The Duke

by Katharine Ashe

  That privacy came more easily now that all of Edinburgh believed the man who owned the house to be a diabolical ravisher of maidens.

  Gabriel had not actually lived in this house since returning to Edinburgh. No purpose in keeping an entire staff for the mammoth place when he had used it to entertain only once in three months. The hired house in Leith was small, required few servants who could carry stories to newspapers or the police, and it was close to the docks.

  “You’ve smudged the features o’ every one o’ them,” he said, stepping closer to the nearest painting.

  “Not all features,” the prince clarified.

  “Only the facial features.” Gabriel gestured toward the canvas. “Who is this one?”

  “I do not know.” Ziyaeddin spun a long, thin paintbrush between his fingers. “I have no interest in painting portraits. Only in studying the human form.”

  “An’ your models, what is their interest in it?”

  “It is a harmless game to them, innocent dallying with the devil. They believe I am you and they enjoy it.”

  “They’ve never seen your face or heard your voice?”

  “I go and come from the house at Leith cloaked, and remain covered during the sittings.”

  Gabriel returned his attention to the painting. He peered closer. “I think I danced with her at that ball.”

  Ziyaeddin chuckled.

  It loosened Gabriel’s chest a bit. The exiled prince had no pleasures except his art. His ploy to entice models to his studio in this house had taken advantage of the rumors that circulated in Edinburgh, rumors that identified Gabriel as the so-called Devil’s Duke. It was a clever ruse, and successful.

  “Wasn’t that the ball at which you lost the heiress to that other fellow?” Ziyaeddin murmured around the pointed end of the paintbrush between his teeth. “The heiress you never actually intended to wed.”

  “Didna I?” He studied the next picture, yet another nude woman reclining on a divan. Ziyaeddin’s talent was prodigious: even without facial features, each woman was at once alluring yet subtly distant.

  Memories of an English maiden—her soft, damp skin and scent of desire—threatened the edge of Gabriel’s sanity.

  “Tell me, my friend,” Ziya said, “what did you hope to gain from your brief courtship of Lady Constance Read? The friendship of the heiress’s noble English friends, or perhaps of her ducal father?”

  Gabriel hid his grin. “Do they teach court intrigue to young princes in your kingdom, or do you learn it by trial and error?”

  “Error, obviously on my part,” Ziya replied with a tap of the brush’s handle. “You admit to intrigue?”

  “No intrigue.” Constance Read’s friends were powerful men with interests throughout the seas, men who would rebuff a stranger, but who might partner with a man nearly betrothed to an intelligent woman they admired. “I had hoped to court her friends who are in trade.” It had been a gamble from the outset, and had come to nothing.

  “Therefore you courted her? You truly are a barbarian, Scot.”

  “An’ you are a prince without a crown, Turk. Which o’ us is the worse, do you imagine?”

  The young man’s smile was slow.

  Moving to the window, Gabriel looked out onto the rainy village that flanked one side of his property. So close to both palace and castle, it was tiny, no more than six shops built a century ago to serve this house in which the lairds of Haiknayes resided while in Edinburgh. Now a flare of brilliant orange shone through the blacksmith’s doorway.

  In thirteen years at sea, the only creature comforts Gabriel had ever missed were the great big blazing fires that had burned in the massive medieval hearths at Haiknayes.

  Five years ago, with a head full of arrogance and blood full of heat, he had dreamed of taking Amarantha Vale there—actually taking her, before the great hearth—stripping off her delicate garments, caressing her skin that glowed in the firelight until she moaned, doing away with her maidenhood to the music of her pleasured cries, and then making her his again till, exhausted, they fell asleep entwined on the fur rug there.

  That a randy, youthful fantasy was the principal reason he had not yet moved to Haiknayes, although he had been master of it for two years now, was most certainly his greatest idiocy yet.

  The estate was barely twenty miles distant. Now its lands were in poor condition. Distracted by his studies that had tempered the grief of losing his wife, his father had allowed Haiknayes to languish. Fortunately the castle itself was in better repair than the land, still full of the modern comforts his mother had installed to make it home.

