Duke of Sin

by Adele Ashworth

  Her mouth dropped open. “You must be joking.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll never in my life forget how astonished those women were to receive such a gift. Jesus, Vivian, they had no need for rubies, and Elizabeth very well knew that. Where on earth did she think they’d wear them if they wanted to? Regardless of the fact that I paid them well, have always paid my staff well, these women were born and raised in a world where they worked for money to buy food and necessities. I’ve no doubt every one of them sold the earrings on the street for pennies of what they were worth, thankful to the Duchess of Trent for giving them an opportunity to stash a bit away, clothe their children in new fashions, and put a rare side of beef on the table.”

  Vivian fully sympathized with his concern, knowing perfectly well what it was like to live by modest means, yet fully understanding how such a ridiculous act must have looked to everyone who knew what the duchess had done. “Did that incident bother you?”

  “You mean did I get angry? Of course.” He tipped his head a fraction and eyed her candidly. “It didn’t bother me that my wife cared about others and desired above all else to please them. It bothered me that she would do these irrational things so… spontaneously, without ever consulting me.” He ran his palm quickly over his face. “As the wife of a nobleman, it’s one thing to help the needy by donating old clothes, visiting the sick and the poor, and filling soup bowls. It’s another to think you’re so important you’re going to save the underworld. Elizabeth truly believed she alone was going to save the underworld.”

  A gull dropped low on the sand in front of them, pecked a few times, then took flight once more, heading south over water.

  “How did she die?” Vivian finally found the courage to ask.

  He hesitated for a moment or two, inhaling deeply as he concentrated on tying the two blades of grass together.

  “There were other times, dark times, when she wasn’t herself,” he disclosed, his tone low and taut. “During these times, Vivian, it was as if she… became ill, absorbed not in herself and her power to do no wrong, but fearful, anxious, so overcome with despair, crying until there were no more tears to cry, then growing angry and even cruel to me. She would throw books or candlesticks or teacups at me—whatever was available and at her fingertips— if I didn’t say or do that which she deemed appropriate and reasonable. She used language no lady should use, treated servants who had been under my employ for years with such suspicion they were genuinely afraid to go near her when she entered “the mood” as they called it. God help me, but I never understood it. Her physician said it was normal for ladies to get… emotional during their monthlies, but this was… I don’t know, pronounced. Extreme. And it wasn’t at all predictably based on her female cycle, either. She would sometimes go for months with incredibly high energy, then sink so low into desperation that for weeks she would rarely leave her bed.” He raked his fingers harshly through his hair then threw the knotted blades of grass out on the sand in front of him. “After a while, because I had no idea what else to do, I retreated physically and emotionally from her, which proved to be the beginning of the end.”

  Vivian watched the wind lift the knotted grass and carry it off across the sand and down the beachfront. She remained motionless, fairly speechless, and found it terribly difficult not to reach over and caress his cheek, then pull him against her in a loving embrace.

  “The night before she died, we had a terrible argument,” he continued, now seemingly lost in remembrance. “She’d come to the conclusion that I no longer cared about her, and it didn’t matter what I said to the contrary. She had been in her bed for two weeks, unwilling to leave it. Her sister had just come for a short visit, and she more or less accused me of not giving Elizabeth enough attention, which I think had the negative effect of putting ideas in her head. By that point I felt helpless, I suppose, and refused to speak to either of them. Her sister left on Saturday, and the next morning, a beautifully warm, sunny Sunday, Elizabeth’s body was found floating in a nearby lake. The following weekend, her relations accused me of murder.” He squeezed his hands into fists. “The only reason I’m not dead or imprisoned now is that I had friends, members of the peerage, to testify on my behalf, and there was never any solid proof that I did anything to her at all. In her despair, which she could not handle, my wife drowned herself. In the public’s mind, however, the suspicions still exist, will always exist. I have committed the ultimate sin, for which they will never forgive me.” He lowered his gaze to the ground in front of him, staring without seeing. “If I’ve learned nothing else, if’s that life is not only difficult, but sometimes unbearable and only rarely fair. If not for the faint glimmers of sunshine and hope at the top of each hill we climb, I think we would all give in to it.”

