The Duke's Undoing (Three Rogues and Their Ladies)

by Vandagriff, G. G.

  “Ruin, most likely.” Elise did not even care. She kept seeing the stiletto in Peter’s back, wondering if her actions had caused his death. It did not seem possible, but the depth of the pain clenching her heart was comparable to what she had felt on learning of Joshua’s death. “I never want to come back to London, Aunt.”

  “We will face that when it is time. Now we are going to Yorkshire. You must be very brave, my dear. Save your mourning until we have escaped town. We must bend all our efforts at this moment to accomplishing that goal.”

  “And Mother? Are we just leaving her here?”

  “Dearest Sukey is our brick. She will see to getting your mother packed off to Shropshire once we are out of the house. She has also engaged to deal with the scandal mongers. Thank goodness for her connection to the duke of Devonshire and her social standing as a daughter of a duke. We have agreed that she is to endeavor to present you in the best light possible. That you are so weighed down with grief will certainly be in our favor.”

  “And you, Aunt? How does all of this reflect on you? And what can possibly occupy you for two months in deepest Yorkshire?”

  “You are not to worry yourself about me. But we are wasting time. We simply must get away before Elspeth gets wind that we are going and why.”

  “Yes, yes,” Elise agreed. The mere idea of her mother’s rage trumped every other emotion. She had rung for Kitty and was out of bed before her Aunt had left the room.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IN WHICH WE LEARN ABOUT EVENTS IN LONDON

  My love. My darling. Those were the words floating through Ruisdell’s mind when he at last regained consciousness. Where the devil was he? He was weak as a cat, the room, wherever it was, was dark as pitch, and the entire left side of his torso felt like it had been stabbed repeatedly. In addition, he was deuced thirsty and drenched in sweat.

  Elise filled his mind with unexpected urgency. My love. My darling. Those were her words. From somewhere inside his soul, rejoicing grew until it filled him, overshadowing the weakness and pain in his body. It didn’t seem possible, but she loved him!

  Why should he be so surprised? Had he not set out to make it so? Shame killed his rejoicing. He did not deserve her love. He was an unprincipled rake. But Elise Edwards had fallen in love with him, and he must have a heart somewhere, because even in his present condition, it made him deliriously happy that it was so. Was she here somewhere?

  He struggled to say her name, but the only thing that emerged from his parched throat was a croak. Richards was at his side in a moment.

  “Your Grace!” he said with uncustomary emotion. “We did not think you were going to survive!”

  “Why? What’s wrong with me? Where am I?”

  “You were stabbed, Your Grace. In the gardens at Reardon House. You lost a deal of blood, but what almost carried you away was fever. You’ve been delirious for four days. Judging by how wet your sheets are, I’d say that the fever has finally broken.”

  As though reading his mind, the valet poured him a large glass of water from the pitcher somewhere behind his head. “Here, drink this.”

  While Rusidell slaked his thirst, his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. “The library?” he said. “What the devil? I was stabbed? Who stabbed me?”

  “We brought you in here because it was the only place on the ground floor with a couch. You were allegedly stabbed by the Earl of Waterford, Your Grace, and though he is in custody, he denies it. However, he is being held on the kidnapping charge. His trial is next Monday in the House of Lords.”

  “You must get me Somerset. I must have the latest news.”

  “It is two a.m., Your Grace. He is asleep upstairs in the guest room. Shall I awaken him?”

  “Somerset in bed at two a.m.? Is he ill?”

  “Worn to a bone, Your Grace. He has been sitting up with you night and day.”

  The duke was moved. What had he ever done to deserve George’s unswerving devotion? His way of life since the trouble at Oxford had vouchsafed him few friends.

  It was very odd how Chessingden kept turning up in his life. Now, despite their rivalry for Elise, the viscount was most probably going to bear witness in the Lords against his attempted killer. He probably would not want to. But his passion for Elise would certainly urge him to get the earl hanged for her kidnapping.

