The Desperate Duke Read online

“I don’t know, exactly,” he confessed with a shrug. “It might be as long as several months. I—I’ve taken a position at the mill.”

  “Oh,” she said, conscious of a pang of disappointment. A mill worker, then. And yet his speech was not like that of the mill workers, at least not any of those with whom she had come in contact. A gentleman fallen on hard times, perhaps? They must be very hard times indeed, if he was forced to seek employment in a cotton mill rather than securing a more genteel position as a land steward, or a tutor, or even a clerk.

  “In that case, you’ll be wanting one of the less expensive rooms,” her mother deduced, giving Daphne a nudge. “Don’t just stand there, my love. Give me those linens, and then show our guest up to the Pennine Room. Dinner is served promptly at seven o’clock, Mr.—?”

  “Tisdale. Theo Tisdale,” he said, offering her mother a handshake. He wore no gloves, Daphne noted. His hands were well-shaped, and although Daphne would not call them soft, she could not bring herself to believe they had ever done a day’s labor in their life.

  “Mr. Tisdale,” Mrs. Drinkard echoed. “As I say, dinner is served at seven, so you’ll have time to wash up after work and put off your dirty clothes before joining us. Of course, you may make your own dining arrangements if you wish, which will reduce the cost of your room by sixpence per week. But my daughter will tell you all about that,” she concluded, taking the sheets from Daphne’s arms and shooing her toward the once-grand central staircase.

  “The Pennine Room is the smallest, and thus the least expensive of the rooms,” Daphne explained, leading the way up the stairs and blushing for the threadbare carpet covering the treads. “It lets for one-and-six per week, but that does include breakfast and dinner, as Mama says, in addition to washing your linens every Friday. If you choose to dispense with dining or laundry services, it brings the cost of the room down to a shilling—or sixpence, if you choose to forego both.”

  They had reached the top of the stairs by this time, and it seemed to Daphne that Mr. Tisdale let out a sigh of relief as she turned and started down the corridor.

  “At least you’re not putting me up in the attic,” he remarked.

  “No, for the attic is set up as a kind of ward. Cots are available for tuppence the night, but no meals are included, nor any washing.” She took a deep breath. “Mama meant no offense. I daresay she did not mention the attic because she thought it likely that you were accustomed to having a room of your own.”

  He gave a bitter little laugh. “She’s in the right of it,” he said cryptically, but offered no particulars. “Have you any other, er, guests staying here?”

  “Not guests so much as permanent residents. Mrs. Jennings is an elderly lady who came to us after her husband died—her room is at the opposite end of the corridor from the one to which I’m taking you. Old Mr. Nethercote has the room directly across the corridor from yours. He is quite deaf, you see, and so is unlikely to be troubled by any noise from the dining room directly below.” She glanced uncertainly up at him. “The Pennine Room is above the dining room as well, since it stretches from the front of the house to the back. That is, the dining room does, not the Pennine Room. I—I hope you will not be troubled by the noise. I daresay you will not—that is, I rather thought—”

  “You thought I would come back from the mill so exhausted that I would collapse into bed and fall asleep regardless of any racket from below,” deduced Mr. Tisdale. “You’re very likely right. But I have to wonder exactly what goes on in the dining room that might disturb my sleep. Surely if there’s a meal being served, I’ll be in the dining room myself, contributing to the commotion.”

  “Yes, but there are the preparations to be made—setting the table for breakfast, and of course clearing away the dishes after dinner. And tomorrow night, a gentleman has hired the room for holding a meeting.”

  “A gentleman?” he echoed sharply. “Who?”

  “His name is Sir Valerian Wadsworth. He is standing for Parliament, so I daresay it is some sort of political gathering. He wishes to meet with some of the mill workers.”

  “He’ll catch cold at that,” predicted Mr. Tisdale. “He’d do better to concentrate his efforts on men who are able to vote.”

  “Perhaps I misunderstood,” Daphne conceded doubtfully. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about politics. In any case, if they make too much noise, you must tell me. We cannot allow him to disturb our residents, no matter how much he may be paying Mama.”

