Daring a Duke

by Claudia Dain

  “You’ll get used to it,” she said, pulling a dangling button from his waistcoat and tossing it into the air, catching it in her palm, grinning like the wildly in love woman she was.

  “See to that, will you?” he said, smiling at her, torn mouth and all, as he made his way to his chair at the massive table.

  It was then that, finally, the guests were allowed to sit and enjoy Lord and Lady Iveston’s wedding breakfast.

  They relished every bite.

  Twenty-eight

  Three weeks later

  Everyone was leaving. Oh, not literally everyone, but so very many. It was the end of another London Season. Town houses would be closed up and people would escape the heat and dirt of Town for their Country seats. The normal cycle of English life, for the aristocracy, that is. And Sophia was that, fulfilling her mother’s whispered expectations. What Sophia wanted for herself, now, was something else entirely.

  Jane and Edenham, his two lovely children, along with two female servants and two male servants, were sailing for New York today on the Plain Jane. The sun was bright, the water of the Pool of London sparkling silver and pew-ter, the ships rising tall against the wharves and smelling of tar and hemp. Sophia had come to see them off simply because she could not stay away.

  The river called to her today.

  It was a season for going.

  Markham, her son, and John, her brother, along with his three sons, had left from France for America over a week ago. Markham would be gone for a year at least, more likely two. John and his boys she might never see again. One never knew with John; the forests and fields between the Mohawk and the Ohio Rivers were not tamed. Markham would grow into a man there, which was why she had sent him, albeit without his knowledge. Caroline, her daughter, believed she was pregnant and was cozily nesting in her husband’s estate.

  The river called to her today.

  One of the men she hunted had boarded a ship in New York bound for London. Perhaps he was here now. Perhaps the river was calling her to him. Perhaps, wherever he was, he thought himself safe.

  Sophia smiled and looked up at the main mast of the Plain Jane, the gulls circling and crying shrilly against the sky. Life was not tamed. Only a fool, or a child, believed that he could ever be truly safe. Had she ever believed it?

  No, she had not.

  “Sophia?” Jane said, walking toward her across the wide planks of the wharf, her straw hat tied on with a scarlet ribbon, her cloak of amber wool. “Sophia,” Jane repeated when she was closer, her smile wide. “Hugh won’t tell me a thing, but I know you will. What advice did you give him to win me over?”

  “Beyond his pretty face, you mean?” Sophia said, smiling. “I did think that his beauty should have been enough to beat against your strongest prejudices, but you are far stronger than that, aren’t you?”

  “Of course, though I’m sure that was a complete surprise to Hugh.”

  “Perhaps not a complete surprise, but a welcome one, nonetheless. Now, darling, of course I shall reveal all,”

  Sophia said, looking out at the river and the crowd of masts, like a forest upon the water. “I simply and most astutely told darling Edenham that, being a true American,

  you valued most what you fought for the hardest. All he had to do, poor darling, was find a means to induce you to fight for him.”

  Jane’s eyes revealed her disbelief. “But I did no such thing! He is the one who fought for me! You were there.

  You witnessed it all.”

  “I did,” Sophia said. “And you are therefore not able to deny to me that you fought for Edenham’s respect, attention, and regard. That you insisted he comply with your standards of a courtship, even to this sailing to New York to gain your father’s approval. That his children meet you and approve of you first, which is never done by the way, which they have and do. That he fight your brothers to prove his worth. That he love Jane Elliot, American, and not Jane, the marginally acceptable niece of the Duke of Hyde. Now, was that not a fight? It took you the better part of a day, but you won it. You won it, darling.”

  Jane’s beautiful hazel eyes shone with unshed tears, and then she began to softly laugh.

  “I did all that? I did, didn’t I?” Jane said over her laughter. “What an adventure it was, and still is.”

  Sophia took Jane’s hand in her own and grew somber.

  “It is an adventure, Jane, but be certain you know where you are going. You will be a duchess, an English duchess.

