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

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “Yes.” She clutched at his arm again. “We have to keep him from following us once we leave Dieppe!”

  “Right,” he said acidly, “so he won’t find Bonnaud. I grasped that. What did your brother do, steal the family treasure?”

  “No! Well, not exactly.” The engine noise died, and worry lit her face. “We’ll be disembarking any moment. I promise that later I will tell you everything.”

  “You damned well will.” He walked over to return the manifest to the captain, then grabbed her by the arm to urge her none too gently back onto the deck. “But for now, if you want to dodge your pursuer, you are going to do exactly as I say, without protest or complaint. Is that clear?”

  She stiffened but had the good sense to nod.

  “All right. Then let’s go escape Mr. Hucker.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  LISETTE WAS IN awe of Max’s efficiency. He’d thought of everything—passports, their entry into France, the possible problems with customs. She should have thought of it, but she’d only traveled to France once in her life, and she’d been with Maman, who’d taken care of everything. She was lucky she’d thought to throw her passport into her bag before she left the house.

  Some world traveler she was.

  Still, despite Max’s forethought in those areas, as the day went on, she began to be skeptical of his plan, whatever it was, to dodge Hucker. The man of affairs dogged them throughout the hours they spent going through customs, though at a surreptitious distance. Max didn’t seem to notice or care. He spent his time chatting amiably with the immigration officers in very fluent French, which rather surprised her.

  It shouldn’t, since he was naturally well educated. And he had said that he’d traveled on the Continent a great deal. Still, she’d expected the usual English butchery of her mother’s tongue, and it pleased her more than it ought to find that he was quite adept.

  By the time they finally entered the Hôtel de la Ruse in Dieppe, it was late in the evening. Max seemed to know the hotel well, which made her wonder just how often he visited France. Hucker had come into the hotel with several of the other passengers, barely even trying to hide himself, probably assuming that if she hadn’t recognized him up close on the packet boat, then she wasn’t going to.

  Meanwhile, she was starting to be annoyed that Max had made no effort whatsoever to avoid Hucker. What was the point of asking for his help?

  “My wife and I would like a room for the night,” Max said in English to the hotel’s owner, having somehow managed to be first inside. He took a bag of coins from his bag and handed it to the fellow. “And I understand that we can also purchase the fare for the diligence to Tours here.”

  Tours? That was an entirely different direction from Paris. Surely he didn’t mean to go gallivanting about the French countryside just to get rid of Hucker. And the diligence, the French version of a stagecoach, was a very public, lumbering vehicle. It would be easy to follow on horseback.

  The hotel owner opened the bag of coins, his eyes going wide at the amount. “Oh yes, sir,” the man answered in halting English. “It leaves first thing in the morning. I will make sure that you and madame have seats in the coupé.”

  “Thank you, that would be preferable,” Max said.

  The coupé in a diligence, an enclosed compartment above the driver’s seat, was always the best place to sit, but right now she couldn’t even find it in her heart to be pleased that he would arrange it. Did he think that taking seats on a diligence would keep Hucker from following them, for pity’s sake?

  “Come this way, monsieur,” the owner said, walking toward the stairs. “I will see you to your room myself.” He barked some orders at a footman, who picked up their bags and followed.

  As the four of them headed up, Lisette murmured, “I’m not sure how this will help us.”

  “You promised to follow my orders without protest or complaint,” he retorted. “Have you forgotten that already?”

  “No, but—”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You can be insufferable at times,” she said. He was beginning to give her a headache.

  “It comes with being a duke,” he clipped out. “I would apologize, but I’m not in the mood for apologies right now. Especially when you keep breaking your promises.”

  That brought her up short. What other promise had she broken?

  Oh, right. The promise not to lie to him. She hadn’t broken that, though he probably didn’t see it that way. And he was going to be angrier still once she told him that Tristan was wanted in England for horse thieving.

  The owner stopped to open a door that led into a lavishly appointed bedchamber. “This is my best room, Monsieur Kale. I hope it will suit you and your wife.”

  “It will, indeed,” Max said, casting the room only a cursory glance before taking the bags from the footman and walking in, leaving Lisette to follow him inside.

  “Shall I have dinner sent up for you, monsieur?” the owner asked.

  “My wife and I ate on the steam packet,” Max said. “We won’t require anything else this evening, thank you.”

  “But monsieur, surely—”

  “Did I neglect to mention that my lovely wife and I have only been married a few days?” Max slid an arm about Lisette’s waist, pulling her close. “We will need nothing further this night, I assure you. In fact, I’d be most appreciative if you’d tell your staff not to disturb us until morning.”

  Trying not to react to that alarming pronouncement, Lisette forced a smile.

  The hotel owner wore a knowing expression. “Oh, yes, of course. I understand, monsieur. There will be no disturbances.”

  He then handed Max the room key, sparing a wink for Lisette, who managed not to throw something at him. As soon as he’d left, she jerked free of Max and whirled to scowl at him. “If you think that I am going to—”

  “Hold your tongue, for God’s sake,” he hissed, then hurried to crack open the door and peer out into the hall. “We don’t have much time. I would wait here until everyone goes to bed, but the later we wait, the more conspicuous we’ll be when we leave Dieppe.”

