How to Tame Your Duke(6)

"You're all right?" he asked. He didn't wait for an answer. His arms opened wide, releasing them both, almost pushing them away.

"Yes, yes. Quite all right." Emilie nudged Freddie away and settled back  in her place. Her face burned against the cold air. Embarrassment. Yes,  that was it. Of course the duke had been embarrassed. That was natural;  she had felt it, too. They were strangers. It was simply the  awkwardness of it all.

"Speak for yourself, Grimsby," said Freddie. "Where the devil have my specs gone?"

"Here," said Ashland, from the darkness.

"Oh, right-ho." Freddie leaned backward and sank into the seat, just as  it rose up in another jolt to meet him. "I take it we're near the  drive?"

"Almost there." A pause settled in. Ashland shifted his big body. "We  will save our interview for tomorrow morning, Mr. Grimsby, if it's  convenient for you. I daresay you'd just as soon head straight for your  room."

"Yes, Your Grace." The carriage slowed and lurched around a corner. Emilie found the strap just in time.

"I believe they've already prepared it for your arrival. You shall instruct my butler, of course, if anything is amiss."

"Yes, of course. Thank you, sir."

Freddie coughed. "You're going to have to show a great deal more spirit  than that, Grimsby, if you're hoping to survive a winter up here. Once  the wind starts to kick up, things turn dashed melancholy."

A gust rattled the windows, shrieking along the seams.

"Hasn't it rather kicked up already?" Emilie ventured.

"This?" Freddie laughed without mirth. He rapped his knuckles against  the glass. "Nothing more than a gentle breeze, this. A zephyr."

"Oh. I see."

Freddie laughed again. "You're in Yorkshire now, Grimsby. Abandon hope  and all that. If I were you, I'd be counting the days until my first  weekend off and booking the early express up to London. We are giving  him a weekend off now and again, aren't we, Pater?"

Ashland did not stir. "If your progress is satisfactory, of course."

"Then I shall do my best for you, Grimsby. It's the least I can offer you. And I'm dashed clever, you know. Never fear."

"Quite clever, I'm sure." Emilie said this with conviction. No doubt at all, young Lord Silverton was altogether too precocious.

The carriage slowed, lurched, stopped. Almost before the wheels had  fixed, the door was swinging open and the duke leapt out as if from a  spring.

"That's Pater for you," Freddie said resignedly. "Not at all fond of  closed spaces. You first, Grimsby. Hero of the hour and all that."

The moon shone round and full behind a raft of skidding clouds. It  illuminated the Duke of Ashland's hair to whiteness as he turned and  stared down at Emilie. She met his gaze squarely beneath the brim of his  hat, afraid of letting her eyes trail downward to his ruined jaw. The  single eye enveloped her whole. In the moonlight, it might have been any  shade from pale gray to vivid blue. "Simpson, this is Mr. Grimsby,  Silverton's new tutor. Have your staff see to his comfort tonight."

Emilie was aware of an enormous dark mass to her right, immense with  gravity, obscuring the night sky. A single figure resolved itself from  the pitch, white collar gleaming with its own luminescence from the  corner of Emilie's vision. "Yes, Your Grace," said a low voice,  crackling with age. "You may come with me, Mr. Grimsby."

"I shall send for you in the morning, directly after breakfast, to  discuss the terms of your employment here." A sudden gust of wind nearly  tore his words away, but Ashland didn't move, didn't raise his voice by  so much as a single decibel. "In the meantime, I urge you to make  yourself comfortable in my home."

"Thank you, sir." Despite the numbing shock of the wind, Emilie's cheeks glowed with warmth.                       
       
           



       

"In other words," Freddie put in, "you've been dismissed for the night,  Grimsby. I'd dash while I could, if I were you. In fact, being a  hospitable sort of chap, I believe I'll take you up myself." His hand  closed around Emilie's upper arm.

"Frederick." The single word snapped out of the duke's throat.

The boy paused, one shoe poised above the gravel. "Yes, Pater?"

"In my study, if you please. We have a certain matter to discuss."

Freddie's hand dropped away from Emilie's arm. "What matter, sir?"