  Your life will be here, just as his life is here. Your children will be part of the English aristocracy. There is no changing that once it is done.”

  “Yes,” Jane said. “I know. I’ve thought of that. It is strange to consider.”

  “But consider it well. Your life will be here.”

  Jane searched Sophia’s face, placing her hands around Sophia’s. “Has it been so very difficult for you?”

  Sophia pulled her hand free and smiled. “Nothing is very difficult for me, darling. I thought that was obvious.”

  Her smile faded. “It is only that I want you to know what it all means.”

  “You were very young, Sophia,” Jane said, still looking deeply into her eyes. “It was very different for you, I know, but your life has been so wonderful for so long now.

  According to Hugh you are nearly a legend.”

  “Nearly a legend,” Sophia said smoothly, taking Jane’s arm and linking it with hers, neatly redirecting her searching gaze. “Darling, either Edenham is being needlessly and insultingly modest on my behalf or I have my work in front of me.”

  Edenham came and collected her then. Jane hugged her warmly, kissing her cheek, and said, “I will never stop going home, because New York will always be my home.”

  Jane took her hands in hers again, squeezing them encouragingly. “Come home, Sophia. My mother would love to see you again. She talks of you endlessly.”

  “Endlessly? Your mother?” Sophia said, feeling the burn of emotion in the back of her eyes.

  Jane laughed and said, “Well, by that I mean two or three times a year, which for her is something of a record. I don’t believe she mentions Jed more than once a year.”

  “I heard that!” Jed shouted from the deck. “Good-bye, Sophia!” he called out, his arm lifted. “Until next time.”

  “Until next time,” she answered softly as Edenham and Jane climbed on board.

  But there was not always a next time, was there? She knew that very well, indeed.

  She did not wait to see them cast off. She simply walked away. Freddy, her butler, was waiting for her just a few feet away, his bushy brows lifted in question.

  “A hard parting?” he asked.

  “Too many partings lately,” she said as he escorted her to her carriage at the end of the long wharf. “I’m turning sentimental, Freddy. It’s appalling. I don’t know how I shall go about in Society with sentiment dripping from my fingertips.”

  Freddy, or Fredericks, his proper name, was more than a butler. He was American, true, but he was more than that as well. Freddy had been with her from the start, or from one of her many starts. She trusted him, and she could say that of very few.

  “He’s still here,” Freddy said softly.

  “You have to credit him with stamina,” Sophia answered.

  “He’s like a wolf searching a herd to find the calf with the broken leg. Do I look broken to you, Freddy?”

  Freddy looked askance at her, his blue eyes bright. “Or a wolf looking for his mate.”

  “I see we both agree that he’s a wolf.”

  “I’m starting to feel guilty when you refuse to see him,”

  Freddy said.

  “I’m happy to report that I never feel guilty. For anything,” Sophia said pleasantly. “Lord Ruan will eventually learn that there is no path to me, and then he will wander off and bedevil some other likely woman. Or an unlikely one, as to that.”

  The wharf w
as crowded, as was all of the Pool of London. The wharves were nearly a city unto themselves, the ships so crowded upon the Thames that the water was oftentimes assumed to be floating them, it being buried beneath wooden hulls. All the world came to London, all the ships of the world, carrying all the people of all the lands of the world.

  And yet, though nearly buried, the river called to her today. Its call so softly insistent that it would never have occurred to her to ignore it. Something awaited her here.

  She did not choose to believe that it was simply Lord Ruan.

  In that madness of people and noise and filth, the Marquis of Ruan stood in the shadowed and deep-set doorway of a mud-splattered inn with a crooked roof. The Red Bear.

  Sophia watched him watching her, his face half in shadow,

  his expression washed clean of emotion, his eyes trained on her face. It was a penance of sorts, and he was seeking absolution in her smile. What a pity for him that she did not deal in absolution.

