Always a Gentleman, Never a Duke (Dueling for Dukes Book 3)

Chapter 13

“Ithought you said this was a dinner,” Tuck murmured, looking about the room. “We’re the only ones here.”

Tuck took in the drawing room where they’d been brought. It was a room he had never seen in all of his visits to the earl. It was a small room with oppressively heavy green velvet drapes at the window, a set of chairs before a fireplace that appeared never to have been used, and a faded and careworn carpet across the floor. That was it. There wasn’t another piece of furniture in the room, and the whole space reeked of dust.

Eloise stepped closer to him. “Are you certain the earl isn’t really a mad totter?”

He shrugged. “He’s never seemed mad the many times I’ve spoken to him.”

She gave him a glance that suggested she didn’t quite believe him and remained by his side while they waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Unlike the other times he had been there, the house was silent around them. It made the tick of the clock above the fireplace sound louder than it actually was, echoing in the quiet that blanketed them.

A quarter of an hour past and then another.

Eloise shifted from foot to foot. “Do you think we should go look for someone?” She clutched his arm and leaned forward, bringing up one foot, wriggling her toes, and switching to the other. “These shoes are not meant to be stood in.”

He watched her repeat the movements several times. “Then why on earth are you wearing them?”

She blinked, appearing slightly hurt. “Because they’re cute.”

When the footsteps sounded in the hall, they both jumped, so startling was the sound in the unending silence.

The earl himself appeared in the doorway. Well, at least his head did.

“Oh, there you are,” he said before stepping fully into the doorway. He looked around much as Tuck had done. “I didn’t even know this room was here.” He made a noise of appreciation then and looked to where Tuck and Eloise waited. “I bet you two are starving. Come, come. We mustn’t tarry any longer. I believe Cook has prepared a feast.”

Tuck was relieved to see the earl wore pants. Although they were purple, and his dinner jacket was peach. He had all the other requisite pieces of clothing in place, however, and Tuck took Eloise’s arm as they followed the earl into the hall.

If Tuck had his bearings correct, the earl was taking them back to the library where Tuck had met with him every time he’d come to visit the earl. The library was a strange place to have dinner, but then perhaps the earl preferred a drink before the meal.

Except when they stepped into the library, it was to find a circular table laid for dinner.

A table that sat a scant two feet above the floor and was surrounded by cushions. The surface of it was laid with an intricately woven cloth bursting with bright colors—reds, oranges, and turquoise. Strewn across its surface were flower petals, roses it looked it. There were three empty plates set at intervals around its circumference, and that was all.

Tuck wasn’t sure which one of them stopped first, but their elbows locked together like a chain.

Tippy loped around the table, sweeping a hand grandly over it. “Sit, sit. I hope you are adventurous eaters. I thought a nice Moroccan meal was in order.” He took a seat then. That is, to say, he flounced down on the floor against the pile of cushions on the other side of the table.

Tuck swallowed and turned to his wife to gage her reaction. He wasn’t surprised to find her beaming.

She tugged her arm free and without hesitation pulled up her skirts before settling onto another cushion pile.

“Moroccan, you say?” Eloise adjusted her skirts.

Tuck thought Tippy’s smile might rival his wife’s. “Oh yes,” he said. “My Carolina and I spent a wonderful three days trapped in Tafraoute. Blocked in by a sandstorm. The innkeeper there took pity on us and treated us to a feast.” Tippy leaned forward, resting his chin in the cup of his palm as he planted one elbow on the table. “What a wonderful feast that was,” he murmured dreamily before straightening with bright eyes. “The innkeeper was the great nephew of the sultan, you see, and had the connections to get all the best meat there was to be had. Never had a tagine like it since.” He sat up and shook his head, his gaze somewhere else as if he were recalling the very taste of the meal.

Tuck took the remaining seat at the table, feeling as though the world about him had shifted. Was the earl really the mad totter everyone thought him to be? He glanced at Eloise, but she was smiling wistfully at the earl.

