The Gypsy Duchess (18 page)

“When can we expect the seasoned veterans to return from America now that that unfortunate fracas is over?” Devon asked.

“Not soon enough to join Wellington before he faces Bonaparte in a major battle, I fear.” Castlereagh looked Devon straight in the eye. “But don’t even think of boarding one of the troop ships leaving Harwick, my lord. I will order you forcibly constrained if necessary.

“England’s need for statesman is every bit as great as her need for soldiers. When this war is over, she will need sane men with sound judgment to administer her government. I am counting on you and the marquess to be among that number. Right now the best thing you can do for your country is produce the necessary heir to your title and your seat in the House of Lords.”

Devon nodded, smiling to himself when he envisioned Moira’s slender body swelling with child. His child. “I bow to your wisdom, my lord,” he said. “But still, it galls me that I shall not be there to see the Corsican madman trounced once and for all. Pray God, your counsel is heeded this time as to his fate. I remember how strongly you opposed exiling him to an island so close to Corsica.

“It will be heeded, my lord. This I guarantee,” the foreign minister said grimly.

A few minutes later, Devon bade good night to his two companions and departed for home. He had spent every waking hour of the past month pleading with, cajoling, even arguing with influential members of Parliament to bring them around to his way of thinking. What he needed more than anything else was a little time alone to recover his equilibrium.

The breeze that had been freshening earlier was blowing in earnest when he stepped onto the darkened street outside White’s, and a warm spring rain lashed his face as he searched for his carriage. It was nowhere to be found. Where was the blasted thing? His coachman had never before failed to wait for him in the designated location.

He thought of hailing a hackney but there were none in sight. Finally, though his leg was acting up a bit from sheer exhaustion, he decided to walk the few blocks to his town house. He moved along briskly, keeping a careful eye on the street ahead. Except for an occasional carriage, it was deserted and with times as hard as they were, not even the better sections of town were free from marauding cutpurses and hoodlums.

A sudden gust of wind blew his favorite beaver from his head just in time to have it trampled beneath the hooves of a passing team of horses. Swearing under his breath, he vowed to give his young coachman a tongue-lashing he’d not soon forget when next he saw the beef-witted fellow. He paid his servants extremely well and in return, he expected them to perform the tasks he assigned them without question.

He walked on, faster now, remembering Moira’s warning and grateful for the pools of light cast by the gas lamps overhead. His boot heels echoed hollowly against the rain-washed cobblestones and an eerie prickling started in the region of his spine. Unbuttoning his coat, he grasped the handle of the pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, he heard a voice. His heart nearly stopped. It was Moira’s voice. He’d know it anywhere.

“Turn, Devon,” she cried. “Look behind you. You’re in danger.”

He whirled around just in time to deflect a slashing dagger in the hand of a black-clad ruffian with long, greasy hair and a face like a snarling ferret. He felt the sting of the blade as it cut through his sleeve and into the flesh of his upper arm, and instinctively stuck out his foot to trip his assailant. The fellow went head over teakettle a good six feet and with a startled grunt, landed face down on the cobblestones.

Gun cocked for action, Devon approached the still form, flipped it over with the toe of his boot, and stared down at his would-be murderer. The blade that had slashed through his sleeve seconds before now sat buried hilt deep in its owner’s chest and a pool of blood spread across the muddy cobblestones. With a last faint gurgling sound, the fellow quit this life to stare at Devon with empty, lifeless eyes.

Devon returned the gun to his waistband and pressed his fingers to his ragged sleeve to stem the flow of blood. Leaving the cutthroat where he lay, he hurried on toward his town house. The last thing he needed was to be involved in a lengthy and useless investigation into the fellow’s death. He had no doubt who had hired the cur, but proving it to the authorities would be impossible.

Though he knew it was useless, he took a final look about him for Moira. But, of course, he didn’t find her. How could he when she was hundreds of miles away? Still, it
had
been her voice that had warned him; nothing would ever dissuade him from that. Once again she had saved his life and in an even more bizarre fashion than before. It was enough to make a man’s skin crawl. Hell and damnation, it was almost enough to make a man believe he was beginning to lose his sanity.

