The Tattooed Duke (3 page)
The Writing Girls
Offices of
The London Weekly
The following day, Wednesday
E
liza dashed down Fleet Street. Her heart boomed in her chest. It hurt to breathe.
It had been a trial to sneak out past Saddler, the butler, and the lot of footmen that stood about. Mrs. Penelope Buxby, the housekeeper, was easier to avoid once she started with the whiskey. It was late afternoon; she had begun at luncheon. Jenny agreed to cover for Eliza’s absence, saying that she was sweeping in the attic. No one would look for her there.
Eliza arrived at 57 Fleet Street, breasts heaving and heart pounding. She nodded to Mehitable Loud, the enormous and terrifying-looking but friendly giant who protected the offices and all those in it, particularly Mr. Knightly, the owner-editor-proprietor of London’s most widely read, gossiped-about newspaper.
Eliza had not fully composed herself when she finally dashed into the weekly meeting of the writers of
The London Weekly
. Late. Damien Owens and Alistair Grey stopped talking and heads swiveled to look in her direction. Knightly noted her attire with a lift of his brow.
She wore a plain gray dress, with her white apron still pinned to the front, and a little white bonnet over her hair. There hadn’t been the time or place to change. Her hands were pink and raw from a morning spent scrubbing floors.
It was Annabelle who gave voice to the question: “Eliza, why are you dressed as a servant?”
“I have recently taken employ in the household of the Duke of Wycliff,” she answered, biting back a smile as the room erupted into murmurs and she noted the gleam in Knightly’s eyes and the grin tugging at his lips.
They knew what this meant: a spy in the house that all of London was gagging to know about.
Eliza had always written stories that took her undercover, often in disguise, to explore a side of London most never saw—and certainly one that other papers rarely covered. She wrote about the penny weddings of lower classes, or quack medicines, and once even spent a few days in the workhouse in order to alert Londoners to the real conditions.
It was nothing new for her to immerse herself so fully, to put her body and soul on the line for the paper. But this time it was different, because there was a scandalous, mysterious, unconventional duke involved. Even more pressing, this time her every column submitted could be her last.
But not this one. She grinned. The one in her hand was
gold.
“ ‘The Tattooed Duke,’ ” she added, and
The Weekly
staff exploded with questions. Her heart was still beating fast and she felt light-headed. It wasn’t just the mad dash to arrive, but the novel sensation and heady feeling of being the center of attention.
Eliza handed the sheet to Knightly, wincing at how it had become damp and crinkled during her race to the offices. He began to read.
It was the best of times and it was the worst of times for the new Duke of Wycliff, recently returned to London to reclaim an old, notorious title. He looks nothing like a duke ought to. His hair is kept scandalously long; it is not the fashion now, nor was it when he quit England ten years ago. Like a common sailor, this duke wears a small gold hoop in one ear.
But those are trifling things in comparison to the duke’s tattoos . . .
Knightly skimmed ahead, settling on one line to read aloud: “ ‘His appearance is that of some wild, heathen warrior,’ ” and Eliza realized that her face surely took on fiery hue. Had she known Knightly would read the story—written feverishly late last night—she might not have written those words.
She glanced at her friends. Dear Annabelle’s blue eyes were wide with shock, and Julianna’s delight was unmistakable. Julianna possessed an insatiable taste for gossip, and this was undoubtedly quenching it. Sophie was listening with obvious interest.
“This is wonderfully scandalous,” Julianna murmured. She was the author of “Fashionable Intelligence,” the best gossip column in London. And she was Lady Julianna Roxbury, née Somerset.
“Scandal equals sales,” Knightly remarked automatically. It was the phrase upon which he had built his ever-growing publishing empire.
“Scandal equals published,” Eliza whispered under her breath. Annabelle Swift, advice columnist and the sweetest girl in the world, sympathetically nodded her head.
“Scandal equals tell me more,” Julianna said when the meeting concluded a short while later.
“Yes, everything,” Sophie added. Since her marriage to the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, Sophie occasionally wrote about weddings, which she hated, in her column “Miss Harlow’s Marriage in High Life.” But she more often wrote about fashion, which she loved.
“Thank you both for your letters of reference,” Eliza began, and her rich, titled friends both laughed. The letters had been a necessary part of her application for the position of household servant. Eliza continued, “The housekeeper was shocked that someone of my impeccable qualifications would wish to leave your households to work for Wycliff.”
