Duke Herheart Final (15 page)

Michael didn’t invite Kathryn for late evening entertainments after dinner. He watched her reluctantly retire to her room, and he hoped she would spend the time reflecting positively on all of the happenings in the last twenty-four hours. Kathryn had mentioned visiting with Cassandra, but his sister had seemed distracted and busy and even Agatha had not 86

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come down for dinner. He did see Kathryn had taken a book up to bed.

He hoped if she wasn’t going to be thinking about him that the book would put her to asleep, before half nine.

As soon as his small band of horses were assembled in the forecourt, Michael knew that Kathryn would hear the crunching of horse’s hooves and come to the window. He felt her gaze on his back and forced himself not to acknowledge her. If he did so, later he would have to answer her inevitable questions as to where he went. He hoped she would not admit to spying on him so he could avoid it altogether. Mounted on Fury, Michael whistled to his grooms Thrasher on Thunder and Marsh on Lightening. They departed in a blast of speed for Worley.

Michael’s feelings were decidedly mixed as he headed off in the direction he had run with Kathryn that afternoon. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he approached the spot where the assassin’s bullet had whizzed past her ear, just wide of her thankfully still-beating heart.

Being stalked by a shadowy assassin was unnerving but not altogether unfamiliar. He had many times known the fear of being hunted.

Michael’s battlefield skill and his known position as one of Wellington’s favorites made him a regular target of French agents bent on eliminating Wellington’s best men. Killing a battlefield commander did more damage to troop morale often than the loss of dozens of men so to them, it was like the beheading of a serpent to Boney’s minions. Only now, why was he still a target? The only explanation could be the succession.

As the three of them approached Worley, a cold, sick dread began to take root in Michael’s mind that the person who stood to gain the most from the demise of his intended and then from his death was his heir presumptive, his cousin Harold Stafford. The same man who had been with Charles when he died after falling from his horse.

* * * *

“Your Grace.” The elderly housekeeper greeted Michael with a deep bow.

“Mrs. Soggs.”

“They are in the Master’s study.” She indicated the direction.

“Is everyone here who is expected?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Soggs.” She bowed then melted into the dim hallway.

Michael knew his way but he reflected ruefully that even so, a woman did not announce visitors. But soon enough Matthew would have a proper butler. Soon.

“Worley, Weatherford, Hamilton. I see I am last to arrive. What have I missed?” Michael announced, striding into the midst of the 87

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somber gathering.

“Actually, we have been here for some time. We summoned you to join us at this hour on purpose so that you could come alone, under cover of dark. We have grave news,” Matthew said while reaching for Michael’s outstretched hand and indicating a seat near the fire.

“It sounded serious. You perceive me all ears and I, too, have news,” Michael reported.

“We found a woman, dressed as a maid, in a shallow grave on the Eastern border of Worley and Hawthorne,” Matthew Drake, Baron of Worley, reported. “Colin had brought the dogs and we were investigating my property as there have been some strange occurrences here over the last few weeks and we chanced upon the freshly turned mound.”

“I assume since you are reporting the woman was dressed as a maid, that you removed her from the grave?” Michael asked.

“Yes, we wanted to get a look at her face to see if we recognized her from the households or the village. We knew that was unlikely and we were hoping to discover the manner of death.” Matthew paused, then continued. “Manner seems easy enough to identify. She was strangled.

There is a fresh thin line around her neck from a cord and her eyes were grossly protruded. While neither of us was a particular expert, it seemed quite obvious,” Matthew finished, while blanching at the retelling.

“Her assailant…could you tell anything else?” Michael asked.

“If she had fought or had other damage? No, there was none. It was as if she had been fine one moment and strangled the next. She didn’t even have abrasions on her hands from a struggle to pull the cord from her neck,” Julian added.

“She knew him.” It was not a question. Michael noted that the others agreed with him.

“Aye,” Colin Hamilton confirmed.

