His Duchess at Eventide

by Wendy Lacapra

  She hadn’t needed to tell him.

  Truth existed between their bodies, a recognition that went beyond words.

  He’d known it. Felt it.

  Hadn’t he?

  She shivered with a dawning chill. She flicked her skirts down over her legs and then moved to adjust her bodice.

  “Allow me.”

  His voice returned some of her warmth.

  She looked up into his face. He smiled.

  Oh yes. He knew. Her Chev. He would tell her soon. He must. He would tell her, and they would oust those rotten men and start to rebuild. Together.

  Just as they were working together to refasten her hooks.

  “You must think—” she started.

  “Hush,” he said against her temple. “I’m endeavoring not to think at all.”

  She nodded and sighed. Silent recognition would be enough for tonight.

  He’d suffered so such—had so many scars. She must trust that he would, in small measures, continue to reveal the truth.

  Faith again.

  And waiting.

  “I’m not very good at faith,” she said aloud.

  “Aren’t you?” he asked.

  She shook her head no.

  “Where do you get your strength?” he asked.

  “From the hope that—” she stopped.

  “Well, then.” He lifted his brows. “Hope is a kind of faith, isn’t it? And, you are very good at dwelling in hope.”

  Dwelling in hope. She liked that.

  She was very good at hoping. Who else would have waited for an absent husband for thirteen years?

  She glanced up. “I may be too good at hoping, in fact.”

  “My dear—” he stopped abruptly, and his smile disappeared.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He placed a finger over her lips, tilting his head as if encouraging her to listen.

  They were no longer alone.

  Silently, she pulled her legs up to her chest, and he drew his dark coat over her petticoats, whose light color practically screamed in the moonlight. Even in this, he was thinking of her.

  He was her Chev but changed.

  Together, they inched back into the shadows.

  A few more moments passed before she heard them distinctly.

  Voices. Men’s voices.

