The Duke set off for Coventry the next morning, in a curricle hired at the best livery stable Leamington Spa had to offer, drawn by the fastest pair they could provide. Be damned to the bet; he’d learned the hard way how difficult it was to track a man down once you no longer had his trail.
He was going to find Daizell. He was going to apologise – fully, humbly, as he should have done at the time. And he was going to offer all the power at his disposal to end the ostracism that Daizell had suffered for his miserable parents and Sir James Vier’s spite, along with the odd indiscretion that was really no worse than anyone else’s. He’d do that whether Daizell wanted any more of him or not, because it was right.
That vow, and the pleasure of driving himself in a well-sprung conveyance at a satisfactory speed, carried him all the way to the Green Lion in Coventry, where Forster the landlord seemed unexcited to see him, and suggested he might want to leave. Cassian felt warmly towards him for his defence of Daizell, but had no intention of taking the dismissal.
‘I need to know where Daizell went,’ he repeated politely. ‘It is important I find him.’
‘Look, mate, your quarrels aren’t my business—’
‘No, they are not. Answer me, please.’
Possibly the landlord saw something in his face, because he said, ‘He headed south. Went to meet Martin at the Rose and Crown in Leamington.’
Where Cassian had just come from. Marvellous. He changed horses and headed back, cursing Martin Nichols – why was Daizell travelling with that blasted man? – and fate, and mostly himself.
At the Rose and Crown, he learned that he had missed Daizell by some thirty-six hours. He and Nichols had taken the coach towards Worcester. Cassian took this news with as much grace as he could, considering he seemed to be fated to drive in circles. He was going to find Daizell, and he was going to apologise if it was the last thing he did.
Two days later, he broke the journey at the March Hare in Broughton Hackett. He hoped only to get some sort of lead there before arriving in Worcester. Instead, he walked into the inn, and straight into John Martin.
‘You!’ Cassian said.
‘Oh God.’ Martin sounded exhausted, and looked it too, his eyes dark-ringed. ‘Look, sir, Your Grace, if you’re planning to have me arrested—’
‘I don’t care about you. Where is Daizell?’
Martin opened his mouth, hesitated, and considered him for a moment. ‘What for?’
‘Because I want to talk to him.’
‘What do you intend by him?’
‘That’s none of your affair.’
‘Hurt or help?’ Martin demanded. They were having this conversation in a passageway, in low voices. It was probably indiscreet. Cassian didn’t care. ‘Because you’ve given him quite enough hurt, and if you mean more – well, which is it?’
‘I want to speak to him, and I mean him no harm, and—’ He had no desire to reveal anything to Martin, considering, but the man was defending Daizell. The Duke had a momentary mental image of Daizell taking comfort in his old lover’s arms, and quashed it. If he’d driven Daizell to that, it was his own fault. ‘I need to apologise. I hope he will hear me. Maybe he won’t but that is his choice, not yours.’ He held Martin’s gaze. ‘If he doesn’t want to speak to me, I’ll leave.’
Martin examined his face a moment longer. ‘And what if he needs help? Would you act for him, Your Grace, or is it more important to stay incognito?’
His tone was aggressive, but there was something raw in it and Cassian’s spine prickled. ‘What do you mean, help? What’s happened? Is something wrong?’
‘You might say so. He’s in gaol.’
Chapter Fifteen
Daizell sat in the cell, arms on his knees and head in his hands, wondering if he could identify the point at which his life had gone quite so badly wrong.
It depended where you wanted to start. Being fathered by George Charnage had been a tactical error from which he’d never recovered. Expulsion from Eton had primed the world to take a dim view of him. He could have handled himself better around his father’s crime, instead of his bewildered efforts to defend his parents, not to mention the drinking. The obscene profiles had been enormous fun to do at the time, but he should have ensured they were gathered up and burned. He probably shouldn’t have tried to elope with Miss Beaumont. And he should never, ever have talked to Cassian, or agreed to travel with Cassian, or fallen in love with Cassian.
Perhaps that wasn’t the stupidest thing he’d done in his life, but it felt like it. His wretched idiocy, his self-delusion, his pathetic need for once not to be disposed of as a trivial obstacle to someone else’s life: they stewed miserably in his stomach, unless that was the gaol food.
If he wasn’t a bloody fool, he would have realised that Cassian was far more than he said. Perhaps they might have set up a sensible sort of arrangement, one where they could be friends who fucked, and Daizell lived at the Duke’s expense. A kept man, as Martin had suggested. That wouldhave been the sensible thing to do, if he could have borne it, if he’d kept his head and negotiated a satisfactory bargain, if he hadn’t wanted Cassian to love him.
He didn’t want to be Cassian’s shameful secret or paid bedmate. He wanted Cassian as he’d had him over the last glorious weeks, friend and lover and companion, there all the time with his sun-and-rain eyes, that wondering hopeful smile.
But he wasn’t going to have that, because Cassian was the Duke of Severn. If he wasn’t a damned needy fool, he could at least have taken the news with grace and had another week. He could have taken the fifty quid, come to that. It would have helped.
And, while he was on the subject, he could have refrained from punching Mr Thomas Acaster in the face.
