She was married to his uncle, and it was no secret that the two men were bitter enemies. She was, by default, then, also Mr. Sherbrook’s enemy. And it was clear Mr. Sherbrook felt some personal animosity towards her for her marriage to Manwaring. It was evident now in the way his mouth turned down at the edges and his expression hardened to stone.
She did not like him either. He was even more detestable than the Viscount Marlowe and was no doubt the reason the feckless Viscount was always in trouble. He led his stupid, fat friend from one outrageous act to another. Sherbrook was a Libertine, the worst rakehell in the country, and though admittedly Lord Manwaring had few redeeming qualities himself, it was not hard to figure out why the Marquess wanted nothing to do with his nephew.
However, no one could deny that Mr. Sherbrook was a handsome man. More than that: beautiful, as only a woman had a right to be. Clear, olive skin, large, depthless blue eyes, a tall, slender but powerful figure, and a mouth made for sin. At least that was what her faster acquaintances said about his mouth. All she could determine was that it was large and full and dark red, and when she looked at it she felt quite strange deep in her stomach.
No one had a right to such beauty, especially a rogue like him.
No, she did not like him at all.
They stared at each other without moving or speaking. The tension between them stretched very taut. Neither exchanged even the most cursory of greetings. She gave him her haughtiest expression and arched one eyebrow.
He let his watch fall to his side, and the twin snatched it up and began to tug it, pulling the chain, and him along with it. As if snapped out of a trance, he turned back to his game with the child and allowed her to lead him from the corridor by his watch fob. He said something to the girl, and they both broke down into peals of laughter that sounded very naughty.
Lady Katherine knew when she had been dismissed. She wasted no time in departing the residence. As she settled into her landau and drove towards her empty townhouse, she couldn’t decide whether the surprise of encountering him or the surprise of seeing him play with the child as if he were a normal person was the most disconcerting part of their meeting.
Both, she decided.
But she filed away their encounter with all the others, certain details – the fall of his ebony hair, the buckles on his shoes, the single dimple on his right cheek when he smiled at the child – and the dead look in his brilliant eyes– all duly noted.
“WHAT DO you mean,” the Viscount Marlowe blustered at his sister, “that she is going to Yorkshire to rescue the Duke? What business of her’s is the Duke?”
“Well said, old man,” seconded Sebastian, who had skulked inside the drawing room, only to overhear Elaine’s convoluted explanation for Lady Manwaring’s upcoming trip to Yorkshire. Sebastian didn’t much care what Montford had gotten himself into with these Honeywell chits, but he cared greatly that Lady Ice had taken it upon herself to interfere in Montford’s affairs. She’d drag Montford back by his nose and have him leg-shackled to her dreadful sister before the week’s end. That was unacceptable.
Egad, just glimpsing Lady Ice in the hallway had been enough to make Sebastian seek out the Earl’s sideboard forthwith and pour himself a generous snifter of port. She was the second to last person on earth Sebastian liked encountering. She left him with a queer pang in his stomach and a horrible taste in his mouth.
He reclined on the most comfortable seat in the drawing room, sipping his port and watching Marlowe and Elaine bicker in an effort to banish the image of Lady Manwaring’s face from his mind.
“Montford demanded I ride up there forthwith to deal with these Honeywell people. Such an idea is absurd, in my condition,” Elaine said, touching her stomach.
Marlowe, thunderous a second before, looked at his sister askance. “You’re not – again?”
“I am,” Elaine answered.
“Weren’t it just a week ago you dropped your last brat?” Marlowe demanded.
“It was two months ago. God, Evvy, keep up, will you?”
“I would, ‘cept it’s so very hard. Don’t see how Brinderley manages it, D’you, Sherbrook?”
“Didn’t know he had it in ‘em,” Sebastian drawled.
“Well, he does manage quite well in … that arena. Quite,” Elaine said firmly. Then she blushed, realizing what she’d said.
Marlowe blushed as well and looked slightly ill, obviously forming an unwanted visual image of his brother-in-law “managing” with his wife, much like Sebastian was.
