He bent carefully and tossed the cat—he did not pitch it hard, as he wished to, or wring its neck—several feet away. Cats were definitely French.
“Shall I fetch you some tea, Your Grace?” Blevins’s adoption of proper address had become enthusiastic, if not quite ironic. “The wives are good about keeping us supplied with tea even when the quartermasters can’t.”
“Hot water will suffice. My thanks.” For even the thought of tea sent Christian’s digestion into a panic.
This time, Blevins succeeded in keeping a straight face to go with his, “Very good, Your Grace.”
Did dukes no longer thank their servants? Blevins’s expression cleared, and he hustled away. Perhaps the man thought Christian would finally be shaving.
Soon enough, Easterbrook would come, and then on to England, where Christian could begin to plot a just fate for Anduvoir and Girard, and all would at last be well again.
***
“Not hoping must be hard,” St. Just said as he and Easterbrook made their way toward the officers’ mess. The tent lay on high ground, and gave off the same beguiling, smoky aroma as every mess St. Just had had the pleasure of approaching from downwind. “Mercia is your cousin, after all.”
He kept his observation casual, because something about Easterbrook’s reaction was off. If any of St. Just’s family had turned up missing, and then been reported found, he’d be dancing on the nearest fountain and bellowing the good news to the hills.
While Easterbrook’s mannerisms suggested dread.
“Mercia is a young man,” Easterbrook replied. “If it is him, and he still has his reason, and his health is not entirely broken, he could get back to his life, or a semblance of it.”
Anybody held by the French for months would have reserves of resilience St. Just could only envy, though the creature they found in the mess tent was pitiful indeed.
He sat alone at the end of one table, taking small bites of boiled potato, setting his fork down, chewing carefully, then taking another bite. His beef was untouched, his appearance unkempt, his bearded features sharp, like a saint newly returned from a spate of praying and wrestling demons in the wilderness.
“A real duke has pretty manners,” Easterbrook said, approaching the table, “but he’d be tearing into that beef if he’d been kept away from a good steak for months. I’m Easterbrook.”
He sat across from the skinny, quiet fellow with the brilliant blue eyes, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“My teeth are loose, Colonel,” the man said. “I cannot manage the beef, because the French became too parsimonious to feed me the occasional orange. Or perhaps they ran out of oranges themselves.”
“Ah, but of course—shame upon those niggardly French.” Easterbrook shot a long-suffering glance toward the several officers malingering two tables over. “Perhaps we should take this discussion outside.”
St. Just would have preferred to shoo their audience away, because the cool mountain air would cut right through the wraith at the table.
“We should take the discussion outside, Your Grace, Marcus,” said the wraith—softly. Ducally, in St. Just’s informed opinion.
“My apologies,” Easterbrook replied, “Your Grace, indeed.” His tone was so punctiliously civil as to be mocking.
The man rose slowly—perhaps he could not abide leaving his potatoes unconsumed—and nobody moved to help him. St. Just discarded the notion given the determination in those blue eyes.
“Look here,” Easterbrook said when they’d drawn a few steps away from the mess tent. “If you were Christian Severn, Duke of Mercia, you’d bloody well not be sporting that beard. You look like you haven’t shaved in weeks, your hands are dirty, and without putting too fine a point on it, I wouldn’t want to stand downwind of you on a hot day.”
None of which, in St. Just’s opinion, had any bearing on the present situation.
“My hands shake too badly to wield a razor, Cousin, though less so now.” His Grace—why the hell not refer to him as such?—held out a right hand that did, indeed, suffer a minute tremor. “The French would not shave me, because I might succeed in slicing open my throat against the razor, regardless of the barber’s skill. They clipped my beard occasionally instead.”
This was more logic, but Easterbrook waved an impatient—and also slightly unsteady—hand.
“The Duke of Mercia was a man in his prime, for God’s sake. You’re skin and bones and you have no uniform, no signet ring.”
Which, of course, the French would have taken possession of immediately upon capturing the fellow. Inside the mess tent, shuffling and murmuring suggested the audience had shifted close enough to hear the exchange.
“I was fed enough to keep me alive, not enough to keep me strong. You insult your cousin, Easterbrook.” The man spoke softly, as if he refused to entertain a lot of bored officers who at midday were not yet drunk.
“Half the camp knows I was cousin to Mercia,” Easterbrook spat as Anders led his horse up. “Having me identify the imposters has become a standing joke. My cousin was left-handed, you ate with only your right hand. Explain that.”
The explanation had St. Just itching to hop back in the saddle and ride anywhere—Paris, Moscow, Rome—provided it was far, far away. His Grace held up his left arm, on the end of which was an appendage bearing five fingers; the last two of them bore old scars and curious angles at the joints.
“As a gift to the commanding officer, the guards decided in his absence that I was to write out a confession to present their superior upon his return from Toulouse. My captors neglected to realize I was left-handed.” The lost duke spoke slowly, each word chosen to convey the most information with the fewest syllables.
