His coffee had gone cold by the time he had come up with a plan to deal with the problem of the letter writer. This person had clearly decided to take the bit between his teeth and was not going to let up.
“Right, if it’s a fight you want, then I’ll gladly give you one,” muttered Robert. He glanced at the half drunken coffee and decided against finishing it. He was in a bad enough mood and cold beverages would only set him in a worse one.
He headed upstairs to his study. The creak of his boots on the stairs was a reminder of how empty Tolley House was without any servants at this hour of the day. Having to do things for himself was the price he’d been forced to pay for running a smuggling operation out of his family’s elegant townhouse.
Seated at his desk, Robert pulled out a piece of paper and began to write. The only way he was going to get somewhere with this letter-writing pest was to challenge them. Make them come out from behind their pen and ink and expose themselves.
A dual. But not just any old dual, those things were illegal, rather he would face off with his nemesis across the table of London’s finest dining establishmentRules. Get the measure ofthe man who sought to take him down, and then teach him that when it came to the matter of knowing what good food was and what it was not, few men could match the Duke of Spice.
The letter took several attempts. His temper and lack of sleep kept getting the better of him.
I doubt the editor of the Morning Herald would appreciate me using the words know- it-all sod in my column.
When he had finally put together a more civilized missive, Robert carefully folded it, added a plain wax seal, and walked the letter over to the offices of the newspaper in Catherine Street, just off the Strand.
As he walked through the front door of number eighteen, he spied the clerk at the reception desk. The man took one look at Robert’s noble demeanor and well-cut attire and immediately got to his feet. “Good morning, sir, how may I help you?”
Robert paused for a moment. It wouldn’t do for him to publicly announce himself as being the Duke of Saffron Walden. Dukes didn’t tend to visit newspapers. His presence here might raise all manner of questions. And gossip.
He hated gossip. Especially when his name was involved.
Clearing his throat, he approached the clerk. “Is the editor in this morning?” He gave the man a look which dared him to ask for a name or a calling card.
The newspaper clerk worried his bottom lip. “Will he know what this is about?”
Reaching into his coat pocket, Robert pulled out the letter. He hesitated before handing it over. “I will ask him if the seal has been broken.”
The man nodded, the implied threat understood. “If you would please wait here for a moment, I shall go and deliver him your letter.”
Robert pointed to the chair behind the clerk’s desk. “You don’t mind if I sit there and wait for your return? I don’tparticularly wish to be standing in the foyer for any longer than necessary.”
If he remained where he was, he risked people passing by on the busy street and catching sight of him through the glass-fronted door.
The folly of coming here in person was beginning to pester at him. Sleep deprived brains didn’t always make good judgements.
He’d barely touched the clerk’s chair before the door leading into the main office of the newspaper opened. The wiry-haired editor ofthe Morning Heraldappeared. He took one look at Robert, then at his clerk, and quickly announced, “That will be all Gerald, I shall deal with this gentleman.”
He headed toward the staircase on the other side of the foyer, motioning for Robert to follow.
Once upstairs on the first floor, the editor hurried along a narrow hallway. A little way down, he stopped and turned left. The room the editor had entered was barely the size of a cupboard. Robert halted at the door. He wasn’t one for confined spaces. Even the cellar in his kitchen made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace, but this is the only place in the building where you and I can talk without my staff overhearing. If I’d known you were coming, I would have made more suitable arrangements.”
“It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing,” replied Robert.
More like a rush of blood to the head, which I am now regretting.
He shuddered as the man closed the door behind them. The only light in the room was a small window up high. It reminded Robert a little too uncomfortably of the cells in the Marshalsea Prison, where he had been forced to spend the night under a false name on the odd occasion. His bribes to the marshal ofthe prison had cost him a small fortune, but he wasn’t about to complain. He was a free man. Greasing palms in order to keep on the right side of the law was an occupational hazard in his line of work.
The editor, whose name Robert was busily racking his brain to recall, waved the letter at him. “Are you sure about this, Your Grace? I mean, if you sit down to dine with this reader, it will unmask you as our restaurant reviewer.”
Damn. I hadn’t thought about that. Fool.
He really ought to stop making rash decisions without the benefit of a good night’s sleep. “Well I can’t allow him to call me names and demand my resignation, now, can I?”
William. I think his name is William.
“What would you suggest, William?”
