She ignored her husband’s groan over the idea.
“I do hope so, Miss Mayton,” the earl said. “We are so close to the denouement, and I cannot imagine what will happen.”
“I will be positively bereft if I do not hear the denouement of this remarkable tale,” Conbatten said, smiling at Van Doren.
Darden snorted. He was always very much amused when the duke teased Van Doren.
“Never fear, Your Grace,” Miss Mayton said condescendingly, “I will catch you up to where we are so far before reading the shocking conclusion.”
“Shocking!” the earl said, seeming delighted. “Now I am on tenterhooks over it.”
And so they’d gone merrily on and Miss Mayton did read the shocking conclusion toThe Dreadful Doings of Dembric Hall.
Amidst Van Doren’s shifting in his chair, pained sighs, and staring at the doors as if he wished he could go through them, Miss Mayton explained to the duke what had happened to that point.
Mr. Denbrow had been considering marrying his decidedly pregnant kitchen maid, though he was not the father and did not know who was. The maid attempted to convince him that a son would nullify any arrangements he’d made with the duke, he could keep all the duke’s money, and he would not be murdered by the villagers if they moved to sunny Spain.
The poor duke and Mr. Denbrow’s daughter, now the duke’s beloved duchess, remained poor as church mice in their ducal residence. They were still chopping their own wood and living on raw eggs, as neither of them knew how to cook anything. They had made attempts, but they’d all gone up in smoke. A villager sometimes brought a piece of roasted meat and the couple were very careful to eat it bit by bit.
It would turn out that Mr. Denbrow could not face leaving for Spain without seeing his darling daughter once more. He arranged to stop by the duke’s house very casually, without saying he was going anywhere.
The duke, being accustomed to acting the host extraordinaire in days gone by, would not countenance his father-in-law failing to be fed during the visit. He cracked a few raw eggs into a bowl. Then he gamely fetched the last of the pork that Mrs. Willow had brought them three weeks prior, which had been stored in a cabinet in the drawing room.
The whole thing smelled like sulfur and death, but Mr. Denbrow ate it out of guilt.
He was dead not three days later.
At that very opportune moment, Chester had jumped round his cage and cried, “Murder! Murder!”
“Oh no,” Miss Mayton had said to the parrot, “you see, it was just that the duke was so used to entertaining properly and he had to make do with what he had.”
As itwasan accident, and as Mr. Denbrow had seemed very miserable to be rich, he was fondly missed, but not overly mourned.
The duke and his duchess were restored to their wealth and the duke spent the rest of his life dousing his lady with presents and jewels. The duchess, for her part, planned elaborate dinners of twelve courses—they would never eat raw eggs again.
The earl had been delighted with the story, exclaiming, “So Mr. Denbrow does himself in by the very hardships he’d forced on the duke and his own daughter! If he hadn’t taken the money, he wouldn’t have been served raw eggs and the pork that had gone off. Well, it just goes to show.”
“I had hoped they’d all be dead thirty pages ago,” Van Doren muttered.
Conbatten had raised a brow. “For myself, I am rather cheered that the duke was restored to his fortune.”
“If we ever find ourselves in such a situation, Conbatten,” Rosalind said, “I would sell off my jewels before I would allow you to eat raw eggs.”
“You will do no such thing,” her duke assured her. “I would hire myself out as a laborer before one diamond departs your neck.”
“What about you, Baderston?” Darden asked. “Are you to hire yourself out as a laborer in such straights?”
“I rather think I’d hire myself out as an accountant,” Lord Baderston said. “I’m very good with managing the account books and, in any case, I imagine Viola would prefer it.”
Viola nodded. “He always does wish to know what I would prefer.”
“What ofyou, Van Doren?” Juliet asked. “What will you be doing once your estate hits the rocks?”
“My estate will never hit the rocks, as you phrase it. I am very careful to protect me and mine, as everybody well knows.”
Beatrice patted her husband’s hand.
“Yes, yes,” the earl said. “My daughters have all married very fine husbands, indeed. I am well pleased.”
