How to Deceive a Duke (26 page)

Delphine laughed. “Wilton is a cad. Everyone knows that. No one believes a word he says. He owes money everywhere, while Meg has never given anyone cause to gossip. Why shouldn’t a woman buy horses? There are currently a dozen ladies of my acquaintance planning sorties to Tattersall’s.”

“She broke Nicholas’s heart!” Sebastian pointed at her. “I didn’t think any woman could, but why else would he do such a damned fool thing as going back to war?”

Delphine kissed her brother’s cheek. “I didn’t think you had a romantic bone in your body, but you do, don’t you?” She smiled at Meg. “Nicholas loves you,” she gushed. “And you love him.”

“How do you know that?” Sebastian demanded. “Going off with Wilton hardly suggests—”

“She is going all the way to Brussels for Nicholas,” Delphine explained. “Come now, Sebastian, be a good brother and arrange passage, and we’ll let you stand on the pier and wave your handkerchief as we go off to find Meg’s brave soldier.”

“If we weren’t twins, I’d call you out and shoot you for that remark,” Sebastian pouted, pulling on his gloves to go.

“If you wish, dear heart, but I’m a better shot than you,” Delphine retorted.

Chapter 66

B
russels was filled with an air of frantic gaiety, as if everyone who had gathered for the impending battle felt they must live life to the fullest before the end. The sultry promise of an early summer made it difficult to think of war at all.

Every day, thousands of uniformed men poured into the city in preparation for the coming event, but Napoleon’s armies didn’t appear, and sightseers and ladies began to think the whole exercise was mere spectacle and pageantry.

Meg hadn’t found Nicholas. He was out of the city on military business, but no one would say more. He wasn’t Captain Lord Hartley as he’d been in Spain, but simply Temberlay, and a major. To the men who had known him in Spain, he was still Devil, the man who outsmarted the French.

Delphine’s older sister Eleanor and her husband, Colonel Lord Fairlie, welcomed them. By day, the ladies strolled and lunched and had tea just as if they were still in England. Meg searched every face, every group of officers for Nicholas, but he wasn’t among them. With every disappointment, the longing grew worse.

The Fairlies had rented a small estate on the edge of the city, surrounded by orchards and gardens. Eleanor turned the salon on the ground floor into a workroom for ladies who wished to do more for the cause than simply look pretty and provide officers with dance partners.

“We might as well roll bandages and gather supplies,” Eleanor said. “The parks are full of soldiers in tents, since there is nowhere else to house them, and we cannot walk there. Fairlie says we shall be forced to give up our orchard next. The outbuildings have already been commandeered by the army, but I suppose being surrounded by troops makes us safe.”

Meg threw herself eagerly into the tasks. The ladies gossiped while they worked, and just as in London, there was plenty of gossip to be had.

“D’you know what I heard today?” Delphine asked as they climbed into bed. Meg had given up her own room to a captain’s wife, and shared a bed with Delphine the way she’d once shared with Rose. “Claire Howard is here in Brussels. She came here to the house to help and they turned her away. Can you imagine? She left old Augustus for Daniel Napier, and followed him here when he bought a commission. They say she sold her famous necklace to pay for it too, and she is quite in love with him, and fears he will be killed and she’ll have to go back to Augustus after all. No one has seen them together, though. It appears Daniel is out on patrol somewhere, like Nicholas.”

Poor lady, Meg thought. David’s journal had said that Augustus had used the money he gained from cheating her father to buy the necklace to convince Claire to marry him.

“Why would they turn her away? Surely an extra pair of hands would be useful.”

Delphine looked at her with delighted shock. “She is not respectable! She abandoned her husband, and ran away with her lover, Meg. Surely you can’t imagine Countess Huntley or Lady Aimes allowing her to become part of their circle of good works.”

“Yet isn’t Lord Wellington escorting the wife of one of his own officers while her husband is away on duty? No one would dare exclude
her
if she decided to roll bandages of an afternoon,” Meg said.

Delphine grinned. “I suppose not. What d’you suppose she
does
get up to in the afternoons?” she asked wickedly.

Meg blew out the candle. She could imagine the duke’s mistress whiling away the sultry afternoons in the arms of her lover. Did she wonder where her husband was, if he was safe?

She shut her eyes, and saw Nicholas’s face as he made love to her. She could never want another man.

“I think I shall go and see her,” she murmured.

The rope frame of the bed creaked. “The duke’s paramour?” Delphine gasped.

“No, Claire Howard.”

“How bold you are! Eleanor will never allow me to accompany you.”

