“I spent my boyhood years in and out of Hardcross Manor, a part of the family, really. Richard and I were inseparable, then Lily grew up and I saw her with new eyes, and so we married. Richard was my best man; Vicky was her flower girl. Six months,” he added, “we had only six months before she was shot, before she died.” He stopped, simply couldn’t bring himself to tell how he’d run into the garden to see Lily dead, blood covering her chest, how that warm sunny day had irrevocably changed all their lives. He said only, “Someone killed her or she shot herself. Neither makes sense to me, but it is either one or the other.
“I admit I’m surprised the baron wishes to make amends, to end the antipathy between us; that is what he wrote.”
Roxanne felt tears burn her eyes. What had really happened? Why would a newly married young woman kill herself? Who would kill her? It must drive him mad to not know what happened. She cleared her throat. “Your mother is very surprised as well. She believes it is now obvious the baron realizes he was wrong about you, and wishes to apologize to you. Do you think this is true?”
“I don’t know. Richard gave me the opposite impression. We will see.”
“Well, I think it a fine idea to see what he has to say. I would like to see Richard Langworth’s face when he hears of this. I wonder, do you think he will be at Hardcross Manor as well? Do you think his father consulted him? Well, no matter. How many days does it require to get to Cornwall?”
“Three days.”
“We will leave on Wednesday?”
When he walked her to the front door some ten minutes later, Roxanne paused, laid her hand lightly on his arm. “Julian, this is an awful burden for you to carry, both the grief for your wife’s death and Richard Langworth’s belief you were responsible. I am very sorry for both.” And she wondered how he stood it, the not knowing what had happened that terrible day.
He remained standing on the doorstep, watching until her carriage disappeared from Rexford Square.
He received word that afternoon that the Blue Star, six weeks late, had arrived in Plymouth. He was on his way to Plymouth within the hour, Cannon running like the wind.
20
Lemington Square
Corinne pulled off her lovely York tan gloves. “I know only that the Blue Star at last arrived in Plymouth, and my son was gone within the hour on that beast of his. We are to leave tomorrow, yet I have heard nothing at all.”
Roxanne looked up from her sewing. “If Julian said we will leave tomorrow, then he will be back, ma’am. You’ll see.”
“But there might be trouble. It might require a lot of time for him—ah, I shall pull off my bonnet and stomp it. No, everything will be all right. Julian knows what he’s about.” But the dowager duchess continued her pacing, her lovely pale blue skirts sweeping over the Aubusson carpet. “His father was the same way, at least I think perhaps he was. It has been so very long, and I knew him for only a year and a half, but I do remember he was stubborn as a stoat, and if one continued to question him, he became silent as a rock. I was breeding, right away, and I do remember wanting to clout him upon occasion.”
Sophie laughed, couldn’t help herself. “I agree with Roxanne, ma’am. Julian will be here. I am quite interested in meeting Richard Langworth’s father and sister. So he wishes to end the ill feeling? I wonder, does this end it for his son as well?”
“We will see.”
The three ladies looked up to see Julian standing in the drawing-room doorway, Mint hovering at his elbow.
His mother rushed to him, pulled him to her, then pushed him away. “What about the Blue Star, Julian?”
He nodded to Sophie and Roxanne, who were standing next to each other, the light flooding through the bow windows, showing him for the first time the resemblance between aunt and niece—the same tilt of the head, the same winging brows.
“My ship was run aground in a storm off the coast of southern Spain. My captain sent me messages, but none got through. Repairs required nearly a month. All is well.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Roxanne said. “None of your men were hurt in the storm?”
He shook his head. “I was afraid of sabotage, but it was not.”
“So you are now richer than Croesus,” his fond mama said.
“It is close,” Julian agreed, a twinkle in his eye. He smiled down at her. “I brought you a present, Mama.”
It was in that instant that every person in the room fell in love with him, including Mint.
He presented Corinne with a two-foot-long rope of pearls, earrings, and a bracelet. They were fit for a princess, Mint said reverently, watching the pearls shimmer through Corinne’s fingers.
“Actually, they did belong to a princess,” Julian said, “a real princess named Labina Falusi. The family has fallen on hard times. I believe they wanted me to marry the princess, but I decided I preferred the pearls. My first mate, Mr. Toft, kept them with him throughout the entire voyage, since I was never sure when bandits might strike.”
“And did bandits try to rob you, Julian?” Sophie asked.
He nodded. “Outside of Naples. Fortunately, they were incompetent.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Corinne said, sliding the pearls through her fingers.
He watched his mother loop the pearls three times around her neck, then fasten on the earrings and the bracelet. He watched her rush to the large mirror over the fireplace and stare at herself.
“You look lovely, Mama.” And he saw in that moment what his father had seen when she was eighteen years old.
Corinne rushed back to him and hugged him tightly. “I love you, Julian. You drive me to madness, but never forget I love you. The pearls, they are amazing. Do you really like them?” She turned this way and that, and the pearls shimmered and glowed.
“They—you—are magnificent.”