“Little does she know . . .” Sophie murmured.
“I am a terrible housemaid, but no one else is lining up to take my place,” Eliza said. “ It seems the duke’s reputation scared off all but the most desperate applicants; the rumors of his debts scared off the rest. How lucky for me.”
“Good help is so hard to find,” Julianna said wistfully.
“They will be lining up after your story about the tattooed duke is published,” Sophie said.
“Which begs the question, dear Eliza, of how you know about those tattoos,” Julianna asked pointedly.
“I’m sure everyone was perishing with curiosity but would not dare ask in front of the group,” Annabelle added.
“I might have encountered His Grace in the bath,” Eliza said, realizing that those words didn’t quite explain it at all. They didn’t capture the candlelight, for instance, the steam rising from the hot water, or how she knelt by his side and traced her fingers along the inky swirls of his tattoo.
“Oh my goodness,” Annabelle gasped. “Did he try to take advantage of you?”
“No,” Eliza said hesitatingly. But their lips had been close enough for a kiss. “I merely slipped in to leave a drying cloth for His Grace.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Julianna declared. “The Wycliff dukes are notorious rakes, and known to enjoy their housemaids.”
“I have so many chores that I haven’t the time for that,” Eliza deadpanned. “At night I’m too exhausted.”
“Spoken like a wife,” Sophie said, grinning.
“What’s he really like?” Annabelle asked. “Is he nice?”
“Nice is not quite the word,” Eliza answered. “Given that he was rumored to have been a pirate. His idiot cousin said something about him ravishing an entire harem in one night.”
“Ah, so he is not your average gentleman,” Julianna remarked with a gleam in her eye, which Eliza matched.
“Is he handsome, then?” Sophie asked wistfully. “He sounds handsome. There is nothing quite like a handsome duke.” He certainly wasn’t beautiful—there was something too sharp in his cheekbones, too rugged in his unshaven jaw and long hair roughly tied back in a queue. Eliza recalled that scar on his lip, suggesting all his adventures. And then his gaze—so very aware, so very bold.
“In a way . . . a way that leaves a girl breathless.”
“I daresay the Wycliff tradition will live on another day,” Julianna murmured.
“Or night,” Sophie added.
“I told you both, I’m too busy and too tired,” Eliza said, though it was only partially true. The thrill of chasing and capturing a story like this kept her up writing at all hours. As for the Duke himself . . . the word
yes
burned on her lips.
But
nothing
could get in the way of getting her stories printed. Not when it seemed she had written pure gold with this one. Not when every column could possibly be her last.
“When do we get to make the acquaintance of this duke?” Julianna asked. “This oh-so scandalous duke.”
“I haven’t noticed a swarm of invitations. But I’m sure he’d take your call,” Eliza answered. No one came to call, other than his idiot cousin Basil. He didn’t receive many letters either. She’d thought there would be a swarm ready to make his acquaintance—he was a duke, after all—but it seemed word had already traveled that he was . . . unusual.
“We cannot call upon him,” Sophie said morosely.
“Rules. Scandal. Angry husbands, etcetera,” Julianna explained.
“Ah, yes,” Eliza said, reminded of that vast gulf between her friends the duchess and the countess, and herself, the daughter of an actress and playwright. There were so many pesky social rules that she never bothered with. “Pity that. I should enjoy watching the exchange.”
“We shall throw a party and invite him,” Sophie suggested.
“He does not seem inclined to socialize,” Eliza said. Thus far he had spent most of his hours in a locked room—
whatever did he do in there?
—or in his private study with maps and books and journals, which she was eager to obtain. He took meals with his one-eyed, one-armed friend Harlan, but otherwise kept to his work.
“A brooding, tattooed, recluse duke,” Annabelle said breathlessly. “The housemaid with a double life. It’s a Minerva Press novel come to life.”
Eliza laughed and said, “Except for all the scrubbing of floors, which is not anyone’s idea of romance.”
In Which Scrubbing Floors Is Romantic
T
he following day found Eliza scrubbing the foyer floors and eating her words. Saddler, the butler, was nearby in his pantry obsessively polishing the silver. The door was ajar, so he could hear if her work went idle for a moment. The butler, she discovered, also had an unnerving habit of silently appearing behind her and giving her a horrible fright just in those moments when she paused to let her mind wander from her work.
