The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order (3 page)

They loaded His Grace as gently as they could into the cart, covered him with blankets and made their way through the empty, densely fogged, early morning streets of Mayfair to Ainsworth House. The ducal residence was a handsome, four-storey building of red brick with cream Coade stone quoins outlining the corners. It stood within a spacious city garden made private by a tall, brick wall.

From the mews behind the main house, they entered a wrought iron gate in the rear wall. A cacophony of barks and howls erupted somewhere in the bowels of the great mansion as Murphy carried the duke into the gardens. They scrambled to situate their victim then hid in the bushes and watched anxiously for lights. Windows below stairs stayed dark and the dogs quieted.

Though they rushed to leave, Miss Haversham made sure the duke lay on his sound, right side. Last, she picked the paper label from a jar of her rose arnica salve and slipped it into his coat pocket. She hoped it would help.

• • •

Two days later, Prudence Haversham still ruminated over the nightmarish moment her life careened into a ditch.

They drove the horse cart into Bath. They were a quarter-hour or so from Bathwick just across the Avon River from the famous spa town.

“That wasn’t him,” she repeated to Mrs. Mason.

“All will be well, Miss H., you’ll see,” Murphy reassured her.

Prudence reproached herself throughout the journey home. How could she have made such a blunder? Of course, she knew the answer. On this misguided trip, after nine years of stewing and fuming, she finally fulfilled her vengeful fantasies as well as her autumn orders for essential oils, salves and poultices. And if Shakespeare’s tragedies were any indication, her thirst for revenge would certainly prove her downfall. Or so she fretted every waking hour.

For years, Prudence joked with Mrs. Mason and Murphy about branding the Duke of Ainsworth or having him tattooed for his knavery. (She had not meant it…Well, maybe a little…All right, perhaps more than a little.) She indulged in daydreams of revenge whenever she suffered low spirits. Plotting her reprisal proved an uplifting way to pass a quiet evening while living in spinsterish ignominy. The three of them would imagine ridiculous tattoos for the duke. The more outrageous the suggestion, the harder they laughed until they made themselves hysterical with giggle fits.

For years, Prudence gamely lived life as Sir Oswald Dabney’s discreetly disgraced sister and unmarriageable female apothecary. But the injustice of it gnawed at her. After all, it was the duke’s incorrigible behavior for which she, not he, paid the price.

Prudence, however, was not one to pout in a corner about the unfairness of life. Almost immediately after Sir Oswald sent her back to Bathwick in disgrace, she turned her social exile to advantage, apprenticing at the Trim Street Apothecary. In time, she managed it and when the apothecary retired, she assumed his duties. Her clientele came from the lower orders of society, those who could not afford a doctor’s fee and were desperate enough to accept a female apothecary’s treatment. Her competence and mixtures made her a great favorite among soldiers and sailors wounded in war. Thanks to Napoleon’s intransigence, her practice thrived. Unfortunately, as years passed and her self-confidence grew, so did her righteous indignation.

In addition to contemplating what to tattoo on the duke, and where, she also raised the subject of how to tattoo him with Hsieh Ta Long, a Chinese herb merchant from whom Prudence purchased ginger root and other exotic medicinal herbs on her trips to London.

Mr. Hsieh had a magnificent tattoo. Whenever he gestured with his hands, his loose silk jacket sleeve revealed the meticulously scaled tail of a dragon that wound round his wrist and twined sinuously upward. When she finally found the nerve to express her admiration, he pushed up his sleeve to show her the monster in full. At his shoulder flying among blue shaded clouds leered a green dragon with a lolling red tongue and plumes of orange from its nostrils. His brother had done this, Mr. Hsieh told her, but he too had a little skill. (Modest Mr. Hsieh was a master in the art.)

Thanks to Mrs. Mason’s habitual indiscretion, Mr. Hsieh knew of Prudence’s unfortunate history and offered to help punish the guilty party should the opportunity ever arise. He didn’t find it a scandalous notion in the least. In his country, tattooing criminals on their
foreheads
was common practice.

For several years more, Prudence continued to deliver supplies to apothecaries in fashionable London twice a year and only daydreamed of vengeance.

In August of 1815, the ‘dye’ was cast.

