by Erica Ridley
Bastien could not help but grin. “Returning home to France has been our one overriding aim for so long, I’ve no idea what I’ll do when we get there.”
“You’ll meet French girls,” his brother said pointedly.
Bastien brightened. “And shop!”
“And never again step foot in a smithy,” Lucien said with a fervent sigh.
A trio of sisters waved as they strolled past. “Good afternoon, Beau!”
Lucien’s face turned red. “You are not Beau Brummell. Even Beau Brummell should not be ‘Beau’ Brummell. He is not French. We are.”
“They don’t think I’m Beau Brummell,” Bastien whispered back. “They think I’m Beau le Duc.”
“Even worse,” Lucien growled. “Now you will wish to be friends with Prinny.”
“What is he saying?” one of the girls asked with curiosity.
Bastien gave them a friendly wave. “That he wishes you ladies a very lovely afternoon.”
Lucien’s jaw clenched. Although no one but their sister had ever witnessed Lucien attempt to speak a single syllable of English, Bastien had no doubt that his brother understood almost every word.
Not an easy feat. Even after Bastien had become reasonably conversational in English, it had at first been very hard to switch between languages. Now that he was used to doing so all day every day, the right language usually came flying out of his mouth without thinking.
He nudged his brother off the walking path and onto the decorative iron pedestrian bridge that crossed the castle pond. Here, at least, there would be fewer pretty young ladies to vex his brother with their appalling English beauty.
In fact, only one other person stood atop the narrow bridge. Well, two if you counted her dog.
Miss Eve Shelling scowled at the sparkling pond from beneath a drooping straw bonnet. Glossy black tendrils tugged and tumbled with the autumn breeze. Although he could not see her eyes from here, he knew them to be a bright, arresting green, and full of intelligence. Her cloak listed to one side, giving the impression of being tossed over her shoulders more out of habit than respect for fashion, and managed to accentuate, rather than hide, the curves of her silhouette.
At her feet, a large bullmastiff that nearly outweighed her flashed its canines at the swans fluffing their soft white tailfeathers on the water below.
“That is one odd woman,” Lucien muttered. “Even for the English.”
Bastien liked odd. Why else would he have added blue and green spangles to his waistcoat? Odd made life more interesting. He could gaze at Miss Shelling’s carelessly beautiful oddness all day.
“This way.” Lucien turned away from the bridge.
Bastien glanced over his shoulder at Miss Shelling. “But—”
“That one definitely has ulterior motives,” Lucien assured him. “And if she has not, her pet certainly does. Do you know why those are called ‘gamekeepers’ night-dogs?’ Because they are strong enough and swift enough to knock armed poachers to the ground, pinning them immobile and helpless until the trespassers can be hanged as a public example.”
None of this was making Bastien any less intrigued by Miss Shelling.
“The point is,” Lucien continued, as if none of the prior distractions had occurred, “we could leave tomorrow if we wished to. And I think we should.”
Of course he did. Much as Lucien would be loath to admit it, when it came to returning to France, Lucien was all emotion and Bastien was the level-headed one plagued by pesky logic.
“We cannot leave tomorrow.”
He lifted his hand to give his brother a reassuring pat on his arm, then reconsidered. In Lucien’s current mood, he was likely to toss Bastien into the castle pond. This superb greatcoat had been crafted with far too much care to befall such a tragedy.
“Think of Désirée,” he tried instead. “She’s been married for…” Bastien made a show of checking his pocket watch. “Six and a half hours. Might we grant her a short while to enjoy her new circumstances before we shove her onto a boat?”
“She has lived with him for a month. He’s English. Surely she must need a break by now,” Lucien muttered.
“You like Jack,” Bastien reminded his brother. “Our percentage of his smuggling operation is the entire reason we were able to pay Uncle Jasper’s loan. How much debt do we have now? None. That’s thanks to our brother-in-law. Huzzah for Jack! Even though he’s English!”
Lucien scowled at him.
