An Inconvenient Duke

by Anna Harrington

  “Your arm,” Danielle rasped out as she hurried to him and placed her hand worriedly on his shoulder.

  “I’ll be fine,” he ground out. He’d suffered much worse on the continent.

  But the dubious expression on her face told him that she didn’t believe him. She turned her attention to his niece.

  “Pippa, come here. It’s all right,” Danielle cooed as she gently pulled the little girl from his arms. She turned to hand her off to Mrs. Davenport as the woman finally arrived, huffing and puffing from running down from the nursery. “Please take her back upstairs—”

  “Noooooo!” Pippa wailed, her arms tightening around Danielle’s neck, and refused to go to her nanny.

  Danielle cast a silent plea at her aunt for help.

  The viscountess came forward immediately to take Marcus’s good arm and help him away from the wall. “That wound needs to be dressed, Duke.”

  Ignoring her concern for him, Marcus glanced at Claudia, who sat on the floor in Trousdale’s arms, crying in both fear and relief.

  “I’d checked on Pippa,” she explained, her chin resting on Trousdale’s shoulder as he held her in his arms. “On the way back, I stopped in Elise’s room to see if I could find her wedding veil.” A jerking sob tore from her. “I wanted to show Danielle and the viscountess… Then I saw that man…going through her things…”

  Trousdale rubbed her back to calm her, but his caresses did nothing to ease her shaking.

  “I tried—I tried to get away, and I screamed…but he was too fast…that knife…”

  Her words died away as she buried her face in Trousdale’s waistcoat and cried.

  Marcus’s eyes stung as he tore his gaze away from Claudia. The icy truth slammed through him, as palpably as the burning pain of his cut arm. His family would never be safe until he found the men responsible for killing Elise.

  And when he did…God help them.

  * * *

  “Claudia found him in here, going through the boxes.” Marcus led Clayton Elliott inside Elise’s room. For once, he didn’t feel the pang of grief that always struck him whenever he stepped into her room. But tonight, he blamed that on worry and anger.

  Nodding, Clayton went to the window and checked the sill and shutters, his brow frowning in concentration as he ran his hand along the sash, feeling for any unusual marks.

  One of the best officers who had served under Wellington, Clayton had been a major in the Grenadier Guards and one of the many men who had gone through the fires of Waterloo. Unlike the others, though, he’d managed to avoid losing his way in civilian life by continuing his service to crown and country during the peace. Now fully ensconced in the Home Office as an undersecretary, he held responsibility for overseeing surveillance of half of England. Which half, though, he refused to say.

  Clayton moved to the second window and began his inspection again.

  He’d arrived here at Charlton Place only moments ago, after Marcus had sent a footman to find him and tell him they’d had an intruder. The man had tracked him down at his club, and Clayton came immediately, still in his evening clothes and smelling faintly of brandy and cigars. A better man to help with this Marcus could never have found.

  “He was searching Elise’s belongings,” Marcus said quietly. Every inch of his home felt like it had been invaded and ransacked, although nothing seemed out of place.

  Except for him. The surgeon had just finished with his medical treatments when Clayton arrived. Thank God, because the viscountess had insisted on being at his side while the man had sewn up the wound. He didn’t know which was worse—the pain of the needle sticking repeatedly into his flesh or her attempt to distract him with a story about swimming in the Thames with Benjamin Franklin.

  But the wound was now clean and sewed up tight, even if the shirt he still wore was soiled with his blood, not yet having found the time to change into fresh clothes. He’d been too busy securing the house and giving orders for all the servants to check every room, cabinet, nook, and cranny to make certain no other intruders lurked anywhere in the shadows.

  “He didn’t come in through these windows. There’s no sign of forced entry here.” Clayton straightened away from the casement, then turned and cast an assessing look around the room. “Most likely, he saw that you were having a dinner party and took advantage of the distraction to break his way inside through another window or door without being seen. This was probably the first room he came to where he thought he might find valuables worth taking.”

  A niggling doubt at the back of his mind told Marcus it wasn’t as ordinary as Clayton made it sound.

  Clayton stepped out into the hall to glance up and down its length. “With everyone in the dining room and kitchens, no one would have noticed if he’d slipped up here and searched the rooms. No one was up here to catch him.”

  “Except for Pippa and Mrs. Davenport, sleeping just above in the nursery,” Marcus ground out, his jaw clenched. “And Claudia, who simply walked upstairs.”

  “None of them were hurt, General,” Clayton reminded him.

  Only by the grace of God. “To break into a house like this, when even more people than usual are here… This wasn’t a typical burglary. That’s why I sent for you.” Marcus lowered his voice even though they were alone in the hallway and solemnly revealed what he could. “Elise became involved with some dangerous people, right before her death.”

  “Who?”

  “Have you heard of an organization called Scepter?”

  Clayton gave a slight nod. “Criminal activity in the rookeries and stews, smuggling and fencing, prostitution…” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “Your sister was involved with them?”

  “I think she stumbled across them by mistake.”

  Disbelief flashed across Clayton’s face. “How would a society lady even come into contact with men like that?”

