The Duke Diaries

by Sophia Nash

  Well, it was almost dawn. The birds were already chirping in the pear trees outside Carleton House.

  The first thought Rory had after he was ushered into the future king’s chambers was that Prinny’s shorn hair on the left half of his head was going to take a long time to grow in properly. Not one of the other dukes of the entourage had been able to remember how the royal head had become suddenly quite bald on one side. It was a good thing wigs were still in fashion.

  But if it had happened to Rory, he would have shaved the other side, if only to avoid the snickers of the servants. But then again, he was not the future monarch of Christendom, and so, who was he to give advice? And princes had the unattractive habit of thinking themselves above humankind, and definite trendsetters of the first order.

  Prinny’s trends unfortunately included eating to excess, drinking to excess, cavorting in excess, gambling to excess, attempting to rid himself of an excess wife, spending in excess, and excessively annoying Parliament due to the latter three vices, and infuriating his subjects due to all of the above. Yes, the monarchy was ripe for revolution.

  “Your Highness.” He showed a leg when the prince opened one eye.

  “Abshire,” Prinny croaked. “To what do I owe the displeasure?” He paused. “Are you married?”

  “No, sire.”

  “Candover will kill you if you don’t go through with it. You know that. You could at least try a bit harder. Do you know how difficult it will be to explain away a duel?”

  “I beg your pardon, sire, but since it’s merely a question of whether he will kill me before or after the wedding, I find it difficult to worry, even if I should pretend to care.”

  The prince barked a laugh. “That’s why I’ve always liked you far and away the best of the lot of those spoiled prigs.”

  “Happy to play the court jester.”

  The Prince Regent’s lids were low on his eyes. Despite this royal’s inability to spend his subject’s pennies wisely, and do anything moderately, Rory was in no doubt of his intelligence. Hundreds of years of royal inbreeding had somehow come full circle in that area.

  “I’m glad you’ve come, whatever the reason. I miss your bloody hide.”

  “The feeling is almost mutual, sire.”

  The Prince Regent chuckled. “And your timing could not be better. Since you’re here, I require your services. It’s perhaps a bit more enterprising than a jester, C.”

  Rory nearly balked at the euphemism for the name the prince had assigned him more than a decade ago.

  “Have you seen the Morning Post of this morning?”

  Rory shook his head. God, he should have foreseen this. The prince was never more jovial than when he tried to coax a chameleon from well-deserved rest in his natural habitat.

  Prinny nodded toward the marble-topped gilded table beside his massive bolstered bed. A stack of newspapers—the Morning Post—resided there. Each was folded to show the infamous column.

  “Go on, then,” Prinny insisted. “Read the first one. Very fashionable for you, indeed, today. You will like it, I assure you.”

  He quickly scanned “The Fashionable World” column.

  Bloody, bloody hell.

  As it is not Tuesday or a Thursday, this column will not feature an excerpt from the Duke Diaries today. Instead we shall give our loyal readers our initial impression of who might be the extraordinary author of this compelling read after having completed a thorough perusal.

  It should be noted that in not one instance does the name Rory Lennox, Earl of Rutledge, more notably the new Duke of Abshire, appear on any of the incriminating pages.

  In light of this, and the ceaseless whispers by the ton—wondering why the Prince Regent conferred a duchy on this notorious rake. Oh, yes, he fought for the Crown, and was occasionally in our dear Wellington’s circle of officers, but still . . . is that all it takes to earn a dukedom? Why, surely Wellington must be secretly offended, as he should.

  These diaries hint at an answer: blackmail. Abshire’s talent is obviously chronicling his betters’ misdeeds, and using them to his advantage.

  To further the argument, I shall confirm that these diaries were found in Carleton House the evening before the Duke of Candover’s failed wedding.

  So I ask you all to watch very carefully the Prince Regent’s behavior toward Abshire in future. Will he ask the Prime Minister to rescind this new duke’s ministerial position, of which he has absolutely no expertise? Will Abshire soon be escorted to Newgate prison on trumped-up charges? Or will the Prince Regent stand by this rakehelly blackmailer? You be the judge.

