Dukes to Fall in Love With: A Historical Regency Romance Collection

by Bridget Barton

  “You are saying that he confessed to the thing? The Earl of Upperton admitted murdering the Countess by pushing her down the stairs?” Crawford’s eyes were as round as saucers.

  “No, he did not confess.”

  “Then I do not understand. Either her death was an accident, or it was murder; there is no middle ground. Either the Earl killed her, or he did not.”

  “He did not.” Elliot knew that he was fast reaching the point of no return.

  However, he knew in his heart that he could trust Crawford Maguire with any piece of information on God’s earth and know that it would never be uttered abroad. “He told Isabella that Anthony, the young man who will one day be the Earl of Upperton, murdered his own mother.”

  “Isabella’s younger brother pushed his own mother down the stairs?” Crawford’s mouth hung open in a way which almost made Elliot inappropriately laugh.

  “That is exactly what he told her.”

  “Then it is clear that the man would stick at nothing.” Crawford Maguire shook his head violently. “That he would blame his own son for it is appalling. The man would obviously stoop to any depth to save his own hide.”

  “But his hide was not in any danger, was it?” Elliot said quietly and studied his friend’s face. “After all, as we all knew at the time, nobody suspected the death to be a crime. To all intents and purposes, the Earl of Upperton had got away with murder. The only person who did suspect him, whom he always knew would suspect him of it, was his daughter. But he knew that she could not accuse him of it without evidence, and so he was in the clear, do you not think?”

  “Well, since you put it so succinctly, yes, he was in the clear.”

  “And Isabella believes him,” Elliot added.

  “Of all people, if Isabella believes it, I think it must be true. But really, that a boy of his age could commit such an atrocity and against his own mother is unthinkable.” Crawford was still shocked.

  “He is a product of his father’s upbringing, is he not? After all, as Isabella says, Anthony has only ever seen his mother treated with contempt. And she was treated with contempt by the only person who has instructed Anthony on how life ought to be lived. Is he not mirroring his father’s behaviour, albeit in a most extreme manner?”

  “Our fathers do have the greatest influence over us, that is true,” Crawford said thoughtfully. “But what possible reason could the young man have had to push his mother down the stairs?”

  “Isabella asked her father the same question,” Elliot said. “And this is the hardest part of all to understand. There had been no argument between them whatsoever.”

  “Nothing at all had passed between mother and son?”

  “No, the Earl of Upperton was at the bottom of the stairs and saw his wife approaching from above. As if from nowhere, Anthony stepped out and put a hand squarely on his mother’s back before shoving her hard and standing with wide eyes to watch her fall, to see her hit every step on her way down. I think the whole thing has quite frightened the Earl.”

  “I am not surprised it has frightened him. And perhaps it is time that dreadful man was made frightened by something. Perhaps it is fitting that he has been frightened by the fruits of his own labours. He instructed the young man in the ways of the world, and murdering his own mother was his interpretation of his father’s teachings.”

  “I think you have it exactly, Crawford. And in truth, that is exactly how Isabella sees it.”

  “And how is Isabella? How is she taking it all?”

  “She is not at all well, Crawford. It has hit her very hard indeed although it is true to say that there was no love lost between Isabella and her brother. He had been raised by his father to see his elder sister as beneath him, almost amongst the ranks of the servants.”

  “And I take it that Anthony was physically violent with Isabella also?” Crawford asked the question awkwardly.

  “Not until the very end, she assures me.” Elliot felt his stomach tighten, knowing that he would have to tell the tale. “Some weeks before she was due to come here to Coldwell Hall and marry me, Isabella attempted an escape from Upperton Hall.”

  “I had no idea.” Crawford sounded amazed.

  “And neither did I, until Isabella and I talked. You see, I asked her exactly the same question as you did. I asked her if Anthony had ever been violent towards her, had ever hurt her physically. She told me that he had only done so once. Naturally, I asked her to recount the circumstances for I should now like to have a better account of that young man’s character. And that is when she told me of the plan she had made to escape her family and make her way to Ireland. As a matter of fact, to escape me if the truth be known.”

  “But that is before you knew her and before she knew you, my dear fellow.”

  “I cannot see how that makes it better, Crawford. In the dead of night, Isabella attempted to creep out of her house and into the town to walk through the darkness so that she might get onto the earliest post-chaise unseen. For a young woman to be forced to do that rekindles the shame that I felt at the time.”

  “She clearly did not make it out of Upperton Hall,” Crawford said and seemed keen to have the rest of the story.

