The Duke at Hazard

Book 2: The Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune

by KJ Charles

Genres: Historical Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Don't miss the second thrilling Regency romance in the Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune series by KJ Charles...

The Duke of Severn is one of the greatest men in Britain.


He's also short, quiet, and unimpressive. And now he's been robbed, after indulging in one rash night with a strange man who stole the heirloom Severn ring from his finger. The Duke has to get it back, and he can't let anyone know how he lost it. So when his cousin bets that he couldn't survive without his privilege and title, the Duke grasps the opportunity to hunt down his ring-incognito.


Life as an ordinary person is terrifying...until the anonymous Duke meets Daizell Charnage, a disgraced gentleman, and hires him to help. Racing across the country in search of the thief, the Duke and Daizell fall into scrapes, into trouble-and in love.


Daizell has been excluded from polite society, his name tainted by his father's crimes and his own misbehaviour. Now he dares to dream of a life somewhere out of sight with the quiet gentleman who''s stolen his heart. He doesn't know that his lover is a hugely rich public figure with half a dozen titles. And when he finds out, it will risk everything they have...

Release date: July 18, 2024

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 336

Sample

Vernon Fortescue Cassian George de Vere Crosse, the fourth Duke of Severn, the Earl of Harmsford, Baron Crosse of Wotton, and Baron Vere walked into an inn. They were all the same man.

He did not announce himself by all of his titles, or any of them. Nobody did it for him, either. Nobody slipped in front of him to open the doors, or bowed to greet him. In fact, nobody paid him any attention at all. A couple of heads turned at his entry, but their gazes slipped over him without interest and away: he was water off a flock of ducks.

That might have been rather lowering if he’d believed that the usual stir and attention his arrival created was due to his good looks and imposing presence, rather than his slew of titles. However, the Duke was all too aware of his moderate height, nondescript features, quiet ways, and general sad lack of ducal authority. He was nothing without his titles, and he knew it. Nobody would pick him from a crowd; nobody would look twice at him without the trappings he’d been born to.

Well. One man had.

The Duke took a deep breath of the smoky air in the inn’s parlour, ripely fragranced by spilled beer, insufficiently washed bodies, and the ghost of a pork joint that had spent too long at the fire. It smelled like freedom.

He probably ought to have a drink, he thought. He had plenty of money, but he wasn’t sure how to apply it. Should he expect to be shown to a table, or seat himself and wait to be attended? There were men standing at an elbow-high bar receiving ale: did one purchase it oneself? Was one meant to join in with the friendly banter they exchanged with the buxom woman at the bar, or would that be a solecism? If one did join in, what did one say?

The Duke of Severn knew to a nicety how to judge a bow to people on every rung of the aristocracy including his equals (all twenty-five of them) and superiors (the Royal Family). He knew how to behave at a rout, a soirée, Almack’s or White’s. He might be personally negligible but he had never put a foot wrong socially, in large part because he kept to the limited, elevated circles considered appropriate to his station. In the public bar of the Bird in Hand, he was suddenly and terrifyingly uncertain.

‘Mr Wotton,’ said a voice at his ear. It took the Duke a second to remember that was himself. He turned to see the man he’d come to meet.

‘Good evening,’ he said, and forgot all about public house etiquette in the rush of relief.

The Duke had been on an informal visit to a school friend in Gloucester, accompanied only by his valet, two footmen, groom, and outrider. He’d shed the lot of them to take the air in a park one evening, and there seen a man in a mulberry coat: a dark-haired fellow with a roguish sort of look. Eyes had met. There had been a little casual conversation, the brush of a hand, a tempting smile.

Very tempting indeed, and the Duke had duly fallen. Not under his own name, or names, of course: he’d called himself George Wotton, enjoyed a brief but very satisfying fumble in the darkness, and agreed to meet a few days later at the Bird in Hand inn. That had meant ridding himself of his retinue by underhand means that involved letting them believe he was meeting a woman, and the sense of release was exhilarating. Just for tonight, he would be an ordinary man, without the weight of rank, his behaviour scrutinised by nobody except his partner. Just for tonight, he would be with a man who was attracted by his person, who didn’t need to be paid to be there, who wanted the man, not the duke.

