time,” the prince replied, only slightly pompously. “He sought to determine what we can and cannot know through the use of reason.”

  “And what did he decide?” asked Charlotte with her customary touch of irony.

  “That our knowledge is constrained by the limited terms in which the mind can think. We can never know the world from the ‘standpoint of nowhere,’ and therefore we cannot conceive its entirety, neither via reason nor experience.”

  “Pure gibberish,” James murmured.

  For a moment Cecelia was concerned that the prince had heard. But he gave no sign.

  “Standpoint of nowhere?” Sarah looked confused.

  “I think it means we are constrained by our personal points of view,” Cecelia told her. “We cannot get outside them.” She had learned this much from her father.

  “Bravo,” said the prince. “You are interested in philosophy.”

  “I’m not really.”

  “Not?” Prince Karl’s thick blond brows went up.

  “I can work my way through the text,” Cecelia replied. “With difficulty. But I don’t find the…result worth the effort.”

  James made an approving noise, as if she’d taken his side somehow when she’d only told the truth.

  “Wonderful,” said Prince Karl. He leaned a little closer to her. “I am most happy to hear it.”

  “You are?”

  “I have many other interests myself.” His tone was almost caressing.

  A sound rather like a low growl came from Cecelia’s other side. It could not be James. He would never do such a thing.

  “My…companions on this journey have arranged many serious meetings and lectures, such as tonight.” Prince Karl indicated the room with a small gesture. “They are of course interesting. I enjoy debating ideas. But I also wish to see more of the world before settling into a round of duties in my country. And thus I am so very glad to meet you lovely ladies.” He bowed to them all from his chair.

  “Really,” said James.

  He was piqued, Cecelia realized. He was accustomed to being the center of attention, even fawned over, at evening parties. But for the moment all the feminine attention was focused on the prince.

  Prince Karl continued to ignore him, though Cecelia now thought he was very much aware of James in a sly, contentious way. “Perhaps you and your friends would show me about London, Miss Vainsmede? I cannot conceive more charming guides.”

  “Do you want to see the museums and the Parliament?” asked Sarah.

  “I wish to do all that is proper,” Prince Karl replied without marked enthusiasm. “I am very fond of dancing. Do you like the waltz, Miss Vainsmede?”

  Cecelia nodded. Did he expect her to procure invitations for him? That would be awkward.

  “The Regent not trotting you around?” asked James. “I’d’ve thought he would. Being German and all.” His tone skirted the edge of rudeness.

  “I have been presented to him of course,” replied Prince Karl with the tact of a diplom
at. “Our families are not closely connected. And we are, of course, of different generations.” He turned back to Cecelia. “I have received a great many invitations. Perhaps you would help me choose among them? Particularly those events you mean to attend.”

  His interest was obvious. He was clearly singling her out.

  “Cecelia is very good at that,” said Sarah. “She knows everyone.”

  “Ah, then I may benefit from your advice?” The prince smiled at her winningly.

  Cecelia could only agree.

  “I’d be glad to take you to Gentleman Jackson’s for a round,” said James. “If you box?” His voice held an edge of challenge.

  Prince Karl shook his head. “I don’t care for fisticuffs.” He managed to make the pursuit sound faintly déclassé. “Fencing now. You have a well-known school here, yes? Angelo’s, it is called?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should like to visit there.” He touched a small scar at the corner of his square jaw.

  James’s lips turned down. He gave the prince a curt nod.

  “I am at the Carleton Hotel for now.” Prince Karl stood. He bowed over Cecelia’s hand, not quite kissing it as he met her eyes. “I shall call on you. And your father naturally. If I may?”

  She nodded. He was a bit brash, but she was intrigued by this addition to English society.

  “Until then.” He smiled at them all and walked away. Lady Tate intercepted him at once and steered him to the center of the discussion on Kant.

  “An actual prince,” said Sarah.

  “Of some tiny country, probably smaller than Yorkshire,” said James. “With a toy-soldier monarch.”

  The whole group turned to look at him. Cecelia met his blue eyes and felt a shivery thrill. James was obviously jealous.

  “So many of them are,” he added defensively. He leaned toward Cecelia. “Would you care to take a turn about the room?”

  “To join the debate over Grund und Erfahrung?” she asked him.

  “I don’t believe you know what that means. Anymore than I do.”