Sebastian set aside his snifter. And he thought he’d felt nauseated before.
“Devil take it, what were we talking about?” Marlowe thundered.
“Montford. Yorkshire. Honeywells,” Sebastian prompted.
“Oh, yes. Don’t know what the blazes is happening up there, but to call upon that woman to intercede on your behalf…”
“Come now, Evvy, she is to be Montford’s sister, and Araminta, who is accompanying her, his wife.”
“Araminta! She’s going? Bloody hell, Lanie! We are trying to stop this wedding from happening, not hasten it. Why not send up a bloody firing squad to finish him off? ‘Twould be kinder.”
“I will pretend you did not just liken the marriage state with an execution. Nor will I believe you dare insult one of my dearest friends to my face. You know how fond I am of Katie. She is rather … aloof, I’ll grant you, and can come off as dour and moralistic and –” She broke off when she realized her endorsement of her friend had not come out quite right. “She is not a bad person,” she insisted after they snorted. “Despite being married to your mortal enemy. Though what he has done besides being thoroughly boring and old I do not know.”
Marlowe and Sebastian stared at their shoes and did not provide any enlightenment on this last point.
“Nevertheless, your bosom beau Montford needs a chaperone. Katherine is willing to be that chaperone. What’s the hue and cry?”
Marlowe looked to Sherbrook for guidance, but receiving nothing but a shrug, he shrugged as well. “Demmed if I know. Just don’t like the smell of this one. What d’ya think, Sherry?”
Sebastian studied his fingernails. “If My Lady Aunt thinks to run up to Yorkshire to meddle in Montford’s affairs, she is free to do so.”
Marlowe looked deflated by Sebastian’s lack of enthusiasm.
“However,” Sebastian continued, locking eyes on his friend over his nails, his lips curling in his sliest smile, “so are we.”
It took a moment for this to sink in. When it did, Marlowe laughed gustily and slapped his knee. “For a moment, Sherry, I doubted you. But only for a moment.”
Chapter Eighteen
IN WHICH THE DUKE’S HOLIDAY TAKES AN UNEXPECTED DETOUR
AT FIRST, he thought he was on a sea voyage, the room around him tilting and heaving like a ship in a squall. He’d been at sea before when he’d been obliged to cross the Channel for the Congress of Vienna. He’d tried to block out the memory of that experience, however, as it had been quite miserable. He’d never found his sea legs. In fact, after returning from Calais a wasted, nervous wreck, he’d vowed to never set foot on a boat again.
So what the devil was he doing on one now?
He tried to raise his head, but this was a serious mistake. Bright sunlight barraged his face through a slit in a wall. His head felt the approximate weight of an anvil, upon which a very well-endowed blacksmith had merrily hammered for days and days.
His berth lurched to one side, and he clutched beneath him for purchase, his hands encountering rough wood planks and a bit of coarse canvas cloth that had a suspiciously foul odor. Then the ship, or whatever he was on, hit a large rock or maybe even a whale, throwing his entire body a few inches in the air. He landed with a thud.
He thought he heard a woman’s laughter, but that could have just been the squawking of a gull.
The ship encountered another whale, and he was thrown up in the air again. He crashed back down, every inch of his body in
pain, his stomach roiling. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, his brain felt smashed. Something thudded against the planks, the vibrations causing his head to throb, then rolled against his side. It was heavy and persistent. He thrashed about with his arms and tried to push it away, but it would not budge. Something was trying to crush him.
He squinted one eye open in an effort to get his bearings. Slowly, by increments, his eye adjusted to the blinding light pouring over him. He had expected to find a ceiling, but instead he was staring at a dingy, tan expanse of canvas hovering a few feet above him. Part of the canvas had become unknotted, revealing a bright patch of grey-blue sky.
He turned his head, which swam dizzily, and faced his attacker. It was a large wooden barrel. It must have been jostled loose from its moorings by the terrible storm. Though how a barrel had landed in his berth, and how it could be storming even though the sky was blue, were mysteries to him.
It hurt to think too hard.
