The Unusual Story of the Silent Duchess: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Linfield, Emma

  “You know I got my start in India,” Julian announced. His posture indicated he would be delivering a rehearsed monologue as if he were on a stage.

  “During some of my formative years after the army,” he went on, his thumb sliding up and down over the pistol’s hammer, “I met a man trading spices. He was inspiring, you see, because he ran an independent operation. It was just he and his ship, and of course, the crew he hired. It was old fashioned, the spirit of adventure radiated from this man, you see.”

  Mary-Anne watched him still, her heart pounding within her chest. He is not going to shoot me, at least not yet. Mary-Anne also remembered running through the forest, and hearing the pistol shot behind her. So, he is willing to kill me, but he does not wish to, she resolved.

  “We spoke for some time, this man and I. I told him of my time in the service, and he told me of his family in London. A wife with a baby on the way. One day a letter came to him, you see. The baby had been born. A beautiful baby girl. But his wife had passed in childbirth. He was devastated, utterly devastated, as anyone would be.”

  What is the point of all this? Mary-Anne thought. She inched herself little by little towards the edge of the seat, closer to the door, attempting to mask her movement with the jostle of the carriage.

  “He told me something else as well, told me about a policy he had taken out on his ship. A bundle of cash, just waiting there, should he never make it back to London. I mean a bundle, dearie, more money than you or I will ever make honestly,” he laughed. “But I am not an honest man. I am not ashamed of it! Oh no! It was what brought me here, to this point. When we return to London, the captain of my ship will see us married. I have the documents waiting. Then, we will make our way to a certain insurance house, where we will collect the vast sum awaiting the next of kin to one Matthew Barnes.”

  Mary-Anne felt as if she had been thrown from a horse directly into quicksand. She was being dragged down, suffocated by the shocking knowledge of her father. She did not remember much about those early days, but there is one thing she remembered. Matthew. He was her father and on one voyage he had not returned.

  “Oh, I waited, I bided my time,” Julian went on, grinning like a piglet over the trough. “I knew that one day the time would be right, and now it is.”

  I have been a pawn of his for my whole life, Mary-Anne despaired. How can this be?

  “You remember that boy you were going to run off with to Scotland? The one from the orphanage? Did you ever know what happened to him?”

  I hate you! Mary-Anne screamed out, fire rising in her chest, licking up the inside of her throat, craving to be released in a great spray of dragon wrath. You have destroyed everything good my entire life! Now I am going to destroy you!

  “I had him press ganged!” Julian spurt out in more laughter. “A navy man now, if he’s still alive. Don’t you see, Mary-Anne? You are mine, my property, and have been your entire life. By tomorrow morning you will belong to me legally as well!”

  I am not yours! I am not anybody’s! Her eyes shouted. Her muscles were quivering with rage now, her shoulder blade vibrated as the adrenaline raced up her spine and flooded into her heart.

  “I have owned you ever since I killed your father!” Julian finished triumphantly.

  The fire inside Mary-Anne erupted like an enchanted volcano. All of the suffering this man had inflicted upon her broke against the wall of magma that she hurdled outwards, like a golden queen of dragon gods. She would not endure his torture any longer.

  “I am not yours!” she screamed into his face. Just as her terror of this man and the trauma of that night had stolen her voice, her hatred and confrontation of him had restored it.

  Mary-Anne grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted sharply upwards, ripping it clean from his grasp. She had shocked him, but as she moved to turn the gun around at him, his mammoth hand shot upwards and grappled with hers.

  The two of them struggled, grunting and gasping, trying to wrestle the weapon away from each other.

  “You are mine!” Julian hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Never!” she screamed back.

  The pistol rang out in the close confines of the carriage.

  * * *

  Neil and Oliver galloped hard through the rain, pounding down the sloping road after Mr. Chase’s coach.

  “There they are!” Oliver shouted through the gale, pointing ahead at the rambling carriage. In the jostling oil lamps hung beside the driver’s seat, the outline of a bundled and storm-soaked Mr. Chase was barely visible.

  “They are delayed by the wind!” Neil shouted back. “We shall be upon them!”

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace, again, I’m sorry!” Oliver screamed.

  “You are here now, aren’t you?” Neil shot back, urging his stallion forwards.

  “We’re coming up on the gulch!” Oliver pointed.

  Neil looked down the dark road before them and saw it curving to accommodate the sloping gulch.

  It dropped down off the right side of the road, deep into a rocky river valley that worked as drainage for the surrounding fields.

  Neil saw the carriage ahead of them proceeding through the storm, and he shivered against the forcible winds.

  It had been here, five years ago, that the coach containing his parents and wife had gone over the side of the gulch, wrapped up in a storm such as this one.

  Neil had not been there, but he had imagined it time and time again, how it would look to see the carriage cascading over the side, to hear the screams.