He couldn’t wait.

John Martin, his companion, had secured a private parlour to dine, saying it was his treat. The Duke had never had a man spend money on him before. That was his role in the few encounters he’d had, and he didn’t resent it: he knew very well he was paying for the company. Now he found himself stunned by the little kindness, which seemed like more than was necessary, more than an assignation. It felt like courting, and it made him warm all over. And John Martin was a witty, amusing man with a lively manner, and the Duke found himself wondering, if things went well, whether he might dare to propose a third meeting.

That was dreaming. He was here for a night’s illicit pleasure; he really couldn’t have more. But all the same he tingled with anticipation, and ate the stringy boiled fowl with more enjoyment than he took in his own French cook’s roasted quail.

They moved upstairs, to a small bedroom. John pulled him over, and kissed him.

And it was . . . good. Not perfect, because his head was a little clouded by two mugs of strong ale, followed by a glass of gin which he’d tossed back with unwise abandon, seeking Dutch courage or perhaps just wanting to be roguish and reckless for once. He was unquestionably rather drunk, and also John had very decided views on what he wanted which weren’t precisely in step with the Duke’s own preferences.

That didn’t matter. If he wanted his desires fulfilled to the letter, there was always that discreet London house where he could have whatever he wanted supplied with a smile. He was here incognito precisely because he didn’t want to be pandered to; he wanted to discover what it was like when the goal was mutual pleasure, not his alone. Which meant that when John said, uncompromisingly, that he wanted to be buggered, the Duke obliged him.

It was good enough. John certainly seemed to enjoy it, though the Duke was starting to feel more than a little dizzy by the end. John suggested another drink before the second bout, and the Duke accepted another glass of gin because he’d already had too much to be sensible, and he didn’t remember anything more.

He woke up with a headache like knives and a nasty taste in his mouth.

He blinked his throbbing eyes open and sat up carefully. He was alone in the bed, which was good – discreet, sensible – but also regrettable. How had he fallen asleep so early and foolishly? He hoped John wasn’t offended. Maybe he was downstairs; maybe he’d waited.

The Duke cast a glance around the room to see if John had left his things. It was bare of the clothes they’d strewn around, and of the Duke’s travelling bag which he’d carried himself. Had Waters, his valet, come in and tidied up? The Duke had a pulse of alarm at that before remembering that Waters wasn’t here.

He sat up again, too sharply for his head, and got out of bed, realising he was naked. His clothes were nowhere to be seen. He turned to the single chest, wondering if John had put them away, and saw a sheet of paper on top of it, with a couple of lines of scrawled writing.

You really ought to be more careful. Don’t put temptation in people’s way.

I won’t trouble you further if you don’t trouble me.

The Duke stared at that. Then he checked the chest, which was of course empty, looked under the bed in one last desperate hope, and sat down on it, hard.

He’d been robbed. John Martin had stolen his clothes, his money, his silver hairbrushes, everything. And that second line – was that a threat? If he made a fuss, if Martin was tracked down and the Duke prosecuted him, would the villain make counter-accusations? The Duke imagined himself the subject of a prosecution for sodomy, the newspaper reports, his family’s reaction. Surely it could not come to anything: he was the Duke of Severn. But the shame alone was a prospect to make his whole soul cringe.

He felt sick to his stomach with bad gin and mortification and crashing disappointment. It wasn’t that he’d cared for John Martin, but he’d briefly imagined a world in which he might one day come to care for him, just as he’d imagined that Martin had seen something appealing in his own nondescript person, picked him from a crowd and liked what he’d seen.

Clearly his imagination was overactive. Because he’d also imagined that he could manage one single evening without a regiment of people taking charge of his life.

