The Odious Duke Read online

  “Or as clever as Assaye,” Verena added with a little smile.

  “That, of course, goes without saying,” the Duke agreed.

  Their eyes met.

  “Don’t be afraid,” the Duke said softly. “You are young and very lovely, Verena. The world can be a wonderfully enchanting place when you have both those attributes.”

  “I shall make mistakes – ” she whispered, almost as if she spoke to herself.

  “Not if you trust me,” the Duke replied.

  She put out her hand towards him as if in need of comfort.

  The Duke took it and felt her cold fingers tighten on his.

  “I will destroy the dragons,” he said softly.

  Verena drew in her breath.

  “I hope you can – Leopard!” she whispered in a very small voice.

  It was, however, a woebegone little face under a pretty straw bonnet who the Duke said ‘goodbye’ to the following morning when Verena and Miss Richardson left for London.

  The landau was solid and old-fashioned and the coachman had been thirty years in the General’s service and the horses were good bloodstock and the Duke had confidence in the footman escorting the ladies.

  And a groom followed behind, riding Assaye.

  “Goodbye, Travers,” Verena said, holding out her hand.

  Travers took it in his.

  “I’ll carry out the Master’s orders, miss, and keep the house ready for your return.”

  Miss Richardson, who had already said ‘goodbye’ to the Duke, then stepped into the carriage.

  Verena held out both hands to him, her eyes filled with unshed tears.

  “You will come and see me – soon,” she asked.

  “The day after tomorrow,” the Duke promised.

  “You have my Godmother’s address?”

  “You wrote it down for me,” he answered. “Take care of yourself, Verena, and I give you my word that you I will do my very best to see that you enjoy London and it will be very different, I swear to you, from your last visit.”

  “I rather doubt it,” she replied. “Goodbye, Major. You must travel slowly. I think you should take at least two or three days on the journey.”

  “You will be pushing me in a bath chair before you are finished,” the Duke answered and saw a ghost of a dimple before she turned away and stepped into the landau.

  The coachman started up the horses and Verena’s hand waved from the window until the carriage was out of sight.

  “Poor child,” Travers muttered beneath his breath.

  “She will be all right,” the Duke asserted. “I will see to that.”

  “Indeed, sir, I sure hopes so. And you can be certain of one thing, I’ll be sendin’ no messages to the United Services Club!”

  “How much did you influence the General to write that will?” the Duke asked with a twinkle in his eye.

  There was an answering smile on Travers’ lips.

  “I may have put it into the Master’s head, sir, that Miss Verena might get tied up with some undesirable person seeing as how she’d had so little experience of eligible suitors.”

  “That was sensible of you.”

  “Of course, sir,” Travers continued, “I did point out to the General that being in black gloves made it hard for a young lady to make any new acquaintances. After I says it, the Master was not beyond guessin’ who’d come callin’ as soon as he was under the ground!”

  “I congratulate you,” the Duke said.

  He left a little later on Salamanca for Eaton Socon. He had thought himself strong enough to endure such a short journey on horseback, but by the time he had reached The White Horse he was glad enough to give Salamanca into the hands of his own groom and then to repair with a throbbing head to the private parlour Mr. Carter had engaged for him.

  After partaking of a light luncheon, the Duke left for London and only the excellent springing of his new travelling landau and the fact that he was able to sleep part of the way made the journey at all bearable.

  It was indeed a very tired exhausted man who reached Selchester House well after midnight and sank thankfully into his own bed to sleep heavily and dreamlessly until late the following morning.

  *

  When the Duke awoke, he wondered for a moment where he was.

  Then, as the events of the past week crowded back into his mind, he found himself planning certain operations with a zest and an interest that made him exceedingly impatient of any physical weakness.

  The Duke had thought at Eaton Socon that he would send for his own physician for his arrival at Selchester House.

  But he decided on rising that apart from a certain soreness his head was in fact well on the way to recovery and he had other more important matters to attend to.

