A Duke of Her Own (Desperate Duchesses #5)

But he would have to time his escape perfectly, before the duke’s four grooms emerged from the stables.

After breakfast he strolled casually out the door. Likely, Ashmole would have seen through him, but he had taken care of that by asking Violet to create a diversion. The fire she had started on the nursery floor ought to keep Ashmole busy. She needn’t have thrown Colin’s book onto the blaze, however. He could still hear Colin’s howls from the front doorstep.

None of the footmen knew how to treat him—as a child of the house, or as a by-blow? Their dilemma just made Tobias grin: he didn’t give a rat’s ass how they treated him, as long as they danced to his tune. A solitary groom standing at the horses’ heads gave him a bored glance but said nothing until Tobias pulled open the door to the carriage.

“Here, you!” the man bellowed. Tobias stuck his head back out of the carriage and gave him a cheerful smile. “Just doing an errand for Mr. Ashmole,” he said. “Getting a blanket he asked for.”

“An errand for Mr. Ashmole?” He could see the concept slowly trickling into the groom’s mind. An errand put Tobias into the category of servant. And that meant he could kick Tobias into shape if he wanted to. It was obviously a comforting thought.

“I like to help Mr. Ashmole whenever I can,” Tobias said, ladling it on. “Perhaps someday I can be a butler just like him.” He tried for a soulful look, which probably made him look like a sick calf.

The groom thought this over. Tobias could almost see him relaxing: if Tobias wanted to be a butler, well then he wasn’t getting above his place in life. Much.

“Like to see you a butler!” the groom said, guffawing as he would at any beggar who expressed the same wish.

“I’ll make it someday,” Tobias said, putting on the brave and cheerful face of an orphan. “I don’t mind hard work. That’s why I’m trying to help today.”

“You’d best get on with it, then,” the groom said, waving him on.

“Could I do something for you, next?” Tobias asked. “Hold the horses for a moment, maybe? I do love horses.”

“I could take a piss,” the man said. “Bring that there blanket to Ashmole and come back here, smart-like.”

“Yes, sir,” Tobias said, pulling the blanket out of its place and trotting up the steps back to the house. ’Course, it wasn’t a normal blanket. It was soft as a baby’s backside, and trimmed in some sort of fur. Ermine or suchlike. He handed the blanket to the footman stationed in the hallway and told him that it was to be sent to the laundry.

“You shouldn’t be using the front steps like that,” the groom told him a moment later, as he handed over the reins. “Ashmole will whup you if he sees you at it.”

“I think he said something about that,” Tobias said vaguely, stroking one of the horses’ noses.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” the man said, heading around the side of the building. “Mr. Seffle will be coming to drive the coach around the block again. Doesn’t like the horses to get antsy.”

The moment he disappeared around the side of the building, Tobias called to the footman just inside the door. When he appeared, Tobias shouted, “Tell Mr. Seffle I took the horses around the block.”

By the time the duke’s coachman, Seffle, rushed around the side of the house, Tobias was already hidden in the coach. The horses hadn’t even had time to realize that they were free to trot off. From inside the blanket box, Tobias could faintly hear Seffle swearing, followed by a shouting match between Seffle and the groom and the ensuing search for himself, but after a few minutes it all settled down and Seffle jumped on the coach to drive it around the block.

Tobias wasn’t overly uncomfortable. He could sit with his arms clasped around his legs. They trundled around the final corner and pulled to a halt again. He heard the duke’s drawling voice. “Are you saying that Ashmole asked my son to run errands for him?”

Tobias couldn’t help grinning. He hadn’t made up his mind about his father. Villiers was like some sort of weird exotic bird with nasty eyes and a strange way of talking. He wasn’t friendly. Or warm.

But Tobias still thought about the way Villiers had knocked over Grindel, the man who forced him to root around in the mud to pick up things like human teeth. Grindel had hit the ground with an enormous crash. And now there was a tone in Villiers’s voice that said Ashmole was in danger of losing his job if he confused Tobias with a footman.

Villiers seemed to think he could make everyone forget that his son was a bastard. Which was idiotic, though Tobias appreciated the thought.

Finally the coach lurched to a start. Tobias planned to wait until they were on the outskirts of London before he announced his presence. But they couldn’t have gone more than a block when the wooden roof over his head suddenly flew open.

He raised his head slowly, and met his father’s eyes. He had learned long ago to stay silent in awkward situations, so he said nothing.

Unfortunately, it seemed his father adhered to the same lesson, and after an uncomfortable moment Tobias couldn’t take it any longer. “Ashmole didn’t ask me to do an errand for him. How did you know I was in here?”

The duke arched an eyebrow. “A blanket carried into the house followed by a missing boy hardly posed much of a conundrum. And there was the fire in the nursery as well.”

Tobias climbed out of the blanket box, pushing the flap back down. Surely the duke would shout to the coachman, stop the carriage, and send him back in the care of the furious groom, who would likely give him a clip on the ear, if not worse.

But his father said nothing at all, simply turning his eyes to a small book he held in his hands.

After a while Tobias asked, “Aren’t you going to send me back?”

The duke looked up. “I assume that you have some desire to accompany me.”

Tobias opened his mouth, but Villiers raised a hand. “You needn’t embellish. I gather that after a few years chasing through a muddy riverbed in danger of life and limb, you find the nursery tedious. I suspect,” he added, “that the addition of a six-year-old girl to that nursery has not improved matters.”

“She was quite good this morning,” Tobias said fairly.

“Ah, the fire. I do wish that you had told her that the embroidery samplers from the west wall were not for burning. Ashmole seems quite distressed by their demise. They were over one hundred years old.”

“Probably moldy, then,” Tobias pointed out. “I didn’t specify the sort of fuss she should make. I would have told her not to burn Colin’s book.”

“She burned all the books in the nursery,” Villiers remarked.

Tobias didn’t believe in apologizing, as a matter of course. But somehow he found his mouth opening and something along those lines emerging.

Villiers merely shrugged. “We’ll have to watch her on Guy Fawkes Night.”

Tobias began to feel more comfortable. “Are we really going to Kent to meet your wife?”

“She’s not my wife yet. I’ll choose whichever of the two women seems likely to be the better mother to the lot of you.”

“I don’t need a mother,” Tobias said.

“Violet does.” His father turned a page. “And so do the twins. They are much younger than you.”