My Inconvenient Duke (Difficult Dukes #3)

Chapter 13

The Lovedon Arms

A short time later

Mrs. Jagg, the innkeeper, hurried into the parlor with tea. A maidservant bearing a plate of cakes followed her.

“Mais, c’est impossible!” Alice cried.

“Pray calm yourself, Madame,” Blackwood said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“But how does this happen? How does un duc vanish—pfft! Like this!” She waved a hand. “Into the air.”

She was a French actress, having adopted for the occasion Madame Girard’s Parisian accent—exaggerated for effect, she said.

She was the très chère amie of le duc de Reeplee , who had appointed to meet her last night after her performance and failed to appear.

Blackwood had never been to Paris, and he wasn’t sure how well Alice mimicked Madame Girard in particular, but the accent

matched those of certain Parisian women he’d met. Her manner, meanwhile, was so wonderfully French that he could scarcely maintain his composure. Nearly as difficult was keeping his mind on what they were doing.

“I wish I could tell you more, Madame, Your Grace,” Mrs. Jagg said as she arranged teapot and accoutrements upon the table.

“We’ve been asking about His Grace all day, ever since his man came to us in a dreadful state. But you know, His Grace had

a trifle to drink last night, and he said he wanted air. And that was the last I saw of him. We asked in the stables, as you

may know, and it’s true he took his horse out.”

She frowned over a spoon before setting it down.

Blackwood sensed hesitation. “Mrs. Jagg, if you’ve any ideas, hints, suspicions, we should be grateful.”

“Why should you be so quiet? Is this because Monsieur le duc has another chère amie ?” Alice waved her hand. “Bah! What is this to me? A great surprise? I supposed him to be a monk, do you think? Do I look

to you like the fool?”

“Pray recall that Madame is French,” Blackwood told the innkeeper. “A Parisian, furthermore.”

Following another short hesitation and after sending the maid out of the parlor, a red-faced Mrs. Jagg admitted that the Duke

of Ripley knew a handsome young woman originally from the neighborhood. It was possible he’d gone to visit her.

“I see,” Blackwood said. “And, as was his custom, he distributed certain monetary gifts to keep his doings quiet.”

“Since when is my brother so secretive?” Alice said to him in rapid French.

“He might have been uncertain whether the young woman has acquired a beau or a husband recently, and he didn’t want to make

trouble for her and complications for himself,” Blackwood said in the same language.

To the innkeeper, in English, he said, “Where, exactly, might one find this young woman at present?”

Sometime later, Alice sat at a table by a tavern window while Blackwood charmed the proprietress of the Two Swans, no onerous task, she supposed. One must admit that her brother had fine taste in women.

Margery Ronse was a curvaceous young widow, blessed with a cloud of red-gold hair and deeply blue eyes. About Alice’s age,

or not much older, she kept a clean, well-run tavern in Kensington Gravel Pits, a village on the Uxbridge Road.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Ronse was as baffled as they. The duke, she said, had left the premises at eleven o’clock last night,

when she closed the tavern. Here, too, he’d had “a trifle to drink.” She appealed to her customers for information.

Some private discussion followed before one old fellow said, “If he were goin’ back to London, he took the wrong way. Maybe

got east mixed up with west.”

“Well, he were bung-eyed, weren’t he?” said another. “Drunk as a lord. Meanin’ drunk as a duke. Ha-ha.”

This witticism mightily amused the other patrons.

“It were dark as your pocket last night,” another volunteered. “What odds he lost his way?”

“He’s a duke! He went to Castle de Grey and slept on a feather bed. Him and Lord Lovedon being cousins.”

“No, they ain’t.”

“All them nobs is cousins.”

After a few minutes of these exchanges, Blackwood rejoined Alice. “This sort of discussion might go on for hours and still

result in nothing useful,” he said in an undertone. “I recommend we move on.”

Alice shook her head. “That one,” she said. “By himself in the corner.”

Blackwood looked toward the lone youth scowling into his tankard. “He’s a boy.”

