Page 10 of The Duke of Cups (The Highwaymen #3)

DUNROSE SURVEYED THE list of men for a time. Then he got several sheets of paper and wrote out each man’s name at the top of each one. Underneath, he began listing reasons why all of them were awful choices for husbands.

This took the whole of the afternoon.

When he had finished, he surveyed his work, grimaced, crumpled up each of the pieces of paper and threw them into the fire.

Stupid business, really, trying to marry off a woman.

And, well, he was really starting to warm to the idea of simply marrying her himself. He didn’t know why exactly, because it made no actual sense, but it was beginning to seem like the best option.

Of course, he couldn’t be married to her and then have her kill Champeraigne, for if she were his wife, Champeraigne would be suspicious of her, and rightly so.

Well, here was the way of it, then: He must simply play along with this charade of searching for a husband for her until he got her to do the business of poisoning Champeraigne, and then he could marry her afterward.

Yes, that was clearly the way to proceed.

Decided, he began to look into poisons instead.

There were the normal considerations, like arsenic or hemlock, but he saw immediately that the best course of action was really opium.

It was easy to get, not easily detectable, and it could be made into a proper overdose and mixed easily into someone’s glass.

Furthermore, it made the subject fall asleep and looked primarily like the poisoned person had simply had too much to drink.

And, he was intimately aware with the substance.

“Yes, but you’re just looking for an excuse to buy it,” he said aloud to himself.

This, also, was true.

Dunrose had quite a problem with opium, almost always laudanum.

A number of people who developed dependencies came by them innocently.

Usually what happened was that someone was badly injured or ill or what-have-you and one began having a dollop here and there to ease the pain and to sleep.

The malady faded, the dependency did not.

Dunrose, however, could claim nothing of the sort.

He’d sort of gotten himself into it on purpose. At first, it had been a game. How much and how often could he use it without forming a habit?

Turned out, not much.

It had happened very quickly, that was the thing, and he hadn’t even noticed it happening.

It was insidious, truly. It made one’s brain work in odd ways, ways that made a person think that they sort of needed it.

He would come up with ever so many reasons for getting a bottle of laudanum.

He could swear his own body produced aches and pains precisely for the purpose of enticing him into it.

Getting off of it had been an awful process.

Arthford had undertaken it. He’d locked him up in his country house, Bluebelle Grange, and refused to let Dunrose have any for a total of some weeks.

Dunrose had gone rather mad. He’d screamed and broken things and once climbed out a window and nearly broken his neck.

He’d spent days and days naked and shrieking and begging.

It was really this that kept him off it now, remembering how bad it had been to get off it, remembering the crawling, awful sensation of being denied it.

So, no, he could not buy the poison. He went to see Rutchester, instead, and informed him that he would have to both purchase and prepare the poison for Champeraigne.

“You will not let me near it!” he said, rather frothing at the mouth in his insistence.

“Yes, yes,” said Rutchester. “I can well handle such a thing. Do not worry.”

“Good,” said Dunrose, mollified.

“Are we to this stage of the plans? I thought you were trying to marry off Miss Thomas.”

“Oh, I’m just going to marry her myself.”

“Come around to that, have you?”

“Don’t tell her. She obviously won’t be pleased. But it’s really easier, actually, and I can’t abide the thought of anyone else marrying her.”

Rutchester only blinked at him.

“Well, she’s actually rather fetching,” said Dunrose. “And she’s sort of adorably terrible at the piano.” He laughed. “And, erm, there’s a way about her. She’s different, different like we are, I think. I told her I wasn’t normal, and she said she wasn’t normal either.”

“I don’t care if you get married,” muttered Rutchester. “I’ve always known it would be that way, that all three of you would get married, and I’d be left on my own.”

“Do you wish to get married?”

“No.”

“Right, well, I don’t either, but… if we do it in the service of killing Champeraigne, then I can make that sacrifice.” He drew in a breath. “Absolutely.”

Rutchester only regarded him, looking sulky, as was his way.

Several days later, Dunrose met with Miss Thomas again, and she had made a number of lists of reasons why each of the men might make good husbands, and he found himself arguing with her about each and every one of her points and saying idiotic things like, “Yes, but he has stupid hair, don’t you think?

