A Trace of Roses

by Connolly, Lynne

  “I will do so, sir. We believe they left both of you for dead, and then ran. As far as anyone can tell, the only things missing were your gold hunter watch, the French one, the ship’s manifest, and a few sacks of tea. Most of the cargo had been unloaded, and the ship’s crew had been signed off.”

  “Where is the vessel now?”

  “Preparing to leave for China, sir, with a fresh crew. They are waiting to discover…” His voice tailed off.

  “If I am alive or dead?” He gave a twisted smile. “Well, you can tell them I don’t plan to go anywhere yet.”

  An hour later, washed, arrayed in a fresh nightshirt and having consumed a delicate meal that barely made a dent on the raging hunger consuming him, Grant allowed his mother and brother to see him.

  They sat by his bed like lugubrious ghouls. At least, his mother did, her usual fashionable pallor emphasized by her dark blue gown and powdered face and hair. David looked even more like an angel than usual, his dark hair covered by an exquisite wig, his clean-cut features still.

  “Johnson tells me you remember nothing,” she said. “How can that be?”

  “People who have been knocked on the head sometimes have a loss of memory.”

  Grant remembered a man at university who’d fallen down a set of stairs at his lodgings and forgot everything when he woke up. Even his own name. He’d recollected in time, all but the day before the accident.

  The loss of memory made Grant feel vulnerable, as if he didn’t really exist. But he kept that to himself. He’d need what wits he had left to cope with his mother.

  “I remember almost everything.”

  “Almost?” She widened her eyes.

  “Almost,” he confessed.

  “So the marriage negotiations have slipped your memory?”

  “Marriage?” Startled, he sat up, ignoring the pain he felt. “What marriage?” His mind went to Dorcas Dersingham. He’d been courting her all season. Had he finally asked her? A sense of contentment filled him at the thought.

  “Yes, dear.” The duchess shared a meaningful glance with David. “We thought the poor lady would lose her betrothed yet again but, fortunately, that is not the case.” She sighed, a long-suffering sound. “You finally agreed that you were ready to marry Lady Elizabeth Askew, but before you could ask her, you were attacked. I have sent word to her that she should come to dinner in a few days. Her parents are delighted.”

  “Lady Elizabeth Askew?” Surely he hadn’t done that. Had he woken in a different world? He’d spoken with her, surely he had. But not about marriage. No, he had a vague recollection of visiting her. Had he asked her then? “You must be mistaken, Mama. I spoke with her,” he calculated in his head, “two weeks ago. When I decided to propose to Lady Dorcas Dersingham.” He remembered his resolve enough, and a sweet kiss they’d shared at Ranelagh. But after that, his memory started to fuzz and melt away. When he tried to remember, pain attacked him. “What about Lady Dorcas?”

  “What about her? You were supposed to have dinner with the earl and his wife the day after the attack but, of course, I sent your regrets. They are leaving for the country this week, if they have not done it already.”

  “Mother, I feel sure I planned to propose to Lady Dorcas.” And when he said it, he was convinced. He’d been courting her, hadn’t he? But vague memories of visiting Elizabeth plagued him. Had he changed his mind at the last minute?

  Why would he do that? He’d never considered her as anything more than a friend, and recently, even less than that.

  His mother got to her feet. “I cannot understand it. I don’t recognize you. I will ask her to dinner with her family next week. We must get this sorted out as soon as we can.”

  Oh, yes, she would do that. He wouldn’t put it past her to announce the wedding. And he had no intention of letting that happen. He had to resolve this confusion, and the only way he could do that was to get away.

  “The dinner must wait,” he said firmly. “I need to recover and sort everything out.”

  His mother stared at him. Grant stared back.

  She was the first to give in. “Very well. You will be married by the end of the year, Blackridge. You cannot leave it any longer. Even you must remember agreeing to that.”

  Yes, yes he did. But not to Lady Elizabeth. His mother wouldn’t leave him alone now until she got her way, but she should know by now that did not work with Grant. But in his current state, he really didn’t feel up to a full-scale bout of shouting and hysterics.

