The Gypsy Duchess

by Nadine Miller

  Moments later John Footman, who had been elevated to the station of butler in Chawleigh’s absence, announced the arrival of the honorable Squire Reardon and the brothers Keough.

  “Honorable?” Moira gasped as her father clasped her in a bone-crushing hug. “Since when has there been anything honorable about you, you old reprobate? And how did you acquire the honorific of the landed gentry when you never stay in one spot long enough to acquire more land than the dust you carry on your boots?”

  “Moira, me darlin’ girl, ‘tis glad I am to see you too.” Jack Reardon’s handsome, florid face was wreathed in a grin that spread from ear to ear. “And as to me new designation, I decided ‘twas only proper, with me daughter a high-and-mighty duchess.”

  Moira disentangled herself from her exuberant parent’s embraced and surveyed him closely. From the elegant silver buttons on his moss-green riding jacket to the smooth fall of his buckskin breeches, he looked every inch the wealthy country squire he claimed to be. Even his usually unruly salt-and-pepper hair had been trimmed into a neat conservative style. “Well as least you’re dressed for the part you’re currently playing,” she admitted.

  “Which is more than I can say for you, daughter.” His heavy black eyebrows drew together in a disapproving frown. “Since when have duchesses taken to going about barefoot and garbed in widow’s weeds so dowdy no self-respecting scrub woman would be seen in them?”

  “Since I became a duchess, I imagine,” Moira said disinterestedly. “All the gowns aristocratic English women wear are so colorless and boring I cannot bring myself to prefer one over another.” She frowned. “But don’t tell me you’ve ridden all the way from Penryn to lecture me on my lack of fashion sense.”

  “I’ve made the trip—and a hard ride it was, I might add—because the lads told me you’d called in your markers.” He indicated the three tall, redheaded men in rough country garb who waited in the hall outside the salon door, all of whom looked too much like John Footman to deny kinship. “If it’s trouble you have, lass, you should have sent for your old da’, not those sons of Satan.”

  “My old da’ has been the cause of most of the trouble in my life and never yet, that I can remember, the solution,” Moira said dryly. “As a matter of fact, the greatest favor you can do me at the moment is to get back on your horse and ride away before my houseguest, the Earl of Langley, catches sight of you and begins snooping into my family background.”

  “Langley is here? By all that’s holy, I thought the old codger had cocked up his toes years ago.”

  “The old earl did die two years ago in a hunting accident. His son Devon is the present earl.

  “Devon is it now? Lord, girl, I should think you’d have learned your lesson about consorting with Langley’s pups after that last bumblebroth.”

  Moira limped to the nearest chair, where she clasped the back to balance herself while she massaged her aching toes. “I am not consorting with the earl,” she said irritably. “Far from it; we loathe each other. He is here on business—as Charles’s guardian.”

  “Never say so!” Jack Reardon assumed a highly offended mien. “What was the old duke thinking of, giving over young Charlie’s affairs to a stranger. As his step-grandpapa, I should have been named the boy’s guardian.”

  Moira laughed. “That would be the day! The duke may have been the best-hearted of men; he was never a hen-witted one. With you as guardian, Charles would be penniless by the time he reached his majority.”

  “Mind your tongue, girl. Have you no shame, speakin’ to your father so disrespectful?” He beckoned to the waiting men. “Come on in, boys. I’ve had me usual tongue-lashing from this fishwife I sired.”

  “And with good reason, I’ve no doubt, you old reprobate,” the tallest of the three redheads declared in a deep voice that reverberated like a giant cymbal throughout the small salon.

  He stepped forward. “Michael Keough at your service, ma’am. And these two handsome fellows are my brothers Timothy and James. Young Johnnie here”—he gave John Footman a resounding clap on the back—“has told us a bit about this wicked fellow, the viscount. Will you be wanting him dead or just roughed up enough to put him off bothering you again?”

