The Duke's Holiday (4 page)

Marlowe’s florid face went white as a sheet. He jumped to
his feet in a flash – faster than Montford had seen him move in years
– and this time he was so distraught he forgot about his port. The glass
tumbled down his gut and landed on the Persian carpet.

The sound that emerged from Montford’s throat was
not
a whimper, but it was damned close.

Marlowe blotted the front of his stained waistcoat to no
real effect and bent over to retrieve his snifter. “Awful sorry, Montford,” he
muttered.

“Don’t worry. I’ll buy a new one,” he said through his
gritted teeth, feeling a headache come on.

“Yes, well …” Marlowe drifted off and furrowed his brow in
an obvious attempt to recover his train of thought. It came back in a horrible
rush. “Honeywell’s dead!” he blustered with a passion Montford would have
appreciated in his apology about the carpet. “Don’t tell me the brewery has
folded! I don’t think I could bear it.”

“Of course the brewery’s not going to fold,” Sebastian
scoffed. He turned to Montford, looking a bit apprehensive himself. “It’s not,
is it?”

Montford shrugged, and because he couldn’t stand it another
second, he marched over to the spill, armed with a handkerchief, and began to
blot up the port on the carpet. “Honeywell had no male heir. The property
reverts back to the dukedom,” he said.

“But you won’t … surely you won’t shut it down,” Marlowe
cried. “Montford! You wouldn’t be so cruel!”

“Alyosius Honeywell died a year ago. Clearly someone is
still producing that swill you call ale. You are in no danger of dying of
thirst.”

“Oh,” said Marlowe, who, seeing that the crisis had been
averted, shrugged and returned to his seat – after pouring himself a new
glass of port.

“Oh,” echoed Sherbrook, who furrowed his brow. “A year, you
say. How peculiar. It’s not like you to let a detail like that go, Montford.”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know he was dead until two weeks ago.”

Sherbrook cocked an eyebrow. “Indeed. I wager that one has
been sticking in your craw.”

“You have no idea.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“You aren’t going to shut down the brewery, are you?”
Sherbrook asked, pitching his voice so as not to distress the slumbering Marlowe
again.

“It is hardly profitable.”

Sherbrook shook his head and threw up his hands in
exasperation. “That’s everything to you, isn’t it? Profit?”

“Not everything. But damned near close.”
Someone
had to keep his two friends in beverages
and meat pies.

“At least you’re honest.”

“See here, Sherbrook, you know how the Montfords despise
the Honeywells.”

“May I point out you’ve never even met a Honeywell?”

“Yes, well, be that as it may, Rylestone is my responsibility,
and I will be damned before I let it continue to be so grossly mismanaged. The
tenants must be starving, considering what I’ve seen of the returns on the
estate.”

“But the
ale
!
Montford, it’s the best ale in the Kingdom!” Sherbrook wheedled, the plight of
the tenants completely beside the point, as far as he was concerned.

Montford sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I honestly don’t
know what I’ll do. With Stevenage out of touch, I am feeling … disjointed.”

Sebastian nodded his head decisively. “What you need is a
good holiday.”

Montford snorted. A holiday indeed. “Dukes do not take
holidays.”

Sebastian gave him an arch look. “Really, Montford. You can
be so tiresome sometimes. You’re a mortal man, same as the rest of us. And if
you ask me, you need to loosen that cravat of yours a little before you
strangle on it.”

“Hear, hear,” Marlowe seconded, apparently more alert to
the proceedings than his posture indicated.

“I didn’t ask you,” he growled. “Or you,” he added in
Marlowe’s direction.

Sebastian rolled his eyes.

“Besides, there’s no time for a … holiday, what with the
wedding in a month,” Montford finished.

Sherbrook’s face darkened, as it always did when the
subject of Montford’s upcoming nuptials was mentioned. “That’s another thing,
Monty. Lady Araminta? Are you
quite
sure?”

“Of course I’m quite sure. She’ll make the perfect Duchess.”

Sherbrook shuddered. “Aye, if Duchesses were carved out of
stone and encased in ice. Lady Araminta is a cold-blooded, heartless, self
centered Bath miss.”

