How to Tempt a Duke

“Here now, friend,” Fitz said grumpily. “This poor girl is working herself to the bone, trying to get a bit of a rise out of you, if you take my meaning, and you’re just sitting there like some lump, arms hanging at your sides, staring into the fire. Pass her to me, why don’t you. I know what to do with a willing female.”

Rafe snapped himself out of his maudlin musings to realize that the barmaid was now looking at him in some disgust. “Many apologies, ma chérie,” he told her in French as he eased her off his lap. “You are very lovely, but I am very weary.” He hooked a thumb in Fitz’s direction. “And that hairy one over there has many coins.”

The barmaid’s fickle affections switched immediately as she smiled at Fitz and climbed onto his lap. “Ah, that’s more the thing. That’s it, sweetheart, wiggle that plump bottom about on me some more. The blazes with their pretty statues and showy gardens—this is all the Paris I want to see,” he said as the buxom young woman shoved her ample assets close to his face. “Sorry, my friend, but you know how it is. The better man, and all of that.”

“That you are, Fitz,” Rafe said quietly. “But before you go upstairs, you might want to slip me your purse for safekeeping. Damn,” he said then, blinking rapidly as he shook his head. “What’s in that ale, anyway? The room seems to be spinning.”

“You haven’t drunk enough for rooms to spin,” Fitz said, looking at his friend. “You know, Rafe, you don’t look too good. Here, let me play at nursemaid and feel your forehead.” With one arm securing the provocatively jiggling barmaid in position, he leaned toward Rafe and did so, and then pulled back his hand, dramatically shaking it. “Blast it, man, you’re burning up, do you know that?”

“I can’t be, Fitz. I’m bloody freezing. It’s this wet uniform, that’s what it is.” Rafe clenched his jaw, for his teeth had begun to chatter as he shivered again, missing the warmth of the barmaid’s lush body if not the barmaid herself.

“I don’t think so. I think it’s that fever you picked up at Albuera, isn’t it? It’s back again, damn me if it isn’t. Come on, let’s make our way back to our quarters before you go passing out on me and I have to carry you the way I did in Vitoria.”

Rafe waved off Fitz’s offer. “Go have your fun. If it’s the fever again I’m already as sick as I’m going to get. Take her upstairs and ruin her for all other, lesser men with your Irish expertise. I’ll…I’ll just wait for you here by the fire.” He laid his head on his bent arms. “Too tired to go back out in that rain and damp anyway.”

“Your Grace? Excuse me, sir, for disturbing you, but if I might have a word? Your Grace?”

“Rafe,” Fitz whispered in a suddenly strained voice, nudging him in the ribs. “There’s a funny-looking little man standing on the other side of the table, and he’s talking to you. I mean, I think he’s talking to you, because he most certainly couldn’t be talking to me. He said Your Grace. Better sit up, friend. Something’s strange here.”

Rafe forced his eyes open and squinted at the bemused expression on Fitz’s face as his friend continued to look across the table. “Bloody hell,” he said, pushing himself erect to see a rather rumpled little Englishman standing there, just as Fitz had said. Except there were several of him…perhaps a half-dozen rumpled little Englishmen weaving and waving in front of him. He tried to single out one from the herd. “Sorry? May we help you?”

“You are Rafael Daughtry, are you not?” the man said. “Please say you are,Your Grace, as I’ve been hunting you now for nearly a month, ever since the cessation of hostilities allowed safe travel across the Channel. Perhaps none of your hopeful aunt’s letters reached you?”

“You hear that, Rafe? Your Grace. He said it again,” Fitz pointed out, pushing the barmaid from his lap, at which time the woman launched into a torrent of gutter French that would have made even Rafe blush, if he’d been listening to her.

“Indeed, I did say just that,” the man said, sighing. “If I might be allowed to sit, sir?”

Rafe and Fitz exchanged puzzled glances. “Yes, of course.” Rafe indicated the empty chair in front of the man. He fought to keep his eyes open. “But I’m afraid I don’t—”

“No, I can see clearly that you do not. My name is Phineas Coates, Your Grace, and it is my sad duty to inform you that your uncle, Charlton Daughtry, the thirteenth Duke of Ashurst, as well as his sons, the Earl of Storrington and the honorable Lord Harold Daughtry, all perished tragically when their yacht sank off the coast of Shoreham-By-Sea approximately six weeks ago. By the rules of inheritance, you, sir, as your father’s son and the last remaining Daughtry, are now Rafael Daughtry, fourteenth Duke of Ashurst, as well as holding the lesser titles of Earl of Storrington and…and the Viscount of Something Else that sadly escapes me at the moment. Sir? I say, sir. Did you hear me?”

Rafe had slowly lowered his head onto his crossed arms once more, hearing the man’s voice only through the ringing in his ears. Funny, he thought, grinning. Last time the fever came back to torment him, he’d thought he’d seen angels. Never odd little men in ill-fitting hacking jackets and filthy red waistcoats. He liked the angels better…

“Rafe, answer the man,” Fitz said, shaking him. “Did you hear what he said?”

