The Duke

by Katharine Ashe

“My lady.” He bowed elegantly. He extended his hand. Upon his palm was a sealed letter. “This arrived by naval post boat this morning, enclosed in a letter to myself from my cousin.”

  The letter bore her name.

  “Forgive my presumption,” Mr. Brock said. “Knowing something of the nature of your acquaintance with my cousin, I sought you out to give it to you immediately.”

  Seizing it, she snapped open the seal.

  The contents of the letter nearly sent her to her knees: he would return for her soon; they would be wed by special license in a church, before God and man; she must only wait, as she had promised him.

  Pressing her knuckles against her lips to stifle the joy she wanted to shout to the world, she managed to speak four shaking words: “When will he come?”

  Face drawn, Mr. Brock told her that his cousin would never come, that this was the last letter his cousin would ever write. Two days earlier the Theia had been ambushed by bandits, its crew decimated, its commander killed.

  Captain Gabriel Hume was dead.

  PART II

  1818

  The Pact

  Chapter 8

  Courses Set

  24 January 1818

  Kingston, Jamaica

  Dear Emmie,

  He did not perish. He is alive.

  This afternoon, hearing the news from the gossips, I could hardly contain myself: I was so full of both joy and anguish. In silence and secrecy for a month I have mourned him. Yet he lives!

  When I asked about the bandits, the gossips peered at me as though I were a child inventing stories. There were no bandits. Instead the women whispered of his mistress in Montego Bay with whom he spent his last nights on the island—nights during which I waited for him, longed for him, and—like a trusting child—loved him.

  I know now that it was all a lie. He was merely sporting with a gullible girl—for amusement’s sake, I suppose, for diversion. Or perhaps he did care for me, yet apart he swiftly forgot me.

  His ship now crosses the ocean, they say, although no one seems to know to where it is bound. Wherever it goes, I should take no interest in it. He is not mine to miss. He never was.

  Oh, Emmie—Am I wicked to pray for his safety, or merely foolish to do so when he has dealt me this hurt? I know it is the latter—yet still I pray. How unguarded, how simpleminded I have been. And how foolish I am even now to wish this a terrible dream that will vanish upon waking.

  I am all confusion, knowing that I have done wrong, that I do wrong still, yet unable—unwilling—to end my own unhappiness. For then, it will truly be over, and that I cannot yet bear.

  (25 January)

  Last night I wept myself to sleep, hiding my tears from my husband. Today, however, I am changed: wiser, more sober. Papa once warned that my heart trusts too swiftly and too deeply. I did not understand the warning then. I do now, for a naval officer has taught me a fine lesson: to believe a man’s words and deeds rather than my heart’s desire.

  I will never make that mistake again.

  —A.

  July 1818

  HMS Theia

  Lat. –34.35, Long. 18.46

  The hull heaved to starboard and rent the already deafening cacophony of thunder pounding the heavens, and rain pounding the deck, with a creak to send a sailor’s heart scurrying to the soles of his feet.

  Captain Gabriel Hume, commander of His Majesty’s frigate Theia, having had no functioning heart to speak of for seven months, stood with legs braced hard and hands tight about the wheel, and closed his mouth and nose against the sea that rushed over him. His arms and back burned with the strain as, with a mighty groan, his ship righted herself then plummeted into another swirling green gully.

  “Foremast’ll go first, Cap’n! Mark me words!” shouted his bosun over the roar of the storm. Strapped to the mizzen with a rope, he had refused to go below as Gabriel had ordered.

  Another wave rose portside, a flash of lightning illumining hills of water all about. Forcing his sixteen stone against the helm, Gabriel drove it, cutting the prow toward the oncoming swell. It burst against the hull, a river of foam and black flooding the forecastle. As Theia dipped again and he hauled the wheel back, the eerie crackle of wood snapping came to him through the clamor.

  “There she go—!”

  His bosun’s next words were lost in thunder.

  But the foremast held, rain cascading from reefed canvas in waterfalls.

