Dashing Dukes and Romantic Rogues

by Caldwell, Christi

  Everyday Londoners he quite liked. They were vital, alive, clawing their way through their struggles. Adam had a feeling that absolutely nothing would get these people down. How could one not admire that?

  The French were fools if they thought they could ever conquer England. In fact, despite the recent independence of his country, he had a strange feeling that England would remain when all else was dust.

  It was an odd conclusion, but it was what he had gathered on the wharves and docks that made England great. The people there were hard yet merry. And how could he not admire that? He only hoped that, one day, they found a way to gain power and wrest it away from their sanctimonious overlords as the United States had done.

  The establishment of new shipping offices in London was now his purview. He still wasn’t entirely sure how it had befallen him. But his brother, who actually lived in England now, had taken up politics and had no time for the family business any longer.

  Still, Adam had one joy. It was bloody good fun causing the ton to squirm. So, instead of eschewing their company, he attended almost every event he was invited to. And because of his sister-in-law’s family, he was invited to many.

  Ah. The glory of making them all desperately uncomfortable as he strode through their midst.

  So it was that he’d fallen in with the strangest set.

  Young Anthony, renowned bastard of the Duke of Aston, and the Earl of Ellesmere.

  They often headed out into the East End and to the dockside taverns that few nobles went. Tonight was no different.

  As he entered the Maiden’s Legs Tavern, he drew in the heady feel of a crowd prepared to live as if there were no tomorrow.

  Loud fiddle music accompanied by a bodhran drum played by the fire. A fire that was large enough that it provided most of the light for the room. Several women of dubious repute danced together, ignoring the men, enjoying each other’s company as they hopped about.

  Most of the mixed company looked as if they hadn’t had a new coat in five years. In fact, they all looked like they lived hard. But they lived. That was certain.

  Spotting Ellesmere and Tony was quite an easy task.

  Most gents would be eaten alive by such company. But Anthony and Ellesmere had been tested by the regulars some time ago and not found wanting.

  When not buying rounds for the customers, Tony, Ellesmere and he kept to themselves in a corner, enjoying the riot of life.

  The two now sat at a table in the dark corner, dressed impeccably in their evening kit of black and white, yet not doing anything to draw particular notice to their presence.

  Adam sauntered over to the rough, wood table and plunked himself down onto a hard bench. Before he even had to raise a hand, a barmaid with soft brown hair and bosoms on display, swooped through the tightly-packed bodies and dropped off a bottle of gin and an extra glass.

  She gave him a quick wink and said, “‘ello, Captain.”

  He nodded at her and she quickly whisked off, hips swinging as she carried her heavy tray.

  “Where to tonight?” Adam asked as he poured the clear, nearly-lethal liquid into his small cup.

  Tony grinned, his eyes dancing. “The Duke of Hunt’s.”

  “Oh good God,” Adam groaned.

  Tony blinked. “I thought you liked Hunt.”

  “I do,” Adam agreed easily, lifting the cup and scenting juniper berries. He took a swig of the burning liquid, no doubt laced with some sort of sulfur. “It’s the brother I can’t stand.”

  “I thought you and Charles got on,” Ellesmere said as he gazed over the crowd.

  “Not the twin,” Adam corrected. “The other one. The pup.”

  “Lock?” Tony asked.

  Adam sighed. He’d never quite forgiven Lord Lockhart Eversleigh for boarding his ship and threatening his brother with murder.

  The man was too tightly wound by far. And he’d no sense of self-preservation what with the way he’d been determined to fight all the Duke brothers and not consider Adam’s crew’s allegiance.

  “He can’t stand that the United States backed France in their revolution.”

  “Turnabout is fair play, lads,” he pointed out, adjusting his coat. “France supported our revolution. Most of us didn’t support the bloodbath.”

  “Can’t argue that,” Ellesmere drawled.

  “Of course not,” Adam said with mock arrogance. “My logic is unsurpassed.”

  Tony rolled his eyes. “Have another drink.”

  They all took a quick swallow of gin.

