The Tattooed Duke (17 page)

Chloroform could be fatal. He fervently hoped this was not the case.

“What do you want to do with this one?” Harlan asked from across the alley.

“Kill him.”

“Really? Because I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask him,” Harlan said coolly. “Namely, what business he has with our little housemaid.”

“All right, take him back, then. It’s probably time you lost that sling, since you’ll need both arms for a beast like that one. I’ll have my arms full with her.”

“Pity. I was enjoying the ruse. The maids were so much more obliging because of it,” Harlan remarked. Then he removed the sling, used it to bind the wrists of their captive, and proceeded to haul him out to the street. He paused.

“Your Graceness, it’s going to be a trick getting these two back on our horses. Don’t think there’s any way to be discreet about it.”

Wycliff swore. The last thing he needed was to be spotted removing an unconscious female from a dark alley. His one-eyed friend Harlan hauling the bruised and bloodied body of a street thug wouldn’t appear much better.

“We could wait until nightfall,” Harlan suggested. “Employ the cover of darkness . . .”

“Harlan, it is a good five hours before it grows dark. I for one am not about to sit around in this squalid alley with that stinking creature. And Eliza needs to be taken home immediately.”

“Eliza.” Harlan lifted his brow, curious.

“What’s your point?”

“Ties.” And that was all he needed to say to explain everything.

“Speaking of ties, your captive is waking up and undoing his.”

“Bloody hell,” Harlan swore, and turned to bind the man tighter.

Resolutely, Wycliff strode to the mouth of the alley, flashed some coin and obtained help—no questions asked—and hired a hack to transport his quarry back to Wycliff House.

When he clasped Eliza, drawing her into his arms, a knife fell from her hand. It was one he recognized, because it was one of his. Time stopped for a moment, as he put two and two together. Housemaids did not carry knives upon their person just because. Eliza had a reason. And he didn’t know what it was.

Why did that
hurt
?

There was no way around it: people stopped and stared to watch the Tattooed Duke in the flesh carry out an unknown limp female body from a dark alley. Murmurs erupted in the crowd, though no one moved to stop him. When Harlan followed, urging a now conscious but resistant man, bound and gagged, the din of the crowd grew louder.

It was the sound of everyone assuming the worst.

Of stories being blown out of proportion.

Of rumors starting and accumulating impossible details at such a dizzying pace that within an hour strangers would be saying the Tattooed Duke had murdered a man with his bare hands, in cold blood, in the bright light of day while the man pleaded for his life and the duke laughed wickedly.

Wycliff kept his head high. He dared them, with a look, to keep at bay. They could talk—fine. But they must not get in the way of his returning Eliza to safety, so he could care for her.

Holding her in his arms, he climbed into the carriage. His heart beat hard with not one, but two truths.

She kept secrets from him.

And he was falling in love with her.

Chapter 32

Discovery

U
pon their return, Wycliff barked orders to the staff: tie up this cretin and lock him in the basement, draw a bath, brew tea, prepare his bedchamber for her, and above all move faster, dammit. In the back of his mind he could imagine Eliza pertly commenting that he was perfectly demonstrating how to act like a powerful, commanding aristocrat.

But it wasn’t an act: He was the lord of the manor and his lady had been injured.

Wycliff carried her up the stairs to his bedchamber, straight to his bed.

Eliza. In his bed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

He lay her down gently, atop the blankets.

Why had she taken one of his knives?

Clearly, she had anticipated the attack. She wasn’t a brazen thief, excited by the thrill of pilfering from others. She would have taken one of the nicer ones, then. No, Eliza must have been in trouble and she hadn’t confided in him. He frowned, because that bothered him tremendously.

He had confided in her, and she had not even alluded to problems of her own. But had he ever asked? No, because he’d been trying to see her only as a servant—not a woman with a history and thoughts and feelings. And now he’d failed at that by going and falling for her, yet he did not know anything about her, really.

Next, her plain gray woolen dress was carefully peeled off. Jenny helped while the footmen brought up hot water for the bath.

“What should I do with this, Your Grace?” Jenny asked, holding up the dress. It was dirty and bad things had happened to it. Off to the fire it ought to go, he told her, and he would buy her new gowns. Pretty ones. He’d find the money.

Her muslin underthings were plain, white, pristine.

For days, for weeks, Wycliff had fantasized about seeing her in a state of undress. For all their kisses, he’d only caught a glimpse here or there. He hadn’t seen her uncovered and unadorned. He had imagined it, at length and in great detail. But not like this.

