Her ladyship began to fan herself briskly in the none-too-warm tearoom.
“Are you well, Lady Abingdon?”
“No need for concern, my dear,” she said with a negligent wave of a hand as she dabbed a handkerchief at her upper lip. “Just a bit breathless now and then. At my age, I am relieved to be breathing at all. The quacks claim it’s my heart but I notice it beats so I cannot imagine what they are on about. They say a murmur’s become a muttering or some such.”
Prudence looked closely at her godmother. Her color under the layer of powder was the same as the pale talc. Her lips had a bluish cast at the edges indicating poor circulation.
“Lady Abingdon, I beg you to heed your doctors.”
“If I did, I’d be abed even now instead of having tea with my favorite godchild. Tea is a great restorative as any well-versed herbalist knows.”
“You must take care of your health.”
“I am fine, my dear. Better than fine. Matter of fact, I’m contemplating a pleasure trip to Italy.”
“You cannot!”
“Pooh! I can and will. I am done with emetics, paregorics, bloodletting and leeches, I tell you. Finished! I am worse off for the best care available and I’ll have no more of it.”
“But...”
“But nothing. It will be a most excellent adventure. So salubrious to relax under the Tuscan sun half potted on Chianti and fully stuffed with the local proscuitto ham. Bound to see some ruins and cathedrals, I suppose. Plan to stay in Florence. Very civilized place, Medici and all,” Lady Abingdon mused aloud. “Popes and poisoners in that family but then, who doesn’t have a mad uncle or aunt, I say. Makes holidays eventful.”
Prudence laughed uncertainly with her ladyship.
“I had hoped I might persuade you to join me. Be my companion in Italy instead of an ape leader in Bath. I would welcome your company, my dear child.”
“Italy, Lady Abingdon?”
“Lord Abingdon went there on his Grand Tour. Never heard the end of it — until he passed on, of course. Simply adored Tuscany and I have a mind to see what all the fuss was about before I join him in what will undoubtedly be a ham-less eternity.”
“I would love to go with you but the apothecary shop...”
“Will carry on quite nicely without you. It’s only a twelve-month. You’ve trained Mr. Murphy well and deserve to see a bit of the world while you can enjoy it. Perhaps you’ll meet a handsome Italian Count.”
Prudence gave her a look.
“Think on it, Prudence.”
“I am honored you would consider me.”
“Consider you! I thought of no other. Nor am I in a hurry to go. The autumn is lovely there or so I’m told. We’ll have a wonderful time together, I’ll wager. Everything at the apothecary shop will be as you left it when you return.”
Of that, Prudence had no doubt. Italy or no, nothing in her entirely predictable life in Bath would change.
Chapter 6
In which our hero anticipates laughing last and best.
Autumn’s many mortifications gave way to a somewhat less mortifying winter for Ainsworth at Grayfriars Abbey. By New Year, he returned to Town to look in on the House of Lords as was his duty. From what he saw, this involved a great deal of sitting in hard, high, straight backed wooden benches. Only the occasional foot stamping or “huzzah!” relieved the monotony of speechifying. He shuddered at the thought. Perhaps next year he would take his seat. Or the year after.
The duke’s shoulder still ached like a sore tooth. The skin had knit roughly together but the underlying muscle remained in painful turmoil. He couldn’t raise his left arm much less lift any weight with his left hand without triggering pain.
Excepting Smeeth, who fussed over his hair and person like a mother baboon nitpicking her young, the rest of the duke’s staff understood implicitly they should not dwell upon his infirmity. Even the household mongrels sensed he should not be importuned. They sat at a respectful distance whenever a walk in the park seemed in the offing.
Thatcher grew concerned about His Grace’s chronic discomfort. One late January day, he held the duke’s caped greatcoat and dared to raise the subject obliquely when the duke winced as he lifted the coat off the butler’s arm.
“Wounds take time to heal, Your Grace.”
“They do, Thatcher.” Ainsworth looked his butler in the eye, “And how do you get on?”
“Well enough now, Your Grace.” Thatcher said perfunctorily.
“It wasn’t always tolerable?” The duke asked, “The pain.”
