A Duke in Shining Armor Page 3

  That, at least, was what he assumed she was doing.

  The view he had—and a prime one it was, though brief—was of stockinged leg and garter. Then white satin and petticoats and the scent of a woman filled the world about his head. He barely retained the presence of mind to grasp her ankles to steady her.

  “Up,” she said. “It’s still too high for me to get there. Up, up! Hurry!”

  The voices neared.

  Grasping her feet, he pushed her up, over his head. He felt her weight leave him as she found purchase at the top of the wall. He saw the backs of her legs as she scrambled onto the top of the wall and into a sitting position. An instant later, she dropped out of sight.

  The voices were very near now.

  He hadn’t stopped to think a moment ago and he didn’t think now. As she disappeared over the wall, he caught hold of a tangle of ivy and climbed up and over.

  He looked right, then left.

  The cloud of white satin and lace was moving swiftly down Horton Street.

  He ran after her.

  Chapter 2

  Ripley caught up with the bride in Kensington’s High Street. She’d slowed her pace, but she didn’t stop.

  “Hackney,” she said, nodding toward the hackney stand ahead. “Do you have any money?”

  “First it was help over the wall,” he said. “Now it’s money.”

  “And here you are,” she said. “Still. Again.”

  “Yes. Because—”

  “I,” she said, drawing out the single syllable. “Need. Money. For. The. Hackney.”

  She waved at the vehicles and called, “Here!”

  The driver of the first hackney cab in the line regarded her with interest but offered no sign of moving.

  Why should he? She looked like a Bedlam escapee.

  Not that Ripley didn’t appear more than a little eccentric himself, with no hat, gloves, or walking stick.

  Still, he was a duke, and one of England’s most notorious and easily recognized noblemen.

  Furthermore, here he was, as she’d said. Ashmont ought to be here but he wasn’t, and somebody had to look after her. One did not let a gently bred young female roam on her own, especially a young female belonging to one of his stupid friends who couldn’t hold on to her.

  It was all well and good to be wild and reckless and not give a damn for Society. But when a fellow asked a girl to marry him, he oughtn’t to give her any reason not to show up for the nuptials.

  It was damned carelessness, was what it was. But Ashmont was spoiled, that was the trouble. He never had to exert himself with women.

  Long past time he started.

  Ripley clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s stop and think.”

  “I am thinking,” she said. “What I’m thinking about is, where is the blasted hackney? Why don’t they come?”

  “Let’s think about what you look like,” he said. “You know. Wedding dress. Veil and all. Creates an odd impression, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “I daresay,” he said. “But let’s try to appear calmer and in our right minds.”

  “I am in my right mind.” She clenched her hands. “I’m perfectly calm.”

  “Good. Very good. Now let’s take this in steps. Where do you propose to go?”

  She made a sweeping gesture. “Away.”

  “Away,” he said.

  She nodded, and the mound of hair and lace and whatnot shifted farther to the side of her head.

  “Very well,” he said. “It’s a start.”

  He would simply have to do the thinking for both of them, a daunting prospect. He didn’t like doing the thinking for himself.

  He raised his hand and beckoned.

  The first hackney coach lumbered out of line and toward them while she all but danced with impatience.

  When the vehicle had drawn up alongside them, Ripley pulled the door open.

  As she climbed onto the step, she struggled for balance and started to tip backward.

  He gave her a light push forward, and she toppled into the straw on the coach floor. He watched her hoist herself up—bottom uppermost for a riveting moment—and fall onto the seat. She smoothed out her skirts, straightened her spectacles, and glared at him.

  For some reason, his mood brightened.

  “Where to, Yer Honor?” the driver said.

  “Your Grace,” she corrected. “Don’t you recognize more than the usual lordly arrogance? Isn’t it obvious he’s a duke?”

  Ripley’s mood improved another degree.

  If the driver heard her, he gave no sign.

  “Battersea Bridge,” said Ripley. He climbed into the coach.

  The bridge lay a distance southward. This would give him time. To decide what he wished to do. But it wasn’t too far to prevent his returning her in a reasonable amount of time, if that was what he decided.

  The advantage was, Battersea Bridge wasn’t the first place his friends would think to look.

  “Or did you have a particular ‘away’ in mind?” he said.

  “Don’t talk,” she said. “I’m thinking.”

  The coach rumbled into motion.

  “That’s odd,” Ripley said. “Mind you, our communications have been brief, but from what I can see, thinking and you are two different countries. At war.”

  She shook her head and wagged a finger at him in the manner of the inebriated everywhere.

  “That’s not going to stop me talking,” he said. “If you must think, maybe you’d be so good as to think about explaining.”

  “Explaining what?”

  He gestured at her dirty bridal attire and the coach’s dirty interior. “This. The running away. Because I’m still rather muddled and not at all sure this is the best idea. I’m debating whether to tell the coachman to take us back.”

  “No,” she said.

  “But you can understand how tempting the idea is,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’ve had rather a trying morning, you see.”

  “You!”

  “Yes. It’s not going the way it was supposed to.”