Frankly, he didn’t even want to go further. When he saw her pure and naked for the first time, he wanted it to be in the throes of passion, and part of a grand seduction. Not like this.

Wycliff traced his finger along the edge of her bodice, wishing this moment were different, with her awake, eyes bright with passion, lips parted slightly awaiting his kiss.

His finger caught on something tucked into her bodice.

She moved, slightly, and her lips moved, too, though she was still in a slumber.

In that little wriggle Wycliff heard the unmistakable sound of a sheet of paper trapped in the bodice. He learned that from bedrooms and boudoirs from London to Zanzibar.

“I never said I was a gentleman,” he told her.

Eliza did not respond because she was unconscious. The lady did not protest when he extricated a folded page from her corset. Then he unfolded it and began to read.

The Tattooed Duke

In the wilder days of his youth, Wycliff had climbed a gnarly old oak tree with branches that conveniently brushed against a certain lady’s bedchamber on the second floor. He’d slipped, thanks to the wine that suggested this was a good idea. When his body hit the ground, it knocked his breath out and his world went black. He felt like that now.

He couldn’t breathe for a minute as the full force of these damning words hit him.

Eliza lay before him, blue eyes closed, lips parted, skin too pale. She wasn’t talking. She didn’t need to.

The Tattooed Duke by W.G. Meadows

Eliza Fielding = Writing Girl Meadows. Fielding, like meadows. How obvious.

It made perfect sense. What a thick-headed idiot he’d been not to suspect.

No, he had suspected. The thought had crossed his mind once or twice and he’d ignored it, simply because he wished it wasn’t true. The things he had told her . . .

Everything.

Everything.

For a minute he ceased to breath. It seemed his heart ceased to beat. For all he knew, the earth ceased to spin and the sun quit shining. This was betrayal.

All those hours on the roof when he had confided in her—when he told her things he’d never said aloud before, could never imagine voicing to another person. He had trusted her with his hopes and plans she had gone and written for Londoners to feast upon.

He had thought her naught but a housemaid, when she was, in fact, one of those damned Writing Girls.

Wycliff felt the hot flush of a fool, and then the scorching fire of anger.

She had lied to him, to his face. She lied, and then she kissed him. He recalled the time they had categorized insects together and he thought she couldn’t write. And the time on the roof when he noted her way with words and Eliza only smiled. She must think him a fool. And to think, he’d been on the verge of falling in love with her.

Wycliff laughed bitterly from where he sat at her bedside, then Wycliff continued to read.

Two households, both alike in indignity?

He scowled.

The debaucherous past of the Wicked Wycliffs is well known. The scandalous past of Lady Shackley has been detailed in the gossip pages. Something is brewing between them.

Wycliff swore. He gazed at her now, through the narrowed eyes of an angry, suspicious man. She lay in his bed, nearly lifeless. He’d kissed that pale pink pout of a mouth that had lied to him. That pink mouth had turned away from his, too, which now made a certain amount of sense. How could she kiss her subject?

Why did she have to draw the line
there
?

Unless this
something
was one-sided—his side—and her interest went only as far as what could be printed. It didn’t go to her heart.

Wycliff began to burn, smoldering with a potent mixture of mortification and rage and, yes, heartache. He had fallen for her. She’d betrayed him every step of the way. Nevertheless, he continued to read. How could he not?

Yet the duke is not a man to be constrained, not when there is a wide world of adventures awaiting him.

So she listened to him, he thought with a scoff. That was some small crumb of consolation.

He has sunk French ships, battled and outwitted cannibals, survived shipwrecks. As he traveled, he did more than slaughter and whore his way across continents—he kept detailed records and collected specimens of various flora, fauna, and (shudder) insects, all for the advancement of Science. The duke would not just claim a territory like Timbuktu, he would know it and return all of its secrets to England.

As Wycliff read these words, he experienced queer twinges in his chest. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought it the feeling of his heart breaking.

This wasn’t the usual rubbish W.G. Meadows—Eliza—wrote each week. She was attempting to build him up in the press after weeks of tearing him down. It was a boring column. But it was full of praise.

Eliza showed no change, no sign of life. Her skin was a ghostly pale. Her breath was faint. She did not look like a traitor or a spy or evil. In fact, she looked like nothing more than a pretty young girl.

