Page 2 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

Saying he possessed no inclination to inherit his cousin’s title and become a blasted duke didn’t seem quite the right thing under the circumstances.

The temptation to spit out the truth blossomed, however.

Why would he want anything that evil bastard Marcus had possessed?

Not his title nor his house nor his money.

None of it. However, he held his tongue.

This was Wellesley he was talking to. He couldn’t object to anything he ordered him to do.

Especially not if it came from the offices of the Prince of Wales.

A little protest might not go amiss though.

“Why is it so important that I go back? I’m sure the inheritance will take care of itself.

My cousin probably had an excellent estate manager and the same man of business my uncle had.

They should be able to take care of everything until I find time to return.

Until the fighting here in Portugal is done with. ”

Fane shook his head. “I know you want to stay here, lad, but you can’t.” His voice had softened in sympathy. He glanced at Wellesley. “I suppose we’d better show him the other message.”

Wellesley nodded. “You’re right. We have to.

” He reached into the leather messages pouch that lay on the desktop and withdrew a second folded sheet of paper.

“Have a look at this and you’ll see why you have to go back.

Aside from the fact it’s your duty as a Duke of Great Britain, as I just said, to not allow the title to fall into abeyance.

A serving duke with no male heir is not approved of in the military.

What if you were to be killed? Look at what happened to young Bunbury. One can’t predict matters like that.”

More curious than ever, Richard reached for this second message, his fingers no longer shaking. He unfolded it.

Duke dead under suspicious circumstances. Duchess of Stourbridge under suspicion of murder. Estate in an uproar. Imperative you order Major Carstairs to return and clear her name.

“Same origin as the first message,” Fane said. “Only this one was marked ‘personal.’”

Richard looked up again. “Ah.” Not that he’d even known Marcus had a wife, and especially not a wife the Prince of Wales might show an interest in.

Why would he have? As far as he knew, his cousin had always been more of a man to keep a stable of mistresses than one wife.

Although, if she were suspected of his murder, perhaps Marcus had been as vile to her as he had been to Richard when he was an orphaned child living at Stourbridge Castle.

Any woman who’d had the foolishness to marry Marcus surely had to be pitied, not pilloried.

There was no denying that the world would be a better place without his cousin in it.

“You see?” Fane said. “We have to send you home. For more than one reason. If a duchess were to be openly accused of murdering her husband, it would throw the reputation of Britain’s nobility into chaos.

Those eager to move against them, as has happened in France, would seize upon it. You will need to clear her name.”

Wellesley nodded. “There’s the inheritance, too.

We usually get younger brothers in the army, or more distant relatives.

Just as you were until today. Peers tend to be the ones who stay at home and let others do the fighting.

Preserving the bloodline. You’ll want to get yourself a duchess and a son in the nursery before you think of doing any more fighting.

Perhaps two heirs, just to be on the safe side.

If you even wish to return at all, by that time. ”

Not return at all? Richard fixated on those words, heedless of the suggestion that he should find himself a wife and beget a child which was not something he’d ever seen himself doing.

Not return to the life he’d lived since he was a boy of fifteen and a lowly ensign in the 42nd Foot, a commission bought for him by his beloved grandmother, partly to save him from Marcus’s ever-increasing bullying.

Since that moment, he’d never looked back, never visited Stourbridge Castle, never thought about the family he’d left behind.

Except perhaps for his cousin Dora. But she’d be married now, with a family of her own.

Stourbridge Castle would be empty of all the people he’d known there as a boy, nearly twenty years ago.

The one overriding benefit, however, would be that it would be empty of Marcus.

Richard waved the paper at Wellesley. “Do you know what happened to the duke that has led to his wife being under suspicion?”

Wellesley shook his head. “No more than you’ve read here.

No other word came with these messages that have been following us around without catching us for a while.

Henry and I have discussed this at length, and we are ordering you home to put your affairs in order.

No doubt you’ll find out soon enough what’s befallen your cousin.

