The Tattooed Duke (10 page)

“I’m an ass,” he said flatly, suddenly realizing that he was complaining about wealth and privilege to a housemaid. “Please accept my sincere apologies.”

“Very well,” she said, to be agreeable, and because her point had been made.

“I’d take you to a ball, but you wouldn’t want to go with the likes of me,” Wycliff told her, taking the broom from her and setting it against the wall.

“Instead . . . Eliza, would you care for a waltz?” he asked, sweeping into a grand bow before her. She gave a little laugh. Fancy that, a duke, requesting a dance with her, a mere housemaid as far as he knew.

“Now?” She laughed nervously again.

“Is there somewhere else you need to be?” Wycliff asked, obviously expecting the answer to be no. She was his servant, and expected to be at his beck and call every moment of the day. What other business could she possibly have, other than his?

She was immensely glad for the lessons from Sophie and Julianna, because this was an offer a girl was mad to refuse.

Wycliff pulled her against him, pressed his large, warm open palm into the small of her back and clasped her hand in his. He tilted his head down so they could see eye-to-eye. His brown eyes, dark, with a spark of mystery and mischief.

“Are you ready?” he asked with the velvety smooth voice of a practiced rogue.

Before she could say yes or no, he swept them into a waltz around the gallery floor. There was no music, but they didn’t need it.
One, two, three. . .

The duke waltzed her around a settee covered in a white sheet, and then around a table and set of chairs, also covered, and then she stopped paying attention to her surroundings.
One, two, three. . .

His shirt was open at the neck. She looked at his exposed sun-browned skin and was struck by the urge to press her lips to it and taste him. She bit down on her lower lip instead.

And then she made the mistake of closing her eyes.

She felt his touch more intensely—the heat from his skin and the possessiveness of his grasp. She breathed in his scent—just plain soap and whiskey and something indescribably him that made her light-headed in a lovely way. She dared to imagine that she was not a housemaid, or the writer betraying him, but a woman he could love passionately.

When she opened her eyes, Eliza saw a hungry look in the duke’s dark eyes. She felt it, from the sudden flight of butterflies in her belly to the ever quickening of her pulse.

She stood corrected: a waltz with Wycliff was an offer a girl was mad to accept because . . . she might do stupid things like think he wanted her. Or that she could have him.

They waltzed on, with no sound other than their footsteps and the thudding of her heart. She heard the duke’s breath catch and then they stopped suddenly. She stumbled into his hard, tattooed chest, and his arm clasped her against him protectively.

“Your Grace,” Saddler intoned. Eliza dared a glance at him and saw that his face dripped with disapproval. Weren’t butlers supposed to maintain a stony, inscrutable expression at all times?

“An urgent missive has arrived for you, Your Grace. From Lady Shackley.”

Chapter 19

A Visit from Mr. Monroe Burke

The library, late

W
ycliff stood with his hands clasped behind his back, glaring out the window. Harlan sprawled in a chair, smoking a cheroot. A card game lay abandoned, for they had a caller. Wycliff had been winning.

“Mr. Burke,” Saddler intoned before vanishing just as silently as he appeared. Wycliff thought of refusing to see him but he was too curious.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” Burke asked, sauntering in. He had called, uninvited. Presumably gloating was on the agenda.

“The thought did cross my mind that a gentleman would,” Wycliff said, turning from the window to face his traitorous friend. “Then the newspapers reminded me that I was not a gentleman. So no, I don’t think I will congratulate you.”

“Oh, come now, Wycliff. Don’t be a sore loser.” Burke attempted a laugh that fell flat. Harlan exhaled a gray slip of smoke.

Wycliff stepped forward and said, bitterly, “I had thought you were a friend.”

“You thought you were the only adventurer with his sights set on Timbuktu? With that offer of ten thousand pounds, everyone and their mother is angling to go.”

“I hadn’t realized it was in
your
sights. But then, it’s not as if we had discussed
my
plans for my trip. Extensively. In detail. Over the course of months.” They had done exactly that. From his seat, Harlan nodded in agreement.