  “Nothing like that,” Moira said quickly. “I just need you to act as the young duke’s bodyguards for a short time. At the rate Viscount Quentin is racking up debt, he’ll soon be in so deep with his creditors he’ll have to flee the country, and my troubles will be over.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am. For it’s God’s truth we owe you, and a Keough always pays his debts.” Michael Keough wrapped an arm around John Footman’s narrow shoulders. “If our young cousin here will show us where we’re to lay our heads down of a night, we’ll stow our belongings and look the place over to decide how best to go about this bodyguarding business.”

  “Fair enough.” Moira smiled. “I was certain you would be just the men I needed”

  She watched the men leave the room, then turned to her father with a frown. “I meant what I said, Blackjack. You cannot stay here right now. One whiff of scandal in my background and the earl will take Charles away from me just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “And I cannot let that happen because I love the boy as if he were my own. Not that I expect you to understand that.”

  Blackjack Reardon raised an indignant eyebrow. “Would I not? Then why am I here in your time of trouble if not out of fatherly concern?”

  “Most likely because your pockets are to let. You’ve not shown up on my doorstep for any other reason these past four years.”

  Blackjack rolled his eyes dramatically. “Ah, Moira girl, it’s a cynic you’ve become since hobnobbing with the swells. “ ‘Twas nothing but the love in me heart that kept me rump glued to the saddle for close to twelve hours.”

  His strong white teeth flashed in the wicked smile which for forty odd years had won him a place in the hearts and the beds of more women that he could remember. “However, since I’m here, I don’t mind admitting I am a wee bit short of the ready.”

  “I thought so. What was it this time? Horses or women?”

  “A bit of both actually. Not that any of it was my doing at all. ‘Twas simply the devil’s own happenstance. First I suffered a run of ruinous luck with the ponies; then I gave me protection to an undeserving wench who emptied me pockets while I slept and ran off with a traveling tinker.”

  Moira couldn’t help but laugh. “A traveling tinker! Good Lord, Blackjack, you have landed in the dung heap this time. But don’t look to me for help. I’m at low tide myself right now. I settled up all my accounts before I left London, since I’ve no intention of ever returning to the miserable place—and my quarterly allowance from the duke’s estate is not due until April.”

  “You paid off your creditors?” He shook his head in bewilderment. “What kind of foolishness is that? Don’t you know the titled gentry never pay their bills until they’re dunned; nor are they expected to? ‘Twould be the collapse of the entire British financial system should such a muzzy notion take hold. ‘Twas not at my knee you learned such heresy, nor that of your dear departed mother, for no self-respecting gypsy would consider payin’ for anything.”

  “If you’re telling me my mixed blood leaves me neither fish nor fowl, you’re wasting your breath,” Moira said bitterly. “I had that bit of wisdom driven home to me before I took my first step.”

  Blackjack drew himself up to his full, imposing height. “Well, you’ve not done too badly for a hedge bird, have you girl? And who do you have to thank for landin’ in the clover? Your old da’, that’s who. For without me you’d not have struck your fine bargain with the old duke.”

  He scowled fiercely. “And like it or not, you’ll have to put up with me until you’ve the blunt to see me on my way. Or have your grown so heartless you’d send your old da’ to sleep beneath the haystacks like a common turnpiker? Think on it, Moira girl. Is it right I should be the one to suffer because you’ve a poor head for handling y
our finances?”

  “Heaven forefend, Blackjack. Not even I could be that unreasonable,” Moira said, smiling a little in spite of herself. Once again, her wretched father had talked his way around her. The man had such a gift of gab he could persuade the Angel Gabriel into taking up residence in Hades.

  “All right, you may stay,” she agreed through gritted teeth. “For a few days. But you will have to remain in the east wing until the earl leaves for Langley Hall.”

  “And take me meals on a tray all alone in me room I suppose,” Blackjack said petulantly. “As if I would infect the rest of you with the plague should I sit down at the table with you.”

  “Those are my terms. Take them or leave them,” Moira said, steeling herself against his hangdog look.

  “You’ve grown hard, Moira girl. Something I never thought to see your mother’s daughter do.” Blackjack brushed a crocodile tear from his eye. “Will you let young Charlie visit me, at least to help while away the long, lonely hours?”

