Wagered to the Duke (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Karen Lingefelt

  Hathaway whimpered like a frightened puppy but climbed back into the carriage. Nathan followed, taking the seat next to him and across from Miss Hathaway and her maid, both of whom looked as innocent as two cherubs in a church fresco.

  Being so tall, Nathan could fit easily into this carriage as long as he was the only occupant. But ensconced in the seat facing Miss Hathaway, he could not stretch out his legs so much as an inch. To make matters even more awkward, his knees neatly bracketed hers, while he felt her feet shuffling around as if trying to free them from the trap he’d inadvertently created with his own. He glanced at Freddy and the maid, neither of whom seemed to be experiencing the same problem. The maid’s cloak was wide open, revealing two large globes of pink flesh. If the carriage hit a bad enough rut in the road, Freddy might be jolted out of his seat and catapulted headfirst into her cleavage. Nathan looked back at Miss Hathaway, who looked as if she was trying to fathom a way to free her legs from his without offering a view up her skirt.

  “Now let us have no more nonsense, children,” he said, his voice stern. “Soon we’ll be stopping for the night. I take it no one here has enough blunt to pay for a bed?”

  “Do you mean to tell me the duke didn’t give you an expense account?” she inquired. “Does he expect you to travel in his service but out of your own pocket? Mr. Fraser, there’s a word to describe a situation such as yours. It’s called slavery.”

  Nathan found himself struggling to keep a straight face. “That’s not the word I would use to describe my situation at the moment, Miss Hathaway. And let me assure you the duke would never expect any of his retainers to travel out of their own pockets. Why, he’s generous and benevolent to a fault, taking pity on the most pitiful.” He thought the better of glancing at Freddy as he said that. “But I might remind you, His Grace was not expecting me to bring anyone back to London. Nonetheless, I shall bespeak a room for you and your maid. As for your brother…” Nathan paused to see whether either of them would deny the sibling relationship.

  “Just put me on the mail to Leeds,” Freddy muttered. “That’s all I ask. I can find my own way home after that.”

  “What about your sister here?”

  “No one’s putting me on any mail coach,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Nathan assured her. “I’m sure there’s a stage coming through this way tomorrow that will take the two of you to Leeds, or even back to York, from whence you can find a stage to Leeds.”

  “Tell him, Freddy,” she said.

  Freddy glanced at her in befuddlement. “Tell him what?”

  She leaned forward slightly, narrowing her eyes. “You know. About the debt.”

  “The debt? Oh yes, the debt! Mr. Fraser, I insist on honoring my debt.” Spoken in the tone of a man with a pistol at the back of his head—or at least a lady’s reticule swinging over it.

  Nathan sighed. “While I can certainly understand your desire to do so, Mr. Hathaway, I’m afraid that I cannot in all good conscience take your sister.”

  “Your conscience?” she burst out.

  “The duke’s conscience,” Nathan corrected himself. “I am just so loyal and dedicated to the service of His Grace that his beliefs are mine. Miss Hathaway, I should remind you that he sent me to the Blue Rooster for the sole purpose of forgiving your brother’s debt. I must do as the duke commands.”

  “No, I must be allowed to honor the debt,” Freddy said. “I can’t be denied my own sense of honor. Would you be denied your own?”

  Nathan had to admit that this time Freddy sounded a little more sincere. Still, “You would allow your sister to go with a perfect stranger?”

  “Dukes aren’t strangers!” she interjected. “They’re dukes! Men of honor and nobility. Their names are known everywhere. What harm could a duke do?”

  Nathan thought of his own half brother, the previous Duke of Loring, who was believed to have killed several people who weren’t even strangers to him, and he felt a cold qualm shudder through his insides. “But don’t you regard me as a stranger, Miss Hathaway?”

  “Didn’t you just declare yourself so loyal and dedicated to the service of His Grace that your beliefs are his? Then you must be as honorable as he is.”

  Nathan crossed his arms over his chest as once more he seriously contemplated telling her that he really was the duke. He was surprised her brother hadn’t told her already, but then Freddy was a lackwit.