Ned was waiting up for him as usual. Within minutes, he had Devon sitting on a chair in the library, stripped to the waist and with one of Dr. Hamish MacDonald’s moldy bread compresses applied to the cut on his arm. He was just finishing wrapping the bandage about the compress when there was a loud pounding at the town house door.

“Devil take it! Someone must have witnessed the attack and called the watch,” Devon said. “Now I’ll have to contend with their everlasting questions.”

Ned hurried to the door before the pounding woke the rest of the staff, and returned to the library a moment later with Stamden in tow. The marquess was as white as the bandage ringing Devon’s arm. “Thank God you’re safe,” he said. “I was on my way home when I came upon your empty carriage on Upper Brook Street.”

“The devil you say! And where, may I ask, was my driver? I’d like a word with the fellow before this night grows older. If he’d not left me to walk home, none of this would have happened.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until you pass the Pearly Gates for that conversation, my friend,” Stamden said. “The lad was slumped over the ribbons as if asleep, but when I looked closer, I found his throat had been slit from ear to ear. My coachman put him inside the carriage and we drove him to your mews, where your grooms are attending him now.”

“Oh, no!” Devon gasped, bile rising to choke him at the picture Stamden painted. “He was but a boy, scarcely past his twentieth year.” Wearily, he rubbed his hand across his eyes. “You would think I would have grown accustomed to death with all I’ve seen, but somehow this murder of an innocent seems even worse than death in battle. I saw the face of my attacker; the fellow took malicious pleasure in his grisly work.”

Stamden clenched his fist. “Hired by Viscount Quentin, no doubt.”

“I am certain of it, but how to prove it? Moira predicted the coward would arrange to have me ambushed when I told her I’d threatened to kill Quentin if he ever touched her or the duke again.” Devon stared at his friend, a sudden, sickening thought racing through his head as he recalled the viscount’s angry claim that both the wealth and the title of the Duke of Sheffield should be his and his alone.

“We have all, Moira included, underestimated the blackguard’s monstrous greed. The guardianship has never been the ultimate goal, but only a means to get the young duke in his power. He wants it all—and the only way he can have it is to eliminate Charles as the rightful heir.”

Stamden nodded. “I believe you’ve hit upon the truth. And with the mountain of debts he has accrued, he will be in a hurry to accomplish that end before he finds himself sitting in debtors’ prison. If he thinks his hired assassin made certain you are no longer a threat to him, he may already have dispatched another such villain to Cornwall to murder Charles as well.”

“Devil take it, you’re right,” Devon exclaimed. “And he is undoubtedly congratulating himself this very moment that the deed is done. He probably had to hock everything he owned to hire the fellow he sent after me, for he was no novice. He moved as swiftly and silently as a cat. Had I not had warning, I would this very minute by lying dead in a pool of my own blood.”

Stamden’s eyes narrowed. “You had warning of the attack? How was that?”

“I’ll tell you later, though I doubt you’ll believe me. I scarcely believe it myself,” Devon said, rising from his chair and thrusting his arms into the clean shirt Ned held out to him. “Right now I must prepare to leave for Cornwall at first light. My first concern is for Charles’s safety…and Moira’s as well. Quentin has sworn to take his revenge on her and I can imagine what that revenge would entail.”

“We will ride together,” Stamden said. “Our work here is finished and I for one plan to take Castlereagh’s advice and claim my bride as soon as possible.” He surveyed Devon’s bandaged arm. “Are you certain you are able to travel?”

“Of course. It’s only a scratch.” Devon crossed to his desk and picked up a pen. “But first I must leave instructions to my man of affairs to see the coachman’s young widow is well provided for. Just this morning, the lad proudly told me she was carrying his babe.”

He clenched his fists in frustration. “I agonized over every French soldier I shot in the Peninsula wars,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “I shall feel no remorse whatsoever when I put a bullet through Quentin’s black heart.

