“I’ve given you three days already. If you fling another figure at me, I will suffer an apoplexy. And then you’ll lose Lattimer and your income from it to the Crown, after all. Send whatever else you think I require today to the Regimental Tavern in Knightsbridge. I’m leaving for the Highlands in the morning. You know that address, I assume.”
“But as we told you three days ago, you have an estate here in London. Leeds H—”
“Leeds House. Yes, you did mention that. Several times. I’ll be at the Regimental.” Stuffing Blething’s letter and its response into his glove, he made for the door. Now that a path had revealed itself, not a damned thing was going to keep him in this tastefully appointed room for another bloody minute. He had a destination, a task, and from the numbers being flung at him by the paper men, the monetary means with which to accomplish it.
Kelgrove pulled open the door as he reached it, then followed him down the short hallway and out to the noisy, dirty streets of London. Gabriel collected Union Jack, then headed southwest toward Knightsbridge where he’d taken a room above the Regimental Tavern. Whatever title they’d thrown at him, he felt far more comfortable seeing it as words—endless words—on paper. If he walked into Leeds House in Mayfair, all this insanity became real. Aside from that, moving his two trunks there for one night would be pointless. That, at least, sounded completely plausible and not at all like he was worried he’d piss himself if he thought hard enough about what had been laid before his scuffed boots.
“So you have a grand home in Mayfair and you don’t even want to gaze upon it before you leave London?” the sergeant asked, interrupting his mental calisthenics.
With a sigh, Gabriel slowed Jack to a walk. “I’m hoping it’ll go away. Along with all the solicitors, the estates, and the ache in my skull.”
“No disrespect, but I imagine there are multitudes all around us at this moment who would give a limb for what you’ve had thrown at you, Your Grace.”
And they could have it. Unfortunately, it remained his cross to bear. “So I sound ungrateful,” he said, guiding his bay around a hay cart.
“Some would say so. Not me, of course.”
“I’m fairly certain you’re meant to be more respectful.”
The sergeant snorted. “You do recall when they assigned me to your service? You ordered me to always give you an honest opinion, because firstly doing otherwise could get one of us killed, and secondly any flattery was wasted because you had no rich relations who could reward my bootlicking. You are the rich relation now, Your Grace, but I’m assuming your previous orders still stand.”
After the sycophants of this morning, that seemed refreshing. “For God’s sake, yes. And ‘Major’ will do. I don’t intend to be ‘Your Graced’ enough to become accustomed to it.”
“I know you said you meant to return to duty after you have this mess straightened out, but…” Kelgrove said, then let the sentence trail off. “You should do as you wish, of course.”
“I’ve put a lifetime of sweat and blood into the army, Adam. I’m good at it. I’m too old and too stubborn to take on something this grand, and too plainspoken to want anything this frivolous. As you said, it was thrown at me. I should have ducked.”
“I’ll second that. As I am four-and-thirty and four years your senior, however, I’m willing to go a few rounds arguing that you’re old.”
Despite the quick change of subject, Gabriel heard the hesitation in his aide’s voice, and he damned well knew from whence it came. A duke in combat would be nearly unprecedented, at least in this century. But he would find a way. He couldn’t imagine any other alternative. “Damnation,” he muttered aloud. Every damned man who had a duke for a father should be obligated to marry and procreate well before he inherited, just to be certain the title had an heir. Otherwise, dirt-beneath-their-nails men like him found their own lives ruined for no damned bloody reason but that wealth needed an owner.
“Scotland, eh?” Kelgrove went on. “I’ve never been to Scotland. Been to India, Portugal, Spain, and bits of France, but not to Scotland.”
“I’ve never been, either,” Gabriel replied, lifting his gaze but unable to see the horizon for all the buildings. “A few weeks there, and I’ll have Lattimer Castle set right and a new steward put in place to oversee it.”
And then back to the Continent, the sooner the better. He’d asked for—and been given, with an absurd amount of ceremony—six weeks’ leave, which at least indicated that the army did want him back. Whatever plotting and planning his military superiors might be up to with regard to his new title, the thought of returning to Spain and the war was the only thing keeping him from pummeling everyone in his path and fleeing to the Colonies. At least they didn’t have dukes in America.
“Have you thought about what you’ll tell your sister?” Kelgrove asked, pitching a shilling to an orange girl and catching one of the fruits in return.
Devil take it. Gabriel drew Jack to an abrupt halt. He’d been sending half his salary to his sister since he’d joined the army at age seventeen. Nine years his junior, Marjorie had always seemed so… young, and far too delicate for a rough-hewn man like him to be raising. He’d seen her sent to the best boarding schools he could afford, because that had seemed far more helpful than his presence. That, though, was no excuse for not even thinking about her now. Neither was the unexpected timing of his trip to London. If his circumstances had altered, so had hers. And someone needed to tell her that.
According to the papers he’d spent the past three days signing, she’d just become the sister of a duke. At the least she needed to know that her monthly income would be increasing by a number he couldn’t even fathom.
“You wouldn’t happen to have her address to hand, would you?” he asked, wheeling to face his aide and refusing to admit that he had no idea where in London she resided.
“I would, Major. She’s in South Kensington.”
“Well, aren’t you efficient?” Gabriel returned dryly, trying to decide if that was censure he heard in Adam’s voice. If it was, he deserved it.
“I thought you might wish to send her a note and then call on her this evening. You haven’t seen her for some time.”
“No, I haven’t,” he agreed. “But we’re heading north in the morning. I’ll see her now, or I’ll have to send one of those paper men to talk to her until her ears bleed. I wouldn’t wish that on Bonaparte.” He blew out his breath. “I had Wellington tellme.I have a signet ring the size of a cannonball. Perhaps she’ll appreciate it more than I do.”
As they headed south toward the bank of the Thames the crowds of carts and pedestrians seemed endless, and his shoulders stiffened. Chaos and noise and bustle were nothing new, but in the army it carried with it an overall purpose and direction. On the main thoroughfares of London, with hundreds of people each concerned only with their own needs, chaos became a completely inadequate word.
“There, Major.”
Kelgrove indicated a small, narrow town house on the right, sharing common walls with the dwellings on either side. A rose trellis crawled up the left side of the door and up around the window, while a low hedge of some kind of pink flowers ran along the bottom of the walls on either side of the front trio of steps. “It looks… quaint,” he said, swinging down from Union Jack and somewhat surprised she could afford the rental of such a house with what he sent her, but she evidently spent wisely.
