Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (5 page)

Morland frowned. “As you know, the Emperor Chia-ch’ing has been firmly opposed to receiving our emissaries in Peking. But it seems that the emperor has a special fascination with pillow books—and with one such book in particular. For ten years his emissaries have crossed the length and breadth of China, searching for this fabled book called
The Yellow Emperor’s Guide to Secret Arts.
Unfortunately, the book vanished ten years ago.”

“And you think
you
can find it?” Atherton sneered. “When even the heathen Chinese emperor himself cannot?”

Morland smoothed a painted page, his eyes distant. “Three years ago I had occasion to perform a favor for the captain of a Macao-bound brigantine. As a result, the man told me I would have his assistance whenever I required it. Six months ago I called in that favor.”

“Well?” Atherton’s voice still held a sneer. “Pray, don’t keep us in suspense.”

“The captain responded that he has finally located the book I just described to you.”

The admiral’s jaw tensed. “
Where
?”

“In Macao—or at least it was in Macao until it disappeared. The captain believes the book was taken aboard a ship that left Macao harbor in the dead of night, without papers or proper authorization.”

Morland waited, letting the force of those words sink in.

“Well, man?” The admiral was curt. “Bound
where
?”

“For London, as it happens.”

A low murmur swept the room.

Atherton’s pale eyes narrowed. “How did this captain friend of yours happen to acquire this information, Morland?”

The earl swept a careless hand before him. “It hardly need concern you, I think. The important thing is that the book will soon be within our grasp. With that book we will have the key to open the Celestial Kingdom to British trade and diplomacy. Without any bloodshed or loss of life, I might point out.”

The admiral drummed his fingers softly on the walnut table. “It has potential,” he said at last. “A damned sight better than any of the
other
plans I’ve been hearing from the Foreign Office. Besiege Peking, sack the Summer Palace, and take the emperor hostage, indeed!” He shot a dark look at Atherton. The author of that inflammatory suggestion merely sniffed and tugged at his waistcoat.

The admiral turned back to Morland. “What is it going to cost us to obtain the book?”

“You will understand if I prefer to keep the details to myself, Admiral.” Morland’s gaze hardened. “The captain tells me that five men have already died while pursuing this volume. If we proceed, you will have to grant me carte blanche.”

Atherton sat forward, sputtering, but the admiral cut him off with a sharp look.

At that moment the door leading to the next room opened. A tall man with a hooked nose and startling blue eyes strode into the room and instantly all the other men made to rise.

But the hero of Waterloo motioned them back into their seats.

The Duke of Wellington turned his hawk-like gaze on the Earl of Morland. “Your plan has the advantage of originality, at least. But why should we entrust such a responsibility to you?” There was no rancor in the question, only the intensity of a seasoned military campaigner testing the weaknesses of his pawns.

Morland met the duke’s gaze levelly. “Because I’m the only one with the knowledge to track down the book. Because I’ve the contacts here and in Asia to negotiate for it. And most of all, because I have the experience to recognize the real thing when I find it.”

Wellington smiled faintly. “Quite impressive. You always were a great one for plunging right into the thick of things, weren’t you?”

Staring into that hard, proud face, Morland remembered too many times when he’d done just that. At Corunna. At Badajoz. During the smoke of Salamanca.

But he’d been running then, running wild and fast from a pain too deep to face. Oh, he’d buried it deep—no one had even suspected. Not even the keen-eyed Duke of Wellington.

He was running still, Morland realized. The war with France was over, Napoleon was exiled at St. Helena, and he was still running

Morland’s blue eyes hardened. Maybe that was better than agonizing over the past. Better than wondering and worrying about what might have been—what
should
have been, if only…

Frowning, he dragged himself back to the discussion at hand. The men around the table were staring at him curiously.

Wellington frowned. “Where are we to find this book?” His voice took on a cynical edge. “And how much is it going to cost us when we
do
find it?”

“As to the first, I should have an answer before the week is out. And as to the second”—Morland stared at the duke—”twenty thousand pounds should do it.”

The men around the table broke out in startled protests.

“Nonsense,” Morland said briskly. “We would earn that much back in a few weeks of trade.”

The furor raged for ten minutes.

The Duke of Wellington sat motionless in his chair, his fingers steepled before him as he listened to every argument. When the room quieted, he gave Morland a hard look. “Very well. But it had better be worth
every
shilling,” he said softly.

“But you’re not—you cannot actually be
considering
this plan.”

Atherton’s sputtering was cut off by one cold glance from Wellington. “Do you have a better suggestion? “

“Well, er, not at this instant precisely. But I have been working on something—yes, something that will almost certainly—”

Wellington’s face hardened. “Then we shall follow Morland’s plan.” His chill blue eyes killed any protests before they could be formed. “Excellent. Morland, I believe the rest is up to you.”

The earl bowed slightly. “It will save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, I am convinced of that. And both countries will benefit from regularized trade and exchange of diplomats.”

Not death.

Morland had enough ghosts. Some men he had been unable to save, choking men whom he’d held helplessly while blood gushed from their throats at Salamanca, or pooled from their chests at Badajoz. For those men, he had been able to do nothing.

