The Luck of the Devil (6 page)

E
verything he knew or loved was gone. His father, his cousins, his career, his friends. Carey was left with nothing but responsibilities. Even General Wellesley had seen fit to remind him of his duties before he left the Peninsula.

"You've been a good officer, lad. Had my doubts at first, I admit. Looked like you'd use your guts for brains. Wouldn't have lasted long at that fool's gamble. Now you have an onus, boy, a God-given burden to use those wits, yes, and the backbone, to serve the country in another way. Not speaking ill of the dead, but your cousin never took his seat, never cared that the lands and people who depended on him were cared for except by hired overseers, never made sure one of the proudest names in the land would not die out with that last ball you took. Go home, boy, see to your obligations, raise up more fine lads to serve their country and carry on the name, and see if you cannot beat some sense into those old fools at the War Office."

Carey was on his way, his hair white at the temples, his uniform hanging on his gaunt frame, his cane and Rudd supporting most of his weight. His heart dead inside him.

The ship docked in Southampton after a miserable crossing. Carey had to be half carried to the coach that had been sent down to meet them from Delmere, and the old stableman, Ned, wiped at his eyes with a checkered kerchief as he whipped up the horses.

They dropped the batman off at Delmere before going on to High Clyme, over Rudd's protests. "Whatever's there can wait another day, sir, ah, Your Grace. I didn't nurse you all these months to have you cock your toes up the first day in England."

"Sergeant, you are sounding like an old woman. As is, I am putting off Harry's solicitors and bankers as well as the War Office, in order to see about Suzannah and Emonda. That's where I am going. I rested in the coach, so don't go clucking like a hen with one chick. Go ask Mrs. Tulliver to take a few of the holland covers off so we have beds for the night and a hot meal. Wait till you taste her cooking, Rudd. Good, plain English fare."

"I don't see why you have to be traipsing back and forth, is all. Why can't we bunk at this High Clyme then, if your wards are there?"

"Emonda's a widow, Rudd. It wouldn't suit her notions of respectability to have a bachelor under the roof, even one with a game leg and a burning desire for a hot bath. Knowing my stepaunt, the peagoose would lie awake all night worrying that I was battle-starved for a woman, and lusting after the first female with blond hair and pale skin."

Rudd shook his head in disgust and tucked the carriage blanket tighter around the major, neither of them being used to the chill dank air after the heat of Spain. Carey tapped his cane on the roof of the coach for Ned to proceed.

The new duke looked back on the gray stones of his home that was home no longer. He would have to take up residence at the Abbey, he supposed. Carey loved that rambling old pile where boys could get lost for days without a tutor ever finding them—but he could not face that yet. He supposed Delmere would go to his second son, as it had come to his father. The deuce, he thought, sons.

The hatchments were up at High Clyme. Trust Emonda to get all the conventions correct. Carey struggled out of the carriage and stood on the gravel drive contemplating the marble stairs. Blast, there must be twenty of the bloody things. He shook off the footman who came down to assist him, feigning desire to look around while he caught his breath.

Before he started the long climb, a girl came tumbling out of the ornamental maze toward the left of the carriage drive. Suzannah must have heard the coach pull up and, giggling, hurried to greet her long-lost half-brother with—hell and damnation—Heywood Jeffers by her side.

Suzannah stopped when she got closer and had a better look at Carey, and he thought he read pity on her face so he frowned. Her chin came up with a determined set as she took Woody's hand and moved forward. She was lovely, Carey thought, with her black hair curling down her back, a Delverson through and through. The cawker at her side was wearing striped pantaloons, b'gad, and he may have filled out some, but young Jeffers never had grown into his ears. As for that carroty mop and the freckles, Jupiter, but love was blind.

Then Carey opened his own eyes wider as the pair reached him at the bottom step. Suzannah's high-necked gray gown was misbuttoned at the bodice, and her lower lip was swollen. The major grabbed for the sword that was not by his side and cursed.

