Dark Duke(12)
Edward wasn’t getting it back.
She was keeping it.
Chapter Five
Edward looked for her all afternoon, with no success. He found the rest of them though, repeatedly. Violet in the kitchen chatting with Mrs. Murphy as she baked—the little ones, Hamish and Taylor, pilfering biscuits and gorging themselves beneath the table. Malcolm and Ned in the billiard room sneaking his whiskey and smoking his cheroots. Violet once more, with Aunt Hortense, rearranging furniture in the Blue Salon and babbling on about a Poseidon Motif or some such nonsense. The middle boy, Dennis, uprooting orchids in the conservatory. Hamish again—or was it Taylor?—eating worms in the garden. The one that really frightened him was Sean, the quiet one, a surly seven-year-old, whom he found in the dining room, hiding a saw behind his back with a guilty look on his face.
But of Kaitlin, there was no sign.
By dinnertime Edward was positively petulant. Where had she gone?
He wanted, rather desperately, to talk to her about what had happened between them that morning. Even more desperately, he wanted to finish it.
It stuck in his craw that she was hiding from him, because he didn’t know if she was just afraid of him—of the power of what they had experienced together—or if she was regretting it. Both prospects soured his mood.
So, though it had become his custom to take his meals in his suite since the invasion, he decided to go down for dinner. He found everyone in the drawing room awaiting the gong. Everyone, that was, but Kaitlin. Hovering at the door, he scanned the assembly again and again, hoping he’d overlooked her auburn head in a sea of black, but she was not there.
Damn. Damn and blast.
He should escape now, before anyone spotted him—
“Halloo! Moncrieff.” Aunt Hortense, girded as she always was in her breastplate of pearls, waved at him from the divan. Her upper arms wobbled with the vigorous motion. “Are you joining us for dinner?”
He straightened his waistcoat and entered the room.
“Oh, how lovely, Edward.” Violet smiled. “We’ve so missed you at the table. Boys?” She clapped her hands. “Boys! You must be on your best behavior. His Grace is joining us for dinner.”
Naturally, they all ignored her. The twins, Hamish and Taylor, were engaged in a battle—using his finest chess men, bashing them together and making “cuhss” and “pkoo” noises. Malcolm plunked out sour notes on the piano. Sean jabbed viciously at the fire with a poker. Ned stood at the mantel with a large glass of amber liquid looking for all the world like the lord of the castle.
Come to think on it, this probably was their best behavior.
By the time the gong sounded, a headache had begun to ping at Edward’s temples. He was certain it wasn’t the din in the drawing room. It probably was the conversation Aunt Hortense had begun. About preparing for Violet’s season.
Not that the prospect of a season for Violet gave him a megrim. He rather liked the idea. For he rather liked Violet and wanted the best for her. It was the assumption that Edward would be the one to escort her to the balls and soirees and musicales.
He would rather be tortured on the rack in the Tower—if they did that anymore—than attend Almack’s in a fussy suit and stiff collar.
So when the gong rang, he leapt to his feet. He hadn’t completely forgotten himself—although at the moment, he wished he could—and he offered his aunt an arm.
“Thank you, m’boy,” she said, patting his hand. Then she launched into a plan for a ball for Violet’s coming out, for which he would pay, of course. The litany of his responsibilities went on as they made their way to the dining room, the boys and Violet following along behind, chattering raucously. While such hubbub had never been part of his life—a duke was staid, quiet, decorous—Edward found himself beset with little pings of envy. How fun it would have been to grow up with boisterous brothers. To have someone to share the mischief.
Dukes didn’t get to have fun. He’d learned that from his father. The first Edward Wyeth had been an extraordinarily reserved and somewhat sad man. Edward always supposed it was because he’d mourned the loss of his wife. Although why he would pine so, considering how often they’d fought, Edward couldn’t fathom. He remembered his mother as a brittle, bitter woman married to a man she detested.
She had died when he was a young lad.
His father had raised him with the strictest expectations—he was to be a duke one day, after all—which was probably why, when Edward turned eighteen, he rebelled. He ran off and joined the army, a decided taboo for the only son and heir of a peer. It had taken his father three years to find him. It had taken that long because when Edward joined the army, and later worked for the Home Office, he had done so under a false identity.