The Unexpected Wife
Page 1
Table of Contents
THE UNEXPECTED WIFE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
THE UNEXPECTED WIFE
CAROLINE WARFIELD
SOUL MATE PUBLISHING
New York
THE UNEXPECTED WIFE
Copyright©2018
CAROLINE WARFIELD
Cover Design by Rae Monet, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-1-68291-716-9
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BY CAROLINE WARFIELD
Dangerous Works
Dangerous Secrets
Dangerous Weakness
The Renegade Wife
The Reluctant Wife
The Unexpected Wife
To those who struggle
with addiction to opium
in all its forms
and to those who love them.
Chapter 1
London, February 1838
Crouched behind a dilapidated barrel smelling of fish and rot, Charles knew he didn’t belong in the Isle of Dogs dressed like a dockside vagrant. You’re a duke for pity’s sake, he reminded himself repeatedly in the moonless night. Have some dignity. The coat his valet found in a ragman’s hoard and the woolen britches with torn knees made dignity unlikely. His face, blackened with burnt cork, made it impossible.
The entire operation had ceased to be fun an hour earlier when the damp reached his marrow and the pains in his back outran the ache in his heart—an ache that had cried out for a distraction and driven him to the ludicrous adventure. Bent down and cramped, he struggled to remember why he had begged the inquiry agent to bring him along. Walter Stewart could bag their quarry on his own, as Charles knew well. Boredom and the malaise that had settled over him in the six months since his son’s death made him stupid. There could be no other explanation.
Stewart had been certain Thorn had to pass the fishmongers’ alley—if his information about the boy’s intentions proved to be accurate. The docks lay steps to the right, the ship they had scouted anchored around the corner.
Where is the ignorant pup? Charles wondered. It had taken them three days to get word of his whereabouts after he disappeared into the urban underbelly, infuriating his father and sending his mother into a frenzy of worry, probably wondering if he were flat on his back in a drunken haze—or worse. We’re fools for sitting here on a frigid night waiting for a witless cluck who ought to be more careful about his associates.
Charles might have given in to the temptation to leave, except he had known the boy from infancy and well-remembered the ruddy, happy, delightful child he had been before debauchery, drink, and poppy juice took him; except the boy’s parents were family friends; except his father— Charles didn’t want to contemplate the Duke of Sudbury. The duke not only wielded power in the opposition party, he loomed over Charles’s boyhood, first as his guardian’s closest friend and later as his mentor, leading him into a career in government. Charles alternately worshipped and feared the man. He didn’t want to fail him.
The sound of shuffling feet alerted him. At that hour of night, only the desperate or foolish—the young marquess was most certainly one of those—braved the narrow alley. The young man who passed had dressed in black, his head hooded, but Charles recognized him.
A second boy who scampered after the first, running to keep up with him was unexpected. Unlike the first, he wore plain linsey-woolsey trousers and a rough shirt. The two appeared to be arguing. Charles waited until they passed as Stewart had advised and then pushed himself up, staggered, and steadied himself with one hand on the barrel.
My damn leg is numb. I’m too old for this. He limped out into the alley to see the two figures hurrying toward the waiting ship. The smaller boy tried to grab Thorn’s shirt, but Thorn pushed the grasping hand away.
“Wait,” Charles shouted. Both young men turned his way. Thorn took advantage of the interruption to send his companion reeling. The boy fell flat on his belly, and Thorn ran up the gangplank.
Charles staggered forward two steps and shouted again. “Wait.” He tried to run but stumbled instead. Where the hell is Stewart?
He forgot about the inquiry agent when the boy pushed himself to all fours, giving Charles a view that drove all other thoughts away. Whoever chased Duke of Sudbury’s heir onto that ship was no boy.
Hesitation earned him a violent attack from behind. He slipped to his knees and darkness descended over his puzzled observation. The derriere encased in those trousers belongs to a woman.
~ ~ ~
Hammers resounded in Charles’s head with every heartbeat, echoing against his skull in some unholy sonata of agony. He had woken up in a bed not his own, but in a room he recognized nonetheless. It appeared that his uncle took him home. After what, he could not recall. Another binge? Not whiskey. Not this much misery.