The footmen were taking forever with the bathwater. Jenny was probably snogging Thomas the footman in the hall.

Time moved slowly, it seemed, when one’s world was cracking and disintegrating. This paper in his hands wasn’t what he had expected. He didn’t know heads from tales anymore.

Wycliff continued to read: rubbish about him and Lady Shackley and some outrageous yarns Harlan was known to spin to impress women.

He read it all the way to the end, and then again, and again and again. Not once was there mention of the one thing that would have the ton in a collective fit of hysterics: the child.

Eliza had taken his wages, shared his wine, his roof, and nearly shared his bed. But she had lied to him, deceived him, and must have thought him a fool the whole time. While he panted over his housemaid and gave her every consideration, she’d just been taunting him with her feminine wiles. For his secrets.

Good God, he wanted to throttle her. But then he remembered—with a rush of something like relief or excitement or hope—if the Earl of Alvanley was to be trusted, Eliza was worth ten thousand pounds. He needed money. He held proof in his hands.

And she wasn’t the only one who could use seduction to obtain secrets.

With great care, Wycliff folded the page along the same lines.

Jenny returned, ready to give her a bath.

Wycliff decided he would feign ignorance of Eliza’s secret . . . until he learned all of hers. Why had she taken the knife? Did she know her attacker? What happened in Brighton?

These things he wished to know, and he deserved to know.

And then he would turn her in to Lord Alvanley, take the money and set sail for Timbuktu, leaving behind that ocean-eyed beauty with whom he’d
almost
fallen in love.

Chapter 33

Awakening

W
hen she woke a few hours later, Eliza fervently wished she had not. Her mouth was dry, as if she’d slept with cotton scraps stuffed in her cheeks. Her head throbbed viciously. Moving her arms to rub her temples required strength she simply did not possess.

She drifted off again, awakening to the soft, muted light of morning. The duke sat on a chair beside her bed.
His
bed.

Her room was a narrow garret in the attic, with one small pane of glass and a narrow cot. There was no room for a man in a maid’s bedchamber. This was most certainly not her room, or her bed. It belonged to the duke.

Her eyes widened in alarm and she opened her mouth, but no sound came out. What was she doing here? What had happened to her?

Wycliff helped her to a seated position—moving was excruciating and nearly impossible on her own. He even fluffed the pillows behind her for support. He cradled her head in his large, open palms and held a cool glass of water to her lips. She drank thirstily.

As she did, her senses and her memory returned. Realizations dawned upon her, like the sun rising to illuminate awful truths that the night had kept hidden. As her awareness brightened, so did the blood in her veins turn cold.

The last thing she recalled was that devil, Liam. They had been in the alley . . .

What was she doing in the alley?

Escape. Why had she been out and about?

The London Weekly’
s usual meeting. Yes, the meeting where Knightly had cruelly rejected her writing and callously handed it back to her
in front of everyone.
The pitying glances of Grenville, the other Writing Girls and the other writers. And then she had been dismissed.

She choked on a sip of water as the truths burst upon her like a firing squad given the command to shoot.

The page that contained her column had been folded and pressed into her bodice. Where was it now? She wished to reach up and check, but she did not possess the strength and she could not give him ideas. And Wycliff was watching her.
He couldn’t know. . . .

Eliza sank back into the pillows, willing herself to faint for the first time in her life. Willing the earth to open up and swallow her whole. Willing herself to fall asleep and wake again, in another time and place. But this moment was real, and she had to live it and all the ones that followed.

What did Wycliff know?

If she had been out there and now she was here, something must have happened. But what? And how had she made it home? And when did she begin to think of Wycliff House as home?

All these questions burned upon her lips. It mattered not that she was incapable of voicing them; she most certainly would not like the answers. Instead she was left to wonder
What now?
in mute, punishing silence.

“How are you feeling?” Wycliff asked.

Like a liar. A thief. A criminal. A sinner. An utter wretch.

She was glad she could not speak.

Instead of answering, she looked closely at him, taking note of dark circles around his eyes, inadvertently confessing to a lack of sleep. Had he been worried? Or furious?

Eliza glanced around for signs of his rage—shattered glass, empty brandy glasses, broken furniture—but there was nothing to suggest his anger. Except, perhaps, a tension in his unshaven jaw and a hardness in his gaze.

Yesterday she’d seen the heat of passion in his deep brown eyes, for her.