  “Are we the only residents, then? Me, and this Mrs. Jennings and Mr.—Nethercoast, was it?”

  “Nethercote,” she corrected him gently. “But the three of you are not the only ones, for the curate also lives with us, and a solicitor’s apprentice moved in about six months ago. Those are our only permanent residents. The others are usually men who have business at the mill—not mill workers, you understand, but men who have come to repair the equipment, vendors of dyestuffs—that sort of thing.” In fact, the most recent of these had attempted more than once to catch her alone in the corridor and kiss her, but that unpleasant incident was none of Mr. Tisdale’s business. She wondered if he were the sort of man who would try to corner a defenseless young woman, and wondered which would be the greater disappointment: to discover that he was, or to deduce, in the absence of any definitive evidence, that he was not.

  They had by this time reached the room that bore on its paneled door a small plate reading “Pennine.” Daphne turned the key in the lock and opened the door, then stepped back to allow him to survey the room that was to be his home for the foreseeable future. It was small, as she had said, but it had its own fireplace, and the narrow bed boasted a headboard of burnished brass. He set his valise down beside a chest of drawers positioned adjacent to the window, which looked out over the front of the house.

  “There are larger rooms, but they are all occupied at present,” Daphne offered apologetically, although precisely what she was apologizing for, she could not have said.

  “This will do well enough,” he conceded, withdrawing a coin purse from the inside pocket of his coat and counting out sufficient coins to cover the first week’s lodging. “Now, is there somewhere I might find a drop to tide me over until dinner?”

  “The Red Lion is not far away—perhaps a quarter of a mile,” she said, gesturing in the direction he must travel to find this establishment.

  “But not here?”

  “My mother and I are not running a tavern, Mr. Tisdale,” she informed him, very much on her dignity. “You may have coffee with your breakfast, half a glass of wine at dinner, and one cup of tea in the afternoon, if you should happen to be here when it is served.”

  “No, of course not. I beg your pardon. Now, if you will excuse me, I will see you at dinner,” he said, and betook himself from the room.

  But Daphne stood in the middle of the Pennine Room for a long time after he had gone, gazing speculatively at the door through which he had passed.

  6

  For I must to the greenwood go,

  Alone, a banished man.

  ANONYMOUS, The Nut-Brown Maid

  THEODORE WAS SURPRISED and not a little indignant to find, upon his return from the Red Lion, that his valise still sat on the floor beside the chest of drawers, exactly as he had left it. A moment’s reflection, however, was sufficient to remind him that he no longer had a valet to see to the unpacking of his bags. Heaving a sigh, he picked up the valise and put it on the bed, then set about removing his clothes to the chest of drawers. By the time he had finished this task, it was time to wash and change for dinner. No, he amended mentally, not change. He hadn’t brought a set of evening clothes with him, and even if he had, he would have looked a pretty fool, togging himself out in full evening kit to dine with a collection of shabby-genteel mushrooms. He’d have to settle for brushing what dust he could from the tailcoat he’d worn on the stage—an unprepossessing garment of brown serge, fully ten years old and bearing a small round hole, almost like a bullet hole, n
ear the top of one sleeve—and washing his face and hands before putting it back on to wear to dinner.

  Alas, the pitcher on the washstand was empty—as he discovered when he attempted to pour hot water from it into the ceramic bowl provided for that purpose—and he glanced about the room in vain for a bellpull with which he might ring for a servant. He stepped out into the corridor, and almost collided with an elderly man in an old-fashioned bag wig, who cradled a pitcher to his chest with one hand while he fumbled for his room key with the other.

  “I say,” Theodore addressed this worthy, his eyes alighting on the pitcher, “Have you hot water there?”

  “Eh?” asked the old man. “What’s that?”

  Clearly, this was the deaf Mr. Nethercote. “Hot water?” Theodore said again.

  “No,” his fellow houseguest informed him in the too-loud accents of the hard of hearing. “If you mean Miss Drinkard, she ain’t my daughter.”

  “Not daughter; water,” reiterated Theodore, raising his voice to match Mr. Nethercote’s in volume. “Is that hot water in your pitcher?”

