The Duke's Dilemma (17 page)

It was obvious she recognized the runner as-an old acquaintance, and once she’d accepted the coins he dropped in her outstretched hand, she led them down a grimy hallway and stopped before one of a long row of doors.

While Jared watched, she pushed open the door, revealing a young woman in a flimsy pink wrapper sitting on an unmade bed. Her hands were folded in her lap, her eyes downcast, her rich brown hair cascading about her shoulders like a heavy mantle.

“Emily?” Jared stepped forward, his heart thudding against his ribs.

The girl raised her head and stared at him through eyes utterly devoid of expression. “My name is Mary, sir,” she said dully, but I can be Emily just as well, if it will please you.”

Jared drew a deep breath as relief surged through him. Turning to Haggerty, he shook his head. “She is not the one we seek.”

He returned his gaze to the girl, who still stared at him with her great, sad eyes. “But hell and damnation, I can’t leave her here. She’ s no more than a child.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice, your grace,” Haggerty said with a chilling lack of compassion. “It’s too late; the chit’s been here a fortnight. She’ s already ruined.”

Ruined! The very word the old woman had used to describe Emily.
“The devil she is,” Jared said, clenching his fists to keep from wringing the runner’s neck. He turned to the girl, whose small,
heart-shaped face had suddenly come alive. “Are you willing to do an honest day’s work to support yourself?” he asked
“I’ll do anything,” she declared fervently. “Anything but this.”

“Very well then. Put on your clothes and come with me. I’ll send you to Brynhaven, my estate some twenty miles from London. The staff is large enough so one more maid will never be noticed. “

He smiled kindly at the girl who had leapt to her feet and was busy scrambling into a nondescript brown frock much like the one Emily had worn the first time he’d seen her. “I’ll give you a note to carry to my housekeeper. She’s a good woman. She’ll work you hard but she’ll treat you fairly.”

“Think what you’re doing, your grace,” Haggerty warned. “You can’t just walk out of here with her. She’s probably in debt to the house; the girls always are, and don’t think that fat old woman listening at the door don’t have a team of bully boys ready to see she pays up. You know the way of things down here in the Stews, even if it ain’t your bailiwick. How far do you think you’ll get with such as them at your heels?”

“I’m taking the girl,” Jared said stubbornly, shoving a wad of pound notes into the runner’s hands. “Pay the procuress whatever it takes to buy her out of this hell hole.”

It was an illogical thing to do; the girl was nothing to him. She was just one of the great multitude of prostitutes who filled London’s brothels or walked London’s streets. But she did resemble Emily a little, and somehow he couldn’t just walk out and leave the sad-eyed child to wait for a parade of unwashed, unfeeling men to defile her.

Odd. He’d never before given a thought to the kind of life a prostitute led. Possibly because he’d never frequented brothels—not even the select ones so many of his acquaintances used. He’d always preferred to keep a mistress under his protection to serve his needs.

He thought about it now—and about all the poor creatures who, like Mary, waited out their dismal lives in such dismal rooms—until they were too old or too ill to wait any longer.

He found himself wondering how many of them had been forced into the profession because some titled member of the ton had betrayed them as he’d betrayed Emily.

By Friday, Jared was at his wit’s end. Night after night he’d walked the streets hoping, by some miracle, to find Emily. It was, he knew, a useless exercise in frustration. Still, it was preferable to lying awake wondering where she was or worse yet, to dropping off to sleep.

For on the rare occasions when he closed his eyes, he had the same recurring nightmare of the cold waters of the Thames washing over her pale, lifeless face.

The last thing he felt like doing was attending the opera tonight. But he was obligated. He was, after all, the one who had persuaded Catalani to perform, and the funds raised would benefit the poor devils who lay maimed and dying in the Duke of York Military Hospital. He’d invited his longtime mistress, Lady Carolyn Crawley, to share his box because she would no longer be sharing his life.

For he couldn’t bring himself to touch her and doubted that he would ever be able to do so again. In fact, there were times when he found himself wondering if he would ever again desire any woman if Emily were lost to him.

He would give Carolyn her
congé
tonight along with a very expensive gift. For she had been his friend as well as his lover for the past six years, and he owed her that much. Then he would return home and ‘drink himself into mindless oblivion.

