The Tattooed Duke Read online

  “Yes, that one. Or are you in the habit of offering vast sums of money for ridiculous things?” Wycliff asked.

  “A man must keep himself entertained. I once wagered three thousand pounds on a raindrop race.”

  “What the devil is that?” Wycliff asked, and Alvanley smoked his cheroot and smiled as he explained: “Which raindrop would first reach the bottom of a pane of glass in the bow window at White’s.”

  Wycliff was speechless.

  “I haven’t a wife to bleed me dry,” Alvanley reasoned, which also explained that he was smoking freely in the drawing room, “or elder relatives to complain about how I spend my fortune.”

  “I won’t feel guilty about accepting your ten thousand, then,” Wycliff said. Because he would get this money. He knew the truth.

  “Splendid. I should hate for it to be ruined for you,” the earl said. “You do accept that I’ll want proof before I merely hand it over.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Wycliff asked.

  Alvanley sipped his coffee, pausing to close his eyes and savor the taste.

  Wycliff didn’t have any place to be, but the clock was ticking. Burke was probably charting his course or loading his ship right now. Lord only knew what else Eliza was discovering or inventing for her column at this very moment.

  “See if you can get something published in the author’s next column,” Alvanley said. “A particular phrase, or story, that the author will unwittingly include so that you and I will know, irrefutably and in print, that you have identified W.G. Meadows.”

  Wycliff immediately saw that this would require Eliza’s service in his household for at least another week. This didn’t strike him as such a terrible thing. Torturous, yes. Dangerous, indeed. Fraught with the possibility of disaster, absolutely. But it was not a terrible thing at all.

  “I suppose you know what you’d like it to say,” Wycliff said. He took a deep breath and fought for patience as Alvanley took another luxurious sip of coffee. Good Lord, was there opium in it?

  “There’s a Byron poem I’m fond of,” the earl said, gesturing to a book on his side table. ‘We’ll Go No More a-Roving.’ See if you can get a line from it in the column.”

  “Agreed. You’ll see it in W.G. Meadows’s next installment of ‘The Tattooed Duke.’ I will call on Saturday afternoon to collect.”

  Chapter 43

  In Which There Is Poetry

  The conservatory

  The duke called upon Eliza to assist him in the conservatory. Seedlings that had been collected abroad, having grown, now required transplanting into new, larger containers.

  Of course he would ask her to assist him, of everyone else on the staff.

  And yet, she knew the duke was not a fool. This must not be an innocent endeavor.

  The conservatory was warm and humid. Outside, it was cold, wet, dreary England, with rain pelting the glass walls and ceiling. But inside, it was a tropical paradise. Eliza breathed deeply, inhaling the luscious fragrance of all the plants and blossoms. She loved this room, in a bittersweet way. She could only imagine what the rest of the world was like, and how much of it she was missing.

  If only the duke would take her along . . .

  The thought was sudden, unbidden, unlikely.

  “Eliza.” Wycliff turned, catching her eye from the far side of the conservatory. She waited as he walked toward her, weaving his way through this jungle of orange trees, ferns, and other vibrant greenery she could not identify. His gaze was intensely focused upon hers, demanding that she stay utterly focused upon him. She couldn’t look away.

  He wore his boots, breeches, and just a white shirt, rolled at the sleeves and stretched across his broad shoulders, left open at the collar, with a hint of his tattoos visible. As if he could not tolerate the slightest restraint. As if it wouldn’t be long before the shirt was carelessly tossed on the floor and he worked in this hot room bare-chested.

  Breathless. She was utterly breathless at the thought.

  Wycliff pushed a branch out of his way, and she noticed that he had begun to wear his signet ring. His hair was pulled back and tied with a bit of leather.

  She noticed his shirt, again, and that it was a bit damp and clung deliciously to his taut abdomen. He must have been watering the plants, she thought vaguely.