“I’ve been watching his expression while the others talk. He seems to have something bothersome on his mind.” Alice rose. “I think he’s shy to speak in front of the other men. Find a pretext to get him outside. I want to know what’s troubling him.”

Blackwood’s pretext was a coin, surreptitiously conveyed, and a murmured suggestion.

Then he took Alice outside to the carriage.

They waited, but not for long.

After about five minutes, the young man emerged from the tavern.

“You there, lad,” Blackwood said. “What’s the shortest way to Castle de Grey?”

The youth approached the carriage. His name was Sam Pryke. He didn’t know what had become of the missing duke, he said, but

the tavern talk made him think about what he’d heard today.

“This morning,” he said. “At the blacksmith. I went to fetch the tools he mended for my father. I caught some talk but I wasn’t

listening so close. They was talking about a fine horse, fitted out like for a king and on its own. Somebody said, ‘Did he

catch it?’ and somebody else said it took a while, her being skittish. But she was tired, and they got her.”

He didn’t know who, precisely, had captured the animal, but he knew the men who’d been talking about it, and gave their names.

“Only they didn’t steal her,” he said, clearly anxious. “I didn’t want to say nothing in there.” He jerked his chin toward the tavern. “Sound like I was blabbing on fellows. And there’s more than one in there, you got to be careful what you say if you don’t want a fight. But the men talking about the horse, they were farmers. The mare was running loose, and one of them caught her, same as he’d do with any stray, especially a fine one. They wouldn’t want to risk her coming to harm. There’s bad places thereabouts. The clay, you know. All the digging, they make holes the rain fills up. Big as lakes, some of them.”

He provided the men’s names and where to find them, and went on his way, enriched with an additional coin.

Alice looked at Blackwood. “Lucetta was running loose.”

“If Ripley was as drunk as they say, he failed to tether her securely. Lucetta has a mischievous streak. She might have run

off while he was answering Nature’s call.”

“Or being sick into the bushes,” she said. She closed her eyes briefly and opened them. “When I get my hands on my brother,

I shall throw him to the pigs.”

“I’ll help.”

Nearly two hours later, they found Lucetta.

“We looked everywhere for her master,” Jonas Hodge said. “She’d wandered into Porto Bello Lane, and we thought he couldn’t

be far away. Fine animal like that, we thought she’d come from one of the big houses. We sent word, but nobody’s come for

her.”

The mare was uninjured. The farmers had taken good care of her. She recognized Blackwood, a generous giver of treats, and

nickered at him. He didn’t disappoint her. Alice caught one of Blackwood’s rare smiles when he petted the horse and gave her

a carrot.

Always prepared, Blackwood was, to bribe man or animal. But she supposed he’d been taught that way. His father was strict

about such things, she knew. He’d have rules for the proper way to treat horses and dogs.

Not a bad man , Ripley had said of Blackwood’s father, but rather exacting and suffocating. Still, at least one knows what to expect.

One couldn’t say the same of their own bewildering sire, with his fits of rage and fits of penny-pinching and fits of remorse

and a dozen other species of tantrum. Day to day, sometimes hour to hour, one never knew which father would be there.

Alice shook off the past and focused on now .

The once-suffocated son’s dark eyes were as readable as onyx at present, but as Blackwood turned away from Lucetta, Alice

discerned the tightness about his mouth. He was more worried than he let on.

Like her, he’d be imagining a hundred scenes, none of them pleasant. She couldn’t let herself think that way. It would cloud

her reason.

“I’m told she gave you more than a little difficulty,” Blackwood was saying.

The men grinned.

“That she did,” one said. “She’s a lively girl. But we couldn’t let her run loose. There’s too many places where she could

get hurt. You want to be careful once you leave the main road, Your Grace.”

“The Duke of Ripley will be grateful,” Blackwood said. “On his behalf, I hope you’ll allow me to make you a small gift.”

Coins changed hands, and he arranged for them to return Lucetta to the Lovedon Arms stables. There was further murmured conversation.

Alice didn’t try to eavesdrop.

They’d stopped several times in recent hours and interrogated dozens of people. They took turns, depending on the circumstances.

This was his turn.

