You May Kiss the Duke

by Charis Michaels

  See bills outside tavern for showtimes and ticket prices. Libations and lite fare available for purchase.

  Church tours twice daily, weekly services Sundays 11:00 o’clock.

  —from A Noble Guide to London by Sabine Noble

  A week later Sabine stood in the shadow of the grotto ruins in Marylebone High Street and transcribed the not-so-discreet conversation being volleyed some five feet away.

  One Thomas T. Toose of T. T. Toose Wagons and Carts was giving orders to a foreman regarding an undertaking to which he referred as “Orion’s Light.” Fortuitously, Sabine had learned that “Orion’s Light” just happened to be the code name for the smuggling operation commanded by her uncle. (Thank you, scurvy-ridden sailors from the Dreadnought.) After five days of lurking around Marylebone, she had finally stumbled upon a conversation with value.

  The illustrious wagon master, Mr. Toose, had been named again and again in the letters from her mother’s maid. Sabine had since discovered that he was a purveyor of wagons, but that was all she knew. Wagon-letting was a legitimate profession, of course, but he would not have been such a frequent guest to Park Lodge without a more nefarious purpose.

  Under the guise of research for a Marylebone installment for her travel guides, Sabine had been up and down the high street, just waiting for him to say or do something useful to her investigation.

  But now he had invoked the code words, “Orion’s Light,” and she knew she had finally lit on a conversation worth overhearing. Standing beside the wagon house, her drafting kit open and a half-finished map of Marylebone in plain view, Sabine listened carefully and took down every word.

  “The barrels leave for the Isle of Portland at the end of the month,” Mr. Toose told the underling. “A quarter of them will have nothing in them, so get your hands on something to fill them with. We’ll sell whatever it is in Dorset. I mean to make money coming and going. You think Dryden and the others aren’t lining their own pockets every chance they get?”

  “Get my hands on something . . . like what?” asked the younger man.

  “Don’t care,” said Toose. “If it fits in a barrel and will travel easily, it’ll do.”

  “How much are you willing to pay to for this something?”

  “As little as possible. And then we charge double when we sell it to the good people of Dorset.”

  Sabine scribbled madly. When they changed course and began discussing calendar days, she gave Bridget a friendly kick, sending the dog darting between them. The men cursed and leapt back—a disruption that allowed Sabine to catch up.

  Five minutes later the men had gone their separate ways and Sabine tucked away her notebook and drafting kit and walked to Oxford Street for a hansom cab. If Stoker was awake when she returned, she could go over every word while it was still fresh in her mind. In Sabine’s estimation, Mr. Toose supplied a fleet of wagons to distribute . . . whatever it was Sir Dryden smuggled into the country. Also the barrels to transport it, apparently. Sabine couldn’t care less about middlemen like Mr. Toose, but she must follow every lead until she knew exactly Dryden’s game. What was inside the barrels that were not empty? What would go inside the empty ones? These were the persistent questions that kept Sabine and Stoker up nights. She’d paced Stoker’s bedroom for the past week, explaining to him what she’d discovered, showing off her map of London with pins that marked each cog in Dryden’s wheel of smugglers. She recounted notes she’d made, newspaper clippings she’d saved, and every letter received from May, her mother’s nursemaid, which detailed who Sir Dryden entertained at Park Lodge.

  Sharing her evidence with Stoker, a man who knew the business of importation and who had a sense of England’s strategically situated barrier islands, was gratifying to Sabine in a way she could not have imagined.

  Ultimately, he said very little, but he listened so very well, as if Sabine was explaining the most troubling problem in the world. And when he did ask questions, they made the whole conversation feel like . . . like a collaboration.

  How long had it been since she she’d known the thrill of working on something with someone of like mind and abilities? Her friends had embraced their marriages and moved away. Her father had been dead for five years. Perhaps Stoker only humored her, too ill to do anything else but listen; perhaps he did it to distract from her questions about the Duke of Wrest. Either way, he clearly understood her ultimate goal. And he endorsed it—or if he did not endorse it, he did not discourage it.