  Still, he left her unable to take in air. There was something so raw and so strong about him. Like nothing could possible stand in the way of his deep, pure enjoyment of earthly pleasures. Something so capable about him—that he might single-handedly defend them from all manner of danger, survive on next to nothing, show a woman the greatest pleasure she’d ever known.

  Eliza was stricken with both the urge to flee from danger and an overpowering desire to throw herself into his arms. In the end, she remained rooted where she stood. Wycliff stood before her. Her heart beat hard in her chest.

  She loved him. She knew it like she knew the sky was blue, and like she knew the sun set each day and rose again in the morning. It was a simple, powerful fact.

  “You requested—” she began, trying to explain her presence.

  “You, Eliza,” he said, in a warm, sultry voice. He took her hand and led her past trees and other plants. Her hand felt so small in his, and she felt so vulnerable as she followed him. Her heart skipped beats every time he glanced back over his shoulder at her.

  He seemed to desire her, and she wanted him to love her. She wanted to hold his hand and explore the world. She tilted her chin up and gave him a sweet smile. She would win the money for him, for them. Knightly and The Weekly be damned.

  “I require your assistance,” the duke said. On the potting table before him was an assortment of small plants and containers and dirt. “I thought you might prefer this to dusting, or sweeping, or polishing the silver. But then again, who knows with women?”

  “Saddler takes care of the silver,” Eliza said. “No one else is allowed near. We might steal it.”

  “Well, I might sell the lot of it and sail to Timbuktu with the proceeds.”

  She smiled. In less than a week’s time he’d have all the money he needed for his voyage, and he could keep the Wycliff silver collection. That is, if her scheme worked and Alvanley’s word was good.

  “What am I to do here?” she asked.

  “Transplanting. Those little seedlings have germinated and outgrown their containers. They need more room to grow, otherwise they’ll be stifled and die.”

  “And you didn’t carry these seeds from halfway around the world to watch them wilt in your conservatory.”

  “Precisely. Here, I’ll show you.” Wycliff stood her before the table and came to stand behind her. From there, with her tucked up against him, and reaching his arms around her, he showed her how to remove the seedling, gently tease apart its roots and then replant it in another, larger pot where it would have room to flourish.

  The rain fell outside, pittering and pattering on the glass ceiling above them.

  She felt the rise and fall of his chest. She wished to fall back into his arms. The warmth of his body and the heat of the room were making her drowsy, languorous. When he stepped away to work beside her, she felt the loss of him intensely.

  They were silent for a while, until he broke it.

  “The child is not mine,” he told her. Eliza slowly exhaled.

  “You need not marry her, then,” Eliza answered. She dared a glance at him out of the corner of her eye and saw that he was focused on the little green plants, which seemed so delicate and tiny in his large hands.

  “Duty no longer impels me to,” he answered. It wasn’t a no. It wasn’t quite a yes, either. It didn’t matter, at any rate.

  Liam. Brighton. What a mistake. Had she known then . . . had she just a bit of faith that great things were in her future, she could have waited instead of greedily snatching the first exciting thing to cross her path.

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “You mean, how will I get to Timbuktu?” he sa
id, and she nodded. “Perhaps my voyage will not look like I imagined it. Instead of a troop of soldiers, I could take only the essentials: myself, my wit, my weapons.”

  “But what of the estate, here? What about the tenants and the wages —”

  “I am not sure if you are the angel or the devil on my shoulder,” Wycliff said. “Tempting me into one thing, reminding me of a contradictory duty. You are trouble. But then again, most women are.”

  “Perhaps, but you seem unscathed as of late. In fact, you have been remarkably studious. In your library at all hours . . . I wonder what you are reading?”

  She noticed that he stayed there later and later each night.

  He’d been in that locked room for hours, too. But she dared not mention that.

  “I have taken to poetry, if you can believe it,” Wycliff answered, and then he began to recite some lines: “ ‘So, we’ll go no more a-roving/so late into the night . . .’ ”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to feign ignorance and ask who the author was, even though she was well aware that it was Lord Bryon. But it was hurting her soul to play the silly girl around this sharply intelligent man. And what did it matter at this point? As long as she managed the line “In secret we met, in silence I grieve” in her column, the money was hers to give to him.