Roxanne, Sophie, and Mint admired the pearls and loved him even more when Julian asked his mother to waltz. Roxanne rushed to the piano. Sophie sat on the sofa, watching Julian and his mama in her beautiful pearls sweeping gracefully around the drawing room.
When Roxanne stopped playing, it was to see Mrs. Eldridge and three maids crowded behind Mint in the drawing-room doorway, smiling from ear to ear.
“Excuse us, Miss Roxanne, but the lovely music, all the laughter, ah, t’were lovely,” said Mrs. Eldridge, her hands over her heart. “A man waltzing with his mama, ’tis a fine thing to see.”
Mint said, “I will bring champagne to celebrate the safe arrival of your ship, my lord.”
They drank champagne while Julian answered questions. He finally raised his hands. “That is enough. Really, all is well. I’m not certain, though, that all of you should accompany me to Hardcross Manor. I’m not certain it is reconciliation the baron seeks. I cannot believe Richard has suddenly changed his mind, particularly since he told me he had proof, so—”
Corinne interrupted him smoothly. “We have discussed it, Julian. You will consider us your reinforcements. We will not allow Baron Purley to stick a stiletto in your back. Also, Roxanne and Sophie wish to visit Ravenscar.”
Still, he didn’t like it. But he thought about Roxanne and Sophie alone here in London. With Richard Langworth. He gave it up. “Very well. We will leave very early tomorrow. It will require three days. We will take two carriages.”
On a dismal very early Wednesday morning, thick fog covering the ground, two carriages left Lemington Square.
The sun was setting on the third day when the carriages pulled to a halt in front of Hardcross Manor, sprawled atop a small rise amid rolling hills and thick maple and oak woodlands six miles east of Saint Austell, and only three miles from Ravenscar. The grounds surrounding the house were vast, covered with freshly scythed grass, smooth and green. Neat rows of flowers were beginning to burst into bloom, and trellised rosebushes stretched themselves to the sky. It was a lovely property, Julian had always thought. He realized he’d missed Hardcross, missed the baron, a man he’d known his entire life, a man
he’d always admired, until—he felt the rip of remembered pain, closed it down. The past was done and over, only pain and hatred remained. And endless regrets, and questions with no answers.
He also wished they were staying at Ravenscar, but soon, he thought, soon, they would leave Hardcross Manor.
“It reminds me of the gardens at Allegra Hall,” Sophie said, and breathed in deeply as she stepped to the graveled drive. “Roxanne is quite the gardener. Flowers and plants adore her.”
“It hasn’t changed,” Corinne said, and then she added, “I wonder what Rupert—”
Roxanne waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, “but something isn’t right. That letter of his, it leaves too much out, don’t you think? There was only a hint that he might be nearing death, but I don’t know—”
“We will see soon enough if he is sincere.”
Sophie said, “Something is wrong, Julian.”
He frowned but found his step was quicker as he walked up the wide steps to the front portico.
21
Time is nature’s way of keeping everything
from happening at once.
—WOODY ALLEN
Julian didn’t know why he was surprised, but he was. Richard Langworth stood in the now open front door, the Langworth butler at his elbow, a fine sneer on both their mouths. So this was the something Sophie felt was wrong. She’d somehow sensed that Richard was here. Well, his presence would certainly make things more interesting.
“So you brought all your ladies,” Richard said, sneer in full bloom. “Your timing, as always, Julian, is impressive. My father is anxious to see you. Since he wrote me the same time I wrote you, I decided it best that I come.” He stepped back, saw the three ladies, two maids, and Julian’s valet, Pliny, and whistled.
Julian stepped back, allowing the ladies to precede him into the long, narrow entrance hall.
The butler, Tegan, tall, straight, and more impressive than King William on a good day, cleared his throat. “His lordship instructed me to show you to the library immediately, Lord Julian. Perhaps the ladies would care to refresh themselves in the drawing room?”
“I would like to be shown to my room,” Corinne said.
“Forgive me, your grace, but dinner will be served in precisely”—he consulted his watch—“thirteen minutes. As you know, his lordship has a fondness for punctuality.”
“It is more than mere fondness, Tegan, it is an obsession with him,” Richard said. “However, if the ladies wish to refresh themselves, I am certain Julian can keep my father occupied.”
Tegan gave a short bow to Richard, gave a longer look to Julian, and escorted both him and Richard to the library, a grim, dark room Baron Purley had inhabited and loved for forty years, a room that had, as a child, made Julian uneasy—too many dark corners where an enemy could hide.
He saw Rupert Langworth, Baron Purley, closer to seventy than sixty, seated in his favorite chair, heavy and dark with elaborate carved arms, behind a massive mahogany desk of equal years. He slowly rose. He never looked away from Julian as he said, “Richard, leave us.”
Richard said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” At his father’s nod, Richard left the library, closing the door behind him.
“Come here, Julian, I wish to see you. It has been three years.”
Rupert Langworth looked hale and hearty, as fit as Julian, his full head of white hair as thick as Julian’s.
“I suppose I was expecting to see you wheezing in your deathbed, sir, bargaining with God to bring you to Him rather than to the Devil, issuing orders on what foods would be served at your funeral breakfast.”
