"It isn't seawater, is it?"
"It is." Freddie picked up his cup, drank, scalded himself, and set down the cup again with an oath and a clatter. "Shipped in fresh by rail every month. Haven't you noticed the delivery? Converted fire engine brings it in from the railway station. Confounded fuss."
"I had no idea. None at all."
Freddie blew carefully over the top of his cup and tried again. "Of course, I admit it's rather nice to be able to swim in the convenience of one's own home. I made them heat it, of course. It's as good as swimming in the Arctic in wintertime, otherwise."
"So your father told me."
Freddie glanced up, amused. "Caught him at it, did you?"
"No. He was at boxing practice." Emilie selected a third piece of toast from the rack at her right. She was feeling quite remarkably hungry this morning, for some reason.
"Oh yes. He does that, too. A regular John Sullivan, my Pater. Jolly reassuring, should we be waylaid by a gang of prizefighters while trotting across the moors some afternoon. Is that the newspaper?"
"It is." She pushed it toward him. Freddie's face was beginning to lose its greenish tinge, under the effects of the coffee. Her own thoughts were reeling. Did Ashland really rise before each dawn and exercise like this? Boxing and swimming and God knew what else? She had been breakfasting in the family dining room for weeks now-a single invitation that had somehow stretched into a habit-and never noticed a sign of recent rigorous exercise in Ashland's demeanor. For what reason did he do it? Why should a duke, a man who scarcely ever dined in company, let alone left his estate to face the physical dangers of the wide world, keep his body honed in such battle-ready shape? As if he were preparing for some great test. She lifted her own coffee-also black, God help her-and tried to banish the thought of Ashland striking that punching bag, his muscles bunching effortlessly under his glowing skin.
Of Ashland's body atop hers, connected with hers, heated and powerful, stroking into her with exquisite strength.
Beneath her neat jacket, her plain wool waistcoat and cotton shirt, the linen bandage binding her chest, Emilie's breasts tingled painfully. She cleared her tightened throat and finished her toast. "Speaking of which, where is His Grace at the moment? He's never been so late for breakfast."
Freddie looked up. "Oh, that. Hadn't you heard? Pater's gone off."
Emilie's knife clattered on her plate. "Gone off?"
Freddie waved his hand. "Off. Gone. Exit, pursued by a stag."
"A bear."
"Whatever it is. Absconded to London, at the crack of . . . dawn . . ." He stared at her and frowned.
"London!" Emilie's forehead stretched upward with astonishment, causing her spectacles to slide down her nose. She pushed them up hastily. "The duke in London! Whatever for?"
"I haven't the foggiest. I'm quite as perplexed as you." Freddie cocked his head, still frowning, his eyes fixed on Emilie's face. "Daresay things have gone along so swimmingly with this new bird of his, he's decided to try his luck in the capital."
Emilie's fingers went cold. "I . . . I daresay."
"You know . . . the oddest thing . . ." Freddie said slowly.
Emilie stared down at her plate. The yolks of her half-eaten eggs had met a pool of grease from the kippers, and were beginning to congeal. Her enormous appetite had evaporated. "What's that?" she asked absently.
"No, no," he said hastily. "A dream. I'm sure of it. Ha-ha. A dream, of course."
She glanced up. "A dream?"
Freddie was plunging his fork into his breakfast, looking miraculously human, a living testament to the restorative powers of strong black coffee. "Ha-ha. You'll never credit it. Last night, you see, I dreamt that you'd shaved those whiskers of yours."
"Ha-ha." She picked up her cup and hid behind it.
Freddie stuffed his mouth and smiled reminiscently. "Astonishingly vivid dream. I can see your face quite plainly, shorn as a newborn lamb."
"Newborn lambs aren't shorn, as a rule."
"Well, but you looked like a precious little newborn baa-lamb, without your whiskers. All wide-eyed and innocent. Gone, the avenging tutor! Ha-ha." Freddie threw back another cup of coffee. "I should sketch it out before I forget. Then the next time you're scolding me, I'll bring it out to remind myself of your humiliation."
