The Duke's Downfall (18 page)

“I would like that,” Betsy told him, her eyes shining, “and would be honored to call you my friend.”

“My friends,” Charles shot back, with a grin, “call me Braxton.”

"Touché, my lord,” Betsy responded, laughing at last.

“‘Ow come y’got s’many names, guv?” Davey asked.

“It’s a long story,” Charles said, shifting in his chair to look at the boy. “One I would be delighted to tell you while you have your bath.”

“Already ‘ad one,” he said, glaring unhappily at Betsy.

“Ah, but did your furry little friend?”

“Why’s Scraps need a bath?”

"Fleas, my boy. Scraps, I’m sure, would not wish to share his with Boru.”

“‘E don’ ‘ave fleas. I picks ‘em off.”

“Then you must have them, too,” Charles replied, sliding Betsy a sidelong glance, “and you wouldn’t want to give them to Lady Betsy, would you?”

Picking up on his cue, Betsy stiffened suddenly on the bench. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed, scratching her shoulder.

“Too late.” Charles intoned ominously, trapping Davey in a steady stare.

“Will a bath git rid ‘o ‘em?”

“I believe so, yes,” Charles assured him. “And I believe Scraps would take to the water much better if you were to climb in with him.”

“Figgered you’d say that.” Davey sighed resignedly.

Chapter Seventeen

Once Lady Clymore had been served dessert, George and Iddings returned to the kitchen, shed their coats, and heated more water. Dragging the hip bath before the fire, they filled it and stepped back. Teeth gritted and eyes squinted, Davey clutched Scraps in his thin arms and climbed into the tub.

Rolling up his sleeves, Charles went down on his knees and took up a cloth and soap. While he scoured the boy from stem to stern, he told him all the titles he held and how he’d come by them.

The list was rather long, sufficiently so that Charles had to stop and think and correct it twice. Listening to him, elbow deep in murky water, scrubbing grime and coal dust from Scraps’s shaggy coat (the blister on her hand stinging just a little), Betsy felt her heart swell and tears prick her eyes.

How kind and patient Charles was, how handsome with his hair burnished copper by the fire and water gleaming like quicksilver on his muscled forearms. There was nothing of the lunatic about him now, or the tyrant he’d been at Lady Pinchon’s. How ridiculously and hopelessly in love with him she was, for he wished only to be her friend.

And how fervently Betsy hoped he wouldn’t remember that he’d kissed her twice this day, for if his memory of all the events in Hyde Park returned he would, as a gentleman, feel bound by honor to marry her. He remembered Boru disappearing, but had made no mention of anything else, which she took as a hopeful sign. For no matter how friendly his feelings toward her, Betsy wouldn’t—couldn’t-marry him without at least a glimmer of the fevered gleam she’d seen earlier in his eyes.

Though it had frightened her and she’d mistaken it for madness induced by his fall, she longed to see at least a spark of it now in his blue-green eyes, for it had occurred to her that love was not unlike madness. There was no discernible logic to it, and precious little reason, for it made no sense at all that the mere sight of this man, who’d been less than kind to her in most of their encounters, should leave her feeling so breathless. Still, it did, and it saddened her, too, when the wink he gave her, as Davey rose from the water with chattering teeth, held only amusement and a conspiratorial twinkle.

Wrapping the boy in one towel and Scraps in another, Betsy sat on the bench with the terrier on her lap to dry him, while Charles carried Davey off to the scullery to dress him in brown breeches, a white shirt, and a blue vest borrowed from the pot boy. When he returned, leading a shy and transformed Davey with shiny and still-damp blond hair by the hand, the smile on the duke’s face glowed with almost paternal pride.

“How handsome you are!” Betsy exclaimed to Davey, unwrapping the little dog from the towel and holding him up for all to admire. “And look at Scraps!”

His coat was no longer shaggy but silky, a mix of tan and chocolate brown. He wiggled and whimpered happily in Betsy’s hands, until a vividly blushing Davey took the little dog in his arms, cuddled him to his chest, and burst into sobs.

Blinking madly at the tears swimming in her eyes, Betsy bowed her head and bit her lip. She started, just a bit, when Charles sidled up beside her and laid a hand gently on her shoulder.

“You are learning, my lady,” he murmured to her.

“Thanks to you,” Betsy said softly, looking up at him over her shoulder.