  If he could afford to restore Haiknayes to its former glory, he would in an instant. But Kallin required every guinea he could scrape from four merchant cargoes a year. His gambit to court Constance Read’s wealthy friends had not worked. He simply must find more funds somewhere.

  He turned to face the young prince.

  “How would you like to move to Haiknayes?”

  “The fortress?” Ziya replied. “You intend to sell this house, don’t you?”

  “I am giving it thought.”

  “What about another heiress? I understand that Britain is seething with wealthy gentle-maidens seeking noble titles.”

  “No more heiresses for me.” No women for him, period. Not while his head was still full of a memory.

  “Then I shall do as Your Grace wills it.” The prince bowed in regal assent.

  Gabriel laughed and started toward the door.

  “Leave the house on occasion, Ziya. At least go to the park.”

  “Why? What is in the park?”

  “None o’ these”—he gestured to the paintings—“an’ more o’ the real thing.”

  “You cannot convince me that naked women cavort about in the parks of Edinburgh.”

  “No. But you can invite them inside an’ take care of the clothing fairly quick. Devilishly tricky, all those buttons and fasteners, but no’ impossible. ’Tis all in the wrist.”

  Ziya tapped the brush handle to his fingertips again. “I believe the idiom of this land that most suits now is the pot which calls the kettle black.”

  Gabriel grinned. “I’m off to London.”

  “Not to Kallin to repair the leaky roof?”

  “Not yet.” While his original partner, Torquil Sterling, had lived, Gabriel had not been involved in the mercantile side of their joint venture. The man that had taken on Tor’s role after his death, Xavier Du Lac, coordinated it all now from Portsmouth. Since Xavier’s brown skin and Haitian origins rendered negotiations with some Brits tricky, they had agreed that Gabriel would pursue business opportunities as well. It was either that or endanger Tor’s most cherished project: the community of women currently residing at Gabriel’s Highland estate.

  Kallin needed money. Selling this house or Haiknayes, in which his mother had made homes full of laughter and joy, would be his last resort. But no woman would supply the funds needed. He had far too many females in his life already.

  Chapter 11

  The Journey

  24 May 1822

  Portsmouth, England

  Gabriel,

  Regrettably I must convey the news that the house in Edinburgh has burned down. Z. was in Leith at the time and has no notion how the fire began, but the possibility that it was arson concerns him. He has removed to Haiknayes.

  Enclosed, find the most recent communication to arrive from Kallin. Of particular interest: Miss Cromwell has made plans to put up two dozen barrels of gin.

  —Xavier

  July 1822

  Edinburgh Infirmary

  “My clothes, at long last!”

  Amarantha eagerly received from the nurse the gown, stockings, shoes, and cloak in which she had arrived unconscious at the hospital eight weeks earlier.

  “I began to believe you would never restore them to me,” she added with a smile as she pulled the gown over her shift.

  “If you’d no’ attempted to escape before you’d
fully healed, we’d have allowed it afore,” the nurse said, buttoning her gown, “Though we do wish you would remain, Anne. You’re a fine nurse.”

  “A better nurse than patient, I daresay.” She laughed.

  “’Tis good to see you smile, child.”

  “I had no reason to smile before today.” Only dreams from which she awoke each morning muddled and confused. “Except your kindness.” Amarantha threw her arms about the woman and hugged tight. “Thank you.”

  “Be off with you, Anne Foster,” the Scotswoman said upon a sniffle. “Or we’ll be keeping you after all.”

  Amarantha’s throat was thick. After years of marriage to a man who never bothered concealing his disapproval of her while boldly lying to her face, the kindness of strangers in this gracious country made her watery.

  With nothing but her clothing, and coins that the nurses had scraped together as a parting gift, Amarantha departed. After so many weeks of rest, she felt remarkably well, and beyond a single errand this morning, she had no plan, only information. The advantage of being forced to remain confined to bed for weeks was that she had had ample time to read through the hospital’s cache of old newspapers kept for kindling. She now knew quite a lot about Gabriel Hume.