  After his mother and brother left the room, Grant settled to his breakfast, getting out of bed to sit at the table by the window.

  An hour later, after a brief visit from the physician, Baker called.

  Grant had studied his own reflection in the mirror when Johnson had shaved him. He watched the cousins exchange cordial nods, then invited Baker to sit with him while Johnson left the room.

  “You’ve been in the wars,” he observed.

  Baker shot him a grin. “So have you.” His weathered face was swollen and bruised. The large bruise on his left cheek made his features unbalanced, but the black eye on the right helped to balance it. He held one arm carefully, nursing it next to his body and when he’d come in, he’d had a decided limp.

  Baker and Grant had too much between them to stand on ceremony.

  “Anything permanent?”

  Baker shook his head. “I’m not ready to retire yet. I’ll be fine in a week or two. Bastards.” He turned his head to one side as if to spit, then recalled where he was.

  Before he could apologize, Grant held up a hand to stop him. “I won’t forget what you did, Baker. You have a position with me as long as you want it.” That was the least he could do. “Did you save me?”

  “We saved each other.”

  Grant pushed the pile of letters that waited for him to one side and reached for the port decanter, which Johnson had thoughtfully left within reach. He poured two generous doses. It tasted a lot better than the potion the physician had forced on him earlier.

  “So tell me about it.”

  “You were there,” Baker reminded him.

  Grant tapped his head. “I don’t remember. I might in time, apparently, but I need to know now.”

  Baker grimaced. “Ah, sorry to hear that.” He finished his port, and pushed the empty glass to Grant, who obligingly refilled it.

  Thus armored, Baker started his story, from the moment Grant appeared on the ship, to Dorcas’ sudden illness, Grant’s return and the attack. Grant did not interrupt, but listened carefully.

  “So we destroyed Lady Dorcas’ precious roses. That was our responsibility. What went wrong?” Because something must have. Grant did not tolerate shoddy work.

  “Somebody did.” Although they were alone, Baker leaned forward. “And to tell you the truth, sir, I don’t rightly know who or how, but I plan to find out.”

  “Was anything else taken?”

  “No, sir. Only personal items. None of the cargo left on the ship, nothing.”

  Grant nodded. “So it was an attack against us. I thought so, but I wanted your opinion.” He sipped his port and refilled Baker’s glass. The man had a hard head for drink. Normally, Grant could match him, but not today.

  He had far too much to think about.

  “They attacked you before you got to the boat,” Baker said. “Do you remember?”

  “Nothing that happened that day.”

  Grant listened in growing anger as Baker recounted the earlier attack, before Lady Dorcas had arrived.

  “So somebody wanted me dead.” Either that or they wanted to stop him doing something. He could only be thankful that Dorcas had missed both attacks. Though not for the reason she did. He remembered her debilitating headaches from the time they spent at Greenwich. If this one was half as bad, she’d have been completely helpless.

  Baker took his leave shortly after, leaving Grant with a lot of questions and few answers. He turned to his letters.

  He put aside the
first two, both business related. They were for his information only, part of tidying matters up before the end of the season.

  Then the third. It was another legal missive, but this one was completely unexpected. Apparently his great-aunt had died. After a rift with the family not long after Grant was born, she’d retreated to the manor house she’d inherited from a female relative.

  His great-aunt had made good on her threat to his parents, and left the property to Grant, on the condition his mother never got her hands on it. That suited Grant. In fact, it gave him a sanctuary he welcomed at this time. He wasn’t well enough to face anyone. Although that knowledge galled him, he was at least sensible enough to recognize it. If anyone tried to kill him now, they’d probably succeed. A week or two somewhere quiet, and they would not.

  The old lady had a coal mine on the property, but despite advice to develop it, she only used it to supply her house and her neighbors’. She’d never had it explored. That excuse would serve his purposes perfectly. And it didn’t escape his notice that it was close to Carbrooke House, the Dersingham family seat. Not far from Chatsworth, also, where he was invited in just over a month.

