The Very Daring Duchess Part 33

Edward sucked in his breath. Letters often went astray due to the war, and even official dispatches had been slow to reach them in Naples. But St. John dead, gone so long without him knowing-he felt the shock of it even though he hadn't been close to his brother.

"No, my lord," he said softly. "I had not received the news of his death."

"Ah, ah, Ramsden, I didn't realize." The earl grunted, and shook his head. "h.e.l.lacious circ.u.mstances, too, being shot by one of his own men. A great loss, of course. To your family, and to the country. My condolences."

Edward nodded, silent. He had not seen St. John in at least five years, nor had he wished to. Perhaps because he'd been the brother closest to Edward in age, as boys he'd always taken pains to ally himself with George and Frederick against Edward, and the tendency for bullying had lingered into his adulthood. Edward suspected St. John must have made a miserable officer, but he'd never guessed his brother's life would end because of it.

"That is not all, Ramsden," warned the earl ominously, rubbing on his cheek. "There is, I fear, considerably more. At least Major Lord St. John died in the service of his king. The same cannot, I fear, be said of your other two brothers."

"My other two brothers?" repeated Edward faintly, though his thoughts were already racing toward the inevitable, ironic conclusion of this whole unspeakable farce. "What has become of them?"

"An 'accident' of the most grievous, most ludicrous sort." The earl grimaced, as if even to speak of such events was distasteful. "While you were risking your life for your country in the company of Admiral Lord Nelson, your two brothers were risking theirs for the purest folly imaginable. They had hired a French balloonist to take them high aloft in the company of two harlots they had likewise hired for their lascivious diversion. You can, I am sure, guess the rest, and the shameful scene when the wreckage was discovered. The scandal was enormous-the printmakers and wags have never had such sordid grist-and the only good that shall come from such a mess is that you, Your Grace, are a gentleman capable of removing the stain upon your family's ancient name."

Your Grace? Edward shook his head, grasping at the arm of his chair as the only way to keep his bearings. All three of his brothers lost, and him the only one left. All three of his brothers gone, dying the same wretched ways that they'd lived. All of them dead, and him the only one left, and not a single chance remaining for reconciliation or apologies or answers or whatever else he'd always hoped for from his brothers but now would never have, not in this life.

Your Grace? He had never remotely considered himself an heir to the t.i.tle, nor did he want to possess it now. Instead he wanted to be the Centaur's captain again, with an honorable purpose in life. h.e.l.l, they could make him master of a tiny sloop like the Antelope, and he'd prefer it to this. He did not want to wear a cloak trimmed with ermine, or attend the king at court, or sit in the House of Lords, or oversee at least four separate households, or accept the responsibility for the lives of countless servants and tenants, and most of all, he did not want to become his brother or his father, either.

Your blasted, b.l.o.o.d.y, double-d.a.m.ned Grace. Edward, seventh Duke of Harborough, Earl of Heythrop, Baron Tyne. He'd have to learn to answer to that now whether he wished to or not. If his three brothers and father had together wished to contrive one final, vindictive cruelty to inflict upon him, they had succeeded beyond measure.

"Perhaps you should have been told earlier, Your Grace, but a letter seemed most heartlessly impersonal. His Majesty himself suggested that this would be the better way to ease the shock you must be feeling." The earl rose slowly to his feet, bowing stiffly before Edward. "I am honored to be the first to wish you well, Your Grace, and many long years of happiness and contentment."

d.a.m.nation, he now outranked the First Lord of the Admiralty. He was supposed to sit here and be grand while the Earl of Spencer bowed to him.

He rose abruptly to his feet, thumping his tumbler on the table beside him and splattering claret across the carpet. "I do not want this, my lord, and I never have. Why can't I remain a captain? What the devil will a medal for the Nile mean to me now? Why can't I continue to serve His Majesty in the way I can be of the greatest use?"

"You know the reason yourself, Your Grace," said the earl patiently, "else you would not be asking now. As much as I hate to refuse the talents and experience of an officer such as yourself, you know as well as I that the navy cannot have a peer of the realm rushing about in battle."

"But d.a.m.nation, I was-I am-a captain in the king's navy first!"

