Duke In Disguise (The Stafford Sisters Book 1)

by G. L. Snodgrass

  Next to him, he could feel Lady Clarice stiffen for just the briefest moment. It took a strong will on his part to stop himself from smiling at her.

  “Of course, Your Grace,” Lady Gresham said with a small pout.

  He sighed internally as he leaned to the side slightly so that he might be served the soup course. His stomach rumbled. It had been a long day and one thing about the Gresham’s, they always did set a good table.

  As the meal progressed, the conversation remained on safe topics such as the interplay in the ton. The prospect for the corn laws. Lord Liverpool’s difficulties in Parliament. Anything not dealing with the fact that it was Lady Clarice that had forced him into a marriage with Ann.

  He smiled to himself. At some point, he should make a point of thanking her, he realized. The thought was surprising, but if he was honest with himself. He didn’t regret the marriage. In fact, he was coming to believe that it might be the best thing to ever happen to him.

  Who would have ever thought that? Not him, never in a thousand years.

  “Excuse me, My Lord,” the Gresham’s butler said as he stepped into the dining room. “A message has arrived for His Grace.”

  Norwich’s heart jumped as he held out his hand for the note. This couldn’t be good. No seal. No indication of who it was from.

  Opening the note, he glanced down to the bottom to see Stevenson’s tight scrawl. His shoulders stiffened as he returned to the top. As he read, he felt a sense of dread wash over him. His wife had returned to Brookenham’s. Why? What was she thinking?

  Suddenly he remembered their last two days together. That undiscussed cleft between them had opened a little more than he had liked. He had realized something was bothering Ann, but he had believed that if it was important, she would tell him.

  After all, that was what he was there for. To solve people’s problems.

  But she had held herself back. It had been like that for their entire marriage. All four weeks of it. Some hidden discontent. Was that why she had returned to her sisters? Did she despise him? Did she hate her new life so much that she abandoned it at the first opportunity?

  He continued to stare at the note before him as he tried to decipher exactly what the problem might be. He had given her everything a woman might want. An entire new wardrobe. A ball that had been a giant success. His friend’s wives had accepted her. Even his mother had gone out of her way to ease her way into this new world.

  And of course, there were their nights together. He had been careful. Never demanding too much. Letting her explore and learn at her own pace. And he was most assured that she had enjoyed herself. A man could tell after all. A woman didn’t scream his name unless she had been taken to the highest of heights.

  So why had she left? Stevenson’s note gave him no clue. Had she received word that here sisters were ill? No, Stevenson would have mentioned that.

  His brow knit, as he recounted their time together while he searched for what might have gone wrong. Of course, there might be a perfectly acceptable reason, he told himself. But his heart didn’t believe it. Not deep down. No, something was wrong.

  “Is everything all right, Your Grace,” Lord Gresham asked. Both of the ladies at the table were staring at him, obviously waiting for him to explain.

  How could he explain? He didn’t understand it himself.

  “I am sorry, I must return to London.”

  Lady Gresham gasped, obviously upset at losing an opportunity to show him off to her neighbors and friends.

  “Might I borrow a horse? I pushed mine rather hard getting here,” he asked.

  “Of course,” Lord Gresham said, his brow creased with concern. “I do hope there is nothing amiss?”

  Norwich sighed internally. Something was most definitely amiss, but the fact that he didn’t know what it might be was the most maddening.

  “No, nothing serious,” he told his host. “But something that must be dealt with immediately.”

  Lord Gresham nodded as if it all made perfect sense. Lady Gresham looked as if she had lost her best friend. Lady Clarice, however, studied him for a long moment, her eyes boring into him. It was rather obvious that she could tell the note dealt with Ann.

  How was it that he could read her so easily, but couldn’t discern is own wife’s inner thoughts?

  Because Lady Clarice doesn’t have the depth of his wife, he realized. No one had the hidden depths of his wife.

  “If you will excuse me Gresham, ladies. I must be off.”

  The trio nodded their acceptance of his departure.

  Turning, he departed, his mind already focused on his wife. What had the woman been thinking?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The sun had been up for several hours when the carriage pulled to a stop before the Brookenham Manor house. Traveling at night had taken longer than she had anticipated.

  “Your Grace,” Lord Brookenham’s butler, Wesley, said as he stepped down from the main house.

  Ann, nodded her thanks to Davis, the footman as he handed her down from the coach. Then, turning to the butler she said, “Please see to my men, they have traveled through the night.”

  “Of course, Your Grace,” he said with another bow. “I will show you to your room. Neither Lord Brookenham or his mother are in residence of course. I know they will be upset that they missed your visit.”

  Ann smiled softly as she followed him into the house. “I will not be here long, A few minutes only then I will visit my sisters.” The typical morning sickness seemed to be absent. Perhaps a night in a rocking coach was an unknown cure.

  The butler nodded as if it made perfect sense. But then, what else could he do? She was a duchess. Every whim and folly were to be treated as sacrosanct.

  “Both Miss Lydia and Miss Isobel are doing well, I assure you,” the butler said, obviously worried that a duchess might find he and his staff less than perfect. Even though they may have remained in the cottage. It was obvious the manor personnel had taken her sisters and aunt under their care.