  “Charles may visit you,” Moira agreed, struggling to maintain her stern demeanor, “but only if you promise you’ll not teach him any more of your colorful Irish expressions. Poor Elizabeth is still blushing from the ones he learned on your last visit.”

  Moira was not the only member of the household to be aware of the arrival of the newcomers. In the fourth-floor nursery suite to which Charles had been restricted until his bodyguards arrived, he craned his neck out the window and exclaimed to Alfie that things were certain to liven up now that Grandpapa Blackjack had arrived.

  “There’s nobody in the whole world knows more stories about exciting fellows like pirates and smugglers and such,” he added happily—a comment noted with a quailing heart by Elizabeth Kincaid, who was acting as the boys’ teacher until a suitable tutor could be found.

  The clatter of horses’ hooves and the babble of voices carried, as well, through the open window of Devon’s second-floor bedchamber, where Stamden and he were enjoying a quiet conversation. At least Stamden was; Devon was still chafing from the murderous look the duchess had delivered him before stalking off in a huff half an hour earlier. And all because he had made a perfectly logical suggestion concerning the raising of the young duke.

  “What is that racket in the courtyard?” he demanded of Ned Bridges, who stood staring out the window, a dumbfounded look on his square-jowled face. “It sounds like a regiment of the First Hussars has arrived in full battle regalia.”

  “It’s four men. Four men I never thought to see again this side of the grave,” Ned replied in an awestruck voice. “Blackjack Reardon and the three Keough brothers to be exact. Now what would four of Cornwall’s slipperiest ‘gentleman’ be doing calling on the duchess and in broad daylight too? Answer me that if you can, Captain.”

  “The ‘gentlemen’ is the local Cornishman’s term for smugglers,” Devon explained to Stamden. “Though it’s not commonly known, Ned plied the trade himself for a short while before joining the army.”

  Stamden grinned. “I always had a feeling there was more to you than met the eye, Ned. Now I’m certain of it.” His eyes widened. “But wait just a minute. What was that you call the one fellow? ‘Blackjack Reardon’?”

  He turned to Devon. “Does my memory serve me right? Didn’t you once mention that the duchess’s maiden name was Moira Reardon?”

  “I did that,” Devon said grimly. “It would appear the annoying woman is blessed with at least one rather colorful relative. Which makes one wonder what other fruit her family tree might yield if given a proper shake.”

  “Her grace’s name was Reardon? Are you sure of that, Captain?” Ned asked in a shaky voice.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then she must be old Blackjack’s daughter.”

  Devon blinked. “Now what in God’s name would lead you to that amazing conclusion? The Duke of Sheffield was known to be a bit eccentric, but I cannot believe that even he would name the daughter of a common smuggler to raise his son and heir.”

  “Common is the last word I’d ever use to describe Blackjack Reardon.” Ned sank onto the chair beside him as if his legs were suddenly too wobbly to support him. “By my sainted mother, the duchess has to be his daughter. It all fits too perfectly to be otherwise.”

  He smote his forehead with his clenched fist. “Which means I’m beholding to the lady for my very life.”

  His eyes sought Devon’s. “You know I was in the ‘trade’,” Captain. What you don’t know is how and why I got out of it.”

  “No, I don’t,” Devon said, “but I think you better tell me if it involves the duchess in some way.”

  “My brother Daniel and me was crew on Blackjack’s boat, the Lolita, for near two years when Boney was riding high in Europe.” Ned cleared his throat self-consciously. “We carried brandy mostly, once in a while a bit of fancy French perfume.”

  He cast a wary look at the marquess, but Devon raised an admonishing hand. “Never fear, Stamden is the soul of discretion.”

  “We always worked the boats in pairs,” Ned continued. “It was safer crossing the Channel that way. Blackjack captained the Lolita; Michael Keogh the Nancy K, with his two brothers crewing for him. And I’ll say this for the two of them—no better skippers ever hoisted a sail.

  “Uncanny they was when it come to slipping in and out of the rocky shoals along the Cornish coast, and they always had the best cargoes and the highest profits of all the local ‘gentlemen.’ Which I’ve no doubt was why some jealous mucker—and God help him if I ever figure out who—tipped off the excise boys.”

