Love Letters From a Duke (13 page)

“So ask yer questions,” Mudgett was muttering. To his batman everything was black and white. French or English. Officer or soldier. Noble or not.

Thatcher shook his head again. “I’ll not show my cards just yet. If I were to tell her who I was, she’d duck back behind some proper facade and then I’d never discover the truth about this Miss Langley—or how it was she deceived my grandfather so thoroughly.” It had nothing to do with her lithesome body and fleeting, winsome glances, or the way her touch sent his blood on a hot and heated race through his veins.

“I still say it would be easier to just toss her over and be done with it.”

Thatcher agreed, but that didn’t mean he could. Not with his curiosity so roused. Not to mention the other parts of him that found her…well, demmit, rousing as well. He shook off those thoughts and told his batman, “If I want my answers, I have no choice but to continue taking reconnaissance under the cover of this livery.”

Mudgett snorted. “You ain’t going to cast yerself into the briars over this gel, are you?”

“Have you so little faith in my skills as a spy, Sergeant?”

“Just ’cause you got a uniform on, don’t mean you won’t get shot,” his batman muttered.

Lady Lumby’s carriage deposited the girls in front of their house on Brook Street. “Promise to call upon me, my dears!” the lady begged. Then she leaned out the door and caught Felicity by the sleeve. “And I will entertain your proposal for Hubert, Miss Langley. ’Tis an interesting proposition—one I certainly would never have thought of. But more to the point, I tend to agree that the pair may suit.”

Felicity smiled. “My only wish is to see them both happy, my lady.”

The lady let go of her, waving her hand at such a notion. “What is it with young people these days? ’Tis all romance and starry eyes. I say bah! Love and marriage under one roof is an impossible proposition, but no one can tell you young people otherwise.” She sat back and thumped her cane onto the ceiling. “Home, Crackell!”

As the Lumby carriage rolled away, a dark cloud crossed over Felicity’s shoulder, and despite her best efforts—and the vow she made during the carriage ride home to ignore the man—she trembled at the thought of him so close.

“Matchmaking, Miss Langley?” Thatcher asked, his ques
tion sending another shiver down her spine. “Is that a proper occupation for a future duchess?”

“I’m not a duchess yet,” she shot back, tipping her nose in the air and dodging out from his lofty shadow and heading in a determined path toward the door. She had a thousand and one things that would need be done, and quickly if everything was going to work. Oh, and if it did…well, visions of new gowns and furniture and coal danced before her eyes.

Not to mention the ducal coronet atop her head.

“If you must know, I am only following your suggestion. I am going to find the Hodges sisters brilliant matches.”

“My suggestion?” Thatcher’s sharp outburst was matched by the thick trod of his boots following close behind her. “I’ll have you know, no man appreciates being caught in a female’s trap.”

She turned around. “It is my experience that most men don’t know what it is they want, even when it is right beneath their nose.”

And there she stood, right beneath his nose, and a tiny voice niggled in the back of her heart.
That applies to you as well
,
Felicity
.

Applied to her? Not in the least.

Doing her best to ignore the strong set of his jaw and the obsidian glint of his eyes, she continued, “Men make this great pretense of not wanting to be caught, but in the end they usually beg for a lady’s hand.”

“Pretense? Have you ever considered that such a defense might be deliberate?” He looked up and down the street. “And if your theory is correct, Miss Langley, where is your duke? Why isn’t he here on bended knee begging for
your
hand?” His brows waggled at her, and Felicity felt a hot flush rise on her cheeks. “Or could his delay mean he is currently fortifying his house against your wiles?”

“M-y wha-a-at?”

“You heard me, your wiles,” he said. “The ones you were practicing on me today.”

“Ooh!” she blustered. Shaking a finger at him, she fired back, “I did no such thing.” Perhaps she had, but she wasn’t about to admit anything to this arrogant, intolerable…“Yours, sir, is exactly the attitude that leaves women—whose fates, I might add, are entirely at the whims of men—to fend for themselves by whatever means possible.”

“Whatever means possible?” Thatcher’s brows drew dangerously together. “Is that what you did to secure your precious duke? Used any means possible?”

Tally, Pippin, and Aunt Minty all stepped back like spectators on a battlefield—far enough away to be out of the direct line of fire, but close enough to hear every shot. Even Mr. Mudgett, the battle-hardened veteran, edged cautiously out of harm’s way.

