Author: Catherine Coulter
Category: Suspense
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Fanny looked longingly at a tray of lemon-seed cakes, caught Aunt Gweneth’s frown, and turned miserably away.
The Duchess said, “Would you like an apple, Fanny? They’re quite delicious. I just finished one myself.”
Fanny shrugged, then caught the apple Marcus tossed to her. She rubbed it on her sleeve, earning her a disapproving look from Aunt Gweneth. Marcus smiled at the Duchess, but she didn’t regard him.
“The hour grows late,” Aunt Gweneth said some minutes later. “I think it is time for you girls to go to bed.”
“All right,” Antonia said, closed her book and yawned deeply. She said to the Duchess, “You’re our half-sister. Marcus told us all about it. You’re no longer our cousin from Holland.”
“That’s right. After your dear mother died, our father married my mother. He made me legitimate.”
“You were a bastard,” Fanny said, no guile showing on her face or sounding in her voice. “How very odd. I remember Antonia and I used to argue whether you were from Italy or Holland. It was difficult because we had never heard you speak either language.”
“Yes, I was a bastard, until last May to be exact.”
“Really, my dear, you needn’t blare it so loudly,” Aunt Gweneth said. “It would make people believe that you weren’t ashamed of your unfortunate birth.”
“Since I had no say whatsoever in my birth, ma’am, why should I ever feel shame about it?”
“Still—” Aunt Gweneth said, but was interrupted by Antonia, who said, “Now you will be able to find a husband. You won’t have to pretend anymore that you’re not a real lady.”
“Just imagine,” Fanny said as she chewed on her apple. “You were a love child. How very romantic.”
“Bosh,” Antonia said. “You’re stupid, Fanny. Now, Duchess, you won’t have to stay here because now you’re all right and tight and legal. You won’t have to stay here for Marcus to order you about.”
“I, order you about, Antonia? Come, if I were such a tyrant, would I allow you to read that nauseating pap that is currently sitting in your lap?”
“Well, perhaps not,” Antonia said, grinning at her cousin, “but still, Marcus, your rules do seem to multiply by the day. It must be that you and Aunt Gweneth make up new ones after Fanny and I have gone to bed. But Fanny and I will continue to bear with you. You haven’t been the earl all that long and we quite understand that you must fit your own boots into it. Now, then, Duchess, will you go to London?”
“It’s possible. Perhaps I shall go to London after Boxing Day. Why not?”
“Will Marcus give you money?” Fanny asked, looking still at the lemon-seed cakes, the chewed-down apple core in her hand. “London is ever so expensive, you know.”
“We will see,” Marcus said, his voice testy as hell. “Now, off to bed with you girls. No, Aunt Gweneth and I won’t sit here and devise new despotic rules to test your fortitude. Aunt Gweneth, you may excuse yourself as well. Duchess, please remain for a moment longer, if you will.”
A short while later, she looked at him from a goodly distance, saying nothing, merely standing behind a winged chair, one graceful hand smoothing rhythmically over the soft brocade as if it were Esmee beneath her hand. Odd, but even Esmee, the most independent of felines, lay quietly beneath the Duchess’s hand when she chanced to pet her. There was a slight flush on her cheeks from the warmth of the fire. “Yes, Marcus? You wished to say something to me?”
“Why did you say you wanted to go to London?”
“I said perhaps I would go. After Boxing Day.”
“Do you need money to allow you to go?”
“No, I daresay that I won’t need a sou.”
“So, I had allowed myself to believe that you came here because your finances were strained beyond their limits. But it isn’t so, is it? Not if you can afford to keep yourself in London. If keep yourself is indeed what you would be doing.”
“Badger will be with me, naturally.”
“You won’t go. I forbid it. You will wait to go to London when I do, which will be in late March. Aunt Gweneth will accompany us and will provide you chaperonage. You will have your bloody Season. If you find a gentleman I deem appropriate, or if I discover a gentleman for you whom I deem suitable, why then I will provide you a dowry and you can marry.”
“Nonsense, Marcus. Pray cease your outflow of orders. Tyranny doesn’t become you.”