"Frederick, my dear boy. We have all been to a great deal of trouble  tonight. I believe some sort of reckoning is in order. Don't you?"  Ashland's silky voice nudged upward at the very tip of the last word,  implying a question where one didn't really exist. Emilie heard a little  slap, as of gloves hitting an impatient palm.

Emilie didn't dare look at Freddie. She couldn't have seen him well  anyway, as the moon had just retired behind one of the thicker clouds.  But she heard him gulp, even above the thrum of the wind about the  chimneys. Her heart sank in sympathy.

"Yes, sir," Freddie said humbly.

"That will be all, Mr. Grimsby," said the Duke of Ashland.

The butler stepped aside in a meaningful crunch of gravel, and Emilie  turned and walked up the steps, guided by the dim golden light from the  entrance hall, and into Ashland Abbey.

* * *

The Duke of Ashland waited until his son's footsteps had receded  entirely up the stairs before he allowed the smile to break out at the  corner of his mouth.

Well, it had been an entertaining evening, after all, and he couldn't  deny he stood in need of a little excitement from time to time. A  chuckle rumbled in his throat at the image of poor Mr. Grimsby, eyes  wide, whiskers a-flutter, one slender, scholarly fist closed at his side  and the other brandishing a chicken drumstick. But he had shown spirit,  after all. The young chap had put himself in imminent danger to rescue  Freddie. That was all Ashland needed to know.

He rose from his desk. On the cabinet near the window, a tray beckoned  alluringly with a single empty glass and three crystal decanters: one of  sherry, one of brandy, and one of port. Ashland's right hand-the one  that no longer existed-throbbed with eagerness at the sight.

He walked with steady steps to the cabinet, picked up the sherry with  his left hand, and filled the empty glass nearly to the brim. A single  glass of spirits each night: That was all he allowed himself. Any more,  and he might never stop.

The first sip slid down his throat in a satisfying burn. His nose and  mouth glowed with the familiar taste, the taste of relief. Ashland  closed his eyes and dug his fingers into the diamond pattern of the  bowl, giving it time, letting the sherry spread through his body to fill  all his parched and aching cracks. The stiffness on the right side of  his face began to ease, the throb of his phantom hand to fade.

How Grimsby had stared at first. Ashland had almost forgotten the effect  of his ruined face on the untrained eye. How long had it been since he  had encountered, unmasked, a genuine stranger, one who hadn't been  prepared in advance for this abomination? But Grimsby had recovered in a  flash and composed himself politely. Well-bred, that fellow. Outside  the carriage, he hadn't shifted his eyes away, hadn't looked at the  ground or his hands or Ashland's hat. Another point in the young man's  column. He might very likely do. Only a few months, after all. Only a  few more months until Freddie's Oxford examinations, and then Ashland  need no longer bother with this business of bringing tutors into the  house, into his well-ordered routine, only to have them pack their  valises and leave after a week or two. Freddie would be off, would  likely only return to the howling moors for the odd dutiful week or two,  and that would be that.

The Duke of Ashland would be alone at last. No tutors; no Freddie  spreading about his profligate charm, so like his mother's; no lingering  reminders of the days before he had shipped off to India, plain old  Lieutenant the Honorable Anthony Russell, leaving behind a beautiful  wife and infant son, and two perfectly healthy cousins between himself  and the dukedom.

Ashland took another drink, longer this time, and lifted aside the heavy  velvet curtain. The window faced north; in full daylight, the view was  bleak beyond description. Tonight, however, all was black. The clouds  had moved in completely, propelled by the incessant wind, and there was  no further moonlight to illuminate the spinning grasses, the rocks, the  few scrubby bushes that had once formed a sort of garden along this side  of the house. In her last year, Isabelle had worked obsessively on that  garden, employing a raft of men from the village to eke out some sort  of civilized order to the landscape. She had ordered plantings and  statuary, tried for shade and windbreaks, and all for nothing. Only the  statues remained, like the ruins of some lost Roman town, limbs cut off  abruptly where the wind had toppled the poor fellows off their  pedestals.