Barbara Metzger Read Online Free PDF Page B

do it. He was exhausted and dejected, but not yet ready to admit defeat.
    “I have a new plan,” he announced to his valet-butler-groom one morning. It was actually more like late afternoon when St. Sevrin opened his eyes for the second time that day. The first time he’d seen nothing but the walls swaying, so he’d shut them again. Now the pounding headache was almost endurable.
    “What, are we going to go on the high toby? Might be more profitable holding up coaches. And hanging might be quicker’n freezing to death in this place.” Kelly placed a cup of coffee near his master’s hand, his right hand. Kelly was tired of mopping up when the major, what was now His Grace if Kelly could only remember, tried to use that left arm. The old infantryman’s joints were too sore for all that bending.
    “Freezing be damned. It’s spring. We don’t need fires.”
    “Then why are you sleeping under your greatcoat?” Kelly had been with the major through Coruna, Oporto, and Cifuente. He’d dragged him off the fields of Talavera to the hospital tents. With all the gray hairs Kelly’d sprouted on the major’s behalf, he could deuced well complain about the conditions in Berkeley Square, and frequently did.
    St. Sevrin as frequently ignored the older man’s grousing. He’d promised Kelly a glowing recommendation if the batman wanted to find other employment, but Kelly chose to stay on, for which the duke felt grateful, and guilty as hell. “You can borrow my greatcoat tonight,” he offered now, taking a gulp of the coffee to help clear his mind. The coffee had been sitting on the stove all day for just that eventuality, though. Now it was scalding, bitter, and thick as boot polish. In fact, it could have been boot polish. The duke spit out the brew and fell back on his pillows. “Thunderation, what does it take to get a decent cup of coffee?”
    “Let me think…some fresh beans, ’haps a grinder what works, a pot without rust, one of them modern stoves. Oh, and maybe a real cook what gets paid. Yessir, Yer Grace, that ought to do the trick.”
    So the duke threw one of his pillows at his longtime, long-suffering servant and companion. “Stubble it. I know you’re doing the best you can.”
    Kelly picked up the pillow and His Grace’s discarded clothes from the evening before. “A’course, I could go out to the coffeehouse and bring you back some fresh-brewed and a meat pasty or such, was the dibs in tune.” He shook the duke’s coat, hoping to hear the rustle of paper money and the jingle of coins. All he heard was his own stomach grumbling that they’d have to eat his own cooking again. “So what’s the new idea?”
    “We’re going to Devon, Kelly, that’s what.” St. Sevrin felt better just thinking of getting out of the stinking City, especially with the weather turning toward spring. In London all one noticed was a warmer fog.
    “Devon, eh? We taking up smuggling, then?”
    “Dash it all, I know you don’t approve of my making a living at the baize table, but it’s not as if I’ve been shaving the deck or anything. And this plan is strictly legitimate.” The coffee was cool enough to drink now. St. Sevrin tried to make it more palatable by pouring in a dollop of brandy from the bottle at his bedside. “We’re going home, if you can call St. Sevrin Priory my home.”
    “You usually dub the place the millstone around your neck.”
    “Yes, well, it is the ducal seat, even if I’ve only been back there a handful of times since I was out of short pants.”
    His Grace did not have fond memories of those visits, either. He’d been sent off to boarding school when he was six, unfazed at the petty cruelties there. The schoolyard brawls were as nothing compared to the arguments between his parents. Theirs had been an arranged match, the old story of the groom’s title and the bride’s wealth. Fiona’s father was an Irish shipbuilder who’d amassed a fortune that he left to his daughter, so