Lieutenant Fluellen looked from one to the other with undisguised curiosity. “I feel as though I’m missing something.”
“Most of your wits,” countered Robert amiably.
“I packed them in my other case. Which, by the way, is still at the Rusty Dove in Dovedale village.” He turned to Charlotte. “What is a rusty dove?”
It was too clumsy a change of subject not to be deliberate. Charlotte liked him tremendously for it.
“It’s my guess that rusty is a corruption of ‘russet,’ ” she explained earnestly. “The first Duke of Dovedale had red hair, you see. Hence the Russet Dove, in compliment to the Duke.”
Lieutenant Fluellen looked critically at his friend. “If they named a tavern for Rob, it would have to be the Muddy Dove. Did you leave any dirt on the road between here and Dovedale, Rob?”
“An adage about pots and kettles comes to mind.” The Duke turned his attention back to Charlotte with an alacrity that would have been flattering if she hadn’t had the impression that his thoughts were a million miles away. Or perhaps only several thousand miles away, across the seas in India. “The Duchess mentioned visitors from India?”
“Only one,” Charlotte said apologetically, wishing she could offer him more. “Lord Frederick Staines.” Something in Robert’s expression prompted her to add, “Do you know him?”
“Only by reputation,” said Robert smoothly. “But I look forward to knowing him better. We old India hands tend to band together.”
Penelope swung her basket in the direction of the door. “Lord Frederick and the rest of the party should be outside already, cutting holly and mistletoe. If you join us, you can meet him.
“Although I imagine you’d probably prefer to stay by a hot fire at this point,” Charlotte put in, with a glance at her cousin’s chapped cheeks. Much as she wished he would join them, it would be cruel to drag him back out into the cold. It was silly to imagine that if she let him out of her sight, he would disappear again, like a cavalier in a daydream, riding back off into the haze of her imagination.
Or, as he had twelve years ago, packing and stealing away without a word to any of them at all.
“Ra-ther,” agreed Lieutenant Fluellen wholeheartedly. “A hot fire, a hot fire, my kingdom for a hot fire.”
He looked like he might have expatiated on that theme, but the Duke preempted him by strolling deliberately towards the door. Glancing back over his shoulder, the Duke winked at Charlotte in a way that made her stomach flutter like five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
“Come, Tommy,” he said easily. “Where’s your seasonal spirit? How often does one have the chance to participate in a proper country Christmas?”
Lieutenant Fluellen held out both hands palms up, in the traditional gesture of surrender. “How could one refuse?”
Chapter Two
There were many emotions Robert Lansdowne, fifth Duke of Dovedale, might have experienced upon returning to his ancestral home. Elation. Triumph. Fear.
Mostly, he just felt cold.
Charlotte was right: He was longing for a hot fire. Preferably a dozen of them all at once. After a decade overseas, he had nearly forgotten the merciless chill of an English winter. Robert thought back to all those soldiers he had known in India who had spent half their time mooning over memories of England, saying fatuous things like, “Oh, to see a good English winter.” Madmen, the lot of them. He had lost the ability to feel his feet somewhere just west of King’s Lynn. Since he was upright, he assumed they were still attached to his legs, but he wouldn’t have been willing to vouch to their presence in any court of law. As to the rest of him . . . well, it didn’t bear thinking about. At this point, fire and brimstone were beginning to sound more like a promise than a threat. The Devil could have his soul for the price of a hot water bottle.
Yet here he was, turning his back on the promise of whatever warmth might be available in this frosty and unpleasant land, and going voluntarily out into that cold night. It was only just past five, but the early winter dusk had already fallen, turning the grounds of Girdings House dark as night. The great parkland stretched before them like the uncharted seas of a medieval explorer’s map, the topiary rearing from the landscape like sea serpents along the way. The torches placed at intervals along the uneven paths served more to cast shadows than to illuminate, making two of every shrub and tree.
