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“I beg your pardon, Highness, they are not recommended,” Monsieur DuPree said smoothly.
“I beg to differ. They are verymuchrecommended in order that I may read,” the princess insisted, not unreasonably.
“Perhaps you might commit the speech to memory. It will provide you the opportunity to practice your enunciation.”
Princess Justine groaned heavenward. “What iswrongwith needing eyeglasses to read?”
Princess Amelia and her little rabbits giggled into their hands.
“Je,”Queen Agnes said pertly. “Je,Robuchard, I think your plan is a good one.”
CHAPTER TWO
Four monthslater
London, England
LASTNIGHT’SSUPPERhad turned into a bloody bacchanal, and William was feeling the effects of it.Beck,damn him. Ten years ago William would have imbibed with abandon, but he’d long ceased being willing or able to pass the hours with drink. Ten years ago he would have bounced back to form like Indian rubber, but today every part of him ached.
This seemed to happen every time he was in London. It was his own rotten fault. He’d believed that because his old friend, Beckett Hawke, the Earl of Iddesleigh, was a husband and a father now, there would be none of the debauchery of yore. What a bloody fool he’d been to think it.
He’d intended to get plenty of rest before a day he knew he’d need all his wits about him. He’d assumed,quiteincorrectly, that supper on Upper Brook Street would come to an early conclusion given that Beck’s four young daughters were being reared without any sort of proper discipline and required a near army of parents and servants to corral them into bed.
But Beck’s wife, the ginger-haired, plump Blythe Northcote Hawke, had taken the children to the old Honeycutt House where their bachelor uncle Donovan generally resided. Donovan would keep them for the night and, she reported with glee, would tell them ghost stories and frighten them out of their wits. Her happiness stemmed not from the fact that her children would likely refuse to sleep in their own beds for a fortnight, but from the fact that for one night, she and Beck could behave indiscriminately.
For the occasion they’d included Beck’s good-for-nothing friends, Lord Montford and Sir Martin.
William should have sensed the minute he was shown into the drawing room that trouble was afoot. He should have begged off the minute Beck introduced “very fine Scotch whisky” that might have been obtained “from a smuggler’s den.” But he hadn’t, and the next thing he knew, his valet, Ewan MacDuff, had come to fetch him at four in the morning.
That was how he’d come to be staring bleary-eyed at the imposing, three-story facade of Prescott Hall. He hated mornings like this. The ride from his house in Mayfair had jostled every bone in his body and had only worsened his wretched headache.
He removed his gloves, and then his hat, and shoved his fingers through his hair. He did not miss Ewan’s grimace—the man took great pride in his work, and even though he had not personally combed William’s hair, he considered it part of the overall effect of his sartorial work.
William turned from his valet’s judgmental countenance, and his gaze landed on a young groom, come to take the horses. William meant to dismount, but he blinked at the house again. More than a house, really. A sprawling edifice practically bulging at the seams with opulence, one of the many homes owned by the Duke of Beauford and one of the few grand enough to house a royal princess and her entourage. He understood the gardens were extraordinary. He would like to take a look at them—how pleasing it would be to meander about while the sun burned the fog from his brain. But alas, there was no time for that. William intended to pay his call and depart for his house on Arlington Street as quickly as possible, have Ewan draw him a scorching-hot bath, then contemplate how, in a universe as vast as this, he kept ending up in these untenable situations.
One would think that William Douglas of Scotland, the Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale, the future Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, might have a wee bit more control of his own life at the ripe age of three and thirty, and yet, nothing could be further from the truth. The older he became, the less things seemed in his control. His sister Susan was right—he ought to have been wed by now and have children of his own. He ought to have become one of those tinkering country gentlemen with a painting hobby who demanded reports on the number of sheep in the fields and read poetry to his wife. But no, he was a bachelor, who had been abroad as much of the past ten years as possible, and had been asked—no,commanded—to mollycoddle a bloody European princess.
The groom kept sliding looks at Ewan, his brows clearly asking his unspoken question of what the devil was going on here. Ewan straightened his vest, pulled his cuffs from the sleeves of his coat and returned a look that clearly conveyed he didn’t rightly know.
“Fine,” William said to them both. He slid off his horse and nodded at the impatient groom to take the reins, then nodded at Ewan, indicating he should go ahead and announce his presence.
As Ewan was the sort of man who liked to have a mission, he immediately began to stride for the entry. He was a very large man, six inches taller and broader than William, and when he jogged up the steps to the double doors, one half expected the ground to tremble. He rapped so loud that William could hear it on the drive.
William pulled on his gloves, but he did not reseat his hat. He turned his face to the afternoon sun. Lord, he could use a cup of tea and a nap.One last toast, indeed.
He shifted his gaze to the park spread before him. The grounds were perfectly manicured, including a field before the house where sheep were grazing, and stately trees lining the drive. Chestnut trees, he thought. They looked like the dozens upon dozens his father had planted at Hamilton Palace in Scotland several years ago.
Father.He was the one who’d put William up to this. Just a month ago he’d called William home from Paris with an urgent telegraph—come at once.Naturally, William had feared that his father was ill and was holding off the Grim Reaper. And then he feared his father would die and saddle him with massive debt and the monstrosity they called Hamilton Palace, and he’d be a duke and the surviving descendent of the Scottish throne—if his father’s claims were to be believed—and stuck in Lanarkshire, far from the sort of society he enjoyed.
But it turned out his father was very much alive and very pleased to see him. Clad in a dressing gown at two in the afternoon, he’d hugged William tightly, patted him on the back, said William looked fatter since the last he saw him.
His father chatted about the new ewes he’d personally bought at market, about the chicken pie the cook had made for supper. He eagerly showed William the new rooms he was adding to the house. He reported that William’s mother had gone to visit her sister, and that Susan had brought the children around last week, and poor little Arthur had gotten lost in the house and they’d searched the better part of a day for him before they found him crying in the blue drawing room.
Oh aye, William’s father was very well, thank you. The emergency for which he’d summoned his heir home was that he was in desperate financial straits.
Again.
William loved his father. He enjoyed his company—the old man could always be depended upon for a laugh. He’d been the best father one could hope for. Though he was prone to excess, he really did care about things like the Hamilton seat. His father had one great flaw. Well, two, really—William and Susan agreed that the duke’s oft-made claim of being the true and rightful heir to the Scottish throne due to the tracing he’d done on the family tree was suspect at best. But his greatest flaw was that he was horrible with money. Utterly and thoroughly awful. He hadn’t the least bit of financial sense and would not listen to reason. He’d come close to ruining the storied Hamilton family more than once.