  Wedged between the rock and his body, she could see nothing, but the sound of the voices grew louder.

  ~~~

  Pen moved back into the shadows entirely without sound. What Chev could not hear, he could feel. She tucked her silver-blonde hair beneath her black wool cloak, even as he’d covered her petticoats with his, both ensuring nothing light-colored would accidentally reveal their position.

  He placed the strange sense of connection—of comradery—it was like the bonds he shared with his naval brothers...the knowledge that one did not work alone, but in concert.

  In trust.

  As captain, he held the primary responsibility for his crew, but he worked with confidence, knowing he was not alone.

  He experience the same with Pen.

  He could work, knowing she would be working beside him, thinking with him, beyond him, even.

  As with his fellow officers, he could trust her to fill gaps he missed, making their combined defenses impenetrable.

  In the past, he’d failed to understand their mutual dependence. Failed to trust her strength. This time, he vowed, would be different.

  The voices were close now—men, moving not-so-silently through the night, their whispers fizzling like ash into the darkness.

  Chev’s heart thudded in his throat.

  Smugglers. The unseen. Smuggling had dwindled, not stopped. The goods could even have come from the ship Emmaus had spoken about.

  And, from the path the men had taken up from the harbor, they would have had to walk right past Sir Jerold’s militia.

  Then again, why should he be surprised?

  Officers and smugglers often worked in consort. Most of the time, the only way a man ended up caught smuggling was if he went against his own.

  The men passed by in groups of two—one man in front, one behind, a chest between each pair. Two, four, six, eight.

  One of the men stumbled and cursed.

  The line came to a halt.

  “That’s the last time, I tell you.” A man spoke.

  “You whine like a woman.” A second man said.

  Penelope’s spine stiffened.

  “I almost died back there,” the first man spoke again. “Could’ve been you and you know it. There’s no way an inexperienced man could climb down that cliff.”

  “Shut it, would you?” A third man called. “I told you they won’t be going down that way.”

  “Then how—”

  “I said”—the third man lifted a flintlock—“shut it.”

  Silence fell among the group.

  “Now,” the third man said, “let’s get these to the storerooms, shall we? Quietly.”

  The line of men moved slowly across the field, not bothering to hide themselves in the least.

  “Looks like we’ll be here for a while,” Chev whispered into Penelope’s hear, “you had better get comfortable.”

  Penelope nodded, turning her face into his chest.

  He held her head beneath his chin as he considered what he had just heard.

  Why would one of the smugglers complain that the cliff was too difficult for an inexperienced man to climb down?

  The smugglers only transported goods.

  Or were they planning to transport men?

  Chapter Fourteen

  PENELOPE RETURNED WITH Chev—as the captain—late the night before. On the way, they’d discussed everything they’d seen and heard.

  Smuggling had returned to Ithwick, with the cellars beneath the castle ruins being used to store the goods.

  Pen and Chev had come to the same conclusion—there was only one way smuggling could have resumed, and that was with Anthony’s express permission.

  The smugglers had also unwittingly provided the answer that had been troubling her for some time—the reason for Anthony’s courtship.

  If Anthony gained control of both Pensteague and Ithwick, he could reopen the tunnels the duke had destroyed. Concealed within the earth, they could smuggle even more. More goods. More people.

  Hundreds of French naval officers were held in parole towns, under curfew but mostly by their honor. A smuggler who successfully transported an officer out of England could charge three hundred guineas or more. Suddenly Anthony and Thomas’s trip to the prison hulks made a great deal more sense.

  Avoiding a tax on goods was one thing, abetting Napoleon was quite another.

  The captain—Chev—had left her with a kiss to the brow and a promise he would do everything he could to protect her and Thaddeus.

  That kiss had left a brand—a stamp that had comforted as she had drifted off into a restless slumber.

  Last night she’d trusted Cheverley.

  She’d been dazed by his presence, the very fact he existed. She’d absorbed the horrible blow of his suffering and then opened to his tentative care.

  In his embrace, the heavens cracked, and she’d caught a glimpse of a vastly reordered world. Beneath the stars, in the romance and magic of night, she had trusted Chev would, eventually, reveal the truth.

  What if she’d been wrong? What if he’d never intended to reclaim his place?

  How had he answered when she’d asked him if he intended to return to his love?

  I have not decided.

  As Ithwick emptied of suitors for an excursion to Penzance, even dawn’s rosy fingers could not pierce her heavy gloom.

  And then, the duke began to thrash. His turn seemed a bitter omen.

  She stood with Mrs. Renton in His Grace’s bedchamber, worrying her lip with the edge of her thumbnail.

  “His Grace is worse,” Mrs. Renton said. “He’d been doing so well. Yesterday, he called me by name and even told
me to go to the devil like he used to and now, he’s confused again...”

  He was more than confused. He was flushed, sweating. And he looked so very small in the middle of his massive, golden bed.

  “He’s vomited up everything I’ve tried to feed him,” Mrs. Renton finished.

  “You prepared the meals yourself?”

  “I prepared them,” Mrs. Renton chewed her lower lip. “But with Thaddeus ill—and you gone most of the evening, there were times he was alone. Do you think—?”

  Penelope went to the side of the bed, placing her palm against the duke’s forehead.

  “You cannot be everywhere,” she said to Mrs. Renton. “And I confess I’ve been...distracted.”

  “Piers!” the duke cried out suddenly. “Cheverley!”

  “Please, your Grace,” Penelope murmured. “Rest.”

  His fevered eyes met hers. “You,” he said. “You.”

  The accusation was present in his tone, his gaze. The accusation had always been present. Even when he couldn’t speak at all, he’d gazed at her as if she were something he did not trust.

