The Duke’s Perfect Wife

Chapter 21

The pipe-smoking Reeve rented a small boathouse near Blackfriars Bridge on the south side of the Thames, but he and his wife and son spent most of their time either on the river or on the boat wedged up onshore.

Reeve roamed far and wide looking for treasure in the sewers, the river, the water and gas tunnels, under the bridges, and inside the railway tunnels. He claimed that anything along the buried Fleet River was his, though his rivals contested him from time to time. Hence the knife.

Mrs. Reeve provided her family with fresh water every day from a public pump—one of the new wells that tapped fresh water far from the river. She brought enough for all of them, even enough for Hart to wash and clean his teeth. He’d never before realized the simple joy of the tooth powder he had the lad Lewis purchase for him from a chemist.

The Reeves did not tumble to who Hart was, nor did they seem to care. Hart proved willing enough to help—he and Reeve hauled the boat in and out, Hart knew how to cast a net, and he helped Lewis go through the “catch” every night.

The only thing Reeve refused to let Hart do was go with him into the tunnels—it took a special knack, Reeve said, and he didn’t want to be hunting for Hart in them again. Hart agreed, never wanting to see the bloody sewers again. Hart knew too that Reeve didn’t want to take the chance that Hart would disappear and not give Reeve his reward money.

As for Hart, he was not yet ready to leave. He wanted more than anything to get back to Eleanor—he dreamed of her every night. But once he’d discovered, through the discarded newspapers Reeve brought to the boat, that Eleanor was alive and well, and so was Ian, he made himself resist the frantic urge to rush to her. Scotland Yard and others were still hunting those trying to kill Hart, and Hart could protect Eleanor and his family better by lying low. He needed to get a message to Eleanor, however, to reassure her he was all right.

For that, he’d have to recruit help. Hart watched the Reeves, assessing them, working on winning their trust as he decided whether to trust them in return.

Hart never tried to take command of Reeve’s boat or tell him what to do. He made requests instead, reasonable ones, offhand. For boots that fit so he could better help carry the boat over the shingle. A fisherman’s sweater to wear over his thin shirt so he didn’t have to borrow Reeve’s extra coat. He’d had Mrs. Reeve find him some trousers before he’d been there a day, converting his plaid into a cover for his pallet. He also let his beard grow in, rough and red, prickly stubble. From a distance, and perhaps even up close too, he now looked like just another fisherman.

Hart started suggesting where they might take the boat and cast the nets for a better haul. He began standing guard at night so the boy and Reeve could get more sleep. Gradually Reeve began asking for Hart’s opinions, and then, when Hart’s ideas found them more valuable flotsam and jetsam, Reeve started waiting to be told what to do. Hart was a natural leader, and Reeve, though not a mindless follower, began to acknowledge Hart’s casual command.

He decided that he should not use Reeve as his messenger to Eleanor, however. Reeve would do anything for money, and he might decide that selling information about a rich stranger leaving a message in an odd place would fetch more than what Hart could give him. Mrs. Reeve was stoutly loyal to her husband, though she let her opinion be known when she disagreed with him. Loudly.

The lad, now. Hart had won Lewis’s respect by helping with the nets and letting Lewis instruct him what to look for. Hart learned much about which bits of trash could be turned into money and which bits were worthless. Lewis was loyal to his father but also his own man, young as he was. Lads grew up fast on the river.

“Lewis,” Hart said to him when he felt the time ripe. “I need you to run an errand for me.”

Lewis looked up at him, neither interested nor uninterested. Hart rubbed his face, feeling that his beard had softened from stiff bristles to wiry hair.

“I need you to go to Mayfair for me,” Hart said. “And not tell your father. It’s a simple task, nothing dangerous to you, and I promise I am not trying to cheat your father out of what I owe him.”

“How much?” Lewis asked.

He was his father’s son. “How much do you want?”

Lewis contemplated. “Twenty shillings. Ten for doing it, ten for not telling my father.”

The boy was a shark. “Done.” Hart held out his hand, and Lewis shook it in a firm grip. “Now, then, lad, how good are you at climbing fences?”

Eleanor opened the gate of Grosvenor Square and walked into the little park. It was early by Mayfair standards, about eleven o’clock in the morning. Nannies in gray with white starched aprons pushed prams or held the hands of small children, or sat on benches while their charges played on the grass. They watched Eleanor, used by now to seeing the famous duke’s wife take her morning amble. Such a brave woman, trying to bear up.