  And by the by, dear readers, take note: I am forced to resign my position since the Prince Regent has threatened the publisher of this fine paper with charges of sedition and libel should he continue to publish this column. So I have decided to go the way of so many others, who demand proper behavior by their rulers—underground. But I shall persevere with your aid. Look for my Tuesday and Thursday column on street corners and posting houses! Until then, remember this: while we may be at war with our French neighbor, their Declaration of the Rights of Man, which details the universal natural rights of all mankind, as well as government by elected representatives, is based on the Age of Enlightenment and resistance to oppression.

  Citizens unite!

  Rory returned the paper to the ornate table. The goddamned Frenchified traitor wanted to see a rake, did he? Why, he would take great pleasure in placing the coward on the British common soldier’s front line and would face him and pull the trigger himself, while wearing his best counterfeit French uniform.

  He examined his fingernails as Prinny examined him. “You were about to suggest simple breaking and entering, I suppose?”

  “I leave it to you, as always, my dear,” Prinny replied, while scratching the shorn half of his head, which featured a half inch of graying stubble. “But you are not to destroy that bloody diary. I insist on the pleasure of reading it before I burn it.”

  Rory sighed and was suddenly tired. “God rest the soul of the poor sod who wrote them. A disgruntled servant, most likely, no?”

  “I really don’t care who it is, Abshire. But I shall personally draw and quarter him myself.” The prince sniffed. “Of course, I shall require you to hold him down.”

  “And then you’ll gift me with . . .”

  “Hmmm . . . perhaps a small country? Well, we don’t want to draw too much more attention your way, given that column, do we? Perhaps a nice large island somewhere exotic, where you can cool your heels until this dies down.” The prince chuckled.

  Rory shook his head. “I admire your cool, sire, as always. But perhaps you should consider joining me under this promised coconut palm if you cannot contrive a way out of this revolution in the making.”

  “Never fear, my dear,” the prince replied. “My ancestors have withstood far greater evils than published recriminations over royal excess made public. I’ve told all of you—reform your reputations, cast off your mistresses, marry within your class, and that will be the end of it. Once you’ve all accomplished that, the fickle public will become bored with this evil little man’s tirade and cast their eyes toward new gossip.”

  “Of course, you are right, sire.”

  “So after you bring me the diaries, I command you to marry Candover’s sister, the name someone here whispered in my ear. What is it, again?”

  “Lady Verity Fitzroy.”

  The prince rubbed his hands together. “What a delightfully prim name. I almost feel guilty delivering a peaceful little dove to a hawk such as you. Almost.”

  “Oh, she’s little, all right. Peaceful and dove-like? Of that there is considerable doubt.”

  “How divine,” Prinny continued. “I sense a true reformation in your future. Ah, well . . . everyone knows reformed rakes make the best husb—”

  “Murderous traitors?” he cut in loudly.

  Prinny chuckled. “One would hope not. Especially when a small country or large island is
in the offing.”

  The problem was, Rory thought, as he carried out preparations for what he hoped would be his last mission (something he considered for the very first time after two hundred forty-seven sorties for the Crown in the last decade), that he didn’t want to live on a tropical island paradise.

  He wanted to figure out why the not so very prim, un-dove-like, unpeaceful lady he had wanted to throttle the last time he’d seen her was running away, and then he wanted to haul her back to the wild beauty of the windswept peaks of their youth and open the door to the promise of happiness.

  He would consider it an added bonus if he could also manage to replace all of her ghastly, miserable hats in the process.

  Chapter 13

  It took Verity Fitzroy one day less than a fortnight to travel to hell and back. Or rather from hell to a different sort of Hades in Cornwall before a return to the cold realm of the devil in the Peak District she had once known and loved until recently.

  At least she’d had Mary Haverty to keep her company from Derbyshire to London, and then from London to Cornwall. Of course, the delightful composition of her carriage’s occupants had changed during the last leg of the endless carriage ride. And it was her own fault.