“Then I will go alone.”

“Y
our Grace!” Claire Howard dipped a curtsy when Meg arrived at her humble lodgings. “Will you take tea? I will understand if—”

Meg smiled. “I never had the chance to meet you in London. I came to see how you are. I didn’t know until yesterday that you were here in Brussels, or I would have come to visit sooner. Please call me Meg.”

Claire led the way to a small sitting room that overlooked the main road. “I am guessing this is more than a social call. You must know you are courting scandal by coming here. Is it because of my brother-in-law, Charles Wilton, that you’ve come?” Meg felt a frisson of surprise climb her back at Claire’s frankness.

“No. I came because you are alone, and no doubt worried about . . . Lieutenant Napier. My husband is also away from town, you see.”

Claire’s face crumpled. “Daniel said he must prove himself. We cannot marry, since I am still Augustus’s wife. Daniel is out on a scouting mission. I am very afraid. If he does not come back, what will I do? I love him. I don’t think I can live without him. I have no money—the necklace everyone envied was made of paste. Augustus gambled away every penny. I sold my wedding ring to buy my passage here. If Daniel is killed—”

Meg swallowed her own knot of fear. “He must come back,” she whispered, speaking of both Daniel Napier and Nicholas.

“You are afraid for Temberlay too,” Claire said.

Meg nodded. “He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“I’m glad you are, and that you came today.” Claire rose and went to the window, and parted the lace curtains to gaze out into the street. “You must forgive me. I find myself checking the road for signs of Daniel a hundred times a day.”

Meg studied dappled shadows of the lace on Claire’s pale cheek. “I came to ask you something, Claire. A favor.”

Claire turned. “A favor?”

“Your sister, Lady Wilton. I understand she had a child with Nicholas.” She raised her chin as she felt her cheeks heat.

“Oh. You’ve heard that bit of gossip,” Claire said. “You should know—”

“I don’t wish to cause trouble. Please don’t imagine I would do such a thing. I only wished to ask if I might visit her, meet her son. You see, if Temberlay does not—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “The dukedom will need an heir, and I thought that possibly . . .” The words, the idea that she would never see Nicholas again stuck in her throat.

Claire came and sat beside her. “Oh, Meg. There are things you need to know. My sister and Wilton had an argument. He had a mistress, and Lavinia was jealous. When he refused to give the woman up, Lavinia told him that their daughter was not Wilton’s. It was an unforgivable lie. She chose the first name that came into her head when he demanded to know who the father was. There was a copy of the
London Times
on Charles’s desk, and she saw the name of an officer who had left London some months before. She told him Captain Lord Nicholas Hartley had been her lover.”

Claire went to a small desk in the corner of the room and ran her hand over the lid. Meg watched her, her heart in her throat.

“Lavinia never even met Nicholas. I think even Wilton knew that it was a lie, but Lavinia had borne him only a daughter, and he was tired of her. Her thoughtless lie gave him a way to be rid of her. Wilton swore he’d have revenge. He sent Lavinia to the country, separated her from Charlotte, their daughter. He sent his own daughter to a foundling home that very day, wouldn’t even allow Lavinia to see her child.”

She opened the desk and took out a packet of letters tied with a blue ribbon. “Nor would he let my sister write to her family, or have friends near. My mother pleaded with him to tell us where she was, but he refused, and under the law there was little we could do. We feared she was dead by his hand.”

She untied the ribbon, pulled out one envelope. “Then I received a letter from her, smuggled out somehow. I went to see Wilton, demanded that he let me see her.” She reddened. “He insisted I do something for him first.” She shut her eyes.

“What did he make you do?” Meg asked. Her skin prickled, remembering Wilton’s hands on her in the curricle.

“He insisted I marry a friend of his, Augustus Howard. I was in love with Daniel, planned to marry him, but my sister had begged for my help. What could I do? Wilton encouraged Augustus to pay a large debt my father owed, and then my parents forced me to marry him. When I returned from the wedding trip, my sister was dead.”

She looked at the letters. “A few weeks ago, a servant who had been with her at her death brought me the letters she’d written me in those long months. She said my sister died of guilt and grief.”

She handed Meg one of the yellowed letters. “There is one she meant for Nicholas, a warning that Wilton meant to harm him, or to destroy his family if he could not reach Nicholas in person. Forgive me. I should have given it to Nicholas the moment I read it, but it was nearly two years old by then. I decided to leave Augustus, go away with Daniel the next day. When I return to London, I will look for Charlotte, try and find her, but she is not Nicholas’s child, and could never be heir to Temberlay.”