“I had tenderness of the stump but,” Thatcher clammed up, fearing he importuned the duke with inappropriate personal details.
“But?” Ainsworth asked.
Thatcher hesitated but the duke silently awaited his reply. After an uncomfortable pause, the butler blurted out in a rush, “The missing arm gave me so much grief I wanted to have it cut off all over again!”
“Did you see a doctor?”
“Even if I could afford one, why pay a man to tell me I was certifiable?” Thatcher replied. The duke said nothing, waiting intently. Thatcher elaborated, “Got to the point, I was beside myself distracted by it. Then another fellow in my condition told me about Miss H.”
“What?” Ainsworth’s head throbbed. ‘Mizzach!’ That Night, he heard those two syllables over and over. Now perhaps he understood. “Miss H., you say?”
“Miss Haversham, Your Grace. Bless me if Miss H. didn’t put me right! Has special salves. Her man at the apothecary shop had ways of working what was left that settled my stump nicely. She told me to try grabbing things with my missing hand…in my head, pretending that is. Thought her daft but I swear it helped. Only charged for the liniments and poultice. She was a godsend, sir.”
“You call her Miss H., this Miss Haversham?” The duke’s hackles rose.
“Everybody does.”
“Where in Town might I find this Miss Haversham?” He asked quietly.
“Not in London, Your Grace, Bath. Her apothecary shop’s on Trim Street, tucked away in the corner. Number three. Can’t miss it. Worth the trip, I’d say.”
“No. 3 Trim Street, Bath,” the duke committed the address to memory. He jammed his hand into the pocket of his greatcoat and withdrew the empty glass jar. “In the meantime, is it possible for someone to get more of this? I’ve used it up.”
“The housekeeper will see to it tomorrow, Your Grace. What is it Mrs. Clarke should get?”
“I’m not sure what it’s called, Thatcher. All I have is this.”
Ainsworth opened the jar for his one-armed butler, who sniffed it once and said, “Demme if that isn’t one of Miss Haversham’s rubs, Your Grace.”
“There’s no label.” The duke showed his butler the top of the lid.
“Funny,” Thatcher replied, perplexed.
“Hilarious,” the duke said grimly. “You’re certain it’s hers?”
“No doubt about it. Never smelled anything like it before or since.”
“Unforgettable, I agree. And what does this Miss Haversham look like? Is she a heavyset, older woman?”
“Lord, no! Fact, she looks too young to be tending folks. Brown hair. Light eyes. Slim. But not to worry, she knows what she’s about. Been at it for years.”
“Pretty?”
“Not in a loud way,” Thatcher said with fondness. “But she grows on you. She’s a right one, Your Grace. Not high in the instep. Gives as good as she gets from the likes of me but a lady through and through. Daresay you’d like her.”
Not bloody likely.
The duke recalled the slight female examining him, brushing his hair from his forehead gently. Her hands were small, soft and cool. Her voice had a velvet nap. She handled his shoulder carefully and massaged the fresh-smelling salve into his tattered skin. But first, she had her henchmen tattoo him.
“I think we shall go Bath in the spring.”
“To cure what ails you, Your Grace?”
Ainsworth n
odded slowly.
“I’ll look up Miss Haversham for you, Your Grace, she’ll change your life.”
“I believe she already has,” Ainsworth muttered to himself.
“Shall I call for your carriage?”
“No, Thatcher. I’ll walk.” At the word ‘walk,’ Attila stood at attention. Fred and George, both fright-haired terrier mixes with half-cocked ears, started toward the open door. And Puck danced in place whining for an explicit invitation.
“Sit,” the duke commanded. They sat and fretted.
“Stay!” He added. The foursome drooped and let him step to the open door. Ainsworth softened the blow with a curt “Find Cook!” And off they ambled to seek solace in meat scraps.
The duke walked briskly nowhere in particular, just to alleviate the pulsing energy now coursing through his body.
Miss H. was it? Who in blazes was this Miss Haversham? What had he ever done to her? He’d never laid eyes on the chit before That Night. Never been to Bath. Her motive for the attack remained a mystery. No matter. By God, he would track this Miss H. down. Even if her touch felt more like a lover’s caress, he’d make her rue the day she raised a hand against him. He would have his revenge.
