Royal Regard (35 page)

Malbourne was not ten strides down the garden
path when a hand on his shoulder spun him around.

“
Merde
! What is this?”

The Duke of Wellbridge appeared rabid as a
street dog, barely controlling the snarl in his voice. If Adolphe
had ever questioned whether the man were a foul cur, the answer
stood before him.

“Leave her alone, you demon-born bastard. One
more step toward her, and I will beat you within an inch of your
life. If I allow you to live at all.”

Malbourne straightened the cuffs of his
jacket. “Your Grace,” he sneered, “How lovely to see you again,
mon ami
. I’m not certain of what you speak. Is there some
way I can assist you?”

“I am not your friend, and you know exactly
what I mean. Stay away from Bell—Lady Huntleigh—or I swear, I will
take your head off with my bare hands and leave it on a pike. Do I
make myself clear?”

“Ah, Lady Huntleigh. She is lovely,
n’est-ce pas
? So fresh and unspoiled.” Adolphe allowed a
hungry leer to cross his face. “I can see you have taken a personal
interest. Will you call me out for a friendship as innocent as she?
I cannot believe she would thank you for that.”

“She wouldn’t thank you for entertaining
another woman in the dark a quarter-hour after you finished
whatever it was you did to her.” Adolphe hardened his face to any
reaction. “Though, given her state of mind, she should be grateful
to avoid your continued attention.”

While Adolphe might have concerned himself
with Lady Huntleigh’s state of mind a few days ago, her wishes were
irrelevant at this juncture. However, there was no need to
encourage speculation.

“Another woman?”

“The bit of muslin who just left through the
trees. I already knew you were no man of honor, but I am sure
Bella—Lady Huntleigh—will be very interested to know.”

Adolphe tugged at the lower edge of his
jacket, aligning it perpendicular to the placket of his trousers,
“I have spoken to no other woman and if you are of a mind to call
me out, Sir, I suggest you remember you have no claim to defend. I,
on the other hand, can challenge you for your effrontery without
impugning the lady’s honor at all.” He pulled his gloves from his
pocket and gracefully pulled on the left, pointedly leaving the
other hanging loosely in his right hand, ready to slap Nick with it
in formal challenge.

Before Adolphe could even take a step
forward, Wellbridge pulled his fist back and it flew into his face,
knocking him flat on his back just off the path, the glove flying
through the air and landing at the base of the tree he had been
using as a bed. Adolphe didn’t even have time for outrage before
the
cochon
spat in his face.

“I have no need of swords or pistols, you
malevolent Frog. You seem to think me more gentleman than I am, so
let me enlighten you,
‘mon ami.’
My boots have kicked men to
shards in the worst slums in the world. I can kill and bury you
before anyone knows you are gone.”

“Wellbridge!” Wellbridge’s head turned at the
sound of half a dozen men and at least as many ladies coming down
the path, allowing Adolphe to roll away onto his side and rise to
his knees, glove and shirtfront covered in the blood spurting from
his nose.

“I know it is tempting to knock a Frenchman
on his
derrière
, but you will make a shambles of my
party.”

Nick bowed as low as he could manage while
short of breath, leaving Adolphe to stand under his own power or
remain kneeling at his opponent’s feet.

“Your Majesty,” Wellbridge fawned before
Prinny, the fat fool, “I apologize for the disruption, but I
thought it comparatively more prudent than an illegal duel or
outright murder.” Murder! As though a coward like Wellbridge had
the stomach for murder. He had made it clear only moments ago, he
would not even fight on the field of honor.

“A duel!” Prinny’s eyes glowed as Malbourne
stood slowly, the right side of his face already swelling and
surely bruised. “What quarrel is this? Have you come to fisticuffs
over a woman? It must be a woman,” he said, turning to his
companions, “for Wellbridge hardly raises his voice but to defend
the deservedly downtrodden or a lady’s honor. I’ll place ten
guineas on it. Anyone?” All of his companions backed away from a
bet they couldn’t win.

Adolphe groaned internally at the gossip
Prinny’s set—Wellbridge’s set, according to Michelle—would make of
this. Fortunately, the miserable dog had a moment of good sense and
made an excuse. “It is nothing, Sire. A disagreement gone awry
after too much arrack-punch.”

On second thought, perhaps he could remove
Wellbridge from the contest entirely. Adolphe shook his head,
setting off more pain in his back teeth. “This is not so, Your
Majesty. He has attacked with no grounds, and I insist he be
arrested for breaking the king’s peace.”

Prinny laughed heartily. “It is my peace,
Malbourne, and I decide when it is broken. Care to make a case,
Wellbridge?”

“No, Sire, I would not. I would not besmirch
the lady’s name.”

Prinny eyed Wellbridge with far too much
interest. “I will have the story from you sooner or later, you
know. Take yourself off, then. Whomever the young lady and whatever
Malbourne has done, you’d be better off seeing to her than beating
another peer half to death.” As though Wellbridge had any chance of
stopping plans already in motion.

“And you, Sir,” the king said, turning to
Adolphe, adding insult to injury by an admonition, “would do best
to stay away from any woman under Wellbridge’s protection. Even I,
with an army at my disposal, might remove myself from the duke’s
company when his temper takes a pugilistic turn.”

Prinny held out his arm for Lady Conyngham,
who had shrunk away from the conflict, knotted into a circle with
the other ladies a few steps away. “My dear, shall we continue our
promenade? I assure you,” Prinny glared at both men as they backed
away in opposite directions, “there is no danger here.”

