The Bachelor's Bargain Read online

  The devil could take the Marquess of Blackthorne.

  Two

  “Alex, you are looking capital.” Ruel clapped his brother on the back. “How old are you now? Twenty, at least.”

  “Three-and-twenty, Ruel, and you look abominable. Your skin is as brown as a seaman’s. And your hair! Good heavens, where have you been these last months? When did you arrive at Slocombe?”

  “Not an hour ago. May I join you for tea? I assume there is plenty.”

  Ruel glanced at the housemaid. She had backed up against the fireplace, her face as white as chalk and her cheeks a pair of pink roses. This must be the young lady who had served him leavings with the charity in the kitchen, yet she looked different now. Her hair, a rich brown cape around her shoulders, glistened in the red firelight. Her mobcap lay on the floor. Ruel appraised the situation. Alex was still up to his lecherous pranks. Had the maid been a willing partner?

  “I shall see to the pouring,” he said, aware that the woman would wish to escape and restore her appearance.

  “I shall fetch Mr. Errand.” Her voice was low. “He will dispatch a footman to serve you, my lord.”

  “Nonsense.” Alex settled into his chair and waved a hand at her. “Pour the tea. My first cup is cold already, and I have no patience to wait for a footman. Seat yourself, brother, and tell me what you have been about. The last intelligence we had of you was from our cousin, Auguste Chouteau. He wrote that you were staying with him in St. Louis in the Missouri Territory.”

  “The last I heard of myself, I had been scalped by Indians.” Ruel looked at the maid again. She was carefully ignoring him. Unable to rescue her cap, which had fallen beneath the tea table, she had tucked her hair behind her ears and bent to pour a second cup of tea. “Fortunately, I have kept the hair on top of my head, and a valet will take a razor to my face.”

  The maid’s attention darted from the teapot to his face. Their eyes met, and the flush spread from her cheeks down her neck. Caught, she shifted her concentration to her tasks again.

  How did he appear to a woman, Ruel wondered. Though a common house servant was no judge of aristocratic manliness, it comforted him to see the blush of color that made her fair skin glow. Perhaps he had not lost all his noble bearing during the three months of torment he had spent at sea.

  “Before you go out in Society, you must do better than shave,” Alexander informed him. “The regent has developed a bit of a tousled mop, but he manages to make it appear rather dashing. You, on the other hand, look a veritable rake. So where have you been, Ruel? No doubt pirating, smuggling, or something else equally illegal.”

  “Your opinion of my talents has grown since I have been away, Alex. I am flattered.” Ruel accepted the warm cup Anne handed him and held it to his lips. Closing his eyes, he took a deep drink. As the steaming liquid seeped into his body, he felt his muscles unknot. He let out a long breath.

  “In spite of my appearance,” he told his brother, “I have been the perfect gentleman. I departed St. Louis half a year ago and have been traveling homeward since that time. Down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Around Florida. Across the Atlantic.”

  “It took you six months to get here?”

  “The ship was becalmed at sea for five weeks.” He opened his eyes. “We were in danger of starvation. I shall be grateful when sails are put away in favor of steam.”

  Alex laughed. “Steam! Ruel, you are dreaming again. No one in his right mind would undertake a sea crossing with nothing but steam power. Ridiculous!”

  Ruel waved a hand in dismissal. “Never mind. I shall leave that enterprise to the shipyards.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “We have other missions to discuss, Alex.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He had missed his brother in the years away. Though the younger man’s propensity to waylay housemaids and his expensive tastes in food and clothing had never pleased Ruel, he counted on Alex for companionship and counsel. From their boyish exploits exploring the smugglers’ tunnels along the coast to their enthusiastic pursuit of London’s most enchanting female company, they had been close comrades.

  “I have made plans to absolve the duchy from our growing debt,” Ruel announced. “With hard work and determination, we can do it.”

  Alex raised one golden eyebrow. “Not with steamships, I hope.”

  “Textiles.”

  “Textiles?” With a groan of dismay, Alex leaned back and covered his eyes. “We have not the sheep of the Lake District, the mills of the Midlands, or the roads of London, yet we are to build a fortune on fabric?”