  The duke’s memories returned in a rush. Elise. He was just about to kiss Elise when the blow struck him from behind. My love, my darling. Had she really said those words? “And Miss Edwards? She was there. Couldn’t she identify Waterford as my assailant?”

  Richards was silent.

  “Richards? Out with it, man. Where is Miss Edwards?”

  “She was here, Your Grace. Determined to stay by you. But her aunt dragged her away. You were not decent without your shirt. But the doctor says you would have died in the garden if she had not bandaged you.”

  He sensed Richards had another “but” in store for him. He was right.

  “Now, she has disappeared. There was a terrible to-do in the newspapers. That first day they said you were dead. Stabbed because of a ‘love triangle.’ Miss Edwards is the brunt of a terrible scandal including the Viscount Chessingden, Lord Waterford, and yourself—made to look a heartless harpy.”

  “The devil! My poor Elise. And she thinks I’m dead? She probably thinks she caused the whole bumblebroth.”

  “Lady Clarice managed to get her clean away. According to Bates—Your Grace will remember the butler—Lady Susannah left the same day, taking Lady William away to her home in Shropshire. Lady Susannah has what the Frenchies call zeng fwa, Your Grace. Bates says Lady William was yelling and screaming at Lady Susannah. So that lady, she sat up on the box with John Coachman, carrying the blunderbuss and the yard of tin!”

  The duke laughed and wondered who was minding Henry Five or whether she had him with her in some sort of kennel.

  “You seem cozy with Bates, Richards. Tell me. Doesn’t the fellow know where Miss Edwards and her aunt have gone?”

  “If he knows, he is not telling, Your Grace. He claims they have disappeared. Waiting for the scandal to die.”

  Disappeared. Elise cannot have disappeared! But she thinks me dead. Dead like Beynon. Bath! She mentioned Bath during the scene with her mother. He must heal quickly.

  “The devil take it, Richards. I need a glass of brandy!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IN WHICH OUR HEROINE ARRIVES IN YORKSHIRE

  By the time Elise and her aunt arrived at Aunt Clarice’s small Yorkshire estate, Elise was heartily sick of her own company. Watching out the window of the post chaise, she hardly noticed the forests thickening as they traveled steadily north. Over and over she had run through her mind the events of her last few days in London and concluded that it was her fault that the duke had been murdered. If it weren’t for her, he would still be living his roguish life with his devoted friend, the marquis. Her memory flashed back with horrible frequency to the stiletto sticking out of Peter’s back as she held his head on her shoulder. She could see and even smell the hot, red blood. She felt his brown, wavy hair tickling her ear, as his head lay on her shoulder.

  “Darling girl,” her aunt repeated every time Elise wept and gave voice to her guilt, “It was his choice to do what he did. It was even his choice to be in the garden when he was killed. I know this entire tragedy revolves around you, but none of it is your fault. Waterford’s madness is certainly not your fault.”

  What she could hardly confess to herself was that she had tumbled headlong into love with the duke. She did not know how very much she had come to love him until he was stabbed. The saddest thing was that, while he might not have intended it, she felt that he had been in love with her, as well.

  On the fourth day of travel, they finally arrived at their destination. The manor house that met Elise’s view was an unexpected gem. The Palladian architecture was beautifully proportioned with white columns and a frieze against apricot plaster. The main part
appeared to be three stories with eastern and western wings of two stories.

  The house was in the care of a husband and wife named Dean who were like “Jack Sprat who could eat no fat and his wife who could eat no lean.” They appeared to be ancient and were clearly overjoyed to see their mistress thus unexpectedly.

  Elise, overcome by physical, mental, and emotional fatigue, was shown to a rose-hued room with chintz furnishings (once the Holland covers were removed) and a lovely brass bed. Not even waiting for Kitty to bring up her portmanteaux or for Mrs. Dean to make the bed, Elise collapsed on top of it, using her pelisse as a blanket. She slept on and off for two days, only getting up to swallow a little soup so that the bed could be made with freshly aired sheets.