Nick was trying to read another
letter from his estate manager at Rathemore, confirming the house
had been closed and his important possessions delivered to
Wellstone by one of Huntleigh’s ships. The manager would be
pensioned, though still young enough to find another position, so
Nick needed to write a character to send on the next mail coach. An
additional concern, he could not allow the man to take action
against Nick’s tenants, as the letter placed blame on them for
Nick’s decision to shutter the estate, eliminate the man’s
position, and ignore the threat of rebellion on his property until
the military forced him to act.

However, Nick was having a very hard time
paying attention to his tasks.

Never, since Nick had been a randy boy whose
younger sister spied on him with any young lady he singled out, had
he so wanted to throw a woman over his knee and spank her into
submission. He had no idea from whence the unwelcome impulse
stemmed. For Heaven’s sake, he didn’t even like submissive women.
And it didn’t bear considering what Bella would do to him with a
knife if he tried.

But this situation was ridiculous. In the
space of a quarter-hour, he had saved a woman from degradation,
fought publicly for her honor, averted criminal charges for
dueling—or outright murder—and kept her name from social
devastation, all without drawing too much of a crowd and keeping
the details from her husband and the king for almost three days, an
eon, by the measure of gossip among the
ton
. Nick was the
hero in this story in every respect. Or rather, he should be.

One would think a woman thus safeguarded
would offer her appreciation, her gratitude, perhaps an invitation
to tea or a polite note or a “thank you, Wellbridge,” not a
shrewish curtain lecture. The next time she said, “You had no
reason to run after him; you might have been killed,” or “I can
fight my own battles, if you please,” he truly would instigate
corporal punishment.

She had asked him to keep the secret, having
finally convinced Charlotte she had been frightened, not hurt, by a
footpad, but the trade-off Nick demanded was taking Bella’s
protection upon himself, using every inch of the access Huntleigh
had given him to their house, grounds, and family life. He invited
himself for every meal, played backgammon or discussed politics
with Huntleigh late into the night, appeared early in the morning
to re-pot plants with her in the hothouse or accompany her to the
shops or deliver clothes to Huntleigh’s church that she had sewn
for the poor.

It was hardly on Nick’s head that when
Huntleigh saw the duke on edge, it sharpened his protective
instincts. Or that Bella declared herself not-at-home to Charlotte,
and had Watts deny her the house. Or that Firthley had expressed
his concern to Bella’s husband in Lady Firthley’s stead.

Nick, by contrast, had steadfastly maintained
the fiction that he and Malbourne had simply finally come to blows
in their progressively more contentious battle for Bella’s
favor.

He held no culpability for the half a dozen
courtiers and half a dozen ladies walking with Prinny and his
latest mistress at the masked ball, who had watched Nick level
Malbourne with a fist to the jaw. Malbourne’s mask had been knocked
away, and Nick had left his off entirely, but if he were any other
man, hundreds of guests might have seen the fight, and as a matter
of honor, either he or Malbourne would now be dead, the other on
the way to the gallows.

Nor was it his fault that Huntleigh’s
fatherly demands for an explanation could no longer be safely
ignored, or that Prinny summoned Nick for a game of
piquet
and every hand wagered, “The story of Malbourne’s bruises at
Vauxhall,” until he won.

In both cases, Nick had said the barest
minimum he could without breaking her confidence, but he had been
speaking to very intelligent men who could add two and two, both of
whom rang a peal over his head for keeping the secret.

“You buffle-headed pile of cow dung! You
dared keep this from me—
your sovereign
—when you are aware I
concern myself with her safety? No, Wellbridge, you need not try to
explain. Only consider how quickly I can have you gaoled should you
keep such a thing from me again!”

“You bacon-brained lout! You dared keep this
from me—
her husband
—when you are aware how concerned I am
for her safety? No, Sirrah, you need not try to explain. Only
consider how quickly I can have her removed from London and your
questionable company should you keep such a thing from me
again!”

Nick had tried to side with Bella, but in
truth, he agreed with the others: he should have been more forceful
from the start, insisting she involve her husband, at least. Maybe
then, he wouldn’t be subject to either their contempt or her absurd
female insanity.

After three days of her snappish comments
about over-protecting her, he had finally barked, “Shall I stand
aside, then, and let Malbourne do whatever he likes next time?
Shall I truss you and leave you in Dover for his delectation?”

She responded, “I removed myself without
incident and would do again,” which was as close as she had come to
admitting Malbourne had done anything untoward, almost enough to
send Nick and a loaded pistol to find the French worm and the rock
under which he’d slithered.

To avoid another round of self-recrimination
about leaving the louse alive, he attempted to bring himself back
to the question of Rathemore. Having dipped his pen into the India
ink, he found himself drawing curlie-wurlies on the parchment, like
a schoolboy daydreaming about a farm girl he might tup behind a
hedgerow.

Ridiculous! This was utterly ridiculous! His
obvious heroism had been discounted by
everyone
, especially
Bella, and he would simply not stand for it! Hands on the edge of
the desk, preparing to stand and tell Blakeley to have the carriage
brought around, instead, he slumped forward, forehead dropping onto
the paper, ink thankfully dry.

He had no defense against the guilt at
breaking the spirit of his promise to her, the treachery of keeping
the secret from her husband. There was no way to contain the
ferocious anger at Malbourne, resignation and resentment about
Prinny’s interference, apprehension about what the gossip was going
to mean to all concerned.

There was no precedent for the depths of
emotion coursing through him the past three days. If he had just
killed and buried the Frog when he had the chance, perhaps all of
this pent-up frustration would be gone. His entire life might be
back to normal. No more worry about Prinny meting out punishment,
no more remorse about misusing Lord Huntleigh’s friendship, no more
disturbing thoughts of all the ways Lady Huntleigh should be
offering her appreciation.