Eleanor walked past them as usual, keeping her pace unhurried. No sense rushing to the middle of the gardens, no sense drawing attention to herself. She strolled along, a parasol raised against the sunshine. Yesterday, it had been an umbrella against the rain. She came here every day, rain or bloody shine.

Eleanor counted her steps, the mantra keeping her pace even. Perhaps today. Perhaps today… forty-two, forty-three, forty-four…

When she reached the center of the garden, she kept walking, off the path and onto the green. Seventeen more steps. Around the base of the wide-trunked tree…

Eleanor stopped. A little violet, the kind men purchased from flower girls to wear on their lapels, rested at the base of the tree. Not a hothouse rose, no, but the sort of thing a man who was hiding for his life might be able to obtain and leave for her.

She closed her eyes. Someone must have dropped the flower. She wanted so much for Hart to have left it that she was inventing things.

Eleanor opened her eyes again. The flower remained, sitting in the exact place Hart had left the others for her years before.

The flower will mean that I cannot come to you as promised, but I will when I can, he’d told her when he’d come up with the idea. And that you are in my thoughts. He’d missed a walk with her, she’d been angry, and Hart had invented the scheme to charm her out of her bad temper. It had worked.

Eleanor picked up the violet and pressed it to her nose. Hart was alive. This had to mean that Hart was alive. She lowered the flower to her chest, to her heart, and drew in a shuddering breath, forcing back tears.

Maigdlin came around the tree. “You all right, Your Grace?”

Eleanor wiped her eyes and thrust the violet into her pocket. “Yes, yes. I’m fine. Go on. I want to sit by myself a moment.”

Maigdlin peered suspiciously at Eleanor’s eyes, but she nodded. “Yes, Your Grace,” she said, and faded discreetly away.

You are in my thoughts.

“But where are you, Hart Mackenzie?” Eleanor whispered. No one knew the signal but the two of them. Why had Hart chosen to leave it but not come to the house or write a note? Did he believe himself still in danger? Or was this some new machination of his?

Eleanor doubted he’d left the flower himself. But who had he sent? She’d suspected Wilfred in the past, but Wilfred wore a black band around his arm and never left the house these days. If Hart wanted to be entirely secret, he’d need someone who’d not be suspected to be connected with him. But that someone would need a way into the gardens. Eleanor doubted that Hart had taken his key with him.

Then again, she might be entirely mistaken that Hart had left the flower. Her first thought had been that someone had dropped it, and this might be true.

Well, she would not sit here staring into the distance and being maudlin. She stood up, brushed off her skirt, and started asking those in and around the gardens—discreetly—whether they’d seen anyone odd coming into or out of the gardens in the middle of Grosvenor Square.

The evening after Hart had sent Lewis to leave the signal to Eleanor, Reeve, down on the shingle, leaned against the boat’s hull and lit his pipe. Hart sat above him on the deck, eating bread dunked into the soup Mrs. Reeve had left for him. Mrs. Reeve and Lewis had gone, tired, to their beds, Lewis having earned Hart’s praise—and promise of shillings—for a job well done.

Reeve had been in the tunnels all day, Mrs. Reeve taking the opportunity to visit her sister, so Lewis had had plenty of time to purchase and drop the flower in place and then linger to watch Eleanor find it. Hart listened hungrily to Lewis’s description of her lifting the flower to her nose, her face flushed in happiness, how she’d pressed the violet to her heart. Then with alarm when Lewis told him how she’d walked about the square, questioning people. Of course, Eleanor would not simply pick up the flower and quietly return home.

He longed for her with a sharpness that hurt. Every night Hart dreamed of Eleanor’s fiery hair, her blue eyes, the sweet sounds she made when he was deepest inside her. His darker fantasies returned, and in his dreams, Eleanor surrendered to every one of them. He’d wake hard and sweating, his body aching.

Hart pulled his thoughts from his frustrating dreams when Reeve’s words caught his attention.

“I heard tell in the pub that the duke everyone said would be prime minister won’t be now,” Reeve said. “Seeing as how they can’t find him.”

He said it too easily, too lightly. Hart kept chewing bread, letting nothing show on his face.