  “Mr. Fraser, don’t you know what men do when they can’t honor their debts?” she raved on. “They shoot themselves.”

  It was all he could do not to burst into laughter. “Do they?”

  “They do! Do they not, Freddy? Admit it. You’d rather shoot yourself than take me back home in such disgrace!”

  “I think I’d rather shoot myself now,” Freddy mumbled as the carriage suddenly halted. Nathan peered out the window to ascertain that they’d arrived at a coaching inn.

  As Bilby opened the carriage door, Nathan realized to his chagrin that this matter would not be resolved tonight. Surely, once the siblings had a chance to sleep off their mutual anger, they might be more amenable to accepting the duke’s forgiveness and going home to Leeds tomorrow.

  He would simply refuse to leave the inn until they boarded a stage. And while he was willing to pay their fare to Leeds, he had no intention of paying their room and board for another night.

  “Very well,” he said. “Now that we’re here, how shall we explain ourselves?”

  “We needn’t explain ourselves to anyone,” Miss Hathaway replied. “Are you concerned because none of us in this carriage is kin to each other?”

  Nathan cocked a brow. “Are you not kin to your brother here?”

  She squirmed on the seat. “Well, you must admit, after the odious way he’s behaved, ’tis very difficult indeed to think of him as my own brother. After all, he left the Blue Rooster without even bidding a farewell! Without even making sure his sister was in safe hands!”

  With each “without” she lifted her swaying reticule just a little bit higher, as if readying it for another strike.

  “I suppose you have a point,” he agreed. “But on the other hand, have I not taken care of you as a good brother might?”

  “Well, except for that little debacle in the inn yard when you fired your pistol in the air—though now that I think about it, that’s just the sort of foolish thing Freddy might do.”

  Nathan nodded and smiled. “So if anyone asks, Miss Hathaway, you’re my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Would you rather be my niece?”

  “You don’t look old enough to be my uncle. Besides, I thought I was Freddy’s sister. That is, I’m already Freddy’s sister.”

  “Why can’t you be my sister, too? Just for tonight?”

  For the first time since he’d met her, she smiled, and Nathan found himself wishing there was more light inside the carriage to better see that smile. Was that a dimple on her left cheek?

  “As long as it’s just for tonight,” she said sweetly.

  “I can assure you it will be just for tonight,” he said firmly, determined to see her and her wastrel brother on the northbound stage tomorrow.

  “I say, does anyone plan to disembark, or should I get back on the box and keep driving?” Bilby inquired. “Though I should warn you, it’s now past twilight and we have only the carriage lamps to light the way. I really do recommend—”

  “Thank you, Bilby.” Nathan finally emerged from the carriage and turned around to hold out his hand. “Ladies, if you’ll come with me, please?”

  As he handed Miss Hathaway out of the carriage, she said, “If we’re to be siblings, then perhaps we should take care to call each other by our first names. The innkeeper will surely become suspicious if either of my brothers happens to address me as Miss Hathaway.”

  “That’s a very good point. In which case, you may call me Nathan.” He glanced back into the carriage. “I say
, Mr. Hathaway? Shall I call you Freddy?”

  Freddy’s only response was a loud snort from his nose as he slumped over to one side.

  “Bilby, I’m afraid you’ll have to rouse Mr. Hathaway. Or maybe we should just leave him in there for now.” He turned to Miss Hathaway. “What does your family call you?”

  “They call me Kate.”

  Like everything else about her, that thoroughly perplexed him, for he knew from the marker her brother had signed at the card table in Northumberland that her proper name was Margaret. “Kate? I thought that was derived from Katherine, not Margaret.”

  She gazed up at him as if there was nothing the least bit odd about her assertion. “If you’re to address me by first name—Nathan—then I wish you would call me Kate.”

  He sighed. “Very well. Now kindly say no more. Let me do all the talking.” He continued striding toward the half-timbered inn, wondering if he was making this more complicated than it should have been. Truly, there was no need for her to say a word.