Tippy shook his head and straightened just as two footmen entered carrying platters of food. Tuck leaned back from the table, expecting to be served, but the footmen simply placed the platters in the middle of the table, bowed, and withdrew.

This wasn’t the end of the oddness, however. Tippy sat up and without ceremony scooped a helping of vegetables from one platter, a variety of tomatoes and aubergines and something else Tuck couldn’t identify. He scooped it with his bare hand.

“I grow all the vegetables in my own garden, you see. Can’t very well trust to get fresh ones from abroad, now can we?” He looked up, a gleam in his eye. “Perhaps one day though, eh, Tuck? Can you imagine? Fresh fruits and vegetables from around the world delivered to your kitchen before they spoil?” He shook his head. “Now that’s a fantasy.” He gestured to Eloise. “You use your hands in Moroccan culture, my dear. Eat always with your right and save your left hand for when you need a clean one.”

Tuck stared at his beautiful wife, Lady Eloise Bounds, whom he had married beyond everything that said they shouldn’t be wed.

She leaned forward too and scooped a handful of the vegetable mixture onto her plate. “And how long were you in Morocco, my lord?”

Tippy waved a hand, his clean one as a matter of fact. “Please, dear, the name is Tippy. And my Carolina wanted to languish in Morocco forever, but we had business to attend to in Peru.”

Tuck blinked. What was going on here? He’d come to know the earl quite well in the past few weeks. He’d visited the man with some kind of regularity and learned he preferred Scottish shortbread to chocolate biscuits, a warm fire and a rug over his lap with a good book at night, and when he was feeling particularly wild, a walk in Hyde Park.

But this…

Morocco?

Peru?

“What took you to Peru?” Eloise asked the question while Tuck scooped up his own serving.

“Ah, that would be our guano business.” Tippy looked between them. “You both are aware of the use of bat dung as a fertilizer, I take it?”

Tuck blinked. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the practice.”

Tippy nodded. “Yes, it’s rather a niche business but profitable. My Carolina always did have a head for business. That’s why I took her suggestion that we invest in guano with her dowry. It turned out she was right.” Again the shake of his head, but this time it was almost whimsical. “She was always right,” he said more softly now.

“And you took an active role in your…” Eloise swallowed. “Guano investment?”

Tippy looked up, eyes widening as though he had forgotten he had guests for dinner. “Oh, yes.” Another shake of the head. “Well, no, it wasn’t an investment like that, really. It was a business. Carolina and I ran it together, you see, and now I have a board of directors who oversee it.” He sat back. “That’s why I asked you both to dinner actually. I hope you don’t mind talking of business over a meal, but I’ve never seen the purpose in such formality.” He shrugged. “I’d like to leave my business to the two of you. To fund your future expeditions.”

Eloise held a piece of tomato and aubergine between two fingers as though she had meant to take a bite but had been frozen by Tippy’s words. Tuck hadn’t been able to touch a morsel as their strange conversation unfolded, so he simply sat there, staring.

“I’ve already set it all up, so I hope you don’t turn me down.” Tippy laughed good-naturedly. “The directors will continue to oversee the business, and any profits will be deposited into the account marked for your expeditions. You can do with the funds what you will, of course. While I have a taste for adventure and a spirit for the unknown, I can’t say I’m especially educated in the matter of science.” He paused then, a look of almost impossible hope coming into his eyes. “I hope you’ll indulge me once in a while and tell me what it is you’re finding up there in the north.” He paused again, as if considering his own words. “Well, for as long as I’m still on this plane. Before I go see my Carolina again.” His face split into a grin.

Tuck could not speak.

Luckily, Eloise still held her wits. “Tippy, are you saying you’re…”

“Bloody rich,” Tippy said. “No one knows, of course. Except for you two and my directors.” He wrinkled his nose. “My peers tend to frown upon wealth which stems from the steaming piles of bat dung, and so I never told them about it.” He shrugged and went back to his meal. “Their loss really. I could have saved many a fortune if any of them had listened to me.” He tucked into his meal as if he hadn’t just changed the course of their lives forever.

