The Duke's Downfall (10 page)

“Most assuredly, Lady Clymore,” Teddy said, cheerfully agreeing with the countess. “Just as seeing Lady Betsy dance with a duke will make a much greater impression upon his lordship than merely hearing me tell of it.”

“It will make an even larger impression on His Grace,” Betsy threatened, her temper and the memory of her humiliation at the hands of the Duke of Braxton overriding discretion. “An impression the size of my reticule, which I will most assuredly put in his head if he so much as dares to come near me.”

Again Lady Clymore trod upon her toes. But this time Betsy trod back.

“Ouch!” her ladyship squawked, more from surprise than pain. “That’s my gouty foot, you wretched gel!”

“Fustian,” Betsy said, turning her attention to Teddy. “How do you know His Grace stood up with me?”

Tiny sparks gleamed in her deep blue eyes. If he fed them a bit of fuel, Teddy thought, perhaps he could goad Betsy into telling him what happened at Lady Pinchon’s rout to set her and Charles at odds.

“Why, he told me, of course.”

The spark dimmed a bit, with relief, Teddy guessed, but her gaze narrowed a fraction. “Did he say anything else?”

“He mentioned that he loaned you his coat.”

The spark flared, almost but not quite burst into flame. “Did he say why?”

“I believe he said you took a chill while walking in the garden.”

“What?” Lady Clymore shrieked, leaping from the settee firmly onto her gouty foot. “I shall call him out!”

“Sit down, Granmama.” Betsy’s voice was cool, but her eyes were not. They never wavered from Teddy’s face, and flickered vividly with sapphire flame. “I went nowhere near the garden with His Grace. I merely threatened to slap him for even suggesting it.”

“That is sufficient grounds for a challenge!” Lady Clymore declared, fumbling beneath her shawl for the pockets of her morning gown. “A glove! I shall need a glove! And a second—”

“Granmama, sit.” Tearing her gaze from Teddy, Betsy grasped her ladyship’s wrist and tugged her down on the settee. “As it happens, His Grace said nothing about the garden. He said pardon, which I mistook for garden.”

“He did? Oh! Well then,” Lady Clymore blustered huffily. “Loud as the demmed music was I don’t wonder. My head is still ringing from it.”

“’Twas not just the music, Granmama. I stuffed lamb’s wool in my ears.”

“Lamb’s wool!” her ladyship squawked. “Wretched gel! Did you not think to share it with me?”

“I also mistook His Grace to say bother when he said brother,” Betsy said, her gaze swinging back to Teddy, slitted and smoldering with suspicion.

“Well, of course he did! You told me that! ‘Twas the reason he came, you said, to make you cry off from—” Lady Clymore broke off her tirade and turned her head to add her fearsome glare to the one Betsy had trained upon Teddy. “You put the idea in his head, didn’t you, you scamp?”

“I must own that I did, my lady,” Teddy confessed.

“How could you?” The tears in Betsy’s eyes gleamed more with hurt than fury. Boru sidled around the corner of the settee, laid his head in her lap, and rolled mournful brown eyes at Teddy.

Lady Clymore rose purposefully. “Give me your glove, you ungrateful, perfidious pup.”

“I ask only a chance to explain myself,” Teddy replied, getting quickly to his feet. “If my reasons do not suit my lady I will name my seconds.”

Betsy and her grandmother exchanged a look, then the countess sat down. “We are listening,” she said coldly.

“I beg you recall his lordship’s reaction when I told him Lady Betsy danced last night with a duke. Not just any duke, but an unwed duke.”

Betsy flushed guiltily,       for the advantage in leading Julian to think she’d attracted the attention of a peer of greater rank had already selfishly occurred to her. “Of course we recall it, and our own shameful part in furthering the notion that His Grace stood up with me for purely social reasons, but that hardly excuses you—”

“Certainly it does not,” Teddy cut in. “I most deeply regret that I was unable to apprise you of what I had done, but Charles locked me in my room with my valet and my Latin grammar last evening. I could not even send you a note.”

“Knows you well, doesn’t he?” Lady Clymore observed.

“Indeed he does, my lady.” Teddy grinned unabashedly. “It struck me upon first hearing of Lady Betsy’s plight that the interest of a duke would be the very thing to keep her cousin at bay until she can make an equitable match.”

Betsy’s eyes widened with alarm. “Surely you did not suggest such a thing to His Grace!”

“Of course not,” Teddy assured her. “I merely led him to believe that you and I were on the verge of eloping to Gretna Green.”

