The Gypsy Duchess (8 page)

“Then she must be old Blackjack’s daughter.”

Devon blinked. “Now what in God’s name would lead you to that amazing conclusion? The Duke of Sheffield was known to be a bit eccentric, but I cannot believe that even he would name the daughter of a common smuggler to raise his son and heir.”

“Common is the last word I’d ever use to describe Blackjack Reardon.” Ned sank onto the chair beside him as if his legs were suddenly too wobbly to support him. “By my sainted mother, the duchess has to be his daughter. It all fits too perfectly to be otherwise.”

He smote his forehead with his clenched fist. “Which means I’m beholding to the lady for my very life.”

His eyes sought Devon’s. “You know I was in the ‘trade’,” Captain. What you don’t know is how and why I got out of it.”

“No, I don’t,” Devon said, “but I think you better tell me if it involves the duchess in some way.”

“My brother Daniel and me was crew on Blackjack’s boat, the
Lolita
, for near two years when Boney was riding high in Europe.” Ned cleared his throat self-consciously. “We carried brandy mostly, once in a while a bit of fancy French perfume.”

He cast a wary look at the marquess, but Devon raised an admonishing hand. “Never fear, Stamden is the soul of discretion.”

“We always worked the boats in pairs,” Ned continued. “It was safer crossing the Channel that way. Blackjack captained the
Lolita
; Michael Keogh the
Nancy K
, with his two brothers crewing for him. And I’ll say this for the two of them—no better skippers ever hoisted a sail.

“Uncanny they was when it come to slipping in and out of the rocky shoals along the Cornish coast, and they always had the best cargoes and the highest profits of all the local ‘gentlemen.’ Which I’ve no doubt was why some jealous mucker—and God help him if I ever figure out who—tipped off the excise boys.”

Ned ran his fingers distractedly through his thinning sandy-colored hair. “To make a long story short, a revenue cutter was waiting for us one dark night four years ago last September.”

Four years ago last September, Blaine had received that fateful missive from Moira Reardon on September 19, 1811
. Devon felt chills travel his spine.

Ned’s eyes looked bleak. “Blew both boats out of the water, they did. Daniel was near cut in half by a splinter off the spar. I managed to get him to shore, but he died in my arms right there on the beach.” He covered his eyes with his hands, obviously reliving the horror in his mind.

“Go on, Ned. How does the duchess come into all of this?” Devon asked gently, reluctant to intrude on his batman’s grief, but certain the information was vital to his understanding of the mysterious woman who had had such a tragic impact on his life.

“We was hauled up before the magistrate and sentenced to hang within a fortnight. I don’t mind admitting I could scarce take it in. Not yet five and twenty and just like that, my life was over. Lord I was scared—so scared I damned near wet my trousers just thinking about that hangman’s noose—and the Keough brothers was just as scared as I was.

“But not old Blackjack. He never blinked an eye when the judge passed sentence. ‘I’ve sent word to my daughter and the chit’s clever as they come,’ he told us later. ‘She’ll do whatever’s needed to keep her old da’ from swingin’ at the end of a rope—and my friends as well. Just you wait and see.’ ”

“Which she evidently did,” Devon said, a cold knot forming in the pit of his stomach as he found himself wondering if Moira Reardon was indeed the daughter of Blackjack, the smuggler—and if so, to how many men beside the duke she had had to grant her favors to accomplish her mission. The words “she’ll do whatever’s needed” echoed in his head over and over.

Ned rose from his chair and walked to the window to stare out at the pale February sunshine. “We was free men three days later. Rumor was that someone too rich and powerful for the magistrate to refuse spoke up for us. I never knew who—only that Blackjack laughed and said the little baggage he’d whelped had saved our necks by marrying high enough to reach the ear of the Regent himself.”

“And so she did,” Stamden said. “No man in Britain wielded more power than the Duke of Sheffield.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair in which he sat. “Coincidently, I had an interesting talk with Miss Kincaid this morning. It seems the duke told her, just before he died, that he had married Moira Reardon because she was the only woman he could trust to protect his young son from Quentin. A wise old man, the duke.”

