This Duchess of Mine

by Eloisa James

“The market at Covent Garden!” She jumped to her feet.

  “There must be many poisonous flowers that have medicinal properties. Do you remember what that old man was growing?”

  “He called them Dead Men’s Bells.” She scanned the article again. “But Withering discusses a flower called foxglove or digitalis purpurea. I can’t tell from that.”

  But Elijah’s tutors hadn’t drilled him in Latin for naught. “Purpurea,” he said, “means purple. And the flowers were purple.”

  “Let’s go,” Jemma cried.

  But Elijah stayed behind his desk. “I don’t want you to become hopeful.”

  “I am not overly hopeful. I am determined. I will not sit by and simply wait for you to die next to me. I will not!”

  When they reached Covent Garden, the flower stalls were closed.

  “The market is open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,” their footman said, after making inquiries.

  “Stay with the carriage,” Elijah told him, walking after Jemma. She was moving through the stalls at top speed, heading for the place where the old man sold his flowers. He hadn’t had a proper stall; he’d simply put out a few buckets of flowers for sale.

  He rounded a corner to find Jemma staring at the back wall where the man had sat. “There’s his stool,” Elijah said. “We’ll come back on Saturday and find him.”

  “That’s three days.”

  Elijah didn’t like the implication that he might not live three days, but he could hardly protest. Jemma turned in a slow circle and then set off, like an arrow free of its string.

  He walked after her. The closed-up stalls of the market had a melancholy aspect, as if they had grown tired and shut their eyes for the night.

  Finally he saw where Jemma was going. She had spied one stall with an occupant and was bending over the counter, talking to a little old lady wrapped in woolens.

  “Do you know which gentleman I’m referring to?” he heard as he walked up.

  “That’s not a gentleman!” the woman said with a gentle string of giggles. “That’s Stubbins. Ponder Stubbins.”

  “Of course. Could you possibly tell me how to find Mr. Stubbins?”

  She giggled again. “It does sound odd to hear a ‘Mister’ attached to Stubbins’s name.”

  “Does he live close to the market?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “You’ll have to wait for the market again. Just a few more days, that’s all. I’ll be here with daffodils, oh so many daffodils. And tulips. Do you like tulips?” she asked Elijah.

  He bowed and said, “Good afternoon, ma’am. I do like tulips.” Though in reality he hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. Certainly his cook, Mrs. Tulip, had nothing flowery about her.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I tell you something. I’m that old that I allow myself a leeway now and then! You look,” she said, leaning on the counter, “ezactly like my idea of a duke.” Giggles once again burst from her mouth. “Now isn’t that something for both of us to laugh about! As if a duke would be coming down to the flower market to find old Stubbins.”

  He smiled at her and she actually turned a little pink. “My saints, but you’ve got a pretty face,” she added. “I always says to my husband that someday I’ll meet a duke. It’s our joke. The duke’ll take me away, see, give me a carriage with gold wheels to it, and make me his beautiful bride.”

  “And what does your husband say to that?” Jemma asked.

  “He says as how what he gives me is better than a gold wheel any day,” she said, giggling madly. “But here, even as you’re not a duke, you won’t want to find Stubbins until the market opens. He lives in a bad area. I don’t even go there unless I has to.”

  “Where?” Jemma asked.

  “Spitalfields. I can’t see the two of you there.”

  “We were there less than a week ago,” Elijah said.

  “Could you give us his direction? Does he live anywhere around Cacky Street?”

  Her giggles stopped and she narrowed her eyes. “You’re missionary types, aren’t you? I know your sort. You’ll be trying to turn Stubbins into some sort of churchgoer and make him wear a hat and the rest of it.”

  “That would make me a miracle worker, not a missionary,” Elijah pointed out.

  “Well, at least you know that much.”

  “We just want to find the doctor who uses Stubbins’s flowers for medicine,” Jemma said. “It’s terribly urgent, so could you please help us?”

  “Stubbins lives in Wiggo Lane,” the woman said.