  The final letter was also unknown, and the seal was too blurred to read. But it was folded carefully. He slit the seal with the paper knife Johnson had thoughtfully left for him. He toyed with the knife while he shook the letter open.

  It wasn’t a letter. It was a special license for marriage, obtained from Doctors’ Commons, applied for the day of the attack. He must have stopped off at Doctors’ Commons on the way to the ship, although he couldn’t remember doing it.

  Only the name on the license wasn’t Elizabeth’s. It was Dorcas Dersingham’s.

  So his mother’s attempt to marry him off to Lady Elizabeth was not only misinformed, it was mendacious. After talking to Baker and remembering his intention to propose to Dorcas, he was almost sure, but doubt had remained. His head felt as if someone had taken the contents of a pillow and stuffed his head with it. But now, with the license and the knowledge that Dorcas had visited him in private on the Voyager, he knew for sure.

  Grant made his plans.

  Chapter Eleven

  After a restful two weeks at the Hampshire mansion, the Dersinghams traveled up to Derbyshire to their principal country seat.

  Last summer, they’d spent most of their time in Gerald’s smaller house in Hampshire, the one they’d been brought up in, before they’d left for Bunhill Row. The Hampshire house was close enough to London for Annie to continue running her business. But during her fourth pregnancy, her second with Gerald, she’d loosened the reins. While she still controlled the company and made all the major decisions, her manager had proved his worth, and she’d allowed him to run the office and workshops.

  “I do miss it,” she said as they left the outskirts of the City of London, heading for the Great North Road, “but life goes on, does it not, and we can’t always dictate what happens. Sometimes we just have to go along with events.”

  Glancing back, she followed Dorcas’ gaze. London was retreating, its valley covered by a blanket of smoke. Even at this time of year, the end of June, fires were still blasting. Bake houses had to be fueled, and kitchens must be kept going. The bustling cities of London and Westminster continued, as they would when Dorcas and the rest of her family were long gone. The notion comforted her.

  What did her petty concerns matter next to that? So she had lost Grant to another woman. She would survive, even though her heart was broken.

  Her fingers moved restlessly over the newspaper lying on her lap. It contained the brief news that the oldest daughter of the Duke of Illingworth had married a man “in the same state and rank as her father, which is only right”. “The last duke in London,” they’d called him.

  The paper had arrived the first week in Hampshire, and it had put the seal on the break between Dorcas and the man who’d been courting her this last season.

  A duke. Although the journal did not name him, it could only be Grant. Her perfidious suitor had changed his mind, married the woman his mother expected him to. May he live in perfect misery for the rest of his life.

  Dorcas turned her attention to the view outside, tossing the paper aside as if it meant nothing.

  Spires thrust through the clouds, testament to London’s resilience. Most of the churches they belonged to were built after the Great Fire. Next to that, Dorcas’ current state of mind was mere indulgence, self-pity, which she never gave way to. Or tried not to.

  As they turned a gentle corner, she caught sight of the other carriages in their little procession. “We’re as grand as kings,” she said. “One coach for us, another for the children, and yet another for our body servants.”

  “If we hadn’t sent most of the luggage ahead, there’d have been more,” Gerald said, stretching his legs. “If you’d wanted, you could have traveled with Brigstock, instead.”

  Dorcas, sitting with her back to the horses, swung her foot. Gently, because Annie was sitting opposite. “In a few miles, I thought you might like to take the children in here with you. I don’t mind keeping the nursemaids and governess company.”

  She smiled. “That could be entertaining.” Annie’s two oldest boys had recently gained a governess, who would continue with her children by Gerald when the time was right. Everybody liked her, and her willingness to keep the boys informed of what would be important to them in the future, when they took over their mother’s company.