“What do ye think of that?” Reeve asked.

Hart finished his bread. “I’m not English. Not interested.”

“This duke, they say, was a Scotsman,” Reeve went on as though he’d not spoken. “What you might call an eccentric. Always wore one of them Scottish skirts, like you had when I found you.”

“Kilts,” Hart said.

“He went missing when the bomb went off in Euston station. Some thought he might have a-fallen into the tunnels, and most think he was washed, dead, into the Thames.” Reeve stopped to tamp the tobacco into his pipe and relight it. “Seems like I would have found him, had the man been trapped down in the interceptors.”

Hart said nothing. Reeve studied him with his keen dark eyes as he tamped his pipe again.

“People disappear all the time,” Hart said. “Sometimes never to be found again.”

Reeve shrugged. “Happens that some men disappear for their own reasons.”

“They do. They’re found when they’re ready to be found.”

“This man were rich as anything, by all accounts. I’d think he’d want to go home to his palace, sleep in a soft bed, and eat off silver plates.”

Hart rubbed his chin, feeling the unfamiliar beard. He’d glimpsed himself in the small, foggy mirror in the cabin earlier today, and he’d nearly recoiled, thinking he’d seen the ghost of his father. A hairy man with glittering eyes had looked out at Hart from the mirror—a fiery-tempered, arrogant man who’d believed in himself too much.

Or had he? Perhaps Hart’s father had hated himself with the same self-loathing Hart sometimes felt, the man lashing out instead of turning his anger inward. The old duke was dead and gone now, and so Hart was never to know.

Reeve puffed on his pipe. “Might be worth this duke’s while to not be found, eh?”

Hart held Reeve’s gaze. “It might be. If he’s that rich, he can do what he likes. Just as a man who feeds his family by picking through other men’s trash instead of looking for a job in a factory.”

Reeve snorted. “Factories. Backbreaking work all hours of the day and night, shut away and never watching your boy grow up. Freedom, that’s worth all them plates of silver and a fine palace.”

“I agree.”

They exchanged another look. “Then we’re the same, are we?” Reeve asked.

“I believe so.”

Reeve made another elaborate shrug, leaned back, and sucked heavily on his pipe. “Well, I hope they find the bugger. The pipes under London can be deadly.”

“So I understand.”

Reeve went back to smoking quietly, and Hart gazed across the river, making his plans.

After a time, Reeve stirred. “Pub?”

Hart gave him a silent nod, and the two men left the boat to cross the shingle and mount the stairs to the streets.

The inhabitants of the pub had grown used to seeing Hart come in with Reeve, accepting Reeve’s story that Hart was an itinerant worker, down on his luck, helping Reeve in return for a bed and food. Reeve talked to his cronies, and they all ignored Hart, who accepted a pint from the landlord and kept his head down while he read through a newspaper cover to cover.

David Fleming had taken over the coalition, he saw. Good. David would know what to do. The coalition was popular, because Gladstone, to most people, smacked of radicalism and revolution, and the Tories favored the large landholders. Hart’s party was somewhere in between, something for everyone. Hart had planned it that way.

The elections, the newspapers said, were sure to return the men in the coalition, and Fleming, as the new head, would lead the government. The queen was not overly fond of Fleming—or Hart, for that matter—but she liked Gladstone still less.

The papers were more full of worries about Khartoum and Gordon and the Germans slowly taking over southern Africa than the missing Duke of Kilmorgan. A small story in one newspaper reported that Hart’s body had not been found, but the Thames was deep and never-stopping. A sad end for so proud a man as Hart Mackenzie. Scotland was in mourning for him, but England wasn’t. Bloody good riddance, the English paper did not say but might as well have.

He found a story on the last pages that the Mackenzie family was leaving the city to retire to Scotland. Good, Hart thought. Eleanor will be well taken care of there. Eleanor was like wild Scottish heather, happy when rippling free on Scottish hills, constrained when cut and shoved into a confining vase.

The same story said that Lord Cameron Mackenzie would be taking the coronet as duke once his oldest brother was proclaimed officially dead.

Hart touched Cameron’s name and stifled his laughter. Cameron must be boiling with rage. His brother’s greatest fear in life had been that Hart would peg it early and leave the dukedom to him. Hart imagined all the colorful names Cameron was calling him. But Hart knew that Cameron would take care of everyone very well. Cam’s greatest strength was his ability to protect those he loved.