  “You’ll find him there or behind the mews, most likely. That’s where he grows all his stuff. I think he even sleeps there sometimes.” She didn’t look like laughing now. “You’re from the Watch, aren’t you? You jist look like a duke, but you’re really the law.”

  “No, not at all,” Jemma protested.

  “You’re going to drag him off to the workhouse and it’ll be my fault. I wish I’d never told you.”

  “I would never put Stubbins in the workhouse,” Elijah said mildly. “And I’ve nothing to do with the Watch. As it happens, I am a duke.”

  “You never!”

  Elijah gave her an extravagant bow. “The Duke of Beaumont, at your service, madam. I would take you away with me, but—”

  “His gold wheels are just made of brass,” Jemma said, taking his arm.

  “Oh my, and isn’t it just like a fairy tale,” the flower seller said. “The duke and duchess, and you loves each other, just like a tale, don’t you?”

  Jemma felt her smile waver. “Yes, just like that.”

  “And do ya have a carriage with gold wheels?”

  “No. But I have a beautiful bride,” Elijah said promptly.

  They found Wiggo Lane without a problem. It was one of the narrow channels that led off Cacky Street, not far from the glassworks. In the afternoon, Spitalfields looked utterly different than it had in the morning. People were sitting on stoops, and children were dashing everywhere, howling and shrieking with laughter. Laundry was hanging out to dry, nothwithstanding the fact that smoke billowed onto the clean cloth from cook fires in the street.

  Finding Stubbins wasn’t as easy as finding the lane.

  “He used to live here,” one man said, giving their footman an extremely unfriendly look. Most other people wouldn’t even answer, but just backed away or stared at the coach with grim dislike.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Elijah said, watching James approach a man who looked as if he might knock the footman down before he gave out any information. He leaned forward and called, “We’ll go to Cow Cross, James!”

  The door was unlocked, as usual, the hallway dim, and Knabby came toward them squinting. “It’s the duke again,” Elijah said, “with the duchess as well.”

  Knabby was clearly surprised. “It’s a pleasure to have you again so soon! Everyone’s in the courtyard.” He turned around and started bustling away.

  “We’re trying to find someone who lives in Spitalfields,” Elijah said, but Knabby was already through the door to the courtyard.

  It wasn’t nearly as lively this afternoon. “Cully’s sleeping,” Knabby announced. “Sophisba’s husband took her away again, and Mrs. Nibble went to stay with her sister, as has a stomach ulcer.”

  After greeting everyone in the circle, Elijah said, “We’re trying to find Ponder Stubbins, who lives in Spitalfields and raises flowers. Does anyone know him?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Waxy said, “’Course it is the duke.” But it was clearly a struggle between Spitalfields loyalty and glassworks loyalty.

  “We don’t mean him any harm,” Jemma put in. “We only want to find a doctor who buys his flowers.”

  “Oh,” Knabby said, sounding very relieved. “In that case, Stubbins is just around the corner. He lives somewhere, maybe on Wiggo? But he’s never there as his wife is a proper terror. He sleeps behind the mews in Fish Street.”

  “Excellent. We are most grateful for your help.” Elijah made the round
s of the circle again, shaking the wavering hands that were held out in his direction, and they left.

  The mews were a two-story wooden structure. The ground-story rooms were occupied by horses, busily producing manure, which made it easy enough to find Stubbins. They had only to follow the smell. It was a particularly rich, brown type of smell, perhaps because the back of the mews faced east, and sun struck the manure piles all morning.

  Stubbins had everything neatly arranged. To the left were flower beds, and to the right were fresh piles of dung.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said, leaning on a shovel. “I thought you’d be about.”

  “You did?” Jemma asked, shocked. “You thought we’d follow you here?”

  “Not you, ma’am, but your husband here. I reckoned he was curious about the manure, and I was right wasn’t I?” Without waiting for an answer, he started showing Elijah his arrangements. “It can’t be too hot. Fries the flowers, I suspect. So I rakes it here, and then I give it, oh, four or five days. Sometimes I pour fresh milk on it.”