"I wasn't humiliated." Emilie glanced at the footman's impassive face. "It was only a dream, after all. Your dream."
"And a dashed fine dream at that. The memory has quite cheered me up." Freddie used his toast to wipe the rest of his egg, shoved the lot gracelessly in his mouth, swabbed himself with a snowy napkin, and stood up. "I shall await you in the schoolroom, Mr. Grimsby. Don't be late!" He tucked the newspaper under his arm, clicked his heels together, and swept from the room.
Emilie knew she should rise and follow him, but her limbs wouldn't move. She stared at her toast, uncomfortably aware of Lionel the footman standing ten feet away, probably annoyed, probably impatient for the damned tutor to lift his bony arse out of his seat and leave the room to the poor sods who did the real work around the Abbey. She'd come to a much deeper understanding of what it meant to be a servant, these past several weeks.
The Duke of Ashland had left for London.
What did it mean? Trying his luck in the capital, as Freddie put it? Now that the ice had been broken. Now that he'd finally lain with another woman. The deed had been done. One sin might as well be a hundred.
Emilie clenched her fists in her lap.
Think logically. Of course Ashland hadn't gone to London to find more women. It wasn't in his character at all. Emilie thought of his words last night, his disciplined arms pounding the leather bag downstairs. He was not a wastrel. He was not a rake. This trip to London must be some business affair, some urgent matter.
In any case, it shouldn't bother her, even if he were after women. She should welcome his straying to other pastures. The sooner this tie between them was snapped off, the better. And since she didn't seem to have the strength, Ashland might as well do the snapping himself. She would spend this week of his absence constructing a very high, very thick wall between them. By the time he returned, she would be quite indifferent.
Or at least able to greet the sight of his half-naked, gloriously glowing body with perfect composure.
Emilie finished her toast, finished her coffee in a gulp. She rose and nodded to Lionel, who returned-to her surprise-an almost imperceptible nod of his own.
Outside in the hallway, she nearly crashed into Simpson as he strode toward the breakfast room. "Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr. Simpson."
"Not at all, Mr. Grimsby," said Simpson, as he might say, Take your arse to Greenland, Grimsby, on a fucking flat-bottomed rowboat.
Emilie was undeterred. "I understand His Grace departed for London this morning. When can his lordship and I expect his return?" She inserted Freddie's name into it, just to ensure the butler's attention.
Simpson looked as if he'd been handed a week-old pig's bladder and asked to make a sausage with it. "His Grace did me the honor of informing me that he would be absent a week."
"Seven full days?"
"So much I have always understood a week to contain."
"How perceptive you are, Mr. Simpson. I am in your debt." Emilie turned and marched down the hall to the staircase-the main staircase, used by the family-and went up three flights to the schoolroom, where the Marquess of Silverton stood in the center of the carpet, blue eyes globular, newspaper fluttering from his hand, staring at her with an expression of utmost shock.
"Good God, Grimsby!" he said. "You're a bloody princess, aren't you?"
SIXTEEN
A shocked silence greeted the Duke of Ashland as he paused in the doorway of the dining room at his London club.
He expected nothing less. He hadn't darkened this particular threshold in well over a decade, not since the eve of his departure with his regiment. A riotous evening, that one. He'd crawled back into his hotel room just as his old friend dawn, the rosy-fingered bitch, had broken the horizon in the east. An hour's sleep, a bracing bath, a mug of coffee, and he'd been off to Victoria Station to join his regiment massing at Southampton. God, that rattling train. His head still ached in sympathy at the memory.
The mood at the club tonight was something less than riotous, and the stunned faces turned toward him were even less familiar. He remembered the smell, though-that exact blend of roasted meat and smoke, leather and spirits, wafted out to greet him as if he'd been away only a week or two. Eau de club, he supposed. He kept his gaze high, scanning over the tops of their befuddled gentlemanly heads, but he could feel them take him in: his white hair, his black leather half-mask, his ruined jaw protruding beneath. Perhaps even the empty space outside the cuff of his right sleeve, which he kept defiantly at his side, in full view.