The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires

by Sabrina Jeffries

  Now it was left to him to salvage things. As always.

  “Oh my word,” the plump Mrs. Greasley breathed, then turned on Miss Bonnaud with obvious incredulity. “Husband? You got married?”

  He held his breath, praying that Miss Bonnaud wouldn’t fall apart right there and confess all.

  After their earlier encounter, while preparing for the trip, he’d sent a servant to the area around Bow Street to ask about her and Bonnaud. Everything she’d told him so far had proved true. Bonnaud had never been seen at Manton’s Investigations, and her role at the place was strictly administrative.

  Judging from all reports, she was as forthright as she seemed. Which probably explained why the appearance of her neighbor at the coach office was throwing her into a panic. He braced himself for any reaction.

  But she rose to the challenge, leaning close to look up at his face with feigned adoration. “Yes. I’m Mrs. Cale now.”

  Mrs. Greasley was having none of that. “But . . . but . . . I saw your brother last week and he said naught about it! Why, I didn’t even know you had any beaus!”

  When Miss Bonnaud stiffened at the veiled insult, an inexplicable urge to throttle her busybody neighbor seized Maximilian. “Didn’t you?” he said coldly. “She was the belle of the ball in France. That’s where we met. I had great difficulty persuading her to choose me over the others.”

  “Others?” Mrs. Greasley squeaked.

  Warming to the subject, he patted Miss Bonnaud’s hand. “She came to England to avoid her French suitors. Fortunately, I’m English, so I just followed her to London after I returned from doing business on the Continent. Then I courted her relentlessly until she agreed to marry me.”

  The woman still looked skeptical. “The banns weren’t called.”

  “We married by special license,” he said smoothly. “Mr. Manton had to take an emergency trip to the north, so he prevailed upon the archbishop to grant us the license so he could accompany us to the church before he left. I’m sure you know that Mr. Manton has friends in high places.”

  That certainly knocked the good Mrs. Greasley off her game. “A special license,” she breathed with clear reverence. “What did you say your name was?”

  “It’s Kale,” Miss Bonnaud said quickly. “With a K. My husband is a—”

  “Land agent,” Maximilian broke in. He was having none of this cotton merchant nonsense. He didn’t know a damned thing about cotton. Or being a merchant, for that matter. “I’m land agent to a gentleman in . . . Have you ever visited Devonshire, Mrs. Greasley?”

  She was staring at him wide-eyed. “Afraid not.”

  “Ah, a pity. That’s where I’m a land agent. Big estate. Lots of sheep.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Among his several estates was a rather large one in Devonshire that brought in most of its income from wool.

  “Oh my, a land agent,” Mrs. Greasley said, obviously impressed. “That’s why you speak so well.”

  “Doesn’t he, though?” Miss Bonnaud said with false sweetness. “My husband has improved himself wherever he can. He’s very ambitious.”

  “I can see that.” Mrs. Greasley nudged her husband, who’d done nothing but stand there like a lump. “You could use a bit of Mr. Kale’s ambition.”

  “Aye,” the poor man answered. “But then you wouldn’t have nobody at home of an evening to listen to your harping now, would you?”

  “Mr. Greasley!” she protested.

  Maximilian kept his face carefully blank, though he was laughing inside. Clearly Greasley had his own way of dealing with his busybody wife.

  A horn sounded from the front of the inn.

  “That’s the ten-minute warning,” Mrs. Greasley said. “We’d best hurry.”

  “We’ll be right there,” Miss Bonnaud said. “I just need a moment with my husband.”

  “All right, but they’ll leave you if you’re late,” Mrs. Greasley cautioned as she tugged her husband toward the door.

  As soon as the woman was out of earshot, Miss Bonnaud whirled on him. “My husband? Are you out of your mind?”

  “You gave me no choice. You stood there gaping like a fish about to be filleted, and one of us had to do something. I realized you couldn’t go by another name when she already knew yours, and you couldn’t invent another brother, so I improvised. I gather she is familiar with both your brothers?”

