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

Chapter 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

R elief washed over Sinclair. His sister was alive. All was well. He pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, leaning on Eugenie as she slipped an arm about his waist, her clothing soon soaking in the water from him. The group shifted to allow him in, just as Annabelle vomited up some of the brown water, and began to indulge in a fit of sobbing hiccups.

Mrs. Burdock slipped an arm about her shoulders and helped her to sit up, murmuring sympathy. Miss Gamboni had come forward but, seeing Sinclair, backed away again. Annabelle’s dark eyes scanned the faces looming over her and widened when she realized that her brother really was there.

“You saved my life,” she croaked. “Sinclair, you were right all along. I should have listened to you. Anything is better than this. How could I have thought I wanted to live the life of a simple girl?”

He knelt and took her hands in his. “Hush, Annabelle. Now is not the time. We will talk about these matters later.”

“My life is ruined,” she wailed.

When it was obvious she wasn’t going to calm herself, they carried her into the cottage and up the stairs to the Burdocks’ bedroom. There she was left to the tender care of Mrs. Burdock and Eugenie. Sinclair, who’d followed them in, sat at the same table he shared with Eugenie only moments ago.

Captain Johnno placed a blanket about his shivering shoulders and he thanked him, holding it close, feeling the warmth of the stove gradually seeping into his bones. Or was it his heart? Why did he feel so worried? He should be happy and relieved. Annabelle was safe, all was well, they could go home now. It was over.

But perhaps that was the trouble. It wasn’t over.

He didn’t want it to be over.

He noticed Terry hovering in the doorway, peering up the stairs, clearly worried about what was happening up there. Sinclair eyed him a moment, wondering if he had the strength to punch him in the nose. After a brief struggle with his wobbly legs he decided he didn’t.

“Sit down for God’s sake,” he growled instead.

Terry eyed him nervously. “Only if you promise not to call me out.”

Sinclair snorted. “I don’t have my second here at the moment. Sit down, Terry. I have no intention of calling you out.”

The boy—and suddenly he seemed little more—edged toward the table and sat down.

There was a strained look about his eyes. Sinclair realized he felt, if not sorry for him, then at least a little less inclined to blame him for the whole situation. Annabelle could be very strong-willed when she wanted something and Terry had little experience of strong-willed dukes’ sisters.

“Do you think she will recover?” Terry said, glancing toward the door to the stairs again. “I would have jumped in, sir, but I never learned to swim.”

Sinclair rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the grate of his unshaven cheeks. When had he last shaved? He couldn’t remember. It hadn’t seemed to matter . . . until now. “She’s in good hands. Your sister will take care of her and Mrs. Burdock seems to me a capable woman.”

Terry nodded, and when he looked at Sinclair again it was with speculative eyes. “May I ask, sir, what my sister is doing here?”

Sinclair wondered how much to tell him, or how much Eugenie would want to tell him. In the end he said, “She wanted to find you. She was worried I might do you an injury if she wasn’t here to stop me.” His mouth curved into an involuntary smile, and he saw Terry’s gaze sharpen. Quickly he made his expression stony again.

“Is my sister’s virtue intact?” Sinclair asked bluntly, thinking he may as well know the worst so that he could deal with it.

Terry’s eyes opened wide. They were green, like Eugenie’s. “Yes, sir! It was never . . . we were never . . . We are friends only! And Lizzie was with us all the while. Miss Gamboni, that is. She was chaperoning your sister. None of it was her fault. We sort of—sort of kidnapped her, you see.”

He looked so indignant, so eager to impress upon Sinclair his innocence, that this time Sinclair had difficulty subduing his smile. Then he thought of something else.

“Then what on earth did you think you were doing eloping for the border?”

“We weren’t eloping,” Terry groaned. “I was escorting her to Scotland, where her friend lives. She could not marry a man she didn’t love and live a life she despised, and she begged me to help her escape. She wanted . . . she said she wanted to be an ordinary woman living an ordinary life.” His voice trailed off at the end, as if he’d realized that Annabelle’s declarations were no longer to be trusted, and perhaps they never had. He knew now he should have listened to Lizzie when she warned him, but he’d been too caught up in the romance of rescuing Annabelle, of being her hero.