“My news is just as ominous. Kathryn and I were shot at today as we ran along the path connecting Hawthorne and Worley.”

“
Shot at
. Are you sure?” Colin asked for all of them.

“Quite. It was a long barreled pistol, I’d wager Fury on it,” Michael exhorted. “We had been stopped on the bridle path and just as we started running again, the shot cracked and whizzed past her ear.”

“I know this is off the point, but did you say you were running?”

Julian asked, twisting his lips into an almost Byronic grin.

“Yes, Kathryn has this ridiculous notion of running for exercise. As you can imagine, I am not going to allow her to do it alone, so therefore I have to go and to challenge her to footraces to appear to enjoy it. It was all very unmanning to then actually lose,” he admitted to the group, each 88

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of whom had silly grins in their own particular styles on their aristocratic faces. His silly grin was for another reason altogether! Losing in the fashion he had had been entirely pleasurable.

These men had been his best friends and closest confidantes since they were boys. Each had saved the other’s life on at least one occasion and they had all served their country on the Continent in some capacity over the last ten years. Julian as a spy behind the lines in France because of his uncanny resemblance to the native population and command of their tongue, Matthew the youngest, as a much-celebrated Cavalry officer, Michael as a battlefield commander and trusted confidante of Wellington himself and Colin who had been an emissary attached to the consulate and who on many occasions had run messages from Wellington to agents of Prinny himself. Michael trusted each of them with his life and more importantly with that of his bride-to-be. They needed to know the full extent of his thoughts, about just what was going on.

“I think my cousin, Harold Stafford, is behind all of this,” Michael informed the group that at that moment was still mulling his announcement that he and his proposed fiancée’ had spent the afternoon running around his property. He thought it might be the fact that he had had an altogether too cat-with-the-cream look on his face that had actually gotten their attention.

“The succession?” Colin asked.

“Exactly. Make sure to eliminate any possible posthumous heir or shall we say, the chance of one and then kill me.”

“When I asked you…” Julian began.

“You were absolutely right. I was too stubborn to admit you had the right of things. I had only known her for one demmed day and have only really just admitted to myself that she is going to be the Duchess.” He gave a sheepish half-smile that had Julian smirking again. His friend knew only too well that Michael had been hedging and was clearly besotted with his intended long before his admission to this group. “So Kathryn has to be eliminated even before we can get married so that she’s just a dead
visitor
. If we made our wedding or even our betrothal official, she’d be a dead
Duchess
.” He winced as he said it and the other men looked gravely forward knowing he was right, no matter how callous it sounded.

“Because once you’re married, both of you dying are too suspicious.

As long as she’s an unknown traveler who you really haven’t introduced to anyone yet, no one is likely to hear of her death in London, so your demise is not nearly as suspicious,” Matthew voiced for the group.

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“I know Harold’s your heir, but why suspect him?” Colin asked not because none of them knew the answer but more because they needed to hear the answer said aloud.

“He is the only one. All other potential heirs are far away and have no reason to think I might not take up the reins. He was probably planning this since Charles…” he stopped in mid-sentence and he was not the only one who realized where his thoughts were leading. Charles had been with Harold Stafford when he died or more to the point, Harold had been with Charles when he died.

“He probably had a hand in it then and realized while I was off at war…”

“And possibly wouldn’t return…” Julian observed, not particularly helpfully.

“That with both of you gone and your father’s dissolute behavior…”

Colin added.

“He was as good as the Duke in short order,” Matthew finished for all of them.

“Thank you all for the Shakesperean rendition of reading your lines.

I can take it from here, as I know damn it all to bloody hell that my family’s behavior is what got us here. Now, how do we catch him?” An emotionally spent and now altogether shaken Michael slumped into the nearest chair. “I need a brandy.”

Colin crossed to the decanter and poured three fingers, then handed the glass to Michael.

