The Duke's Downfall (13 page)

Expelling the breath she hadn’t realized she’d drawn and held in a long sigh of relief, Betsy lowered the book. Cautiously tucking the errant curl behind her ear, she watched Charles lift a shaky hand to his head.

“Are you all right, Your Grace?”

“I have asked you to at least call me Braxton, and yes, I am fine. Perfectly.”

He raised his right arm to steady himself against the oak tree, which stood, unfortunately, at least a foot away. Betsy’s first impulse was to rush to his aid, but instead she bit her lip and winced sympathetically as his palm pushed thin air and he keeled over on his side. When he righted himself and sat back on his hands, legs spread in front of him and breathing hard, she curved the fingers of her right hand against her breast and resisted the urge to sweep back the dark hair tumbling over his forehead.

Neither the nuance of the gesture nor the catch of her lip between her teeth went unnoticed by Julian. Unease made his jaws clamp and his fingers close around the butt of the gun as he inched closer to the edge of the trees and strained to listen.

“You... could... at... least,” Charles panted, “help ... me... rise.”

“I think it wiser not to, Your Grace.” Betsy backed further away and knelt to pick up her emptied reticule.

Something crunched beneath her right slipper as she did so. Tugging her skirts aside and lifting her heel, she plucked her grandfather’s spectacles out of the leaves. The left lens was shattered, the ear-piece hopelessly twisted.

“Drat!” Betsy stuffed them unhappily into her bag. “Now I shall have to get another pair.”

“How charming that you wear spectacles!” Charles exclaimed, a delighted grin on his face. “I do as well!”

“I don’t wear them, Your Grace. I merely carry them in my reticule.”

Sifting through the windfall, Betsy uncovered her grandfather’s snuffbox. A bright scarlet oak leaf trembled by one point from the lid. She pinched it free between her thumb and forefinger, then let it go, her gaze locking with Charles’s as she watched it flutter away. His lips were parted and his eyes wide with astonishment.

“You take snuff as well?”

“Hardly. I carry it in my reticule merely for the effect, as I do—or did—my grandfather’s spectacles.”

Charles blinked at her bewilderedly. “Eh?”

“Never mind, Your Grace.” Betsy sighed and dropped the snuffbox into her bag. “It is a long story, and would only make your head worse for hearing it.”

“There is nothing wrong with my head,” he snapped irritably, “and you may tell the tale when I call upon you on the morrow.”

Betsy smiled and arched a dubious eyebrow. “I don’t think so, Your Grace.”

“You don’t think what?”

“I do not think you will call upon me, on the morrow or any other day.”

“Now see here-—” Charles began, grunting with effort as he pushed with both arms and tried again to stand.

Betsy scrambled to her feet but needlessly, for the duke could not even budge himself from the ground. Gasping for breath, he fell back on the heels of his hands, an angry frown and a gleam of perspiration on his face.

“That tears it!” Charles smashed a furious fist into the ground. “With your temperament, lady, I fear I must forbid you books once we are wed.”

In the trees, Julian bit his knuckle and nearly swooned. It wasn’t a hum. It was the truth, the awful truth. Grasping a beech sapling for support, he swung away from the clearing. The rocks loomed closer, larger, and sharper than ever. Hell and damnation. He’d inherited an earldom, but not a single bloody farthing to support it.

Julian raked an unsteady hand through his hair and cursed himself again for allowing Lady Clymore to bring Betsy to London. Wretched old clutchfist. She’d made it clear she would not allow the estates to fall into disrepair, but not one penny more would she part with. He could mortgage them, he supposed, but he’d have to shoot the countess first, for she would surely shoot him when she found it out.

Again, Julian’s fingers strayed to the pistol. Or shoot Braxton before he offered for Betsy, for as things stood now, he’d be risking the only thing of value he possessed—his unblemished reputation. as a gentleman—if he refused the duke. If only he’d come to town sooner. If only he hadn’t underestimated Betsy’s charms, though in truth he still hadn’t the foggiest notion what they were. If only ... if only—if only Betsy would refuse him. The wondrous but remote possibility drew Julian up short and spun him around.

“Nothing to say?” Charles prodded smugly. “Excellent. Then we shall deal very well together.”

“No, Your Grace, we will not,” Betsy replied staunchly. “And if I thought for an instant you had any inkling of what you are saying, I would, indeed, have a great deal to say.”

