Rand studied the names of senior officers at length. Blair reported to Fairweather. Only Fairweather mattered, but it wouldn’t do to reveal that. They both assumed Blair would be nowhere near headquarters the first afternoon, and Rand would go unrecognized. Should Blair stumble on them, he wouldn’t dare reveal he knew Rand or how. Charles felt sure of that.
The second bottle disappeared before a half-decent dinner arrived, leaving Rand feeling more favorably disposed to discussion over good food, if still far from charitable. Conversation began with a disjointed series of stories about transatlantic travel. Charles, to Rand’s shock, had been to New York. “Although I generally disembark in Philadelphia on my way to Washington.”
That led to questions about his political career. Rand found himself grudgingly respectful; the ill-at-ease boy of his youth had grown into a man of influence and power. One thing puzzled him.
“We have no troops in Washington to inspect. I would have expected you to travel to Canada.” It came out before Rand thought and hung in the air between them.
“I avoided Canada,” Charles replied simply, avoiding eye contact.
Henri appeared with a much finer port than the inn could boast. He poured for them both and began to clear the dishes.
Charles asked Rand if Artie had managed to escape school long enough to visit, setting off a discussion about the earl and countess, their shared family. Rand described his shock at the size of Tobias and Mary. Charles chuckled over stories about their doings.
“I met Jonny,” Rand said, accepting a third glass of port.
“I expected you would. He spends much of his time at Chadbourn House.”
“He is a bright boy. You must be proud of him.” Rand gripped his glass. Should I mention his illness? He had no idea how comfortable Charles might be with the subject.
“I am. He endures his illness with courage and grace.”
Rand relaxed somewhat. “I wasn’t sure—that is, Catherine told me. I’m so sorry, Charles. It must be devastating for you, and for Julia.” He meant every word and was distressed to see Charles stiffen.
“I manage. I have no idea about Julia,” Charles said through tight lips.
Rand raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t seen Julia in two years. She hasn’t seen Jonny in longer. I have no idea how she ‘manages.’” He leaned toward Rand. “Don’t look at me like that, Randolph Wheatly. We separated less than a year after we married. It happens. If you had stayed, you might have delighted in my misfortune.”
Charles glared at Rand, who could think of nothing to say. When the silence became painful, Charles sank back in his chair. “Don’t worry. Though it seems unlikely Jonny will ever be duke, know that he is loved. I love him as if he were my own.” His voice rose when he continued, and an emotion Rand couldn’t identify gave force to his words. “He is my own. Don’t try to say otherwise.”
“What are you implying, Charles? Of course he’s your son. You were eager enough to bed his mother.”
“I didn’t touch Julia until our wedding night. Jonny came into this world six months later. What do you think I’m implying?”
Something uncurled in Rand’s chest. His cousin was many things, some unpleasant, but he wasn’t a liar. Rand’s dearly held belief that Charles seduced Julia while he knew—he had to have known—that Rand still held hope of a betrothal crumbled into dust.
“But who then?” Rand’s confusion muddled his thoughts and thickened his speech.
“You dare ask me that? You’ve seen my son. The family resemblance is unmistakable—and thank God for Jonny’s sake.”
Awareness, when it finally came, left Rand breathless. He shook his head. “Not me, Charles. I am not that boy’s father.”
Charles stared back, his face suffused in sadness. He leaned forward, but he said nothing.
Rand went on without waiting. “I adored Julia. I wanted her desperately, but I never touched her. She was too good, too pure. Her innocent flirting had me in a frenzy of frustration, but I didn’t take advantage.”
“Innocent?” Charles sneered. “Someone impregnated her. If not you, then who the hell did?”
“You separated over this?” Rand gasped. “She isn’t the first young woman to fall from grace.”
“We separated after I caught her with one of the grooms. Jonny was six months old, and she had ignored him the entire time. She told me his illness disgusted her and she would have naught to do with him.”
“Julia?” Rand’s shock must have registered on his face because Charles reached out a hand and touched his arm.
“The woman you loved didn’t exist, Rand. Do you know what she told me when I realized how advanced her pregnancy was? She told me you raped her.”
Blood drained from Rand’s head, leaving him lightheaded. He shook his head as if to deny it.
“I knew that for the lie it was, dear cousin. You would never force her. Later . . .” Charles shrugged, downed his glass, and poured another as well as one for Rand. “I tried to see you before you left, did you know that?”
Rand’s throat felt tight, forcing him to clear it. “I told Will to tell you to go to hell. Did he tell you that?”
“No,” Charles agreed. “Will and Cath were ever protective of the two of us. Later, when I knew what she was, I tried writing but burned most of the letters. Between humiliation and disgust, words wouldn’t come. You must have gotten at least one.”
“I did. I burned it unopened.” Like a damned fool.
“I thought you might,” Charles said sympathetically.
“I assumed you got what you wanted. I assumed—” Rand stumbled over his own thoughts. I assumed they lived in glorious marital bliss, the duke and duchess lording it over all.
