The Duke's Holiday (The Regency Romp Trilogy) Read online

  He wouldn’t begin to imagine the sleepless nights ahead when she invaded London. Even if he didn’t see her, he would know she was there, at the Countess’, with her mismatched eyes and goading tongue, plaguing him. As she plagued him now, sitting next to him, holding her nose as if he offended her.

  He couldn’t bear the twenty miles back to the castle. Never mind his queasy stomach. The thought of enduring her company was enough to make him want to scream. Which he would have done, had he not suspected that such an act would make his aching head explode.

  He didn’t think he could even bear ten miles to Hawes. Whatever that was. But ten was better than twenty, and perhaps he could purchase a horse there. He needed a horse anyway, which was the reason he’d come to the damned festival in the first place.

  “Ten miles. I can do ten miles,” he muttered to himself, clutching the seat.

  Miss Honeywell snorted. “Do you hear that, Charlie? His Majesty can bear our poor company for ten miles. Though how he’ll feel about the thirty miles back to Rylestone is another story.”

  “I’ll purchase a horse in Hawes. Not riding back in this,” he said, indicating the wagon with a vague pass of his hand. “That’s for damned bloody sure.”

  “Well, good, because we don’t desire your company any more than you desire ours.” Miss Honeywell sniffed haughtily, then signaled for Charlie to continue, but the driver hesitated.

  “Mebbe we should turn round,” Charlie suggested nervously, looking rather pale.

  “NO!” they both cried simultaneously.

  Charlie grimaced, then reluctantly whipped the drays into motion.

  Montford gripped the edge of the seat until his knuckles were white, willing his stomach to calm down. But the combination of his motion sickness and his hangover was quite hard to overcome. A few moments later, he could feel his face turning from gray to green. He sprang into motion, clawing his way over Miss Honeywell’s lap, crushing her with his body. She fell off her perch, swearing at him and smacking his head. He was too busy scrambling to the railing and leaning over the road to give her much notice. His shoulders heaved, his breath choked, and the most incredible hacking noise issued from his throat as he cast up his accounts.

  Charlie pulled up on the reins, and the cart drew to a standstill. Miss Honeywell pulled herself back on her seat, edging closer to Charlie, giving the Duke as wide a girth as possible on the narrow perch. When he was through heaving, he slumped exhaustedly against the side rail, his body trembling.

  When he glanced up at Miss Honeywell, she was gazing at him with a mixture of exasperation and concern. “You don’t have the plague, do you?” she inquired.

  That was it. He could bear it no more. He groaned, pulled himself upright, and then slowly began to climb out of the wagon, every muscle in his body protesting.

  Miss Honeywell looked down at him in alarm. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  He lost his footing and fell the rest of the way. He landed with a thud on his backside, dust flying up around him. He heaved himself to his feet. “I’m walking back.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s twenty miles!”

  “Don’t care. I’d rather walk a hundred miles than spend another second in your presence,” he muttered, which was true enough. He didn’t add that one more second on that moving wagon was likely to make him cast up his guts.

  She put her fists on her hips and glared at him. “You weren’t saying that last night,” she finally retorted.

  What was that supposed to mean? A chill passed down his spine. Oh, God, what had he done?

  Seeing the look on his face, she gave him a satisfied smirk and reached into one of the baskets behind her. She threw something at him, and it landed against his chest and slid to the ground. He grunted and rubbed the sore spot where it had hit, then bent over and retrieved the object. It was a water skin.

  “Wouldn’t want you to die along the way of thirst,” she explained, settling into her seat.

  “How thoughtful of you,” he gritted out.

  “No, it would just be too easy to let you to die. I want you to feel every step of the twenty miles back to Rylestone.”

  “Damn you, Astrid Honeywell!” he roared, as the wagon rolled onwards and Miss Honeywell and Charlie put their backs to him. He raised his fist at the rear of the wagon. “I hope I never see you again!”

  As he turned and began to trudge down the road, he thought he heard her voice drift back to him on the wind. “Same!” it called out, tauntingly.

