A Duke in Disguise

by Cat Sebastian

  “The child was epileptic,” Lady Caroline clarified. “As was his father before him. I knew my father and brother to have a prejudice against those afflicted with that condition.”

  Now Ash knew to a certainty that every eye in the room was fixed on him, as if waiting for him to have an episode right on the spot. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his uncle’s malevolent gaze.

  The judge then read the statement of the Duke of Arundel admitting that he knew his nephew had not died. This, the judge instructed the jury, was to assume even greater gravity given the duke’s perilous health and the fact that the declaration was against his own self-interest.

  Then the rector of Ashby testified, a tiny old man with sparse white hair and thick spectacles. Ash tried to remember him but came up with nothing. He had thought that perhaps the trial, with its orderly progression of evidence, would awaken some memories. But that period of his life before Roger was as lost to him as it ever was, leaving him with nothing but fragmented images that failed to coalesce into anything he could understand.

  When court adjourned for the day, Ash and his aunt stayed back, waiting for the crowd to thin before attempting to summon their carriage. They sat in the judge’s antechamber, barely making conversation while they drank the tea that appeared before them.

  Ash did not want to go back to Arundel House. He would have preferred to walk along the river, to shake loose some of the restlessness that had settled in his limbs that day. But when the carriage was called, he went with his aunt. On the street, a somberly clad figure waited for them beside the carriage.

  “Miss Plum,” Lady Caroline called, before Ash quite got his bearings. “Let us drive you home.”

  “It’s out of your way,” Verity said, at the same time Ash flung the carriage door open and said, “Get in, Plum, before you get abducted by a newspaperman in search of a good story.”

  Verity cracked a smile and climbed in. There ensued a polite but wordless dispute over seating arrangements, which ended somehow with Ash’s aunt occupying the entire front-facing bench while Verity and Ash sat opposite her.

  “I’m going to give testimony tomorrow,” Verity said once she had arranged her skirts.

  Ash frowned. When his solicitor had told him as much, Ash had protested heartily. But Verity had been the one to find the letter, so she must take the stand. “I apologize for that.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “I told you that I want to help you. Besides, after hearing your uncle’s barrister publicly slander you and Lady Caroline, I want a chance to look him in the eye.” She said this viciously enough that Ash wouldn’t have liked the barrister’s odds if he met Verity Plum in a darkened alleyway. He very much wanted to take her into his arms but they were in a carriage with his aunt.

  At close distance, Ash could see that Verity’s unfamiliar garments were speckled with more than a little cat hair. “I gather you and the cat are getting along.”

  “She has a charming new habit of scratching me bloody if I stop petting her. Also, her name is now Isabella of France.”

  When the carriage stopped at Holywell Street, Verity tried to tuck a stray piece of hair beneath the brim of her bonnet.

  “Here,” he said, staying her arm. “Hold still.” He retrieved a pin from his pocket to tie back the loose tendril.

  “I’d like to know whose hair you’re dressing these days to warrant still carrying hairpins around,” Verity said over her shoulder as she stepped down from the carriage.

  “Only you, Plum. I’m ever optimistic that I’ll have a chance to put you to rights.”

  “Until tomorrow,” she said, and Ash knew a moment of confidence that no matter what, they would look out for one another.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Verity arrived in the courtroom the next morning wearing a bonnet that was even more demurely enormous than the previous day’s. She truly hoped Ash recognized two days of consecutive bonnets as the public declaration of love that it was. From where she sat, Ash seemed weary and on edge, and she wished she could have sat by him. But she had a different role to play this morning.

  With her hands—sheathed in Amelia’s finest kidskin gloves—folded in her lap, she watched as the judge read a letter from a trustee of St. Gerald’s School in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, stating that Adrian Lewes had been employed by that institution from the year 1792 until his death ten years later.

