The Deception Read Free Page B

smugglers in fifty years,” the duke said. “You sound like you’re coming down with something, McComber. Take better care of yourself. I’ll wager you caught it from Juniper, who’d better be tucked snug into his bed as we speak.”
    “I’d niver get close enuf to that little bug to catch nuthin’.”
    His tiger, Juniper, and McComber hated each other. He’d never discovered why. It was apparently a deep, strong hatred of longstanding, a tenacious hatred and abiding, a hatred one couldn’t help but admire.
    “I don’t care if you’re sickening from Cook’s blood pudding, have a care.”
    “Aye, yer grace,” McComber said. “But ‘tis true, I’ll niver ketch a whimpering thing from that little bleeder, never ye mind wot ‘e says aboot me mother.” Then he began talking a mile a minute to the bays as he led them to the magnificent stables to the north that the duke’s father had enlarged some thirty years before.
    The sun was getting low in the west. The wind was rising. It was getting colder. The duke sniffed the salty air, breathed in deeply, then looked again at that wonderful sun which hadn’t shown itself for three days.
    He looked up to see Juniper, who should have been in bed, running hard toward him, his crimson livery coat flapping in the breeze. “Your grace! I’m here. Oh, dear, I particularly asked Bassick to tell me when you neared. He likes McComber better, and thus he didn’t give me warning and so I’m late, and all of a flutter. Oh, dear, he’s taken the bays, hasn’t he? He’s taken my boys.”
    “Yes. And he won’t knobble them or harm them in any way at all. Go back to bed, Juniper. Trust me to take care of the horses. You will remain in bed until you no longer are hacking your tongue out of your mouth.”
    Juniper gulped, coughed, gulped again. “It’s just a touch of something bilious, your grace,” he said, looking toward the stables, seeing the bays prancing happily behind that blackguard McComber.
    “I don’t want to have to bury you just yet, Juniper. Out of my sight.”
    Juniper continued to look up hopefully at the duke, a very large, handsome young man who, in all the years Juniper had known him, had never been ill from anything other than drinking too much brandy. It was nothing for the duke to ride in an open curricle, the rain battering down on him, the sea winds tearing through his thick hair. For Juniper, had he done something so ill-advised, he would be shortly six feet under the ground with a stone on his head and a daisy planted on top of his belly. The air was still damp from the interminable rain, the breeze off the Channeldamp and chill. He shuddered. “Go,” the duke said again.
    “Aye, your grace,” Juniper said. “Oh, your grace, I forget to give you this. It was brought just an hour ago by one of those men who works for your friend Lord Pettigrew.” He handed the duke a thin envelope with turned and twisted edges.
    The duke didn’t wait. This had to be it, he thought. It just had to be over now. He tore open the paper and read:
    We thought we had him, but he escaped our net. Sorry, Richard. Keep faith. We’ll get the murdering bastard yet.
DH
    The day turned suddenly and completely black. He looked up and saw only bleak clouds that were filling the sky, turning it a nasty ochre color. He crushed the paper in his hand. They’d all been so certain, knowing that they’d catch the miserable traitor who’d brutally garroted Robbie Faraday in an alley near Westminster in early December.
    He wanted to smash his fist into something. He turned to see Juniper staring at him in fascinated horror.
    “Go away, Juniper. Now.”
    Juniper ran back up the wide, deep front steps, wondering what horrific news was in the letter he’d happened to snag from the messenger while Bassick was in the pantry chastising one of the footmen.
    Well, the young duke had many things on his mind these days, though Juniper couldn’t say what any of them were. Maybe it