“All night?” His Grace asked pointedly.
Eunice rocked at the insult, reddening. Garth held his breath.
“Indeed not, Your Grace. It would have been improper,” she replied with spirit.
Garth broke into a sweat.
Angered, Eunice went on. “I could not sleep that night. Nor could my aunts, the Lady Wetherby. The moon, sir. So, Auntie and I strolled the gardens. Garth’s room was in the ell of the wing. His candle was burning.”
The duke laughed coldly. “A candle proves nothing. You are being used, Miss Wetherby.”
Eunice blinked uncertainly. “Your Grace, Auntie and I saw Garth through the window. He sat at his table, reading.”
Garth had been holding his breath. Slowly, cautiously, he let his breath escape. So the charade with Jenkins had been necessary. To think he’d almost not bothered.
The duke seemed to waver at Eunice’s testimony. It was time to jump in. Garth strode into the center of the room, giving a casual wave of his hand.
“Enough,” he said, affecting a slightly bored, irritated demeanor. “If His Grace wants an orphan bastard to call ‘son,’ then His Grace shall have one. The boy Harrington brought from Amsterdam is a damned nuisance, anyway.”
Wheeling around, he went out of the drawing room and into the foyer. He shouted up the stairs.
“Mab! Up at once!”
In a few moments, Mab appeared at the top of the stairs, rubbing sleepy eyes with her knuckles. She was in a wrinkled flannel nightdress and her hair was braided for sleep.
“Bring Trent down at once,” he ordered loudly. “The duke of Tewksbury wishes to make him his heir!” Mab blinked in astonishment. He turned back to the drawing room, then had a better thought. He barked at Mab again. “Wait! Go up to cook’s bedchamber. Her grandsons are sleeping there. Wake them. Bring all three boys into the drawing room at the same time.”
Mab blinked her amazement, and he strode back into the drawing room, closing the door with a firm click.
“You will be able to recognize your ‘son,’ Tewksbury?” Garth sneered. “You will be able to pick him out of a group of three?”
The duke faltered slightly, then covered himself with an arrogant, “Naturally.” But uncertainty tinged the word and the duke’s thin, hawkish face flushed with anger.
Score one, McNeil thought, the old goat doesn’t know what Trent—Robert—looks like.
The minutes ticked by. Hostile silence settled upon the room. Bewildered by everything, Eunice sank weakly upon the settee and nervously wrung her hands.
“I wish I had stayed in London,” she whined. “I should never have—oh, the disgrace—whatever will people say?”
As though unconcerned with events, McNeil strolled to the sideboard and poured a glass of port. He gestured toward Eunice, offering wine, but she merely looked at him and shuddered as though he were an ominous stranger. With a sneer he held a glass toward the duke. His Grace merely stiffened in icy silence.
With a careless chuckle, Garth quaffed the wine himself.
At last, commotion began upstairs. Doors banged. Children’s sleepy voices rang out. Garth tensed, the sweat beginning on his brow. A few moments more and Mab—her nightdress covered with a serge wrapper—shepherded the children in.
“Over here, by the candles,” Garth snapped coldly. “The duke of Tewksbury will want to see well when he picks out his son. Deliberately, he made the word “son” ring with irony.
Dumbfounded, Mab obeyed, and the duke strode forward, flinging back his cloak. He studied each sleepy child. They were of a piece: all of them dark-eyed with sandy to dark hair. The duke flushed, a blue vein thumping dangerously in his temple. He swung toward Garth.
“Enough of your games. Which is my son?”
Garth laughed scornfully.
“Take your pick. Any one of them will be well pleased to inherit the Tewksbury title and all of its wealth.”
He’d hit a nerve. The duke’s complexion darkened.
“I’ll see you dead for this!” he hissed, lunging toward the window to signal his men. Just then, a landau clattered into the street. Garth froze in his would-be dash to the study for weapons. The front door banged open. High heels clicked on marble, then on wood as Annette burst into the drawing room. Her color was high, her bosom rose and fell with panting.
Breathless, she dropped a little curtsy to the duke, then turned to the sleepy children. Garth was stunned. Goddamn it, what was she doing—
“Trent,” she cried out. “Trent, dear, come to me.”
