by Jess Russell
Mrs. Weston…
She put the receipt in her reticule and turned to Rhys. He steeled himself for her thanks. He did not want it.
“Mr. Merrick, I am in your debt. Thank you for your assistance.”
You can thank me by lifting your veil so I might see you are just an ordinary woman with ordinary cares. Or, perhaps you would allow me to dip my head to the space between your neck and shoulder to ascertain if that intoxicating smell is merely attached to your shawl or to your actual person?
In contrast to his heated thoughts, he was sure his face was a mask of frozen disdain. It usually was whenever he felt such discomfort. She held his gaze far longer than he’d expected—certainly no mealy-mouthed miss. But sure enough, after teetering a moment, she turned to leave. He had successfully repelled her.
“Here, don’t you want your money?” Crup rushed forward, his gaze darting to Rhys. “I won’t have you say later I cheated you.”
Mrs. Weston’s veil fluttered with her gasp, and her hands covered her heart. She murmured something he could not catch and shook her head at the floor.
Then she laughed. Not the small nervous titter of earlier, but a full-throated, out-and-out laugh.
Rhys’s teeth cut into the inner flesh of his cheeks.
“Well, it looks as if the rain has stopped, Mrs. Weston.” Crup stood by the door. “Best take advantage.”
She started toward the door and then hesitated. Her fingertips touched her mouth, and her shadowed gaze turned back to Rhys.
A swell of unbidden emotion surged against his dam of control. What? Speak. Anything but thanks. Her head cocked and lips parted. A smile?
He strained to think of something to say; anything to keep her light near him. But his words remained firmly trapped within his hammering breast. He made himself turn away, dismissing her.
A moment later the bell jangled and the door shut.
He found himself by the window.
“Mr. Merrick. Now about that watch crystal…”
Rhys pressed his hand to the cold damp of the glass. She seemed so small now, a dark patch against the winking, rain-slicked buildings.
A boy shot out of nowhere and pulled at her skirts. He held out a bedraggled and muddy flower. Clearly some discard from a rubbish heap. Rhys winced, but Mrs. Weston seemed to have no qualms about touching the lad, who must have found every puddle in the street. She bent, brushed his reddish-colored hair, and spoke to him. He pointed down the street gesturing wildly. Mrs. Weston opened her reticule and gave him a coin Rhys knew she could ill afford. The boy snatched it, thrust the flower at her, and dashed off with a whoop.
This woman, with her one shilling, put all his ducal philanthropy to shame. But all logical thoughts of pence and pounds dissolved when she tipped her face up to the feeble sunlight and lifted her veil.
“Mr. Merrick, the crystal? Or perhaps something else strikes your fancy?”
Rhys tried to blot out the shopkeeper’s voice, but the moment was gone. She had already lowered her veil and was moving off in the direction of Fleet Street.
“Yes,” Rhys said softly. He turned away from the window. “Yes, I have found something I want.”
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
Olivia Weston dared another peek above her. Two very lethal-looking swords dangled a good twenty-five feet above her head. If one had an active imagination, one could imagine those swords slipping their confines and summarily slicing the head from one’s body.
She shifted slightly on her bench—its own instrument of torture—but she would not be cowed into moving. If there had been another spot to move to.
When faced with Roydan House, she had very nearly turned around. A veritable colossus. And the man who lived within, a Goliath. That would make her David, holding a bill instead of a slingshot. She snorted. Not the most formidable of weapons. Still, in her heated anger, she had almost knocked at the mansion’s front door before remembering her current status, and scurrying around to the servant’s entrance.
Was she addlepated? If his mistress hadn’t paid, what made Olivia think she had a chance with His Grace, the sixth Duke of Roydan?
Still, surely his secretary, Mr. Wilcove, could spare her a moment?
He had to. Her dearest Eglantine was counting on her.
Olivia had left Egg back at their shop shivering under three shawls next to a nonexistent fire. Egg had been attempting to string a row of minuscule jet beads before her next fit of coughing. She had not been successful and beads had skittered everywhere. But instead of a curse worthy of a dockside worker, there had been only dead and empty silence. In that moment, it was as if all their woes had been poured through a sieve and distilled into Egg’s hopeless eyes.