  “The next one’ll take her, Cap’n!” his bosun shouted. “Mark me—”

  “Blast it, man!” Gabriel hollered. “Bind your flapping lips or when we’re through this I’ll sew them shut!”

  “Aye, Cap’n!” his bosun replied over the rain beating at the quarterdeck. “But the gods have it in for us this time!”

  “’Tis no’ the gods that sent this squall,” came through his gritted teeth as a wave rose. Tilting, Theia began her slow roll into the trough.

  Gabriel pulled the wheel, every muscle and tendon and bone strained to snapping. Through the thunder came the howl of a wild animal. As the swell crested and his chest throbbed with agony he knew the sound was coming from his throat, his mouth.

  Eighty-four men.

  Eighty-four men under his command. Men given into his care alone.

  And one vengeful storm.

  Ten months earlier he had cheated a hurricane. The devil apparently was not satisfied with the punishment he had already been dealt for that.

  He threw his strength against the helm.

  “You’ll no’ take any o’ them, you son o’—”

  A wall of sea swallowed the forward half of his ship and a spar flew at him from the darkness. Pain exploded in his head.

  When he opened his eyes, he was falling with the helm. With a tearing of every muscle in his body, he fought, pulled, pushed to his feet, slipping in icy water, righting himself, struggling against the fog between his ears.

  “You’ve got it right, Cap’n,” his bosun burbled, waterlogged now. “This ain’t the gods. This storm be Satan himself come to carry we all home.”

  Funnels of water streamed from the ink above. Lightning snapped, showing the sailor slumped against the mast. Thunder like cannon blasted the wind. Gabriel closed his ears against the devil’s madness. His exhausted fingers slipped on the wood.

  No.

  Not yet.

  Not his ship.

  Not his crew.

  “What do you want, then?” he called out, clinging to the pegs as the lash of rain against his cheeks and hands washed all but savage audacity away. “What’ll the Prince o’ Darkness have from me in return for these men’s lives?”

  A spear of lightning split open the blackness from cloud to deck, and a barrel tied to the railing burst into flames.

  “All right.” Gabriel watched the fire sputter out beneath the rain. “You’re listening. Excellent!”

  Wind swept over the deck. He pressed his shoulder into it and held the helm steady. But he could feel the weakening, the end of his strength coming finally, with no end to the storm in sight.

  “You already know what I want!” he shouted into the fury of Hell.

  The only thing he wanted.

  “Now, you bastard—”

  Portside, a curtain of black arose, darker than the foam, darker than the rain, a towering mountain of ocean. Beneath the screaming wind Gabriel growled, “Let’s make a deal.”

  PART III

  1822

  The Pursuit

  Chapter 9

  The Dark Lord

  19 March 1822

  Kingston, Jamaica

  Dear Emmie,

  I sail tomorrow, but not to England. Months ago my dearest friend Penny—sister to me here in your absence—sailed to Scotland. She gave no warning and left no explanation to even her family, only a message written, I believe, in distress, insisting that she had good reason to go. I had intended to travel directly home after preparing the mission for its new pastor, but now instead will follow her in hop
es of discovering the astonishing haste for her journey.

  I say astonishing, for this is entirely unlike her. Penny’s character is more steady than volatile, more thoughtful than impulsive, and more responsible than mercurial. (Paul regularly reminded me that she and I were perfect foils.) I must go after her.

  I will miss Eliza and Mr. Meriwether profoundly, for they and Penny made this island home to me. It is the desired state of a missionary’s heart: to never become so happy in any terrestrial place that one’s attention strays from the hereafter. It is a very good thing, then, that I am no longer a missionary’s wife.

  With love,

  Amarantha

  May 1822

  Port of Leith, Scotland

  Despite the Scottish chill that burrowed beneath her clothing and under her skin, Amarantha had discovered that port towns were alike in at least one particular: spending coin was the fastest route to learning anything useful.

