I Married the Duke (2 page)
Plymouth
August 1817
L
ucien Westfall, former commander of the HMS
Victory
, Comte de Rallis, and heir to the Duchy of Lycombe, sat in the corner of the tavern because long ago he had learned that with a corner at his back he could detect danger approaching from any direction. Now the corner provided the additional benefit of a limited landscape to study.
On this occasion the landscape especially intrigued.
“Ye’ve got the air o’ a hawk about ye, lad.” Gavin Stewart, ship’s physician and chaplain, hefted his tankard of ale. “Is she still looking at ye?”
“No. She is looking at you. Glaring, rather.” Luc took up from the table the letter from his uncle’s land steward, folded the pages and tucked them into his waistcoat pocket. “I think she wants you gone.”
“Wants to get at ye. They all do. ’Tis the scar.” Gavin lounged back in his chair and scratched his whiskers, salty black and scant. “Wimmen like dangerous men.”
“Then you are doomed to a lonely life, old friend. But you were already, I suppose.”
“Hazard o’ the vows,” the priest chortled. “Bonnie lass?”
“Possibly.” Pretty eyes, bright even across the lamp-lit tavern, and keenly assessing him. Pretty nose and pretty mouth too. “Though possibly a schoolteacher.” A cloth cinched around her head covered her hair entirely, and her cloak was fastened up to her neck. Beneath it her collar was white and high. “Trussed up as tight as a virgin.”
“The mither o’ our Lord was a virgin, lad,” Gavin admonished. Then: “An’ what’s the fun if a man’s no’ got to work for the treasure?”
Luc lifted a brow. “Those were the days, hm, Father?”
Gavin laughed aloud. “Those were the days.” He was broad in the chest like his Scottish forbearers, and his laughter had always been a balm to Luc. “But since when do ye be knowing a thing about schoolteachers?”
Since at the age of eleven when Luc had escaped the estate where their guardian kept him and his younger brother and blundered onto the grounds of a finishing school for gentlewomen. With a soft reprimand, the headmistress had returned him home to a punishment he could not have invented in his worst nightmares.
Luc had not believed his guardian’s rants about the evils of temptation found in female flesh. Of course, he hadn’t believed anything the Reverend Absalom Fletcher said after the first few months. Bad men often lied. So he escaped the following day and ran to the school, hoping to find the headmistress out walking again, and again the following day, and again, seeking an ally. Or merely a haven. Each time the footmen dragged him back to his guardian’s house, his punishment for the disobedience was more severe.
He had borne it all with silent tears of defiance upon his cheeks. Until Absalom discovered his true weakness. Then Luc stopped disobeying. Then he became the model ward.
“I know about women,” Luc grumbled. “And that one is trouble.” He took a swallow of whiskey. It burned, and he liked that it burned. Every time she looked at him he got an awfully bad feeling.
Her movements were both confident and compact as she surveyed the crowded dockside tavern with an upward tilt of her chin as though she were the queen and this a royal inspection. Clearly she did not belong here.
Gavin set his empty tankard on the table. “I’ll be leaving ye to the leddy’s pleasure.” He dragged his weathered body from the chair. Not a day over fifty, the Scot was weary of the sea that he had taken to for Luc’s sake eleven years earlier. “Don’t suppose ye’ll be wanting to have a wee bit o’ holiday at that castle o’ yours after we leave the crew off at Saint-Nazaire? Visit yer rascally brother?”
“No time. The grain won’t ship itself to Portugal.” Luc tried to shrug it off, but Gavin understood. The famine of the previous year was lingering. People were starving. They could not halt their work for a holiday.
And, quite simply, he needed to be at sea.
“Grain. Aye,” Gavin only said, and made his way out of the tavern.
Luc swallowed the remainder of his whiskey and waited. He did know women, of all varieties, and this one wasn’t even trying to feign disinterest.
She wove her way through the rowdy crowd, taking care nevertheless to touch no one in her approach. Only when she stood before him on the other side of the table could he make out her eyes—blue, bright, and wary. The hand clutching the cloak close over her bosom was slender but the veins beneath the pale skin were strong.
“You are the man they call the Pirate.” It was not a question.
Of course it wasn’t
.
