The Reluctant Duchess

by Roseanna M. White

  “The toast seems to have settled, for which I’m thankful. Though to be perfectly honest, I’d rather skip this day altogether and wake up to tomorrow—wherein Mr. Abbott shall have proven Ella right and awakened, Catherine shall have been arrested, and Malcolm shall have been discovered to have passed out in the pub in Lochaber, thought the telegram a dream, and given up all thought of coming here.”

  “Mm.” He rested his head against hers. “That would be lovely.”

  She nestled against him and trailed a finger down his tie. “Brice . . . when all this is over, I . . . I dinna want to wait any longer. To be yours in every sense, I mean. Had I not been so miserably ill last night when we went upstairs, I would have . . .” She blushed to a halt.

  Who knew he would have found a reason to grin today? “Giving me incentive for getting through this day?”

  “In one healthy piece.” She smiled up at him. With the kind of smile that tied a man in knots. “I love you. I canna promise that there willna be any panic, but I think I’m ready. I ken ye’ll never hurt me. And when ye kiss me . . .”

  He did so now, just a featherlight touch of his lips on hers. “When I kiss you?”

  “I ne’er want you to stop. I canna think of anyone, anything but how ye make me feel.”

  Were it a different day, he would have accepted the unspoken invitation to test that now, to kiss her until they both melted. But the pressure he’d felt since the minute he woke up this morning pressed harder upon him, and he drew away a few inches. “My darling, I want . . .”

  She inched away too, but her smile was all soft light. “I know.”

  “But we must . . .”

  “Aye. ’Tisn’t the time. Constable Morris will be here any minute. And until he arrives . . .” She caught his hand, tugged him toward the settle. “You lead the prayer, mo muirnín. Ye’re better at finding the right words.”

  No words felt sufficient, not today. Not with so many lives teetering on the balance. But he did his best to put voice to the cries of his spirit. For the Abbotts. For the constabulary. For Mother and Ella. For him and Rowena. That Lochaber would be able to influence Catherine as required.

  That they would be protected from Malcolm.

  But there were praises too. That her father had come to warn them. That Geoff had survived the night. That no one else had been harmed yesterday.

  When he breathed his amen and opened his eyes, he found they were no longer alone in the drawing room. Much of the upper staff had slipped in, bowed their heads, and joined the prayer. Davis and Cowan, Lapham and Lewis, Mrs. Granger and Mr. Child . . . who had a hand on the small of Cowan’s back. Brice slanted a glance at Rowena, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.

  A conversation for another day.

  The butler reclaimed his hand and tucked it behind his back, clearing his throat. “The men have arrived, Your Grace. Shall I show those who will be positioned inside where to go?”

  “Please. And I’ll take the others outside. Rowena—”

  “As I promised. I’ll stay inside, out of the way.”

  Brice sent her a scowl. “I did not say out of the way.”

  His wife grinned. “Out of the way, out of harm’s way . . . the result is the same.”

  “Hmm.” He touched a finger to her chin and then stood. “Just be safe—that’s all I ask.”

  Cowan bustled forward. “We’ll go to the upstairs sitting room. Not as good a vantage as the men will have, but we’ll be able to glimpse a bit.”

  Mrs. Granger nodded. “I’ll bring up a tray of tea things. I’ve already put out to the inns and hotels that we’ll not be conducting tours today, as requested, Your Grace.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Granger.” Brice kissed Rowena’s hand and then turned her over to the older women, who would no doubt coddle and try to distract her until it was all finished. Would have driven him crazy—and probably would her too—but caring for her would keep them busy and out of harm’s way.

  And keeping the household from any more injuries was everyone’s top priority today.

  He met the group of trusted men in the entryway and led them out the back, to the various places he and the gardener had chosen this morning. Every possible path of escape would be covered by at least one man, the more likely ways by three or more. In the garden, they would be concealed by hedges and sheds, behind gates and statuary. In the woods, the spryer of them would opt for height in the trees and the majority would crouch behind brush that would conceal them from whichever way Catherine might come.

  All would be listening for the bird call of their fellows in the house, watching for her arrival.