Bastien gave him a sunny smile in response. “Now that our finances have broken even, next month we will finally have money left over. We won’t just return to France, brother. We’ll go home in style.”
“But when?” Lucien’s tortured gaze indicated he’d row across the channel on the back of a fallen log with nary a shilling in his pocket if it would get them home faster.
“After Twelfth Night,” Bastien promised. “We cannot split Désirée from her new family over Christmas, no matter how much we’d rather be somewhere else. The sixth of January, we’ll set sail for the last time. Can you wait until then?”
Lucien cocked a dark brow. “We will find out.”
Chapter 3
Eve leaned on the cool iron railing of the narrow pedestrian bridge and glowered at the lively pond below.
She liked swans. She just didn’t want to waste newspaper space on them.
As if sensing her thoughts, Duenna gave a low growl. Eve stroked behind her bullmastiff’s soft ears.
Duenna liked swans, too. Particularly for dinner.
“All right,” Eve said. “I’ll write about swans if I must, but that’s not all I’ll write about. There has to be a better compromise. A newsworthy story that might actually interest subscribers without scandalizing Father.”
Even if she could think of such a story, things weren’t that simple. They never were.
Although he might deny it, Father was still angry with her for inviting an untrustworthy rogue into their home several years before. Not as angry as Eve still was with herself. The consequences had been disastrous. She had sworn to never again fall for a duplicitous blackguard, but promises could not undo the past. Nothing could.
But that didn’t stop Father from trying to remake the present. He railed against rule-breakers of any kind, and was determined that the Gazette paint Cressmouth as a real-life fairy story.
The Gazette was just as important to Eve. It was a means to show the world as it truly was—thereby proving there were no hidden tricks to be scared of. That she was no longer naïve enough to fall for pretty lies. Only by exposing the truth was anyone ever truly safe.
“There you are!”
Eve glanced over her shoulder and grinned to see her good friend Miss Margaret Church climbing up the iron bridge. “Good afternoon.”
“Don’t ‘good afternoon’ me, young lady. I know you’re up here plotting something devious, and I insist on taking part.”
Because Margaret had already reached the ripe old age of five-and-twenty, she considered herself a set-in-her-ways spinster… which she generally used as an excuse to do anything she pleased.
Eve, at the tender age of four-and-twenty, had no such freedoms. There was no inheritance waiting at the end of the rainbow. Her birthday would pass like any other day, and at five-and-sixty she’d probably still be filling her journals with articles that never got published even in the local paper. Assuming her father didn’t sack her.
“Good God.” Margaret balanced a plump arm on the iron railing. “It cannot be as bad as all that. Did you drop a lemon tart into the water?”
“Worse,” Eve said darkly. “Father wants me to write about swans.”
Margaret frowned. “As a dining alternative to Christmas pheasant?”
“As… birds who float on this pond for half the year, and then disappear for the other half. They won’t even be here at Christmas.”
“Why, that has nothing to do with Yule at all.” Margaret clapped her hands in excitement. “He’s unbending! Eve, this is wo
nderful.”
“It’s dreadful.” She gripped the iron rail. “Nobody cares about swans that have gone elsewhere. I want to report things that matter. I want to publish real news.”
“Or, at the very least, not bore people silly. A fine aim. I have just the thing.” Margaret struck a dramatic pose. “You can write about me.”
Eve pretended to take notes. “Spinster… five-and-twenty… shocking tendency toward self-aggrandizement…”
“Think about it,” Margaret insisted. “It could be a regular column. No, not about me every time—more like, ‘Cressmouth’s resident of the month.’”
“It’s a quarterly gazette.”
“Then the column will go on forever.” Margaret grinned at her. “It’s perfect.”
Eve scratched behind Duenna’s ears and considered the idea. Highlighting a Cressmouth resident every issue was a compromise by Eve’s standards, but it would still be a horror to her father. He had despised her column on the village’s founder because she’d dared to include less than-rosy aspects of his legacy and personality.
