Page 1 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

“Yes?” Richard asked, pausing in his pleasurable task.

His soldier servant, Corporal Baxter, could have cleaned his rifle for him, but Richard had always maintained that a good rifleman, whatever his rank, looked after his own weapon, and he wasn’t about to change now, tired as he was. Besides which, Baxter had enough to do.

“Major Carstairs, sir. Message for you to report to the Commander of the Light Brigade, sir.” The man barked out his message as he stood to attention and saluted.

He had the puny, underfed look about him of a man who’d grown up stunted and hungry in the slums of London.

Many of the ordinary soldiers under Richard’s command shared that appearance.

However, if they joined young enough, some of them had been known to flourish and grow both upwards and outwards.

Not this little man though, with his narrow, ratty face and scrawny shoulders.

Probably fast on his feet, which would be why he was being used as a messenger.

Baxter, a similarly short, but in his case sturdy, grizzled man a few years older than Richard, glanced up in curiosity from where he was occupied in darning his master’s stockings, a task at which he excelled.

The needle in his horny hand stilled above the darning mushroom on his knee, and his eyes narrowed to slits against the sun’s glare.

His sharp gaze traveled from his master’s face to that of the orderly, then back again, no doubt weighing up the import of this order and how it would affect him.

Richard set down the oily rag he’d been using on his rifle.

He knew better than to ask a lowly orderly the reason for this summons.

Leaning his rifle against the tree under whose inadequate boughs he’d been sheltering, he rose to his feet, something that enabled him to tower over the little infantryman.

Flexing his stiff shoulders, he gave the man a nod. “Lead on, soldier.”

Out of the tree’s meager shade, the unrelenting heat of Portugal’s late summer sun beat down on his back as he fastened his far-too-hot woolen uniform jacket and retied his red waist sash.

Despite the much easier relationships amongst the riflemen, it wouldn’t do at all to present himself to Brigadier General Fane in anything approaching undress.

All around him, the men of the 95th, many of them his own particular men of whom he was justly proud, sat about just as he’d been doing, resting in the aftermath of the intense battle they’d been part of on the preceding day.

A good few of them were nursing wounds. The battle had taken place at Rolica, some eleven miles to the north, where they’d put the outnumbered French to flight and captured three of their five guns.

A resounding success, although the combined British and Portuguese forces had suffered four hundred and eighty-seven casualties—more than half from the 29th Foot who’d rashly stormed a too-well-guarded hill.

However, they could all rest satisfied that the French had suffered much heavier losses and run off with their tails between their legs.

Richard felt his customary glow of pride as he surveyed where his men sat at ease, crammed into whatever shade they’d been able to find.

The trees here were nothing like the spreading oaks of England, neither in height nor in spread.

For himself, he was glad to have seen action so swiftly after his regiment’s arrival in Portugal, and proud to have been a party to the first shots fired.

He had confidence his men felt the same, and nothing about their cheerful dispositions gave the lie to that.

Their first engagement had happened on August 15th, only days after their disembarkation at Figueira da Foz, when the 95th and the Royal American Regiment had encountered the French rearguard and pounced on it.

The only sad adjunct to that was that they’d also suffered the first loss of the campaign, when young Lieutenant Ralph Bunbury, a man Richard had known well, had been killed.

Despite nearly twenty years of soldiering under his belt, having taken up a commission as a raw ensign at only fifteen years of age, it never failed to upset Richard when one of his men died.

They were like family to him—taking the place of the family he’d never had.

He doubted he’d ever get used to losing one of them.

Brigadier General Fane had set up his tent on the far side of the camp, amongst the cluster of tents belonging to the other commanding officers of the sizeable force now gathered near the hilltop village of Vimeiro.

As a major, Richard could quite reasonably have set his own tent up on the outskirts of that group, as many of the officers of the other regiments had done.

However, like the rest of the 95th’s officers, he preferred to remain amongst his own men, where they could see him.

