“Did he … survive?”
Francesca shook her head for a long time, her chin wobbling with grief-stricken sobs she seemed determined to hold back. “I’ve looked for him everywhere, but there’s no sign of Declan Chandler ever having been born. He was an orphan, after all, and if his mother never recorded his birth, then … he wouldn’t be missed. What if his poor little body was left there in the woods somewhere, or possibly a bog or a lake? I have this nightmare that I’m the only one left alive who even remembers he existed.” A few sobs broke through her slender throat, hoarse little sounds raw enough to mirror the pain in Alexandra’s heart.
“You loved him,” Alexandra realized.
“Pippa loved him,” she sniffed. “And he loved Francesca. And Fernand loved Pippa. When it wasn’t a bevy of little heartbreaks, it was the most wonderful childhood one could imagine.”
They remained silent for a tear-fraught moment, trying to digest the scope of the tragedy before Alexandra finally asked the inevitable. “When did you become Francesca? Or, I suppose I’m asking, why did you become her?”
“The Mont Claire title was not entailed to primogeniture. Which meant if any one of the Cavendish children survived, male or female, they would be the heir to the entire estate. And so, the gypsies who were allowed to live on the estate took me in, dyed my hair red with henna, and the moment all the paperwork was in order, the trustees and clerks bribed, and my ‘godparents’ established by paper trail, I became Francesca Cavendish. After I was presented to the courts, it was decided I’d be sent to a boarding school out of the country.”
“Why did the gypsies go through all that trouble?” Cecelia wondered. “For the Mont Claire money?”
“No,” Francesca insisted. “No, money means nothing to gypsies. They did it for the same reason I remain in this farce of a life to this day…”
She turned her head toward Alexandra again, and the fire reignited behind her irises.
Alexandra nodded, her throat clogged with emotion. “Revenge.”
“Exactly.” Francesca kissed Alexandra on the cheek, her gaze a mix of ferocity and an aching kindness. “Alexander. I will always keep the secret of this murder in our past, if you will keep the secret of the murder in my future. For when I find out who is responsible for the death of my family…” She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to.
Alexandra returned the kiss, tasting the mingled salt of their tears.
Francesca looked to where Cecelia dashed moisture from her cheeks. “I’m so sorry for you both.” She hiccupped around a delicate sob.
Alexandra’s shoulders came off the bed and she clung to them both. “You two are my family,” she swore. “I will have no husband or children. No man would have me and … and I want none. Never. I never want to be touched again.”
“Nor I,” Francesca nearly snarled. “Men are vile, demanding, violent cretins. We are best off without them.”
“I agree,” Cecelia whispered. “I’ve never known marriage to be a happy institution. Our lives will take us so many places, but we’ll always have each other to return to. To holiday with. To rely upon. We are bound by blood now, as tightly as any family.”
Alexandra lay back down, spreading her hand on her chest, just above her heart. She placed Francesca’s palm over hers, and Cecelia followed suit. “We are eternally bound,” she repeated. “By secrets, blood, and pain.”
“And by trust, passion, and revenge,” Francesca added darkly.
“And by friendship, love, and…” Cecelia sniffed, pressing on the hands beneath her, as if she could touch the heart below it. “And hope. For without that, what reason do we have to endure?”
The enormity of the night crashed through Alexandra with all the strength of a rogue wave, threatening to drown her in despair. When her friends would have pulled away, she clung to them. Without another word, they curled around her, creating a nest with their bodies and the darkness.
In that moment, they were the only ones in the whole world.
But they weren’t. Morning would come, and everyone would know. Or they wouldn’t. The headmaster would be discovered missing. The intensifying burn between her legs might be unimaginably worse. And she was already feeling dirty again. Aching for another bath.
She’d have to learn to hide who she was. Who he’d made her.
A murderess.
God. What if she couldn’t keep such a dark secret?
Anguish overwhelmed her until Cecelia huddled closer, her lips grazing Alexandra’s ear in the dark. “You’ll always be haunted by this night,” she whispered, tinged with agony no one her age should bear. “You’ll forever miss what was taken from you. But your body will heal, Alexander, and you’ll get stronger.”
Francesca pressed her forehead to her temple, kissing at a tear. “Your heart will learn to beat again. Until that happens, I’ll protect you. I promise.”
They’d protect each other, Alexandra fervently swore.
Whatever it took.
CHAPTER ONE
Maynemouth, Devonshire, 1890
Ten years later
Alexander,
Accept the invitation to Castle Redmayne.
I’m in danger. I need you.
—Frank
Alexandra Lane had spent the entire train ride from London to Devonshire meticulously pondering those fourteen words for two separate reasons.
The first, she had been unable to stop fretting for Francesca, who tended to give more than the appropriate amount of context. The terse, vague note Alexandra now held was more of a warning than the message contained therein.
The second, she could no longer afford a first-class, private railcar, and had, for the last several tense hours, been forced to share her vestibule face-to-face with a rough-featured, stocky man with shoulders made for labor.
Alone.
He’d attempted polite conversation at first, which she’d rebuffed with equal civility by feigning interest in her correspondence. By now, however, they were both painfully aware she needn’t take four stops to read two letters.
