The Deception (3 page)

The sun was getting low in the west. The wind was rising. It was getting colder. The duke sniffed the salty air, breathed in deeply, then looked again at that wonderful sun which hadn’t shown itself for three days.

He looked up to see Juniper, who should have been in bed, running hard toward him, his crimson livery coat flapping in the breeze. “Your grace! I’m here. Oh, dear, I particularly asked Bassick to tell me when you neared. He likes McComber better, and thus he didn’t give me warning and so I’m late, and all of a flutter. Oh, dear, he’s taken the bays, hasn’t he? He’s taken my boys.”

“Yes. And he won’t knobble them or harm them in any way at all. Go back to bed, Juniper. Trust me to take care of the horses. You will remain in bed until you no longer are hacking your tongue out of your mouth.”

Juniper gulped, coughed, gulped again. “It’s just a touch of something bilious, your grace,” he said, looking toward the stables, seeing the bays prancing happily behind that blackguard McComber.

“I don’t want to have to bury you just yet, Juniper. Out of my sight.”

Juniper continued to look up hopefully at the duke, a very large, handsome young man who, in all the years Juniper had known him, had never been ill from anything other than drinking too much brandy. It was nothing for the duke to ride in an open curricle, the rain battering down on him, the sea winds tearing through his thick hair. For Juniper, had he done something so ill-advised, he would be shortly six feet under the ground with a stone on his head and a daisy planted on top of his belly. The air was still damp from the interminable rain, the breeze off the Channel
damp and chill. He shuddered. “Go,” the duke said again.

“Aye, your grace,” Juniper said. “Oh, your grace, I forget to give you this. It was brought just an hour ago by one of those men who works for your friend Lord Pettigrew.” He handed the duke a thin envelope with turned and twisted edges.

The duke didn’t wait. This had to be it, he thought. It just had to be over now. He tore open the paper and read:

The day turned suddenly and completely black. He looked up and saw only bleak clouds that were filling the sky, turning it a nasty ochre color. He crushed the paper in his hand. They’d all been so certain, knowing that they’d catch the miserable traitor who’d brutally garroted Robbie Faraday in an alley near Westminster in early December.

He wanted to smash his fist into something. He turned to see Juniper staring at him in fascinated horror.

“Go away, Juniper. Now.”

Juniper ran back up the wide, deep front steps, wondering what horrific news was in the letter he’d happened to snag from the messenger while Bassick was in the pantry chastising one of the footmen.

Well, the young duke had many things on his mind these days, though Juniper couldn’t say what any of them were. Maybe it was a woman. Now, he knew, everyone knew, that the duke was a randy young man, so randy that he was already a legend in this part of
England. And that brought Polly, the in-between maid, to mind. Maybe he could cozen her into bringing him some of Mrs. Dart’s hot quail-egg soup. Maybe he could even talk her into spooning some into his mouth. Maybe after he ate, he could convince her that he wasn’t too sick to slick his fingers through that pretty hair of hers.

The bleak look faded from the duke’s face. He frowned at Juniper for a moment, his dark eyes narrowed. He yelled as Juniper’s foot hit the top step, “You won’t tumble Polly, and that’s the end to it, Juniper. I don’t want her ill. Go away and stop your dreaming.”

Just then the great oak front doors were flung open by his ancient butler with a flowing mane of white hair that any man of any age would admire to the point of black jealousy. The duke remembered that when he was a little boy, he had believed God must look like Bassick. His father had grinned down at him and said, no, not God. He looks like Moses.

“Send Murdock out here, Bassick.”

Scarce an instant passed before a tall redheaded footman, impressive in his crimson and gold livery, appeared at the duke’s side.

“Escort Juniper to his bed and tuck him in. If he doesn’t stay put, tie him to his bed. Tell Cook to prepare him some nourishing soup. Tell Polly not to trust a thing he says. Tell her simply to stay away from him.” Murdock gave Juniper a commiserating look and led him away.

“His grace shouldn’t know these things,” he heard Juniper say low to Murdock.

“Aye, that’s the truth of it, but he does. He once knew I’d taken off my shirt to show Betsy the scar on
my right shoulder.” Murdock sighed deeply. “She loved that scar.”

