A Duke in Shining Armor

  “You can’t take my dog! He cost me—”

  “You are an extremely tiresome man,” Ripley said. He looked about the inn yard. “Somebody make him go away.” He made a shooing motion in Bullard’s direction.

  “That’s my bloody—”

  Whatever else Bullard was going to say was cut off as two of the sturdier onlookers took hold of the brute and dragged him to a far corner of the yard.

  Ripley turned back to Olympia. “If we take the dog, it’s your dog,” he said. “When I leave you at your aunt’s, I leave him. Is that clear? Once we take him, there is no mind-changing, because I am not going to abandon him on the road or find him another home or adopt him. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said, heart pounding. “Thank you for explaining it in simple terms, in case my girl brain was too small to grasp the implications.”

  “Good,” he said.

  He moved away to talk to Bullard, who was struggling with the men trying to hold him. A long debate followed, with Bullard’s voice rising in outrage then gradually subsiding to a grumble.

  Not long thereafter, a servant emerged from the inn with blankets. He carried them to the boot and arranged them over the parcel containing her neatly wrapped wedding ensemble.

  “Will that do, or shall we hire a separate carriage for your new pet?” Ripley said. “And a footman or two to look after him, perchance?”

  “That will do,” Olympia said.

  Ripley clicked his tongue and the lurcher looked at him, ears pricked. Ripley pointed to the crate. The dog jumped into it. He pushed the blankets with his paws and turned around a few times until all was arranged to his satisfaction. Then he settled down.

  The dog had been well trained. Clearly the problem wasn’t the animal’s.

  She glanced at Bullard, who stood, mouth open, looking from the dog to her to Ripley and back again.

  “Get in the carriage,” Ripley said. “Now.”

  Ripley watched her climb into the post chaise and settle into the seat in a flurry of lace and ribbons and bobbing flowers.

  He gave one last glance about the courtyard to make sure Bullard wasn’t about to rush out at them and make a pest of himself. More of a pest of himself.

  Then Ripley went to the boot and examined the dog. He detected two welts, but saw no blood. The swine hadn’t had time to get to serious whipping.

  Ripley stroked the dog and made a few meaningless but comforting sounds, and the dog’s trembling abated.

  “You’re one lucky fellow, I hope you realize,” Ripley said. “Your timing was excellent.”

  The dog licked his gloved hand. “No drooling.” Ripley drew his hand away. “Even on these unspeakable gloves. And you are on no account to be sick on the way.”

  There.

  He was better now.

  Ashmont’s duchess-to-be was alive and in one piece. Nobody had died. No blood had been shed, although Bullard would have many painful bruises as mementoes of the occasion.

  In spite of agreeable thoughts like these, Ripley knew he would need some time to settle down after exerting so much self-control, to keep from beating Bullard to a bloody pulp.

  Ripley took one last calming breath, left the dog, climbed into the carriage, and told the postilion to set out.

  The vehicle had hardly begun to move and Ripley had hardly settled into the seat when Lady Olympia bounced up and threw her arms about him and said, “Oh, well done, indeed!”

  Then she kissed him.

  Chapter 6

  She kissed him on the cheek because she was overwrought—or so Ripley’s brain, had it been working, would have told him.

  Had this organ of intellect been in operation, it would have told him to push her off and say something like, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  His brain wasn’t working. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the lips, and not gently. He kissed her with all the anxiety, frustration, rage, and other annoying emotions he’d thought he’d finished with a moment ago. And with the simple lust he’d been fighting for what seemed like a very long time.

  He felt her tense, and he was about to withdraw, but then her soft mouth was responding to his, and the taste of her was . . . different. Fresh and sweet and something else. He didn’t know what it was and didn’t care.

  She had no idea how to kiss. He didn’t care about that, either. Her mouth was soft and full and tasted good. In any case, he knew how to kiss, and he didn’t doubt she was intelligent enough to catch on.

  She melted into his arms and fit exactly as she ought to do, and for a moment he simply lost himself in the rush of excitement and relief and pleasure and other, more alien, feelings.

