Love Letters From a Duke (14 page)

“Mr. Mudgett!”

Thatcher’s sharp retort jolted Felicity—and she turned an inquisitive glance first at her footman and then at his former batman. “Mr. Mudgett, I would love to hear more about His Grace, but I fear Mr. Thatcher objects. Whyever do you suppose he does?”

“Oh, he would. Probably doesn’t think it’s a proper thing
for ladies to hear about such craven tales. Why, I could tell you anything you want to hear about the man, right down to the scar on his—”

“Mr. Mudgett!” This time Thatcher’s interruption held a warning note that stopped his friend cold.

“What?” the forthright man said, a wry tip to his lips.

“These are young ladies, not new recruits.”

Mr. Mudgett glanced over at his audience and shrugged. “I suppose they know men ’ave got bums, don’t they?”

Tally covered her mouth to keep from laughing, while Felicity colored at the thought of her nearly betrothed with a scar on his…well, his posterior.

“Be that as it may,” Thatcher told him, “it isn’t a proper subject for young ladies.” He paused and leveled a stern gaze at the man. “Besides, there is the
valet’s code
to remember.”

“The valet’s what?” Mr. Mudgett and Felicity asked.

Thatcher took a wide stance and said in a firm voice, “The code. The valet’s code. An employer’s secrets are a valet’s secrets.”

Mudgett worked his jaw back and forth. “I suppose next you’ll be telling me that goes for a batman as well.”

“Especially for a batman,” Thatcher told him.

“What about footmen?” Pippin ventured.

He bowed slightly to her. “Your secrets will travel with me to the grave, Lady Philippa.”

Felicity noticed he didn’t include her in his vow. She wove her way between her cousin and their footman. “Not that we have any,” she interjected. “Secrets, indeed!” Pulling off her cloak, she thrust it into Thatcher’s hands and then turned her back to him. “Mr. Mudgett, are you in London to regain your position with the duke?”

The man waved a meaty paw at her. “Nay. ’E’s gone all toplofty now. I doubt he’s got a place for old Bob Mudgett in that fancy house of his.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “Mr. Mudgett, this cannot be.
The man I’ve corresponded with would never be so mean as to not help out a former employee, especially one who had spent so many years serving our dear King and country. No, Mr. Mudgett, you must have it all wrong!”

“I daresay I know the fellow better than most,” the stubby fellow declared.

This stopped Felicity in her tracks. Here was the closest opportunity she’d ever had to interview a firsthand source as to the duke’s character—well, other than Lord Jack Tremont, but he’d never been all that forthcoming about his old friend—still, she wasn’t about to waste this golden opportunity.

“Dear sir,” she said, wrapping her hand around his elbow and leading him toward the stairs. “There must be some mistake! I am certain the Duke of Hollindrake, if he knew of your plight, would be most generous in a settlement or in finding you a proper position.”

“A settlement? Now doesn’t that sound nice!” the man said, smiling over his shoulder at Thatcher. “Maybe you do know best, miss.”

She wasn’t about to let her impossible footman derail this man with all his “valet’s code” nonsense. “Perhaps some tea would warm your spirits, sir, or even a spot of brandy. And then if you feel inclined, you could indulge me with a few reminiscences about the duke.”

“Mr. Mudgett!” Thatcher warned, the hard thud of his boots coming up from behind them. “The code!”

Felicity ignored him and sent a broad smile in Mr. Mudgett’s direction. “I have it on good authority that this code hardly applies to
former
employers.”

“Oh, right she is,” Tally enthused. “Think of the book you could write!” She waved her hands in the air, like a magician revealing a trick. “‘The Life and Loves of the Duke of Hollindrake.’” She shivered. “A best-seller, I assure you.”

“Brandy, you say?” Mudgett replied, the idea of writing a book quite lost on him. But brandy…

Felicity nodded. “We have a lovely vintage. A gift from the Earl of Stanbrook.” The man needn’t know that they’d liberated all of the brandy in the earl’s cellars to pay Mrs. Hutchinson—not that she didn’t have every intention of re-stocking the shelves once she was married.

“And cakes,” Pippin added.

“Cakes, eh? I like cakes,” he said.

Felicity sent up a fervent prayer that they had any cake.

“I can’t see what harm there is in a few proper stories,” he told them.

