A Duke in Shining Armor

Then it was over, and he was drawing away.

“Well, then, what fellow wouldn’t want to come running back for more of that?” he said, with a crooked smile that made her heart ache. “Or, in my case, limping back. Go argue with your mother about your second wedding dress, and leave the rest of this to me. It’ll all come out right, I promise.”

As he made his way home, it occurred to the Duke of Ripley that it had been a very long time since anybody fussed and fretted about his wellbeing.

He remembered Olympia’s asking, on the way to Battersea Bridge, whether he had enough money for the watermen.

Well, she had brothers. A horde of them. Fussing came naturally to her. As did ordering males about. It would be a great thing if he spent the rest of his life being fussed over and disobeying orders.

It would be a great thing if his didn’t turn out to be a very short life.

Once home, he ordered a light dinner and wrote several notes, which he sent servants to deliver to his solicitors and others. He turned himself over to his valet, bathed, and shaved. He changed into undergarments, waistcoat, and trousers, and shrugged into a dressing gown.

He ate in his private apartment rather than the dining room, doing what justice he could to the brilliant meal Chardot had prepared for him on short notice. For the first time since his Spartan boyhood, Ripley had no appetite. However, he had to be practical and sensible. A man couldn’t think properly on an empty stomach. He needed to think and act carefully—a mode of behavior he wasn’t used to.

Still, no matter how much thinking he did or how carefully he acted, in a short while, he’d have to deal with a man who did neither.

Which meant that this might be one of the Duke of Ripley’s last meals, if not the last. Whether it was or it wasn’t, he’d do his best to appreciate it. That was the practical and sensible thing to do, if he wanted to avoid antagonizing the best chef in London.

He pictured Olympia sitting at his right hand at the dining table, and one of Chardot’s feasts spread out before them. He smiled and he ate, though he tasted nothing.

He returned to his dressing room, completed his toilette for the evening, chose his sturdiest walking stick, and went out.

Too late.

Thanks to Lady Charles’s harassing questions and his own disinclination to lay violent hands upon a woman, no matter how severe the provocation, it took Lord Frederick far too long to leave Camberley Place. When he did finally ride out through the gate, he might have had half a wish to ride back again and continue the dispute. This unusual—for him—indecisiveness could have contributed to his slow progress thereafter.

There was the rain, too.

It beat on him from time to time as he rode back to the inn where he’d paused this morning to make himself presentable, and it beat upon his carriage as it traveled back to London.

Nonetheless, he did return, and it was all for naught. By the time he reached Gonerby House, Ripley had been and gone. All Lord Frederick could do was say he’d stopped to make sure Lady Olympia had arrived safely. Then he was treated to the happy news and obliged to pretend he had no objections and required no apologies. It wasn’t, he’d told them with a smile, as though Ripley had stolen a lady from him.

He saw no way to mend matters now. Calling on Ashmont would be a waste of time. True, terrible things might happen. In Ashmont’s case, that was practically a foregone conclusion. Yet terrible things happened all the time. Men, even including Lord Frederick himself, made mistakes that changed their lives forever. Lady Charles had said it wasn’t up to him. Not that he agreed with her. But for the moment, vexed as he was, he felt disinclined to keep helping a young man who was determined to ruin his life. It was possible, in fact, that Lord Frederick ought to have kept out of it in the first place. Had he not interfered, his nephew might have forgotten the lady’s existence by the next day.

But she was perfect for him, Lord Frederick thought. She might have saved him.

Maybe Ashmont had gone too far to be saved.

And maybe Lord Frederick might as well have stayed at Camberley Place and let Lady Charles aggravate him. She at least wasn’t a drunken oaf of a nephew. Beyond question she was pleasanter to look at.

Not long before midnight, Ripley ran Ashmont to ground at Crockford’s.

It seemed like an age since Ripley had walked out of the gambling club in the small hours of morning. It seemed like an age since Ashmont had appointed him guardian of the wedding.

Not even three days.

He found Ashmont in the hazard room with Blackwood.

One glance told Ripley that, early as it was, Ashmont was three sheets in the wind.

So much for hoping to find him in a relatively rational state.

“Ripley, you dog! There you are at last!” Ashmont pushed away from the table and rose. “About bloody damned time. I’ve been bored witless.”

“Your Grace, your winnings,” the croupier said.

“Spread ’em round, spread ’em round,” Ashmont said. “Let the other fellows have a chance.”

Ashmont cheerfully followed Ripley into the corridor, Blackwood bringing up the rear.

When they were clear of the room, and not within eavesdropping range, Ripley said, “I’ve come to take you home.”