  Ruel could not suppress a grin. “Your dramatics could be staged in London, Alex. Look at you—a brocade waistcoat, a silk cravat at your throat. Your trousers are so tight it is a wonder you can sit down. You have even managed to impale a bit of lace on your heel.”

  Reaching across the tea table, he tugged the strip of lace free from his brother’s pump. “Dallying with the ladies again, Alex?”

  The younger man chuckled. “I am to be married in six months. Gabrielle Duchesne is quite the most sumptuous Frenchwoman I have ever met, and I look forward with great anticipation to our wedding.”

  Ruel idly wound the lace scrap around his finger. “What is her fortune?”

  “Fifty thousand pounds, but you must understand I am deeply in love with the lady. Especially now that I know we shall save the duchy with your textile enterprise. Do apprise me as to how it is to happen.”

  “A trade triangle. We shall send raw linen and flax from England to St. Louis. The opportunities there are incredible. We shall use our own port, of course, and I hope to acquire ships eventually.”

  “Steamships, no doubt.”

  “We shall export our fabric from St. Louis to the United States and France. In France, we shall add to it machine lace from the factory I intend to build in Douai, and violà! We shall revitalize French fashion and fill our coffers.”

  Alex guffawed. “I have missed you indeed, Ruel. Not since you left have I enjoyed such grand entertainment. More tea, please, miss.”

  “Laugh all you like, Alex, but with only your wife’s dowry, you will not be purchasing silk cravats for too many more years.” Ruel stuffed the scrap of lace into the pocket of his waistcoat and held out his cup. “I left Devon three years ago for one reason: the duchy was running aground in debt. Father knew it. You knew it. Now I am returned, and I have brought a workable plan. I shall expect your cooperation.”

  He watched the housemaid pour his teacup full. Too full. The tea edged up to the brim, over the top, and down the sides into his saucer. “Enough!” he said, grabbing her hand and forcing the pot upright.

  “I beg your pardon, sir.” She dabbed at his saucer with a napkin. “I shall fetch Mr. Errand at once.”

  “Stay, madam. My brother and I wish to have a private discussion.” He glanced up at the woman. Instead of cowering beneath his wrath as she properly should do, she was glaring at him. He frowned.

  “Ruel, permit me to understand you,” Alex said, setting down his cup. “The duchy grows almost no flax, yet we are somehow to send a grand shipment of it to the Missouri Territory. Are we not at war with the United States, brother?”

  “You have been sequestered too long in the countryside.

  A peace was signed last December.” Ruel took mental note that his brother had not gained any greater interest in world matters than he had evidenced as a boy. “I have calculated our initial investment in raw materials, Alex. The duchy can afford it.”

  “We have no factory in St. Louis, yet we are somehow to make fabric from this quantity of flax?”

  “Exactly. Auguste Chouteau is sixty-nine-years old and a man of vision. Our cousin believes St. Louis will one day become a hub of commerce. He has committed himself to the expansion of the city and her industries. Even as we speak, he is beginning construction of a mill.”

  “American fabric? French lace? Are you mad?” Alexander leapt to his feet, reached out, and p
ulled the length of lace from his brother’s pocket. “Assume we manage to purchase a quantity of flax,” he said, wagging the lace as he spoke. “Assume we manage to ship it all the way to St. Louis. Assume we manage to build a mill there and weave the raw stuff into fabric. Even assume we ship our product all the way to France. That country is in chaos, man!”

  “Perfect for our purposes. Did you know Napoleon has just returned to his homeland?”

  “You must be joking. He is in exile on Elba.”

  “No longer. He is free, and by my best guess, all the sovereigns of Europe will unite forces against France. It can mean nothing less than war.”

  “Wonderful. We are to turn the minds of the French to fashion when their nation is at war. Have you taken leave of your senses, Ruel?”