  Adam laughed as he relaxed a little. “I’ll need it. The rest of the family is quite bearable.”

  “I think so,” Tony said. “Shall we go on the chase after?”

  Adam drew in a long breath, tasting the sooty air from the fireplace. He’d chased more skirts of many varieties than he cared to admit. But when a sailor hit port, there was little else to do but drink. And while he liked his liquor, he also liked his brains. Ladies were a far more entertaining sport than drunkenness. Still, it all did get a bit repetitive. One almost always knew what was about to be said.

  Ellesmere suddenly scowled. “I bloody thought I’d be married by now.”

  Tony laughed again, as he was wont to do. “Don’t ever say so.”

  “I’m an earl, damn it,” Ellesmere proclaimed, pouring more gin into his cup as if truly distraught. “I have to get married.”

  “So get married,” Adam said. “Despite your desperately ugly face, I’m sure your wealth will ensure a decent catch.”

  Ellesmere’s scowl deepened.

  In fact, the earl was extremely handsome. Something they all knew. But for whatever reason, he did insist on love. Whatever the devil that meant.

  “I very nearly did get married over Christmas,” Ellesmere lamented.

  Tony clapped him on the back. “Love. It’s a strange fellow.”

  “Love is not a man,” Ellesmere countered. “There’s not logic to it whatsoever.”

  “You think men are logical?” Adam laughed.

  “Are not men the father’s reason? Of philosophy. Of-”

  Adam rolled his eyes. “Ellesmere, you’ve been either spending time with the wrong women, or completely choosing to ignore that men are ridiculously emotional creatures. Bloody hell. Look at Byron. And he loves the Greeks.”

  Ellesmere shifted on his bench. “Now look-”

  “And Nelson,” Adam went on. “I can’t think of another woman as emotional as he.”

  With a sigh, Ellesmere said, “Good God. I suppose you’re right.”

  “Always.”

  Tony smirked. “How tiring for you. I think I know why you don’t like Lock.”

  Adam ignored what he felt certain was about to be a comparison in the situation of always being right. “I think I saw Lock in the park today. A young lady was with him. Is he thinking of marrying? God help the lass.”

  Tony grew wary. “I doubt it. Young lady, you say?”

  “Yes,” he replied thinking of the beautiful woman who had sat so ramrod stiff in the curricle. “Dark hair, hints of red, straight back, her entire stance seemed combative. I didn’t really see her face.”

  “Ah, yes.” Tony drew in a deep breath, his whole face losing its mirth. “Lady Beatrix.”

  Beatrix. The name hummed through his mind, then his veins. The entirety of his being seemed to love the sound of it. Which was deuced odd. He wasn’t given to fancy. But, then again, she’d been odd. Nothing about her had seemed to suggest she was anything like the other ladies in the park.

  “She’s staying with the Eversleighs,” Tony informed him, pouring generous portions of gin as if he were about to begin a tale of undue woe that required a stiffener. “Tragic story.”

  “What the devil could be so tragic about her?” Adam challenged. Good God, she was the daughter of a lord and obviously wealthy. “She looked like she is very well kept.”

  Tony leveled a hard stare at him, the kind of stare that reminded everyone that Tony was a
man of depth and not just a rake. That Tony could kill you as soon as make merry with you. “Her entire family died last year in a coaching accident.”

  “I see.” Adam stilled at the intensity of Tony’s change. “Damned insensitive of me.”

  Tony gave a conciliatory nod. “A tad, but you’ve seen enough horrors to become inured.”

  Not inured. He had trouble sleeping at night. What he had seen might drive some mad. He’d seen it. Men who’d seen hell and fell into bottles of rum never to resurface. Men who could not close their eyes at night lest they see the cavernous bellies of ships filled with nightmares.

  He swallowed, feeling himself slipping away into memory. Into the sort of pictures that led to a dark night for him. So, he drew in a deep breath and took a long drink of gin, determined not to seem affected by his sudden line of thinking.

  “So,” he said lightly instead, “we shall see her this night?”

