The Accidental Duchess (19 page)

“A small one. It was not important.”

Emma leveled that frank gaze at her. “It has much affected your mood for something not important.”

“She cast aspersions upon an old friend who cannot defend himself.”

“Are you speaking of Lakewood?”

“How did you know?”

“I only guessed. His ghost has a way of appearing too often in our lives. You must forgive Cassandra. The man brought her to the edge of ruin, so she is hardly able to see anything good in him.”

Lydia turned and stared at Emma. “I know that she refused to marry him after a minor sort of compromise. I always thought that very sane of her. However, it hardly is reason to condemn the man’s character.”

“There are no minor compromises. She paid a high price for her refusal to marry him, Lydia. She left England soon after, to go on tour with her aunt, and was abroad for two years to escape the scandal.”

Lydia recalled Cassandra’s words in the storage room. He would do anything to marry well, she had said.

“The gentlemen believed he pined for her to the end,” Emma said as the carriage stopped again. “For a long time they thought the duel was about her, but are now convinced not.”

This day had held many shocks, but none so big as this one. “Do they know who it was about instead?”

Emma shook her head. “Nor will the duke say. If he did not speak of it at his trial, he probably never will.” Emma accepted the footman’s hand and stepped down from the coach. Distracted now, and looking tired, she walked toward the house’s door.

Lydia stuck her face to the coach window. “Emma, why did they ever think it was Cassandra?

Emma turned back for a moment. “I suppose they thought that because to the end of his life, he kept telling them that Cassandra was the only woman he would ever love.”

“S
ince he is still here in London, he on occasion sees some of his friends from the guard. Privately, of course. While you spared him public disgrace, they all knew he sold out under pressure and that never is good news.”

“You are very good at this, Ambury. I should have hired you for all kinds of investigations in the past. I had asked his old comrades-in-arms for his whereabouts last year, and learned nothing.”

“Did you ask as a sympathetic new friend who had just bought them several rounds in a tavern, or as the Duke of Penthurst who wanted to find a man whose career he had helped ruin? Even if you attempted the former, they would have smelled the latter. Men will reveal in confidences what they never will under coercion.”

They rode through the City on the streets surrounding Covent Garden. This area of London sported a broad assortment of people of all classes. Whores loitered at corners not far from coffee shops frequented by men of the ton. Items of all kinds overflowed markets large and small. Thousands crammed the old buildings lining the narrow streets.

Ambury removed a small paper from his coat and checked it, then twisted to ascertain the numbers of the buildings. “It should be after the next crossroads.”

A few minutes later he stopped his horse and dismounted. “Up one level, I was told. In the front.”

Penthurst swung down and tied his horse. “I must ask you to stay here.”

“If you like, but I have a personal interest, don’t I?” His tight expression indicated he had realized he too had been used by Lakewood. Ambury no longer defended Lakewood, and said he knew far more than anyone guessed, but Penthurst doubted he had escaped scathing disappointment on realizing his friendship had been tainted this way.

“I told you not to think too deeply on it.”

“Good of you. The mind, however, cannot always stop its thoughts. As I recall, he came to me twice. Perhaps he turned to you because it would be rash to drink from the same well too often.”

“Something like that.”

“How much like that?”

He wanted to know it all, of course. He had the ability to find out if left to his own devices. Perhaps half a loaf would dissuade him from doing that. “Lakewood first exploited Southwaite after you. He then turned to me after approaching Kendale, in the army himself at the time, who insisted on meeting the aspiring officer to assess fitness rather than relying on Lakewood’s good word.”

Ambury laughed, bitterly. “Well, God bless Kendale. No shortcuts on duty for him.”

“No.”

“Southwaite too, though. Does he know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“No reason for him to, it seems to me.”

“I agree.”

Ambury looked up to the second-level window. “It was said he drinks. It might be wise to have me come with you.”

“I think I can still pacify a drunk if I have to.”

“Have it your way.”

He entered the building. Smells assaulted him. Fish, onions, tallow, and decay mixed with the sour stink of people not given to cleanliness in either body or home. High above a child screamed. He passed a door out of which a hot argument seeped.

At the top of the stairs he found the door to the chamber that would overlook the street. A young man answered his knock. Dark hair ungroomed and slack jaw unshaved, his pasty color said he had not seen daylight in a while.

He had never met Michael Greenly. A mistake that. Kendale would have found him lacking. He was not foxed yet, but halfway there, and his eyes held surly lights that did not speak well for his temperament.