  “It’s not as impossible as you would think,” Marcus muttered, thinking of Danielle and Nightingale. He sucked in a ragged lungful of air. “I can’t tell you how, but Elise strayed into their world. I believe she crossed them, and they killed her for it.”

  His friend muttered a low curse, momentarily stunned. Then Clayton nodded his sympathy, knowing not to voice any more arguments or worthless condolences. He stepped back into the room and swept his gaze around it once more, this time taking in the boxes and trunks.

  “It’s very unlikely that the man who broke into your house tonight is involved with Scepter or had anything to do with your sister’s death.” He opened one of the trunks and looked inside. “Why take that risk? And now, two years after her death? For what?”

  Marcus rubbed the knot at the back of his neck. “Damned if I know.”

  There was nothing left in the trunks and boxes except clothes and other whatnots that hadn’t yet been donated to the poor. Nothing at all that seemed important.

  But then, he hadn’t known himself that anything important had been among her things until he stumbled across the letter. God only knew what else was hidden here that the men who had killed her would want to keep from coming to light.

  “Whoever killed your sister,” Clayton said, closing the trunk, “she’s not a threat to them anymore.”

  But Marcus was. He’d watch those men swing, no matter what it took.

  “As a favor to an old brother in arms, can you call on your Home Office contacts to learn more about Scepter, what it’s been doing and who the men are behind it?” Marcus placed his hand on Clayton’s shoulder, the bandaged and blood-stained arm stretching out between them as a reminder of the gravity of the situation. “I’d be more at ease if I knew my family won’t be threatened by them again.”

  Especially once he had their names and put them into their graves.

  “I can’t do anything officially,” Clayton offered, “but I will ask around, see what I can discover on my own. I ca
n’t promise that I’ll learn anything. You know how it is with criminal groups like this. If they don’t interfere with legitimate business interests or those of the crown, they’re mostly allowed to carry on unchecked. The Home Office simply doesn’t have enough men to go after all of them.”

  Marcus’s hand dropped away. “Nor does Parliament or the king care if the poor are killing and cheating themselves.”

  “As long as it doesn’t spread outside the rookeries,” Clayton confirmed with a sardonic lift of his brow. “Then they might actually have to do something about the fact that the poor are starving and dying instead of simply ignoring them.”

  These days, many of those same poor and starving were soldiers who had returned from the wars to find vacant jobs nonexistent and their commissions worthless, with no way to support themselves or their families. The aristocracy did their best to ignore their existence, and the middle class blamed the poor themselves, calling them lazy and ignorant. The truth was that those same men would have gladly taken any job that put food on the table and a roof over their heads, but those jobs simply didn’t exist. And what did Parliament do? Passed import laws that protected their own profits by raising the cost of corn and food while taking away resources for the poor. They’d even gone so far as to make being poor a crime by passing vagrancy laws and allowing the death penalty if a man poached a single hen in order to keep his wife and children from starving.

  They’d fought to stop the tyranny of Bonaparte, yet a worse tyranny had befallen their own countrymen, and at the hands of the men who were supposed to be protecting them. Marcus knew better than to believe that military men turned politicians, like Wellington, would make any difference to the ones who needed help most.

  “In the meantime, I’ll post men around the property for the next few days,” Clayton offered as Marcus walked him from the room and down the hall toward the stairs. “I’ll tell the Home Secretary that someone broke into the house but spare the other details. Because it’s you, he’ll take it seriously enough to post a guard.” Clayton shot him a darkly amused look as the two men descended the stairs. “Can’t have England’s newest hero harmed after he’s returned safely to English soil. We’d be worse than the French.”

  Marcus grimaced. “He wouldn’t give a damn if I were still only a general.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” They reached the ground floor, and Clayton accepted his gloves, hat, and coat from the footman. Slipping into his overcoat, he tapped his gloves to Marcus’s chest to make his point. “If Marcus Braddock were still only a general, he’d have men watching you around the clock.” His grin hid the seriousness of his words as he lowered his voice. “Your men loved you, General—still do. Don’t think their loyalty to you and their willingness to do whatever you asked of them went unnoticed in Westminster. The French had a king once, too, before they killed him and made a general their emperor.”

  He slapped Marcus on his good arm as he turned to leave and doffed his hat to the women inside the drawing room as he passed by, the room’s double doors open to the hall.

  As Marcus followed to see him out the front door, he glanced inside the drawing room. The others were all still there. They took comfort in one another’s presence even now, with Trousdale’s arm far too familiarly looped around Claudia as they sat on the settee in the corner. Danielle and the viscountess were together on the sofa. Pippa nestled in Danielle’s arms, not yet willing to release Danielle as she continued to talk in hushed tones to the little girl and rub her back in an attempt to ease her into sleep.

  As Clayton waited for the footman to open the door, he appealed to Marcus beneath his breath, “Promise me that if I bring you information about Scepter that you won’t do anything reckless.”

  “I won’t let them hurt the people I love.” That was the only promise he’d give.

  Danielle looked up and somberly met his gaze over Pippa’s head. At her worried glance, something twisted deep inside him.

