“It was obvious his lordship was embarrassed that we should see him rendered helpless by his infirmity,” Elizabeth said, “even though it was his brave defense of the duke that aggravated his old injury. Men are such silly, prideful creatures they think the least show of weakness casts a slur on their manhood.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I just hope he has the sense to send for his doctor. I fear he may have done himself serious harm.”
Moira refrained from comment, although she, too, was certain he had opened an old wound. But she saw no reason to alarm Elizabeth further by mentioning that when his coat flapped open in the breeze, she had seen blood seeping through the fabric of his right trouser leg. She trusted his friend, the marquess, would see that he had the proper medical care.
In truth, she was still too shocked by the entire affair to think clearly about anything except the need to get Charles safely back to the town house. She had known Viscount Quentin was desperate to gain control of the boy’s fortune; now she knew just how desperate. She would have to take measures to make certain her young stepson was properly guarded at all times.
Weary to the bone, she leaned back against the velvet squabs of the coach and closed her eyes. The sensation of immediate danger was gone, but her mind kept spinning round and round like a whirlpool, one thought chasing after another in the circling vortex…until a single, startling memory rose to the surface.
She sat bolt upright, shocked from her lethargy, as she relived that fateful moment on the footpath when her “gift” had told her the life of someone dear to her was threatened. In the heat of the moment, she had failed to register that it had been Devon St. Gwyre’s face she had seen in her mind’s eye.
But how could that be? The “gift” that was hers, and had been her mother’s and grandmother’s before her, had only ever warned of danger to those who were loved by the gypsy seeress. What she felt for the Earl of Langley was a far cry from love. In truth, though she was sincerely grateful for his brave defense of Charles, she could not bring herself to feel anything but an intense dislike for the insolent devil who had once called her his brother’s whore.
For once, the Great Spirit of All Nature, which conferred the “gift” on certain gypsy women, had totally missed the mark.
Love an arrogant gaujo like Devon St. Gwyre? Never! She might be many things, but a fool was not one of them.
The weather remained sunny for close to a sen’night and Moira’s heart ached whenever she came upon Charles standing, nose pressed to the window, watching the children who lived in the adjacent town houses roll their hoops or walk with their nannies to the park. But after the fright she’d had, she was loath to take him out on the streets of London—especially since both John Footman and one of the maids had reported seeing a very suspicious-looking fellow lurking behind the lamppost directly across the square.
Logic told her to return to Cornwall as soon as possible. Only there could she take the appropriate steps to insure Charles’s safety. But she needed the Earl of Langley’s permission to take Charles out of London, and while he had sent her a signed copy of the guardianship document within an hour of that fateful visit to the park, she hadn’t heard a single word from him since.
In point of fact, she had been waiting all of five days for an answer to her note requesting such permission, and both her nerves and her temper were beginning to fray at the edges. On the one hand, she felt as if her entire life were in a state of suspension waiting for a glimpse of the arrogant earl; on the other hand the very thought of facing him and his inevitable questions sent her into panic.
If she made one slip that revealed the truth about her parentage, she felt certain he would take Charles away from her and forbid her to ever see him again. For what member of London’s prestigious ton would consider the daughter of a Spanish gypsy mother and an Irish smuggler father fit to raise a future peer of the realm—even if that member were as rumor had it, the most notorious rake in London with a penchant for loose-moraled opera dancers.
Elizabeth came up with one excuse after another for the earl’s neglect of his ward. “You did tell him you required nothing but his signature on the guardianship document, your grace. In fact, you were most specific about wanting to raise Charles entirely by yourself.”
Moira could not argue the truth of that, any more than she could justify the deep, unreasonable anger she felt toward him for blithely taking her at her word. She told herself her resentment toward the earl stemmed solely from her concern for Charles. And she almost believed herself. For it was all too obvious that in the few minutes the lonely little boy had spent with his guardian, he had developed a serious case of hero worship. The least the insensitive lout could do was devote half an hour to visiting his young ward and giving his permission for him to be removed to safety.
