Sally MacKenzie Bundle (168 page)

“He spends all his time with his nose buried in his books.” His father shook his head. “Hard to believe he’s my son.”

Dolly laughed. “True. If he didn’t look so much like ye at that age—and if his mother wasn’t that cold piece ye married—I’d have my doubts. Well, don’t worry, love, we’ll take care of him. Can’t guarantee that he’ll be the expert his papa is, but at least he’ll know his way around a bed when this night is over.”

“I’m not asking for miracles. Whom do you have in mind?”

Dolly scratched her ear. James was very much afraid that he saw some movement in her elaborate hairstyle. Not lice, too. He desperately wanted to be back in his room with his Cicero.

“Fanny. She’s had years of experience with young cubs. They can be very, um, frustrating, ye know.” Dolly checked the timepiece pinned inside her minimal bodice. “She should be finished with her customer soon. Roland never takes very long. Ah, here she is now.”

James looked up at the couple coming down the stairs. His eyes slid past the balding, paunchy man—and then swung back. He truly was afraid he would puke right there in front of everyone. The maligned Roland was Mr. Richardson, his Greek don.

“Fanny!” Dolly called out. James slumped down and tried to back into a darker shadow. Fortunately it appeared that Richardson was exceedingly drunk. “Fanny, come here.”

Fanny bestowed a farewell pat on Richardson’s rump and slouched over to them. Her eyes immediately fastened on the duke. She was a businesswoman, first and foremost, James surmised. She knew who had the deepest pockets. When Dolly indicated that James was her chosen customer, she shrugged and turned her attention to him. He felt her eyes assess his face, his shoulders, his hips and his groin. He felt naked. His palms began to sweat. His stomach twisted sharply, and he swallowed bile.

Fanny smiled. James’s eyes fastened on her painted lips and rotting teeth.

“Come on, then, dukeling. Fanny will teach ye what ye need to know.”

James looked at his father, sure his eyes rolled like a panicked horse’s, but his father was too busy staring down Dolly’s dress.

“Go along, son. Dolly will keep me entertained, won’t you, m’dear?”

Dolly took his father’s hand and put it on one of her breasts. “Very entertained,” she purred.

Fanny grabbed James’s arm and started pulling him up the stairs. “Don’t be bashful. Fanny gots just what ye need.”

James felt that what Fanny very much needed was a good scrubbing. She smelled of garlic and onions, sweat and Richardson.

Her room was small. The bed took up the main area—the sheets were still rumpled from her work with Richardson. James averted his eyes. A mistake. The walls were decorated with pornographic prints.

“Like the pictures, do ye?”

James turned his eyes back to Fanny. She had made short work of ridding herself of her dress.

She was the first woman James had seen naked. She was probably in her mid-to-late thirties, old enough to be his mother. Her sizable breasts drooped onto her ample stomach. She scratched the matted thatch at the apex of her legs. His face began to sweat and he looked for the chamber pot.
Please, let it be empty,
he thought. He had hopes. That was one scent he had not yet detected in the room. He sidled towards the bed. The chamber pot should be near it.

“Eager, are ye?” Fanny walked toward him. James increased his pace. She laughed. “Ye cubs are all the same. Eager to bed, eager to come. Fanny’ll teach ye how to slow down.”

James thought he saw the pot under the bed. He was almost within reach. He swallowed. If he breathed through his mouth, he wouldn’t smell anything. Maybe his stomach would settle.

“I’ll help ye with yer breeches.” Fanny stepped close in front of him. James watched a large louse navigate an oily brown strand of hair that had fallen over her forehead. She grabbed his crotch and leered up at him.

“How’s that?”

It was too much. The smells of unwashed hair, sweat, sex, and rotting teeth were strong enough for James to taste. He made a dive for the chamber pot. His last coherent thought was a prayer of thanksgiving that it was empty. Then he concentrated on emptying his stomach.

James sat up in his chair, shaking his head to dispel the memory. From the distance of all these years, the scene was almost funny. Fanny had been extremely put out to have a man puking in her room, apparently as a result of her charms. She stormed out to find Dolly and complain. Dolly was entertaining the duke and neither she nor James’s father had been pleased to be interrupted. His father had stalked into Fanny’s room, tucking his shirt in as he came. He had grabbed James by the collar and hauled him down the stairs, out into the blessedly fresh air.