The note came while his valet was dressing him for the evening. It was on the cheapest kind of paper and he instantly recognized the scrawling, almost illegible, handwriting.

I think I have a lead on Miss Haliburton. Highpockets Harry, a cutpurse who, works the King’s Theatre area, bumped into a lady of her description on the street the night you mentioned. Saw some fancy dressed toff take her up in his curricle. Don’t yet know who he was, but I promise you I will soon. At least it is better than the Thames. — Haggarty

Jared was torn between a staggering sense of relief and a monumental wave of anger and jealousy so intense it emptied his lungs of air and left him breathing so hard, his frantic valet started burning feathers and plying him with hartshorn as if he were some dowager with a fit of the vapors.

He had half a mind to organize an army of servants to knock on every door in fashionable London until he located her. For he knew his Emily. She would feel so indebted to the lecherous Corinthian who had saved her from the horror of the streets, she would get all. weepy and emotional. And a weepy, emotional Emily was a vulnerable Emily.

But by all that was holy, it would be pistols at dawn if the blighter dared to lay a hand on the future Duchess of Montford.

CHAPTER. FIFTEEN

“S
o it is farewell then, your grace?”

Even in the dim interior of his carriage, Jared could see the bitter twist to Lady Carolyn Crawley’s lovely mouth as she fastened the exquisite emerald earrings to her earlobes. “You will note I wore my emerald necklace in expectation of your parting gift.”.

Jared sighed. “You know me well, Carolyn.”

“So I thought. But it seems I was mistaken. If there is any credence to. the gossip running rampant throughout the
ton
. You didn’t really ravage that girl, did you? I cannot imagine I was so mistaken in you.”

“No, of course not. But I might as well have. I put her in such a compromising position, her reputation is”-—he choked on the word—“ruined. I must find her, wherever she is, and offer for her.”

“And what of my reputation?” she asked somewhat petulantly. “Everyone in London knows I have been your mistress these past six years.”

“And the Earl of Skiffington’s mistress before me and Lord Falkener’s before him.”

“Enough! You have made your point.” She laughed softly, ruefully. “What a black-hearted devil you are. I cannot think how I came to fall in love with you.”

Jared raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I was not aware love was ever a part of our arrangement, my lady.”

“Of course you weren’t. How could I tell you how I felt when every time the subject came up, you declared love was simply a term coined by hypocrites to pretty up their natural lust.”

Jared searched the face of the woman whose body he knew as intimately as his own and wondered how he could have failed to realize he knew nothing of her heart or mind. “I am sorry,” he said gently. “I would never intentionally cause you pain.”

” I have survived pain before. I shall survive it again.” She tossed her head of gleaming, golden curls. “And don ‘t you dare pity me, for that I could not bear. I shall have no difficulty finding another protector; the wealthiest men of the
ton
will be standing in line to take up where the Duke of Montford left off.”

“That will not be necessary, my dear. I have put the Kensington house in your name and made arrangements for a quarterly allowance to cease only upon your death. With a little clever maneuvering, you should be able to move into a more acceptable level of society. God knows at least half the so-called proper matrons of the
ton
have pasts more colorful than yours.”

He turned to stare out the window at the passing scene, avoiding her eyes. “You have given me many good years, and I care too much about you to live with the thought of your having to sell yourself merely to survive.”

“You care about me?” Lady Crawley looked genuinely surprised. “I would never have guessed.”

Now it was Jared’s turn to be surprised. “My God, Carolyn, we have been bed partners for six years. How could you think I had no feeling for you? I have always considered you my friend as well as my mistress.”

“Have you really? How very odd. Yet you have never given me permission to address you as anything but ‘your grace.’”

Jared felt a humiliating flush spread across his face—something that had happened too often of late. He cringed. “Am I really as stuffy as you paint me?”

“I did not say you were stuffy your grace. Stuffy implies boring, and that you have never been. You are just exceedingly high in the instep, but then I suppose one must expect that of a duke.”

Lady Crawley shrugged her lovely shoulders with the same grace she did everything else. “Ah well! It makes no mind now, does it? And I am sincerely grateful for your protection, as well as all the lavish gifts you have given me—especially this last and most generous one. If I had more strength of character, I would politely refuse it, but a woman with my expensive tastes cannot afford too much pride.”