T
he terror Moira had felt those first few hours after she’d seen her latest “vision” slowly receded until it was no more than a nagging worry at the back of her mind. Reason dictated that if she could sense when Devon was in danger, she would surely sense if were dead or even seriously injured. Still, it was maddening to be neither fish nor fowl—not ordinary enough to be blissfully unaware, nor gifted enough to know the entire truth of his circumstances…and she
had
seen that pool of blood on the cobblestones.

For safety’s sake, she doubled the guard on Charles, insisting there be two adults with him at all times. Rightly or wrongly, if Quentin thought he had managed to eliminate the threat Devon posed for him, he would make another try for the boy who stood between him and his greedy ambition.

Then, because there was nothing else she could do, she resigned herself to waiting for the moment she both longed for and dreaded, when Devon would be safely back in Cornwall and demanding the truth she had promised him when last she’d seen him.

Moira found herself wishing she could pour out her troubles to her grandmother. It had been months since she had felt free to slip away to the gypsy camp and she sorely needed the renewal of spirit her visits with her carefree gypsy relatives always afforded.

She knew they were somewhere nearby; she had found a
patrin
, the gypsies’ age-old method of communication, laid out beside the fountain in her favorite garden to alert her they had returned to Cornwall for the spring and summer. No
gaujo
would ever have noticed the small arrangement of twigs and acorns, but she had instantly recognized it for what it was and relayed the information to Blackjack.

It told her that her grandfather’s group of Spanish gypsies were a day’s journey south of White Oaks in a grove of trees on a remote peninsula they had used as a campsite many times before. If she were not so reluctant to leave Charles, she would have left for the camp the instant she found the little
patrin
; this was the first spring in the ten years she had been living as a
gauja
that she had not gone “home.”

Luckily, just when she thought she would go mad from the waiting and the loneliness, her monthly supply of books from Hatchard’s Book Store arrived. The shipment included a copy of
Mansfield Park
, Jane Austen’s most recent book published late the previous year.

More eagerly than usual, Moira immersed herself in the humor and irony of Miss Austen’s clever social satire and for a brief time forgot the tragic state the real world was in. Though in truth, she found herself oddly disappointed when that charming rogue, Henry Crawford, changed at the last moment from a hero of promise into a scoundrel and villain. She had found his depth and passion a great deal more appealing than the somewhat insipid Mr. Darcy of
Pride and Prejudice
, published a year earlier—probably because he reminded her a little of Devon St. Gwyre.

She was curled up on the window seat in the sitting room off her bedchamber early one evening in April, supposedly reading the last few pages of the novel but actually daydreaming about her handsome golden warrior, when she was struck by another of her frightening premonitions.

She dropped the book instantly. “Where is Charles?” she asked Elizabeth who was sewing nearby.

“The squire and John Butler took the boys to the stable to see Moonstar’s new colt,” Elizabeth replied, knotting her thread on the reverse side of her embroidery and neatly clipping the tail end.

Moira leapt to her feet, rushed through the maze of hallways adjoining her chamber, down the three flights of stairs and out the small side door leading to the stable yard. Not a soul was in sight, but clouds of dust motes sparkled in the brilliant sunshine and the soft, dry dirt outside the stable door was crisscrossed with wheel tracks. Someone had been there, and very recently.

She heard footsteps behind her and Elizabeth’s anxious voice. “What is it your grace? What is wrong?”

“I don’t know—yet. But I mean to find out.” Moira lifted her skirt, unsheathed her knife and beckoning Elizabeth to stand well out of the way, pushed open the stable door.

Cautiously, she stepped inside, then momentarily blinded by the dim interior, promptly tripped over an obstacle lying across the entrance. Righting herself, she blinked to gain her vision and stared down at the object at her feet. “Oh my God,” she gasped, dropping to her knees beside the prostrate form of John Butler, lying face down on the earthen floor, blood seeping into his orange curls from a lump on the back of his head.

Terror sliced through Moira and she raised her eyes to search the dim recesses of the stable. “Charles!” she called at the top of her voice. Then, “Charles…Alfie…where are you?”

The horses were in their stalls, she could hear Moonstar’s plaintive answering whinny and the stallions pawing the straw-covered floor with their powerful hooves. But other than that, the stable seemed unnaturally quiet and empty. There was no sign of the two boys or Blackjack.