But what if she began by covering the rosiest of residents? Not Margaret. She’d lived on the Continent for a period, which was interesting, but poverty had forced her to leave, which was depressing, and now she lived in a spare room on her cousin’s dairy farm, which was… wholesome, Eve supposed. Margaret would gag to think such a saccharine word applied to her.
“I need something bigger,” Eve said slowly. “Something Cressmouth-ier.”
“A pillar of the community.” Margaret nodded. “I understand. The only ‘pillars’ I let near me are the ones that belong to tall, strapping rogues whose only desire is to—”
Eve covered Duenna’s ears. “Please don’t say it. She still thinks you’re a good influence.”
“It’s the treats.” Margaret fished a crumble of shortbread from her reticule and held it out to Duenna. “Nothing works better than bribery.”
The big bullmastiff lowered her muzzle to Margaret’s palm and gently retrieved the treat.
“Noelle is very Cressmouth-y,” Margaret suggested. “She worked in the castle counting-house for years. Didn’t she bake biscuits for the visitors’ buffet?”
“‘Used to’ and ‘used to.’” Eve let out a frustrated sigh. She would not be defeated. “I need someone who’s the heart of the community at this very moment.”
“Do you?” Margaret wrinkled her nose. “I thought you wanted to be a famous journalist, whose name splashes beneath the newsiest news in London. Maybe what you really need is a coach ticket.”
“The ultimate aim is London,” Eve admitted. “But no writer ever became famous just for buying a coach ticket. If I want anyone to treat a female journalist seriously, first I need experience. If I can turn the Cressmouth Gazette into a real paper, then perhaps I can find employment nearby in Houville or Berwick-upon-Tweed. And once I’ve proven my competency with that—”
“Look,” Margaret breathed, fanning her throat despite the chill autumn air. “It’s the le Duc brothers. Has there ever been a more handsome pair? My heart, it’s… titillating. Catch me, for I may swoon.”
“You won’t swoon,” Eve pointed out dryly. “You can’t gawk shamelessly if your eyes are closed.”
“True.” Margaret leaned forward on the iron railing. “Sébastien le Duc is almost too gorgeous to look at, but no one can smolder quite like Lucien.”
Eve arched a brow. “By ‘smolder,’ do you mean ‘glower broodingly at everything in his path?’”
“Yes.” Margaret fanned herself wildly. “I’m definitely going to swoon. Much later. After they walk out of view.”
Eve would never admit it, but she’d caught sight of the brothers even before Margaret. They were impossible to miss. Tall, slashing cheekbones and strong jaw due to good blood, well-muscled due to their work in the smithy, dark eyes the color of melted chocolate, a devastating smile that tilted up slightly on one side.
Lucien’s hair was so dark it was almost black, full of stray curls that threatened to spill over into his “smolder.” His clothes tended to match; black boots, black breeches, black coat, black scowl.
Sébastien, on the other hand, was a burst of color. During the summer months, his perfectly coiffed brown hair lightened to a golden hue. Even during the winter months, he dazzled. Shiny hessians on his feet, tight and buttery buckskins clinging to his muscled legs, a deceptively simple jacket that displayed broad shoulders and narrow hips to best advantage, a snow-white cravat whose impeccable folds defied the winter wind. No matter how hard her heart pounded, she could not look away. Black beaver hat at a rakish angle, strong jaw, and soulful brown eyes. One could not look at him without one’s skin heating deliciously.
Eve did not trust either handsome le Duc brother.
She’d learned the hard way that every man kept dark secrets, no matter how pretty his exterior. Or his posterior. They would tell any lie to get what they wanted, and cared nothing about the destruction they left in their wake.
“I shall keep my distance, and I suggest you do the same,” she said with a shiver.
“Look-look-look-look-look.” Margaret practically wriggled. “Here come the rest of the family.”
Sébastien le Duc gamely launched himself into a game of hoop-trundling with his niece and nephew, whilst the newlyweds engaged in an animated conversation with Lucien le Duc.