He turned the page and froze. His eyes fell upon the story—rather buried—that the pocket of Fenians who had set the bomb in Euston station had been discovered, their house raided by the police, headed by one Inspector Fellows. Many arrests had been made, and people rejoiced that the streets might once again be safe.

This was the morning edition of the paper, and the event had taken place the night before. So important a thing, and Hart had known nothing until he read it now.

Living on the river erased the rest of the world. It had moved on. Without him.

And he didn’t care.

Hart touched the feeling, examining it. His frantic need his entire life had been to control the world around him, to shape it, and everyone in it, into what he wanted. He’d learned through mistakes—most notably with Eleanor—that he could not shape the people who mattered most to him. But too many people had let him, giving him the illusion that he could.

The boy who’d tried so hard to make a world that had nothing of his father in it had succeeded. Too bloody well, perhaps. Hart had become very like the man he hated—expecting everyone to bend to his will. He’d congratulated himself for not being physically cruel, but he’d been as cruel as his father with his words and deeds.

Eleanor had been right about how he’d treated Mrs. Palmer, right to fear he’d do the same to her. He might well have, had she not thrown cold water over him and brought him to his senses.

And now the world he’d struggled to control was going on its merry way, assuming Hart was floating facedown in the Thames. He was just another body on the earth, another man, like Reeve, trying to get by and find happiness as he could.

Hart had found happiness. With Eleanor. But he’d decided to go on serving his obsessive ambition, setting her to one side, and assuming he’d have plenty of time for her when he finished.

Fool. Reeve had the right of it. Backbreaking work all hours of the day and night, shut away and never watching your boy grow up. Freedom, that’s worth all them plates of silver and a fine palace.

A factory or the Houses of Parliament—it was all the same.

He needed to see Eleanor. He needed to bury himself in her softness and beg her forgiveness. He knew well and good that he’d sent the flower to her for another reason—he feared that if she believed him dead, she’d turn to another, David Fleming, perhaps, for comfort. Eleanor was beautiful, young, and now a very, very rich widow. The predators would be coming out of the woodwork.

It was time to go home.

Hart looked up from the newspaper, his world changed. The denizens of the pub went on talking and laughing with their friends, some quietly, some loudly. The Duke of Kilmorgan, the entirety of the British peerage, were nonentities here. For the first time in his life, Hart had no power at all.

Thank God.

Hart remained at the pub with Reeve, sitting quietly while his mind spun with plans for getting himself back home—Kilmorgan would be the best place for staging his resurrection—until the publican closed up for the night. Reeve said good-bye to his mates, and he and Hart turned in the darkness toward Blackfriars Bridge. Reeve walked unsteadily.

A hand reached out of a dark passage and landed on Hart’s shoulder. Hart spun around, fist swinging in a perfect pugilist’s right hook. The punch was caught with equal skill in a hand that was as big as his own. Eyes the color of Mackenzie singlemalt regarded Hart in the dim light of Reeve’s lantern.

Hart looked back at Ian Mackenzie, face smudged and bearing lines of exhaustion. Ian put both hands on Hart’s shoulders, and his fingers dug through Hart’s coat.

“I found you,” Ian said, his voice low and fierce. “I found you.” He put his arms around Hart, and Hart for a moment sank into the strength that was his youngest brother. “I can always find you,” Ian whispered.

“Come with me.”

Eleanor looked up from the desk in the main study in the Grosvenor Square mansion, the house quiet, since the rest of the family, excepting herself, Ian, and Beth, had departed for Scotland. It was very late, and Beth and her children were asleep.

“Good heavens,” she said. “Are you still up and about, Ian?”

Ian, being Ian, did not bother to answer the question. He held out his hand. “Come with me.”

He was breathing hard, his eyes alight. Ian didn’t smile, but Eleanor sensed his excitement, even joy, behind his still face.

“Where is he?” Eleanor asked, rising.

“Come with me.”

That was enough for Eleanor. She snatched up her shawl, took Ian’s hand, and let him lead her out.

