The Tattooed Duke Read online

  “The lot of good this title has done for me. It’s money that’s required. Or at least a title that isn’t tainted by scandal, going back seven generations. But damn, Harlan, of all the places in the world . . .”

  Harlan shrugged. “You ought to make your pitch to the Royal Society sooner rather than later. The account books will wait . . .”

  Wycliff thought of the maid’s simple question—What about the tenants and your staff?—and he felt duty tugging at conscience. He thought, too, of adventure, and Timbuktu, and the wide-open plains of Africa and the pride of discovery. The past he inherited, or a future he forged for himself?

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. “We have work to do.”

  There were papers to write, to detail the customs of other cultures. There were more seeds to plant, specimens to catalogue, wild animals to feed. All in preparation for his proposal to the Royal Society. The funds had to go to him, not Burke, who was a ship captain with no scientific background or exploration experience to recommend him.

  This was something he deserved, Wycliff thought. Not because he was a duke, but because he’d spent the past ten years roaming, collecting, detailing, accumulating experience. Timbuktu belonged to him.

  Chapter 18

  In Which His Grace Suffers Rejection

  Something bad had happened; it was clear to the entire household. Saddler kept to his pantry, Mrs. Buxby nervously sipped her whiskey-tea, and the others made themselves scarce. The duke bellowed and raged, he stomped and stormed. When something shattered, Eliza was the only one brave enough to venture forth with a broom and dustpan.

  She had an ulterior motive: details for her column. That was the only reason, of course. It had nothing to do with concern or care or a simple desire to be near him, especially after their heated moments and scorching kisses.

  It certainly had nothing to do with wanting to clean up whatever unholy mess His Grace had made. She had never cared for housework before, but she loathed it now.

  She found him in the second floor gallery, stomping across acres of once-polished parquet floors. Furniture sat covered under white sheets, like odd, misshapen ghosts.

  Along the east wall, windows overlooked Berkeley Square. On the opposite wall hung dozens of portraits of previous dukes, their homes, dogs, wives, and mistresses. Eliza thought portraits were always supposed to be dour, but these dukes looked jolly. And naughty. Their wives, on the other had, looked so very sober.

  The live duke in her midst, however, was glowering and prowling like a caged beast in a rage. He fixed his eyes upon her, and she felt herself shrinking back and stepping behind what seemed to be a chair under a sheet.

  The duke stalked toward her, collected the chair and heaved it across the room, where it crashed against the wall, cracked, splintered and collapsed.

  His dark hair had escaped its tie and tumbled wildly around his shoulders. He looked like a towering, enraged warrior capable of anything he put his mind to, whether it be violence or passion.

  Eliza’s heart began to pound and she thought perhaps the cleaning of broken glass could wait.

  He growled at her: “What are you doing here?”

  She took a deep breath. She had survived two days in Newgate for a story, spent time in a brothel—as an observer—and investigated factories. One angry duke was nothing to her. She straightened her spine.

  “I heard something break. I came to tend to it,” she explained.

  The duke folded his arms across his chest and glowered at her. Tattoos peeked from the vee in his shirt, which any proper gentleman would have covered with an elegantly tied cravat.

  “The whiskey bottle could not withstand the excitement of meeting the wall suddenly, and with great force,” he explained.

  “I see,” she murmured. Much like the chair.

  “I am in a terrible temper,” Wycliff stated, and she bit her lip. He continued: “And I can see that you are holding back some impertinent quip. I really don’t give a damn.”

  “I’ll just see to the broken bottle before you injure yourself upon it, Your Grace.” Eliza proceeded to locate the broken bottle on the far side of the room while Wycliff followed behind her, sputtering in rage. With her back to him, she dared to smile.

  “Injure my— I’m not going to— Don’t be ridiculous. You just wanted to see what all my hollering was about.”

  “I’ll confess to a curiosity.” She peeked over her shoulder at him; he was still glaring.

