‘It wasn’t my fault.’ The little madam quivered her lower lip and turned tragic toffee-brown eyes on Sophie. ‘I’m a very good girl. Truly.’
‘You are a minx,’ Cal corrected absently, still watching Sophie who blushed, lost all of her poise and mumbled,
‘I am very glad to hear that. Your mama must be very proud of you. Good day, Duke. I trust your arm will cease paining you very soon.’ She dropped her hands and the dapple was into its stride and heading towards York Street before he could respond.
So that was what that was about: when she saw Isobel she had thought him married, believed he had been flirting with her despite it. How very flattering that it should matter to her. Cal grinned, warmed by the rush of masculine smugness. It had been a while since he had enjoyed flirting with a pretty woman and a very long time since he had encountered a well-bred young lady who had made him want to. Miss Wilmott, seen in the broad light of day and with his full attention on her and not on the confrontation with his family, was frankly beautiful. Well worth pursuing, and the suspicion that Cousin Ralph had his eye on her only added a pinch of spice.
Nanny Jenkins was standing in the open doorway, hands on hips, shaking her head at him. He had hired the fierce little Welsh widow in Calcutta in the days following Madeleine’s death and she had bustled into his life, a scolding bundle of warmly loving efficiency. Cal had been left with an infant, a guilt-inducing awareness that he was free and an almost irresistible urge to stop wandering, come back to England, see if he could finally lay his ghosts. Nanny Jenkins had taken one long, assessing, look at him and pronounced, ‘The little one should be home. You’ll be taking a passage as soon as you can find a ship.’ It was an order and for once in his life, Cal did not demur.
‘Good gracious me, what have you been doing to yourself?’ she demanded now as she lifted Isobel from his arm. ‘Your Grace.’ It was always an afterthought, his title. ‘Fighting?’
‘An encounter between a phaeton and a small child in Green Park,’ he admitted. ‘The child is fine, I dislocated my shoulder and lost my hat.’ Any proper employer would be outraged that she might suggest him capable of brawling in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. He was long since resigned to being an improper employer.
Prescott, his secretary, looked round the study door, studied his dusty, battered appearance and raised his eyebrows. ‘There is a considerable amount of business awaiting you, sir. However it will all keep until tomorrow.’ The door clicked shut behind him.
In the days before his twenty first birthday, when he had been finalising the plans for his escape, Cal had realised that he had to leave behind him a confidential secretary of the utmost respectability, intelligence and probity. If he could not, then there was no way he could square his conscience about abandoning his estates to be administered at arms’ length. George Prescott, the third son of Lord Warnley, a neighbour, was the soberest, most hardworking and conscientious man Cal had ever encountered, despite George’s youth. He had left university with honours and was choosing between the various flattering offers of work he had received, which included posts with a bishop, two lords and a leading member of the House of Commons, when Cal poached him.
He was one of only three men in whom he had confided his suspicions about his uncle and cousin. The second was Jared Hunt, originally employed as his fencing master, a taciturn man of lethal fighting ability whose past was a mystery. He was a year older than Cal, had presented himself in answer to an advertisement and appeared to have no background whatsoever, only excellent references from two French émigré sword masters.
His loyalty became apparent when he had taken Cal to one side a month before he put his plan of escape into action and warned him that he was suspicious about the accidents and ill-health that had plagued him. The relief at finding someone with whom he could discuss it, and the knowledge that he wasn’t losing his mind, had given him the strength he need to break free.
He left George behind him as his confidential secretary with powers of attorney, the only man who knew where he was going in advance and who received letters and orders from wherever Cal went. Jared travelled with him, at first while he was still weak from the last bout of illness, as his bodyguard. Then, as his health returned, as his friend and companion.
The third man in his confidence was his valet, Michael Flynn, a young Irishman whom Cal had rescued when he was being beaten up by a gang of toughs on a New York street. He had got the battered youth back to his dingy lodging room, tended his wounds and thought nothing of it until Flynn had turned up the next morning at the hotel, his smart appearance marred by two magnificent black eyes, and announced that Mr Thorne – as he was calling himself – needed a valet and that he was his man.
Cal had noticed his clean nails, his sharp shave, despite the bruises, his well-chosen clothes and agreed.
‘You know what I am,’ Flynn had blurted out. ‘You know why they were having a go at me?’
‘Because you’re a molly,’ Jared had growled as he squinted down the length of the fencing foil he was polishing.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Lay one finger on my knee, lad, and you’re a spit roast,’ Jared drawled. ‘Otherwise you can be romancing the kitchen cat for all I care. But it’s not up to me, I’m not the one you’ll be helping into his small-clothes.’
In his innocence Cal had puzzled over how Jared had known. As far as he knew he’d never met a man who preferred to lie with his own sex, but he suspected he probably had and that it was his own inexperience showing. His uncle was intemperate on the subject, which seemed a good enough reason to take the opposite view. ‘You’re hired on a month’s trial,’ he said, waving towards the heap of portmanteaux that held his crumpled and unvaleted clothing. ‘See what you can do with that lot, and Mr Hunt’s while you’re at it.’
After a month Cal could not imagine how he had managed without Flynn. The valet moved from body servant to confidential servant to friend and Cal revealed his true identity, though not the reason for his travels. But Flynn was sharp, with an inbuilt level of wariness that a hard life had taught him. ‘What’s the danger in England then, sir?’ he’d asked one day when he was heaving off Cal’s boots. Cal told him and Flynn shrugged. ‘Bloody hell. Still, I suppose if you need a motive for murder, getting a dukedom is a pretty tempting one.’ In Cal’s opinion that summed things up nicely.
Now he trudged upstairs to find Flynn and a change of clothing, leaving Isobel telling Nanny all about the nice lady who had driven Papa home. Flynn, emerged from the dressing room and pursed his lips at the sight of Cal’s battered person.
‘Fighting, sir? Or courting?’
‘Impudent devil. I shudder to think what goes on in your imagination if you think I could get into this state courting.’ Although come to think of it, the afternoon had certainly advanced his relationship with Sophie Wilmott.
&
nbsp; ‘A jealous rival?’ The valet circled him. ‘Tsk. How did you get out of your coat?’
‘Painfully. I dislocated the shoulder joint and the doctor wanted to cut my clothes off.’
‘He might as well have done,’ Flynn said as he tossed the coat aside and held up Cal’s boots to study the scuffed leather. ‘This lot is fit for the rag and bone man. I’ll send for hot water, you’ll want to bathe before those bruises get any worse and you seize up completely.’ He paused with one hand on the bell pull. ‘And is the lady who brought you home unhurt herself?’
‘The lady almost ran me down,’ Cal said with a straight face, provoking a whistle of surprise.
‘And I thought Naples was dangerous.’
Ah yes, Naples. That had been fun. Dirty, dangerous, violent and full of dark-eyed, voluptuous women, most of whom came with knife-wielding brothers or husbands. He had been a married man of course, but even so, flirting had been almost obligatory. And Jared had been bedding one married beauty and he suspected that Flynn had been up to something with her younger brother… that evening the three of them, swords drawn, had only just managed to escape alive.