Their ghosts would haunt him always.

But he would see that he had no
new
ghosts on his conscience. And he could save the children, the sad-eyed waifs with young-old faces who were always hurt the most in war, left destitute in the wake of the killing. Morland had seen too many of those hopeless orphans, drifting like human debris in the wake of the war spilling across Spain and Portugal. When he’d come home from the war, he had seen his own niece and nephew devastated by a similar pain. Reckless once too often, Morland’s brother had died in a coaching accident. Morland could not mourn the brother for whom he had long ceased to feel any affection, but the children were different. He meant to see them protected from any more trauma in their young lives.

He could not change the past, but he could bloody well do everything possible to change the
future…

Wellington pushed back from the table, “You have my support for your plan, Morland, unprecedented though it is. Let us pray to heaven that it succeeds.”

The duke strode to the door and stopped, one hand on the polished wood frame while his keen eyes scanned the room. “Come along, Morland. We’ve a few things yet to discuss. You’d better come too, Blessington.”

Few people in England would have dared to address the august admiral in such curt terms.

The Duke of Wellington was one of them.

As if on cue, the other men filed from the room. Atherton’s face was suspiciously flushed as he pushed rudely past Morland.

Morland ignored him. He had won, after all.

He wondered why the knowledge left him with a vast sense of uneasiness.

Sevenoaks

Suffolk, England

White clouds sailed through a serene blue sky. A robin piped happily in its nest.

Two dirt-streaked legs hung over the edge of the sturdy tree house at the Earl of Morland’s Suffolk estate.

“Where’s Uncle Tony, Je’emy?” The speaker, a girl of five, had a tangle of guinea-gold hair and dust caking her chubby cheeks. By habit, she dispensed with the R in her brother’s name.

Her brother, at the vastly mature age of nine, scowled down at her. “He’s in London, of course, Elspeth. He told us he would be there till the end of the month.” The boy frowned, taking aim at a nearby beech tree. His stone hit the trunk with a resounding
thwack.

Jeremy Langford gave a yelp of delight, which he quickly concealed as befitted his dignity as the eighth duke of Morland. He
was
the master of the manor in his uncle’s absence, after all.

“How much longer is
that
?”

“We’ve two more weeks to go.”

His sister clutched at the mangled doll in her lap. “Miss him,” she said softly, pulling the doll to her chest.

Her brother sighed. Elspeth had been hit hard by the tragedies of the last year. Within months, their mother and father had both been taken from them, the former in a boating mishap and the latter in a coaching accident.

The news had been just as hard on Jeremy, of course, but his extra years had given him more resources to conceal his pain.

What Elspeth did not know—and Jeremy could never forget—was that their father had been driving the coach when it had overturned, killing himself and his fellow travelers. And their father had been roaring drunk at the time.

Jeremy sighed and hurled another stone. This one went wide. Grunting in irritation, he stared down at his sister. “Will you stop sucking your thumb, Elspeth? It’s terribly childish, you know. Uncle Tony doesn’t mention it, because he—well,
I’m
not so polite.”

His sister’s head slanted back. Her cornflower-blue eyes widened. Her brother saw moisture well up in them.

“There now. You can suck your thumb when we’re alone, I suppose. Not so much harm in that. Only—only don’t do it otherwise, hear? It’s—it’s just not fitting for the sister of the Duke of Morland.”

His sister promptly popped her grimy thumb back into her mouth. “Y not?” she mumbled.

Jeremy gave her an exasperated look. “Because it just
isn’t,
hang it all!” Muttering, he flung another stone across the path. This one struck home.

His frown lightened somewhat.

“Is our uncle Tony
ever
going to get married, Je’emy?”

The boy shrugged. “I suppose so. Most grown-ups do.” He tossed a stone up and down, his expression thoughtful. “Why?”

“I want a new mama.” The little girl ran her fingers through her doll’s tangled yarn hair. “Want someone to tuck me in at night—and listen to my prayers. Someone nice to hug me when I scrape my knee on that nasty ladder.” A fresh wave of tears filled her wide eyes. “Nanny’s nice, but she’s not the same. And her apron is ever so scratchy.” She gave a watery sniff. “Hurts my nose.”

Her brother’s fingers tightened on his stone. His thin features hardened. “Even if Uncle Tony
does
marry, the new countess won’t be our mother, Elspeth. She’d be our”—his eyes narrowed with concentration—”our
aunt
, I think.”

Privately Jeremy thought that the first thing the new countess would do was pack her niece and nephew off to some distant relative as far away from Sevenoaks as possible.

But the boy did not tell his little sister that.

Instead, he waved a hand airily toward the west where the great city of London lay. “Uncle Tony is too busy enjoying the pleasures of London to think of marrying.” Jeremy wasn’t sure exactly what that last phrase meant, but it had sounded impressive when Cook had said it to the steward.

“Why not, Je’emy? Don’t he like ladies?”

“Doesn’t,” her brother corrected absently. “And of course he likes ladies, Elspeth.” Jeremy scowled down at his sister. “You saw him that day in the barn with that noisy widow from London, didn’t you?”