  “She had crept down the great staircase and made her way almost to the door before her brother appeared. And I shudder to think about it, but it is very clear from her telling of it that he knew well that she planned to escape. He had found in her bag a timetable of sailings from Liverpool to Ireland and, instead of taking the thing straight to his father, he sought to capture her himself. That dreadful child must have waited night after night in the darkness of the hall to see if his sister would try to make her escape. I am only grateful now that he did not apprehend her on the stairs, for the Lord only knows what would have happened to her.”

  “And so, he physically stopped her?”

  “He pulled her back through the hall by her hair. And apparently, he did not let go until his father instructed him to do so. That his ungentlemanly brutality was witnessed by so many of their servants did not bother the young man at all. He cared only for his father’s opinion on the matter.”

  “The child is surely a monster.”

  “He was raised to be a monster by a monster, that is my genuine belief.”

  “But I do not see how Isabella can be blamed for it.”

  “Good heavens, I would never blame Isabella for such a thing. What on earth gives you such an idea, Crawford?”

  “I daresay it is the fact that you now seek information on how an annulment to your marriage might be obtained. Surely that is punishment, is it not?”

  “I do not seek to have the marriage annulled as a means of punishing Isabella, but as a means of setting her free.”

  “But how would that be setting her free? I do not understand.”

  “Isabella has lived her life with a man who was so awful he has raised a son who would kill his own mother. What that woman must have suffered in her life, I cannot begin to imagine. And then, there was I, a man so lonely that he would do any selfish thing to alleviate that loneliness.”

  “You cannot compare yourself to the Earl of Upperton, Elliot,” Crawford said firmly.

  “I do not compare myself to him. Not exactly, at any rate. But I have her a prisoner here as much as her father and brother had kept her prisoner at Upperton Hall. Her entire life has been ordered by others, myself included.”

  “Elliot, that is not exactly the case. And is it not true of many young women that they do not have great choices in this life?”

  “That does not make it right, does it?”

  “No, it does not. But you have given your wife many great freedoms. You have not kept her a prisoner for a moment. She is allowed any visitor she chooses, you have made that very clear. And she might visit whomever she chooses, you have made that clear also. So how is it that you think you have made a prisoner of Isabella?”

  “Because I cannot go out with her into the world, and I know that she would wish it.
”

  “I am sure that she would wish it, but that is something that will come with time.”

  “No, it will not come with time,” Elliot said determinedly. “My attendance at her mother’s funeral taught me as much. I will not go out again.”

  “That was but one expedition, Elliot. The first in a great many years. What on earth did you expect to feel?”

  “I do not want the society of the world outside, Crawford, that is not going to change. And I do not want to keep my wife a prisoner of my own idiosyncrasies, and so I must beg you to do what you can to help me secure an annulment. No, I know that securing an annulment will not be easy, but you must give me your word that you will attempt it. You must find out as much as you can about the process, I beg of you.”

  “Of course,” Crawford said looking almost as downcast as the Duke.

  Chapter 28

  “After we had spent all those minutes together talking after your mother’s funeral, I would have imagined the Duke would have been sitting for afternoon tea with us today,” Esme said and was clearly disappointed.

  “Please believe me when I tell you that it is certainly nothing to do with you that Elliot is not here with us today. In truth, I think it has more to do with me.”

  “Do you mean because of what your father told you about Anthony?” Esme said in a whisper as the two of them sat cloistered in the drawing room of Coldwell Hall.

  It was only Esme’s second visit, and already she seemed at home there, just as she had always seemed at home at Upperton Hall. It was very likely that it did not matter where she and her friend sat down to talk, Esme was most comfortable.

  “Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Ever since we sat down and talked about it, Elliot has been very quiet. I know that he does not blame me exactly for what happened, but I cannot help thinking that he finds me now to be a little tainted by association. After all, the same man who raised Anthony raised me, did he not?”

  “That might be so, but that same man raised you both very differently. He did not raise you to be arrogant and entitled. He did not raise you to be cruel and intimidating. He raised your brother to be those things, and he now reaps the benefits of that. But I cannot believe for a moment that Elliot would think you in any way the same. I can hardly believe that he would think you in any way affected.” Esme had finished her tea and was reaching forward to pour them both another.

  “It is all that I can think of which explains his absence and his extreme quiet when we are together. We have not played music in the library for many days, since before I heard of my mother’s death.”

  “Perhaps that is why, Isabella. Perhaps the Duke is giving you time to adjust to the awful shock of hearing that your mother had died and the even greater shock of hearing of the manner of her passing. Perhaps he is giving you some time in which to adjust to it all. Everything you have told me of the Duke would lead me to suspect him of being a very kind and considerate sort of a man. And I must say, all the better for meeting in person.” Esme gave a broad smile.