Penthurst felt stock being taken, such as one assesses horses up for auction. Whatever Greenly saw had him backing into his chamber.

There was only one, clearly. It held a bed, table, and a heap of clothes. A bottle of gin stood on a bookshelf not far from the bed.

“Who might you be?”

“Penthurst.”

Greenly chewed that over, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re the reason I was forced to sell out.”

“I’m also the reason you had a commission to start.”

“You got your money for that, free and clear, looks like to me. I’m the one who was out thousands.”

He resisted the temptation to hit the man, but only because his anger was for another person. He knew Lakewood had used them all. He had not known for certain until this moment that he had also implicated all of them. “Sit, please. I want to talk with you about that.”

“Nothing to say, is there. Bled me well, you did, then turned around and—”

“Sit.”

Greenly sat.

“I have some simple questions for you, Mr. Greenly. It would be best if you answered them simply too. And honestly.”

Greenly glared at him.

“When you bought your commission, to whom did you pay the bribe?”

“I just said. You—”

“To whom did you hand the money?”

“Your friend you used as a go-between. Lakewood.”

“Did you ever see anyone else with him during your negotiations? Think hard.”

“Not with him, but once I followed him out of the tavern where we met and he was entering a carriage and there was a woman inside. Pretty. Red hair. Not that fire color. Darker. More brown. I remember because he had just told me the price and I was thinking it would be a long time before I could afford such as she.”

“Did he ever speak about her?”

Greenly laughed. “Are you worried that your mistress was exposed? I guessed that was who she was. Lakewood told me about her, and how she ran things so you would not dirty your hands.”

This was what Greenly had revealed at the start—that he had paid a duke’s mistress money for his recommendation. When confronted, Lakewood had denied any woman was involved. It had been a gallant lie. Greenly’s description would help, but not enough. “Did he tell you her name?”

“A little late to be trying to clean up, isn’t it? Nah, he never said her name. He was discreet, for all the good it did him with you.”

Lakewood had told a story, and this man had no reason to doubt it. Much like his own plot to explain his marriage to Lydia, the story fit all the known facts very neatly. Greenly would never be persuaded it was all a lie, but one had to try the truth, despite the long odds against it.

“Mr. Greenly, I never received your money. The amount would not have affected my comfort much, so you should ask yourself why I would risk my good name for it. Nor did I have the good fortune to enjoy a mistress at the time. Lakewood lied to you. He kept the money, and perhaps shared it with conspirators unknown, including that woman. Since I was not involved, I did not betray you when, upon hearing about your accusation while in your cups, I did nothing to save you.”

“Like hell.”

“Believe what you will, but there it is.” He looked around. “How do you live?”

“They let me sell out. I got that much back out of it.”

“Be glad. Others did not.” He removed twenty pounds from his coat and set it on the table. “Go back to Yorkshire and your family. Nothing good will come to you in this town.”

Ambury waited outside. “Did you learn anything?”

“A few things. Not enough.” Not enough, and all of it disheartening.

They mounted their horses.

“Are you going to tell me?” Ambury asked.

“To what end? Nothing good, that is certain. I already regret that I told you what I did.” He turned his horse. “Thank you for finding him. I am leaving town for the afternoon, so will part from you here.”

He rode off and aimed his horse for the river. Two hours later he was swinging an ax on Mr. Gosden’s farm.

 • • • 

L
ydia ate dinner with Rosalyn. That was a mistake. Rosalyn quizzed and poked about the day with Emma and Cassandra. It took more effort than Lydia wanted to expend to avoid being cornered into a lie or an indiscretion.

Better to have just stayed in her apartment, where she retreated upon returning from the auction house, and to where she ran after the meal ended. Penthurst had been gone all day and it appeared he might be gone all night. The hours ticked by with silence next door.

She could not escape a melancholy that had entered her after the day’s outing. Hearing Lakewood disparaged by women she respected created confusion about her memories. Hearing that he had claimed an unending love for Cassandra made her sick at heart.

She drifted toward sleep in her sadness. Then, abruptly, her senses snapped alert. She cocked her head. All still remained silent next door, but she sensed movement there, as if it came to her through the floorboards rather than through sounds. She listened intently and finally she heard steps on the other side of the wall, in the duke’s dressing room. Voices too, she thought.

She padded over to the connecting door. She opened it a crack and heard the duke tell his valet to call for hot water, lots of it. She ventured down the short corridor and peered around the corner.

“What happened to you?” she cried.