He put his face in his hands as if that could hide him from the humiliation, and felt something wrong in the touch of his skin. Something missing. It took him a second to realise what, and then it hit him with the force of a slap.

His ring. The Severn ring, wrought of Welsh gold from the Crosse family’s mine, a gnarled dragon worn by every duke since the first, taken from his father’s still-warm corpse and put, frighteningly loose, on his own six-year-old finger. He’d worn it every day of his life since, with various artful attachments to keep it safe until his hands had reached their adult growth and it had been sized for him. He’d left behind his retinue and his embroidered linen to come to this assignation, but he hadn’t even considered taking off the Severn ring. It proved him the Duke of Severn when nothing else did.

And it was gone.

The rest of the day was a bad dream. He had to poke his head out of the door with a blanket wrapped around him, so as not to outrage any serving-maid, and summon the landlord, and beg him to send a message for his valet, on the promise of lavish reward once his money arrived. At this point, he learned that John Martin had left him to pay the shot for last night’s meal as well as the cost of the room. He sat on the bed in his blanket for hours, since he had no clothes and the landlord was too suspicious to lend him any, and enlivened the time by alternately kicking himself for his stupid self-delusion, and searching frantically for his ring, as if it could have somehow fallen off his finger.

At last his valet Waters arrived in a flurry of competence for which the Duke could only feel grateful, bearing clothes and money and terrifying authority borrowed from the dukes he’d served for fifty years. He restored the Duke to decency, gave the landlord a dressing-down that left the man in a state of grovelling apology, and swept the Duke into the comfort of his well-sprung carriage.

Waters did not ask what had happened. The Duke told him anyway, a version whereby he had indulged in an evening of manly pleasures of the acceptable kind (drink, gambling, a hint of women), and been robbed. There was no way to avoid that admission: he’d just have to endure the embarrassment and hope the tale stayed within the family. He tried to make a story of it, a comical misadventure, the kind of thing that could happen to a seasoned man of the world, more to practise that version than out of any hope his valet might take it lightly.

As indeed, he did not. ‘Your Grace must not jest!’ he said, real distress in his voice. ‘Anything might have happened. You could have been killed! These brutes have no mercy.’

The Duke put out a reassuring hand. ‘Since I wasn’t in the slightest harmed—’

Waters wasn’t listening. His eyes bulged. ‘Your Grace! The ring! Did – did they steal the Severn ring?’

The Duke opened his mouth to make the dreadful admission, and heard himself say, ‘No.’

‘No? But—’

‘A very lucky chance,’ said the Duke’s voice, which seemed to have overpowered his mind. ‘I caught my finger in a door earlier, so I took the ring off in case it swelled. I have it safe.’

Waters pantomimed relief with a hand on his heart. ‘Thank heavens. To have lost the Severn ring—’

‘Yes,’ the Duke said, strangled. ‘That would be unthinkable.’

‘Unforgivable. Your grandfather was so gracious as to inform me it was his most precious possession, valued over all else. He called it the Honour of the House.’

The Duke knew that. He’d been told over and over that he was the ring’s custodian, that it represented everything he ought to be, that it should always be worn and could never be lost. He felt giddy with horror, sick with shame; he wanted to curl up and cry.

He’d have to admit the truth at some point. Why had he not just done it now and got it over with?

Well, that was easy enough. It was because he’d have no way to explain why he wasn’t sending to Bow Street for their best men to track down the thief.

Even so, all he’d achieved by lying was to delay the inevitable. It was pure cowardice, running away from trouble like the child Waters still thought him. His valet would be so disappointed by the truth. His uncle would be furious.

The journey back to Staplow, the ducal seat, seemed to take both forever and not nearly long enough. The Duke spent several minutes greeting the staff who lined up to welcome him back after his brief absence, knowing too well that while he chatted, Waters would be rushing to tell Lord Hugo about the whole sorry affair. The two old men had been allies in guarding and protecting the orphaned child-duke for too long to lose the habit in his manhood. His only hope was to present the whole affair as an absurdity, and hope his uncle could be brought to regard it in the same casual manner as he did his own sons’ mishaps.

