The Odious Duke Read online

  The Duke looked at her speculatively for a moment before he said,

  “If it is your wish, Verena, I will take you home and then retire. I had thought you were too angry with me to remember my injuries.”

  “My anger, Your Grace, has nothing to do with your health! And, as I am responsible, as you have often pointed out, for the wound on your head, then if you intend to escort Godmama and me back to Manchester Square, we should leave at once.”

  “If that is what you desire,” the Duke replied.

  He collected Lady Bingley and more swiftly than Verena could have imagined possible, they made their farewells and the three of them were in the Duke’s coach driving home.

  On arrival Lady Bingley thanked the Duke profusely.

  Verena only said as she dropped him a curtsey,

  “For Goodness sake be sensible and go straight to bed.”

  “I will obey your instructions,” the Duke said, “but I hope you will permit me to call for you tomorrow morning in my phaeton as I wish to take you driving in Hyde Park.”

  He glanced round to see if Lady Bingley was out of hearing and added in a low voice,

  “We must search, as you know, for the ‘Evil Genius’.”

  “And if I refuse to come with you?” Verena asked.

  “Then I might have to compel you,” he replied in an amused voice.

  “Compel me?” she questioned, glancing up at him.

  “As your Guardian, I have certain rights. I should not hesitate to exercise them, Verena.”

  She uttered a sound of exasperation and, tossing her head, stalked away from him.

  But the Duke was smiling as he stepped into his landau and was then driven back towards Selchester House.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Duke was just finishing his breakfast when Harry Sheraton was announced.

  He entered the room in the magnificent glory of the uniform of the Life Guards, his breastplate shining in the sunshine from the window, the spurs clinking on his thigh-high boots and he carried under his arm the helmet with horsehair crest and plumes designed by the Prince Regent.

  “God, Harry!” the Duke exclaimed, looking up from a dish of lamb cutlets embellished with truffles and cream. “You clank like the bell in a damned belfry! Sit down before you deafen me.”

  “On my way to the Barracks,” Harry Sheraton replied. “Heard you back, Theron. Could not resist just looking in to hear if you had found a blushing bride!”

  “I have not,” the Duke answered, “but I have found your Bullion thieves!”

  “Found what – ” Harry Sheraton asked.

  “It is a long story,” the Duke replied with a smile. “You had best be seated, Harry, or you will fall down from exhaustion. I well know the weight of that fancy attire you are wearing is intolerable.”

  “Trouble is,” Harry Sheraton replied, seating himself very carefully on a high-backed dining chairs, “only time even passably comfortable is on a horse! Never mind that, tell me your tale. Not much time.”

  The Duke obliged, relating in detail his encounter with Verena, the curiosity that led him to The Priory and the way he had suffered, as he put it, “in the interests of law and justice.”

  “Good God, Theron!” Harry Sheraton then exclaimed when he had finished. “Know you to be a truthful cove or would swear you bamming with all the Cheltenham theatricals rolled into one!”

  “It is the truth,” the Duke said soberly.

  “Cleverest scheme I have ever heard.”

  “Exactly what I thought,” the Duke agreed. “It is almost foolproof as far as the ‘Evil Genius’ is concerned.”

  “That is what you call him?” he asked “Apt name! Genius, right enough.”

  “I think it was Verena’s name for him,” the Duke remarked, “but as you say he certainly has a brainbox to think out a plan that would be very difficult to pin on him unless we catch him in the very act.”

  “What we shall have to do,” Harry Sheraton stated positively.

  “Exactly!” the Duke agreed. “It is why I was so anxious that Verena should come to London. She is the only person who can identify him.”

  “Now about this girl,” Harry Sheraton said with a change of tone. “Sounds an Amazon! You intend to marry her?”

  The Duke put down his knife and fork with a clatter.

  “Marry her! I can assure you, Harry, by the way Verena raged at me yesterday she would sooner marry a gorilla at the Royal Exchange! She considers me abominable, deceitful and contemptible and in her favourite epithet – odious!”