  Unfortunately, he had the sinking feeling that “Kate” would have plenty of words to say regardless, and if anyone was going to make this unnecessarily complicated, it would be she.

  As he neared the doorstep, he noticed faces pressed against the other side of a mullioned window, peering out at him and the two women trailing behind. Upon entering the inn, the two faces left the window to confront the new arrivals.

  “So you’ve decided to stop here for the night, after all? The missus and I were wondering how long you were going to stand out there arguing. And if you are arguing, then you can just move on to the next village. I run a respectable house and won’t tolerate any brawling.”

  “Thank you for the warm welcome, but we weren’t arguing,” Nathan replied. “It’s dark enough outside now that you can’t be at all certain of what you saw. Now I shall need four rooms, one for myself, one for my brother, another for our manservant, and the third for my sister and her maid.”

  The innkeeper and his wife scrutinized their prospective guests as if searching for something amiss, and it didn’t take long. “Where is your brother?”

  “He’s still out in the carriage.”

  The innkeeper planted his fists on his hips. “’Tis our experience that usually when someone remains out in the carriage while rooms are bespoken, it’s because something isn’t quite right with that someone. Something that might make him an undesirable guest.”

  Nathan darted a quick warning glance at Miss Hathaway, or rather Kate, who only smiled back at him.

  “Is he foxed?” the innkeeper queried.

  “Are you suggesting that if my brother was foxed, you’d deny him a room?” she piped up. “If you denied a room to everyone who imbibed too much, I daresay you’d be out of business.”

  Though Nathan really, really wanted her to hold her tongue, he had to admit she made a very good point.

  “If he’s only foxed, then of course he can have a room,” said the innkeeper. “But just be warned, I’ll have no brawling on these premises.”

  “He won’t brawl. And neither will my sister here, if she knows what’s good for her.” From the corner of his eye Nathan thought he detected little daggers shooting out of her spectacles, or maybe that was just a trick of the lamplight glinting off the lenses.

  The innkeeper swaggered behind the counter and opened his ledger. “I’ll need your names.”

  “Of course. I’m Nathan Fraser from Edinburgh. This is my sister Kate.”

  The innkeeper’s wife audibly and evenly visibly sniffed. Her nostrils flared with suspicion. “You don’t look like brother and sister. In fact, you don’t even sound like brother and sister.”

  Nathan’s heart sank as now that suddenly occurred to him. Why couldn’t Kate have remained silent?

  “I do believe he’s from Edinburgh as he says,” the innkeeper’s wife addressed Kate, “but I don’t believe you’re from there. You sound more English.”

  “Maybe that’s because I was raised by English relatives here in England, while he was raised by Scottish relatives in Scotland,” Kate shot back. “There’s nothing so unusual about that. Economics, deaths in the family, changes in fortune, and all that faradiddle. I hope we shan’t be asked to take turns recounting our life stories just to acquire rooms for the night, or we’ll be standing here till dawn tomorrow, by which time we’ll no longer need the rooms, and you and your good husband will be out a few shillings that I’m sure you’d like to—”

  “Thank you, sister dear,” Nathan interjected, and he meant his gratitude with all his heart. Maybe he was simply too exhausted after a long, eventful day that he’d had such high hopes this morning would be uneventful, but he’d been too flummoxed by the wife’s shrewd observation to come up with a plausible explanation for the discrepancy in accents.

  The innkeeper looked from Kate to Nathan, then back to Kate. “It just seems more likely to us that you might be husband and wife.”

  “I wonder what makes you an expert in these matters,” Kate remarked. “I hope this doesn’t mean you plan to put the two of us in the same room.”

  She hoped? As if she had utterly no desire to spend the night in the same room with Nathan. Only why did that matter to him? They’d only met today, and even if they did share the same room, she’d probably keep him up all night with her endless nagging and haranguing.

  “My own sister is married to a Scotsman,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “I merely assumed the same of you two. Now what about this brother of yours, the one who’s still out in the carriage?”

