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

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “Not a bit.” She leaned up to whisper, “How do you think you ended up with your cravat undone and your waistcoat unbuttoned?”

  He glared down at her. “You’re a very wicked woman, Miss Bonnaud.”

  “Ah, ah, you’re forgetting your role,” she teased. “Mustn’t do that.”

  “Wicked and annoying,” he snapped.

  “Not to mention hungry,” she said, releasing his arm to walk over to the counter where they were handing out plates.

  He followed closely behind her. “So am I. But not for food now, thanks to you.”

  A delicious shiver slid down her spine, despite her determination not to be affected by him. “Remember,” she warned, “we have an agreement.”

  “Yes, and I’m beginning to regret I ever made such a foolish bargain.”

  She laughed. How lovely to have found a way to get back at him for his cocksure pronouncements about her character.

  But as they picked their way through the dining room with their plates and mugs of ale, she found herself wondering about his character. Who was this duke who could be a perfect gentleman one moment and a tempting rogue the next? Had his childhood aim really been to become a midshipman? It just didn’t seem like him.

  The minute they sat down, she asked him about it.

  “Actually,” he told her as he dug eagerly into his dinner, “there’s a long history of naval service among the younger sons on my father’s side of the family—two uncles, a cousin, a great-uncle . . .” He paused, as if something disturbed him, then continued with a forced smile. “Some of them sent me souvenirs from their exploits sailing under Admiral Nelson. So as you might imagine, at the tender age of seven, I worshipped Nelson and hoped to sail with him myself one day.”

  “Did you really?” she said, trying to picture it.

  “It was right after the Battle of Trafalgar, and the newspapers were full of stories about Nelson’s gallant actions and glorious death. I dreamed of fighting Boney, rising rapidly through the ranks like my hero, and becoming the greatest naval captain ever to sail the seas.” A rueful smile touched his lips. “Of course, I had some boyish notion that the war would go on forever.”

  “It did go on quite a while. Were you disappointed when it ended?”

  His face clouded over. “No, because by then, any possibility of reaching my dream had vanished, anyway.”

  He’d turned somber again. She watched, her heart twisting as he concentrated on steadying his plate when it slid toward the edge of the table.

  Trying to cheer him, she said lightly, “Forgive me, but I’m having trouble imagining you as a small boy dreaming of adventure at sea. You just seem so . . . dukely, sprung fully formed from the womb of a duchess.”

  “Dukely?” he said with an arched brow. “Is that even a word?”

  “If it’s not, it should be.” She cast him a mischievous grin. “It means ‘imperious.’ ”

  That got a smile out of him, to her enormous pleasure. But as she watched, he sobered. “You realize that I might not actually be a duke. If Peter is alive—”

  “You said it was impossible.”

  “It is.” He drank some ale. “Well, unlikely, in any case.”

  Curiosity got the better of her. “They did find his body, right?”

  He sighed. “They found the body of a boy the right age to be him. But by the time we learned of it and were able to travel to the Continent, he’d been buried for months.”

  “Then how did they know it was Peter?”

  A hard look crossed his face. “He was found with his kidnapper, who also died in the fire. And his kidnapper was definitively identified by a ring he wore.”

  “You found out who his kidnapper was? Who was it?”

  He flinched, then drank down some ale. “Some blackguard, that’s all,” he murmured and forced a smile. “So are you never going to tell me exactly what happened while I was drunk last night?”

  The abrupt change of subject made her sigh. He didn’t trust her even that far, did he? “No,” she said, trying to match his light tone. “A woman has to have some secrets.”

  “I suppose.” He pushed his plate away. “Was it your childhood dream to be an investigator?”

  “Certainly not. My dream wasn’t much different from yours. I wanted to be an explorer.”

  He laughed, and the shadows faded from his eyes.

  The next few hours passed quickly. They ate their dinner, then strolled the deck talking. The sea had smoothed out into a surprising calm, which made the journey quite pleasant. As long as they skirted the subject of his brother and the kidnapping, their conversation was perfectly amiable.

  The duke could be entertaining when he wanted. He regaled her with tales about his wild friend Gabriel Sharpe, who’d settled into marriage with Miss Waverly, the cousin of one of Dom’s former clients, Lord Devonmont.

  But now she was all too aware of how carefully Max avoided speaking of the kidnapping, or even his life past the age when his brother had supposedly died. Other questions leapt into her mind, too, like what sort of illness his father could have contracted that made it necessary for Max’s parents to take him with them searching for a cure. The more she knew of him, the more curious she became.

  When the steam packet approached Dieppe, she found herself wishing that she had the courage to pry. Then again, he was adept at avoiding uncomfortable subjects. She doubted that a couple of days with her was going to unlock his reticence.

  Realizing that they would be tied up for a while on the shore with customs and the like, she excused herself to visit the necessary. When she was done and had come back out to head toward where Max stood near the front of the ship, she nearly collided with a gentleman in a gray surtout who was rounding the corner toward her.

  He tugged his hat down and mumbled, “Beg pardon, ma’am,” then scurried into the necessary. But not before she caught the familiar vile scent of Spanish cigarillos.

