The Duchess and the Highwayman

by Beverley Oakley

  The Duchess and the Highwayman

  Beverley Oakley

  Copyright © 2017 by Beverley Oakley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Beverley Oakley

  Other books in the series

  1

  It was an evening like any other: dull, with a hint of menace and tension so thick, Phoebe imagined slicing a neat hole in it and disappearing magically into a new life.

  Any would do.

  The company had retired to the dim, close drawing room, gentlemen included, following a gluttonous dinner. By the fireplace, Phoebe worked at her embroidery, glad to be ignored though she knew that wouldn’t last for long.

  The reprieve was even briefer than she’d anticipated. Brutus exhaled on a shuddering snore truncated by a yelp as he chased rabbits in his dreams; this caused James the footman, who was stooping over Ulrick in the act of offering his master a drink, to jump in fright and deposit a snifter of brandy upon her husband’s waistcoat. Not that it would concern Ulrick, who was snoring more loudly than Brutus and whose waistcoat was already stained with drool.

  The footman cast the mistress a sideways glance as he unwound his lordship’s stock and dabbed at the sticky mess, but Phoebe held her tongue and made do with a dispassionate look. She’d never liked James. She was certain he’d conspired with Ulrick on more than a few occasions to put her on the back foot and to tarnish her name belowstairs. Despite her obvious disdain, she was afraid of the power he wielded.

  “That will be all, James.” She rose with a dismissive wave and the rustle of silken skirts. “I’ll attend to my husband. Please see Mr Barnaby and Sir Roderick out.”

  Sir Roderick, that most unwelcome of neighbors, appeared before her, bony and wraithlike; malevolent as ever. “I believe your dog needs more attention than Lord Cavanaugh.” His thin mouth turned up in a parody of amusement as he wafted a fastidious hand about his nose, indicating Brutus’s greater guilt than his master’s snoring.

  Phoebe offered Sir Roderick a cold smile. On the other side of the room, Ulrick’s two other guests conversed in low voices by the window.

  She inclined her head as she ignored his attempt at levity. “Good night, Sir Roderick.”

  Sir Roderick straightened his spare, weedy frame, which she saw trembled with suppressed outrage at being so summarily dismissed by the lady of the house.

  Phoebe refused to turn away from his challenging gaze. Sir Roderick was another who couldn’t wait until the doors of Blinley Manor were closed against her the moment Ulrick breathed his last. She’d offended his honor, having bitten his lip and kneed him in the groin six months before when he’d accosted her in a dimly-lit corridor, and suggested in lewd terms how he might assist in the creation of an heir for the already ailing Ulrick. An heir who would ensure Phoebe kept a roof over her head.

  Ulrick stirred to wakefulness with a grunt but Phoebe ignored him.

  “My husband is attempting, with the limited faculties yet available to him, to wave you farewell, Sir Roderick.” She struggled to keep the acid from her tone. Sir Roderick was a powerful neighbor. He was also the local magistrate and self-proclaimed arbiter on acceptable behavior; not a man she’d have willingly chosen to cross. She bowed her head. “His strength is exhausted and I need to see him to bed.”

  Sir Roderick flicked a glance toward Wentworth and Mr Barnaby then pushed his skull-like head, which reminded Phoebe of an oddly-shaped mushroom sprouting some form of fungus, into her face.

  “You’ll be sorry—after your husband is gone—if you don’t take advantage of the kindness I’m still prepared to offer you, Lady Cavanaugh.” His thin fingers dug into her wrist as he all but dribbled down her cleavage, and Phoebe, icily composed until now, whipped her head around with a gasp but met only amusement in her husband’s dull, onyx eyes as he regarded the scene.

  She breathed in despair and exhaled on resignation. Although Ulrick could barely communicate these days, he was still more cognizant of what was going on around him than most people believed. But he would never champion her. He never had and he’d not start now.

  Phoebe hoped he didn’t hear the fear in her whisper. “I would rather copulate with an adder, Sir Roderick.” It was an unwise response, though being blunt had to be better than a ladylike dismissal which might encourage him to repeat his predatory behavior.

  Sir Roderick glanced over her shoulder, no doubt to ensure they remained out of earshot of the remaining two guests still conversing by the window. “You may discover some day, Lady Cavanaugh, that my bite is far more dangerous.” His nostrils flared as he pinched her hand before releasing it. “Indeed, I’ll ensure you rue the day you threw my kindness back in my face.”

  Kindness? “Good night, gentlemen.” With a rustle of her skirts that hinted at the outrage more eloquently than Phoebe could put into words, she turned her back on the company and swept over to Ulrick’s side. Her heart beat painfully as she rearranged his pillows, and the closing of the door on the last of their neighbors to leave offered only a small measure of relief. There was still Wentworth to deal with.

  “The doctor doubts Ulrick will make Michaelmas.” The lazy drawl of her husband’s cousin punctuated the silence as Phoebe resumed her position in an armchair by the fire.

