This Duke is Mine (32 page)

She was so pale that her rouge stood out in patches on each cheek. “This rash, imprudent effort is foolhardy in the extreme. The French will shoot at first sight. And you haven’t even been on the water since your wife died!”

Quin’s hand curled into a fist. “It is true that I have not been across the Channel, but only because I have had no need to travel to the Continent.” Quin’s even tone concealed the pit in his chest that had yawned open at the mere idea of crossing the same stretch of water that had swallowed his son. A duke should never be prey to such emotion, and he ruthlessly pushed it away. “Evangeline’s death is irrelevant. Montsurrey needs me; Olivia needs me. And frankly, Mother, I could not face the Duke of Canterwick, should he recover his senses, knowing I had not made every effort to bring his son home.”

His mother swallowed hard. “Canterwick would not do the same for you.”

“As with Evangeline’s death, that is irrelevant. We will put to sea at Dover, and the voyage should be a mere four hours with a good wind. I expect to be home tomorrow. Smugglers do this every day, you know.”

“I am afraid of that water,” the dowager said, her voice tight as a violin string. “I almost lost you to it before.”

Quin nodded; they both knew there was more than one way to be lost.

He picked up his mother’s hand and brought it to his lips. “You raised me to be a duke, Mother. I would disgrace my own title if I allowed a man of my rank to die on a foreign shore through my own cowardice.”

“I wish I’d raised you to be a peasant,” his mother said, her voice low.

“Your Grace,” he said, bowing with a low sweep that signaled his deep respect for his mother.

She raised her chin, and then slowly descended into a curtsy of her own. “I would prefer not to be proud of a son who is walking into clear danger,” she remarked. Her eyes were shining with tears.

“I will take your blessing with me,” Quin said, ignoring her words and answering the look in her eyes. That was something he was learning from Olivia. If he concentrated, he
could
tell what people were feeling, just from looking carefully at their eyes.

His mother turned and swept up the stairs, her shoulders rigid, her head high.

Twenty-six

The Dangers of Poetry under the Moon

I
t was almost three hours since they left the port at Dover in a vessel named the
Day Dream
, a schooner with a small cabin lying just above the surface of the water. Olivia stood at the porthole, watching black water fall restlessly behind their prow, as if it had somewhere to go.

“We’ll take the rowboat up an inlet, if I understand you,” Quin said from behind Olivia’s shoulder. He was pouring over a detailed map of the French coast with Sergeant Grooper, the soldier who had come to fetch them. Though to be exact, Grooper had come to fetch Rupert’s father.

Poor Canterwick. He still lay as if dead. Olivia had visited him before they set out, and had told him that she was going to France to find Rupert and bring him home. Perhaps he heard her.

“Aye,” Grooper said. “The hut is just here.” His stubby finger landed on a tiny inlet. “I memorized that town: Wizard.” His finger moved again.

“Wissant,” Quin corrected him. “I believe it means ‘white sands.’ ”

Olivia hugged her cloak tighter around her. Quin had been interrogating Grooper for more than two hours, grilling him on the exact route up the French coast taken by Rupert’s men. They’d been in a sloop, desperate to avoid capture. They had faced no problems until Rupert’s condition became so precarious that they were afraid to keep travelling.

“Burning up,” Grooper said from behind her. “Babbling of green fields and the like. And a lady he left behind.”

Olivia turned and smiled faintly at the soldier. “May I inquire whether he was asking for someone named Lucy?”

“That’s it! All the way down the coast, it seemed. Lucy, and more Lucy.” He eyed her. “I’m thinking your Christian name might be Lucy, ma’am?”

“No, Mr. Grooper, this is Lucy.” She gestured toward the little dog sleeping in a basket at her feet.

Grooper’s bushy eyebrows flew up. “First time I’ve heard a man make such a fuss over a dog, I don’t mind telling you that.”

Olivia felt no need to explain Rupert, nor his devotion to Lucy, and merely nodded. Quin was bent over the map, evidently memorizing every tiny crevice on the coastline. His coat was pulled tight over his shoulders, emphasizing their breadth. His cheekbones stood out more prominently than usual. And that white shock of hair fell over his brow.