Ahead of him, his cousin bobbed around, peeking over her shoulder. Wisps of blond hair had escaped from her hood, sparkling like angel dust in the light of the torches interspersed along the path. At the sight of him there behind her, she looked—pleased. As though she had actually meant those words of welcome. They did say time healed all wounds. But then, people said a lot of bloody silly things. Didn’t she realize that she wasn’t supposed to be happy to see him?
Robert decided it probably wasn’t in his own best interest to remind her of that.
He sent a warm smile her way, undoubtedly a wasted gesture given the uncertainty of the lighting and the fact that her friend was already claiming her attention with a hand on her arm and a whispered comment that made his cousin laugh and shake her hooded head.
Little Charlotte. Who would have thought it? She was still very much Little Charlotte, Robert thought with a slight smile, for all that she must be turned twenty. The top of her bright red hood came up just to her taller friend’s ear, and she walked with a bouncing step that was nearly a skip. He remembered her as she had been, a whimsical, wide-eyed little thing with rumpled blond curls that no one ever bothered to brush and a disconcertingly adult way of speaking.
He hadn’t thought to find her back at Girdings.
To be honest, he hadn’t thought about her at all. Cultivating family ties hadn’t been high on his list of objectives in returning to Girdings. Coming back to Girdings had been no more than a necessary evil, a means to an end.
Next to him, Tommy sunk his chin as deeply into his collar as it would go, which made him look like a disgruntled turtle. “Feather beds,” he muttered. “Mulled wine. A fire. Remind me why we’re here again?”
It required only one word. “Staines.”
“Oh. Right.” Tommy sunk his head even deeper into his collar. “If he has any sense, he won’t be out here, either.”
“Sense isn’t something he’s known for.”
Tommy wrinkled his brow, the only bit of him still visible over his collar. “Who’s the less sensible—he for being out here, or we for following him?” When Robert didn’t answer him, his tone turned serious. Swiping wool out of the way of his mouth, he said very carefully, “Rob—are you sure this is a good idea?”
Since that wasn’t a question Rob wanted to examine too closely, he countered it with one of his own. As he had learned from Colonel Arbuthnot, a good offensive was always the best approach when one was on weak territory. “Do you have a better one?”
Tommy looked wistfully back along the alleyway to the great house behind him, the windows ablaze with light. “This is a nice little place you have here. We could just forget about this whole revenge thing, have some mulled wine, enjoy the holiday . . .”
Robert’s spine stiffened beneath layers of wool. “It’s not about revenge. It’s about justice.”
“I take it that’s a no to the mulled wine, then.”
“Don’t you want to see justice served?”
“General Wellesley—”
“—has other things to worry about.” When Robert had tried to voice his suspicions to the General’s aides, he had been laughed out of the mess.
But, then, what commander wanted to hear that one of his own officers had betrayed him? In the flush of victory after Assaye, no one had wanted to talk about what might have gone wrong. What was one murdered colonel when the day had been so gloriously won? People die in battle. And if a man died from a shot in the back from his own side, well, that was regrettable but far from unheard of. It was battle. People lunged and mingled and dashed about. It was not always possible t
o make sure that bullets went where they were supposed to go. That was what they had said, in a patronizing tone that suggested that, after a decade in the army, he ought to have known that, too.
Except that this bullet had gone exactly where it was supposed to go—right into Colonel Arbuthnot’s back.
For the thousandth time, Robert wandered the torturous paths of might have been. It might have all turned out so differently if only he had paid more attention to the Colonel that night, when the Colonel had told him that he suspected Arthur Wrothan of selling secrets to the enemy. Robert had been ready enough to believe it. He had never liked Wrothan, with his sly quips, his toadying ways, and that absurd sprig of jasmine he affected, more suited to a London dandy rather than a commissioned officer in His Majesty’s army. But Robert had been preoccupied with the day to come, with the battle to be fought. There would be plenty of time to deal with Wrothan later, after the battle; plenty of time to interest the proper authorities and turn the whole bloody mess over to them. It had never occurred to Robert that Wrothan might strike first and strike fatally.
It had never occurred to him—but it ought to have. The scent of jasmine still made his stomach churn with remembered guilt.