He considered how best to put her at his mercy, not that he intended to show her any.
Ainsworth strode down Grosvenor Street to Bond, turned right and continued his long-legged lope through Mayfair’s main shopping district. Insensible to the stir he caused being afoot, hatless and easily recognized, the duke continued on his walk. He passed countless Bond Street shops and flirtatious ladies bundled up against the chill, arriving at Piccadilly where he found himself without conscious volition standing before the windows of Hatchard’s Bookshop. He loved Hatchard’s. Reading was one of the few passive verbs he heartily enjoyed. Perhaps, he would browse for a while to calm down.
As he lost himself among the shelves of classic texts in Greek and Latin, his temper cooled considerably. He opened an old friend, Virgil’s Aeneid: Arma virumque cano…, ‘I sing of arms and of a man…’
Some flicker of movement and a tap on the bookshop window made him flinch involuntarily. He looked up. His instinct for danger rang the alarm. He closed the book with a snap and peered through the window. Seeing nothing more ominous than window shoppers and passers by, his wariness eased and he returned to the Aeneid. Thus, he wiled away the afternoon, lost in an ancient tale of capricious gods, endless war, and the thwarted ambitions of man.
Later, in the middle of the night, Ainsworth’s routine nightmares of blood-soaked battlefields featured French cuirassiers, English infantry and now the odd Roman legionnaire. Next, this scene shifted seamlessly, as dreams are wont to, into the dim, fiery room of That Night. He clearly heard Mustachio and the buxom older domestic chanting “Miss H., Miss H.” over and over. She knelt before him, watching him, and reached out. He woke with a violent twitch.
Damn her eyes!
Chapter 7
In which our heroine suffers envy, then an apoplexy, on Piccadilly Street.
In late January, Miss Haversham, Murphy and Mrs. Mason returned to London to make deliveries in Mayfair and St. James. Again, the threesome stayed in her brother’s unoccupied townhouse for this brief transactional visit.
Prudence loved strolling the streets of Mayfair, admiring – to be honest, rudely gawking at – the fine ladies in their beautiful, irresistibly impractical clothing. Delicate laces effervesced at swanlike ivory throats. Dyed ostrich plumes erupted from fanciful spoke bonnets. Sable and ermine muffs cosseted delicate, pale hands sheathed in thin, pastel kid gloves. The women floated along Bond Street like bits of brightly dyed eiderdown.
When Prudence was a small child, she delighted in delving into her mother’s carefully packed chests filled with finery from an earlier age of elegance. She stroked the silk stockings and slid them up over her knobby knees to the top of her thin thighs where they hung loose but felt decadent even to a little girl. As she whirled before a cracked mirror in the attic, she fantasized about her come-out: the balls, the routs, the music, the dancing and the delicious rustle of silk.
That was long, long ago.
Prudence glanced down self-consciously at her best walking gown. Her Pomona green, long-sleeved frock buttoned to the neck and had no froths or ruffles, just a few sober horizontal pleats above the hem. Nothing but simple velvet trim decorated the warm, brown wool kerseymere Spencer she wore over it. Her bonnet was serviceable but made her look as dour as a Methodist, or so she thought. She needed no fripperies in her practical life but that did not prevent her from coveting them on occasion.
It was a typically grubby, overcast January morning in London as Prudence walked briskly along Piccadilly with basket in hand on her way to a tiny apothecary shop on Albemarle Street. The air was tinged a sludgy, smudgy yellow green. London’s infamous fog hung denser than usual this morning, thickened as it was by half a million chimneys belching coal fire smoke into the cold, dank air. It reduced visibility to barely across the wide, crowded thoroughfare. Carts and carriages loomed into view only to be swallowed up a short distance away. Pedestrians, too, materialized from and disappeared into banks of the gritty urban mist.
In her own personal fog, Prudence riffled through her mental filing cabinet to recall the owner of Albemarle Apothecary. As she walked, she barely noticed a man further down the pavement whose bare head was nearly as tall as the beaver hats on other pedestrians. A heartbeat later, she recognized the Duke of Ainsworth looming out of the pea soup not ten yards ahead of her and all her mental notes spewed from her mind. She jerked to a halt, abruptly short of breath.
