Con relished the opportunity to study an adversary he would not underestimate. A promissory note signed by a man who’d departed this earth five years ago was easy to forge, though proving the forgery would be nearly impossible.
The Duke of Mowne could have swarmed Warren with solicitors, inquiries, and intimidation. With a little time, His Grace could sell a farm in the East Riding to rescue a farm in Lesser Puddlebury.
Connor Amadour could not call upon the resources of the Duke of Mowne, and based on the increasing worry in Julianna’s eyes, even if Con did reveal himself as the duke, he had no time—no time at all—to bring the duke’s resources to bear on Julianna’s situation.
* * *
“Please stop pacing,” Antigone muttered. “You’re attracting notice again.”
Hector flopped down beside her with a loud sigh. Quint flipped out his tails and took a more decorous seat on her other side.
“This is one of the finest posting inns in York,” Quint said, withdrawing a deck of playing cards from a pocket, “but a lady of your quality loitering about in the common can’t help but earn stares.”
“With such handsome escorts, the stares aren’t all directed at me.” Antigone was accustomed to being overshadowed by her brothers, to being teased and flirted with by their friends. She was not accustomed to harebrained journeys half the length of the realm, but Quint and Hector had both leaped at the notion.
While Mama had packed for Kent, thank heavens.
“That fellow does not belong here,” Hector said, sitting up straight.
Sir Walter Scott’s novels had imbued all things Highland with dashing romanticism, and kilts were not unheard of even in London ballrooms. The closer to Scotland one traveled, though, the more in evidence clan dress became. Usually, the kilts were patterned in bright plaids, neatly folded, all tucked up with jeweled pins, silver brooches, and the like.
This fellow’s kilt had seen better days, and the pleats had gone soft for want of pressing.
“Big lout,” Quint said, shuffling the cards. “Wouldn’t want to tangle with him when he’s put away a wee dram too many.” Quinton always traveled with cards, a chess set, and dice, all of which had helped to pass the hours in the inn’s common.
The Scot in question was tall, muscular, and into the ageless years. He might be fifty, he might be seventy. Cold blue eyes said he would not be trifled with.
For the second day in a row, Antigone and her brothers had come down from their rooms early, intent on spending the day appearing to pass the time in the common. All manner of people had come in to pick up mail.
When the Scot stepped up to the bar, the publican took the towel from his own shoulder, refolded it twice, and passed across a single letter—presumably Antigone’s reply to Con.
“That’s him,” she said, the refolded towel being the agreed-upon signal. “Of all the urchins, footmen, dandies, and dowagers, that… that representative of Clan MacMuscle is Con’s emissary. Quickly, you two, or we’ll never catch him. I own I am intrigued.”
“I’m alarmed,” Quint said, stuffing the cards back in his pocket.
“I’m having the time of my life,” Hector retorted, springing to his feet. “Haven’t had this much fun since Tiger threatened to turn her archery skills on Lucere’s horse.”
“She would have hit the poor creature too,” Quint muttered, escorting Antigone to the common’s side entrance. “Quite the markswoman, is our Tiger.”
Antigone loved it when her brothers used the nickname Con had given her in infancy. Nonetheless, as they gained the street, and the Scotsman climbed into a farm cart that bore two trunks bearing the Mowne ducal crest, Antigone had to admit Quint and Hector were both right.
The adventure of rescuing Con had been a lark thus far, but this development—an enormous Scottish ruffian in possession of Con’s personal luggage—was purely alarming.
* * *
“Maurice wants a fortune from me,” Julianna said, skirts swishing. “He tried to dodge and deceive, as you said he would, but I pressed him for answers.”
She paced the length of her porch while Connor sat on the swing—on a pillow on the swing—exuding a damnable calm.
“You asked him about both the principal sum borrowed and the rate of interest on the loan?”
Connor had been very insistent last night, very clear. Whether a mortgage or a promissory note or something else entirely, whatever John had signed—Connor had had doubts that John had signed anything—the document would state a sum borrowed and terms of repayment.