  Then, accompanied by a din that rose to a roar, the judge announced Verity’s name and she made her way to the witness stand. For the last two days the papers had talked about how one of their own, the publisher of the Ladies’ Register and sister to Nathaniel Plum, had come into possession of an item of evidence that was crucial to the fate of the Forgotten Heir. This was too good a story to resist, of course. Every word she spoke would be transcribed in newspapers and distorted in broadsheets. She’d be lucky if she didn’t have a ballad written about her.

  Answering the barrister’s questions in a loud, clear voice, she spoke about how she had come into possession of the letter, who Roger Bertram was, how she knew the plaintiff, and other questions as to her knowledge of Ash’s life dating from his arrival in London.

  She then answered Ash’s uncle’s barrister in tones of bland indifference. When the barrister asked whether it was true that she was the defendant’s lover, and had cooked up this scheme in order to make herself a duchess, she let out a peal of laughter. The judge warned her to answer the question that was posed.

  “Sir, if you’re in the least familiar with my magazines, you’ll know precisely in what regard I hold the aristocracy. For my brother’s dearest friend and the companion of my childhood to now count himself among the most highly ranked men of the land is a grievous professional embarrassment.” The court exploded into laughter, and no amount of gavel pounding brought order until Verity had descended from the stand and disappeared through the crowd. On her way from the stand, she met Ash’s eye and he responded with a slight, grateful smile.

  And then—oh, to hell with it. Instead of returning to her seat upstairs, she sat beside Lady Caroline. She didn’t know if this was even allowed, and as someone who had been raised to have a healthy fear of the organs of the law, she half expected a bailiff to haul her off to a prison cell. But nobody even seemed to notice, because Ash was taking the stand and all eyes were on him.

  He looked like the grandson of a duke and she hated it. She made plans to divest him of every stitch of snowy white linen, to make him pay for that cravat pin and signet ring. But beneath all those despicable trappings of class that was Ash up there, and she loved him, whatever he wore, whatever he was.

  As Ash spoke, she knew she wasn’t the only one who thought he looked the part. The court was silent, every person’s attention on him. In a tone that conveyed a sense of acute embarrassment that he had found himself in this position, he told the court what little he remembered of his early life and the circumstances under which he had discovered his origins.

  “Do you wish you had never found out the truth?” asked his solicitor.

  “Yes,” Ash answered without hesitation. “If I were still an engraver, I think I’d be halfway to convincing the woman I love to become my wife. Or maybe a third of the way.” Verity heard soft laughter even as her cheeks heated. “But with things as they are, I doubt that will come to pass.”

  He was a fool. She had worn this bonnet. Did he not understand the significance of that? She was in love with an idiot. But she saw two members of the jury smile fondly at him, and even the judge brought a hand to his mouth to conceal what must have been a grin. That, she knew, was the moment he had won the case.

  It was also, it seemed, the moment his uncle realized it, because while Ash was being cross-examined, his uncle, who until that point had been a dark and sullen presence on the opposite side of the room, rose to his feet. The courtroom fell silent, and then once again exploded into sound as the man pushed his way out of the room.

  “I know that look,” Lady Caroline said.
Her face was ashen, and when Verity reached for one of her hands, she could feel the chill even through both their sets of gloves. “I need to stop him.” The older woman rose to her feet. The judge pounded on his gavel, and Verity sought out Ash, who was still on the stand. He gave her a pleading look.

  “All right,” Verity said, standing. “Lead the way.”

  Lady Caroline’s carriage was nowhere to be found, so Verity hailed a hack.

  “Where are we going?” Verity asked.

  “Arundel House. If we aren’t too late.”

  “Too late for what, exactly?”

  “I expect he’s going to tear up my plants. He’s always been a petty man.” She sounded so resigned to this, and Verity remembered her mother’s similar state of mind with respect to her father’s temperamentality.

  When they arrived at Arundel House, the front door was slightly ajar. The foyer was empty, the house utterly silent.

  “Perhaps I was wrong,” Lady Caroline said. “Perhaps he didn’t come here at all, but went off to his club.”