Woody stepped forward, offering his hand. "Welcome home, Your Grace. We have been waiting your arrival to ask your permission to—"

Carey sneered at his sister's gown. She blushed. "This is how you wait, you bastard?" He reached for Woody's outstretched hand with his right, pulled him forward, and popped him a hard left smack in the middle of his nose. Woody went down, his claret drawn, and Carey, as was inevitable, collapsed alongside him. Carey pulled himself up to a sitting position before the footman could get to him, but sat there on the bottom step waiting for the pain to subside, watching his sister use the gossoon's neckcloth to tenderly wipe the blood from the face in her lap. Carey sent the footman off for water and towels, and so no more of this Cheltenham tragedy need make the rounds of the neighborhood.

"What are you doing home from school?" he asked his sister in a quiet tone that would have had many a junior officer quaking in his boots.

Suzannah looked up, her eyes blazingly defiant. "I came to support Emmy in her hour of need and I will not go back."

"I see." Carey nodded curtly at the youth, now moaning in her arms.

"No, you don't see at all. You never have, you heartless bully! Woody is going to London and Emmy says I cannot go with Angela and her parents because we are in mourning, so I won't see him again for ages if you won't let us get married."

"I said when you are eighteen, after you have had a Season, when you know your own mind. That is not unreasonable, Suky."

"But all those other girls will be there, with their London ways and flirting looks. They'll scoop Woody up for sure."

Carey took another look at the gangly boy in her arms. Love must be deaf and dumb too, if Suzannah thought the Town belles were pining away until this jug-eared sprig of a squire's son came to sweep them off their feet. "Think, Suzannah. You are now the stepsister to a duke! You'll have one of the handsomest fortunes in the land and you can look as high as you wish for a husband."

That chin came up again. "I know my own mind and I have since I was four. You can keep your money and your titles. I want Woody, and I want him now!"

In an unconsciously identical manner, Carey stiffened his own resolve. "You will go back to school, you will have a Season, and you damn well will not give yourself to any rutting young jackanapes before then!"

Tears filled her blue eyes. "But I love him."

Carey wished he could reach out to her, across the stairs, across the years. "Ah, Suky, you're too young to know love."

"No I'm not, Carey," she told him, hugging her fallen knight more closely. "You are just too old to understand. I'll bet you have never even been in love."

"But I have," he told her with a smile, "sometimes three or four times a night"

"Really? Woody—That is, that's not the kind of love I meant and you know it."

"I do, pet, and no, I have never known that 'spiritual coupling of two souls.' "

Maybe once he could have, when there was no room in a soldier's life. And maybe now he could have found it, that dream, that glory, if he were not maimed in body and in spirit. All he had to offer in trade for her glittering London life was an empty shell of a man and the shambles he'd been warned he'd find at St. Dillon. He had the title now and money, more than he could spend in his lifetime, but so did she, who could have bought herself a husband anytime these past four years. He would not even subject her to the ridicule of the London fishbowl, watching the cripple go acourting. Asking for her hand would be like clipping the wings of a beautiful dove, binding her to earth and ugliness.

No, he would never know love, but he understood duty very well.

"You are asking me to marry you?" Emonda reached for her salts. She was prettier than the last time Carey had seen her, still with that pale coloring, but dressed in a fashionable gray gown with black velvet ribbons instead of the heavy black crepe he had expected. Donald had made her promise not to go into deep mourning, it seemed.

She had also competently managed the debacle on her front steps, sending for Lord Clyme's valet to tend to Woody, ordering Suzannah upstairs to change her spattered gown, and overriding Carey's own insistence on struggling up the stairs himself. She sent two strapping footmen down to aid him. They were used to doing for Lord Clyme, she announced, making Carey feel like an ancient. At least she had the courtesy to turn her back when the men half carried him into her parlor.

For all that, and a few pounds on her thin frame, she was still the vaporish female he recalled.

"Yes, I am asking you to become the next Duchess of St. Dillon. Forgive me for not getting down on my knee. I would never get up."

Emonda fluttered her handkerchief in the air. "But why?"

"That should be obvious." He studied his fingernails. "You are all alone in the world now, with no family except myself and Suzannah. Gabriel Wimberly will be coming to take over High Clyme, and you cannot wish to live with a stranger as his dependent."

