The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “Almost four months.”

  She watched for his reaction as he turned his gaze on the room. On the cracked plaster, the fading wallpaper and the ancient furniture. She spoke before he could. Told him more than she should, a stranger, perhaps a danger to them all. She found once she started, she just could not stem the flow. “Our mother died seven years ago and my father sort of lost his mind. He began to gamble large amounts. The estate has had no care for five years and wasn’t in the best condition before that. With no money, no servants and no upkeep, it has gotten quite out of my control…”

  “How many have come to claim on his empty pockets?”

  “Too many to count. We’ve sold everything we could to pay the debts but the one belonging to your father is too large.”

  “Don’t ever call him that,” Darius warned her in a voice so low it sent chills racing down her already cold spine.

  “Call him what?”

  “He may have forced himself upon my mother, but he is not my father. He never was and never will be.”

  “But you are Jonathan are you not? Jonathan Meddington? You lived at the estate as a boy. I remember your grandfather’s grief when you ran away.”

  She could no longer read the emotion in his eyes as he went to stand before the window, pulling the moth-eaten drapes aside so he could peer out upon the snowy landscape. “I didn’t run away. Meddington and Harold had me beaten and taken aboard a ship. After they nearly killed me, I knew I could never return.”

  “It has been years—why did you come back? Why now?”

  “There are many reasons, more now, thanks to you and your father.”

  “You won’t tell anyone about us, will you?” Eliza held her breath. The futures of her brothers and sisters depended on his silence. On his discretion. She didn’t know what she would do if he refused her and reported them to the magistrate. He had to be the one they’d been waiting for. She never would have risked telling him about the duke otherwise. He had to be an emissary for his American employer otherwise she had just bungled a situation that would only get much, much worse.

  She stood and went to him, standing at his back, ignoring the three other men in the room. “Please say you won’t tell anyone about this. We can manage for a little bit longer.”

  “What would you have done today if we hadn’t come along?” he asked, still not facing her but talking to her all the same.

  “I had a gun. They wouldn’t have made it inside the house. And the children know how to hide and escape if they need to.”

  His humourless laugh filled the room as he turned once again to face her. She stepped back when she glimpsed the burning intent in his eyes. “The gun with no bullets? Would you have swung it at their heads? You could barely hold it up!”

  “You knew it wasn’t loaded?” she said at the same time the men behind her exclaimed their own disbelief with grunts and groans.

  “I had a feeling,” he admitted with a grimace. “But mine is and I would have shot them both where they stood had they harmed you.”

  Touching sentiment but then he would have finished the day hanging from his neck. “You should not have involved yourself or your men.”

  When Darius’s hands closed around her arms, it wasn’t comfort he offered. Instead, he squeezed. “You cannot do this on your own, Eliza. You’re daft if you think you can. Wickham will be back and he’ll bring more men next time. A fool could see you were outmatched. You had no footmen, no butler, no one at your back.”

  “I have been taking care of my family for seven long years and I will continue to do so until my brother is duke.” Struggling to be free of his grip and, more importantly, his reason, she tried to pull away.

  “And then what?” Darius launched his words at her and accompanied them with a shake. “You will continue to sleep in here? All together? Where will you find the money to buy food let alone repair a roof about to blow off in the next storm? Just because that boy becomes a duke does not mean your problems will be behind you.”

  “We’ll figure it out. We still have some jewels we will borrow against when the time comes and there is a London house entailed so we can go there. We don’t need your help.”

  He finally let her go and then began to pace the room. “Move to London with no servants? Tongues will wag when you arrive in a hired hack and cannot pay the driver. You obviously know nothing about life or London if you honestly think you can see this through and emerge unscathed.”

  She hadn’t thought of any of that. Once Nathanial inherited, they were going to sell one of the unentailed properties up north, starting with their father’s hunting lodge and grounds, and then see about their next step. It was something they couldn’t do until her brother could make legal decisions and sign his name to the documents. Only two more months and they would have been free from the deceits and dangers.

  “Does anyone else know of your father’s death?” Darius asked.

  She shook her head, fearing more tears if she argued with him further. She didn’t have the strength to fight and even though she wasn’t normally overset quite so easily, the past months and her current anxiety over her acting skills had stretched her nerves to the upper limits.

  “How did he die?” one of Darius’s men asked.

  She still remembered the sound of the shot. The smell of blood and sulphur as she’d burst into the room had stung her nose and left water in her eyes. Gabriella’s hysterical screams had pierced the night. Pieces of his brain had slid through Eliza’s fingers as she’d cleaned it off the estate ledgers where before only the tears of her ancestors had stained the page. Inhale. Exhale. “He shot himself in the head.”

  Eliza had spent hours scrubbing the room before rolling the body in a bedspread, after calming her sister and sending her off to keep Ethan occupied. God, she’d retched and retched but she’d got it done. Then she, Nathanial and Gabriella had carried him to the family plot, took turns digging a shallow hole and then had dumped their father in it and covered the corpse with the dark soil of their heritage. It had taken a whole month to clean the mud from beneath her fingernails. She would never remove the image from her memory. Not ever.

