Carla Kelly (26 page)

Keep reading for a special excerpt from another Regency Romance

eBook by Carla Kelly

LIBBY’S LONDON MERCHANT

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“I say, Nez, you’re not paying a ha’penny’s worth of attention.”

Benedict Nesbitt, Duke of Knaresborough, grunted, shifted his weight, and rolled gently onto the floor.

“Eustace, you have my undivided attention,” the duke replied as he rested his head on the pillow that had rolled off with him.

“Oh, bother it!” Eustace’s voice rose to an unpleasant pitch. He picked up another pillow to throw at his friend and succeeded only in knocking down the few remaining bottles that still stood upright on the table. “Here I am, facing the crisis of my life, and all you can do is drink my wine and grunt.”

“It’s my wine,” insisted the voice from the floor, “and it’s my house.”

Eustace tried to sit up straight. He looked about in surprise as his eyes narrowed. “Well, Lord bless me, you may be right.” He nodded wisely and settled lower in his chair again. “I suppose you will tell me that is why the butler did not look familiar.”

“That is what I would tell you,” said the patient man on the floor, who groped for the second pillow and put it over his face.

Eustace Wiltmore, Earl of Devere, sighed the sigh of a man bereft of all resource and fumbled among the bottles. He picked up the liquor-soaked letter and held it upside down, close to his face. “My father has sentenced me to wedlock, Nez, my dear. You could at least offer condolences.”

The man on the floor took the pillow off his face and sat up. He stared owl-eyed at his friend. “There are two of you, Eustace,” he concluded after a moment of reflection. “Don’t you think that a trifle extravagant?”

Eustace scowled and fanned himself with the letter. “Would that there were, my boy. Then one of me could flee and none would be the wiser.” He crumpled the letter and tossed it toward the fireplace, which had winked out hours before.

A bird began to warble outside the window. The Duke of Knaresborough winced and put his hand to his temple. He pressed hard until there was only one Eustace Wiltmore. “Eustace, are you under the hatches again?” he asked.

“As always, Nez, as always,” replied the other man, his face mournful. “Have you ever known me when I was not?”

Nez closed his eyes again. “Tell me something. You’re not already promised to another, are you?”

Eustace shuddered elaborately. “Good Lord, man, you know I have made it my life’s ambition to avoid parson’s mousetrap.”

“Ah, but Eustace, that is your solution,” said the duke, picking his words carefully. “Marry this wealthy woman so long promised in your family, and you’ll never have pockets to let again. You don’t have to like it; you merely have to do it.”

The only sound for several moments was Eustace filling another glass and gulping down its contents. “And now I suppose you will tell me this is rather like Hougoumont or Quatre Bras,” he accused.

“I suppose I will, Eustace,” the duke agreed. “We none of us had much fun that day, but we did the thing. You need merely to plan your campaign as carefully as Wellington and bring this event to pass.”

Eustace was silent again, and it was the same stubborn silence that the Duke of Knaresborough remembered from their shared childhood. He opened his eyes and spent several minutes in close observation of his friend.

Eustace Wiltmore, he of the mournful eye, observed back. “Oh, think of something,” he pleaded.

But the duke was busy, taking in Eustace’s pallor, studded here and there with wispy beard. He noted the way Wiltmore’s long nose meandered down in the general direction of his too-short upper lip. Eustace’s whole face seemed to droop in folds toward his neck with all the grace of a basset hound.

“I think we are getting old, Eustace,” the duke concluded.

Eustace groaned. “That is the best you can do?” he cried.

The duke stared back stupidly. “Well, yes, I rather think it is,” he replied. “I’m as mizzled as you are, dear boy, and who ever had a good idea at a moment like this?”

“It’s a thought,” agreed Eustace with reluctance, and turned his attention to the window, which was gradually turning from black to gray. He staggered to his feet and, opening the window, perched himself on the sill. “You are forcing me to think, aren’t you, Nez? I call that a rascally thing.”

Nez sat up. “I had no idea you were so serious,” he said. “This may be the first time since Cambridge that you have been forced to think.”

The wounded look that Eustace bestowed on him would have made Nez laugh out loud, except that his head was beginning to throb.

“I told you these were desperate times,” Eustace said.