  “Sounds a rum sort of wench!” Harry Sheraton said, his eyes on the Duke’s face.

  “She is certainly different from most young females of her age,” the Duke remarked. “She hates Society and would so much rather associate with village children. She has a great disdain for anyone she considers top-lofty and has a passion for horses. She has trained her own horse to do incredible tricks. She has healing hands, she can read Latin, handle a musket with considerable skill and she has not the slightest conception of how to flirt or ingratiate herself as a female!”

  Harry Sheraton’s eyes twinkled.

  “Makes me cursed curious. I think you already halfway to Altar!”

  The Duke rose from his seat at the table.

  “You can save such idle speculation for romances from the lending libraries. Verena now considers herself promised to some fortune-hunting footslogger. In fact I am almost convinced it is my duty to make a push to find him or at least have some idea of his whereabouts. Heaven knows where the Eleventh Foot are stationed at the moment!”

  “Must be off,” Harry Sheraton said, rising with some difficulty from his chair. “See you later. Talk further on this matter.”

  The Duke was not listening.

  “I suppose,” he said reflectively, “I could visit the War Office.”

  “Not accompany you there,” Harry Sheraton remarked. “Gives me the creeps to see those old Generals hanging round hoping that war will break out in some obscure part of world.”

  He paused halfway to the door to ask,

  “By the way tell me what the footslogger’s name? Have uncle who commanded the Eleventh one time!”

  “The name is Captain Winchcombe-Smythe,” the Duke replied.

  “Giles Winchcombe-Smythe?” Harry Sheraton asked.

  “Yes!” the Duke answered in some surprise. “How the devil did you know?”

  “Unless a twin. In my Regiment!”

  “In the Life Guards ‒ ”

  “Right,” he replied. “Bought a transfer to us two months ago.”

  “What is he like?” the Duke enquired.

  “Not spoken with him over much,” Harry Sheraton answered. “Not done to be effusive to newcomers.”

  Harry Sheraton paused

  “Then what happened?” the Duke prompted.

  “Begun to sport his blunt deal too ostentatiously,” Harry Sheraton continued. “Boasts of his conquests in Petticoat Lane, gives parties for Covent Garden frails that send the younger Officers on parade with such hangovers they cannot see the point of their swords at two paces.”

  “Interesting,” the Duke commented quietly.

  “Personally I think of him as an outsider and so will tell you more later,” Harry Sheraton said with a quick glance at the clock. “Roasted if late, the Colonel in none too good a humour these days. One thing would cheer him, to hand over the ‘Evil Genius’ in irons!”

  “You will have to persuade Miss Winchcombe to come looking for him,” the Duke suggested with a sudden smile.

  “Certainly do that,” Harry Sheraton promised. “Gad, Theron, you are most unaccountable chap! Never expected you be one for adventure, heroics and all that type swashbuckling!”

  “I am not,” the Duke answered ruefully. “I was forced into it, you might say, by circumstances that I had no control over.”

  He found that he was talking to himself in an empty dining room. Harry Sheraton was already proceeding a
cross the hall, his accoutrements clanking as he moved.

  The conversation had given the Duke much food for thought.

  And, when he collected Verena just before noon to take her driving in the Park, he had not made up his mind whether he should tell her that Captain Winchcombe-Smythe was in London or whether he should wait until she asked for his help.

  He had an idea that she might visit the War Office on her own and this, which would give rise to gossip and speculation, was something that the Duke was determined to prevent.

  He wondered whether be should speak to Lady Bingley about it and then decided that perhaps the wisest course would be to determine how anxious Verena herself was to meet her cousin.

  He had, however, an idea that, because she was incensed with him at present, her thoughts inevitably would turn with affection and perhaps longing towards Captain Winchcombe-Smythe.

  When the Duke duly arrived at Lady Bingley’s house in Manchester Square, his groom, who had accompanied him in his high perch phaeton, jumped down to ring the bell.