“The guards limited their attentions to the hand they thought I could not write with,” he went on. “I did not write out the confession in any case. When Colonel Girard was done having his guards beaten for their cheek, he was effusively apologetic.” That last phrase was flourished with subtle irony and such a perfect enunciation of the final consonants, that St. Just paced off a few feet, the better to curse quietly.
“Anybody who reads The Times would know the story of the lost duke,” Easterbrook said, a bit desperately, to St. Just’s ears. “My cousin was a robust man, handsome, fastidious, vain about his person. His family connections would be listed in Debrett’s, and known to anybody who moved in good Society. You’re skinny, dirty, disgracefully turned out…”
He ranted on, for he was ranting, his voice rising, likely for the benefit of the officers inside the tent, but St. Just had heard enough.
“Easterbrook, mind your horse.”
Anders held the reins of a grand chestnut beast, solid, but with a hint of Iberian grace and refinement. The horse was pawing and curling its upper lip while craning its neck forward.
Toward the lost duke.
“Aragon?” Easterbrook was apparently not that canny a fellow. Beside Aragon, St. Just’s mount was standing perfectly calm.
“Not Aragon,” the lost duke said, walking toward the horse. “Chesterton. You took my horse, Cousin, and changed his name. I suppose I am to thank you for looking after him when God knows what might have befallen him had he remained in French hands.”
The beast pawed repeatedly, and wuffled, a low, whickering sound of greeting.
And the love of a mute beast was, to St. Just, better evidence than any interrogation would ever yield.
“You’ve found your duke,” St. Just said. “Either the horse has read Debrett’s and colluded with an imposter, or that’s his master, plain as day.” A half-dozen officers had shuffled out of the mess tent, their uniforms declaring them cavalry, and not a one argued with St. Just’s conclusion.
Easterbrook scowled as the horse nuzzled at the lost duke’s pockets, each in turn. The duke scratched at the animal’s shoulder. Had the bloody horse been abl
e to, it would have purred and hugged its owner.
“By God…” Easterbrook took a step toward a man whose death would have been convenient, if tragic. But the duke held up a hand—his good hand.
“Do not, I pray you, embarrass us both with an excessive display of sentiment comparable to that of this lowly beast. If you would show your welcome, fetch writing utensils that I might communicate with my duchess posthaste. A change of clothes would be appreciated as well, as would a bucket, cloth, and soap.”
The horse gave up nuzzling empty pockets, but was either too well-bred or too canny to nudge more strongly at a master who would likely topple at such attention.
For the first time, Easterbrook’s expression conveyed consternation and…shock. “You don’t know, then. God help you, nobody told you about Helene.”
Three
“Your Grace, you have a caller.”
Christian had been at his London town house for three days and nights, and still his entire household, from butler to boot boy, seemed helpless not to beam at him.
He’d been tortured, repeatedly, for months, and they were grinning like dolts. To see them happy, to feel the weight of the entire household smiling at him around every turn made him furious, and that—his unabating, irrational reaction—made him anxious.
Even Carlton House had sent an invitation, for God’s sake, and Christian’s court attire would hang on him like some ridiculous shroud.
The butler cleared his throat.
Right. A caller. “This late?”
“She says her business is urgent.”
By the standards of London in springtime, nine in the evening was one of the more pleasant hours, but by no means did one receive calls at such an hour.
“Who is she?”
Meems crossed the study, a silver tray in his hand bearing a single note of cream vellum.
“I do not recall a Lady Greendale.” Though a Greendale estate lay several hours ride from Severn. Lord Greendale was a pompous old curmudgeon forever going on in the Lords about proper respect and decent society. An embossed black band crossed one corner of the card, indicating the woman was a widow, perhaps still in mourning.
“I’m seeing no callers, Meems. You know that.”
“Yes, quite, Your Grace, as you’re recovering. Quite. She says she’s family.” Behind the smile Meems barely contained lurked a worse offense yet: hope. The old fellow hoped His Grace might admit somebody past the threshold of Mercia House besides a man of business or running footman.
Christian ran his fingertip over the crisp edge of the card. Gillian, Countess of Greendale, begged the favor of a call. Some elderly cousin of his departed parents, perhaps. His memory was not to be relied upon in any case.
Duty came in strange doses. Like the need to sign dozens of papers simply so the coin earned by the duchy could be used to pay the expenses incurred by the duchy. Learning to sign his name with his right hand had been a frustrating exercise in duty. Christian had limited himself to balling up papers and tossing them into the grate rather than pitching the ink pot.
“Show her into the family parlor.”
“There will be no need for that.” A small blond woman brushed past Meems and marched up to Christian’s desk. “Good evening, Your Grace. Gillian, Lady Greendale.”
She bobbed a miniscule curtsy suggesting a miniscule grasp of the deference due his rank, much less of Meems’s responsibility for announcing guests. “We have family business to discuss.”
No, Christian silently amended, she had no grasp whatsoever, and based on her widow’s weeds, no husband to correct the lack.
And yet, this lady was in mourning, and around her mouth were brackets of fatigue. She was not in any sense smiling, and looked as if she might have forgotten how.
A welcome divergence from the servants’ expressions.
“Meems, a tray, and please close the door as you leave.”