“It is hardly nonsense and I’m not a bloody tyrant, no matter what the Twins say. There are many so-called gentlemen in London eager to sully a lady’s reputation or take liberties with her person. You have no idea of how to go along. You’re young and green. You would quickly make a fool of yourself. I won’t allow that to happen. You’re now a Wyndham, after all. You will go to London with me and I will point out all the scoundrels to you.”
She said mildly, “If you aren’t careful, Marcus, every female of your acquaintance will convey you bound and gagged to the Quakers in Bristol. They are the most strict of their sect, it is said. It is said they never see themselves unclothed, always dressing and undressing with their eyes straight ahead and bathing in the same way. I cannot imagine how it is done. Such modesty must require a great deal of practice and resolution. Truly, Marcus, you must mean well, but do not concern yourself with me.”
“I have already set my guardianship of you into motion. It shouldn’t take long to finalize.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, then infuriated him by smiling into the fire, calm and unruffled as ever.
“You have no say in it, damn you!”
“Oh, I daresay that I shall have more say than you can begin to imagine.”
“How?”
She remained silent.
“How did you support yourself? There was a man, wasn’t there? There’s a man awaiting you in London, isn’t there? Why did you come back here if your plan was simply to leave again? Did your father make it a stipulation of your legitimacy?”
“That is an abundance of questions, Marcus. I will address the first. You seem to believe that ladies are singularly incompetent. Cannot you imagine that one of us could support herself through honest means?”
“Not you. You’re a lady. You were raised to be a lady, to be a man’s wife, nothing more. It isn’t that you are incompetent, no, certainly not, it is just that you were raised to do nothing, except—” He stalled, seeing the endless hole beneath his feet he’d so eagerly dug for himself.
She said coolly, kindness reeking in her soft voice, “Decorate a gentleman’s arm, perhaps?”
“Yes, and bear his children and see that his home is comfortable and well run. Perhaps keep flower beds if you wished.”
“All that doesn’t require some proficiency, some skill?”
“Not the kind of skill that would bring in groats. And yet, you seem to—” He stalled again. His words sounded utterly pompous and condescending. He sounded like an ass, but he wouldn’t take the words back. Perhaps he’d even get a rise out of her this time. Maybe even make her raise her voice just a bit. That thought made his eyes glitter. But it was not to be.
“Marcus, what do you do to earn groats?”
He stared at her, then said more calmly than he imagined possible, “I was a major in the army. I earned money.”
“And now that you are no longer in the army?”
He ground his teeth, there was no keeping it from her and he didn’t care.
“Is there a rich lady keeping you in style? Obviously a nobleman can’t earn groats, why his blood would quickly turn from blue to black.”
“There are many responsibilities I have now, as you well know. I have to oversee all the properties; I am caretaker to more houses than you even know about; I am responsible for every man, woman, and child who works on all estates owned by the Wyndhams, I—”
“In short, you inherited everything.”
“You know very well the title means little to me, but I will fulfill my duties as I must.”
“Marcus, h
ow old are you?”
“You know very well that I am twenty-four.”
“So very young to be as you are,” she said, then had the gall to shrug.
“And just how is that? Concerned for your well-being? Knowing that I am the one responsible for this damned family, as I said? Ah, don’t try to turn this to me, Duchess. As I was saying, all your, er, abilities don’t bring in groats. There was no inheritance to make you independent. Yet you had enough to rent that damned cottage, to—” He stopped on purpose this time, his eyes glittering anew. Perhaps now he’d see a fist again. Wouldn’t that be something?
She had the further gall to shrug again. She said not another single word, and he waited, hoping, but there was not even a glint of anger in her cool blue eyes.
He gave up, saying, “Your Mr. Wicks will be here tomorrow. What do you say about that?”
“I imagine that Mr. Wicks will wish to speak to both of us. Do you plan to be here?”
He would have liked to tell her he was going to Edinburgh, but he didn’t. “I’ll be here. Now, I’m going to bed. I will see you at breakfast.”
“Good night, Marcus. Sleep well.”
