My Inconvenient Duke (Difficult Dukes #3)

Chapter 6

Blackwood House, Piccadilly

Forenoon of Wednesday 2 May 1832

“The laundress ? What the devil has the laundress to say to me? What time is it?”

Springate, Blackwood’s valet, hovered at his master’s bedside.

“Something after eight o’clock, Your Grace.”

“In the morning ?” Blackwood edged up onto his elbows to direct a baleful look at his manservant. “And you wake me for a washerwoman? Have

you been drinking?”

The look would have sent other men scurrying for cover. Springate, however, had been in the duke’s service for nearly a decade.

“Certainly not, Your Grace. But the woman said the matter couldn’t wait, and I was to tell Your Grace...” The valet hesitated,

his long, narrow face acquiring a pink tinge.

“What? Tell me what?”

“I do beg Your Grace’s pardon. She said she hadn’t all the day to wait, and to wake you, sharpish, or she’d do it herself.”

Blackwood sat up fully. “The laundress said that?”

“Not Mrs. Hudgins. One of her minions makes the deliveries. But this person had Your Grace’s shirts in her basket.” Springate frowned. “Or somebody’s shirts. I can’t be certain because she wouldn’t give them to me until I relayed her message. I suspect a prank, and yet—”

Blackwood held his hand up. “Wait. I need to think.”

Like any gentleman careful of his appearance, the duke had his linen sent to the country—to Kensington, specifically—for laundering.

Among other drawbacks, garments dried out of doors in London were liable to acquire a patina of soot and less-than-pleasing

odors.

Mrs. Hudgins was a superior laundress. Annoyed as he was, he did not like to risk his linen.

“With the most profound apologies, Your Grace, I am uneasy about making the young woman wait. Her tone made me suspect that

a brick through a window was a possibility. Not that she expressed this intention outright. Had she done so, I should have

summoned the porter to throw her into the street.”

“After you’d got my things, I trust.”

“Certainly, Your Grace. However, one received the distinct impression—”

“Yes, yes.” Blackwood waved off Springate’s impressions. “I’d better see what this is about.”

If a prank was in progress, somebody was going to be very, very sorry.

His valet nodded. “I shall ready Your Grace’s toilette.”

“No. If she’s in such a bloody great hurry, she may take me as I am.”

He threw back the bedclothes, revealing the nothing he slept in.

“Indeed not, Your Grace,” Springate said firmly.

Ten minutes later, clad in shirt, dressing gown, and slippers, his face washed but still shadowed with morning stubble, his hair—despite Springate’s objections—uncombed, Blackwood descended to the small ground-floor anteroom where the militant laundress waited.

She turned away from examining a framed sporting print and faced him.

He blinked. Twice.

She didn’t. She looked him up and down and said, her voice very low, “A long night, I see.”

He became acutely conscious of the fact that he was half-naked, his bare ankles showing below his dressing gown’s hem. Warmth

stole up his neck.

Embarrassed? He? Not in a decade at least. He was only reacting to being dragged out of bed at a barbaric hour, he told himself.

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He turned away and closed the door.

“This had better be important,” he said.

“Would I deprive you of your beauty sleep otherwise?” she said.

The initial shock subsiding, he in turn surveyed her.

If he hadn’t known it was Alice, he’d never know it was Alice.

A white bonnet with a ruffled cap underneath concealed her black hair and part of her face. Over her dress’s red-dotted green

bodice she’d tied a patterned red scarf. Red stripes adorned her yellow skirt, over which she wore a blue apron. A dark red

shawl completed this mad mélange.

Washerwomen had muscular arms, but the shawl and big sleeves concealed hers. Into his mind slid images of smooth, naked arms,

muscles tensing...

And that was not useful thinking.

He shoved the images into the mental cavern and summoned his wits, no small challenge at this hellish hour after a long night of applying the usual remedies. Still, even with a barely functioning brain, he could see that she carried herself in a different way, not at all aristocratic. Pinning down what, exactly, she did to create the impression, however, was beyond him at present.