  Her heart stopped. Hucker.

  Instantly she chided herself for being so absurd. Why would Hucker be here on the packet to France? Why would he follow them all the way from London?

  Still, the day before yesterday, she’d thought she’d seen him in the street opposite the house. And at the coach office she’d felt almost certain that someone was watching her.

  Her blood chilled in her veins. It seemed unlikely, but . . .

  She hesitated, tempted to wait until the man came out again so she could get a good look at him and make sure it wasn’t Hucker. But if it were and he realized that she knew of his pursuit, escaping him might be much harder.

  Then it dawned on her why he might be following her—to find Tristan. Good Lord, could Hucker actually be hunting for her brother?

  She hurried down the corridor and out onto the deck, wiping her clammy hands on her cloak. Perhaps she was being hasty. Plenty of men probably smoked Spanish cigarillos. And after all these years, why would George send his man of affairs after Tristan now?

  Once they’d left Yorkshire, George had seemed to give up the search, probably because looking for them on the Continent would have cost him a fortune since he’d had no idea where they’d gone. And from what Dom had been able to find out back then, George hadn’t had a fortune. Or time to hunt down Tristan. His hands had been full dealing with the estate Papa had left behind.

  As the years had passed in France, they’d begun to feel safe. It had seemed that George’s thirst for blood had been sated once she and Tristan and Maman were out of his hair. It was precisely because George had no longer seemed a threat that Dom and Tristan had felt secure in having her come from France to live with—

  She groaned. Good Lord, that would explain why Hucker might be hanging about all of a sudden. News of her living with Dom could have trickled back to George. It would have enraged him to hear that one of the half siblings he’d thought himself well rid of was living in England again, bold as brass. Knowing George, he was probably just waiting for Tristan to show up, too. The th
ought of them living out in the open in London with Dom would drive him mad.

  But mad enough to send Hucker after her? She wasn’t sure.

  She had to figure it out without alerting the man that she had recognized him, or it wouldn’t be nearly as easy to give him the slip. And they had to give him the slip, because she wasn’t about to let him drag Tristan back to England to be hanged.

  Ducking into the dining room, she watched furtively out of one of the windows for the man in the gray surtout. When he strolled past, he appeared to be scanning the deck for someone. Unfortunately, he kept his hat so low over his face that she couldn’t make out his features.

  Drat it all. She would have to ask for the duke’s help. He already barely trusted her and this would ruin that. The minute she mentioned that they were being followed, he would know there was more to Tristan’s situation than she’d said.

  Worse yet, after how she’d hidden the truth from him, he would never agree to help her unless she agreed to tell him everything.

  Fine, then she would do what she must. She would just have to pray that he could be trusted with her family’s secrets.

  9

  MAXIMILIAN LEANED ON the rail as the boat approached Dieppe. He couldn’t believe how much he was enjoying himself. It was a sunny day, with lazy clouds scudding above, reflected on a sea that was a sheet of green glass, unusual for a Channel crossing. His sailing yacht wouldn’t have moved an inch in this calm, but the steam packet chugged along with great enthusiasm, plowing up the sea behind it.

  Oddly, the noise of the engines no longer bothered him much. His belly was full, his head had stopped hurting, and he would soon be in France, one of his favorite places to visit.

  Best of all, not a soul was paying him any mind. Who could have known that being a “regular person” could be so satisfying? For the first time in his life, he was truly anonymous. No one was cozying up to him because of his money and rank, no one was recording his every move to report in some gossip rag, and no one, absolutely no one, was watching to see if he was going mad.

  Least of all his lovely companion.

  He smiled. The minx never failed to surprise him. One moment, she was vowing her determination to be one of her brother’s “men”; the next, she was flouncing off to talk about bonnets and fabric with a lot of chattering females.

  She challenged and teased him by turns, showed an interest in his past but never pried. And she made him burn. No woman had done that since his father’s madness had made him rethink his prospects for marriage. He hadn’t let any woman do it until her.

  No matter how much he told himself that his desire for her couldn’t lead anywhere, he couldn’t seem to stop it.

  As if she’d read his mind, she came up to stand next to him at the rail, and every muscle in him went taut just at her presence. Holy God, what a fool he was.

  “You were right about the steam packet,” he said conversationally. “We got here much more quickly than we ever would have in my yacht.”

  She said nothing in answer, which surprised him. Lisette never lacked for anything to say. He glanced down to find her staring out at the sea with a serious expression.

  Even that could not darken his mood. “You’re not going to exult that you were right?” he teased.

  “I need a favor from you,” she said in a low voice, “and I need you to do it without asking any questions. Time is of the essence.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Maximilian said, amused by her dramatic pronouncement.

  She didn’t smile. “I think there’s a man on board the packet who followed us from London. If it’s who I think it is, we have to get rid of him.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Maximilian kept his tone light, though her manner was starting to unsettle him. “Stabbing? Strangulation? Or simply tossing him over the side?”

  Her solemn gaze shot to him. “Don’t be ridiculous. We have to keep him from following us on to . . . to where we’re going.”