  That would explain some of the pungency, Jemma thought.

  “Then I pile it over here and mix in a little o’ that and a little something else. Then I plant my seeds.”

  He showed them the shack where he kept his seeds, and Elijah looked at everything gravely and asked just the right sort of questions, and Jemma knew exactly why the Cacky Street Glassworks was doing so well. It was Elijah. He was grave and compassionate, and so honorable that people longed to be near him.

  A few minutes later Elijah led Stubbins to the question of the doctor.

  “He used to live in Birmingham,” Stubbins confirmed. “And then he went to one of them far-off countries, but it didn’t do the doctor’s lungs any good, so he’s back in London now. He has rooms on Harley Street, I think. ’Course I never go there because he just sends a man to pick up my flowers.”

  Jemma’s heart was pounding in her throat. “It is he,” she said, clutching Elijah’s hand. “Dr. Withering! He’s the one, Elijah, he’s the one!”

  A moment later they were back in the carriage and racing to Harley Street.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  April 4

  “Grindel’s in Wapping does not appear to be known to the headmaster of St. Paul’s,” Ashmole said, appearing like a bird of prey in Villiers’s study. “In fact, the headmaster believes there are no schools in Wapping.”

  “Any word from Templeton?”

  Ashmole’s eyes glinted with the fascinated delight that servants always display when one of their own goes bad. Villiers had seen it before. There was nothing more carnivorous than a household that had discovered a maid with child.

  The butler drew himself up to his full height—approximately that of a twelve-year-old boy. “Mr. Templeton has vacated his premises.”

  Villiers generally prided himself on his lack of reaction to unpleasant news, but he surprised himself with a hearty Anglo-Saxon oath.

  “Precisely, Your Grace,” Ashmole said, bobbing his thin neck in a gesture of solidarity. “That bird has flown.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s always money.” Ashmole hadn’t been head of the duke’s household for years for nothing. “How much did you give him?” He cackled. “Shall I let the gardener go and tell Cook to economize in the kitchen?”

  “I don’t suppose he could get at a great deal, but he certainly had means to feather his nest.” He followed up with a few more oaths.

  “We can have a Bow Street Runner after him,” Ashmole said.

  “That won’t get the money back.” But there was something darker in the back of his mind. “Why now? Why did he run now, Ashmole? It must be something to do with the children.”

  The old man stared at him, perplexed.

  “The devil take him,” Villiers said. He’d given Templeton far too much rein. “Get a Runner after him, not for the money—because I’ll never get that back—but because I want to know about those damned children.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Shall I send a footman over to Wapping to locate the school and fetch the boy?”

  Villiers pulled out the list Templeton had sent him just before he decamped to parts unknown. “We’ll just stick to the one problem at the moment. I’ll go to Wapping. Fetch me a carriage. And I need to see both Plammel and Philaster this evening, whether they’re free or not.” Those two lyrical names belonged to the unlyrical men who handled his business affairs.

  “If they’re still in London,” Ashmole cackled.

  Villiers gave him a look.

  “They’ll be here,” the butler said grudgingly. “Templeton wasn’t a man to share his profits.”

  Villiers was in a carriage five minutes later. Generally, he spent at least a half-hour with his valet before leaving the house. Since he maintained the affectation of never wearing a wig, he demanded perfection in his hair, not to mention gleaming boots, a shirt the picture of snowy perfection…

  Today he simply left the house.

  What the hell had happened to the children?

  The children, an obstinate little voice in the back of his mind reproached him, those same children whom you didn’t care a fig for a month ago.

  Yes, those children. Why had Templeton run? Mrs. Jobber was kind, and had obviously provided a good home. But then his eyes narrowed. Why didn’t Mrs. Jobber have the other children? There were five more of them, after all. Why were they not placed together?

