Along Came a Duke (35 page)

Including an old priest hole in the attic—as well as a hidden staircase that led down to the kitchen—so one could be ferried in and out of the vicarage without detection.

Kempton had come to the new religion as it came to all change—slowly and stubbornly resistant.

A factor that had now restored Tabitha's freedom.

She moved quickly up Meadow Lane, Mr. Muggins bounding joyously ahead, while her overflowing portmanteau banged against her hip. She had finally taken her uncle's advice and packed. Though she had no intention of going anywhere he might have planned. When she reached the intersection with High Street, much to her elation, she spied a swiftly moving curricle, driven by a tall figure coming into town.

Preston!
her heart sang. He'd come at last. Late, she mused, but here at last. She'd let him apologize profusely, beg for her absolution (and her hand in marriage) and then she'd forgive him.

How her body ached to forgive him, the memories of his lovemaking never far from the surface, sending tendrils of desire racing through her.

“Here I am,” she said, waving her arms at the driver to get him to slow down.

Which he did, managing to get his horses stopped just before they trampled her. She rushed around the carriage, only to come to a stumbling halt.

Oh, good heavens, no!

“Miss Timmons! This is most fortuitous!” Mr. Reginald Barkworth exclaimed.

Fortuitous was not the word Tabitha would use.

Barkworth leapt down from the carriage, and before she knew what he intended, he folded her into his awkward embrace. “My poor, dearest lady! The iniquities you have suffered! But never fear! I have come here to save you.”

Oh, how she wished he hadn't.

A
fter discovering that Tabitha was not in the vicarage, Preston and Roxley locked Sir Mauris and the Reverend Timmons in the cellar. When they got to the lane where Preston's carriage and Roxley's horse awaited them, they spent a moment determining which way she might have gone.

“If I were to guess,” Roxley said, “we should try the Pottage.”

“Miss Hathaway's?”

“Yes,” Roxley said. “Or–”

Woof. Woof. Woof.

The earl's suggestions came up short as Mr. Muggins came bounding up toward them.

“There you are. Good dog,” Preston said, giving the dog a friendly pat on the head and looking around for Tabitha. But to his concern, she didn't appear. “Where the devil is she? She wouldn't leave this mongrel behind.”

“Not likely,” Roxley agreed, then sighed, looking up the road. “Though I am loathe to suggest it . . .” He glanced up the lane to where it intersected with the main road. “I suspect she's gone where everyone else is tonight.”

“The Midsummer's Eve Ball,” Preston supplied.

Roxley looked up at him, surprised.

“Miss Timmons mentioned it. Once or twice.”

“Most likely twice. It is all they talk of around here for months.” Roxley reached over and gave Mr. Muggins an affectionate scratch behind the ears. “Then we are off to Foxgrove.” They began to walk up the lane, both of them leading their horses, Mr. Muggins following right at the duke's heels. “My aunt will not be happy to see me. Or you.”

“Is she ever?” Preston quipped.

The earl snorted. “She complained quite vigorously before she left Town that you kissed her at Grately's.” Roxley slanted a glance over at his friend, one brow arched high.

“I'd rather not discuss that,” Preston told him, looking straight ahead.

“I'd rather not hear about it,” Roxley told him. “Ever.”

P
reston and Roxley arrived at Foxgrove a little while later, and the earl led the way around to the back of the grand house. Easing up through the shadows, Preston looked through the open French doors of the ballroom and tried to spy Tabby, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Demmit! He was of half a mind to storm Lady Essex's house, but then that might just raise the alarm with Lady Timmons and her sister-in-law, and they would finish what their husbands had failed to do—spirit Tabby away.

Then all of a sudden a lithe, blonde beauty walked by the door, and Preston, with his well-known prowess at stealing young ladies right out from beneath their protective maman's watchful gazes, leaned inside, grabbed Miss Dale's hand and tugged her out the door, even as his other hand swept over her mouth to keep her from crying out.

For a moment, she put up a good fight, until she spied his face and he nodded at her. Her gaze changed from panic to fury.