  By the time Brice got them all situated, he could hear the crunch of gravel from the front. Lochaber came around the side of the house just as Brice was heading back through the garden to the rear door.

  He didn’t quite know how to read his father-in-law’s face. He certainly didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t look any more displeased than usual, either. Brice headed his way. “How did it go?”

  Lochaber spared a curt nod. “I daresay she willna be far behind. Piece of work, that one. Are ye well acquainted?”

  “Only well enough to know I have no desire to know her better.”

  That earned him a brief smile. “I’ve met a few like her before—not my favorite people, but I ken well enough how to speak to them.”

  “Well, I appreciate you doing so. I think all is in place—”

  “Sir!” Mrs. Granger’s voice broke in, sounding frustrated. “I beg your pardon, but when I said no tours, I didn’t mean you could take yourself on one!”

  Brice barely stifled a moan. Apparently they hadn’t gotten the word out to everyone in ample time. If they’d had the leisure of choosing their own day for this all to transpire, it wouldn’t have been on one when tours were normally given. “Excuse me. I had better intervene—we have had tourists sneak away before, but their curiosity usually flees rather quickly when they realize they’ve been caught by the master of the house.”

  Lochaber muttered something about the lack of wisdom of giving tours in general, but Brice ignored him and turned toward the corner of the house where Mrs. Granger’s voice had come from. The poor woman must have been chasing the fellow all the way around, for her next shout sounded short on breath and growing ever more in outrage.

  Another day, it would have been amusing. Today . . . He paused when a dark-clad figure rounded the corner.

  Tall, broad. Dark hair falling over his forehead, dark eyes. And lips that curved up into a dark, cruel smile when he spotted Brice.

  “Blast.” How did he get here so quickly? And why was he raising his arm as if . . . ?

  “Get down!” Apparently not trusting Brice to act, Lochaber charged into him, knocking him to the ground behind a granite maiden.

  Even as they fell, a crack split the air, and a chink came from the statue. Screams, shouts, thundering steps. Brice pulled himself from the white gravel digging into him, careful to remain behind the wide granite base. Lochaber followed suit behind him.

  “Put down your weapon! Hands in the air!”

  The answering Gaelic shout didn’t sound inclined to obey. Footsteps, but not away. No, closer. Brice’s gaze darted to the door—too far, with no cover between. The nearest tree was a good thirty feet behind. Could they edge around the statue, avoid him?

  Lochaber cursed, peered out, cursed again.

  When Brice looked up, he was staring down the barrel of a pistol. Malcolm Kinnaird wasn’t smiling now, but he also wasn’t firing. He grabbed hold of Brice’s collar and wrenched him to his feet, shouting at the encroaching officers, “One step closer and the duke gets a bullet in the head!”

  Ducky. Just ducky.

  Lochaber stood too, looking ready to pummel the man. “Easy, Malcolm. Think before ye act. Ye kill him, and ye willna get away. Ye’ll be locked in a Sassenach prison the rest o’ yer days.”

  The cold cylinder pressed to Brice’s temple wasn’t moved by
the earl’s logic. But he felt no panic, not like yesterday. Just a calm that held him absolutely still.

  “Call off yer hounds, Sassenach,” Kinnaird hissed into his ear. “Give me Rowena and my bairn, and we’ll leave you in peace. No one harmed. No one hurt.”

  Brice glanced about the garden. All the men were out of hiding, all had their weapons at the ready. The odds were in his favor—except he already had a pistol at his head. But if he could just put some space between them . . . “They’ll not make a move without my command.” Not entirely true, given that they weren’t his men, but they certainly wouldn’t charge in at the moment. “Put away your weapon and we’ll talk. Inside, like civilized human beings.”

  “Oh, I dinna think so. I’m not glaikit enough to go into yer house. Send yer guards away and his lordship in for his daughter.”

  The men kept creeping closer, though Brice hoped the hand he raised discreetly at his side would halt them. He didn’t particularly relish the thought of Kinnaird getting nervous at the approach of a dozen . . . Wait. A dozen? He scanned the faces again and realized the men from the woods had joined the fray.