It was terribly rude, she knew. Her carpetbag remained clutched in her fist the entire time, except when her hand would wander into its depths to palm the tiny pistol she always carried. The sounds of the other passengers in adjoining vestibules didn’t make her feel safer, per se.
But she knew they would hear her scream, and that provided some relief.
For a woman who’d spent a great deal of the last ten years in the company of men, she’d thought these painful moments would have relented by now.
Alas, she’d become a mistress of manipulating a situation so, even if she had to endure the company of men without a female companion, there would be more than one man. In the circles she tended to frequent, people behaved when in company.
It had worked thus far.
Alexandra braced herself against the slowing of the train, breathing a silent prayer of relief that they’d finally arrived. She’d been terrified that if she’d glanced up once, she’d be forced into conversation with her unwanted companion.
Rain wept against the coach window, and the shadows of the tears painted macabre little serpents on the conflicting documents in her hands. One, a wedding invitation. The other, Francesca’s alarming note.
A month past, she’d have wagered her entire inheritance against Francesca Cavendish’s being the first of the Red Rogues to capitulate to the bonds of matrimony.
A month past, she’d assumed she’d had an inheritance to wager.
Their little society had seemed destined to live up to the promise they’d once made as young, disenchanted girls to never marry.
Until the invitation to an engagement masquerade—given by the Duke of Redmayne—had arrived the same day of her friend’s cryptic and startling note.
The invitation had been equally as ambiguous, stating that the future duchess of Redmayne would be unveiled, as it were, at the ball. Included in Alexandra’s particular envelope was a request fo
r her to attend as a bridesmaid.
The subsequent plea for help from Francesca—Frank—had arrived in a tiny envelope with the Red Rogue seal they’d commissioned some years prior.
Alexandra hadn’t even known Francesca had returned from her romps about the Continent. Last she’d heard, the countess had been in Morocco, doing reconnaissance of some sort. Nothing in her letters had mentioned a suitor. Not a serious one, in any case. Certainly not a duke.
Francesca had a talent for mischief and a tendency to interpret danger as mere adventure.
So, what could possibly frighten her fearless friend?
Marriage, obviously, Alexandra thought with a smirk. A risky venture, to be sure.
And dangerous.
Alexandra smoothed her traveling skirts, whose smart tweed became more worn and forlorn with each passing year.
She should have taken better care of it. She shouldn’t have taken for granted that her father would always be able to buy her another.
The train trundled up to the Maynemouth platform with a series of lurches, sending the man’s briefcase tumbling from the seat beside him. It landed at her feet before sliding half beneath her skirts.
“Sorry, madam,” he said in heavily accented Continental English as he leaned toward her lap, reaching for the briefcase below her. “I’ll just—”
Alexandra surged to her feet, staggering toward the vestibule door. She burst into the narrow hall, stabilizing herself against the dark wood wainscoting as she passed the more judicious travelers who waited until the train came to a complete stop before disembarking.
Could she have acted more absurd?
Yes. And she had, a multitude of times.
She clung to a rail by the door as the train came to a halt, and leaped into the Devon seastorm the moment the porter opened the door.
She’d forget this interaction, she reminded herself as she sought cover beneath the overhang to wait for her luggage. She always did. Embarrassment was nothing compared to safety.
A half hour later, Alexandra nervously chewed her lip as she stood on the platform, lost in a billow of engine steam and sea mist, ready to debark to the infamous Castle Redmayne.
If Cecelia ever arrived.
The coach was supposed to have met her a quarter hour past, but Alexandra might have known her sweet, disorderly friend would be tardy. As good as the woman was with numbers, a concept as simple as time confounded her. Thus, Cecelia forever functioned a half hour behind the rest of the world.
“You got a chaperone, miss?” The endearingly young, knobby-jointed porter with what appeared to be a penciled-on mustache eyed her impertinently. Smythe, his gleaming name badge christened him. “I got to be about me work, see, but I don’t like to be leaving you alone. We’re running like rats wot with all the toffs arriving for the grand wedding. And … no offense meant, miss, but me mother’s sick, and I’d rather not lose out on the gratuity by standing still.”
By standing next to an impoverished spinster, he didn’t say.
He didn’t have to.
“Of course.” Alexandra didn’t bother to explain that she happened to be one of the bridesmaids in the aforementioned grand wedding. Nor did she inform him of her status as one of the “toffs” to which he referred. It would have been well within her privilege as the daughter of an earl to demand he address her as “my lady” rather than “miss.”
Instead, she gathered a precious ha’penny from the carpetbag she’d acquired in Cairo, and pressed it into the young man’s glove. “Someone will be along to collect me shortly. Thank you.”
She enjoyed a bit of relief when the porter scurried away in search of peerage. Indeed, there were plenty more to be found disembarking the train.
She could attest to that, as she’d been avoiding as many as she could.
In case they’d seen her in second class.
In case they’d heard of her family’s recently reduced circumstances, and felt the need to remark upon their spinster daughter who was now too old, and too clever, to catch a husband.
If they only knew the truth. What would they say then?
It had been heavy carrying one devastating shame around for a decade. She’d underestimated what the weight of a second scandal would do to her.