The knocker had been taken down from Sir Oswald’s Russell Square townhouse when the baronet and his family left in early August. (Lady Dabney was expecting yet another blessed event and would spend her confinement at Treadwater.) None of Sir Oswald’s staff remained but Miss Haversham nevertheless found it a convenient place from which to conduct her usual week of business.

By day, Murphy took the horse cart to deliver larger orders, while she carried small quantities to the pocket-sized apothecary shops more easily reached on foot.

At night, in the echoing townhouse, Prudence read with growing disgust the scandalous newspaper accounts of the Duke of Ainsworth, who was suddenly ‘at large’ and flouting convention in London. With the rakish duke swaggering through the broadsheets, her vengeful fantasies became more detailed, with specific ‘hypothetical’ plans for abducting him, tattooing him and returning him undetected to Ainsworth House.

Prudence even joked that Murphy and Mrs. Mason might someday use a free evening to follow him and note his habits. She hadn’t anticipated they would take the initiative so decisively the very next night.

Their last day in Town began unremarkably enough.

Prudence had one last piece of business that day so she allowed herself all morning and the better part of the afternoon to wander the streets of Mayfair, her small basket of essentials in hand. She peered into the windows of drapers, hardly taking in the bounty of sumptuous silks, brocades, Indian printed calicos and laces. In a modiste’s window, she studied the latest Ackermann’s fashion plates.

Finally, she turned her steps toward her favorite client, Mr. Floris at 89 Jermyn Street in St. James. She loved his elegant, wood-paneled shop. It smelled perfectly masculine, like his colognes and gentlemen’s toiletries. Her late father favored Floris’ citrus-scented soap. It was there Beau Brummell himself once praised her essential oil of rose, the critical component in his secret, custom-blended scent, or so he said.

Once they concluded their business, Mr. Floris invited Prudence to take tea with him and his wife in the first floor parlor. To this, she readily agreed. They discussed botany and Society with great enthusiasm. The afternoon reminded Prudence of happier days in Bathwick when her parents were still alive. Time flew by. When Prudence insisted she must be on her way, the sun had set. The city fog obscured a great deal, but night had certainly fallen. Mr. Floris insisted she take a hackney cab back to her brother’s townhouse. This she did, glowing from her wonderful day.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mason and Murphy spent the evening trailing the Duke of Ainsworth. They shadowed him as he toddled unsteadily from White’s across Piccadilly into the night’s sea fog drifting dense in the side streets of Mayfair. They followed him past the alley where by chance they left the cart and horse. Never ones to disdain a God-given opportunity, they snatched him. He was two, if not all three, sheets to the wind so the two drugged and bundled him into the cart quite handily despite his imposing size.

Murphy sent a hackney cab to London’s Limehouse district to fetch Mr. Hsieh.

Considering it was done impulsively, the acts of the tragedy preceded like clockwork. Murphy and Mrs. Mason appeared with the duke, muffled head to toe in a rough blanket, slung over Murphy’s shoulder. Prudence had no time to think much less reconsider. She was too giddy with triumph to exercise caution or put a stop to it.

The night careened away with its own momentum thereafter. Mr. Hsieh arrived, his face wreathed in smiles. Mrs. Mason and Murphy barred Prudence from the room while they stripped the man and Mr. Hsieh shaved his lower belly bare and plied it with needles and ink. By dawn, the Chinaman had tattooed Prudence’s most hilarious suggestion under the duke’s skin and left with a paternal pat on her cheek.

It happened so quickly, and in such dim light, she hadn’t noticed anything amiss at first.

Days later, in the kitchen of her little stone cottage, Prudence Haversham paced, her slight frame tense, her slim hands in constant motion. Reflexively, she tucked in stray tendrils of sable brown hair escaping from her bun’s thick braid and smoothed creases from the smock and faded dress she wore while she tended the distiller. Nothing she did to dissipate her nervous energy settled her nerves.

Well-meaning people often described her as girlish, much to her irritation. In truth, she was lithe and quick in her movements, as a girl child is before propriety and ‘uplifting’ stays make her self-conscious. But Prudence’s gaze was that of a woman in full, sobered by painful disappointments. Her eyes shifted color like a stormy sea from blue to gray to a blue-green, revealing emotions she usually concealed with unflappable competence.

