The Duke

by Gaelen Foley

  “Yes?” he prompted, waiting.

  Her hand rested lightly in his, but now she wrapped her fingers around his and looked into his velvety brown eyes. “If you don’t mind skipping General Blucher's party, there is somewhere I’d like to go—something I’d like to show you tonight—but it won’t be easy for you to take.”

  “What is it?”

  “A side of life I wager you have never seen. These children—”

  “Belinda, we’re talking about you.”

  “Yes—I know.” She dropped her gaze. “And I thank you for caring about me and standing by me as you have. You’ve been one of the truest friends I’ve ever had, Robert. My problems are nothing compared to theirs. Please, won’t you indulge me in this?”

  He studied her, then nodded, looking mystified. “If it’s what you wish.”

  She leaned to him and kissed his cheek lingeringly.

  “Thank you. Best change out of those handsome clothes into something more workaday. Where we’re going, there are people Andrew’s age who would cut your throat for your watch chain.”

  “What?” he exclaimed.

  “I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes,” she said, then dashed up the stairs before he could ask her any more torturous questions.

  A short while later Hawk was mentally cursing his willingness to go along with this. They were riding their horses through the dark labyrinth of filth-strewn back streets that made up the rookery of St. Giles’s. It was no place for a lady or for a civilized man. Astride his tall restless stallion, Hawk rode at a walk beside Belinda’s docile gray gelding, one hand resting on the butt of his pistol while he scanned the street and the ramshackle buildings. William brought up the rear, astride one of the servants’ hack horses.

  The moist, musky stink of the river at low tide permeated the close alleys. No streetlamps pierced the unrelenting dark. Broken signs, creaking in the tepid breeze, hung from shops with cages over their windows. Potholes deep enough to cripple a horse yawned in the surface of the medieval streets.

  “I hope there is a point to all this,” he muttered.

  Beneath her wispy riding veil, Belinda’s face once again wore that haunting mask of serenity. Gracefully perched sidesaddle, she brought her horse to a halt with a slight pull on the reins.

  “There,” she murmured, pointing to a large warehouse with one gloved hand.

  Hawk studied it. “It looks deserted.”

  “Would that it were.” She urged her horse back into motion.

  Hawk shook his head at her misguided courage and gave his horse a squeeze with his ankles, keeping abreast of her.

  She halted again across the street from the dilapidated warehouse and dismounted.

  “What are you doing, Belinda?”

  “I’m going in there.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not—”

  “My horse, William?” She turned to the groom.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The lad jumped down with a grim expression and held her gelding’s reins.

  “Belinda!”

  “This is what we came for, Robert. Let me go in first.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “They know me. I’ll call you over in a moment once they’ve seen that you’re no threat.”

  “Belinda Hamilton, you will not go in there. Get back on your horse,” he ordered, but she ignored him, sweeping off her hard brimmed riding hat and hurrying alone across the street.

  Muttering oaths, Hawk was already leaping down off his horse and following her when movement stirred in the gloom near the warehouse door. He drew in his breath and pulled out his pistol, but before his eyes, small shadows materialized out of the darkness and began gathering around her.

  He stopped and stared.

  Children.

  He realized he was looking at a flash house. He had known such grim, lurid establishments existed, of course, but he had never seen one with his own eyes.

  Belinda bent down and greeted the small, ragged shapes, silhouetted against the wall. Several hugged her. He saw her reach into her reticule and give away her money. He gazed at her, humbled by the grace and compassion she had dared to bring into this underworld of brutish squalor.

  In a dawning wave of sorrow, he stared at the thin, wary, needy children surrounding her—budding thieves and prostitutes all, future fodder for Lord Eldon’s gallows. As dismal a realization as this was, his concern for Belinda’s safety was even greater. Lurking somewhere nearby was bound to be the pimp and his associates, no doubt grown and dangerous thugs, for these wraithlike children certainly weren’t taking their profits for themselves. God only knew what kind of cutthroats roamed this rookery. He was glad he’d brought his guns and had armed William, as well. The three of them would be fortunate not to end the night floating facedown in the Thames.

