To Pleasure A Duke (The Husband Hunters Club #3)

Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

T he landlord came bearing food and drink, and announced that their bags had been taken to a room upstairs. Eugenie was relieved when Sinclair suggested she make use of it first. Georgie watched her go with an appearance of unease, but she assured him that the duke would not harm him and despite appearances was really quite nice. As she closed the door she saw Sinclair’s expression at being described in such a way, and it made her giggle to herself as she climbed the stairs.

Sinclair was certainly not used to the treatment he was receiving from Georgie. Although perhaps it would do him good. He was too used to getting his own way and being fawned upon. Such deference couldn’t be good for him—well, not all the time.

Her smile faded when she opened her carpetbag. There was only her pink dress left to change into, and that was none too clean. But at least, she comforted herself, it was dry, so she made the best of it. The room looked as if it was used as a storeroom, with boxes stacked against the walls and the window filthy with disuse. As Georgie had hinted, this was clearly not a place where people stayed for long, and she was glad to return downstairs.

She paused outside the parlor. It was very quiet. With a feeling of growing concern she cracked open the door to see what was happening. Had Sinclair tied Georgie up and gagged him? Or were they glaring at each other warily, like two dogs with one bone, as they had been when she left?

But the scene before her was actually very domestic.

Sinclair was sitting at the table, busy putting himself on the outside of a plate of stew and potatoes, while Georgie was seated opposite him, just finishing his helping. He set down his spoon and eyed the serving dish longingly.

“More, brat?” Sinclair said, before Eugenie could utter a word. He reached over and spooned more stew into the boy’s bowl and then added a huge serving of the mashed potatoes. “Enough?” he asked dryly.

Georgie nodded happily and applied himself to the meal.

Only then did Sinclair look up and see Eugenie watching them from the doorway. A flush colored his lean cheeks and he looked almost shame-faced, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Being kind to an urchin, she supposed, wasn’t the done thing for a duke, although he would probably be more than happy to hand out a few coins. Close contact with the masses, that was something Sinclair wasn’t used to, but in Eugenie’s opinion it was very good for him.

“You’ll make the child ill,” she said mildly, making her way across the room, to where her cloak lay spread out before the fire. To her relief it was almost dry, the woolen cloth steaming.

“Impossible,” Sinclair retorted. “He has the stomach of a grown man.”

She was surprised to hear Georgie chuckle in response. Evidently while she’d been away upstairs the two of them had formed some strange sort of masculine bonding.

Eugenie joined them at the table and spooned some of the food onto her own plate.

“Our host found Georgie some clothes and a pair of boots. They look rather large but he can always stuff the toes with cloth,” Sinclair went on blithely, as if he discussed such things every day. He gestured to a pile of clothing and the boots, which had been placed on the sideboard.

“The duke used to stuff his boots when he went to boarding school ’cause they was too big for him,” Georgie explained, his mouth full of potato.

“Did he?” Eugenie gave Sinclair a puzzled look. “Didn’t you mention to your mother or your father that they were too big?”

“My parents were away somewhere or other on the Continent when I was sent off to my first public school. I was seven. I suppose I could have written a letter to them but by the time they received it and sent me new boots I would have grown into the old ones.”

He sounded matter-of-fact but to Eugenie, who’d been hemmed about with her family most of her life, his childhood appeared lonely and bizarre. It gave her an entirely new slant on his character. Who would have thought she could ever feel sorry for the Duke of Somerton?

They ate in silence.

“Will you be happy to stay here, do you think?” Eugenie asked brightly, smiling determinedly at Georgie.

The boy gave her a sideways look. “Dunno.”

“You will have work and food and a warm place to sleep,” she reminded him.

“Paid for with my blunt,” Sinclair added dryly.

“He won’t keep me after you’re gone,” the boy said with the certainty of the old at heart. “He’ll pocket the blunt and send me off down the highway. Probably make me give back the boots, too.”

Eugenie gave a gasp. “Oh no, we won’t let him, Georgie!”

“Once you’re gone how will you know?” Georgie replied calmly.

“I’ll see about that,” Sinclair declared angrily, rising to his feet, but Eugenie put her hand on his arm to stop him.

“He’s right. How will we know? And how can you force the landlord to do what you want?” she said. “You cannot be keeping an eye on him after we’ve gone.” Her eyes widened, a glint in them he knew well. “Sinclair! There’s only one thing to be done. We’ll have to take Georgie with us.”