  “If you be wanting information about a pretty girl traveling alone,” said the proprietor of the eighth pub as he pocketed the shillings she laid before him, “you’d best be asking Mrs. Eagan up at Kirkgate.”

  A madam, surely. Where sailors sojourned, there were always women to serve their needs.

  “Isn’t that quite a fine neighborhood?”

  “Mrs. Eagan’s callers no’ be the sorts to trawl the docks seeking company, lass.”

  Even after five years that word—lass—still pinched at the back of her neck. Only one man had ever called her that.

  “I see.” Penny would not have willingly sought shelter in a brothel. But if she had been desperate, or frightened . . .

  Amarantha set off.

  Mrs. Eagan’s house was a modest, Georgian-style building with amphorae overflowing with flowers by the entrance. A footman escorted Amarantha to a pretty parlor that revealed the madam’s fondness for cherubs: chubby little nudes decorated the papered walls, the ceiling, and the mantel.

  She smiled. Paul would be horrified that she was seeing this.

  But her grin faded swiftly. She had displeased him so constantly that she hardly remembered his face in an attitude of pleasure—except on one occasion, the grand finale to four years of lies.

  “Miss Foster?”

  Amarantha started. She still hardly recognized her false name, Anne Foster. But it was necessary. Anonymity had already allowed her to search for Penny in places where an earl’s daughter or missionary’s wife would never go.

  Mrs. Eagan stood haloed by the gilded door frame. Neither plain nor beautiful, with sweeping brows and straight black hair, she seemed entirely regular.

  “Mrs. Foster, actually,” Amarantha said.

  “I am Loretta Eagan. What brings you to my home? It cannot be your husband, for at present there are no men in the house except my footman, and he is neither handsome nor wealthy enough to attract a woman of your beauty.”

  “You needn’t flatter me, Mrs. Eagan. I have not in fact come here looking for a man.” She extended her hand.

  The madam’s grasp was light but it lingered.

  “I entertain guests in this parlor, Mrs. Foster. If you have come here seeking work, we must remove to my study for that conversation.”

  “I do not seek work here.” A cherub seemed to wink at her.

  “You smile,” Mrs. Eagan said. “But you do not smile in derision.”

  “I don’t, in fact. But how do you know it?”

  “On occasion I welcome into my home women of your quality.”

  “Oh? I imagined your callers were—”

  “My clients are indeed gentlemen.”

  “I don’t suppose you hire these women as housemaids and such?”

  Mrs. Eagan’s smile was knowing. “Some are bored in their marriages. Others are confused. Some seek pleasure they are not allowed at home. And some seek forbidden adventure.” Her gaze traveled over Amarantha’s figure. “Have you come here seeking adventure, Mrs. Foster?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Oh, yes. I have had my fill of forbidden adventure.” Once. Enough to convince her to never seek it again. “Enough for a lifetime.”

  “Then what of your betraying smile?”

  “I was imagining what my husband would think to see me here.”

  “No doubt that you are a woman of passion.”

  “No doubt.” The hypocrite. “But I have not come here to speak of me. I seek a friend who disembarked three months ago from a merchant ship. A dear friend. A sister, in truth, through my late husband’s family.”

  “How intriguing that a moment ago you spoke of him as your husband only.”

  “I have had only the one.”

  “A woman of enterprise can possess more than one husband in a lifetime.”

  Not this woman.

  “Mrs. Eagan, I was told that you take a particular interest in pretty young women who arrive alone in Leith.”

  “I do, if they are well-spoken and free of disease. Is this friend also of your quality?”

  “She is well-spoken and English, with the accent of those raised on the island of Jamaica. At the time she left home she was in excellent health.”

  She seemed to study Amarantha. “How young?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “I might have encountered her.” Moving to a sofa, she draped herself upon it. “But I typically take little interest in mature women. For he does not take any interest in them.”

  “He?”

  She laid a beautifully rounded arm upon the sofa’s gilded back. “The Devil, of course.”

  “The—I beg your pardon, did you say the devil?”