  “I’m not jesting!” Kinnaird yelled loudly enough for them all to hear. “Now, Lochaber. Go and fetch Rowena. If ye refuse, it’ll be a bullet in the duke’s head and one in yers as well. I may die or rot for it, but at least I’ll know he willna be—”

  “Malcolm, stop! Let him go. I’m here!”

  Now the panic came, full and hot, and Brice jerked his head toward the house. “No. Rowena, get back inside! Now!”

  She stood in the doorway, her face still pale from that morning’s sickness, her eyes wide with fear. Why, then, would she put herself in the path of the monster who had haunted her nightmares? Why would she . . . ? But he knew. The same reason he would sooner take a bullet than let her suffer at his hands again.

  Love did strange things to one’s logic. And to one’s fears.

  “There’s a good lass.” Kinnaird pressed the gun harder against Brice’s temple and dug his fingers into his neck. “Here’s how it’ll work, Sassenach. She comes with me, and ye dinna try anything clever. If ye do, I shoot her instead. Do ye ken?”

  All too clearly. One way or another, one of them would die if they fought. Yet they must fight, with their wits if not with weapons. “You would kill her? When you’ve gone to such trouble to get her back?”

  The gun was warming against his flesh . . . which made it all the worse. “Better dead than—”

  “With a Sassenach. Right. Very enlightened of you, I can’t think why the Scots and English were ever at odds.”

  Kinnaird shifted his grip on the gun, pushed Brice back around to face the officers rather than Rowena. “Stay back. Ye’ll have yer precious duke soon enough. Rowena!” He gave a sharp Gaelic command.

  Rowena edged forward, taking slow, cautious steps. He could barely glimpse her in his periphery, couldn’t see her face. Couldn’t exchange any silent message.

  He didn’t have to. Lochaber still stood before him, unencumbered and able to see them both. He glanced from Rowena to Brice, showed three fingers against his leg and then looked to the ground.

  “Faster!” Kinnaird barked.

  Lochaber flashed one finger.

  “Well, if ye want me to move faster, perhaps ye should try not scaring the verra life out o’ me with that gun. Put it down, Malcolm, and let him go! I’m coming.”

  Lochaber flashed a second finger.

  “I’ll put the gun down when I’m good and ready.”

  Lochaber flashed a third finger. Brice lunged to the side and down. Lochaber charged with a shout that would have done William Wallace proud.

  A shot. Feminine screams. Masculine shouts. A veritable earthquake of thundering footfalls, another blasted shot that bit the ground not an inch from his nose, spraying dust into his eyes. He blinked it away and got to his knees, casting about for . . .

  There, there was Rowena, crawling toward him. Unharmed, praise the Lord. He had to get to her, get her to safety, then find some way to help Lochaber, who was trying to wrestle the gun from Kinnaird’s hands.

  “Brice.” Her voice was but a croak, but it was speaking his name, so what did he care? He scrabbled to his feet and stumbled for her, pulled her up into his arms.

  A guttural scream ended the shuffling sounds behind them. He spun.

  The constable’s men had converged upon them, and one stood on the wrist that had formerly held the weapon. A second claimed the gun, and four more held the beast down. Morris wiped his brow and repositioned his hat. “You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of the Duke of Nottingham. And if you don’t stop struggling, Clive here’s going to have my permission to pound you into submission.”

  A hulking man slammed a hand against his fist and grinned.

  Brice buried his face in Rowena’s hair and held her so tight even air couldn’t fit between them. “What were you doing down here? We agreed—”

  “I saw him, heard him. I couldna let him kill you. I couldna.”

  “I know. But you nearly felled me of a heart attack.” He leaned back just enough to tip up her face. “We’re safe.”

  “Aye.” But her brows drew together. “Are all the men here?”

  He spun back around, did another quick count—but his math in the heat of the moment hadn’t been amiss. They’d left the woods unguarded.

  His stomach turned to a stone. “Constable Morris.”

  Morris looked up, around, and seemed to come to the same conclusion he just had. Muttering a curse, he took off at a run for the trees.