  And all the while, he struggled with very significant problems of his own, the greatest of which was his painful recovery. There was also the mystery of his missing boat and absent crew and the fact that he’d been left for dead. Yet, he was wholly attentive and engaged whenever she drifted into his sick room with a question or new evidence, and he tolerated mealtimes dominated with talk of her investigation.

  Of course, what choice did he have at mealtimes or any time? She fed him, or rather she helped him eat; his strength returned with greater force every day. Talking came naturally to her, and he was not prone to chatter. It was a little bit like having her own useful captive, she thought, a capable man who did not intrude or countermand or do much more than entertain her chosen topic of conversation.

  But of course he was not a captive, nor did she wish for him to be. He was a virile man in the prime of his life, suffering from a momentary setback. When he was well, he would leave her and her investigation and go on his way and she would not hear from him again for months.

  As well it should be.

  As she preferred it.

  A quarter hour later, Sabine and Bridget reached Belgravia to see Dr. Cornwell’s carriage parked outside the Boyds’ townhome. Sabine checked her timepiece, cursing her tardiness. She’d known the doctor would call this afternoon, but she’d been disinclined to leave Marylebone without listening to everything Mr. Toose might have to say.

  “At least we’ve caught him before he’s left,” she told Bridget, clipping down the cellar steps.

  “Ah, Mrs. Stoker, there you are,” said Dr. Cornwell, pushing through the door.

  “Oh yes, hello, Doctor. I’m so very sorry to be late. I was detained in Marylebone. How is he today?”

  “Doing much better, in fact,” said the doctor. “Now that he’s finally consented to actual bed rest, the true healing has begun. Of course, the sustenance and mental stimulation has also been a boon. He is a strong man and you are a devoted nurse, luckily. He’s just told me you’d gone out to fetch fresh herbs to make a healing tea.”

  “Oh yes, a healing tea,” Sabine repeated, biting her bottom lip. Original. She went on, “It’s imperative to keep him drinking and eating, and I’ve had no end of luck with this particular . . . er, tea.”

  “Carry on, then,” said the doctor, putting on his hat. “Just take care you don’t poison him. I find one cannot go wrong with chamomile or jasmine.”

  “Of course,” Sabine said, patting her drafting kit.

  The doctor went on, “I’ve cleaned and redressed the wound. Always a painful process, but the bandages are fresh now and he is resting. Mind you, I’ve left him without a shirt, and I should like him to stay that way. The wound should air out during the mild part of the day. Assuming the sunshine remains, keep him uncovered while daylight remains, keep the windows open, and let mind and body breathe.”

  “Mind and body,” repeated Sabine vaguely, “right.”

  Dr. Cornwell clipped up the steps. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Mrs. Stoker.”

  Sabine bid him farewell and pushed her way into the apartments, pulling off her gloves. She dropped her satchel and coat on the bench and paused, staring at the open door to her bedroom.

  Shirtless. Stoker. Just inside the room. Right. Not a problem.

  Sabine had never felt shy about hosting Stoker; she’d strode in and out of his room, lecturing him, inquiring about evidence, retrieving her dog without a second thought. All the while, he’d lain there in his shirtsleeves, the sheet pulled tightly
, and been wholly . . . well, inert. Even when she dragged him down the hall, she had not been shy or nervous.

  So the doctor said he would be shirtless—so what? She may have not seen a shirtless man before, but surely such a paltry thing as the lack of a shirt would not change the fact that he was a very sick man, completely harmless, and really more of a resource now than whatever he was—

  Sabine forced herself around the corner and froze in the doorway.

  Jon Stoker without a shirt changed everything.

  She puffed out a breath. The room shrank to the expanse of tan skin above the white of the sheet. He appeared to have doubled in size. All at once, she saw shoulders and biceps and a tapered waist. She saw ribs and hair and broad, bare chest. She saw old scars and fresh bandage and the aggressive serpent tattoo weaving up his right arm and coiling around his chest.

