How to Tempt a Duke. Кейси Майклс

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Two mugs of your finest brew, Innkeeper, if you please, and whatever hot food you’ve got in the kitchens,” Rafe interjected quickly in flawless French as he tossed the fellow a coin, and the man bowed his way back to the bar.

      “Damned frogs. They don’t seem to know we’ve beaten them, do they, Rafe?”

      “Oh, they know, and they hate us for it. The only thing saving us right now, I’d say, is the fact that most Parisians blame Bonaparte for getting them into this fix in the first place. I heard we had to put more guards around his quarters again today to protect him from his own once-loyal subjects. A part of me thinks we ought to stand down, and simply let them have at him. A personal escort of one thousand of his own men, armed, and in uniform? Dubbing him bloody Emperor of Elba? This is what we fought for, Fitz?”

      “Does seem like we’re coddling the little fellow, I agree. How long are you and I supposed to be guarding him, anyway? Not that I’m in any great rush to head back to Dublin. Wet and cold it may be right now, but Paris has Dublin beat all hollow for willing females.”

      “That’s only because all the females in Dublin already know you and make sure to stay away.”

      “True enough,” Fitz said, scratching at his neatly trimmed beard, his green eyes sparkling. “I have cut myself a bit of a swath through the local ladies, handsome devil that I am. Now answer my question, if you please.”

      Rafe drank deep from his mug as the barmaid plunked down two bowls of steaming stew and then winked at him before walking away, her pretty, rounded rump issuing a provocative invitation he felt oddly disinclined to accept. Still, if he paid her well enough, she might launder his shirt for him while he took a nap.

      “How long? Six months or more, according to our orders,” he said as he lifted a stained wooden spoon and prodded at the thick stew, knowing he should just close his eyes as he ate, and not ask himself if he could identify the meat. “I hope I can find an opportunity to talk to the man.”

      Fitz looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Talk to Boney? Why would you be wanting to do any such thing?”

      Rafe crossed his arms and tried to hug some warmth into his bones before tackling the stew. “I don’t know why I’m telling you, since you’ll do nothing but make jokes at my expense, but I’ve been toying with the idea of penning a book about the war. You do realize, don’t you, Fitz, that for all our years with Wellington, we never once encountered Bonaparte himself across the battlefield.”

      “And we never want to, to my mind. So you’re setting yourself up as another Byron, is it?”

      “Hardly. That would mean casting myself in the role of hero. Just a simple history, Fitz, one that nobody will read, not even those grandchildren you’re trying to foist onto me. At any rate, we’ll be back in England by Christmas, if you’re still of a mind to accept my invitation to visit for a few months.”

      “I am. I’ve heard enough about your home to think I already know it, but I still want to meet this grand family you say you have, not that I’ve seen a letter from any of them in all the years I’ve known you. Or you penning more than the occasional note to any of them, come to think of it. And what then for you, Rafe?” Fitz asked as they ate. “Will your uncle the duke let you take back the reins on your imaginary estate?”

      Rafe put down his spoon, his only mediocre appetite now completely gone. “I’ve never held the reins, Fitz, and you know it. Mother’s succession of husbands did that, each one a worse steward than the last. At least they listened to my mother and refused all of His Grace’s offers to put one of his own men in charge.”

      “Why would they do that?”

      “Because my uncle would have offered his hand, and then taken back twice as much with both hands. That, and my mother loathes the duke.”

      “But the estate is yours, correct? You left England a lad, but you return having gained your majority.”

      “In a perfect world that might be so,” Rafe said, rubbing at his eyelids, which seemed to wish to close even as he struggled to keep them open. “But, thanks to Willowbrook not being part of any entail, everything is under the control of my mother until I reach the age of thirty.” He reached for his mug of ale once more. “And my mother? Does she play the good steward of her son’s eventual inheritance? No, she does not. She marries, Fitz. It’s what she does.”

      “Maybe she’d like to marry a nice young Irishman, then,” Fitz teased, giving Rafe a jab in the side. “I’d let you run the place to your heart’s content, sonny, while your mother and I—What would we do, Rafe?”

      “I wouldn’t even want to contemplate such a question. Besides, she was barely out of her widow’s weeds when I left, so there may be yet another new stepfather installed at Willowbrook for all I know, and my sisters tossed back to the duke for safekeeping while dear Lady Helen plays at blushing bride.”

      “Oh, come on now, it wasn’t all so bad, as I recall you telling me you spent most of your years with the duke and his sons yourself, until he bought you your commission. There could be worse fates than a generous uncle.”

      “That’s what Charlie used to tell me. Drove me halfway round the bend, that little monster did, but she, like you, did have a point.”

      Fitz looked into his mug. “No, I can’t be drunk yet, there’s still too much ale in here. Charlie? And then you said she?”

      Rafe smiled at the memory of a girl several years his junior: tall, thin, all long legs and elbows, trailing after him as if he were some knight in shining armor. “Sorry. I should have said Charlotte. Charlotte Seavers. Her father’s estate cuts into my uncle’s, also, like a wedge of pie. Rose Cottage and the land that’s still a part of it are probably more of a thorn in His Grace’s side than Willowbrook.”

      “Roses, thorns, that makes sense.”

      For some unknown reason, a memory he didn’t know he still possessed rose in Rafe’s head. He was in the apple orchard, hiding from his lessons with his cousins, and Charlie had called down to him from her perch in the branches of one of the trees. He didn’t know how she did it, but she’d always seemed to know where he would be, and made sure that she was there, as well.

      Sometimes he was flattered by the young girl’s attention, and sometimes he was annoyed. That day he was annoyed, and to show his annoyance he’d picked up an apple that had fallen to the ground and halfheartedly tossed it in her direction.

      It had been a stupid thing to do. He might have hit her with the apple. He might have startled her so that she fell from her perch and was injured.

      Instead, the little monster had deftly snagged the apple out of the air with one hand, and then winged it back in his direction.

      He’d had that black eye for three weeks.

      “Rafe? You’re woolgathering again. I think I said something about there being worse fates than a generous uncle.”

      Rafe shook off the memory of his childhood, a move that, oddly, made his head ache even more. “True. But the boy I was at nineteen is not the man I hope I am now, at six and twenty. Grateful as I am, I’m past the point of accepting any more of the man’s cold charity, Fitz. I can’t do anything to help my sisters. I’m thankful for what my uncle has done for them as well as for me, but it’s time I made my own way in the СКАЧАТЬ