“Definitely not,” Sinclair said in his chilliest voice. “I knew this would happen, Eugenie. I knew you would want to take the child with us, and I utterly refuse. We are not taking Georgie and that is final.”

* * *

The rain had stopped, although it was still overcast and cool for the time of year, but English weather was never to be relied on. The road through the woods was gloomy, rather like one of those horrible children’s fairy tales Eugenie read to her younger brothers—the more horrible the better they liked them. Stories full of trolls and wolves and wicked witches. When a bird flew up from the bushes with a shriek, she jumped, and Georgie’s arms tightened about her.

“All right?” She glanced back at him and smiled.

He nodded, but she noticed his eyes were flickering nervously about them and every now and then he’d give a shiver, despite his new warm coat.

“The duke will look after us,” she tried to reassure him. And herself. “You do like him, don’t you, Georgie? He has been kind to you?”

Georgie’s gaze turned sly. “He’s only doing it because he wants to please you, miss.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s sweet on you, miss.”

Eugenie tried to think of something to say but Georgie’s cheeky grin was unsquashable. In the end she shook her head at him and turned again to face Sinclair’s back, her face fiery and no doubt her freckles standing out.

It was a ridiculous suggestion.

She would rather have said Sinclair was cross with her. He certainly hadn’t been very happy when she insisted on bringing Georgie with them, but eventually he’d given way to her on the condition that once somewhere suitable was found they would leave Georgie behind. Of course Eugenie and Sinclair had different opinions of what “somewhere suitable” might look like.

She considered the duke as they rode. His bark really was worse than his bite. That gruff manner he affected when he was actually being kind, and the haughtiness that hid his uncertainties about himself. It was as if he believed his generosity was a weakness to be hidden. She felt as if she was beginning to know him rather well. Strange to think they had been so intimate, that she had touched him and kissed him and . . . well, she knew things about him she’d never tell—and yet it was only now that she felt she understood the way he felt and thought.

* * *

At first Sinclair didn’t see the men. They were up ahead, lurking in the shadows of the dripping trees. Waiting, as he later found out, for him. It was only as Sinclair and Eugenie drew closer that the two men rode out of the forest, hard-eyed, roughly dressed, and placed themselves directly in front of the little party. Blocking their path through the woods.

Every instinct warned Sinclair they were dangerous.

If he’d been on his own he would have ridden straight at them. Usually that ensured that anything in his way soon moved out of it. But there was Eugenie to consider and there was no way he could leave her to the mercies of these bandits—he knew instantly that was what they were. Thieves, ruffians, lawless highwaymen. No, he would have to stay and bluff his way out of trouble. As a duke he was used to being obeyed, and most people were used to obeying him. It came in handy.

“You are in our way,” he said loudly. “Move aside.”

They didn’t answer, their eyes watchful and wary.

Time to show these ruffians who was in charge, he thought grimly. Reaching into his saddlebag, Sinclair expected to place his hand on his pistol, which he’d placed in there during their stay at the tavern.

It wasn’t there.

Disbelievingly he began to search, and then search again, more desperately, but he found no familiar comforting shape to place his hand on. The pistol had gone.

He saw one of the ruffians nudge the other with a grin and his heart sank. They knew he was unarmed. That meant that this meeting wasn’t an unfortunate coincidence but a calculated assault. Someone had taken his pistol and sent word of it to their companions.

With no weapon there was nothing he could do but continue to play the duke, using his authority as a threat. Some people found that more frightening than a gun.

“Move aside at once,” Sinclair demanded loudly.

“I don’t think so.”

“We’ve come to relieve you of your savings,” the other man retorted, the one with the scrappy beard. “You was flashing it about in the tavern back there, so we heard. I reckon we have more need of it than you.”

“I am the Duke of Somerton, a peer of the realm,” Sinclair said angrily, “and you will regret it if you molest me.”

The two men looked at each other and snorted with laughter. “We heard you was a duke. Some of the other travelers seen you in your pretty coach with your pretty horses.”

“My man will be here soon. He’s following behind us.”

“You haven’t got no man,” scrappy beard sneered.

His glance moved toward Eugenie and Georgie, and Sinclair’s stomach twisted. They would not harm Eugenie and the child, not if he had to fight them with his bare fists. But who had taken the weapon? He knew there was only one way to find out.

