Page 14 of To Defend a Damaged Duke (Regency Rossingley #2)
“TOMMY, DARLING. FORGIVE me for barging in like this, uninvited.”
“You’re a spoiled aristocrat.” Marking his place in the column of figures with his fingertip, Tommy added, blandly, “It’s what you do.”
“Precisely. I knew you’d understand. Alas, far too many don’t.
” Rossingley flopped into the spindly seat facing Tommy’s desk.
Under his nimble frame, it made nary a squeak of protest. “But, more pertinently, I’ve discovered the identity of your lordling.
” He pulled a face. “Gadzooks, you don’t do things by half, do you?
A duke ? Wasn’t a common or garden baronet or a mere viscount, good enough for you? You had to tumble a damned duke?”
Tommy laid down his quill to properly regard his visitor, amused despite the seriousness of his growing predicament. “I assure you, Lordy, he wasn’t very ducal at the time. He was gauche, clumsy, and spewed like a volcano the second I laid my hand on his prick.”
And I loved him with every fibre of my being, regardless , he could have added, but Rossingley already knew that.
“And yet,” murmured the earl softly as if reading his thoughts.
“Precisely.” Tommy allowed himself a small smile. “I knew you’d understand. Alas, far too many wouldn’t.” He set aside the fat ledger. “My innocent lordling has grown into a beauty, has he not?”
“Albeit a petrified one, yes,” agreed Rossingley. “Mind you, he’s always been a timid chap. And someone out there is determined to ruin him.” Adjusting his impeccable cuffs, he eyed the pot of barley sugar candies on the corner of Tommy’s desk, reserved for the earl’s consumption alone.
With a shake of his head, Tommy pushed the jar towards him. “I am already apprised of the situation. He came to see me in a state of great distress. How did you find out?”
“I chanced upon him trying to behave normally at Tattersall’s.”
Selecting a sweet, Rossingley untwisted the wrapper, then popped it in his mouth.
“The man could barely piece a sentence together,” he continued around the bulge in his cheek.
“You know, I’d always fancied Ashington shared our unnatural tendencies.
Since he was a boy, in fact. He used to trail around after me in the stables whenever his family came to stay.
I’d build up a sweat brushing down my father’s favourite mare and then strip to my undershirt and amuse myself by watching the poor boy becoming increasingly bewildered. ”
He crunched the sweet noisily. “Anyway, I digress. Seeing as he was so miserable, I invited him for a ride. Once I’d insinuated that we were both of a similar persuasion, he couldn’t wait to offload his weighty burden from those broad, ducal shoulders.
And may I just say how deliciously broad they are.
” He flapped his slim hand in front of his face, “Nothing beats a duke in danger to get the juices flowing, Tommy. Don’t you find? ”
Tommy sighed heavily. “You are irredeemable, you know that, don’t you?”
“Gadzooks, yes.” A second sugar barley disappeared the way of the first. “Kit encourages me daily.”
A sense of unease plagued Tommy’s mind, worst-case scenarios unfolding. “Have there been any new developments? Is he being blackmailed?”
Rossingley shook his head. “Calm yourself, dear. Not yet. He’s shaken up, nothing else. So far, our unknown friend has merely signalled his or her malign intent by sending Ashington a list with his name on it.” He gave an elegant shrug. “But I can’t help thinking it’s only a matter of time.”
Tommy selected a crumpled scrap of paper sitting on the top of his pile of correspondence, holding it up by his finger and thumb. “You mean this list? My own copy arrived this morning.”
The earl squinted at it. “I imagine so. What ghastly handwriting. Though at least we can narrow our search to illiterates with black ink stains on their cuffs.” His shrewd gaze travelled back to Tommy.
“Our perpetrator is demanding five hundred pounds from you but not from the wealthy duke.” His brow wrinkled. “That’s a little odd, is it not?”
Tommy nodded. “More than.”
“And yet you don’t appear as perturbed as His Grace, despite the blackmail.”
“Mostly because I’m bloody livid,” answered Tommy calmly. “That’s why.”
“Hmm.” Rossingley pinched his lower lip in thought. “For yourself or for…?” The delicate question hovered between them.
“Both of us.” Tommy glared at him. “His…His Grace has suffered enough for the natural instincts he was born with. He can no more help them than you or I. I would be furious on anyone’s behalf.”
“Do keep on telling yourself that, darling. I so enjoy a good yarn.”