  He had no idea why he was asking. He shouldn’t give her a second thought.

  Tony shook his head, placing his cup down. “Unlikely.”

  Adam peered at him over the gin bottle. “Why?”

  “She hates company,” Ellesmere stated simply. “She has eschewed it entirely.”

  Adam considered this. He knew grief and pain, and the darkness where it could lead. Suddenly, he hated the idea of that young woman who had sat so defiantly, suffering alone in a room, cursing the world as it left her alone.

  “So,” he said, as if determined that they would, indeed, meet, “then we’ll get along famously.”

  “I doubt it,” countered Tony.

  He arched a brow. “Does she hate Americans, too?”

  “I’ve never asked.” Tony smiled ruefully, as if recalling her at some earlier date. “She knows quite a lot about your politics. I’ve seen her set down ignorant fools regarding the Constitution.”

  “They aren’t my politics and Constitution, puppy. They’re my nation’s.”

  “Aren’t they the same?”

  “Not exactly, and it’s good to know some English person values our Constitution. In any case, why do you say she’d dislike me? I’m a very likable fellow.”

  “She doesn’t like anyone,” Tony stated with no hint of humor.

  “Grief does that to people,” Adam said softly, his finger tracing the slightly splintered wood along the table’s edge.

  Tony raised his glass. “Indeed, it does.”

  But as they drank, Adam found himself thinking of the young woman in the curricle who’d held herself as if she were daring the world to hit her again. And suddenly, he wanted to meet her. Meet her and assure her that, despite the hell that this world was, there was always more. After all, people who’d seen hell had to stick together. Of that, he was certain.

  Chapter Four

  “Come down to the party,” the Dowager Duchess of Hunt urged. Her beautiful voice rippled through the light blue bedroom room like softest silk.

  “No, thank you,” Beatrix replied, turning in her seat before her dressing table. She hated her terseness, but hated to be bothered even more.

  The dowager duchess strode further into the room, reached out her beautiful beringed hand as if she were about to touch Beatrix, but the pulled back, aware it would be unwanted. “Dear girl, surely it’s time.”

  Tears stung Beatrix’s eyes and she blinked rapidly. “Will it ever be?”

  “I can’t make you, of course,” Hyacinth said softly, folding her hands before her. “But I worry about you spending so much time alone.”

  I am alone, she wanted to retort. She didn’t. Hyacinth had been far too kind for that. She grasped her ivory-handled hairbrush as if about to begin her bedtime routine but it was far too early for that. Even for her.

  “I’m not ready,” she said instead.

  “If you insist,” Hyacinth said as she turned and swept towards the gold-framed doorway. But just before she left, she added gently, “If you need me, don’t hesitate.”

  As the door slid closed with a quiet click, Beatrix’s throat closed. She could scarcely breathe. If she dared to suck in a breath, she would cry. Would she not? And she could not bear to cry.

  Was this her life now? Shutting out the world?

  It seemed so. But she couldn’t bear all those people looking at her. Feeling sorry for her. Their piteous looks were beyond abominable. Yet. . .

  Nor could she stay in the four walls of her room. She’d go mad. She knew that. She’d paced and paced and paced before, and the desperation that soon accompanied that reminded her of what it must feel like to be trapped in a small room forever. Like an asylum mate, even if her self-imposed prison was bedecked with blue silk walls and pastoral paintings.

  Taking her cane in hand, she hobbled out of the room, down the wide hall lined with golden candelabras, gold-framed mirrors, and paintings of far off lands, and finally towards the servants’ stair. Opening the narrow side panel, she took the steps carefully until, finally, she came out to the simpler hall which led to the back garden.

  The summer night hummed and the din of the party drifted from the open windows. Immediately, the scent of roses drifted towards her and she could not help but admire it. Red, white, and pink country roses dancing in the night breeze, lined the immaculate paths created by some great gardener.

  She didn’t bother to glance back. Not wanting to make a sound on the gravel paths, she headed across the grass, a book in her free hand. There was a good spot tucked behind several trees that she liked. No one would see her and the light of the late summer moon would be quite enough to read by.