  For a long, long time after he finished his disclosure they sat in silence, listening to the ocean waves crash upon each other as they pushed toward shore, an occasional squawking bird, the whistle of the wind.

  “Who are these friends who came so readily to your defense?” she asked sometime later.

  Without pause, he replied, “One is Samson Carlisle, Duke of Durham, the other is Colin Ramsey, Duke of Newark. Our families are all distantly related, of course, but the three of us have been more like brothers since early childhood.”

  “I met his grace, the Duke of Durham a few years ago,” she confessed after only a second’s hesitation, “at Lady Clarice Suffington’s coming-out soiree.” Uncertain whether it would be wise to admit it, Vivian decided the encounter had been so brief it wouldn’t matter. “I recall that he was very handsome in a rather distinctive, melancholy way, and very tall, though I don’t suppose he would remember our brief introduction. The man had seemed so positively bored—that I do remember well about him.”

  Will glanced sideways at her, smirking. “A fair assessment of Sam, I suppose.” His gaze skimmed her face. “Why were you there?”

  Her eyes widened. “At Lady Clarice’s coming out?”

  “Yes.”

  Think fast.

  “As it happened, I was standing in the library, with Lady Clarice’s mother, reassembling one of the floral arrangements, when he walked in to get a moment’s peace, or so he said.” It wasn’t a direct answer, but one she hoped would suffice. Reaching down to avoid his penetrating contemplation of her, she pulled a handful of long grass up by the roots and tossed it out into the breeze. Truthfully, she had been an invited guest at the party, and had gone into the room with the countess to advise her on floral pieces for her older daughter’s upcoming nuptials, when she’d been introduced to the man. But she didn’t want to give Will too much information, leading to more questions she wasn’t prepared to discuss. Instead, she kept the conversation focused on his friend. “I do remember that he seemed annoyed to be there, and rather contemplative.”

  After a moment she chanced a glance back at his face.

  He watched her, assessing, then offered, “Sam is quiet, and he despises parties.”

  She nodded, smiling faintly. “And your other friend? The Duke of Newark?”

  He continued to study her for several moments. Then he brushed windblown hair from his forehead and turned his attention back to the churning waves. “Colin is everything Sam isn’t—self-assured, gregarious, and flirtatious to a fault. Colin is … colorful.”

  “And the ladies adore him?” she guessed, knowing the type all too well.

  His mouth turned up slightly in wry humor. “An understatement. Even as a child, swarms of little girls would stand around him and giggle incessantly at the things he would do and say. Sam and I would roll our eyes and run from such nonsense. Colin absorbed it like butter on toast. Still does.” He snorted. “He needs female attention in constant supply to feed his excessive vanity.”

  “You’re just jealous,” she asserted through a small laugh.

  “Probably then.” He looked into her eyes. “Not anymore.”

  That warmed her from the inside out. Vivian found it
fascinating to consider the apparent differences between the three, friends from childhood whose personalities remained unique through the years. She imagined it must have been amazing to those who witnessed the Duke of Newark and the Duke of Durham, two distinguished gentlemen of such high noble rank, standing in court, before a judge and jury, defending a man’s character. She surmised that Will’s future—his entire fate—had for a time rested precariously in their hands.

  “They saved your life,” she said softly.

  “They did,” he agreed after a deep inhale. “Without them, and their unswerving testimonies, I probably would have hanged.”

