Only You: Duke of Rutland Series III

by Elizabeth St. Michel

  “Yes, Sir. Alexandra has agreed to honor me as my wife, but that is not for public review yet. Not until a coming out has properly taken place.”

  “Well done,” said the Duke of Westbrook, his gaze assessing Alexandra over from head to toe.

  “I came to pay my respects to you, Nicholas, and must leave. But I do want to hear every detail of your journey.”

  Alexandra did not like the private nature of the innuendo, nor the fact that Cornelius kept staring at her. His voice troubled her. Almost as if she had heard it before. She fiddled with her glove and blew out a breath. Since Nicholas wasn’t bothered by Cornelius’s strange behavior then she should not be either.

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Nicholas said. “Why sit alone in your box when you can share ours?”

  Alexandra fanned herself. The two men were deep in quiet conversation, but beneath veiled lids Rachel watched Cornelius. So did Nicholas’s father. A whisper of unease goaded Alexandra’s senses again. Memories assailed her from the island and their discussion of who might have been behind the attack on the Rutland’s. As Nicholas seated her, nerves rattled down her spine, warning her she had not been wrong to suggest to Nicholas that his uncle may not have the purest of intentions.

  Rachel gave Alexandra a slight nod, confirming a silent communication that Alexandra’s uncertainties were not irrational.

  In a flat tone of voice, Rachel said, “We must talk later…” She indicated Cornelius with a discreet nod. “…about accessories for your new gowns.”

  “That would be lovely,” Alexandra said. “Your opinions matter to me.”

  As she spoke, Nicholas sat on one side of her and gestured to the Duke of Westbrook to sit on the other side of her. Sandwiched between the two men, she leaned over and peered down at the pit, anywhere she would not meet Cornelius’s eyes. “Looks like we have arrived just in time since it appears the opera is about to begin,” she said, lowering her voice.

  “Is something wrong, Lady Sutherland?” the Duke of Westbrook whispered into her ear.

  “Why do you ask, sir?” Alexandra said.

  “You are tapping the blades of your fan on your knee in iambic pentameter.”

  Alexandra gulped. “How careless of me,” she said, mortified that she was nearly flogging herself. “I offer my sincere apologies, Lord Westbrook.”

  “None to be given,” he said, his expression filled with warmth. “Although I like your rhythm.”

  Alexandra cringed.

  She opened her fan and stirred the air around her face. “I often have too much energy to sit idle, and I tend to dispel it in peculiar ways.”

  “I can empathize,” Lord Westbrook said, leaning so their faces were inches apart. “When I’m distracted, I’m inclined to hum.”

  “Oh,” she said, pretending interest.

  “Badly,” he added, and Alexandra laughed at him. The man was disarming.

  The Duke of Westbrook whispered another humorous anecdote in her ear. His shoulder brushed hers in an intimate fashion that did not seem accidental. “Lucretia, I’m so happy you are here this evening.”

  Alexandra narrowed her gaze. “Pardon me?”

  Cornelius pulled back. “Please, accept my apology. You look so much like Nicholas’s late mother, your coloring, your eyes, your energy, that for one moment I was in another time and place.”

  She blinked. Was Duke Cornelius caught between hallucinating and the world of reality? He gave her the same feeling she experienced of a forest pool she had come upon in Deconshire, half-hidden by an edging of deadly nightshade and leaning prone across it at a despondent angle was a lifeless willow, strangely halted from falling into the foul waters.

  Alexandra leaned into Nicholas. Had he seen the Duke of Westbrook’s odd behavior? Nicholas’s smile washed away her anxiety.

  The rumbling D-minor cadence of the overture filled the theater, commanding silence from the spectators. Alexandra took a deep breath and switched her attention to the stage in anticipation of enjoying the opera.

  Handel’s Rinaldo was magnificent, staged with a dramatic setting of an enchanted palace with blazing battlements and with monsters spitting fire and smoke. Alexandra was so moved by the vocally elaborate long arias that were designed to display the virtuosity of the castratos. Soon, the excitement churning in her faded to the suffocating heat and oppressive smoke emitted from candles.