“What worries me most is that there’s a garrison here, damn close to the hut,” Quin said, his finger sliding over from the inlet where Rupert could be found. “Have you seen soldiers conducting drills thereabouts?”

“I wasn’t there but half an hour,” Grooper said. “I’m not a man who’s a dab hand at the sickbed. I set out for England the moment we had the major settled on a pallet. He hadn’t much time.” He shook his head. “I still see his father every time I close my eyes, just listing to the side like that, and then falling on the floor. I should have told his lordship more gentle-like. I just blurted it out.”

“It wasn’t you,” Olivia said. “It was the distressing news, not you. No matter how you had phrased it, the duke stands to lose his only son, whom he loves very much.”

“I saw that,” Grooper said. “And I don’t mind telling you that every man in the company feels the same about the major. ‘The Forlorn Hope,’ that’s what they called us. Cause we weren’t supposed to come to nothing and”—he stuck out his jaw—“we was the men that no one else wanted; did you know that?”

Olivia shook her head.

“The other recruiters for the army wouldn’t take us, and we were just left behind, for one reason or another. They thought I was too old, though I know the battlefield as well if not better than any man. There was a few who had been lamed in the service, and they were told they should just go home.”

Olivia made a sympathetic noise.

“Go home! Go home and do what? Take up knitting? You don’t tell a soldier to go home just because he lost a few toes or has a gammy leg.”

“But the marquess didn’t agree?” she prompted.

“In the beginning, I was as nervous as any. He doesn’t think the same as the rest of us, that was plain. But then I saw what he was about. And once I saw that, I would have followed him anywhere.”

Olivia beamed at him. “Up the ramparts, in fact?”

“That’s right. See, the other companies as had tried before, they always went in the middle of the night, thinking to surprise the Frogs. But of course they didn’t. Well, the major, he said we would just walk up there around noon or so and do it. He didn’t seem to be worried about it at all, and so none of us were either.”

“That’s the attitude of a born leader,” Quin said. He had straightened, pushed the map to the side, and now leaned on the table, listening.

Grooper nodded. “By then we’d marched across Portugal to Badajoz, and we knew he was a decent chap. Listened to us, he did. And told us what he thought, and didn’t talk down.” He paused. “Mind you, he was an odd thinker.”

That was a kind way of putting it, to Olivia’s mind. “So you took the fort.”

“Easy as pie,” Grooper said, his chest swelling with pride. “See, the Frogs was all eating. And when they eat . . . they
eat
. They go three courses, four, five. All of them, even down to the lowest soldier. The major, he worked it out. He’d had a French tutor, see, and he knew what they were like. And he told us in a way so we could all understand it, too.”

Olivia smiled. She loved thinking of Rupert being greeted with respect rather than less-than-thinly-veiled contempt.

“We knocked out a few sentries right off, and then we just took the fort. And we didn’t kill many of them French soldiers either; we let them run straight from the lunch table to San Cristobal. The major, he doesn’t hold with killing, not unless you have to save your own life.”

Olivia smiled. “That’s Rupert.”

“Did the marquess sustain his injury in the fight?” Quin asked.

Grooper shook his head. “It was the damnedest thing—if you’ll pardon me, my lady. We was all done and we held the fort for three days, till the English forces could get back to us. They didn’t think we had a chance, you see. Not after all the earlier attempts had failed.” The disgust in his voice spoke for itself.

“We held that fort, and we did it nice, too. We had all the Frogs in the stockade, but we gave ’em blankets and plenty of food. Because the major said that a Frenchman deprived of his food will fight like a cornered rat. Sure enough, once they were all snug and well fed, they didn’t seem to mind much. Never even tried to get out.”

“Then what happened?” Olivia asked.

“The major, well, he liked to walk about on those battlements at night,” Grooper said. “The guard up there . . .” He cleared his throat. “Well, he said as how the major was reciting poetry.” The last word came out reluctantly, as if he were confessing that Rupert had begun smoking opium.

“Reciting poetry is not generally considered to be a hazardous activity,” Quin observed.

“Not one for poetry myself,” Grooper acknowledged, managing to imply that he considered poetry to belong in the same category as treason. “The major was up on those battlements, walking around and looking at the moon, and he took a header.”

“He was looking at the moon?”