  “Have you come from the colonies so recently, Mrs. Foster, that you have not yet heard of the Devil’s Duke?”

  “It seems so.” The mantel cherubs grinned. “Is this devil a client of yours?”

  “Come, make yourself at ease and I will tell you.”

  Amarantha perched on a satin cushioned chair.

  “Last autumn a girl from Edinburgh disappeared abruptly,” Mrs. Eagan said. “She was eighteen, attractive, modestly educated, and pious, the daughter of a tradesman of no particular social distinction but comfortable income, and a maiden. Her name was Cassandra Finn.”

  “Was?”

  “Three months later, another girl disappeared. This time it was a laborer’s daughter, also lovely and young, but unlike her parents she was schooled.”

  “Well-spoken too?”

  The madam nodded. “And betrothed to be married to a man who would lift her from poverty into respectability. Her name was Maggie Poultney.”

  “You have twice said ‘was.’ Are Miss Finn and Miss Poultney now deceased?”

  “The Edinburgh police believe they are.” Fingernails painted crimson stroked the gilded wood. “Cassandra Finn’s abductor—”

  “Abductor?”

  “—left no trace of her behind. But Maggie Poultney’s cloak was discovered. Drawn in chalk on it was a peculiar symbol: a star with three additional symbols at three points.”

  “How curious.” Amarantha shifted on the soft seat, impatience jittering in her empty stomach. She had not traveled all the way to Scotland to hear tales of runaways and occult symbols. “Mrs. Eagan, I wonder if I could describe to you my—”

  “And blood, Mrs. Foster.”

  “Oh. On Miss Poultney’s cloak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do the police believe that a devil abducted them?”

  “They found the cloak at the edge of his property. Several months later, another girl went missing. Her name was Chloe Edwards. From the gentry.”

  “The police have not yet discovered the whereabouts of the three girls, I assume?”

  “Four girls. Again, the discovery was at the edge of his property. This time it was her lifeless body.”

  “Good heavens.” Amarantha folded her hands. “I believe I understand now your interest in young, lone women. You wish to protect them, don’t you?”

&nb
sp; “To warn them, Mrs. Foster. And to teach them how to withstand the dangerous allure of the unknown.”

  Amarantha could not believe that she had sailed thousands of miles from her husband’s church to sit in the parlor of a brothel in which young women were cautioned to avoid temptation.

  “Mrs. Eagan, who is this man whom the police believe is perpetrating crimes, and why do you call him the Devil’s Duke?”

  “Not only I. Everybody.”

  “In Leith or Edinburgh?”

  “In Scotland. Even London. His infamy has spread far beyond Edinburgh.”

  Not to Kingston. But news traveled slowly across the ocean.

  “Why has he such a dramatic name?”

  “Surely it is obvious. He is the devil incarnate, living alone, eschewing society, speaking to none, plotting evil deeds, and then in the dark of night venturing forth to destroy innocence. The name suits him ideally.”

  “Interesting. The devil I have heard preached in pulpits always seems remarkably active in people’s lives, encouraging them to bad behavior.” That devil had been one of her husband’s favorite topics, especially when he was vexed with her. “But I suppose the double D has a pleasantly alliterative ring to it. What of that other part of the name? Why do they call him a duke?”

  “Because he is a duke.”

  “A duke? An actual duke?”

  Her hostess nodded.

  “A titled lord?”

  “Yes.”

  “The police and everybody in Scotland believe a peer of the realm to be an abductor and murderer of maidens? Because the body of a young woman was found near his estate?”

  “Not his principal estate. Rather, the property he owns in Edinburgh.”

  “Mrs. Eagan, for five years I lived on an island about which English people regularly tell stories of heathen rituals and dark magical goings-on, none of which I ever actually witnessed. Nor has anybody that I know. It is all hearsay and exaggeration of matters that outsiders do not understand. Englishmen adore believing in fantastical stories.”

  “These are not stories, Mrs. Foster, nor fantasy. There is proof.”