His uncle did not.

‘Are you quite mad, Severn, making light of this?’ Lord Hugo demanded. ‘And you don’t propose to summon the Bow Street Runners? The Duke of Severn made drunk, robbed, his person outraged—’

‘My person was not outraged in the least,’ the Duke interrupted. That, he was quite sure, was true: his larcenous lover had even tucked a blanket over him to keep the chill off. ‘And I can’t claim to have been made drunk: that was my own fault.’

‘I don’t know why you young men are so easily disguised. In my day, anything less than a three-bottle man – but that is not to the point. Of course you will summon the Runners.’

‘And have the story get about within days? I really should prefer not to make myself a public laughing-stock. I have been taught a lesson, and will learn it with all the grace I can muster.’

‘I damned well hope you do. To go off on your own in such a careless manner – what were you thinking of, boy?’

‘I am a grown man,’ the Duke pointed out. ‘Leo and Matthew go off on their own, as you put it, all the time.’

‘Pah! They don’t matter,’ Lord Hugo said of his beloved sons. ‘You are Severn, and I will not permit this recklessness.’

‘Ah – “permit”, Uncle?’ The Duke loved his uncle, and owed him a great deal. But his long minority had ended at the age of twenty-five, and he had steeled himself to challenge those many habits of speech when his cousins had informed him that if he didn’t, he would spend the rest of his life a schoolboy. It didn’t come naturally.

Lord Hugo lifted a hand in irritable acknowledgement. ‘Yes, yes, I misspoke. But this is an outrage and you must take it seriously.’

‘Believe me, I do,’ the Duke assured him. ‘Notwithstanding, I have learned a lesson at the cost of fifty pounds, a coat that I was not quite pleased with, a pair of hairbrushes, and a bad head. There are worse fates.’

‘I will say for you, you don’t make a fuss. Not but what you ought to be a deal higher in the instep,’ Lord Hugo added, in one of the instant contradictions that made him such a trying conversational partner. ‘That spirit of uncomplaint is a very admirable thing in any man, but you are not any man. You are Severn.’

‘So I should rant and rage for my offended dignity?’ the Duke asked with a quizzical look. ‘Dear sir, why, when you do it so ably on my behalf?’

That got a reluctant laugh from his uncle. ‘Insolent dog,’ he said, once again forgetting that his nephew outranked him. ‘Well, you will decide, I suppose, but no more of this gallivanting around on your own without your proper attendance. You must know your position better.’

He returned to the subject at dinner. It was an informal family meal: just the Duke, his two resident aunts, widowed Amelia and spinster Hilda, their brother Lord Hugo, and his sons, Cousin Matthew, who was twenty and ought to have been at Oxford but for an incident on a racecourse, and Cousin Leo, who was twenty-eight and ought to have been in London but for an incident in a gaming hell. Both aunts had fluttered, worried, and mourned what their poor mother would have said about the boys’ wildness. Lord Hugo had accepted both sons’ rustication with a deal less dismay than he did any transgression on the Duke’s part.

Inevitably, Lord Hugo went over the whole sorry business as soon as they sat down to dine. Leo and Matthew found it hilarious, which the Duke attempted to take in good part, aided by the free-flowing wines, of which he partook more than usual in an effort to numb his still-aching head. In other circumstances, he could perhaps have laughed sincerely – not at the personal betrayal, which he flinched from considering, but certainly at the spectacle of the Duke of Severn huddled in a blanket and hiding from a suspicious landlord. He wanted to remember it as ludicrous. He would far rather be the butt of a ridiculous affair than the victim of hurt and unkindness and crushed hope.

He could have laughed, if it wasn’t for the ring. As it was, he thanked the Lord for his family’s habitual obliviousness, which meant nobody had noticed his bare finger and spared him repeating the lie, and wondered what the devil he was going to do.