Garth found his voice. “Annette, damn it,” he swore, starting for her. But it was too late. Trent was fond of Annette. With a sleepy smile he ran into her waiting embrace and was crushed to the blue satin gown.
The duke smiled his triumph.
“Thank you. Lady Annette—or Lady Dunwood, I should say. You have just identified my son. If you will kindly release him—” The duke started toward Trent, and Garth tensed to spring. He’d not wanted violence. But if it came to that, so be it.
“Your son?” Annette said loudly, hugging Trent. “How dare you, sir! Trent is my son. My son born out of wedlock to Captain Garth McNeil. A secret I had to guard, sir, from my late husband, the baron Vachon.”
The astounding announcement froze the assembly. The duke tottered a bit in shock, and McNeil stared at Annette, dumbfounded that she should do this for him. So! Annette had guessed Trent was his. He drew a hoarse breath.
“Mab, take the children away,” he ordered quickly. Wide-eyed, puzzled, Mab jumped to do his bidding. On the settee, Eunice burst into tears. She lunged to her feet, sending hate-filled looks at Annette and at Garth.
Eunice shrieked, “How can you disgrace me like this, Garth! I shall be the laughingstock of all London. To think that you and Annette Vachon . . . Oh, I hate you! When Auntie hears—when my cousin, the earl hears! I shan’t stay another moment in this house.” Eunice ran out.
The front door banged shut, and in a few moments McNeil recognized the creak of his own landau as it moved off.
The duke glared at Annette.
“Do you know what you are admitting to, Lady Dunwood?”
Annette blanched, and only then did Garth begin to sense what she’d done to herself.
“Yes,” she said boldly. “If you refer to my husband’s mother—and I think you do, Your Grace, you are quite right. Lady Dunwood now has ample grounds to annul my marriage.”
The duke eyed her with contempt.
“I grant you one last opportunity to deny the boy is yours, Annette. Else you become the joke of society.” He laughed coldly. “Had you borne a bastard to the Prince of Wales or to someone highborn, London would have easily forgiven you. But to bear a bastard to a mere sailor!” He snorted, as the lords and ladies of London would snort when they heard.
Annette’s eyes fluttered to the floor, and Garth held his breath. Social position was everything to Annette. He knew she reveled in it, enjoying status and power. As wife of the earl of Dunwood, she would enter even higher circles on her return to London. His heart hammered.
“I—I—” She stopped and drew a quivering breath. Softly she began again. “I will not deny my own son. Whatever the cost.”
As her tears began to spill, Garth growled at the duke, “Get out of this house, Your Grace. Get out of Virginia. Get out of the colonies.”
The duke drew himself up arrogantly.
“In due time. Do not presume to order me about, Captain McNeil. I’ve unfinished business in the colonies. I mean to finish it.”
There was threat in his words, but threat of what? Garth had no idea.
“Get out!” he reiterated. “If you do not leave America at once, the London Board of Trade will receive some very interesting information. The Board will learn that in September of 1753, a jade piece was planted aboard the Caroline so that all harbor attention would be focused on her and not upon two incoming ships. Virtue and Bountiful Lady.”
He paused as the duke
flinched in surprise. Evidently the duke had thought no one knew about his smuggling ventures.
“The Board will also learn that when the duke of Tewksbury landed in Virginia, his first callers were the captains of Virtue and Bountiful Lady.”
The duke’s eyes widened in alarm for a moment, then narrowed to dangerous slits.
“Be careful, McNeil. You do not know what you are saying.”
Garth met the cold, shrewd eyes without blinking.
“May I offer Your Grace the same good advice?”
They stared at each other, adversaries who hate and who are a hairbreadth from attack, but adversaries who sense the wisdom of a standoff.
Latching the fastenings of his cloak in a slow, deliberate manner, the duke strutted to the door like a peacock. He turned with an unpleasant laugh.
“As to the boy, I suspected he was not my son at first sight. There is a common, mongrel air to the bastard.”
The duke strutted out. Within moments, harness tracings jingled and snapped. The uneven clopping of six horses echoed into the night as the duke’s carriage trundled off.