  Everyone was watching the opera except Nicholas.

  More than once, she had felt his gaze linger on her.

  “Are you unwell, Alexandra?” he said.

  She closed her eyes. If only she could feign sleep so she did not have to answer him. The insides of her stomach rioted a silent tattoo.

  “I know you’re not sleeping,” he continued, pitching his voice low so he did not disturb the others. But that didn’t happen and to her embarrassment, Cornelius watched her too. Nicholas stretched his leg so his boot brushed against the side of her slipper. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Alexandra opened her eyes, half begging him to leave her alone. If only he wouldn’t pay so close attention to her. “What question?”

  He muttered something under his breath. “Your pallor concerns me. I asked if you were unwell.”

  It was their first time in public and she didn’t want to disgrace herself or Nicholas. Quiet. That was all she needed…and to lay down. Would the room ever stop rotating? “I am fine, my lord.”

  “Liar.”

  Her eyes flared at his rudeness. She ignored the small fact she was lying to him. Let me suffer with my dignity intact.

  The muscles in her throat constricted. Alexandra clamped her hand over her mouth and ran from the box. Where could she seek privacy? A footman whirred past her. She moved down a long dark corridor. Bile rose-up her throat. Too late. She emptied the contents of her stomach in an urn. Knees shaking, she placed her hand on the wall willing the spinning to cease so she wouldn’t faint dead away. A handkerchief was handed to her.

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  Nicholas. Oh, he had witnessed her humiliation. Dabbing her lips, she took her hand off the wall, turned, lifting her gaze to him.

  Dear heavens, the tropics could be frozen beneath his narrowed cobalt eyes. Had he assumed she had kept the pregnancy from him? She wrapped her arms around herself, loathing the trembling of her limbs, and waiting until her breathing evened. “I just found out.”

  He crossed his arms in front of him, waiting for an explanation.

  “I have been ailing for weeks, believing I had caught a ship-born malaise. This afternoon, I was ill in front of Rachel, so she arranged to have her physician examine me. He confirmed I was to be a mother, and I wanted to wait until we were alone to surprise you with the news. And now I have disgraced myself and you are angry.”

  She wanted to cry, to be anywhere but here. “I-I don’t understand why. I thought you wanted a child.”

  Nicholas stood thunderstruck. “I thought you couldn’t have children.”

  “The physician said the doctor in Deconshire was either addled or superstitious and that a fall wouldn’t prevent me from having children as evidenced by my condition.”

  Nicholas hauled her into his arms.

  “What if someone sees us?” A door opened further up the corridor and she pushed from his arms. Duke Cornelius. Thank goodness, he headed the other way.

  Nicholas murmured into her ear. “To hell with everyone else. We are going to have a baby and we are going home. You must rest.”

  His quarrelsome bellow teased a smile from her lips. “Nicholas, I’m not dying. I’m having a baby and the doctor said I was to maintain a normal routine until I started to show.”

  “How long?” he demanded.

  “We have seven and a half months before our child is born.”

  “You should be in bed.”

  She giggled from Nicholas’ magnanimous pontification and allowed him to escort her back to the box, to make their goodbyes, happy the Duke o
f Westbrook had not returned.

  Rachel tapped her closed fan on her lips and arched an eyebrow. “Nicholas knows?”

  “You are leaving so soon?” asked Nicholas’s father, standing and shooting a suspicious glance over Alexandra.

  Heat rose to her face.

  Anthony sat with his eyes closed, his mind immune from the opera and the commotion.

  Aunt Margaret leaned forward. “Knows what?”

  Oh, good Lord. If Aunt Margaret and Duke had guessed, they would think her the worst kind of woman. Hearing a whispering sound, she glanced behind her. Attention from the audience was drawn to her and not the opera. She gasped, wrung her hands together and turned away. If she were to die a thousand deaths it would not be too many.

  Aunt Margaret patted her gloved fingers on Alexandra’s. “There has been too much excitement for you, dear. You must go home and rest.”

  The Duke clapped Nicholas’s back, and then smiling, bowed to Alexandra. “You are a very welcome addition to our family, Miss Sutherland.”

