The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order (2 page)

“Bloody hell, Thatcher!” Ainsworth nearly jumped out of his gleaming Hessians. “You do spook a man.”

“My apologies, Your Grace,” the butler said, holding the duke’s coat over his only arm.

Thatcher, late of the 71
^st
Foot, also suffered injury at Waterloo. Artillery fire shattered his left arm in the opening hours of fighting during the furious assault on Hougoumont. Field doctors didn’t amputate his arm until the next morning but somehow he survived. Tough as boot leather, Thatcher, and quiet as a bloody mouse.

Without thinking, the duke tried to put on his coat unassisted but flinched with pain. He let Thatcher help him.

To disguise his discomfort, Ainsworth asked, “Where is everyone? Attila, George, Fred and who’s the new one?”

“You named him Puck, Your Grace. The brown and black. That is, if he won’t be one too many.”

“Certainly not, the place needs a bit more…”

“Chaos?” the butler suggested. Unlike Smeeth, Thatcher had a naturally repressive dignity well suited to his new profession.

“Life, Thatcher. I was about to say life.”

Sleeve by sleeve, the butler helped the duke into his coat, taking extra care to settle it gently on his injured shoulder.

“Well?” Ainsworth pursued, ignoring the dull ache pulsing from his ruined shoulder down his arm.

“The staff thought the beasts ought to stay in the stable till you were back in the pink, Your Grace.”

“They may as well return now that I am up and about. Is Puck well-behaved?”

“He’s clever, that one. Unlatched a cabinet in Cook’s pantry and…”

“Thatcher,” the duke interrupted in mock rebuke, “You should know I cannot abide tattletales.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Thatcher replied with a crisp bow.

Ainsworth noted how neatly Thatcher had sewn the empty sleeve of his frock coat. No doubt the butler managed it himself single-handed, as he managed everything else. The loss of his arm seemed to give him little trouble. In truth, Thatcher’s capability humbled Ainsworth and reminded him how much easier was his own lot in life. He was duke however badly his limbs functioned. Thatcher was a fine man who was sent into battle to be diced to bits then shamefully turned off without pension or provision as “no longer fit for duty.” If not for Smeeth’s intercession, what trade could the one-armed ex-soldier have hoped to find?

The butler reached up to flick nonexistent lint from the duke’s broad back, “And is Your Grace well, if I may ask?” His expression remained perfectly bland.

“Well enough,” the duke replied. “I’ll be at White’s.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Thatcher stepped aside and the footman opened the door.

Ainsworth counted himself lucky to have his staff. There were footmen and maids enough. Cook had whomever she needed in the kitchen. But he had no wish to fill Ainsworth House with the typical army of servants. His needs were modest, straightforward and surprisingly few for a peer of his rank. For these requirements, the duke relied primarily on Smeeth, Thatcher and his man of affairs.

As former military men themselves, his butler and valet knew not to probe and worry the subject of his shoulder (whereas, his sister in Brussels nagged at him extravagantly in correspondence). Being forced to think about the pain did nothing to alleviate it.

Now that he thought about it, something had definitely changed for the better.

His left shoulder no longer screamed with sharp, shocking pain. This relief came either as a result of distraction, his fresh tattoo being exceedingly tender, or it was due to the mysterious liniment used on him while in captivity. Someone had done more than defoliate and decorate his lower anatomy. The dressing on his shoulder had been freshly applied. The unfamiliar salve on his skin smelled clean, certainly herbal, possibly floral and as soothing as it was unusual. Despite everything else he associated with the scent, he liked the salve. It helped.

For this small thing, Ainsworth was thankful. For the tattoo, he most certainly was not. He was livid and potentially homicidal. He vowed to hunt down the perpetrators and wreck their lives until satisfied they had paid for this villainy in full. Given where and what it was, their comeuppance should cost them everything.

Still a touch unsteady, Ainsworth reluctantly took his carriage to White’s. (He generally preferred to walk around Mayfair though it simply wasn’t done.) When he leaned back against the squabs inside, something hard pressed against his hip. With his right hand he felt around behind him on the seat. Nothing. Muttering about the infernal discomfort of carriages, he patted and fumbled his good hand to his left side and into his coat pocket. From it, he extracted a small, squat glass jar. Screwing off its metal lid, he smelled the ineffable scent of the mystery salve. Something leapt to mind:

A meaningless sound: ‘mizzach.’ The mustachioed man and the buxom woman chanted ‘mizzach.’