Lady Clymore made a noise in her throat that was more moan than groan, clapped a hand over her eyes, and fell heavily back against the cushions of the settee.

“You what?” Betsy gaped at Teddy, the color draining from her face.

“I could hardly tell Charles the truth,” he replied logically, “and ask him to pretend interest in you.”

“Why ever not?” The countess demanded, lowering her hand from her face just as a knock sounded at the saloon doors. “Yes, Iddings. What is it?”

“My lady,” he said, stepping into the room. “The Earl of Clymore has taken himself no farther than the flagway outside the gates.”

“What the devil is he doing there?”

“It would appear that he is turning away visitors.”

“What?” Betsy shrieked along with her grandmother, following on the dowager’s heels—as Teddy and Boru followed on hers—when Lady Clymore leapt from the settee and rushed into the foyer behind Iddings.

A frown on his face and a spying glass in his hand, George stood at one of the tall windows fronting the courtyard. He stepped aside, drawing the velvet drapery with him to give Lady Clymore, Betsy, and Teddy a better view.

Laying a hand on Boru’s head as he wiggled between them, Betsy looked across the courtyard and through the iron spikes of the fence at Julian, strolling up and down the flagway. A discreet distance away, a hired hackney waited, the driver lounging in his box. A growl rumbled in Boru’s throat, but Betsy soothed him by scratching his ears as a carriage swung into the square and stopped before the house.

By the time the coachman placed the steps and opened the door, Julian was there to greet the occupant. Betsy watched them shake hands, saw her cousin stretch an arm across the gentleman’s shoulders and draw him away from the gates.

“Who is that?” Lady Clymore demanded, all but pressing her nose to the glass as well. “I cannot quite make out his features.”

“’Tis difficult to tell at this distance.” Teddy stood on tiptoe and craned his neck. “But it may be the Marquess of Claxton.”

The name, at least, was familiar to Betsy. She’d last seen it earlier that morning—penned in a horrible hand at the bottom of the most dreadful poem she’d ever read.

“‘Ere, m’lord.” George offered his spying glass. “Kep’ this when I left the docks.”

“Good fellow.” Teddy opened the glass and squinted into the eyepiece. “It is Claxton. And look! He is returning to his carriage.”

“Let me see.” Betsy claimed the glass and raised it in time to see the marquess clap Julian on the shoulder in a congratulatory fashion before remounting the steps and disappearing inside his carriage.

“Give me that." Lady Clymore snatched the glass, but Betsy did not need it to see the triumphant grin that spread across her cousin’s face when the coach rolled away out of the square. “Come back, you clunch!” the countess shrieked furiously.

Betsy shot a simmering glare at Teddy. “What do you make of this?”

“I would guess,” he replied grimly, “that his lordship has persuaded Claxton that his time is wasted here.”

“Snake,” Betsy hissed murderously as she swung back to the window and watched Julian resume his apparently casual stroll around the square. It was one thing to scheme herself free of unwanted suitors, but quite another for her cousin to do so.

“I shall summon the watch!” Lady Clymore declared.

“To what end, my lady?” Teddy countered. “‘Tis public street and his lordship is an earl. He can further claim acquaintance with you to explain his presence."

“I will not allow that despicable upstart to chase off Betsy’s suitors!” With a loud thwack, Lady Clymore collapsed the spying glass between her hands. “I will shoot him and say I mistook him for a cut purse. Anyone who knows Dameron will not doubt me. Iddings! The dueling pistols!”

“Wait, Granmama.” Betsy turned toward her, a devilish gleam in her eyes. “Isn’t it time for Boru’s exercise?”

At the mention of his name, the hound turned his head from the window, whined, and wagged his tail.

“Why, yes.” Lady Clymore smiled with fiendish glee. “I believe it is.”

“I’ll fetch his lead,” George said, darting away toward the kitchen.

“Soames! My pelisse!” Betsy shouted for her abigail, hiked her skirts, and raced for the stairs, her lacy petticoat frothing about her ankles as she sprang up them two at a time.

“I’ll get my hat.” Grinning, Teddy rubbed his hands together and crossed to the hall table to collect it.

“Let’s leave nothing to chance.” Lady Clymore nodded sagely to Iddings. “Bring the pistols.”

Chapter Ten

The butler returned from the game room with a pair of silver-inlaid Forsyth pistols in a mahogany case just as Betsy came pelting downstairs in a pink pelisse and bonnet that matched her gown, and George came back with Boru’s lead. Once the hound was securely leashed, Iddings opened the door, and Betsy took Teddy’s arm.