“Yes, it’s a brilliant disguise, but we haven’t all day for you to gawk at me,” she said. “I wanted you to see this.” From

the laundry basket on her arm, she withdrew a handbill and gave it to him.

Head spinning, Blackwood read it and looked at her. “And this signifies what?”

“Maycock is Worbury’s solicitor,” she said. “The boy described is the one I misguidedly waylaid at Hyde Park Corner.”

Into the quagmire of his mind came a more or less coherent thought: the Defenseless Child. Of course.

“I agree that you were misguided,” he said. “You might have contracted any of a dozen diseases, not to mention fleas and lice.”

“It was misguided of me,” she said, with obviously strained patience, “because I allowed my cousin to get a close look at

him, and against all odds, he took careful note.”

“In spite of the smell, do you mean? And in spite of every instinct urging one to avert one’s gaze and move as far away as

possible?”

“The Worm does not possess your delicate sensibilities,” she said.

“On that we agree. All the same—”

“He noted the boy’s size and the color of his eyes and hair.” She pointed to the handbill. “He noted the two scars over the right eyebrow and the bruise near the left. I daresay he could draw as accurate a portrait as I could, though I’ve seen and talked to the child many times. This does not bode well. We have to find that boy before Worbury does.”

Blackwood stared by turns at the notice, then at her.

Obviously, he was still asleep. Obviously, this was a mad dream.

He stared at the handbill some more. No, this was Alice.

He was not ready.

He wanted to sit down. He wanted coffee. Well-dosed with brandy.

He held up a hand. “Wait.”

“We don’t have time to wait! Those notices have been posted in all the thieves’ dens: Covent Garden, Saffron Hill, Seven Dials,

and likely farther on, into Southwark and Limehouse.”

“This makes no sense,” he said, and there was a prime understatement. “It’s a deuced lot of trouble and expense—and not even

for the actual thief. Among other things, how did he learn the brat’s name?”

She threw up her hands. “For heaven’s sake, must I explain everything?”

“Alice, you woke me at the crack of dawn!”

“Dawn cracked hours ago.”

“Noon hasn’t cracked yet, and that’s dawn to me.”

She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and let it out. His gaze—bloodshot, undoubtedly—slid to her bosom, in the ghastly

bodice.

That will not help you think , he told himself. You need to think. This is Alice.

She opened her eyes and, visibly controlling herself, said, “The name doesn’t matter. The sorts of people who inhabit the rookeries have various aliases and nicknames. What matters is the description and the ten pounds. Irresistible temptation, as Worbury well knows. If I truly were a laundry maid, it’s as much as I might earn in a year. Giles, we must set out now .”

Right. Defenseless Child, who could easily lead to Murder or That Sort of Thing if Alice was let to move on into avenging

angel mode.

Blackwood wasn’t remotely ready.

He’d had more than sufficient drink the previous night, or this morning, or whenever it was. He’d had less than sufficient

sleep. He could not think clearly. That was well enough, even preferable, most of the time. At present he felt slow and thick,

as though treacle filled his brain. The sensation was not agreeable.

She went on, “You know Worbury doesn’t retaliate on those who can fight back. He chooses weaker targets. He’s done it since

your school days.”

“Yes, yes, but this doesn’t—”

“He was prepared to blame the child nearest to hand. You and I prevented that. You embarrassed him in a public place. This

is his revenge.”

What Blackwood did not want to do at this inhuman hour was chase about London after young criminals who were headed for the

gallows in any event. He told himself that Maycock had other clients. He told himself this could be what it seemed to be,

parents searching for a missing child. One read every week in the newspapers of children stolen.

The trouble was, as far-fetched as it seemed, this was in character for Worbury.