  Alexandra cringed from the unwanted attention, yet with the well-wishes, she let go a breath. Perhaps they had not suspected anything untoward.

  Rachel elbowed Anthony awake.

  He assessed Alexandra, and then shook Nicholas’s hand. “Six hundred and nineteen divided by perimetros?”

  Nicholas chuckled and Alexandra frowned, unable to grasp Anthony’s cryptic message, and finding the mathematical formula odd. Nicholas placed her cape around her shoulders. She attempted to work out the formula but her mind was far too muddled.

  Outside the theatre, Nicholas hailed a footman to get their coach. With his arm tightly around Alexandra, he felt her breathe in the night’s damp air. A mist drew a bright sheen on the wide street beneath the lantern light and neat lines of pollarded trees, and quiet honey-colored buildings with slate roofs settled in silence. Apart from for the coaches parked down the street, people were non-existent, the opera in the third act. He used the quiet to digest the news.

  They were going to have a baby. He was the happiest man on earth and nothing could dispel the wonderful feeling of becoming a father.

  “What did your brother mean by six hundred and nineteen divided by perimetros?” Alexandra asked.

  “He was assessing the gestation period for when a baby is born which is nine months and two days.” How he loved seeing the color rise to her face and the question forming in her eyes. “My brother is a scientist. His theories are born on observations,” Nicholas said.

  Horses clomped over cobblestone. Full gallop. Harnesses clanged. Was it the Rutland coach? A runaway carriage? Hooves thundered.

  “Look out!” yelled a footman from behind them.

  The driver cracked his whip on the horses. He hurled curses. The carriage veered onto the walkway, heading straight toward them. No time. Nicholas grabbed Alexandra and rolled with her into the street, horses and carriage wheels whizzing past them, a cat’s whisker breadth away.

  Nicholas pulled Alexandra up and she swayed into him. “That was deliberate. We could have been killed.”

  Nicholas wanted to run after the ruffian but the effort would be useless, the gloom swallowing up the rig up.

  The footman rushed up to them. “Are you hurt?”

  “Did you see the driver?”

  “No, sir. It was too dark and happened too quickly.”

  Nicholas’s jaw hardened. He moved Alexandra inside and instructed the footman, “Go to the Rutland box and tell my family there was an attempt on our lives and to leave immediately. We will wait.”

  Chapter 24

  “That’s two attempts on your life, Alexandra. We must keep an eye out for the killers,” Nicholas said the next morning. Shoulder to shoulder they moved down a splendid breakfast buffet.

  “What if the killers we met last night were meant for you?” Alexandra scooped fluffy eggs on her plate, a sweet bread and black pudding. “And why didn’t you wake me last night when we returned?”

  Nicholas whispered huskily in her ear, “You fell asleep on the ride home and I carried you to bed. I didn’t have the mind to wake you. In your condition, you need the extra rest.”

  Alexandra’s cheeks heated and she turned from the buffet to see if anyone had heard him. Aunt Margaret smiled at one end of the table. Samuel, Anthony and Rachel were already seated and in a discussion about commerce. Nicholas’s father nodded to where a servant pulled a chair out for her next to him.

  Nicholas sat across from her and gestured for a servant to pour a dark, thick liquid substance in her gilded tea cup, followed by a dab of whipped cream. “You must try the drinking chocolate.”

  Alexandra lifted her cup and inhaled the sweet scent of chocolate and sampled the russet-colored brew. Silky smooth, heavenly bliss coated her tongue. She emitted an unladylike groan.

  A servant brought a platter of golden crispy cakes oozing with melted cheese. “Fried goat cheese.”

  Nicholas’s grin was so endearing, she instantly wished to lean across the table and kiss him. “You remembered as when I told you how I longed to see an opera.”

  “Of course. It will be my delight to see you savor everything for the first time, and to make-up for all the hardships you’ve experienced.”

  She cringed by being singled out. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I say you, enjoy,” opined Aunt Margaret. Everyone laughed.