Christian rose from his desk, intent on shifting to stand near the fire, but the lady twitched a jacket from her shoulders and handed it to him. Her garment was a gorgeous black silk business, embroidered with aubergine thread along its hems. The feel of the material was sumptuous in Christian’s hands, soft, sleek, luxurious, and warm from her body heat. He wanted to hold it—simply to hold it—and to bring it to his nose, for it bore the soft floral scent of not a woman, but a lady.
The reminders he suffered of his recent deprivations increased rather than decreased with time.
“Now, then,” she said, sweeping the room with her gaze.
He was curious enough at her presumption that he folded her jacket, draped it over a chair, and let a silence build for several slow ticks of the mantel clock.
“Now, then,” he said, more quietly than she, “if you’d care to have a seat, Lady Greendale?”
She had to be a May-December confection gobbled up in Lord Greendale’s dotage. The woman wasn’t thirty years old, and she had a curvy little figure that caught a man’s eye. Or it would catch a man’s eye, had he not been more preoccupied with how he’d deal with tea-tray inanities when he couldn’t stomach tea.
She took a seat on the sofa facing the fire, which was fortunate, because it allowed Christian his desired proximity to the heat. He propped an elbow on the mantel and wished, once again, that he’d tarried at Severn.
“My lady, you have me at a loss. You claim a family connection, and yet memory doesn’t reveal it to me.”
“That’s certainly to the point.” By the firelight, her hair looked like antique gold, not merely blond. Her tidy bun held coppery highlights, and her eyebrows looked even more reddish. Still, her appearance did not tickle a memory, and he preferred willowy blonds in any case.
Had preferred them.
“I thought we’d chitchat until the help is done eavesdropping, perhaps exchange condolences. You have mine, by the way. Very sincerely.”
Her piquant features softened with her words, her sympathy clear in her blue eyes, though it took Christian a moment to puzzle out for what.
Ah. The loss of his wife and son. That.
She pattered on, like shallow water rippling over smooth stones, sparing him the need to make any reply. Christian eventually figured out that this torrent of speech was a sign of nerves.
Had Girard blathered like this, philosophizing, sermonizing, and threatening as a function of nerves? Christian rejected the very notion rather than attribute to Girard even a single human quality.
“Helene was my cousin,” the lady said, recapturing Christian’s attention, because nobody had referred to the late duchess by name in his presence. “The family was planning to offer you me, but then Greendale started sniffing around me, and Helene was by far the prettier, so she went for a duchess while I am merely a countess. Shouldn’t the tea be here by now?”
Now he did remember, the way the first few lines of a poem will reveal the entire stanza. He’d met this Lady Greendale. She had a prosaic, solidly English name he could not recall—perhaps she’d just told him what it was, perhaps he’d seen it somewhere—but she’d been an attendant at his wedding, his and Helene’s. Greendale’s gaze had followed his young wife with a kind of porcine possessiveness, and the wife had scurried about like a whipped dog.
Christian had pitied her at the time. He didn’t pity her now.
But then, he didn’t feel much of anything when his day was going well.
“Here’s the thing…” She was mercifully interrupted by the arrival of the tea tray. Except it wasn’t simply a tray, as Christian had ordered. The trolley bore a silver tea service, a plate of cakes, a plate of finger sandwiches, and a bowl of oranges, because his smiling, hopeful, attentive staff was determined to put flesh on him.
His digestion was determined to make it a slow process.
“Shall I pour?” She had her gloves off and was rearranging the tray before Christ
ian could respond. “One wonders what ladies do in countries not obsessed with their tea. Do they make such a ritual out of coffee? And you take yours plain, I believe. Helene told me that.”
What odd conversations women must have, comparing how their husbands took tea. “I no longer drink tea. I drink…nursery tea.”
A man whose every bodily function had been observed for months should not be embarrassed to admit such a thing, and Christian wasn’t. He was, rather, humiliated and enraged out of all proportion to the moment.
“Hence the hot water,” she said, peering at the silver pot that held same. “Do you intend to loom over me up there, or will you come down here beside me for some tea?”
He did not want to move a single inch.
She chattered, and her hands fluttered over the tea service like mating songbirds, making visual noise to go with her blathering. She cut up his peace, such as it was, and he already knew she would put demands on him he didn’t care to meet.
And yet, she hadn’t smiled, hadn’t pretended grown dukes drank nursery tea every night. Whatever else was true about the lady, she had an honesty about her Christian approved of.
He sat on the sofa, several feet away from her.
She made no remark on his choice of seat.
“I suppose you’ve heard about that dreadful business involving Greendale. Had Mr. Stoneleigh not thought to produce the bottle of belladonna drops for the magistrate—the full, unopened bottle, still in its seal—you might have been spared my presence permanently. I can’t help but think old Greendale did it apurpose, gave me the drops just to put poison in my hands. Easterbrook probably sent them from the Continent all unsuspecting. Greendale wanted me buried with him, like some old pharaoh’s wife. Your tea.”
She’d made him a cup of hot water, sugar, and cream—nursery tea, served to small children to spare them tea’s stimulant effects.
The Captive Page 3
