The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

Chapter Thirty-five

Harriet trained her pistol on the gaunt figure that had appeared like a ghost in the doorway. Dear God. She could have shot him for a stranger. He had tied his unkempt blond hair back with a bit of string. His coat and trousers stank to heaven. She was a little stunned to realize that from a distance one might actually consider him to be handsome.

“Should I shoot him first, Harriet?” Lady Powlis asked in a quavering whisper from behind the sofa.

“Don’t shoot at all. In fact-” Harriet bit her cheek, stepping around the sofa to remove the dueling pistols from Primrose’s unsteady grasp. Her ladyship was liable to shoot Harriet or herself the way those guns were bobbing up and down. “If anyone shoots our nasty visitor, it’ll be me.”

Grim Jack held his battered hat to his heart. “Is that any way to talk to your beloved sire?”

Lady Powlis’s eyes widened. “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Harriet snapped. “He’s just some confused street gent who wandered in here by mistake. And he’s going to leave-”

Grim Jack brushed around her. “Madam, you’ve naught to fear from ’arry’s dad. We’re all friends, ain’t we?”

“Your-” Lady Powlis sniffed the air like a pointer. “What is that unusually pungent odor?”

“That would be my father,” Harriet said, passing Lady Powlis a scented handkerchief. “You’ve met him. Now he’s getting out, or I’m calling the constable.”

“’ang on a minute,” Grim Jack said, eyeing the fine Japanese vase on the mantelpiece. “I’ve risked life imprisonment, transportation, maybe even ’anging to come ’ere.”

“Nice of you to bother,” Harriet snapped, prodding his hand away from the table with her pistol. “You’re supposed to be dead. You killed someone-”

“In self-defense.” He stepped back, suddenly gaping at her as if he had seen a ghost. “It’s been a long time, ’arry. You look so much like her. I-I-”

“What do you want?”

“I know where she is-that duke’s girl that got abducted-if you’d give me a chance to slip in a word.”

“You dirty lying bag of-”

“Why don’t you let the man finish, Harriet?” Lady Powlis asked through her handkerchief. “And open a window while you’re at it.”

“Madam.” He bowed to her. “I apologize for my indecorous aroma. But I was in dire straits, and I’ve risked capture to be of service to the duke, when ’e’s at ’ome.”

Harriet walked him to the window, her voice shaking with contempt. “You know where Edlyn is? Is that what you want us to believe? Where is she? You, who couldn’t find a chamber pot if you stepped in it. You-”

“I saw ’er face,” he said. “I swear it. She was behind a barred window in ’anging Sword Alley. She even ’eld out a hand to me. I thought at first she were an angel. Then I saw all them posters.”

“What did she look like?” Lady Powlis whispered.

“White as a bloody corpse. Sorry, my lady. It was dark, and I thought I was seein’ things.”

“Could you find her again?” Harriet asked, dimly aware of a door opening in the servants’ quarters.

“Yeah. But it ain’t where I’d go. I went back there, see, right back to that lodgin’ ’ouse, after I realized who she was. Then I remembered that it’d been some bloody awful screamin’ that woke me up in that wheelbarrow.”

“Screaming?” Lady Powlis said faintly. “My niece was screaming?”

Jack frowned. “No. But some ravin’ shrew behind ’er was.” He bent his head to Harriet’s. “I watched a bit. The young lady never came back to the window, but after a while a man came out, so I followed ’im, careful like, to Blackfriars Bridge.”

“And he didn’t notice you?” Harriet whispered after a skeptical pause.

He scoffed, stopping himself before he swatted her with his hat. “I saw ’im meet up with a bargeman. I couldn’t ’ear everything, but I put together they was makin’ plans to sail tonight, if they ain’t already done so.”

Harriet regarded him without a hint of affection. “If you’re lying, so help me God, I’ll not only watch you swing, I’ll hang on to your ankles and turn somersaults between your feet.”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Lady Powlis said, looking as if she were going to be sick, whether from Jack’s story or his smell, Harriet did not know.

She did know, however, that she’d never felt so relieved to see anyone as when suddenly the duke entered the room, the look of unmasked emotion on his face the stuff of fainting damsels and impossible dreams. His eyes dropped to the pistol she was holding at her side. She shook her head. His aunt started to cry.

“It’s all right,” Harriet said, swallowing over a knot in her throat. “But there’s no time to waste. This man-my father-thinks he knows where Edlyn is.”

He nodded tersely. His gaze holding hers, he strode past Jack and motioned from the window. Harriet noticed a man across the street, another appearing on the corner. There could have been a hundred armed guards about the place. It was Griffin’s presence that made her feel safe. She had known other gentlemen willing to overlook her imperfections, to offer themselves as her protector. But she had never met a man who needed her to protect him as desperately as he did.

He took the two dueling pistols Harriet had hidden behind the teapot, tucking one into his belt and handing the other to her father. “Can you take me to the house where you saw her?”

“I could, but someone’s gotta be on the bridge, just in case.”

Harriet had to turn away for a moment. She had seen the surprise on her father’s face at the implicit trust that Griffin had given him. She thought then of her mother, of how Jack would talk about her when he got drunk, and how he cursed the world for taking her when he’d have gladly gone in her place.

She had never considered that she might have been a product of love and that there had been goodness in Jack Gardner before he became the brutal man she remembered. Who would have guessed he’d turn hero at the last hour?

He put his hand out to hers. “I’ve been think-in’-”

She blinked.

“-you could always see better than anyone in the dark, ’arry. We could watch each other’s backs, just like in the good-”

“Absolutely not,” Griffin and Primrose said in unison.

“In fact,” the duke added, “I am having two of Sir Daniel’s men posted inside this house while I’m gone.”

Jack shifted his feet. “Let’s ’ope they do a better job guarding the ladies than they did of keepin’ me out.”

Harriet vented a sigh. “I have never felt this utterly useless before.”

“Now you know how a woman of my capacity feels when she begins to grow old,” Lady Powlis murmured, misty-eyed again.

Griffin caught Harriet under her elbow and drew her against him for a last word of caution, if not an embrace. “Be good. Don’t give Sir Daniel another reason to arrest you.”

“I love you, Griffin,” she whispered.

He broke away, gesturing for Jack to follow. Harriet stood, offering Lady Powlis reassurances she wished to believe herself. She had always dreaded the day that Griffin would meet her father. Her mind had played out many humiliating scenarios. She had not once, however, imagined the pair of them forming an alliance that would fill her with pride.