“Maurice didn’t want to tell me even that much. Why bother my pretty head—he used those words, my pretty head—when settlement discussions would obviate the need to mention such unpleasant details?”
Marriage settlement discussions, of course. Maurice had taken the gloves off, to use language the boys would understand. Julianna was to marry him, and all monies owed him would be “worked out” in the settlement discussions pertaining to “disposition of the real estate.”
Stealing the farm that Julianna was determined should go to the children.
“Come sit beside me, Julianna, and tell me what he said.”
Such calm, reasonable words. “Not even you, Connor, not even with such a harmless suggestion as that, should tell me what to do right now. I am in a taking. I have never been in a taking before.” A taking meant Julianna wanted to throw herself into Connor’s lap and weep on his shoulder, also apply her broom repeatedly to Maurice Warren’s backside.
Connor stood, plucked a white rose, and passed it to her. “You should be in a taking. Shall I tell you the rest of it?”
The rose had thorns. Julianna held it carefully. “Yes. The whole of it, and then I can find apprenticeships for the boys, write MacTavish a character, give him Horty, and—”
And what? Send Roberta back to the poorhouse? Maurice had hinted that he might find an apprenticeship for Roberta, because she was such a biddable child.
“You will visit Maurice Warren in jail,” Connor said, taking Julianna’s rose from her grasp and gently batting her on the nose with it. “I asked the boys to watch you at market today, and they did.”
“I saw them.” All on their own, enjoying their freedom. Julianna would soon need to let down trouser hems for Lucas and Ralph too. “That rose should be in water.”
Connor tucked the rose into a half-full vase Julianna had brought out. He leaned a hip against the porch railing, silhouetting himself against the rioting roses and the afternoon sun.
“Warren has apparently directed the merchants to bilk you at every turn. They are all, every one of them who can, charging you double what they charge anybody else. Warren stands beside you to enforce this behavior. Two of the merchants pulled the boys aside and told them you ought to buy your goods in York if you want better prices.”
“York is half a day’s journey coming and going, assuming the roads are passable.”
“And Warren knows you can’t leave the children that long. Did he mention that the sum you owe him is subject to late penalties, delinquent fees, anything like that?”
Everything like that, and Maurice had been so sad, so reluctant to tell Julianna the true state of her indebtedness.
“He named a total.” Julianna collapsed onto the swing, muttering the amount loudly enough for Connor to hear. “I’m ashamed. I hate being ashamed. Why haven’t I forced an accounting from him sooner? Now, he won’t even give me until harvest to make a payment and says he owes it to John’s memory to attend to matters where I’m concerned.”
Attend to matters. Holy matrimony should mean years of shared dreams, work, laughter, loving… And Maurice Warren might as well be buying another mule at auction.
“I think the matter he wants to attend to is a fortune in coal,” Connor said. “MacTavish told me a surveyor came down from Northumberland earlier in the summer, and there’s talk in the village that Warren’s mines are playing out. That could be why Maurice is forcing your hand. He is despe
rate to impress investors, and yet, he has no capital of his own. Your property is the asset he needs to lure them into turning over their coin.”
The children were across the lane, playing in the apple orchard. Even Roberta was up a tree, impersonating a pirate or a highwayman. Why did children never play at being farmers, shepherds, blacksmiths, or publicans?
“He wants to turn one of the best farms in the shire into a coal pit,” Julianna said. “A fitting metaphor for what my life will become. I can resign myself to such a fate, but for the children…”
For the children… Maurice would make her beg, plead, bargain, and agree to anything, and she’d do it, to keep the children playing in their trees, grumbling about their chores, squabbling over the last bite of cobbler.
Connor prowled away from the railing and drew Julianna to her feet. “I cannot resign myself to such a fate—not for you, and not for us. Where is your fight, Julianna St. Bellan? Do you know the family motto?”
“Faciemus proelio,” Julianna quoted. “We make war, or battle, or something grand. All very well for dukes and coal nabobs, but I make bread. I make beds, and I make children do their sums.”
