Page 3 of A Bride for the Heartless Duke
“Youagain,” Nicholas murmured absently.
“Now, now—that is no way to speak with your biggest supporter. You have once again made me a pretty penny, good sir,” he beamed.
“Don’t think the lads at the betting benches will be best pleased.”
“Ah, no. I gather they were rather sold by that tale of woe he’d been singing up and down the tavern about his dead father.” The man chuckled. “Will, is it?”
“That’s what they call me.”
“Hm. So, not your real name, I take?”
Nicholas shrugged, turning back to the proprietor of the grimy tavern to collect his winnings. He had no need of the money and always tossed it to the street urchins on his way back home, but refusing payment invited more questions than it was worth.
“Where did you learn?” the fop pressed, propping a shoulder against the wall. “I have rarely seen such masterful technique.”
“You a pugilist?” Nicholas retrieved the shabby coat he had bought off a beggar that afternoon.
“Lord, no!” he laughed, as though this were the most ridiculous thing in the world. “But I have studied a bit with the great Jackson himself.”
Nicholas grunted. Perhaps this dandy had—from what he’d seen of him, his clothes were fine enough, and he certainly had the money—though Jackson rarely offered personal lessons to nobles these days.
“Oliver Chant,” the man offered without cause, extending a hand. “About time we be introduced!”
Nicholas shook it and offered nothing in return. Men who introduced themselves in places like this generally sought something—a partnership, an arrangement, a fighter who would win orloseto order. Nicholas’s code of honor was slim, but that particular clause was carved in stone.
Still, Chant merely smiled. “I hope to see you here again,Will,” he said. “It’s a pleasure watching you work. You never fail.” He jangled his purse with a wink. “And I do appreciate a man who delivers consist—”
“Oliver, was it?” Nicholas paused at the foot of the stairs and snatched down the arm holding the purse. “Since you walked in, at least six pairs of eyes have priced everything on you down to your stockings. Now, unless you’d like to be carried home in a sack, I’d spend less breath on the finer points of boxing and more on the quickest route to your carriage.”
Chant’s easy grin snuffed out like a pinched candle. He glanced about the cellar.
Nicholas climbed the stairs and let himself out on a side street into the York evening. In the corner, a boy of perhaps ten beggedwith grimy palms upturned. He dropped a handful of shillings into them and watched the child bolt down an alley, quick as a rat, before anyone bigger could relieve him of it.
He had doled out the rest of his winnings by the time he reached theBlue Boar, a rather more salubrious establishment that knew him by his true name. Once he received the clothes his groom had stowed for him in the stables and had carefully tucked his mask under the seat of his carriage, he rode home as theDuke of Winchester.
That burdensome title settled over him like a coat cut for a different man.
The house was dark when the carriage finally rolled up the drive. Past eleven, and every window blind save one, high in the east wing, where a tiny light burned well past the hour it should have been snuffed.
Gregson met him in the dark foyer with a guttering candle as he took Nicholas’ coat and hat.
“Where is Mrs. Bell?” he asked the butler.
“Gone to her sister’s, Your Grace,” Gregson replied. “She… sent word she would not be returning.”
Nicholas groaned inwardly. Another nursemaid. Another resignation. “Is she asleep at least?”
He didn’t wait for an answer as he moved through the hall, past the drawing room with its cold grate and the dining room laid for a supper he had no appetite to eat. A thin line of candlelight showed beneath the door of the little writing room beside the nursery that had once belonged to Grace. Same territory, same taste for late hours.
He eased open the door without sound.
Sophia sat at the small desk in her nightgown, one stockinged foot tucked beneath her, her hair falling in dark loops over her shoulder. Her tongue was caught between her teeth—much like his own would be—as she dragged a pen across the paper by the light of a dying candle stub. She hadn’t heard him.
He crossed the carpet quietly. He ought to scold her, but she had already turned eight, and he never once did.
At the top of her page, in large uneven letters, was written:
QUALITIES REQUIRED.
