The Secret Duke (23 page)

“I didn’t take her,” Bella admitted.

“An assignation?”

The last thing Bella wanted was a revealing blush, but she felt the heat in her cheeks. “Very well. I had arranged to meet a new admirer. And yes, it was foolish, but how was I to suspect that he was part of such a plan?”

“What happened?”

His sympathetic tone drew more from her, and soon, walking briskly through the chilly air, she found herself telling him all. As she came to the end, to the vile fate she’d faced, she could hardly get the words out. After her time with Lady Fowler, she knew more about the darkest side of brothels.

He took her gloved hands, offering firm comfort. “You escaped,” he said, as if she needed the reminder.

Perhaps she did, for it almost broke her control.

“Why wait until then, though?” he asked. “Why not escape earlier if you were able?”

His calm questions pulled her out of the dark, and perhaps the brisk, damp wind helped to scour her mind. “I was closely guarded at first. One of them was always with me except at night, and they always made sure my room was secure.”

“You didn’t try to get help from others along the way? Innkeepers, other travelers?”

“No. They threatened me, but . . . It may seem odd, but I was still very worried about the story getting out, and sure my father would deliver the ransom. But even if he didn’t . . . I think I assumed they would give up and release me.”

“You were very young and had lived a protected life. When did you change?”

“When we arrived in Dover and I learned their plan. By then, thank God, they’d grown careless, misled by my passivity. They locked my room at the Crown and Anchor that night, but there was a window.”

“Good girl.”

At the approval, she looked up to see a warm smile in his eyes. She smiled back, realizing that she had done something remarkable back then. She told him about Billy Jakes, and about finding him in Litten.

“Does he have good employment?” he asked.

“Yes, why?”

“I could help him if he needed it.”

“I don’t think he wants to go to sea, but thank you for your kindness. He seems well set up at Sir Muncy’s place, and is soon to marry the head groom’s daughter.”

He nodded. “So you escaped the inn. How did you end up in the Black Rat?”

“Sheer stupidity,” she confessed. “I was scurrying through the streets of Dover, afraid and in a panic. I had no money. I knew no one here. I decided to go to the church and ask the vicar for help, but then I saw my captors, already searching, so I slipped inside the nearest public building. I knew it would be a rough place, but I could never have imagined what happened there.” She looked up. “Please do let me thank you again for rescuing me. You risked your life.”

“Devil a bit,” he said cheerfully. “Once those men gathered their wits they’d have realized they didn’t want that much trouble, even over such a pretty morsel as you.”

Bella looked ahead, again stupidly warmed by a casual compliment. But then she realized that this time, it wasn’t so much the compliment as the man paying it. Much to her surprise, she liked Captain Rose. Wisely or not, she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. She even felt he could be a friend.

She’d felt completely different the other night in his room.

How odd.

“So you rode off on my horse and returned where?” he prompted. “Maidstone?”

“To my sister’s house near there. She took me home.”

“To the father who failed to ransom you. Was he so vile?”

She hadn’t told him about the switched notes because she hadn’t been sure whether to broach her plan. Her reasons for hesitation were different now—he might think her unnatural, unwomanly, to want revenge.

“The ransom note was never found,” she said.

“Another failed agent, as with my horse?”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Indeed. Except that this failed agent was the cause of all the trouble.” It would not be held back. “It was my brother, Augustus,” she said, hearing a hiss in her words.

“What did he do? Lose the ransom note?”

“Deliberately. And then he substituted one that seemed to be from my lover, announcing our plan to run off and sin. And,” she added grimly, “after all it was his plan in the first place!”

“Ah, gaming debts, I assume.”

“How—” But she broke off with a sigh. “Is it so common for men to lose huge sums at the tables?”

“Common enough, though it doesn’t usually lead to such a complicated drama. Gaming debts aren’t claim-able by law, you see.”

“Coxy said that.”