With her reticule looped over her elbow, she went first down the steps, at the bottom tugging Teddy aside to let Boru and George pass. Eagerly the hound towed the footman across the chilly, sun-splashed courtyard, where young Lord Earnshaw’s groom and dark green curricle waited.

“Be sure you shoo him this way!” Lady Clymore called.

“Don’t even think it,” Betsy warned Teddy. “She might actually shoot him."

Lifting one hand to her bonnet, she rounded the gatepost behind George and Boru in time to see Julian, some few yards ahead on the flagway, raise his cane to the brown-haired urchin boy and his little dog.

“Stop!” she cried, breaking into a run as Julian’s cane came down.

The boy dodged the blow and dove for the gutter, the terrier yelped, and Boru let out howl. As he raised his cane again, Julian shot a glare over his shoulder, his jaw dropping at the sight of the huge hound dragging a sprawled George behind him as he lunged past Betsy. The footman clung desperately to the lead, but his weight was too great. The leather snapped, freeing Boru to the hunt with a second joyful howl. Grabbing his hat, Julian bolted for the hackney waiting near the mouth of the square.

“Boru! Come back!” Betsy skidded to a halt, bit off her glove, and stuck her fingers in the corners of her mouth.

The long, piercing whistle she gave had no effect. Baying his bloodcurdling wolf’s cry, Boru ran at full stride in pursuit of his quarry.

“I’ll get ‘im, m’lady.” George pushed himself off the pavement and went racing after the hound.

Praying the footman would catch him, Betsy rushed toward the boy, with Teddy a step or two behind her. Arms wrapped protectively around his dog, he huddled in a pile of leaves blown into the gutter. He threw back his head when Betsy fell on her knees beside him and gripped his shoulders, his eyes blue and huge in his pale, pinched face. First with fear at the sight of Teddy, then with wonder and recognition when Betsy smoothed her ungloved hand over his dirty forehead and ragged hair.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“N-no, m’lady.”

“And Scraps?”

“‘E’s all right. Just skeered.”

The crack of a pistol made Betsy jerk her head around to see her grandmother on the steps of the house, the Forsyth pistol gripped in her hand, smoking and pointed skyward. She swung back then and saw Julian, no more than five steps ahead of Boru, fling open the hackney door and dive inside.

When a second shot rang out, the horses reared in their traces, the jolt slapping the door shut in Boru’s face. With a furious howl, he leapt up the side of the coach in a vain attempt to reach Julian. The driver did his best, but by now his horses were beyond control. As soon as their front hooves touched ground they bolted, lurching the hackney away from the gutter and across the square.

“Boru, no!” Betsy shouted, pulling the boy with her as she scrambled to her feet. “Boru, stop!”

She whistled again, but futilely, for Boru was beyond hearing. Clutching the boy and the squirming, yapping terrier in his arms to her skirts, she watched helplessly as the hackney careened out of Berkeley Square onto Davies Street with Boru howling and nipping at the rear wheels and George running valiantly behind.

Even when safely ensconced in a sturdy, well-sprung coach, the streets of London were dangerous. For an overzealous wolfhound intent only on running his quarry to ground they were certain peril.

“If Boru suffers so much as a scratch, I will shoot Julian myself!” Betsy threatened, clenching her hands into fists and drawing the boy closer.

“Come along, quickly.” Teddy closed an urgent hand on her elbow. “We’ll follow in my curricle.”

“Me an’ Scraps’ll point the way.” Wriggling free of Betsy, the boy put his dog down and wrapped the string around his wrist. “‘Urry up, mister!”

His rags flying around him, the boy dashed away. Scraps ran alongside, barking and limping only a little. Wheeling about and gesturing with one arm, Teddy shouted at his groom to bring his curricle.

Betsy murmured prayers and stifled tears. She hadn’t reckoned on the boy and his dog appearing, Julian’s cruelty—though she’d long suspected her cousin possessed such a streak—or Boru’s reaction to it. Nonetheless, if anything happened to her darling, the blame could be laid on her dish. Even so, she would shoot Julian.

In a clatter of hooves the curricle arrived, drawn by a pair of gleaming blacks. The tiger jumped off before the wheels stopped turning, handed Betsy up onto the dark green leather seat, then passed the leads to his young master and stood clear as Teddy vaulted into the curricle.