I Married the Duke (8 page)
“Me? Perhaps he wished to kill me? Mutiny, perhaps?”
She nodded.
“Not to fret, Miss Caulfield. The lad will be suitably questioned.”
“Are you typically the target of murderers, Captain?”
“Not usually.”
“Yet it seems not to surprise you that another man could wish you harm.”
He lifted a brow and smiled slightly. “I find that somewhat disingenuous coming from a woman who has made no secret of her opinion of my imperfect character.”
“Can you not be sincere about anything? Do you laugh at everything? Even real danger?”
“I was perfectly sincere in my fear for you when I entered that infirmary.”
Arabella’s throat got thick. “Fear?”
A knock came at the door.
“Come,” the captain called, still watching her.
“Sir,” Mr. Miles said, “Captain Masinter wishes an audience with you.”
He frowned. “Now? Before we make port?”
“His passenger insists upon it.”
“Who is his passenger, Miles?”
Mr. Miles’s voice seemed to pucker. “His lordship the Earl of Bedwyr.”
Earl?
But Arabella’s surprise was nothing to the captain’s, apparently. All amusement slid from his face. “I will pay a call on the
Victory
. Tell Mr. Church to ready the boat.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Miss Caulfield, I will instruct Mr. Miles to return your clothing to you immediately.” He moved toward the door. Then he paused and returned to her to stand very close again. “Do not leave this cabin while I am absent. Unless Dr. Stewart is here with you, lock the door and only allow Mr. Miles to enter.” His gaze scanned her face slowly, carefully. “Do I make myself clear?”
Little hot nervous jitters slipped through her. His gaze lingered upon her lips then rose again to her eyes.
“Do I?” he repeated roughly.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Then good day, ma’am.” He reached for his hat on the table and went from the cabin.
Arabella’s knees gave out. She sank to a chair.
An
earl
wished an audience with a ruffian merchant ship captain? She had never seen him, but she knew of the Earl of Bedwyr by reputation. They said he was astoundingly handsome, a seasoned gambler, and the sort of man from whom a mother should steer her innocent daughters far away. What on earth did a rakish lord want with her ship captain?
Her cheeks flushed with heat.
He was not her ship captain. His ship was merely the means to an end. In two days she would never see him again. In two days he would be nothing to her but a memory.
“T
he Devil take you, Luc! My men welcomed you aboard like a Messiah returning from the dead. It’s damned lowering, I say.” Captain Anthony Masinter of the Royal Navy pushed away his dinner plate and poured another full glass of wine, then refilled Luc’s as well. His moustached scowl was jocund.
Luc settled back in his chair at the fine mahogany table he had chosen for the captain’s day cabin when he outfitted the
Victory
for its maiden voyage six years earlier. Considerably more spacious than his quarters aboard the
Retribution
, it was the place from which he had commanded hundreds of sailors and half a dozen officers for over five years.
“The men remember the war and the glory enjoyed after battles, Tony. I am merely a reminder of that.”
A cabin steward worked silently about them, removing the remnants of their meal. He caught Luc’s eye.
“Blast it.” Tony’s palm came down on the table. “Even Cob here knows you’re blowing smoke. I tell you it’s damned provoking, captaining a ship full of sailors who want their old master back.”
“I would never say so, sir,” the steward said, and carried the dishes from the cabin.
“He would never say so,” Tony grumbled, wiping wine from his neat moustaches with an embroidered handkerchief. “Balderdash!”
“Speaking of smoke, shall we, Anthony?” From across the table, the Earl of Bedwyr’s voice held a studied air of indolence. Though cavalry once upon a time, after acceding to the earldom, Charles Camlann Westfall had cast off every vestige of the military. He wore now not the dashing gold-corded blue of the Tenth Hussars, but a plum cutaway coat with large silver buttons, a silk waistcoat embroidered with roses, and a mask of supreme ennui upon his face.
“Capital idea, Charles.” Tony stood and brought a box to the table, lit a cigar, and pushed the box toward Cam. “Then you don’t want the
Victory
?” he said loosely to Luc.
Not since he’d found another mission worth pursuing. “You know I don’t want her.”
“He couldn’t have her even if he wished,” Cam drawled.
“Right.” Tony shook his head. “The old duke doesn’t like him in the line of battle. Poor sot.” He clapped Luc on the shoulder.
“Rather,” the earl said, lifting eyes shadowed by a thatch of artfully arranged golden hair, “the old duke’s widow.” He slipped a hand draped with lacy cuff into his waistcoat and drew forth a letter bearing a wax seal. He tossed it onto the tabletop. “What say you to those tidings?”
“Luc, by golly, you’re a duke! My compliments. This calls for a toast, and a second to follow. Cob, bring the brandy!”
“He is not a duke yet, Anthony. Merely duke-in-waiting.”
Luc stared at the unopened letter in his palm. “When did it happen?”