An infuriated Dale. Heaven help him. But this was the best chance he had at finding Tabby. He released her. “Miss Dale—”

“Your Grace,” Daphne said in a strained voice. “Unhand me! Isn't it enough you've ruined Tabitha, now you must include me in your nefarious ways?”

Roxley leaned back against the wall and shrugged, as if to say
Well, she does have a point.
Mr. Muggins, meanwhile, had settled down at the earl's feet and watched the proceedings with his gaze still fixed on Preston.

“Miss Dale—” Preston began.

“You fiend, you badger-witted—”

“Badger-witted?” Roxley laughed. “That's a new one.”

Preston shot him a hot glance, and the earl managed to stifle his ill-timed humor.

Preston hardly needed Roxley's help when he had to deal with Miss Dale.

Dales! Lofty tempers and endless parries with words. Preston hadn't any patience for either. “Miss Dale, you know why I am here. I must find Tabby.” He paused. “Miss Timmons.”

“What? To ruin her yet again?” She shook her head and began to gather up her skirt. “Leave it to a Seldon not to know when enough is enough.”

He heaved a sigh. “Miss Dale, I know we have a shared dislike for each other—”

“Harrumph,”
she shot back. “Seldons!”

Yes, well the feeling is mutual,
he would have liked to have told her. Dales! Overly insolent, supercilious . . . He took another deep breath. What he needed to do was put aside his own Seldon pride and find Tabitha.

Doing his best to sound conciliatory, if not sane, he said, “Just this once, I would like to ignore our familial differences in the name of saving your friend.”

Miss Dale's eyes widened. “Save her? You ruined her.”

So much for a peace accord.

“Demmit, Miss Dale! This is going nowhere! Now, are you going to help me or not?”

“Of course she is,” Harriet Hathaway said as she came tumbling out the open doors in her usual forward way.

“Ho there, Harry,” Roxley called out.

The lady glanced over her shoulder. “Roxley! Best not let your aunt see you. She's in a rare state. Something about the duke kissing her and you not around to avenge her slighted honor.”

Roxley grinned at her, and Preston could have sworn Miss Hathaway blushed a bit before she turned toward him and showed him why her brothers feared her wrath. “About time you arrived, Your Grace,” she scolded, hands fisting to her hips. “I was beginning to think you'd never get here. And after all the trouble I've gone to to see that Sir Mauris couldn't leave Kempton.”

“What did you do, minx?” Roxley asked.

“I might have taken apart his carriage a bit,” she admitted. “Daphne helped.”

“Not so you could save her, mind you,” Miss Dale told Preston tartly. “But rather to give us more time to find a way to get Tabitha out of the vicarage.”

“Now that you are here, Your Grace,” Harriet said, “where is Tabitha?” She glanced around, looking for her friend. “If you've got Mr. Muggins, then Tabitha can't be far away. She'd never leave him behind. Not willingly.”

“She's not in the vicarage,” Preston told them and then quickly recapped what they had found when he and Roxley had stormed St. Edward's.

“Then you must find her, and find her quickly,” Harriet told the duke.

“Harriet! He's a Seldon,” Daphne said, stepping between Preston and her friend. She tossed another disparaging glance over her shoulder at him. “He has ruined Tabitha and means her no good.”

“Oh, good heavens, Daphne, he's here to save her,” Harriet said. “If you had your way, you'd have us all believing the Seldons roast their young and defile ladies as a matter of course.”

Miss Dale's expression, a “you-shall-see-that-I-am-right” smirk, suggested that she had no doubts he had a pot in the back of his carriage for boiling stray orphans and spare virgins strapped to the front of his carriage on the off chance he ran out of his usual daily course of nubile sacrifices.

Harriet went to open her mouth, but Daphne caught hold of her arm and gave her friend a good shake. “How can you trust
him
so implicitly with Tabitha's future happiness?”

“Because Roxley trusts him,” Harriet said, nodding toward the earl. “And Chaunce says Preston has more wits about him than one usually finds in a duke.”

Preston groaned, pressing his fingers to his temple. He would never get used to these ladies from Kempton. “Please, Miss Hathaway, where is Tabby?”

“Harriet—” Daphne began to warn.

This time, he truly lost his patience with her and her Dale presumption.