The duke pulled himself upright to the table again and searched about among the bottles and remains of last night’s dinner, which had congealed on the plates. He pawed this way and that among the ruins of beef scraps and fish bones until Eustace was drawn from the window to stand over him.

“Whatever are you doing, Nez, rummaging about like a hog in a midden?” the earl asked crossly.

“You said these were desperate times,” Nez explained. “I require chocolate.”

Eustace let out a sigh that bordered between exasperation and defeat. “Can you never be serious?” he complained.

“No,” said the duke. He found a lump of chocolate among the thickened beef juices and helped himself. He rolled the chocolate around in his mouth like a connoisseur of fine wine, swallowed, and gently subsided back onto his pillow.

Eustace made a face. “How can you eat chocolate at a time like this?”

When the duke made no reply, Eustace sat down heavily in his chair. “I am desperate, man. I will run away.”

“Don’t do it,” the duke said from his soft spot on the floor. “How can you uphold the honor of our sex if you are dodging and running from what is obviously the fate of every man?”

Eustace was silent. He lowered himself to the floor and looked his good friend in the eye. “Well then, Nez, I require your help.”

The duke opened one eye, suspicion written all over his face. “I still recall our last combined effort. Eustace, doesn’t it bother you to know that there is one whole shire in the country where we daren’t ever show our faces again?”

“No,” Eustace said serenely. “Dorset always was a bore.” He prodded his friend. “Seriously, Nez, I think I just had a remarkable idea.”

“I don’t want to know it,” declared the duke as he pillowed his head more resolutely against his arm.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Eustace insisted. “You told me only yesterday that you were bored and tired of the prize fillies on the marriage mart that your sister and mum keep trotting around the paddock.”

“Umm, so I did.”

Eustace Wiltmore was just warming to his subject. He pressed his fingers tight against his skull. “Suppose . . . now, just suppose, Nez, and don’t look at me like that! Suppose you were to go to . . . Oh, where the devil . . .” He crawled to the fireplace, retrieved the crumpled paper, and spread it on the hearth, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Ah, here it is. To Holyoke Green in—where the deuce—in Kent. Pretend you’re a salesman of some sort—it doesn’t matter—a regular London merchant.”

The duke made a rude noise, and Eustace sighed.

“I am continually amazed that you are tolerated in the best circles, Nez,” Eustace scolded.

“I don’t do that in the best circles,” his friend replied. “Been tempted, though.”

“Well, never mind. You have an accident in your carriage in front of the house, and they have to take you in, my boy. You don’t really have an accident, of course, but you pretend to.”

“Thank you,” the duke said.

“After you have looked over the girl of my father’s dreams, you carry a report to me in Brighton, where I will be enjoying a repairing lease. If the report is too grim, I will pack my bags and head for the Continent. I hear one can live there cheaply on bread and cheese. If the affair seems promising, I will go down in person.” Eustace gulped audibly and dabbed at his brow. “I may have to do my family duty yet, but you would ease the way considerably.”

“A London merchant? You’re daft.”

“Not at all,” Eustace argued. “Merely drunk. I will be sober in the morning, and it will still be a good idea. Consider its merits.”

The duke made another rude noise.

Eustace sighed again.

“You’ve left something out, Eustace,” the duke said.

“What?” snapped Eustace.

“Why should I do this for you? Give me a good reason to do you this—or any—favor.”

Eustace sighed again, thought a moment, and pulled out his trump card. “I will remind you of the sow in the headmaster’s bed, Nez, and leave your conscience to do the rest.”

The duke opened his eyes and raised his brows. “That was a breathtaking recovery indeed, Eustace,” he agreed. “You did prevent my rustication by taking the rap for that one. I suppose I owe you something.”

“You do, my dear, and I have been waiting these five years to collect,” Eustace said, his words slurred, but possessed of a certain virtuous tenor that not even a mizzled duke could mistake. “I will merely pause now and allow you to contemplate the virtues of duty and honor to one’s friends.”

He paused. The duke began to snore. Eustace observed in silence, steeling himself for the ordeal of rising, which he accomplished slowly and in stages. He crossed the room at angles and tugged on the bellpull. When the butler came, he requested his carriage and took one last look at his friend.