He had to get it back, that was all. A discreet – exceedingly discreet – private agent to investigate, perhaps? There would surely be someone who would pursue the matter on his behalf, and who would know how to track down a thief who doubtless wasn’t called John Martin at all and of whom the Duke could say little more than the colour of his hair and coat. He wondered how he might seek out a discreet private agent without word getting back to his uncle.

‘You are not attending to me, Severn!’ Lord Hugo remarked, jolting him from his thoughts. ‘I suppose rag-manners are the fashion these days.’

‘You’ve read him the same lesson several times, sir,’ Leo observed to his parent with pardonable exasperation. ‘Yes, he was reckless to go abroad without attendance. The point is made.’

‘Well, and do you dispute it?’

‘Of course I don’t. The way you have wrapped him in lamb’s-wool all his life, it is no surprise that any effort to look after himself should end in disaster.’

‘I have done no such thing!’ Lord Hugo objected inaccurately. ‘Naturally Severn’s safety has been my paramount concern—’

‘Such that he now can’t go on a spree without losing his shirt. Literally. Even Matthew can hold his drink better, and the Lord knows he’s a featherweight.’

‘I say!’ Matthew put in, and was ignored by all.

‘You’re harsh, Leo,’ the Duke said, keeping his voice mild though he felt decidedly stung. ‘I grant you, I did not show to advantage last night, and I know I lack worldly experience—’

‘Lack experience? That is to understate the case. Could you even survive without the constant ministrations of the faithful Waters, and your groom, and your footmen? Good Lord, Sev, you’re held up by a scaffolding of service. No wonder you collapse without it.’

‘I say,’ Matthew repeated, this time in a more worried tone. There was something unusually aggressive in Leo’s voice, more than the usual family give and take, and the Duke’s bruised feelings found relief in responsive anger.

‘That is unjust,’ he said. ‘I am not a fool, or a weakling. I have been robbed once—’

‘You’ve been out once!’

‘At least I have not returned to be robbed again and again at a single spot,’ the Duke retorted. ‘I’m not that easily shorn.’

Leo had lost a great deal of money to the same men at the same hell over three evenings, a proceeding on which his father had commented in unflattering terms. He reddened. ‘Easy to say from your noble heights. You have no more knowledge of the world than a baby, and no more force of character either, and it is no surprise that you cannot manage without a retinue. If you attempted to take the public stage—’

‘I would learn to do it, just as you did. Purchasing a seat in a coach can hardly be a conundrum requiring membership of the Royal Society to solve.’

‘And carry your own bags? Command rooms and meals? Make your own way without the glory of the Duke of Severn opening all doors for you? Admit it: you’d be helpless.’

‘Of course I could do all that!’ the Duke snapped, and in that moment his great idea rushed upon him, carried on a wave of wine and anger. ‘I could,’ he repeated, ‘and since you suggest it, I shall. Do you care to make a wager of it?’

Leo sat up straight. ‘Wager?’

Aunt Amelia squeaked. Aunt Hilda barked a laugh. Lord Hugo said, ‘Eh?’

‘I would do very well by myself, and I shall prove it,’ the Duke insisted. ‘I shall fend for myself without all the advantages of Severn for, let’s say a month.’

‘You will do no such thing!’

Leo ignored his father. ‘Without servants, and without use of your title or your social connections for assistance or influence? A month without privilege?’

‘Without using any of it. Entirely anonymous.’

‘But what are you going to do for a month like that?’ Matthew asked.

‘Travel,’ the Duke said recklessly. ‘Explore the country. Gain the experience Leo wishes for me.’

‘You’ll find it dashed uncomfortable. Dashed dull, too. You must have rats in your attic, Sev. If I were a duke, I shouldn’t set foot on the stage for the rest of my life. Who cares if you don’t do things for yourself? Why would you bother, when you’re Severn? Dash it, what if you’re pretending to be nobody and you meet someone you know?’

‘I’ll just have to avoid fashionable haunts.’