  “What are you talking about?” she whispered. “I thought we were going on the—”

  “Do you want to leave Hucker behind or not?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door, fit the key into the lock outside, and picked up both their bags. “Quickly now, while the owner is dealing with the other passengers from the packet.” Carrying their bags into the hall, he added, “Lock the door, then slide the key under it. And hurry.”

  She did as he said. He was already headed in the opposite direction from the stairs they’d just ascended. When he reached the end of the hall, he stopped opposite a door and indicated with a nod that she should turn the handle.

  Surprised when it turned for her, she held the door open for him, then followed him into what was apparently a servants’ stairwell. He nodded down the stairs, and she hurried to descend ahead of him.

  “How did you know this was here?” she whispered as they crept furtively down to the ground floor.

  “My family stayed in this hotel when I was sixteen. We were on our way to Paris to consult with my great-uncle’s lawyer . . .” His voice turned remote. “Anyway, I sneaked down the back stairs one night.”

  “Oh, so you started your habit of going down to the taproom in inns at a very young age.”

  His only response was a foul glance, for they’d reached the ground floor. There were two doors opposite each other, and they could hear voices on the other side of one of them. “Quick, this way,” he murmured and headed out the other door.

  She followed, surprised to find herself in a garden. But Max didn’t allow her time to pause, urging her to move behind a shed . . . and just in time, too, for someone came out the door to empty a cauldron of water onto the bushes.

  As the servant lingered to smoke a cheroot, they stood there frozen, pressed against each other in the small space. Max turned his gaze to her,
and her breath caught in her throat.

  In the dark he looked nothing like the amiable gentleman whom she’d found so entertaining on the packet boat. Out here behind the shed, he was the forbidding duke, his eyes glittering down at her in the pale moonlight. It provoked an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach that felt remarkably like desire.

  Desire? Nonsense. She did not desire the duke when he was ordering her about and demanding everything his way. Not in the least.

  Nonetheless, as the scent of burning tobacco wafted to them on the breeze and Max continued to stare down at her, she shivered uncontrollably.

  He set down the bags and drew her cloak more tightly about her. Her breath quickened. His hands lingered on her cloak, his gaze dropped to her mouth, and she half thought he might even kiss her.

  Then he released her cloak as if it had burned his fingers. Edging to the corner of the shed, he glanced around it, then motioned her forward. As he went back to pick up their bags, he murmured, “There’s a gate that leads to the alley. I’m right behind you.”

  They left the garden in stealthy silence, but the moment they reached the alley, Max quickened his pace, forcing her practically into a run to keep up with him.

  “Stay close to me,” he murmured as they rushed down the alley. “There’s no reason to think that Hucker will be outside the hotel, but I don’t know what byways we’ll have to take, and at this hour men will be drinking in the taverns and weaving through the streets. I don’t want them giving you any trouble.”

  “All right,” she said through a lump in her throat. Despite his anger, he was worried for her safety. That warmed her even as he was being so overbearing.

  They walked through Dieppe in silence, keeping to the shadows, taking back alleys where they could. Fortunately, the town wasn’t very large. They’d walked less than a mile when they reached another hotel, the Hôtel de Londres. As they entered, he said, “If you want to visit the necessary, now is the time.”

  And with that enigmatic remark, he went off in search of the owner. She was dying to know what he was up to, but she figured she’d better do as he said. When she returned, Max was waiting to lead her back outside to where a coach was being hurriedly rigged up for a journey.

  He handed their bags to a groom, who tied them to the back of the coach, then opened the door for her. “In you go, my dear.”

  As awareness dawned, she got in and took a seat in the aging but comfortable vehicle. He climbed in behind her and settled back onto the seat.

  “I take it that we’re headed for Paris?” she asked as the coach left.

  He nodded. “The owner of the Hôtel de Londres assures me that we can be there by midafternoon tomorrow, barring any problems, especially if we go the shorter way and avoid Rouen.”

  “Avoiding Rouen is a good idea, anyway. It’s on the road to Tours as well as to Paris.”

  Removing his hat, he tossed it onto the seat beside him. “We’ll be long past Rouen before Hucker even sets off for Tours in the morning, but just in case . . .”

  “You’ve made sure that if he does find out tonight that we’ve already left, he won’t catch up to us in Rouen.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  She gazed out at the streets dimly illuminated by gaslights. “But when he goes to board the diligence to Tours in the morning, he’ll surely figure out that we slipped off in the night. Then he’ll check all the hotels and find out that we left from that other hotel for Paris.”

  “No, he won’t. I paid the owner well to keep quiet. The trail will go cold here.” His voice sharpened. “And I seriously doubt that a man as thoroughly English as Hucker would venture much beyond the coast of France if he doesn’t know where to go.”

  He’d thought of everything, hadn’t he? And thank God for it, because her head was really pounding now. She was tired of travel and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a soft bed.