  Then a dog barked, and the sound woke him from the mindless state he’d fallen into. He drew away—cautiously, because, his brain having belatedly begun normal operations, he knew he’d done something amazingly stupid. It made no sense to push her away when he was the one who’d turned an innocent peck on the cheek into something she’d never intended it to be.

  “Damnation,” he said. “Did nobody ever tell you not to get too close to men who’ve been fighting only a minute before?”

  “You kissed me!” she said, eyes very wide and possibly blue at the moment, though it was hard to be sure in the coach’s dim confines on a dim day.

  “You kissed first,” he said.

  “On the cheek!”

  “On the cheek, on the lips. All the same to me. Female, kiss. Male, excited. Do I have to explain simple facts of life to you?”

  “Some, yes, it seems,” she said. “I have six brothers, and I know about fighting. But I was—I don’t know what happened. You saved the dog! And . . . and he—Bullard, I mean—he thought I was a demirep!”

  “I believe he won’t make that mistake again,” Ripley said. He couldn’t completely crush a prickling sense of frustration. It wasn’t much of a kiss, when you came down to it. And it seemed to him there ought to have been a good bit more since now there would be a lot of talking to get through and—gad, how could he be so stupidly stupid? Ashmont’s bride, of all women.

  “No one’s ever made that mistake,” she said. “Who ever heard of a woman of ill repute in spectacles?”

  “Why not?” he said. “They add an air of mystery.”

  She stared at him.

  He let her stare. He was trying desperately to find a way out of whatever it was he’d got himself into.

  “It’s the dress,” she said at last. “I told you. This ensemble was never meant for a spinster.”

  “You’re not a spinster,” he said. “You’re a bride-to-be.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” she said. “Whose clothes were these meant to be?”

  “How in blazes should I know?”

  “A courtesan’s.” She smoothed the skirt lovingly. “Or a dashing widow’s. Mrs. Thorpe was certainly accommodating. From the way she spoke, I deduced she owed you a favor. Or a hundred.”

  “The favor wasn’t my doing,” he said. “It was my sister’s.”

  Had Her Grace of Blackwood attended the wedding, as she ought to have done, Ripley could have enlisted her to help him retrieve Lady Olympia, and the runaway bride would not have got as far as the garden gate.

  But no, Alice had to be thirty miles away from London with Aunt Julia, for some as-yet-unexplained reason.

  Blackwood hadn’t offered much information, but then, he and Ripley hadn’t had much conversation, had they? Nearly all the talk had been Ashmont talking about getting married.

  To the woman Ripley had kissed a moment ago in an excessively enthusiastic manner.

  “You’ve met her, no doubt,” he said. “She can be the damnedest—never mind. If you’ve met her, you know what she’s like.”

  “Splendid raven tresses and green eyes,” Lady Olympia said. “I was shocked when I heard she was to marry Blackwood. I’d thought she had more intelligence than that.”

  He’d thought so, too.

  “You accepted Ashmon
t,” he said.

  “Your sister did not have five younger brothers to consider, or improvident parents, or a shrinking marriage portion, or being voted Most Boring Girl of the Season seven Seasons in a row,” she said. “I was growing panicky. And so were my parents.”

  “You have a few good years left,” he said. “I’m still puzzled about the boring part.”

  “You don’t know me as I truly am,” she said darkly. “I can prose on about first editions and Maioli’s Library and early copperplate engravings until my listeners keel over in a dead faint. Worse, I have a System, inspired by the American president, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, who applied Bacon’s table of science to the organization of books. My own method is rather more complex, and I can hold forth on the topic for about twenty times longer than listeners can bear to hear it.”

  He had been looking straight ahead at a not especially thrilling view—mainly of the postilion’s back and the horses’ posteriors. Now he turned to look at her. She was gazing through the front window as well, a grim set to her mouth.

  The mouth onto which he’d put his a very short time ago.