  Like a sorceress or a witch.

  He held her responsible for every curse brought down on the house of Ithwick because she’d disrupted his plan for Cheverley.

  But why should she accept sole responsibility? Here at Ithwick, His Grace had been king-like in his power.

  “You, too,” she replied, with equal accusation.

  If Ithwick had been cursed with death, dissipation, violence and greed—His Grace had played more than a small part.

  In creating a world devoid of anything that resembled true affection, he had made his elder son a devotee of drink and his younger, a man chasing some illusion of male perfection.

  The duke held her gaze for a long, horrified moment. Then, he stilled.

  He closed his eyes and moaned. Many of his words she could not understand, but one name stood out.

  Cheverley.

  “Bring me my son!” The duke’s sob echoed through the cavernous chamber, melding fury, frustration, and pain.

  “Piers is dead,” Mrs. Renton said, calm as ever. “You remember. He stepped into a nest of adders last year.”

  The duke shook his head no. “Cheverley. Bring Cheverley.”

  Mrs. Renton sent Penelope a pleading glance.

  “Cheverley is not here,” Penelope replied.

  The duke inhaled—an awful, gasping sound.

  Mrs. Renton glanced to Penelope. “Please,” she said. “Please allow me to administer the doctor’s tonic. He said—”

  “The doctor,” Pen replied, “was paid by Mr. Anthony.” She picked up the bottle of Fowler’s solution. “And I don’t trust this—not for a second.”

  “But it’s the same one he prescribed Her Grace.”

  “It contains arsenic in trace amounts,” Penelope replied. “But if improperly mixed...”

  She glanced down at the bottle.

  The doctor insisted the tonic was safe. But the duke had sunk back into the state he’d been when she first arrived—confusion, red skin, cramps, vomiting. She strode to the window, and then tossed out the contents.

  “Mine!” The duke roared.

  Mrs. Renton lifted a pewter mug from the bedside table and leaned over the duke. “How about a nice bit of broth—”

  The duke threw the cup across the room, spattering the dark brown liquid across the wall. The empty pewter mug made a clanging sound as it hit the dresser and then the floor. His gaze shifted to Penelope—an unspoken challenge.

  “That’s enough, Your Grace,” Penelope said. “Leave us, Mrs. Renton.”

  Mrs. Renton frowned. “Will you be all right?”

  Pen nodded. Mrs. Renton left the room and quietly closed the door.

  Penelope sat down by the duke’s side. He shrank back into his pillows.

  He’d always been so large, so invincible.

  He glanced at her in horror. His hands shook as he held them against his face.

  She imagined suffering his confusion—a prisoner in his own aching body, in his own over-large bed. She laid a hand against his arm.

  “No more medicine,” she said. “You are, in fact, much improved. You could barely speak when I first came to Ithwick, do you remember?”

  “No,” he replied, stubborn.

  “Do you know me, Your Grace?”

  He put down his hands. He stared for a long time, her name shivering on the edge of his lips. “P-Penelope.”

  She sat straight. “Yes,” she replied. “I am Penelope, Lady Cheverley.”

  He winced as if in terrible pain and sunk back into his bed. “Piers.” His chest rose and fell with uneven breath. He lifted his hand to his forehead. “Dead.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” she replied.

  “Cheverley?”

  She hesitated. “Lord Cheverley is your second son.”

  The duke scowled, eyes still closed. “Daft!”

  “Cheverley was lost at sea six years ago,” she answered carefully.

  His lids flew opened. For a startling moment, he appeared shrewd as ever. He gripped her arm. “Dead?”

  How could she lie to a dying man? “I have reason to hope he survived.”

  “Hope?” His grey eyes—so much like Cheverley’s and her son’s—pierced. He slurred through a sentence, his tone all condemnation.

  “I don’t understand—”

  “You’ve learned nothing!” He said clearly.

  Oh, she’d learned. She’d learned that power corrupted. That privilege did not lead to appreciation. That love could hurt and confuse as much as love could inspire.

  “Was there something you intended to teach me?” she asked.

  “Foolish.” His breath cracked in his lungs. “Both.” He tapped his chest. “My rules. Mine.”

  The duke blinked, confused again. And then he hung his head.

  Yes. Yes, they’d been foolish. The duke had laid down rules, Cheverley had seen only impediments.

  “We thought,” she said gently, “we were in love.”

  His Grace made a dismissive sound. Then, he turned his mournful gaze to the door. “Duchess.”

  He heaved a wracking sigh, he placed his hands back over his face and then the most fearsome man she’d ever encountered in her life began to cry.

  “The duchess warned—.” The duke’s shoulders shook. “But—but I knew best.” He spat the word. “Cheverley is dead.”

  His shaking sob alarmed. If not calmed, she feared his fevered frustration could strangle out his last breath.

  “Please, Your Grace,” she said. “I just told you there was reason to hope—”

  The duke fixed her with an uncomprehending stare. Then he glanced about the room, surprised, lost. He closed his eyes. “I ache.”

  “I know, Your Grace,” she said soothingly. “Food would help. Mrs. Renton can bring up more broth.”

  She rose to ring the bell. He reached out and grasped her arm.

  She looked down at his hand. She doubted the duke had ever voluntarily touched her before.

  “Stay,” he said, urgently.

  She removed his hand from her arm and covered it in both of hers.

  “I won’t go,” she replied.

  “You didn’t go, did you?” Regret laced his voice. “I wanted,” he winced, “you to give up. Leave.”

  She might have dropped the cold hand within hers, had it not been feather-light. She might have told the duke to go to the devil, if it were not so clear he was already there.

  “I killed him.” He resumed weeping. “I killed my son.”

  She did not like the sound of his breath. She may be running out of time, but the duke was nearly out.

  “He is alive,” she said quietly. “You don’t deserve a decent end, but you will have one. Cheverley is alive.”

  He dropped his hands. In his expression she read the mirror image of the hope she’d carried for so long.

  “Bring him to me,” he pled. “Please.”