  That was when Verity smelled smoke. “I think he’s here,” she said unnecessarily, as Lady Caroline was already dashing up the marble stairs. Verity sighed and followed her. This was probably the stupidest thing she had ever done, rushing farther into a building that might well contain both a killer and a fire. But for all she knew Lady Caroline was being murdered at that very moment. Or the duke might be being killed—no, on second thought she didn’t care much about him. He was a villain and entirely welcome to die, as far as she was concerned. But Lady Caroline had been good to Ash and had suffered enough for a couple of lifetimes.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, there was no sign of Lady Caroline. The smoke seemed to be thicker than it was in the foyer, but still she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Before she could debate whether to go downstairs and shout for the fire brigade, she was jerked backward by a strong arm around her neck. The man—presumably Ash’s uncle—had apparently never witnessed a street brawl, because he was utterly surprised when Verity twisted her head and bit his hand. She stepped out of his grasp, searching the landing for anything she could use to bludgeon him with, her eyes alighting on a very solid-looking urn. But before she could reach it, Lady Caroline appeared behind her brother and hit him on the head with a newel post that appeared torn from the bannister. He hit the ground with a thud.

  “Are you all right?” Verity cried. Lady Caroline had blood on her face and the sleeve of her dress was badly singed, hinting at damage beneath.

  Lady Caroline ignored her. “He’s not dead, is he?”

  “I don’t think so,” Verity said, nudging the man with the toe of her boot. He rolled over, and the two women stared at him, and then at one another. He was inches from the broken segment of banister. Several posts were missing, as if they had been kicked out in anger, with the result that there was a gap of more than a yard.

  “He tried to kill my father,” Lady Caroline said. “He set a fire outside his bedchamber.”

  “It looks like he tried to kill you too,” Verity pointed out, gesturing towards the blood on the other woman’s face and the burn marks on her dress. “He certainly seemed intent on killing me. I do believe he tried to kill Ash once too. While we’re tallying up his crimes, that is,” Verity added, knowing she was rambling.

  Lady Caroline stared at her brother, then took a deep breath. Then she braced her foot against his back and shoved him off. A moment later, they heard an ominously wet sound from below.

  “What a pity that he fell by accident,” Verity managed. “What a shame.”

  Lady Caroline stared in mute horror over the railing, as if unable to comprehend what she had done.

  “I’ll never forget how you rescued me from an assault and then my attacker fell to his death completely by accident,” Verity recited, not taking her eyes from the older woman. There were advantages to spending some time on the windy side of the law. “Witnesses?”

  Lady Caroline shook her head. “The servants are gone,” she said after a moment. “The house is empty except for my father and his manservant. Ash must have given them the day out.”

  “Well. Let’s go downstairs and see if we can find a constable.” She looped her arm through Lady Caroline’s and they headed for the street, two women who had made their own justice.

  When Ash walked in the front door of Arundel House, he was greeted by the sight of Verity and his aunt bonding over the corpse of his uncle. As he had spent the harrowing trip from Westminster imagining the grievous injury of either Verity or his aunt, it was a pleasant surprise, all things considered.

  “Perhaps we ought to get a constable,” he suggested, shoving his hands in his pockets and deciding that he was not going to ask what had happened.

  “We’ve already done that,” Verity said. “Now we’re waiting for the coroner.” She outlined the facts, with enough emphasis on how it was a terrible accident to make him resolve never to ask any questions about the details. Ash had been afraid his uncle would retaliate against the duke and the household staff, which was why Ash had quietly sent the servants away for the day. He found that he was pleased to learn that his grandfather had slept through the entire episode, and that the house suffered only minimal damage.

  In the end it was past midnight by the time the body was removed, the coroner’s inquest scheduled, the servants returned, and the foyer cleaned of blood. Verity stayed with him the entire time.

  “You still have on your bonnet,” he remarked when they were collapsed on the sofa in the library, Lady Caroline having retired to bed.