“But the earl may be unable to visit,” Elizabeth said when Moira gave vent to her frustration. “I fear he may have injured his leg more seriously than we realized.”
“An injured leg would not keep him from taking pen in hand to grant me the permission I need,” Moira snapped. “And I do not intend to cool my heels much longer waiting to hear from him.
On the morning of the sixth day after the incident in the park, she decided enough was enough. Calling her household staff together, she informed them, “I am planning to leave for Cornwall within the week and have no plans to return to London in the near future. Therefore, before I close up the town house and leave it in the hands of a caretaker, I shall want it cleaned and polished from top to bottom, which includes cleaning every chimney, washing every window, and covering every stick of furniture with dust covers.”
Moira knew her demands were excessive since old Chawleigh, the duke’s butler, headed as competent a staff as anyone could wish for. But she was the consummate housekeeper—probably because she’d spent half her life contending with the careless slovenliness of her gypsy relatives. The duke had often teased her about her obsession, claiming he despaired of buying her expensive French perfume since he was convinced the only scent she truly appreciated was lemon oil.
She was an obsessive bill payer as well, having spent the other half of her life fleeing from village to village with a father who was always just one step ahead of his creditors. She often wondered what kind of person she would have been if she’d led a safe, conventional life like the one Elizabeth had described to her.
Now, as the staff cleaned and polished, she set about settling all her London accounts and penning final instructions for both her solicitor and man-of-affairs.
She worked steadily for nearly two hours at the desk in the library where the duke had so often sat when they were in residence in London. As always when in this room which so plainly bore the stamp of his vital personality, she found herself sorely missing the shrewd old man who had been more her friend and confident than her husband.
She owed him so much. Not only had he given her the protection of his name; he had given her the precious gift of knowledge as well. Her eyes misted with tears. It was here in this very room that he had taught her to read and write and do her sums, to appreciate the beauty and power of the English language, and to speak it with the grace befitting a duchess.
She set her pen aside momentarily and let her gaze wander one last time over this room that held so many happy memories for her—over the rich oak paneling, the tall leaded windows, the hundreds of books that had filled her hours with untold pleasure in the past four years. This had always been her favorite room in the massive town house, but that was with a roaring fire in the fireplace. Today, with the fireplace dark until the chimney sweep could complete his work, the room seemed miserably dank and depressing. She shivered, suddenly feeling chilled to the bone.
A scratching sound, and puffs of soot spewing from the blackened fireplace, told her that at last the sweep was working in this section of the house. She wrapped her warm shawl tighter around her shoulders and blew on her numb fingers, praying the fellow would finish quickly so she could c
omplete her work in comfort.
“Gor’blimey watch what yer doin’, a muffled young voice demanded from the depths of the chimney, “I ain’t no worm to be twitched about for some fish to gobble.”
Moments later the same voice directed, “Haul me up afore I chokes to death. This ‘ere chimney’s as clean as it’s goin’ to get.” The speaker gave a raspy cough. “But mind that bit of broken brick wot’s cutting through the ro-o-o-o-o-o-ope.”
Moira heard a strangled cry and a dull thud, as what looked like a bundle of filthy rags dropped onto the andiron, then rolled off into the cold, gray ashes. To her horror, it twitched once then lay ominously still.
“Good heavens!” She leaped to her feet, rushed to the fireplace, and dragged the filthy bundle onto the hearth. Above her the sweep sent a string of obscenities as black as the soot he dealt in cascading down the chimney while he hauled up the remains of the frayed rope.
Frantic, Moira reached for the nearby pull chord and pumped it half a dozen times. Then, removing her handkerchief from her pocket, she wiped the worst of the soot from the urchin’s face while she waited for help to arrive.