  If he were on foot, he would have paused, stopped still in his tracks by the site of the gulch in the storm, and above it a carriage carrying someone he cared for. Perhaps it would have been too much for the Duke’s mind, and perhaps he would have collapsed into the rainy road, wailing at his inadequacies.

  But Neil was not on foot. He was on a raging stallion, pumping muscles hard against the sleeting rain, and there was no stopping still.

  Neil was forcibly carried onwards into a near re-enactment of his nightmares. You can do this! Neil yelled at himself. Come on! It’s right there!

  They drew nearer and nearer still, their horses coursing over the rain-washed road, panting great clouds of breath from their nostrils.

  “Mr. Chase!” Neil shouted out, but his voice was lost in the wind of the storm. Neil and Oliver exchanged glances.

  “We have to get closer!” Oliver called back.

  Neil nodded, hunched further over the neck of his horse, and surged onwards. Oliver was close behind.

  “Mr. Chase!” Neil screamed again, hoping to God, if he were there at all, to lend out a bloody hand.

  Mr. Chase turned his head slowly at the noise behind him. It looked as if he had heard the cry, and Neil’s heart soared. It is almost over, he reassured himself.

  “Stop the horses, Mr. Chase!” Neil bellowed. The old coachman raised one of his hands as if he was signaling that he understood.

  The unmistakable sound of a pistol shot burst from within the carriage, and Neil saw Mr. Chase jump from his seat, jerking his limbs, and he fell headfirst from the side of the carriage, shot by Julian’s bullet when it tore through the ceiling.

  A bolt of thunderous lightning followed directly after, and the horses bucked wildly. The carriage collided with one of the creatures, and the whole vehicle was thrown off of its axis.

  * * *

  Mary-Anne felt the powder burst in the pan, and the shot deafened her with ringing. Smoke clouded up into her face, and she could hear Julian screaming out.

  “My hand! You wench! Ah!” he was clutching his palm, burned by the discharge from the barrel.

  Mary-Anne dropped the pistol, now useless, and dove for the door on the right-hand side. She flung the door open just as Mr. Chase’s body fell past her, and she screamed while Julian’s good hand coiled around her ankle.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Julian cackled, yanking her back into the coach.

  “The horses—” Mary-Anne start
ed to scream. Then the lightning struck, and the coach crashed.

  There was a tremendous impact, and Mary-Anne was thrown forward into Julian, who smacked against the carriage interior.

  The sound of cracking wood and panicking horses filled her ears, and Mary-Anne felt her elbow smash against something.

  Pain appeared, the intense hurt of broken bones, but it was dashed aside by the adrenaline, willing her to survive.

  Mary-Anne had always survived. Ever since she had first been left alone, she had found a way. She would be damned if this evil git got the best of her, after everything she had endured.

  The carriage had stopped, it seemed to be resting at an angle.

  Julian was moaning, blood pouring from a broken nose, slumped against the carriage interior. It seemed as if he had struck his head against the door frame, now partly destroyed.

  “I’ll get you,” he murmured, waving his hand out delusionally. He was likely hallucinating from the head injury.

  The rain was pouring in from the left-hand door, which faced upwards like the roof, and through its open portal came the weather and the sound of the horses bolting away.

  Get up! She commanded herself. Get up now!

  Mary-Anne pulled herself upwards, clutching the edge of the coach’s bench with her good arm. She grunted and pulled but was weak and battered from the accident.

  “You’re mine!” Julian shouted out from the bottom of the coach, reaching wildly upwards, but apparently unable to bring himself to stand. “You wench! Stop!”

  Mary-Anne flailed upwards, trying to grasp onto anything beyond the coach. She could see only straight upwards into the storming sky, and she could not feel the ground. She had to haul herself up and over, and she strained with all her might.

  * * *

  Neil saw the carriage collide with the earth and bounce itself free of the horses. It rested with a crash on the edge of the gulch, precariously upended and suspended between piles of mud it had created.

  The impact was jarring, and sent a shocking feeling into Neil, reaching down to grab his stomach, squeezing it, wrenching at him.

  “No!” he screamed, throwing himself from the saddle wildly. He slipped as he landed, sliding a foot in the thickening mud. Yet, he pulled himself upwards and clawed through the gusts of bittersweet, forcing each step closer to the teetering carriage.

  Then he was there, looking down into the coach through its overturned, left-side door. Mary-Anne clutched desperately on the lip, hanging on by one hand, grunting and struggling against the rain that pelted down.

  “I have you!” Neil called, taking hold of her arm with both of his hands. He pulled her up, but suddenly was stopped short, fighting a ridiculous resistance.

  “You’re mine!” Julian was raving, a pile of battered bones at the bottom of the coach, yet his good hand had found Mary-Anne’s ankle. “I have you!” he cackled.

  “Hold on!” Neil looked Mary-Anne in the eyes, gripping her tightly, and he knew that he would not let go of her. He had her now, and he would never let her go.