  Mr. Graystone, however, had delayed him and it was not until after luncheon that the Duke, travelling in his smart town landau repaired to a mansion in Charles Street, Mayfair.

  Here, on asking for Lord Adolphus Royd, he was informed by the butler that his Lordship was in the study and was led to a quiet room at the back of the house.

  Lord Adolphus, who had put on weight considerably in the last ten years of his life, looked up in surprise at his nephew’s entrance. Heaving himself up from the comfortable armchair where he had been enjoying a quiet snooze, he exclaimed,

  “Good Heavens, Theron! Why was I not informed that you would be calling on me?”

  He held out a fat hand remarking as he did so,

  “Is there any urgent reason for such unusual attention? Surely you have returned exceeding swiftly from your intended trip to the country.”

  “I arrived back last night,” the Duke informed him.

  “Then your addresses have already been accepted?” Lord Adolphus enquired curiously.

  “I have made no addresses,” the Duke replied sharply. “What I have come to ask you is whether we have a relationship with Lord Merwin?”

  “Merwin?” Lord Adolphus repeated. “Why should you expect that we have a connection with that prosy and loquacious windbag for whom I have had a deep aversion from the time I was at Oxford University?”

  “Most English noble families are linked by marriage somewhere in their Family Tree,” the Duke replied. “You have made that statement to me on many occasions in the past.”

  “It is true, but I would have no wish to be connected with Merwin. Tiresome chap, very tiresome!”

  “Uncle Adolphus, the one subject you are an authority on is lineage. Surely to oblige me you could find a small connection, however trifling, between our family and that of Lord Merwin’s?”

  “There is none,” Lord Adolphus stated adamantly. “And I cannot conceive, Theron, why you should desire a cognation so distasteful, or to put it stronger, so abhorrent to me!”

  “What can Lord Merwin have done to you?” the Duke asked with a hint of laughter in his voice.

  “I have no wish to dig up any skeletons. It is enough for me to say, Theron, that I don’t include any of the Merwin family on my visiting list. Anyway the Lord Merwin I knew has been dead these past ten years.”

  “Then why could you not say so? I imagine he had an heir?”

  “I believe that a cousin inherited the title,” Lord Adolphus replied coldly. “But I have no desire for his acquaintance. What bat is flapping in our belfry, Theron? There is enough blue blood in the Beau Ton without your needing to rub shoulders with those quite beneath your touch.”

  “You disappoint me,” the Duke said, walking restlessly across the room. “And Winchcombe? We have no connection with that family, I presume?”

  “Winchcombe!” Lord Adolphus repeated. “Now that one is a very different kettle of fish!”

  The Duke, having asked the question in an offhand way as one who already knew the answer, was suddenly alert.

  “Yes, indeed, very different,” Lord Adolphus continued. “And as a matter of fact, dear boy, your great-grandfather married a Winchcombe.”

  “He did?” the Duke
queried. “Then why have I not been told of it?”

  “As it so happens, I have not included him in my history of the family.”

  “Why the devil not?” the Duke asked.

  “Because it was a mésalliance, something that none of us could be proud of.”

  “What happened?”

  There was now no mistaking his curiosity and Lord Adolphus, who seldom found his relatives interested in the family archives, which were his special hobby, was gratified to notice the way that the Duke seated himself in a comfortable chair and was now apparently prepared to listen raptly to anything his relative had to impart.

  “Do you mean to say,” he asked as Lord Adolphus seemed to pause for reflection, “that my great-grandmother was a Winchcombe?”

  ‘Nothing of the sort,” he snapped. “Your great-grandmother was a Newcastle, an excellent family, good blood. The quarterings embellish our own with great distinction.”

  “Then explain yourself,” the Duke urged.

  “The Winchcombe mésalliance was a family misfortune and this is why I have not incorporated it in the Family Tree.”

  “Cheating, are you?” the Duke asked. “Well, I have always been suspicious that you bend the branches a trifle, Uncle Adolphus.”

