How to Tame Your Duke(5)

"Right, ye wankley whoreson," said the attacker. He was the first one,  Emilie thought blearily; the one who had knocked the coins from the  table to begin with. He was large and drunk, his eyes red. He leaned  down, grabbed Freddie by the collar, and hauled back his fist.

"No!" Emilie said. Freddie's weight disappeared from her chest. She  tried to wriggle free of the rest of him, but Freddie was flailing to  loosen himself from the man's grasp. Emilie landed her fist in the crook  of one enormous elbow and levered herself up, just a little, just  enough that she could bend her neck forward and sink her teeth into the  broad pad of the man's thumb.

"OY!" he yelled. He snatched his hand back, letting Freddie crash to the  ground and roll away, and grabbed Emilie's collar instead.

Emilie clutched at his wrist, writhing, but he was as solid as a horse  and far less sensible. His fist lifted up to his ear, and his eyes  narrowed at her. Emilie tried to bring up her knee, her foot, anything.  She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting the shattering blow, the flash of  pain, the blackness and stars and whatever it was.

How the devil had this happened to her? Brawls only happened in  newspapers. Only men found themselves locked in meaty fists, expecting a  killing punch to the jaw. Only men . . .

But then . . . she was a man, wasn't she?

With one last mighty effort, she flung out her hand and scrabbled for  the knife. Something brushed her fingertips, something hard and round  and slippery. She grasped it, raised it high, and . . .

"OOGMPH!" the man grunted.

The weight lifted away. Her collar fell free.

Emilie slumped back, blinking. She stared up at the air before her. At her hand, grasping the tip of a chicken leg.

She sat up dizzily. Two men swam before her, her attacker and someone  else, someone even broader and taller, who held the fellow with one  impossibly large hand. Emilie expected to see his other fist fly past,  crashing into the man's jaw, but it did not. Instead, the newcomer  raised his right arm and slammed his elbow on the juncture of his  opponent's neck and shoulder.

"Oy?" the man squeaked uncertainly, and he sagged to the ground.

"Oh, for God's sake," said Freddie. He stood up next to Emilie and offered her his hand. "Was that necessary?"

Emilie took Freddie's hand and staggered to her feet. She looked up at  the newcomer, her rescuer, to say some word of abject thanks.

But her breath simply stopped in her chest.

The man filled her vision. If Emilie leaned forward, her brow might  perhaps reach the massive ball of his shoulder. He stood quite still,  staring down at the man slumped on the ground with no particular  expression. His profile danced before her, lit by the still-roaring  fire, a profile so inhumanly perfect that actual tears stung the corners  of Emilie's eyes. He was clean-shaven, like a Roman god, his jaw cut  from stone and his cheekbone forming a deep, shadowed angle on the side  of his face. His lips were full, his forehead high and smooth. His  close-cropped pale hair curled about his ear. "Yes," he said, the single  word rumbling from his broad chest. "Yes, my dear boy. I believe it was  necessary."                       
       
           



       

Dear boy?

Emilie blinked and brushed her sleeves. She noticed the chicken leg and shoved it hastily in her pocket.

"I was about to take him, you know," said Freddie, in a petulant voice.

The man turned at last. "I would rather not have taken that chance, you see."

But Emilie didn't hear his words. She stood in horrified shock, staring at the face before her.

The face before her: His face, her hero's face, so perfect in profile,  collapsed on the right side into a mass of scars, of mottled skin, of a  hollow along his jaw, of an eye closed forever shut.

From somewhere behind him came Rose's voice, raised high in supplication. "Yer Grace, I'm that sorry. I did tell him, sir . . ."

"Your Grace?" Emilie said. The words slipped out in a gasp. Understanding began to dawn, mingled with horror.

Freddie handed Emilie her valise and said ruefully, "His Grace. His  Grace, the Duke of Ashland, I'm afraid." A sigh, long and resigned. "My  father."