Heart pounding, she turned John Butler over and cradled his head in her lap. He moaned softly, opened his eyes, and gazed about him. “What happened? “Where am I?” He groaned. “Oh! My head!”

“You’re in the stable…alone, and you’ve a lump the size of a goose egg on the back of your head,” Moira said, fighting back the panic that threatened to engulf her. “Do you remember what happened? Do you have any idea where Charles might be?”

John Butler rolled his head tentatively from side to side. “Last I saw, Alfie and he had pushed open the stable door and were running toward Moonstar’s stall, with Blackjack right behind them.” He forced himself to a sitting position, moaned softly, and clutched his head in both hands. “I remember thinking the grooms must all be at supper in the servants’ quarters, but I couldn’t figure why they’d closed the stable door on such a warm evening. Then I stepped inside and—“

Moira beckoned to Elizabeth. “You stay here with John Butler. I’m going to check Moonstar’s stall.”

“Not alone surely, your grace,” Elizabeth pleaded. “Let me summon one of the footmen.”

Moira ignored her. Tearing down the aisle between the stalls, she peered over the half-door to where Moonstar stood quietly munching the fresh hay filling her feeding bin. Beneath her belly, the new colt balanced on wobbly legs, attempting to suckle. At first glance, all seemed in order until, out of the corner of her eye, she spied a movement in the shadowed corner of the stall. She opened the door and circling the mare and her colt, found Alfie bound and gagged and squirming like a small worm atop the mound of straw on which he lay.

Swallowing the lump rising in her throat, she quickly untied his gag and pulled it from his mouth. “Them gallows birds took the nipper and there wasn’t nothing I could do!” he cried while, with trembling fingers, Moira undid the ropes binding his hands and feet.

Alfie rubbed the back of his hand across his dirty, tear-streaked face. “And ‘im what could have ‘elped the poor little bugger sellin’ out to the blighters for a couple of bloody quid.”

“Slow down, Alfie,” Moira said, grasping the hysterical little boy by the shoulders. “I can’t make head nor tail of what you’re saying. Now tell me who took Charles and where they took him.”

“There was two of ‘em. One a big ugly fella with a fearful limp and the other ‘alf ‘is size and twice as mean—waving a pistol around like he was itching to shoot anything wot moved.”

Quentin’s hired thugs, of course
. Moira forced herself to speak calmly, though her teeth were chattering from fear. “Now slow and easy, tell me everything you remember.”

“We was almost to Moonstar’s stall, the nipper and me, when I heard this thud. I turned around; there was John Butler flat on ‘is face and this big fella standing’ over ‘im. Crowned ‘im with the butt of ‘is gun, he did. Then he limps over and grabs the nipper and cuffs him a good one when he starts to cry.

“Do somethin’ I says to Blackjack. ‘Don’t stand there like a great lump of coal and let them muckers snatch the duke.’ But the bloody coward just laughs ‘And get a bullet between me eyes. Not likely,’ he says, with a grip on me arm wot near broke every bone in it—and the next thing I knowed, he’s talkin’ to the two of ‘em friendly as if they was kin.”

Moira felt her first glimmer of hope. Whatever Blackjack might be, he was no coward. She’d wager everything she owned that he’d fight to the death before he’d let Charles be taken by two such ruffians. “Go on. Tell me what happened next, including every word that was said,” she demanded, certain her wily father must have some scheme in mind.

“He asked ‘em what they was plannin’ to do with the nipper and if they’d already got their money from some fellow called the viscount, ‘cause if they hadn’t, he was most likely stiffin ‘em like he did everyone else.”

Alfie rubbed his hand across his eyes. “I could see right off there wasn’t brains enough between the two of ‘em to fill Miss Elizabeth’s thimble ‘cause they was listening to the old windbag like wot he said was gospel. ‘If you kills the lad, you’re playin’ into the viscount’s ‘ands and you’ll never see a farthing for your trouble,’ he says. ‘The thing to do is sell ‘im. Then you’ve got you money no matter wot.’ ”

Moira held her breath. What was Blackjack up to?