“Damn and blast it! I cannot stand, but I am not an idiot! I am not the least bit—” Charles broke off, fist raised to pound the ground again. “You’ve heard me called His Dottiness. That’s what this is. That’s why you think I’m a raving lunatic.”

“Yes, Your Grace. I mean, no, that’s not why.”

“What then?” Charles ground out exasperatedly. “Please, Your Grace. I’ve no wish to further humiliate either of us.” Betsy gathered up her bedraggled skirts, “Let me find Teddy and your coachman. You should lie down and rest, perhaps take a draft of laudanum. It will help you to sleep and to forget your intention to call upon me.”

“Don’t you dare move!”

The thunder in his voice—and the groan of agony that followed—turned Betsy in her tracks as she wheeled away to find and fetch Teddy. Charles was gritting his teeth and clutching his head again. What little Betsy could see of his face between his fingers was a frightening chalky-gray. Her tender heart overcame her sense and she ran to him, falling on her knees at his side.

“You should not shout,” she said, pushing her hands on his shoulders and trying to make him lie down. “It will only make the blood pound in your head.”

“No, lady. You make my blood pound.” Charles let  go of his head and caught her arms, his gaze and his grip overwarm.

With fever rather than ardor, Betsy was certain. His eyes were glassy with it, his throat flushed.

“‘Not fire nor stars,’” he said to her “‘have stronger bolts than those of Aphrodite.’”

“I am not Aphrodite! Any more than you are Euripides!”

“Well, of course I’m not!” Charles struggled indignantly up on his hands. “I was merely trying to be romantic.”

“I think it more likely, Your Grace, that your brain is so scrambled you don’t even know who I am!”

“My brain is not scrambled!” He shouted, winced, and sucked a breath through clenched teeth. “Pray tell me why you keep insisting otherwise. Softly, I beg you, lest I disgrace myself on your slippers.”

“It was so with my father,” Betsy said, sotto voce, as she knelt beside him. “He, too, suffered a blow on the head and breathed his last believing I was my mother.”

“God in heaven.” Charles swept a hand over his eyes, then fixed the soberest gaze he could muster on Betsy. It was difficult, for her features kept blurring. “I’ve had a nasty crack on the noggin, I’ll grant you, but even so, I can assure you—most fervently, my lady-—that it would be impossible to mistake you for anyone else.”

“Prove it, then. Who am I?”

"Clearly," Charles replied, leaning wearily back on his hands, “you are my downfall.”

It was just as well she’d laid Ovid’s
Amores
aside when she’d picked up her reticule, Betsy thought furiously, else she might have bashed him with it again. She still had her tiny little fists, but the knuckles of her right hand ached abominably. And so did her heart.

“Spanish coin, I’m sure.” Scraping together what little remained of her dignity, Betsy rose. “I think it safe to say you are well on your way back to being yourself, Your Grace. Good day.”

Dropping him a curtsey, she lifted her nose and her skirts and fled in search of Teddy.

“Damn and blast it, come back here!” he bellowed.

But Betsy only ran faster, leaves spilling from the battered bonnet against her shoulder blades. Gritting his teeth against the sickening, thudding ring in his ears, Charles banged his fists against the ground in frustration.

“Temper, temper, my lord.” Julian tsked, grinning with glee, and waited to see if Braxton would be so undignified as to cast up his accounts in the middle of Hyde Park.

When he rolled over on his back and flung an arm over his eyes, Julian sighed with disappointment and made his way back through the trees to the hired hackney. The driver, a scruffy-looking fellow with several days beard blackening his features, turned in his box as Julian handed up his pistol.

“Missed ‘im, eh?”

“Mind your horses,” the earl replied curtly as he opened the coach door and climbed inside. “Keep straight to this road and take me to White’s.”

“Aye, guv,” the driver responded, clucking his horses forward without complaint.

The longer, more circuitous route would ensure that Julian’s presence went unknown by Betsy, for it would not do at all for her to know he’d witnessed her seduction by the Duke of Braxton. Not yet, at least, Julian thought, pursing his lips as he leaned against the threadbare squabs and considered how best—if at all—to make use of what he had seen and heard.

So long as she believed the duke’s screws had been sufficiently loosened by the clout he’d taken on the head, he would keep the incident to himself. But if Braxton were able to convince her otherwise, or if it proved the duke was not after all dicked in the nob, then, Julian decided, he would be forced to reveal what he knew. First to Lady Clymore, then to Betsy if the countess proved arbitrary, and if necessary, to the whole of the ton.