Montford took no offense at Sherbrook’s words. He accepted
Sherbrook’s opinion on the matter of his fiancée and family, because it
happened to be his own. “I thought that was her sister,” he said dryly.

Sherbrook’s eyes narrowed. “What? Lady
Katherine
? My beloved Auntie?” He snorted. “You’re right. Ten times
worse than her sister. Never have I met such utter conceit, such utter
frigidness…”

“I was unaware you had conversed with her,” Montford
interposed.

Sherbrook stopped up short, looking extremely put out.
“Well, I haven’t, but I
have
met her.
We’ve
been
introduced.” As if that
explained it.

Montford was the one to roll his eyes this time.

Sherbrook began to pace in front of the fireplace. “The
Carlisle sisters are the most high-in-the-instep, vapid, insipid, frigid,
paragons
to have ever lived.” He turned
on Montford, fists clenched. “She makes me want to take her by the shoulders
and shake some life into her. And if I didn’t fear that I would turn to stone
merely by touching her, I would …”

“Are we speaking of Lady Araminta or her sister?” Montford
interjected.

Sherbrook stopped pacing and blinked. “What?”

“You said
she
.
That you wanted to take her by the shoulders and…”

“Yes, yes, I know what I said,” Sherbrook bit out. He
glanced around the room with a haunted expression, then stalked over to the
desk and retrieved his port, swallowing its contents in one thirsty gulp.

Montford suspected that Sherbrook had no idea what he had
said, or what he had meant. And he knew as well that Sherbrook was referring to
Lady Katherine, not her sister. Sherbrook had taken an immediate and
bone-thorough dislike of the Marchioness of Manwaring, his estranged uncle’s
new wife, upon their first encounter at a ball some years ago. And Montford
knew that the feeling was mutual.

“Oh, bugger it,” Sebastian muttered after throwing back his
drink. “Enough about bloody females.”

“Hear hear,” Marlowe chimed in.

Sebastian saluted Marlowe with his empty snifter, then
turned back to Montford. “I know you hate traveling, Montford, but you just
might have to go to Yorkshire.”

Montford more than hated traveling. He physically abhorred
it. “Not a chance.”

“It sounds just the thing.”

Montford grew suspicious. “Why do I not trust you in this
moment?”

Sebastian quirked his lips. “Well, it seems to me you need
to clear your head. And Yorkshire, what with all of the countryside and sheep
and such, seems a good place to do it in. I hear the air in Yorkshire is lovely
this time of year.”

“No doubt reeks of manure.”

“You can take out some of that pent up anger out on these
Honeywells. Turn them out of house and home. Shut down the brewery.”

“I shall never speak to him if he does,” Marlowe threatened
from the chaise. “Tell him, Sherry. If he shuts down the brewery, I shall cease
to be his friend.”

“Maybe you could at least spare the brewery,” Sebastian
said with a wink. “Unless you wish to alienate the entire male half of the
country.”

Montford snorted. “How can anyone drink that waddle?”

“Have you ever had a pint?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Do not judge, then. Now where was I? Oh yes, hurl your
thunderbolts at the Honeywells. Spare the brewery. Take in the fresh air. And
perhaps come to your senses about this atrocity at the end of the month …”

“You mean my wedding,” he said flatly.

“What other atrocity were you planning?”

“I can think of several at the moment, involving you and
that beached whale over there and the business end of my…”

Sebastian chuckled and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“I just love it when you flirt, Your Grace.”

“I should burn down the brewery for that comment alone.” He
strode towards the door.

“Where’re you going?” Marlowe cried, sitting up.

To bash my head in
.
“To bed.”

“You are such a bloody stuffed shirt, Monty,” Marlowe
replied laconically.

“I’ve told you, don’t call me that.”

“Or what? You’ll break my nose again?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Pleasant dreams,” Sebastian called, long after Montford
slammed the door behind him.

Their conversations often ended up this way. And he knew
when he came down in the morning, he’d find his sideboard emptied of its stock,
evidence of the fun his friends had had in his absence and at his expense.