  “Lud, no! If I were any richer, d’ye think I’d be living here?” retorted the old man, eyeing Theodore with disfavor. “Besides, ain’t the sort of thing ye ought to be asking a stranger. Not much for manners, are ye?”

  “All I want is some hot water!” shouted Theodore in some exasperation.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” grumbled Mr. Nethercote. “You want hot water, you’ll have to go down to the kitchen and get it.”

  Muttering under his breath, Theodore returned to his room and grabbed the empty pitcher from its resting place in the bowl. When he returned to the corridor, Mr. Nethercote was still there, fumbling with his room key. Heaving a sigh of annoyance, Theodore snatched the key from the old man’s hand, inserted it in the lock, and pushed the door open.

  “There!” he pronounced, returning the key to his housemate before setting off in the direction of the staircase.

  “Hair?” Mr. Nethercote echoed, putting a hand to his wig as he watched the younger man go. “Haven’t worn my own hair in fifty years!” Shaking his head over the vagaries of the younger generation, he entered his room and closed the door behind him.

  Theodore, meanwhile, went down the stairs to the ground floor of the house and glanced about for any sign of Miss Drinkard or her mother. Finding neither, he had no choice but to try and find the kitchen on his own. Fortunately, this was not difficult; having grown up in one of the stately homes of England, he had a very good idea of the general arrangement of such houses. It was only a matter of locating the green baize door that led from the house proper down to the servants’ domain below. Having accomplished this, he had only to follow the clamor that indicated dinner preparations were in full swing.

  He peered around the door whence most of the noises seemed to emanate. Sure enough, a mouthwatering aroma wafted from a large pot suspended over the fire from one of several cranes built into the fireplace for that purpose. At a stout deal table nearby, a squat middle-aged woman in a voluminous apron and mobcap dismembered a chicken by means of a carving knife wielded with one beefy arm as she simultaneously barked orders at two serving girls. No, Theodore amended mentally, one serving girl. The other apron-clad female was Miss Drinkard, stirring something in an earthenware bowl with a wooden spoon. Her cheeks were flushed with heat from the great fireplace, and wisps of brown hair escaped their pins to curl riotously about her temples and the nape of her neck.

  “Er, excuse me,” Theodore began tentatively.

  “Oh! Mr. Tisdale!” exclaimed Miss Drinkard. If it were possible, her cheeks grew still redder. “What—? How may I—?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, unaccountably embarrassed at having discovered the daughter of the house engaged in a task better suited to the lowliest kitchen maid. “It’s only—I was told that—I need hot water, you see, and Mr. Nethercote said—”

  “Of course,” she said quickly, abandoning her spoon in order to take the empty pitcher from him. “I should have told you when I showed you to your room. Water is kept on the hob all day, so you may fill your pitcher any time you have need of it.”

  She took a ladle from its hook by the fireplace and filled the pitcher with hot water from a large black cauldron. Theodore took careful note of her actions, reserving the knowledge against the following morning, when he would be expected to perform this task for himself. Finally, he took the pitcher from her, begged pardon once more for interrupting the meal preparations, and retreated up the two flights of stairs to his room. The pitcher was considerably heavier now, and he took care not to spill its contents onto the carpet even as he acknowledged that this could certainly do with a thorough cleaning.

  In truth, the coming dinner gave him cause for considerable perturbation of spirits. A curate, Miss Drinkard had said, and a lawyer’s apprentice, along with a couple of old people no doubt gentle of birth, but with pockets to let. He’d met Mr. Nethercote, and had been relieved to find that gentleman, at least, a total stranger. A curate, however, might well be cause for concern, as this young clergyman would no doubt have been educated at Oxford—where Theodore himself had matriculated, although not even the most charitable of his tutors there could have called his scholastic career anything but mediocre. A lawyer’s apprentice was another possibility, although a somewhat less likely one. Then, too, there was Mrs. Jennings. How old was she, and was it possible that she had known his parents in their younger days? His memories of his mother were dim, as the duchess had died while he was still quite young, but he was said to resemble her, in temperament as well as countenance.

