Allegra cried out in shock, feeling herself held and imprisoned within a grip that was astonishingly strong. She struggled against Gloriana, but it was useless. She was being dragged toward her brother. Grey and Richard moved in unison, reaching out to help her.
“Hold!” cried Charlie, brandishing his pistols. “Don’t take another step if you value Annie’s life. She’ll remain unharmed if you keep your distance. Otherwise, Glory is quite capable of breaking her neck. I only want her as a hostage to see us safely out of here. And those diamonds of hers will be a nest egg for Glory and me.”
Grey doubled his fists in helpless fury and glared at Charlie. “By God, if she’s harmed…”
Charlie laughed, an evil sound. “Annie is my sister. There are still blood ties. But as for you…” He raised his pistol and pointed it at Grey. “Baniard Hall was mine, you whoreson! You never had a right to it. Let it come to your widow. She, at least, belongs there.”
“No!” Allegra screamed as Charlie squinted down the barrel of his pistol.
Suddenly he stiffened, his eyes wide with shock, and dropped to his knees like a stone falling to the ground. The pistols tumbled from his hands and he leaned forward, grimacing. Allegra could see, between his shoulder blades, a strangely carved knife in the shape of a snake. It was imbedded to the hilt. She looked up. A small, hidden door had opened in the paneling, and Jagat Ram stood there, his dark eyes burning.
“Oh, God. Charlie!” Allegra broke from Gloriana’s loosened grip and rushed to kneel and put her arms around her brother. She hesitated, then lowered him gently to her lap. “Grey, send for a surgeon.”
Charlie gasped and shook his head. “Too late, Annie. Let me die.”
Grey ordered his servants to bring strong spirits for Charlie to drink, and set a pillow under his head. But it was clear there was no hope. Already his eyes were beginning to glaze. Allegra removed his periwig and smoothed the damp hair from his forehead. She fought against her tears, wondering how she could feel such pain for a man whose loss she had mourned years ago.
“Don’t cry, little Annie,” he whispered. “’Tis better this way. Think of the shame of a Baniard at Tyburn Tree. And I’m so very tired of this life. Let me sleep.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. His face was soft and serene, washed clear of the anger and bitterness that had haunted him for so long. “Do you remember the place on Wenlock Edge where we used to go? And look out over the whole valley?”
She nodded. “’Tis still as beautiful as ever.”
“Bury me there.” He glanced up at Gloriana, standing forlorn and apart, a stranger in every way. “Take care of my child. And my poor sweet whore.”
Grey knelt beside him. “I give you my pledge on that, Charlie.”
Charlie smiled faintly and lifted trembling fingers. “And your hand, Ridley?”
“Willingly, Brother.” Grey clasped Charlie’s hand in a strong, vital grip.
“Queer little sister.” His voice was beginning to falter. “Rum little poppet, my Annie. You could laugh for joy at a rainbow, and weep at the sight of a chained dog.” He sighed—a deathly, hollow sound. “You would have wept for me, Annie. I was a chained dog for too long.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
His mind was beginning to wander. He muttered incoherently, words and phrases jumbled together as though he were reciting a list. Or cataloging his life. “So tired…damned bloody villains…sleep at last…” He smiled at Allegra, his face radiant, the years and pain melting away. “Do you remember when it snowed at the Hall, little Annie? And you made angels in the snow? So white and clean and pure…like our lives then. Life was never so bright and clean again…in the whole accursed world…” He coughed once and then was still, his dark eyes staring sightlessly. Grey stroked his lids closed with gentle fingers.
“Aw, Charlie. What a rum gent you was.” Gloriana stood above his prostrate body, her hands twisting at her apron. She seemed lost and abandoned, and suddenly very young—her unspoiled beauty at odds with the harsh, artificial coloring of her rouge.
“Come and sit down,” said Richard, putting his hand beneath her elbow.
She shook her head. “He were good to me sometimes.” She gasped, uttered an oath and crumpled to the floor, clutching at her swollen belly. “Damn your eyes, Charlie,” she said with a grimace of pain, “why couldn’t you wait to see your brat?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The dawn sky was a pale, milky yellow, like the cream rising in a wooden tub. One star lingered in the west, a glittering crystal shard that twinkled in the frosty air. From beyond the garden wall of Morgan House came the clang of a dustman’s bell and the clamorous bawl of a fishmonger. The church bells began to ring—close and majestic from St. James, just across Piccadilly, softly musical from the more distant St. Martin’s in the Fields.
Allegra sighed and pulled her fur-lined cloak more closely around her shoulders. There was comfort in the everyday sounds, in the cold winter air that swept her mind clean of dark thoughts. She felt weary, but it was the weariness of someone who has come through a long journey and reached safe harbor at last.
“Why don’t you go to bed? You haven’t slept all night, the servants tell me.”
Allegra turned and smiled at Grey. There was a small plaster on his neck, and he limped from the wound to his leg, but his face mirrored her own serenity. “In a little while, love,” she replied.
