How to Tame Your Duke(11)

"Indeed."

The single word boomed through the air like a cannon shot. Emilie jumped, spilled her coffee, and whipped around.

The Duke of Ashland filled the open doorway, his hand on the latch, his white hair glowing above his masked face.

* * *

The taut room snapped into panic at Ashland's appearance, like a platoon  caught malingering by a sergeant. A useful skill, this ability to move  and observe without being perceived. He owed Olympia that, at least.

Freddie leapt to his feet; his chair toppled to the floor behind him. "Sir!"

On the other side of the table, Mr. Grimsby set down his coffee cup and  rose. His fingers curled around the edge of the table: shaking,  probably. Poor fellow. "Good morning, Your Grace," he said, in his gruff  little voice.

Ashland stalked into the room, closing the door behind him with a  decisive click of the latch. The sound helped to quell the sick feeling  in his chest.

They were most spectacularly in love at first.

"I see your studies are proceeding apace, Frederick," he said.

Freddie picked up his chair, righted it, and sat down. "Oh, don't be  cross and sack poor Mr. Grimsby, Pater. Was only making conversation  over coffee. I assure you, he was putting me through my paces at a smart  clip a few minutes ago."

"No doubt." Ashland angled his body over the table and ran over the  papers and books clustered about the coffee tray. He picked up a sheet.  "Are these your Latin conjugations, Frederick?"

She bolted, pure and simple.

Ashland locked his fingers to keep them from crushing the paper.

"Hideous, I know. I've already been broken to bits by Mr. Grimsby. On the other hand, he's quite impressed by my maths."

"He should be." Ashland laid the paper back on the table. "Well, Mr. Grimsby? What's your assessment?"

Grimsby's face still glowed pink beneath that startling bush of  wheat-colored whiskers. He cleared his throat. "Lord Silverton is  immensely clever, Your Grace, as I suspected, but he will need to study  with a great deal more discipline over the coming months. He's not yet  sixteen, and his education has been haphazard at best; meanwhile, he  will be competing for places against older public schoolboys who have  been drilled in Latin every day for the past eight or ten years. I  suppose his name will help him slide through . . ."

"I say," Freddie muttered.

". . . but I doubt his lordship wishes the lucky accident of his birth  to nudge out some better-qualified young man from the chance for  advancement." Grimsby's eyes gleamed as he said this, as if he actually  cared about the fate of that deserving schoolboy shunted aside for the  son of a duke.                       
       
           



       

Ashland raised his eyebrows. "Well phrased, Mr. Grimsby. Frederick? Do you agree?"

"When you put it that way," Freddie said sulkily. "I'm not a complete rotter, after all."

"I believe Mr. Grimsby is quite right. Britain's great strength is her  ability to discover and encourage boys of exceptional ability and allow  them to better their condition in life through hard work and application  to duty. Nowhere else in Europe can a talented boy of little or no  social connection advance himself to prominence, and the result on the  Continent is stagnation, decadence, and tyranny." Ashland tapped his  finger against the topmost book in Grimsby's stack, a neatly bound  edition of Newton's Principia.

"I say, Pater," Freddie grumbled. "That's coming it rather thick."

Grimsby's face had flushed to an even more furious shade of red. "That  is not altogether the case, your lordship. I would not go so far as to  say tyranny."

"Tyranny and disorder," Ashland said. "Take the recent case of this  principality in Germany, this Holstein-Schweinwald. A trifling, backward  state, to be sure; quite second-rate and of very little interest to the  world at large . . ."

"Backward!"

"Yet even there, an absolute ruler, a despot, attempts to rearrange the  succession to suit his own interests, to prevent the natural growth of a  democratic form of law . . ."

"Was it fair, Your Grace, that the succession must die out because the  prince's children happened to be girls instead of boys? Britain herself,  and by extension half the world, is ruled by a woman." Grimsby's voice  shook with passion.

"Your views are admirable, Mr. Grimsby, but I beg leave to remind you  that Great Britain is ruled by her people, as you well know. Queen  Victoria, God bless and keep her, has only a ceremonial role in  governing our country. But we are not here to discuss political theory,  after all. We are here to discuss Lord Silverton's application to his  studies, and his duty to earn his place at university by merit alone."  Ashland picked up the book and gave it a little slap.

Grimsby dropped his eyes to the papers in front of him. He squared them  neatly. "We are quite in agreement on that point, Your Grace. I shall do  my best to ensure that his lordship is prepared."

"Very good." Ashland took a chair, the sturdiest available, and drew it  out from the table so that his right side would be shadowed from the  window. The adjustment was so instinctive, he hardly noticed he made it.  "Carry on, then," he said, with a wave. "Simply pretend I'm not here."

Grimsby's large blue eyes blinked slowly behind his spectacles. "Your Grace?"

"I have arranged my schedule to allow an hour or two of quiet observation." Ashland smiled benignly at them both.

"Pater, it's not possible. You're about as easy to ignore as a bull elephant."

Ashland fingered the edge of his empty cuff. His stump was aching more  than usual this morning; perhaps the weather was changing, winter was  coming on. "Nevertheless," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous, Pater . . ."

"Your lordship's father is perfectly welcome to stay and observe," said  Mr. Grimsby. "He is, after all, paying for your instruction."

Ashland folded his arms and studied Grimsby. He had always considered  himself a decent judge of character, with a few glaring exceptions, but  he could not quite make out the young man. He had a certain freshness  about him, a dewy innocence. His fair hair gleamed beneath a layer of  sleek pomade; his skin still radiated surprise at Ashland's unexpected  entrance. Were it not for those whiskers, curling luxuriously about the  young man's jaw, he might have seemed like a youth, hardly older than  Freddie himself.

And his eyes. Ashland angled his head, watching the two of them. Grimsby  was explaining some point of Latin conjugation to Freddie's bored and  sloping body, and his blue eyes narrowed with seriousness, causing a few  lines to invade the skin between his eyebrows. An old soul, Ashland's  mother would have said, nodding her head. Old and wise.

Again, Ashland thought of Grimsby in the taproom last night, brandishing his chicken leg, face ablaze with determination.

Grimsby, straightening his lapels a moment ago, as Ashland observed them  noiselessly from the doorway. Speaking in his sturdy voice: Then she is  a fool.

An older fellow, Freddie's last tutor. Seventy at least, with thinning  hair and a querulous tone, complaining about Frederick's lack of  attention here and Frederick's lack of discipline there. I cannot be  expected and these conditions and that sort of thing.                       
       
           



       

Ashland adjusted his arms at his chest, keeping his empty cuff hidden,  relieving the slight pressure on the stump from his opposite forearm.  Grimsby's voice was low, a bit gruff, almost intentionally so, as if he  were making up for his lack of years with a manufactured resonance.  Determination, patience, intelligence. This young man was nothing like  the other tutors, who had left after two days, a week, three weeks, fed  up with Freddie's quicksilver brilliance and the incessant howling  bleakness of the landscape.

Which begged the question: Why had Olympia sent Grimsby to Ashland Abbey, instead of putting the young fellow to use himself?

Olympia, after all, did nothing without reason.

Ashland rose abruptly. "Thank you, Mr. Grimsby," he said. "I shall leave the two of you in peace."

He walked from the room and back down the stairs to his private study.  He had a great deal of estate business to work through before venturing  out tonight.





FIVE




By afternoon, Freddie's restless body was nearly bursting through the  walls of the schoolroom, and Emilie, sensing opportunity, prescribed a  spell of outdoor exercise. A message was sent down to the stables, and  in short order they were trotting from the stable courtyard, wrapped up  against the weather in coats and woolen caps.