  Verity had felt she had no choice but to offer a place in the carriage to the Archbishop of Canterbury when he came to call at St. James’s Square. The poor man was so flustered after an apparent dressing down by the Prince Regent that he had misunderstood the prince’s command to personally deliver an urgent missive to the Duke of Candover.

  Verity was not surprised at the dressing down. From what she had witnessed that awful night, the archbishop had been the most sodden drunk of the lot of them.

  “But my dear Lady Fitzroy, I simply must see His Grace, immediately,” the archbishop had said, his old wrinkled hands shaking visibly. “The Prince Regent demanded it.”

  “But he’s in Penzance, at the Duke of Kress’s house party on St. Michael’s Mount. The Duke of Barry and the Duke of Sussex are there as well. The Prince Regent ordered them away from London. My brother informed me in a letter that Prinny insisted he oversee a house party where Kress was supposed to select a bride to help quell the public’s outrage.”

  The elderly gentleman mopped his brow with a black handkerchief. “But I had thought your brother was to remain here to try to convince his former fiancée to forgive and marry him.”

  Verity shook her head. “There was never any chance of that.”

  “But the prince gave me three days to deliver this or else . . . or else, I don’t know what. I will not have enough time.” His neck wobbled as he spoke. “Oh, the Prince Regent will be most displeased.”

  “Archbishop,” she could not withhold a small sigh, “Lady Mary Haverty and I are just leaving for Penzance. I should be very happy to deliver the royal letter for you.”

  “Oh, no, no, no. I must do it myself.” He looked at her with such hope.

  He was an elderly gentleman and it would obviously take him half a day to return to his elegant residence and arrange for his carriage, and his affairs to be packed before he would leave.

  “Well, then, sir, you are invited to join us straightaway. We would be, um, delighted by your company.”

  “You are very kind, my dear,” the man said with a blinding smile, which nearly transformed his face into that of a much younger man. “I shall just give your footman a note to deliver to my chambers to have my affairs sent on to Kress’s castle there. Always wanted to see the place. A former Benedictine monastery, don’t you know?”

  Well, there went any chance of an exchange of confidence and of deepening the already great bond between Mary and herself.

  Verity had never subscribed to the notion of confession to a man of the cloth. She preferred the privacy of tormented pleadings and apologies to her Maker directly.

  And so Mary and she had sat up straight, kept on their toes, and all other clichéd phrases that indicated pious behavior. That did not include hiding a novel between Johnson’s Sermons. But they had some luck, the archbishop finally fell asleep the last hour of the journey, and could not be roused, even with Verity’s smelling salts.

  Verity had to laugh. She had finally met her snoring match. Of course he was eighty-seven and smelled like yellowing parchment.

  It was Mary who snatched the royal missive from the archbishop’s fingers and suggested a way for Verity to have a private interview with the charming Duke of Sussex, who was the only one who could save Miss Amelia Primrose.

  If he didn’t kill Verity first.

  Ah, but that was another story.

  It was good to be back in London, Rory had to admit as he remounted the white marble steps of Carleton House the next afternoon. A little intrigue and a little lock picking was good for the soul from time to time. It would have been an excellent prescription for keeping the mind alert, if the high probability of death during one of these escapades wasn’t a negating factor.

  And for the first time, he had very much wanted to cheat death. He didn’t want to examine the feeling too closely. It was just that he knew he had to finish this business with Verity Fitzroy. He owed her that, he told himself, refusing to add that perhaps, just perhaps, he owed it to himself as well.

  He quickly forced away the thought by remembering the events of yesterday in detail. With a disguise in place, and a modicum of gold guineas placed in the furtive hands of the working man who cleaned the offices of the Morning Post, Rory had gained the address of the former author of “The Fashionable World” column before it had been discontinued. When the columnist departed his residence with a jaunty bounce to his step, Rory gained entrance and recovered the diary under the bed mattress within minutes. Why were people so uniformly uncreative in their hiding places? His last discovery, one of Kress’s bottles of French absinthe, confirmed the obvious. The damned ink-stained tattletale was the original thief who had somehow entered Carleton House and ferreted out Verity’s diaries. But despite the momentary thrill of the find, these working hours were becoming tiresome.