But it was not the butler on her mind.
His Grace had strolled by, and Eliza spent the next hour reliving all seven seconds that it took him to stroll through the foyer from the drawing room to his library and ogle her shamelessly.
When the duke appeared, she had been on her hands and knees, in a position of utter supplication, and vexed with the strands of hair falling in her face. Her cheeks were flushed, due to steam rising from the bucket of hot soapy water.
He did not ignore her, as he ought to have done. She’d heard that servants in some households were required to turn and face the wall when their masters appeared.
Instead, the duke indulged in a look that would have been horribly rude for the liberty of it. If she’d had a daughter and a man looked at her that way, she would have called him out for the hot, fierce gaze that freely swept slowly over her breasts, the dip in her back, and the rise of her bottom. It was so brazen, so bold, that she could feel it.
An hour later she was still feeling it—the heat of it, the shock of it, the mock outrage and secret pleasure.
In Which the Duke Curses His Fate
The following evening
W
ycliff pulled a sip from his tankard of ale and muttered a stunning array of curses. “Oh damn. Oh bloody hell. Oh Lord above and Lucifer in the heavens. Shit.”
Timbuktu had always been far away, but not far like this. He’d dreamed of being the first European to make it there—and back. It was a challenge that had stayed with him through the years as he ambled around the world, taking advantage of opportunities that came his way. He had been a reckless wanderer in the manner of a Wycliff, but the discipline he inherited from his mother—
where else would it have come from?—
was boldly asserting itself.
Wycliff wanted to lead a proper expedition. He wanted to accomplish something—especially something that had nothing to do with the circumstances of his noble birth.
He had a dream, a plan. He would have to let it go.
He took another long sip of his drink.
Beside him, Harlan appraised the serving wenches and barmaids of this pub just off St. James’s street and said, “Now there’s a fetching lass.”
Wycliff followed his gaze and concluded that Harlan was very deep into his cups or utterly desperate after long, chaste months at sea. The chit was fine. But he wouldn’t have classified her as “a fetching lass” by any stretch.
“Are you quite sure? Because you’ve had a few, and you only have one working eye,” he pointed out.
Harlan adjusted his eye patch with his one good arm, the one that wasn’t wrapped in a sling made out of an old bedsheet.
“Oh, I’m quite sure that I’ve had a few and have been at sea for a few months,” Harlan replied.
To which Wycliff raised his glass and said, “Cheers.”
She wasn’t a looker; Harlan could have her. Not like that maid, Eliza. Now
she
was a fetching chit. Every time he encountered her around the house, he noticed something about her, like the perfect, pert shape of her bum. Or her breasts, which promised to be a good handful. Or a figure that made a man ache and think extremely ungentlemanly thoughts.
But it was her eyes that affected him most, and not because they reminded him of the sea and the sky and other lovely blue things. She really looked at him, searching, curious—when she ought to turn and face the wall whenever he passed.
Wycliff had no interest in rebuking her for that. He was a terrible duke in that way. Mrs. Buxby ought to have, if she wasn’t so drunk all the time. But she’d been the housekeeper since before he was born, and he wasn’t about to reprimand her. Besides, the Wycliffs were never ones to keep a conventional household.
He sipped his ale again. Like all the Wycliffs before him, he was hankering after the maid, when he had real problems to face. Bloody hell and damnation. He was thinking with the wrong organ.
“I’ll be back shortly,” Harlan said. “Actually, I hope I’m not back for an hour at least. Maybe longer,” he added before downing his ale and sauntering across the room to chat up the barmaid who had caught his eye.
They were drinking because Wycliff had received awful news that day. They were also drinking because he could not tolerate the confines of Wycliff House with that information looming over his every breath. And especially not with that housemaid, Eliza, sauntering from room to room, hips swaying, pink lips smiling and tempting him with racy thoughts. And then her breasts . . .
He wanted to bend her over the dining table and ravish her. Or the desk, or one of the twenty beds, or any piece of furniture, really. The sooner the better, too, since every last stitch of furniture would likely need to be sold.
That was the news he had received today, from a pipsqueak solicitor and a banker who resembled a whale: There could be no expedition. At least not one he funded himself, because His Grace, the eighth Duke of Wycliff, was broke.