  So instead of asking who the author was, Eliza recited the next line: “ ‘Though the heart be still as loving, and the moon be still as bright.’ ”

  “A poetry-reciting housemaid. Where the devil did Mrs. Buxby find you?” Wycliff gave her a slow, lazy grin that warmed her up even more. For a moment the world beyond his gaze ceased to exist. Eliza thought of the pleasure he’d given her, and at the memory, heat pooled in her stomach, and lower.

  “I hate that you are married,” he said softly.

  That sucked the air out right out of the room. Eliza imagined plants wilting in her hands. Wycliff’s hands stilled, but he kept his gaze on the plants.

  “Me, too,” she said, and then she asked, “Does it have to matter?”

  “If only I wasn’t a run-of-the-mill Wicked Wycliff,” he remarked. And then he recited a few more lines from the poem, “ ‘Though the night was made for loving, and the day returns too soon/Yet we’ll no more go a-roving, by the light of the moon.’ ”

  It made her lungs tight, in a panicked way, as if she needed him, loving by the light of the moon, to survive. What if he left for Timbuktu—without her? What if he sailed off and she had only a memory of what could have been?

  If only, if only . . . if only a million different things. But life was the way it was, and certain things were as immovable as mountains. He was determined to be a better man than all of his ancestors. She was trying to show him that she was honest and faithful and true when it really mattered, so that when her disguise came to light, he’d know she wasn’t a complete liar.

  All they had was this moment, warm inside, and sheltered from the rain drumming on the glass walls and ceiling.

  As they worked side by side, hands in the dirt and holding delicate little plants, Eliza wondered . . . if he knew, and if he didn’t love her, what was she still doing here?

  By all rights he ought to have sent her away long ago.

  He must care for her. But then why could he not say it?

  By the end of the week all the secrets would be revealed—let the cards fall where they may. She gasped for air, suddenly aware of the tension, and craving for the release. This unknowing could cease, this deception brought to light.

  If she thought for a moment that she could tell him her schemes, she would have. But she’d heard his angst and frustration, and the scathing comments. He might storm away, and then she would never be able to fully explain her own hopes and dreams and needs.

  When she won the money, she would give it to him for his own dreams. She just hoped they included her.

  Chapter 44

  Harlan and the Duke

  “Now this is more like it,” Harlan said, exhaling a full stream of cigar smoke up into the night sky. A few stars peeked through the thick haze of fog.

  “It’s almost like being back out there,” Wycliff said, although the roof now made him think of Eliza right here, and not some grand adventure out there. This was noted and pushed aside.

  “Aye,” Harlan agreed. He puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. They had come up to the roof after supper, rather than sitting in the stifling atmosphere of the library. Wycliff had been there all day, studying Arabic, reviewing the account books, and plotting his course. The mission would look different than he had planned.

  In fact, all of his plans were now falling neatly into place. But still there were questions, unanswered. He sipped his brandy and asked one of the questions that had been nagging him for a while.

  “Did you join Burke’s crew yet?”

  Harlan exhaled again, sending another puff of smoke into the air.

  “I’m entertaining an offer,” Harlan answered. “He recognizes my translation skills. He also has an expedition planned, and a departure date.”

  Wycliff felt his jaw clench, hard. Harlan, his supposedly trusty comrade, was defecting to his longtime rival. The lack of loyalty was breathtaking, save for one fact.

  “And yet you’re still here,” Wycliff pointed out. Smoking his cigars. Drinking his brandy. Looking at the stars from the roof of his ancestral home.

  “You did save my life. Once,” Harlan remarked.

  “When is Burke leaving?” Wycliff asked. He stared up at the few night stars and imagined a sky full of millions. His heart sang in its chains at the thought. But he couldn’t shake the image of Eliza beside him, gazing up at a sky on fire with stars.