Sweating with the release of tension, McNeil went to Annette. She came limply into his arms. He held her close. They didn’t speak. The house lay hushed and silent. A breeze blew in the open window, bringing the faint hint of plum blossoms and riffling the lace that trimmed her gown.
He was overwhelmed. Stunned by her generosity and loyalty. Did she love him so much, then, this foolish little woman? She’d sacrificed everything, her marriage, her social standing. His arms closed around her tightly, protectively. Her gallantry left him speechless, left him ashamed.
At last he murmured into her hair, “You know that Trent is my son, don’t you?”
“And Flavia’s.”
“How? How did you figure it out?”
Unwillingly, she met his eyes.
“The bits and pieces began to come together tonight, after you left me at the ball,” she told him softly. “The clues had been there. Two years’ worth of clues, but I failed to see them until tonight. Tonight I saw what I’d been too blind to see. The dock girl you slept with. The girl you searched for in London. She was Flavia, wasn’t she. Trent looks just like her.”
He nodded. “I didn’t know she was Flavia. Not until the night of the baby’s birthday ball at Tewkbury Hall.”
A long unhappy sigh came from her. She clung to him. Gradually, she tried to brighten. The old brassy sparkle flickered.
“Well, McNeil, shall I spend the night?” She gave an unhappy, self-deprecating shrug. “My reputation is lost, anyway.”
He kissed her forehead, then put her at arm’s length, keenly aware as he did so that he already missed the warmth of her willing body.
“No, my love. No, Annette. Go back to the ball before Lord Dunwood misses you. All is not lost. I doubt the duke will hurry to spread the news. He is more clever than that. He will keep the news to himself, hoping to use it against you and Dunwood at a later time. When it better serves his purpose. With luck, that time may never come.”
Her eyes grew large with hope.
“But Eunice?”
Garth smiled sadly. “The story is Eunice’s humiliation, too. I would guess she’ll not say ‘boo to anyone.”
Annette laughed hopefully. With a quick breath, she turned and rustled to the door, only pausing to whisper, “Did you mean it, McNeil? When you called me ‘love’?”
He was taken aback. He’d not remembered saying it. He strolled to the sideboard, fumbled for the brandy decanter, but his hand slid away. He turned and looked at her.
“At this moment there is only one other woman I love more than you,” he admitted. “And she is dead.”
Annette’s dark eyes jumped in joy.
“Oh, Garth,” she breathed. “Oh, darling Garth, good night.”
“Good night, Lady Dunwood,” he said. And for once he said it without sarcasm.
* * * *
As the rumble of her landau faded into the spring night, he returned to the brandy decanter and poured out a healthy portion. But when he tried to bring the glass to his mouth, the glass shook. He set it down with a clunk, disgusted. So this sort of evening had gotten to him, did it? He’d not known he had “nerves.” They’d never reared up at sea, not in storms, not even in pirate attacks.
Abandoning the drink, he went out for a walk. As he walked, he sorted everything through. It was finished, he realized in relief. Trent was his. He and Trent would begin life anew. He wished Flavia could know.
He strolled on in the quiet night, fruit trees showering him with pink and white blossoms at each gust of spring wind. He thought of Annette. God, she’d been loyal. It made him feel like a dog, treating her like a convenient tart all of these years. He was ashamed; he was thirty-three and not yet grown up. God!
He thought of Eunice. Vaguely, he wondered where she’d gone to, then admitted to himself that he did not care. He supposed he would forfeit the two thousand pounds dowry money he’d loaned to Lord Wetherby. He shrugged. Small price to be rid of Eunice. The two thousand pounds would go far in smoothing her ruffled feathers.
He returned home and drank the brandy with a steady hand. Its cleansing fire burned a trail down his throat. He poured a bit more, then sank into a wingback chair, surveying the room. His first step, he thought with childish pleasure, would be to remove Eunice’s damned sickly green window hangings. He wanted the bright blue silk ones back. Annette’s draperies. Not Eunice’s.
He was still slouched low in his chair, bemused and mulling over the extraordinary evening, when a tap sounded at the open door. It was Mab. Her flannel nightdress peeped out of a dark wrapper. Her hair, even in its braided state, managed to look stringy.