“When did old Uncle Theodore go to his maker?” His cousin’s voice did not rise above its habitual drawl, as though coming one step closer to the dukedom himself meant nothing to him. Which it probably didn’t; Cam preferred indolence to work. “Three weeks ago, after a nasty turn for the worse. Really, Lucien, if you stayed in touch you might have known this was coming.”
The steward returned with a crystal carafe and three glasses.
Cam played absently with his gleaming watch fob, smoke curling about his shoulders. “I suppose you are still pursuing the activities you commenced when the navy ejected you?”
“Didn’t eject him. He wanted to go,” Tony said, puffing a cloud. “Noble fellow.”
The cabin was cool, the late summer wind coming off the Atlantic sifting in through the broad windows. But sweat gathered along Luc’s scar. “Why did Adina send you to tell me, Cam?” Theodore’s wife, young, beautiful, and equally as vain and vapid as her late husband, was devoted to her much older brother, Absalom Fletcher. This news would not be welcome to Fletcher. It would mean, of course, that Luc would finally return home. And so would his brother.
But Fletcher was no longer a mere cleric. Recently elevated to the episcopate, he was a powerful and influential man. The Bishop of Barris could hardly fear anything from his former wards. Nevertheless, Luc had remained at sea and Christos in France. Now, however, that would change.
“She did not send me. I volunteered.” Cam lifted a brow. “I came to commiserate, cousin.”
Tony frowned. “Now see here, Combe is a pretty place. Wouldn’t mind having a castle like that myself.”
“Luc already has a castle, Tony.”
“Not in England!”
“The title would be welcome to him, Anthony, as would the estate,” the earl murmured. “Rather, if the duchess were to lose this child like she has lost all the others, or if she were to bear a girl-child, the necessary padding of heirs to the duchy would swiftly diminish to . . . none.”
Tony choked on his brandy. “I don’t like you speaking of a man’s brother like that, Charles. Wouldn’t be surprised if Luc called you out for it. And if he don’t, I might.”
“He knows I won’t, damn his two eyes.” Luc slipped the letter into his pocket. “And you won’t either.”
“I’ll challenge the blackguard if I like, even if I do owe him a hundred guineas from that faro disaster.”
“There is a note enclosed from Adina, Lucien,” Cam said. “Are you not interested in reading our auntie’s heartfelt pleas for you to return and make it all better for her?”
“Bed her already, did you, Cam?”
Tony sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over behind him. “Damn all three of your eyes. The poor girl’s only just been widowed.”
“Sit down, you chivalrous fool.” Cam laughed with languor. “Luc is merely taunting. And the duchess is not to my tastes anyway.”
“She’s not female and married, then?” Luc finally took up his glass.
The duke had died. Long live the duke.
In the nineteen years during which Adina had been Theodore’s wife, she had lost five infants before birth. The life of the poor child she carried now was not by any means a certainty. After the fifth still birth, Theodore’s demand that Luc relinquish his command in the navy had made his concerns upon that score eminently clear.
But Luc had always assumed his uncle would recover from his illness and continue trying to make heirs. Others had grimly suggested that delicate Adina would not survive the next difficult birth, and that Theodore would swiftly take a second wife whose ability to produce heirs might meet with more success.
Now that was not possible, and because of it everything had changed.
The face of the sailor Mundy haunted Luc, like the little governess’s pleas to save the starving youth. A year after the famine now, hunger still ravaged the poor. Failed harvests the year before had decimated seed reserves, and this year’s crops were scant. He’d seen it in Portugal in the spring, France in the summer, and again in Cornwall and Devon before he departed Plymouth: peasants’ hollow cheeks, the bone-thin limbs of villagers, and children dying everywhere. Even his own family’s patrimony, a sprawling Shropshire estate, still suffered.
But he had no choice now. His current cargo must sail to Portugal without him.
Now he had one goal: he must have an heir. With the duke dead, while Adina awaited the birth of her child, the duchy was in abeyance. But if the child did not survive, or if it was a girl, Luc would inherit. He must leave his ship and return to London to find a suitable bride. The French property was modest, the Rallis title honorary; his brother Christos, who had lived at the chateau for years, could manage those. But the dukedom must never come to him. The weight of responsibility and authority would kill Christos as surely as if it were a guillotine.
Finally, Luc could no longer remain abroad. For the first time in eleven years, he must go home.
In doing so, he could see to the troubles at Combe while he still might. Theodore could not name him principal trustee to the estate. He feared that Fletcher, his uncle’s longtime friend, had been given that honor instead. Luc had only until the birth to wield authority at Combe. After the birth he would have none . . . or all.
“In point of fact, coz,” Cam said, “the duchess isn’t in any condition to be rolling about in the hay with anybody. Lovely Adina is nearly in her confinement.”
Luc’s gaze snapped up. “Already?”
“Oh, how the months fly.”
“Poor girl.” Tony shook his head. “With her record at the track, likely as not it’s all for nothing. Still, Luc’s got to hang about twiddling his thumbs waiting. Damn the aristocracy, yanking a fellow about this way and that all his life. Much better to be a commoner, I always say.”
