The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

Pride, compromise, status, love. It was a word game, a riddle he had no idea how to read.

‘How long may I stay in Maubourg?’ Freddie demanded as the carriage rolled over London Bridge.

‘Until the new term. This is not the end of school, young man, you know your papa wished you to be educated as an English gentleman.’ Eva carried on settling all her things for the journey. Books into door pockets, her travelling chess set on the seat, some petit point in her sewing bag. Freddie’s seat was cluttered with packs of cards, books, something he was whittling out of wood and a box of exercises Herr Hoffmeister insisted he took with him. They were doomed to stay there, Eva suspected—the tutor was taking a holiday, much to Freddie’s well-suppressed glee.

‘Why did Papa not let me come home for holidays?’ Freddie persisted.

‘I think because he wanted you to be thoroughly English,’ Eva explained. ‘Then when you were older you would have all the contacts you needed for diplomacy, and your English would be perfect.’ Which it was. Now, they had slipped back into a mixture of French and the Maubourg dialect; she did not want her son arriving home sounding like a foreigner.

‘I misse

d you.’

‘I missed you, too.’ She suppressed the nagging suspicion that Louis had wanted their son to grow up with less feminine influence, or even that, as Napoleon’s influence grew, he had doubts about having married a half-French bride. Whatever it was, he had never chosen to explain himself to his wife, merely citing her tears as evidence that Fréderic was better off at school. ‘Still, now you are so much older, I am sure Papa would have wanted you to spend your holidays in Maubourg.’

Freddie nodded thoughtfully. ‘And I can study with Uncle Philippe so I will learn how to be a proper Grand Duke.’

‘Yes, my love.’ She smiled at him, tears of pride shimmering across her vision so that he became a blur. Last night, amidst the chaos of the preparations for their sudden departure, she had found no opportunity to shed the tears that filled her heart for Jack until she had reached her bed, and then, alone at last, she had wept for what might have been, but now never could be.

‘Uncle Philippe is a very good Regent, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘But he doesn’t know about things like sport and adventures and things like that, does he?’

‘No, I don’t think those interest him.’ Her brother-in-law was the scholarly one of the family.

‘I do wish you were going to marry Mr Ryder after all,’ Freddie said.

‘Freddie! Whatever makes you think—?’

‘I thought you loved him. You were very sad when he went away and didn’t say goodbye. And the way he looked at you. I may not know much about these things,’ her nine-year-old son said with dignity as she gaped at him, ‘but I can tell when two people like each other a lot. I don’t understand why he didn’t ask you to marry him.’

‘Possibly because I am a Grand Duchess,’ Eva said more sharply than she intended.

Freddie nodded. ‘I did wonder about that. But then, he’s a duke’s son, isn’t he? One of the chaps at Eton recognised him and told me. I know it’s a long time since you’ve really been in England,’ he explained earnestly, ‘but it’s a very important family; perfectly eligible. Do you think I ought to write and give him permission?’

‘Freddie!’

‘It is a difficult question of etiquette,’ her son pondered, apparently oblivious to his mother’s horrified expression. ‘I shall have to ask Uncle Bruin. I mean, Mr Ryder is a lot older than me, after all.’

‘Twenty years,’ Eva said weakly.

‘Old enough to be a proper father, and young enough to be fun,’ the Grand Duke opined solemnly. ‘Just right, really.’

‘Freddie, promise me, really, truly, promise me you will not write to Mr Ryder,’ Eva begged.

‘Sure? Well, tell me if you change your mind, Mama.’ Freddie found his pocket telescope and proceeded to risk motion sickness by trying to use it while the vehicle was moving.

Eva slumped back in the corner of the carriage. Bel thought he loved her. Her own son thought he loved her. She had hoped he loved her. But Jack had not said it. Were they all wrong—or was he deliberately not telling her?

Two days later Eva was still pondering. They were travelling at a reasonable speed, one of the footmen up on the box beside the driver with a shotgun, the other man, with Grimstone, riding on either side of the carriage. There had been no problems, no apparent danger—it seemed Antoine’s plotting had died with him.

She looked out at the countryside, contrasting it with England and with Maubourg. She seemed never to have found a real home—their French château was a distant memory, she had been in England only a short while before Louis had married her, and Maubourg was hers by marriage, not by birth.

Jack struck her as a very English Englishman. She was not sure what that meant, but she had seen a change steal over him after they had landed, a sense that he was home, that he had taken a deep breath and relaxed. She had asked him to leave that without a single thought to how it would feel for him, without even asking what lands he held, how attached he was to them.

She had fallen in love with the man, without ever seeing him in his true context. How could she hope to understand him? How could she know what she was asking him to give up for her?