  Ned ran his fingers distractedly through his thinning sandy-colored hair. “To make a long story short, a revenue cutter was waiting for us one dark night four years ago last September.”

  Four years ago last September, Blaine had received that fateful missive from Moira Reardon on September 19, 1811. Devon felt chills travel his spine.

  Ned’s eyes looked bleak. “Blew both boats out of the water, they did. Daniel was near cut in half by a splinter off the spar. I managed to get him to shore, but he died in my arms right there on the beach.” He covered his eyes with his hands, obviously reliving the horror in his mind.

  “Go on, Ned. How does the duchess come into all of this?” Devon asked gently, reluctant to intrude on his batman’s grief, but certain the information was vital to his understanding of the mysterious woman who had had such a tragic impact on his life.

  “We was hauled up before the magistrate and sentenced to hang within a fortnight. I don’t mind admitting I could scarce take it in. Not yet five and twenty and just like that, my life was over. Lord I was scared—so scared I damned near wet my trousers just thinking about that hangman’s noose—and the Keough brothers was just as scared as I was.

  “But not old Blackjack. He never blinked an eye when the judge passed sentence. ‘I’ve sent word to my daughter and the chit’s clever as they come,’ he told us later. ‘She’ll do whatever’s needed to keep her old da’ from swingin’ at the end of a rope—and my friends as well. Just you wait and see.’ ”

  “Which she evidently did,” Devon said, a cold knot forming in the pit of his stomach as he found himself wondering if Moira Reardon was indeed the daughter of Blackjack, the smuggler—and if so, to how many men beside the duke she had had to grant her favors to accomplish her mission. The words “she’ll do whatever’s needed” echoed in his head over and over.

  Ned rose from his chair and walked to the window to stare out at the pale February sunshine. “We was free men three days later. Rumor was that someone too rich and powerful for the magistrate to refuse spoke up for us. I never knew who—only that Blackjack laughed and said the little baggage he’d whelped had saved our necks by marrying high enough to reach the ear of the Regent himself.”

  “And so she did,” Stamden said. “No man in Britain wielded more power than the Duke of Sheffield.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair in which he sat. “Coincidently, I had an interesting talk wit
h Miss Kincaid this morning. It seems the duke told her, just before he died, that he had married Moira Reardon because she was the only woman he could trust to protect his young son from Quentin. A wise old man, the duke.”

  He leveled his narrowed gaze on Devon. “And so, my friend, another piece of the puzzled falls into place. Now we know what the lady demanded in return for her promise to raise the young duke as her own and why she is so assiduous about keeping her end of the bargain.”

  “Now we know.” Devon sank back against his pillows, suddenly weary beyond believe. At long last he knew the truth of why his brother’s paramour had jilted him. Ned’s amazing story shed an entirely new light on the beautiful duchess. She was not merely the greedy opportunist he had despised for so long; she was a woman who had done what she must to save her father’s life, no matter what it had cost her personally.

  Logically, he could not fault her for that. Yet illogically, his anger accelerated when he thought of her selling herself for the sake of a man to whom she was merely “the baggage he’d whelped.” And this time the anger had nothing to do with Blaine. To his everlasting shame, Devon St. Gwyre found himself consumed with rage and jealousy at the thought of other men enjoying the intimacies he had only fantasized.

  Beside him, Stamden rose from his chair and crossed the room to a demilune pier table on which sat a silver tray bearing a crystal decanter and glasses. He poured three glasses of brandy and handed them around. “Who but a crafty old fox like Sheffield would think to give the care of a future peer of the realm into the hands of the daughter of a notorious smuggler?” he asked.

  “Who indeed?” Devon answered, struggling to hide the torment raging within him. “Not I certainly. But if Elizabeth is to be believed, Moira Reardon was the old duke’s choice.”

  “I would stake my life on Miss Kincaid’s veracity.” Stamden spoke with a quiet intensity that startled Devon. “And the young duke obviously adores his stepmother.”