Miranda Jarrett - The Duke's Gamble

“Aye, mum.” The boy who’d been helping grinned at her, tipping his head back to gaze boldly at her from beneath the crumpled brim of his scarecrow’s hat. “That’s how I rule me life. Purposeful, mum. Purposeful.”

“Purposefully impudent, I’d say,” Amariah said, but she laughed and tossed him the apple. At once the boy bit into it with hungry enthusiasm, heedless of the bits of apple and peel that now dotted his grin.

Guilford guessed he must be nine or ten—because he was so thin and wiry, it was difficult to tell—and while his clothes were as dirty and tattered as the others outside, at least he’d washed his hands before he began helping with the food. He had a choirboy’s blue eyes and golden curls combined with a born rascal’s cockiness, and Guilford liked him at once.

“I eat purposeful, too, mum,” Billy said between bites. “Nothing impudent ’bout that.”

“If the lady says you’re impudent, lad, then you are,” Guilford said, laughing, too. Strange that he’d just been speaking of his boyhood with Amariah, for this little rogue could have been cut from the same bolt of cloth as he’d once been himself. “You must trust me. I know from my own sorry experience. It’s not wise to cross Miss Penny.”

“Go on, guv’nor.” The boy looked at him sideways, his profile silhouetted against the angled brim of his black hat. “Miss Penny’s an angel o’ kindness an’ forgiveness, even t’ me.”

“Then you must not test your luck,” Guilford said darkly, glancing knowingly—no, purposefully—at Amariah. “Far better to keep her sweet tempered, and be safe. Here now, doff your hat and beg her forgiveness.”

Before the boy could react, Guilford reached out to sweep the hat from his head for him.

Beside him, Amariah gasped. “Don’t, your grace, please, please!”

But her warning came too late. With Billy’s hat in his hand, Guilford froze, painfully, horribly aware of how much he’d just erred.

The boy didn’t flinch, or duck away. He held his ground, staring back at Guilford as boldly as Guilford was staring at him, unable to make himself look away from what the hat’s wide brim had hidden. Where there should have been another bright blue eye, instead was only a grotesque, tortured mass of scars, the skin drawn tight over the empty socket like melted wax.

The boy thrust out his upturned palm toward Guilford. “That be ’alf a crown, guv’nor. I don’t let no one gawk at me for free, an’ for swells like you, the fare be ’alf a crown.”

“He’s not a swell, Billy,” Amariah said quickly, the warning in her voice clear. “He’s His Grace the Duke of Guilford.”

“What of it?” Billy shook back his blond curls, as if determined to hide nothing from Guilford. “If a cat may look at a king, why, then a duke may look at a Fox. Don’t that be so, Duke?”

“You call him ‘your grace’, Billy,” Amariah said as she took Billy’s hat from Guilford’s hand and set it back on the boy’s head, slanting it at the same shielding angle as it had been before. “And if you don’t start minding what comes from your mouth, you’ll find yourself transported to the colonies for being disrespectful to your betters.”

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