  “You’re a bastard, Rutland!” Julian wailed, jerking Mary-Anne’s ankle and yanking her downwards. The coach teetered further on the ledge, creaking and tearing at broken pieces of wood. “I claimed her! She is mine!” Julian pulled harder, and the whole of the wooden frame rocked, protesting, sliding out of position.

  Oliver appeared beside the Duke, lit up by a brilliant flash of lightning. In his arms, he held the long-barrel Baker rifle from the Duke’s saddle.

  “I should have seen this coming,” he sneered down at Julian.

  Oliver reached down and struck Julian square in the jaw with the bronze-plated butt of the gun.

  Julian fell back, stunned, releasing Mary-Anne, and Neil hoisted her out of the doomed carriage just in time.

  The weight shifted within the coach when Mary-Anne was lifted clear, and the coach groaned a final time before tipping over the edge of the gulch.

  Julian opened his eyes, trying to grab hold of something, anything. He looked up, panicking, to see the faces of the Duke, Mary-Anne, and Oliver looking briefly down at him.

  Then the coach was falling, falling fast, cascading down the gulch, smashing against trees and rocks, picking up speed as it went, and then there was nothing.

  Neil watched the coach disappear into the darkness below, clutching Mary-Anne to his chest in relief.

  “It’s over,” he whispered, taking her head in his hands. “You must forgive me, I—”

  “I love you,” Mary-Anne cut him off and kissed him. He held her tightly, feeling the warmth of her against him in the horrible cold, feeling alive and complete.

  “You can speak,” Neil remarked with a light laugh when they drew apart. Tears of happiness came down his face and mixed with the pelting of rain.

  “It seems I can.” Mary-Anne laughed back, also sobbing with joy.

  “I love you too,” Neil replied, and the two came together again.

  They stood there together, on the edge of a great gulch, set against a thundering storm, soaked from the rain, red in the face from the cold, and covered in freezing mud.

  There, in that wide blackness of storm, rage, and cold, the two of them stood serenely. They were whole, in love and together, and alive. They were a beacon of bright light, shining hot into the night, and Mary-Anne was finally safe.

  They drew apart after a time, drinking in each other’s proximity. To Neil, there was only one thing left to do.

  “Will you marry me, Mary-Anne?” he asked, tearing up as he sank to one knee.

  “I will!” she exclaimed, embracing him again, falling to the mud to miss him.

  “Bravo!” Oliver laughed, clapping, and the two of them spun around to face him.

  “I had forgotten you were here, Master Hanson!” Neil laughed out.

  “Well I haven’t,” Oliver smiled back.

  “I suppose not,” Mary-Anne said to him, picking Neil and herself up from the mud.

  The three of them looked down into the gulch, where far below the wreckage of the coach lay shattered.

  “So that is the end of it?” Oliver asked.

  “Almost,” Neil answered, draping his arm around Mary-Anne. “We have a wedding to plan.”

  Epilogue

  In the following weeks, there was not one wedding but two. Firstly, as Lucy was with child, she and Oliver were married with splendor.

  Neil had insisted that he would spare no expense, not for the rescuer of his true love. While Oliver constantly reminded him that Neil had played as much as part as he, Neil continuously hailed Oliver as a hero.

  For such heroic services, Neil had offered to pay for the wedding. He had also taken the two young lovebirds into his home, giving them a permanent place on the Rutland estate.

  “It won’t do,” he had said, “to have such fine young people as yourself out in the cold, raising a child.”

  For their wedding, Neil brought in special craftsmen from Scotland who rapidly restored the old chapel that looked over the cottages. The building was still in use but needed some replacement windows and a solid scrubbing of the stone. Once the place was made presentable, decorations began to spring up.

  Flowers and holly were strung up all around, hanging from the rafters with some sort of calculated chaos.

  All of Neil’s tenants were in attendance. There were so many come to see the wedding, in fact, the crowd gathered all around the chapel. The space was completely filled, and many others stood outside the great wooden doors, left open so that all could hear the priest.

  With the door open, a stiff cold breeze regularly blew through the ceremony. No one seemed to mind. All present were too wrapped in the happiness radiating from the two young folks to feel the wind’s impact.

  The priest announced, “I thus pronounce you man and wife in the eyes of God and of your peers.”

  The chapel broke into intense revelry. All hooted and hollered their congratulations, hailing the couple with good fortune. Ins
tead of celebrating there in the village, Neil opened his ballroom again to his tenants. Not to escape calamity, but to rejoice together in the warmth and grandeur of his home.

  Neil had hired a band of musicians from the London area as entertainment, and they looked around the room in slight disgust at all the dirty common folk. Seeing their hesitation, Neil approached them.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have brought you here to play for our enjoyment. So, if you would, play!” the Duke commanded, and the band struck up a fast-paced tune.