Olivia squeezed her own lids shut, wanting to block out the next image, Eglantine slowly sinking to her hands and knees to carefully gather each and every bead—
“By Saint Anne, we will be satisfied!” Olivia opened her eyes to find the glaring gap in a stringent chevron of swords that marched up the walls. The hole irritated her—like a dropped stitch in a row of knitting. Where was that foil? But the four full suits of armor, Sir Mutton, Sir Haggis, Sir Dunce-a-lot and, last but not least, Sir Portly—she had named them all in the last hour—gave up no secrets.
Drat, Daria Battersby and her bobbling breasts.
“Dear Rhys and I had a little falling out, is all,” the woman had said just yesterday. “I am quite sure Roydan will settle this little matter in a trice. You must come back, and we will discuss a few other sundries.” Then she had launched into an excruciating and detailed account of Mrs. Peebles’s gout, involving the need for specially made slippers. Olivia shuddered.
“Sundries, my eye,” she said to Sir Mutton who stood nearest her bench.
If only she and Eglantine had known the anxiety this overfed peacock of a duke’s mistress would cause them, they would have waltzed her right back out of the shop and barred the door. Instead, firewood had been sacrificed for silks and bread for Belgian lace. Then Wes’s beloved watch—she missed its familiar weight in her left pocket. And finally, just three days ago, her mother’s paisley shawl. She scrubbed the back of her hand over her eyes. Silly to get so upset over a bit of wool.
Suddenly her imagination had the missing sword in her hand, and she was en garde with the author of her misery, the buxom Mrs. Battersby.
Take that! Creating a mental series of feints and parries, Olivia had the woman huffing and puffing in no time.
Slice—one sleeve gaped. Slash—the other soon followed. Now the poor lady’s bodice lay gaping, her bosom a tad less buoyant now.
Next, Olivia dispatched her turban and the plumes that sprouted from the disastrous piece of millinery. On second thought, that would be doing the woman a service. Olivia mentally plopped it back on her head. Backward.
In short order Olivia reduced the duke’s mistress to a quivering mass of flesh, clad only in her bedraggled turban and jewels.
“Please, I beg you, Mrs. Weston, have pity,” the phantom Mrs. B. panted. “You see the shape I am in; I desperately need your skills to conceal my flabby folds with your magical undergarments.” Olivia hesitated in her delicious torture. Flabby? Magical? Well, it was only the truth and, after all, Olivia’s daydream. “I will pay you twice what I owe,” Battersby continued. Olivia tickled the woman’s chins with the tip of the foil. “Have mercy,” Mrs. B. cried, “and you shall have whatever you wish!” This was getting better. “You shall have my jewels”—tickle—“my carriages”—tickle, tickle—“my servants”—an out-and-out poke—“even my house in town!” And when Olivia still did not relent—“And the duke. Yes, I give you the duke as well!” She ended on her knees, her turbaned head bowed in supplication.
The duke? Really?
As a girl she had dreamed of being a duchess. But before she had the good lady rising and “Your Gracing” her, Olivia remembered Egg saying something about this duke being known as…the Monk.
At the time she had listened with only half an ear, but the story somehow involved a very public men’s club, the famous courtesan Harriette Wilson clad only in an ermine cloak and diamonds, and the duke’s words, “Madam, you seemed to have dropped something.”
Apparently the papers had a romp with the tale, the culmination being a garish cartoon by Gillray depicting Mrs. Wilson and the duke entitled, “The Monk.” The name, Egg said, had stuck with the duke all this time.
The image of a sober old codger in an ancient bagwig tottering on his creaking knees in prayer flashed through her mind.
Hmm…perhaps she would forgo being Duchess of Roydan at present. Instead, she decided to put Mrs. B. out of her misery. Olivia rose from her bench, happy to stretch her cramped limbs and nearly numb posterior, and prepared to execute her coup de grâce.
****
The foil went flying.