“We found a scrap of paper behind with a bit of verse on it, all about the moon. At any rate, the fall knocked his brains about. He didn’t even wake up for a day and we thought he was gone for sure. But then he started talking of this Lucy—we thought she was his lady wife—so we decided as how we should get him back to England. Wellington’s doctor, he said that we had to wait till the major died and just bring back the body.”

“I’m glad you didn’t wait,” Olivia put in.

“The major wasn’t like the rest of them commanders. He really
cared
.” Grooper’s voice was a bit rough. “We put him in a cart and brought him to the shore, then we took a sloop and brought him up the north coast of France easy as pie. And we would have come across to England, except we thought it was making him worse, with the pitching of the waves. It hurt his head.”

Olivia put a hand on Grooper’s sleeve. “You did just the right thing. His father may not have been able to say this before he collapsed, but he is tremendously grateful to you, as am I.”

The sergeant looked at his hands and said, “Iffen we’d known Lucy was a dog, I don’t know that we would have done it.”

“In that case I’m glad you had no idea.”

“We must be nearing the shore,” Quin said, breaking in. “Olivia, you will wait here with Sergeant Grooper.” He seemed to think that he had the ultimate say in that matter. “The captain will drop anchor and I will take the rowboat to the hut and fetch the marquess.”

“No,” Olivia said, keeping her tone even. “I intend to be in that rowboat.”

“I beg to differ.”

“I did not come all this way to sit safely offshore. If Rupert is alive, he may not be well enough to venture a ride in a rowboat as, indeed, Grooper and his fellow soldiers surmised.”

“When we first discussed this possibility, we did not realize that there is a garrison of French soldiers a handsbreadth from the hut. I am extremely doubtful that Rupert and the two men who remained at his side are still at liberty.”

Olivia pressed her lips together before they could tremble. “It is true that Rupert is not a very lucky person.”

“I am certain that we can retrieve his body from the French if we pay enough,” Quin said bluntly. “We will bring it back to England and he will be buried with honors, as befits his rank and his deeds. But you need not risk yourself in that particular endeavor, Olivia. I will bring Rupert home.” There was a fierceness in his voice that turned the words into a vow.

Now tears
were
pressing against her eyes. Other than his father, Rupert had never had a champion. And now he had this magnificent, uncompromising duke. She felt sure that Quin would never allow the slightest insult against his erstwhile rival.

“Rupert would have been honored to know you,” she said, her voice unsteady despite her best efforts. “And I shall be in that rowboat with you.”

“No.”

“If you do not permit me to accompany you, I will join you a few moments after I strike poor Grooper on the head and swim to shore.”

“No need for that,” Grooper said. He seemed to be enjoying the skirmish. “Never let it be said that I came between a married couple.”

“We are not married,” Quin said, eyes fixed on Olivia.

Grooper shook his head. “And here I thought nobility didn’t have the loose ways o’ the rest of us. You surely fight as if you’d taken the vows.”

“I am an excellent swimmer,” Olivia insisted, ignoring the sergeant’s less-than-helpful comments. She was trying to make a point, but the moment the words left her mouth, and she saw the pain that flashed through Quin’s eyes, she realized she had made a terrible misstep.

She was at his side in an instant, her arms tight around his waist. “I won’t go in the water. I promise I won’t go into the water.” She brushed her lips across his. “If Rupert is still alive, I must be with him. He will recognize me; he has never met you.”

“I’ll bring Lucy with me.”

Olivia knew in her heart of hearts that she had to have her way on this. “You cannot make this decision for me.”

“You won’t be safe.” His voice was ragged . . . raw.

Though they scarcely noticed him, Grooper went up the steps to the deck, gently shutting the door behind him.

“You cannot keep me safe.” She pulled him closer until she could feel his hard chest against her. “I cannot keep you safe either.”

“Damn it, Olivia, these idiots stowed Rupert in a hut under the very noses of a whole garrison of French soldiers. If the Frenchmen were to capture you . . .
no
.”

“They will not capture me,” she said. She felt the knifelike agony in his eyes sink into her own heart. “I didn’t come all the way to France simply to wait in the
Day Dream
.” Then she had an inspiration. “They won’t capture me because I will be with you.”