Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,23
pay for everything, and pay more than amply, out of his pocket change, no doubt. It was a pity he couldn’t pay to make this whole ghastly day vanish.
As the long summer afternoon faded, the storm dwindled to drizzling rain. She was sitting in the sickroom, she and Mrs. Nisbett by the fire, talking in low voices, when Keeffe called for her.
She went to the bed and felt his forehead. It seemed not so hot as before.
“No, no, I’ll do,” he said, gently pushing her hand away. “What a fuss over nothing. I do wonder at you, I do, fretting over a couple broken bones.”
“You have a fever,” she said.
“Had ’em before. Get ’em easy. Always did.”
“The surgeon said it was pneu—”
“What he don’t know would fill one of them encyclopeeders.”
Mrs. Nisbett came to stand beside her. “Back to his ornery self, I see.”
“You,” he said. “What’d you let my miss fret for? Whyn’t you send her to bed? She got thrown out a carriage, you know.”
“Ladies’ garments are thickly padded,” Cassandra said, “as you well know.” In his heyday, Tom Keeffe had quite the reputation with women. “I bounced a few times, but found my feet soon enough.”
He laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” she said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Not likely, miss. Like I tole His Grace . . .” He frowned. “Where’d he get to? We was talking. And do you know, miss, he ain’t”—the former governess glared at him—“isn’t half bad, once you get to know him some.”
Marry me.
Cassandra’s face was warm, and well it might be, with indignation. His wedding plans were hardly cold in their grave, and he was trying to snare another bride. When he sobered, he’d come to his senses, or as close to that state as he ever came, and celebrate the narrow escape with a tub of champagne.
She became aware of Mrs. Nisbett’s considering regard.
“The world knows the Duke of Ashmont more than some,” Cassandra said crisply. “And he’s more than half bad.”
“I need to tell him something,” Keeffe said.
“You need to rest.”
“I need to tell him something now. Before I forget. Before you dose me with laudanum again and it goes up in dreams.”
“Keeffe.”
“You might at least heed a dyin’ man’s last wish.”
“You’re not dying.”
“I might, you aggravate me enough, ’n’ work me up into a killing fever.”
She looked at Mrs. Nisbett.
“I daresay he’ll live,” the older lady said. “But we might as well send for the duke. He’ll want to know how the patient is faring.”
Cassandra rang. A maidservant came.
“Be so good as to send the duke to us,” Cassandra said.
The girl’s brow wrinkled. “The duke, Miss Pomfret? What duke?”
It was a fine joke, actually.
One of Ashmont’s better pranks, though, if all went well, nobody would know it was a prank.
It was easier than some, certainly. Enough villagers had done well by the three dukes to return their generosity with ample goodwill. When Ashmont told the innkeeper and his wife, “I wasn’t here,” they only looked at each other briefly, then nodded.
“I’ll leave it to you to pass the word,” he told them. “And any coin necessary to encourage people not to have seen me. Oh, and we’d better not forget my pistol. When found, it’s to be discreetly delivered to me in London, with a reward to be collected then. And if you’d be so kind, the same message to be communicated to the Green Man.”
Given the sum he proffered, his hosts would be so kind to their worst enemy.
He left it to them to carry out his wishes. People hereabouts would assume it was one of his pranks, and more than a few men—and women—had acted as co-conspirators at one time or another.
Having done all he could to arrange Miss Pomfret’s comfort and peace of mind, though little she knew it, he hired a post chaise larger than the cramped, two-passenger one his valet had traveled in, and he, Morris, and Sommers set out for London shortly before sunset.
London
Lord Frederick Beckingham knew about the duel this morning.
His lordship knew everything worth knowing, and more, about everybody, and most especially about His Dis-Grace the Duke of Ashmont.
As much as his lordship would like to close his eyes and stop his ears in this regard, he had a duty, which he’d never shirked.
Following the deaths, in quick succession, of a brother at Waterloo, then a wife in childbed with their stillborn daughter, the previous Duke of Ashmont had sunk into a melancholia from which he never recovered. He neglected everything, including his young son.