The duke slumbered under the table, the pillow on his face again. Eustace waved to his dear Benedict Nesbitt. “Ta, ta, friend,” he said softly as he allowed the butler to guide his arms into his coat. “Better that we not meet again for a little while.”

***

Nez opened his eyes, hours later, to total darkness and a great weight pressing on his face. I have died, he thought, and it was not an unpleasant idea.

He felt curiously detached from his body. After a moment’s serious thought, he concluded that he could probably not even move a finger, so he did not try. His head throbbed with a life of its own, as if a small animal had climbed inside and was running about from ear to ear, throwing itself against his skull, seeking a way out.

He concluded that he was not dead. Death would have felt better. He had seen enough of dead men on battlefields and, worse, in hospitals, and had noted the looks of resignation and the gentle relaxation of the facial muscles to tell him that death was preferable to his present state.

If he was truly alive, there was the matter of darkness. He opened his eyes wider, and it was still dark, which jolted him considerably. I have finally drunk myself into blindness, he thought as he felt cautiously for his face—and then sighed with relief. He took the pillow off his face and blinked his eyes against the exuberant excess of a June morning.

When his eyes grew accustomed to the brightness of the sunlight that streamed in the open window, Nez looked at the underside of his table. I have spent the night under the table in my dining room, he thought, and I am sure I was not alone.

Nez crawled out from under the table and looked around. A wine bottle rested on its side, dispensing its contents a drip at a time. He hauled himself into a chair, surveying the ruins of last night’s meal, and sank back to the floor again, nauseated by the sight of drying bones and hard potatoes.

The sight of the open window disturbed him. He had a vague memory of Eustace Wiltmore perched there last night, teetering about on the sill as he rambled on about . . . what? Nez shook his head slowly. He crawled to the window and raised himself up enough to look out. There were no remains of Eustace littering the flower beds, so obviously his friend had not hurled himself to the ground.

But there was something else, something Nez could not recall. He took several gulps of the clean air and felt better. His second attempt to sit in a chair was more successful. Gingerly he propped his leg on a footstool and wondered what it was he had promised Eustace Wiltmore last night when he was three sheets to the wind.

Nothing came to him. He looked down at himself in disgust. “Oh, Lord,” he said out loud. “Why do I do this?”

No one answered. The only sound was the ticking of the clock, a sound that crashed about in his brain and kept time with the little animal in there that was still hurling itself about.

His neckcloth was already draped over the bust of an ancestor, so he unbuttoned his shirt, eased himself out of it, and sat there bare-chested, his eyes drooping. The little breeze from the window was cool and felt good, even though he shivered. He moved to another chair in the direct sunlight and sighed. June. June in England.

Someone banged on the door, pounding so loud and long that the hinges shook and the door bulged. Nez put his hand to his head. No, the door did not move. It was someone barely tapping. The animal inside his head stopped to pant and listen for a moment, then whirled around again.

Luster poked his head in. “Sir?” he asked. “My lord?”

“Get my dressing gown.”

The butler returned in a moment with the dressing gown, all tapestry and frogs and much too busy for a man scarcely able to comprehend primary colors. Nez closed his eyes against its design and allowed Luster to help him into sleeves that seemed too difficult to maneuver alone.

“What . . . what day is it, Luster?” he asked finally.

The butler permitted himself a smile. “It is the fifteenth, my lord.”

“The year?”

The smile broadened and then disappeared as Nez frowned back. “1816, my lord.”

The duke managed a slight twitch of his lips. “I know that, Luster,” he said. “I was merely testing you.”

The butler coughed and held out a cup.

The duke sighed and looked away. “No, Luster. I think I will never drink again.”

The butler would not withdraw the offensive cup. “Please, your grace, try it,” he urged. “You’ll feel much more the thing.”

“Do you promise?” the duke asked, eyeing the cup with vast disfavor.

“I do,” said the butler. He coughed. “’Twas my grandfather’s own remedy for the Duke of Marlborough.”

“Very well, then, in memory of the great duke.”

Benedict sipped at the brown brew, wishing that it did not look so awful. He closed his eyes and huddled down into his dressing gown, wishing to pull it over him like the shell of a turtle and retreat from all human contact, particularly the brightness of this June morning.