“Yes, Mab?”
She hung in the doorway.
“I heared that name somewheres. That Tewksbury name. But I can’t remember where I heard it.”
McNeil sighed tiredly.
“Forget it, Mab. Forget everything you saw and heard tonight.”
She persisted.
“It bedevils my sleep, Cap’n. Tewksbury. It sticks in m’brain like a sliver in a thumb.”
“Then pull it out,” he said irritably. “You will do well to forget the name. In fact, I insist.”
At the rancor in his voice, her head reared up in the old pridey way. She opened her mouth to say something snippy, but McNeil rose from his chair. He was in no mood for servant trouble, on top of everything else.
“Yes, sir,” she whispered and went flying.
Two nights later, he was roused from deep and dreamless sleep. It was Mab again. Her intense, face hovered over his bed.
“I remember, sir,” Mab whispered excitedly.
“What the devil are you talking about?” He growled like a bear roused from hibernation, then came suddenly awake. “Trent! He’s not sick, is he?”
“No.” Mab shook her head, grinning.
“Then get out of here,” he growled. “Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.” He rolled over, punching his pillow and settling into it. The day had been damned trying: a frigid interview with Lady Wetherby, who was staying at the Governor’s Palace with Eunice and Mouse. A tongue-lashing from the governor, who’d been told only enough by Lady Wetherby to lead the governor to believe Garth had taken liberties with Eunice. The dissolution of the betrothal. Annette leaving for Baltimore with Lord Dunwood . . .
To his deepening annoyance, Mab shook his shoulder.
He rolled over. “What! So help me, Mab, you’re asking for a whipping.”
She ignored him, grinning.
“That Tewksbury name, sir. I remember!” she crowed victoriously. “I know where I heard it!”
Chapter 19
“For thee, Jane.”
Flavia’s smile trembled as she accepted the small, utterly perfect bouquet of flowers. They were lilies of the valley. Still moist with morning dew, the tiny white bells shivered upon stems of dark green, exuding a heady fragrance. She brought the
bouquet to her face, inhaling sadly. Her wedding bouquet.
Tears welled up. She blinked them away.
“Thank you, Dennis. They’re lovely.”
He stood studying her with an earnestness that threatened to become anxiety. She tried to give him an assuring smile, but only half-managed it. Still, the smile seemed to cheer him. His eyes lit with love.
He looked fine; ready for the altar, Flavia admitted. He was wearing his best; a brown suit of wool serge, new white stockings, a new ruffled linen shirt that was Betsy’s wedding gift to him, and his only pair of shoes, which he’d carefully repaired and polished almost to a state of newness. It touched her that he’d combed his hair carefully over the balding spot on the crown of his head.
“Thee hast not reconsidered, Jane?”
His voice was tight with dread, and his Adam’s apple shot up and down.
“No,” she said quickly, not daring to pause and think.
“I want only thy happiness, Jane.”
She tried to meet his eyes.
“I shall try to be a good wife to you, Dennis.”
“Jane,” he whispered passionately. “Beloved Jane.”
To hide the tears of despair that rushed to her eyes, she lifted her mouth to be kissed. He flushed. It was their first intimacy. Touching her cheek with carpentry-roughened hands, he timidly brought his mouth to hers. His lips were dry and hot, trembling with passions he was too gentlemanly to unloose before the wedding vows. “Jane,” he whispered. “Dearest love.” He allowed himself a moment’s kiss, then drew back in propriety. The marriage ceremony must come first.
“I’ll fetch the chaise,” he said, moving out of the door to get the chaise and horse that William Tate was lending them for the day.
Alone, Flavia turned slowly and sadly surveyed her surroundings. When next she stepped into this little schoolhouse, she would be Dennis’s wife. Her eyes moved to the cozy area Dennis had made for her in one corner of the kitchen. His only real bedstead was there. When he’d bought her indenture from Mrs. Byng—paying the greedy woman twice what it was worth—he’d also gone to the wharf in Chestertown and bought old, wind-worn sails. He’d sewed rings to the sails, then slipped the rings on poles and fastened the poles to wall and rafter. She’d been able to draw the curtains closed whenever she wished, gaining a somewhat private bed area.
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