  Nicholas’s father, sat benignly at the head of his table, the benevolent leader of the family, dispensing charm and affection. He spoke of the days when his wife was alive, when everyone was together and no threat loomed over his family. After an hour of familial discourse and laughter, the Duke motioned for the servants to leave.

  As soon as the door closed, Aunt Margaret fixed her gaze on Samuel. “Going into your history, I find it fascinating that Alexandra was not murdered nor kidnapped. You and your wife’s efforts to protect Lady Alexandra Sutherland all these years were courageous. May I extend my sympathy to the loss and sacrifice of your wife.”

  “You can add my sentiments as well,” said the Duke. “Since Alexandra is with us now, we should finish our discussion from last evening about the carriage incident at the opera, and then the occurrence in Deconshire.”

  “Now tell me, what new revelations have you come up with?” Aunt Margaret narrowed her gaze on Nicholas.

  Nicholas cut his smoked salmon into neat even pieces. “One of the thugs we captured in Deconshire escaped and the other remains mum. I have turned him over to the magistrate and doubt if he can do any better. The best we can get him for is attempted murder. We must be careful and have full evidence before we make allegations against Lady Sutherland and her son. Those men were too scared to talk.”

  “It was Lady Ursula and Willean who put me aboard the Santanas. Isn’t that enough?”

  The Duke said, “Nicholas is correct. For us to clearly get Lady Sutherland and Willean we must be more cunning, and work through back doors…and that takes time.”

  Aunt Margaret harrumphed. “To think I came face to face with that dratted woman and her son at Kensington’s soiree last week. Lady Sutherland puts on such a holier than thou presence. If I’d known what evil creatures she and her son were, I would have…I-I don’t know what I would have done, but it would have turned out badly, and you’d be fetching me from the magistrate.

  “What about the runaway carriage? Was it Lady Ursula’s doing?” said Rachel.

  Nicholas shook his head and Alexandra’s heart panged for he looked tired. “Nothing. We had runners question other possible witnesses but it was too dark to identify them.”

  Anthony twirled his spoon, reflecting light across the table. “Perhaps the carriage incident was planned for an attack on the Rutland family and not on Alexandra.”

  Nicholas leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. “Father, we’ve had little time to discuss affairs. Who else do you consider an enemy of the family? Have you considered Lord Eaton, having his hand in
the laboratory explosion and our kidnapping?”

  Alexandra stroked the pearl ring Nicholas had given her, like a touchstone that helped orient her. Lord Eaton was the father of the man Nicholas had killed in self-defense.

  “Lord Eaton died of a lung ailment, a month following his son’s death. I understand he’d been sick for some time and would not have had the stamina to carry out a disciplined and orchestrated plan.”

  Anthony helped himself to more eggs from the sideboard and returned to the table. “Cuthbert Noot had an ax to grind, and was ready to tell us who was the one responsible for trying to kill Anthony when he was shot dead. The same thing happened to Percy Devol in Boston. He was ready to kill Abigail when he, too, fell to a pistol ball. Whoever is accountable is thorough in covering up any loose ends, and he must have unrestricted assets to have had Cuthbert Noot and Percy Devol released out of Newgate to perform their vengeances.”

  Rachel lifted a brow at Alexandra over her tea cup. “Interesting that Lord Cornelius tired of the opera and left just before the runaway carriage affair.”

  Silence filled the room. Alexandra widened her eyes. Rachel’s plucky spirit bred in the Colonies made her bold enough to comment on a close family friend.

  Was Nicholas wary of the Duke of Westbrook’s possible intrigues? He did not indicate his thoughts. She darted a glance to Nicholas’s father. His hand fisted around his fork. She couldn’t wait to get Rachel aside and inquire about the Duke of Westbrook.

  Duke Richard smoothed butter over his sweet bread with deliberate strokes. “I’m thinking of Lord Drummond. I’ve fiercely opposed his policies in parliament. He stands to lose a lot if the war in the Colonies is abandoned. He has many military contracts that have made him rich and will continue to do so if the war proceeds.”

  Aunt Margaret stared at the Duke as he calmly took another bite of black pudding.

  Nicholas’s expression remained impassive. “He certainly has the means and motivation. I’d start there,” he said.