My Dangerous Duke (4 page)

Of course not. Indeed, they had infuriated him several months ago with their outrageous plea for yet more money.

The tersely worded letter he had sent back had been the end of it, or so he had thought. Apparently, he had been wrong. Greed, ambition, desperation had driven his unruly tenants to overstep the simple boundaries he had laid down for them.

Now they had drawn themselves to the attention of the Coast Guard with their activities, and he was all that stood between them and the gallows.

Well, rules were rules. If he did not bring down the hammer on them and deal with them privately in his own fashion, it was going to become a public scandal, and the Order could not have that.

There was an old seaside ploy, a trick of the trade, that English smugglers had indulged in for centuries.

By the clever use of multiple large lanterns, they could simulate the signals of a lighthouse, luring unsuspecting ships to wreck on nearby rocks. This done, they would run down onto the beach, steal whatever washed ashore, and even row out and claim whatever booty they could scavenge from the wreckage.

It was a reckless, cutthroat procedure, and, of course, highly illegal. He could hardly believe the fools had done it. They clearly needed reminding of whom they answered to.

Pacing past the row of tattered ruffians lined up before him, he sent each one a glance of dark severity. He still dangled his unusual sword from his hand as casually as a dandy might swing his walking stick.

He paused to stare the largest man into submission, the one they called Ox. The sweaty mountain of a smuggler dropped his gaze.

“How many times have I warned all of you against this sort of thing?” Rohan continued, moving on. “I drew the line for you and bade you not to step over it, and yet you have the temerity to disregard my orders. Then—well!” He let out a sudden, harsh laugh that made them jump; he stopped at the end of the line and pivoted. “You bring me one of your drunken wenches—as if that’s going to get you off the hook!

“Don’t misunderstand me, she is a fine-looking lass, and I shall use her well. But if you believe that a willing harlot and a few bottles of decent brandy are going to make this go away, then you fail to grasp the seriousness of your situation. There is such a thing as consequences, gentlemen,” he added. He swept them with a fiery look, though in truth, he was making more of a show of anger than the irritation he actually felt.

Those who saw him genuinely angry rarely lived to tell about it.

“The most amusing part is that you actually imagined I wouldn’t find out. Ah, yes! You must have assumed that I was still abroad. Obviously, you were wrong.”

He had returned from his rather bloodthirsty mission to Naples months ago.

Of course, they knew nothing of that. He never explained his long absences to anyone. He let them draw their own conclusions, and usually, they believed he traveled merely to entertain himself, seeking new pastures, new populations of women he had not yet bedded.

There was, perhaps, a grain of truth to that—but a man had to vent his tensions somehow.

“I was at my London house when I received a most enlightening visit from a high-ranking Coast Guard official, come to inform me of my tenants’ mischief. Oh, yes, they know all about you,” he informed them with a cutting edge to his voice. “As a courtesy to a peer of the realm, he saw fit to warn me in advance of the raid about to be carried out on the village. You should have seen how eager he was for your blood.”

The smugglers exchanged uneasy glances.

“We all know what a thorn your gang has been in the side of the Coast Guard. Now they have witnesses, you see. Crewmen from that merchant ship you sank.”

“But Your Grace—”

“Silence!”

They cowered.

“I will not hear your excuses!” he boomed. “If even one of those sailors had drowned, I should not have intervened to save your miserable hides, I can assure you. Did I mention that the Coast Guard was even prepared to arrest your wives? Aye, and most of your young sons, as well. It’s no secret that these shipwrecks usually involve the whole village. However”—he continued pacing—“given that no lives were lost, I was able, at the cost of a large sum of gold, to bribe the Coast Guard agent into letting me deal with you privately. He agreed to a simple arrangement.

“I promised to hand over the men directly responsible for the shipwreck; these alone will face prosecution. In exchange, the rest of the village will be spared.”

He noted their looks of relief.