Although worried about the consequences of their recent misadventure, Prudence never once blamed her overzealous staff. She realized her preoccupation with revenge made the disaster inevitable.

“I should’ve made certain he was the duke,” she reproached herself.

“He rode in the duke’s crested carriage, Miss H.,” Murphy said. “We made sure to check the coat of arms.”

“His coachman ‘Your Graced’ him up and down. Then he got out at the gentleman’s club, right where you thought he’d go. That was the Duke of Ainsworth,” Mrs. Mason reiterated.

Reviewing events for the umpteenth time, Prudence continued to fret, “Just once I stand up for myself…and before I know it, I’ve marked an innocent man with a permanent joke. Worse, I assaulted a peer of the realm.”

“You always intended to, Miss H.,” Mrs. Mason reminded her. “You’ve been giving yourself spasms about that randy duke for years. What’s done is done.”

“But that wasn’t the randy duke,” Prudence said. “I’ll hang for this.”

“Don’t be daft, Miss H. They won’t hang you. More likely transport a lady like you to New South Wales,” Murphy comforted ineffectually.

Mrs. Mason added, “How’s he ever to know who did it? It being so random and mistaken after all.”

“No harm done, just a bit of a lark. It’ll look, er, festive when it stops oozing and all those blackish-purple bruises fade,” Murphy consoled, unaware that his consolations were making his employer hyperventilate.

Prudence wanted to believe there was no way to find them out. She knew, however, that in a moment of guilty distraction she had tucked all he needed to hunt her down in his coat pocket. Still, there was hope. In all likelihood, the duke’s butler found the little jar and threw it away unbeknownst to the duke.

A
insworth would liefer be trampled again than put in an appearance at Almack’s Assembly Rooms even with the Season concluding. By now, the
ton
would have thinned to a manageable crush. Still, a week after That Night, he felt not the least bit sociable. Randy, yes. Sociable, no.

His Grace preferred to conduct his private life (i.e. his amorous assignations) well away from the prying eyes of Society. Indeed, he hoped to conduct almost all of his life far from Society’s scrutiny till he shopped around in earnest for a proper wife and married the chit at St. George’s, Hanover Square.

It seemed, however, his every move was now subject to relentless comment in the press. Even innocuous walks in the park occasioned near-hysterical hyperbole. Be that as it may, he took his motley pack of mongrels to Hyde Park daily. Generally they minded their manners. They stayed close at heel as Ainsworth crossed Park Lane and strode through Grosvenor Gate. Once inside, all but Attila took off barking in a tumble of legs and tails, foaming at the mouths with the scent of some squirrel. Having arrived well before the fashionable hour, Ainsworth let them run pell-mell like happy, rabid lunatics till they exhausted themselves. Their exhaustion out of doors also kept his staff happy. Thatcher frequently remarked the animals were only well behaved when asleep.

Attila was the exception. He was always well behaved. The dog appointed himself ducal bodyguard upon taking up residence at Ainsworth House shortly after His Grace’s return from war. He alone remained at heel despite the temptations of pigeons, horses and yappy, bite-sized dogs. Ainsworth suspected Attila was a mastiff crossed with gargoyle and ox. His huge, square head had pronounced cheek muscles. His calm, tawny eyes matched his tawny, brindled coat. Placid by nature, he had the devil’s own grin when relaxed and content. His muscular shoulders sat squarely over thick forelimbs on each side of a broad, deep chest. The former bearbaiting dog walked with ecclesiastical dignity, fixing all comers with a gimlet eye. In response, nannies snatched away tots and equestrians made wide detours around the 14 stone
¹
brute and his master.

The dogs came into the ducal household by way of the stable master’s young son. The tenderhearted boy discovered Attila injured and starving behind the stable. He brought the dog into the stable yard using only string for a leash and, after his father flatly refused to house the creature in an empty stall, the lad appealed directly to His Grace with soft, worshipful eyes as the duke was inspecting a new hack. What could Ainsworth do? Despite the stableman’s embarrassed protests ‘not to mind the little rascal,’ the duke decreed the place needed a dog or two.

To date there were four. And they had moved into the house.

Much to the delight of his rambunctious canines, the duke followed a sparsely populated footpath near the Serpentine. The new one, Puck, took a running leap into its turbid waters. Apparently, he had a sporting breed among the many contributors to his mixed-lot parentage.