“Your father is a baronet, Anthony,” Cam said with a slight smile.
Tony waved his cheroot about. “Nobody cares a sow’s ear about a wretched little baronet. Least of all his fifth son, don’t you know.”
“When is the child due?” Luc said.
“November.”
Less than three months. Three months, after which Absalom Fletcher could very well be the de facto master of Lycombe for years to come. Or three months until he himself became duke. It all depended on a fragile widowed duchess and her unborn infant.
Luc rubbed his scar. Casually, Cam turned his head away. But for the first time in six months, Luc did not have the urge to plow his fist into his cousin’s perfect face.
“Still and all, Luc, the poor girl could probably use a man about the place.” Tony patted the hilt of his saber. “Best you hurry home.”
“What is that monstrosity?” Cam passed an arch look over the sword. “Good God, Tony, it looks like the crown jewels.”
“Family piece.” Tony’s chest puffed out. “My great-grandfather had it as a gift from King Willie himself after his smashing success at Cherbourg, don’t you know.”
Luc stared distractedly at the glittering gems on the sword handle. A ruby caught his eye, but not nearly as large as the jewel on the little governess’s ring. He could not follow her to his chateau after all. It was for the best. He had no business courting trouble with a governess, no matter how brave and vulnerable and foolhardy she was, and no matter how her magnificent eyes looked at him with barely veiled desire and her tongue surprised him at every turn.
He swallowed the brandy in his glass, all of it, as he had the night before when he shared the darkness with a beautiful little sodden servant.
“I’ll leave the
Retribution
in Church’s command,” he said. “Will you head back to England immediately?”
Tony snorted. “The Admiralty has commanded that I put my ship at your disposal. The
Victory
sails at your leisure. Again.” He grinned upon a scowl.
Luc met his cousin’s dark gaze. Cam stared back at him, his eyes hooded.
“Why did you really volunteer to bring me the news, Cam?”
The corner of Cam’s mouth crept up. “Serendipitously, at the moment of our uncle’s demise I found myself with the pressing need to be absent from London.”
“A woman, I presume.” Luc’s scar ached. Six months ago it had also been a scandal with a woman that drove his cousin from England to France. A girl, rather. But that time Cam had surprised him. His cousin’s vice had not been what Luc imagined. By the time he understood the truth of it, of course, it was too late. His eye had been the casualty of his misjudgment.
Cam absently twirled the stem of his brandy glass. “It is always a woman that drives a rational man to behave contrary to his interests, Lucien. That you are too blind to see that”—he finally looked directly at the kerchief about Luc’s brow—“is no one’s fault but your own.”
Luc scraped back his chair and rose. The door opened and the
Victory
’s first lieutenant entered.
“Captain,” the sailor said to Masinter, “we’ve interrogated Mundy. He’ll admit only that he was hired in Plymouth by a man he had never seen before to find the
Retribution
, join the crew, and steal poison from the infirmary. He was to await further orders when they arrived in Saint-Nazaire.” He turned to Luc. “I believe he is telling the truth, sir.”
“Put the thumbscrews on the lad, did you?” Cam drawled.
“He gave you no name for the man that hired him?” Luc asked the lieutenant.
“He said he didn’t know it, sir. As to thumbs . . .” He glanced at the earl. “Mundy said that the man lacked a thumb on his left hand.”
“Thank you, Park,” Tony said. “That will be all.”
“Aye, Captain.” The officer left.
Tony scowled, this time with no pleasure. “Blast it, Luc, I don’t like a thief going freely about my ship.”
“Hold him in the bilge if you wish. I will speak with him during our return.” And learn what could be learned of the lad’s attempt at thievery. If her instincts were to be believed—her ability to read men, as she said—Mundy was not a thief by inclination but by desperation. But the poison was worrisome.
Luc went to the door. “I will see you in port, gentlemen.”
“All plans to make a sojourn to that lovely little chateau of yours are off, I suppose,” Cam said with a sigh of regret.
“Deuced shame. But old Luc’s got to take up his responsibilities after all.”
That, and avoid further private audiences with a beautiful little copper-haired servant. He would send her on to Saint-Reveé-des-Beaux and be rid of the temptation.
“
D
R.
S
TEWART, WHY
is the Royal Navy escorting us into port?” Arabella stood at the day cabin window, watching the ship keeping easy pace with them across the water.
“ ’Tis a great honor, lass.”
They would be at Saint-Nazaire shortly and she would be leaving the sea behind. But her nerves were stretched. She told herself it was because she was now within reach of her new position—within a day’s ride from the port, Dr. Stewart had told her. It was most adamantly not because she would be obliged to speak to Captain Andrew before disembarking. They had not spoken since he went aboard the naval ship the night before, and she was glad of it. Her dreams had not been of churning seas and thunder, but of him touching her.
She had never wanted a man to touch her before. That she dreamed of
him
doing so—and woke breathless, with her skirts in a tangle and skin hot—was preposterous.