“I’m sure he knows all about it,” he remarked. “Thus, there are other ways to make losers pay. If the gaming is among gentlemen, then any defaulter will be ostracized. Fear of that usually makes them find the money. If they can’t, they blow their brains out or abscond to a foreign land.”

“If only Augustus had chosen either of those.”

“Miss Barstowe, I like your spirit.”

Bella laughed and she did truly feel lighter. Because of his admiration.

The streets were now almost deserted as the weather grew more ominous, but it didn’t seem to bother him, and she certainly didn’t want to end this meeting.

“Coxy seemed a gentleman,” she said, but then added, “more or less.”

“There’s a distressing number of more-or-lessians about. From our brief acquaintance I’d say he was less.”

“You’re probably correct, because he wasn’t able to use the threat of exposing Augustus to other gentlemen to squeeze the money out of him.” Bella considered her plan. Though misty, it involved catching Augustus in the act and shaming him. She, however, had the advantage of not wanting money. Shame would be enough. “Where do men like that gamble?” she asked.

“Usually a gaming club, more generally called a hell. But why would your brother play in such places rather than in better circles?”

Bella answered without hesitation. “Because he had to preserve his pristine reputation, especially from our father, who detested gaming above almost anything.” She clutched her hat against a gust of wind, looking up at him. “Can a person conceal his identity in hell?”

His eyes smiled. “Too profound a theological question for me, Miss Barstowe, but in a hell, he could give a false name. As long as he played with coin, no questions would be asked.”

Bella considered that. “But he ran into debt.”

“Which meant the men he played with accepted his vowels.”

“Vowels?”

“A written promise to pay, abbreviated to IOU.”

“So a fortune could be lost, a family ruined, by a few letters on a piece of paper?”

“Yes, sadly that can be the case.”

“Tragically,” she said, thinking of Hortensia Sprott, left in poverty by a father’s vowels. That fueled her desire to expose her brother. Perhaps she could expose others at the same time and prevent some future suffering.

“Coxy took Augustus’s promise to pay,” she said, “so he must have felt sure he would get his money. Why?”

“We can’t be sure, but is your brother clever?”

“No.”

“Then he probably thought he was concealed by a false name, but was in fact known by all the sharps.”

“Sharps?” she asked.

“Men, occasionally women, who make their living at the tables. They’re usually highly skilled players, but they’ll cheat if they need to, and do it skillfully enough that many a pigeon will never know they were plucked.”

“A pigeon,” Bella said with relish, able to let go of her hat, though she didn’t trust the calm. She smiled at her companion. “I like the thought of Augustus as a pigeon, especially a plucked one.”

“And baked in a pie,” he said, eyes twinkling. But then he came to a halt and asked, “Is that your purpose?”

Bella searched his features, but in the end she had to act on instinct. “Yes.”

“How?”

“By exposing his addiction to gaming.”

His brows rose. “And you came to a sea captain for help. Why?”

Put like that, it was ridiculous. Bella could hardly confess that he’d been her mythical hero for four years.

“Because I know no one else who might be able to help,” she said. “You’ve already educated me about gamesters.”

“That doesn’t mean I am one.”

“But you do know how to deal with dangerous men. I’m sure you have knife and pistol with you now.”

His smile was wry. “True. Very well, Miss Barstowe, let us consider the matter. Without commitment,” he warned. “When pressed for payment, why did your brother come up with such a wicked plan? Why not confess to your father? It’s the usual way. The father berates the son, but pays up for the honor of the family.”

Bella shook her head. “Father would have done more than berate. He’d have stopped Augustus’s allowance and imprisoned him at Carscourt.”

She managed not to say,
As he did me
.

“Then why didn’t Coxy go directly to your father, threatening to expose your brother as one who doesn’t pay his debts of honor? I’d say he was gentleman enough to make that threat credible.”

“Debts of honor?” Bella scoffed. “Pigeon droppings, more likely.”

“Very apt, and thus they are called. But why didn’t the sharp take that route?”