“I didn’t wish to lay it on with a trowel, but I thought the veriest hint I might be dying and wanted to close my accounts was the only way I could think of getting you here, Julian.”
“I believe a straightforward invitation would have sufficed. I did not come alone. My mother is with me, as well as her two protégées, Roxanne Radcliffe and Sophie Wilkie. I had not expected to see Richard here. Are we to have a house party, sir?”
“No, it is more a funeral. We are to bury the hatchet.”
“In my head?”
“No.” Rupert Langworth raised a pistol and fired.
22
Julian’s breath whooshed out as the bullet slammed into a bookshelf three feet to his left. He didn’t move, merely stared at the baron.
“You see how easy it would be to kill you and end poor Richard’s obsession with you.”
His heart was still beating a mad tattoo. “That is true, sir, you could, but you would also doubtless hang.”
“For taking revenge on the man who murdered my daughter? I don’t believe a jury of my peers would find me guilty.” Rupert wiped his handkerchief over the pistol, laid it carefully back into the top desk drawer, closed the drawer.
“I am tired of repeating myself, sir. You know very well I did not shoot Lily, that I would shoot myself first.”
The baron said, “It doesn’t surprise me that you have ice water in your veins. Your father was the same way. You couldn’t frighten him, couldn’t make him tremble or quake, no matter what you said, no matter what you threatened. You never knew your father—a pity, really, for you would have admired him greatly. But he was an old man when your mother became pregnant with you. When I was a young man, he was a god to me, strong and powerful, ruling everything and everyone in his sight. He spent more time at Ravenscar than he did at his home, Mount Burney. He always loved it, the way it hunkered out over the water, the way its very presence was a threat to any enemy. He once said, I remember, that if he were a house, he would be Ravenscar—solid and enduring, and fine-looking, of course.”
Julian had never heard anything like this about his father, particularly from Baron Purley. His father—a foolish old man, he’d always thought him, even though his mother had never said anything of the sort to him. But Lorelei Monroe, his sister-in-law and the current Duchess of Brabante, had endlessly criticized the old duke, and he saw now her words had burrowed deep inside him, and he’d believed her. He felt something inside him move. He swallowed. He said slowly, “You said my father was powerful? Strong?”
Rupert nodded. “His physical strength, it was legend, but he also had a brain and speech that could mesmerize.
“His heir, your estimable half-brother Constantine, has never seemed to have the same sense of knowing who he was and his place in the world. That sounds strange, I know, given Constantine manages his ducal estates with intelligence and fairness. No, you are more like your father than Constantine is—a foolish name, I heard your father say once, but it fit the lad. As for your name, he told me it was a right and just name for you. Do you know why he selected it for you?”
Julian shook his head.
“Julian—after Julius Caesar, an emperor over millions of souls, a man above all other men in his time, a man with vision and fortitude. He told me you wouldn’t ever be a duke—you would be more. You would be a prince.”
Julian knew none of this. He said, “It is disconcerting to hear myself called prince by all here in Cornwall.”
“It doesn’t matter. As I said, it was your father’s commandment. All grew very used to calling you prince. It is what he wanted for you, and so it was. When the end was drawing near for him, he murmured, ‘My son is the Prince of Ravenscar.’ I see you did not know this. So your father never told your mother why he wished you to be called Prince.”
“When I asked my mother if I was indeed a prince, she told me only that it was what my father called me, and all followed suit.” He gave a twisted grin. “She said I was to accept it and not fret. Nothing more.” He paused, shook his head. “After Julius Caesar—my father had visions of grandeur I will never attain.”
“You are already making your mark in the modern world. Ah, your glorious mother. Your father took one look at your mother and fell tip over arse. He wanted her powerfully. Nothing Constantine s
aid, nothing the duke’s friends said, could make him change his mind. I believe he died a very content man. Your mother was so very young, innocent, and beautiful, maybe three pence to her family’s name, but they were a rapacious lot, eager to sell her to the old man. Your father didn’t care. What need had he of more money? He wanted your mother, paid her father a lot of money for her, married her, and told her family he never wished to see them again.
“When you were born, your father was happier than he’d been at Constantine’s birth. As I said, you are very much like him. And like no other—you are the prince.”
Julian said slowly, “You have known me all my life. Why have you never told me this before? You have never before spoken to me of my father—I believed him a foolish old man.”
“Forgive me, I didn’t know. Time passes so quickly and one forgets. I remember after your father died, your mother considered taking you, an infant, back to her family. Luckily, both her father and mother died of a virulent fever that struck their neighborhood. There were only cousins, none of whom she cared for, so she came to me for assistance, assistance I freely offered.”
Julian said, “I asked her once about her family, but she said they were dead. But years passed, sir, yet you never said anything to me.”
The baron shrugged. “One focuses on the present, on the people who must be dealt with, those who distract and confuse and create havoc. Things are different now.”
“Tell me more about my father.”
“It is a pity you never had the joy of knowing him, knowing how proud he would be of you. He was not only a man to admire, he was a man who saw people clearly, both men and women. Just as you do, Julian.”
Prince of Ravenscar Page 11