  Vivian felt her heart swell with compassion and she made a concerted effort not to break down in front of him. How horrible his life had to have been, not only while married to someone he couldn’t understand or reach emotionally, but experiencing the humiliation of a public trial, and especially these last five years when society had judged him evil and beyond redemption. She had to wonder if this was the reason why he’d moved to Cornwall, why he spent his money on rare and exquisite items of beauty to decorate an estate he rarely left, a marvelous home he shared with nobody save a few loyal servants. She was beginning to understand his actions and thoughts, his confusion over the years his wife suffered, only to realize she ended her life in such terrible sadness, such emotional torment about which he could do nothing. His frustration and grief must have been as great as his guilt. No wonder he remained a recluse to this day. No wonder he seemed so alone.

  Without clear thought, Vivian reached out and placed her hand on one of his, clasping it firmly, holding on tightly should he attempt to pull away. Instead, he tenderly began to brush his thumb across her knuckles, back and forth, in a calmly shared intimacy he seemed to relish.

  After a long while of contentment, she pulled his hand up and lightly kissed his wrist. “You may find this incredible, Will, but my husband was very much like your wife. Not because of an emotional imbalance, but because of an addiction so strong it took away all that he was in personality before it destroyed the best of his life.”

  She paused for a moment as he continued to gently caress the top of her hand, saying nothing, waiting for her to carry on at her desired pace. Vivian instinctively knew his curiosity about her very personal history had to be as great as hers had been about his. In that she felt strangely comforted.

  At last, throwing caution into the moist, sea-salted air that enveloped them in a world of mutual confidence, she gathered her fears and began to disclose her perfectly veiled past to the one person she suddenly trusted above all others.

  “My husband was a man of some means,” she started quietly, with only the slightest remaining reservation. “I’ve told everyone that he was a cousin, to avoid unwanted questions, but he wasn’t. He was a longtime family acquaintance, and I fell in love with him the instant we met. But not only was I young when I got to know him, I was also extremely naive. I married him just before my twentieth birthday, and I, like you, was filled with good cheer and hope for a decent future of laughter, companionship, and children. Unfortunately, on my wedding night, my world took a tumble into the realm of the unimaginable.”

  Vivian closed her eyes and lifted her face skyward, noticing the familiar coiling of tension inside of her that always appeared when she remembered that other life. A life she hadn’t discussed with a soul in more than ten years.

  “My husband, Leopold, had an opium addiction, Will. He smoked it daily, hidden from everybody, and it became a nasty obsession that slowly tore away his reason to live, ate away everything he was.” Lifting her lashes, she gazed straight ahead into the dull grayness of early afternoon. “On our wedding night, I dressed myself to please him, readied myself for the consummation that would take my virginity and make me his. I loved him, you see, and wanted him to love me in return.”

  Vivian drew in a shaky breath, feeling his eyes on her but afraid to look at him, unwilling to expose just how deep her anger had carved its way inside her mind and tender heart of so long ago. Still, though, she clung to his hand, the tether that joined them in past and destiny. Above everything, she needed to touch him now.

  “I was naive, as I said, so young and unaware in my sheltered upbringing that I couldn’t believe someone of my husband’s prestige in the community, a man of relative wealth and education, a noble subject with a sterling reputation, could become so addicted to a substance that eventually everything good in his life held no meaning. He lived each day, from morning till night, for what he conveniently termed his medicine.”

  Will lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles softly, though he didn’t interrupt. Finally she turned and smiled at him faintly. His eyes had narrowed as he watched her with a gravity she could feel to her bones.

  She lowered her voice to a soft whisper heard just above the wind. “You asked me why I was a virgin. The truth is my husband couldn’t sustain an erection. Oh, he tried, and when his… when he didn’t—respond physically, even to my touch, he blamed me for his own inability.”

  She watched his reaction to that news carefully as his brows drew together with an apparent confusion. Then he remarked, “His addiction was so all-consuming that it made him impotent and he considered it your fault?”