  He had been in the Mediterranean Sea commanding the Theia when his brother perished in an incident in Leith and, a month later, a longtime malady finally overcame his father.

  He was indeed elusive—even reclusive.

  He did not reside at Haiknayes Castle near Edinburgh, which had been empty for years.

  He spent most of his time traveling, yet no one seemed to know to where. Some suggested Kallin, but that estate was sufficiently remote that no one had ever confirmed it.

  He almost never went into society. Since inheriting the title, in fact, he had done so only once: in March, while Amarantha had been crossing the Atlantic, in Edinburgh he had briefly courted the beautiful heiress Lady Constance Read, but it had come to nothing.

  And, finally, he had never denied any accusation leveled against him.

  Two months ago—on the very same day strangers found Amarantha fevered and insensible, and brought her to the poor hospital—an Englishman had confessed to abducting the third missing girl, Miss Chloe Edwards, and to the murder of the fourth girl. Nevertheless, Edinburgh’s newspapers continued to call Loch Irvine the Devil’s Duke. After all, Maggie Poultney and Cassandra Finn were still missing, and the duke’s house in Edinburgh had mysteriously burned to the ground on the night of Miss Edwards’s rescue. While the villagers around that house insisted he had not been in residence for years, few heeded them. Most believed that the demonic duke had retreated to the countryside, where he was busy perfecting his mastery over the dark arts.

  Setting off toward the toll road, Amarantha managed to walk halfway to her destination before she was obliged to rest. Continuing on more slowly, she was still a distance away when she fully understood what she was not seeing: his house.

  She had one clear memory of the day eight weeks earlier when she had fallen so ill: standing before the duke’s house, staring up at its three stories of austere Palladian elegance and marveling at how the young man she once knew had, in five short years, gone from naval commander to duke to infamous villain.

  Reading about the fire had not prepared her for this.

  Charred and black, the stone foundations arose from the grass and moss that had already grown up around them like huge fingers of tar from some underground well. The little village huddled forlornly now, even in the sunshine.

  Amarantha’s heart beat unevenly. It seemed not months but a lifetime ago when she had left Mrs. Eagan’s house with a wide smile, thrilled that the world believed him to be a villain.

  What did the world believe her to be now? A poor woman, alone and friendless? Certainly not the daughter of a wealthy earl or the widow of a righteous missionary.

  No one. She was no one. She had been gone from home for so long, they all probably thought her dead. No one would even know if at this moment she simply ceased to exist.

  After Paul’s death she had sought anonymity. She had needed it—needed to no longer be the woman she had tried so hard to transform herself into, all to suit him. She had needed to be someone else, even no one else.

  Now she truly was anonymous, an island, bound to none.

  Walking toward the shops, she found all but two locked. At the door of the blacksmith’s, a burly, elderly man with reddened skin opened to her knock.

  “Well now, lass,” he said with a meaty smile that tightened Amarantha’s throat for the second time that morning. “You be a sight for old eyes.”

  “Good day, sir. I have come to thank you.”

  “Seeing you hale be thanks enough. You gave me an’ the wifie a powerful fright.”

  “I am sorry that I put you to the trouble of rescuing me, and of paying the hospital to keep me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled forth the coins that the nurses had given her.

  “Keep your money, lass. The wifie’s been fretting for weeks that we didna take you in ourselves and nurse you back to health. But our daughter was in childbed, an’ Bess was needed in the country.”

  “Oh! Have you a grandchild now?”

  “Aye, the eighth! Now, come inside for a dram o’ tea. Bess just finished the baking an’ she’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Your wife is the baker in this village?”

  “She’s been baking for the dukes o’ Loch Irvine since she were a wee one.” With a glance at the field of ashes, he made a big exhalation through his nostrils like a horse. “Come. There be cakes just out o’ the oven.”

  Inside, a fire blazed. A woman entered with a bakery tray.