  “I have done nothing of the sort,” his uncle retorted. “But it seemed to me pointless to record the senseless action of a young profligate.”

  “Suppose you tell me what happened?” the Duke suggested. “And let me judge for myself.”

  “When your great-grandfather was up at Oxford,” Lord Adolphus began, “he became infatuated there with a young female of the name of Winchcombe, the daughter of some Army chap. The boy was nineteen at the time, a wild blade who had been in many scrapes, when he asked his father’s permission to marry the wench. You can imagine the reply!”

  Lord Adolphus paused to make his words have greater effect and then he went on,

  “Her father as it so happened also refused his consent. Your great-grandfather in those days had no title, there being several lives between him and the Dukedom and he was also in a state of impecunity habitual to most undergraduates.”

  “What happened?” the Duke asked with a smile.

  “Young Royd and Miss Arabella Winchcombe ran away to Gretna Green!”

  “That must have caused a scandal!”

  “It did indeed,” his uncle replied. “Both fathers set off in pursuit only to reach Gretna Green without having a sight or sign of the eloping couple. They thought they must have been hoaxed and after abusing each other in respect of their erring offspring for over a week, they returned South striving on their journey to discern the whereabouts of the lovers.”

  “What had occurred?” the Duke asked with deep curiosity.

  “The runaways had become involved in a carriage accident,” Lord Adolphus replied. “It had happened after they had lost their way on some Yorkshire Moor. Anyway they were both injured, your great-grandfather broke his leg and several ribs.

  He paused for more effect and them continued,

  “They accepted the hospitality of the Country Squire, who had been driving the other vehicle and he certainly paid handsomely for his part in the collision as they stayed with him for months! Arabella Winchcombe, making a swift recovery, apparently nursed her lover back to good health. I imagine that she was a competent chit, being a soldier’s daughter.”

  “I am sure she was,” the Duke remarked reflectively.

  “Four months elapsed before they finally reached Gretna Green and were married.”

  “My God, that must have given all the gossips something to chatter about,” the Duke remarked.

  “It was hushed up. When they returned South, Miss Winchcombe, or rather, Mrs. Royd now, went back to live with her parents and died in childbirth five months later and then the child was still-born. Your great-grandfather returned to his studies, or rather his gay life, at Oxford. The prodigal was welcomed home by the family and no one was sure of what had happened until he announced to his parents that he was a widower!”

  “They must have been curious,” the Duke murmured.

  “I have a suspicion after reading all the family correspondence that young Royd, having a vast dislike of the penury in which he had been existing in the North, was a convincing liar, while my own opinion is that by the time they reached home he was bored with Arabella!”

  “Obviously a shyster of the first water,” the Duke remarked. “And yet from all the accounts he was a conformable Duke and in his declining years deeply religious.”

  “An example of the poacher turned gamekeeper,” Lord Adolphus smiled. “No man is more pontifical than a reformed rake!”

  The Duke laughed and then commented seriously,

  “Nevertheless my heart bleeds for Arabella.”

  “Never knew you had one,” his uncle retorted.

  “It has for years been a matter of conjecture,” the Duke agreed, “but, Uncle Adolphus, you have told me exactly what I wished to know, my great-grandfather was in fact married to a Winchcombe!”

  “Secretly and, as I have already told you, I shall not acknowledge the connection in the family history that I am at this moment compiling,” Lord Adolphus retorted.

  “On the contrary you will oblige me by telling the truth,” the Duke replied. “I find the story most intriguing and in the interest of accuracy it should be recorded.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Lord Adolphus remarked. “Never known you interested in your ancestors before now and most certainly not in any seamy incidents that do not reflect well on the family character.”

  The Duke did not reply and Lord Adolphus stared at his nephew reflectively with narrowed eyes.

  “Is it a Merwin or a Winchcombe who has a particular interest for you?” he enquired.

