An Improper Arrangement

She stepped down carefully, holding up her gown just enough to see her way on the steps, and stood beside the duchess for a moment before moving a few feet away, as she always felt like a giant when in the woman’s proximity.

That was because the duchess was, although wide, quite small.

No, that wasn’t true. It was because Dorothea knew herself to be that tall. She towered over her own mother, her stepfather and her two half sisters, stuck out (or up) like a towering oak surrounded by saplings.

Not that she rolled her shoulders forward or attempted to stoop when in company, because she was proud of her height. She was her father’s child, and he had been tall, was still tall, curse him…quite possibly as tall as one of the gentlemen now approaching, hats in hand, with the taller one quick to bend over the duchess’s offered hand.

“Aunt,” he said now, “welcome home. The duke is upstairs, dying.”

The woman frowned. “Again? He promised not to do that while I was gone. What is it this time? Is he seeing spots? He hasn’t done that in a while.”

“He hasn’t mentioned spots, no, although I recall hearing something about ill-humors. I’m afraid I wasn’t attending his words all that closely.”

The duchess nodded, the many silken tiers of her bonnet nodding with her. “Don’t apologize, Sunny, we none of us do.”

Dorothea exchanged looks with the second gentleman, obviously not the grandnephew and heir, who was looking as perplexed as she at this lighthearted exchange. But then he smiled, and she decided they would be friends. She smiled back.

“Sonny boy,” the gentleman said, nudging the grandnephew, “have you considered introducing me to the duchess…and company?”

Now it seemed time for the two gentlemen to exchange glances, but nobody smiled. Indeed, they seemed to stare each other down for a brief uncomfortable second, before the nephew turned to the duchess and asked if he might be allowed to introduce his friend, Sir Jeremiah Rigby, baronet.

The duchess murmured something vaguely proper. She offered her hand to be bowed over and then turned back to her grandnephew. “Gabriel, Sir Jeremiah, it would be my great pleasure to introduce to you both my lovely new friend from Virginia, Miss Dorothea Neville. Show off your pretty curtsy for them, my dear, so that we may all go inside and out of this confounding breeze before my bonnet takes to the four winds.”

Thea did as she was bid—she’d found that to be easier than taking anything the duchess said to heart or as an insult—holding out her hand at the same time. The baronet, who was closer in any event, made an elaborate bow over that hand before stepping back to allow Gabriel Sinclair to do the same.

His hand barely grazed hers and he made a rather perfunctory bow, his gaze locking with hers for a moment before he shook his head as if to deny something he’d been thinking. “Miss Neville,” he said before turning to offer his aunt his arm, leaving Rigby to escort her up the marble steps and into the foyer of the impressive edifice that was Cranbrook Chase.

Bit of a prig, isn’t he, she thought, staring at the man’s back. He’s extremely handsome, but I believe I’d much rather he be personable. I’ll have to work on that, if I’m going to be in his company for any length of time.

Once inside, she refused to gape at the impressive foyer and its several stories’ height topped by an enormous oval glass dome that flooded the area with sunlight. Nor would she mention that the area was large enough—granted, if the furniture was removed—to host a cricket match and its assembled audience.

It wasn’t that she was a stranger to either size or beauty of architecture. Virginia was very well populated with mansions of all sorts, many of them built in the tradition of the owners’ grand homes in England.

She simply hadn’t ever before seen at least three dozen gilded birdcages of every shape and size such as those hanging here, situated there, clustered close together in corners, all of them filled with a gorgeous array of exotic birds. Birds of every color, every size. Birds with eyes that looked unreal, birds with beaks as bright as the sun or as long and black as ebony. Oranges and green and shockingly bright blues, birds with long tail feathers or strange feather plumage sticking up from the tops of their heads.

A near forest of vegetation she couldn’t recognize was spread about in enormous brass pots. Plants with drooping fronds the size of elephant ears, tall, single-trunked trees of some sort, wearing not bark but something more like exotic shingles and topped by wild green headdresses of spiked greenery. She did recognize the palm trees, as she’d seen those in Virginia. She’d never seen a banana tree, but she was fairly certain she was seeing one now, bunches of small green fruit hanging some twenty feet above the black-and-white-tiled floor.

Strangely—hardly as strange as the rest of it, but strange nonetheless—there seemed to be a two-sided balcony strung about a third of the way between floor and dome. An observation platform? And she’d thought her stepfather odd for insisting his new landau had canary-yellow wheels simply because he’d seen one like it in Hyde Park during his last visit to England.

A peacock strutted by, followed by his drab peahen, and then stopped to fan its fine feathers before moving on.