Meg stared at the letter in her hand. It explained many of the accusations in David’s journal. A single lie, and a ruthless man had destroyed so many lives. She also knew of Julia Leighton from the pages of the journal, David’s fiancée. She understood now the kindness Nicholas had shown the frightened young woman, realized her child was not Nicholas’s son.

He must come home, Meg sent up a prayer.
He has to live, if only so I can tell him I love him.

Chapter 67

“H
old on, Napier,” Nicholas murmured. The young lieutenant lay on the floor of a barn, bleeding from a bullet wound that had just missed shattering his knee. He had no time to spare Napier more than a quick glance. They were surrounded by French soldiers, and under fire. They’d be lucky to make it out alive.

“If I don’t make it, please tell Claire that I love her,” Napier said. “She’s waiting for me in Brussels.”

“You can tell her yourself,” Nicholas said with more confidence than he felt. He wondered who would tell Meg that he’d been killed and what they’d say of his final moments. He’d kissed her forehead as he’d left the warmth of her bed, whispered that he loved her. He licked the dust from his lips now, wishing he could kiss her once more.

In his pocket he had information that Wellington would need, maps of Napoleon’s planned route from Paris to the Belgian border. The wily French emperor had set a trap for the allies, sending a small number of troops west, in hopes they’d race to meet them while he crossed the border at Charleroi, an easy march from Brussels.

It had been luck that he’d found the maps at all. He’d stumbled across Napier, separated from his patrol and wandering in the countryside, a sitting duck. They’d found shelter in a stable, and a French courier had chanced upon the same haven, with a pretty French milkmaid to tumble. When the man shed his clothes, Nicholas went through his pocket and took the maps.

“Are they regular soldiers?” Napier asked now. He reloaded his pistol and passed it to Nicholas. A musket ball came through the window and buried itself in the wall beside Nicholas. The splinters stung his cheek.

“They’re too clever to be regular French troops,” Nicholas replied. They’d found him only hours after the maps went missing. He waited for the next shot to tell him where to aim, and fired. A man screamed and fell from behind a hayrick and lay still in the dust of the farmyard. “One more down,” he said to Napier, as he passed back the empty pistol.

“We’re running out of shot, Temberlay. How many more are there?”

Nicholas scanned the farmyard, the outbuildings and the house. There were a dozen hiding places, most of them empty now. “Three or four, I’d say. Possibly fewer.” He shot again, heard a grunt, and smiled. “Fewer still.”

Screams broke his concentration. A man dragged a woman out of the farmhouse with his pistol pointed at her head. “Is that you, Hartley?” her captor asked in French, scanning the barn. “Come out, or I’ll shoot the woman. You should know there are children inside, and I’m quite willing to kill—” The woman’s tearful pleas cut him off. He cuffed her to silence, and Nicholas’s eyes narrowed.

“D’you know him, Temberlay?” Napier whispered.

“Ferrau.” Nicholas growled the name. “I thought he was dead.” Judging by the terrible scar on the side of his face, he almost had been. Nicholas had left him bleeding the last time they’d met, before his second escape from French custody. He wasn’t usually so careless with enemies of Ferrau’s caliber, but he’d been in a hurry.

“Can you hit him without harming the woman?” Napier asked.

“Not with a killing shot,” Nicholas said.

Ferrau moved into the middle of the farmyard as if the outcome was already in his favor. Nicholas had always hated the French spy’s arrogance. “I have men pointing pistols at the heads of the little ones inside, Hartley. I seem to recall you had a weakness for protecting women and children. It’s how I captured the first time,
n’est-ce pas
? I have heard rumors that you inherited a title. Has it made you so jaded you’re willing to take innocent souls to hell with you now?”

“What makes you so sure I will be the one to die, Ferrau?” Nicholas called.

The Frenchman smiled, the grin twisting the ugly scar. “How many men do you have in there with you? As I recall, you prefer to work alone. I have a dozen soldiers on my side. Come out and I’ll shoot you cleanly, give you a good death. You’ve stolen something that belongs to me. You need only return it and admit that I have won. You are a poor spy, Hartley, and a terrible thief.”

“Now what could I possibly have that belongs to you? Last time I saw you, you were blubbering over that scratch I gave you.”

Ferrau pointed the gun at the woman and fired into her arm. She screamed as her striped apron turned crimson and blood sprayed Ferrau’s face. He held her up, refusing to let her fall. “The next bullet kills her if you do not come out,
mon ami
.”