  When she was no longer able to escape into sleep, she dressed in an old gown of leaf green muslin and went out to lose herself in the grounds. Aunt Clarice had told her there was a pool with a waterfall in the forest. She had only to take the path that led from the small stable yard. Once there, Elise christened the lovely glade, with its clear pool and sheet-like waterfall, “My Solace.” Sitting down on a flat, smooth rock, she let the thoughts she had been sleeping to avoid crowd into her mind. She was alone at last. Her crying would not be heard over the noise of the waterfall.

  Why was every relationship she had cursed to end in tragedy? She would never love again. She would never go back to London. She would beg her aunt to let her live in this beautiful place, and she would write about all the things she could never have—possessing them at least in her mind. She began to weep and then to sob for the duke, for herself, and, as always, for Joshua.

  Remaining in “My Solace” for the morning, she exhausted herself and then chastised herself for her orgy of self-pity. She would do as she had always done when things were too dire to bear. She would write. The exercise would use her emotions and carry her away to a place beyond reach of the recent past.

  Returning to the house, Elise explored the rooms and selected a small sitting room with a view of the neglected garden as her writing room. She could see her aunt, busy outdoors, trying to clear, prune, and tame the wild growth. The room had a nice cherry wood desk with its own comfortable chair. There was a vertical portrait of a dark-haired, red-cheeked young man in Georgian dress, a white terrier at his feet. She assumed it was her Uncle Stephen as a boy. Mrs. Dean had rescued some white roses from the thorny mass of garden and placed a bowl on the top shelf of the desk. Their sweet fragrance was calming. The yellow walls were cheering. And the quill pen in its holder was calling.

  During the following month, Elise spent every morning in her writing room, wrestling with Misunderstood, the book she had begun in London. To start with, she did not yet have a plot or an ending, but she had a hero. In every respect, he was complex and multilayered, representing her idea of the real Duke of Ruisdell. In the afternoons, she walked in the glade, and if the day was warm, she bathed in the pool.

  Her aunt left her to her thoughts, for the most part, chatting during mealtimes about the garden and her neighbors. Elise knew that her aunt was aware of the difficult passage she was negotiating. She did not intrude, but let Elise wrestle with her emotions in private.

  One day in mid-August, Elise was walking home from a dip in the pool. Her hair was streaming in a wet braid down her back, and she carried her bonnet by its ribbons. Her body was still wet, and her muslin clung to her legs, practically transparent. She was alarmed to see a gentleman in the distance, his top hat in his hand. He was wearing buff pantaloons and top boots with a rust-colored top coat. He held himself like the Viscount Chessingden and was watching her approach.

  Never had she wanted to see anyone less! Especially in a wet gown. Ducking behind the stables, she ran along the dirt path that led to the servants’ entrance to the manor house. Once through the door, she made her way to her room and rang for Kitty.

  “How long has the viscount been here?” she asked when her maid appeared.

  “He came right after you went for your bathe. Lady Clarice told him that you were taking a walk in the forest.”

  “Hmph. Well, I suppose we ought to set about making me presentable. Can you light the fire and help me brush my hair dry, Kitty?”

  When Elise finally descended to her aunt’s drawing room, dressed in a modest round gown of sapphire muslin, she found the viscount taking tea with Aunt Clarice. Standing in the doorway, she took in the sight. The room had fallen victim to her aunt’s redecorating mania and was now hung in leaf green silk accented by salmon upholstery. Lady Clarice was now working a needlepoint pillow in royal blue, salmon, and greens to complete her décor. She called it her Tuscan room. Chessingden rose at her entrance.

  Searching her heart, Elise found the viscount’s presence painful.

  “How did you find us?” she asked baldly.

  “It’s lovely to see you, too.” Gregory said, laughing. “May I say, you’re looking well?”

  “I’m afraid the viscount is guilty of subterfuge,” her aunt said with a fond look. “Bates left our post on the hall table with our London address stricken through and this address written in.”

  “What was he doing in the hall?” Elise asked her aunt.

  “I was there, ostensibly to retrieve the Woolstonecraft I had leant you but hoping to prize your address from Bates. While he was gone for the book, I saw the post.”