Rhys watched the sword as it sailed end over end, looping high into the library’s vaulted ceiling. The blade, threatening to unman a dozen or so innocent, frolicking cherubs, descended with a clattering smack on the top of his huge desk.
Light as the sword was, it scattered papers, priceless pieces of his Tompion watch, various tools, and yes, the inkwell, which teetered for a second, as if testing his tolerance, before tumbling to the Aubusson carpet.
Rhys wanted to curse. But he never cursed—at least out loud. Not even when he was quite alone.
“Damn!” The word slipped out. By God, what was happening to him? He never lost the grip of number forty-seven. The foil was a particular favorite, the balance so perfect for his height and bearing.
Rhys took a steadying breath and crossed the room to pick up the now half-empty inkwell. Crunch. He froze. No doubt that was, or had been, part of the escapement of his priceless watch.
He pressed his lips together.
Using his handkerchief, he carefully righted the inkwell, avoiding the spreading ink now marring the cream and red carpet. He brushed his hands over the fine wool nap to retrieve—please God—all his clock works. Lastly, he shuffled the various papers into a heap, hesitating when he recognized his Uncle Bertram’s letter. He need not actually read the letter. He knew very well what it contained, for this was the third he had received in as many days. He threw it on the desk where it landed next to the beautiful, heart-shaped watch case.
Thank God the case still sat squarely in the middle of the mess, as if it were a sun to all the orbiting chaos surrounding it. He brushed his fingers over the scrollwork feeling the depression where the enamel had worn away.
Mrs. Weston.
Why did he have this insane feeling he had let the real treasure go?
There was a scratch on the door.
“What?” The question exploded from his lips, the pain of a headache flaring.
Wilcove entered and bowed.
“Your Grace, my deepest apologies for the interruption—”
Seeing his secretary brought Rhys back to his present woes. “Have my solicitors made any headway with breaking the codicil?”
“As to that, nothing new has been discovered, Your Grace, but Messieurs Fink and Ponzer continue to persevere.”
Rhys flung his uncle’s letter aside and began sorting clock pieces.
Wilcove continued, “I can report we have found the proposed beneficiary’s brother, the Reverend Rodger Gooden of Hammersmith. But I am afraid the trail goes cold from there. The reverend was never on the best of terms with his sister and has not heard from her in over six years. The last correspondence was from the Indies.”
“I want a man sent immediately to investigate.”
“Yes, Your Grace. I have anticipated you and thought to send Mr. Wadmond.”
One year—well, less than one year now—to marry and start “producing.” Bloody codicil. As if he didn’t have enough to plague him, now he must take on a wife? Still, he could not ignore his father’s last jab. Dee Gooden would never have Valmere, his mother’s estate. Even if it meant paying her thousands.
But he had to find her first.
“Is that all?” Rhys asked. By God, the balance wheel was missing! He looked on the floor, lifting his feet.
“Not quite, Your Grace, another matter has come up that unfortunately requires your attention.”
Nothing. “What is it?” Rhys said riffling through the waste bin next to his desk.
“It is not an ‘it,’ Your Grace, it is a ‘she.’”
Rhys’s gaze locked with Wilcove’s. “It is not Mrs. Battersby again?”
“Not precisely, Your Grace.”
Rhys kept his voice steady and well-modulated as he put the waste bin down. “What is she? Precisely?” Wilcove was an excellent secretary, but the man had a tendency to be a bit too literal even for Rhys’s own considered standard.
“She is a tradesperson, Your Grace. A dressmaker.”
Rhys waited, and then raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. Wilcove, used to reading volumes in the mere quiver of Rhys’s nostril, rushed on.
“Your pardon, this dressmaker claims to have a rather large outstanding bill”—he produced a paper—“for several gowns, five to be exact, and some other incidentals, which Mrs. Battersby seems to have commissioned.”
Rhys’s headache pounded. “It was my understanding we settled everything of that sort weeks ago.”
Thursday—his birthday—when he had broken it off with Daria Battersby. Her settlement had been more than generous, but not content, she had dared to breach his house, bursting into this very room.