  Since his return, she’d come to mean a great deal to him. As much as his own family. Yet she was unnecessarily putting herself at risk with Nightingale, the same way Elise had, and the stubborn woman refused to stop.

  One way or another, though, he was going to put an end to Nightingale and save her from herself. He knew at that moment that he would protect her the same way he would Claudia and Pippa.

  With his life.

  Twelve

  The man was following her.

  Again.

  Dani didn’t have to glance behind her as she strolled down Bond Street to know he was there. She felt it in the tingle at her nape. It was the same electric jolt she’d gotten two days ago when she’d looked out her bedroom window and noticed the same man lingering in the square across from her house, keeping watch. On her.

  That’s what he’d done ever since—kept watch and kept his distance, always following after her whenever she went out but never approaching her, never coming to the door, never making his presence known beyond his mistake of letting her see him the morning after dinner with Marcus at Charlton Place. Now she saw him whenever she went out, always there just at the periphery of her vision, always lingering far enough behind that no one else would have noticed him.

  But she had. Of course she had. Working with Nightingale over the years had trained her to notice such things.

  The man wasn’t dangerous. At least she assumed so, trusting that he would have attacked her by now if he were. Which meant that he was watching her house and following her for a different reason. Because Marcus had asked him to.

  But she’d had enough of secrets and surveillance to last a lifetime, and this afternoon, she planned on teaching that man a thing or two about following innocent women. Along with the man who’d hired him.

  Smiling slyly to herself, she darted into the dressmaker’s shop.

  Inside, the seamstresses and assistants barely glanced her way, having grown used to having her here. Oh, she spent a great deal of time here, too, because this was where she had all of her own dresses made as well as those for the women whom Nightingale vanished. Many of them had nothing but the clothes they’d been wearing when they disappeared from their old existences. They needed new clothes to match their new identities, all of which the network provided.

  With a little help. In gratitude, she waved a gloved hand at Mrs. Harris, the shop owner and one of the first women Nightingale had rescued, as she walked through to the rear of the shop.

  She passed through the front showroom, with its beautiful dresses on display, brocade chairs, and bone china tea services for the ladies who patronized the shop, and disappeared behind the door that separated off the work rooms in the rear. Back here, the small army of assistants made the fine gowns and accessories that had earned Mrs. Harris her reputation as one of the best mantua-makers in London. The rooms on the floors above served as warehouses for the material, beads, lace, and other fripperies used to make the gowns, as well as dormitories for the girls who worked long hours in the workshop. They’d also served many times as hideaways for women Nightingale had moved about London when other places weren’t safe.

  Dani had enough trouble finding the money to reimburse Mrs. Harris for the dresses. She would never be able to repay her kindness for hiding the women.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Martin,” Dani whispered, using the woman’s real name to herself as she snatched up a day dress from a pile of folded dresses waiting to be delivered to clients. She held it up to judge its fit. “This will do nicely.” She plucked up a pair of pale pink stockings that matched the dress. “And so will these.”

  Then she stepped into a little fitting room at the rear of the building and flung closed the curtain.

  Oh, if Marcus could only see her now! This little quick-change act would prove that she was more than capable of hiding her identity and taking care of herself. His efforts to convince her to shut down Nightingale were complete
ly unwarranted. And would certainly come to nothing in the end, as she had every intention of continuing to rescue women just like Mrs. Harris.

  He might have been a determined general, but she was a stubborn society lady. His unstoppable force had just met her immovable mountain.

  With a mischievous smile, she quickly began to undress. She’d show the man who was following her, and undoubtedly still lingering on the street and waiting for her to emerge from the front of the shop, that keeping watch on her wasn’t as easy as it seemed. She’d leave through the rear alley door, wearing a different dress and a bonnet that hid her hair and face. She’d be long gone before he realized that he’d been fooled.

  “That’ll set him on a merry chase,” she mused as she reached behind her to unfasten the short row of pearl buttons at the back of her bodice.

  She peeled herself out of her dress with a few contortions of her arms and twistings of her spine that left her cursing herself for leaving Alice at home this afternoon. A ripping of fabric—she winced. But it couldn’t be helped. Then off came the petticoat and her white stockings, until all she wore were her short stays and the thin shift beneath.

  She held up the dress again and frowned at the bodice. With aggravation, she undid the front lacing of her corset and then began to tie it again, this time much more tightly, in order to restrict her breasts enough to fit into the smaller dress. Unfortunately, all that seemed to do was push them up higher. But it would have to do. Somehow.

  Deciding to find a spencer that she could button up to her neck and hide whatever flesh spilled over the neckline, she propped her foot onto a stool in the rear of the fitting room and quickly rolled up the stocking to her knee.

  Behind her, she heard the curtain’s grommets scrape against the rod as it was slowly pulled aside. She called over her shoulder without looking, “An emergency, Mrs. Harris. You can add the expense to my personal account.” She smiled as she secured the first stocking, dropped her foot to the floor, and bent down to pick up the second stocking. “I do have to say, though, that these stockings are absolutely beautiful.”