  “You can walk home from here, Fowler,” the Duke said.

  “Very good, Your Grace.”

  The man, however, waited when Verena came out of the house to help her up into the phaeton beside the Duke.

  Verena had intended to treat her Guardian with a cool indifference, to answer him in monosyllables and try by an air of dignity and frigidity to make him realise that, while she is obeying his command, she was still extremely incensed by his unforgivable behaviour.

  Unfortunately, as she descended the steps, her chin held high and her expression telling him all too clearly that she was well prepared to do battle, she stole a glance at the horses pulling the high perch phaeton – and was lost!

  Two perfectly matched geldings, both of them black as jet, they were as dashing a pair as she had ever seen.

  She stopped dead on the pavement to stare at them.

  They were tossing their heads, moving a little restlessly and, as they sidled and fidgeted, they proclaimed clearly that they were anxious to be off.

  With some difficulty Verena bit back the words of admiration that hovered on her lips and, climbing into the phaeton with the assistance of Fowler, took only a brief glance at the Duke.

  He was looking more handsome and more impressive than usual, wearing a high beaver at an angle on his head, a grey whipcord coat into which he seemed to have been poured and pale-yellow pantaloons above Hessian boots.

  If the Duke was magnificent, Verena herself, although she did not realise it, was the perfect accompaniment for him in a new driving coat of pink batiste, trimmed with pink braid of slightly darker hue and then fastened with pearl buttons.

  The straw bonnet that framed her brown hair was ornamented with tiny ostrich feathers of the same pink and matched by ribbons that were tied under her small pointed chin.

  The Duke did not speak and nor did Verena. As soon as she had seated herself comfortably, the Duke set his horses in motion and they trotted out of Manchester Square towards the Park.

  They had travelled some way in silence before the Duke said,

  “I should inform you, Verena, that I have arranged for your horses to be moved to my own stables.”

  “Why have you done that?” Verena asked sharply. “I have no wish, Your Grace, to avail myself of your hospitality or of your stables.”

  “That is most unfortunate,” the Duke replied suavely, “because if you intend to house your bloodstock where it is at the moment, there will be no room for the pair of bays that I spoke to you about last night.”

  Verena, knowing that her Godmother’s stables were not large, was aware that the Duke had scored a point.

  “Then I would much prefer,” she said grandly, “to find my horses other accommodation.”

  “You are quite at liberty to look for it,” the Duke answered. “When you find a place to your satisfaction, I will have your horses moved there immediately.”

  “How obliging of Your Grace!” she countered sarcastically.

  “I am really trying to be obliging,” he answered with a touch of laughter in his eyes as he looked down at her. “In fact I was so obliging as to do exactly what you commanded me last night and since you are so interested, I did sleep well, thank you, and my head feels much better this morning.”

  Verena gave a hastily suppressed little chuckle of laughter.

  She found it difficult to remain aloof when the Duke teased her with just that particular note in his voice that had amused her when she had sat for hours at his bedside and they talked and laughed at so many things.

  However, she did not intend to capitulate too easily!

  “As Your Grace is so much better in health, I imagine that you will soon be leaving London.”

  “Why should I?” he enquired in surprise.

  “I had thought that you would wish to continue the series of visits that was so unfortunately interrupted on our first acquaintance,” she said. “You may have by this time a slight disinclination to visit Lord and Lady Upminster, but the other two young ladies your sister spoke of last night will undoubtedly still be waiting for your arrival with panting hearts.”

  “My sister’s talk was not intended for your ears,” the Duke replied.

  “It is unfortunate that I am not hard of hearing,” Verena remarked.

  “I might have known you would use this ammunition against me,” he said. “What female could resist the gratuitous present of a red-hot cannonball?”

  “If I had a cannon,” Verena answered, “I would certainly fire it at Your Grace, for your behaviour in this matter only confirms all that I suspected before we even met!”

