Page 41 of A Duke in Disguise
“I didn’t get rid of him,” Lady Caroline protested.
Ash stepped closer to the old man. “Your grace,” he said.
“She got rid of you because you had fits,” the duke said.
Lady Caroline made a sound of protest. “I didn’t—”
“She”—he gestured to his daughter—“paid off some poor woman whose son died in a rookery, laid out the body herself, said it was you, and had the child buried the next day under the church floor with the rest of the Talbots. I was at a shooting party in Yorkshire and came home to find the house in mourning.”
So that was how she did it. “How did you know, your grace? If you were away from London, I mean.”
“I’m the duke,” the old man said forcefully, and looked about to say more, but he was interrupted by a coughing fit. A servant stepped forward, but the duke waved him off. “I’m the duke,” he repeated when he once again had breath. “The child’s father told me. He wasn’t going to do the bidding of a chit of a girl. Of course he told me.”
“Got some money from you, too, I suppose,” Ash said gently, not wanting to speak the wordblackmail. “Why didn’t you look for me?”
“The body had already been buried in the Talbot plot. I couldn’t dig it up and expose my daughter’s misdeeds to the world,” the old man said. “Or my son’s,” he added darkly. “So you’re to be the duke when I die. Won’t have long to wait. Daresay you’re pleased with yourself.” When Ash didn’t respond, the duke pointed a bony finger at him. “You’d rather my daughter return you to whatever hovel she found you in, then?”
“I’m not certain what kind of newspapers you receive here, but I didn’t come from a hovel. I’m a tradesman, which you may well consider worse. And it doesn’t seem that I have the choice to go back to where I came from, especially since where I came from was evidently here. So I mean to get on the best I can.”
“Hmph.”
“I hardly need to point out that if you don’t like the looks of me, you could very well disclaim all knowledge of the dead urchin. On the other hand, if you wanted to speed things up, you could provide a sworn affidavit with the story you told me. As for me, I’d rather you do one of those things, because without a statement from you, your grace, I don’t see any way around a long and costly legal battle between your son and me. I’d rather that money be spent on doing something about the chimneys in this house, but it’s your choice.”
The old man regarded him appraisingly. “Caro, get him out of here. I need to rest.” As they left, they heard the sounds of his coughing.
Chapter Fifteen
Verity settled into something of a rhythm that first cold, damp week of December. She rose, she worked, she ate, she slept. She feared that the sense of calm and peace she felt in an empty house was certain proof that she was not meant to form a lasting partnership with anyone. In the evenings, she curled up on the sofa with a book while Ash’s cat gave her murderous stares and repeatedly knocked over the inkwell.
“Yes, well, nobody said you had to stay here,” Verity told the cat. Occasionally Verity left a dish of table scraps on the floor, and occasionally the cat left a dead mouse on Verity’s pillow. Verity took this as a sign that they had reached a tentative détente; the cat sometimes even ventured to sit on the back of the sofa, but only if Verity pretended she didn’t notice or care.
Predictably, the papers were making a meal of Ash’s situation. In her line of work, she couldn’t entirely ignore newspapers, but for the first few days she tried to at least avert her eyes from those articles about Ash. Whenever she walked into the workshop, however, she’d find the men hastily hiding the latest edition behind their backs, a pall of sudden silence falling over the room. She caught herself tip-toeing down the stairs, straining her ears to catch fragments of overheard conversation. At that point, Verity figured she might as well admit that she lacked the will to suppress curiosity about a person who had mattered—didmatter—so much to her, when there was news of him right in front of her eyes, and began greedily reading everything she could about him.
Each edition of every paper had a story on “the long-lost heir of Arundel” or “the Commoner Duke” as they had taken to calling him, this latter sobriquet being a compliment from Whigs and an insult from Tories. Engravers took shameless advantage of having a subject they knew well enough to draw from memory, so every printshop from Grub Street to Hyde Park displayed ludicrous caricatures of Ash in the window. A notable example portrayed him carrying a common tankard of ale and betting on a cockfight, his ducal coronet askew, radical pamphlets tucked into his ermine cape. That would have amused Ash. He would have been less amused by the caricature of Lady Caroline Talbot absentmindedly dropping a baby in the gutter.
It was when she saw these engravings, done by his former colleagues, that Verity understood that there would be no going back for Ash. Whatever happened, he couldn’t return to Holywell Street and work alongside people who had used him in this way. And what was worse, they were all lost to him. Ash had been alone too often, had been cast off by too many people too many times.
Then she grabbed her umbrella and cloak and made for the street.
“But what do I call these people?” Verity asked an hour later, pacing the floor of Portia’s drawing room.
“I doubt you’ll meet the duke, but if you do, simply call him your grace. Lady Caroline Talbot is either Lady Caroline, my lady, or madam.”
“I meant what do I call Ash?”
Portia looked at her as if she were feverish. “Call him Ash,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable.
“I can’t walk in the door and say ‘Bring me to Ash.’ Is he Lord Ash? He can’t be Lord Montagu yet.”
“Those who have declared themselves in support of his claim are already calling him Lord Montagu.”
“Then what are they calling his uncle? The man who used to be Lord Montagu?” This was all dreadfully confusing, and exactly the sort of system one would expect from a class of people who regarded an accident of birth as more important than knowing who the devil one was speaking of.
“Lord Robert,” Portia said. “It’s very cold. You’ll borrow my fox cape?”
“I can’t very well wear your fox with my own dress. It’ll look like I stole your cape. I’ll get arrested.”
“Then you ought to borrow one of Amelia’s afternoon gowns as well.”