“We’ll have to draw him out in the open, catch him in the act of trying again. A trap,” Julian proposed.

“A trap is all well and good, but I am sure I’m not going to like the suggestion of bait. Can we think of something else?” Michael asked wearily.

They debated and schemed and strategized until Michael’s head was ready to explode with all the myriad ways his conniving cousin could kill his bride-to-be and then take him with her. “I need to be getting back. All these clandestine meetings will be noticed. Jules, she saw you the other night and she asked me about it but I am just not ready to scare her yet, mainly because I’ll have to tell her why she’s a target.”

“Haven’t gotten around to the proposal yet?” Colin chuckled.

“I don’t think anyone but the staff is ready for it, least of all Kathryn,” Michael admitted.

“So, you haven’t really told us much about her. What has made you sure this is the one?” Matthew steepled his fingers and leaned back in the chair, waiting for an answer Michael was not completely ready to 90

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divulge. He was not ready to discuss why she was indeed right for the job. But they were going to help him save her and catch a murderer.

They deserved the truth.

“She is the perfect candidate…smart, generous, capable and before you ask, she is quite comely for those of you have not seen her face.”

“Comely how?” Julian seemed to be interested in the lady’s looks, capability and generosity be damned, in the face of a pretty face.

“Kathryn is the woman you would create if you wanted to mold the earth, the sun, kindness, happiness, freedom, health and intelligence into one package. She is quite literally every color of the earth—bronze, honey, gold and brown with a touch of green in her eyes married with the intelligence and heart of the goddesses—the strength of Diana and the sense of Artemis. For sheer physical charms, she is a blatantly, frighteningly, brilliant Aphrodite.”

No one said another word for a very long time.

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Chapter Ten

The next morning after breakfast, Kathryn decided it was time to take matters into her own hands regarding underwear. She needed some badly. She would ask Ellie to make her some panties. Washing or rather rinsing in soapy water the same panties over and over again had made them rather ripe and wearing none was just too freaky for her. Going commando was for guys and she just couldn’t take it anymore. In the meantime, there might not be any women’s underwear in this house but there darn sure were some man’s boxer style drawers.

Well I know one way to find out about a man’s underwear she
thought determinedly and turned toward the stairs to corner her prey.

* * * *

“Your Grace!” Mrs. Luverna Pembroke effused, reaching for Michael’s hands. He took hers, bowing over them and getting a dreadful nose full of her fragrance. If Kathryn was essence of America, Luverna Pembroke was essence of boudoir! She smelled as overdone as she was dressed, too many flounces and feathers and odors. His study would need to be aired out after she left and he was already getting lightheaded.

“We, the committee and I, want to talk with you about the fall harvest festival. Now that you are here and established, it is high time we got back into the swing of things. We’ve missed it the last two years.”

She penitently bowed her head to him he thought to show respect for his family’s losses.

“Mrs. Pembroke, it is my intention to reinstate the festival. I have invited my Aunt Agatha Adger to come serve as a hostess in my house and my sister Lady Cassandra is recuperating. They will both need a little time to…”

“Yes, yes, they will want to jump right in but no fear, we will have it all under control…the committee and I.”

“Mrs. Pembroke, I will have Lady Agatha call on you and the Committee once she has settled in.” His tone had become more firm and only a slow top would have missed the steely edge.

“Well, we will need to get started soon…should plan on having…”

“Mrs. Pembroke!”

She finally stopped and looked into his face and realized too late that he was taking charge of the conversation.

“I have just returned from eight years overseas and my Aunt has just 92

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taken up residence. We will call on you when we are ready.” His icy stare had her cheeks flushing and she looked like she might have just realized she had angered him. He wouldn’t tell her that she had come on the worst possible day. Fear for someone’s life had made him absolutely foul.

“Yes, well…just so…” she stammered.

“Just so. I appreciate your interest and we will certainly be glad for your assistance and that of the committee when we are ready to proceed.