I’m afraid your days of soldiering are over, Richard, at least for the foreseeable future.

You leave for the coast in the morning. There you’ll take one of the ships returning to London. Is that understood?”

The use of first names struck Richard. Wellesley was no longer addressing a fellow officer but a civilian.

Whatever happened next, he was not going to be fighting against the French for some time.

Not unless he married with undue haste and provided the necessary heir.

A male one, at that. And getting married was not something he’d ever considered.

Not something he wanted to do at all. He was happy the way he was right now, wasn’t he?

Anger at Marcus for getting himself killed welled up and had to be controlled.

Bloody man. Affecting his life from beyond the grave.

He rose to his feet and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

Wellesley’s serious mouth quirked in a rueful smile. “Although I think that we’d best address you as Your Grace now, hadn’t we, my boy?”

Baxter had finished his darning by the time Richard returned to their camping spot and was stirring a pot of stew over the little campfire he’d lit. The meaty aroma wafted enticingly to Richard’s nostrils, but he had more important things to think about that filling his stomach.

He halted in the shade. “You’d best pack your things. We’re going back to England.”

His man raised his bushy eyebrows and grimaced. “All of us? We only just got here. Them in charge need to make their bloody minds up.”

Richard shook his head. “Not all of us, no. Just you and me. Well, just me technically, but I’d like to take you with me. No one’ll object to that, I’m sure. We’ve grown accustomed to one another’s ways, over the years, and I don’t want to lose you. You won’t mind the change, will you?”

Baxter shifted the pot away from the heat and rubbed the side of his sizeable, and decidedly crooked, nose.

“I go where you go, Major. You know that. But why just us? If you don’t mind me asking, that is?

What’ve we done to deserve being shipped back to England, I’d like to know?

I was lookin’ forward to a bit more Johnny Crapaud bashing. ”

Richard took off his jacket and lowered himself back into the spot he’d so recently vacated.

“I’ve been recalled on a personal matter, Baxter.

I might as well tell you as you’ll find out soon enough.

” He considered his soldier servant’s puzzled but trusting face.

They might have been officer and servant for years, and indeed Richard considered Baxter a friend, but he’d never felt the need to divulge any of his personal history and neither had Baxter.

He was going to have to now, though. “I suppose I must tell you something of my history at last. I have—I mean I had—a cousin of whom I was not at all fond.”

He licked his lips. How long had it been since he’d even thought of any of them, especially not Marcus, the bane of his boyhood?

“It appears he has died childless, and I am his heir. We have to return, because I am to inherit his title and estate. Lieutenant General Wellesley, no less, has ordered me back to England, after a message from the office of the Prince of Wales.” He gave an uncertain laugh.

“I am, if I wish to return to the army, to provide myself with a wife and an heir with some alacrity. Something, I fear, that might take a lot longer than Sir Arthur thinks.”

Baxter scratched his head, his fingers running through the stiff bristles of his hair. “So we’re to go back to his estate that’s now yours?”

Richard nodded.

“An estate what was once your cousin’s?”

Another nod. Richard’s inner reticence was keeping his mouth shut, although memories swarmed through his brain: of the terror he’d felt aged only seven when the bullying Marcus had laughed with glee as he held Richard under in the lake, of running with wild abandon with Dora, hand in hand through the woods, and of the warm safe feeling of his grandmother smiling with benevolence as he pressed his small body against her knees.

Baxter sat up a bit straighter. “And what is it that I’ll be calling you, Major, now you’ve inherited a title? If I’m to come with you, then I’ll have to be minding my manners a bit more than I’ve had to in the Rifles, I’m thinking.”

Richard’s lips quirked upward in a half smile.

“I’m rather taking a leap to the top of the pile, title-wise.

You see before you, dusty and unshaven and, I have to admit, a bit smelly, the eighth Duke of Stourbridge.

” He let his smile spread into a grin. “And before you say anything, let me tell you that no one could be more surprised by this than I am.”