  Wentworth raised his cut-glass tumbler to the light as he sighed in appreciation of Ulrick’s best brandy. He took a sip and smacked his lips, meeting Phoebe’s eye across her sleeping husband, whom she’d made more comfortable in his large leather armchair with the tasselled cushion Phoebe had embroidered to support his neck.

  The odious creature could not help but interpret Phoebe’s critical expression correctly, but there was no defensiveness in his tone as he chuckled. “The old bastard can’t enjoy his riches when he’s gone.” His teeth were white; sharp and wolfish beneath his black mustache and Phoebe looked away, pretending concentration on her handiwork while her stomach clenched with revulsion and fear. She would not dignify Wentworth’s grasping remarks with a response.

  For a few minutes, Ulrick’s wheezing, rattling cough and the hiss of the fire broke the silence. The harsh caw of a raven in the darkness made Phoebe jump, but she kept her fingers busy with her embroidery and her head averted from Wentworth’s hard stare.

  Tonight? Would Wentworth insist on claiming her tonight, with Ulrick so very ill and likely to need her?

  Wentworth drained his glass, placing the empty vessel clumsily upon the low table beside him. Empty vessel. It’s what she’d always been made to feel as Ulrick’s wife. “Ulrick was always mean with his liquor. A good supply for his heir then, eh, Phoebe?” Ulrick’s heir. Wentworth imbued the word with the disgust he’d always felt for the fact that he was not Ulrick’s heir. It was hardly better than the reproach that had
always hardened Ulrick’s tone in the days he could speak, when he implied that Phoebe had failed in providing him with a son to continue the family line.

  Phoebe glanced up and saw Wentworth’s thin lips were pursed, observing fleetingly that he looked like a malevolent raven, his dark eyes glittering in the face she’d once thought so handsome. She tried not to show her fear.

  “How long do you suppose it’ll take my brother to drink the lot once he inherits?” There it was. The bitterness he didn’t bother to hide.

  “Hush, Wentworth. You’ll wake Ulrick.” Phoebe cast the sleeping invalid a nervous look.

  “The doctor opines that our poorly Lord Cavanaugh will not last three months.” Wentworth didn’t trouble to lower his voice. “My guess is he’ll be gone long before Michaelmas.”

  Phoebe could bear it no longer. She dropped her handiwork into her lap and sent her husband’s regular and increasingly unwelcome guest an imploring look. “Please, Wentworth. He’s not dead yet. Have the good grace to keep such thoughts to yourself. What if he hears you?”

  Wentworth gave a short laugh. “What do I have to lose by my graveyard talk? It’s not as if Ulrick’s in any position to deny me what my imbecile brothers already have simply by virtue of them being alive.”

  How many times had she heard the same complaints? Phoebe forced aside her weary frustration and rose. “I’m going to bed.”

  Instantly Wentworth was behind her, his breath hot on the back of her neck as he gripped her hand.

  “I thought you’d never say it, my sweet.” He sucked gently at the hollow at the nape of her neck, twisting a tendril of her hair around his forefinger while Phoebe’s insides clenched with revulsion. Once, though, Wentworth had thrilled her with his charm. She, who’d not known what it was to be wooed, had fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

  “But Ulrick will need—”

  “Ulrick looks comfortable to me.” Wentworth moved her in front of him and tipped her chin to look into her eyes, his voice as thick as treacle. “Come, my sweeting. Let us do Ulrick’s bidding.”

  Another rattling cough from the armchair was cut short by her husband’s rasping, feeble voice. “Phoebe?”

  Phoebe was for once glad of the chance to go to him. “Not tonight, Wentworth,” she whispered over her shoulder, kneeling at his lordship’s knee and arranging her shawl about him. “Ulrick needs me.”

  “Ulrick ne’er needed oo.”

  Phoebe’s stricken look was met by Wentworth’s satisfied grin. “Ulrick never needed you,” he interpreted. “That is, he only needed you to provide him with an heir who wasn’t an imbecile, which you failed to do.” He bent at the waist and put his mouth to his cousin’s ear. “My dear Ulrick, I was about to take your wife to bed; however, she appears to think you’d prefer her tonight.”

  “Never wanted her. Go!” The old man flicked a trembling hand in the direction of the door, and with a chuckle, Wentworth gave Phoebe a push as she straightened. She stumbled a few steps, regaining her balance only because Wentworth swung her round to face him, one hand gripping the back of her neck, the other her chin. Over his shoulder, she could see Ulrick snoring again, his head at an odd angle upon the cushion; dribbling his bile upon the handiwork which was all she’d ever been good for.

  Phoebe used her last bargaining chip as she shrugged herself out of Wentworth’s grip. They’d made it as far as the first guest bedchamber only to find the fire unlit, which was hardly surprising she tried to tell him. Still, Wentworth’s desire was greater than his fear of discomfort, and as he ran his clammy hands over her, she tried another. “I think I’m with child.”

  He blinked owlishly and tilted his head as he pushed her against the bed.

  “I’m late.” She put her hand to her head and closed her eyes. “Please Wentworth, I’m very tired tonight.”

  “How late?” His voice was thick with hope.