“What is it, your grace? What is wrong?” Chawleigh sounded winded as if he had sprinted the length of the town house. He peered over Moira’s shoulder, a puzzled expression rearranging the unique collection of wrinkles crisscrossing his ancient visage. “My word what do you have there?”
“It’s a child,” Moira said. “One of those poor little devils the sweeps dangle down the chimneys.” She looked up to find dour Mrs. Chawleigh standing beside her husband. Behind her were a footman and two maids, and seconds later, Elizabeth burst through the door with Charles in tow.
“The sweep’s rope broke and this child fell into the fireplace,” Moira explained, gingerly touching the lump already rising on the boy’s forehead. “Fetch some cold water and soft cloths,” she directed the nearest maid.
Elizabeth dropped to her knees beside Moira. “Good heavens, he looks no more than eight or nine years old, and he’s so thin. He’s just skin over bone.”
“Me mum says the sweeps keeps them half-starved so’s they’ll fit down the chimneys,” the second maid, a pretty brown-haired girl of seventeen, volunteered.
“But that’s monstrous!” Elizabeth declared. “How would such a scoundrel get his hands on the child in the first place?”
“Could be an orphan he picked off the streets; there’s plenty of them about.” The little maid gave a slight shrug of her slender shoulders. “Or, what with times as hard as they are, he could’ve bought the boy from his folks. The sweeps is always lookin’ for new boys ‘cause the poor little tykes don’t last long what with breathin’ in so much soot. Just last month one of the blighters come lookin’ to buy me little brother, but me mum whacked him across the head with her broom.”
Moira stared down at the pitiful little scrap of humanity lying before her and remembered her own happy childhood in the gypsy camp ruled by her Gitano grandfather. A people who eschewed any material possessions they couldn’t carry in their squalid little wagons, the gypsies considered their children their only real treasures.
If food was scarce, which it often was, the children were always the first to be fed. She remembered being cold and dirty and often exhausted from the long treks between camps, but she had never lacked food to fill her belly nor love to fill her heart when she’d lived with her mother’s people. Yet the scoundrel who had starved this child to turn him into a human scrub brush for the soot-filled chimneys of London would be the first to label the gypsies the scum of the earth.
At that moment, a second footman appeared in the doorway to announce the sweep was on the back stoop and looking to collect his soot boy.
Moira’s temper flared. “Well he can’t have him, for I’ve need of just such a boy to start the fires for Cook each morning and I intend to keep him.”
Chawleigh raised a disapproving eyebrow. “If you do so, the sweep will want paying, your grace, for like as not he’ll have to give a shilling or two for another boy.”
“Then pay him out of the household money,” Moira directed, just as the boy opened his eyes and stared at her with the bewildered gaze of a small bird that had tumbled from its nest.
“You’ve had a bad fall,” she said gently, dipping a cloth into the basin of cool water the maid had set beside her, then wringing it out and placing it on the boy’s forehead. “But you’ll not be dangling down any more chimneys, for we’ve work for you right here in our kitchen.”
The boy made no response, merely blinked and wiped the back of one grimy hand across his eyes.
“Cook already has a fire-lighter, your grace”—Mrs. Chawleigh surveyed the small, soot-covered boy with obvious disgust—”and I doubt she’ll want to replace him since he’s her orphaned nephew.”
“Then make him a pot boy,” Moira said.
Mrs. Chawleigh looked as sour as if she’d just sucked a lemon. “My sister’s youngest is our pot boy,” she declared, as if that ended the distasteful matter.
“If nobody else wants the soot boy, may I have him, Mama?” Charles stepped forward to place his hand on Moira’s shoulder. “He can be my com…my com…” He looked first to Elizabeth, then to Moira for help.
“Companion,” Moira supplied. “But I’m not certain that is such a good idea, sweetheart.” She cast a dubious glance at the wide-eyed bundle of rags and soot who had struggled into a sitting position while the strangers around him haggled over his fate.