  He was sitting up against the pillows, reading a broadsheet newspaper folded into a rectangle. In no way did he appear infirm or harmless, except for the bandage. Sabine was struck by the dual impulses to duck back into the hallway but also to stand and stare.

  Stoker looked up from his paper. “I’m sorry,” he said, narrowing his eyes. His expression was sincerity and chagrin with a touch of bashfulness. He spoke as if he’d promised something and failed.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, but the words came out with too much force. She cleared her throat. Bridget was not fazed and progressed to the bed with her usual sense of entitlement.

  “Bridget, no,” Sabine said weakly, watching the dog leap.

  “Oh, now you call off the hound,” he said.

  “I have very little control over my dog.”

  “You have keen control over your dog. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I’ve never seen anything like you, Sabine thought.

  She wondered how he could be both so very ill and also so imposing. Had he expanded in height and breadth when his shirt was removed? Was his tan darker? And that tattoo up his arm and across his chest? She’d not known the extent of it.

  She blinked up at the ceiling, uncertain of where to look. It was missish and awkward to stare at the floor or out the window, but staring at his chest was hardly appropriate. She settled on his face. He watched her in silence.

  “You are enjoying this,” she said.

  “I do not enjoy making you uncomfortable. I would tell you to go, but I would like to know what happened in Marylebone. You were gone for an age.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Nothing happened.” She retreated to the bench to retrieve her notes. “Why should something happen?”

  “You were eavesdropping on suspected criminals, Sabine. Any number of things could have happened.” There was a bite in his voice she’d not heard before.

  “Are you . . . worried about me?” The prospect of Stoker taking stock in potential danger had not occurred to her. It had been so long since anyone regarded Sabine’s safety but Sabine herself.

  He shook his head. “I never worried about my own well-being before I was nearly stabbed to death, and look at me now.” He gestured to his wound, and Sabine’s eyes migrated to his expansive chest and thick, muscled arms. “Caution is not a weakness. It is self-preservation. I know you’ve been independent for many years, but I—” He stopped and began again, “I am so incredibly useless here in this bed.”

  Sabine thought of Stoker out of the bed, accompanying her to Marylebone or wherever else the investigation might take her. She had not considered the possibility of this. Surely, when he healed, he would not devote time or energy to her. That had never been the nature of their relationship. He was here now, because he was convalescing. She tolerated this, she told herself, because he was hobbled and dozing.

  He went on, “Today I cannot even wear a shirt.”

  Sabine looked at his chest again. He was not dozing. In no way did he appear to be dozing.

  He finished, “I am of little help to you. But I am still curious.”

  “Nothing happened,” she repeated, “but I did overhear a very pointed conversation from the suspected associate, our Mr. Toose, and he used Dryden’s name in particular.”

  Sabine began to read off the transcribed conversation, drifting closer. When she reached the mattress, she sat at the foot of the bed near Bridget and began to stroke the dog.

  “What do you make of it?” she asked, looking up. “Clearly, Toose’s wagons are used to transport the smuggled goods from the Isle of Portland and the coast of Dorset to . . . whomever buys them. But why send some of the barrels with goods to sell in Dorset—making them effectively empty after they arrive—and some filled? Filled with what? So many barrels. Will the smuggled goods not arrive in their own barrels?”

  “It’s true,” he mused. “Most goods, whether they come illegally or through proper channels, arrive in barrels or sacks or crates or trunks. We sailed with the guano in barrels. It’s odd that Dryden is dealing in something that requires a fresh barrel when he makes landfall . . .”

  Sabine nodded and flipped through her notes for their growing list of possible smuggled items. “Clearly, he does not require clean barrels if his man is going to fill some of them with something else before they are met with the smuggled cargo. You don’t suppose they intend to wash them between usages, do you?”

  Stoker chuckled. “Smugglers are not overly concerned with how pure or clean or unblemished their cargo may be. They work quickly, under the cover of darkness, with anonymity and stealth.”