“He didn’t say, but I can guess. Any inquiries around the area would have told him what Father was like. Stern, rigid, and unforgiving. He’d punish Augustus, but he wouldn’t pay. He’d think shame was his just deserts.”

“What’s more, he was a magistrate. He would have found some crime to lay against a sharp and inflicted the worst punishment he could. Lud! Augustus has that position now, making judgments about poor unfortunates from the magistrates’ bench, when he’s a worse sinner than all of them.”

“The poor unfortunates are there for a reason.”

“I hope you never end up facing him.”

For some reason, he smiled, as if seeing a prospect he relished.

“So the sharp is balked,” he said, “and abducts you so that the ransom will pay the debt.”

“At Augustus’s suggestion,” Bella reminded him.

“I don’t forget that. I’m puzzled that he didn’t let the plan go ahead. Your father pays the ransom. Any anger falls on your head for wandering too far afield. His debt is paid.”

“Do you doubt my story?” Bella demanded, hurt. “I have no proof.”

“I believe you believe it.”

“What purpose could Coxy have in weaving it?”

“None, it would seem, but I would like to understand your brother’s plan.”

“He’s never liked me, so perhaps my fate wouldn’t weigh with him.” Even to Bella that didn’t seem enough. “He’s always been selfish. But yes, it’s hard to think he abandoned me to such a fate.”

Rain splashed her cheek, and it almost felt like a tear.

Captain Rose moved them to a more sheltered spot, frowning at the darkening clouds. “We should get back to the Compass, but let me speculate. Unfortunately I occasionally meet such men—weak and utterly selfish, and therefore always afraid. He probably intended the plan to go through, but then he began to wonder if the sharp had told you of his part, carelessly or out of spite. Or if you’d overheard something. His imagination would paint the worst outcome. If you never returned home, you could never expose him.”

“That’s monstrous!”

“But he is, isn’t he?”

Bella covered her mouth, but she knew it was exactly the right word. That knowledge had driven her here, to this desperate association. She’d simply not worked through the damning details.

“Your dear Augustus must have been very, very frightened when you returned home.”

Bella had never thought of that. “So that’s why he was so vicious!”

“How?”

Bella shook her head. “Petty things, but wearing. It doesn’t matter.”

“I doubt that,” he said, but a gust of wet wind caused him to shield her. “Back to the Compass. So you returned, were not believed, and were imprisoned. Not unreasonable treatment of a daughter who had apparently run off with a lover and been gone for days, though some families would attempt to conceal the incident, or cover it with a marriage.”

“They tried the latter. I refused.”

“Why?”

She turned narrow eyes on him. “Would you marry a foul harpy twenty years your senior who would always regard you as a penitent, never to be given any freedom to sin again?”

“Hard to imagine the situation, but no, Miss Barstowe, I wouldn’t. Do you know the amount of your brother’s debts?”

“Six hundred.”

“A modest amount to cause such mayhem.”

“Modest! Smuggling must be a very profitable business.”

“It is, but I am not a smuggler. Or rarely,” he amended.

But then the rain swept in suddenly, in a drenching downpour. He put an arm around her and hurried her toward a building. “The Crown and Anchor. They’ll serve us tea.”

Bella was having to run to keep up with him. “It’s where I was held!” she reminded him. “Someone might recognize me.”

“Let them,” he said, with a flash of grinning teeth.

Bella laughed. For the joy of running. For a man’s strong arm. For the delight of the confident grin. When had she last been so carefree?

As they dashed into the inn she thought,
At the masquerade. With the goatherd. Slipping out onto the balcony for naughty kisses.

And Captain Rose was the Duke of Ithorne’s bastard brother.

She stood stunned by the thought. Had this man, shaking water off his three-cornered hat, been at the revels, disguised as a goatherd? It wasn’t beyond belief.

Was that why she had become so attracted to him so quickly today?

What of the footman? Captain Rose again?

It thrilled her, but worried her at the same time. Might he recognize Kelano? What would be the consequences of that?

Images of beds rose in her mind. . . .