  “Well, I will tell you, Eliza.”

  “If you wish,” she said, and then began to sweep shards of glass into a pile. The fumes of the spilled whiskey were intoxicating on their own. Mrs. Buxby would be livid to see it wasted thus.

  “Apparently, I am thoroughly disreputable,” the duke stated dryly, and she only murmured “Mmm” as he continued. “So very disreputable and scandalous that I cannot be trusted with an expedition. Or the funds for one.”

  “According to whom?” she inquired. Besides, of course, nearly everyone.

  “The Royal Geographical Society of London.”

  Eliza kept her head bowed low.

  “They—those old, gray, overweight and overbearing old oafs—” the duke muttered.

  Esteemed men of Science, Eliza thought to herself.

  “They said that I demonstrated a lack of discipline. They could not, in good conscience, use the King’s money to send one reckless and scandalous peer gallivanting debaucherously around the world.”

  “Gallivanting debaucherously?”

  “Exactly. One of them actually accused me of wenching and thieving my way across continents. That is apparently an unsuitable use of resources.”

  “What of your quest to Timbuktu? What about your collection, and your papers? Did you not explain all of that to them?”

  Here the duke’s smile turned bitter and his eyes darkened considerably. Her heart ached for him, for he was continually denied what he wanted. Yet he defiantly searched for another way. He refused to give up.

  “They were not interested in hearing more about that because they already have their man to claim Timbuktu. He’s been settled with a ship, a crew, a veritable army, a princely sum, and the well wishes of the King. Damn him!”

  “Who is it?”

  “My good friend, Monroe Burke. And not because he’s more qualified than me—which we can all agree he is not. He may be a captain in the navy, but I’m the one with the scientific knowledge and experience that will make the expedition useful and not some bloody, conquering free for all that serves only to make more enemies. Do you know, Eliza, what recommends him over myself?”

  “I couldn’t venture a guess.”

  “His reputation. Or rather, it is my reputation that’s the issue. Whatever dregs of it are left, thanks to those damned, bloody news rags. They’re the damned thorn in my side,” the duke muttered. Eliza thought she might have actually heard him growl under his breath.

  “The newspapers?” she echoed lightly. By now all the glass shards were neatly contained in one pile of clear, sharp daggers. Nevertheless, she continued to sweep with her gaze firmly focused on the floor.

  “Though they claim to be men of science and learning, the Royal Society relies on extremely questionable sources of information. Nevermind my work, or my decade of experience. Because The Weekly has detailed the more salacious aspects of my travels, they think I’ll take the King’s money and spend it on trollops and rum while sailing carefree around the globe. It was that damned column in The London Weekly that did me in.”

  “Which one?” she asked, and was appalled at the hollow sound of her own voice. She was raised by an actress, she ought to be better at acting through scenes like this.

  “The Tattooed Duke. I am assured that everyone in England is reading it, from the King himself to the lowest scullery maid.”

  “Oh yes, that one,” Eliza said, recovering herself. “The one that mentioned the harem.”

  “Idiot Basil spreading that gossip all over town,”
Wycliff grumbled. “The lot of it.”

  “Was it not true?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t hundreds in a night. Good God, you can’t make proper love to a woman in just a few minutes, which is all you’d have in order to ravish hundreds from dusk till dawn.”

  “How long does one need to make proper love to a woman?” Eliza asked. “Just out of curiosity, of course. Scientifically speaking.”

  That teased out a harrumph of laughter from the sullen duke.

  “At least one entire night from sunset to sunrise,” he answered, not missing a beat.

  Wycliff caught her gaze and held it, with an intensity so strong that she couldn’t break it. For that moment, she couldn’t breathe. There was something so wild and reckless about him; she ached to throw caution to the wind and join him in mad, passionate pursuits. But her position—in his house, and at The Weekly—depended upon her restraint.

  “You could write your corrections in to the editor of the newspaper,” she suggested, once she’d recovered herself. “I’ve heard that is sometimes done.”