They both headed in the same direction so she followed him, careful to stay behind him. Prudence took in the breadth of his shoulders, accentuated by the capes of his greatcoat, and recalled the other, more disturbing memory of his naked back. He had been inert, leaning against the chaise, his brawny shoulders slumped but still exceptionally wide. The contours of his muscular arms and his golden skin haunted her still. His tousled brown hair now appeared lighter by a shade to a warm caramel.
The man moved elegantly. Impeccable tailoring could not disguise the power of the warrior within his clothes. He wore his coat carelessly open and flying away from his legs. Oh, the legs on the man! Years in the saddle resulted in long, distinct thigh muscles that pulsed with each firm step he took. Even the most exaggerated illustrations captured sufficiently the duke’s profile and powerful physique. From her perspective behind him, Prudence also saw the ripple effect Ainsworth had as he passed other pedestrians, like a tall ship creating a wake. Beaver hats swiveled. Ladies’ bonnets pivoted and bobbed. On each face writ plain was surprise then delight as eyes widened in recognition.
With a quick glance to the right, Ainsworth strode into the street and dodged through traffic with athletic grace. She trailed after him across the street, never letting him disappear entirely into the miasma.
After reaching Hatchard’s, His Grace hesitated, rolled his shoulder as if to test it and only then disappeared into the bookshop. So very much a man, unfussy yet refined, she sighed. She regretted inadvertently marring such perfection.
Prudence approached Hatchard’s tall, many-paned bow window cautiously. The front window extended from floor to ceiling inside and gave an unobstructed view of readers within. She peeked in, not daring to enter.
She watched with fascination as Ainsworth scanned a shelf on the other side of the glass. The way his long fingers slid over the leather bindings of the books made her shiver. He made a selection. With his head bent over the text, she had the leisure to admire him. His wind-blown hair needed a quick sweep of her hand. His profile proclaimed his pedigree: the aquiline nose, firm, sculpted chin and a prominent brow over deep-set, intense eyes. The boyish look of his unconscious countenance was nowhere in evidence.
What had she been thinking! This was no man to trifle with, abduct or, God help her, tattoo. His wakeful expression was that of a predator, a raptor. She prayed never
to find herself his prey.
A gust of wind snatched at her bonnet’s brim. She jerked to catch hold of it and knocked on one of the small glass panes. The duke looked up and through the window. She flung herself out of sight with a squeak, her heart pounding. Had he seen her? Would he come storming out after her? She stood frozen in place, hoping and dreading he would fly out the door to find her.
• • •
Funny how revenge whets one’s appetite.
The morning after he solved the puzzle of ‘mizzach,’ Ainsworth had a hearty appetite for the first time in too long to remember. He took breakfast in his mother’s morning room, where he usually picked at whatever he put on his plate. His shoulder and his dreams interfered with sleep and left him too exhausted to eat much most mornings.
On this day, however, he smelled bacon and coffee with keen interest. He looked in awe at the ridiculous lengths to which Cook went to tempt him to eat. (So much fuss over his poor appetite.) Ainsworth had lost a stone or so since returning from the continent but hadn’t thought it all that obvious.
From the overstocked sideboard, he piled his plate with potted beef, cold fowl, ham, potatoes, and eggs as well as a number of dainty pastries that Cook took special pains to make. He ate till his stomach ached, but pleasantly so.
As he leaned back to enjoy the last of his coffee and yet another tiny pastry, he caught the two footmen exchanging grins.
Gesturing at the sideboard with the pastry, Ainsworth said, “Please thank Cook for another delicious breakfast. I enjoyed these strawberry tart things especially. Is this my fourth or fifth?”
“Fifth, Your Grace,” came the echoed response from both men.
“Delicious,” he concluded and popped it whole into his mouth with a smile.
Next he sent for Sterling. Within the hour, the two men were ensconced in leather chairs in the duke’s study. Sterling sat poised on the edge of his seat waiting for the duke to speak. His man of affairs was a small, neat, bird-like man with bright, intelligent eyes, a house sparrow to the duke’s golden eagle.
The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order Page 5