Blackmail was an ugly word, but so was poverty. If he could not otherwise win Betsy’s promise, then he would extort it. Not without compunction, but the means justified the end. He would find a way to make it up to her, though precisely how he hadn’t a clue— until the hackney rolled out of the park onto Knightsbridge and he saw Boru, tongue lolling and kite strings snarled in his tail, galloping along the verge.

Neither his mistress, Lady Clymore, or the duke’s pup of a brother were anywhere to be seen. A perfectly brilliant plan for redeeming himself in Betsy’s eyes sprang into Julian’s head.

Snatching up his walking stick, he thumped the roof of the coach, then leaned out the window and shouted to the driver, “Follow that dog!”

Chapter Thirteen

Perhaps logic and reason didn’t solve everything Charles thought, as he lay battered and aching beneath the oak tree. Emotion didn’t, either; he was certain of that—for it was the very thing that had landed him flat on his back, marveling at the fact that he’d kissed Lady Elizabeth Keaton. Not once, God help him, but twice.

Could it be that this was his mother’s meaning when she’d said he wasn’t half so clever as he thought? Or was his brain really scrambled?

Whether it was or not, he would do the gentlemanly thing. Just as soon as he could stand without wanting to retch he would call upon Lady Clymore and ask permission to pay his addresses. She would accept, of course, and so would Betsy, if for no other reason than to escape her mushroom cousin.

It hit him then, as suddenly and as painfully as another clout on the head, that perhaps he had been Lady Elizabeth’s quarry all along, that Teddy was but a lure.

The thought made Charles want to retch again, and he rolled over on his stomach with a groan. No, it wasn’t possible. She’d bashed him once— no, twice—and threatened to a third time. If she planned to trap him into marriage, she wouldn’t have beaten him off. Or had she done so knowing she could count on him to do the proper thing?

There was only one way to find out—present himself posthaste in Berkeley Square. But first, he had to get up. Gritting his teeth, Charles struggled up on his elbows, his head clanging and clashing and— No, it wasn’t his head. He lifted his chin, breathing hard and blinking, and spied the cause of the clatter—the remnants of his wind device dangling and banging against the bole of the oak tree from what was left of one of his kites.

“Damn and blast,” he swore breathlessly.

“Sorry, Chas,” Teddy said, dropping on his haunches and into his line of vision. “It appears to be beyond repair.”

Charles squinted at his brother. The lad’s coat was snagged with leaves, the buttons gone, his cravat and waistcoat torn, and his lawn shirt mere green than white.

“So do you, halfling. What the devil happened?”

Easing himself to the ground, Teddy crossed his booted ankles and looped his arms loosely and tiredly around his knees. “Took a header—no, several, actually—trying to catch Boru.”

Charles blinked to clear the spots swimming at the corners of his eyes. “Trying?”

“Got clean away on us. Wouldn’t have if Lady Clymore’s gouty foot hadn’t given out on her.” Teddy rubbed a tear in the left leg of his pantaloons where a patch of barked skin showed above the top of his dirt-caked. Hessian. “Or if Lady Betsy had come along in time.”

Guilt and nausea washed over Charles as he struggled higher up on his left elbow. “Where is she? I believe I owe her an apology for detaining her.”

At the very damned least, he thought, despising himself. The hound was a menace, but she was devoted to the bloody creature. And she had begged him to let her go.

“I loaned her my curricle and she’s gone with her footman to search for Boru.” Teddy left off rubbing his shin, leaned his elbow on his knee, and blinked wearily at Charles. “Hope to blazes they find him before some Cit mistakes him for a wolf and shoots him.

“That’s it, spoon it on thick.” Charles gritted his teeth and pushed himself up on his hand. Teddy raised his head puzzledly. “Spoon what on?”

“Never mind.” Charles peered at the carriages drawn up on the verge of the greensward. He couldn’t quite make out if there were two or four. “Lady Clymore?’

“Her coachman and Fletcher are bringing her,” Teddy said, turning his head to follow his brother’s gaze, just as the servants came around the curve in the road bearing the countess between them on their clasped and crossed hands.

Vauxhall or Drury Lane would be hard-pressed to provide a better entertainment, Charles thought, watching the burly coachmen huff and puff while Lady Clymore clung to them with her elbows crooked round their necks. Thank God it was no where near five o’clock, when the park would be awash with the crème de la crème.