  Annie had been busy. So had Gerald, for that matter. She was already expecting when she married him two years ago, and having delivered a girl, she’d fallen pregnant again almost immediately afterwards. Now the son and heir to the earldom was no doubt bawling in the carriage behind theirs, since he liked to use his lungs. Annie was still feeding him herself, so Dorcas would make way for the baby and his nurse soon.

  “I heard from Delphi this morning,” Gerald said, dipping his hand into his coat pocket and coming out with a letter. He handed it to Dorcas. “It’s too short for my liking but, apparently, she’s doing well, or she was when she wrote this, two months ago. It arrived this morning. Another hour and it would have missed us.”

  The letter was relatively clean, no doubt included in a pouch for its long journey, the seal only broken once. It dangled from the letter as Dorcas read it.

  Delphi was indeed happy. They were staying in a house near the Spanish Steps, and Delphi, accompanied by Matilda and her husband, had visited the classical ruins more than once. She wanted to find a companion, so she could visit more.

  For now, she was making a footman her honorary duenna, and spending hours in the sun, sketching the ruins that had fascinated her all her life. Only a brief mention of Matilda, now the Duchess of Trensom followed, but she seemed deliriously happy with her new husband.

  Then she laughed. “Did you know that Kilsyth was in Rome?”

  Gerald grimaced. “No, I didn’t. I might have thought twice about letting Delphi go.”

  The Duke of Kilsyth was the third in the triumvirate of dukes from Scotland. Close friends and of about the same age, they had endured London together, as Glenbreck had put it. Now Glenbreck was with Dorcas, Blackridge was at his estates with his new bride, and apparently Kilsyth had taken himself to Rome.

  “I didn’t think he was pursuing Delphi,” Dorcas commented. “She never claimed to like him. In fact, sometimes she said she positively hated him.”

  “It’s a coincidence,” Gerald assured her. “He has business in Italy, or so he told Glenbreck. But I thought he was in Naples, not in Rome. The man’s a menace to women. I must write to Trensom and warn him.”

  “He probably knows,” Annie put in. “Don’t worry so much. Rome is a big place, and while they might meet at social events, I doubt they will do more than that. I heard rumors he was affiliated to the Jacobite court.”

  Gerald groaned. “That’s the last thing we need. I will definitely be writing to Trensom.”

  The exiled Stuarts, who
still considered themselves the rightful monarchs of Britain, or at least Scotland—as if it were a possession!—lived in Rome these days. Troublemakers by nature, they never hesitated to stir up trouble where they could. Dorcas knew little about them and cared even less. She read on, and then folded the letter and handed it back to Gerald. “To think that I have a sister and an aunt-by-marriage who are now duchesses.”

  “And I’m an earl. Although I’m finally getting used to it. I don’t look over my shoulder anymore when someone says, ‘Lord Carbrooke’.” Gerald grinned wryly. “I’ve accepted what I can and I’m coping with the rest.”

  Annie threaded her fingers through his, clasping their hands together. “So you are. Beautifully, if I might say so.”

  “You’re the beautiful one.” Turning his head, Gerald pressed a kiss to his wife’s brow. “I couldn’t have done this without you. Not as successfully, for sure.”

  Although Gerald rarely showed his affection so openly, Dorcas loved seeing the bond between her brother and his beloved wife.

  Would that ever happen to her? Would she ever find anyone who loved her like that?

  Every day that passed made that eventuality less likely.

  A week after their arrival in Hampshire, Gerald tossed a paper over the breakfast table to her. She unfolded the journal. “It arrived this morning,” her brother said.

  The closely written columns in small print gave her a moment’s pause, while she skimmed it, not knowing what she was looking for.

  Then she saw a name she recognized. The curt sentences brought her mood down to the bottom of her shoes.

  Although few people remain in town, Lady E…A…, prominent daughter of the Duke of I…, made good on her promise to marry a duke by the end of the season. She has married an old family friend, who happens to be the Duke of B…. The clubs and coffee houses will be consulting their betting books and counting the cost. The happy couple are bound for his country house, no doubt to celebrate their union in the time-honored way.