He leveled his narrowed gaze on Devon. “And so, my friend, another piece of the puzzled falls into place. Now we know what the lady demanded in return for her promise to raise the young duke as her own and why she is so assiduous about keeping her end of the bargain.”

“Now we know.” Devon sank back against his pillows, suddenly weary beyond believe. At long last he knew the truth of why his brother’s paramour had jilted him. Ned’s amazing story shed an entirely new light on the beautiful duchess. She was not merely the greedy opportunist he had despised for so long; she was a woman who had done what she must to save her father’s life, no matter what it had cost her personally.

Logically, he could not fault her for that. Yet illogically, his anger accelerated when he thought of her selling herself for the sake of a man to whom she was merely “the baggage he’d whelped.” And this time the anger had nothing to do with Blaine. To his everlasting shame, Devon St. Gwyre found himself consumed with rage and jealousy at the thought of other men enjoying the intimacies he had only fantasized.

Beside him, Stamden rose from his chair and crossed the room to a demilune pier table on which sat a silver tray bearing a crystal decanter and glasses. He poured three glasses of brandy and handed them around. “Who but a crafty old fox like Sheffield would think to give the care of a future peer of the realm into the hands of the daughter of a notorious smuggler?” he asked.

“Who indeed?” Devon answered, struggling to hide the torment raging within him. “Not I certainly. But if Elizabeth is to be believed, Moira Reardon was the old duke’s choice.”

“I would stake my life on Miss Kincaid’s veracity.” Stamden spoke with a quiet intensity that startled Devon. “And the young duke obviously adores his stepmother.”

Devon nodded. “I cannot argue with that. Therefore, as the boy’s guardian, I suppose it behooves me to establish a congenial relationship with the woman despite my reservations.”

“I would say so,” Stamden agreed, with something that looked suspiciously like humor in his slate-gray eyes. “And the sooner the better for all concerned.”

Devon felt his pulse quicken and fire race through his veins at the very thought of what establishing that relationship with the stubborn, independent duchess could entail.

“I’ll do it,” he said at last. “I must…for young Charles’s sake.”

Moira was not easily taken aback. At an age when most little girls were learning to spin a top or dress a doll, she’d had to face the death of her beloved mother and learn to deal with being shuttled between her volatile Spanish gypsy grandfather and the care-for-nothing Irish rogue who had fathered her. Her four years under the tutelage of the wily old Duke of Sheffield had only reinforced her natural pragmatism and inured her to the kinds of situations that sent most women into fits of vapors.

Nevertheless, Ned Bridges managed to render her completely nonplussed when, upon meeting her on the first-floor landing of the manor house staircase, he launched into an impassioned declaration of undying fealty, including a vow to lay down his life for her if the need should ever arise. His surprising utterance had all the more impact since he prefaced it with, “The captain—I mean the earl—wants to see you right away, your grace. That is, if it’s convenient for you, of course.”

“Heaven help us, what have I done to get Sir Friday Face’s back up this time?” she muttered to herself, standing stock-still on the landing long after Ned had disappeared down the stairs. She pressed her hand to the spot where her heart thudded against her ribs. Could this mysterious summons have something to do with her father’s untimely arrival? Whatever it was, it must be serious if kindly Ned Bridges felt he must defend her to the death.

She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders resolutely, and climbed the remainder of the stairs to rap on the earl’s door. His “come in” sounded surprisingly cheerful, which made her even more nervous.

He was out of bed, sitting on a small chaise lounge with his injured leg propped up, and wearing a jade-colored velvet banyan which turned his eyes a deep, fathomless emerald green.

“Should you be out of bed, my lord?” Moira asked, more for something to say than out of any real concern, since he had the healthy color of a man well on the mend.

“Probably not, if my batman is to be believed. But I’ve had enough of beds these past few weeks to last me a lifetime.”

