Free The Gypsy Duchess by Nadine Miller Page A

would place him with someone of a more temperate nature.”
    “And break both their hearts? I think not,” Stamden said. “And as for you following them, do not even consider it. You are not yet up to it. Why, even this short jaunt has so exhausted you, you’re white as paper and wringing wet with sweat. If someone must follow them, I’ll do it.”
    “The boy is my responsibility—and his impossible stepmother as well,” Devon said stubbornly. “I’ll take my traveling coach; it is roomy enough to keep my leg elevated, as well as hold Ned and two of my stoutest grooms in case we run into trouble.”
    He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped the beads of perspiration from his brow, and prayed Stamden wouldn’t notice his knees were trembling from the fatigue that left him feeble as a newborn colt.
    “Thank you for the offer, my friend,” Devon added. “But I cannot let you undertake this rescue mission in my stead. Such an admission of weakness would be too damaging to my pride—and the Earls of Langley have always had a surfeit of that commodity.”
    He managed a tight-lipped smile, however. “Still, there are limits beyond which pride becomes foolhardy. So, if you’ve a mind to join me on a fast trip to the wilds of Cornwall, I’ll not refuse your company.”

Chapter Five
    T he journey from London to Cornwall was a nightmare. The roads, so recently frozen, had thawed sufficiently to be pocked with hundreds of potholes, and the resulting ride was like traveling an endless washboard. Devon’s leg had been painful enough when they started; by the time they’d bounced and jolted their way to the inn where they made their first exchange of horses, he was in such agony, only his pride and the knowledge that Stamden would insist on turning back kept him from resorting to laudanum.
    Each morning as they started out, he sent his trusted batman ahead on horseback to arrange for the necessary nags and to inquire about the duchess. At every inn the story was the same; she and her party had passed through but stopped only long enough to change horses and eat a cold repast. It was apparent she was traveling as if the devil were at her heels, for despite long, exhausting days on the road and only the shortest of nights at the inns where they stopped to rest, Devon and Peter could draw no closer than the five-hour lead she’d had on them from the beginning.
    With each agonizing mile, Devon’s pain increased, his frustration multiplied, and his temper shortened—until when they reached Exeter and still had not caught up with their elusive quarry, he was, as Stamden put it, “literally frothing at the mouth.” He was also back on the laudanum he had weaned himself off while at Stamden’s town house, for the continual jouncing about had aggravated his injured limb to a point where the torment was too excruciating to bear without it.
    He survived the balance of the journey alternating between a haze of searing pain and a fog of opium-induced dreams in which, for some reason he could not begin to fathom, he was skippering the small skiff his father had given him as a boy.
    “Stay in the safe, clam coves,” his dream father cautioned him. But Devon paid no heed to the sage advice. Closer and closer he sailed to the treacherous rocks dotting the Cornish coast, knowing he courted disaster. But he was so entranced by the beautiful, black-haired siren who beckoned him, he no longer cared.
    The dream was always the same. He could feel the hull of the little boat grinding itself to death against the rocks, feel the icy waves washing over his face even as he reached out his arms for the alluring creature.
    Then, just as he resigned himself to a watery grave, she disappeared in a wisp of fog, leaving only the echo of her taunting laughter—and he would awake utterly desolate and chilled to the bone by the cold sweat that seeped from every pore of his pain-wracked body.
    “This is the last of the laudanum,” Peter