  ~~~

  Cheverley followed Thaddeus up the servants’ stair.

  Thaddeus moved through a short corridor off a landing. “This one goes to His Grace’s chamber. That one”—he indicated door on the other side—“takes you to the duchess’s room. That’s where my mother sleeps.”

  Chev had often used the servants’ stair to sneak in and out of the house, but he’d never before entered either the duke or the duchess’s chambers. They’d been hallowed places. Forbidden.

  Especially for a mere second son.

  “Shall I take you inside?” Thaddeus asked, clearly hoping the answer would be no.

  “Your mother asked me to come alone.”

  “Yes, well. You better get on,” Thaddeus replied.

  Cheverley eased open the servants’ entrance to the duke’s bed chamber, and then shut the door behind him. Hidden halls and stairwells snaked throughout the manor, built specifically so that the servants would be little seen.

  All scions of Ithwick preferred the illusion they existed entirely on their own.

  The air within the bedchamber had a heavy feel. The abundance of gold didn’t surprise him. Nor did the over-large bed, though he knew for a fact the bed had never been occupied by anyone but the duke. Alone.

  An outsized bed for a man with an out-sized sense of his power. Only, the person in the bed did not seem powerful at all. Gone was the commanding force of his presence. All that remained was a withered body, mouth ajar and sheets anxiously clutched at his chin.

  Across the room, the doorway to the duke’s sitting room stood open. Penelope lay asleep on a chaise. In contrast to the duke’s ragged breath, hers was deep and even.

  Quietly, Chev closed the door.

  She’d given Thaddeus no explanation why Chev should meet her here. Thaddeus’s message was only that Pen needed him.

  As for why—the answer lay in the horrible rattle in the duke’s breath.

  She may not have acknowledged Chev as her husband, but she had known. And now, she was giving him this chance—a private moment with the father who he’d feared but not respected, who he’d loved but never admired.

  He sat down on the duke’s bed. How could someone so fearsome appear frail?

  “Your Grace,” Chev whispered. “Father.”

  The duke opened his eyes, his body stilled. His breath stopped. Then, slowly, his pale gaze settled on Chev.