It would all be over soon, she supposed. The news of her family’s financial ruin wouldn’t stay secret for long. And when what was left of her money ran out, her long-ago transgression would be revealed as a direct result.
Because if one couldn’t pay one’s bills, one certainly couldn’t pay one’s blackmailer.
Better that Francesca marry now and have the designation of duchess when the scandal broke.
And Cecelia, dear kind Cecelia, didn’t have the responsibility of a title, nor did she have the protection of one. Her reputation meant little to her, mostly because she was a rather obscure woman in all but her immediate academic circle.
But reputation was nothing next to the hangman’s noose … and they all might be in danger of that.
Pressing her hand against a pitch of dread in her stomach, Alexandra hid herself behind her meager hill of luggage. A hill because, by comparison, the piles of trunks, hat cases, and garment bags currently being carted from the train were veritable mountains rising from the mists.
The Earl and Countess Bevelstoke hurried past, tucked tightly into their furs and cloaks as an army of servants and porters—Smythe, included—conducted their things in the direction of an ostentatious coach.
Lord and Lady Bevelstoke had once been counted among her parents’ most intimate society.
Until lately.
Luckily, the train belched another whoosh of steam, further concealing her from their view.
“Alexandra? Lady Alexandra Lane? Can that possibly be you?”
Alexandra flinched at the sound of her name, but broke into a genuine smile at whom she found behind her.
“Julia? Julia Throckmorton?” she greeted.
They embraced with the exuberance of long-parted friends, and stepped apart to examine what the years had done to each other. They’d been kinder to Julia than to her, as her old school chum was bedecked in more pearls and sapphires than a traveling kit warranted.
“How long has it been?” Alexandra asked.
Julia tucked an errant golden ringlet into her stylish cap, pursing her lips together. “Six years, at least,” she recalled. “Our last drink at the café in Boston the summer my husband took us on the grand tour of New England. Then it was de Chardonne before that. Can you believe it’s been ten years?”
“I cannot,” she answered honestly. It felt like only yesterday, and yet another lifetime ago. “Where is Lord Throckmorton? You’re both here for the wedding, I presume?”
Julia’s bright eyes dimmed along with her smile. “Of course, you haven’t heard. You were in Greece two years ago when my husband passed.”
Alexandra gripped her hand. “Oh, Julia, I’m so sorry. I hadn’t heard, and when I’m in the field, I never read the papers. I’m hopeless at correspondence. Forgive me for not writing.”
“Don’t think of it.” Julia’s smile was tighter when it returned. “I know you’ve enough on your mind as it is, poor dear.” She patted Alexandra’s hand in a manner almost condescending, as though reminding Alexandra of her diminished circumstances without being gauche enough to lend them voice.
Oh, yes, this was why Julia, generally considered a friend, had never been inducted into the Red Rogues. It wasn’t the lack of the red hue in her hair, it was her propensity to be a bit priggish. Not that she had a reason to feel superior, she’d been married off to Lord Walther Throckmorton, the Viscount Leighton. A man twenty years her senior and at least double that in weight due to his excessive drinking.
“Can you imagine, a dowager at my age? Though Lord Throckmorton left me a vulgar fortune,” Julia whispered, increasing the vulgarity by mentioning it. “And now I’m enjoying jaunting about all of Christendom with Lord and Lady Bevelstoke.”
If Julia noticed, she didn’t mention. “How mysterious this Duke of Redmayne is. I’ve heard he’s beastly. Have you any idea to whom he’s engaged?”
“I couldn’t possibly say.” Alexandra sighed, already tiring of the gossip. Although she had to admit she’d enjoy Julia’s astonishment when Francesca was revealed as the bride.
They’d never got on.
“Lady Throckmorton,” Lady Bevelstoke called over the increasing storm from the coach. “We really should go, we’ve important society waiting upon our arrival.”
Alexandra didn’t miss the slight emphasis she’d placed upon the word.
“Let’s do catch up.” Julia kissed her on both cheeks and burrowed further into her furs as a footman held an umbrella over her all the way to the coach. “Au revoir.”
The slap of the whip sent the Bevelstoke carriage axles grinding toward one of the oldest, and perhaps grandest, fortresses still standing on British soil.
Castle Redmayne.
Alexandra scanned the storm, wondering if the castle, or the sea, was visible from here on a clear day. The weather was both peculiar and ominous. Evening darkness loomed much earlier than usual. The raucous clouds so heavy, they appeared black in some places. The storm was lively with lightning, and yet an ethereal fog clung to the ground, refusing to be dispelled by the rain. Displaced by the knees of scurrying travelers, it swirled and eddied, lending an elegance to the bustle.
The small village of Maynemouth hunkered nearby. Charming streets lined with businesses built tight to the rails. The attractive crofts, cottages, and stately homes gleamed farther up the hill, so the clamor of the train and the bustle of industry didn’t disturb their infamous Southern tranquility.
A bitter sudden gust drove little needles of rain sideways. As Alexandra and her things had been abandoned at the edge of the awning, the storm and the runoff combined their efforts with the wind to soak her threadbare travel kit clean through.
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Page 3