  “I might have known,” the Duke said again, “that you are like all your sex – a nagger, a shrew and a scold!”

  “That is not fair,” Verena retorted angrily. “I am not a shrew and I have not the slightest interest either to nag or scold Your Grace.”

  “Then if this is not nagging,” the Duke said, “I can only be heartily sorry for anyone, Verena, who has your interest and must stand corrected by you!”

  “I think this conversation is pointless,” Verena said coldly. “Perhaps Your Grace would be so obliging as to tell me instead about the bays you consider I might wish to purchase.”

  “Certainly,” the Duke replied. “Lord Manson is sending them to my stables tomorrow.”

  “You seem certain that I shall wish to own them,” Verena remarked, trying to find fault.

  “I have already purchased them on your behalf,” he answered.

  He saw, as she turned to look straight at him, that she thought it an impertinence and added,

  “If you are not interested, I would be delighted to keep them myself. In fact I consider I am making a considerable sacrifice in allowing you to have them.”

  “So, I have to be grateful to you, do I?”

  “Not in the least,” he replied. “Just be your usual disagreeable self, I am getting used to it.”

  She laughed because she could not help it.

  “You are impossible!”

  “Good gracious!” the Duke exclaimed. “You have now found a new adjective. I was beginning to think that you had run out of them and that we should return to ‘contemptible’, ‘outrageous’ and of course, ‘odious’! I feared that your vocabulary, Miss Winchcombe, was not extensive.”

  “You are not to make me laugh!” Verena parried and there were dimples in both her cheeks.

  “However bellicose you may be feeling, you might at least just try to look pleasant,” the Duke continued. “We are now approaching Rotten Row and, when the Beau Ton do see you beside me, they will be full of speculation as to who you are, how well we know each other and if in fact I have any ulterior motive in inviting you to drive with me today.”

  “I collect by that,” Verena said in a demure voice, “that Your Grace is being so obliging as to make me fashionable and introduce me to the Beau Ton.”

  “Very certainly. You cannot really expect
me to be seen driving any young female who is not of the first water?”

  Verena laughed again.

  “Conceited cockscomb was right.”

  “But of course!” the Duke agreed. “All wearers of strawberry leaves are conceited. They have so much consequence to be conceited about.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.” Verena pleaded. “You know perfectly well I should look cool and slightly bored and any fashionable lady of the Ton must show off by appearing dissatisfied with her surroundings, whatever they may be!”

  “Who told you all this?” the Duke asked.

  “I think it must have been in one of those nonsensical novels you were so anxious for me to read,” Verena retorted. “I am only sorry now that I did not make you listen to the whole thirty-eight chapters of Love at First Sight or The Lost Heir.”

  “You bullied me enough as it was. God help any man who is at the mercy of a woman’s ‘tender hand’! It is just as heavy, I can assure you, as any artillery!”

  By this time they were entering Rotten Row and Verena saw many open carriages drawn by superior bloodstock, ladies in entrancing gowns holding court under lace-frilled sunshades, gentlemen riding on spirited mounts, high phaetons and dashing curricles each tooled by an elegant buck with an expertise that Verena admired as much as their horseflesh.

  She would not admit to the Duke that this was the first time she had ever ridden in a high perch phaeton and she felt an exhilaration at being so high off the ground, seated so precariously above the huge wheels and knowing that the fragility of the vehicle made it extremely vulnerable to accidents unless it was driven very competently.

  There was no doubt that the Duke was a Non-pareil or indeed that his phaeton, like his horses, was undoubtedly the smartest in the Park.

  “What do you think of it?” he asked, being aware of the wonder in Verena’s wide eyes and knew that she was thrilled by the scene.

  “I would never have guessed it would be so beautiful or the horses so breathtakingly magnificent,” she answered rapturously, as if she had forgotten who she was speaking to.

  Then suddenly she gave a cry.

  “Stop! Stop. There is Giles!”