The Duke’s Embrace: 12 Dukes of Christmas #7 Read online

  Lucien gestured. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

  “Veuve Clicquot. Every bottle I have.”

  Although Lucien posed the question in French, Jack replied in English. Neither had ever budged from this maddeningly stubborn pattern, despite it becoming abundantly clear that they both understood each other’s language.

  “I’ll bite.” Bastien crossed his arms over the dove-gray superfine of his favorite coat. “Why are you generously bestowing our tea table with all three bottles of champagne from your enormous wine collection?”

  Jack sighed. “Because that’s it. For now,” he added quickly. “We had a problem at a harbor. Although I sent my best man, both the primary plan and our contingency fell through. He’s got the cargo, but the ship is stuck where it is.”

  “No more champagne?” Lucien leaned against the billiards table for support.

  Bastien would do no such thing due to the grievous wrinkles the act of leaning could do to good fabric, but he, too, felt light-headed enough to sit down.

  Adding champagne to their brandy smuggling enterprise had allowed them to claw their way out of debt. Without the champagne, their brandy commission subsidized what they managed to earn in the smithy, but certainly wasn’t enough to finance “going home in style.”

  It would barely be enough to go home at all.

  They needed so much more than sea passage. Transportation once they arrived in France, somewhere to live, something to eat. Little things like that, which Bastien had been planning to cover by saving every spare shilling between now and Twelfth Night.

  Except there weren’t any shillings. They were debt-free and penniless.

  “Don’t panic,” Jack warned them. “We will resolve this like we eventually resolve everything. But it may take some time.”

  “Time.” Lucien’s gaze was empty, his voice dead.

  Time was the one thing they simultaneously had too much and not enough of. They’d waited eighteen long years to be able to make their way back home. The idea of waiting an extra week, an extra month, an extra year…

  Jack cleared his throat. “That said, I feel it pertinent to mention that we’ve always known smuggling to be not just a volatile business, but a temporary one. Bonaparte was sent to Elba five months ago. Soldiers are coming home. Taxes and embargoes could lift at any moment, rendering our entire racket unnecessary.”

  “Thank you,” Lucien muttered. “That makes us feel so much better.”

  “How is Désirée?” Bastien asked hurriedly. “What about your family?”

  Jack waved a hand. “We’re fine. I have more than enough coin stashed away to ensure my children and grandchildren a comfortable life. I don’t need to keep smuggling.”

  Translation: So perhaps I won’t, even if I still could.

  Bastien nodded. His brother-in-law was right. “Smuggling a temporarily forbidden liquid” inherently was not a life-long career.

  Jack had always earned a lion’s share of the percentage because he was the brains of the operation as well as its original and ongoing financier whenever times were tough.

  Bastien and Lucien’s involvement was minimal. If anything, Bastien had felt for years that Jack continued to deliver their commission out of friendship more than requiring the brothers’ strategic contribution. Before leaving for France, Bastien had planned to tell Jack to keep the entirety of his earnings from now on. He deserved it, and Bastien and Lucien would no longer need it.

  Except they did. And it was gone.

  “All right,” Bastien said before Lucien lost his mind and started breaking things like a trapped animal. He turned to Jack. “You handle your business, and I’ll handle mine. Lucien, do not worry. I have a plan.”

  Bastien did not have a plan. He had a France-sized ball of nausea roiling in his gut.

  “Thank God.” Jack’s wide shoulders sagged in obvious relief. “I’ll resolve this scrape as fast as possible if it’s possible, but with the current political climate and the way the harbors are managed—”

  “We understand,” Bastien interrupted. “Our house is not your concern. Go home to your wife. Take her a bottle of champagne.”

  Jack shook his head. “We have other wines. Those are yours.”

  He left.

  Bastien stared across the billiards table at his brother in dismay. Bastien wanted to go home to France. Lucien needed to. He was as panicked and desperate as a fish flopping in a bucket, inches from shore.

  England was the hook piercing Lucien’s skin. He’d brought his siblings here when people were losing their heads at home. The slippery worm of safety was all the bait it took to traipse the trio of siblings out of the only place they had ever known and into nearly two decades of crippling debt, just to own the land beneath their feet.

  Bastien gasped. That was it. That was the answer!

  Lucien’s spine straightened. “You do have a plan.”

  “I do.” Bastien raked his fingers through his hair, then cursed himself for messing up a perfectly styled coif. He gestured about the room. “What are you attached to here?”

  “Nothing.” Lucien curled his lip. “I hate all of it.”

  Bastien nodded. “For now, the only French things we possess are this carom table, that wine, and our accents. I can change that.”

  “How?”

  “Uncle Jasper deserves the house. He rescued us when we had no safe home to return to. Everything we know about blacksmithing we learned from him, but that was years ago. His gout keeps him out of the smithy. So let’s sell it.”

  Hope lit Lucien’s eyes. “We sell the smithy?”

  “To the highest bidder.” Bastien’s heart fluttered with excitement. All they needed was a master blacksmith in want of a fine smithy, and their problems would be solved. “We’ll leave extra coin to Uncle Jasper and take the rest with us to France.”