“That’s how I knew his smile matches his brother’s,” Margaret sighed happily. “It only ever peeks out when he’s talking to his sister. That family would do anything for each other.”
Eve shook her head. If anything, it looked like Sébastien le Duc was practicing for the circus. He had wrested the toys from his niece and nephew, and was now lurching about the park as he attempted to trundle two hoops at once with both hands.
“Is he ever serious?” she said in disbelief.
“Oh, you and your love of serious. I hope you fall for someone who wears his clothes inside out just to vex you.”
“I hope you fall for someone who keeps his clothes on, just to vex you,” Eve shot back.
“Oof.” Margaret pantomimed taking an arrow to the heart. “Sooner would I die than live so cruel a fate. So would you, if you had any idea what you were talking about.”
“I don’t need to know.” Eve lifted her chin. If she had no intention of getting married, she had even less inclination to waste precious time with a man she didn’t even want to keep around. “I want a career. Until I have it, nothing else deserves my attention.”
“Then let’s get started.” Margaret turned away from the view, her blue eyes serious. “What are we looking at?”
This was what made her such a good friend.
“The ‘December’ paper is posted on the first of November, in order to give tourists plenty of time to plan their visit around the annual Yuletide festival. Today is the first Sunday of October. This means I have exactly four weeks to turn the Cressmouth Gazette into something it’s not: newsworthy.”
“Which,” Margaret said slowly, “you hope will turn you into something you’re not.”
Eve nodded. “A legitimate journalist. So, here’s what I’m thinking…”
They were so engrossed in the branched logistics of what steps to take if Eve’s father approved or rejected this or that article, that they did not notice themselves in the path of a runaway iron hoop’s trajectory until it clattered against the metal railing right next to them, earning a yelp from Margaret and a disapproving woof from Duenna.
Sébastien le Duc flashed them a corset-shedding smile.
“My apologies, ladies. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Or endanger us?” Eve stammered, largely because whenever he was this close, her neatly ordered brain suddenly forgot how to think.
His accent never failed to send prickles of awareness down her spine. Or maybe it was the intensity of those deep brown eyes that pinned her as easily as Duenna could capture a squirrel. Or perhaps it was the knowledge
that, no matter how cold the breeze might blow across the water, Eve suddenly felt like she was wearing three layers too many, and that Sébastien le Duc was exactly the sort of man who could help with that type of problem.
“We’re busy,” she said desperately, scooping the heavy iron ring up from its spot at her feet and shoving it at his perfectly tailored chest. “Good day, Monsieur le Duc.”
Shock registered in those come-hither, expressive brown eyes, but he dipped an elegant bow worthy of a king. “A fine afternoon to you as well, ladies.”
He took himself off without another word.
Margaret gripped Eve’s arm. “Did you just cut him? You just cut him.”
“He is a distraction I cannot afford.” Eve bit her lip. “And his scent always muddles my brain. He smells… touchable. I don’t like it.”
Tears of laughter glistened at the edges of Margaret’s eyes. “You wanted something newsworthy? This is newsworthy. I’ll wager no one has ever turned that gorgeous face away in his entire life.”
“Good,” Eve muttered. “Maybe he learned something.”
“He learned—” Margaret dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper. “—that you intrigue him. The poor man literally just walked straight into a holly bush because he can’t stop looking back at you. This is the greatest thing that ever happened in Cressmouth.”
“You mean the worst.” As amusing as a dandy in a holly bush sounded, Eve couldn’t bring herself to look. “The last person I need in my life is some rakish rogue like ‘Beau’ le Duc.”
“Too late.” Margaret’s eyes sparkled with delight. “He’s captivated.”
Chapter 4
Bastien and Lucien glanced up from their worn family billiards table when their new brother-in-law Jack Skeffington strode into the room.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…” Bastien rested his cue. “Shouldn’t you be at home with my sister?”
“I should,” Jack agreed as he placed an armful of champagne bottles on the tea table in the corner. “And I will.”