  “Perhaps, but a man cannot depend on logic alone in these times. Without vision, without dreams, the world will over- take us. We must be ready to run with the best of the thinkers, Alex.” He stood. “We must not be quick to ridicule the advancements of our age. Factories and mills are springing up everywhere you look. Steam is taking the place of wind and water power. The middle class is getting its hands on the source of money—manufacturing. Money is power. Power in the hands of the middle class spells doom to the aristocracy. And the aristocracy, my dear Alexander, is us.”

  The younger man stared at his brother. “You are raving.”

  “I am the sanest man in this society of brainless dandies. If we mean to save our fortune, we must think. Think!” He punched the air with a forefinger. “What does little Tiverton have to offer the world? Agriculture? Mining? Timber?”

  “Fishing.”

  “Fishing? When we can barely supply our own villages?”

  “Then what can you be thinking?”

  Ruel jerked the scrap of lace from his brother’s hand. “Textiles! We are the source of Honiton lace. John Heathcoat has moved his lace machines from Nottingham to Tiverton in order to escape the Luddites and their determination to smash and burn him out of business. We shall take one of Heath-coat’s lace machines to France, and there we shall unite their product with our cheaply made fabric to supply every languishing Frenchwoman in the empire.”

  “How shall we export lace machines to France when you know perfectly well it is illegal to do so? Lace itself has been banned there since the Revolution.”

  Ruel dropped his voice and leaned close to his brother’s ear. “With France in wartime chaos, we shall smuggle our machinery.”

  “Smuggle it!” Alexander threw up his hands in disbelief.

  “Quiet! If we are found out, the plan is dashed. We must arrange a meeting with Heathcoat at once. Do you know him? I understand he is brilliant. I mean to learn all I can about—”

  At that moment the chamber door flew open. Ruel clamped his mouth shut as Laurent Chouteau, the Duke of Marston, entered. He was followed close behind by Mr. Errand, the butler, his personal valet, two footmen, and another man.

  “Ruel!” The duke’s blue eyes shone in his face. He was frail and white-haired, but his bearing was undeniably regal. “So, the intelligence I have had of you is true. You are returned!”

  “Father!” A flood of feeling ran through Ruel as he strode across the floor toward the gentleman. Like the little boy who had always adored his father, he threw his arms around the older man and hugged him warmly. “You should not have walked this distance, Father. I fully intended to come to you before dinner.”

  “I could no more await you than a child anticipating Christmas. These many months, we have had vicious rumors of your death, my boy. But here you are, safe, sound, and hale.” He held his son at arms’ length and looked him up and down. “Good heavens, what plagues your hair? And have you no better clothes?”

  Ruel grinned. “I have just returned from sea, Father. My wardrobe and hair will have to wait. But how are you? Well, sir?”

  “Tolerable, tolerable.” The duke gestured to a short, round-headed man at the rear of the party. “Do you know our vicar? I was taking tea with him when news of you was brought to me.”

  Introductions were made, and before Anne could escape she had been ordered to attend to tea for the Duke of Marston, his sons, the Marquess of Blackthorne and Sir Alexander, and the vicar of Tiverton. She nodded quickly, swept up the tea tray with its cold silver pot, and hurried from the room.

  “Anne?” Prudence Watson intercepted her lady’s maid in the corridor as Anne was rushing back up to Sir Alexander’s room. “I am in search of more ink, and . . . Anne, what has possessed you? You are as pale as a ghost, your hair is wild, and you run with a tray full of Slocombe’s best silver plate!”

  Anne stopped, plunked the tea things on a hall table, and knotted her fingers together. “Oh, Miss Watson, he has taken my lace!”

  “Who?”

  “Blackthorne, that is who, and I mean to have it back.”

  “The marquess? He is here?” Prudence Watson clapped her hands to her cheeks in shock. An avid reader of Miss Pickworth’s column in The Tattler, she well knew the rumors circulating about the fate of the Marquess of Blackthorne. In the past months, Anne had done her best to entertain and amuse the young woman whose golden hair and olive green eyes had tempted many a suitor. But Prudence had an unsettled temperament and a tendency toward histrionics. She had no interest in marriage and could find little to brighten the gloom that had overtaken her. Her lady’s maid eventually abandoned all efforts to coddle her and simply became a friend.