  “She knows Dom.” She hit her forehead. “Oh, Lord, I should have told her you were Tristan! She’s never met him.”

  “I somehow doubt she would believe that I am your half-French brother,” he said. “Besides, a husband will be easier to pass off, since then we don’t have to look or sound alike, or pretend we have the same background and family connections. And a husband is far easier to get rid of than a brother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “All you need do when you return from France is claim I had an accident while we were abroad. I drowned or dropped off a cliff.” He fought a smile. “Or dueled with one of your many suitors and died tragically in your arms, wounded by love.”

  “That’s not funny,” she muttered. “And if I claim you died, then I become a widow. I’ll have to put on widow’s weeds for a year, not be able to marry for a year, not . . .” Her eyes lit up. “Wait a minute, what a fine idea! You’re brilliant!”

  “I always thought so,” he drawled.

  “If I’m a widow, I’m free!” She lifted a shining face to him. “My brothers can stop their fruitless search for a husband for me. Widows can do as they please . . . well, not completely as they please, but they can do far more than a spinster. I could travel . . . I could work for Dom! He wouldn’t be so reluctant to train me, and I could actually be one of his men.”

  He eyed her askance. “I doubt that becoming a widow magically alters one’s sex.”

  “You don’t understand. Shaw and I are always telling new clients that Dom and ‘his men’ will handle their cases, even though we know that Dom can’t afford to hire other investigators.” She grinned up at him. “But he wouldn’t have to hire anyone else if I worked for him. I could be one of Dom’s ‘men’!”

  The idea of her striding about town asking questions of strangers all alone sent a chill down his spine. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked sharply.

  A noise in the inn yard made her glance out the window. “We’ve got to go. The coach is about to leave.” She grabbed her bag.

  “I’ll take that,” he said as he extricated it from her hand. “You have a husband, remember?”

  Her eyes gleamed at him. “Not for long.” Then she hurried ahead to the coach.

  With a frown, he quickened his steps. “You don’t have to be so cheerful about it, Miss Bonnaud. Or so confounded eager to kill me off.”

  “Stop calling me ‘Miss Bonnaud,’ ” she reminded him. “I’m your wife Lisette for the time being.”

  “Right. Lisette.” He’d forgotten her Christian name. It suited her.

  He handed her bag up to the footman, then helped her into the coach. Oh yes, the name suited her very well. Her French blood showed in the delicate flick of her wrist as she settled her traveling cloak and her skirts about her, in the way that she didn’t hurry to cover her ankles or hide the bottom of her petticoat . . . even in the unconsciously provocative smile she shot Greasley when he drew back his booted foot to keep from soiling her hem.

  Maximilian had seen women in Paris move and smile in such a fashion. It came naturally to them, was part of who they were. Lisette had that French feminine instinct, too, though it was mercifully joined to a healthy dose of English pragmatism and good sense.

  He liked that about her. But given what she’d said, other men didn’t appreciate that mixture at all. They must all be daft.

  Obviously women recognized her sensual appeal enough to view her as a threat, or Mrs. Greasley wouldn’t be so catty to her. The old biddy probably couldn’t abide having a French rose like Lisette growing wild in her neighborhood.

 
He settled into his seat in the carriage. If that were the case, Mrs. Greasley was going to have heart failure by the time they reached Brighton. Because this was a damned small coach, and they were in very close quarters.

  Between the ladies’ petticoats, his height, and the small items protruding from every nook and cranny, he felt like a horse in a hatbox. There was scarcely any room for his legs, and his head butted up against the ceiling.

  It was even worse once they set off, with the body of the coach swaying and lurching at every rut in the road. Holy God, did people actually travel like this? How did they stand it?

  He couldn’t imagine how he was going to stand it. He’d never been in a public coach. Even when he’d been in school, some servant had always come to fetch him in one of the many family equipages.

  Lisette had said he should look on this as an adventure, but clearly her idea of adventure differed vastly from his. His would never have included having a packet that reeked of mutton lodged under his arm, or being jabbed in the ankle by an umbrella every time the coach made a stop.

