The Ugly Duchess

Page 36

“Surely not,” Theo said, hating to think it.
“The vessel was headed to India, by all accounts, and never heard from again. The passage is besieged with pirates,” Mr. Boythorn observed. “More than one sailor has told me that it would be a miracle if the Percival escaped an unfortunate fate.”
Theo sighed. “Cecil, would it be acceptable to you if Mr. Boythorn began the proceedings to submit a death in absentia petition to the Lord Chancellor and the House of Lords? If we receive other news in the next month, of course, the petition would be withdrawn immediately.”
“Would you prefer to wait another year, my dear?” Was there ever a more reluctant duke than Cecil?
Theo looked at him with a faint smile. “I have quite enjoyed managing the estate, particularly with regard to the weaving and ceramics concerns. But I should like to move on with my life. I know I’m practically elderly—”
“You are not!” Cecil cried with a satisfying smack of indignity in his voice.
“But I intend to throw myself on the marriage market after the petition is approved,” Theo continued, “and another year would do me no good in that respect.”
“As it should be,” Mr. Boythorn intoned solemnly. “It is time to close this sad passage in the history of the Dukes of Ashbrook. Lord Islay was cut off in the prime of his youth, but life must go on.”
And with that rattling series of platitudes, the conversation ended.
Long live the new duke.
Twenty
On board the Poppys
In 1814 the  Poppys sailed to India without taking a single ship on the way; they did so merely to prove that their captains would have no problem grappling with monsoon winds. But since they were there, they wandered around until Griffin decided that Sicilian noblewomen whom he had known (intimately) would fall in love with gilded birdcages; he filled the hold with them. James discovered a passion for a flavoring called curry, so he filled all the birdcages with packages of turmeric and cumin.
On the way home a pirate crew was ignorant enough to try to take them down, so they sunk that ship, dropped off the men on an inhabited island (as was their custom), and sailed on, a pile of emeralds in a corner of Griffin’s cabin revealing that the Poppys were not the first boats those particular ill-fated pirates had approached.
They sold the birdcages in Sicily at an outrageous profit. They sent the curry to England, where their man there (for they now had establishments to manage their assets in five countries) reported that it was slow to take on at first, but by the end of three months, it had sold at a neat seventy times the cost.
Jack had learned to control his temper. He had even come to thinking of his father with equanimity. When one kills enough men—albeit pirates who had killed hundreds themselves—embezzlement seems like the crime of a child. Perhaps more importantly, guilt became something that he refused to allow to rule his life.
And Daisy . . . he found himself irritatingly unable to forget the enchanting way her eyes had widened when he first touched her breast, not to mention all the childhood years when they played and fought together. But he told himself over and over that those were the memories of a boy named James, and Hawk prided himself on forgetting everything to do with his life in England, marriage included.
Then his luck ran out.
It was early 1816, and they had just taken down the  Groningen, on special request from the Dutch king; the naval boat had been stolen and was being used to rob trading vessels. Everything was well in hand; the pirate captain had gone to his just reward, and only a few men from the Groningen were still fighting hard.
Jack was about to bellow an offer for surrender when there was a rush of movement to his right, and a pirate came up fast and hard with an open blade.
He felt the knife slice his neck, just below his chin. It didn’t hurt, oddly enough, but there was a terrible sensation of flesh parting, followed by a warm rush of blood down his throat.
He reeled back, dropping his weapons and collapsing to the deck. There was a crack from a pistol, and the pirate with the knife pitched backward, landing on the deck with an audible thump.
Then Griffin fell on his knees by Jack, swearing a blue streak, screaming orders.
Jack squinted up at him, seeing his cousin against the sun as if he had a halo, a fuzzy halo. “Good run,” he said, but nothing came from his lips. Of course men who had their throats cut couldn’t speak. He and Griffin had come to love each other like brothers, though being men, they never expressed it. They didn’t need to.
Now Griffin was bending over him, stuffing cloth under his chin. James met his eyes and discovered they were terrified. He had known the truth before he saw it in his cousin’s eyes. Men with cut throats do not live.
“You will not die,” Griffin ordered through white lips, as ferocious as only a pirate king can be. “Damn it, James, hang on. Dicksling will be here in a moment, and he’ll sew you back together.”
James shaped the words slowly. “Tell Daisy.” No sound escaped, and the pain had flooded his body now, making black dots swim in his vision. But there was only one thing in his heart, one thing he had to say, shocking though it was to discover it.
“Daisy?” Griffin said, leaning even closer. “Your wife. Tell her what?”
But the black dots were connecting together and rushing at him as if a sandstorm suddenly rose from the sea.
And at that very moment the felled pirate made one last violent effort: the man thrust himself to a sitting position and slashed his knife at Griffin. With a howl, Griffin clapped his hands between his legs. Blood flew in the wind and splattered all over James’s face.
It was over, it was all over. It was only then that James realized what he surely knew all along.
He couldn’t shape the one word he desperately wanted to say.
And there was no one to hear it.
Twenty-one
April 3, 1816
The petition to declare a formal end to the life of the Earl of Islay was wending its way through the Courts of Chancery when Theo received a message from yet another of the twenty Bow Street Runners who had returned to England.
But this message was different: it claimed news.
She sat quite still with the note in her hand, staring at it.
If James was alive, the Runner, a man by the name of Mr. Badger, surely would have written I found your husband, rather than I bring news. Desolation felt like a palpable thing in her stomach, like another heart beating under the first.
She summoned her new butler, Maydrop, and instructed him to request that Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn visit that very afternoon. Mr. Badger turned out to be swarthy and hirsute, a bow-legged and fierce-looking individual. One had the distinct impression that criminals would be quite sorry to find that Badger was on their trail.
“He has the whiskers of a catfish,” Cecil whispered, but Theo was too nervous to smile. They were sitting together on the couch, Mr. Badger in a chair opposite them. Theo was so fidgety that she felt as if flies were dancing on her head, yet Mr. Badger methodically plodded on without getting to the point. He took forever explaining precisely where he had been assigned by his superiors, how many men he took with him, how many he hired in the islands, how long it took him to sail to his first port of call.
For the first time in years Theo had the impulse to chew on her fingernails, a habit she had broken in the schoolroom.