“I see.”

And reading the misery in Terry’s face Sinclair did indeed “see” the truth.

“Will there be a terrible scandal, sir? I don’t care what happens to me but please don’t blame Lizzie for any of this. It wasn’t her fault.”

Sinclair rubbed a hand across his eyes, feeling the weight of his responsibilities, of being the Duke of Somerton.

“We had turned back,” Terry went on to explain. “We didn’t even reach the border. Annabelle wanted to go home. She decided she didn’t want to be an ordinary girl after all. She wanted to marry this Lucius fellow and live in London and go to parties and balls and . . .” He sighed, as if all his beliefs had been shattered. Sinclair had a fair inkling that the boy had imagined himself in love with Annabelle, and planned to be her heroic savior. Now he probably felt like a complete idiot.

“You understand I will have to send you away from Somerton,” Sinclair said, watching Terry’s face to see how he’d take the news.

He took it bravely, straightening his shoulders, although there was an expression of misery in his eyes. “I know that, sir.”

“So where is it to be, then?”

Terry shrugged a shoulder. “I thought about enlisting as a common foot soldier, just to get away from . . .” He swallowed. “I always hoped for a commission but my father . . . It was not possible.”

Sinclair could read between the lines. He considered the matter. “Very well, I will buy you a decent commission. But you will repay me by being a model soldier. If I hear of any schemes to make money and defraud anyone, any gambling, any drunkenness . . . you know the sort of thing I’m talking about. If I hear of anything like that then I will pay a call to your commanding officer and see you thrown out. Do you understand me, Terry?”

The boy blinked in amazement. “I . . . I don’t know what to say, sir.”

“Thank you and good-bye, in that order,” Sinclair said. He looked at the door that led to the stairs. “I wonder what’s taking her so long,” he murmured, and realized he was thinking of Eugenie.

“You will look after Lizzie, won’t you, sir? You will take her home with you and write her a good reference?”

“Yes, all right.” He eyed Terry with sour interest. “Are you planning to marry her now?”

“She wouldn’t have me,” he said glumly.

“Give it a year or two and she might forget what a fool you’ve been over my sister,” he felt impelled to say. The boy looked so forlorn, and the fact that he could feel so when he’d just been given the commission he’d always wanted said something for his genuine feelings for Miss Gamboni.

“Might as well be a lifetime,” Terry sighed.

* * *

Upstairs, Eugenie had helped Annabelle to undress and rubbed her warm and dry with towels provided by Mrs. Burdock. They tucked the girl into a bed with a hot water bottle, and eventually her shudders began to give way to yawns and sighs.

“What is my brother doing here?” she asked, eyes beginning to close. “I did not expect to see him here.”

“He was trying to catch you before you reached the border,” Eugenie explained. “We have been following you since the night you left Somerton.”

“We?” She gave Eugenie a scornful look. “What, were you traveling with him?”

“Terry is my brother,” she said with quiet dignity.

“Oh yes, so he is.” Annabelle yawned again. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said. “He only did what I wanted him to do. I thought I knew what I wanted but I didn’t understand what it would be like. Being a commoner.”

A commoner, thought Eugenie, as if she were royalty! She supposed with the Somerton wealth and power and family background, she was the next thing to it. Eugenie felt her spirits sink as once more Annabelle’s attitude brought back to her just how large was the gap between a duke and a Belmont. As wide as an ocean.

Or it might as well be.

“Do you think Lord Salturn will take me back?” Annabelle was nearly asleep, struggling to keep her eyes from closing.

“I’m sure your brother will persuade him to do so.” She managed a smile. “Sinclair can be very persuasive.”

“He can.”

“Why is it I never realized how much I—I wanted to be Lucius’s wife until it was too late?”

“Perhaps it isn’t too late.”

Annabelle’s breathing finally deepened and slowed.