“Am I?”
A single winged brow tilted upward. “They said that I was to look for the dark-haired man with a scar cutting across his eye on the right, a black-banded kerchief, and a green left eye. As you are sitting in shadow, the color of your eye is not clear to me. But you bear a scar and you cover your right eye.”
“Perhaps I am not the only man in Plymouth that answers to such a description.”
Now both brows rose. The slope of her nose was pristine, her skin without blemish and glowing in the fading sunlight slanting through the window at Luc’s back. “There aren’t any pirates now,” she said, “only poor sailors with peg legs and patched up faces from the war. It is very silly and probably disrespectful of you to call yourself that.”
“I don’t call myself much of anything at all.” Not Captain Westfall, and not the Duke of Lycombe’s heir. The latter was an unstable business in any case. Luc’s aunt, the young duchess, had never carried an infant past birth, despite five attempts. But that did not mean her sixth could not now survive. So in the year since he had left the navy to pursue another noble goal, he’d gone only by Captain Andrew of the merchant brigantine
Retribution
. Simple and without any familial complications, it served his purposes.
The Pirate was a foolish nickname his crew had given him.
“Then what is your real name, sir?” she asked.
“Andrew.”
“How do you do, Captain Andrew?” He nearly expected her to curtsy. She did not. Instead she extended her hand to shake. She wore no ring. Not a war widow, then—the war that for years had kept his brother, Christos, safely hidden in France beyond their family’s reach.
He did not take her hand.
“What do you want of me, miss, other than to lecture me on the evils of war, it seems?”
“Your manners are deplorable. Perhaps you are a pirate after all.” She seemed to consider this seriously, chewing on the inside of her lower lip. The plump lip was precisely the color of raspberries.
Tastable
.
Luc had not tasted a pair of sweet lips like that in far too long.
“I suppose you are an expert on manners, then?” he said with credible disinterest.
“I am, actually. But that is neither here nor there. I need passage to the port of Saint-Nazaire in France and I have been told that you depart for that port tomorrow. And that . . .” She studied him slowly, from his face to his shoulders and chest, and soft color crept into her cheeks. “I have been told that you are the most suitable shipmaster to transport a gentlewoman.”
“Have you? By whom?”
“Everyone. The harbormaster, the man in the shop across the street, the barman at this establishment.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are not a smuggler, are you? I understand they are still popular in some ports even since the war ended.”
“Not this port.” Not lately. “Do you believe the harbormaster, shopkeep, and yonder barman?”
Her brows dipped. “I did.” A pause, then she seemed to set her narrow shoulders. “Will you take me to Saint-Nazaire?”
“No.”
Her jaw took on that determined little tilt that made Luc’s chest feel a bit odd.
“Is it because I am a woman and you will not allow women aboard your vessel? I have heard that of pirates.”
“Madam, I am not—”
“If you are not a pirate, why do you cover your eye in that piratical manner? Is it an affectation to frighten off helpless women, or could you only find black cloth of that width and length?”
Clever-tongued witch
. She could not possibly be teasing him. Or flirting. Not this prim little schoolteacher.
“As I believe the scar makes clear, it is not an affectation, Miss . . . ?”
“Caulfield. Of London. I was recently in the personal service of a lady and gentleman of considerable status.” Her gaze flittered down his chest again. “Whom I don’t suppose you would know, actually. In any case, they employed me as a finishing governess for their daughter who is—”
“A ‘finishing’ governess?”
“It is the height of ill breeding to interrupt a lady, Captain Andrew.”
“I believe you.”
“What?”
“That you are a governess.”
Her eyes flashed—magnificent, wide, expressive eyes the color of wild cornflowers flooded with sunlight.
“A finishing governess,” she said, “teaches a young lady of quality the proper manners and social mores for entering society and leads her through that process during her first season in town until she is established. But I don’t suppose you would know anything about manners or mores. Would you, captain?”
Oh.
No
. Magnificent eyes notwithstanding, he needed a sharp-tongued virginal school mistress aboard his ship as much he needed a sword point in his left eye.
He climbed to his feet. “Listen, Miss Whoever-You-Are, I don’t run a public transport ship.”
“What sort of ship is it, then?”
“A merchant vessel.”