Nicholas’s gut tightened. He had only minutes before she bled to death. He kept his face impassive as he studied his old adversary.

Ferrau took a second pistol out of his belt and pointed it at her head. “Shall I blow her head off?”

Nicholas took the map out of his pocket and hid it under the straw where Napier could reach it. “Let her go. I’m coming out,” he called out to Ferrau. Lieutenant Napier was pale and sweating. “Stay quiet,” he told Napier. “Take the map and ride out at nightfall if I don’t win this round.”

“You can’t go out there—he’ll kill you!”

“No he won’t,” Nicholas said. “Not right away. We have a history, you see. He’ll want to torture me awhile before he kills me.”

He tucked a loaded pistol into Napier’s hand. The gun shook. The young lieutenant would need help soon.

He lifted the heavy bar and the door swung open. He tossed the empty pistol in the yellow dust at Ferrau’s feet. In Spain the dust had been red.

“Let her go.”

Ferrau instantly dropped the woman into the dirt and turned his pistol on Nicholas. She crawled away, whimpering.

“Now return what you stole.”

Nicholas frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ferrau reddened. “You were seen leaving that stable. You are not as clever as you think. You seem to have lost your touch after so many years of dissipation. I shot the courier for his stupidity. Imagine what I will do to you.”

Nicholas looked over his old enemy. Like Nicholas, he usually wore civilian clothes while out on a mission, yet today he had on the same style of military greatcoat that Napoleon favored. It suggested the French army was close by, and he was on his way to join them. Ferrau wore a glittering military decoration over the place where his heart would have been if he’d had one.

“I regret my offer to kill you quickly, but I am in a hurry.” He pointed his pistol at Nicholas’s heart. “But I can spare a few minutes to hear you beg for your life.”

Nicholas stared into the barrel of the gun. He had come to war not caring what happened to him. He intended to acquit himself bravely and honorably on the field of battle and leave this life a hero. But he realized now that he didn’t want to die. He wanted to go home to his wife.

“Check my pockets, Ferrau—there’s nothing in them but my watch.”

Ferrau suddenly changed his aim and fired at someone behind Nicholas. Napier slumped against the barn door. “I thought you were alone. Are the maps in his pocket? The next bullet goes through your knee,
mon ami
. Then I’ll shoot your fingers off, one at a time, then your ears . . .”

Napier was screaming, rolling in agony on the straw. It was impossible to tell how badly he was hurt.

Nicholas turned back to Ferrau and shrugged. “Now how can we discuss things with all this screaming? Let me get one of the others in the barn to help him, and I’ll see what I can remember about—maps, was it? I’ve been drinking rather a lot in the past few days.” His eyes bored into the Frenchman’s. “Dissipation.”

A flicker passed through Ferrau’s eyes as he quickly glanced into the dark interior of the barn, and Nicholas knew. His men were dead, and Ferrau was alone.

“Temberlay, move!” Napier croaked, and Nicholas dove. Daniel’s shot went wide, but it gave him time to draw his own gun, and his shot hit the Frenchman in the eye, and he dropped without a sound. The dust darkened under his head, a black halo. This time Nicholas leaned over the corpse, making certain he was dead.

Nicholas went to Napier. He had a second wound in the arm, a mere scratch, but his leg was bleeding again. “Is he dead?” he whispered, his white face sheened with sweat.

“Yes, at last,” Nicholas said. He retrieved the maps.

“Will you tell Claire that I did my duty?” Napier sighed. “She’s with child—”

Nicholas unpinned Ferrau’s gaudy medal and put it in the lieutenant’s tunic. “Something to show her when you see her. Those look like real diamonds,” he murmured.

He thought of Meg, wondered if possibly— He shook the thought away. He wanted to be there, see her face when—if—

But that pleasure would have to wait.

He bandaged Napier’s wounds as best he could, dosed him with rum, and pulled the lieutenant up behind him on Hannibal and rode north.

Blessedly, Napier fainted after a few miles. When Nicholas reached British lines, he tucked the maps into Napier’s tunic. “Get him to headquarters in Brussels as quickly as possible, he has information Wellington will need to see.”

He turned Hannibal’s head.

“Where the devil are you going?” the major asked.

“Charleroi. That’s where Napoleon will cross the border,” he said.

Nicholas spurred Hannibal along the road. It was nearly dusk. Lives were at stake, including his own. He looked down at the ducal signet ring on his finger. He had a duty, to his wife, his country, and Temberlay.

If his luck held, he’d see them all again.