Usually, Montford never begrudged his friends their fun. He
knew for a fact that both of them were perpetually skirting dun territory and
bumbled their way through life dining at their friends’ tables and drinking
their liquor. He didn’t mind it when they took advantage of his largesse, for
they never asked for loans or importuned him in any other way … well, besides
wheedling sandwiches from his cook and drinking his port. But tonight he was
seriously considering taking them by their collars and kicking them to the
curb.

Which was insane. They were his best friends, after all.
His
only
friends, now that he thought
about it.

And this realization made him feel even worse. His only
friends in the world were a pair of leeches who used him for his sandwiches and
sideboard, and who would not even do that should he deprive them of their
goddamned ale.

His life, he thought bleakly as he trudged up the grand
marble staircase in the cavernous gilded foyer, was as empty as this house.

Maybe he
did
need
a holiday.

IN WHICH
THE DUKE VENTURES FORTH INTO THE WILD

BESIDES
HIS sundry well-documented compulsive behaviors, Montford’s inner demons
manifested themselves in two distinct aversions: riding in carriages and the
sight of blood. He couldn’t explain these phobias any more than he could
explain why he hated to let different foods touch each other on his dinner
plate. But he had become an expert at disguising his fears, for it would never
do to let people discover that the Duke of Montford tended to vomit in coaches
and faint when he got scratched.

He avoided extended journeys that would require a carriage
and rode his mount when at all possible. When he was fencing, a sport at which
he excelled, he made sure his foil never came loose, thus avoiding nicking his
opponent. And if
he
was nicked, which
was not often, and usually only at Sebastian’s expert hand, he never looked
down at the wound. Fortunately, only one of the duels in which he had stood
second for Marlowe had ended in bloodshed, when his friend had taken a ball to
his shoulder. No one noticed his light-headedness, however, in the drama that
had followed.

Nonetheless, three days after speaking to his friends,
Montford arrived at Rylestone Hall after an excruciatingly long and messy
journey northward. His agitation over the situation had at last overcome his
aversion to travel, and he decided to put up with a miserable few days
traveling rather than let this Honeywell business go unresolved.

As he couldn’t abide putting up at a vermin-infested
roadside inn, and as he owned no other residences between London and Rylestone,
he had made his driver stop only long enough for him to vomit, for Coombes to
retie his cravat, or for the horses to be changed out. The journey, even at
such a rate, should have only lasted two days, but the second day, one of the
horses went lame, and it had taken the entire afternoon for a replacement to be
located.

On the third day, by his calculations, which were always
precise, he should have been on the estate by midmorning. But Rylestone proved
as elusive as an oasis in the desert. The Yorkshire dales were hardly made of
sand, but they certainly qualified as wilderness to Montford, who had little love
of pastoral life. He had to suppress a shudder every time he looked out the
window and saw beyond him nothing but endless stretches of farmland and timber
forests, interspersed by the occasional cow or sheep. It all looked unbearably
rustic … and
dirty
.

By noon, it was clear that they were lost, and he ordered
his driver to stop in the nearest village to ask directions. The village, which
looked to have more ovine occupants than human, proved to be little help to
them. Clearly, the human occupants of the village were as little impressed by
the ducal crest upon his carriage as the livestock, and unwilling to offer much
assistance. The directions they finally wrenched out of one man, who had just
tumbled out of the village tavern three sheets to the wind, were spoken in a
thick Northern brogue that was as unintelligible as Chinese to Montford’s ears.

Newcomb, his driver, more exhausted from the journey than
Montford – as drivers could not sleep – sent the man on his way
with a few shillings, and turned to Montford, who leaned out of the carriage
window, weak from the traveling sickness.

Coombes cowered back in his seat, handkerchief covering his
sensitive nose, eyes widened on the fragrant patch of mud in which the driver
stood.

“What the devil did he say?” Montford demanded.

“Haven’t a clue, Your Grace. But he made some gestures with
his hands I think I can make some sense of.” Newcomb’s brow furrowed. “That or
he was insulting me.”

“Let’s pray it is the former.”

“East, I think he meant,” Newcomb said, shrugging in the
manner of one who was simply too weary to care much where they were going any
longer. Then he climbed back on the perch and whipped the team to a trot,
putting them on a muddy road that looked like every other muddy road they had
taken in Yorkshire.

