Mad About the Duke (33 page)

From the
Bachelor Chronicles
:

Geoffrey, Baron Larken

(Addendum, dated May 12, 1814)

“Miss Langley,” he replied, bowing perfectly, his gaze never leaving hers.

“Um, may I help you?” Tally asked, fixing her gaze on a vase on a table, the portrait overhead, the yellow curtains on the window. Anything but
him
. “I believe you are in the wrong wing,” she pointed out, pulling her wits about her.

“I don't think so,” he said, rocking back on his heels and looking at her. Really looking at her, as if he couldn't get enough of her.

“Your room is two floors up and at the other end.”

“I wasn't looking for my room. I was looking for
you
.”

She glanced up again. “For me?”

“Yes,
you
.”

The way he said it sent shivers down her spine. Whatever was he doing? Flirting with her?

His eyes narrowed and he glanced at her, a slight smile on his lips. And then he brought out his offering.

An entire bouquet of wildflowers. Pristine white flowers, delicate pink blooms, and more of those blue Devils he'd picked for her earlier. He held them out to her and when she took them, he held her hands.

“You dropped your other ones, so I thought…” His words faltered to a stop, but his eyes sparkled with something else.

Egads! Mr. Ryder was flirting with her.

Nay, he was courting her.

For one divine moment, Tally forgot everything. Pippin and Dash. That she was up to her ears in treason. That she was supposed to be going downstairs to ask Staines for the carriage.

Everything but the fact that this man wanted her…

But that wasn't it. He wanted something. From her.

Demmit, Tally. He's here to stop you. Trap you.

By any means possible…

Truly? Any means?
She wished she didn't feel so pleased by that idea.

Tally stepped back, not only from him, but away from the realization that Felicity was so very right. There was someone here to spy on them. And he was standing right before her. She'd wager her black velvet gown on it.

She took a deep, steadying breath. “If this is a bribe to gain my assistance in keeping you out of my sister's path, let me make this very clear: I won't help you.”

“You won't?”

Was it her imagination, or was he edging closer to her. She shook her head, both at her desire for him and at his question. “No, I cannot. Felicity rang a peel over my head for dawdling earlier and she already suspects you of avoiding her. ‘Dragging your feet' as she put it.”

“Me?” He moved as he spoke, not really taking a noticeable step but moving like a great cat with his prey in his sights.

Prey? Her? A shiver ran down her spine. The part of her that delighted in this cat-and-mouse game. If she was the prey, wouldn't it be wickedly fun to discover how he proposed to catch her?

“No, it would not,” she said aloud.

“Would not, what?” he asked, moving again.

If he got much closer he'd have her up against the doorway, with the sturdy oak at her back, and nothing but Mr. Ryder covering her.

Tally gulped and gave the first part of her imaginings life, bumping into the door and finding it as solid as she'd suspected.

And what of the other half of this trap?

Oh, yes, he'd be just as hard and unforgiving, she thought, gauging the inches between them and wondering how much courage she could muster.

For if she were truly fearless, truly the woman she wanted to be, she'd let herself become as entwined with him as they'd been last night.

“Miss Langley, there is something I would like from you…” he whispered, drawing nearer, his words brushing against her neck, her ears.

She tipped her head and shivered at the delicious intimacy of it.

Thalia Langley! What are you thinking? Duck around him. Stomp on his foot. Knee him, for goodness sakes.

“Yes, Mr. Ryder?” she managed to whisper, standing her ground. To run would be cowardly…wouldn't it?

“I was wondering if you—”

“If I?”

He paused and looked down at her, hungry, dark desires burning in his gaze. He wasn't even wearing his spectacles, she noticed, and without them, his eyes were even more piercing.

“Miss Langley, I would be so very delighted if you would indulge me—”

From the
Bachelor Chronicles
:

Captain Thomas Dashwell

Southwark, London
June 1814

 

“Come along there,” the guard said, shoving his prisoner forward. “We 'aven't got all night.” The thick chains rattled at the shackles on Dash's arms and legs
as he shuffled through the darkness of Marshalsea Prison toward what fate the English had in store for him, he knew not.

