The duke took his chair. “Listen to this,” he said, “she sends one Mr. Hubert Huberville. She says he’s been dismissed without a reference from two households and is so desperate we will never get rid of him. He’ll hang on like a barnacle to a boat. She writes that our diabolical housekeeper is finally to meet her match.”
The two footmen, Charlie and Thomas, snorted at the sideboard. They knew as well as everybody else that it was always a mistake to underestimate Mrs. Right’s creativity and determination in getting rid of a butler.
“I cannot imagine our Mrs. Right ever failing to eject a butler. My poor aunt,” Valor said, “she would be happier if she gave it up. She is always to be disappointed that her man does not succeed.”
“She would not be disappointed if she would stop sticking her nose into my affairs. In any case, this butler gambit has turned into a battlefor the ages between us so I suspect she cannot face giving it up. And look here, another bit of good news—you will not have to don that ridiculous court dress and make your curtsy to the queen. Queen Charlotte will not hold a drawing room this year. She’s probably too shook up over the king’s condition and that profligate son of hers being named regent. I’d be shook up too if I were her.”
No curtsy. That was an enormous relief. She’d seen what Winsome had gone through, encased in a cake of a dress and having to be made a spectacle of.
“I, for one, am happy to skip over that palaver,” the duke said.
“As am I,” Valor said. “I was going to be sick on the day, anyway. The consumption was going to come roaring back. I had a whole scheme set up where I would wet a small towel, hold it over the fire, and hold it against my forehead. Then I would ring my bell and it would seem as if I had a terrible fever. Now I do not need to go to the trouble.”
The duke laughed. “Chin up, my girl. We leave tomorrow morning and you will have Mrs. Right and Sir Galahad by your side.”
The “sir” in question, a chubby pug, was just now lying under the table in case anything was dropped there.
Valor thought she might take comfort in that. The two beings in the world who knew all her secrets, their housekeeper and her dog, would be by her side to prop her up. Then her sisters would be there to surround her when they got to Town. They’d all written letters of encouragement, sent news of her nieces and nephews, and claimed they would have a jolly time together.
It must be enough. She took a deep breath to calm her anxiousness. It might be all right. Possibly. If her rare book collecting baron was out there somewhere.
*
Weston Nicolet, ViscountTramondeley and heir to the Duke of Pelham, let the mainsail luff as they drifted toward the dock. The sun was on the rise and the French vessel they’d harried and teased all night sat far on the horizon. It was a fine morning on the Cornwall coast.
His valet and crewman, Stockton, got the jib down and leapt onto the pier with the bowline while Weston took the stern line. They were bringing in theAthena, a Bermuda sloop, after a long night of sailing. Weston had built her for her speed and agility and she was painted a very dark blue and her sails were dirty gray. She was aptly named—just as the goddess Athena was known to do, the sloop donned her cap of invisibility while they were out on their nighttime prowls. If Weston chose to show himself, he’d light a lamp for a brief moment and then snuff it, blending into darkness once more. Even in the dawn light she was hard to spot—the waves and heaving sea and her matching colors making her as one with it.
It drove the French positively mad.
He’d been sailing since he was ten years old. Several years ago, he’d been out at night just for the fun of it, he and Stockton practicing navigating by the stars. A looming shadow had come out of nowhere and they found themselves outrunning a French frigate by tacking every which way and counting on their nimbleness to get away. Since then, he’d turned the tables and been tracking French activity along the coast and sending messages to Sir Peter Parker, Admiral of the Fleet.
Weston had become aware that the French called him “Le Moustique,” or the Mosquito, for how he buzzed around them and let them know they were seen. The admiral had also written to him that perhaps the greatest benefit in the whole scheme was that the superstitious French sailors began to see the Mosquito as a messenger of some sort of doom on the horizon.
Weston tied off the boat and hopped into his waiting carriage. Asthey made their way back to the house, he and Stockton passed a jug of hot coffee between them.
The house, his childhood home he supposed he’d call it, was a lonely structure high on a cliff and overlooking the sea. It was relatively empty of people inside, but for Lord Ledderbey and a skeleton staff. The lord was an old family friend and when Weston’s mother and father passed there had been nowhere else to go as Weston was thought to be too young to leave to his own devices and had flat-out refused to be sent to Eton.
Weston might be the Duke of Pelham’s presumptive heir, but that gentleman had not had an interest in taking him in. He assumed the duke was annoyed that the entail would force his estate into Weston’s hands rather than his slew of daughters and the title would go to him too, in the natural order of things. He’d heard that his father and the duke had never seen eye to eye on anything, so it must be particularly irksome.
For all that, he was not sorry about his circumstances. Lord Ledderbey was a kind, elderly gentleman who’d never kept him on a tight leash and so he’d stayed long after he might have left. Really, the gentleman did not generally know what he was up to at all. He’d only in the past year found out about Weston’s night sails, though they’d been going on since he was sixteen.
When he and Stockton reached the house, which ought to be quiet at this early hour, they found Lord Ledderbey pacing the great hall in his dressing gown.
Weston rushed forward to the old gentleman. “What’s happened, my lord? Are you ill?”
“If I am, I would not be surprised. Thank heavens you are home, my boy. Never have I spent such a night in my life.”
Weston surreptitiously glanced around and scanned the windows. He’d always had a worry that the French might find his exact location, land a dinghy, and come to the house. He was certain they knewwhere he docked his boat, however, the house was some distance from the pier. Anybody attempting to see where he went through a spyglass after he disembarked would not find success—the carriage would disappear behind a hill and be lost. For all that, they might put a man on the ground and figure it out someday.
He nodded to Stockton and his valet began working his way through the rooms looking for anything amiss.
“Come, my boy, into the library,” Lord Ledderbey said, shuffling in that direction.
Weston took him by the arm and helped him there. The old man collapsed into a chair. “First,” he said, “there was a pounding on the door sometime past two. Poor Jeremy answered it, scared out of his wits. Here is what was handed to him by a messenger on a fast horse.”
Lord Ledderbey handed over a sheet of paper that looked as if it had gone through the wars.
Viscount Tramondeley