She reached across the space between them and caught Jared’s hand in hers. “Find your country miss, your grace, and make her yours. For already I see the changes she has wrought in you. Given time, she might make you as human as the rest of us.”

Jared gave a snort of mirthless laughter. “Now you sound like Edgar Rankin. Perhaps there is truth in what you say. But if this past sen’night is an example of what it is to be ‘human,’ I am not certain I shall survive the experience.”

The Royal Theatre was, as Lady Sophia, had predicted, full to overflowing. Emily had scarcely finished settling the two old ladies in their luxurious first-tier box, when she realized an odd silence had settled over the crowded auditorium. She looked about her and found every set of opera glasses in the house trained on her—including those of Beau Brummell, who stood in his usual place in the pit with the rest of the
ton’s
leading dandies.

She took a deep, calming breath. It was obvious this was going to be a very long and very difficult evening. Despite the thrill of hearing the great Catalani, she would be immensely relieved when it was over.

Only moments later it was brought home to her just how long and how difficult an evening lay ahead when a cumulative gasp spread through the assemblage like a breeze rippling through a forest.

“Montford must have arrived,” Lady Sophia said, leveling her spectacles at a box on the opposite side of the great hall. “Just as I thought, and he has ‘that woman’ with him.”

Emily’s breath caught in her throat and every bone in her body turned to water. She kept her eyes studiously trained on her lap, for fear she would encounter the duke’s gaze if she raised her head.

Lady Cloris lifted her glasses. “Oh, my goodness. Is that Lady Crawley? You must admit, sister, she is really quite beautiful.”

“Lady Crawley indeed!” Lady Sophia gave an indignant sniff. “A title the chit acquired by marrying a ne’er-do-well baronet who fled to the Americas less than a year later to escape debtors’ prison. Furthermore, she is five-and-thirty if she ‘s a day and common as coal dust.”

Surreptitiously, Emily stole a brief look at the woman in the duke’s box, and her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the stylish golden-haired beauty who was the duke ‘s mistress. Compared to the sophisticated Lady Carolyn Crawley, she felt the veriest country mouse, despite her elegant new gown.

“Aha! Montford has seen us.” A triumphant smile spread across Lady Sophia’s flushed face and she quickly dropped her glasses to her lap.

Lady Cloris’s glasses followed suit. She pressed a shaky hand to her bosom. “He looks terribly angry, she managed in a hoarse whisper.

“Angry? He looks ready to commit murder.” Lady Sophia chuckled with obvious glee. “And observe that flock of sheep below us. They couldn’t be playing their parts more perfectly if we’ d rehearsed them.”

Against - her will, Emily glanced over the railing fronting the box. The entire lower floor looked like giant pendulum, swinging from left to right—right to left as all heads swiveled back and forth between the Duke of Montford’s box and the one in which she sat.

The silence in the vast auditorium was unnerving and when the orchestra suddenly struck its opening chord, she nearly leapt from her seat.

“Do stop fidgeting, Miss Haliburton,” Lady Sophia said smugly. “Sit back and enjoy yourself. It bids fair to be a rousing performance.”

Emily sincerely hoped she was referring to the one on stage.

Jared still couldn’t believe his eyes. At first glance, he had assumed the fashionable young woman sitting in his aunts’ box must be the daughter of one of their titled friends. It was only when he took a second look that he realized who she actually was.

Emily!

His first reaction was a relief so profound it made his head swim; his second was total bewilderment. What was Emily Haliburton doing in his aunts’ box at the opera?

He looked again. And what in the name of heaven had the woman done to herself? Her hair was different—not at all as he remembered it—and there was such a disgraceful amount of her generous bosom showing above the neckline of her daring gown, she might as well have been sitting there stark naked for all that was left to the imagination.

He lowered his glasses, suddenly aware that every eye in the place was on him.

“Who is the pretty young thing in your aunts’ box, and why is she attracting so much attention?” Lady Crawley asked.

“She is attracting attention for the rather obvious reason that she is rigged out like some high priced Cyprian,” Jared declared in a choked voice.

