Wagered to the Duke (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (7 page)

Though Nathan really, really wanted her to hold her tongue, he had to admit she made a very good point.

“If he’s only foxed, then of course he can have a room,” said the innkeeper. “But just be warned, I’ll have no brawling on these premises.”

“He won’t brawl. And neither will my sister here, if she knows what’s good for her.”
From the corner of his eye Nathan thought he detected little daggers shooting out of her spectacles, or maybe that was just a trick of the lamplight glinting off the lenses.

The innkeeper swaggered behind the counter and opened his ledger. “I’ll need your names.”

“Of course. I’m Nathan Fraser from Edinburgh. This is my sister Kate.”

The innkeeper’s wife audibly and evenly visibly sniffed. Her nostrils flared with suspicion. “You don’t look like brother and sister. In fact, you don’t even sound
like brother and sister.”

Nathan’s heart sank as now
that
suddenly occurred to him. Why couldn’t Kate have remained silent?

“I do believe he’s from Edinburgh as he says,” the innkeeper’s wife addressed Kate, “but I don’t believe you’re from there. You sound more English.”

“Maybe that’s because I was raised by English relatives here in England, while he was raised by Scottish relatives in Scotland,” Kate shot back. “There’s nothing so unusual about that. Economics, deaths in the family, changes in fortune, and all that faradiddle. I hope we shan’t be asked to take turns recounting our life stories just to acquire rooms for the night, or we’ll be standing here till dawn tomorrow, by which time we’ll no longer need the rooms, and you and your good husband will be out a few shillings that I’m sure you’d like to—”

“Thank you, sister dear,” Nathan interjected, and he meant his gratitude with all his heart. Maybe he was simply too exhausted after a long, eventful day that he’d had such high hopes this morning would be uneventful, but he’d been too flummoxed by the wife’s shrewd observation to come up with a plausible explanation for the discrepancy in accents.

The innkeeper looked from Kate to Nathan, then back to Kate. “It just seems more likely to us that you might be husband and wife.”

“I wonder what makes you an expert in these matters,” Kate remarked. “I hope this doesn’t mean you plan to put the two of us in the same room.”

She
hoped
?
As if she had utterly no desire to spend the night in the same room with Nathan. Only why did that matter to him? They’d only met today, and even if they did share the same room, she’d probably keep him up all night with her endless nagging and haranguing.

“My own sister is married to a Scotsman,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “I merely assumed the same of you two. Now what about this brother of yours, the one who’s still out in the carriage?”

“His name is Freddy, and I doubt you’ll think he looks like either of us, either,” said Kate. “If you must know, we’re all half siblings. Our father had three wives.”

“Three?” the innkeeper said in amazement.

“Lawks!” his wife exclaimed.

“’Tis only half as many as Henry VIII,” Kate said airily. “But at least our father didn’t chop off any of his wives’ heads.”

“That will do, sister dear,” Nathan put in. “As you’ve already pointed out, we hope not to spend all night regaling these people with our biographies.”

“Very well, but we only have three rooms available,” the innkeeper said.

Nathan wasn’t exactly keen to share a room with Freddy, but he didn’t want to inflict Freddy on Bilby, either. Maybe Freddy couldn’t be roused from his stupor and would remain in the carriage all night. “Then I’ll take all three. And I’d like my supper served in my room.” The last thing he wanted to do was break bread and socialize with the Hathaways. He intended to start severing ties with them now.

“What about me?” she asked. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“You can sup with Freddy in the dining room, of course.”

She frowned and wrinkled her nose in utter revulsion at that notion. Nathan swore he’d never seen anyone with such an aversion to their own sibling, until he remembered how his own older half brother had despised him.

And Freddy
did
wager her in a card game. She wasn’t likely to forget or forgive that transgression anytime soon.

“Why can’t I sup in my own room, like you? Who do you think you are—a duke?”

“As a matter of fact—” Just in time Nathan thought the better of it and turned to the innkeeper’s wife. “My sister will likewise have her supper served in her room.”