He shut his eye and tried to breathe evenly so as not to be sick. This was impossible, though. It was a matter of when, not if, he lost the contents of his stomach. He couldn’t very well lose them in his current location, however. He needed to find a chamber pot, or at the very least a bucket. He made himself sit up, his head brushing the canvas above him, his stomach in his throat. He made for the slit he’d seen in the canvas on all fours, and as he did so, he wondered what had happened to him.
His hands were filthy, and so were his sleeves. The lace at his cuffs was torn and soiled, and the buttons on his wrists of his jacket were missing. Had he been kidnapped by pirates? Was he himself a pirate?
No, no, he was the Duke of Montford. The signet ring glaring up at him from underneath a layer of dried mud reminded him of this.
He fumbled his way to the slit in the awning and threw it back. He expected to be on the deck of a ship, but instead he found himself thrust up against a wooden railing, watching a dusty country road fly by him in reverse. He leaned over and spotted a large wooden wheel spinning and creaking, round and round, in the ruts of the road. He clutched his head with one hand, and his guts with the other.
He was on a wagon.
It was even worse than he’d thought. His stomach heaved, and he cast up his accounts all over the wooden wheel.
Several moments later, he sat back against the railing, wiping his mouth with his tattered sleeve, squeezing his eyes shut, and trying to recall what had led him to this horrible fate.
The last thing he could see in his mind’s eye was watching Miss Honeywell drop a red flag and smirk at him. After that, everything was a blur. He’d raced in that damned contest. He might have won, he wasn’t sure. And he might or might not have been attacked by a white poodle. He’d been very, very, very drunk. In fact, he might still be drunk.
And he had been abducted. He would never have voluntarily climbed into a wagon – an even worse conveyance than a well-sprung carriage for someone with his condition – no matter how drunk he was.
His unwarranted mirth died a quick death as his stomach lurched again. He turned over the side and hacked up the vilest concoction of stomach acid, Honeywell Ale, and whatever disgustingly crude food he’d devoured while in his drunken stupor. Whatever it was, it was unrecognizable as it painted the roadside.
Then he heard voices murmuring on the breeze, somewhere at the front of the wagon. One of the voices was female and familiar. It cut across his throbbing head like the crash of the blacksmith’s hammer against iron.
He laughed with grim humor.
Who else had he expected?
He began to crawl forward, hoping he’d have the strength to wring Astrid Honeywell’s neck when he found her. At last, he managed to reach the front of the wagon bed and could make out the outlines of Miss Honeywell and a driver on the other side of the awning. The driver was chuckling at something Miss Honeywell was saying, and it took a moment for Montford to make out what it was. When he did, he began to grow extremely worried.
“ … young fellow from Kent/ Whose anatomy was quite bent/ When he thrust to go in/ He got stuck on her shin/ Back home to his wife he was sent.”
“Ach, Miss Astrid!” cried the driver through his laughter. “That was too naughty! You mustn’t say such things!”
“I was only quoting. ‘Twas not I who said it, but the Duke himself. And admit it, you’re amused.”
“Aye, but I shouldna be.”
Montford managed to part the canvas. He peered out at the driver’s seat, upon which Miss Honeywell sat with one of her stable hands. She looked bright-eyed and entirely too chipper for his liking, twirling her bonnet around in one of her hands, her corkscrew hair rustling in the breeze. She was wearing a white muslin gown sprigged with orange flowers, and an orange-colored pelisse, which clashed painfully with her hair. He felt like sicking up just looking at her.
He felt like sicking up at the bit of verse she’d just shared with the driver. It was irritatingly familiar. The kind of codswallop Marlowe was fond of belting out when in his cups. Montford had a horrible suspicion Miss Honeywell was not lying when she said she’d been quoting him. He did not remember reciting the limerick, but then again, he did not remember a great deal of the previous day.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” he groaned, clutching his aching head. He must have spoken too loudly, for he heard Miss Honeywell shriek and felt the wagon lurch to a standstill. He wasn’t expecting the movement, so he was unable to stop himself from flying forward, out of the wagon bed, and across the driver’s seat. His nose became intimately acquainted with Miss Honeywell’s boots.