He grunted. She stood silently, watching him stride out of the magnificent drawing room, over three ancient and rich Turkey carpets, past some furnishings that dated back to before Henry VIII. She paused a moment before leaving the Green Cube Room and looked up. All the beams in the vast ceiling were intricately carved, showing the family coat of arms in too many places as well as a series of interesting geometric patterns that struck her as designs for their own sakes. In between the beams various scenes were painted, beginning with Medieval tableaus and moving up well into the sixteenth century. There were beautifully painted figures of men and women, the colors still rich and vibrant even after so many years, the expressions on their faces still clear as well. Where the beams met the top of the wall, there were an abundance of smiling cherubs, too many, all pink and white, gazing with dewy Classical eyes upon warriors with swords and shields, painted like a foot-wide swatch of mural at the top of the walls. This last addition had been made only in the last century by an earl of Chase with more guineas than discrimination. The former older scenes were much better executed, the men and women depicted in a far more realistic manner, down to the lute strings of a Medieval young man playing for the lady before him.
The Duchess looked back down into the fire. What would Marcus have to say to her after Mr. Wicks’s visit? She remembered him as such a wild young man, forever leading Charlie and Mark into the most appalling mischief. But then he’d bought a commission in the army and had been out of her life for five years. She wondered if he would still be as wild as a winter storm instead of the moralistic bore he’d become upon gaining his coronet if he were still in the army. He’d been the devil’s own son, that’s what her father had called him with a good deal of fondness, perhaps even respect. At least before Charlie and Mark had died there’d been fondness. She wondered what her father would call him now.
Whyever did he feel it his duty to prose on and on instead of laugh and view his new station in life with optimism and pleasure rather than grimness and a dour sense of duty? She wondered what he was doing now—hopefully he was taking deep breaths—for he’d left nearly on the verge of apoplexy.
Actually, Marcus was only on the verge of profound brooding. He allowed Spears to assist him out of his coat, which he normally didn’t do. He wasn’t helpless, for God’s sake. He remembered his batman, Connally, who’d spat on the floor of the tent, staring at his coat even as he held it for Marcus to shrug on, as if it were a snake to bite him. Poor Connally had been shot, going down beneath his horse, crushed to death. Marcus said now under his breath, “Bloody girl. She’ll end up strangled if she doesn’t change her ways, that or fall into the arms of a scoundrel.”
“May I ask what ways, my lord?”
“Your ears are a great deal too sharp, Spears. All right, the Duchess has secrets. She breeds them, she holds them tightly to her bosom. She won’t tell me the truth about how she kept that damnable cottage, how she paid Badger, how she bought food, how she—”
“I quite understand, my lord.”
“She just stands there, looking all calm and unruffled, and giving one of those stingy little smiles of hers and doesn’t say anything. I can’t even make her angry and the good Lord knows I pushed and baited and mocked. I did my damndest. Why won’t she tell me anything?”
Marcus pulled away from Spears’s ministering hands to pull loose his cravat and fling it onto the massive bed. “She has the damnable gall to inform me that she intends to leave for London on Boxing Day. I set her aright on that, I tell you.”
“May I ask what your lordship set aright?”
“I told her I would soon be her guardian. She will do what I tell her to until she’s twenty-one. If I can push it through, she will be under my control until she’s twenty-five.” Marcus stopped, frowned down at his left boot that was proving recalcitrant.
“Sit down, my lord, and allow me to remove it.”
Marcus sat, saying, “Even if I managed to be her guardian until she was twenty-five, she would probably marry the first man to ask just to spite me. But she would never raise her voice, no matter what I did, Spears, oh no, she wouldn’t deign to do that. That is doubtless beyond the scope of her emotional repertoire. No, she would just look at me like I was a seed in her garden, an unwanted seed that would sprout a weed.”
“Surely not that sort of seed, my lord. You are, after all, the earl of Chase. Perhaps you would be contemplated a bulb, not a seed.”
“Or maybe even a worm.”
“All things are possible, my lord.”
“She’s a damned twit. Are you mocking me, Spears?”