“So you need to marry some milksop miss and sire a brat or two,” she had lisped. “La, that need have nothing to do with us.” The desperate look on her face had put him on guard. “I know what you need, some new diversion…” And then she had sunk to her knees, her hands on the buttons of his falls—
“Your Grace?”
Rhys snapped his head back to Wilcove, adding a crescendo to the pain throbbing at his temples.
His secretary continued, “I tried to impart to the woman in three separate letters that Mrs. Battersby no longer enjoys your protection. I was loath to bring such a trivial matter to your attention, but the woman is rather tenacious. And you did wish to be apprised of any new complications involving Mrs. Battersby.”
“I see.” Rhys’s gaze strayed to his uncle’s letter. He seemed to be surrounded by tenacious people these days. “I presume that is the bill?”
“It is, Your Grace.” Wilcove placed it in his outstretched hand.
Ridiculous what ladies spent on fripperies these days. Clearly this dressmaker had padded the bill knowing his position. And sure enough, it was dated just after he had broken their contract. Wilcove’s feet shifted ever so slightly.
Damn Daria! She had always been a grasping woman, but now she went too far. He had made no pretense of loving her. In truth, he had chosen her for the very fact that it would be impossible for him to love her. Hell, he did not even like her a good deal of the time.
Several Sevres figurines and his great grandmother’s Venetian mirror had been sacrificed to her tirade that day. Daria’s “pleasing mistress” mask had shattered right along with them. Thank God his clepsydra water clock had not been within her reach.
Daria would have to be checked and, by God, he would start with this dressmaker.
“Send her away.”
“Very good, Your Grace. I will deal with this Mrs. Weston.” He bowed and left the room.
Rhys pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, ripped open his uncle’s letter, and began to read.
Uncle Bert wanted to move things along. He proposed a young woman to fulfill the role of duchess, a Miss Arabella Campbell.
Arabella Campbell…Somehow attaching a name to the woman made the prospect all too real. He tossed the letter aside.
But where was his bloody, infernal balance wheel?
He wrenched the chair out from beneath his desk and seized a lit taper. Dropping to his knees he crawled under the massive piece of furniture.
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Not one speck of lint, never mind a fingernail-sized golden wheel. He grabbed his foil, using its thin blade to swipe under the desk—
Wait, Weston?
The candle tipped and Rhys jerked as hot wax burned a painful trail down the inside of his wrist, just as his head connected with the underside of the desk.
Mrs. Weston. Good God, could it be?
****
Olivia shook out her numb limbs, sighted the knight-errant Sir Haggis—who kindly stood in for Daria Battersby—and advanced.
However, her sally was spoilt by the heel of her boot catching the recently mended tear in her best petticoat. When she righted herself, instead of impaling her foe, she faced a thoroughly alive flesh and blood man with a whip-like foil. One poised to pierce her very heart.
She shut her eyes, sucked in a huge draft of air, and prepared for death.
Nothing happened.
A musky scent filled her nose, and her heart thudded—both responses proving she was very much alive.
She dared to open an eye. This man was no fancy, hatched from her overactive imagination.
Good Lord, she should have eaten. Blackness engulfed her vision. and the floor rose to meet her just as an arm of hard muscle and bone snaked around her backside pulling her right up against his broad chest. Her eyelids popped open. Flashes of light skittered across her vision, but they in no way diminished the impact of his eyes. Brittle chips of the clearest amber imprisoned her just as surely as his arm. The same eyes that had invaded her dreams these past two weeks.
“Mr. Merrick?”
Chapter Three
“Mrs. Weston.”
Oh, God’s teeth, his voice was still the deepest burnt umber. As if the bright sharpness of his eyes had melted, leaking sweet, rich honey down into his throat.
But why was plain Mr. Merrick brandishing a sword in the Duke of Roydan’s hall?
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried again. Heavens, she must look like a gawping fish. On the third try she managed a breathy, “Sir—I mean, Mr. Merrick. I mean—”
His arm abruptly dropped, and he took several steps backward.