“What are you doing here?” Miss Honeywell shrieked somewhere above him, the sound ricocheting through his skull like a gunshot. He groaned and tried to right himself, but he only succeeded in turning his head enough to glimpse Miss Honeywell’s face peering down at him from above. She was upside down.
“What am I doing here?” he rasped. “I’ve been abducted, that’s what.”
Miss Honeywell looked aghast, her cheeks suffused with red, her hair popping out of its pins.
He floundered at her feet for several long, painful seconds, until finally the driver hauled him upright by the shoulders. He managed to put his arse, which had been thrust inelegantly in Miss Honeywell’s face for some time, on the seat where it belonged. Though his victory was short-lived. His stomach somersaulted dangerously.
“Abducted?” Miss Honeywell was screeching next to him. “Stuff! How dare you accuse me of … abduction!”
He cringed and covered his ears with his hands. “Damnation, woman, don’t scream at me!” he whispered.
“I’m not screaming!” she yelled.
He clutched his temple and groaned.
“I did not kidnap you, Montford,” she said, moderating her tone slightly. “That’s the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. You are the last person on earth I ever want to see again! You’re supposed to be on the road back to London. Or at the very least suffering mightily back at the castle.”
“I am suffering mightily,” he informed her.
“Good. No less than you deserve after the … spectacle you made of yourself yesterday.”
He moaned. He did not want to know what he had done. Snatches of memory here and there were returning to him. The limerick had jarred something loose inside. He seemed to remember having recited quite a lot of them last night.
He eyed Miss Honeywell out of the edges of his fingers. She was facing the road, her arms folded underneath her breasts. She looked quite cross. She wrinkled her nose. “And you stink to high heaven, Montford. You smell like the brewery. And dirty stockings.”
“Thank you for that valuable insight. Now, if you shall turn this conveyance around, I should like to return to the castle.”
“Not bloody likely.”
“What?”
“I said, not bloody likely. The castle’s twenty miles back that way,” she said, pointing her finger behind them.
“Twenty miles? Twenty miles?” he sh
rieked, then grimaced, as his voice had split open his head anew.
“Mebbe we should, Miss Astrid,” the driver interjected, looking worried. “If’n His Grace be wanting to return.”
Montford gave the man a gracious nod – or as near to one he could manage in his present state. “Thank you–”
“Nonsense,” Miss Honeywell said contemptuously. “We are but ten miles from Hawes. I’ll not be put off concluding our business because the Duke decided to pass out in our wagon.”
“I did not decide to pass out in this … I would never choose to pass out in a moving conveyance. Someone put me here!”
“Well, it wasn’t me!” Miss Honeywell cried. “Not after the way you behaved last night …” She bit off anything else she had been about to reveal, and her face went from merely being red to something closer to purple.
Montford had a sinking suspicion that he should be remembering something quite important right about now. But his mind was a blank. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “ What did I do?”
“You mean you don’t remember?” she asked, her eyes popping from her head.
“I don’t remember a blasted thing. Except being attacked by a white dog. Was I attacked by a white dog?”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, which was not far from the truth. “You must be thinking of Aunt Anabel’s wig. You knocked it off when you kissed her.”
Now he was definitely going to be sick. “I … what?”
Miss Honeywell beamed at him, seeing his discomfort. “You kissed Aunt Anabel. On the lips. In front of the entire village.”
The driver coughed into his hand to muffle his laughter. Montford groaned. “I didn’t.”
“You did!” she insisted, looking triumphant.
He shook his head in misery and tried to focus. His immediate goal was to avoid being sick all over his boots. He had that under control, as the wagon was momentarily stopped. Of secondary importance was finding his way back to the castle and out of Miss Honeywell’s sights forever. She may not have put him in the wagon, but she was to blame nonetheless. He couldn’t be near her. She made him do crazy things. Like running in drunken races and kissing old women. Indeed, he was beginning to wonder if London would be far enough away from her.
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