His uncle, the Earl of Chadbourn, had been his guardian since he was ten years old, more of a father than his own had ever been. Discovery that the countess was his half-sister brought them even closer. He grew up in and out of the boisterous household with the earl’s own br
ood and the countess’s younger brothers. Charles’s gratitude for that idyllic world warred with irritation over the earl’s continued protective oversight, but this particular morning he suspected he ought to be grateful.
Pain left him momentarily weak, and he couldn’t swallow his groans when he pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. His tongue rasped against the roof of his mouth, dry as sand, but he detected no telltale sign of laudanum. Since his stomach appeared inclined to stay where it was, that seemed likely.
No laudanum. They didn’t dose me with the god-forsaken devil’s brew. He might have been relieved if it weren’t for the pounding and confusion. What the hell happened to me?
One hand grasped the bedpost while he lurched to his feet and blinked at the light that filtered through drawn curtains. Daylight? How late is it?
He raised a shaking hand to his head and quickly found the source of his troubles. No amount of liquor could have caused the large knot on the back of his head. Someone or something had hit him hard.
The docks. I went to the docks.
He staggered to the mirror; red-rimmed eyes over a day’s growth of beard stared mournfully back at him.
Sudbury’s cub. The unruly princeling was— He struggled to remember, leaned on the washstand, and prodded his memory. It had been a lark. He had followed Thorn to the docks. The idiot quarreled with his father once too many times and thought to make his fortune by taking passage with a China Trader. But— But what? Something else happened.
Determined to confront his uncle, he pulled on his trousers and stuffed his soiled shirt into them, grateful someone had neglected to remove the thing. It wasn’t good form to appear below stairs undressed, but he had run tame in the Earl of Chadbourn’s house since he was ten. Neither his aunt nor his cousins were likely to faint at the sight. Charles padded out the door and down the stairs in his stocking feet.
A footman glanced up, eyebrows meeting his hairline. “Your Grace! May I—”
Charles ignored him. He followed the sound of voices to his uncle’s study.
“They will manage, I assure you.” The Duke of Sudbury’s cold voice, unmistakable in its clipped tones, drew his attention. “The clipper I sent will reach Macao long before the tub they sailed on spews the two of them, wrinkled and travel weary, onto the docks.”
Two of them. There was another. A boy. No—not a boy!
“If you’re certain, I suppose they will be fine. I wish I could say the same for Charles,” his uncle said.
Of course I will be fine. It’s just a tap on the head. Does he think I’m an infant? Charles put up a hand to push the door open.
“He’ll be right as rain as far as his head goes. I wish I could say the same for his spirit,” the earl went on.
The hand stilled; his hearing sharpened.
“He sounded well enough last night when he insisted on trailing my son,” the Duke of Sudbury said.
“Better yes. Not out of his mind with grief as right after Jonny’s funeral. But last night? There was a desperate edge to him, a recklessness.”
“There was no real danger. Dennison’s men apologized for mistaking him for an intruder.” Sudbury managed to convey just a soupçon of disgust. Not above using a China trader to give his son rope, but too fastidious to actually respect them, Charles thought.
Memory flooded back. He had accompanied Sudbury’s paid inquiry agent to the docks to keep an eye on things. The duke wanted to allow his heir to believe his little escape had actual danger while paying the firm to protect the miscreant all the way to China. After months of defiance and debauchery, the duke hoped the experience would shake sense into the young Marquess of Glenaire.
A mental picture of the other stowaway formed. Smaller, younger perhaps—and definitely not a boy. Charles pushed the door open all the way.
“Tell me you didn’t intend to allow your daughter to sail with them as well,” he snapped without preamble.
His Uncle Will jumped to his feet and examined Charles as a nanny might a child who had fallen from a tree. The Duke of Sudbury, cool and composed, gazed back at him calmly.
“Of course not,” the duke replied.
“Sit, sit,” the earl said, falling back into his chair.
“Don’t be a mother hen, Will,” Charles grumbled. He sat anyway. Falling would not add to his dignity.
“I’m grateful you could confirm Zambak embarked. Her mother alternates between pride and panic over her as it is. I would not have wanted her to worry for weeks while we verified the girl’s whereabouts.”
“You aren’t alarmed? A young lady on such a vessel? She’s gone to China for heaven’s sake.” The duke’s calm made Charles uneasy. It often did.