He saw no point in trying to tell her now that he really was the Duke of Loring. She probably wouldn’t believe him, and besides, he didn’t want the innkeeper and his wife creating the same sort of fuss he’d set out to avoid at the Blue Rooster earlier today. Tomorrow he would send this vexing female and her brother and maid back to York or Leeds or wherever they wished to go—as long as it wasn’t where he was going.

A short while later, he sat in his room enjoying a peaceful supper. He’d hoped for a quiet, uneventful journey back to London before he finally donned the mantle of Duke of Loring and submitted himself to the inevitable—the responsibilities to all the holdings he’d inherited, the seat in the House of Lords, but worst of all—the London Season, in which he would be feted and pursued as the most eligible bachelor in the
ton.

In less than a year, he’d gone from being the Duke of Loring’s insignificant, much younger half brother, whom no one thought would ever inherit the dukedom—for none of the chits on the marriage mart ever gave up hope that the previous duke would eventually take a wife—to being the Duke of Loring himself.

And now, the chits and their matchmaking mamas who’d previously declined to give him the time of day would be descending on him like an English invasion of Scotland.

Hypocrites, all of them. And if Miss Hathaway had ever had the chance for a season herself, she’d be just like them. Maybe that was why she’d insisted on making her wastrel brother honor his debt. She was hoping for a season in London. Only she hadn’t mentioned any wealthy or titled relatives in London who might easily be scandalized by her circumstances.

Nathan drained his tankard of ale and told himself that she wasn’t his problem, though he had to admire her cleverness and audacity thus far.

What had he been thinking, to saddle himself with these strangers? What made them his responsibility? They weren’t helpless children—at least she wasn’t.

But as he looked back on the very first time he’d ever traveled this same road, some twenty years ago, he knew why he’d agreed to take her away from the Blue Rooster today, and why he didn’t leave Freddy looking so woebegone at that crossroads.

“He’s abandoned me,”
she’d said at the Blue Rooster.
“Left me to a fate unknown.”

Nathan could never forget that he’d once said those very words himself—as a helpless child.

And because of that, he knew he could never do that to another human being.

What if her brother abandoned her again? Granted, she wasn’t as helpless as Nathan had been years ago, but he also knew what could happen to ladies who were left with no man to protect them, because it had happened to his mother.

He fell asleep thinking of that, remembering, and succumbing to an old nightmare that hadn’t haunted him in years.

Kate opened her eyes to a room that wasn’t her own—or at least it wasn’t the one she’d occupied at Bellingham Hall, for she’d never felt that bedchamber was her own, if only because she happened to think of it as a prison cell.

And then she remembered that she was supposed to be at Mr. Throckmorton’s house as his new governess. Instead she was at a coaching inn somewhere between York and London—but closer to York.

She didn’t see Polly anywhere. She didn’t even recall that Polly had gotten into bed with her last night. Kate was quite positive she would have been aware of another person beneath the covers with her. Where had Polly slept, if not with Kate?

She dressed and pinned up her hair. She’d really hoped Polly would do that for her. She’d always wanted a lady’s maid, if only so she’d have someone to do her hair for her, because she’d never been very good at it. She’d always envied the ladies of the
ton
with their elaborate coiffures, how their hair curled where it was supposed to curl and stayed smoothly in place where it was supposed to stay smoothly in place. All Kate could manage on her own was a plain, miserable bun pulled back from her face. She didn’t even have bangs to curl into ringlets. Over the past year of exile at Bellingham Hall, where there’d been no visitors and nothing happening, she’d let her bangs grow out until they could almost reach behind her ears, but not quite. Thin strands still fell forward into her face, and wearing her bonnet was the only means to keep them out of the way.

But she wasn’t ready to don the bonnet yet as she ventured out of the room and downstairs to the dining room, where she thought she might find Nathan or even Freddy or Polly.

None of them were there.

“Mornin’, miss,” said the innkeeper’s wife as she filled someone’s teacup. “I’m afraid your brother didn’t leave a message for you.”

Bewilderment flooded Kate. “What do you mean, he didn’t leave a message for me?”