  “In a few days,” Harlan answered. “Which doesn’t leave you much time. You could just marry Lady Althea and be done with it.”

  “I could,” Wycliff said, but the words struggled in his throat, telling him that he absolutely could not. Not when she had tried to trap and outwit him with that child. Not when she was Hades’ Own Harpy. Not when he still had another option.

  He would get to Timbuktu. But would he get there first?

  Harlan seemed to hear the struggle in his voice, and glanced warily at him.

  “It’s the maid, isn’t it?”

  “I might be able to come up with the necessary funds in time,” Wycliff replied evasively. He found he didn’t quite trust his old friend, not when he was likely to join a rival expedition. Harlan glanced at him curiously, and then taunted him.

  “And then what—will you spend it on an expedition, or set up house with the little missus?”

  Wycliff sipped his brandy, savoring the burn, and biting back words he was surprised to find at the ready. Timbuktu. Expedition. Of course. There could be nothing else.

  “There’s no missus. There cannot be. She’s married,” Wycliff said.

  “That little housemaid has more secrets than you can shake a stick at,” Harlan remarked.

  “Aye,” was all Wycliff could say to that.

  “You know about her, don’t you?” Harlan asked. “You’re after the Alvanley money, yea?” Harlan fixed his good eye upon the duke. “I put two and two together. Good to see you’re not so far gone that you can’t recognize a woman’s scheme when it’s kissing you and talking honey mouth to your face,” he said, using an Arabic phrase.

  Wycliff stared at him, hard. His heart pounded heavily in his chest. The words made him dizzy with anger. His old friend thought him a fool, blinded by the charms of a treacherous woman. Worse: he knew that where he himself suspected a deep, dark, storming real love that could drown him, Harlan saw only an idiot in the throes of infatuation.

  Harlan probably thought he wouldn’t turn her in for the money. Little did he know.

  Another sip, to give him pause before saying, “Yes. I know. Don’t tell her.”

  “Oh, I won’t say a word, old mate,” Harlan said, taking a sip of brandy himself after setting the cigar down. “But I don’t think it’ll work out as you’
re planning it will.”

  “Whatever does that mean?”

  “Ties, Duke; the kind of ties that keep a man on land, and get him thinking about heirs and spares and prudent behavior. Before you know it, you’ll be cutting your hair, tying a cravat around your neck, and vexing over your reputation.”

  “You seem to have me mistaken for someone else,” Wycliff replied.

  “You seem to be refusing to admit that you’re a man in love,” Harlan said plainly.

  “I told you, she’s married.” Wycliff nearly growled this unfortunate, immovable, impossible fact. He couldn’t possess her—she wouldn’t let him, so long as her husband might roam the earth. And if he couldn’t have her, then he couldn’t lose her.

  “I hope you don’t think that was artfully dodging the question,” Harlan said with a snort, “because that just confirmed everything. You’ve gone and fallen in love with the chit.”

  After quitting the roof, Wycliff walked quickly through the halls on his way to the study.

  He couldn’t admit Harlan was right. Couldn’t deny it either. That word rattled and banged around his head, knocked on his heart, burned in his gut. He couldn’t admit to loving her, because then he couldn’t very well turn her over to Alvanley for a cool ten thousand pounds, which he would then use to leave her. A man in love wouldn’t do that. He needed to do that.

  Wycliff entered the long corridor decked with the portraits of old dukes and duchesses and their dogs and children. They all smiled fondly down upon him, he knew, though he refused to look.

  The trip to Timbuktu—and the respect and recognition for his own damned talents and not his lineage—was the summation of everything he’d ever wanted. Over the years, his heart beat for this. He inhaled and exhaled, each breath bringing him closer to his goal. Every shipwreck, plan gone awry, time in prison, night spent hungry under a big black sky, every wild beast hunted and every skirmish and fight with foreign tribes . . . he’d gamely taken all that on for a reason. For Timbuktu. For recognition. For his own damned sense of pride and honor.