  And what had happened two years ago, when Templeton had taken the oldest boy away to school? Villiers was quite certain that he’d never delivered any edicts about school. He’d avoided speaking or thinking about the children, in fact. He’d never asked Templeton for a report, the way he did on his wheat fields, or his tenants.

  Guilt was such a tiresome emotion.

  The village of Wapping seemed to live on the River Thames. Other places had houses and perhaps a river to the side. In Wapping, everything started at the river, and then jumbled up the bank any old how. There was a charming breeze, smelling of mud and dying fish.

  The door to the carriage opened. “Your Grace, Ashmole suggested that we go to the church. Would you like me to make inquiries?”

  Villiers waved the footman on and sat back, door shut. He felt like a fool, peering out of his window, but Wapping was fascinating. It wasn’t exactly poor—it was too lively to be contained by that paltry adjective.

  Just out his window was a great flight of stairs leading down to the Thames. It was thronged by a mess of boys, breeches rolled up, playing in the mud. Apparently the tide had covered the steps and then rolled back, leaving a thick coating.

  Villiers watched them for a time and then leaned back against his seat. He and Elijah had once larked about in the river that used to run between their estates. He corrected himself. One ought to surmise that the river was still there and not refer to it in the past tense.

  Just because he never chose to visit his estate didn’t mean that it had ceased to exist.

  The footman opened the door again. “The priest is not in residence, but the sexton reports that he knows of no Grindel’s School for Boys.” He hesitated.

  “Out with it,” Villiers said.

  “There’s apparently a dissolute man by the name of Elias Grindel, who runs a pack of five or six mudlarks. Orphans, the sexton thinks. But he can’t be the man you’re looking for, Your Grace, because—”

  “Did you get his direction?” Villiers cut him off.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  Villiers gestured for the door to be shut. He would find Templeton and have him thrown into the Clink to rot. The carriage trundled off again, stopping after a mere five minutes. He stepped out onto a street that fell away on one side, plunging down toward the river with all the abruptness of a sawed-off board. There were more steps, and more children.

  Villiers felt disgust twist in his gut.

  They weren’t playing in the mud. They were mudlarks. Boys who scavenged in the mud and the sewers to rec
over whatever they could for sale. And his son, Juby or Tobias, was likely down there as well. Some bit of his ducal bloodline was down there larking around in the muck.

  Though “larking” was an altogether too pleasant word.

  Grindel, once Villiers located him in a dingy house facing the river, was as belligerent a man as his name would lead one to expect. “I don’t have no boy named Tobias, nor Juny either,” he said, lower lip jutting out so he looked like an obstinate hedgehog.

  “Juby,” Villiers corrected him.

  Grindel just glared. “I ain’t had no dealings with a man called Templeton. I don’t run a school for boys. You have the wrong man.”

  Villiers swung his sword stick casually in front of him, as if it were a cane and he were testing its weight.

  “I hear there’s another Grindel, down in Bagnigge Wells. Mayhap he’s started a school for boys,” the man offered.

  Villiers twirled his sword stick in his hand. The sheath gleamed with the promise that the rapier inside was designed to inflict damage. Finally, he placed the point downwards, and it sank into the rotten wood at his feet.

  “Dear me,” he said gently. “And that was just the sheath.”

  Grindel’s eyes narrowed.

  “I want the boy named Tobias, sometimes called Juby. I want you to send someone to get him, now.”

  “Or what?” Grindel asked. “You’re planning to slice my gizzard because I’m not running a school for boys? I don’t even like boys. I can’t stand having them around me.”

  Villiers looked around the filthy room that Grindel had labeled his “study.” It was a study without books. In their place were warped wooden buckets, barrels, and wicker baskets. A bucket at Villiers’s feet was brimming with buttons, all shapes. He could see the open top of a basket full of coal, and a large barrel that seemed to be half full of wood chips.

  “So what do you do for a living?” he asked genially.

  “There’s no call for you to show interest,” Grindel said, not moving. He was short and sweaty, and wore a yellowed wig. Strands of greasy hair poking out from under the wig confirmed his remarkable indifference to cleanliness.