  “Join the club,” she said.

  “You see, I wasn’t expecting to be traveling at a snail’s pace in a dilapidated hackney coach to Battersea Bridge,” he said. “Or any bridge. I feel reasonably certain I wasn’t supposed to be helping a drunken bride who chooses the very last minute to flee her wedding.”

  “I am not drunk,” she said. “And you’re not the only one who’s had a trying morning. If you don’t want to help me, you’re at liberty to stop the coach and disembark.”

  “I’m not at liberty,” he said. “I’m the—the something. The bridegroom’s special envoy. Or his keeper. For all I know, I’m the bridesmaid. The point is, he gave me the job, and maybe he has to take his chances of my bungling it. But one thing I do know is, you can’t be let to gad about on your own. If you could, I should have gone back and got my hat. Or not. I might have simply gone back and left you to somebody else. But I couldn’t, as I’ve explained, because of the job. No point in bringing the ring and the license and the money and all the rest when the bride’s gone off who knows where.”

  Her gaze lifted to his head. “Your hair is wet.”

  He did not turn a wet hair. He was used to drunken non sequiturs. “Everything is wet,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t melt.”

  “That’s not something I’d worry about,” she said. “The thing is . . .” She closed her eyes for a moment, but following a train of thought must have been too much for her because she opened them again and said, “When you drop me off at the bridge—”

  “Another man, who had looked forward to a peaceful wedding ceremony and good champagne and a fine wedding breakfast—the Newlands keep an excellent chef, you know,” he said.

  She regarded him stonily.

  “That fellow,” he went on, “missing the meal he’d looked forward to, and feeling a trifle short on sleep—that fellow might be tempted to drop you off the bridge. As in, into the river. But I—”

  “Yes, you’re the bridesmaid.”

  “I hardly ever drown women, was what I was going to say.”

  “I shall take a boat,” she announced, as one might pronounce a fiat or a sentence of death. “To Aunt Delia. In Twickenham.”

  He blinked. “Remarkable. You have a plan.”

  “Yes. I only needed the mental stimulation of your stimulating company.”

  “Any chance of stimulating you into telling me what, exactly, you’re running from?” he said. “Better yet, any chance of your changing your mind, like a good girl, and turning back? Any chance of something, oh, you know, bordering on reasonable?”

  “The die is cast,” she said in the fiat/death-sentence voice. “Be so good as to get this monstrosity off my head.”

  Because he wasn’t nearly drunk enough—or at all, for he seemed to have gone extremely sober suddenly—it took him a moment to interpret the request. Command.

  “Your hair?” he said. “Isn’t it permanently attached?”

  “Does this piece of architecture look permanently attached? It’s sliding down and pulling the hair I do in fact own with it. It’s most uncomfortable, and not like me at all. You can’t make a sow’s purse from a pig’s ear. I tried to tell them, but nobody would l-listen.”

  “I believe you mean silk purse—”

  She burst into tears.

  Oh.

  Tears threw some men into a panic.

  Ripley wasn’t one of them.

  Had this weeping female been his sister, he’d let her bawl on his shoulder and spoil his coat and neckcloth a
nd get rouge all over his handkerchief. Then he’d give her money and tell her to buy something.

  If she’d been his mistress, he’d promise a ruby necklace or diamonds, depending on her tears’ volume and velocity.

  This weeping female wasn’t like his sister or any of his mistresses or even his mother. This one belonged to a different species altogether. Among other things, she was Ashmont’s betrothed. Ashmont had never had one of those before. This being a brand-new category of Situation with Weeping Female, Ripley needed a moment to determine his course of action.

  The brisk approach, he decided.

  “Brace up,” he said. “You had mettle enough to go over the wall. You act like you’ve never run away before. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Yes, it is,” she sobbed. “I’ve ruined everything. Clarence will never get to Eton, and Andrew won’t get his cornetcy, and I shan’t be able to do anybody any good at all, and I won’t even have the library!”

  Ripley had no idea what she was talking about and saw no point in tiring his brain, trying to get an idea. How often did women make sense? What were the odds of that happening now?

  He said, in the encouraging manner of one addressing a jockey before a race, “The die isn’t cast. You can turn back. Ashmont is so drunk, he’ll believe anything we tell him. Then, tomorrow, he won’t remember anything but the broad outlines. I’ll tell him you got drunk accidentally and—”

  “I’m not d-drunk.”

  “Believe me, I recognize the condition,” he said. “You’re more than tipsy. You couldn’t even manage the coach step. Here’s what we tell him. We say you accidentally drank brandy, thinking it was . . . hmm . . . what the devil could one mistake brandy for?”

  “T-tea,” she sobbed. “It was in the tea. At f-first.”

  “At first,” he said.

  She nodded. She fished out from one of her enormous sleeves a tiny, elaborate square of lace, took off her spectacles, and wiped her eyes and nose with the scrap of lace. She put the spectacles back on and gave the nosepiece a little poke with her finger to set it in place. “But I drank that. The rest was from Stephen’s flask.” She balled up the alleged handkerchief in her hand. “I purloined it last night. After Mama told me about the wedding night. That is to say, she more or less told me. Some aspects of the business are not at all clear. But I thought brandy would strengthen my resolve. For the Inevitable.”