” Or, “The way he ties his cravats. It’s appalling.

” Or, “He only wears suits in shades of blue and black, as if he thinks there are no other colors in the world. ”

She looked him over and said, “Purple velvet is a strange choice for a man, I must say. People say you’re a dandy.”

He shrugged. “Nothing wrong with being a dandy.” He eyed her. “Is there? Do you dislike dandies?” He rather liked his purple velvet suit, he had to say. He smoothed it out, feeling a little off-kilter. “You know, truly, Miss Thomas, I don’t actually care what you think.”

“All right,” she said with a shrug.

“All right,” he said, too forcefully. He did not care what she thought, actually. He did not need this woman to like him. Women never liked him, anyway.

No one liked him.

Oh, people tolerated him, he supposed. It was his strategy to push that, push it as far as he could, to go right up to the edge of tolerability and see if people would stand for it. If they didn’t, well, he had never expected them to.

He sighed. “All right, well, there’s a ball this weekend. We shall both be there, and I shall make sure your dance card is full.”

“You will? How are you going to do that?”

He had no notion. He’d figure that out later. “I simply shall. And then, once you are assured of some male attention, you will feel more secure. Now, I’m wondering if you’ve heard anything about when Champeraigne will return to the house where you’re staying.”

“No, nothing,” she said. “In fact, I don’t know about staying there myself.

The marquis is quite put out about the loss of his carriage and horses—which is your fault, you know—and he is thinking about quitting the place and no longer paying any rents because he cannot afford to keep it up and buy a new carriage besides.

Truly, it’s going to be difficult for me to get to the ball at all. ”

“I’ll send a carriage for you.”

“Your carriage? How will that look?”

He thought about that. “All right, well what if—”

“No, it’s going to be all right. I have decided that I only must get myself to Marian’s house—”

“Marian? ”

“The Countess of Billingsworth. She’s my closest friend. I can easily ride with her, but it means that I must ride there on horseback, and it will be dreadful on my dress—”

“Allow me to send a carriage to take you there, then,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I can say that it is my own carriage and that it is needed elsewhere later, but that they can drop me off at her house. Of course, Marian will be scandalized that I am traveling sans chaperone, but she is my friend. She won’t advertise such a thing.”

“Do you have to be chaperoned everywhere?”

She glared at him.

“I suppose you do,” he said thoughtfully. “Frightfully inconvenient, that.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “I do not like to simply take too much charity from you, I must say, but as it is your own fault I have no carriage in the first place, I shall accept your help.”

“It’s not charity,” he said, waving this away. “We are not in an equal position. I have more freedom and more money and more everything than you have. It only makes sense to take advantage.”

“Yes, thank you for pointing that out.” She shot him a look full of hatred.

“It’s not my fault!” he protested. “Would you rather I had no means to help you?”

She sighed heavily.

“So, no word on Champeraigne at all? Do you even know where he is?”

“I think he is in Scotland, in fact.”

“Scotland? What could he be doing there? What is there to do in Scotland, in fact?”

“I really don’t know,” she said.

“Well, that’s bothersome,” he said. He had wondered if perhaps they could get Miss Thomas to wherever it was that Champeraigne was, if need be.

Such things could be finagled if one knew the right people.

If she needed an invitation to a country house or something, he might have been able to make inquiries and give nudges in the proper directions.

“I suppose we must simply wait until he comes back.”

“I suppose,” she said. “I have told you, I shall not enter into any sort of action against Champeraigne until there is a legal betrothal agreement, have I not?”

“Yes,” he said. “But as to that, we can just draw one up between us if that’s all you want.”

She gave him a funny look. “You would legally agree to marry me. You know that once you’ve signed a contract like that, you would not be able to get out of it without looking like some kind of cad? A woman can withdraw. A man, once decided, cannot.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be something we’d advertise, as we wouldn’t want Champeraigne to know about it, but I don’t mind marrying you at all. I think I’m the best choice, anyway, of all the dolts on our list.”

She let out a disbelieving laugh. “What?”