  Just then Belinda beckoned him over. He slipped his pistol back into its holster, glanced over his shoulder to assure himself that William was having no trouble with his temperamental stallion, then approached, feeling like a towering Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians as the silent, hollow-eyed children backed out of his path.

  At Belinda’s urging he peered into the warehouse through the hanging door. Shock resounded silently through him and horror as his gaze traveled over the mass of youngsters inside.

  By the time he drew her away, he was stunned into brooding silence.

  “Are you all right?” she asked as they walked back to their horses.

  He nodded. “You?”

  “Oh, I’m used to this.” She stared for a long moment at a nearby alleyway that yawned into pitch blackness like some corridor to Hell. Absently, she shook herself. “I only wish they hadn’t seen me like this. It sets a bad example.” Putting her riding hat back on, she walked away.

  He followed her to her horse and gave her a leg up while William attempted to soothe the nervous stallion. In another few minutes they were on their way out of the St. Giles’s maze.

  “Something must be done for them,” Hawk said quietly.

  Belinda looked at him—looked into his very soul, it seemed. “I knew you would feel the same as I do. There are a small number of charities that offer these children aid, like the Philanthropic Society and the Relief Society for the Destitute, but from what I’ve seen, it’s like trying to stop a flood with a bottle cork.”

  He reached across the empty space between them and took her hand. She looked over, her eyes wary beneath her half veil.

  “You have never seemed to me more beautiful than you are right now,” he murmured. “I will do everything in my power to help them, Belinda.”

  “I knew I could count on you.” She squeezed his hand before she let it go to steady her horse.

  When they reached Knight House, Belinda kissed him on the cheek and went to bed, murmuring that she was worn out by it all.

  In a saddened mood at the ugliness in the world, Hawk drifted into his library, caressed his piano as he passed it on the way to his desk, and sat down to write out his thoughts and questions for future research about the flash houses, juvenile crime, and the concealed sickness that obviously infected London within a stone’s throw from Carlton House and Buckingham Palace and every aristocratic great house like his own.

  Time and again he caught himself staring at nothing, his mind drifting back to Belinda. He never would have thought he’d say it, but he was beginning to see that her decision to become a courtesan was not born of mercenary greed and vanity, as he had automatically assumed when he first met her. Through no fault of her own, but due to her father’s incompetence and Dolph’s predation, the gently bred Miss Hamilton had been steadily reduced to the level of a coster-monger. The humiliation she must have felt, he thought, cringing at the memory of the many small digs he had taken at her for her choice of occupations.

  He had not fully appreciated that her choice had been a matter of survival. Tonight he had glimpsed the meaning of the word. And through it all, she had not lost her ability to notice and care for
other people.

  He put down his quill pen and rested his face in his hands, feeling like a damned hypocrite. All the while that he had been looking down his nose at her, judging her for a harlot, her heart brimmed with love for others and held a quiet, luminous, unsung virtue.

  Good God, stop this nonsense, commanded the voice of reason suddenly in his head, sounding remarkably like his late father’s cold, clipped tones. Indeed, he could almost envision the shade of the eighth duke standing glowering before him. This is absurd, it seemed to say. You, a Hawkscliffe, are making an ass of yourself over a demirep. Stop idealizing this woman and tormenting yourself. Get control again before she makes an utter fool of you, for that is precisely what she’ll do if you let this go any further. At the single bong of the grandfather clock just then, the guilty vision of his father’s anger fled, leaving Hawk alone with his fear of the things Belinda made him feel.

  Nothing was solved. The tug-of-war between his heart and his head resumed with renewed intensity. Even now he yearned to go to her. He stared into the candle’s tongue of flame, brooding.