Alfie paused as if gathering his thoughts. “The two of ‘em put their heads together and then the one called Weazel asks, ‘Sell ‘im to who—a slaver?’ ‘Could be,’ says Blackjack, with as nasty a smile as ever I seen. ‘I ‘eard there was one anchored a mile or so off the coast, but wot would the likes of them want with a half-pint like ‘im? Besides, them slavers is mean as piss-ants and as apt to put a bullet in your ‘eart as a guinea in your pocket. If ‘twas me, I’d sell the brat to the gypsies. They pays well and no questions asked—and it so ‘appens I knows where a band of ‘em is camped not more’n a day’s ride south of ‘ere. For a couple of quid, I’ll lead you to ‘em.”

Moira felt tears of relief spring to her eyes. For once, she found herself grateful that her father was a devious old scoundrel who was better at lying than the vicar was at preaching a sermon. Who else could have come up with such an ingenious place to save Charles?

Alfie wiped first his eyes, then his nose on his sleeve. “Then the big fella points to me and says, ‘Maybe we could sell this one too.’ But Blackjack just laughs. ‘Not even the gypsies would want a scrawny runt like this,’ he says, all the while ‘elping ‘em truss me up like a turkey cock ready for stuffing. ‘Tell me daughter, Moira, it’s time for ‘er to go ‘ome,’ he says to me quiet-like, as if that made any sense, then dumps me into Moonstar’s stall and off ‘im and them other two varmints goes and takes the nipper with ‘em.”

Alfie’s tears were flowing fast now, leaving muddy tracks down his cheeks and dropping onto his heaving chest. “We got to stop ‘em, your grace, afore they finds them gypsies. Everybody knows wot
they
does to little children once they gets their ‘ands on ‘em.” He gulped. “Eats ‘em, they does, and that’s a fact.”

“Gypsies are not cannibals, Alfie,” Moira said, staring at him in horrified outrage. “Where in the world did you get such a ridiculous idea? She remembered her grandmother telling her that such vicious rumors had been started about the Rom a few years earlier in the mountains of Romania, and hundreds of innocent gypsies had been slaughtered before they were proven false. The idea that such talk should abound in a country like England shocked her to the core.

“It’s just something everybody knows,” Alfie said stubbornly. “It’s wot gypsies does, same as cats eats mice or we eats mutton.” He started to sob again, great gulping sobs that wracked his thin body. “We got to find the nipper, your grace, and we got to find ‘im fast.”

Moira could see he was too distraught at the moment to listen to reason. “I will find the duke, Alfie,” she said firmly. “I promise you that, and I’ll bring him back safe and sound. Blackjack isn’t the only one who knows where the gypsies have made their camp.”

Within minutes of returning to the manor house, John Butler had spread the word throughout the servants’ quarters that the duke had been kidnapped. Every groom and footman instantly volunteered for the hunting party the younger Keough brothers were forming to track down his abductors.

Moira was frantic. As if she hadn’t enough on her plate already with worrying about Charles and Blackjack in the hands of two desperate killers, now she had a horde of wild-eyed young men brandishing pistols and threatening, among other things, to carry out their own gypsy massacre.

“Stop!” she ordered as they gathered outside the entrance to the stables. “The surest way to get both Charles and Blackjack killed is for the lot of you to go thundering after them.”

To her surprise, Michael Keough agreed with her. “Her grace is right,” he declared. “I’m of the mind there’s more to this than meets the eye. I’ve counted Blackjack my friend for a good many years. He may be a scoundrel and always looking for the main chance, but I stake my life he’d never let those two cutthroats touch a hair of the lad’s head.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Moira said “But his only chance of saving Charles is to keep the kidnappers believing he’s thrown in with them until they reach the gypsy camp.”

“But what good will that do? Surely the squire doesn’t think the gypsies will help him save Charles?” Elizabeth asked. “While I don’t subscribed to the bizarre stories Alfie’s heard about them, I know for a fact they’re a very devious and mysterious people. A group of them camped in the woods near the vicarage when I was a little girl and everything from laying hens to underdrawers hanging on the clotheslines went missing.”