Page 3 of Dukes for Dessert

“Oh, come now,” David said, giving him his most charming smile. “You don’t truly believe I was trying to shoot a man in Regent’s Park, no matter how much he goaded me. If you examine my pistol, you’ll find it fully loaded and un-fired.”

Fellows’s face remained granite hard. “Griffin has brought charges of assault and attempted murder on you, and his earl uncle is calling for your blood.”

“For pity’s sake.” David pointed to the bruises on his face. He was plastered with mud, still a bit drunk, and spattered with dried blood. “Does this look like I assaulted myself? A solicitor would be a fine thing, Detective Super.”

“I have recommended that the magistrate let you return home until this is sorted. He does not like the idea, but he bows to the might of the Duke of Kilmorgan.”

David heaved a sigh of gratitude. God himself would bow to the might of Hart Mackenzie.

He rose. “Good old Hart. Thank you, Fellows.”

“Sit down.” Fellows pointed at the hard chair. David obediently sat, wincing from his bruises.

“It’s a serious accusation, Fleming. One that could get you hanged, or at the very least, sent to Dartmoor. Doesn’t matter who your connections are—you’re not a peer, so you’ll be tried at the Old Bailey with everyone else.”

“Griff has to prove it,” David said. “I do know that much about the laws of jolly England. Innocent until a jury says I’m guilty.” He spread his hands on the unclean table. “I did not discharge my pistol, I promise you. I ducked when Griffin discharged his at me. I don’t know why I bothered—he’s a rotten shot.”

“I convinced the magistrate there was no immediate evidence to suggest you tried to kill Mr. Griffin. However, many witnessed the ensuing fight. You can bring counter charges against him, of course.”

“Bugger that.” David once again surged to his feet. “If I’m not being charged, I believe I am free to leave.”

Fellows gave him a nod, but a grim one. “Don’t flee to the Continent. I have a friend in the Sûreté, and he’d find you, but you’d rather he didn’t. I hear you have an estate in Hertfordshire. Perhaps lying low there for a time is a good idea.”

David shuddered. His ancestral home—Moreland Park—held too many foul memories. “I will retreat to my London house, pour coffee down my throat, soak in a bath, and sleep for a week. With that satisfy the magistrate?”

“I doubt it.” The dry tone in Fellows’s voice was something he shared with Hart—that edge that told its recipient he was a damned fool. “Before you withdraw from the world, the duchess requests that you call upon her.”

David sank to the chair again, his strength gone. “She does, does she?”

Fellows, David could spar with. Hart Mackenzie, he could face. Hart’s wife, Eleanor … that was another matter entirely.

“Please tell her I am suddenly stricken with a dire disease and must quarantine myself in my house with a cask of whisky.”

Fellows regarded him in some pity. “Tell her yourself.” He tapped the table once, turned, and walked out.

“Heaven help me,” David muttered. It was some time before he made himself rise and follow the impatient constable out.

David kept a stash of Mackenzie malt in his carriage for emergencies. He imbibed a little now to clear his head as his coachman took him to Grosvenor Square.

The Duke of Kilmorgan owned a tall house on one side of the square, which dominated all others around it. The house had been in the family since the late eighteenth century, when the Mackenzie family had begun to prosper once more. The Battle of Culloden, in which they’d fought on the side of the Jacobites, had nearly wiped them out. But the canny Mackenzies had managed to regain their title taken from them as traitors to the crown and recover their fortune. They’d bought the house that had been owned by the Marquess of Ellesmere, and swarmed in.

David was distantly related to the family through his ancestor aunt who had married Angus Mackenzie, the son of the glorious Malcolm Mackenzie and his English wife, Mary.

The distance was everything, David thought as he stared up at the house. Hart was a duke, and his brothers had courtesy titles, large houses, and plenty of money. David, the shirttail relative, was still in his evening dress from the night before, thoroughly coated with mud, and coming tamely to the house when sent for.

Eleanor would be waiting in her parlor, rustling in some silken gown Hart would have bought her. Her red hair would glisten, and she’d have a secret smile on her face that betrayed she was a woman in love—with Hart, of course. There had never been anyone else for Eleanor.

She’d gaze at David with her cornflower blue eyes and ask bluntly what sort of scrape he’d gotten himself into now.

David wouldn’t mind, except that once upon a time, he’d been madly in love with the dratted woman. He’d asked her to marry him, and she’d turned him down with a speed that had made his head spin.

He still cared for her, but the burning passion had subsided. Eleanor and Hart belonged together, and no one could tear them asunder. So be it.

David took another gulp of whisky, which burned to his empty stomach.

He held up the flask in salute. “Apologies, dear El, but you are the one thing I cannot face today.” He rapped his stick on the roof. “Hinch!”

A tiny trap door opened, and the eye of his large coachman blinked at him. “Yes, guv?”