  I can’t use her for bait, he thought. But he had to. And he knew that he would. His mouth curled in a bitter twist. His only option, after all, was to kneel at her feet and confess to the star of the demimonde that he had become her slave.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In the gentle, undulating countryside of Leicestershire the mail coach stopped daily in the quaint market town of Melton Mowbray. A sturdy boy of ten, entrusted with a high duty, greeted the easygoing post driver every day and accepted from him whatever government mail had been franked to his employer, along with the master’s daily edition of the London Times.

  The boy then began the hour’s walk on foot into the green, pleasant countryside, glad for the shady lanes, for the bright yellow sun shone hot. At last the hipped slate roofs of the stately manor house climbed over the rise before him. Reaching the top of the rise the boy paused to catch his breath.

  The breeze rippled through his tousled hair as he viewed the ruddy brick manor house that nestled between the rolling hills, its reflecting pond glittering under the blue summer sky. He did not pause long, however, for the earl of Coldfell would be wanting his Times.

  Heaving his leather satchel with the mail and newspaper higher onto his shoulder, the boy squinted in the sun. From the distance he could see the masons and carpenters up on the scaffolding, still fixing the east wing of the house that had been burned in the fire before the poor, pretty, red-headed countess had drowned.

  Poor old master, thought the boy, spying his lordship hobbling out on his cane to inspect the workmen’s progress.

  Carrying his precious cargo, the mail boy jogged the rest of the way to his destination. When he approached, the kindly old earl rumpled his hair and smiled, taking the newspaper from him.

  With the day’s issue of the Times under his arm, Coldfell went inside to his study, closed the door behind him, and leaned his cane against the wall. He clamped his lined mouth and lifted his monocle, scanning the paper in grim eagerness for word of Dolph’s death. After a few minutes’ diligent search, Coldfell’s eyes narrowed.

  Nothing.

  Glowering, he straightened up from the paper as the monocle fell from his eye. “Damn it, Hawkscliffe, what are you waiting for?” he muttered under his breath.

  Robert had vowed to avenge Lucy and to destroy Dolph, but ever since Coldfell had left for the countryside, the duke had done nothing but parade around London with his flashy young ladybird on his arm. He could easily understand that Hawkscliffe was a virile man and perhaps had need of a woman’s consolation after Lucy’s death. Still, he did not like it. The duke clearly needed reminding about his quest. In another few days, Coldfell planned on returning to Town for this Tory soiree that Hawkscliffe’s mistress was giving on her protector’s behalf. Then he would see for himself just what the devil was going on between this courtesan harlot and the man he had privately earmarked as his future son-in-law.

  As summer deepened, Dolph Breckinridge was awash in a despondency and a misery so complete he had never known such feelings could exist.

  He could only sit in the bow window at his club, staring bitterly at the Victory parade. It seemed to mock his defeat. She will never be my wife now.

  Quaffing his glass of ale, he left and tried to elude the turmoil in his breast by driving. He slowed to leer into the shop window where he’d watched Belinda trying on her pretty gowns. I hate her. I want her. I need her. Damn it, what kind of exchange had Hawkscliffe meant that night at Vauxhall?

  Tossing the spent stump of his cheroot into the street, he cracked the reins of his phaeton again with a sneer. He careened through the streets of London as though trying to outrun his own obsession. Why couldn’t he forget her? He did not understand himself why she tormented him this way, made him so angry. It was either destiny or, he feared to think, there was something wrong with his mind.

  He drove to all the places where he used to find her selling her oranges and the dingy tenement where she used to let a room.

  Leaving the environs of the City, he drove north toward Islington until he came to the refined treed lane at the end of which sat Mrs. Hall’s Academy for Young Ladies, the place where Belinda had worked, for he had divined a way to get back at Hawkscliffe, if he dared.

  The finishing school was associated with a tiny quaint village from which it sat apart, aloof as an heiress at tea. Having come to see Bel here every day for a month, he knew the school’s daily schedule; he knew the layout of the grounds.

