Loving Tales of Lords and Ladies

by Abigail Agar

  The Duke lay cold and blue in the alley. Penelope raced forward to grasp the man and pull him to safety, but unseen hands yanked him away. She screamed for fear of his fate.

  There was nothing to do but to follow into the deep blackness, and yet Penelope waited. She listened. She pleaded that she should hear something. And she did.

  She heard that scraping noise of wood on stone. She heard it, and she had heard it that night. Penelope remembered it as if she would never forget the sound. She remembered it like the beat of her blood in her ears.

  Penelope took a step forward but found her way barred. Her arms held by her parents and nobles with mouths that moved but said nothing stood in her way. Penelope yelled at them, but they were deaf to reason.

  She woke up with a start in her own bed. Penelope felt the blankets to assure herself that she was indeed not surrounded by the stones of the alley. Sinking back into her pillows she sobbed to release the feelings that the dream had left in her chest.

  ***

  As Penelope lay sobbing in her bed, something made her stop and take notice. She lifted her head from the pillows. Penelope frowned as she heard a noise from down the hall. It took her a moment to realise that the noise was not just in her mind, some trick of her nightmare-laden brain. She could not place the sound.

  Getting up, Penelope pulled on her dressing gown and went to the door. She leaned near the door and listened. Was that footsteps? Penelope frowned and turned the doorknob slowly. The thuds seemed to be coming closer and then going further away as if someone were pacing up and down the hallway.

  She pulled the door open and peered out. She could hear the footsteps more clearly, and she felt certain now that it was just someone in the hall, but she could not say who it was. Penelope slipped out into the hall.

  Further down the hall near the top of the stairs, she saw a figure walking back and forth in the moonlight. Her heart forgot to beat for a fraction of a second as the Duke strode through the moonlight. She could not say what he was doing. Penelope’s forehead wrinkled up. The man seemed to be unaware of her presence, and she crept forward slowly.

  He paused for a moment to stare out the window and then swung around to walk again. The man looked agitated. He paced with his head bent, and his hands seemed to move as if he were talking. Perhaps he was having a conversation with himself.

  Penelope said, “Pray, are you having an argument with the ghosts?”

  The Duke startled, and Penelope had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing at the sight. He stared at her for a moment then he too chuckled, and Penelope did not feel so bad for her reaction. “I certainly thought a ghost had me for a moment there,” the Duke said with humour.

  Penelope remarked, “You must be feeling better if you can stand to be out here walking so.”

  “It hurts, but at least that means I am alive,” the Duke said. “That night that I was attacked, while I was brought here and cared for, I was in a forest.”

  Penelope did not know quite what to say. It was such an odd thing to say. The Duke’s tone was slightly unnerving. Penelope had heard of people having anxiety and bouts of uncontrollable fear after such things. Soldiers returning from war often had the ailment as they relived what happened repeatedly in their minds.

  “Are you well?” Penelope asked the man as she took another step forward.

  He nodded, then he frowned, and he seemed to be giving the matter some thought. At length, he said, “I am better than I was.”

  “That might not be saying much if you were worse than this,” Penelope said and then added, “Your Grace.”

  The Duke laughed then. “When you call me that it sounds for all the world like an insult and slur.”

  Penelope watched the man’s mirth. She had wondered what he looked like lost in laughter, and here he was. Penelope decided the Duke looked unhinged, beautifully unhinged. He looked like a depraved prince bathed in moonlight, laughing as his kingdom burned.

  “I do not truly mean to insult you,” Penelope assured the man. “I just often only remember it as I finish speaking, and I find things that do not flow naturally often sound as if we are forcing ourselves to say something unpleasant.”

  The man shrugged. “You could call me by my name.”

  “I could not,” Penelope said with a nervous laugh. “That would be—”

  “Scandalous?” the Duke finished. Penelope nodded, and he asked, “You are alone with me in the middle of the night. It is intimate.”

  Penelope looked around and fretted her bottom lip. “I should go—” She was going to say that she should go before someone saw them, but she never got the chance to finish her words. The Duke grasped her arm. He moved quicker, was stronger than she thought a man who had recently visited death could possibly be.

  Before she could even fathom a scream, she was tugged into a nearby room that was empty. The Duke shut the door behind them, and Penelope stared at him not sure what to do. She should yell by all accounts, but what then? Would anyone hear her?

  “Please, do not fear me,” the Duke pleaded. “I just want to talk to you.”

  Penelope put her hands on her hips. “We were talking before we came in here.”