Felicity’s mouth gaped until she remembered Miss Emery’s hours of lectures on the uncouth nature of such an expression and pressed her lips shut. Tight. More though out of fear of the very uncouth expression rising in her throat like bile. “Mr. Thatcher, your services are no longer—”

“Duchess!” her sister cried out, rushing down the steps and pulling Felicity out of the fray and out of earshot. Tally gave her a less than gentle shake, which worked to pull Felicity’s furious gaze off Thatcher. Lowering her voice, her twin started a hasty lecture. “Don’t! You can’t sack him.” Tally moved them both a little farther away and around a snow bank. “Have you not considered the cachet of having one of Wellington’s war heroes in our house?”

Felicity did her best to ignore the image of Thatcher in a sharp uniform, standing bravely in the face of enemy fire, his only thoughts of home, and country and King…
and her…

Oh, botheration! She was turning as mad as her sister and Pippin!

And worse, Tally wasn’t done dangling Thatcher before her
like some prize. “Did you see how Lady Lumby tried to lure him away? We shall be beset with offers for his services, not to mention he is the only bit of glamour we have at present.”

Felicity made a low growled protest. “He will ruin our plans.”

“Your plan,”
Tally pointed out, “consists of a proper house with servants—neither of which we have. Given our situation, I fear he’s about as close to proper as we are going to get.” Felicity went to open her mouth, but her sister hastily continued on, “Don’t you remember what Nanny Jamilla always said about footmen?”

“Handsome, dangerous, and capable of making every other lady envy you for their services,” Felicity replied, reciting it like one of their school lessons.

“And Mr. Thatcher
is
devilishly handsome…” Tally let her words dangle, not that Felicity needed to be reminded of how Thatcher looked.

“Perhaps,” she offered, glancing over her sister’s shoulder at the man. That was one of his problems.

“And he was in the war, a hero if you believe this Mr. Mudgett, which makes him dangerous, and Lady Lumby has proven the third rule. So whatever you do, don’t dismiss him. Not yet. At least not until you’ve gained your betrothal to Hollindrake.”

“But Tally, he’s—”

“Not a very good footman, I agree, but we can make do. Think of how envious Miss Browne will be when it is nosed about Town that our footman served with Wellington.”

“I had rather thought of that,” she admitted.

Tally caught hold of that thread and pulled. “See now, if you let him go, how would that reflect on us? Tossing a war hero out in the street?”

Her hand covered her mouth. “Oh, dear, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Yes, I noticed that. You let your temper get the better of
you,” her sister chided. “Now you’d best apologize to the man so he doesn’t up and quit on us.”

This was enough to jolt Felicity right out of whatever guilt she’d been feeling. “Apologize? To him? Never!” She set her jaw and shook her head. “Tally, he is the most provoking man. He was insinuating that I deceived Hollindrake into our arrangement. Why, that is entirely—”

“Correct, and that’s what has you in such a temper.” Tally glanced over at the glowering footman and grinned. “It appears we’ll have to watch ourselves around him or he’ll discover all our secrets.”

Now it was Felicity’s turn to make an indelicate snort. “Not likely.” But still, he was rather observant and too smart by half. That in itself made the prospect of outwitting him tempting. But Tally had the right of it. They couldn’t send a war hero packing.

Oh, why couldn’t the man have been a cook in the war? Or a requisitions clerk? He would have to be a hero, with his darkly handsome looks and his noble features.

Not that it mattered to her, she told herself as she took a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face worthy of the finest Covent Garden thespian and trudged through the snow toward him.

As Tally so eloquently said, she needed this man. No,
they
needed him, she corrected. After all, appearances were their only currency at present.

“Tally points out, and rightly so, that I was being exceedingly rude, Mr. Thatcher. My apologies.” She paused and shot a glance at Tally.
There, I did it
. Her sister smiled and nodded for her to continue.
More?
Felicity cringed. “It has been a trying day,” she ground out, “and I still have much to do and I would be ever so grateful if you would continue your services with our household.”

A collective and expectant sigh moved through the rest of the spectators.

He looked about to refuse her, to quit on the spot, when his friend Mr. Mudgett coughed a bit and offered some comment she couldn’t hear. Whatever the man said, it was followed by a grimace on Thatcher’s part.