Mrs. Burdock glanced at Eugenie. “She’s asleep,” she said, with obvious relief. “When I saw her fall into the canal I thought she was a goner for sure. I can’t tell you how many dead ’uns my Jack hauls out of that canal, some fallen in by accident, others by purpose. Breaks your heart, it does.”

Eugenie managed a wry smile at the mention of broken hearts. She knew it wasn’t Annabelle’s fault the magic spell that had held Eugenie and Sinclair in its thrall had unraveled. If Sinclair hadn’t been here when his sister fell, then she would have drowned and then where would they all be? No, it was just the way things turned out. She’d known all along that the end must come to their idyll at some point, and now it was here.

Mrs. Burdock was kind enough to agree to sit with Annabelle, and Eugenie made her way downstairs.

Terry was seated alone at the table, but he jumped up as soon as he saw his sister.

“Annabelle . . . ?”

“Lady Annabelle is asleep,” Eugenie said briskly. Then, taking pity on him, she said, “She’s perfectly well, Terry. Just a little shaken.”

He looked exhausted and relieved, and for a moment he seemed so much like the little boy she remembered from their childhood that she put her arms around him and held him close.

“You are a fool,” she said huskily. “How could you have done such a thing? She would never have married you, Terry.”

Terry squeezed her tight before letting her go. “I know. She isn’t so bad as you think, Genie. Besides, I met Lizzie, and that made it all worthwhile.”

“Hmm. Lizzie, is it? You realize Father and Mother were quite mad with grief when they read your letter. Mother thought you’d go to gaol for certain.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and then gave Eugenie a sly look. “I’ll bet Father wasn’t mad with grief. He probably thought he’d have a wealthy daughter-in-law to borrow money from.”

“Terry,” she said sharply.

“Somerton has offered to buy me a commission in the army,” he told her proudly. “He just wants to get me away from home, of course, but I think it’s decent of him to offer, don’t you? I always wanted to go into the army, Genie.”

It was generous, but then Sinclair was a generous man. She told her brother she was glad for him, scolded him again for worrying them all so, and then gave him another hug.

“Here now, girl, I’m going to be a soldier now. Soldiers need to be brave. They can’t be cuddled like babies.”

She chuckled. “Well, soldier, here’s a question for you. How are we to get home? Have you any money left?”

He looked comically blank. “I thought . . .”

“That the duke and his sister would take us? No, Terry, we can hardly ride in their coach now can we? We are trying to avoid a scandal, not make another one. You and I must find our own way home.”

“But,” he began, eyeing her knowingly.

Eugenie gave him a stern look. “But?”

“Well, it seemed to me that the duke and you might be . . . well, that he was more fond of you than you let on.”

“Don’t be silly, Terry,” she said, her voice giving away the lie. “He is a duke, after all, and dukes don’t allow themselves to become fond of women like me. Now you come with me while I talk to our captain and see what ideas he has. Maybe he can take us as far as Manchester.”

Captain Johnno was brushing down Rufus, the big horse standing patiently, enjoying the attention. They both glanced up as Eugenie and Terry approached along the towpath.

“The young lady has taken no permanent hurt then?” Eugenie assured him Lady Annabelle was resting but should be perfectly all right when she woke.

Slowly, a little embarrassed, she explained her and her brother’s predicament. Johnno thought a moment and then suggested they make their way to a town some five miles to the east of the lock, where they could get the mail coach south. “There’s a reasonable coaching inn you can wait at,” he said. “It’s clean and the landlord is an honest man.”

“We have no money,” Terry informed him bluntly.

Johnno thought a moment more, until Rufus stirred and nudged his shoulder. “His Lordship left me some blunt, in case,” he admitted. “He was worried that the duke might fly up into the boughs about something or you’d have a barney, or so he said, and you’d be left high and dry, miss. You may as well have the blunt, if it’ll get you home safe. His Lordship would want me to do that.”

“Tell Lord Ridley we’ll pay him back as soon as we can,” Terry said seriously.

Eugenie felt like sagging with relief. They would be able to get home safely, thanks to the kindness of Lord Ridley. The next emotion that swept through her was sadness, like a dark cloud, the color of mourning, because this really was the end of all her hopes and dreams.

The end of love.