  “I still have yet to thank you for resolutely ignoring the hood that my husband wore to my mother’s funeral when everybody else could do nothing but stare right at it,” Isabella said and smiled in return.

  “What hood?” Esme said and then chuckled.

  “Esme, whatever would I do without you?”

  “I am sure that you would manage, but I should not like to test the theory.”

  “And neither would I.”

  “I do think that it might take a little time for you to adjust to everything that happened, Isabella. I know that you and the Duke were getting on better and better all the time, but all is not lost. You will get back to where you were before all this sadness and tragedy occurred. Just give it time and a little patience.”

  “It had taken so long for us to get to where we were, and it was so tentative, almost precarious, that I do not know if we will ever achieve such a moment again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we had become a little close on the last evening we were together, just before dear Crawford Maguire came with the dreadful news.”

  “Close how?” Esme sat bolt upright and put her teacup down on her saucer with a clang. “What do you mean? Spare me none of the details, miss nothing out.” Esme was full of excitement.

  “It was nothing very serious,” Isabella said, but she knew that her cheeks were flushing scarlet.

  She had thought of that evening more than once and, when she did, it always brought a rosy glow to her face. Whenever she closed her eyes and remembered him behind her, his hands over hers as she worked the bow and held the violin, it was almost as if she could still feel him there.

  He had covered her hands with his own most firmly, and she remembered the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. It had been the most intimate moment of her entire life, despite the fact that she had been married for some months.

  She knew that her feelings towards him had changed again that night. It seemed to her that her feelings for him changed a little here and there as every day passed. But some of the changes were bigger than others, more memorable somehow, and that was certainly the most memorable change of them all.

  It was the night when Elliot Covington, the man, had become attractive to her. Not the Duke, and not just the beautiful, unblemished side of his face, but everything about him, inside and out.

  And then there had come the knock on the door which had changed everything, had set them back so far that she did not know if they would ever return to that moment again.

  “Serious enough to make you blush, my dear. For goodness sake, tell me all of it.” Esme had risen from her own armchair and scampered around the low table to sit next to her friend so closely on the couch that there was not even space for a feather between them.

  In the end, Isabella had told her everything. Esme was her oldest and finest friend, after all, and were these not the very things that friends expected to hear? Had it been the other way around, Isabella knew that she would have pressed Esme for every delicious moment.

  And it had been wonderful to say it out loud. It had given Isabella a little thrill of excitement to see the look of wonder on Esme’s face. A very important moment had, indeed, passed between man and wife, and the look on Esme’s face was somehow confirmation of it.

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Esme said over and over again throughout the telling of the tale. “How very romantic.”

  “Do you think it is romantic, Esme?” Isabella said as she felt uncertainty creep over her once more.

  “Of course, I do,” Esme said dumbfounded. “Why? Do you not think it is so?”

  “At the time I did, yes. In truth, I am sure I felt it. But in these last days, I cannot help thinking that I have somehow mistaken it all. It is as if it could not have possibly been that Elliot and I were ever so close. It is hard to explain, but I cannot imagine he thinks of that night as I do. If he even thinks of it at all.”

  “That cannot be true. Not if everything which passed between you was exactly as you told it to me.”

  “It was.”

  “Then the Duke cannot fail to have been moved by it. Think about it, Isabella. The Duke, a man who has spent the better part of eighteen years alone, barring his friend and his servants, would surely have been starved of the finer feelings of closeness. For him to have been so close as to be touching you that night must be among the things he will never forget as long as he lives. Isabella, it cannot have meant nothing to him. It cannot possibly have meant nothing to him. Do you not see?”

  “When you explain it out as you do, yes, I do see. But then what can explain his behaviour towards me now? I cannot quite put it into words, Esme, but Elliot is so very distant currently. I accept what you say that he might be giving me room for adjustment in trying times, but his determination to be away from me is something that I find peculiarly hurtful.”

  “And you are sure that he is determined to be away from you?”


  “Yes, I am. I have sat in the library night after night playing the piano and waiting for him. And now I do not even bother to play; I sit there in silence staring down at the keys and wishing that he would come. But he does not come, Esme. He stays away.”

  “It strikes me that you must speak to him about it,” Esme said and held up a hand when Isabella made to object. “What have you to lose by speaking to him? As far as I can see, that is the only way that you will have an answer in all of this. And for reasons best known to yourself, actually speaking to him, actually asking outright, is something that you have avoided more than once since you have been married. But I cannot help saying that it is surely the most sensible and practical path to take in all of this. If you do not ask him, you are simply flailing around blind, are you not?”