“What cargo do you carry?”
“Grain.” To people who could not afford such cargoes themselves. “Now, I haven’t the time for an interrogation. I’ve a vessel to fit out for departure tomorrow.”
With that jaunty tick of her chin, she darted around a chair and moved directly into his path. “You cannot frighten me with your scowl, Captain.”
“I was not attempting to either frighten or scowl. It is this inconvenient affectation, you see.” He tapped his finger to his cheek and stepped toward her.
She remained still but seemed to vibrate upon the balls of her feet now. She was a little slip of a thing, barely reaching his chin yet erect and determined.
He couldn’t resist grinning. “You don’t look any taller to me standing on your toes, you know. I am uncowed.”
Her heels hit the floor. “Perhaps you take pleasure in playing at notoriety with this pirate costume.”
“Again with the pirate accusation.” He shook his head. “You see no hook on my wrist or parrot on my shoulder, do you? And I have all the notoriety I wish without pretending a part.” Heirs to dukedoms typically did, even Luc, despite his estrangement from his uncle. But now the latest letter from the duke’s steward sounded desperate; the fortunes of Combe were in jeopardy. However much he wished to help, Luc hadn’t the authority to alter matters there. He was not the duke yet. Given his young aunt’s interesting condition, he might never be.
He closed the space between them. “As to the other matter, I take pleasure in a man’s usual amusements.” He allowed himself to give her a slow perusal. She was bound up snugger than a nun, in truth. But her lips were full, and her eyes . . .
Truly magnificent. Breathtaking. Full of emotion and intelligence he had absolutely no need of in a woman.
“I daresay,” she said. The magnificent cornflowers grew direct. “Name the price I must pay for you to give me passage to Saint-Nazaire and I will double it.”
He scanned the cloak and collar. Pretty, yes. Gently bred, indeed. Governess to society debutantes, possibly. But now she was alone and begging his help to leave Plymouth.
Suspicious
.
“You cannot pay double my price.”
“Name it and I will.”
He named a sum sufficient to sail her to every port along the Breton coast and back three times.
Her cheeks went slightly gray. Then the chin came up again. In the low-beamed tavern packed with scabrous seamen she looked like a slim young sapling in a swamp, and just as defiant. “I will pay it.”
“Will you now?” He was enjoying this probably more than he ought. “With what, little schoolteacher?”
The cornflowers narrowed. “I told you, I am a governess, a very good one sought after by the most influential families in London. I have sufficient funds.”
With a swift movement he slipped his hand into the fold of cloak about her neck and tugged it open.
She grabbed for the fabric. “What—?”
His other hand clamped about her wrist. Her gown was gray and plain along the bodice and shoulder that he exposed, but fashioned of fine quality fabric and carefully stitched. And hidden beneath the fabric stretched over her throat was a small, round lump.
“Not a little school mistress, it seems,” he said.
“As I have said.” For the first time her voice quavered.
“You do look like a governess.” Except for the spectacular eyes. “More’s the pity.”
Her breasts rose upon a quick breath, a soft pressure against his forearm that stirred a very male reaction in him that felt dispiritingly alien and remarkably good.
“My employers prefer me to dress modestly to depress the attentions of rapacious men,” she said. “Are you one of those, Captain?” Her raspberry lips were beautifully mobile. He wanted a glimpse of the sharp tongue. If it were half as tempting as her lips, he might just take her on board after all.
“Not lately,” he said. “But I’m open to inspiration.”
The raspberry lips flattened. “Captain, I care nothing for what you believe of me. I only want you to allow me to hire passage on your ship.”
“I don’t want your gold, little governess.”
“Then what payment will you accept?” She sent a frustrated breath through her nose, but her throat did a pretty little dance of nerves.
By God
, she truly was lovely. Not even her indignation could disguise the pure blue of summer blooms, dusky lashes, delicate flare of nostrils, soft swell of lips satiny as Scottish river pearls, and the porcelain curve of her throat. And her scent . . . It made him dizzy. She smelled of sweet East Indian roses and wild Provençal lavender, of Parisian four-poster beds and the comfort of a woman’s bosom clad in satins and lace, all thoroughly at odds with her modest appearance and everything else in this port town.