  Separating the stately brick school from the cluster of shops and the pub was a green stretch of field, an old commons that had been planted with flowers and turned into a little park. In the center of the greensward was a neatly kept pond with a gaggle of geese, some ducks, and one gorgeous swan vainly watching its own reflection as it drifted. The schoolgirls liked to feed the water fowl.

  Dolph pulled his phaeton over to the side of the country lane and jumped out, leaving his vehicle in the care of his cowering groom. He checked his fob watch as he took a casual stroll across the cobbled village street to the bakery. Inside he bought a loaf of bread, then stepped back outside into the dazzling sunshine and walked to the pond to feed the ducks with the air of a man minding his own business.

  As he bent down to toss the birds some crumbs, right on time, behind him, he heard the school bell ring. A narrow smile skimmed over his lips. Today was the day he would lure his quarry close enough to come and talk to him. He could feel it.

  Behind him he could hear the fair pupils giggling and chattering as they filed out of the exclusive academy, two by two, for it was the hour of their daily constitutional. Slowly he looked over his shoulder at them.

  Mincing with dainty propriety, the students, dressed in virginal white, proceeded onto the path that led down to the commons where he loitered. There were about thirty in all. He swept them with a practiced eye, but his gaze homed in on one young beauty who stood out from the crowd like the swan among the ducks.

  Lady Jacinda Knight— Hawkscliffe’s treasured baby sister.

  She was the perfect means to teach Hawkscliffe that Dolph Breckinridge would not be trifled with.

  While the other girls wore bonnets or had their hair plaited and coiled, Jacinda had a mane of wild honey gold curls that floated like a cloud around her apple-cheeked face. She was a fresh, bold, precocious little hellion with high cheekbones and sparkling brown eyes that had a sultry almond shape; she laughed more frequently and loudly than any of the other girls, was constantly in motion, and seemed to dance when she walked. All of sixteen, seventeen at the most, her body had a lithe, nymphlike grace that well suited her aura of high-spirited mischief.

  Dolph wanted her.

  He felt more than a stirring of lust, waiting with a hunter’s expert patience for her to come near. Excitement pounded in him. Hearing a snippet of nervous, giggling whispers on the breeze, he sensed the girl’s thrill to discover he had co
me back to admire her again. But how were they going to talk to each other?

  He had hoped to prey upon her youthful naiveté, but she knew she wasn’t allowed to address a man without a formal introduction. Nor could he address her without breaking the rules of decorum.

  Lady Jacinda approached on the footpath with her companion, a drab brown-haired girl with a tight bun in the back of her head, who looked as though she had already resigned herself to spinsterhood. Jacinda carried a frilly parasol, stepping as delicately as a vain filly on the parade ground when a stallion was near, while her plain friend read aloud to her from a book.

  With the fetching, flirty glances Jacinda threw him from across the green, she seemed to Dolph more than willing to be seduced. He could well imagine she tormented boys her own age, but surely she had never received such pointed attentions from a man before—a man who knew how to satisfy the newly blossoming urges that no doubt filled her sweet teenaged body. The whole ton already prognosticated that the girl would have a lusty nature. After all, she was the only daughter of the original Hawkscliffe Harlot.

  When Jacinda cast him another furtive look, he licked his lips and smiled at her.

  She tossed her curls and looked away, blushing. Her spinsterish friend followed her glance and immediately frowned, pinched faced, scolding, and governesslike. They conferred in whispers. Dolph smiled to himself. Perhaps when he managed to get her alone, Jacinda would like to have a look at his scars, he thought. Women loved that.

  He tore off some small pieces of bread and threw them to the ducks, feeling the girls’ stares on him. Then, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, Lady Jacinda proved she had inherited her mother’s genius for flirtation. Whether by feminine artifice or the interference of that still more coy female, Mother Nature, Jacinda’s light silk parasol lifted out of her gloved hand and blew on a gust of wind, exactly like a kite, and landed in the center of the pond.

  Dolph turned around just as she came barreling to the edge of the water amid the clacking ducks. She skidded to a halt beside him.