  He had touched her body. He had done it badly. He had ruined what could have been a fine and pleasant diversion for them both. He had pawed through her past, seeing what he could find, trying to see into her.

  Her past was past. Dead. No one should dig up a corpse.

  Upon that thought, the hard, quick thought of what lay forever behind her, a man’s profile captured her. Not her attention, and not her eye. Her.

  She paused. Freddy paused instantly at her side, looking at her face, following the direction of her gaze. The wharf was awash with people, which was to her advantage. She knew that face. It was burned in her mind like a fiery scar.

  “Freddy,” she said softly.

  “I see him,” he answered her. “It’s him. The same.”

  She walked forward, casting a glance to Ruan. He caught her look like an embrace, and when she shifted her eyes to the man who had been a shadow in her heart for over twenty years, he followed her gaze like an arrow to the heart of a stag.

  Why Ruan? Why did she seek out Ruan? Why had Ruan come to her in Hyde House that day, knowing that she was needed to help Jane over the final barrier to Edenham?

  Why had she trusted his judgment then, without question, without comment? Why did she now?

  Pointless questions. She trusted him. An ally was an ally, whether you liked him or not.

  The profile turned, three-quarter face now. There was no doubt. That face, the scarring upon his cheeks, the shape of his brow; he was older of course, as was she. His hair was heavily threaded with gray, his jaw and neck thickened with age, yet it was he.

  He was standing on the edge of the wharf, near the shore, The Red Bear just beyond him and to the left, her carriage on the street and to the right. She could just see the rear wheels. Her escape. There was no point in attack without a way of escape. That lesson was old. She didn’t need to even think it.

  His clothing was filthy, old stains, sweat, and other things. His hair was lank. His hands dirty. He hadn’t come to a good end, had he? A small, bare justice. He deserved a far richer justice, a more complete justice.

  Sophia smiled and walked toward him, allowing the crowd to gently push her in his direction. Markham was in full possession of his title, and on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic; this could not touch him. Caro was married, Ashdon’s property, under Ashdon’s protection; she would be safe if this fell awry. Freddy was at her back; he would say whatever needed to be said, do what needed to be done.

  Ruan was before her. What would Ruan do? She did not know. She only knew that, somehow, he was her ally. At least for now. Today.

  There was never anything more than today. Today, always, had to be enough.

  And there he was, right in front of her, the gulls above them crying eagerly over a dead fish floating beneath the wharf, its belly greenish white and already pecked open.

  Not at all ironic, but beautifully poetic. Yes, poetic justice.

  He turned slowly, presenting her with his back, his hands digging in his pockets.

  Perfect. This was better, a better approach, and a better escape for her.

  She pretended to lose her footing, tripped mildly, put her hands against him briefly. He turned his head at the contact and they looked into each other’s eyes for the barest moment in time. There was no flare of recognition . . . had

  she expected that? That he would remember? Not really.

  Perhaps. She remembered him so well, but what was that?

  Of course she would. And she would remember this, too.

  This memory was to cherish. She did not care if he knew why. She knew why, and that was more than enough.

  Her dagger punctured his spine, sliding between the bones, severing the cord. She pulled it out as quickly as it had gone in, the knife cleaning itself as it passed through his clothes. He cried out as he fell, or started to. Freddy turned him and spun him away, his fist in the man’s throat, silencing him, “Stand back from her, you dog! Can’t you tell a lady from a whore?”

  She kept walking, Freddy at her back. She did not look to see what she had done, what he was doing, how quickly he was dying.

  Ruan passed her without looking at her, a lord of England walking on the wharf, that’s all he was. She heard a splash and knew Ruan had pushed him off the wharf, down to bleed with the dead fish. Could he still breathe enough to drown or was he dead already?

  She did not care. He was finally dead. That was all that mattered to her.

  The river called to her today. Now she knew why.

  She was at her carriage when Ruan caught up with her.

  A casual meeting to curious eyes, nothing more. A lord and lady, a chance meeting, if any should question it.