  Five minutes later, when the creaking and groaning of the wagon had all but disappeared in the distance, and his feet were already beginning to ache in his boots, he sat down on the side of the road and stared up at the sky, utterly dumbfounded.

  He was alone, on a dusty road, miles from anything resembling civilization, tattered, battered, and reeking of ale and vomit. It was a state of affairs he could not have foreseen in even his wildest nightmares. He’d cry, if he had any moisture left in his body to invest in tears.

  And he didn’t. He’d retched out all of the water in his body.

  He stared down at the water skin in his hands and tried to open it. But he couldn’t figure out how to manage the top. He didn’t know how long it was he sat there, trying to pry apart the blasted thing, but it was long enough to make him lose the last thread of his patience. He threw the water skin down on the dusty road and stomped on it with the heel of his boots.

  He stomped and stomped until the water skin was quite dead and water pooled out of a leak in its side, turning the dust underneath his feet into a mud puddle. He wished it had been Astrid Honeywell’s head.

  He wandered on a few steps, but found his energy quite sapped. He had to sit down. Which he did, on a log a few paces off the road. Maybe his bright idea to walk back to the castle had not been a bright idea after all. Even off of the wagon, he still felt quite ill. What had possessed him to get so drunk? He had behaved like a lunatic, and what was even worse, he had a niggling suspicion that he had enjoyed himself. It was beyond humiliating. It was worrying.

  What had Miss Honeywell meant? What had he said to her last night? What had he done?

  He tried to delve into the muddle in his brain, but could not come up with a single thing, other than some vague recollection of a rhyme about her eyes.

  He was still pondering this when a large, black coach, pulled by a team of four large, black stallions, and piloted by a giant man in a black cape wielding a dangerous-looking whip, thundered by him. He could not see inside the carriage, but he thought he spied a pair of glinting, coal-black eyes peering from behind a curtain, sending a chill down his spine. He had no liking for coaches in general, but if ever a one looked like it belonged to Lucifer himself, it was that one.

  He rose to his feet and stared at the coach as it tore hell-for-leather to the North like a demon out of hell. What, he wondered in exasperation, could be so interesting up there? Sheep? Hawes, whatever the bloody hell that was? Bloody Scotland?

  London was in the opposite direction, he almost called out to the coach.

  Just thinking of that fair city (even though it was far from fair and rather stank to high heaven when it rained) was enough to get his legs to move. Every step drew him closer to London, he reminded himself. He could not wait until he was back in his palace, ensconced in his steaming bathing chamber, scrubbed clean of his travels, with the London Times financial section in one hand, a bar of soap in the other.

  When he got back to London, he was not leaving. Ever. Again.

  But then he remembered Araminta. Good God, Araminta! He’d totally forgotten he was supposed to marry the chit in a fortnight! And for their wedding tour – obligatory, unfortunately – they were to go to the ancestral pile in Devonshire.

  Montford stumbled to a stop, his mind screaming in outrage.

  Like hell he was going to Devonshire. Like hell he was marrying Araminta!

  Or was he?

  Wasn’t that supposed to be a good ide
a? He couldn’t recall. He was lucky he’d even recalled her name.

  He clutched his pounding temple. He needed to stop thinking so much.

  “Just get back to Rylestone,” he murmured. “One foot in front of the other.”

  That was what he did, for a few more yards. But the screaming in his head seemed to get worse.

  It took him several moments to realize the screaming was no longer in his head, however. It seemed to be issuing from somewhere behind him, and sounded distinctly like Miss Honeywell’s voice. He turned around, but he could see nothing but road and trees. Surely it hadn’t been Miss Honeywell. She was miles away by now.

  He turned back around and trudged onwards.

  Then the screaming started again. This time it was punctuated by the blast of a gun. There was no mistaking that sound as it rent the countryside like a thunderclap. He clutched his aching head and waited. Nothing came after that but the rustling of the leaves in the wind. Even the birds had been frightened into silence.