The voyage from Tahiti to London was a long one, and the three of them had shared meals, drinks, card games, and smoked together under the brilliantly starry skies over the ocean. And they had talked. That Wycliff intended to be the first to arrive at Timbuktu and return had been a subject of many conversations. As had the details—the routes to take, the supplies required, languages, strategy, customs, tribes one would encounter. Burke had taken this knowledge and this dream.

The thief.

“Yes, we did talk about Timbuktu. On
my
ship,” Burke added, leaning against the mantel and looking pointedly at the decanter of brandy that Wycliff purposely had not offered to his guest.

“Your point?” Wycliff challenged.

“I am the one with a ship. A crew. Experience,” Burke said, and when Wycliff opened his mouth to protest, Burke kept going. “Experience
leading.
You skipped from here to there, frolicking and debauching, one thing to another with no determined course of action, and responsible for no one but yourself.”

“You’ve been reading the papers, too,” Wycliff said, strolling over to the sideboard to pour himself a drink. He did not offer any to Burke.

“I was there, Wycliff. I saw and heard more than I cared to.”

“Funny how that detail—
you
up to your neck in debauchery with
me
—never makes it to print.” Perhaps he could make it happen by bringing it to Knightly’s attention. Now that was a letter to the editor he would like to write. He smiled bitterly at the thought.

“Yes, but who would believe it, to look at me?” Burke asked, looking every inch the perfect, polite gentleman who was on time for church, decorous to women, and never indulged in vices.

“You look like a stuffed-up prig,” Harlan chimed in.

“Exactly,” Burke beamed.

“Duplicitous. On so many counts,” Wycliff remarked. He sipped his brandy and made a great show of savoring it. Burke scowled.

“You weren’t going to be funded anyway, and for reasons that have nothing to do with me,” Burke pointed out. To what purpose other than to rankle, Wycliff knew not.

“I don’t find that remotely consoling. However, I hope it assuages your guilt. Which, needlessly to say, I hope is eating you alive.”

“This conversation is proceeding exactly as I expected it would,” Burke said calmly, but color was rising on his cheeks.

“It’s the money, is it not? The lure of ten thousand pounds has you ready to throw your old friend under the carriage wheels. What do you even need the funds for? Is your father no longer paying your bills? Do you have secret gaming debts that your captain’s salary won’t cover? ”

“I would like to marry.” He said this quietly, in such a painfully honorable manner that it simply annoyed Wycliff more than anything.

“Ah, a noble quest to win a lady’s hand,” he remarked dryly. There was nothing worse than a deceitful friend, except one who deceived for a noble reason like love.

Burke shrugged. “That, and to be in a position to afford her.”

“Who is she?” He had to ask. There was no way he could not ask.

“She is my reason for everything. My north star. My secret,” Burke answered.

Wycliff rolled his eyes. For some reason, he thought of Eliza, and downed the rest of his drink.

“I see that you are in no mood to converse about this—” Burke said shortly.

“I am shocked you thought I would be,” Wycliff stated dryly.

“My expedition will leave in a fortnight. I will need a crew,” Burke said, with a pointed look at Harlan, and then his gaze settled on Wycliff.

“You’ve come to the wrong place, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Wycliff told him.

“Then I’d better be on my way,” Burke replied evenly. He took his leave, and Wycliff loudly wished him the
best
of luck as he quit the library.

“So the trip is off?” Harlan asked, still puffing away at his cheroot.

“No. I will find another way,” Wycliff said, scowling. “There is always another way.”

His glance fell on his desk. Particularly on a certain letter amidst all the maps, travel accounts, drawings, and account books. It was from Lady Shackley. The lovely, lively, and evil Lady Althea Shackley. Temptation called like a siren song.

“I hope you think of something, because all I can think of is resorting to highway robbery,” Harlan said. It wasn’t the worst idea ever. But Wycliff had a better one. The siren song tugged at his heart, his brain.