“Gentlemen, I know it is your great tradition to protect one another with your code of silence. While I admire your loyalty, times have changed now that the war is over,” he informed them, scanning the line of them slowly. “The Coast Guard doesn’t have to keep watch for Boney anymore. Now they’re free to concentrate on
you
.”

A few of them blanched.

“At any rate, the Coast Guard man consented to my proposal, and Mr. Doyle has wisely agreed to cooperate.”

Rohan had written to the smugglers’ chief before leaving London, giving him the chance to redeem himself by rounding up the guilty party ahead of his arrival.

He cast old Caleb Doyle a dark glance. “I trust you are ready to hand them over now?”

“Aye, sir.”

Rohan gave him a curt nod. “Bring them in.”

Doyle glanced grimly at his underlings to go and fetch the prisoners, who remained under guard in the carriages outside. The smugglers retreated from the great hall, but Doyle stayed behind; when Rohan looked at him, he could not help noticing the weariness on the old man’s face, and perhaps a trace of shame.

No doubt Doyle was aggrieved, considering two of his own nephews were caught up in the scheme. Now it was either the gallows or some hell-hole penal colony for them.

What a waste.
But Rohan also suspected that Doyle’s look of guilt arose from the fact that, as the smugglers’ leader, he was ultimately to blame for failing to keep his people under control.

Rohan knew that Caleb had not authorized the shipwreck. The feckless crime had been the brainchild of a handful of the younger men out to prove their mettle.

That was part of the problem. Doyle was growing older, weaker, losing his authority. It was inevitable that his role as village head would eventually be challenged by the new blood. No doubt Doyle’s pride had taken a blow in all this, but Rohan did not intend to throw him to the wolves. The old man was too valuable to lose. Though a trickster by nature, to be sure, Caleb Doyle had proved his loyalty these many years to both Rohan’s father and to him.

By now, having arranged the delivery of so many secret communiqués, the grizzled smugglers’ chief surely suspected certain things about the Warrington dukes’ longstanding involvement in secret government intrigues.

Fortunately, Caleb was too shrewd to let on how much he knew—or guessed. Indeed, part of Doyle’s genius lay in knowing what questions
not
to ask.

The mood in the great hall was tense as they heard Eldred get the front door for the guilty smugglers, who were about to be brought in.

Rohan took a seat on the old, thronelike chair in the center of the great hall and drummed his fingers on his sword’s hilt in kingly impatience.

After all, the sooner he finished here, the sooner he could go unwrap his little “present.” His eyes gleamed with anticipation as he permitted himself to think about her briefly. Even now, his instincts were wide-awake with a very male awareness of a woman in his house.

Waiting for him in his bed.

He had wanted her gone from the great hall in case stronger measures were needed to remind his unruly tenants of his authority. He did not wish any female to witness his capacity for violence.

Besides, he did not need the distraction of those beautiful breasts clamoring for his attention. He’d get to know them better soon enough, every silky inch of her.

His people knew what he liked; he was decidedly pleased with their peace offering. This luscious young token of their apology left him feeling much more disposed to forgive. Indeed, the prospect of spending the next few nights in this abominable stone crypt of a castle suddenly looked a good deal more agreeable.

Coming out here to the middle of nowhere, he had expected to have to go without his daily dose of sex, a real inconvenience for a man of his elemental nature. He had a rule, after all, against poaching on the locals.

He wanted to be feared, not hated. But, hell, if they were going to offer her up on a silver platter, far be it from him to refuse such a delicious-looking morsel.

On the other hand, cynically, he couldn’t help thinking of the Trojan horse.
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

No doubt the head-turning beauty sent to warm his bed was also tasked with spying on him for the smugglers’ gang. Certainly, he would not put such a scheme past sly old Caleb.

The smugglers probably reasoned that if they could get one of their girls into position close to him, she could warn them in advance of their lord’s comings and goings, the better to help them conceal from him their next round of criminal mischief.