  Obviously that wouldn’t happen anytime soon. She took off her bonnet and placed it on the seat next to her. Then, removing her gloves, she opened her reticule and searched for her scent bottle. A sniff of the herbal perfume helped to ease her head a bit.

  “You’re probably right about that,” she said as she restored the flacon to her bag. “George won’t have paid him enough for a search of France. If I know Hucker, he’ll be only too eager to return to England in the morning.”

  “And you do know Hucker well, I take it.”

  At his hard tone, she swung her gaze up to him. She could see little of his expression in the dim light, but what she saw sent a chill down her spine. He was ready for his reckoning, and he wouldn’t relent until she had bared every secret her family had ever kept from the world.

  She set her reticule aside. Very well, if that was the price for his help, then she would pay it. She would simply have to make him understand that despite all evidence to the contrary, Tristan wasn’t the defrauder that Max was determined to make him out to be.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know Hucker well enough. He threw me and my family from our home the day after Papa died, because George ordered it.”

  “Playing on my sympathies won’t work, Lisette,” Max said in a distant tone. “I want the truth. Now.”

  “I know. And you shall have it.”

  Even if his cold manner was cutting her to the heart. Even if his return to being Lofty Lyons was killing her.

  Still, it wouldn’t get any better. She might as well get this over with. Squaring her shoulders, she began to tell him the long and sordid tale of the day after Papa died.

  10

  MAXIMILIAN HAD SPENT the past few hours hardening his heart against her, determined not to let the devious chit mislead him. He’d prepared himself for evasions, tears, begging. He hadn’t prepared himself for Lisette calmly and unemotionally relating a tale so specific in its details that it could only be the truth. Especially since it portrayed Bonnaud in a distinctly unfavorable light.

  By the time she finished describing how her family had escaped England in a harrowing trip across the Channel on a smuggler’s skiff, he had to grit his teeth against the feelings rocketing through him.

  She’d been fourteen, for God’s sake. Fourteen! Little more than a child. Her feckless father had failed to provide for his children, and as a result she’d had half her family and all her belongings ripped from her in one fell swoop.

  As the thought made something twist in his chest, he let out a low curse. He was not supposed to care, confound it! She’d deceived him. She was probably deceiving him even now.

  “So your brother is not the saint you made him out to be when we first met,” he clipped out as the coach rumbled through the night. “He’s a bloody horse thief.”

  “He was seventeen! What would you do if your father promised you something on his deathbed and your half brother made it all disappear out of sheer spite?”

  He thought back to his own father’s deathbed. To his mother standing over his father’s corpse, looking wild and frightened, with an empty vial of laudanum in her hand.

  I didn’t mean to, she whispered. He was so unhappy and . . . he kept saying those . . . awful things and I . . . I just wanted him to sleep.

  Oh yes, Maximilian knew something about deathbed confessions and what they could do.

  Determinedly, he buried the dark memories. This wasn’t about deathbeds. It was about Bonnaud, who’d begun a life of crime early. Bonnaud, who was still eluding him, thanks to the man’s deceitful sister.

  Lisette was staring out the coach window, her expression bleak in the moonlight. “Tristan felt he had to provide for us, so he did the only thing he could think of. And he didn’t consider it stealing, since Papa had left him the horse anyway.”

  When that tugged at Maximilian’s sympathies, he snapped, “All the same, taking and selling that horse was rash and stupid.”

  “That’s what Dom said.” Then her gaze shot to Maximilian, full of belligerence. “But without that money, we would never have made
it to France. And after we reached it, we would have starved in the months it took Maman and Tristan to find work.”

  Her voice hardened. “Without that money to grease the palms of our ‘loving’ relations, we would have ended up in the street. They’d always hated that Maman had brought shame on the family by becoming an English lord’s mistress. And that even after returning home to Toulon, she had the audacity to stir up gossip again by going on the stage.”

  “Toulon?” His temper flared again. “I thought we were going to Paris.”

  “We are. I told you, Tristan works for the government now.”

  “I said no prevarications, Lisette. Which branch of the government? Where? How can I find him?”

  She blinked, then tipped up her chin. “I’m getting to that. Considering that we won’t reach Paris for hours, you’re awfully impatient.”

  “With good reason,” he growled. “For all I know, you created this wild-goose chase in the first place to get me away from London so that your brother—”

  “Could do what? Set up an impostor as your replacement, I suppose?” She eyed him with cool irony. “Yes, all along I’ve been engineering a master plan to destroy you. That’s why I called you ‘His Grace’ when I was supposed to be hiding your identity. Why I had to rely on you to pay our passage . . . and our meals and the bribes for the customs officers.”

  Her voice grew choked. “Why I couldn’t even escape Hucker without your help. Because I’m so very adept at diabolical schemes, at pretending to be someone else and trying to keep secrets and—”

  “Enough,” he cut in. “I see your point.”

  This was the Lisette he’d come to know, the one who dreamed of being an investigator and then got thorny when he pointed out that she didn’t know the first thing about it. He grudgingly admitted that she was right. If she was a master manipulator, she wasn’t very good at it.

  For a moment, there was no sound in the carriage except that of the horse’s hooves pounding the dirt and the creak of the carriage springs.