“Mudgett!” Thatcher warned again, but it was far too late, for Felicity had led her willing victim up the stairs and was ready to begin plucking him like a fat pigeon.

Not that she had forgotten her footman. At the first landing, while everyone else was hurrying up to the warmth of the sitting room, Felicity paused and turned to him. “Mr. Thatcher?”

“Yes?” he ground out.

“Please fetch the tea tray from Mrs. Hutchinson. You’ll find her, hopefully, in the kitchen.”

“Miss Langley—”

“Oh, yes,” she said, cutting him off and ignoring the dark tremble in his voice. “Make sure she includes our best cakes on the tray.”

Then, for some inexplicable notion, she cast in his direction that infamous glance, the one Nanny Jamilla had cautioned to use sparingly, if at all.

To her shock it worked, for he stepped toward her, a blazing look in his eyes that held little propriety, little ceremony.

And just as easily as she’d cast it, she found herself entwined by her own net. For one look into his dark and stormy countenance, one glance at the set of his jaw and the firm line of his lips now pressed together in a hard line, sent a ripple of goose flesh down her arms. Beneath her skirt her knees wavered as she considered the raw, hard power of
those devilish lips, the rough shadow of his beard, the muscled strength beneath his patched coat.

He came crashing up the steps, taking them two at a time, until he stood on the step below her, indecently close, so that his very breath mingled with hers.

All too quickly she realized why it was Nanny Jamilla had cautioned the girls to never use the look indiscriminately. For it could tangle a man’s honor, his good sense, and let loose the hungry animal that lurked beneath even the most civilized noble veneer—let alone the rough-edged, warhardened man before her.

“Anything else you would like, Miss Langley?” he asked, his voice now mocking, as if he could see her thoughts, could feel the wretched coil of want trembling inside her.

“Nothing but the tea tray,” she replied curtly, turning on one heel and fleeing up the stairs. Oh, she should just fire the man and be done with it. She had no need for heroes in her life. She had Hollindrake—who would, hopefully, possess the same arrogant self-assurance that made her heart beat wildly.

Yet even with dreams of Hollindrake in the forefront of her thoughts, she took one last casual peep down the stairs, and found her beastly footman grinning up at her, as if he were the one with the upper hand. She straightened and continued up the steps, shaking off the last vestiges of passion that the man seemed to awaken in her with the easy frequency of rain in Scotland.

No, she didn’t need a hero.

Nor his kiss. Or his steely embrace.

When she was the Duchess of Hollindrake, she would have no need for such an ethereal and flighty notion as passion.

Or would she?

Thatcher made his way down the stairs toward what he hoped was the kitchen. While he suspected he’d given the little teasing minx a piece of her own medicine on the stairs,
that didn’t mean her winsome glances hadn’t put his loins into a heated rush.

If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect there was a well-practiced courtesan hidden beneath Miss Langley’s innocent muslin gown. A proper duchess, indeed!

And more to the point, how the devil had this chit pigeoned his grandfather? Oh, he was going to get his answers and then he’d—

He pushed the door open and found Mrs. Hutchinson at the worktable in the middle of the room, pouring herself a hefty measure of what was most likely the Earl of Stanbrook’s prized brandy.

“A bit to keep the chill off,” she told him, nudging the glass toward him and reaching for another, which she filled up to the top. No half measures for their housekeeper.

He took the proffered glass and raised it in a mock toast. “Mrs. Hutchinson, what the devil is going on around here?”

“So you noticed, eh?” she said, taking a gulp of the brandy.

“Just a bit,” he said, taking a more cautious sip.

“You wouldn’t believe the half of it,” she said with a shaky wave of her hand. Obviously this wasn’t her first glass of the day.

“Try me,” he said, settling down across from her and pouring her another measure. “Starting with this Aunt Minty.”

The lady sputtered over her drink. “She didn’t get nicked, did she?”

“Nearly,” he told her. “Tried to lift Lady Lumby’s reticule.”

“Tried?” The housekeeper shook her head and sighed. “Now that is a sad one. There was a day when Aramintha Follifoot was the finest knuckler in all of London.” She sighed again and took a drink. “I tol’ her not to try no more. Her eyesight ain’t what it used to be, and she’s not as light on her feet.”