Rohan shook his head to himself in amusement. Whatever their scheme, he wasn’t worried. In fact, it might be quite entertaining to play a little game of disinformation on his tenants if they actually thought they were clever enough to fool him.

As for his young present, he’d enjoy her all the same. Amateur spy or no, he was not about to let a little deception get in the way of his pleasure.

Watching the smugglers bring in six of their own, bound and shackled, he had some difficulty chasing the green-eyed harlot out of his mind.

It was difficult to find a woman that did not suit his tastes, true. He had a lusty appreciation for them all—tall, short, curvy, thin, blonde, brunette, commoner, aristocrat. But there was something particularly appealing about that … luscious little mess. Her plump, rouged lips and those sweet erect nipples like hard pink candies pressing against her plunging gown had roused in him a mental groan of lust; and yet, the expression in her big, emerald eyes had looked so vulnerable and lost—pathetic, almost—that it had summoned up an even fiercer protective instinct in him.

Quite bewildering.

Something about the shivering, shoeless, tipsy tart had nearly touched the chunk of stone that had once been his heart. In that moment, he had not known which he had wanted more: to gather her onto his lap and comfort her, or to lay her down and ride her into mindless, sweaty ecstasy.

He cast off the question with a restless shrug, deciding to do both as soon as he was done here.

Until he was ready for her, however, she’d find the solar upstairs much more toasty. The girl had been obviously freezing cold—and foxed, to boot. He had not liked seeing her tremble so with the chilly drafts inside the castle. As for her state of inebriation, he had noted that she could barely stand without weaving on her feet.

He scowled, recalling how the little tosspot had even forgotten her shoes. What was it about the harlot breed that they did not know when it was time to quit drinking?

Well, she could sober up while he concluded matters with the smugglers. She was a bed warmer; let her warm his bed until he got through here.

Then he would join her, and they would have some fun.

He still couldn’t help wondering, though, why she had stared at him so strangely … as though she was scared of him. Those big, green, haunted eyes. Even now, he found himself perturbed by her strange, disquieting allure, plaguing him with equal parts desire and uneasiness.

Maybe her possible mission as a spy for the smugglers had suddenly seemed too difficult for her once she was in his presence. Most people realized on sight he was not to be trifled with, but surely she did not think he would ever hurt a woman.

True, there was the old family curse that might claim otherwise about the men in his line, but surely she didn’t believe in that rubbish.

At least he liked to think it was rubbish.

If she was nervous of his size, she needn’t have feared that, either. He knew how to safely wield the oversized weapon with which Nature had endowed him.

Perhaps she had never been bedded by an aristocrat before, but if that was the case, she had better get used to it, he thought cynically. She’d soon find out that dukes had the same base needs as any other blackguard.

Forget her, man. There’s work to be done! You’ll join her soon enough.
With that, he dismissed her from his mind, refusing, as ever, to let a woman distract him. They were objects of pleasure, a favorite hobby, the reward for a hard day’s work, and nothing more.

He stood as Doyle’s men brought in the troublemakers, some of them cursing and struggling as they were marched in. He maintained a stony silence until Caleb had bullied the miscreants into line.

“These are the lads behind it, Yer Grace,” Doyle said at last.

Resting his hands on his hips, Rohan searched the faces of the guilty men for a long moment with a brooding stare. Scanning the line of angry, resentful scowls, he took note of Pete and Denny Doyle, Caleb’s nephews.

Each about twenty years old, these two alone seemed resigned to their fate. The other four looked prepared to start fighting again.

“Take them to the dungeon,” he ordered his black-clad contingent of personally trained guards.

“Yes, sir,” said trusty Sergeant Parker. He and his men took the shipwreckers from the chastened smugglers, answering their curses and attempts to writhe free with a rough bit of muscle.

Rohan watched as his soldiers marched the villains out of the great hall in chains.

There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
he almost said to the remaining smugglers, who were to be spared. But when he looked at them again, he saw they were distraught, faced with their mates’ doom, and he managed to curb his sarcasm.