  “Lass!” she exclaimed, dropped the tray on a table, and enveloped Amarantha in an ample embrace. When she finally put her to arm’s length, she gave Amarantha a long study. Gray haired, with light Scottish skin, she had a kind face. “’Tis a miracle! When we found you in the rain behind the shop, you were in such a fever Angus here could o’ forged iron upon your brow!”

  “I don’t remember any of it. In truth, I don’t even remember either of you. The nurses told me about you, and I have come to thank you.”

  “There be a fine lass, aye, Angus? But I knew it: apologizing to us for the trouble as you burned up in the wagon on the way to the infirmary. The manners o’ an angel. Now, we’ll have a cuppa an’ you’ll tell us all about what brought you to the village as poorly as you were that day.” She drew her toward a chair at the table.

  “What beautiful cakes,” Amarantha exclaimed.

  “Fit for a duke.” The blacksmith spooned tea leaves into a pot.

  “Have you customers here? Still?”

  “No, lass,” the baker said. “The duke’s no’ lived in the house for years, even afore the fire.”

  It was confirmation of the police’s conclusions, despite what others believed.

  “How Angus an’ I miss the ol’ days,” Bess said with a cheerful sigh.

  “Did you know him?”

  “His Grace? Aye.” She set a cake on Amarantha’s plate. “We’d suspected you did too.” She settled at the table. “After the fire, an’ with you wishing to speak to him . . .”

  “Did I say that to you?”

  “Dinna you remember, lass?”

  “No. I remember walking here from Leith and arriving in this village so tired I could barely stand. Then nothing after that. But in the hospital I had dreams—many dreams that felt like memories.”

  Angus and Bess exchanged a glance.

  “What brought you here that day, lass?” Bess said.

  Amarantha looked into the baker’s broad, honest face.

  Then she told them the truth.

  “Do you know of any reason that my friend Penny would seek out the duke?”

  “I dinna, lass.” Bess’s brow creased. “But those rumors o’ the devil be a pack o’ nonsense.”

  “Aye, nonsense,” Angus echoed.

  “
The lad I knew afore he went to sea could ne’er be what they claim.”

  “Will you tell me about him?” Amarantha said, her hands warm around her teacup. “When he was a boy.”

  The baker set another cake on Amarantha’s plate. “The young master were all skin and bones. You’d ne’er seen such a homely lad.”

  “Really?”

  “Aye, a wee monster he were, with that heavy brow, an’ those fine coats hanging on him like he’d no flesh, only shadows between his big bones.”

  “I understand that he is quite handsome now,” she said, pleasure stealing through her that she no longer bothered to quell.

  “He’s a fine man now, lass.” Bess clucked her tongue. “But too alone.”

  “He was not always so alone?”

  “No. In those days, Her Grace took him about with her everywhere, to the parks an’ museums an’ to see all the great ships at Leith. An’ to church, o’ course. The old duke were oftentimes at his studies, you see. But when he weren’t, there’d be parties like festivals, with music an’ dancing an’ all the grand ladies an’ gentlemen in finery.”

  Like her parents’ parties at Willows Hall.

  She had always thought them so unalike: he a dangerous man of the world who had done violence and reveled in earthly pleasures; she an ignorant girl who had never studied and knew nothing about anything, even about the righteous missionary life into which she had thrown herself.

  But she had never actually been that woman—not really.

  “It all sounds marvelous,” she said.

  “You’ve ne’er seen the like, lass,” Bess said.

  By the hearth, the old blacksmith had folded his hands over his belly and his snores competed with the crackling flames. Amarantha took up the teapot and refilled the baker’s cup.

  “I adore hearing about parties,” she said. “Do tell me every little detail.”

  As the sun fell, the couple invited her to take dinner with them and, later, to stay the night. The following morning, as Amarantha tied her hat ribbon, Angus appeared leading a horse. These days they had little use for the animal, he said, and she might put in a good word for them with the duke if she were so inclined. For, Bess added, it was clear that she was setting off for Kallin, and an honorable man like their master would never ignore the wishes of a lady.