  He began to wish he’d made a greater effort to disguise his true identity. He’d taken his title—his former title, rather—as his surname, thinking there might be people who would, quite correctly, connect the family name of Radney with his sister’s name before her marriage. But what if this curate fellow, or fledgling lawyer, recognized plain “Mr. Tisdale” as the erstwhile “Lord Tisdale,” having known him at school? Perhaps he would have done better to have concocted a name from whole cloth. He had considered it, but thought it not worth the risk of forgetting, and failing to answer to his own name.

  For much the same reason, he’d chosen not to imitate the speech of his native Devon, although as a child he’d picked it up easily enough from the stable hands—had got a thrashing for it, too, he recollected with a grin, when he’d elected to demonstrate this talent for the edification of his father’s dinner guests. But he’d thought it would be too hard to keep up such a pretense, remembering the peculiarities of the dialect while at the same time performing whatever unfamiliar tasks might be assigned to him at the mill.

  He’d decided instead to adopt the persona of a gentleman who had suffered a reversal of fortune, deducing that this disguise had the advantage of allowing him to adhere, as nearly as possible, to the truth; it had been a favorite aphorism of his nursery governess that telling one lie always led to a network of further lies in order to maintain the first, until the whole thing eventually collapsed of its own weight. As he descended the stairs, however, he began to think wistfully that one or two well-chosen lies might not have been amiss.

  Great was his relief when he entered the dining room to find—aside from the ladies and old Mr. Nethercote—not one familiar face amongst the lot. Seats were not assigned, but his fellow diners’ careful adherence to the rules of precedence gave evidence of genteel upbringing. He wondered fleetingly what had happened to them all that might account for their present reduced circumstances.

  Mrs. Drinkard presided over the head of the table just as if she were hosting an elegant dinner party, while her daughter occupied the foot, arrayed in a blue satin gown that, if not quite in the first stare of fashion, nevertheless made it hard to believe she’d been employed in the kitchen scarcely an hour earlier. Mr. Nethercote, by virtue of his age, occupied the place of honor at his hostess’s right, while Mrs. Jennings sat at Miss Drinkard’s righ
t, apparently for the same reason. The curate sat at Mrs. Drinkard’s left, and Theodore was relieved to discover that this gentleman was at least forty years old, apparently languishing in his present position for lack of a patron; certainly he was too old to have known Theodore at Oxford, or Eton, or any of the other places where young men of noble birth might be expected to cross paths. The lawyer’s apprentice was also a stranger, and one, furthermore, who glared at Theodore from his place at Miss Drinkard’s left with much the same air as a dog guarding a bone. Theodore mumbled a greeting to the group at large, and took the chair between Mr. Nethercote and the curate.

  “Good evening, Mr. Tisdale,” said Mrs. Drinkard, inclining her head in a way that set the ostrich plumes in her hair bobbing. “Friends, this is Mr. Theodore Tisdale, who will be staying with us for a while. Mr. Tisdale, allow me to make you known to the other residents. Of course, you’ve met my daughter Daphne. This is Mrs. Mary Jennings, Mr. Edward Nethercote, Mr. Henry Nutley, and Mr. Thomas Potts.”

  As everyone was seated, nods sufficed in lieu of bows or curtseys, and the meal began. The dishes in their various serving vessels were already on the table, each one passed around hand to hand so that each boarder might take as much as he or she desired. Mrs. Drinkard explained to Theo that she preferred the presentation of dinner à la française to the growing fashion for service à la russe; Theo suspected, however, that her fondness for the earlier mode had more to do with a lack of footmen on hand to serve each person and then remove the dishes to make way for the next course.

  “Tell me, Mr. Tisdale,” said Mrs. Jennings, leaning a little forward in a way that put her long strand of pearls in danger of landing in her soup, “what brings you to Lancashire?”

  It was the question he had been dreading, but he knew it could not be avoided. “I’ll be taking a position at the mill in the morning,” Theodore said repressively, daring anyone to ask for further enlightenment.