  Montford didn’t breathe. His heart didn’t beat. A terrible dread began to unfurl in the pit of his stomach. He’d not imagined her screams. He’d not imagined the gunshot. He’d not imagined the terrible silence following.

  Montford began to sprint the way he had come, faster than he’d gone at any point during the race on the previous day, though of course he didn’t notice. He was too busy praying that he’d find Astrid Honeywell alive and in decent enough condition to wring her neck. He’d never been so frightened in his life, and it was all her fault.

  ASTRID USUALLY enjoyed the trip into Hawes, but her heart was not in it this year. She wanted to drive to Hawes, drop off the shipment, and return to the castle to enjoy her final days there before she was carted off to London. Charlie Weeks drove her, as was his custom, but his mood seemed equally low. As the early morning haze burnt off and the drays fell into a steady plod along the North Road, they exchanged few words. Charlie was grim-faced, gripping the reins with tense hands. It wasn’t until they’d gone nearly two-thirds of the way that he loosened up enough to laugh at the bawdy rhymes she recited. He was in a strange mood, but she couldn’t blame him, as his wife was six months pregnant with their fifth child. He was deservedly a little frazzled around the edges.

  Poor Charlie seemed to fray apart completely when Montford fell out of the back of the wagon. The cloying reek of stale alcohol and something unimaginably worse had risen off of the Duke’s person, causing Astrid to cover her nose and draw back. He was wearing the soiled clothes from the previous evening, a tear in his once fine silk jacket running from his shoulder to the middle of his back. One side of his hair was plastered to his head, the other side sticking straight in the air, and every bit of his person was layered in a liberal coating of mud, grass, and other unidentifiable bits of debris.

  He was the last person she had expected to see. Clearly Charlie felt the same, for he stared at the interloper as if he were a leper. How Montford had come to be stowed away in the bed of the wagon that she happened to be riding in seemed too coincidental by half, but she hadn’t the patience to pursue the whys and wherefores of the situation. Montford had not, either. He’d cast up his accounts, then fell off the wagon and onto the roadside, vowing to walk back to Rylestone.

  Far be it from her to stop him. If he would rather walk back twenty miles than “endure her company”, then that was his prerogative. She was not hurt at all by his fierce rejection. She was not hurt at all by what had transpired the night before, and what he clearly had forgotten. And she was not about to fill in the gaps in his memory.

  But she certainly hoped he remembered kissing Aunt Anabel. And she certainly hoped he was bruised from Aunt Anabel’s cane. He deserved to be black and blue from head to toe, as far as she was concerned.

  And she had not thrown him a water flask because she felt sorry for him.

  Not at all.

  She faced forward and harrumphed loudly as she and Charlie continued their journey. Charlie still seemed to be recovering from the episode, blotting sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, his hands trembling.

  “Don’t worry, we’re well rid of him. I don’t think the twenty miles will kill him. I don’t think anything would kill him, short of burning at the stake,” she muttered, patting his shoulder.

  “We shouldna left ‘em like that,” Charlie murmured. He hesitated. “Mebbe we should turn back, Miss Astrid.”

  “Nonsense. We’ll be in Hawes in short order. I’ll not let him ruin our trip.”

  Charlie pursed his lips, not looking assured in the least.

  “What I want to know is how he came to be in the wagon in the first place,” Astrid said, to change the subject.

  “Dunna know,” Charlie said miserably. “Dinna check the bed this morning. Must’ve climbed in and passed out there last night.”

  “A very odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Verra odd. Near as jumped out of my boots when he come through the awning.”

  Astrid held out hope that somehow Montford would beat them back to Rylestone, acquire a mount, and be on his way back to London so that Astrid never had to lay eyes on him again. But that was a slim hope indeed in his current condition. They’d likely intercept him on the return journey. Astrid had half a mind to drive past him without picking him up. But that would prolong his stay in Rylestone, and no one wanted that to happen.

  No, until Montford was back in London, she’d not rest easy.

  But then she groaned out loud, recalling that she too very soon would be in London as well.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Charlie demanded. “Should we turn round? Head home?” He sounded strangely hopeful.