The innkeeper’s wife set down the teapot. “Just that. He left without a message for you.”

“He did
what
?”
Kate exploded as every head in the dining room popped up like the red blemishes that erupted on her face on the most inopportune occasions. Granted, this wasn’t one of them, but she lifted her hand to her face anyway, as if to feel for the traitorous little bumps.

The innkeeper’s wife planted her hands on her very wide hips. “How many times must I say it? He’s gone and didn’t bother to leave a message for you. My husband even asked him outright if he wasn’t goin’ to leave a message for you and what do you think your brother said?”

Nausea knotted Kate’s stomach. “I can’t imagine what he might have said.”

“Well, I don’t see why not, for I should think the answer is obvious. He said, ‘No.’”

Kate hated to ask, if only because she dreaded the answer, but she asked anyway. “Did he take the carriage?”

“Aye, of course he did. Oh, and in case you’re wonderin’ where she is, he took your maid with him, which might be another reason he decided not to leave a message for you. They must’ve planned to elope. You do look surprised.”

“Surprised?” piped up one of the diners. “She looks murderous!”

For what must have been a full minute, Kate was speechless, partly because her jaw had dropped and all the muscles in her face couldn’t lift it back up again. Indeed, all of her muscles seemed to have failed her, for she felt her legs weakening, and she grabbed the nearest chair to keep from collapsing to the floor.

So much for being murderous.

“You may as well sit in that chair and have some tea,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “They left around midnight, so they’re halfway to Gretna by now.”

Surely Nathan hadn’t eloped with Polly! They’d only met yesterday, and all she’d done from that moment till the moment she told Kate she was going downstairs and out back to use the necessary—which happened to be the last time Kate saw her—was weep and whine.

What the devil was it with men who were attracted to women like that? Why did men prefer women who were weak and helpless—like Kate’s own mother? How many times had Kate’s mother chided her that if only she weren’t so blasted opinionated, and if only she would stop trying to take charge of every situation she encountered—which was exactly what she’d done at the Blue Rooster in York yesterday—and if only she’d stop showing all the world how much brighter she was than most men,
and at least
pretend
to be weak and helpless and featherbrained
, then maybe she’d finally land a husband?

She picked up the chair and slammed it back down on all fours. “Dash it!”

The innkeeper’s wife patted her on the shoulder. “I know, dearie. She must have been workin’ her wiles on him for quite some time. And right under your own nose! Now do sit down and have some tea.”

Kate finally slumped into the chair, fisting both hands on the edge of the table as a serving girl set a brimming teacup in front of her. Steam rose before her eyes and almost certainly blasted out of her ears.

Nathan must have deduced that she wasn’t really Margaret Hathaway, unless Polly told him. He must have concluded she was an imposter scheming to fleece him, just as he’d surmised yesterday. He must have felt his only recourse was to abandon her at the first opportunity.

However, that did not explain why he’d taken Polly with him. Kate nearly seethed in rage. Perhaps Polly had offered herself to Nathan in exchange for his taking her back to her mam in Leeds. Oh yes, Kate had noticed how Polly would pull back her cloak so it fell over either side of those enormous bosoms that looked as if they needed a platter not only to serve them to whatever man she attracted, but to hold them up.

At this very moment Nathan was probably curled up with Polly in the carriage, his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel while Polly pulled down her bodice to give him access to those breasts that were so much bigger than Kate’s. No doubt they were joking about what a harridan Kate was and how she thought she could fool him by pretending to be Miss Hathaway. Polly had very likely sung the entire opera, and by now she was surely taking her bows over and maybe even into his lap.

For some odd reason, that infuriated Kate even more than the knowledge that he’d stranded her here. But then her
heart sank like a stone into the pit of her stomach. She had no money. She’d been totally, stupidly reliant on the charity of Nathan Fraser, who’d been reluctant to take her to London but for her insistence on honoring her brother’s, or rather, Frederick Hathaway’s debt. Only what had Nathan owed her in return? Absolutely nothing.