"This is as much about what you represent as who you are, Your Grace," said the earl severely, his eyes turning hard as a flint. "If a duke, a peer, were captured, can you imagine what Napoleon would make of it? No, I am sorry, but it will not do. It cannot do. His Majesty himself was most adamant about that fact. When you gave up your commission to the Centaur, you were removed from the list of able and active captains."

To be removed from the list was as good as being dead. Somewhere another captain had moved up the list, into his place, another captain who could rejoice in knowing he was one step closer to becoming an admiral.

Another captain who hadn't been cursed and ruined by being made a d.a.m.ned duke instead.

"There are other ways to serve, Your Grace," continued the earl. "I should be honored and grateful to have your expertise here in the Admiralty, and the Navy is always in need of advocates in the House of Lords."

He didn't want to spend his life rotting behind a desk. He could give up the fighting if he had to, but not the sea, landlocked forever the way the navy wished for him. h.e.l.l, the sea was where he belonged.

But all anyone else could see was astounding good fortune. Clearly Admiral Lord Nelson had thought that-- he'd known the truth in Palermo, of course, he and the Hamiltons both, though all of them refused to admit it-and even Lady Hamilton had believed the same. What was it she'd said to her outside the villa? Something about whatever happened in life, he'd always have Francesca, just as she would have him.

Francesca.

"I must go tell my wife," he muttered, as much to himself as to Lord Spencer. "I have to tell her now."

"Your wife?" asked the earl with obvious delight. "I'd no idea you'd wed, Your Grace! What splendid news! Who is this fortunate new d.u.c.h.ess?"

"A lady who has lived her entire life in Naples," said Edward. He couldn't guess what Francesca's reaction would be. Most ladies would be thrilled to learn they'd become an English d.u.c.h.ess, but Francesca was so unlike other women that she could just as easily see the t.i.tle as a grand, glorious trap-exactly as he did himself. "I doubt you would know her, my lord. She accepted my offer at Sir William Hamilton's palazzo, and we were wed just before Christmas."

"With Vesuvius shooting fire and the Isle of Capri in the background?" marveled the earl. "Lud, she'll have every lady in London-Lady Spencer most of all-desperate to know how she coaxed you into such an idyllic wedding!"

"Excuse me, My Lord, but I must go to my wife now," he said, already on his way to the door. "Now."

He took his hat from the clerk and hurried down the hall, down the stairs, past every grinning jacka.s.s who wanted to wish him well, all of them knowing what he'd only just learned. He kept his gaze straight ahead, mercilessly intent on not letting them say one blasted word. He could do that, couldn't he? Wasn't that one of the ridiculous prerogatives of being the d.a.m.ned Duke of Harborough?

What if one of them reached Francesca before he could? What if she learned of this from someone else, or worse, thought that he'd known and kept it a secret and hadn't told her himself?

"Aha, good day, Your Grace!" called a braying voice he unfortunately recognized at once. "A new-minted duke, a hero of the Nile, and the luckiest b.a.s.t.a.r.d this side of heaven! Come, let me stand beside you, and see if some of that gilt will rub off upon me!"

"Good day, McCray," said Edward grudgingly as the other captain fell into step beside him. It somehow fit with the rest of this wretched day that he'd meet Stephen McCray here in the Whitehall courtyard. Edward had always found McCray irritating, given to too much forced familiarity, heavy drinking, and whoring, and known for a ready willingness to ignore regulations when his superiors wouldn't notice.

But the irony was bitterly unmistakable: Here was McCray grinning up at him like a mongrel dog in his shabby uniform with the tarnished braid and dandruff on his epaulets, one of the most unworthy examples of an officer in the entire service. Yet McCray still held his place on the captain's list, while Edward in his spotless superfine uniform, with all his honors and flawless record in battle, did not.

" 'Good day', aye, I'd say it was if I were you, with so much good luck plopped like a plum into your pocket," continued McCray with a broad wink. "But then you always were one to play your cards close to your chest, weren't you, Ramsden? Oh, pardon, pardon, I meant Your Grace. Tell me, Your Grace, have you grown too grand to come drink a pot or two with an old shipmate?"