  Wycliff gave her an incredulous stare, punctuated with bitter laughter.

  “Are you truly suggesting that all I need to do to right some egregious wrongs is to write a letter to the editor?”

  “It most likely wouldn’t solve anything, other than soothing your temper,” she said, and resumed her sweeping. Amazing things resulted from letters to the editor; that’s how she came to write for The Weekly. But she couldn’t mention that to the duke.

  “Darling,” Wycliff purred like a practiced charmer. “My darling Eliza. Shooting things soothes my temper. Shooting living things is even better. Hurling furniture and whiskey bottles against the wall also has mollifying qualities. Writing a letter to some low-life hack news rag editor is . . . well, let’s just say it would soothe my temper if I could also stab him with the quill and gag him with the letter.”

  Eliza stared at him, horrified. He just shrugged.

  “I am merely a housemaid, Your Grace,” she said once she had collected herself.

  “A tempting, intriguing, and impertinent housemaid,” he corrected.

  She curtsied, cheeks flushed, heart racing. “At your service.”

  “I do need to do something about that newspaper, though,” the duke mused, and began to pace around her. “Especially that damned Tattooed Duke column. It’s scandal mongering and it’s ruining things for me. The Royal Society has been spooked by it, and the haute ton is gob-smacked. Left unchecked, I suspect it will only get worse.

  Never had a patch of floor been swept so thoroughly. Eliza couldn’t look at him. She could only see, in her mind’s eye, all the things that she’d written about him thus far. Every outrageous, damaging word.

  “If they won’t stop writing about me, the least that malicious and vile writer could do would be to compose something decent . . . let alone flattering. I have done great things, mind you. It wasn’t all just whoring my way across continents.”

  “I would be curious to know of your adventures, Your Grace,” Eliza said, pausing in her sweeping.

  “I have liberated slave ships in the Indian Ocean,” he began. Eliza glanced around in the vain hope that anyone was around to hear this. Because if she was the only one to know it, then she could not publish it.

  All alone with the duke, she listened to Wycliff’s noble adventures, wretchedly aware that she could not print one glorious word of it without ruining her disguise.

  “I have survived shipwrecks and captained a purloined pirate ship around Cape Horn. I collected strange plants now prized by the King at Kew Gardens, and now planted all over England. I rescued a woman or two from an unfortunate marriage, sunk a French warship or two, negotiated the liberation of Burke’s crew from a pack of cannibals, and I saved Harlan from a shark attack, or most of him, at least. I did spend a night in a harem and enjoyed myself considerably before liberating a kidnapped English maiden before she lost her innocence. And above all, I have represented my country with decency, diplomacy, and dignity, which is more than can be said for most of the Royal Navy.”

  Awe did not begin to describe what she felt . . . Neither did supremely vexing. Neither did adoration or mesmerized, though all these words and phrases crossed her mind. Her heart beat hard and her conscience rang bells of alarm.

  The duke was an amazing adventurer. He was a reluctant duke, and an outrageous scandal, but this was a man who had really lived. She was acutely aware of her own little misadventures in this small, albeit bustling, corner of the world. She’d enjoyed more excitement than most women. But it did not compare to the duke’s travels. What marvelous fun it would be to join him . . .

  “There is an entire world out there, far beyond the skyline of London, and I have seen it and sailed it and learned it. I can’t fathom how someone like Basil can live going from his home to his club to some party and not feel like he is wasting precious moments, precious years, of his life.”

  “At first I didn’t quite understand why you were so reluctant to be home,” she said. “To be a duke. But now I think I am beginning to.”

  “Have you not traveled?”

  “Once, to Brighton.” Damned, damned Brighton trip. If there was one thing she regretted— Other adventures might have happier endings, she thought.

  “That’s right,” he remembered. “And it didn’t give you a taste for adventure and travel?”