  Phoebe stared at the cherubs dancing above her on the plaster ceiling and tried to think quickly. She was not a natural liar. She’d been clutching at straws, but she felt no desire to play brood mare to yet another Cavanaugh stud. “A week. Oh, but see, there is no linen on the bed, Wentworth.”

  “Too early to be conclusive then.” He ignored her reference to the unsuitability of their location, adding briskly, “No, my love. Both of us have a duty to Ulrick.” He snaked his arms around her waist as she tried to make for the door. “A duty to ensure my imbecile brother Bentink does not succeed your wreck of a husband and bankrupt the estate within the twelvemonth. If you’d only listened to sense a year ago and not let your precious scruples intrude, there might already be a lusty son in the nursery.” Pushing her backward, he flopped down next to her, the mattress dipping under his weight.

  “Bentink will drink himself to death before he’s likely to find a wife,” Phoebe remarked wearily, trailing her hand over the velvet counterpane as Wentworth kicked off his boots from his supine position. She slanted a look across at him, lying beside her, wondering hopefully if he’d fall asleep before he got down to business.

  Wentworth snorted. “And then there’ll be Oberon to worry about. Lord, but if ever there was a pair of brothers to bring shame to the family name. I’m not the first, of course, to believe succession should be based on merit, not birth order.” He looked at Phoebe as the second boot joined the other with a thud. “Come, Lady Cavanaugh. Surely I don’t have to do the seduction routine and remove your clothes for you?”

  “I…I’m not sure we should do this.” Phoebe edged away from his seeking hand and slid from the bed. “What if Ulrick gets better?”

  “Lord, Phoebe, of course he won’t, and even if he does, you know he can never get it up for you.” Not caring that his crudeness was offensive, not to mention wounding, Wentworth grunted as he removed his coat, adding on a pained note, “Never did know why he offered for you.”

  “A fine thing to say if you’re planning to win me over.”

  “That’s what Ulrick said.”

  Phoebe closed her eyes as Wentworth drew her to him and wrapped her in his arms, his right hand dipping into her bodice to fondle her breast. He chuckled. “If one likes their women small and dainty with not a lot to squeeze, I think you’re rather a fetching little thing, though I’m sure if I’d been Ulrick, I’d have somehow risen above my aversion and managed the deed at least a few times in the faint hope of siring something to oust my brothers.”

  “Oh, Ulrick did his best,” Phoebe muttered, trying to ignore Wentworth’s mauling and to block her mind to memories of Ulrick’s wandering hands, her husband panting and grunting and sweating above her, night after night in the early years. If the loss of Ulrick’s function hadn’t also meant the loss of Phoebe’s security, she might have been overjoyed.

  “Ah yes, the dutiful wife…and you’ll be a dutiful mother, too.” His breath was hot on her cheek as he slid his hands up her thighs. “If you’re not already with child, my dear, it won’t be for want of trying.” His hand cupped her sex, and he grunted his displeasure, no doubt at finding little to indicate her interest in the act for which he’d regained enthusiasm. Phoebe slanted her gaze from the ceiling to the unwelcome man beside her. In the faint glow of the single candle upon the carved kist at the end of the bed, she could see his member straining against his breeches. Turning her head to the side, she tried not to cry as his words floated over her.

  Was it a carnal sin to sleep with her husband’s cousin when her actions were as much motivated by Ulrick’s wishes as her own self-preservation?

  “We just have to keep Ulrick alive long enough to fill his nursery with my seed,” Wentworth panted as he divested himself of his breeches. “You’re healthy, and my ability to sire a child is proven.” He lay back down next to her, his fingers probing her while he stroked himself. Phoebe turned away from the sight, trying to block her mind to what was happening; and what would happen, while she imagined a different life.

  “Only then will I feel my duty discharged to my cousin—a
nd to you, my dear.” He narrowed his eyes. “No need to remind you what a miserable widowhood you look forward to if you’re not mother to Ulrick’s heir. His legal and official heir, at any rate, which means we have to succeed at this before he breathes his last. Or at least within a fortnight of the sad event.”

  It was pointless pretending she had any means of preventing what Wentworth intended, for all that the thought of being possessed by him made her body and mind close in on itself.

  She loathed herself for that fact that upon Ulrick’s directions, she’d encouraged him all those months before, though initially she’d refused Wentworth’s overtures with genuine outrage.

  Wentworth, aware of what he had to gain now that Ulrick had drawn him into his perverse plan, had wooed Phoebe with all the charm of the Casanova he was, reminding her that begetting an heir was the primary responsibility of the dutiful wife, and in this instance demanded by Ulrick, who could no longer perform the deed.

  A dutiful wife? For years, Ulrick had mocked her with her inability to provide him with a son, though they both knew it was the fact Ulrick had rarely been able to sustain an erection long enough to even possibly impregnate her that made him so bitter toward her.

  She felt sick at the memories. A dutiful wife would fill the nursery, not make her husband a laughing stock. Ulrick’s eyes had reminded her of raisins in his pallid pasty face as he’d spat the words; little black dots of malice.

  A dutiful wife would use any means to ensure her husband’s self-respect.

  Even if that meant being impregnated by her husband’s cousin.