“Julia has the morals of a barn cat,” Charles said, “but at least she left me Jonny. She got a duchess’s rank, and I got my son.”
The duke leaned forward to peer at Rand with an intensity that arrested his full attention. “Listen to me, Rand. I love Jonny. It never mattered to me that your son might inherit the title and all the nonsense. The old duke was your grandfather too.”
“He isn’t my son,” Rand ground out through clenched teeth, unwilling to think about how Jonny came to resemble the two of them.
Charles waved his words away with one hand. “I believe you, but it doesn’t matter. Jonny won’t live to inherit. Any other son Julia might have had would have been the next duke. I would never have known, though, if that son or any subsequent were my own or the blacksmith’s. Don’t you see?”
Julia—dear God! Rand felt sick. He had spent six years in glorious isolation, nursing a broken heart, and claiming the moral high ground over a woman who rejected her own son. He racked his brain for something—anything—to say to his cousin, caught between astonishment, awareness of his own stupidity, and sympathy for Charles. Words failed him.
Charles had more sangfroid. “Enough maudlin talk. I’ve already had much too much to drink. I’m for bed.” He rose and stretched. “Sleep late tomorrow, cousin. The horses need rest, and the coachman plans to shine the chariot and hang the ducal crest in all its glory.”
Rand downed the last of his drink and stood as well. Charles paused with one hand on the doorjamb.
“And cousin,” the duke announced, “tomorrow you ride inside with me.”
Chapter 24
Sun gleamed off the duke’s polished carriage, kitted out with the crest that trumpeted his rank and driven by his coachman and groom in full livery, when they rode into Portsmouth just after noon. It lacked only outriders streaming banners and blowing horns.
They pulled up in front of a barracks-like building, a timbered affair with peeling paint in the shadow of the sturdy brick buildings the navy built for the Portsmouth shipyard. Charles straigh
tened his hat, gave the lace at his wrist a fluff, reached for an ebony walking stick with its lion’s head of finely carved silver at the top, and grinned at Rand. “Let the drama begin,” he said before stepping out with an expression of bored hauteur and demanding. “Kindly announce to General Richards that the Duke of Murnane wishes to see him.”
Rand’s lips twitched, but he followed, the very embodiment of the subservient cousin he was meant to be. Their progress through the office caused a ripple of excitement. Subalterns scurried in several directions. A captain lounging on the edge of a desk leapt up and began hastily buttoning his jacket. Another cast the first a smug look, snapped to attention, and saluted with a flourish.
The Red Sea parts, Rand thought with amusement. He heard whining and wheedling behind a closed door. The general had two men in his office. It seemed obvious they had been called in to explain something. One appeared to be a captain, and the other he thought, a colonel.
General Richards bowed properly. Belatedly, the other two did as well.
“To what do we owe this honor, Your Grace?” the general asked warily.
Charles didn’t answer. He took out a handkerchief and brushed imaginary dust from a seat before sitting. He didn’t wait to be offered.
“Allow me to introduce my cousin, Randolph Baldwin Wheatly. He is a gentleman but acquainted with business affairs. I’ve asked him to assist me in a brief inspection of your quartermaster activity.”
The general raised his chin. “Is there a problem, Your Grace?”
“Not that Horse Guards is aware. We’ve been making these little visits here and there. One is surprised at what one can uncover when one arrives unannounced.” Charles drawled. He smiled benignly at the general.
Rand inspected the general carefully. He looked much like career officers everywhere. Neat, but not ostentatious. Ramrod straight. Rand couldn’t picture him involved in forgery. He shifted his gaze to the other two men and realized with a jolt that the colonel stared at him, his mouth agape like a carp.
“Is there a problem, Colonel?” Rand asked.
“I say, are you the Wheatly what is supposed to be in Canada?”
Damn.
Sudden silence along the waterfront alerted Meggy to her husband’s approach even before she heard his boots tramping on the cobbles. She had grown sensitive to his moods based on the speed and force of the sound. What she heard that morning alarmed her enough to send Lena out the back door to the safety of the O’Sullivans.
“Did you know the bastard was cousin of a damned duke?” Fergus roared from the doorway. She didn’t have to ask whom he meant. The revelation shocked Meggy into silence, the stutter of her heart leaving her weak. “Well?” he demanded. “Were you holding out on me?”
“No! I swear. I knew they had money but not that, never that.” Rand related to a duke?
“Not just a duke, but the damned Under-Secretary for Poking Their Nose into Army Business,” Fergus spat.
Meggy had thought her foolish hopes already dead, but when they crumpled in her heart, she knew she had harbored them still. She always thought him above her touch, but his whole world spun on an axis a universe away from hers.
Fergus tossed a sack onto the pallet in the corner where Lena slept. “We’ll get the nobs out of our hair right enough when we give them something else to think about. Even a duke’s cousin can’t tup a man’s wife if the man objects, and I object. Think of it, ‘duke’s cousin takes the wife of brave man just trying to serve ‘is Majesty.’ Oh the disgrace of it!” he laughed.