She moved away, back to the carriage, and let Elphick hand her up. Her distress must have shown, because he spoke.

“We’ll find His Grace, my lady. We’ve lost one or other of ’em before—mostly His Grace of Ashmont—and they always turn up sooner or later.”

“I’m sure we’ll find him very soon,” she said. She only wanted to find Ripley alive, no matter how long it took.

Blackwood returned to the carriage minutes later, and Elphick rejoined Pratt in the dickey.

“How does a man more than six feet tall, a man who looks, at his best, like a wolf in expensive clothing—how does such a man

vanish?” she said. “This area is not heavily populated. You’d think somebody would have seen him.”

“They’ve seen him. The trouble is, they haven’t seen him at the right time, when he and Lucetta parted company.” He looked

at her. “We can expect more of this tedious stopping at local gathering places. It could go on for hours. It’s unlikely you’ve

been recognized so far, but that sort of thing is unpredictable. I can take you back to Sussex Place at any time you say.”

She shook her head. “I know I’m supposed to sit patiently at home and wait for news, or go out to dine at Doveridge House

tonight and pretend I’ve nothing else on my mind. Aunt Florentia would prefer that. But I told her to tell the duke the truth.

He’ll understand or he won’t, but I cannot act according to what might or might not upset him or any other man. I cannot.

I will not. You know me, Giles. You, of all men.”

He turned away, offering a stiff profile. “Very well. Let us continue to accost the locals.”

You know me, Giles.

You, of all men.

A dagger to the heart.

His vicious mind displayed the scene for him, undimmed by time.

Late summer. A garden of Camberley Place. The annual party for the young people, to end their visit. Lamps twinkled in the

dusk, while he and Alice danced. There were others, also dancing, who might as well be part of the shrubbery. He had not seen

Alice for two years. Now he saw and heard nobody else.

She wore a fine white muslin dress. Short, puffy sleeves threaded with pink satin ribbon left her arms bare above the long

white gloves. The same ribbon bordered the bodice under the low, ruffled neckline and at the waist—or what fashion designated

a waist, directly under her bosom. Fashion called further attention to the area, thanks to a line of pink satin ribbon between

her breasts, effectively framing them.

He knew he had a weakness for her. He knew he ought to keep away. But he’d missed her, and he’d had so little time with her

during this visit, and she spoke to him in the same way she’d always done—confiding and teasing and all else she did that

made him feel he was special to her. He wanted to be special to her. That was the trouble, part of the trouble.

And so they danced, and at the end of the dance they moved away from the others and farther into the garden’s shadow, through

an arbor, because moving away from the others was what they’d used to do, as though he and she had their own private club

with their own special rules.

“I’ll miss this,” she said. “There’s no other place in the world like Camberley Place.”

In a few days she’d return to the Continent with Cassandra Pomfret, to finish their schooling.

“You must go,” he said. “You want more Continental polish. You aren’t yet quite insufferable enough. You must come back with French airs, and always use an inadequate French word to replace a perfect English one. You must learn to be a coquette.”

“I’m learning other things,” she said. “Useful things.”

“Don’t you want men at your feet?”

“That I might step on them?”

“Miss Pomfret is not a good influence,” he said. “I must speak to your guardian.”

He stood too close. He’d never known Alice to wear strong scent, but they’d been dancing, and the night was warm, and he detected

a fragrance, maddeningly faint, that drew him closer still. He saw the satiny skin of her face and the curve of her cheek

and neck and shoulders and the soft swell above the pink ribbon and ruffled neckline.

He felt his head dipping that way, and very nearly made a terrible mistake, but a noise from the party woke him to what he

was doing. He stepped back and started to turn away.

She caught his arm. “Giles?”

He looked down at her hand and said, “Don’t.”

She looked up at him.

Her face, her remarkable face, as though she came from another place and time. It hurt to look at her like this, to be so

close and to know she’d soon be far beyond his reach.

To know she’d always be beyond his reach.

His choice. The right choice. He knew that, but he had the scent of her in his head and dusk was shading into night, the shadows

lengthening and spreading, so that it was as though they were completely alone .