  He rubbed the green baize of the billiards table. They didn’t need the champagne. They needed a competent, wealthy buyer.

  “All right.” Lucien handed Bastien his hat. “Go and do it.”

  Bastien blinked. “Go… walk into the village and sell the smithy to the first rich person who wants it?”

  “That is the plan, is it not?” Lucien sank into a chair next to the tea table. “I will wait here. I tend to scare people.”

  “It’s because you’re sullen,” Bastien explained patiently. “It’s also the language barrier. I’ve told you time and again, you catch more flies with—”

  “I do not want flies,” Lucien interrupted. “I want to go home.”

  “Twelfth Night,” Bastien reminded him. “I promised you, and I keep my word. We have until the sixth of January to complete the sale.”

  Lucien shook his head. “We don’t have until January. We have two months. No one will be working during Christmastide. We need to have the sale drawn up by the first of December and the money in our account thereafter, so that we are ready to go when Twelfth Night comes.”

  Two months. Surely Bastien could sell a smithy within two entire months.

  He put on his hat and strode out the door.

  Once he reached the street, he realized he lacked more than a thick winter coat. He needed a plan. “Stroll into the village and sell the smithy” was not a plan.

  To Bastien’s knowledge, he and Lucien were the only blacksmiths in Cressmouth. That was the only reason their smithy was profitable at all. So who was he supposed to sell it to?

  “Good evening, Beau,” cooed a chorus of voices from a passing barouche. They didn’t slow to speak with him further.

  Lucien would say this proved English women weren’t worth their time.

  Bastien suspected it proved English women felt immigrant blacksmiths weren’t worth their time.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t want an English woman anyway. A night here and there would suffice until they went home. If Lucien was right, if their petition truly managed to reinstate their ancestral lands and status, marriage-minded women would be throwing themselves at
their feet. A proper cornucopia of eager French young ladies, all vying to be the next Madame le Duc.

  He stopped walking when he reached the castle. Partly because he had no other destination to walk to, and partly because there, standing beneath the drawbridge arch with a journal in one hand and the bullmastiff at her side, was Miss Shelling.

  Her carelessly chosen clothes did not make her look disheveled, but rather too busy for the mundane balivernes of the ordinary world. Even when she was standing still, Miss Shelling always seemed caught right in the middle of something momentous. She radiated excitement and urgency no matter what she was doing. It was positively magnetic.

  She had not noticed him yet. Her glossy black curls were bent over her journal, one hand scribbling furiously as if this was her one chance to commit her thoughts to paper before they vanished into the ether.

  Bastien wasn’t certain he’d ever had thoughts important enough to write down. He might have been born distantly in line to a title, but he’d spent his adolescence and adult life intimately familiar with long hours of hard work. There wasn’t time to scribble thoughts in a smithy. There was just this job, and the next, and the next.

  She glanced up and gasped, as if he’d craftily snuck up on her by walking down the middle of the one and only road out of the village to its biggest central landmark.

  He made his best leg. “Good evening, Miss Shelling.”

  She didn’t reply Good evening, Beau. She stared at him as though no amount of embroidered fabrics and exquisite tailoring could mask what he truly was.

  “What do you want?” she asked suspiciously.

  He kept a blank face. “I’ve come to ravish you.”

  She squeaked and dropped her pencil.

  The bullmastiff exposed glossy canines.

  “I’m not going to ravish you,” he said in exasperation. “I didn’t even know you’d be here. You’re blocking the entrance to the public castle.”

  “Oh.” A fiery blush covered her cheeks.

  Bastien tried not to find it fetching. She was too serious and humorless and clearly felt herself well above Bastien’s station, despite only possessing a chaperone of the canine variety. He should just stop talking to her.

  She snatched her pencil from the ground and forced herself to meet his gaze. “I’ve been creeping about Cressmouth since I was little. I dreamed of being a spy when I grew up. My father told me girls couldn’t join the army, so I switched paths to journalism.” She gave the little book a self-deprecating wiggle. “I still get lost inside my head sometimes. Sorry about that.”

  Well. That unusual explanation and pretty apology certainly made storming past her in a fit of pique seem like overkill.

  He took a step closer.

  She didn’t move away.

  He tried to peek at the journal. “What are you writing about?”

  “Swans.” Her chin lifted. “And before you say it, I know that’s the most boring subject in Cressmouth. I’m not doing it for me; I’m doing it for my father. He thinks people want to see pretty things in the Cressmouth Gazette.”

  “If he wants pretty things…” Bastien hesitated, then forged ahead. “My neighbor likes to sketch. I’m sure she’d be able to create a revoltingly adorable illustration to accompany your fascinating article.”

  Miss Shelling gazed up at him in wonder. “You’re doing me a favor?”

  Bastien shrugged. He found solutions. It was a character flaw.

  Her eyes narrowed. “In exchange for what?”

  Nothing. One performed common acts of kindness out of kindness, not self-interest.

  Unless one was hoping to spend more time with a certain suspicious, buttoned-up woman.

  “A favor in exchange for a favor,” he said lightly.

  She crossed her arms. “In exchange for what favor?”

  He gave her his most untrustworthy smile. “To be determined.”