“Then why did she marry the butcher’s son in Eastbourne?”

No answer for that question, the duke thought, and smiled, but it was quickly gone. He eyed the crumpled letter in his hand. Damnation. They’d been so close. He’d been awaiting word for two days that they’d finally won. His mood was blacker now than it had been but an instant before. “Juniper, Bassick will have Mrs. Needle see to you. You do whatever she tells you to do. That’s an order.”

He heard his tiger groan and saw Murdock give him a pat on the back.

Bassick said in his slow, stately way, “Mrs. Needle alarms him, your grace. Understandable, I suppose. She has the aura of a witch, with her gray, twisted hair, her pink scalp showing. She even has a pot that sits on a hob in her fireplace. If it were just a bit larger, it could pass for a witch’s cauldron. The concoctions she prepares tend to be on the odorous side. And she talks to herself. It’s unnerving to the more uneducated of those around us, your grace.”

“It won’t destroy his manhood,” the duke said, “and believe me, that’s all Juniper ever thinks about. As for Mrs. Needle, my mother has always maintained that she is responsible for more people coming back to health than God even wanted to live.”

Bassick cleared his ancient throat. “I am given to understand that Mrs. Needle now praises the restorative powers of spicy French mustard, mulled wine, and a small pinch of fresh seaweed. I’m not certain if this is imbibed or applied to the offending part of the body.”

“Hopefully neither of us will ever have to find out.”

Bassick said an amen to that even as he looked briefly toward the second floor of the north wing of the castle. He fancied he could smell the noxious odors that emanated from her herbal laboratory. The duke turned and strode up the deeply indented stone steps. He didn’t wait for Bassick to catch up with him to relieve him of his greatcoat and gloves, but continued in without a backward glance, his Hessians landing loudly on the marble entrance floor. He wanted privacy. He wanted to brood, then begin to plan again. This time he would involve himself in the actual strategy. If there was bait needed, he would be it. Drew Halsey had had his chance to catch Robbie’s murderer, and he’d failed.

“Your grace! Wait a moment, please. I forgot to tell you something important.”

The duke’s black brows snapped together. He called back without turning around, “It can wait, Bassick. I’m in a devil of a mood, truth be told. A black cloud is hanging just over my head. It will rain buckets on me any minute.

“Leave me be. Just keep everyone away for a while.”

“But, your grace, it’s something you really should know.”

The duke recognized Bassick’s hovering tone. If he weakened now, he wouldn’t be free of him until midnight, if then. “Let me alone,” he yelled. “I’ll call you when I wish to hear your important news. If you hired two new parlor maids, it’s all right. Swell our rolls. Let us employ every able-bodied person in the county.” He turned slightly and waved a dismissing hand toward the old man, who had been at Chesleigh Castle since before the duke was born. “Keep everyone
out of the library. If you really care about me, that’s what you can do to make me bloody happy.” “But, your grace—”

The duke felt a sudden stab of apprehension. “Is Lord Edmund all right?”

“Certainly, your grace. His lordship spent his afternoon on his pony. He is now enjoying his dinner with Ellen, in the nursery.”

“Excellent. Then say no more. If Mrs. Dent is beating the scullery maid, tend to it yourself.”

The duke turned on his heel, his tan greatcoat swirling about his ankles, and strode the length of the entrance hall, past the medieval tapestries that hung like thick curtains over the ancient stone walls. He left Bassick with his mouth unbecomingly open, half-formed words still on his tongue, a look of perturbation in those rheumy blue eyes of his.

Enough was enough, the duke thought. He’d not only spent two hours with a friend of his father’s, Baron Wisslex, who was dying bravely, with his son hanging about, just waiting for his turn at the title, but then he’d come home to hear the damnable news from Drew Halsey, Lord Pettigrew. He pulled up short, feeling a stab of pain in his foot.

He had a rock inside his boot, of all things. He sat down on a heavy Tudor chair set beneath the portrait of a bewigged ancestor, a great-great-uncle of the last century, and pulled off his Hessian. He flicked out the small pebble, rubbed the sole of his foot, then rose again, not bothering to pull his boot back on. He ignored the footman who was standing not ten feet from him, magically appearing from one instant to the next to see if there was anything required.