Hart waited in the noisome darkness by Reeve’s boathouse, listening to the Thames lap the bank not far away. Too many people lingered near Reeve’s boat down the Strand—a few of Reeve’s mates from the pub had come to visit, even this late—but the boathouse was deserted. Rats and thieves, those were the only things to be found on the shore of the Thames tonight. And Hart.

Hart saw them come. Swiftly and silently, the bulk of his brother came across the littered Strand, pulling a woman in a dark shawl with him.

“Do slow down a tiny bit,” Eleanor’s voice came to him. “These rocks are slippery, and I’m certain I’ve stepped in something nasty. I understand why we can’t have a light, but, gracious, can we pretend that we need to go carefully?”

Ian never responded or looked around at her. He kept propelling her onward, and Hart stepped out of the shadow of the boathouse.

Eleanor dropped Ian’s hand. She froze, a slender upright against what light drifted down to the river, then she was running toward him, skirts swirling. Hart knew he should stay hidden, but he couldn’t stop himself going to meet her—four steps, five, six, seven.

Then she was in front of him. Hart caught and lifted her, spinning her around with him. He buried his face in her neck, inhaling her goodness, feeling her warm against him. Safe. I’m safe. Hart’s body shuddered once with a great, wrenching sob.

Eleanor was crying, her hands coming up to cup his face. She stroked his beard, staring at him in wonder.

“What happened, Hart? What happened to you? My goodness, but you look awful.”

Eleanor’s heart flooded with happiness. He was here, whole, with her. The flower had told her he was all right, but she needed to touch him to believe it.

She caressed his face and the strange beard, Hart looking so different and yet the same. His eyes still blazed like golden fire, even though his clothes were rough, and he smelled of the river. She put her arms around him and held on, so happy she couldn’t speak.

“El,” he whispered. “My El.”

He turned her face up to his and kissed her. The taste of him, so familiar, so much a part of her, broke her heart.

She squirmed out of his arms and thumped her fists to his chest. “Why the devil didn’t you send word? I was sick with worry, waiting and waiting…”

He had the gall to look surprised—so like him. “I sent the signal. I know you saw it.”

“Oh, do you? You were watching me?”

“Had someone watching you,” he said.

“Of course you did. Then why did you not let me send a message back? I scoured the square for any sign of who had left the flower, but no one noticed anything. Useless of them.”

“I heard that too. I did not want you to find him, or me, because it was dangerous.”

“Well, yes, I understand why you wanted no one to follow him to your hiding place. But you might have trusted me to be covert.”

“I mean, it was dangerous for you!” Hart’s usual shouting growl broke free. “What would have happened if an enemy knew I was still alive and you were communicating with me? He might have tried to use you to bring me out of hiding, might have tried to hurt you until you told him where I was.”

“I never would have,” Eleanor said. “Not even under torture.”

“Damn it, I didn’t want you to be tortured!”

Eleanor cupped his cheek. “Oh. That’s sweet.”

Ian came tramping toward them, boots grating on the gravel. “You are making too much noise.”

Hart caught Eleanor’s hand in his hard grip. “You are right, Ian. As usual. Come with me, El. I want to show you something.”

“Can you show me at home? It’s so very cold out here. It is all right now, you know. Inspector Fellows found all the assassins. At last. Do you know, I believe he is sweet on Isabella’s sister. We will have to make sure they are both at Kilmorgan for the summer—”

She found his blunt fingers on her lips, his hands now rough and calloused. “Eleanor, please stop talking for a fleeting instant, and come with me. It will be warm; I promise.”

Eleanor kissed his fingers. “What are you going to show me?”

He gave her a familiar, exasperated look. “Can you come along without asking questions?”

“Hmm, I can see that living rough hasn’t dampened your arrogance. All right, then. Show me. And then, we go home.”

Hart’s expression changed to the triumphant one. Oh, dear.

Hart started walking up the shingle, his arm around Eleanor. She liked being so warm against him, in the protective circle of his strong arm. She babbled because the release from her sickening fear wouldn’t let her do otherwise, but her heart sang.

“Ian,” Hart said as they walked. “Stop at the boat there, and tell Reeve he’ll get his money tomorrow morning. The publican by the bridge lets rooms—El and I will spend the night there. Then send word to Kilmorgan—discreetly—that I will be there soon.”

Ian nodded. He sank his fingers into Hart’s shoulder, then jogged away toward Reeve’s boat, disappearing into the darkness. Ian would do it, and not betray them.