  But it wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last mistake he’d ever made, he told himself. He and his friends had not won the title Their Dis-Graces for acts of virtue.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s bored,” he said. “Maybe your brain’s too large and lively for the company you keep. Good little girls. A lot of rules about every damned thing. Maybe you go on and on about the books because nobody understands you anyway, and at least it’s fun to watch their eyes glaze over.”

  It wouldn’t have occurred to him, in all these years, that she would have been bored. He’d assumed she was like other respectable girls, and she’d fit in. Now, having known her all of—what? Two hours? Three?—he was amazed she hadn’t fallen into some kind of trouble long before now.

  She blinked hard, and he saw a tear steal down her cheek. She brushed it away. “I don’t doubt you speak from your own experience,” she said. “It isn’t hard to see boredom as a problem for you and bad behavior a perfect solution. But it’s different for women. We’re supposed to be pleasing.”

  “Dress more daringly, and you’ll please,” he said. “Men are simple creatures, as I ought not to have to explain to a woman in possession of a surfeit of brothers. What you’re wearing now, for instance. Shows off your figure. The black lace adds an air of mystery and danger—”

  “I! Dangerous!”

  “Didn’t you see how relieved Bullard looked when he saw he had only me to fight, not you? Dress like a dangerous woman, and men won’t notice what you say. They’ll be too busy thinking improper thoughts.”

  “I can’t believe I’m listening to the Duke of Ripley offer brotherly advice,” she said.

  “I do have experience in that line,” he said. “I am a brother.”

  “Over whom his sister has influence, it appears,” she said. “And this, in an as-yet-unexplained manner, has led to undying gratitude on the part of a Putney dressmaker.”

  “She wasn’t always in Putney,” he said, grateful for the return to the original subject. He wanted to hear more about Lady Olympia’s System and he did not want her to cry because a lot of small-minded fools found her boring.

  These thoughts were bothersome, and he preferred them out of his head.

  The dressmaker was another matter entirely.

  “Mrs. Thorne, under another name, was a successful London dressmaker before she married Mr. Kefton,” he said. “She worked and he spent everything she made and then some. The bailiffs came and took away everything, lock, stock, and barrel. Kefton, courageous fellow, ran away. My sister, a loyal customer, told me the sad story and insisted I Do Something. To stop the nagging, I set up the dressmaker in Putney under the name Thorpe. The false name was necessary to foil the faithless spouse’s creditors as well as the spouse, in case he came sneaking back.”

  “And now she does a booming trade in courtesans and merry widows?” Lady Olympia said.

  “Let’s say she’s found a niche,” he said.

  “In other words, that’s where you bring your mistresses,” she said. “All three of you, I don’t doubt. I can see the satirical prints now. My bosom will be falling out of my bodice, and bits of pink and black underthings will show, and my drawers—”

  “Tell you what let’s do,” he said. “Let’s stop talking about your underwear.” An image had developed in his mind of her breasts escaping the dress’s bodice. It was a perfectly normal thought for a man but thinking it was unwise at present. He put it as far back in his mind as he could—no easy feat when she sat next to him and there was her bodice, practically under his nose.

  He made himself stare at the postilion’s back, up and down, up and down, as the horses made what seemed to him excruciatingly slow progress out of Putney.

  “Everybody will be talking about it,” she said. “And imagining the worst.”

  “We’ll be traveling for half an hour or more,” he said. “After dragging unbalanced brides out of the Thames, insufficiently strangling bullies, and rescuing dogs, I should like a nap. Please exert your faculties to be less exciting. Much less exciting. More quietening.”

  She looked up at him. “You cannot be suggesting I explain my System for Library Organization.”

  “Exactly. Tell me all about it. In detail.”

  Their Dis-Graces were in the habit of mowing down whatever got in their way. Accustomed to this modus operandi, the world usually got out of the way as quickly as it could.

  But one couldn’t simply mow down one’s future in-laws and wedding guests. The guests were easily subdued with buckets of champagne and a story about the bride having been taken ill. The future in-laws were another matter. Even with Lord Frederick’s help, the company was not quickly appeased, especially Lord Ludford, who put the blame squarely on Ashmont.

