The Duke’s Perfect Wife

Reeve made another elaborate shrug, leaned back, and sucked heavily on his pipe. “Well, I hope they find the bugger. The pipes under London can be deadly.”

“So I understand.”

Reeve went back to smoking quietly, and Hart gazed across the river, making his plans.

After a time, Reeve stirred. “Pub?”

Hart gave him a silent nod, and the two men left the boat to cross the shingle and mount the stairs to the streets.

The inhabitants of the pub had grown used to seeing Hart come in with Reeve, accepting Reeve’s story that Hart was an itinerant worker, down on his luck, helping Reeve in return for a bed and food. Reeve talked to his cronies, and they all ignored Hart, who accepted a pint from the landlord and kept his head down while he read through a newspaper cover to cover.

David Fleming had taken over the coalition, he saw. Good. David would know what to do. The coalition was popular, because Gladstone, to most people, smacked of radicalism and revolution, and the Tories favored the large landholders. Hart’s party was somewhere in between, something for everyone. Hart had planned it that way.

The elections, the newspapers said, were sure to return the men in the coalition, and Fleming, as the new head, would lead the government. The queen was not overly fond of Fleming—or Hart, for that matter—but she liked Gladstone still less.

The papers were more full of worries about Khartoum and Gordon and the Germans slowly taking over southern Africa than the missing Duke of Kilmorgan. A small story in one newspaper reported that Hart’s body had not been found, but the Thames was deep and never-stopping. A sad end for so proud a man as Hart Mackenzie. Scotland was in mourning for him, but England wasn’t. Bloody good riddance, the English paper did not say but might as well have.

He found a story on the last pages that the Mackenzie family was leaving the city to retire to Scotland. Good, Hart thought. Eleanor will be well taken care of there. Eleanor was like wild Scottish heather, happy when rippling free on Scottish hills, constrained when cut and shoved into a confining vase.

The same story said that Lord Cameron Mackenzie would be taking the coronet as duke once his oldest brother was proclaimed officially dead.

Hart touched Cameron’s name and stifled his laughter. Cameron must be boiling with rage. His brother’s greatest fear in life had been that Hart would peg it early and leave the dukedom to him. Hart imagined all the colorful names Cameron was calling him. But Hart knew that Cameron would take care of everyone very well. Cam’s greatest strength was his ability to protect those he loved.

He turned the page and froze. His eyes fell upon the story—rather buried—that the pocket of Fenians who had set the bomb in Euston station had been discovered, their house raided by the police, headed by one Inspector Fellows. Many arrests had been made, and people rejoiced that the streets might once again be safe.

This was the morning edition of the paper, and the event had taken place the night before. So important a thing, and Hart had known nothing until he read it now.

Living on the river erased the rest of the world. It had moved on. Without him.

And he didn’t care.

Hart touched the feeling, examining it. His frantic need his entire life had been to control the world around him, to shape it, and everyone in it, into what he wanted. He’d learned through mistakes—most notably with Eleanor—that he could not shape the people who mattered most to him. But too many people had let him, giving him the illusion that he could.

The boy who’d tried so hard to make a world that had nothing of his father in it had succeeded. Too bloody well, perhaps. Hart had become very like the man he hated—expecting everyone to bend to his will. He’d congratulated himself for not being physically cruel, but he’d been as cruel as his father with his words and deeds.

Eleanor had been right about how he’d treated Mrs. Palmer, right to fear he’d do the same to her. He might well have, had she not thrown cold water over him and brought him to his senses.

And now the world he’d struggled to control was going on its merry way, assuming Hart was floating facedown in the Thames. He was just another body on the earth, another man, like Reeve, trying to get by and find happiness as he could.

Hart had found happiness. With Eleanor. But he’d decided to go on serving his obsessive ambition, setting her to one side, and assuming he’d have plenty of time for her when he finished.

Fool. Reeve had the right of it. Backbreaking work all hours of the day and night, shut away and never watching your boy grow up. Freedom, that’s worth all them plates of silver and a fine palace.

A factory or the Houses of Parliament—it was all the same.

He needed to see Eleanor. He needed to bury himself in her softness and beg her forgiveness. He knew well and good that he’d sent the flower to her for another reason—he feared that if she believed him dead, she’d turn to another, David Fleming, perhaps, for comfort. Eleanor was beautiful, young, and now a very, very rich widow. The predators would be coming out of the woodwork.

It was time to go home.

Hart looked up from the newspaper, his world changed. The denizens of the pub went on talking and laughing with their friends, some quietly, some loudly. The Duke of Kilmorgan, the entirety of the British peerage, were nonentities here. For the first time in his life, Hart had no power at all.

Thank God.

Hart remained at the pub with Reeve, sitting quietly while his mind spun with plans for getting himself back home—Kilmorgan would be the best place for staging his resurrection—until the publican closed up for the night. Reeve said good-bye to his mates, and he and Hart turned in the darkness toward Blackfriars Bridge. Reeve walked unsteadily.

A hand reached out of a dark passage and landed on Hart’s shoulder. Hart spun around, fist swinging in a perfect pugilist’s right hook. The punch was caught with equal skill in a hand that was as big as his own. Eyes the color of Mackenzie singlemalt regarded Hart in the dim light of Reeve’s lantern.

Hart looked back at Ian Mackenzie, face smudged and bearing lines of exhaustion. Ian put both hands on Hart’s shoulders, and his fingers dug through Hart’s coat.

“I found you,” Ian said, his voice low and fierce. “I found you.” He put his arms around Hart, and Hart for a moment sank into the strength that was his youngest brother. “I can always find you,” Ian whispered.

“Come with me.”

Eleanor looked up from the desk in the main study in the Grosvenor Square mansion, the house quiet, since the rest of the family, excepting herself, Ian, and Beth, had departed for Scotland. It was very late, and Beth and her children were asleep.

“Good heavens,” she said. “Are you still up and about, Ian?”

Ian, being Ian, did not bother to answer the question. He held out his hand. “Come with me.”

He was breathing hard, his eyes alight. Ian didn’t smile, but Eleanor sensed his excitement, even joy, behind his still face.

“Where is he?” Eleanor asked, rising.

“Come with me.”

That was enough for Eleanor. She snatched up her shawl, took Ian’s hand, and let him lead her out.

Hart waited in the noisome darkness by Reeve’s boathouse, listening to the Thames lap the bank not far away. Too many people lingered near Reeve’s boat down the Strand—a few of Reeve’s mates from the pub had come to visit, even this late—but the boathouse was deserted. Rats and thieves, those were the only things to be found on the shore of the Thames tonight. And Hart.

Hart saw them come. Swiftly and silently, the bulk of his brother came across the littered Strand, pulling a woman in a dark shawl with him.