But he could guess. And it wouldn't be a warm bath and clean clothes that awaited him at the end of this unexpected rousing from his bed in the middle of the night. No, after five months in prison, he could guess where they were finally taking him.

“Where to this time, gentlemen?” he asked anyway, feeling a bit light-headed. “Hmm…let me guess, the king has invited me for a late supper.”

“Oh, there's to be a dinner all right.” One of the guards laughed.

“Close your trap,” the officer in charge ordered.

A naval officer. Dashwell hadn't noticed him before, but then again, going from the pitch-black of his cell to the corridor—even as poorly lit as it was—had left him blinking like an owl.

Not that officers of His Majesty's Royal Navy were unusual at Marshalsea. Though primarily a debtors' prison, the Southwark stronghold also claimed a small, highly secure section where the Admiralty kept their most dangerous offenders, with Dash being their biggest catch.

The reckless, or rather, ruthless Captain Dashwell, as the Admiralty Court had described him. He supposed it hadn't helped his case that he'd grinned unrepentantly at the judges when he'd been bestowed that lofty title.

Instead of turning left toward the common room, the guard shoved him outside. This was the first time he'd taken a clean breath of air or seen the sky in months, and he inhaled deeply. It might be the foul, stagnant air of Southwark, but it was fresher than the bowels of this bloody hole they'd tossed him into.

They moved out through a courtyard at the rear of the prison, and then out the gates into the maze of alleys that ran behind the prison and spread out through Southwark like a tangled web.

Escape…escape…
his pirate's heart clamored.

Oh, yes, and how, Dash?
His legs, weak from lack of use, wouldn't take him very far, and where he'd been shot in the shoulder at the Setchfield Ball still festered a bit. He ached and swayed in his poor boots and was, much to his chagrin, too weak to make it much farther than toppling into the offal and mud that filled the streets.

Making things ever more difficult to discern was the fog swirling around them, but a few steps more revealed what they had in store for him—a black, fortified carriage sat waiting.

Such a dismal vehicle was used for only one thing. Carrying away the condemned.

For all his bravado, for all his heroics, his arrogance, it was one thing to joke about your end, and another to see it sitting before you. A chill ran down his spine and for the first time in years, Thomas Dashwell knew what it was to be held in the grip of terror. He stumbled to a halt.

So they'd decided his fate without so much as a by-your-leave or bothering to tell him.

Well, he supposed, they were telling him now, and he forced his feet to move before any of them noticed his hesitation. Before he gave them a story to tell to their mates.

Oh, aye, and ye should have seen 'is face when 'e spied what we 'ad in store for 'im. Weren't so brave then, the bloody coward.

Dashwell straightened, and resigned himself that this was the end. Not the one he'd often envisioned,
or the one he would have preferred—standing on the deck of his ship, cannons blazing, his men cheering as they took another ship.

But what man ever had the choice when it came to the end of his days?

Yet if they intended to hang him, why move him in the middle of the night, and with so many guards? Even the driver sat hunched over in his high perch, hat tugged down to his nose and collar up, so as not to call attention to himself.

It was as if they didn't want anyone to know what they were about.

“Why all the secrecy, Lieutenant?” he asked the officer in charge.

“None of your demmed business,” the man said, his voice crisp and surly. “Now get in there,” he ordered nodding to the open door in the back.

Dash took one last deep breath of the night's damp air, just as a voice cut through the silence of the night.

“Oh, aye, what 'ave we 'ere?” squawked an ancient old bawd, coming out of the foul, dreary mists, basket in hand and a ratty old shawl arranged across her shoulders as if it were silk. She came into the circle of light the lamp hanging over the end of the carriage afforded. “Now, there, good sirs, why 'ang such a 'andsome fellow?”

“Get away, you old hag,” the lieutenant ordered. “This is none of your business.” And when she didn't move he went to strike her, but his motion was interrupted by the arrival of another woman.