  “Aye, he is here!” Anne exclaimed, for once unable to calm her own panic. “After Sir Alexander stomped a hole through my lace, the marquess took it. They snatched it back and forth from each other, waved it about, and abused it in the most abominable fashion. All the while, the marquess went on and on, blathering about lace machines, condemning Luddites, and never knowing he held the finest length of Honiton he shall ever have the good fortune to see.”

  “Anne!”

  “I am going to take it back from him.”

  “You cannot! He is the marquess.”

  “He is a blackguard!”

  “Oh, Anne!” Prudence took a fan from her pocket and fluttered it nervously before her face. “You know I have admired your lace panel, and I support your plan to sell it, but you cannot confront the duke’s son. You will lose your position here, I shall be sent back to London for conspiring with you, and then what is to become of us?”

  “You have enough money to live comfortably at Trenton House for the remainder of your life, Miss Watson. As for me, I shall rework the lace as best I can and sell it to the laceman. I mean to pay my way back to Nottingham and hope I never set foot in Devon again.”

  “What about your father?”

  Anne sobered as she picked up the tea tray. “I do not know. Oh, I cannot think.” Her voice was almost a whisper. She walked toward the door. “But without my lace, I am lost.”

  “You cannot go in there!” Prudence caught her arm. “Anne, the duke is inside.”

  “Aye, and I am to serve them all tea.”

  “But you have lost your mobcap!”

  “Sir Alexander pulled it from my head and threw it to the floor. They are demons, those brothers, the both of them.”

  “You will dip your hair into the tea!” Prudence tried to stop her as Anne pushed open the door. “Oh, Anne!”

  Careful not to spill a drop, Anne walked across the carpeted floor toward the party gathered around the fire. The duke’s valet and the butler stood aside to allow her to place the tray on the table at the center of the cluster of chairs and settees. One footman began to pour the tea while the other handed around the cakes, toast, and biscuits. Anne picked up the plate nearest her and turned to the marquess, who stood near the hearth.

  “Mrs. Smythe sends gingerbread nuts, Lord Blackthorne,” she said, holding the dish before him. “At your request.”

  He took one of the small baked cakes and met her eyes. His voice was nearly inaudible. “My compliments, Your Majesty.”

 
“You have my lace,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “I want it back.”

  “Ruel, do be so good as to join the vicar and your family at the table,” the duke commanded. “We must hear of your adventures.”

  Lace? He mouthed the word.

  “In your pocket. I made it. Please return it to me at once.”

  “Ruel, what can you tell us of my nephew, Auguste Chouteau?” The duke tapped his cane on the floor. “Did his mother, Madame Marie Therese, welcome you? I understand she is quite prominent in Society in St. Louis. And you must give us to understand her relationship with this gentleman, Pierre Laclede, of whom I have heard so many remarkable things.”

  Frowning at Anne, the marquess stepped around her and sat down in a chair near the table. “I am sorry to tell you that your sister-in-law passed from this earth last year, Father.” He accepted a cup of tea from the footman and turned his attention to the company. “Madame Chouteau was indeed highly esteemed, and with Pierre Laclede she was the mother of four children after Auguste. While in her presence, I found her to be a most charming and cordial hostess.”

  “She married this Laclede fellow, then?” the vicar asked.

  The marquess gave a small smile. “Difficult, given her presence in a Catholic territory and the awkward matter that her husband, my father’s brother, René Chouteau, did not die until 1776, well after she had given Monsieur Laclede his four children.”

  “Harrumph.” The duke cleared his throat and took a sip of tea.

  “Indeed,” the vicar put in, “I have heard it said that Americans are more than a little coarse and unrefined. Rough about the edges, so to speak. Did you discover this to be so, Lord Blackthorne?”

  “No more than we,” he replied.

  Immoral, the whole lot of them, Anne thought as she studied the group of men conversing around their tea. A married woman bearing four children by a man who was not her husband! But how much better was England’s ton?