  “I wanted to talk somewhere we would not be overheard,” the Duke clarified.

  Penelope whispered, “Oh. What would we talk of then?” She forgot that they were cloistered in a room that they should not be in at an hour that they should not be speaking. Penelope had wanted nothing more than to speak with the man, and that was all they were doing. What was the harm in that?

  The Duke said quietly, “I was in a forest, and I kept hearing things. My parents came to me and told me horrible things. My friends whispered that I should have died. I found I did not disagree with anything that anyone said. I had tried my best, but that just was not good enough.”

  Penelope stared at the man. “I have heard that we dream when we die,” Penelope said in a quiet voice. “I do not think what you saw was real. I think it was what you fear.”

  “If it was a trial, then I am afraid I probably did not pass,” the Duke admitted. There was a tremor to the man’s hands, and Penelope reached out to place her hand on top of one of his hands. It felt so cool beneath her touch that she folded her hands around his larger hand.

  He looked at her hand in what could have been wonder. They stared at each other for a long moment before Penelope asked, “What will you do now?”

  The Duke shook his head. “Truthfully, I do not know. I was following a man when I was attacked.”

  “You think it was that same man who attacked you?” Penelope asked in concern. She did not like the thought of the Duke in danger. Memories of her nightmare nagged at her, but she pushed them aside. Penelope dared not say such for fear that the man might stop talking of that night. Penelope had longed to know what happened, and if he stopped talking now, then he might very well never talk again about it.

  The Duke sighed. “I do not think he did it personally, but I do wonder if he might be involved somehow with my parents’ deaths.”

  “What happened to your parents?” Penelope asked with trepidation. She was not sure that she wanted to hear it, but she felt like the man needed to say it.

  The Duke’s eyes met her gaze, and he whispered, “They were poisoned, but it was not meant for them. It was meant for me.” Penelope frowned and shook her head. He ignored her protest and continued, “I should have been the one who got that lethal dose, but I decided on a whim not to partake of the wine that night.”

  “You did not know,” Penelope said as if beseeching the Duke to believe her words.

  The Duke nodded. “Lord Portland, the man I was following the night of the party, was there when my parents were killed. I ran into him at the party, and the way he acted caught me as odd. I decided to follow him. I went into that alley, and I know it was foolish. I just did it anyway.”

  “You were desperate to prove your innocence,” Penelope said. “Surely, you do not blame yourself for sur
viving the attack on you in the alley?”

  The Duke said, “No, I do not blame myself for that.” He smiled. “Of everyone I know, you are the first that has assumed my innocence before my guilt. Why is that?”

  “I told you. I can read people,” Penelope said with a shrug. “And when I look at you, I do not see a murderer. I see only a man that needs someone to share his grief and pain.”

  The Duke’s dark eyes read her soul, and Penelope did not try to hide behind false humility or modesty. She just let him see her as she was. The man said softly, “All I had was my revenge. I did not know if it was possible for me to achieve it, but that is all I had.”

  “I understand why you would search for it,” Penelope said as she stood a few feet from the Duke in the room that was lit only by the moonlight coming in the window. The man’s dark hair that Penelope likened to the midnight hour itself hung over his shoulders.

  Penelope had not noticed the Duke’s hair loose until that moment. She reached out a hand and touched the strands that lay against his shoulder. They were soft under her fingers. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Penelope said suddenly remembering her station and yanking her hand back as if it had been scalded.

  He regarded her for a long time before he said, “There is no need of apologies or pardons, Lady Withersfield.” He reached out and touched a loose strand of her blonde hair that had escaped her sleep cap. Penelope realised how ridiculous she must look, and she dipped her head in embarrassment.

  “Why do you do that?”

  Penelope looked up at the man who stood watching her with curiosity. “I just remembered the hour and how I am dressed. I fear that I was more expecting ghosts than you, Your Grace.”

  “My name is Jules, and in a way you found ghosts. I am nothing but a ghost of the man I was,” the Duke said, and he gave her a smile that was sad and forsaken.

  Penelope said softly, “My name is Penelope.”

  “So, I heard,” the Duke said, and just like that, his sad smile turned into a mischievous grin, and Penelope wondered at the transformation in the man. “I heard your father call you that. It took little deduction.”

  They stood there for a long moment before Penelope whispered, “It is good to meet you then, Jules.” The Christian name felt odd on her lips and tongue as if they could not quite grasp their pronunciation.

  Jules’ eyes sparkled with merriment for something about her saying his name gave him great amusement, but Penelope really could not say what. The Duke of Richmond was an odd man, a terribly singular man. What thoughts were in his mind, Penelope pondered, but she still could not say.