  And there were several stops before they even left the city—to pick up a young woman from her home, to intersect with an incoming coach in order to acquire a load of goods, to maneuver around another carriage blocking the road. He couldn’t believe the number of delays.

  By the fourth one, he was chomping at the bit. He glanced over at Lisette, wondering if she was, too, but she was gazing out the window with an expression of rapt attention. They were passing Kennington Common now, where some orator was boring the crowd with his opinions and the nearby Church of St. Mark’s was disgorging its worshippers. Then came Brixton Road and a long line of moderately pretty terrace houses. Mundane sights, all.

  Yet every one seemed to fascinate her, for she alternated between craning her neck to see things and pressing her face to the glass. Had she really traveled so little? She’d spent part of her life in France, after all.

  Then again, if she’d been living with her brother all that time and then come straight to London with her half brother, she might not have had many other chances to travel.

  Her enthusiasm made him envious. When he rode in his own coach, he never noticed the world outside. He was too busy sorting correspondence or reading the papers. But now, through her eyes, he noticed the beautiful carving on one impressive edifice and the glistening of sunlight on the River Effra.

  An adventure? Perhaps.

  They had just reached a more rural stretch of road when Greasley bent down to remove from his satchel what looked—and smelled—like a peeled raw onion. He bit into it and, catching Maximilian’s hard stare on him, explained, “It’s good for the constitution, you know. I eats one every day.” He thumped his chest. “Keeps me strong and healthy.”

  “Put that thing away,” his wife mercifully said. “You’re going to stink up the whole coach!”

  “It’s your mutton pies that’s stinking up the coach,” Greasley retorted.

  “Our angel likes my mutton pies, she does. I promised her I’d bring her some.” Mrs. Greasley turned a flirtatious smile on Maximilian. “So do you like mutton pie, Mr. Kale?”

  “I don’t eat mutton,” he said hastily. Unless it’s prepared by my French chef and not by a woman who thinks it improves with age.

  “Then you just haven’t had it cooked right, that’s all,” the woman said. “I warrant once you taste my mutton, you’ll have a right healthy appreciation for it.”

  As her husband fell into a coughing fit, Maximilian fought to maintain his composure. Obviously Greasley knew what his wife did not—that “mutton” was a vulgar term for something else. And though Maximilian doubted that anyone, even her husband, had ever tasted the harpy’s mutton, he sure as blazes didn’t want that confirmed or disproved. Indeed, he would do almost anything to get that image out of his head.

  So it was fortunate that Lisette chose that moment to join the conversation. “How long do you mean to stay with your daughter in Brighton, Mrs. Greasley?”

  Sparing a frown for her still coughing husband, Mrs. Greasley let Lisette change the subject. “A week at least, I expect. She just bore our first grandson—that’s why we’re going. Mr. Greasley put our son Danny in charge of the drapery shop until we return.” She shot her husband a dark glance. “I daresay he will make it pay.”

  “The devil he will,” her husband muttered, having finally stopped coughing. “The lad’s got bacon for brains. We’ll be lucky if the shop’s still standing when we return.”

  “Don’t you listen to Mr. Greasley,” the woman replied with a sniff. “My Danny is a sharp one, he is. And my younger daughter Sally . . .” She cast Lisette a calculating glance. “Isn’t it about time Mr. Manton started looking for a wife?”

  Lisette snorted. “Dom can barely support me, much less a—”

  “My wife keeps forgetting that she’s married now.” Grabbing her hand, Maximilian squeezed it in warning. “Her brother doesn’t have to support her anymore.”

  Her hand stilled in his. “Of course. I-I’m not used to having a husband yet, I suppose.”

  “I’m sure Mrs. Greasley understands,” he said, trying to smooth over her gaffe. He flashed the older woman a smile. “I suppose you had the same trouble when you were newly wed, eh, madam?”

  “Not a bit,” Mrs. Greasley said stiffly. “We’d been courting nearly a year by the time we married. I was so eager for it that I’d been calling him ‘husband’ in my head for months. But in my day, young people didn’t leap into marriage willy-nilly.”