The jar had no label or rather the paper label had been scraped off its lid. How he had come by it, he couldn’t recall. He first thought to throw it away but reconsidered. It’d be a shame to waste if it could help him heal.

Ainsworth arrived at White’s a short time later. Leaving his carriage at the curb, he took the front steps two at a time though it jarred his shoulder to do so. The club’s majordomo opened the front door promptly with murmured greetings.

“Where’s the footman for this chore, Flicke?”

“Called away momentarily, Your Grace,” Flicke answered with polite efficiency. “How are you?”

“Better than I deserve. And you, Flicke, your wife and family are well?”

Flicke blinked at His Grace before replying with genuine warmth, “Quite well, thank you.”

Ainsworth slipped off his coat with Flicke’s help and returned other greetings as he made his way upstairs to the rear of the club where one might claim a private salon. He ordered tea and relaxed with the afternoon paper. In such soothing surroundings, he soon drifted to sleep. As often the case, hellish visions punctuated his dreams:

The fire grew hot. A demon stood with his back turned, his long black queue swinging hypnotically. The Oriental ghoul only came into focus as he knelt between the duke’s bare legs, a straight razor in hand. Now would be the time to panic, or better yet, to bellow and fight. But lassitude weighed down his limbs. He could only sigh and resign himself to suffer whatever torments awaited.

This dark, hot place, with its distorted, leering faces and infernal shadows leaping across the walls, had to be his eternal destination. He was where his censorious father insisted he would finish. Fortunately, oblivion overtook him as the fiend set to work.

Through the enveloping darkness, he next felt soft hands on his skin. Her hands were cool yet his skin burned wherever she touched him. He struggled to open his eyes and found her looking back at him with extraordinary, turbulent eyes. She caressed his cheek and whispered, “Please forgive me” before dissolving back into the black void.

The duke awoke disoriented. Scrubbing a hand slowly over his face, he straightened up in the overstuffed club chair. Day had dimmed to dusk. It was past time to return home. He had no idea how he ended up ‘illustrated,’ but he would never forget that young woman’s eyes.

Damn her eyes.

“T
his is
not
the Duke of Ainsworth!” Miss Prudence Haversham hissed to her housekeeper, Mrs. Mason, in the dim room.

When Prudence finally took a good look at the man drugged senseless, abducted and tattooed at her instigation, she panicked. She paced back and forth, glaring at the slumped man, willing him to become the one she intended to see. He remained stubbornly himself and no other.

Prudence made no effort to see the ribald tattoo meant to repay the Duke of Ainsworth for ruining her life. She stood behind him, transfixed.

This was not the duke. Far from it.

Her gaze raked across the expanse of the unconscious man’s broad shoulders, over his bandages and up to his tousled brown hair. Brown hair. She shuddered.

Too late, much too late, nothing to be done now
.

Turning to her assistant and abductor-in-chief Murphy, she whispered, “The duke is a blonde man, fair skinned and…fleshier…Look! This man didn’t suffer an injury like that riding to hounds or shooting game birds! It’s as if he’s been mauled!”

“Gnawed by a badger, more like,” added Mrs. Mason. “Though I wasn’t paying much attention up there, I’ll admit.”

Murphy rumbled, “Were you studying the man elsewhere then, wife?”

“I’d a little peek,” she said with a giggle, “Not that he were little!”

Murphy spanked his saucy wife’s ample bottom.

While Mrs. Mason tittered and Murphy fussed, Miss Haversham tried to slow her thundering heart and collect her thoughts.

Who was he?

His scars preyed upon her conscience. He was a soldier certainly. She recognized the pale tracery of old saber slashes and the puckered flesh of a recently healed gunshot wound. This was not the tipsy, soft peer who nine years ago groped her, lied about it and disgraced her in her family’s eyes.

Worse was the unresolved wound. The linen bandages wrapping his shoulder had darkened with bloody ooze and come loose. She gently lifted them to find a suppurating wound covered much of his left shoulder. Rough handling during the abduction disturbed his badly mangled flesh.