  As she brushed back the long trails of a weeping willow, its cool leaves caressing her hand, she stopped. Right there on her curved bench was the man from today. The American.

  It wasn’t possible.

  Was fate laughing at her?

  She’d been so adamant about not wishing to meet him. So determined that she should not have to be confronted with a man who lived to the fullest, that this had to be a dream. Apparently, the gods thought it funny to give her everything she didn’t want. Or at least to taunt her with those things.

  His sandy hair, which somehow managed to look as if it had been teased by a wicked wind, brushed his perfectly-tailored black coat. In fact, his hair was almost scandalous. For he had not even tied it back in a que, but allowed it to caress his shoulders like a wild lion’s mane.

  Silver buttons winked along his cuffs. Under the moonlight, his massive shoulders, strong torso, and robust legs cast quite a figure.

  He, too, seemed to be reading, his powerful hands holding the book with great ease. That seemed a shock. It was a struggle to imagine such a big man, so vital sitting still doing something as quiet as reading.

  She prayed he had not heard her. For the very last thing she wished was discourse with him. Suddenly, it struck her then that her own breath had grown slightly ragged and monstrously loud to her own ears!

  Good Lord, could he hear it? How very terrible. She licked her lips. She was desperate to make her withdrawal unnoticed.

  Perhaps she could sneak away very slowly over the grass from whence she’d come. But before she could, he turned, his head angling and his sandy hair, glinting silver in the moonlight.

  His lips curved in the most impossible smile and he said, “I don’t bite.” His voice rumbled.

  Her heart nearly stopped at the sound of that voice and at the sight of that smile. Who the devil looked and sounded like that? Sin. That’s what sin sounded and looked like. Of that, she was certain. Still, she was not afraid for there was nothing aggressive or frightening about him as he sat, completely at home in someone else’s garden.

  “I have heard odd reports of Americans,” she said before she could stop herself.

  His brows rose and then his smile deepened, transforming his face into the most handsome and tempting of faces.

  My God, that smile. It was wicked. So wicked, she felt the strangest sensation in her belly. In her whole body really. It traveled ov
er her skin, as if the night breeze were teasing her with its caress. But it was not. Not now. It was merely the effect of his gaze and smile upon her.

  “I promise, the reports are all true,” he drawled.

  She doubted it very much. Still, she hesitated, wondering if she could hurry off without completely losing her dignity. After all, she could not hie off in a sense of pique any longer. Oh, no. Hobbling was her best bet. Something she did not fancy him witnessing. But then she stopped herself. Why should she go? It was her bench.

  “I’m sure you’re wanted inside,” she said, with as much optimism as she could muster, glancing back at the house.

  “Oh, certainly,” he agreed, closing his book. “Aren’t you?”

  “No,” she replied quickly, wondering how the devil to extract herself from this conversation he seemed determined to have.

  “Wanted?” he asked carefully.

  She cringed. Drat. Drat and blast. Why couldn’t he be like Englishmen and avoid any uncomfortable topic with a quick change to the weather?

  “Well, yes they want me,” she corrected.

  He nodded, his hands holding his book as though it were china. “You don’t want them?”

  Beatrix gasped at his accurate summary and, also, she found herself admiring the way he held that tome in his hands. She wondered if he held all such things he valued with such care. “That sounds terrible,” she said.

  Shrugging those immense shoulders, he observed, “It’s either true or not. No terrible about it.”

  What an odd man. If they had met over a year ago, she would not have let him go easily. But now? Now, she really did not wish to explain herself to him. Yet, here she was. “If you must know, I’m not fond of company.”

  “Splendid,” he said brightly. “Neither am I.”

  “I did not mean- I do not want-”

  “My company either?” he supplied. “I see.”

  “Good.” She waited. But he didn’t move. She cleared her throat and made a shooing motion to the house.

  “I’m girding myself,” he said with a beleaguered sigh of martyrdom.