Thatcher blinked and tried to determine whether he had
heard the housekeeper correctly or if he should set aside the brandy right now. Instead, he tossed back his portion and leveled a glance at the housekeeper. “And the ladies know this about their chaperone?”

“A course they do. They are fine ones, they are,” Mrs. Hutchinson said, leaning back in her chair, glass cradled in her hands. “Good gels, all three of ’em, and not high and lofty in the least. Took in Aunt Minty when her husband died. Weren’t no place for her to go, and old Dingby Michaels, God rest his soul, thought she might do just fine for the girls as their new chaperone. Asked the Duchess to take Aunt Minty in just afore he died.”

“Dingby Michaels?” Thatcher said. “The highwayman? I remember reading about him when I was a child. He terrorized the North Road for years and then disappeared.”

“Oh, aye, a fine gentleman Dingby was. Didn’t so much as disappear, but went all proper, changed his name and got himself a position with some nob. Tremont, I think his name was. That’s how he met the girls—they were visiting the house where he worked and, well, they got on. So when the Duchess decided to come to London, she wrote Dingby, since he had so many connections here.”

Thatcher shoved his glass out of reach. “But why would the daughters of a baron and an earl need a highwayman’s connections?”

“Well, haven’t you looked around? They ain’t got a penny between ’em.”

“But their fathers—” he protested.

“Harrumph. Scalawags, from the sounds of ’em. The earl got himself killed by smugglers, not that you’ll hear that in their fine circles, but I’ve heard some talk. And the baron, well, there’s talk he went over to the French before he…” She sliced her finger across her throat.

“Lord Langley would never have—”

She staved off his argument with a shrug. “Don’t know
either way, just know what I hear,” she said. “Not that it matters, since the money’s all tucked away and that purse-tight solicitor of theirs won’t let ’em have a farthing of their inheritance. Not till they marry or come of age.”

“Don’t they have a guardian?”

“Did, but she died last summer. A fine lady who treated them kindly, according to Miss Tally, but the old girl had no more say as to their money than what they get for their spending.”

“Pin money,” he supplied.

“Aye, that’s what they call it. Their pin money. Not much that, let me tell you. Been on their own since the old lady went aloft.”

“But how did they manage to rent this house, or even get to London?”

Mrs. Hutchinson chuckled and raised her glass. “Spend enough time with the little Duchess and you’ll see. Bound and determined to come to Town, she was, wouldn’t let the solicitor tell her different. Knew this duke of ’ers would be here and she was afeared of letting him loose in London without her close by to keep an eye on him.”

“So this is all about the money?”

“Ain’t you been listening to me? It’s up to the Duchess to get married and right quick so they have a roof over their head and food on the table. If you haven’t looked around, the larder ain’t got much in it and the coal bin even less.”

“So how is it that they think they can make a Season of it?” he asked, incredulous that three slips of muslin could think to pull off such a feat.

Well, of course they thought they could. Because his grandfather had all but convinced Miss Langley a betrothal was forthcoming and therein secure all their futures.

But surely she must have realized that something might not go right—like Aunt Minty’s penchant for picking pockets, or the fact that very shortly they’d have no food or coal.

Mrs. Hutchinson leaned across the table and nudged him out of his reverie. “Don’t look so worried, sir. The Duchess, well, she’ll find a way to make it all work out.” She filled her glass again. “I says she’ll find her reward for being such a good one.”

“How so?” From where he sat that was hardly the description he’d use for Miss Langley. But then as the lady explained, he realized his measure wasn’t the one that counted.

“Well, she took in me and my Sally,” Mrs. Hutchinson declared. “And I can say this, because she’s mine, but Sally’s not a bright girl, takes after her father, God rest his soul. And I drinks a bit, which ain’t in my favor, but the Duchess gave us a home and for that I’m grateful. Promised me I always would have one, and Sally too.”

He couldn’t imagine Aunt Geneva making such a vow, let alone keeping any servants who weren’t of the finest example or capable of doing their full share of labor. Who in the
ton
would?

“I can see what yer thinkin’,” Mrs. Hutchinson was saying. “There’s some that will promise you anything just to get what they want, but not the Duchess. She’ll keep her word, bless her heart. She’s the sort who’d never go back on her word. Never.”

Thatcher sat back. Those words sent a chill down his spine that no amount of brandy could warm.