A generous dollop of guilt garnished the heaping portion of mortification she struggled to digest.

Mrs. Mason herded Prudence from the room so Murphy could dress him. She paced up and down the hall for hours, or so it seemed, until she finally bullied her way back inside. Her captive slouched on the chaise wearing only his breeches. She stood in the middle of the room not knowing what to do or where to go. Like a witless fool, she asked Murphy repeatedly what they were going to do with him.

“We’ll pop him ‘round to Grosvenor Square ‘fore he wakes up,” Murphy answered patiently. “Just sneak through the mews. Settle him nice and cozy in his garden.”

“He’ll be right as roast when he wakes up, Miss H., don’t you worry,” Mrs. Mason reassured. “But let’s finish quick before the poppy syrup wears off. Don’t want him waking up while we still got him, do we!”

Prudence Haversham, apothecary, could not leave well enough alone. She bade Murphy fetch her healing salve.

“But Miss H., we don’t have time for it. Best we move along,” Murphy urged.

“He’s drifting in and out,” Mrs. Mason agreed. “If he wakes, he’ll be a handful.”

Despite her name, Prudence insisted.

She removed the soiled bandages and cleaned the wound gently with fresh water. Carefully, she dabbed salve on the man’s inflamed flesh and applied a poultice where it was raw. As Prudence re-covered his wound with fresh bandages, she succumbed to temptation and peeked over his shoulder. She surveyed the breadth and solid contours of his chest and the dark hair covering it. From that dense northern forest, her eyes skittered south following the thin dark trail of hair on his taut stomach, past his navel to where it disappeared into his breeches. Her cheeks burned.

It frightened her to do it but despite her fear she moved to face him. She knelt and brushed a lock of hair off his brow. Touching him, she felt a visceral shock, a jolt as one does dreaming of losing one’s balance. It was so elemental that Prudence’s rational mind reflexively dismissed it. The gooseflesh on her skin was harder to ignore so she chafed her upper arms to erase the sensation. She studied him, fascinated.

This man was more than handsome. Even unconscious, he still smiled faintly, making his angular features almost boyish. Disheveled brown hair fell across a high, unlined forehead, though he was 30 years of age at least. His face was tanned except at the corners of his deep-set eyes. Pale creases showed, either from laughing or squinting at the enemy in the sun. (She prayed he had a well-developed sense of humor.) Strong cheekbones balanced his sculpted jaw. His nose ran straight and fine with an aquiline profile.

In the heat of battle, she imagined his features would look honed from tempered steel with no soft flesh to spare — except his lips. His upper lip curved slightly like a bow over a generous lower lip. She couldn’t help but wonder how they might feel in a kiss. She gawked until she recalled herself to their awkward circumstances. He shifted slightly and Prudence smelled soap and something more than his clean skin. It was as if the man’s warmth had a scent, which was as disconcerting as it was stimulating. She breathed it in while her two helpers bustled about the room.

Then he opened his eyes.

The shock knocked Prudence off balance and down she plopped to the floor on her bottom. “Oof!”

He chuckled low and smiled, bleary eyed. It was as if his fingertips, not merely his heavy-lidded gaze, brushed up her ankles and over her knees to linger on her face. If his lascivious survey was any indication, he was a jaded rake. Although she had to admit, he had a lovely smile.

His gaze held her rapt. While her rational faculties screamed in unison to scramble on hands and knees into the shadows, her body responded with more instinctive wisdom. Gathering her legs beneath her, she leaned against his knees to reach out and stroke his face again. Though improper, soothing him didn’t feel the least bit wrong. No, touching him felt entirely right. Rather than run and hide, she met his gaze and whispered, “Please forgive me.”

She waited for his response.

Slowly, his eyes drooped and he drifted back into a drowse. With a whoosh, Prudence exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

The duke stood several inches above six feet with a well-muscled physique. Manipulating such a large man into the rest of his clothes while limp as a rag doll proved harder than removing them. Even so, Murphy replaced everything, including his close-fitting coat. At Prudence’s insistence, Murphy hoisted him over his shoulder with a great deal of care so the duke’s return would be less traumatic to his injuries.