He got up to pour himself some brandy. That evening had been a disaster. Wickam and Landers, the boys who’d seen him, had spread the tale. By the next morning—if not before—Richard had known every detail and had publicly christened him “Monk.”

He watched the brandy tumble into his glass.

But that did not explain why he had become a monk in truth. Why had he lived up to Richard’s stupid nickname? He couldn’t really say. He certainly thought about sex enough. But Dolly and Fanny had given him a bad taste for brothels, and he didn’t much like the notion of using another man’s wife. Plenty of maids and serving wenches had offered to warm his sheets, but taking them seemed wrong, too. He was a duke, a peer. How could he use girls with so little freedom for his personal satisfaction? His duty was to protect his people, not prey on them. And merely because a girl did not live on Alvord land, did that make her any less worthy of his protection?

Truthfully, until he’d seen Sarah in his bed, he had not been seriously tempted.

But Sarah—he wanted her like a starving man wanted food.

He studied the brandy in his glass and added a touch more. He took a sip and held it on his tongue. Nothing could warm the chill he felt at Sarah’s leaving.

This proposed marriage had become more than a rational arrangement. Somehow the dreamy boy he’d been before his trip to the Dancing Piper had been resurrected. That idiot who had believed in love and goodness, honesty and faithfulness was now haunting his body. His heart, which until this moment had done an adequate job of keeping him alive, ached for an intangible pipe dream. For Sarah. For her love.

His fingers convulsed around the stem of the brandy snifter. He thought about throwing it into the fire, about how the glass would shatter and the brandy would make the flames flare. But he would still have this infernal ache.

Carefully, he put the glass down on his desk and went upstairs to bed.

“He wants her.”

Philip Gadner stuck his finger between the pages of Byron’s
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
to mark his place. He leaned back in the leather chair and looked up at Richard.

“Why do you say so? Did he drool down her décolletage?”

“Didn’t he just?” Richard reached for the brandy decanter. “If he hadn’t been in the bloody ballroom, he’d have had her skirts over her head.” He threw the glassful of brandy down his throat.
“Ball
room—ha! That’s exactly what old James wanted—room to ball his American whore.”

“James?” Philip frowned. He could not imagine James losing control of himself. “What exactly did he do?”

“He danced with the whore!” Richard hurled his glass at the fireplace. It exploded against the stone.

“How many times?” If James had been so lost to propriety that he had singled this girl out, then perhaps Richard was right and the situation was indeed serious.

“Once.” Richard shrugged. “He may have danced with her again. I didn’t stay to see.”

“Once!” Philip felt his own anger surge. “For God’s sake, Richard, he only danced with the girl once?”

“Once was enough, damn it.” Richard threw himself into the chair opposite Philip. “I know James, Philip. You know that I do. God, I’ve watched him and studied him my whole bloody life. I saw his face when he danced with her. I’ve never seen him look that way. I tell you, he wants her.”

“Wanting doesn’t necessarily mean marriage.” Philip was thinking quickly. He needed to come up with a plan before Richard did something stupid. “Why not wait and see if he loses interest?”

“He won’t lose interest.” Richard drummed his fingers on the chair arm. “Not in time. He wants her in his bed, and he’ll have her there if I don’t do something soon.”

“But maybe she doesn’t want him. She
is
an American, and Americans hate titles, don’t they? Maybe she doesn’t want to marry a duke.”

Richard reached for the brandy decanter again, but his hand seemed steadier. He poured two glasses this time and offered one to Philip.

“I danced with her. She claims she is not interested in James, but I don’t believe her.” Richard took a long swallow of brandy. “Something’s holding her back, but it’s not lack of interest. I looked at her, too, when she and James were dancing. She wants him. I’d swear it.” He studied the firelight in his brandy glass and smiled. “I may have sown a seed of discontent, however. I told her that James was a rake.”

“James?”

Richard laughed. “You know that’s one explanation of James’s nickname that circulates through society.”

“Yes. So you’ve already dealt with the problem.”

“No.” Richard shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Not definitively. Women are so fickle. They drift with the wind and the wind of James’s desire is going to blow this American into his bed. No, I still think I had better kill the girl.”