His arms came around her. “Only a duke can recognize a duchess in disguise. You make a home out of hard work and love. You make children feel safe. You make a farm successful despite a knave trying to bring you down. You make me so proud of you, if I had a sword, I’d cheerfully run Maurice Warren through for you.”
“You don’t have a sword,” Julianna said, heart breaking. “You have kindness and honor. You have patience with the children and with me. You have a fortune you cannot command as you ought. You have a scar on your backside, and you have such kisses…”
Connor gave her some of those kisses. Sweet, soft, fierce kisses that tempted Julianna to take him upstairs that instant.
“If I marry you, I gain control of my fortune shortly thereafter,” Connor said, his hand going to Julianna’s nape. He knew exactly how to touch her, how to squeeze and caress and muddle her…
“You cannot marry me,” she said, burrowing closer. “You are a duke. I am the widow of a distant relation and even poorer than I thought I was.”
“I can marry you, but not in time to keep Maurice from snatching away your farm, and this farm matters, this legacy that John St. Bellan wanted for you and the children. A ducal marriage is a complicated, drawn-out business, done properly. If we marry simply to foil Maurice, you’ll be doubting forever after that I chose you for love and no other reason. Then too, Leo might prove difficult, and I’m not in the mood to humor anybody’s crotchets where you’re concerned.”
Julianna’s insides had gone from unsettled to fluttery, and her anger was slipping away on a rose-scented tide of wishes and hopes.
“What are you saying, Connor?”
“I’m saying, please marry me, Julianna. Me, your Connor, who isn’t very quick with a needle, but he tries hard to keep his stitches straight. He’ll put his shoulder to the plough if need be. He’ll read to the children at night so you can have an extra hour of sleep. I have no confidence I’ll ever be able to direct my own fortune—Leo is stubborn and contrary and tiresome. I should have told him to stop interfering years ago, regardless of my papa’s damned will. I should have taken my family’s excesses and my mother’s meddling in hand. I was too busy being a dupe instead of a duke.”
How fierce he was. Julianna spared some pity for this Uncle Leo fellow if he thought to turn up tiresome now.
“I wish my late husband had explained this loan to me,” she said, pushing Connor’s hair off his brow. He was proposing to her, offering her marriage, and yet, he would always be the duke too. “I know nothing of being a duchess.”
“I knew nothing of being myself,” Connor said, leading her back to the swing. “I waved a gloved hand, and a coach-and-four appeared before my mansion. I don’t need that to be happy. I’d rather hitch up your mule and put her away for you when you come home. I’d rather read to four rapt children in this farmhouse than make speeches nobody listens to in the House of Lords. I’d rather love you than be a duke to the rest of the world. This farm, you, the children… that’s duchy enough for me, and if Leo doesn’t like it, he can spend my fortune himself. Please marry me.”
Everything in Julianna wanted to say yes, of course, yes. She was a mother four times over, though. MacTavish, even Horty, depended on her to be wiser now than she had been in the past.
She took a seat, and Con came down beside her. “What about Maurice, Connor? You’re willing to spend the rest of your days as the duke farming in the dales, but we might not even have a farm. Your uncle could disdain to recognize your marriage to a nobody, and then the children would have nothing. Once the mining starts here—and it could start literally overnight—the farm is gone forever.”
Con took her hand and kissed her fingers.
“I asked a few questions in the village today. Maurice fancies himself quite the gentleman, even to the point of assembling a weekly card game for the gentry in the area. They lounge about the posting inn’s best parlor and think they’re playing for lordly sums while they over-imbibe and run the serving maids ragged. I’ll win your farm back before Maurice can start crying banns on Sunday. See if I don’t.”
“Our future comes down to a wager? What have you to wager with?”
“A duke might not know how to stack hay, wield a scythe, or brew ale, but he can handle a deck of cards the way you knead bread, my love. He can loll about, swilling spirits, wagering, and looking useless by the hour. He can pay far better attention than most people know. I’ll be a duke in disguise, and Maurice Warren will be much lighter in the pocket for my efforts.”