TWO




The carriage rattled over the darkened road. Each jolt echoed through  the silent interior before absorbing into the old velvet hangings, into  the cushions with their crests embroidered in gold thread.

Emilie took in shallow breaths, hardly daring to disturb the heavy air.  How many years had this carriage sat inside the duke's stables, taken  out for polishing every month or so and rolled back in again? She tried  to think of something to say. She had been educated to speak into  silence, to keep conversation flowing during interminable state dinners  and family visits, but on this occasion she could not produce a single  word.

Young Freddie sat next to her, or rather slumped, dozing against the  musty velvet. Freddie, by courtesy the Marquess of Silverton, as it  turned out. Across from them sat the duke, still and massive, his head  bent slightly to avoid the roof of the carriage. He stared without  moving through the crack in the curtains to the wind-whipped moors  beyond. Emilie could scarcely see him at all in the darkness, but she  knew that he was facing to his right, that he was shadowing his flawed  side from her view. She sensed, rather than saw, the rise and fall of  his chest as he breathed. The rhythm mesmerized her. What was he  thinking, as he sat there with his steady breath and his steady  heartbeat, while the wind pounded the carriage walls?

The Duke of Olympia had told her little about him. He lived in deepest  Yorkshire, at the Ashland family seat, from which he rarely ventured. He  had been a soldier before assuming the title-he was a younger son of  some sort, and not expected to inherit-and had fought in India or  thereabouts. (Emilie, her skin prickling at the memory of the duke's  elbow landing expertly on the drunkard's neck, could readily believe  this.) His only child, Frederick, was nearly sixteen, extremely clever,  and already preparing for the entrance examinations at Oxford; his old  tutor had left a few months ago, which was why they needed another  scholar without delay.

There had been no mention of a wife.

She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but the duke's voice checked her.

"Well, Mr. Grimsby," he said, without turning his head, just loud enough  to penetrate the rising howl of the wind with his extraordinary deep  voice, "this is a fortuitous coincidence indeed. Another instant, and I  should have been forced to find Frederick a different tutor."

Emilie cleared her throat and concentrated on keeping her words steady.  "And I thank you again, Your Grace. I assure you, I am not in the habit  of engaging in tavern brawls. I . . ."

The air stirred as Ashland waved his hand. "No doubt, of course. Your  references are impeccable. Indeed, I rather believe I trust Olympia's  judgment in such matters above my own."

"Still, I should like to explain myself."

He turned at last, or at least Emilie thought he did. Her eye caught a  flash of movement, the sliver of moonlight striking his pale hair, and  she turned away with a blush.

"No need at all to explain yourself, Mr. Grimsby," he said. "You rescued  my young scapegrace of a boy, after all. I daresay it was simply a case  of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Exactly that, sir. As for the inn itself . . ."

Another stir of the air. "I ought to have had a carriage sent to the  railway station, of course. I can't imagine why no one thought of it. My  butler is rather old, I suppose, and unused to visitors. As am I."

The wind screamed, the carriage jolted violently. Emilie reached for the  strap, but not before she and Freddie shot forward in tandem against  the opposite seat.

For an instant she was flying, suspended in the air, and then she landed  with a crash into Ashland's right shoulder, just as Freddie's head  connected into the small of her back.                       
       
           



       

Ashland shuddered at the impact. His iron arms closed around them both, steadying.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Emilie felt for her spectacles, her whiskers.  Freddie was disentangling himself slowly, muttering, fumbling for his  own spectacles, which seemed to have flown from his face and onto the  seat.

"Not at all." The duke's tone was even, but to Emilie's ears it vibrated  with some sort of emotion, distaste or impatience, and as she struggled  to right herself, she sensed that his flesh was shrinking from hers.  That his very bones, from the instant of impact, had convulsed with  agony at her touch.

Had she hit him with such force? She hadn't felt any pain; just the ordinary sort of thud, not even worthy of a bruise.