“So pleased to meet you,” said Susannah. She favored the duke with her dazzling smile. “It’s about time you balanced the table, Grayson.”
“Quite,” said the duke, with an uneasy grin. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Emma and I have some business to discuss.” The duke took Emma by the elbow. “Crowley, please see to Miss ... ah...”
“Emma will do,” Emma put in hastily.
“Just so,” said the duke. “Please see to it that Emma’s bags are placed in the rose suite, and have Gash return her car to the office in Plymouth.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
“But, Your Grace,” said Emma, “I hadn’t planned to—”
“You must call me Grayson,” chided the duke. “Crowley calls me Your Grace because he knows it embarrasses me. Perfectly gorgeous day, what?” The duke swept Emma across the entrance hall, around several corners, up one short flight of stairs, and down another, chattering nonstop all the while.
“I couldn’t help but notice you noticing the frieze on the landing. It was done by Edward Burne-Jones. Great-Grandfather was mad for the Pre-Raphaelites, invited the chap down for a long weekend, and Eddie whipped up the painting as a thank-you. Much nicer than the usual notecard, I’ve always thought.”
The duke led Emma into an enormous dining room and, closing the door behind them, finally came to a stop. “Sorry about the quickstep,” he said, leaning against the door, “but I wanted you out of reach of Susannah’s claws. I do hope you’ll forgive her. She was raised by wolves, you know.”
“Isn’t she—”
The duke nodded gloomily. “Ashers, the English Rose. The face that’s launched a thousand product lines. A somewhat distant and distaff twig of the family tree, but a twig nonetheless. The last time I saw Susannah, she was a scrawny twelve-year-old with two plaits down her back and a brace on her teeth.”
“She’s changed,” Emma observed.
“Not enough,” said the duke. “Now, Emma, my dear—”
“Grayson,” Emma said quickly, “about my luggage and my car. I really hadn’t intended to impose—”
“Impose?” cried the duke. “Nonsense! We’ve scads of rooms at Penford Hall and more cars than we know what to do with. If you need transport, give Gash a ring, and if you need anything else, call for Crowley. Now, come along, Emma, come see the garden. We’ve only an hour of good light left.” As he spoke, the duke ushered Emma across the dining room to a pair of French doors that opened onto a balustraded terrace, where a flight of steps descended to a broad expanse of manicured lawn. The lawn ended, much to Emma’s delight, at the front wall of a ruined castle.
“It is a castle,” she murmured.
The duke had already reached the bottom of the terrace steps. At her words, he turned, smote himself on the forehead, and bounded back up to stand by Emma’s side, saying ruefully, “Forgive me. I forgot that you hadn’t seen the place before.” He waved a hand toward the ruin. “Yes, yes—started out as a fortress, of sorts. The first duke was a bit of a blackguard, and a blackmailer as well. Got the title in exchange for a promise to stop preying on Her Majesty’s shipping lanes and start protecting them.”
“He was a pirate?” Emma asked with a smile.
“ ‘Fraid so. Must’ve been frightfully good at his chosen profession, to get a hereditary title as a retirement gift. Wish he’d got a bit of arable land as well, but one can’t have everything. Nothing left of the original pirate’s keep, of course, but...” The duke rattled on, telling of the castle’s rise and its gradual fall as later dukes reclaimed its massive blocks to build Penford Hall—“Recycling at its finest,” proclaimed the duke.
All that remained of the magnificent edifice were the four massive outer walls and a random collection of interior walls—“with the odd staircase and hearth thrown in for dramatic effect.” Within the ruins, Bantry—“head gardener here, splendid chap”—had created half a dozen garden “rooms.” Emma nodded her understanding, having seen something similar at Sissinghurst, in Kent, where the gardens were laid out among the ruined walls of an Elizabethan manor.
“Admittedly,” the duke concluded, “the castle rather spoils the view from the dining room, but it’s a marvelous windbreak, don’t you think?”