  “How very underhand and ungentlemanly,” Elise said, still standing. “Had you not gathered that we wished to be private? What made you think I would have any desire to see you?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why did you leave so suddenly?”

  “I thought that would be very plain to everyone! The duke’s death was virtually blamed on me. Your name was dragged into the story, along with Robert’s perfidy, and the fact that all of you had been my fiancés. I was at the very center of a monumental scandal!”

  “If you had not left in such a panic, you would know that the duke survived the attack. The newpapers got it wrong.”

  Shock struck. “The duke survived the attack” echoed in her head. Elise collapsed into a chair. Her heart commenced to pump furiously. “He’s alive? Ruisdell is alive?”

  “Very much so and kicking up the devil of a dust, as usual.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, hearing her own belligerence.

  “Oh, Elise, you know he was ever a rake!” The viscount’s eyes actually twinkled.

  She turned her head away from him.

  “I know it’s a shock, dear,” Aunt Clarice said. “I think you had better have some tea.” Her aunt poured her a cup with plenty of sugar and brought it to her.

  “It’s safe for you to return to London, you know,” Chessingden said. “The House of Lords condemned Waterford to death. He was hanged last week.”

  Though she had long ceased to have any pleasant feelings for Robert, the news that he had been hanged was a blow. “I do not know how you can gloat,” she said. “You know the poor man was mad. What a horrible fate. There is something very wrong with the world, I think.”

  “I agree. The trial was a pathetic show, actually. He was quite bewildered. There was Ruisdell, still in a sling, and me, both testifying to the kidnapping attempt. Since you weren’t there to testify, we could not actually pin the attack on the duke on him, but the whole House knew of it. The only one who didn’t know seemed to be Waterford.”

  “I could not have said for certain that he was the attacker, in any case,” Elise said. “He was wearing that domino and a mask.”

  “The duke has many enemies,” the viscount said, thoughtfully.

  She swallowed this. Why? Why did the man who had been so chivalrous and kind to her have the reputation he did? Drawing herself up, she said, “Not enemies who would seek to kidnap me. If it was Robert who stabbed the duke, he then tried to take me by force. Of course I was screaming, so he ran off.”

  “Dear heart,” Aunt Clarice said, “you know it had to have been Robert. Poor man.”

  Elise was sud
denly sick, thinking of the earl, twisting at the end of a hangman’s rope. The vision overrode the shock of the duke’s well-being, which still had not fully penetrated her heart and mind. Her inner tumult made it impossible for her to converse further.

  “Excuse me, Aunt, my lord,” she said, head down, afraid her emotions showed in her face. “I find that I need to be alone.”

  “Of course, dear,” her aunt said.

  Elise went downstairs, hardly realizing what she was doing. Leaving the house by the front door, she headed for her place of solace without thinking of where she was going. Her thoughts were in such a jumble that she did not know whether she was on her head or on her heels.

  When she reached her flat stone by the pool and sat down, she could not help but associate the place with all the tears she had shed for Ruisdell. She thought of all her weeks of mourning, her dreams of what might have been. But the duke was alive! How hard it was to make that switch in her mind. She could not quite believe she would feel the vitality of his nearness once again, see his teasing eyes, framed by the cupid curls at his temples. A rush of tenderness brought tears.

  And then, before she could even contemplate the future, she envisioned Robert’s long body hanging from a rope on Tyburn hill. In her mind, he still wore the green domino. But it wrung her heart to think that he might not, even at the moment of death, have known why he was condemned. Then, in her mind she saw the picture that had haunted her: Robert’s figure, a manic smile on his face, grasping for her over the duke’s torso with the stiletto piercing his back. The stiletto that had not killed him after all.

  The man she had unwittingly fallen in love with, the man she had grieved for, ached for, was still alive! The man she had feared was dead. Thus, her thoughts went round and round in a circle of sadness and dawning jubilation. Such tumbling emotions played havoc with the body that had been numb with grief for so long that she thought perhaps she was growing mad.