  “How are you going to prove how he died, that one of you didn’t shoot him?”

  Her stomach dipped and she had to reach for the sharp bite of the mantel to stop herself from falling. If this stranger was already asking the question, how soon until more did? “We loved our father. What gain would we have from his death?”

  “That’s not how the public will see it, Eliza. The magistrate will ask questions and he will demand answers.”

  “Please stop.” She couldn’t keep talking about it. Eliza would have been happy to never think of the past and only move towards the future. She wanted to bury her head in the snow and emerge in a few years once they were settled and more secure. Once the dirtiest of the deeds were done and forgotten.

  “It won’t work,” one of the other of Darius’s men commented in a quiet voice.

  “We can’t get involved in this, Cap’n.”

  Eliza heard Darius’s sigh and felt the regret right down to her soul as he said, “We already are involved. It’s too late to bow out now.”

  *

  Why was it that whenever he came across a female in need of rescue, Darius always donned his knight’s helmet and jumped right into the fray? He had never started the fray. He’d never intended to finish the fray either yet there he was, kicking up his heels in a poor excuse for a sitting room while Eliza spoke to her siblings about what they would do next. He let them think they had a choice. For now.

  “I say we cut and run while the going’s good,” Wes declared from the window seat where he sat watching the falling snow and the possibility of Wickham returning with the magistrate.

  “Aye,” Duncan’s one-word response followed.

  “They’ll be dead by the end of the week,” Marcus muttered.

  “I’ll not have the stain of their blood on my hands,” Darius told the t
hree.

  Wes sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “Not five months ago, we were chasing a story around the ocean and kidnapping pirates’ daughters. Why must you always attract the damsels in distress? Why could you not draw the attentions of damsels in desire or at least ones with loose morals who would pay their way out of trouble with their bodies?”

  The other two men chuckled. Darius smiled but didn’t answer. He couldn’t put a name to the feeling clutching his heart and squeezing when he thought of Eliza—or even Daniella Germaine, the pirate’s daughter in question, who had essentially been his enemy—in the hands of dogs like his father and his brother. The fact that there were other men who’d come looking for the duke also worried Darius. What if he wasn’t there to protect them? Obviously they had no one else. How could he sleep at night less than a mile away and worry that Eliza and her brood were in danger? Or even shivering to death in their mausoleum?

  The easy answer was that he could not.

  The hard answer was that he would not.

  “They’ll have to come with us.” It was more him speaking aloud than asking the men but they each gave their answers anyway.

  “’Twould be asking for trouble,” Duncan said.

  “It might cause a fight with more than those looking for money,” Wes pointed out. “What about the men in the village? What would the wives say about the miss’s reputations?”

  Marcus guffawed. “Since when did you have a care for a girl’s virtue?”

  For a moment Wes displayed a measure of wounded pride but then he laughed along loudly before replying, “These are ladies. They’re different. I can’t seduce and tumble these girls.”

  “You better bloody not,” Darius warned him. “If they are under our protection then they are off limits. For God’s sake, the little one can’t be more than thirteen.”

  “The elder miss must be at least two and twenty though,” Marcus replied.

  Darius didn’t like the speculative gleam in his first mate’s eyes. The other man eyed Darius like a target for cupid’s arrow. “I won’t be laying a hand on any of them either. They will be guests in our home and that is that. We keep them safe for now and stick to our original plan.”

  A feminine voice interrupted from the doorway. “We won’t be going anywhere. I have spoken to the children and it is decided that we stay and you go.”

  All three men jumped to their feet. Darius tucked his pistol back into the holster at his side and pulled his coat forward to fasten the buttons. “Impossible. Collect what you need and be quick about it.”

  “You have no authority here,” Eliza said, her hands back on her hips in the weakest display of stubbornness Darius had ever witnessed.

  “I’ll not come back tomorrow to find you all murdered in your beds, or worse.”

  A sardonic look stretched her lips as though she thought she had already won this battle. “What could be worse than death?”

  Darius raised his brows. “Perhaps raped? Beaten? Broken? While your brothers are forced to watch but are unable to assist?”

  She paled and he instantly regretted his harsh tone and vulgar words. His conscience didn’t prickle for long though. “Eliza, we will not leave you here alone, unprotected and freezing. We have guest rooms, fires, food.”

  “We have food,” a small voice said as the youngest boy pushed forward from his hiding place behind Eliza’s skirts. Darius would have to remember his presence before there was any further talk of rape or murder.

  “Do you have a hare to roast for supper?” he asked the child.

  The little one shook his head with a defiance to rival his sister’s but it was the lick of his lips that gave him away.

  “How long has it been since you have had a roast hare for supper?”

  Little green eyes met his with longing that soon turned to disgust. “We’ve only had revolting vegetables for months but Eliza says they will make us big and strong.” He flexed his tiny bicep but then dropped his arm and shook his head. “But I reckon she lied.”

  Darius chuckled. “They will help to make you big and strong but a man needs meat. That’s how you get big muscles.”

