And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,2
it up a bit? The worst two days of your life?” Henry shook his head and glared at the basket of letters. They were making this the worst week of his life.
“You must answer these,” she repeated, wagging a finger at her brother. “If only to let these ladies know that they have been deceived, just as you were, and you are most sorry for any distress this will cause them.”
“Make Preston apologize,” Henry told her, pointing toward the real culprit in all this. “He placed the ad.”
“Yes, well, you know he will never do that,” Hen said with a dismissive wave.
“And I wouldn’t have placed it if you hadn’t been so prosy that night,” Preston complained. “Going on and on about how I’d ruined the family’s good name.” He picked up his paper. “I would remind you both, we are Seldons. We have never had a good name.”
“Exactly,” Henry said, latching onto the notion with an idea of his own. “When these ladies discover who has written them, and they nose it about how they’ve been ill-used by a Seldon, don’t you think, Hen, that this will only go to sully our family name further? Might even leave you cut from Almack’s.”
Both he and Preston eyed her speculatively. For while Preston was in name the head of the family, neither of them naysaid Hen. Not if they knew what was good for them.
And it very nearly worked.
Nearly.
“There is no reason for you to sign your own name,” she pointed out. “Sign it . . .” She tapped her fingers against her lips and then smiled. “I know! Sign it ‘Mr. Dishforth.’ ”
“Dishforth!” Henry exclaimed, for it had been some time since that name had been uttered under their roof.
“Dishforth! Of course! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself, Hen,” Preston said with an approving nod. Of course he would approve. Dishforth—Henry’s invention when they were children—had become Preston’s shining hero. If something got broken or the apple tart disappeared and all that was left was a plate of crumbs, the always culpable and ever rapscallion “Mr. Dishforth” was blamed, much to the annoyance of their nannies and tutors.
Dishforth had been the cause of any number of tragedies. And now, it seemed, he could take the reckoning for this newest one.
“That doesn’t get you off the hook, Preston,” Henry told him. “You are going to answer those letters.”
“Trust me to do that?” Preston said, waggling his brows and winking at Hen.
“Preston won’t have the time, Henry. You’ll have to see to this yourself,” Hen advised her brother. And her nephew.
“He won’t?”
“I won’t?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t see why you are complaining, Henry. I know very well you will assign the task to your secretary and be done with the matter.”
Henry had the good sense to look sheepish, as this was what he had planned from the very first moment she’d suggested he respond to the letters.
Not that Preston was going to escape her wrath either. Looking the duke in the eye, she said, “You will have nothing more to do with this, as you are going to be too busy finding a wife. A respectable lady to bring your reputation—and ours—up out of the gutter.”
“Good God, Hen! Not this again,” Preston moaned. “What if I told you I had already discovered such a paragon? The perfect lady to be my duchess.”
“I wouldn’t believe you,” Hen replied, arms crossed over her chest.
Henry grinned over his sister’s shoulder at Preston, only too pleased to see the tables turned on the scalawag of a duke. For once.
But Henry hardly got the last laugh in.
As Hen was dragging Preston from the morning room, the duke turned and pointed a finger at his uncle. “Best answer those quickly. Lady Taft is known to gossip. Terrible shame if it were nosed about Town that you’ve been advertising for a wife.” He waggled his brows and was then led off by Hen to whatever fate she had in store for him.
For a moment, Henry spared his nephew a twinge of guilt—what bachelor wouldn’t at the sight of a fellow comrade being led to his demise?—though his sympathies didn’t last for long. Not when he realized that Preston would find it all that much more amusing to spread his joke about Town, albeit via Lady Taft.
Bother him! He would do just that. Probably get that jinglebrains Roxley to spill what they’d done and then he, Henry, would be the laughingstock of London.