She managed to croak the words “What happened?” She might have been asking about whatever horrible situation she’d encountered yesterday, but her heart wished to know what had caused the heat to vanish from her eyes. She felt cold without it.

“It seems you were attacked, Eliza,” he replied, and there was a world of sensation in the way he drawled out the syllables of her name, as if he doubted them, or tested each one for its veracity. Funny how his doubt hurt. But she deserved it.

“Oh,” she whispered. She could remember that, mostly. But that didn’t explain anything.

At the moment, she would have given anything to know what the duke knew. But to ask was to admit that there was, in fact, something worth knowing. It was a risk she dared not take.

“I shall leave you to rest now,” he said. “And then I have questions for you later.”

Later

I
t turned out that by
later
the duke meant not the following day or evening, but even later than that.
Later
meant that Eliza suffered through two days on tenterhooks, desperately trying to glean any information from him.

In that time, as the minutes passed, she had dusted, drawn baths, cleaned bedchambers, and performed other chores while wondering what lay behind that locked door. And now, as she swept the great foyer, she wondered . . .

What did he know?

The question burned in her belly. The questions buzzed around her head like mosquitoes, always humming and nagging and never letting her forget. She had learned from Mrs. Buxby that the duke had brought her unconscious self back to Wycliff House: “Carried ya in his arms like a princess, he did. All hollering and stomping and commanding and the like.”

She assumed Liam had gotten to her. Evil, hateful man! But why had the duke been there to rescue her? This troubled Eliza enormously.

She made short, swift motions with the broom, gathering all the dirt from the marble floor.

He had to know.

Did he care for her? Perhaps, but did he care enough to overlook her deceit? No, they had shared naught but a kiss or two—though kisses that set her soul aflame. They had shared plenty of conversations, small intimate touches and smoldering gazes. They had
something
between them, something more than a man and his maid.

But it seemed that
something
was gone. Wycliff now locked himself in his mystery room, avoiding her entirely.

Fair enough; she had ruined his life with her writings. If love strong enough to overcome that existed on God’s green earth, then she did not know of it.

And yet, nothing soothed her like immersing herself in the vexations and drama of others. That, and sweeping. That, and she had a column to
rewrite.
Mrs. Buxby, Harlan, and ample amounts of whiskey-tea provided some intelligence that was more scandalous and salacious than her attempt to portray the duke’s noble deeds. Unfortunately, she simply didn’t have the time to set pen to paper. Someone asked for this and rang for that and there was one errand or chore after another. Still not fully recovered from her attack, at night she collapsed into a dreamless slumber.

With horror, Eliza watched the moments fly by until she knew it was too late. The paper would be at the presses, and it would be the end of her career as a Writing Girl. First, the rejection of something poorly written, and now the plain failure to write
anything.

She pushed hard on the broom and her neat little dust piles went flying into the air, scattering and falling, and awaiting her broom again.

Even now, two days later, Eliza’s cheeks flamed hot at the recollection of Knightly handing her column back to her in front of all the other
Weekly
writers. It had never been done! Mortifying did not begin to describe it. Perhaps she had not been attacked—perhaps she had merely fainted with embarrassment.

But no, the memory of that altercation was scratched hard into her memory, like rude comments carved into pub tables by drunken wretches. Liam’s cold blue eyes and the pound, pound, pounding of her heart, and the sickly sweet smell of the chloroform—these things she now remembered clearly.

The soft swish of the broom’s straw against marble was constant and swift. Perhaps it was not a matter of what the duke knew, but what she would confess to.

She could never have the duke as her own, never be with him. Some things were never meant to be. Perhaps, if there had been even the most remote chance that she could allow her heart to feel fully without fear, if there was a speck of opportunity for them to be together . . . then she might tell him the truth and hope for his love and forgiveness.

Swish, swish, swish.

She might even confess . . .

But he could not have her, would not have her . . . thus she, as ever, would need to make her own way in the world. Eliza rationalized that it was a matter of a roof above her head, food in her belly, and clothes on her body.

That reminded her of the ten thousand pound bounty on her head. Ten thousand pounds could set her up for life. Ten thousand pounds could send the duke and his envoy to Timbuktu, and back, in gold-plated ships. Ten thousand pounds could restore the Wycliff coffers—and all without His Grace needing to chain himself to Hades’ Own Harpy, Lady Althea.

Swish, swish, swish. . .

The soft tinkle of the servant’s bell cut through the foyer. Footsteps approached.

The duke wished to see Eliza.