“Certainly not, my lord. The very thought offends deeply. Your other boot, my lord.”
Marcus stuck out his other foot, still mulling and brooding and sprinkling all of it with an occasional curse. “This bloody Mr. Wicks who’s coming on the morrow, what the hell does he want? What’s going on?”
“I daresay we will know soon now, my lord. I recommend, my lord, that you allow Mr. Badger to remain at Chase Park. He’s a man of excellent skills and his brain is of the first order.”
“He was her damned chef.”
“Yes, I will speak to Mrs. Gooseberry. Perhaps she can be, er, cozied into allowing Mr. Badger to prepare an occasional meal for the family.”
“You miss the point, Spears. She was living with Badger, alone, together. It isn’t done. She’s barely nineteen years old.”
“Your lordship surely realizes that Mr. Badger could be her father. He loves her deeply, just as a father ought to love his offspring. He would never harm her. He would protect her with his life.”
So would I, Marcus thought, then cursed. He was now standing naked in front of a blazing fire, his hands outstretched to the flames.
“Would you care for a nightshirt tonight, my lord? I understand from Biddle, the second footman who has lived here his entire life, indeed, whose family has lived here for six generations, that tonight will bring frigid temperatures.”
“No,” Marcus said as he scratched his side. “No nightshirt. The bloody things belong on women, not on men. What do you think this Wicks fellow wants, Spears?”
“I couldn’t say, my lord. However, if you would care to get into bed, you could spend some time thinking about the possibilities. You would be warm rather than cold.”
Marcus said nothing, merely climbed into the huge bed, sinking down instantly into the cocoon of warmth. Spears had used a warming pan and Marcus sighed with pleasure. It was quite unlike lying between the two thin blankets on the floor of his tent in Portugal.
“Is there anything else your lordship requires?”
“Humm? Oh no, thank you, Spears. Oh, have you seen Esmee?”
“Esmee, the last time I came into rather close contact with her, my lord, was stretched on her belly in front of this fireplace, sleepi
ng quite soundly.”
“Ouch! Here she is, Spears. After you warmed the sheets, she must have decided this was softer than the damned floor. It’s disconcerting when she wraps herself around my belly.”
“She’s a very affectionate feline, my lord.”
Marcus grunted at that and Spears appreciated his lordship’s obvious verbal restraint.
“Sleep well, my lord. We will see this Mr. Wicks soon enough.”
Mr. Wicks arrived the following morning at eleven o’clock. Marcus watched the old gentleman step gingerly down from the carriage. He couldn’t make out his features for he was swathed in a huge muffler, a fur hat with ear flaps, and at least three scarves, all intertwined over his greatcoat, an immensely thick wool affair that nearly dragged the ground.
He walked back into his library, guessing it would take Mr. Wicks at least a half an hour to be divested of his outer garments.
When Sampson gently knocked on the door and entered quietly, Marcus merely turned and raised a black brow at him.
“Mr. Wicks requests that the Duchess be present, my lord. Actually, he, er, insists she be present.”
“He does, does he? Well, I suspected as much, truth be told. Have her fetched, Sampson.”
“She is here, my lord, speaking right now with Mr. Wicks. She is assisting him out of all his layers of gear.”
“Ah, so kind of her,” he said, feeling testy and sounding sarcastic because he didn’t know what was going on. Well, actually he did know. Obviously Mr. Wicks had come to inform him of the amount of money his uncle had settled on her. Who cared? He would have settled money on her himself, in any case, as a dowry. He said, “When the Duchess has completed her disrobing of Mr. Wicks, do show them in, Sampson.”
It was, in truth, another ten minutes before Mr. Wicks, a scrawny, quite old, rheumy-eyed gentleman, walked into the library, the Duchess at his side. The old man looked around him with great interest. The library was a wealth of history, Marcus thought, feeling a surge of unconscious pride. He looked at the Duchess. There was no expression whatsoever on her face. She looked serene and calm as the damned mistress of the Park, as if Mr. Wicks were the vicar here to discuss an excursion to the lime wells near Bell Busk for the orphans.