  She smiled her appreciation and turned to follow him upstairs. The footmen preceded them with her bags.

  After she had been shown her rooms and she was once again alone, she took a deep breath and tried to slow her racing heart. What would Daniel think when he returned home to find her gone?

  No, she thought to herself. She must not worry about that. She must take this time to adjust her thinking to her new life. As a mother, she would need to put aside her wants, her desires. She must do what was best for her child.

  Obviously, that meant returning to the Duke at some point. But she would have to come to the reality that it would mean returning to a loveless marriage. She would have to accept that fact.

  Her entire reason for coming to her sisters was so that she could make that internal adjustment. Come to accept this reality.

  Once Ann had changed into fresh clothes and seen to herself, she left her room and hurried downstairs, her heart racing as she anticipated seeing her sisters. Would they be surprised? Happy? What would they think when she told them they were to be aunts?

  Smiling weakly, she slipped out of the house and into the garden. As she made her way through the orchard, she paused for a moment and looked at the apple tree. Their apple tree. Her heart ached for that simpler time. For that sweet moment when the world felt special.

  Sighing to herself, she turned and started for home. Her true home, she realized. The one place in the world where she felt as if she belonged.

  Everything was as she remembered it, filling her with a sense of ease. Of course, the seasons were changing, but the stream still bubbled. The tall trees had not yet lost their leaves. But each step brought back memories. Sweet memories, she realized.

  At the midway point between the orchard and her sisters, a strange noise caught her attention. A rustle in the leaves.

  Ann drew to a halt as her brow furrowed in confusion.

  “I told you,” a gnarled voice said behind her.

>   She twisted to find a man in his late forties. Bedraggled and unkempt, holding a large knife. Her stomach dropped as she realized just how alone she was. The man appeared dirty. His skin grimy. His greasy hair bound by a strip of leather. Even the fingers gripping the large knife looked as if they had been digging in the ground. Every aspect was a warning that this man posed a danger.

  “So you were,” another voice said. Ann turned back, another man, just as scraggy stood there with a pistol. Looking at her as if his greatest wish had been answered.

  “Mr. Evans?” she asked as she realized it was Lord Brookenham’s estate agent. Or rather, his former agent. The man sat three pews from her in church for every Sunday for the last five years. What was he doing here like this? Looking like an overweight outlaw.

  Her stomach tightened up as she looked back and forth between them. The mad glint to their eyes made every nerve jitter with alarm. Both of them looked as if they had been hiding in the forest. Like rabid foxes. Intelligent but insane.

  “Where’s is he?” the knife holder asked her.

  Instantly she realized what this was about. Her husband. They wanted Daniel for some reason.

  She lifted her chin. “If you mean the Duke of Norwich. He is in East Anglica I believe. If you want, I will inform him that you wish to talk to him the next time we are together. Now if you will excuse me. I must be off.”

  Reaching down, she lifted her skirt and took a step towards her sisters. All the while, holding her breath desperately hoping they would let her pass. Of course, there was to be no such relief. Instead, Mr. Evans waved his pistol at her and shook his head.

  “No, that was his coach we saw on the road. He would never have allowed you to travel on your own,” the knife carrier said with a firm set to his chin.

  This man is angry, she realized, murderously furious. Why? What had Daniel done to him to justify such rage?

  “Excuse me, sir,” Ann said as she fought to keep the incident calm. “We have not been introduced. I am …”

  “I know who you are,” the knife carrier said with a hiss.

  Ann didn’t let his anger affect her as she paused for a calming second and said, “And you are?”

  “That’s Sam Parker,” Mr. Evans said. “The mill owner your husband ruined.”

  Ann swallowed hard as her heart sank. She instantly realized just how serious the situation was. These men had lost everything. The wrong word and they would take out their anger and need for revenge and she happened to be the closest target.

  The mill had been located in the next village over. That was why she hadn’t placed him. He had attended a different church. And as a simple country girl living in a cottage in the forest, she had not had much reason to interact with a mill owner.

  Taking a deep breath, she fought to remain calm. “I assure you …” she said, twisting back and forth to talk to each of them, desperately fighting to keep things from escalating out of control. “… My husband did not travel with me. He is not here, and in all honesty, I do not see what I can do to help you men.”

  Mr. Parker scoffed and then growled under his breath. He was the more dangerous she realized. Every instinct told her to be wary of this man. It was as if he had allowed himself to slip into the animalistic aspect of his personality. His humanity had been allowed to slide away.

  “Mr. Evans …” she began, hoping that if she could convince him to let her go, he might convince the lunatic behind her.

  “Come on,” Parker said as he stepped up next to her, his large knife brushing her ribs. A scent of woodsmoke and sour body odor washed over her making her almost gag. How long had these men lived in the forest?

  Ann’s heart slammed to halt as she held her breath, preparing herself for the coming pain. The hard steel against her ribs stopped her from fleeing. The wrong move and she would find herself dead.

  Her hand instinctively dropped to her stomach as sadness filled her. Was she to die before she could even become a mother?