“My daughter is not just any young lady,” the duke said with pride and exasperation he couldn’t entirely suppress. “It is unlikely I could have stopped her. Glenaire may be weak, but he knows his duty well enough to have a care for his sister. I’m paying Dennison’s captain to protect the boy. He will know to protect Zambak as well if he has to lock her in her cabin to do it. As to Macao—”
“Your clipper already sailed to arrive ahead of them.”
“Three days ago.”
“You knew? How did you— Never mind. How do you know anything?” Will said in frustration.
“So, the purpose of me skulking behind barrels was . . .” Charles raised a questioning brow.
“As I said, to confirm that they embarked and reassure their mother.”
Will shook his head. “Richard, if my Emma tried that, I’d have her off that ship and locked in her room for a year.” He handed Charles a glass of brandy. “As it is, the sooner I can have her safely married, the happier I will be.”
“What now?” Charles asked, shooting his uncle a grateful glance.
“I didn’t come here to discuss my wayward children,” the duke said. I came here to bring you this.” He retrieved a folded piece of vellum and offered it to Charles.
The fine paper and dramatic penmanship looked familiar, and the seal proclaimed the sender’s identity. “The queen?” Charles gaped at it. The young queen had conveyed her condolences after the funeral, but he had no other dealings with her. She had come to the throne just a year before, and he had been too busy in the sickroom to even attend the coronation. Since then he had other things on his mind.
“The queen,” he repeated. “What can she want from me?”
“Open it,” Sudbury murmured.
Charles scanned the page, glanced back at his uncle’s friend, and scanned it again. “China? Why me.”
Sudbury leaned forward. “The situation is ugly. The Chinese have begun to resent rogue opium traders flaunting their laws.”
“Rogue traders created by the East India Company,” Charles muttered. Bile rose in his throat. Opium in the form of laudanum had destroyed his mother.
The earl leaned forward. “The traders have spiraled out of control since we ended the Company’s monopoly. They’ve flooded China with contraband in outright violation of Chinese law.”
“A necessary evil,” Sudbury said.
“Necessary because China won’t deal with us directly?” Charles demanded, not expecting an answer.
“That and they won’t take anything but silver,” his uncle said.
“The smugglers sell opium for silver, buy tea with the Chinese people’s own coin, and sell the tea here for British sterling. Nasty,” Charles muttered.
“Damned rum business, if you ask me,” the earl said at the same time.
Sudbury waited for silence before continuing.
“Indeed. Yet the government depends on the revenue from tea. Melbourne can’t afford to let anything get in its way. And tea depends on the trade in contraband.”
“Why don’t the Chinese push back?”
Charles asked.
“They have begun to. The situation has deteriorated so badly that the Jarratt & Martinson Company has begun to lobby for naval support to keep the Chinese off their back.”
“Send the navy? Are they crying for war?”
The duke held up a hand. “Palmerston pushes to keep the government out of it, but Martinson himself has returned to London, spreading money and rumors around to make their point. Palmerston’s man, Charles Elliot, in Macao has little authority, and no stomach for the trade.”
“No stomach for opium, you mean,” Charles fairly growled the loathsome word. “So the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and his foreign minister—Palmerston—wish to avoid war while continuing to ignore the opium trade and profit from the tea. What has any of this to do with me?” Charles demanded.
“The queen needs independent eyes, someone on the ground who can give us an objective report on the players, the damages, and the long-term cost of the thing.”
The queen does or Sudbury does? Charles looked back and forth between the two men. “Why me?” he repeated more forcefully.
Sudbury waited patiently, but said nothing.
I’m qualified. I spent enough damned time as the Assistant Secretary for War and the Colonies to pay my dues, but still . . . “There are others—men closer to the situation.”
“That’s just it. Men in the east are too close to the thing, and Palmerston’s ministry . . .” the duke left his opinion unsaid.
“It’s an opportunity to restart your career,” Will added softly.
Charles tapped his lips with a bent finger. It is that, he thought. Perhaps work is the very thing I need. Nothing keeps me here. With his son Jonny gone and the estate in the capable hands of his cousin Fred, no one would miss him even if he chose not to come back.
He met Sudbury’s ice blue eyes directly, refusing to surrender to the older man’s manipulation too easily. “And this has nothing to do with your children . . .”