  Sabine made a note and looked up in time to see Stoker raise his right hand to scratch the back of his head. His chest broadened and the muscled knot of his biceps bulged, expanding a link of his serpent tattoo. Sabine stared, openly marveling at the beauty of his body. She wondered if all naked male bodies were this fascinating. Was it the bareness or . . . was it him? She thought of the scrawny footman Harley or middle-aged Arthur Boyd without a shirt and tried immediately to erase the image from her brain. She peeked at him again and he caught her gaze.

  “Sorry,” he said quietly, lowering his arm. “I know the tattoo is . . . alarming.”

  “I quite like the tattoo,” Sabine heard herself say. Her voice was too loud and she cleared her throat. She tried again, “I am fond of serpents from an artistic standpoint. They can be frequently found on maps. I’ve never seen a nautical map without one, in fact.”

  He narrowed his eyes and considered her, almost as if she had offended him and he dreaded the next thing she might say.

  “That is,” she went on, “I was able to make the snap decision to marry you because of the tattoo.” Did I just say that? she wondered idly, looking again at the ink on his arm.

  “Because of the tattoo?” he repeated. “The tattoo is designed to traumatize respectable women.”

  “That’s not what you told me on the day we met. When I asked about it.”

  “One thing that was very clear to me the day we met was that you were not easily traumatized.”

  “Perhaps I was simply not respectable.”

  “No,” he said softly. “My respect for you was—is—very great.”

  Sabine felt her eyes go big, much larger than when she looked at his chest or his arms or his tattoo. She glanced down at her notes again and saw nothing. “Well,” she said softly, “you alone would feel that way, especially considering the condition in which you found me.” She thought back to her blackened eye and bloody lip. Her hair loose down her back, her dress a sweaty tangle.

  He said, “Why did the tattoo influence you?” His voice was low.

  Sabine’s mind raced for some joke, some way to change the topic, but his face was so very serious. She glanced at the serpent on his arm again. Bridget lay nearby and she snatched her up, holding the dog close.

  She shrugged. “It was in the chapel, before the ceremony. My commitment to our snap decision was wavering. I noticed the serpentine head poking out of the sleeve of your jacket, and I asked you about it. Do you remember?”

  He nodded slowl
y.

  “Well,” she said, “you answered honestly, didn’t you? And you were so matter-of-fact. You did not try to deny it or explain it away. You did not try to shield me from it. That appealed to me. And you had just the slightest touch of . . . chagrin? Almost as if you’d outgrown your choice.”

  She glanced at him. He was still staring. Had the room grown overwarm?

  Stoker waited, and Sabine heard herself continue. “You said that after your first windfall as a shipping captain, you’d wanted to squander a large purse of money on something foolhardy—something that took the shine off any unwanted respectability that might come with success.”

  His expression softened just a little. “Surely not.”

  She chuckled. “That’s what you said.”

  “I cannot imagine saying something so milquetoast or devoid of manly swagger.”

  You embody manly swagger, she thought. It surprised her, because she was not in the business of considering manliness or swagger, except perhaps to avoid it—but it was true. Jon Stoker exuded a sort of quiet, watchful stoicism; a fierceness; a hard edge that was pure male. He’d been every inch a man, even when she dragged him, half-dead, to this bed.

  Now he seemed entirely alive.

  “Why did you agree to marry me?” Sabine asked. They’d spoken at length in the days since he’d come, but not about personal matters, not really. Sabine was hardly an idle gossip, but she could venture from the topic of wagons and barrels and smugglers, just this once. The question of why he’d married her had crossed her mind a thousand times in the past four years. She’d wondered about it after their brief encounters and after she’d read his letters. Sometimes simply as she lay in bed at night, dreaming of where in the wide world he might be at that moment and if he ever thought of her.

  He was here now, and they’d finally stumbled into an intimate conversation. She repeated the question. “Why did you agree to marry me?”

  “Because of your brazen tattoo,” he said.

  She laughed. “Valiant effort.”