“I have a pistol and I will use it,” he said and waited to be proved right.

“No, you ain’t.”

Was it the slippery landlord? But then a new solution came to him, one that sank his spirits even further. As if to confirm his guess, Georgie leaped nimbly off Eugenie’s horse and scampered toward the two outlaws. The grin he gave Sinclair was pure mischief. “I relieved the duke of his pistol,” he informed his friends, and reaching into the pocket of his new coat, he took out the weapon and carefully handed it up to scrappy beard. “Here you go, Seth.”

Seth weighed the pistol in his hand, grinned back, and then slipped it into his own belt. Suddenly his eyes narrowed as he spied Georgie’s new clothes. “Where’d you get them boots, Georgie? You been thieving again?”

“The lady there, she got them for me,” Georgie said, looking uncomfortable. “And the clothes, too. I was that cold. She’s been kind to me. They both have,” he added in a mumble.

“Maybe you’d rather stay with them then, Georgie. What do you think of that?”

“Yeah, maybe you’d get better pickings with them, eh, little brother?”

Georgie looked from one to the other, his thin face anxious. “Course not,” he said, with an attempt at a sneer. “I want to stay with you and Seth. You’re me brothers. I wouldn’t go off and leave you, now would I?”

“We’d miss you if you did,” Seth said, and there was a threat implicit in his voice that Georgie seemed to understand.

“I said I wouldn’t.” Georgie shuffled his feet and edged away a little. When the other brother lifted a hand as if to strike him, the boy ducked, and both men laughed.

“All right then. So tell us, where’s this duke of yours keep his blunt?”

Sinclair glanced back at Eugenie, still and white-faced, shocked into silence by the revelations. He could see she felt betrayed, her kind heart broken, and he wanted to hold her in his arms. But this was not the time for maudlin sentiment, he told himself.

Their very lives were at stake.

Georgie swaggered up to Sinclair. “Where’s the blunt?” Georgie said, mimicking his brothers’ menacing growl. “We won’t hurt you if you give us your blunt.”

But there was something in the boy’s eyes, a plea to do as he was told. Georgie may have betrayed them but suddenly Sinclair knew he was as much a prisoner of circumstance as they were. Slowly Sinclair reached down and untied his bag and tossed it to the ground. Georgie ran to where it fell, opening it and rummaging through it. He held up a couple of items to show his brothers, and they greedily snatched them from him, slipping them into their pockets. The money wallet was at the bottom and he fumbled with it a moment before finally holding it up with a triumphant grin.

They grabbed that from him, too, emptying it and sharing the notes between them. Sinclair knew, with an impotent sense of rage, that the loss of his money meant he would have difficulty continuing his journey. Not everyone knew him and he could not rely upon the goodwill of those who didn’t. How would he find Annabelle now? How would he save the family honor?

“Did you really see my sister come this way?” he said harshly. “Or was that a lie, too?”

Georgie looked hurt. “’Course I saw her. She and the bloke and the other girl, the yellow-haired one.”

The yellow-haired one? Then Miss Gamboni was with them. Well, at least that was one piece of good news. A chaperone would help still the wagging of scandalous tongues.

“Get down off your horses.” Seth was waving his pistol, keen to regain control. “You won’t be wanting them. I reckon that thieving bastard at the tavern will give us a good price for horses like this.”

It went against the grain for Sinclair to give up his horse so easily, but once again he knew he had no choice. He jumped down and went to help Eugenie. Her hand was cold through her glove and he squeezed it in his, trying to give her courage.

“I won’t let them hurt you,” he said quietly.

Her eyes fixed on his and she managed a shaky smile. “I know you won’t. But, Sinclair, who will stop them from hurting you?”

“Hey, are you listening?” Seth blustered. “Your ring and your pocket watch, Your Dukeship.” He chuckled at his own joke.

The signet ring was a present from his mother when he’d turned eighteen, and the pocket watch had belonged to his father. Sinclair wavered. As items they were not worth much monetarily, but emotionally they meant a great deal to Sinclair.

Suddenly he knew this was the time to make a stand. He had to show these villains he wouldn’t be pushed about. No matter how foolish and reckless his knew it was, he couldn’t give up his signet ring and his watch without a fight.

Eugenie was watching him nervously.

He stepped away from her.

“No,” he said. “You can’t have them. What are you going to do about it?”