  “His name is Freddy, and I doubt you’ll think he looks like either of us, either,” said Kate. “If you must know, we’re all half siblings. Our father had three wives.”

  “Three?” the innkeeper said in amazement.

  “Lawks!” his wife exclaimed.

  “’Tis only half as many as Henry VIII,” Kate said airily. “But at least our father didn’t chop off any of his wives’ heads.”

  “That will do, sister dear,” Nathan put in. “As you’ve already pointed out, we hope not to spend all night regaling these people with our biographies.”

  “Very well, but we only have three rooms available,” the innkeeper said.

  Nathan wasn’t exactly keen to share a room with Freddy, but he didn’t want to inflict Freddy on Bilby, either. Maybe Freddy couldn’t be roused from his stupor and would remain in the carriage all night. “Then I’ll take all three. And I’d like my supper served in my room.” The last thing he wanted to do was break bread and socialize with the Hathaways. He intended to start severing ties with them now.

  “What about me?” she asked. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “You can sup with Freddy in the dining room, of course.”

  She frowned and wrinkled her nose in utter revulsion at that notion. Nathan swore he’d never seen anyone with such an aversion to their own sibling, until he remembered how his own older half brother had despised him.

  And Freddy did wager her in a card game. She wasn’t likely to forget or forgive that transgression anytime soon.

  “Why can’t I sup in my own room, like you? Who do you think you are—a duke?”

  “As a matter of fact—” Just in time Nathan thought the better of it and turned to the innkeeper’s wife. “My sister will likewise have her supper served in her room.”

  He saw no point in trying to tell her now that he really was the Duke of Loring. She probably wouldn’t believe him, and besides, he didn’t want the innkeeper and his wife creating the same sort of fuss he’d set out to avoid at the Blue Rooster earlier today. Tomorrow he would send this vexing female and her brother and maid back to York or Leeds or wherever they wished to go—as long as it wasn’t where he was going.

  A short while later, he sat in his room enjoying a peaceful supper. He’d hoped for a quiet, uneventful journey back to London before he finally donned the mantle of Duke of Loring and submitted himself to the inevitable—the responsibilities
to all the holdings he’d inherited, the seat in the House of Lords, but worst of all—the London Season, in which he would be feted and pursued as the most eligible bachelor in the ton.

  In less than a year, he’d gone from being the Duke of Loring’s insignificant, much younger half brother, whom no one thought would ever inherit the dukedom—for none of the chits on the marriage mart ever gave up hope that the previous duke would eventually take a wife—to being the Duke of Loring himself.

  And now, the chits and their matchmaking mamas who’d previously declined to give him the time of day would be descending on him like an English invasion of Scotland.

  Hypocrites, all of them. And if Miss Hathaway had ever had the chance for a season herself, she’d be just like them. Maybe that was why she’d insisted on making her wastrel brother honor his debt. She was hoping for a season in London. Only she hadn’t mentioned any wealthy or titled relatives in London who might easily be scandalized by her circumstances.

  Nathan drained his tankard of ale and told himself that she wasn’t his problem, though he had to admire her cleverness and audacity thus far.

  What had he been thinking, to saddle himself with these strangers? What made them his responsibility? They weren’t helpless children—at least she wasn’t.

  But as he looked back on the very first time he’d ever traveled this same road, some twenty years ago, he knew why he’d agreed to take her away from the Blue Rooster today, and why he didn’t leave Freddy looking so woebegone at that crossroads.

  “He’s abandoned me,” she’d said at the Blue Rooster. “Left me to a fate unknown.”

  Nathan could never forget that he’d once said those very words himself—as a helpless child.

  And because of that, he knew he could never do that to another human being.

  What if her brother abandoned her again? Granted, she wasn’t as helpless as Nathan had been years ago, but he also knew what could happen to ladies who were left with no man to protect them, because it had happened to his mother.

  He fell asleep thinking of that, remembering, and succumbing to an old nightmare that hadn’t haunted him in years.