Towering over the lady, he leaned down until they were nose to nose. “Demmit, you impertinent little snip! I intend to save her from her uncle and Barkworth.”

Her eyes widened at this.

“Yes, Barkworth, who is even now on his way here to steal her back before she reaches her majority.”

“But—”

“No buts. Further, I intend—if it is any of your business—to see that she inherits her uncle's estate. And finally I intend to give her the choice of being my duchess. The choice. Not force her into some marriage that is convenient for everyone but her. I want to make her my wife. My beloved, dearest wife. Or not. It is entirely her choice. Either way, she will have a fortune at her disposal and the freedom to do as she pleases. Is that enough to warrant your demmed assistance or not?”

Wide-eyed, Daphne pressed both of her lips together and simply nodded.

Preston rose up, straightened his jacket and was about to add a nearly honestly meant
Thank you, Miss Dale
when a vision stepped out of the shadows in the garden.

“Woof!” Mr. Muggins barked, bounding to his feet and nearly upending Roxley in the process.

“Tabby,” Preston gasped, impertinent snips forgotten as he crossed the space between them and gathered her into his arms. His lips sought hers and they kissed, hungrily, eagerly.

It was like coming home, a feeling he hadn't understood—no, had more like avoided—for so many years that it nearly left him undone.

He cradled her face and drank in the sight of her. “Tabby! Where the devil have you been?” Not that Tabby could get a word in, what with Mr. Muggins racing around the pair of them, barking and grinning as only a terrier could. And not after Preston got a closer look at her. “Good God! What happened to you?”

Her muslin gown had a large rent down one side and looked like it had been rolled in the dust. She had the beginnings of a bruise on her cheek and was skinned up on both arms.

“What happened?” he repeated.

“You didn't come along in time, so I had to improvise,” she confessed, smiling up at him.

“Always my best plan,” Roxley added, though no one was listening.

“My uncles locked me in the attic—”

“The devils!” Daphne declared.

“But neither of them knows of the priest's hole up there or the staircase that leads down to the kitchen. All I had to do was wait for Mrs. Oaks to take a tray to my uncles, and when she did—”

Preston grinned. That was his Tabby. Resourceful to the end.

“So I didn't need to come rescue you after all,” he said.

“I wished you had,” she told him. “I ruined my gown jumping out of Barkworth's curricle.”

“Barkworth?” all four of them said.

“Yes, Barkworth,” she told them. “When I got to High Street, I saw a carriage coming toward Kempton at a breakneck pace and thought it was you.” She grinned up at Preston and leaned against him for a moment, as if she just had to reassure herself that he was real.

Yes, Tabby, I am. And I will never leave you again.

However there was one point that needed clarification. “You thought Barkworth was me?”

“Yes, I know, rather embarrassed by it all, but in my defense it was dark and I hadn't had my supper yet.”

“You are nearly forgiven,” he teased.

“I give you leave to taunt me with that fact, but only once a year,” she told him.

“So noted.”

“But what happened when you discovered that it was Barkworth?” Harriet pressed, eager to hear the rest of Tabitha's adventure.

“I was rather shocked, because before I knew it, he swept me off my feet and tossed me up in his carriage.”

“Barkworth?” they all four asked at once.

“Yes, Mr. Barkworth. Apparently being cut off by his uncle—at least until the man's unfortunate passing, which I don't think Mr. Barkworth will find the least bit unfortunate—”

“No, hardly,” Daphne agreed.

“Yes, well, being cut off has given him a new lease on life—at least one that had him seeking my hand and fortune no matter the cost. I tried to get out, but he was determined to rescue me. Refused flatly to bring me here, or bring Mr. Muggins, and then he took off at a devilish pace, until just before we reached the main road—”

“He turned onto a shortcut—” Roxley said, jumping into the conversation.

“Yes, exactly,” Tabitha said. “However did he know about the Old Oak Road?”

The earl shrugged and scuffed the toe of his boot into the thick tiles that made up the terrace outside the ballroom.

Tabitha shook her head. “Yes, well, someone had informed Mr. Barkworth that it was the fastest way from Kempton to the London road.”