The publican and his wife had already gone to bed, but Eleanor put several crowns into the publican’s hand. The man and his wife opened a room and started a fire in its stove, then shook out sheets for the bed while Eleanor stood by the shuttered window, out of the way.

Hart asked for a bath. The publican’s wife gave him a dark look, but another crown later, they brought a hip bath and some towels and filled the bath with cans of steaming water.

The publican asked no questions, but both he and his wife gave Hart and Eleanor curious stares before they left them alone.

“They believe I am a courtesan,” Eleanor said. “How amusing.”

Hart stripped off his soiled clothing. “Do you care what they think?”

“Not really,” Eleanor said. “But as happy as I am to be out of the wind, I will point out that your London house is warmer, and your bathtub larger. And you have running water.”

Hart fished a folded newspaper out of his coat pocket and tossed it on the bed. “That is why.”

Eleanor didn’t glance at the paper. Instead, she watched Hart peel off his trousers and the flannels he wore underneath, and then step, naked, into the bath.

Hart lowered himself into the heat, letting out a sigh of satisfaction. Eleanor’s gaze riveted to him, her large, handsome husband, now soaking wet, skin gleaming with water.

“Read the newspaper, El,” Hart said. He picked up the cake of soap and lavished it over himself.

Eleanor glanced at the bed. “I’ve read that one. The news about the elections is in it.”

“I know.” He let out a breath, collapsing against the end of the small tub. He had to raise his knees to fit. “That is what I want to show you, El. The coalition, the elections, the government… the world. They have moved on.” He spread his arms, letting water drip to the floor. “And I am still here.”

“True,” Eleanor said, her gaze back on Hart. “Some of your colleagues have scarcely stopped to mourn you. It’s rather disgusting.”

“Not what I mean. While I’ve been living on that boat, El, the world has passed me by. I always thought that, without me, it wouldn’t. Everything would crumble and fall, unable to get on without me managing it. But I was wrong.”

She watched him with a worried look. “And this pleases you?”

“Yes.” Hart vigorously rubbed his hair, droplets flying. “Because, love, watching the world from afar brought it home to me. I don’t have to run it. I have set things in motion and given Fleming his push. And now—I can stop.”

He heaved a sigh and slid down into the water, the suds closing over him like a blanket.

Eleanor had never seen him like this. He was relaxed in the ridiculously small tub, uncaring, his grin full of true mirth. Laughing at himself. Though Hart had teased and laughed when he’d courted her long ago, he’d been, in truth, propelling himself toward a goal. Always, Hart Mackenzie had an underlying drive that made anything on the surface just that—on the surface. Right now, he was… himself.

“Are you certain you are feeling quite well?” Eleanor asked. “Ian told me you’d taken a blow on the head from the explosion.”

Hart laughed out loud. He was delectable all wet, his hair slicked with water, his big limbs hanging out of the tub. And the beard. It had startled Eleanor when he’d first stepped into the light, but the softness of it against her lips hadn’t been unpleasant at all.

“I’ve been mad my entire life,” Hart said. “Driven. To take care of my brothers, to make sure we survived, then to take care of the nation, the world if I could. I’ve been terrified that if I stopped, if something happened to me, everything would go to hell. But it hasn’t, has it? It’s wonderful. And I am so bloody tired.”

“But what about the elections? Your party will win. Everyone thinks so.”

“Fleming can lead them. He’ll be good at it, and he’s not a trumped-up aristocrat no one will listen to. He will give Gladstone a run for his money.”

“But if you come back, you can win. I know this.”

“No. I am finished.”

His laughter died into a relieved sigh. The mad light perpetually in Hart’s eyes was absent. At the moment, he was an ordinary man enjoying the simple pleasure of a bath.

“But what about Scotland?” Eleanor asked. “Returning the Stone of Destiny?”

“A stupid dream. The queen adores Scotland, and she’ll never let it go. The days of Highland might and Bonnie Prince Charlie are over, thank God. The strength of Scotland will return one day, but it will take time. I wanted to force it, but I might have made it worse. Look at the mess in Ireland.” Hart splashed more water over his body and rocked up out of the tub, water crashing back into it. “The Stone of Destiny will return to Scotland—someday. I feel it in my bones.” He grinned. “But not today.”