The last way Edward wished to spend this afternoon was drinking with Stephen McCray, and being too grand was the least of his reasons.

"Forgive me, McCray, but I have another engagement," he said, lengthening his stride to try to rid himself of the other captain. "Another time, perhaps."

But McCray refused to be shrugged off quite so easily, trotting along to keep pace. "Off to see your lady-bird, then? Now that's an appointment any man would wish to keep, dawdling between the sheets with a pretty little hussy, and before the sun's down, too!"

Now the man was talking pure rubbish, and at the archway to the street quickly Edward nodded to the porter to summon him a hackney, the only sure way to escape a bore like McCray. "You are mistaken, McCray. Now if you'll excuse me-"

"Nay, not mistaken, not hardly," insisted McCray. "Oh, don't be shy about it, Your Grace. I know how you high-bred officers live. Cards at White's, a box at the opera, and a fancy mistress primed and paid to spread her legs whenever you wish it. I saw an old lieutenant of mine just this morning, and he told me all about how he'd carried you and your trollop clear from Palermo. Pettigrew said she was a hot little Italian piece, ready for-"

That was when Edward's fist found McCray's jaw. Instantly, efficiently he caught the other man beneath the chin, feeling the fleshiness beneath McCray's jaw as he knocked him backward and off his feet and hard to the paving stones. One blow, that was all it took to silence him, and without a single look backward Edward climbed into the hackney and ordered the driver onward. He had a muddled impression of gaping, startled faces as the hackney pulled away, of some men laughing and others pointing and jeering, and the horrified porter rushing to help McCray, for no officer, however shabby or disreputable, should be found on his threadbare a.s.s before Whitehall.

With a groan, Edward sank back against the squabs and closed his eyes. His heart was pounding with unthinking fury, his blood boiling with anger at what that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Pettigrew had said about Francesca. But he also realized how dangerously close he'd come to pounding McCray to lifeless pulp and bone, using him to lash out at all the frustrations of this morning. What the devil was happening to him, anyway? Even a duke could be tried for murder.

Che miracolo, indeed. Wearily he gazed from the hackney's window, and tried to think of how he'd explain his-no, their-newly upside-down world to Francesca.

To his wife.

To Her Grace, his d.u.c.h.ess.

As the hackney jostled its way through the crowded London streets, Francesca once again took the well-creased sc.r.a.p of paper from her reticule, smoothed it over her knee, and read the address. John Peac.o.c.k, 12 Barlow Street, Westminster, London.

She didn't know why she needed to read it again, for it was certainly a simple enough address to remember. Perhaps it was the words themselves that offered rea.s.surance more than information. Written long ago in her father's familiar slapdash penmanship, the ink fading away now just as he'd done himself, the note was the one connection she had between her and her father, and now her and her uncle.

How like Papa to change his surname when he'd moved from London to Naples, and how like him, too, to trade the gaudy, proud Peac.o.c.k for the sprightly Robin! He'd laughed merrily when he'd explained it to her, though as a girl she'd never quite understood the jest. Now it simply worried her. What would this proud Uncle Peac.o.c.k of hers make of a magpie Robin like her, suddenly appearing to beg a place in his nest?

She wondered if her father had even written his brother of her existence, and if her uncle had accepted the artwork and antiques she'd shipped to his address from Naples. There was always the chance that her uncle could have died like her father, or simply moved to a different house, or the ship with her treasures could have foundered or been captured by the French, and never arrived in London at all.

The hackney slowed to a stop before a neat brick house with glossy black shutters and three well-scrubbed white steps to the front door. The neighborhood was quietly prosperous and genteel, an appropriate residence for a retired merchant like Uncle Peac.o.c.k was supposed to be. As the driver hauled her single traveling chest to the door for her, she hesitated, considering asking him to wait until she was sure she'd be welcome. But it was too late for doubts now, and shoving back her hood, she paid the driver and knocked upon the door, head high and her smile as blithely confident as she could make it.

Besides, where else would she go? She'd left Edward, and she couldn't go back. She had no money, no friends, no family in London beyond this single old gentleman.