  “No, I’m fine. Just thinking about my upcoming trip.”

  Charlie’s face paled. His eyes went wild. “Trip? What trip?” he asked nervously.

  She looked at her driver with growing concern. What had gotten into him?

  “Calm down, Charlie, for heaven’s sake. I was talking about my trip to London.”

  Charlie still looked flustered. “Lunnon? When’re you going to Lunnon?” he squeaked.

  “Hopefully never. But probably by week’s end. You haven’t heard, then?”

  “Heard what?” Charlie asked warily.

  “The Duke’s odious plan for us!” she exclaimed.

  “The Duke’s plan?” Charlie murmured.

  “He’s to marry us off. Well, Alice and I, at least. In London. He’s to have one of his friends find us some peacocks to leg shackle.”

  Charlie looked completely at sea. Astrid sighed deeply and explained the Duke’s scheme in greater depth and in less colorful prose. For a long time afterwards, Charlie was silent, staring straight ahead of him, not meeting her eye.

  At last he spoke, in a strange, half-whisper.

  “So lemme get this straight,” he said, licking his lips nervously, “Montford’s paying for yer to fancy yerself up in Lunnon, attend all sorts of ennertainments, and snag yerself any gennleman of yer choosin’.”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “yes, I suppose so.”

  “Then as a weddin’ present, he’s givin’ you a castle and a fair bit o’ blunt to see you set up for life. Then he’s settin’ up Miss Alice as well, and the young ‘uns, when they’re sprouted.”

  “Yes, though when you put it like that, it sounds…”

  “Gen’rous?”

  She snorted. Montford had not been motivated by generosity. He’d come up with the one plan designed to gall her like no other. But she could hardly explain this to Charlie.

  “I suppose it shall not be the end of the world,” she allowed, grudgingly. “I have no wish to leave Rylestone for London, and have no interest in the entertainments of the city. However, if I am to find a suitable husband and secure my dowry, I suppose I’ll have to go to London. I’m certainly not marrying Sir Wesley or Mr. Fawkes!”

  Charlie looked dumbfounded. “Sir Wesley has asked you … and Mr. Fawkes … the vicar?�
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  She nodded. “Of course I turned them down. Though they’re a sight better than Mr. Lightfoot.” She shuddered. “I’d rather endure Mr. Fawkes’ stutter for twenty-four hours a day than be tied to Mr. Lightfoot. Do you know, Charlie, but I think that man might be insane?”

  Charlie looked quite miserable. He looked, in fact, as if he were about to cry. Astrid became quite concerned. “Whatever is the matter, Charlie?”

  He swallowed tightly, as if he had a rat stuck in his throat. “Just wished you’d told me. About Lunnon.”

  “Well, I would have done, but there was the festival yesterday, and so much happening at once.”

  “Just wish you’d told me,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Thought I’d lose my job, I did. Thought we’d all be driven to the workhouse. Thought I had no choice, with my Millie burstin at the seams again and all of the little ‘uns underfoot. Thought I done what’s best for ‘em.”

  She laid a comforting hand over Charlie’s arm, growing increasingly troubled by his behavior. He looked as green as Montford had looked before he’d cast up his accounts. “What are you talking about, Charlie? You’re worrying me.”

  He dropped the reins and turned to face her, though he could not meet her eyes. “Oh, Miss Astrid, I think I done a terrible thing. I think yer gonna tear my eyes out, you are.”

  She grasped his arm. “Charlie …”

  “I were the one what killed Cyril!” he burst out.

  Astrid’s heart stopped working. Her hand dropped from Charlie’s arm. “No, oh no, Charlie!”

  Charlie shook his head miserably. “He said it needed to be done. To shake you up some. I never meant to hurt the poor beast, but the bullet went wrong. Don’t know why I let him talk me into it. But he has a way of twistin’ a body’s thoughts, and fillin’ it with uncommon fears. He said it were the only way, to save you and yer sisters, and to keep us all from the workhouse.”