The trouble was, Blackwood couldn’t believe, as much as he wanted to, that it was simple coincidence, the bills appearing

so soon after the episode at Hyde Park Corner and referring specifically to that location.

The trouble was, this was Alice, the reason he was in London.

The trouble was—

“Ye gods, how much thinking must you do?” she said.

He’d been staring at the floor while he made his brain perform a labor it was in no way fit for at present. He looked up to

meet a flashing green gaze.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” she said. “I forgot. You’re out of practice with thinking. I should have realized you’d be useless.

Never mind. I’ll find another large, intimidating male to go with me.”

He held up a hand. “Alice. Wait.”

“I haven’t time.”

She marched to the door, and quite as though she wasn’t a duke’s sister but an ordinary washerwoman, she opened it herself

and walked out.

He stood for a time, staring at the empty doorway.

The trouble was, his conscience was waking up.

“Goddamn,” he said.

Alice started back down the passage to the tradesmen’s entrance, wishing she’d thrown something at him.

She was a fool.

Her anxiety about Jonesy had addled her wits.

She was mad, utterly mad to expect Blackwood to care what happened to a street child. Mad to believe he’d wake up from last

night’s debauches in order to help her.

Because he’d done one good deed on Monday—and that only out of contempt for Worbury—she’d imagined he’d perform further miracles.

The intelligent, sensitive boy she’d known in childhood, the boy she’d considered a friend and ally, had ceased to exist years

ago. The boy she’d hoped—

“Will you wait, dammit.”

She paused and turned.

He strode toward her, six-feet-plus of barely clothed male, his dressing gown flapping about his naked ankles and revealing a few inches of muscled, hairy lower leg. Beneath the dressing gown, she knew, only a shirt covered skin: a man’s shirt, which ended somewhere above the top of his knees.

She stopped her mind from speculating about undergarments and the lack thereof and hastily brought her gaze to his rumpled

black hair and the morning beard shadowing his jaw. He looked like the devil. He always did, perfectly groomed or not. This

was why she’d come.

“I don’t have time to wait,” she said. She started to turn away.

“I’ve ordered a carriage.”

“We don’t have time for that. There’s a hackney stand—”

He clamped one big hand on her shoulder. “Do you propose I come as I am? Because I will, if you’re in such a bloody great

hurry, though Springate will poison my coffee if I do.”

She was keenly aware of the strength and warmth of his hand, and the awareness stirred memories. Her face heated, and the

heat rapidly spread from there in all the wrong directions.

In her mind she swore and stamped her foot. Outwardly, she merely stared at his hand.

He took it away. “Will you think?” he said. “That would be helpful.”

“I am thinking.” She clenched her hands. “I’m thinking it will take you hours to dress. Ripley never completes his toilette in

less than an hour. Two, more usually. I’m thinking I was deranged to come here.”

“You are deranged, beyond question. You become furious and single-minded and you abandon logical thinking.”

“Logical thinking! Have you examined your life lately?”

“This has nothing to do with my life, except that you’ve interrupted it. Under the circumstances, you might consider accepting

a few facts.”

“I am not in a humor for lectures.”

“I don’t care what humor you’re in. Fact one, I’m not your brother. Fact two, I’ve ordered a carriage. Fact three, I must

dress. Fact four, you will wait, because that is the intelligent method of procedure and you do own a brain, addled as it

is at present.”

What choice had she?

Who else could she turn to? Who else could cause hardened criminals to run away merely by standing there and—and being . Not Doveridge, certainly, or any other gentleman she knew. Not to mention the extreme impropriety of a young lady calling

on any gentleman, no matter how desperate she was.

If only Cassandra were here, with her bodyguard, Keeffe.

But she wasn’t. Alice was on her own.

“Yes, very well,” she said. “But—”

“But me no buts,” he said.

“Go,” she said, waving him away. “Put some clothes on. And make haste. We haven’t a minute to lose.”

“Your gratitude overwhelms me.”

He turned and left her in the passage.