The tears glistening like tiny diamonds on her lashes held Charles enthralled until Davey, with a loud, watery sniffle, dragged a sleeve across his nose and looked up at them. His face was still flushed from his scrubbing, but smudges of fatigue were beginning to show beneath his eyes.

“Long day, eh, Davey?”

He yawned and knuckled his eyes. “Bit o’ one, guv.”

“Then off to bed with you.” Betsy rose from the bench and held out a hand to him.

When his fingers, still cool and puckered from his bath, slid trustingly around hers, Betsy bit back another well of tears. “George’s room is just off the kitchen,” she explained, “and he has kindly put up a cot for you there.”

This was Charles’s suggestion, made while he’d washed Davey’s hair and the boy had screeched like a banshee.

“Yer th’ one tried t’catch Boru,” the boy said, turning his head to look at George.

“Roight—er, right, I am,” George replied, with a sheepish but encouraging smile. “Ye c’n help me stoke the fires come mornin’ an earn yer keep.’

“Right w’me,” Davey replied, his little chest swelling.

Pride was important, Charles had explained to Betsy over the boy’s god-awful howls, and charity anathema. To young ladies of Quality as much as orphans, Betsy thought, aware of Charles trailing behind her as she and Davey followed George and the candle the footman picked up through the kitchen and into his small, spare room. He put it down on a tiny table near the cot and quietly withdrew to let Betsy tuck the boy into bed.

Folding his arms across his unbuttoned waistcoat and the soaked front of his shirt, Charles watched her help Davey shuck off his breeches, tug down his shirttails, and crawl beneath the covers. Most of the Little Season’s debutantes would have swooned dead away at the sight of even a child in small clothes, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of false modesty about Lady Betsy Keaton. What an interesting mix of capability and nonsense she was. Perhaps the fact that she loathed the city accounted for part of it, Charles thought, and what a delightful time he was going to have discovering the others.

“Should I leave the candle?” Betsy asked, tucking the turned-down sheet and blanket beneath Davey’s chin.

“N-no,” he replied, his gaze sliding toward Scraps, sitting obediently with ears pricked beside the bed.

Betsy scooped up the dog with a smile and plopped him onto Davey’s stomach. His tail wagging happily, Scraps licked her fingers, then stretched out on his master’s chest and tucked his nose under his chin. Wrapping his arms around his dog, Davey regarded Betsy gravely.

“T’morrow, after we ‘elp George do th’ fires,” he said, “me an’ Scraps’ll go look fer Boru.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Betsy countered firmly. “He’ll find his way home, don’t you worry.”

“But I seen that there jarvey take ‘im up. ‘E can’t find ‘is way 'ome tied up in ropes.”

"‘Tied up’?” Betsy repeated faintly, lifting a hand to her throat.

“Who tied him up?” Charles asked, quickly stepping closer to the cot.

“Th’ jarvey, o’course.” Davey shifted his gaze to Charles. “Got down from ‘is box wi’a rope an’ whistled. When Boru come close, ‘e grabbed his collar, put one end o’ th’ rope round ‘is neck, t’other round ‘is feet, and then round ‘is mouth, I giss so’s e couldn’t bite. That’s when th’ man wi’ th’ cane got out and helped ‘im lift Boru inside.”

“Julian!” Betsy’s hand slid away from her throat. “Do you mean the man who was here earlier?”

Davey nodded solemnly.

“I’ll tie him up in ropes!” Betsy shot off the cot— straight into Charles’s outstretched hands. There was no fear in her eyes at his touch, only fury. “Let me pass, my lord. I must find Boru.”

“Indeed we must, my dear, but where do we look? You do not know his direction, and neither will I until I reconnoiter with Lesley and Teddy later this evening.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Betsy sighed disappointedly and stepped back out of his grasp.

“Will you see me out?”

“Yes, of course.” Betsy slipped her hand around the arm Charles offered and was led briefly back to the cot. “Would you recognize this jarvey if you see him again, Davey?”

“That I would, guv.”

“Then you shall help us find Boru.” Charles leaned forward to blow out the candle and tousle the boy’s hair. “But for now you must rest and be fresh for the search on the morrow.”

“Aye, guv.” Davey sighed and rolled on his side, tucking Scraps in the curve of his body.

“Good night,” Betsy bid him softly, but his eyes were already drifting shut, his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks in the half light spilling through the door.

