His ring. The Severn ring, wrought of Welsh gold from the Crosse family’s mine, a gnarled dragon worn by every duke since the first, taken from his father’s still-warm corpse and put, frighteningly loose, on his own six-year-old finger. He’d worn it every day of his life since, with various artful attachments to keep it safe until his hands had reached their adult growth and it had been sized for him. He’d left behind his retinue and his embroidered linen to come to this assignation, but he hadn’t even considered taking off the Severn ring. It proved him the Duke of Severn when nothing else did.
And it was gone.
The rest of the day was a bad dream. He had to poke his head out of the door with a blanket wrapped around him, so as not to outrage any serving-maid, and summon the landlord, and beg him to send a message for his valet, on the promise of lavish reward once his money arrived. At this point, he learned that John Martin had left him to pay the shot for last night’s meal as well as the cost of the room. He sat on the bed in his blanket for hours, since he had no clothes and the landlord was too suspicious to lend him any, and enlivened the time by alternately kicking himself for his stupid self-delusion, and searching frantically for his ring, as if it could have somehow fallen off his finger.
At last his valet Waters arrived in a flurry of competence for which the Duke could only feel grateful, bearing clothes and money and terrifying authority borrowed from the dukes he’d served for fifty years. He restored the Duke to decency, gave the landlord a dressing-down that left theman in a state of grovelling apology, and swept the Duke into the comfort of his well-sprung carriage.
Waters did not ask what had happened. The Duke told him anyway, a version whereby he had indulged in an evening of manly pleasures of the acceptable kind (drink, gambling, a hint of women), and been robbed. There was no way to avoid that admission: he’d just have to endure the embarrassment and hope the tale stayed within the family. He tried to make a story of it, a comical misadventure, the kind of thing that could happen to a seasoned man of the world, more to practise that version than out of any hope his valet might take it lightly.
As indeed, he did not. ‘Your Grace must not jest!’ he said, real distress in his voice. ‘Anything might have happened. You could have been killed! These brutes have no mercy.’
The Duke put out a reassuring hand. ‘Since I wasn’t in the slightest harmed—’
Waters wasn’t listening. His eyes bulged. ‘Your Grace! The ring! Did – did they steal the Severn ring?’
The Duke opened his mouth to make the dreadful admission, and heard himself say, ‘No.’
‘No? But—’
‘A very lucky chance,’ said the Duke’s voice, which seemed to have overpowered his mind. ‘I caught my finger in a door earlier, so I took the ring off in case it swelled. I have it safe.’
Waters pantomimed relief with a hand on his heart. ‘Thank heavens. To have lost the Severn ring—’
‘Yes,’ the Duke said, strangled. ‘That would be unthinkable.’
‘Unforgivable. Your grandfather was so gracious as to inform me it was his most precious possession, valued over all else. He called it the Honour of the House.’
The Duke knew that. He’d been told over and over thathe was the ring’s custodian, that it represented everything he ought to be, that it should always be worn and could never be lost. He felt giddy with horror, sick with shame; he wanted to curl up and cry.
He’d have to admit the truth at some point. Why had he not just done it now and got it over with?
Well, that was easy enough. It was because he’d have no way to explain why he wasn’t sending to Bow Street for their best men to track down the thief.
Even so, all he’d achieved by lying was to delay the inevitable. It was pure cowardice, running away from trouble like the child Waters still thought him. His valet would be so disappointed by the truth. His uncle would be furious.
The journey back to Staplow, the ducal seat, seemed to take both forever and not nearly long enough. The Duke spent several minutes greeting the staff who lined up to welcome him back after his brief absence, knowing too well that while he chatted, Waters would be rushing to tell Lord Hugo about the whole sorry affair. The two old men had been allies in guarding and protecting the orphaned child-duke for too long to lose the habit in his manhood. His only hope was to present the whole affair as an absurdity, and hope his uncle could be brought to regard it in the same casual manner as he did his own sons’ mishaps.
His uncle did not.
‘Are you quite mad, Severn, making light of this?’ Lord Hugo demanded. ‘And you don’t propose to summon the Bow Street Runners? The Duke of Severn made drunk, robbed, his person outraged—’
‘My person was not outraged in the least,’ the Duke interrupted. That, he was quite sure, was true: his larcenous loverhad even tucked a blanket over him to keep the chill off. ‘And I can’t claim to have been made drunk: that was my own fault.’
‘I don’t know why you young men are so easily disguised. In my day, anything less than a three-bottle man – but that is not to the point. Of course you will summon the Runners.’
‘And have the story get about within days? I really should prefer not to make myself a public laughing-stock. I have been taught a lesson, and will learn it with all the grace I can muster.’
‘I damned well hope you do. To go off on your own in such a careless manner – what were you thinking of, boy?’
‘I am a grown man,’ the Duke pointed out. ‘Leo and Matthew go off on their own, as you put it, all the time.’
‘Pah!Theydon’t matter,’ Lord Hugo said of his beloved sons. ‘You are Severn, and I will not permit this recklessness.’
‘Ah – “permit”, Uncle?’ The Duke loved his uncle, and owed him a great deal. But his long minority had ended at the age of twenty-five, and he had steeled himself to challenge those many habits of speech when his cousins had informed him that if he didn’t, he would spend the rest of his life a schoolboy. It didn’t come naturally.
Lord Hugo lifted a hand in irritable acknowledgement. ‘Yes, yes, I misspoke. But this is an outrage and you must take it seriously.’
‘Believe me, I do,’ the Duke assured him. ‘Notwithstanding, I have learned a lesson at the cost of fifty pounds, a coat that I was not quite pleased with, a pair of hairbrushes, and a bad head. There are worse fates.’