A few minutes later, Montford made Newcomb pull over so
that he could lean out of the window and retch for the fifty-first time in
forty-eight hours, even though there was nothing in his stomach.

When Montford managed to pull himself back in the carriage,
Coombes stared at Montford’s less-than immaculate cravat with a faintly
accusing expression.

“Don’t say anything,” Montford growled.
 
“We may restore ourselves to rights when
we arrive.”

Coombes looked extremely doubtful about that. “But Your
Grace,” he said in a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard by the carriage
walls, “I don’t think they
bathe
this
far north.”

Montford bit back a retort to this ridiculous statement,
but it was a ridiculous statement that reflected Montford’s own fears. Who knew
what dreadful fate awaited them at Rylestone Hall? Outside privies? Garderobes?
He shuddered.

He half expected to find poor Stevenage done in, or at the
very least mired in the thick Yorkshire mud, put there by a vengeful Honeywell.

He was beginning to doubt his own judgment in undergoing
this journey alone with naught but Newcomb and Coombes, but he always traveled
light when he had to, thinking the fewer who were privy to his weak stomach the
better. Newcomb was a solid enough man – an ex-boxer from Liverpool, and
extremely loyal to Montford. Montford didn’t doubt Coombes’ loyalty either, but
unless it had to do with waistcoats, cologne, or bootblack, the man was
completely at sea.

Montford had expected to sweep into Rylestone Hall and have
everyone under its roof kowtowing to his will. Even the Prince Regent tended to
follow his directives. But in this case he was not so sure. The further they
journeyed, the further removed he felt from the civilized world. Rylestone Hall
was more remote than he had assumed, certainly more remote than any of his
other estates – besides the one on the Isle of Mull he had
no intention
of ever visiting.

It would take days to reach something even resembling a
city. And if it was so difficult for him to locate the Hall, how in blazes
would anyone else find it, should something befall him…?

Dear God, he was
not
paranoid, he had to remind himself. He didn’t
actually
think anything sinister had befallen Stevenage –
well, he hadn’t much more than the tiniest of niggling suspicions. But judging
from the welcome he had received from the few human inhabitants of this
godforsaken wilderness, he didn’t expect he would have a warm reception at
Rylestone Hall.

Not that he expected one. But as the Duke of Montford, he preferred
a certain amount of deference. Even from Honeywells.

Somehow he thought
that
would not be forthcoming. He wondered if the inhabitants of this remote
section of the world even realized they were the Crown’s subjects.

Montford’s mood momentarily lightened when at last, late in
the afternoon, they rounded a bend in the lane and saw something other than
fields and sheep in the distance. It was an old gray castle, settled
strategically on a hillside and surrounded by gardens and orchards. It looked
like something out of Mr. Constable’s paintings, with the slanting sun bathing
the gray, slightly crumbling walls in a warm honey glow, the trees in the
orchard heavy with fruit, the garden tangled with late summer blooms.

Montford’s stomach clenched with an unfamiliar, uncomfortably
warm feeling, and for once, it was not the preface to a bout of vomiting. The
castle looked like some place out of a fairy tale, to be honest. The sort of
place families lived in, for instance. Perfect, picturesque, slightly
ramshackle and quaint. The sort of place the Duke of Montford would never visit
willingly. He did not
do
ramshackle
and quaint. He prayed that this wasn’t Rylestone Hall, while at the same time
some small, hidden part of him he refused to acknowledge hoped to God it was.

He leaned out of the window and ordered Newcomb to proceed,
keeping his wary eyes fixed on the approaching castle. And as they grew closer,
he found himself becoming more and more disoriented. Something was off about
the castle, and he couldn’t figure out quite what. He was perfectly aware of
its crumbling edifices and the seemingly haphazardly, slightly overgrown
quality of the gardens in front. These were imperfections he had noted and
dismissed with an annoyed toss of his head. But something more fundamental was
wrong with the castle, which was making his head spin and his palms sweat, as
if the ground beneath him was tilting…

“Coombes, the castle is crooked,” he declared.

Coombes studied the castle, pulled out his handkerchief,
and wiped his brow, which had broken out in a very untidy sweat. “I do believe
you’re right, Your Grace. Good heavens. We aren’t staying
there
, are we?” the man practically howled.