  Heat suffused her, but she held his gaze with strength. “I was his wife and I couldn’t satisfy him, which was naturally a terrible blow to his pride as a man and husband. In the beginning he didn’t blame anyone; later, as he grew more and more frustrated with his physical inabilities, he blamed me—I suspect, because he refused to blame himself. And it was so much easier than blaming the opium, which he needed, at that point, for survival. He couldn’t bed me and after a while it obsessed him. In time, he no longer cared.”

  For moments Will just stared at her, his contemplation of her confession almost visible in his handsome, sculpted features as he digested the information. Strangely, she felt neither embarrassment nor repulsion in revealing her very private affairs for the first time in a decade. In a manner of speaking, what she really felt was a sense of relief.

  Finally he stretched his legs out casually along the grassy slope, crossing one ankle over the other as he angled his body in her direction, never letting go of her hand.

  “How did it make you feel?” he asked soothingly.

  Her mouth opened a bit in surprise. Although it was true that fewer than a handful of people knew of her marital woes, nobody had ever asked her to express how she personally felt about them.

  “I—I suppose in the beginning I was unconcerned. I mean—I really didn’t understand it. Later I felt hurt, especially when I tried to be a good wife, attractive to him personally, and still couldn’t get him to respond.” She sighed and gazed out over the water again. “In the end I got angry. He loved his smoking more than he loved me, preferred to spend time in seedy dens where he could dispose of his income and share his habit with others so inclined to throw life away. Not once did he care that others viewed me with pity. Not only was I married to a man who was obviously addicted, I also couldn’t conceive, which everybody assumed to be my fault. At least, in society’s eyes, a child would have kept me occupied and able to ignore his vulgar, dark side.” She swallowed harshly, keeping fresh tears restrained. “I didn’t tell anyone that he couldn’t be stimulated into response. I didn’t know how to discuss it.”

  Will exhaled loudly. “Did you consider an annulment? At least it would have given you a chance to start over—”

  “I suggested it once, six months after we were married,” she cut in, facing him directly, her eyes flashing a bitterness she would never be able to conceal. “He slapped me so hard my head hit a wall and my jaw was bruised for two weeks. It was my word against his, he informed me, and he would not be humiliated socially or ruined professionally by any charge of mine. I never mentioned it again. Five years later, my husband departed my world, and I moved to Penzance to forever forget the lonely nightmare that was my so-called marriage.”

>   His expression darkened considerably as a muscle in his cheek flexed, his lips thinned.

  “Bastard,” he murmured, looking past her out to sea.

  She turned her attention to the grayness beyond as well, answering him simply in whisper, “Yes.”

  A calmness settled over them, a soft and comforting cocoon of shared appreciation for mutual anxieties and shattered dreams. She faintly squeezed his hand, beginning to think she needed him more than air and sunshine, grazing his fingers with her thumb, back and forth in a sensuous motion of complete contentment. But for this day, at least, the two of them were all who mattered in the world.

  They sat together for a long while, mollified by the companionable silence. Far in the distance she noticed a lone fishing boat being tossed about on large, cresting waves, a violent ocean attempting to thwart its hopes of finding its destination safely. So like the worries that engulfed her now.

  “Who is blackmailing you, Vivian?” he asked in a gruff whisper.

  Without pause or prevarication, she replied, “Gilbert Montague, a gifted Shakespearean actor performing in town for the season. He has in his possession a copy of a note I sent to my solicitor in London years ago in which I requested information about my erring husband. It was quite detailed. Montague knows my secrets and is threatening to reveal them to any who might be interested in a bit of gossip regarding the well-respected Widow Rael-Lamont.” She exhaled through her teeth, her jaw tightening once more in fury. “In essence, he could ruin me.”

  Will released her and sat forward again, elbows on knees. “Did you consider going to the magistrate?”

  She scoffed. “Of course.” Sitting primly once more, hands folded in her lap, she added, “But what good will that do? I have no proof of blackmail, and he’s got proof that could damage my reputation beyond repair. I’ve worked too hard to build a solid position in this community only to see it disappear at the hands of a scoundrel.”