"But Lord Clyme provided very well for my future. You know that, you helped draw up the marriage settlements. So I never have to marry again if I do not wish."

"What, would you spend the rest of your days alone? Emonda, you are all of what? Nineteen? Marriage is the only option for a female."

"Is it? There is the dower house, you know, so I would not be in the new earl's pocket. He seems a pleasant gentleman, from his letters, at any rate, who I doubt would make me feel like excess baggage. Besides, he is enthused at taking the seat in Parliament, so would not settle here permanently. His sister invites me to London when I am out of mourning."

"I shall be opening Delverson House in Town," he said as if that took care of all of her objections.

"Carey, Your Grace, I am not a Delverson and never have been. I am not your ward, not your responsibility. I am a
Wimberly, and not even Lord Gabriel Wimberly can deny my right to settle my own future. I have been handed from relative to relative my entire life like some heirloom that's too valuable to throw away and too ugly to keep. Never again. You do not have to offer for me out of your sense of honor."

"I am offering for you, damn it, because I need help with Suzannah and I don't have time or inclination to go paying suit."

It was not the most graceful of proposals, but at that moment, when Carey was sick and heart-sore, Emonda liked him better than she ever had, not that she could imagine spending her life with a reckless hero who would want her to take up the tonnish life and manage his vast households. "But you would want heirs," she said, thinking of doing that with this grim-faced stranger. She shuddered.

He understood. She could not bear the idea of making love with a disfigured man. "I see. I am sorry, ma'am, I did not mean to offend. I cannot offer you a chaste marital bed like Lord Clyme, for an heir seems to be what I need more than anything else." He stood awkwardly, his mouth twisted in bitterness. "I have to travel to the Abbey. With your permission I shall leave Suzannah in your care, with the understanding that if she blots her copybook one more time I shall strangle her. We shall discuss other arrangements on my return."

Emonda shrank back in her seat. He was as authoritarian, sneering, and bloodthirsty as ever. Look what he'd done to poor Woody. She could not imagine a worse husband. He would be forever giving orders and expecting instant compliance, with nary a thought governing his own immoral behavior. Just look at that lightskirt he was supporting. Blood rushing to her face, she asked, "Why do you not marry Mrs. Reardon, then? You would have a ready-made heir."

"Mrs. Reardon?" The surprise of hearing his father's mistress's name almost knocked him off his uncertain balance. He clutched the back of his chair for support. "I believed the woman to be elsewhere."

"She was, for a while after you left last time, just long enough to return with an infant. She has a nanny walk his pram up and down the village streets for everyone to see the child's black curls and dark-rimmed blue eyes, just like yours."

Carey's knuckles turned white on the chair while his mind raced. What rig was that Reardon woman running? The child was not his, of course, as his caper-witted stepaunt seemed to be implying, but his reputation was such that Mrs. Reardon would likely be believed if she chose to point to him with the evidence of his butter-stamp. Lord, what that would do for Suzannah's chances when she went to London!

"I don't suppose there is any Mr. Reardon, or Mr. Anything else?"

Emonda shook her head, still blushing. "She tells anyone who will talk to her that you were very generous."

"I was, to get rid of her." Carey did hasty arithmetic in his head and concluded the child could not have been his father's, even if the jade was increasing at their last conversation as she must have been. If the boy was indeed the spit and image of one of the Delverson Devils, by God, that left Harry or Joss. For all Carey knew, neither of them was above littering the countryside with by-blows. The timing would be right for when they came down and hired her, and Harry always did like voluptuous females. Zeus, but Suzannah's idiocy must run in the family. "Has the woman approached you?"

Emonda sniffed. As if she would have anything to do with such a wanton! A lady was not even supposed to know of the existence of women like that. "Of course not. I think she spoke with Donald once, but naturally he never mentioned the matter to me."

"Naturally," Carey echoed dryly, "or you might be able to tell me what they said so I would know how to proceed. No matter, now that Harry is gone I am sure I'll be hearing from her myself. If by some chance the harpy does call, and you can bring yourself to utter the words, tell her Hell will freeze over before a bastard becomes heir to St. Dillon."