  “Both,” the Duke replied and went from the room without gratifying his relative’s curiosity any further.

  From Curzon Street he drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields and, after some difficulty in finding the correct premises of Messrs. Mayhew, Bodkin and Critchwick, he finally climbed a dark twisting staircase to their offices on the first floor of a dreary building.

  A somewhat disdainful clerk was inclined to query the possibility of the Duke seeing Mr. Critchwick, seeing as he had no appointment. But, when he finally learnt the distinguished visitor’s name, with low bows of obsequious servility, he escorted His Grace into an inner office.

  There the Duke discovered an earnest-visaged and bespectacled but comparatively young man seated behind an imposing desk, who made a long verbose speech on the honour His Grace was conferring on the firm by entering their offices.

  “Are you Mr. Critchwick?” the Duke enquired, as soon as he was given an opportunity of speaking.

  “That is my name, Your Grace, but I surmise that you were in fact expecting to meet my father, Mr. Arthur Critchwick.”

  “I was,” the Duke replied.

  “Then I must inform Your Grace that my father is indisposed. In actual fact I must be frank and tell you he has suffered a stroke which has impaired his faculties and there is no likelihood of his resuming work here in this office.”

  The Duke seated himself on a chair that was not only uncomfortable but was, he suspected, unpleasantly dusty.

  “That is unfortunate,” he said. “I was anxious to meet your father, Mr. Critchwick, and I understand that he is by General Sir Alexander Winchcombe’s will empowered to appoint a Guardian for Miss Verena Winchcombe until she should attain her majority.”

  “That is correct, Your Grace,” Mr. Critchwick replied. “We received a letter this morning informing us of the General’s demise. My father, if he was capable of understanding what has occurred, would I know be deeply distressed at losing an old friend and a valued client.”

  “But, as you have apparently taken your father’s position,” the Duke said, “I presume that you would have the authority, Mr. Critchwick, to appoint a Guardian for Miss Winchcombe.”

  “I have, Y
our Grace.”

  “Excellent!” the Duke replied. “Then I will be most obliged, Mr. Critchwick, as a relative of the family and a person of responsibility, if you will appoint me!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Verena was very downcast for the first ten miles of the journey to London that she could hardly bring herself to reply to Miss Richardson’s conversation and, when spoke of the General, she began to weep.

  Almost at once she made an effort to regain her self-control, but the atmosphere inside the landau was lugubrious in the extreme until Miss Richardson in her calm, matter-of-fact voice remarked,

  “I never thought, Verena, to find you so poor-spirited!”

  “I have no wish to go to London.”

  “Then indeed I wash my hands of you,” Miss Richardson declared. “You used to have a good sense of adventure and to be prepared to meet difficulties with a smile and make an effort to overcome obstacles. You are certainly not the same girl who had three falls in trying to leap a five-barred gate but succeeded in the end.”

  Verena managed a smile.

  “I would not like to believe that you are ‒ ashamed of me.”

  “Well, I am,” Miss Richardson replied frankly. “And I can only be thankful that the General cannot see you now. If there was one thing he had a great distaste for it was a wet pea-goose in a fit of the dismals!”

  This remark made Verena laugh and after they had enjoyed an early luncheon at Baldock her spirits noticeably revived.

  They reached the outskirts of London around about five o’clock and the landau, wending its way through narrow roads congested with drays, coaches, carriages and smart phaetons eventually reached Lady Bingley’s residence in Manchester Square.

  It was a tall, narrow and unpretentious house with, however, large windows looking onto the garden in the centre of the square and a private garden of its own at the back.

  As the coachman drew the horses to a standstill, Verena wondered a little anxiously whether her Godmother would be pleased to welcome her arriving unexpectedly and without an invitation.

  But she need have had no fears on that score. Lady Bingley, after a first exclamation of sheer astonishment at the sight of her Goddaughter, held out her arms warmly and there was no mistaking the sincerity of her welcome.