He crossed the gravel path of the garden, took her into his arms, and kissed her tenderly. “What a good heart you have. Gloriana is well?”
“’Twas a long, difficult night for her. But she’s sleeping now.”
“And the babe?”
She smiled in joy and wonder. “Oh, Grey, he’s beautiful! He looks just like Papa. And Glory said she’ll name him William, if I wish it. After Papa.”
He nodded in satisfaction. “All the more fitting, since he’s the new baronet.”
She gulped, the tears rising to her eyes. “Sir William Baniard, Baronet. It sounds just right.”
“And it shall be right. I assume you wish to bring Gloriana and the child back to Baniard Hall.”
“Of course. She’s unlettered, but not unintelligent, I suspect. And she has no one in this world, poor thing. Perhaps, in the seclusion of Shropshire, we can help to educate her to her new station.”
He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “As the mother of the Lord of Baniard Hall.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems only fitting that justice should be served at last. And Baniard Hall returned to its rightful owners. I’ll arrange the details with Gifford. We’ll live there, of course. When we’re not here in London. But I intend to entail the Hall to the child, to be held in trust for him during our lifetimes. Are you agreeable to that?”
She nodded, too overcome with emotion to speak. Once again, God willing, there would be a William Baniard to preside in splendor over Baniard Hall.
“We should leave London soon,” he said. “Before winter makes the roads impassable.”
“As soon as Glory can travel.” She patted her flat abdomen. “And while I still can.”
“Sir Greyston.” Jagat Ram stood solemnly at the entrance to the garden, waiting for Grey’s nod before coming forward and greeting them both with a little bow.
He and Grey exchanged a long, silent look; then Grey smiled. “You’ll be returning to Calcutta now, of course.”
“Of course. It is Allah, I am thinking, who led me to that little door at the very moment when…” He stopped and bowed again to Allegra. “I am regretting that it was your brother, milady.”
“I’ll never reproach you,” she said. “I would have done the same, God forgive me.”
Grey shook Ram’s hand, then threw his arms around the other man and clasped him to his breast. “Six years, my friend,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll miss you.”
“But you no longer need me. Lord Halford told me of the duel.”
Grey shoo
k his head in amazement. “I don’t know what happened. For the first time, with a sword in my hand, I didn’t think of Ruth. Nor of Osborne dying.” He turned to Allegra, his eyes brimming with love. “I thought only of you. In danger. My sweet, precious Allegra.”
“I should have died if anything had happened to you.”
He held her hands and kissed them, then looked around the garden and laughed. They were alone. Ram had discreetly vanished.
Allegra sighed. Ram’s appearance had reminded her of her brother again. “Poor Charlie. How twisted with hatred he had become. Was I as mad as that, with my obsession to kill the Wickhams?”
“For a little while, perhaps. We were both a bit mad. I think I’d be in Bedlam by now, if you hadn’t come along.”
“No. For all the dreadful days and nights of too much gin and self-destruction, I think you were always fighting to save your soul.”
“Not very well. Not until you.”
She stroked his dear face, so handsome and strong. “Oh, pooh. Have you forgotten the angel of Hosier’s Almshouse?”
He chuckled. “The garden will need planting in the spring.”
“Then Mrs. Morgan will come and work beside her husband.” She patted her belly again. “If nature will allow.”
“How strange is life,” he said, musing. “Ripples on a stream. The odd twists and turns. Those hours I spent at the almshouse, before you came into my life, were the sweetest I’d ever known. The only warmth in a life that had become well-nigh unbearable. And yet…” he stared at her in wonderment, “I should never have found them, but for my despair.”
She nodded, understanding him, and herself, with sudden bright clarity. “And I. I came looking for revenge, my heart dark with hatred. And found love and joy. Such promise from such pain.”
He scratched his chin in thought. “I remember a verse from one of Shakespeare’s plays. About finding happiness in adversity.” He frowned, then began to recite. “‘There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distil it out…’” He shook his head. “I’ve forgot the rest. But it ends, ‘Thus may we gather honey from the weed.’”
“And so we have, my love. The sweetest honey of all.” She looked up at the heavens. The day was brightening, but the sky was beginning to cloud over—an icy, brittle whiteness that shimmered with the promise of snow.
With gentle hands, Grey lifted the fur hood of her cloak and tucked it around her face. “Come inside before the snow falls.”
Her face felt alive with the cold, invigorated by the crisp air. “Winter is here for certain. Perhaps it has already snowed on Wenlock Edge.” She thought of the winters at Baniard Hall—sitting before the fire in cozy warmth while the wind blew around the old stones and the snow fell in clean, white drifts. Papa would tell stories of the civil wars, and Mama would serve a hot claret punch, redolent of cloves and oranges.
Allegra felt a sharp pang of longing. Baniard Hall in the glory of winter.
“Oh, Grey,” she whispered, snuggling into the warmth of his arms, “take me to my home.”
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