  “Careful,” Mr. Evans said to his partner.

  Parker scoffed again and shook his head. “We can’t let her go. She’ll warn the main house. We’ll have half the county after us.”

  “No, I won’t…” Ann started.

  “Quiet, you,” he said as he pushed the knife against her slightly.

  Ann swallowed hard and bit her tongue, the man was just crazy enough to do it.

  “Listen,” Mr. Evans said. “let us take her back to camp. The bastard will have to come when we tell him we have his wife. Believe me, I know these high and mighty. They can’t stand the idea of someone taking what is theirs. We will have the man dancing to our call.”

  Ann held her breath as she silently prayed that the man would accept his partners argument.

  Finally, Parker nodded. “Yes, besides what would be better than to have him watch his wife die before we kill him.”

  Ann’s insides curled in on themselves as she realized that this man was perfectly capable of completing his plans. Get Daniel there somehow, kill her, then kill him. Yes, it was perfectly plausible.

  “Come on,” Parker said as he put a hand between her shoulder blades and pushed her off the trail.

  Ann stumbled into a bush as she fell to her knee. Parker just laughed at her, no one offered her a hand up. That simple fact told her just how far these men had fallen. They had no issue with pushing a woman to the ground. The realization sent a cold chill down her spine. They had forsaken any sense of civility let alone chivalry.

  Standing, she pulled her dress free of the thorns, and branches of the bush and lifted her head. Under no circumstances would she let them see her fear. It would only feed their sense of entitlement. Their sense of superiority.

  “Come on,” Parker said as he once again held the knife to her back.

  Oh, Daniel, she thought. Please stay away. For the first time, she wanted him not to follow her. To simply let her go and forget about her. The fact that she was now wishing for her worst nightmare was not lost on her.

  But she loved him. Under no circumstances was he to risk himself for her.

  The thought had no sooner entered her mind than she thought of their child. No, she realized, there was something even more important.

  Stay alive, she told herself. No matter what, she must stay alive. Her honor, her well-being, nothing mattered more than staying alive so that her child might live.

  As they made their way further into the forest, her hope fell away and her worry increased with each step. The forest was huge, Dark and foreboding in places. It was no longer the playground of her youth, nor the basket of plenty feeding her family.

  Now, it had become a dark cavern that hid her from those she loved.

  When they took a turn to the north, she halted for a second and leaned forward to rest her hands on her knees.

  Both of the men shook their head at her. Each of them with a smug look that ate at her soul. But as they both turned to glance around them for any dangers, she scuffed the ground of the new trail.

  All she could do was hope that if anyone followed, they would see the clues she left behind.

  Once they were on the new trail, she made sure to catch her dress where possible, leaving threads. And one time, an entire piece of lace.

  The men were oblivious, of course. To them, she was but a helpless female.

  The realization made her stomach turn over. She was at the mercy of these men. There was no civilization between her and them. The thought made her shiver.

  Stay alive, Ann, she told herself over and over. That was her task now, she thought as once again her hand came to rest on her stomach. Her reason for living.

  Finally, after almost an hour of weaving their way through the forest, they came to a rough camp amongst a set of large boulders. A crude shelter where they had placed limbs and branches across two large rocks. A fire ring had been placed under a tree where the smoke would be defused by the branches. Hidden so no one would see it from more than a dozen yards.
<
br />   An iron pot hung from a branch over the dead fire.

  How long had these men been there? Why hadn’t they run? Did their anger at her husband outweigh their sense of survival? Surely that couldn’t be it.

  But, what did she know of these men? What had it meant to them to lose everything? Their livelihood. Their status, their sense of identity. They had fallen to the lowest of lows. All because of Daniel’s actions. Had that been enough to cause them to do this?

  “Over there,” Parker said as he waived with his knife to a spot between two of the larger boulders. “And don’t think of running. We’d have you before you got a hundred yards.”

  He was right, she realized, in her dress, these men could easily capture her.

  As she sat down, she caught Parker staring at her. His hungry eyes traveled over her, clawing and pawing with a sickening intent making her cringe.

  He seemed to come to come to some kind of decision and began to walk towards her.

  “No, you don’t,” Mr. Evans said as he shook his head.

  “Why not?” Parker said with an angry growl. “If they catch us, it’s the hangman’s noose either way. I’ve always wanted a rich lady. Always wondered what made them special. Now’s my chance to find out.”

  Ann’s heart fell as she desperately felt around for a rock or branch. Anything to protect herself. Oh, why did she no longer carry a knife herself? Because she was a duchess, she realized. A lady does not carry such a thing. Obviously one of the many errors in her new world.

  “No,” Mr. Evans said as he stepped between them. Holding his pistol pointed at his partner’s stomach.

  Parker looked down at the weapon, then up into his friend’s eyes and then at her. He seemed to hesitate for a moment then shrugged and smiled.

  “That’s alright. Maybe I will just wait until the bastard is here then take her in front of him. Or maybe, I’ll change my mind and have her some other time. Think about that,” he said to her. “You won’t know when. But you and me, we’re going to be together. That I promise you.”