  When Lisette stiffened beside him, he squeezed her hand again. “No doubt you were wise to be cautious. Lisette and I should probably have been more so.” That was an understatement. “But what could we do when our hearts ran away with us? We had to follow after.”

  He’d probably got that out of some book, but it was apparently one Mrs. Greasley hadn’t read, for she beamed at him. “Oh my, that’s a lovely sentiment, Mr. Kale. Isn’t it lovely, my dear?”

  The man grunted but didn’t protest when his wife patted his arm affectionately.

  Lisette relaxed beside Maximilian, but he kept hold of her hand. At first it was to be sure he could prevent her from blurting out anything else that might give them away. Then it was because he couldn’t let go. Now that he had hold of her, he indulged his urge to explore—running his thumb along the curves of her fingers, stroking the knuckles, caressing her palm.

  And to his surprise, she let him, though her breath seemed to quicken and the rest of her body go taut. He exulted in that. She had a lovely hand, with slender fingers and bones more delicate than he’d have expected for a woman of her height.

  It suddenly occurred to him that if he moved her hand merely an inch over, it would be resting firmly on his thigh. The urge to do so was so powerful, he nearly acted on it. But the thought of her hand on his leg made his mouth go dry and his muscles go taut in places they should not, and that was definitely unwise.

  Abruptly he released her hand. If he held it any longer, he feared he might want a wedding night in truth. And considering that they would probably have to share a room at the inn in Brighton to maintain their masquerade, that would push him over the edge.

  She shuddered so lightly that no one but him would notice, yet it set his blood pumping higher. Confound it, now he was aware of her thigh pressed against his, her breast just inches away. This was proving to be worse torture than even Greasley’s onion eating.

  As if she’d read his lustful thoughts, Lisette said brightly, “Do you think we’ll be stopping for dinner anywhere? Or does the coach go straight through to Brighton? I confess I’m famished—I had no time to eat this morning, what with preparing for the trip.”

  “I imagine not,” Greasley said with a wink at Maximilian. “Being as you only just got married yesterday, I’ll wager you didn’t rise early enough to do more than run for the coach.”

  Confound the fellow—now Maximilian had new images to torment him. Lisette as a blushing
bride on her wedding night. Lisette letting down her hair. Lisette in nothing but a flimsy night rail and a wrapper, climbing the stairs in front of him with her bottom just close enough to—

  “Speaking of getting married,” Mrs. Greasley put in, “isn’t your half brother over thirty, Mrs. Kale?”

  “Yes,” Lisette said in a quiet voice, making Maximilian wonder if she could sense the rampant urges in him.

  “Then that’s more than old enough to be looking for a wife,” Mrs. Greasley said. “I daresay Mr. Manton makes a good deal of money with his business. And if you’re not keeping house for your half brother anymore, he’ll need someone to look after him. You’ve only got the one other brother in France, right?”

  “Right,” Lisette said, then went on hastily, “But truly, is there no stop along the road for luncheon or dinner?”

  “There’s a short stop at Crawley if you want to have a bit to eat there,” Greasley offered, but Maximilian’s mind was now elsewhere. The Greasleys seemed to know a great deal about Lisette’s family, which she obviously didn’t want him to hear.

  Perhaps there was another way to find out where Bonnaud was hiding. Somewhere along the route, he could take Greasley aside and find out what the older man knew.

  If he had to guess from what she’d said about Bonnaud having a government position, the man’s employer was probably in Paris. Then again, that was only if the man worked for the national government. Bonnaud might have a regional position in some obscure town. She’d never said where she’d been living in France, so anything was possible. A needle in a haystack, she’d called it.

  Well, he meant to shorten that haystack a bit. He liked to know where he was headed. And if he could learn where Bonnaud had been living and it proved to be some small village, then he could leave the meddlesome Lisette in Brighton and put an end to this mad farce.

  Not exactly the gentlemanly thing to do, old boy.

  He scowled. This expedition hadn’t been his idea. Besides, she could head back to London on the next coach and be home in her own bed by midnight. Maximilian would see to it that the coachman received compensation for making sure she was let off right at her door.