“I don’t even know him anymore!” Tommy spluttered. “Why should I want to trouble myself for him? Why am I pacing the floor every minute of the day bloody fretting about him?”
“Because,” explained Rossingley as if patiently elucidating to a small child, “a long time ago, that distressed handsome duke opened up a pocket of sunshine in your heart. And you in his. And even someone as boneheaded as you has noticed that in the intervening years, neither of you has stumbled across anyone else who has managed to do the same.” A loud crunching followed this pronouncement.
“When you know, you know. And now, your mate is in danger. Your body is sensing it and reacting accordingly, even if your head is taking a while to catch up.”
Mate ? Tommy wasn’t a bloody sailor, nor a lone wolf. “Poppycock,” he declared.
Placidly, Rossingley nodded. “There are cocks involved, Tommy, I’ll grant you that.” He rolled his sweet wrapper into a tight ball. “Are you going to sit here all day, wasting your breath and denying the undeniable, or go out and find this fiend determined to bring you both down?”
Rossingley was far too clever to ask questions he didn’t already know the answers to. Tommy pushed his chair back, then stood and hefted on his greatcoat.
“His Grace’s reticule might be overflowing with smelling salts at the idea of extortion, but if this fiend thinks Tommy Squire is going to lie back and quiver like a virgin bride on her wedding night whilst they destroy his business and reputation, they can damned well think again.”
“Oh my.” The earl flapped his hand again. “Even better than a duke in danger. Continue clenching your fists like that, darling, and I may succumb to a fit of the vapours myself. What do you plan to do?”
“Track them down, scare the living daylights out of them, and make them regret their mother had ever given them breath.” He held up a finger as the earl began flapping again. “And do not, at this juncture, Lordy, invoke your juices again.”
Tommy gathered up his ledger, snapped it shut, then locked it in the desk drawer. “Are you in the mood for a trip down memory lane, Lordy?”
He prayed Rossingley would answer in the affirmative. For all his fighting talk, revisiting his past life made Tommy queasy. Moral support from a devout and unaffected friend would make it all the more tolerable.
With a beatific smile, Rossingley palmed another barley sugar. “Gadzooks, darling. I thought you’d never ask.”
*
“ISN’T THE WHITE Hart nothing but a sad pile of cinders, these days?” queried Rossingley as the carriage trundled through the less salubrious parts of town.
Tommy threw him a humourless smile. “Yes, it burned down in 1816.”
In general, he avoided these parts of the stews like the pox; they stirred up too many traumatic memories.
And too much heartache. Yet, thanks to his soft heart and a damned duke in distress , here he was again.
“A lit candle became caught up in a tussle between a feisty young molly named Fox and a foxed madge who should have known better than to short-change him.”
Tommy grimaced as he stared out of the window.
Charred remains of three men had been unearthed from the rubble: a sixteen-year-old regimental drummer, a grocer with premises on New Road (who went by the name Miss Sweet Lips), and an ordained minister with whom Tommy had occasionally shared a bed.
History did not remember them with kindness.
With Tommy’s soft heart still oscillating between shedding tears for the three unfortunates and clenching in trepidation, the earl’s ostentatious carriage drew to a halt on the corner of Vere Street. He forced himself to look at the land, now derelict, upon which the thriving White Hart once stood.
“We’re here,” Tommy said unnecessarily, working his tongue around his dry mouth. And then, because Lordy missed nothing, “How the devil does this pile of rubble still reduce me to a damp, shaky sack of fear?”
The earl peered up at their destination—the forlorn building adjacent—seemingly unoccupied and thereby drawing as little attention to its true purpose as possible.
“I suggest you try to focus on remembering the good times,” he murmured, finding Tommy’s hand and giving it a squeeze.
“Though I’m sure they were few and far between. ”
Images of the Duke of Ashington flooded Tommy’s mind, but as he was then—a long-limbed, laughing raven-haired youth.
That youth was deeply buried now if the severe duke’s haunted, miserable demeanour on his last visit was anything to go by.
He’d seemed uncertain and afraid. Alone.
A person I once held more dearly in my heart than anyone else .
Tommy returned the squeeze. “Perhaps that’s why, in my memory, they were all the sweeter.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Rossingley, turning his attention back to the window. “Or perhaps you and he were written in the stars.”
“And then written to part dramatically and never the twain meet again,” said Tommy drily. “Destiny is a vicious mistress, is she not?” He jerked his chin towards the door. “Shall we?”