  “It quite nearly ruined me,” Eliza said, but the duke seemed to miss the flat note of her voice, thank goodness. It wasn’t something she wished to explain. Or even think about it.

  “Yes, that’s the beauty of it. When you know how wide and blue and wonderful the rest of the world is, London seems like a dank dungeon in comparison. Staying here becomes impossible. Ruined. As if I could be content going from party to party . . .”

  She could see how one might become bored with that . . . eventually. But when the duke prattled on about the chains of his charmed life, she did not feel so guilty about what she wrote. She boldly interrupted him.

  “Some of us, Your Grace, would love the opportunity to become bored with fancy dresses and glorious parties and champagne and waltzes.”

  “I’m an ass,” he said flatly, suddenly realizing that he was complaining about wealth and privilege to a housemaid. “Please accept my sincere apologies.”

  “Very well,” she said, to be agreeable, and because her point had been made.

  “I’d take you to a ball, but you wouldn’t want to go with the likes of me,” Wycliff told her, taking the broom from her and setting it against the wall.

  “Instead . . . Eliza, would you care for a waltz?” he asked, sweeping into a grand bow before her. She gave a little laugh. Fancy that, a duke, requesting a dance with her, a mere housemaid as far as he knew.

  “Now?” She laughed nervously again.

  “Is there somewhere else you need to be?” Wycliff asked, obviously expecting the answer to be no. She was his servant, and expected to be at his beck and call every moment of the day. What other business could she possibly have, other than his?

  She was immensely glad for the lessons from Sophie and Julianna, because this was an offer a girl was mad to refuse.

  Wycliff pulled her against him, pressed his large, warm open palm into the small of her back and clasped her hand in his. He tilted his head down so they could see eye-to-eye. His brown eyes, dark, with a spark of mystery and mischief.

  “Are you ready?” he asked with the velvety smooth voice of a practiced rogue.

  Before she could say yes or no, he swept them into a waltz around the gallery floor. There was no music, but they didn’t need it. One, two, three. . .

  The duke waltzed her around a settee covered in a white sheet, and then around a table and set of chairs, also covered, and then she stopped paying attention to her surroundings. One, two, three. . .

  His shirt was open at the neck. She looked at his exposed sun-browned skin and was struck by the urge to press her lips
to it and taste him. She bit down on her lower lip instead.

  And then she made the mistake of closing her eyes.

  She felt his touch more intensely—the heat from his skin and the possessiveness of his grasp. She breathed in his scent—just plain soap and whiskey and something indescribably him that made her light-headed in a lovely way. She dared to imagine that she was not a housemaid, or the writer betraying him, but a woman he could love passionately.

  When she opened her eyes, Eliza saw a hungry look in the duke’s dark eyes. She felt it, from the sudden flight of butterflies in her belly to the ever quickening of her pulse.

  She stood corrected: a waltz with Wycliff was an offer a girl was mad to accept because . . . she might do stupid things like think he wanted her. Or that she could have him.

  They waltzed on, with no sound other than their footsteps and the thudding of her heart. She heard the duke’s breath catch and then they stopped suddenly. She stumbled into his hard, tattooed chest, and his arm clasped her against him protectively.

  “Your Grace,” Saddler intoned. Eliza dared a glance at him and saw that his face dripped with disapproval. Weren’t butlers supposed to maintain a stony, inscrutable expression at all times?

  “An urgent missive has arrived for you, Your Grace. From Lady Shackley.”

  Chapter 19

  A Visit from Mr. Monroe Burke

  The library, late

  Wycliff stood with his hands clasped behind his back, glaring out the window. Harlan sprawled in a chair, smoking a cheroot. A card game lay abandoned, for they had a caller. Wycliff had been winning.

  “Mr. Burke,” Saddler intoned before vanishing just as silently as he appeared. Wycliff thought of refusing to see him but he was too curious.

  “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” Burke asked, sauntering in. He had called, uninvited. Presumably gloating was on the agenda.