That, however, was not something he was going to admit to Tommy. “If Wrothan did it once, what makes you think he won’t betray us again? Who will die next time? Are you willing to take that risk?”
“You make it bloody hard to argue with you,” muttered Tommy from the depths of his collar. “It’s deuced unfair.”
“Maybe that’s because I’m right.”
“Or just bloody-minded.”
“That, too,” agreed Robert genially. “Are you in?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Are you sure it’s not just for the feather beds?”
Tommy sunk his chin deeper into his scarf. “I’ll let you know when I see one,” he said dourly.
Robert clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Good chap. Once this business is done . . .”
And there he stuck. Once Wrothan had been brought to justice, preferably on the point of his sword, he hadn’t the foggiest notion what to do next. He had sold his commission before leaving India, selling with it the only life he knew. There was a big blank stretch beyond, terra incognita, as forbidding and faceless as the winter-dark grounds of Girdings House.
If he had any sense, he would take Tommy’s perfectly logical suggestion and make his pretended return to Girdings a real one, settle the ducal mantle around his shoulders, and . . . what? He hadn’t the foggiest notion of what a duke was supposed to do. He wasn’t even sure if dukes wore mantles.
He was a mistake, a fluke, a duke by accident, and when it came down to it, he’d rather face an oncoming Mahratta army. At least he would know what to do with the army.
For a moment, it almost seemed as though his wish had been granted. As they rounded a curve in the path, heading towards a stand of trees, torches flared into view and what had been a low rumble escalated into a full-fledged din.
Man-high torches sent orange flames into the sky, casting a satanic glow over the men disporting themselves about the edge of the forest. If it was an army, it was an unusually well-dressed one. The flames licked lovingly over silver watch fobs and polished boot tops, scintillating off signet rings and diamond stickpins. Charcoal crackled in low, three-legged braziers, emitting heat and plumes of sullen, dark smoke. To add to the confusion, dogs darted barking underfoot, worrying at fallen leaves, snapping at boot tassels, and getting in the way of the liveried servants who circulated among the mob offering steaming glasses balanced on silver trays.
Judging from the raucous tone of the men’s voices, the liquid was not tea but something much, much stronger.
“Ah,” Robert said smoothly. “We seem to have found the rest of the party.”
Tommy eyed the dogs and torches with deep suspicion. “They look like they’re about to hunt down a head of peasant.”
Robert stuck his hands in his pockets and assumed a superior expression. “Don’t be absurd. Peasant is too tough and stringy. Hardly worth the bother.”
He wished he felt quite so sure as he sounded. For all his urbane words, there was something distinctly off-putting about the pampered lordlings prancing along the edge of the forest. The torchlight distended their open jaws and lent a yellow cast to their teeth, making exaggerated caricatures of their features, turning them into something predatory, primal, their faces florid in the flaring light of the torches.
These were the sort of men Arthur Wrothan had collected around him in India, the spoiled, the bored, the wealthy. That was how Wrothan had operated. He had battened on the young aristocrats playing at soldier, winning their loyalty by introducing them to all the vices the Orient had to offer. He had made a very special sort of club out of it, one that operated by invitation only. It was a group Robert had steered well clear of—he had no use for amateur officers dabbling in debauchery and even less for bottom-feeders like Wrothan—but in such a small world, it was impossible not to know of them.
They had tended to travel en masse, Wrothan’s lordlings, clattering into the officers’ mess in a burst of clanking spurs, gleaming silver buttons, and shouted ribaldries, well-groomed hair as burnished as their buttons, cheeks flushed with drink rather than sun. They reminded Robert of the thoroughbred horses his father used to take him to see race at Newmarket, glossy on the surface, but skittish underneath. In the midst of those animal high spirits, one would invariably find Wrothan, calm and contained, the dark kernel at the center of the storm.
Lord Frederick Staines had been Wrothan’s greatest coup and most devoted acolyte. His selling out of the army at the same time as Wrothan might have been coincidence—but Robert doubted it.