“Ha ha. Do I look as bad as that? But I’m well. Looks worse than it is. Only waiting, you know. Got Olympia back safe and sound? Or still with your aunt? Uncle Fred made a devil of a fuss. Said I wasn’t fit to see her.”

His skin was grey and drawn. His eyes were bloodshot, ringed with deep shadows.

“Not looking your best,” Ripley said. “A trifle fatigued, perhaps? Let’s go back to your house, where we can talk without shouting to be heard above everybody else.”

Behind Ashmont’s back, Blackwood lifted an eyebrow.

“My house?” Ashmont laughed. “Too early to put me to bed. Still on my legs, can’t you see? But what’s the news? Did she answer my letter? Did she send the answer with you?”

“She did,” Ripley said. “I thought, though, you’d rather read it in a less public place.”

Ashmont glanced about him, belatedly taking in the groups of men passing by, pretending not to be watching and trying to listen to Their Dis-Graces. When it came to gossip, men easily matched women.

“Oh, them,” he said, and his mood darkened abruptly, as often happened. “Damned right. Not here.”

He walked on unsteadily, Ripley on one side and Blackwood following. Ashmont went on talking as they made their way through the club. “Everybody laughing behind my back. Nobody dares say a word to my face. Think I’m deaf, dumb, and blind. As though I’d never hear about what they write in White’s betting book. Odds against me and in favor of guess who? No, don’t try. You’ll never guess. Mends. Do you believe it? Sixty if he’s a day. And everybody knows those aren’t his own teeth. The ones in his drooling mouth came off the fields of Waterloo, off some poor sod got himself killed defending King and country. That’s not a fraction of the entertainment. Foxe’s Morning Spectacle pillory me over half the paper, every day, and in the extra editions.”

“Must say, they’ve outdone themselves,” Blackwood said.

“No girl in her right mind would have me, they say,” Ashmont went on. “Satirical prints, with me as a drooling ogre, and Olympia running for her life. Not that they’ve the bollocks to print my initials, let alone my name. No ‘D of blank’ for them. It’s ‘an infamous peer,’ and ‘a notorious nobleman’ and a ‘titled libertine.’ As though I’d waste my time suing the smug blackguards. And last night—”

He broke off as a group of men passed nearby.

“Ripley, you had your own annoyances, I understand,” Blackwood said, before Ashmont could continue with his grievances. “A fuss of some kind at the White Lion.”

“Over a dog,” Ripley said. He outlined the excitement in Putney while they collected their hats and made their way out of the hubbub of Crockford’s and into the hubbub of St. Ja

mes’s Street.

Mist shrouded the street.

At the bottom of the stairs Ashmont stopped. “She went after the brute,” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, he wouldn’t say, would he?” Ripley said. “She demanded the whip. And he gave it to her.”

His friends laughed.

“Knew she was well above the common run of females,” Ashmont said. “Obvious, once I spent five minutes with her. But I taught him a lesson.”

“The one I administered was insufficient?” Ripley said.

“The brute accosted us, ranting about the dog,” Blackwood said. “Now I see why he was so incensed. A girl got the better of him.”

“Made remarks about Olympia,” Ashmont said. “Couldn’t let ’em pass.”

“Thus the stinker,” Ripley said.

Ashmont touched his bruised eye. “No, that was later. Fell down some stairs. But I’m not the only one damaged in the cause of Olympia, I hear. Ankle, she wrote.” Unsteadily, he bent over to stare at Ripley’s ankle. The wrong one. Then he swayed upright again and eyed the walking stick.

“A sprain,” Ripley said. “No great matter, but the women made a fuss, and when I tried to get away . . . Ah, but it’s a long story. I’ll tell you when we find some quiet.”

London’s streets were noisy most of the time, and the St. James’s neighborhood, shortly before midnight, was no exception. Men on horseback, carriages rattling on their way to this rout or that ball, pedestrians talking loudly, to be heard above the clatter of hooves and wheels on the paving stones.

He was aware of passengers staring at them through the windows of passing vehicles. He was aware of men gathering at Crockford’s windows as well, anticipating some kind of excitement, as usually happened when Their Dis-Graces were in the vicinity. Before long, word would magically reach White’s, across the street, as it so often did, and the famous bow window would frame another sea of faces.

Raindrops began to fall, spitting here and there, casually, as though it were an afterthought.

Looking away from the windows, Ripley found Ashmont staring at him, eyes narrowed.

“What are you looking at?” Ashmont said.

“Bloody audience,” Ripley said.