“Or marrying money,” Wycliff said.

“I’m not really the marrying kind,” Harlan said flatly.

“I could be. Especially if I shall be spending the honeymoon en route to Timbuktu. Sans bride.”

“How are you going to go about getting a rich bride, given your reputation? If the old windbags at the Royal Society are gossiping about you, just imagine the chits in this town. Their jaws must be hurting,” Harlan said with a naughty pause, “from all the talk.”

Wycliff grinned. The letter from Althea was just there on his desk, requesting that he call upon her.

“Your concern for my reputation and marriageability makes you sound remarkably like Basil. But this title has to be good for something. Surely one could overlook my unsavory, scandalous aspects for the prospect of being a duchess.”

“I think we need Basil’s help. Where is he now, when we could use him?”

“Likely at his club losing vast sums of money at card games. But we needn’t call him in just yet,” Wycliff said. There was another option. A risky, dangerous possibility. One that had worked before. He held up the letter. “Shackley money?”

N
ever, in the history of the world, had a doorknob been so thoroughly polished. Never, since the flood, had a spot of earth been so meticulously dusted, cleaned, shined, and otherwise tended to. Eliza stood outside the library door, conveniently left ever so slightly ajar, cleaned and eavesdropped. Shamelessly.

It was almost too easy.

She saw an opportunity for her column to make amends. Or possibly avenge the duke. Or perhaps she might throw a wrench in his plans to marry Lady Shackley.
Why
did that affect her so strongly? It made her stomach positively knot up.

Her heart hurt for him, with all of these setbacks: first the Royal Society’s rejection, and now Burke’s usurpation. The staff gossiped during the late hours in which he wrote papers detailing the cultures and customs he had encountered, among other things—and all the late hours in which she was unable to sneak back into the library to illicitly read his journals. All the hours he spent cataloguing the strange items he’d brought back. The sunny afternoons when he stayed inside with his account books, determining what could be sold to raise money to cover the estate’s debts—ones not even of his own making, but his cross to bear nevertheless. And the blasted hours he was locked away in that room . . . doing what?

Her efforts at lock picking had been unsuccessful. As much as the duke confided in her, he did not take her beyond that threshold. It was one of the thoughts that kept her up at night. She didn’t dare sneak out again, not after that kiss that awakened all sorts of desires and feelings that did nothing but complicate matters.

Eliza knew, too, that he often escaped to the roof after hours to look for stars and breathe in the cool night air. It tortured her: should she go to him? Sometimes she did. Should she stay away? Absolutely—that way lay danger in so many ways.

Would he knock on her door? She hoped not, as often she, too, saw the far side of midnight. Her column didn’t write itself, and “writing scandal-mongering newspaper columns” was never listed among her duties as housemaid.

But the truth was: she wanted him to knock on her bedchamber door. She wanted it with an intensity that was unbecoming in a lady. She feared it and craved it in the same breath. It came down to one thing, really.

She wanted to be near him, with him. So long as she could write her column, she could stay here. The minute her disguise was revealed, it was back out on to the streets of London, and the loss of the story that made her writing career.

It made sense to her in an odd, tortured way. Because she craved him, she had to betray him. And yet . . . perhaps she could use her column for his benefit instead. Burke and the Royal Society ought to brace themselves, she thought.

Especially if the duke was thinking long and hard about Shackley money. Particularly, marrying it. This affected Eliza in a most peculiar manner: her stomach literally ached at the prospect and she dared not examine why.

Later that evening, she feverishly composed another installment of “The Tattooed Duke.” She wrote with half a mind to salvage his reputation. She wrote with jealously of Lady Althea gnawing at her heart. She wrote, desperate to hang onto her position at
The Weekly
and desperate to stay in the duke’s employ. She wrote as if she might somehow make him forgive her this betrayal and possibly love her. She wrote, eager to again experience that sweet triumph of success, and dizzy at the prospect of more. She wrote as if the words
scandal equals sales
were tattooed across her heart.