“Nonsense. She is dressed in the first stare of fashion, and quite uniquely so. Not many women would dare wear that particular shade of green, but it is most attractive on her.”

She took another look. “And if it is her neckline you’re criticizing, it is no lower than that of any other woman in the room.

“She is not any other woman in the room,” Jared growled. “And I have half a mind to haul her out of that box and give her the thrashing she deserves.”

A smile of dawning comprehension flitted across Lady Crawley ‘s exquisite face. “Good heavens. Is that your Miss Haliburton? I wonder why the gossips called her plain?” She regarded Jared with puzzled eyes. “I thought you said she was lost.”

“She was as far as I knew,” he replied bitterly.

A sudden movement among the dandies gathered in the pit directly below him caught his attention and he found himself staring directly into the terror-glazed eyes of his heir presumptive.

Some pink of the ton took her up in his curricle.

Percival owned a curricle—a garish rose-and-black curricle.

Beside the earl stood a smiling George Brummell, who raised his hand in a brief but telling salute.

With maddening precision, the pieces of the mysterious puzzle fell into place. All the long, agonizing nights he ‘d haunted the most dangerous streets of the London slums searching for her, Emily had lain safe and snug in one of his aunts’ feather beds—and neither she nor his bacon-brained relatives had had the decency to put him out of his misery,
“I am going to strangle the lot of them,” he muttered, starting to rise from his chair.

Lady Crawley caught his arm. “No, your grace. Think! You will only embarrass yourself and embarrass me—and unless I am mistaken, that is exactly what the ladies across the way would enjoy most.”

Jared sat back down. “Of course. You are absolutely right. I tend to lose my head whenever I am near Emily.”

“Lucky Emily,” Lady Crawley murmured.

Jared ignored her jibe. “I can understand why
she
would want to take revenge on me—she has good reason. But why are my two aunts aiding her? What have I done to them?”

“You mean aside from publicly humiliating them by failing to choose one of their five candidates after they ‘d informed the entire
ton
they were arranging your marriage?”

“Oh that!” Jared drummed his fingers an the railing in front of him, pandering the truth of Carolyn’s explanation. “I believe you’ve hit an it. It is not hard to imagine Aunt Sophia ‘s fine hand in this unfortunate business. How a woman can be so clever and so foolish at the same time is almost beyond comprehension.”

His mind was made up. “Justified or not, I cannot let them get away with it. I ‘d be the laughingstock of London.”

“Of course you can’t, your grace. But what can you do to remedy it? And how may I help?”

Jared caught Lady Crawley’ s dainty hand in his and raised it to his lips. “Simply by being your usual understanding self, dear lady. For to accomplish the task, I shall have to visit my aunts’ box at intermission—which means I must leave you on your own for a few moments. A discourtesy I regret most sincerely.”

Lady Crawley fluttered the jeweled fan Jared had given her at Christmas with the consummate skill of a practiced courtesan. “Never worry, your grace. I find I am developing a most annoying headache and cannot endure the thought of remaining for the next act…of the opera.”

“I shall instruct one of the attendants to order my carriage.”

“That will not be necessary, your grace. If you will be so good as to escort me from the box, I believe we shall find the Earl of Summerlyn hovering about the anteroom, just waiting for the opportunity to escort me home.”

Lady Crawley’s soft, pink lips tilted in a mischievous smile. “In point of fact, the poor besotted fellow has been hovering about somewhere or other for well over a fortnight; it is high time I gave him a bit of encouragement. Granted, he may be something of a bore, but he does have the loveliest deep pockets.”

Jared chuckled. “Ah, Carolyn. I do believe I shall miss you sorely. Was there ever anyone like you?”

“Never, your grace.” Her brilliant smile fell just short of reaching her eyes. “Nor do I expect I shall ever meet anyone quite like you again.”

Emily didn’t see the duke leave his box at the end of the first act, for she had schooled herself to look everywhere but at the man she most wanted to see. But she knew the exact moment when he did. It was as if all the light in the great auditorium had suddenly been extinguished.

She settled deeper into her chair, part of her waiting with pounding heart for his return—another part hoping she would never see him again. Perhaps then she could find some enjoyment in the rest of the opera. She might even eventually find some enjoyment in the rest of her life once the image of the black-hearted devil began to dim in her memory.