“Excuse me.” Tuck finally found his voice. “You’re telling me you’re going to fund my expedition to Spitsbergen?” He was forced to ask the question in the simplest of terms because everything seemed so befuddled now.

Tippy nodded. “Spitsbergen and beyond, of course. Wherever your research should take you.” He shook his head and made an encouraging noise as if imagining the future. “There’s a stipend for you to live on, of course. You’ll need moneys for lodging, food, and clothing.” He named a sum then that was four times what Tuck took in a year between his teaching and the allowance from his father.

Four times.

Tuck made enough to support the two of them in a reasonable fashion. They would be required to adhere to a tight budget, but they would never starve. But four times that amount…well, they would live like kings.

It was a good thing Tuck was sitting on the floor already, or he might have collapsed.

“My lord, I mean Tippy…” But Eloise didn’t say anything else, and quite frankly, Tuck couldn’t have either.

Tippy nodded though as if Eloise had actually said something of substance. “I know, but the thing is I see in the two of you a kindred spirit.” He waved a single finger at them. “My decision was cemented the moment Bitsy told me you were to wed.” He looked at Tuck then, his expression suddenly grave. “I had planned to fund your expedition no matter what, but when I heard you were to have a companion on your travels, well…” He shrugged. “It made me nostalgic, I guess, and there was nothing I could do except make you my heir.”

Eloise’s hand at his back was the only way Tuck knew he had swayed backward at Tippy’s announcement. “Heir?”

“Well, the title will go to some cousin, I think.” He looked to the ceiling. “A watery chap in Devonshire, if I remember correctly. Has an unusual obsession with hair pomade.” He shook his head and looked back to the two of them. “What can one do. But the business is mine, of course, and you shall have it upon my death. Do with it as you please but take heed.” He leaned forward, elbow on the table as if to emphasize his point. “There’s good money in bat dung.”

The door behind Tuck opened, and a parade of elephants pirouetting through a ballet might have come through for all he could understand. But it wasn’t. It was just the same pair of footmen. This time they carried clay pots that emitted the aroma of onions, tomatoes, and parsley.

“Ah, the main course, splendid.” Tippy waited until the footmen had placed the clay pots on the table and left before he eyed the two of them. “Now that business is out of the way, I should love to tell the story of how Carolina and I almost died from an illness we contracted in a cave.”

“Where was the cave? Dartmoor?” Tuck heard himself say although he couldn’t have said where he’d summoned the words from.

Tippy laughed heartily. “Oh no, son. It was in the Tayos Caves of Ecuador,” he whispered, his voice dropping low, pulling them both into his tale.

And so Tuck ate while sitting on the floor next to the wife he still couldn’t believe he had while he listened to the adventurous tales of the man who had just made Tuck bloody rich.

* * *

Some hourslater they lay in the dark on the sagging bed of their rented rooms. They didn’t speak, and they didn’t touch. They simply lay there, next to each other, man and wife, two people whose entire future had changed so abruptly and then abruptly again in the space of only weeks.

“Tuck?” Eloise finally ventured. “Are you…all right?”

It seemed such a horribly inadequate thing to say. This was his entire life’s work practically presented to him on a platter.

He didn’t speak, but she heard his hair rustle against his pillow as he nodded.

The silence grew until it acquired a sound, a low buzzing in her ears. She heard the clip clop of a horse on the street outside. It was probably a hackney carrying home a late-night reveler. There was the settling of the building, the faint moan and creak of an old edifice relaxing into its joints as the temperature dropped. It was a strange sound that had grown familiar over the past weeks they’d lived in their rented rooms, and now it brought her comfort.

Finally she sat up, pushing herself up against the headboard and moving her braid of hair over her shoulder so it no longer tickled her face.

