An American Duchess

“I will talk to her,” he said stiffly. Without the ice on his eye, it stung again.

“Then do it now.” Miss Gifford turned and walked out.

Damn it. All he wanted to do was kiss her. He slapped the bag against his black eye. The pain of doing that helped cool his ardor. Just barely.

Then Julia came out of Sebastian’s room. Cautiously, and that in itself broke his heart.

“Are you very angry? I shouldn’t have done it.” Julia sank down to the wing chair and she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “Is it very wrong to go dancing when Anthony never will?”

He didn’t want her to spend her life mourning. He felt like a wretch. She had been grieving, and he was making her worry about his reaction. “It’s not wrong to go on living. Miss Gifford is right about that.”

His little sister looked so different. She had always been elegant, even as a little girl. Now even the way she tilted her head looked lively. Her bouncing hair drew his gaze. She looked freer, lighter, and she glowed in relief from her worry.

“You are extraordinarily beautiful, Julia. You look even lovelier with bobbed hair.” And he meant it. “Do you want me to take you home tomorrow?”

Julia wiped away her barely fallen tears. She gave him a wobbly smile as she stood to return to her room. “No, Zoe will drive me. But we are going to leave you to bring Sebastian home.”

He closed the door after Julia, then lay down on the sofa. He must have slept, but he woke up shouting, bathed in sweat. Jerking upright, he listened, heart pounding. Soft snores came from his brother’s bedroom. His brother was in a deep, drink-induced sleep.

Nigel sank back in relief. He stayed awake until morning, staring at the ceiling. Then he went downstairs, had breakfast and walked into the Savoy’s smoking room.

A high-backed wing chair and a newspaper hid his view of the occupant, but long legs stuck out—shapely legs revealed by a short skirt. Nigel identified the legs at once with a deep sigh.

It was Zoe Gifford—a cigarette held between her fingers, a newspaper in her hands.

All around, elderly gentlemen were muttering. Who had let her in? What were the standards of the Savoy coming to? What was the world coming to?

For a moment, Nigel sympathized with Miss Gifford. A devastating war had killed millions, had recarved Europe, had torn wounds that might scar over but would never heal. And what shocked Englishmen was a woman in the smoking room in a short skirt with her legs crossed.

He took a seat across the room, facing the window, and opened his newspaper.

A shadow fell over him. He lowered the paper. Those legs were in front of him. Zoe blew a smoke ring. “I heard what you said to your sister.”

“You listened in on a private conversation?”

“I was closing the door. It wasn’t my fault you started speaking before you were sure I’d gone. Thank you for what you said to her. She was worried about your disapproval.” Her now-painted lips curved in a smile. “She recognizes she does not have to obey you, but she does not want to fight with you.”

“I told her the truth. Thank you for urging me to.” He cleared his throat. “About what happened outside Murray’s—”

“Don’t worry, Your Grace. You know what American girls are like. We meet a boy at a dance at eight, and we’re necking in a rumble seat with him by midnight.”

He dropped his newspaper. Smiling, Miss Gifford walked away, and he had to loosen his tie.

But she cared about Julia. In the light of morning, he saw she had done a wonderful thing for his sister.

* * *

Zoe took the elevator up to Sebastian’s room. She rapped on the door—repeatedly—until Sebastian threw it open.

His eyes were bloodshot, his golden hair a disheveled mess, his clothes rumpled. “Oh, it’s you, Zoe.” He leaned against the door frame. “I’m in here alone. You shouldn’t come in, angel. It’d be a scandal without a chaperone.”

“In the state you’re in, I doubt anything could happen. Your head must be pounding.”

He groaned. And let her in.

He sprawled in a silk-cushioned chair, long legs spread out in front of him. This time he held the monogrammed towel filled with ice against his head.

Blunt and honest. That was what a Gifford was. “Sebastian, our engagement is a ruse, and it can’t be anything more. I—I was in love with someone else, and I lost him, and I don’t plan on falling in love again. No matter what.”

Sebastian had changed. When she’d met him in New York, he’d oozed charm. Now he seemed to be smoldering with anger all the time. She felt it in his tension, his drinking, his wildness.

On a groan of pain, he got down on one knee before her to take her hand. “I know, Zoe. But I’m falling in love with you. And I can’t help it.”

He gazed up at her, looking hungover, but vulnerable and gorgeous. With his blond hair, long-lashed green eyes, full, pouty lips, Sebastian was breathtaking.

But she didn’t want to kiss Sebastian and she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss with Langford.

She’d thought him icy? He had been filled with fiery desire. His kiss set all her nerves aflame. She’d almost turned into a puddle on the sidewalk, she’d been so hot.

“I’m not going to fall in love with you, Sebastian. I can’t.”

Because of Richmond. “That’s the only reason why,” she said under her breath as she left Sebastian’s room.

* * *

A loud, sputtering sound came from the gray, cloudy sky over his head.

Nigel froze, reining in Beelzebub so they were motionless on the long stretch of Brideswell’s gravel drive. He knew the sound. It was the tempestuous choking of an aeroplane’s engine. His heart pounded. He expected to hear the explosion of machine-gun fire. That was what you heard—the engine roar over your head, then the cracking sound as the ground around you was blasted by gunfire.

The war was over. Had been for four years. Four years that didn’t seem real at this moment....

Was he just imagining the sound? It was so damn clear against the other sounds he knew of Brideswell—the whip of the wind through trees, the caws of crows.

A bright yellow biplane flew out of a bank of thick cloud. It banked and made a wide turn over the trees that flanked the road at the end of the drive. The plane started to drop, and Nigel realized it was going to land on the lawn.

Then the engine stalled and his heart almost stopped in his chest.

The plane dropped fast. Then the engine roared and it swooped upward, clearing his head generously. As if it had struck Beelzebub, the spooked animal reared.

Nigel had let the reins go slack to watch the aeroplane. Too late, he gripped them, but he lost his balance—

He tumbled from his horse to wet ground. As he hit the earth, he saw the plane touch down.

He pushed up, his back sore and his arse aching. The yellow plane rumbled over the ground, coming to a stop just before the stone wall that bordered the lawn.

Zoe Gifford jumped out, pushed up her goggles and ran to him. “Are you all right? The damn engine is fickle. It ran fine yesterday when I purchased her, but on the way here, she decided to get temperamental.”

For two days after their run-in in the Savoy smoking room, he had avoided Miss Gifford. Dinner had been the only meal that had forced them into the same room at the same time. She would say things about women’s rights to goad him, but he refused to be drawn into the conversation.