“Damn and blast,” Charles said when they reached the kitchen. “I wish now I hadn’t lost my temper with Dameron, and that I’d questioned Davey more closely in the park.” So much, he thought, for Teddy’s theory that Davey would have mentioned Julian if he’d seen him.

“I should have let Granmama shoot him.” Betsy frowned angrily, unrolled the sleeves of his coat, and handed the garment to him. “I may, in fact, shoot him myself.”

“Not with the pistol you carry in your reticule.”

“Pistol?” she blinked at him blankly.

“You must recall it,” Charles replied, with equal innocence. “It’s the one you carry in your reticule merely for the effect.”

“Oh,” Betsy groaned more than said. “That pistol.” Then she flushed to the roots of her hair.

“The very one,” Charles confirmed, holding her gaze steadily in his. “Teddy explained it had been disabled.”

“You ... found my reticule?” she asked haltingly.

“And everything in it,” Charles replied, shrugging into his coat with a pointedly arched eyebrow.

When she’d discovered her reticule missing, Betsy had hoped—no, prayed—that she’d lost it or a footpad had stolen it from the park. Knowing now that Charles had found it and all its contents, she wished the floor would open and swallow her.

“It’s in my carriage,” Charles told her. “I’ll fetch it for you.”

“Please don’t. I never want to see it again.” Spreading her fingers over her eyes, Betsy peeked through them. “You must think me the most ramshackle female ever born.”

“On the contrary.” He straightened his lapels and took her wrists lightly in his hands. “I quite agree with the ton. You are definitely an Original.”

His smile and glint in his eyes—mischief, not madness or passion, but a glint nonetheless—made Betsy laugh. Shakily, for the graze of his thumbs on the backs of her hands rendered breathing difficult.

“Spanish coin, sir.”

“Not a bit of it. I am merely delighted that we are now on friendly footing.” Charles deepened his smile, and was not surprised when Betsy’s eyes darted away from him. “You need not look about for something to smash me with, Betsy, dear, for I am quite recovered from my clout on the head.”

When her gaze shifted hesitantly back to him, she smiled. “You see, I even know who you are.”

“I did not mean to imply that you are insane, my lord, merely—addled. Temporarily, of course,” Betsy added hastily.

How much did he remember? she wondered, her heart beginning to pound fast and frantic. Please not everything—oh, please not that he’d kissed her.

“You would not be the first to think me a lunatic,” Charles admitted, “for I have made something of a career out of pretending to be one.”

“But why, my lord?”

“It was a means to an end, which I shall explain to you tomorrow evening. I told Dameron, by the way, that I am escorting you and Lady Clymore, and so I will.” Reluctantly Charles loosed her hands. “I shall call for you at nine of the clock. Until then.”

He made her a small bow, touched a finger lightly to his lips and then to her chin, and strode out of the kitchen. The tenderness of the gesture sent Betsy floating up to her bedchamber, wondering the whole way if it was at all possible that Charles cared for her just a little.

After ringing for her abigail, she darted to the window, which faced the front of the house and gave her a view of the courtyard and Charles striding toward his carriage. At the shimmer of the coach lamps on the dark shoulders of his coat, she raised her fingertips to her chin and watched him mount the steps Fletcher had placed.

Neither Betsy nor George, who scurried out of the house to shut the gates behind the departing carriage, saw the two dark shapes detach themselves from the shadows at the mouth of the square.

“I told you,” the jarvey said to Julian, in a low, testy tone in the rattling wake of Charles’s coach, “I told you th’ two coves who followed us wouldn’t dare come back ‘ere t’report I’d lost ‘em.”

“So you did, Owens,” Julian replied implacably. “Still, it never hurts to make sure.”

“I don’t see why,” the jarvey grumbled, hunkering down in his greatcoat with a shiver. “Don’t see what difference it makes who does the followin’."

“But it does, Owens, for if it was Lady Clymore who was onto me—and I know now that it isn’t—I would have had to alter my plans.”

“Which ‘ad better include,” Owens said darkly, “payin’ me fer catchin’ an’ keepin’ that whackin’ great hound.”

“It does, rest assured.” Julian laid a hand on the jarvey’s shoulder. “With a little extra for your trouble.”

And his own, which now included avenging the insult handed him by the Duke of Braxton—as well as seeing a period put to his offer for Betsy. He intended to accomplish them both, in one gloriously fell swoop, with just a bit more assistance from the surly jarvey.

“‘Ow much more?” Owens asked, his small, close-set eyes gleaming with avarice in the darkness.