  Olympia was a good, sensible girl, Ludford said. She wouldn’t run away unless she was tricked or driven to it. He wouldn’t have people slandering her because His Dis-Grace didn’t know how to treat a gently bred girl, who did him a very great favor in accepting him.

  Luckily, Ashmont, for once, didn’t start a fight. He was too impatient to be off to take much notice of anything anybody said.

  Eventually the company was deceived and appeased to Lord Frederick’s satisfaction. Then, Blackwood having had the forethought to order the horses brought round well before everybody had settled down, the two dukes set out.

  They soon reached Kensington’s High Street, though it wasn’t soon enough for Ashmont, who spent the short journey cursing his uncle and everybody else for making mountains out of molehills and slowing him down.

  Then, since one couldn’t mow down possible sources of information, the dukes had first to fend off the hordes of boys who appeared out of nowhere and rushed toward them, offering to hold their horses.

  “Looking for a bride,” Ashmont said. “Anybody seen her? With a tallish fellow, dressed for a wedding?”

  The boys looked at one another, then at him, faces blank.

  Ashmont held up a coin. “Come now,” he said. “A bride. In a veil and everything. Hard to miss. A shilling to the first lad who has something useful to tell me.”

  No response.

  “They’re as hard here as in London,” he muttered to Blackwood as he took out another shilling. “There’s two bob,” Ashmont said more audibly. “For the clever lad who gives me information.”

  He saw one boy whisper to a smaller one, who was dressed in a curious costume. Under the grime, the smaller boy appeared to be fair, with an innocent-looking countenance. He shook his head at the larger one, who moved away.

  Ashmont narrowed his eyes. “You, there,” he said. “I can tell a ringleader from a furlong away.”

  All wide-eyed perplexity, the little one looked at the boys about him.

  “Never mind them,” Ashmont said. “I’m talking to you, old fellow. The jockey.” For, upon further examination, he re
alized the boy was dressed in the tattered remains of what looked to be a racing costume. And the thing on his head was a yellow cap, two sizes too big.

  “I fink His Nibs means you, Jonesy,” one of the boys said.

  “If I was a jockey, you fink I’d be wearing vis?” the boy said.

  Blackwood, who was more adept in Cockney, translated. And since he was the linguist, he continued with the boy. “Come along and let’s talk,” he said.

  “I don’t know nuffink,” said Jonesy.

  And all the other boys said, “We don’t know nuffink.”

  Blackwood turned his horse and rode a little away, but not before displaying a crown so that only Jonesy could see it. No more than a glimpse before Blackwood made it vanish.

  The boy approached him and stood, arms folded. “Vat was pretty good.”

  “Owning the coin will be even better, I’ll wager,” said Blackwood. “But only if you tell me what you saw and heard when the toff and the bride were here.”

  “Maybe he was here and maybe he wasn’t,” the boy said. “But if he was, I fink I remember he give us a glistener.”

  A sovereign? Not impossible. While none of them were pinchpennies, Ripley was the most likely to give a lot of vagrant children an entire pound to keep mum.

  “Then why aren’t you out celebrating your riches?” Ripley said.

  “On account of not wanting to get flicked.” The boy made a gesture indicative of throat cutting. “I got it where it’s safe.”

  If the boy had a coin of such value on him, he wouldn’t be safe, even in Kensington. Not that he looked as though he belonged hereabouts. He had rather more of the city urchin and less of the rustic about him—which probably accounted for the other boys taking their lead from one so small. His age was anybody’s guess.

  Blackwood considered the shabby jockey costume. “It wouldn’t be breaking your sacred oath if you showed me where they went. I don’t have a sovereign on me at the moment, but I will take you up on my horse and trust you to show me the way, and give you the crown, as well.”

  He’d made the right offer. The boy’s eyes widened—startlingly blue—and filled with longing. Then he glanced back at his cohort and shook his head.