“Calm down, Coombes,” Montford said, feeling anything but
calm himself. He couldn’t take his eyes off the castle, especially the north
tower, which listed dangerously towards the southern tower, like an old woman’s
back, defying all the laws of Newtonian theory. It was like looking at a
grizzly road accident, or a hideous facial disfigurement. One just couldn’t look
away.

Now he truly wished with all of his heart for this to be
some place other than his final destination. Although he knew deep down that
they had arrived at Rylestone Hall. Who but the Honeywells would live in a
crooked castle?

They pulled up to the castle keep and waited for several
minutes for someone to greet them, as was customary. When that didn’t happen,
Montford ordered Newcomb to knock on the large, pitted oak door. No one answered
except a flurry of squawking crows, who seemed to have a nest in the
battlements above.

Newcomb turned to him and shrugged.

“For the love of …” Montford muttered, throwing open the
carriage door and stepping down the steps, right into a mud puddle that came up
to his ankles. He looked down at his boots, looked up at Newcomb, who was very
wisely
not
smiling, and cursed.

He stalked up the stone steps to stand beside his driver
and pounded on the door. And pounded and pounded until the oak frame shuddered
and the crows squawked another protest.

“Perhaps no one is at home?” Newcomb suggested, which was
obviously not the case, for a cacophony of sounds arose from behind the door,
many of them human.
Someone
was at
home.
Someone
was avoiding answering.

He began to knock again, despairing over the stains to his
gloves.

At last, when he was about to throw up his hands in defeat,
the door groaned inward. He looked downwards and found himself staring at a
small child. Seven or eight at the most, with shaggy brown hair, a dirty face,
and an even dirtier outfit that resembled a Roman toga. It was impossible to
tell if the child were a boy or a girl. He – or she – stared up at
him with wide eyes.

“Is this Rylestone Hall?” he demanded gruffly.

The child just gawked at him blankly.

“Where are your parents, child?” he asked. “Or a servant?”

The child shook its head.

“An adult, then. I am looking for a Mr. Stevenage. Or an A.
Honeywell. Do you know either of them?”

The child nodded a bit warily.

“Then this
is
Rylestone Hall,” he said.

The child looked reluctant, but it nodded.

At last they were getting somewhere. He would have been
relieved, had he not just discovered he was in the possession of a crooked
castle.

He began to ask the child something else, but when he looked
down, the child was gone. He cursed again and turned to Newcomb.

His driver just sighed, took off his hat, and ran his hands
through his hair, which was so dusty from the road it stood up on end. “What do
we do now, Your Grace?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” he said in all honesty.

“May I suggest you go inside, Your Grace? And perhaps I …
and Mr. Coombes, of course …” he rolled his eyes “… could attempt to find a
stable? The team is quite tired.”

“Fine. Send in Coombes later. I have no idea what lies on
the other side, but I should like some time. I don’t want Coombes fainting on
me.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

Montford sighed and stepped past the oak door into the dim
corridor. He traced the path of the toga-clad child into another corridor off
to the right, then found himself in a parlor cluttered with shabby furniture,
books, and the sort of meaningless paraphernalia – porcelain statues,
decorative vases filled with flowers, and collections of enameled gewgaws
strewn haphazardly across tabletops – that made him want to blow his head
off.

He strode past one massively untidy table, stopped and
backed up, unable to bear it. He rearranged a collection of small snuffboxes so
that they all lined up precisely with the edges of the table, equidistant from
each other. His pulse calmed, and he continued on his way, stopping at a desk
and glancing down at the book that lay facedown in the center, opened to the
middle. His eyebrow flew up at the title on the spine.

Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia
.
Not the sort of book he would have expected to find in a room with an enameled
snuffbox collection. He picked up the book and was startled when another
smaller volume fell out from between its pages.

He rather guiltily recognized the volume at once, having
just received a copy from Sherbrook a few months ago. Christopher Essex’s
latest collection of poetry, so shockingly scandalous it made Lord Byron’s seem
like nursery rhymes. But he did not own every single one of Essex’s banned
publications because he was in the least titillated by the contents. Not at
all. He just thought Essex’s writing and wit was considerably better than other
poets of the day.