“I can’t believe the Earl of Renshaw is wealthy,” she whispered as if she were afraid to speak it out loud. She let her gaze linger on the thin curtains at the window, the shape of the building beside theirs nearly visible through them. “He would always bring each of us a daisy he plucked from his own garden when he came to visit Grandmother Bitsy when we were children. We thought it the most generous gift from a doting old man.” She turned to where Tuck was a shadow on the bed beside her. “How he must miss his wife. Heavens, it almost hurts to take his money.”

It was nearly midnight when they’d left Tippy. He’d seen them to the door himself and waited on the stoop until they were safely in his carriage. He’d insisted on them taking it to see their way home, and they’d found they simply couldn’t refuse his generosity. Not after hearing the stories of his adventurous life with his beloved Carolina.

Finally Tuck showed the first signs of life since they’d returned to their rented rooms. He pushed himself to a seated position much like her and rested his head against the wall behind the bed.

“I think it means something to him, to give us his fortune.” He didn’t look at her. His eyes lingered on the thin curtains much like hers had. “I think it’s his way of making sure his wife lives on.”

“By giving it to your expedition?”

He turned only his head, his eyes meeting hers. “By making sure the fortune she helped grow is used for something she loved.”

She had no response to that and let her gaze travel back to the curtains.

It was only a minute later when he took her hand, startling her. She met his gaze.

“I’m feeling…scared,” he said, his words hesitant to emerge. “This entire time the expedition to Spitsbergen has been a solitary thing, existing only in my mind, and then when I pictured the actual journey, it was just me alone.” He held her hand in one of his, and with the other, he traced each of her fingers, circling knuckle and outlining each curve. “And now I have the funding needed to make the expedition happen, and suddenly it’s real. All of it is real.” He shook his head, his eyes dropping to where he traced her fingers. “And there’s you.” He paused, but he didn’t look back up. He closed his other hand over hers before he looked at her. “I’m scared, Eloise. This thing that I imagined—” He shook his head, licked his lips nervously. “It’s really happening. I’m going to Spitsbergen to study the aurora. To better understand solar flares and how they can affect us. I didn’t think it would ever happen, and now I wonder if I’ll be up to the task.” He swallowed then, and somehow she knew that what he would say next was what truly plagued him. She wasn’t surprised when he said, “If I’ll be up to the task of ensuring Harrison’s death wasn’t meaningless.”

She placed her hand over his. “Do you remember that night we first met?”

“When you thought I was a ghoul?” His voice had firmed a little, not sounding quite as lost, and she let that urge her on.

“Yes, a ghoul,” she confirmed. “But when I understood you weren’t a ghoul, do you know what I thought?”

He shook his head.

“I’d never met anyone as clever as you.” He opened his lips, but she held up a single finger to stop him. “Smart? Yes, of course. I’ve met many a smart person in my little life. But not clever. There’s a difference, you know.”

“How’s that?” A line had appeared between his brows.

“A smart person can know things. All manner of things really. But a clever person is one who can enact change. They do something with their knowledge.”

The concern in his expression deepened. “And what did I do besides scare the devil out of you?”

“You took ordinary railway glasses and made them something else.”

His expression blanked, but he didn’t speak.

“Tell me I’m wrong. Did you not take something that existed, applied your understanding to it, and made it different?”

“I did do that,” he said, but his tone was reluctant.

“It’s evidence, Mr. Ryan,” she said, scooting closer to him until she could cup his cheek and force his attention on her when he tried to move his gaze away. “Aren’t you scientist types always concerned about the evidence?”

Now a weak smile came to his lips. “I suppose we are.”

“And there’s something else that you might not realize.”

His eyes were more sure on hers now. “What’s that?”

“You won’t be doing this alone. You’ll have me, and from now on, we do things together. Do you understand, Mr. Ryan?”

He placed his hand over the one that cupped his cheek, and his smile became certain. “I understand, Mrs. Ryan,” he said before he kissed her.