“But I want him.” Charles’s voice held an unusually stubborn note. “You have Miss Elizabeth, but I don’t have anyone. The earl said he would be my special friend, but I think he forgot.”
Moira heard the loneliness in the boy’s voice and cursed his insensitive guardian anew. Charles had been much too quiet and withdrawn since he’d lost his father, and the earl’s rejection had only made things worse. More than once in the past week she had contemplated finding him a playmate. But a ragged waif from the slums of London? What could the young Duke of Sheffield have in common with such a creature?
“He just smells bad ‘cause he’s dirty,” Charles said, as if reading her mind. “John Footman can bring a tub of hot water to my chamber and we can bathe him like we did my puppy in Cornwall. Then he’ll smell just fine.”
A look of horror came over the urchin’s face. “I ain’t gettin’ in no tub of hot water. Me pants’d shrink up till they scarce covered my knees, they would and they’s the onliest ones I got.”
“What a silly boy you are.” Charles grinned from ear to ear. “Of course you can’t take a bath with your clothes on. How could John Footman scrub the soot off you?”
“Well you ain’t gettin’ Alfie Duggan in no water in his altogethers neither. I can tell you that. It ain’t decent—and like as not I’d be down with lung fever afore the cock give another crow.”
“Oh pooh, I take baths all the time and I never get lung fever because John Footman always builds up the fire before I take my clothes off,” Charles scoffed.
The urchin’s eyes widened to two round, blue marbles in his sooty face. “I heered the toffs was strange ones, but if that don’t curl the cat’s whiskers, nothin’ ever will.”
Charles laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. “Oh, Alfie Duggan, I do believe you are the funniest boy in all of England.”
It was the first time Moira had heard Charles laugh—really laugh—since his father died. The sound made her heart sing, and she decided then and there that Alfie Duggan was just exactly what he needed to turn him back into the happy little boy he had once been. A gift from the gods—that was what the scruffy little street urchin was, and who was she to look askance at a gift the gods chose to drop down her chimney.
She smiled at her young stepson. “Very well, you may have Alfie as your companion—providing he agrees, of course, and providing he will allow John Footman to bathe him, for I’ll not spend good money for new clothes and new boots unless he’s clean as the day he wa
s born.”
“New clothes and new boots?” Alfie Duggan searched Moira’s face as if to determine whether she could possibly be serious. He swallowed hard. “I maybe could get in the water onct, seein’ as how it didn’t do the nipper no harm.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “But wot I wants to know afore I agrees to changin’ me occupation is wot’s this ‘ere companion got to do to earn ‘is keep? There’s things I’ll do and things I won’t do, if you takes my meanin’.”
“I shall expect you to provide companionship for the young duke and help the rest of us see that he never comes to harm,” Moira said, her approval of Alfie Duggan growing by the minute. In many ways he reminded her of herself at that age. He might be a product of poverty, but he had his own set of standards, which not even the most drastic of circumstances could alter.
“Gor’blimey. Is me ears goin’ bad or did I ‘ear you say the nipper’s a bloomin’ duke?”
Moira struggled to keep a straight face. “The Duke of Sheffield,” she said gravely.
“Well if that don’t beat all. Lord luv us, I wish me ma could see me this day—and her wot said I’d never come to nothin’ with a face wot could curdle milk.”
“I take it that means you accept the job,” Moira said. “Very well, the salary is two shillings per week plus your food and clothing.”
“Done,” Alfie said, holding out his grimy paw. “And I promises you this. You’ll never be sorry you struck this bargain, ‘cause the little nipper’ll be safe as the bloody Regent in ‘is palace with Alfie Duggan lookin’ after ‘im.”
Devon was awake—or else asleep and in the midst of a nightmare in which he suffered such excruciating pain, it was all he could do to keep from weeping like a helpless child. He could hear someone moaning, and he was very much afraid the piteous sound was emanating from his own mouth.
The Gypsy Duchess Page 4