  “You must have loved ones waiting for you and wondering where you are,” Penelope said as the thought occurred to her. “Do you think they are very worried?”

  Jules gave her that one-armed shrug he often did to keep from pulling on his stitches. “I imagine that the cook and footman were out scouring the countryside for me before your mother’s correspondence reached them.” He sighed. “I should have returned to my home tonight, but I merely misplaced the thought.”

  Penelope laughed lightly at the look on the man’s face. “I do that sometimes myself. Misplacing thoughts, I mean.” She paused and said, “I am glad that you have those at home who were missing you.”

  She wanted to enquire after others, ladies perhaps, but it was so wholly inappropriate that Penelope kept the thoughts to herself. He had said that he was not interested in that sort of thing, had he not? Penelope contented herself with that.

  “Do you have no other family or loved ones?” Penelope ventured.

  Jules shook his head. “Not close enough to call family. The household staff is more my family now.”

  “Do none of them believe your innocence?” Penelope had to ask the question. She saw the ghosts of pain in the man’s eyes.

  He frowned. “They say they do. I do not know who to believe anymore. I want to believe when someone says that they think I am innocent, but—”

  “How can you when you believe that you are not innocent?” Penelope asked the man, cutting off his trailing sentence.

  Jules nodded slowly. “That is the truth of it.” He sighed.

  Penelope pulled her dressing gown around her still a bit conscious of how she was dressed. The Duke’s eyes followed her movement, but he did not comment on it. He did not seem terribly uncomfortable with the situation, and Penelope pondered if that made him nice or possibly indecent.

  The Duke looked down at his own attire which was suitable aside from not having a coat. Half-dressed as he was, perhaps the man did not deem to comment on how Penelope was dressed. When he spoke, it was in a quiet voice used for conspirators. “Meeting you has given me pause, Penelope. Had our paths never crossed, I would not abate in my all-consuming quest for truth. Now I am tempted …” His voice trailed off, and he looked up at Penelope. He continued, “I am tempted to forsake my quest as folly and ruin. Surely in such blue eyes, I should find peace.”

  Penelope smiled at the Duke’s words. She felt a blush settle on her face, but she did not try to hide it. No, there was little to hide from this man. Perhaps not all men were like her father. Her smile faded a bit at the memory of her mother’s journal.

  “What is it that troubles you?” Jules asked with concern on his lips. “Is it related to what your father said about your art not being as happy?”

  Penelope nodded slowly. “My painting often displays my mood and betrays my thoughts. I had not intended for my painting skill to slip or my paintings to become somehow darker.”

  “What made you unhappy?” Jules asked, pressing closer to the question that Penelope did not want to answer.

  Penelope sighed and looked at the man hoping the heartbreak would not show through. By the look on his face, he could see straight to her core, and Penelope decided there was no need to hide anything from him. “A few months back I found a journal in our attic while looking for interesting things to ponder. It turned out to be my mother’s diary from when she and father married.”

  “I do not understand how that could make you so upset,” Jules said as he frowned in obvious confusion.

  Penelope smiled and shook her head. “My mother was a bright, clever woman. She was much like me when she married Father. They were happy… for a time.” Penelope clasped her hands together and fought back the emotions that always came when she thought of her poor mother at that time. “She loved him so fiercely, and then he became cold and demanding. Slowly, through her words, I watched him break her and shackle her. My mother is not that same woman. I never got to meet that woman because of my father.”

  Jules looked at her with something resembling pity, but Penelope pushed on. “I was of age to find a husband. It was all mother talked about really. I had been excited to find a life outside of her doldrum home, but when I found that diary, I changed. My hope crumbled into fear, and I did everything I could to sabotage any who might want to ask my father for my hand because I did not want to be broken down and shackled. I do not want to find a man and let him into my heart only for him to snuff out all that I am and replace it with obedience.”

  Penelope felt a tear slide down her cheek, and she could not muster the strength to be ashamed of it. She gulped in air, and that was when Jules’ hand cupped her cheek and wiped her tear away with his thumb. She looked into his eyes pleading silently for something she could not even describe.

  Jules’ hand left her cheek, and he whispered, “Were I with you, I would never ask you to be anything but who you truly are.”

  Penelope stared at the man as if he were some sort of illusion that might vanish if she moved or said anything. Jules spoke again when he saw that she was not going to speak. “I never wanted anything other than revenge for my parents. That is all I thought about until I met you.”