Before Alice could kick anything, a footman arrived, who escorted her to a room in the wing containing household offices.

At least Blackwood had the good sense not to let her wait in one of the fine rooms in the main house, as though she were a lady. This was the proper choice, a section of the working area he might have occasion to visit, unlike most of the servants’ regions.

Here she paced, aware that every passing minute raised the odds of somebody finding Jonesy and turning him over to Worbury’s

solicitor.

No choice, common sense told her. Where she needed to go, she couldn’t go unaccompanied, even dressed as she was. Men assumed

that women traveling on their own were fair game. She’d be prey to harassment at best, violence at worst. And that was only

part of the complications.

She’d reminded Liliane of how difficult it would be to deal directly with the solicitor. Duke’s sister or not, Alice would

meet the same treatment.

And so she waited, fuming, while His Dis-Grace made himself beautiful.

Remarkably, according to the small watch she withdrew from the pocket of her skirt, little more than a quarter hour passed

before Blackwood sauntered in and said, “The carriage waits.”

Minutes later they sat in his sleek black cabriolet behind a powerful black stallion. The fashionable accessory, a tiny groom

named Elphick, stood on his perch at the back.

She let herself imagine driving this vehicle with this fine horse, and going wherever she wished, with a man’s complete lack

of anxiety about traveling with only his little tiger.

She might as well imagine driving it to the moon.

“Needle in a haystack comes to mind,” Blackwood said. “But I’m at your disposal. Where to?”

Needle in a haystack came to her mind as well.

She brushed the thought away.

“The Borough High Street,” she said. “He’s been working at the George Inn in exchange for food and a place to sleep in the stables.”

“And nobody keels over from the smell? The horses don’t bolt?”

“He isn’t usually so rancid,” she said. “He might have been dragged about in the river.”

He said something under his breath—an oath, no doubt. He shook his head. “By gad, Alice.”

“To make him join the gang,” she said. “They knock the children about, or threaten someone they care about. There are scores

of ways to force them into gangs or brothels.”

“Keeffe,” he muttered. “The murderous damned jockey. That’s your expensive education, is it?”

“Part of it, yes,” she said. “While I was keeping clear of my brother and his expensively educated friends.”

“Ah, she bares her talons.”

“She is disinclined to endure sermons about propriety from the Duke of Blackwood.”

A pause, a low laugh. Then, “Very well. Let us keep strictly to the matter at hand. You wish to go to Southwark. Yet the brat

was in Hyde Park Corner, well out of his territory, only the other day. And the bills appeared... when? Yesterday?”

“Late in the afternoon.” She explained how Madame Girard had discovered them in Covent Garden. “She always takes note of signs

for missing children. I’d written to her, saying I was worried about the boy getting into bad company. When she saw the handbill,

she was sure something was wrong, and so she came to me last night.”

“I should like to know what it is about the little beggar that awakens women’s sympathy.” He gave his horse leave to start,

and they set out eastward.

“He’s lost and utterly alone,” she said, “yet he wears a cocky front, and somehow survives against enormous odds.”

“Oh, Alice.”

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking. They’re all lost. One can’t save them all. So many criminals. Are they worth saving? But

he’s... different. He seemed to have potential. We tried to persuade him to attend school, but he balked. Fear, most likely.

The children tend to associate the word school with ghastly places, and they’re not wrong to do so.”

“Then he can’t read.”

“No, he can’t, and so no, he won’t know what the handbills say.” She started to wring her hands. She made herself stop. “Anybody

might take him to the solicitor on this pretense or that. Still, he’s a canny one. After the narrow escape from Worbury, I

hope the boy had the good sense to abandon his companions. If so, it’s likely he’s gone to ground in familiar territory, where

he feels safe.”

“Hope,” Blackwood said. “That’s all you have to go on?”

“Yes. Do you have any other suggestions?”

“You know him better than I do. Southwark it is.”

He urged the horses on.