“No, stop!” she called out, coming out of the mist like an angel from on high. While everything around them was dank and dirty and dark, it seemed she was
of the mist, ethereal and fair, her red gown clinging to her richly curved body like the marble on a statue. Her long blond hair hung loose all the way down to her waist, and she moved with an undulating sway that promised to make every sensual dream a man had ever imagined come true.

She even wore a red domino, concealing her face, not that one of the guards was looking up there, not when her gown left nothing to the imagination.

One of the men, the one who'd made the joke about his last meal, made a strangled sound at the sight of this vision. Probably the first time he'd seen a real lady, rather than the drabs and whores he was used to.

Dash had a similar reaction. For after he'd gotten over the shock of seeing her, he tried to draw a breath and found his throat was closed, his chest tightened into a knot.

Oh, no! Crazy, impetuous minx! What the hell was she thinking?

“Lieutenant, I believe you are making a mistake,” she purred as she grew closer. “This man belongs to me.”

She smiled at Dash, the blue eyes behind the mask twinkling with mischief.

“Don't do this,” he begged her. “Leave now while you can.”

“But I must do this,” she told him. “And you knew I would come. How could I not?”

Foolish, wretched chit. She was going to get herself killed. Why, not even two of his best men would take such a risk, not with these odds—six of the king's men against her and her aged friend.

She moved closer still, her breasts pushing up nearly out of the low line of her bodice, gleaming white and
shimmering in the light. “Gentleman, couldn't we come to some sort of an arrangement? A trade, perhaps?”

Another of the guards had the same strangled reaction—but this time Dash glanced over at the fellow to find that he wasn't choking over the sight of this vision, but because a giant of a fellow had come up from the shadows and had his hands around the guard's throat.

When the guard slumped forward, his assailant tossed him aside like a rag doll, down onto the pavement next to the other guard who'd also met a similar fate.

Dash's eyes widened. Good God! He knew that fellow.

“Get away from here!” the lieutenant ordered pointing toward High Street. “Or you'll find yourself hanging beside him. Dobbins, take this woman into irons if she doesn't leave this very instant.”

But there was no reply from Dobbins, for he lay on the street with the other two guards. The last two guards on either side of Dash finally looked away from the woman in red to discover their companions lying on the cobbles.

“Christ sakes,” one of them murmured, fumbling for his pistol.

Dash froze, for the last thing he wanted to see was his lovely savior die at his feet, but once again, she surprised him.

“Now,” she said with all the authority that the lieutenant had lacked. She moved forward quickly, past Dash and straight for the officer, pulling out her hand, which no one had noticed tucked innocently into the folds of her gown, and shoved the
pistol she'd concealed there right up into the man's nose. “Move, twitch, call for help, and it will be the last thing you do.”

But the fellow hadn't risen in the ranks of the navy not to have a bit of backbone, and he called anyway.

Well, stammered a bit. “D-d-do s-s-something,” he ordered his remaining men.

But what could they do? The old hag had moved just as quickly as his Circe, pulling a large pistol out of her basket, and the giant fellow had lurched forward, felling the other guard with one perfectly aimed punch.

And to Dash's amazement, the driver sat up now, pistol in hand, and had it aimed as well at the last guard.

“Get in,” Circe told the lieutenant, nodding toward the carriage, while she plucked the keys to Dash's manacles from the belt loop of the last guard. “Get in, both of you,” she repeated, as she also took up the fallen fellows' pistols, pointing one of them at the two men. “You can get in there alive or end your days in this gutter.”

That was enough for the guard. He scurried into the carriage and took a seat in the darkest corner. The lieutenant still hesitated, until Dash said, “Don't be a fool, man. My life is not worth yours. Besides, do you want him”—he nodded toward the fellow cowering in the carriage—“writing the report of how your life ended?”

The lieutenant cursed, then did as he was told, climbing in with an injured air, his career as tattered as the old hag's shawl and the sails of the garbage scows he'd be left to command after this. To add to his injury, the lady plucked his pistol from his belt.

“You'll all hang for this. All of you will,” he said, shaking his fist at the lot of them. “Dashwell, you'll not escape the King's justice.”

“I will today,” he said, as his manacles were unlocked and he gained the one thing he never thought he'd see—his freedom.