Christmas With The Duchess. Tamara LejeuneЧитать онлайн книгу.
the frame myself, out of whalebone,” he told her as he placed it in her palm.
It was a crude locket, made along the lines of a clamshell, with a design of hearts carved into the lid. Emma opened it gingerly. Inside was a tiny, delicate painting of a doll-like young woman with big blue eyes and yellow curls.
“Is this your sweetheart?” she asked him.
Nicholas looked surprised. “My mother,” he said.
“She was very beautiful,” Emma said gently.
“She was a kind soul,” said Nicholas. “She died too young. They both did. When my father died, I was put to sea. The Royal Navy is Portsmouth’s orphanage, you know.”
“Did you not know that your grandfather was the Earl of Camford?” Emma asked.
He shook his head. “I had no idea. My father never spoke of his family. I believe he blamed them for my mother’s death.”
Emma carefully closed the locket and gave it back to him. Nicholas kissed it quickly before tucking it away under his shirt. “Who’s that fellow over there?” he asked.
Emma spun around, fearing that another person had come into the room.
“I like his mustaches,” Nicholas went on, walking up to another painting. “Very useful for straining soup, I should think.”
Emma laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t the slightest idea. I’m only a Fitzroy by marriage,” she reminded him. “If you’re really interested, I could summon the housekeeper. The servants know everything.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said quickly.
“I’m a very poor guide,” she said ruefully. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure I can find the Raphael.”
“I know I couldn’t,” he said. “And I’m sleeping in it!”
Emma laughed. “You’re sleeping in Westphalia,” she told him. “Raphael is the Italian Renaissance painter.”
Nicholas flushed with embarrassment. “Raphael,” he murmured. “Of course. He painted battle scenes, I believe.”
“No,” she said, laughing. “He painted madonnas, saints, and angels.”
“That would have been my second guess,” he muttered. “You must think me so very ignorant.”
Emma shrugged. “I prefer nature to art myself.”
“So do I,” he said eagerly. “I confess I hate to be indoors.”
“Then, by all means, let us go for a ride,” Emma suggested. “We keep an excellent stable here. It will take but a moment for me to change into my habit.”
The grounds of Warwick Palace were extensive, and she knew a great many lonely, beautiful places where she could take him and seduce him.
Nicholas sighed. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t ride. I’ve never had the opportunity to learn,” he went on, in answer to her obvious surprise. “There are not many horses at sea.”
“No,” she smiled. “A nice, long walk, then?”
“I would love a nice, long walk.”
Emma rang the bell and sent the responding footman for her gloves, her cloak, and her walking shoes. Another footman brought her a chair. Nicholas watched in astonishment as the footman knelt at her feet to remove her high-heeled slippers. “You have servants for everything,” he remarked.
“Well, he is a footman,” said Emma, wiggling her toes. “Why do you think they’re called footmen?”
“I have never thought about it.”
Emma jumped up, her feet now encased in sturdy walking boots. “Shall we?” she said brightly, fastening her sable-lined cloak at her throat.
They went out onto a small terrace at the back of the house. Ornamental gardens and bright green lawns stretched out before them, and, in the far distance, shadowy woodlands crowded the horizon. The quiet enormity of it made it seem bleak. To Nicholas it lacked the dangerous energy of the constantly moving sea.
“Let us go out to the secession houses,” said Emma, deliberately leading him into an obscure, rarely traveled path screened by tall, beautiful lime trees. “We will be hungry by the time we get there. Have you ever tasted a pineapple?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered immediately. “Many times.”
Emma was slightly vexed. “Oh. What about a nectarine?”
“Of course.”
Emma frowned as she tried to come up with something even more exotic. “Breadfruit?”
Nicholas chuckled. “I have been all over the world, ma’am,” he told her. “We sailors learn very quickly to eat whatever we can get in the local markets when we put to shore. When one is subsisting on hardtack biscuits, salt pork, and watery rum, fresh fruit and vegetables are like manna from heaven. Have you ever eaten a carrot, ma’am? Raw, I mean.”
Emma stared at him. “You mean…right out of the dirt?”
“Well, washed of course,” he amended. “They’re nice and crunchy.”
“That doesn’t sound at all healthy,” Emma said disapprovingly.
Nicholas laughed.
Though her intentions had not been honest, Emma had not lied about Lady Anne and the Miss Fitzroys. The journey from Plymouth had indeed exhausted them, and, just as she had told Nicholas, they were sleeping in.
Octavia Fitzroy was the first to rise. A stately young woman of twenty-four, she was the eldest of Lord Hugh and Lady Anne’s five daughters. Intelligent, cold, and pompous, she commanded more obedience from her sisters than their nervous mother ever could. While Lady Anne sat up in bed, nursing a splitting headache, Octavia herded her sisters into the room for a council of war.
Apart from herself, only Augusta was dressed.
“It was a mistake to bring all of us to Plymouth to meet Cousin Nicholas,” Octavia declared while the younger girls were still rubbing their eyes. “By the time we got to Warwick, he was heartily sick of us all.”
“Cousin Nicholas is not sick of me,” declared Julia, preening. At fifteen, she was the youngest, and, with her lively, dark eyes, bright red hair, and flawless alabaster skin, she was the only sister with any claim to beauty.
“Yes, he is,” Cornelia, the third daughter, said spitefully. “He told me so.”
“Liar! You’re just jealous,” Julia said, quite accurately. “I can’t help it if he likes me best. I am the prettiest.”
“Cousin Nicholas treated you as a mere child,” Octavia told her bluntly, “which is, of course, what you are.”
“I am not a child!” shrieked Julia, causing her mother to wince in pain.
“You are not yet Out, Julia,” Octavia told her firmly.
“Well, you cannot have him, Octopus,” Julia retorted. “You are engaged already to Cousin Michael. Not that he seems eager to claim you,” she added spitefully. “The war has been over for months. Surely he could have gotten a furlong or whatever by now, if he wanted to.”
“Obviously, we are not talking of me, Julia,” Octavia said coldly. “I am spoken for. But one of you must make a push for Cousin Nicholas. If all of you try for him at once, it is very likely that none of you shall get him.”
“Cousin Nicholas will choose me,” Julia said. “I have only to crook my little finger.”
“It would be unseemly for you to marry before your elder sisters,” snapped Octavia.
Augusta, aged twenty, spoke up.