Penthurst stood there, absolutely filthy. Mud covered his boots. His cravat was gone and his top shirt button undone. Soiling showed on his coats and shirt, but his face had received the worst of it.

“Were you waylaid and thrown in a ditch?” She went over to him. “Have you been hurt?”

A corner of his mouth curved up. “I am not hurt at all. I have been visiting a tenant’s farm.”

“And he threw mud at you?”

He shook off his coat and unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt. “I was working there. I do that sometimes. Think of it as a small eccentricity on my part.” He stripped off his shirt and threw it onto a chair.

“I would think of it that way, except you are not  eccentric. Well, keeping that queue and the old fashions as long as you did came close to eccentricity, I suppose. Still, you are not odd the way eccentrics tend to be.”

“I’m not? And here I was working so hard at it.”

Three servants with buckets of water filed in and lined the buckets up on the floor. His valet showed at the door to the bedchamber, but the duke gestured for him to leave. Then he poured water into the bowl.

“I should leave so your valet can serve you.”

“Do you want to leave?”

“No. I was bored and could not sleep, but did not want to wake Sarah.”

“Stay if you want, although watching me wash will be poor entertainment.”

As it turned out, that was not true. She had never seen a man wash before, and found it quite interesting. She also had the rare chance to look at those shoulders and back and chest and arms completely for a long time, not just glimpse them in the little vignettes she saw in bed.

“Why were you working on the tenant’s farm? Is he ill?”

Having washed his face and neck, he went to work on his chest and arms. A soapy rag lathered him up nicely. Another rag began removing the soap. “He is not ill. He thinks I am, a little. In the head. I go about once a month, or if I need to think, or bury a hot anger. It is physical and worthwhile and not at all ducal.” He looked at her. “You might find something like that too. Something that reminds you that you are human, so being a duchess does not go to your head too much.”

“Being an earl’s daughter did not go to my head too much.”

“It will be different. Believe me. You have seen how duchesses wield power among both women and men. Even if you do not try to do that, you will be treated as a woman who can.”

“I will put my mind to finding a way to humble myself. It is a little peculiar that you chose this work for that purpose. I can think of a hundred other ways to be reminded you are human,” she said. “Most will not make you so dirty.”

He beckoned her with a crooked finger. She went over and he handed her a soaped rag. “It is too late for a bath, so I will need to wash thoroughly this way. Since you scared off my valet, you can do my back.”

“I can? What fun.” She pushed up her dressing gown’s sleeves, stood behind him, and scrubbed away, reaching high to attend to all of him.

“I first worked a field when I was ten,” he said while she kept at it, only now with long, soapy caresses. “A cousin and I had cruelly teased the son of one of my father’s tenants. When my father heard of it, he ordered me to work for that farmer for a week. I was angry the first day, indignant the second, sorry for myself the third, and accepting the fourth. By the seventh day I discovered there were things about it that I did not mind and even enjoyed. When that field was harvested months later, I watched, knowing my labor had helped grow that crop.” He turned and took the rag from her and handed her one for rinsing. “So I go back and do it sometimes, when I need to think or to escape being a duke for a few hours.”

She finished with his back, and wondered why today he had wanted to forget he was a duke.

He sat down and pulled off his boots, then stood and began on the buttons on his breeches. He paused and looked at her. “You may want to go now. I still have washing to do.”

She sat in a chair and tucked her legs under her. “I’ll cover my eyes so you are not embarrassed.” She smiled brightly to hide how the notion of going away and being alone again with all those sad and confusing thoughts dismayed her.

He saw it anyway. He set down the cloth and came over to her. Wet hand under her chin, he raised her face and looked in her eyes. “You are sad about something. Was my aunt unkind to you?”

“I am not really sad. I am just tired of trying to sort through some things that I need to think about. They do not signify to anyone else except me and I cannot see through them clearly tonight.”

He did not appear convinced, but he released her. “If you are seeking distraction, perhaps this will help.” With that he turned his back on her and dropped his lower garments.

That distracted her very nicely. She admired his bum and decided it was the nicest of all she had seen. What a treat to be able to study it up close like this too. He washed the other side of him while she experienced a profound aesthetic experience. His long, lean legs in particular occupied her attention. She had not realized before how handsome they were. Nicely shaped and just perfect with the rest of him.

He bent to wash them, his muscles stretching and his body angling. Then that soapy rag came around his hip to wash that alluring bum. On impulse, she went over and took it. “I can do this too.”