Under pretense of adjusting his collar, Robert scanned the group of men under the trees. Aside from his cousin and her friend, the group consisted almost entirely of men, shrouded in many-caped greatcoats, boots shining as though they had never touched anything so mundane as earth. Between high collars and low hat brims, it was next to impossible to make out individual features. To Robert’s prejudiced eyes, they all seemed cast from the same mold: overbred, overdressed, and distinctly overrated.
Robert strolled casually over to Charlotte. “I take it this is the rest of the house party?”
She had to tip her head back to look at him, bumping her nose on the side of her hood. “Only those who weren’t afraid to brave the cold. The faint of heart decided to stay in and toast by the fire.”
Despite himself, Robert’s frozen lips cracked into a smile. “After all these years, you still speak like a book.”
“That’s because she generally has her head buried in one,” put in her friend, with equal parts affection and scorn.
“I like books,” said Charlotte disingenuously. “They’re so much grander than real life.”
“Certainly grander than this lot,” snorted her friend, sounding more like the Dowager Duchess than the Duchess herself, but she ruined the effect by raising a hand and acknowledging the enthusiastic halloos of the gentlemen, several of whom seemed quite delighted to see her. Two men broke off from the group, starting forwards in their direction, one considerably ahead of the other.
The man in the vanguard might, just might, have been Freddy Staines. He was certainly of the same type. His coat possessed enough cloaks to garb a small Indian village and his many watch fobs jangled like a dancing girl’s bracelets as he walked. His light brown hair had been brushed into careful disarray before being topped with a high-crowned beaver hat. Rings jostled for precedence on his fingers, a signet ring bumping up against a curiously scratched ruby in an overly ornate setting.
“Miss Deveraux!” he exclaimed, before adding, as an afterthought, “Lady Charlotte.”
He raised his glass in a toast to the two ladies, sloshing mulled wine over the side in the process. It made a sticky trail through the mud on Robert’s boot.
No, decided Robert.
It wasn’t Staines. This man’s skin was too fair ever to have weathered an Indian summer, and the pronounced veins beginning to show along his nose suggested a prolonged course of heavy drinking with the best smuggled brandy London had to offer.
He eyed Robert arrogantly through a slightly grimy quizzing glass. “And you are?”
“This is Dovedale,” Miss Deveraux said bluntly, before Robert could get a word in edgewise. “It’s his mistletoe you’re cutting.”
“Good Gad! You’re Dovedale?”
If a duke fell in the forest, there was no doubt that the entire ton would hear it. The mention of his title commanded universal attention. Conversations stopped. Baskets dropped. Even the dogs ceased barking, except for one spaniel who yipped out of turn before whimpering into silence.
Robert sketched a wave. “Hullo. Carry on.”
“Makes me feel like I ought to curtsy,” murmured Tommy.
Silencing him with an elbow to the ribs, Rob turned back to the other man. “Yes, I am Dovedale.” The name felt clumsy on his tongue. “And you are?”
“Frobisher. Martin Frobisher.” Suddenly the man was all eagerness to please. Letting the quizzing glass fall, he stuck out a gloved hand, noted the sticky splotch of spilled wine that marred the surface, rubbed it hard against his leg, and held it out again. “I believe our families are distantly connected. . . .”
“Through Adam, perhaps,” drawled the man behind him. “I can’t conceive of any connection closer.”
Frobisher’s cheeks mottled, but, surprisingly, he refrained from retaliating in kind. With a quick, sideways look at the other man, he subsided into obedient silence.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” said Robert neutrally.
The newcomer wafted a languid hand in greeting. “Sir Francis Medmenham, at your service. Like the rest of these louts, I am passing the holiday season on your largesse.”
With his gleaming boots and large gold signet ring, he made a very unconvincing mendicant. His appearance accomplished that towards which Frobisher only strove, his coat boasting a restrained three capes, his hair brushed into a perfect Titus, and his hat brim tilted just forward enough to provide a rakish air without obscuring his vision.
Pink Carnation 05 - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine Page 4