  “She ought to have done a better job of telling you,” Ripley said. “It’s Ashmont, you know, not some inexperienced numskull.”

  “Yes, he’s an experienced numskull,” she said.

  “In any event, it’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “People do it all the time. Consequences are hardly ever fatal.”

  “Consequences are babies,” she said darkly. “I should have investigated the matter myself instead of relying upon Mama. I’m not sure she understands the connection. Between the conjugal act and babies. She has had them in excess. In her place, I should have stopped after three. Or after three boys. That’s a good, safe number, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t think it a good, safe idea for his mind to dwell on the conjugal act. It had been an unusually long time since he’d had a woman, and at present he wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. His mind, though, being too easily swayed by the small brain below his waist, was all too eager to imagine how to repair the omission in short order.

  He made himself concentrate on what she was saying. Fortunately, she’d moved on to another subject.

  “I could not fathom why he asked me,” she was saying. “I doubted he was desperate. You’d be surprised at how many girls will overlook a man’s frailties when he’s a duke. Or maybe you wouldn’t be.”

  There might be many such girls, but they weren’t the sort who’d make Ashmont a suitable duchess. For all his shortcomings, he had his pride—rather more than was good for him, in fact. Even in a drunken stupor he wouldn’t marry a girl who wasn’t attractive, wellborn, and in possession of all her faculties. He wouldn’t choose one who was silly or boring or shrewish. He’d want, in short, perfection. Whether he deserved it was irrelevant.

  “I told myself not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” she said.

  “What gift horse?” Ripley said. “He fancies you. Isn’t that enough?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  She must be extremely shortsighted. Had she not worn the Poison label, Ripley would have been all over her years ago. “It makes perfect sense,” he said. “If you were a man, you’d see. As it is—”

  “And then I went to the library today to look into the matter—”

  “You waited until the wedding day,” he said. “No, not merely the day, but the very moment when you were supposed to be saying ‘I will.’” She’d waited until the moment when she’d become fully intoxicated, a condition she was, clearly, not used to.

  “I tried not to think about it, but it bothered me,” she said. “Did you ever try not to think about something?”

  “I rarely have to try.”

  “You simply make it go away?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s good to be a duke,” she said.

  “It is,” he said.

  It was far, far better than being a duke’s son, in his and his friends’ experiences. He wasn’t sure theirs had been the three worst fathers in the British aristocracy, but they were definitely in the running for the prize.

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “It’s like trying to stop a gnat buzzing around my head. And things that don’t make sense are the most stubborn gnats. But all I could find was a book on animal husbandry, and that was when, finally, I put two and two together. Or two and two and two and one. Seven of us, and only one girl. And they—whoever talked or tricked him into getting married—must have said to him, ‘Why, there’s Gonerby’s girl. Can’t ask for better breeding stock. Excellent odds of an heir and some extras in case of catastrophe.’”

  “Knowing Ashmont, I find that theory highly improbable.” Breeding would feature, naturally, because that was what often came of bedding, unless one exercised extreme caution. “You give him credit for more thought than he would ever put into it. You attracted his attention by being kind to him one day, as I understand it.”

  “Kind!” she said. “I could hardly let him get run over by a hackney cab.”

  “It was quick thinking, and showed a certain adeptness.”

  “I have six brothers! They’re always falling into or out of this or that. I acted on instinct.”

  “He deemed it kind, especially your taking him home. In the course of the journey, it seems, he took a good, hard look at you, and you took his fancy. Since you’re a gently bred girl, marriage is required.” And this gently bred girl promised to lead Ashmont a more exciting life than he might have expected.

  She shook her head. “I know there was something more. I am not the sort of woman men lose their heads over.”

  There was more, very likely. Ashmont probably would have forgotten all about the incident if not for Uncle Fred’s underhanded methods. Ripley was not about to enlighten her in that regard, however. He could offer hints about how to manage Ashmont . . . but no. She was an intelligent girl. She’d catch on quickly.

  “You’d be surprised,” Ripley said.

  “I am the sort they marry for practical purposes,” she said. “To manage troublesome households. To take charge. To produce heirs and extras. When all else fails.”

  “Ashmont doesn’t think that way.”

  She was looking out of the window. “But you kn-know . . .” The tears began to trickle down the side of her nose again. “We’ve had our catastrophes, because there ought to have been nine of us, and that was very hard on Mama and Papa both. I did have my doubts about how much comfort Ashmont would be in such a case. And I knew what else whoever it was would have told Ashmont. They would have s-said, ‘No fear of a cuckoo in the nest. No doubt whatsoever nobody’s ever t-touched h-her.’”

  More sobbing.

  Ripley tapped his knee with his index finger. The sobbing continued.

  This was not entirely comfortable.

  “I see we’ve reached the maudlin stage,” he said.