  His amusement fled. “You’re serious.”

  “Very.”

  A slow chill spread over him. Why would someone be following them?

  Surely she was letting her imagination run away with her. He angled his body toward her and surreptitiously scanned the deck behind them. “What does he look like?”

  “He’s about my height and built like a pugilist. He’s wearing a gray surtout and a hat pulled low over his face.”

  “I do see a fellow who looks like that.” What’s more, the man was edging back out of his sight, as if not wanting to be noticed.

  That put Maximilian on guard. She definitely wasn’t imagining it. And the fact that someone might be following them gave him pause. Because it meant there were things she hadn’t told him, things other than the location of her brother.

  Things he suspected he wouldn’t like.

  Maximilian stared hard at her. “Tell me who he is. Or who you fear he is.”

  “George’s man of affairs, a fellow named Hucker.” Her words came out in a rush. “The day before yesterday I thought I saw him outside Manton’s Investigations, but I assumed I was wrong since we’ve had no contact with George in years. Even now, I can’t be sure it’s him until I see his face. I need you to help me with that.”

  She still refused to look at him, which turned his blood to ice in his veins. It was a sign of guilt. “I’m not helping you with a damned thing until I get some answers. Why would Rathmoor’s man of affairs be following you? What or who does he seek?”

  She paled. “Tristan.”

  Of course. Who else? “Why?”

  “We don’t have time for this!” she whispered, turning her face to his. It showed panic, and that made his gut twist despite his growing anger. “We need to have a plan in place before we reach Dieppe so we can throw him off the scent. I swear I will tell you everything once we’re en route to . . . to . . .”

  That she was still prevaricating fueled his temper. “To where, damn it?” he snapped.

  She hesitated, but clearly she knew that he now held all the cards. “Paris,” she finally said. Her expression was full of pleading. “Now, will you help me figure out if it’s Hucker? And if it is, will you help me get away from him?”

  Confound her to blazes. What secret was she hiding? She had to be hiding something, if Rathmoor was sending men to follow her.

  “All right.” As a palpable relief flashed over her face, he added tersely, “But once we’re safely away, you will tell me exactly what this is about. There will be no more evasions, no more omissions. I want all the truth. Is that understood?”

  She swallowed hard, then nodded. Glancing furtively in the man’s direction, she lowered her voice. “Here’s what I suggest that we do, to figure out if it’s Hucker.”

  She proceeded to describe a complicated scheme involving having Maximilian trip the fellow so that his hat fell off and she could see his face.

  “I have a simpler idea,” he bit out.

  Turning from the rail, he headed for the wheelhouse. She followed, protesting in low, urgent whispers that he ignored. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that their quarry was taking great pains to avoid meeting them head-on.

  He scowled. If she had said from the beginning that they might be followed, he would have been more careful. But no, she’d had to keep her cards close to her chest for her own devious purposes. He should have known not to believe her when she’d claimed she’d never lied to him. But he’d been enticed into thinking that she was unlike any woman he’d ever known.

  She was, but only because she was playing a role. How had he not realized that after her convincing playacting in the coach? That should have been a clear clue that she was not to be trusted.

  But he’d let himself be taken in. He’d let her distract him from his purpose regarding her brother, and now he was going to pay for it. He should have heeded his instincts. There had clearly always been far more to this situation than she’d admitted. And he would bloody well get to the bottom
of it before this day was through.

  After he got rid of Rathmoor’s lackey.

  When he entered the wheelhouse, he asked the captain to show him the passenger manifest. That required some money changing hands, but fortunately he’d brought plenty for this ridiculous escapade. As the captain returned to preparing the ship for docking, Maximilian began to scan the list.

  Lisette fretted beside him. “Hucker’s not going to use his real name.”

  “He has to, unless he carries a false passport about with him.” He slanted a glance at her. “Is that possible?”

  She colored. “I don’t think so. To be honest, I’m surprised he even has a passport.”

  Maximilian returned his attention to the manifest. “Customs uses the passenger manifest to determine who’s on board before matching up the names and the passports. So he had to provide his real name to book passage.”

  “I didn’t even consider that,” she said, then grabbed his arm and hissed, “Oh, Lord, what about our passports? They’re not going to match up.”

  “Of course they are. My real name is Maximilian Cale, after all. As for you, I already told the captain that we didn’t have time to get your passport changed after we married—it was a hasty affair, and we had to hurry to France to see to your family.”

  “You . . . you thought about the whole issue with the passports?”

  “Certainly. I booked our passage.” He kept scanning the list. “The captain doesn’t think that your using your maiden name to go through customs will be a problem. For one thing, your name is French. For another, if they give us any trouble, I will simply offer the proper financial incentives to look the other way.”

  “You intend to bribe them?”

  He shot her a hard glance. “Does that bother you?”

  She sighed. “No. I just wish I had considered all the problems that would arise from our masquerade.”

  “You were in too much of a hurry to save your damned brother from me, for that,” he bit out, provoking a frown from her. But he didn’t care. He’d found the name he was searching for. “John Hucker? That’s him?”