After all, they were all riflemen first and foremost, and officers only secondarily.

A few officers from some of the other regiments, sitting in their shirt sleeves on their folding chairs outside their tents, legs outstretched in relaxation, called out to him as he passed or raised languid hands.

Today was a day of hard-earned rest, save for the men rostered on sentry duty.

It never did to take things for granted.

The French had proved many times over that they could be slippery customers.

The little orderly led him to where the largest tents had been erected, near a scattering of trees on a rise, a spot from which the whole of the camp could be observed.

Without exception, all of them had their flaps pinned back in an effort to persuade whatever breeze there might be to enter in.

The orderly halted outside one of them and stood back, at attention again.

“Major Carstairs all present and correct, sir,” he almost shouted through the flimsy, sun-bleached canvas, without making any attempt to enter.

Richard ducked his head as he passed through the open doorway to go inside.

Brigadier General Fane, whom Richard knew quite well, was standing beside his campaign desk. This was because someone else was occupying his folding campaign chair and had taken his place behind the desk.

Richard, a little taken aback at the sight of the second man, stood to attention and saluted. “Lieutenant General Wellesley, sir.”

Sir Arthur Wellesley, the overall commander of the expedition and victor at Rolica, was an unmistakable man, with his majestic bearing, prominent nose, and stern blue eyes.

Unlike Fane, who was rapidly going bald, Wellesley still possessed a fine head of hair.

He was only four years older than Richard, but his rise had been nothing less than meteoric, and every soldier serving under him had unassailable respect for him. Richard included.

“At ease, Major Carstairs,” Wellesley said, waving at the folding seat in front of the desk. “I’d sit down, if I were you. What I have to tell you is going to come as quite a shock, I imagine.”

After a quick glance at his own commanding officer, Richard did as he was told, attempting to look as much at ease as possible. What on earth could Wellesley be about to tell him that would come as a shock? Racking his brain brought nothing to mind.

Wellesley picked up a folded piece of paper from his desk and held it out. “You’d better read this for yourself.”

Curious, Richard took the paper and opened it out, annoyed to discover a slight tremor of trepidation in his fingers, even though there was nothing anyone could possibly tell him that could cause him any upset.

After all, his parents had both died when he was a small child and he had no brothers or sisters, nor a wife or children, nor anyone to whom he had any kind of attachment. Save for his men, of course.

He read the note. It was very short.

Request return to Britain immediately of Major Richard Carstairs. 7th Duke of Stourbridge deceased. Carstairs now 8th Duke. Essential he return with all haste.

What?

He had to read the note a second time before it fully sank in.

Marcus was dead. Marcus, with his iron grip on life made fiercer by his huge strength and determination.

Dead. No more. Gone. But he’d only been three years Richard’s senior.

How could he be dead so young? Men of thirty-eight didn’t just up and die for no reason.

Perhaps he’d been ill, or suffered an accident, or even been killed in a duel.

His lifestyle, even as the very young man Richard remembered, had always been of the most hedonistic.

He shook his head to clear it. However his cousin Marcus had died, he was definitely dead, or this message would not have arrived.

And if Marcus were dead… then the message was right.

He was now the Duke of Stourbridge. Something he’d never expected to be if he’d lived to be a hundred.

Good God. The weight of this news began to slowly sink in.

“You see our quandary?” Wellesley said.

Richard met his level gaze. “I do, sir.”

Fane nodded. “We’re loath to lose a good officer like yourself at a time like this, but that comes from the Prince of Wales’s office itself. We’ll have to let you go.”

Richard resisted the temptation to squirm in his seat, at the same time wondering what on earth the Prince of Wales’s office was doing sending messages about the inheritance of dukedoms. “What if I don’t want to go?”

“Don’t want to, man?” Wellesley said. “Wanting to has nothing to do with it. You have to go, and that’s an order. From on high. You are the last male Carstairs and owe it to the estate and title you’re inheriting not to allow it to fall into abeyance.”