Page 7 of Never a Duke
“Do you miss them?” Ned asked. Before marrying Abigail, Stephen had somehow parlayed lameness and eccentricity into attractive features where women of a certain ilk were concerned.
“Neddy, I will not call you out for asking me that question because you occupy the vast, stultifying darkness known as bachelorhood. You wander an airless and desolate plane, searching for you know not what, your heart relentlessly thirsting while you swill the waters of hedonism without surcease.”
Walden found it necessary to consult his pocket watch, though the duke’s shoulders twitched suspiciously at this description ofStephen’sbachelorhood.
“I’ll take that for a no,” Ned said. “You have sense enough not to miss your erstwhile preferred foolishness. I have never swilled the waters of hedonism, and the closest I’ve come to stultifying darkness is the conversation to be had at most Mayfair entertainments. You have been married for less than three years, and are in anticipation of your second disruptive event. I would otherwise call you out for intimating that I am the same variety of idiot bachelor you were.”
Abigail was six months gone with child number two, and according to her husband’s faultless judgment, she grew more radiantly lovely with each passing week. To Ned’s eye, the lady looked a bit tired and worried.
“If Miss Arbuckle hasn’t eloped,” Walden said, “and she hasn’t been taken into a brothel, where else will you look?”
“Newgate,” Ned said. “The jails, the sponging houses.”
“Don’t forget Marshalsea,” Stephen said. “The sooner she’s out of there the more likely she is to live to a happy old age.”
Marshalsea, London’s largest debtor’s prison, was notoriously rife with diseases, as was Newgate. Crime could pay very well, but the punishment if caught was often lethal even when no noose was involved, to say nothing of the dangers of transportation.
“I will, of course, have a look among the debtors,” Ned said, “but if you were a clean, well-spoken domestic going about your mistress’s business on the busy streets of Mayfair, and you were taken up by the watch, what’s the first thing you’d say?”
“I didn’t do it?” Stephen suggested.
“No,” Ned said, “because that’s what every crook ever arrested says. You’d invoke the consequence of somebody who could inspire the watch to have a care. You’d tell them precisely who you worked for and what that august personage would do to anybody who interfered with the timely execution of your appointed duties.”
“And you won’t tell us who has tasked you to search for this missing maid?” Walden asked, slipping his watch back into its pocket.
“The matter requires discretion.” Lady Rosalind would not want it known that she’d needed help only a convicted felon and former street thief could provide.
“You can trust us, Ned,” the duke said gently. “You are donning a bit of shining armor and cloaking yourself in thankless decency. Sooner or later, you might need some henchmen, and we will be honored to serve.”
“We’ll rescue you,” Stephen said, rising.
He need not add:again. When Walden had been pardoned by the Crown for a crime he’d not committed, he’d exercised a peer’s consequence and hauled Ned out of Newgate with him. A boy facing transportation had never been more grateful or bewildered.
And Ned was grateful, still. Always would be, until his dying day.
“I must be going,” Walden said. “Stephen, can you give me a lift?”
“Of course. I’ll have copies of Neddy’s sketch done by tomorrow morning, and I will put the mystery to Abigail.”
“I will consult with my duchess,” Walden said. “Jane worries about you, Ned.”
“I am all of two streets over,” Ned said. With the arrival of the fourth child to the Walden nursery, Ned had made a discreet exit from the ducal household and set up his own quarters. The privacy was marvelous, while the loneliness was…a bit, well, stultifying.
“Jane worries anyway,” Walden said, passing Stephen his second walking stick. “You are to call on her early next week. Don’t put in a quarter-hour’s penance at her at-home, call upon her. She hears gossip that would never reach male ears, and you are now the family bachelor.”
“Is that a warning?” Ned replied, taking another sip of his brandy.
“Matilda and Duncan are coming in from Berkshire next week,” Stephen said, “and Constance and Althea are in Town to do some shopping. Your fate is sealed.”
Duncan was a Wentworth cousin, a sober fellow a few years older than Walden. Althea and Constance were siblings to Walden and Lord Stephen, and both had found husbands in Yorkshire. They had dragged their spouses south to remark the occasion of Stephen’s wedding ball, and annual spring sojourns had followed.
“My fate was sealed when I was eight years old,” Ned said. “With some help from His Grace, I unsealed it.”
“You did,” Walden said, extending a hand, “and I have ever been proud of you as a result.” He thumped Ned on the shoulder as they shook, a display of affection that had become His Grace’s habit right about the time of Lord Stephen’s nuptials.
And every time it happened, Ned was surprised, pleased, and embarrassed.
“When the right lady comes along,” Stephen said, “you will go meekly and gratefully into the wonderous light of her affection, Neddy. You will scheme to win her favors and bless the day she grants them. Trust me on this.”