Five years of widowhood took a toll on a woman’s ability to trust anything to chance. “We could elope to Scotland.”
“Which would take a good ten days of planning and travel, at least. While our backs are turned, Maurice Warren could buy himself a judgment of foreclosure from a friendly judge and dig up half your pastures.”
In the middle of a summer afternoon, Julianna shivered. “I hate Maurice Warren.”
Con’s arm came around her shoulders. “He deserves your hatred, but I also have to wonder who else’s, Julianna. If he has every merchant on the green cowed, if he’s talked your neighbors into ignoring you, if he can threaten everybody in the shire… somebody needs to put him in his place. Not only for you and the children, but for all the widows and all the children. For the farms he’ll go after next, the children he’ll send down his mines. This shire needs a duke or two, and I know one who happens to have time on his hands.”
This was not the Connor Amadour whom Julianna had found asleep on her swing last week. This was a different fellow, a different sort of duke, a different man.
The children were right across the lane, making a racket in the trees. At any moment, MacTavish could rattle up the drive in the Yoders’ cart, or worse, Maurice might presume to pay a call.
Life was short. Life was sometimes tragically short, and five years of working hard and hoping had got Julianna a tired back and a powerful, unscrupulous enemy. She shifted so she was sitting in Con’s lap and put her head on his shoulder as his arms came around her.
“Best Maurice Warren, Connor. Trounce him, shame him, humiliate him. Take back from him what he’s stolen and make sure the entire shire knows you’ve done it. Put him in his place, because I have every confidence, if Maurice had to groom a mule, cook up a pot of porridge, or make a tired fairy tale exciting for good, innocent children, he’d fail miserably. See Maurice put in his place, and I’ll marry you gladly.”
She’d marry Connor on any terms at all, but he’d set a task for himself that went beyond her, the children, and even the farm. He’d had the title for years, but in a way Julianna didn’t entirely grasp, Connor had only now decided how to be the Duke of Mowne.
“It shall be as my future duchess commands,” he said, kissing her temple and setting the swing to rocking.
Julianna fell asleep in his embrace. She ought to have been plagued by nightmares and worries, but stealing a nap on the swing with Connor was the best, most refreshing rest she could recall in years.
* * *
Dukes might excel at playing cards, lolling about, and looking bored, but they did not excel at waiting. Con, at least, did not.
MacTavish did not come home from York on market day. He did not come home the following day either, and while Julianna made cheerful excuses in response to Mrs. Yoder’s polite inquiries—the housekeeper’s sister had asked her to tarry another day, perhaps—worry crowded the entire household close.
Duke or not, no stranger could join a card game without some demonstration of his ability to handle the stakes. In increasingly wrinkled finery, with a single watch chain and ring to his name, Connor would pass for gentry, or even a lord’s younger son, but little more.
“MacTavish will return,” Julianna said when they’d tucked the children in. “This time tomorrow, you’ll have full pockets and look every inch the duke. You’ll be sitting about the inn’s best parlor, winning great sums, swilling excellent brandy, and looking bored.”
“How can you be so calm? I’ve half a notion to ride Horty into York tomorrow and search through every hostelry and livery. Horse thievery is a hanging offense.”
Julianna took Con by the hand. “You aren’t concerned that Mac might have stolen your clothes? Your jewels? Your trunks?”
Even the feel of her hand in Con’s had a rightness about it. “Of course not. But for tomorrow’s card game, I wouldn’t miss them. They’d be little enough recompense to MacTavish for standing by you when everybody else has fallen under Warren’s sway. I’m more concerned that your only ally has lost his nerve.”
Or worse, attracted the notice of thieves. Here in the country, crime was seldom an issue. In a bustling place like York… Con knew city life, knew its temptations and pitfalls. MacTavish was one man, laden with relative treasure, and no longer young.
Dukes In Disguise Page 9