  The child inched closer. “Do you have big muscles?”

  “I do,” he confirmed with a nod, laughter building on his chest.

  “Are you really called Darius?”

  He nodded again, tamping the humour back down.

  “I have something I’m to give you.” Without another word, the boy ran from the room, his stockings slipping on the hall tiles.

  “You must leave now,” Eliza told them, walking to the door and holding her arm out. “We do not require your assistance any longer.”

  “You would starve them? For what?” Why did she fight so hard against his good intentions? Why did she suddenly look as though he’d backed her into a corner she couldn’t escape from but she would rather die than give in?

  “It is improper for us to accept your invitation. We have no chaperone and you are a stranger to us.”

  “You knew my grandfather and despite who my sire is, I would never take advantage of a woman under my roof. I have no need to take by force or any other means. You will all be much safer there.” Then a realisation hit him and he stepped back. “Is it because I am a bastard and a ship’s captain? Because I make my money in trade, you would refuse my protection? I assure you I have the means.”

  “That has very little to do with anything,” she replied but the moment’s hesitation spoke volumes.

  “You shouldn’t be afraid of what people will say about your being in my house and be more afraid of what people will say about your father sticking his spoon in the wall and none of you lot reporting it.”

  Eliza drew herself up as tall as her five-foot-nothing frame would go and closed the distance between them, stabbing a sharp, slender finger into his chest. “You have no real idea of how society works. The girls’ reputations would be beyond ruined if they were to spend even one night under your roof. Even if you didn’t so much as sneeze in their direction for the duration, their virtue would be in pieces and then where would we be? I don’t care for what people say about me but they are young and will be ruined.”

  “Better dead then?” Darius didn’t know what else to say. He was more than used to stubborn females but he began to wonder if she was the one who was indeed cracked. She had to have a bolt half undone if she was to believe for one moment that they were better off there in the house of holes and horrors than under his roof.

  “Dead and ruined in the eyes of society are one and the same in this country. You may not like it but those are the rules we live by. I won’t subject the children to that fate.”

  Darius ground his teeth and clenched his fists. He wanted to shake her until she saw he was trying to help. He wanted to shake her until she nodded her head of her own accord and chose the right path.

  “I believe it is time for you men to leave,” Nathanial said from the hall behind Eliza. The authority in his voice may have been believable but for the wobble on the last word and the fact that Darius glimpsed the fear in the boy’s stance.

  All he could do was nod to his men in a gesture that they’d been dismissed. Darius was the last to leave the room and stopped in front of the duke-to-be. He reached into his holster and the boy stiffened. Darius shook his head and handed him his pistol. He slipped a hand into his pocket and gave the boy a handful of lead as well. “The next time someone comes to your door, you shoot them where they stand. You don’t sleep at night. You watch over the others and sleep by day. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  Eliza marched forward and tried to snatch the gun away. “You’re scaring him.”

  Darius pinned her with a glare. “He should be scared. You all should be.” He transferred his attention back to the young Master Penfold. “If I come back here and your sister has that gun in her possession, you and I will exchange more than words.”

  Nathanial gulped but nodded. “Yes, sir.”


  With one last chilling glare at Eliza Penfold, the most stubborn, hard-headed woman he’d met in an age, he stomped from the room.

  “Wait,” the youngest of all of them yelled as he ran towards Darius. “I have something for you.”

  Darius crouched down again, forcing a smile to his face as the boy slid to a stop. “So you said.”

  “Before my father went away, he gave me this. He said if a man who spoke differently from us was to call, I was to give him this letter and tell him to… Oh I forget now. I think he said to consider it gravy.”

  “Gravy?” Darius replied, holding his hand out for the letter.

  “Ethan,” Eliza said sharply, trying to snatch the envelope mid-air. “Why did you not say anything about this?”

  Ethan regarded his sister for a moment and then shrugged.

  Darius thought perhaps he held a bank draft in his hand, the business matter concluded between himself and a dead duke. He should have felt relief as he slipped the crinkled vellum into his coat pocket and gestured for the men to continue out the door but he didn’t. Not even close.

  He wondered if this would be the last time he’d see any of the stubborn Penfolds alive.

  Chapter Six

  Ladies were not supposed to yell or scream or curse so Eliza had to make do with slamming the door once Darius and his men had left the way they’d come. She couldn’t help but wonder who he thought he was, demanding this and that and scaring what little life was left out of her brothers and sisters. Between this meeting and the first, she had begun to wonder if he knew her father’s intentions at all.

  “Do you think he was right?” Grace asked.

  Eliza answered, “No!” At the same time as Nathanial said, “More than likely.”

  It was Ethan who spoke next, his voice loud and far bigger than a child’s. “I think we should have gone with him. Can you imagine roasted hare? I bet they have all the trimmings too. I wonder if they’ll have gravy? A huge fire? Why couldn’t we just go with them?”

  Eliza sighed and waited for her stomach to growl over all the food talk but she was far beyond feeling hungry. She had surpassed pains some weeks back and now just felt empty. But at least they were alive. For now. “You did very well with the letter, Ethan.”