Then he took a deep breath and bowed. “At your service, Miss Langley.”

Good, now that she had his word, she couldn’t resist lobbing one last ball in his direction. “Most excellent. I intend to send around a note to the Misses Hodges. Will you be so good as to run it by their house?”

Thatcher’s face turned red, but Pippin rushed in to turn the tide before the man exploded. “Well, now, seems we’ve fixed all that,” she declared. “Time for tea. ’Tis been an age since we ate.”

Tally laughed and edged herself between Felicity and their footman. “Aren’t you forgetting your chestnuts?”

Pippin’s brows furrowed for a moment. “Oh, yes. How could I have forgotten those? Still, doesn’t tea sound nice?” She set a hasty course up the steps, and when she got to the top she turned to Thatcher. “Did you truly serve with Wellington?”

He nodded politely.

Then to Felicity’s dismay, Tally reached over and caught Thatcher’s sleeve, pulling him along with her. “Oh, you must come up and have tea as well. My sister’s note can wait. I’d love to hear tell of some of your more dangerous duties. Pippin and I have been thinking of writing a war epic.”

“
Thalia!”
Felicity’s horror ran all the way down to her boots. “One doesn’t invite their footman to tea.”

“There really isn’t anything to tell, Miss Thalia,” Thatcher demurred.

“Nothing to tell?” Mr. Mudgett shot back. “Nothing to tell, he says. Why, that’s a fine one.”

“Mr. Mudgett!” The warning rang clear to anyone who was listening. But no one was.

“Then you must join us for tea,” Tally said, discarding Thatcher and pulling the other man up the steps, shooting a look at Felicity that dared her sister to come up with a reason against this invitation. “I would love to hear all about Mr. Thatcher’s years of bravery.” She paused at the door and then smiled sweetly at the man. “And yours as well, sir,”

“Oh, I too,” Pippin declared, helping propel Mr. Mudgett inside the house.

“Well, there was that night at Badajoz, when the cap’n…”

Had they all gone mad? The last thing Felicity wanted to hear was that their footman had saved an entire battalion due to his courage. Or that Thatcher had stopped the French from looting and defiling poor defenseless Spanish women and children. Or anything that might shine a favorable light down on him.

Well, she just wouldn’t listen to their prattle. “I have far better things to do. Such as invite the Hodges to tea,” she declared as she marched past all of them.

“The Hodges?” Tally asked. “They aren’t exactly high
ton
. Have you forgotten your plan?”

“No, but they have something we haven’t,” Felicity told her.

Her sister’s fair brows drew together. “Whatever is that?”

“Coal.”

Tally shook her head, confused.

“Well, we can’t have the tea freezing when the Duke of Hollindrake comes to—”

“Hollindrake?” Mr. Mudgett said. “The Duke of Hollindrake, you say?”

“Well, yes, I am betrothed…” She flitted a glance over at Thatcher, who looked ready to make some comment, so she amended herself. “…
nearly
betrothed to him and I don’t want—”

“Oh, miss, you don’t need to worry a bit about the cold,”
Mr. Mudgett told her. “I doubt Himself will mind a nip in the air all that much.”

Felicity turned and eyed the shabbily dressed man, who at present had tracked in a considerable bit of mud into their foyer. “
You
know the Duke of Hollindrake?”

“Of course I do, and if you don’t mind me saying—”

“Mudgett—” Thatcher started to interrupt, but Felicity stepped in front of him and cut him off, literally and figuratively.

“How, sir, is it that you know His Grace?”

“Well, I was the duke’s—”

“Valet,”
Thatcher interjected. “Mr. Mudgett was the duke’s valet.”

“Valet?” both Felicity and Mr. Mudgett said together.

“Yes, valet,” Thatcher asserted.
“His valet.”

Mr. Mudgett eyed Thatcher again before he agreed, “Oh, aye, his valet.”

“Before he became my batman,” Thatcher said, more like he was instructing the man. “Mr. Mudgett was the duke’s valet.”

“Afore he was a duke and all toplofty, iffen you know what I mean,” the man added.

“I don’t believe it,” Felicity declared.

“Why, some days I hardly believe it meself,” the man told her, tipping his head to wink at Thatcher. “Oh, the stories I could tell you of
Himself
. The things I could tell you about the man, why they’d curl those fine blond locks of yours.”