“Yes, yes. Go ’way. Something in the sea…”

“Shoreham-by-Sea, Your Grace, yes. The late duke’s sister, the Lady Emmaline Daughtry, commissioned me to also deliver personally to you her letter requesting your return toAshurst at your earliest convenience. My condolences, er, and my felicitations,Your Grace.Your Grace?”

Fitz pushed lank strands of damp hair away from Rafe’s face. “I don’t think His Grace heard you, Phineas. But why don’t you tell me more about this dukedom thing, all right? There happen to be any money to go along with all those fancy titles?”

“I’d say the man has fallen into about the deepest gravy boat in all of England—er, that is, His Grace is quite the wealthy man.”

Fitz slapped Rafe on the back. “Did you hear that, Rafe? You’re a rich man, you lucky devil! Wake up and we’ll toast your good fortune. On your coin, of course, since you now have so many of them.”

Rafe didn’t move, even when Fitz took hold of his shoulder and shook him.

“Ah, now would you look at that, Phineas? Poor bastard. All his problems solved, his worries blown to the four winds, and he doesn’t even know it. His Grace is going to be asleep for a while. But he’ll be fine by morning, he always is.”

Phineas nodded knowingly. “Ah. Drunk, sir.”

“No, unfortunately for him.” Fitz winked. “But I’d like to be.”

“Yes, sir, Captain, I quite understand,” Phineas said, hungrily eyeing Rafe’s nearly full bowl. “In that case, as I was told not to leave His Grace’s side for any reason once I found him, would it be an imposition if I were to join you for dinner, Captain? I must say, that stew smells delicious.”

PART ONE

Ashurst Hall, November 1814

Friendship is Love without his wings.

—Lord Byron

Chapter One

CHARLOTTE SEAVERS was on the hunt. And she was in a mood to take no prisoners.

Only scant minutes earlier Charlotte had been comfortably ensconced in the drawing room of her parents’ small manor house, happy in her ignorance, enjoying the sight of a mid-November frost glittering on the newly bare tree branches outside her window while she stayed warm and toasty inside.

But then the housekeeper had brought her one of the letters just arrived with the morning post.

After taking another sip of sweet tea, Charlotte had opened the missive from her good friend, read it in growing apprehension and disbelief until, with her newfound knowledge, her blissful ignorance turned to righteous anger.

“Unrepentant liars and tricksters! Wretched connivers!” she exclaimed, her teeth chattering in the cold, for she’d left the house without taking time to search out a warmer cloak than the rather shabby one she used while gardening that hung on the hook just outside the kitchens. “They’ll be lucky if I don’t choose to murder them!”

She stomped along the well-worn path that led through the trees from the manor house, to end halfway up the drive to Ashurst Hall. “And worse fool me because I believed them!”

What Miss Charlotte Seavers was referring to was her discovery, after months of the aforementioned ignorant bliss, that Nicole and Lydia Daughtry—in retrospect, mostly Nicky, with Lydia only following along because she felt she had no choice—had been pulling the wool over her eyes. Over everyone’s eyes.

All this time, since the spring, when they’d first had word from Rafael Daughtry that he was well and aware of the deaths of his uncle and cousins, Nicole and Lydia had been cleverly putting one over on Rafe, on their aunt Emmaline, on Charlotte.

Oh yes, and Mrs. Beasley. But then again, pulling the wool over Mrs. Beasley’s eyes was no great accomplishment, and the twins had the benefit of years of practice when it came to hoodwinking their governess.

In her haste to confront the Daughtry sisters and verbally rip several strips off their hides, Charlotte stomped on some wet, slippery leaves littering the path, and went down with a startled “Damn and blast!”

She just as quickly scrambled back to her feet, hurriedly looking about to be certain no one had heard her unladylike exclamation, and then brushed at the back of her cloak, pulling off damp leaves and bits of moss.

She took several deep breaths, hoping to calm herself, steady herself. After all, she was supposed to be a well-bred, civilized female, and here she was, racing through the trees like some wild boar.

But then she thought again of how Nicky and Lydia had spent the summer and fall posting letters back and forth, impersonating their brother to their aunt, and impersonating their aunt to their brother. Correspondence Charlotte had seen, had been allowed to read—all while the twins were doubtless laughing behind their hands at her gullibility.

Worse, if Emmaline hadn’t just now written to her privately, her words and her questions contradicting things she had already said in the letters Charlotte had been shown by the twins, she would still be none the wiser.

From the moment she’d begun reading the letter, Charlotte’s suspicions had been raised, as the handwriting was so very different from Emmaline’s letters supposedly posted to Ashurst Hall.

But those suspicions had turned to a cold certainty when she read the words, “Charlotte, I vow I sometimes think Rafe is Nicky in long pants. The girl never could get her mind around spelling any word longer than c-a-t.”

And here Charlotte had thought Rafe, for all his on-again, off-again schooling alongside his cousins, was next door to a yahoo when it came to grammar and spelling.