“I’ll bring suit for alienation.” The way he enunciated “alienation” told Meggy someone else had proposed it, probably Colonel Fairweather. Fergus probably doesn’t know what it means.
“Wheatly and the duke are having dinner with the general. The colonel will be there. It won’t be army mutton, you can be sure of that, and drinks will flow. Fairweather will make sure he gets your message.”
“What message?”
“The one inviting him—begging him—to come to you, telling him you made a mistake leaving. Inviting him in, like.”
“All lies. I won’t write it.”
Fergus’s head wagged from side to side. “We gonna go over this again? There are them as will buy a girl as pert as our Lena for a pretty penny. What they do with her would make your hair fall out. It would be your fault unless you do what I say.” He rummaged in the bag and pulled out a piece of foolscap and a pencil stub.
“Not too fancy, don’t you see? So he knows it’s from you. Sit and write.”
She sat as he bid her to, looming over her with breath that smelled of rotten teeth and fish. One beefy arm stretched over her shoulder and pointed at the paper. “Now write what I say, only pretty it up. I finally have a use for that worthless learning of yours.”
Meggy considered warning Rand, but Fergus read well enough to know. Her only recourse was to write in ways she hoped he would recognize as artificial. In the end, she wrote what she was told.
Rand
You’ve come! I need to meet with you. I made a mistake returning to my husband. I want to see you, to talk with you.
“Tell him where to meet you. Add that I’m gone.”
“You want him to come here?”
“No, you stupid cow. He don’t need to see this place. Let him think you’re one of those pampered women. The colonel’s lovebird has a little place in one of the good inns outside of town. She will scuttle out of it for you.”
She scribbled the directions as he instructed, signed it “Meggy Blair,” and folded it neatly.
Fergus snatched the note and slipped it into his jacket. “You’ve got three hours to make yourself look like a woman a man might want. ‘Course this one already wants you. I saw it in his eyes, but he may not want you in your dirt.”
Meggy’s humiliation grew with every word. She had lost weight, had no way to wash, and no way to patch her clothes once she took care of her children’s.
“There’s soap in there,” Fergus said with a jerk of his head toward the sack, “the sweet-smelling kind, and one of the ladybird’s dresses. I told her you didn’t need underclothes.” He laughed as if he had made a hilarious joke.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“What do you think? Get Wheatly into bed. Get naked. Get him naked. Colonel says it don’t matter how far you get, just finding him in your room will do it, but I want you to do it up good. The farther you get, the easier I can smear him and his fancy family. If he does the deed, all the better.”
“What if they don’t care?”
Fergus shrugged. “They’ll care. I’ll tell ‘em I’ll go to the scandal sheets. They may pay to keep it out. I’ll threaten to take him to court. I’ll send a magistrate. They may squash it, but that’ll be after he’s sat in jail. Either way, his fancy cousin stays out of my business long enough, and he can go back to Canada with his tail between his legs.”
When Meggy stood, he grabbed her chin in one beefy hand and pushed his vile-smelling mouth onto hers with a smack. “Be a good girl, Megs, and maybe I’ll get us a better place,” he said. He left without turning back.
Meggy dropped to the chair. How could I have married such an animal? She thought of the handsome soldier she had met ten years before, of the promises he made, and how foolish she had been, and then put her head in her arms and wept.
Chapter 25
The delicacies on the general’s table weren’t quite up to London’s better hostesses’ fare, but they were adequate enough for entertaining the upper classes. He wouldn’t have known that from watching his cousin who picked over his food and wrinkled his nose. Charles was in full “His Grace the Duke of Murnane” mode and enjoying every moment of his performance. He kept the general busy placating.
Two of the officers in attendance had powerfu
l relatives of their own and weren’t easily cowed. Fairweather, however, had the bilious appearance of a man about to be sick. They knew from Drew’s report that he had reason to worry. His activity could lead him to a hangman’s noose once they had proof. Rand had told him without hesitation that he did indeed have business dealings in Canada and added, “Why do you ask?” He had left Fairweather floundering like a beached fish.
During dinner, Rand said little, responding only when asked direct questions. Charles had suggested he take on the dogged frown of an upright businessman. The frown was not difficult. His thoughts swirled around Meggy. He’d had no time since their arrival to seek her out, but he saw enough of the general area Drew sketched for him to know he didn’t like it.
He only hoped the dinner would wind down early enough so he could seek out her exact location under cover of darkness and, if he saw no sign of Blair, talk to her. When Charles rose with an impressive show of utter boredom and announced he would seek his bed, Rand rose with him, anticipation growing.
They strolled from the dining room the regiment had commandeered at the Crown and Anchor, Charles parading in front with his hand on his walking stick and Rand following behind. When they reached the door, the duke climbed up into his waiting carriage. Before Rand could follow, a pockmarked serving girl pushed something into his hand. She disappeared into the taproom, and Rand considered following her but thought better of it. People paid to deliver messages generally knew no more than who paid them, and making a scene at that moment seemed ill advised.
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