  Now this was the moment to saunter off on his way, leaving her to stare after him in consternation and reluctant fascination.

  So he did.

  Chapter 5

  Anything Bastien put his mind to, he mastered.

  Learn a baffling new language at the age of ten whilst grieving the loss of his home, his parents, and his childhood? Accomplished. Become a respectable dandy on virtually no budget? Achieved. Take over the village’s only smithy when gout prevented his uncle from working? Attained.

  Sell said smithy, so that Bastien and his brother could finally return home? Well…

  “I am not conceding defeat,” he assured Lucien.

  “You would never concede defeat.” His elder brother seemed amused at such a preposterous idea. “I have just never seen you not make any progress at all. No one wants the smithy?”

  “It’s only been a week,” Bastien reminded him. “But, no, I haven’t yet found a master blacksmith in the market for an old smithy.”

  Lucien shook his hand. “We do not require a master blacksmith. We need a buyer. Even some indolent heir who will buy it out of whimsy just to wager it away at the whist table will do fine. All we need is enough money to survive until the courts—”

  “No,” Bastien said firmly. “We can abandon Cressmouth, but we can’t abandon Cressmouth.”

  His brother’s face twisted in confusion. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’re the only blacksmiths! Not just for the villagers, but for all the tourists who come to visit. We are going to sell the smithy, but we’ll sell it to someone who can actually run it.”

  “Who?” Lucien asked, his expression bleak and his voice empty.

  “I’m still looking into that,” Bastien muttered.

  He strode out of the door before his brother could ask more unanswerable questions.

  Bastien understood his brother’s urgency. Not only had they been desperate to return home ever since they first arrived, but also every moment Bastien spent in the streets trying to sell the smithy, Lucien was alone in the smithy. Struggling to communicate with the customers, managing all the jobs by himself, going quietly mad.

  Had he believed they had until the first of December to achieve the sale? Lucien would never last that long.

  One month, he promised himself. Not a day more. They’d sign the contracts; the banks and the solicitors would take a fortnight or so to do their bit; and then he and Lucien could pack their valises in peace.

  But for that to happen, Bastien needed to solve a problem. He didn’t know everyone in Cressmouth, and he didn’t know anyone outside of it. He needed help to spread the word.

  And he knew just the person.

  Who was better than a journalist at communicating just the right words to the widest array of people? Luckily for Bastien, Miss Eve Shelling just so happened to owe him a favor.

  There was no better time to pay a call than right now.

  A spring entered his step as he strolled beneath a canopy of red and orange leaves. The problem wasn’t the smithy. The problem was reaching a competent individual who would pay for the privilege of owning it.

  The subscribers of the Cressmouth Gazette included persons of means from all over England, whose presence on the distribution list and previous holiday visits indicated how much they loved this village.

  If none of the tourists happened to also be master blacksmiths, all was not lost. Wealthy people purchased expensive carriages, whom they would only trust to the hands of the best of the best. Even if they were not themselves blacksmiths, they would know one.

  It would no doubt tickle their fancy to be able to brag over a fox hunt or an opera box that they were personally responsible for installing their favored smith in the most celebrated Yuletide destination in all of England.

  Miss Shelling could sort out the matter with a swish of her pen.

  Bastien strolled toward her cottage with his shoulders thrown back and his head held high. Although he had never been invited to her residence, there was no question where it stood. Hers was the only cottage with an outbuild
ing containing a printing press.

  “Good afternoon, Beau,” called a pair of her neighbors as he turned the corner onto her lane.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he replied absently, with an automatic tip of his hat.

  He was not here to flirt. He was here to—

  Miss Shelling flew out of her house with her pelisse untied and her bonnet askew, as if a horde of dragons were hot on her heels. Her bullmastiff shot past her with a growl for good measure.

  Bastien took a small step backward just in case.

  She dashed between the dwindling cover of two yellow-leaf-shedding birch trees and motioned for him to follow.

  After a glance over his shoulder at her innocuous-looking front door, he joined her between the trees, careful not to let the spindly branches scrape the ivy-green superfine of his best jacket.

  “Were you just going to walk up to my front door?” she hissed before he could ask what on earth had sent her into such a panic.

  Ah. The answer was: him. Boldly strolling down a public street during the hours most common for paying an afternoon call.

  Unsolicited.

  “Yes,” he replied. There was no point in prevaricating.

  She took a deep breath. “Don’t. Please.”

  Bastien had the distinct impression that he was not only “not good enough” for Miss Shelling, she couldn’t even bear the thought of being seen with him.

  “I am not here to make romantic overtures,” he said icily. “I am here because you owe me a favor.”

  The storm of emotions that crossed her pretty face might have been humorous in some other context.

  “This way.” She took off through what was definitely not a walking path, paying absolutely no attention to the dirt beneath her boots or the russet-and-gold leaves that crumbled against her pelisse as she barreled through the trees.

  Jaw clenched, Bastien picked his way behind her as swiftly and as carefully as he could.

  She might not care if she emerged on the other side with more twigs than hair and a pelisse riddled with leaves, but Bastien literally could not afford to repair a ruined coat, even if he made the alterations himself.