‘Nobody will recognise you without your pomp and circumstance,’ Leo said, all the more brutally because it was a statement of fact. ‘You’ve a damned forgettable face. If you weren’t dressed up, you wouldn’t look like anyone at all.’

‘I have often observed, my brother didn’t consider the breeding stock when he married,’ Aunt Hilda said. ‘Joan was a delightful woman, but sadly unremarkable. Typical of a Malsham, all their girls were plain as—’

‘Hilda, really,’ Aunt Amelia said.

‘This is not to the purpose.’ Lord Hugo glowered at his sisters to no effect, then turned on the younger generation. ‘And you will both stop this nonsense.’

‘It is a wager,’ the Duke said. ‘I shall fend for myself for a month without using my title or influence or advantages, and when I have done so, you, Leo, will make an apology to me for doubting my capacity.’

‘If you do it,’ Leo returned. ‘Using the public stage and inns as any common fellow might: no hiring a carriage or any such. If you survive a month of ordinary life without disaster, and without resorting to your title or station, I shall admit I was wrong as publicly as you like. And the stakes if you don’t succeed . . .’ He paused, thinking. The Duke braced himself. ‘Your match greys.’

‘What? No!’

‘You can’t wager money,’ Leo pointed out. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to you, and Father would have an apoplexy.’

‘Yes, I would!’ Lord Hugo had never permitted betting or borrowing: the ducal estate was the Duke’s alone, and he had rigidly avoided any action that might be interpreted as profiting from his nephew. ‘You know very well—’

‘Yes, sir, we do,’ his son said impatiently. ‘Stake the greys, Sev, if you’re so sure it’s easy.’

The Duke adored his greys. He had bought them as foals, trained them himself, and driven them for two years now, turning down extravagant offers. They were his sole point of personal glory. People who would not recognise him in a crowd knew the Duke of Severn’s greys: fast, sweet steppers, perfectly matched, high-spirited but never misbehaving. He didn’t want to lose them.

‘Or if you don’t care to risk it . . .’ Leo added.

The Duke set his teeth. He needed this time, this free month in which he would go out into the world and get his ring back by hook or crook. Not to mention, he was cursed if he’d back down now. He would just have to make sure he won his bet.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘The greys.’

Waters came in the next morning bearing a tea tray in his hands and the world on his shoulders. ‘Your Grace,’ he said. ‘I am informed of the most distressing news. It cannot be correct.’

‘My wager with Leo?’ The Duke had been awake for some time, wondering if his great idea was in fact quite as great as it had seemed last night under the influence of several glasses of wine and the flush of insult. The concept was impeccable: a month in which he could track down the scoundrel John Martin and retrieve his ring. It was the execution – specifically, the fact that he had no idea how to go about executing it – that worried him.

‘But Your Grace cannot seriously intend this.’ Waters looked distraught. ‘To travel alone? Without your carriage, or James, or a single outrider, or a wardrobe? Without me?’

‘It is only for a month,’ the Duke said soothingly.

‘A month! Your Grace jests. Who will brush your coats and see to your linen? What about your boots?’

‘I expect inns have people who do that.’

‘Hardly to the standards Your Grace expects.’

‘Indeed not. It will teach me to appreciate you.’

‘Your Grace,’ Waters said strongly. ‘You must not. Surely Lord Hugo objects.’

‘I dare say he does, but I don’t require his permission.’ Or yours, the Duke did not say, because, exasperating though it was to be nannied, Waters had cared for him all his life. The tightening of the valet’s lips suggested he had taken the inference anyway, and was offended. The Duke sighed internally. ‘Will you help me select the most ordinary clothes from my wardrobe?’

Waters stiffened even more. ‘Your Grace does not possess any ordinary clothes.’

This was true. The Duke’s coats were made by Hawkes or Weston, and it showed, even if he did not display them to any great advantage. In the end he resorted to borrowing a couple of Matthew’s older coats, noting with satisfaction that they were a touch large for him and rather worn. He looked wonderfully ordinary. Waters wrung his hands in the background as the Duke admired his nondescript appea. . .