  She smiled into his eyes, so startling a shade of green as to seem unnatural. He bowed, his smile more polite than pleased.

  “How delightful to see you again,” she said, keeping his name from her lips, let them mark the crest upon the carriage door if they would know her name and house; she would not do their work for them.

  “An unexpected pleasure,” he said, showing the same restraint.

  Freddy held the carriage door, his features schooled to that perfectly tutored stamp of deaf boredom that every servant wore.

  “Unexpected, yet so very timely,” she said. “I feel certain that I shall always remember stumbling upon you, upon this day, upon this hour.”

  She looked into his eyes, thanking him, trusting him. He heard her. In all the words she would not say, he heard her.

  “I am honored, and flattered. I,” he said slowly, “I apologize for offending you earlier. In my zeal, I stepped too deeply, looked back too far.”

  “When a hero hunts dragons, he must prepare to be scorched,” she said with a brief smile. “Your zeal is forgiven.”

  Ruan smiled gently, his gaze touching her face. “A hero? Then may I impose upon you a bit further?” he asked.

  Sophia laughed lightly. A woman who had just killed a man would not laugh and flirt, that is what would be concluded, if conclusions were ever drawn. “That reprieve bore instant fruit. A single boon, lord knight. I shall grant one wish. Use it wisely.”

  “I fear I will not,” he said. “Wisdom is clearly beyond my grasp.”

  “But not discretion?” she asked.

  “On that point you need not fear,” he said, smiling. “’Tis only wisdom, particularly with women, most particularly with beautiful women, that I lack.”

  “How fortunate for you that beautiful women do not require wisdom in discreet men,” she said. “Discretion is quite enough.”

  Still smiling, he leaned toward her, a flirtatious remark clearly longing to burst free, and said, “May I ask whom I helped you murder?”

  She laughed and offered him her hand while she climbed

  into the carriage. Once inside, Freddy having closed the door, she leaned toward Ruan and said softly, “That was justice, not murder, lord knight. I watched him kill my mother. She is now avenged. I could
do no less for her.”

  Ruan’s eyes met hers calmly. “A worthy deed for which I have no regret. The other, I do regret, because I stepped clumsily and shattered our accord.”

  She put her gloved hand on the door. There was a splattering of blood on the leather. “Lord knight?”

  He looked at her, his eyes clear of guilt. There were starting to be cries of alarm along the wharf. The drunkard who had fallen into the river was now more than drunk; he was bleeding. He was dead. It would not be wise to tarry longer.

  “Yes?”

  “A gift for a gift,” she said softly. “My husband knew about the satire. But he knew nothing about New York.

  That history was my gift to you.”

  Ruan’s brilliant green eyes flared at the quiet meaning of that message, at the intimacy she had initiated between them, but before he could react beyond that, she called out, “Drive on!” and her carriage merged with the traffic of Wapping, Freddy entering from the other door as the wheels began to turn.

  “That’s done, and well done,” Freddy said. “What next?

  Will you be in for him now?”

  Ruan. She could not think of Ruan now. He slid into her thoughts like an encompassing mist, yet this moment must be reserved for reflecting upon the memory of her mother.

  That was right and proper.

  Yes, even Lady Dalby could sometimes do what was right and proper.

  Sophia looked out the carriage window, removing her gloves and tucking them in her reticule. She would burn them when they got home.

  Home. Dalby House.

  The masts of all the ships crowding together in the London Pool soared like a leafless forest above the rooftops of Wapping. Her thoughts dwelt on forests today, dark and thick and endless, the forests of her memory, while her eyes were captured by the river that was a highway to the world. In the curving, twisting streets that led to the many wharves, the span of a ship’s hull could sometimes be seen, the sounds of voices from other lands blending harshly with the London rhythms of the east end.

  But not the rhythms of the Iroquois and the Mohawk, not the rhythms of her childhood. Had England ever been her home? England had been her mother’s home, but had it ever been hers?