  Brice and Rowena hurried after him. But he didn’t need to see the twigs disturbed that they had carefully placed. Or the door standing ajar on the old playhouse. He knew, even before he ducked in and saw the board torn up.

  Morris swept his hat from his head and slapped his leg with it. “We missed her. She came at just the right time. What a blasted lousy coincidence.”

  Leaning into the doorway, he sucked in a breath. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Well, she’s not going to get away with it.” Morris slammed his hat back on his head and brushed past Brice and Rowena. “She can’t be more than a few minutes ahead of us. We’re going to catch her at her flat, with the gems still on her person, that’s what.” He paused a few steps away, glaring. “You might as well come. Identify your possessions then and there so she can’t claim they’re hers. I daresay it’ll be safe enough with a whole retinue of us arriving en masse.”

  Brice nodded. It would allow him to stop in at the hospital too.

  Rowena tucked her hand in his. “I’m going too. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “You needn’t worry for me, darling.” But he gripped her hand. And was glad she did. “I don’t intend to find myself the target of a gun again—ever.”

  “Good. But even so.”

  “Even so. Together.” They must get this finished—and move on with actually living.

  Chaos greeted them. Rowena followed behind Constable Morris and Brice, but they looked every bit as confused as she as they pushed open the door that hadn’t been latched and stepped into the bowels of pandemonium. Everything inside the house Catherine and her brother had let was in a riot, servants shouting and scrambling and crying, no one paying any mind to the fact that a slew of uniformed officers had just entered.

  “What in thunder?” But no one answered the constable’s mutter.

  Rowena shook her head. It didn’t look as though the household were trying to beat a hasty retreat—no one had anything in their hands, no boxes or trunks to be seen. And that surely wouldn’t incite so many tears.

  Then a vaguely familiar maid came running down the stairs, sobbing. “It wasn’t my fault, my lady, I swear it! I swear it! I was right there in the next room the whole time, just knitting. I didn’t do anything!”

  “You stupid wench!” Catherine tore down the stairs after the maid, in a state Rowena had never seen her in before. Her hair was half d
own. Her face streaked with tears and white as the chalk cliffs. And she shook so violently Rowena could see it from the door. “You killed him! You killed him!”

  Bile burned Rowena’s throat. The nurse—it was the nurse who stumbled in her haste, who fell down the last three steps and then beat her fists against the floor. No. Dear Lord, not little Byron. Please, not her baby. Don’t have taken her baby. She gripped Brice’s arm, bidding him go no farther.

  Constable Morris, however, lurched forward to catch Catherine when she made to throw herself atop the nurse. She beat against him, trying to get to the girl. “She killed him! Arrest her, make her pay—she killed my baby!”

  “I didn’t! I swear it!” The nurse crawled behind the constable’s legs, barely comprehensible through her heaving cries. “I love the boy. I would never harm him. He just stopped breathing. He always naps so sound, never making a peep, but I checked on him. I did, like I always do, after an hour, and . . . and he just wasn’t breathing! It was the crib death, my lady, not me. Not me!”

  Catherine’s scream made Rowena wince away, move behind Brice. Not that he could shield her from it, from the pure, undiluted sound of a heart fragmenting, shattering, piercing one’s being down to the soul.

  How well she knew that scream. She’d loosed it herself when Malcolm had attacked her—but to lose one’s child? It was all she could do to keep from being sick at the thought.

  The scream ended on a shuddering sob, and Catherine’s fists let off pounding at the constable, clinging to him instead. “She killed him. He’s gone. My precious angel, my beautiful boy—it’s all her fault. I was only away from the nursery for an hour, visiting with my friends in the parlor, and . . . and she killed him.”

  Only then did Rowena note the three ladies crowded in the parlor door, all pale faced and tear streaked. Ladies who certainly didn’t look newly arrived, given the half-eaten biscuit one still clutched in her hand.

  Catherine hadn’t been at Midwynd.

  “Easy, my lady. Easy.” Constable Morris guided Catherine away from the nurse. “Rest assured there will be an inquiry, but if it was crib death . . . these things happen, terrible as they are. We lost one that way, too, when she was but three months old.”