  While walking toward Prinny’s royal bedchambers for the second time in two days, Rory quickly scanned the purloined red leather-bound volume that was at the heart of London’s hysteria.

  The bold black scrawl was not the typical handwriting of the serving class. More likely it was that of a bitter gentleman who due to reduced circumstances had been forced into serving his equals who were now his betters. It was the only likely scenario, as Rory refused to believe one of the royal entourage would have been stupid enough or sober enough to remember and document years of debauchery with such clarity and wit.

  He had woken the Prince Regent mid-snore, which was a wicked good imitation of Verity’s adorable gurgle. The future king snapped awake with the alertness of a royal on the verge of losing his crown. The prince had been near to tears in happiness when Rory delivered the diary into his beringed fingers.

  Rory hadn’t received a small country in return, or even a large island. Instead he had asked Prinny to give him the name of the best Bow Street Runner in London. Prinny provided it and then handed him Crown jewels fit for a queen—a diamond-encrusted ring in whose center nested a ruby the size of a quail egg, and a bracelet and necklace made in the same style. Rory immediately thought of how all of it would look on the dark beauty of Verity.

  Well.

  Now as he sat high in his phaeton, driving his matched set of gleaming dark bays through the hot, crowded streets where the fashionable shopped, he reflected that he was almost finished with all he had meant to accomplish in London, and more.

  He had saved the prince’s hide once again, and had, in addition, achieved his main objective. He had interviewed and engaged the services of the finest Bow Street Runner in Town, and supplied the man with every detail he possessed concerning one Mr. Theo Battswell, charlatan son of a vicar turned tooth-drawer.

  Rory turned his horses onto the side street leading to St. James’s Square. Candover’s pile was, of cours
e, the largest of the magnificent townhouses. Only Welly’s Number One, London, bested it.

  He tossed the reins to the footman permanently stationed outside, then leapt from his perch and took the marble stairs two at a time.

  He wanted to see her. He wanted to force aside the distance that had somehow crept between them the day after that terrifying but glorious afternoon of intimacy. He raised the large brass knocker of Candover’s townhouse and realized he was not dreading any moment of this confrontation with her. Even when they sparred or misunderstood one another, he still liked her. And after he ferreted out what had obviously been some sort of misunderstanding, they would return to Derbyshire to resume where they had left off.

  He merely had to convince Verity to truly agree to marry him—whether she liked it or not. He was actually starting to warm to the idea. If he was honest with himself, it was far more than that.

  He could not let her go.

  The austere butler of Candover House did not smile when Rory was received. Then again, butlers rarely smiled. He reflected that it must in part be a gentleman’s gentleman code of conduct.

  “Your Grace.” The elderly man bowed—not as low as he would have had it been the master of the house, but not as slight as if Rory had still been merely an earl.

  “Sir.” Rory nodded. “Is Lady Verity Fitzroy receiving?”

  “No, Your Grace.”

  “Is she at home or not?”

  The butler eyed him balefully and sighed. One was not supposed to ask such things so baldly.

  “Just tell me, man. I’m her betrothed.” His demand was rudeness personified. Rory just didn’t care. He had to see her. Straighten out this mess.

  The butler’s single bushy hedgerow for eyebrows rose a notch. “Yes, as stated by Your Grace’s announcement a week ago in the Morning Post, in the exact place where ‘The Fashionable World’ column once resided.”

  Rory resisted the urge to grind his teeth. The old tic in his left eye returned. “If—and only if—one hazarded a guess that Lady Verity Fitzroy is not at home, or perhaps not receiving me alone, or everyone else included, would you be kind enough to inform me when the lady in question will change her status? Of receiving, or returning, or both?”