He smiled. It was the first genuine smile he had ever bestowed on her. The effect was devastating. Moira could feel the warmth of it enfold her like a soft down quilt on a cold winter’s night. She shifted uneasily from one bare foot to the other. Something was wrong here; the man was being entirely too pleasant.

“Your man indicated you wished to speak to me,” she said in the same chilly tones he had been wont to use whenever he’d spoken to her. If he expected her to fall at his feet and slaver on his boots like an eager puppy at the first hint of kindness, he was in for a surprise.

His smile grew a little tenuous. “Please sit down,” he said, indicating a nearby chair. “I think we need to talk.”

Moira sat, regarding him warily. Why the sudden cordiality when he had insulted her less than an hour before? The man was entirely too capricious in his moods. She folded her hands in her lap, then remembering she had again forgotten to put her shoes on, she tucked her bare toes beneath the folds of her drab, black skirt. “Talk about what, my lord?”

“I am afraid we have made a rather unfortunate beginning to this guardianship arrangement we find ourselves sharing, ma’am,” the earl said softly.

Moira gritted her teeth. “Are you really, my lord? How odd, I could have sworn your insults were deliberate.”

“For the young duke’s sake, I think we should endeavor to establish a more friendly relationship,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her.

Now he wanted to be friends. He must be mad if he thought she believed that balderdash. This habit the English gentry had of saying one thing and meaning another was beginning to annoy her exceedingly. Her hot-tempered gypsy relatives might get a bit raucous and uncouth at times, but at least one always knew where one stood with them.

“I agree, my lord,” she said coldly. “For Charles’s sake, we should endeavor to rub along together a little more amicably, but as to becoming friends…that is highly unlikely. There are very few people I care to call
friends
.”

The earl squirmed noticeably and in doing so apparently aggravated his injured leg again. The color seeped from his face and for one awful moment, Moira thought he was going to faint dead away.

She leapt to her feet and bent over him. “Good heavens, now what have you done to yourself?”

The earl gazed up at her through pain-glazed eyes that held the same disturbing, out-of-focus intensity as when he’d lured her into sharing his impassioned dream during the dark hours of the night. She could feel herself being drawn in again, almost as if she had no will of her own.

Seemingly of their own volition, her fingers brushed back the strand of hair that had fallen over his forehead. “You must be more careful, my lord,” she murmured. “You will open your wound again.”

Devon stared at the woman bending over him and his breath caught in his throat. He felt her fingers feather across his forehead, inhaled the mysterious, unforgettable scent of her, and an odd sensation of weakness invaded his limbs.

He couldn’t help himself; he reached up to touch the tiny mole at the corner of her mouth with the tip of his finger—and all at once he knew as surely as he knew his own name—the kiss they had shared had not been merely a dream.

He couldn’t be that mistaken. He
had
held her in his arms; he
had
plundered her soft mouth with his lips, with his tongue—and the saucy minx had responded with a passion every bit as fiery as his own. In truth, she had taken advantage of his drugged state in the most wanton of ways.

“Moira?” he murmured, feeling his body harden despite his pain. The instant alarm mirrored in her eyes confirmed that what he suspected was true. With a triumphant cry, he grasped her slender shoulders and pulled her down to him until her soft breasts pressed against his chest; her lips hovered just inches above his own.

“What are you doing, my lord?” she panted, pushing against him with all her might. “Think of your wound.”

“Not to worry, sweet Moira.” Devon chuckled. “For it appears I am dreaming again and, as we both know, anything is possible in a dream.”

“I know nothing of the kind,” Moira snapped, heaving herself up and away from him with her last ounce of strength. Her heart pounded with such force she felt as if it must surely burst from her chest. He knew! Somehow the rakehell knew!

She gulped a breath of air into her starved lungs. “The only thing I know for certain, sir,” she declared with what dignity she could muster under the circumstances, “is that this is a most unseemly situation and you are no gentleman.”