“Alice.” He needed to move away, to put space between them so he could think, but he looked into her face, upraised to his, and didn’t want to think. He closed his hand over hers, the one holding him and keeping him without exerting any pressure at all. Then he pushed down the glove and bent his head to press a kiss to the inside of her elbow.

She gave a little gasp. “Oh.” So soft, a whisper in the night. “Giles.”

He drew her into his arms, and she came easily. He kissed her, and the taste of her went to his head like strong wine. The

taste of her was Alice and summer, all their summers, a string of moments spent together.

This was what he’d given up with the choice he’d made: Alice in his arms and he dizzy with the scent and taste of her, the

softness of her. He, weak with longing, falling and falling endlessly.

One kiss, that was all. One clinging kiss that sent the world whirling away, along with promises and choices. He fell, spinning

in happiness, while she grasped his arms, holding on as though she’d never let him go, never let him sink unless they fell

together. She kissed him, innocently answering, without hesitation, as though all their moments together had naturally led

to this.

Innocent.

She was seventeen, still a schoolgirl.

He was no innocent schoolboy. He’d made a choice, and he’d cheated.

Only one kiss. Only one wrenching moment of happiness before he broke away, shattered and heartsick.

“We can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t do this. By God, I must not.”

He walked quickly away from temptation and set out for the place where he, Ripley, and Ashmont always went, especially in

times of difficulty: the fishing house, their refuge.

In short, he ran away, caught up in his own turmoil. He never considered her feelings, a seventeen-year-old girl who cared for and trusted him, who’d come so willingly into his arms and would have willingly given herself.

He dragged a mental curtain over the scene and summoned his wits. His memories and dreams and desires didn’t signify. He needed

to find his friend, his brother. Her brother.

After an overlong, throbbing silence, he found his powers of reason and his voice. “We could investigate every lane and path

where a man might go astray. I believe, though, that keeping to the main road and continuing our current method makes more

sense. Sooner or later somebody will offer a clue.”

“People do seem willing to help,” she said.

“So far. Until now we’ve met up mainly with respectable persons. As we move nearer to the less prosperous areas, that will

change. My mind will be easier if you remain in the carriage with the servants.”

He braced himself for the inevitable argument. She said nothing, and he went on, “They’re tougher characters than they appear—like

your tutor Keeffe, whom you no doubt wish were here, instead of this great, useless ox of a duke.”

“You annoy me,” she said. “Yet you are not without intelligence.”

Oh, Alice.

He laughed inwardly and smiled a little outwardly, and the shell of misery about him cracked a degree. “Thank you. Allow me

to return the compliment.”

“You may. And may I return it again by saying I presume you have a weapon in the carriage?”

“Alice.”

“Tough servants are all well and good, and I did bring my sturdiest umbrella. Still, an object more obviously deadly can be of use to a lady. One ought not to underestimate the element of surprise. Also the element of terror. A woman waving a loaded pistol is extremely alarming. She might fire it accidentally, or be so lost to human feeling as to aim a few inches below the waist.”

He had himself to thank. Or blame.

He was the one who’d taught her how to clean, load, and fire a pistol. The first, aborted, lesson hadn’t been the last. Eventually,

he’d shown her off to his two friends. They were vastly amused, watching Ripley’s little sister fire at a target. She’d turned

out to be a competent shot.

Still, even the moving targets his father and Lord Charles had devised were not the same as living human beings. There were

so many ways to go wrong with guns, especially in unexpected situations.

“I’ll leave you the whip,” he said. “The pistol case is under the seat, and the pistols will need to be loaded. We left in

haste, and I hadn’t time to fully prepare for problems.”

“And you don’t trust me to load them properly,” she said.

The moment flashed into his mind when the pistol had misfired and Ripley fell.

“In ordinary circumstances, I’d trust you,” he said. “This is not ordinary. It’s different when you’re acting under duress,

which might easily be the case.”

“And you’d be uneasy, leaving me alone with loaded pistols.” She smiled suddenly, and his heart twisted in his chest. “I’m

not sure I blame you. In fact, I might congratulate you on learning a lesson. Very well, then. I’ll make do.”