There was a pair of liveried footmen working amid it all, pouring water, picking up stray feathers, sweeping up, one would suppose, after the peacocks. One of the cages was open, a footman half stuck inside, reaching for something Thea probably didn’t want to identify.

Fires burned in a pair of huge matching fireplaces facing each other across the immense hall, and in the center of it all was—

“A fountain? A waterfall? But…but that’s not possible.” Thea hadn’t meant to say anything, but how could one not?

She wished she’d retained her bonnet, so that she could fan herself in the heat of the place.

Jeremiah Rigby bent his head close to hers. “I’m told the duke and duchess once traveled extensively and brought home reminders of their trips. Later you might want to apply to sonny boy if you’ve never seen a stuffed lemur.”

“Stuffed?” Thea looked at the nearest cage, relieved to see the pair of small birds—lovebirds of some sort?—were busily rubbing necks together. “These are all alive, aren’t they, not just a few of them?”

“They are, and with the parrots and such among them, many will probably outlive all of us. I can’t tell you how often my friend gushes to me about how thrilled he is by that news.”

“You’re being facetious, aren’t you?”

“Madly so. I fear all these lovely birds will be somewhere other than this grand hall once he’s in residence.”

“The air does smell rather sour. I knew the duchess badly desired to bring a pair of our local cranes to England with us, but my stepfather warned her the birds probably wouldn’t survive the voyage. I never imagined this.”

The duchess, who had been admiring her birds, must have overheard, for she came over to Thea to explain. “Basil is the genius behind it all, you know. Once he became duke, I complained to him about the sad, overcrowded state of the aviary, and this is the result. It was my dear cousin’s house in Virginia that helped spark the idea, as he’d thought it quite clever to place doors at both the front and the rear of the house, to encourage summer breezes, so Basil ordered the removal of a stuffy old den that once stood in the way and added a half-dozen French doors along the rear. We often open both sets of doors to the elements, during clement weather, of course. The peacocks tend to wander off, but they always return.”

Finally Gabriel Sinclair said something. “My aunt fails to mention that he only closed in the staircases after it became apparent that accidentally loosed birds tend to migrate. If we’ve seen enough?” He gestured toward a set of doors to his right.

“Yes, yes, let’s take ourselves upstairs,” the duchess agreed. “Although I should be going at once to Basil.”

“He’ll keep,” Gabriel said. “At least for another few months.”

The duchess playfully slapped his arm. “Naughty boy! He’s not going to die, no matter how much he’s talked himself into this silly idea of a curse. And if he is, well, I refuse to see him do it hiding here. And that’s what I want to talk about. Come along, dearest Thea—you’re a large part of this.”

Now the nephew was looking at her that way again, whatever that was. Perhaps he was working on developing a squint? Really, it was most disturbing. She didn’t need him. Not really. She would do what she would do and not request his help, no matter what the duchess thought.

Once more she allowed Sir Jeremiah to offer his arm to her. One of the footmen hastened to push open the double doors, and she found herself looking up at what had once probably been an impressive staircase, curving up and toward the great hall. She followed along dutifully to the top.

“To your left, Miss Neville, that door leads to the balcony that rides over the aviary and into the west wing and a matching staircase. To your right, the entrance to the grand salon. Aunt?”

“I know it looks terrible, Sunny, but it was necessary.”

“None of this was necessary.”

Thea had to agree with Gabriel Sinclair. If one wished to reside in a jungle, one could easily find a jungle and, well…reside. She actually began to feel pity for the man. Perhaps being heir to a dukedom wasn’t all one would suspect it to be.

She caught his eye once they’d adjourned to the grand salon and she’d taken up her seat beside the duchess on a quite lovely striped satin couch. When he returned her look, she smiled, hopefully sweetly, and then carefully removed her gloves and folded her hands in her lap. They would leave the past awkward minutes behind them and begin again.

“You had a pleasant voyage?” Gabriel asked, directing his question at her.

Ah, he was agreeing with her. They would begin again.

“It was delightful, sir, yes. We left Virginia well ahead of any thought of a late-summer tropical storm, and the entire crossing was blissfully uneventful.”

There. That was polite, informative, and if he seemed to be faintly surprised by her crisp, precise, cultured English, he only showed that reaction for a moment.

The duchess was already fussing with the tea tray one of the servants had carried into the room, pouring out tea and handing around thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches.

“How fortunate. And this is your first trip to England, Miss Neville?” Yes, he was definitely curious. Had he thought she’d drawl out every vowel, a laziness of speech her half sisters had fallen into, much to their mother’s despair?

“It is, yes.”