He tucked the boot under his arm and opened the library door.

The Chesleigh library was the present duke’s favorite room. It was a dark chamber, somber and rich, its shadows deep and full, and it smelled always of lemon wax and old books. He looked briefly at the walls with all the inset bookshelves that soared up to twenty-five feet, the long, narrow windows covered with rich maroon velvet curtains, hung there by his father not two years before. There was a good-sized fire built up in the cavernous grate, and a single branch of candles had been lit against the coming night. Bassick, as was his way, had known he would be home soon, and had the room prepared for his comfort.

It was a masculine, very comforting room to the duke, and he felt himself begin to relax, felt the black rage, the sense of helplessness that he felt to the depths of him, begin to recede. He stripped off his gloves and greatcoat and tossed them over the back of a dark blue brocade chair, then sat down and tugged on his boot. Since this was a chore that he rarely performed by himself, he found himself cursing at his own ineptness.

A low, musical laugh came out of the gloom. He jerked around to see a woman standing at the side of the fireplace in the shadows, swathed from head to foot in a dark cloak.

“A nobleman and his boots,” she said, shaking her head. “I wonder how poor mortal men manage. I suppose I could offer to help you.” Her voice was amused.

However, she didn’t move.

T
he duke rose swiftly to his feet, his boot, thankfully, snug where it belonged. He nearly stumbled over his feet in his haste and surprise.

“I could have killed you,” he said. “Hiding in here was a stupid thing to do.”

“Oh? How would you have dispatched me? Perhaps you would have hurled your boot at me?”

“If I’d had a gun with me, you could be lying on the carpet with a bullet in your gullet. Sometimes I do have a gun with me. Today I don’t. However, I do have my hands, and they would, doubtless, fit nicely around your neck.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’d kill me. Your very nice butler wouldn’t allow murder to be committed beneath his nose.”

“Don’t wager your dinner on that.” “He’s fascinating. If he wore a white robe, he would look like a biblical prophet.”

“He isn’t a prophet. However, he is supposed to guard the portals to my kingdom. Now, who the devil are you? How did you get in here?”

She didn’t answer, just stood there like a specter in a black cloak. Anger began to replace surprise. He’d
wanted to be alone, and now this female had forced her way into his house and into his library.

Actually, he was beginning to feel ripe for murder. Then he understood. “Bassick’s head will roll for this. Damnation, the servants’ entrance is in the north wing. If you want to keep your position here at Chesleigh, you will use it in the future, not come into this part of the castle. Tell Bassick that I don’t need to interview you. Go away. Now. I want to be alone.”

“You said a great deal there and I did hear all of it, but still, I don’t quite understand. Could you please speak again? Only this time perhaps you could just reduce all your thoughts to one that is the most pertinent?” The woman had the gall to sound both amused and offended. But there was more amusement, all of it at his expense. His fingers itched to lace themselves about her neck.

He drew himself up even taller, his head cocked a certain way, his shoulders drawn back—the medieval seignior at his most intimidating—something he’d seen his grandfather do, something his father did better than any other human being, and said, all black hauteur, “I am tired of this, my girl. You will remove yourself now. I have no wish to be bothered, no matter what a wench offers. Send my butler in. The fellow has a lot to answer for.”

“This is the first time I’ve been called a wench. Are you normally so very rude, your grace? Or is it just that it’s Wednesday, and this mid-week day offends you? Or perhaps it’s the weather? I myself was delighted when the rain stopped. I was beginning to grow mold.” “Shut up, damn you.”

She shut up, contenting herself with staring at him and praying she hadn’t misjudged him.

A discordant note finally tolled in his mind. He’d been locked inside his own black soul. Damnation, the female wasn’t a serving girl, here in his library for the lord and master to interview. She was well spoken. And wasn’t there just a hint of a French accent popping up every once in a while? But it didn’t matter. She was here and she shouldn’t be here. She was in his private lair, the last place she should be. He was smoldering with impotent anger, and now, with her here, he saw a fresh goat standing right in front of him, ripe for sacrifice, so to speak, and so he let out his anger.

He advanced on her. She didn’t move, didn’t even shrink back an inch. Of course, if she had, she just might have tipped herself into the fireplace.