Philip leaned forward. “Richard, I promise you if you kill Miss Hamilton, the authorities will not look the other way as they did with the whore at the Green Man. This is London and the girl is the Earl of Westbrooke’s cousin, besides being a friend of the Duke of Alvord—and of Lady Gladys and Lady Amanda Wallen-Smyth.”

“I can handle the situation.”

“No, you can’t. There has to be another way.”

“I can kill James instead.”

“No. We’ve been through that before.” Philip swallowed a large mouthful of brandy. He’d been arguing with Richard against his assassination efforts for months. The man seemed incapable of comprehending the simple fact that, should James die under suspicious circumstances, the authorities would look to Richard as the natural suspect. Who else would benefit from James’s untimely death?

Each time Richard had hired some new accomplice to attempt the deed, Philip had had nightmares. He did not want to see Richard dancing from the end of a rope, nor did he want to join him on the gallows.

“There must be another way to manage this problem.”

Suddenly, Richard grinned. “I could rape the girl. Make it look like she wanted it. James would never take my leavings.”

Philip sat up, his brandy forgotten. He believed—prayed—Richard had more sense than to kill Sarah Hamilton. Rape, however, was a different issue. It would take just a few moments in a darkened garden to accomplish that task.

“No, Richard, don’t do it. James would kill you.”

“James? My little cousin, James?”

“Your little war hero cousin James, lauded in the dispatches for the number of Frogs he sent to their Maker.”

“You worry too much, Philip.”

“You don’t worry enough.” Philip’s mind raced. “If you want to do this, we need to find someone to do it for you.”

“I’m done with using incompetent fools.”

“Yes, but I’ve heard Dunlap is in town.”

“The New York whore trader?”

“The same. He’s competent and ruthless and you have him by the balls.”

“True.” Richard swirled his brandy around his tongue. “Still it would be very pleasant to plow a female James fancied.”

Philip leaned over and put his hand on Richard’s forearm. He couldn’t keep a note of panic from creeping into his voice.

“Please, Richard. Dunlap will get the job done at no risk to you.”

Richard stilled, staring at Philip’s hand on his arm. Philip was afraid Richard would shrug him off. It would hurt, but he had been hurt so much in the last few years, what did another wound matter?

Instead Richard’s other hand came up to rest on Philip’s.

“You really worry about me?” There was a note of vulnerability in his voice that Philip hadn’t heard in a long time. He turned his hand over to grip Richard’s.

“I do.”

Richard kept his head lowered, staring at their clasped hands. “After all I’ve done to you?”

Philip squeezed Richard’s hand. “Yes,” he said. “I love you.”

Richard looked up. His face was strained, his eyes bleak. “Show me, Philip. Please.”

It was the invitation that Philip had been waiting months—years—to hear. “Of course.”

“Richard Runyon’s here to see ye.”

“Shit!” William Dunlap leaned back from his ledger books, pushing his chestnut hair out of his eyes. “What the hell does he want?”

“Damned if I know.” Belle LaRue, the madam of this particular establishment and Dunlap’s occasional mistress, frowned. “He’s not a regular here, I can tell ye that. Came once and mauled Gilly pretty bad. Had to have the surgeon see to her.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” The Rutting Stallion, being on the Thames, was one of Dunlap’s rougher whorehouses, but Runyon could be meaner than any seaman or docker. Dunlap sighed and stood. “I’d better see him. The sooner I find out what he wants, the sooner we’ll be rid of him. Where’d you stow him?”

“In the red parlor. Figured ye didn’t want anyone else to see him.”

“Exactly right, love.” Dunlap put an arm around Belle’s ample waist and took a kiss. He liked his women big, with wide fleshy hips, lovely soft bellies and thighs, and tits a man could lose himself in. His boys he liked young and skinny. Contrast, he thought as he opened the door to the red parlor, was the spice of life.

And Runyon was the rot. Dunlap had dealt with some pretty awful characters in his line of work, but Runyon was one of the worst. He took a moment to observe him.

Runyon stood by the window, peering out between the heavy red drapes. The weak morning light did not soften the sharp angles of his nose and cheekbones, nor warm his cold blue eyes. Runyon always had a whiff of madness about him, but Dunlap sensed he was closer to the brink since last he’d had the unpleasant occasion to be in his presence.