  That must have been the wrong thing to say because she sat up straight and pointed a menacing finger at him. “Perjurer,” she declared. “A third of the way. Not likely to come to pass. Fabrications and falsehoods. As if I’d wear a bonnet for a man I didn’t love with every fiber of my being.”

  He swallowed hard. “I don’t doubt your love for me, Plum, although it’s always gratifying to hear you remind me. But loving someone and marrying them are two different things entirely, as you’ve pointed out more than once.”

  She set her jaw and regarded him in a way that was all too familiar. This was Verity steeling herself. “I’ve been thinking about those letters Roger saved,” she said, surprising him. “They were in love, weren’t they? Roger and the schoolmaster?”

  “He never said as much, but I think so.”

  “It must have been his friend’s bible. And I thought to myself, Roger must have remembered his friend every time he looked at that careless knot. He didn’t look at it as the text of a religion he rejected, but as a book that was dear to his friend. The ribbon was worn ragged, Ash.” He could picture Roger worrying the knot, running the ribbon between his fingers. “I dare say they would have married if they could have. Instead Roger must have only found out about his friend’s death weeks after it occurred. Ash, I don’t want to read about you in the paper. I want to be by your side.”

  His arms were around her, hauling her into his lap. “That’s a yes?”

  “It’s a yes.”

  Verity was in the back of the courtroom when the jury announced that they had found in Ash’s favor. She wanted to see it happen, wanted to watch the moment Ash officially became a duke, as if the transformation would happen before her eyes. Ash was not present: a week after the death of his son, the old duke’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he died in the night. Ash remained with his aunt at Arundel House. When Verity arrived home, she found a note from Ash to the effect that he would call on her the following day, special license in hand, and haul her before the clergyman of her choice at a time convenient to herself. He also wrote that if she would consider where she might like to reside, he would be grateful.

  This baffled Verity. It hadn’t occurred to her that Ash had been serious about living anywhere other than Arundel House. The Holywell Street house was out of the question, because it would be exceptionally awkward for the workers to have a duke poking
his nose into their business, not to mention how it would throw Nan into apoplexies. But there could, apparently, be a middle ground between Holywell Street and Arundel House.

  It occurred to her that what she really wanted to do was continue the Ladies’ Register. And that she could do from a distance, sending in material to be printed and then sold. The shop foreman could continue to publish the Register with minimal oversight. It made her feel slightly sick, the idea of giving up control of the rest of Plum & Co. It was hers, she had made it, and now she was going to need to step away from it. But Ash had stepped away from his own work in order to take on his duties. Even Nate had stepped away from his work when Verity had needed him to. Verity could do the same. Sometimes love required sacrifices; she had known this since her earliest days.

  She responded to Ash’s note with one of her own, stating that she would be at home the following morning, and he could arrive with settlement documents in hand. Her cheeks flushed as she wrote the words, but if she was giving up her livelihood, then he could ensure that she was provided for. It was fair. And it was something more than fair—it was just.

  The following morning, she found Nan in the kitchen, reading what appeared to be a pamphlet, her brow furrowed and eyes narrowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Verity asked.

  “It’s just . . . if I didn’t know better, I’d think this was written by Mr. Nate. Have a look for yourself.”

  Verity glanced at the front page and for a moment went quite dizzy. In large type were the words “On the Dangers of a Shackled Press” and below it an engraving in a style she would have known anywhere. It depicted the body of a man in chains, with buzzards in red coats picking at his bones, while jackals looked on in hungry anticipation. Sketched in the background was a gibbet, emaciated children, and soldiers holding out tin cups. An assortment of men in shiny boots and evening dress looked everywhere but at the dead man. Ash had drawn himself as one of the distracted bystanders, including himself among those who needed to pay closer attention. In case there was any confusion, he had signed his name to the bottom, a signature she had seen hundreds of times, but this time it read Arundel.