The Obscure Duchess of Godwin Hall: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Hamilton, Hanna

  After his first evening in the gaol, however, he swallowed his fears and sent for the man who came by the evening post and was there in a day.

  It was a relief to see Mr. Walford’s familiar face, even in the peculiar backdrop of the gaol cell. Mr. Walford had dealt with the Duke of Leinster’s affairs for his whole life, as had his father before him. Any scrap of familiarity was a great comfort to Andrew when everything else seemed so uncertain.

  That relief was greatly hampered, however, by the gravity of the attorney’s countenance and by the restrained fashion with which he greeted Andrew.

  “It does not appear to me, Your Grace, that the case against you is particularly strong,” he said, peering through his monocle at the sheaf of papers he had brought with him. He spoke in his usual, measured tone, which gave very little away.

  “There is but a shred of evidence,” Andrew agreed eagerly, hoping that he could somehow convince the lawyer not to utter whatever gloomy forecast was clearly on his lips.

  “Nonetheless,” Mr. Walford continued, lowering his monocle and sighing, “it is a terrible thing for a duke to be murdered and people will want to find someone to blame.”

  “And that is me,” Andrew replied. Well, better me than Rebecca, I suppose, he thought privately. If it has to be one of us, then I would face the Sandman a thousand times over for her sake. That fact was his sole comfort when he was lying on the hard planks of wood that passed for a bed in his gloomy cell. At least, he knew, that as long as he was imprisoned, Rebecca walked free and had the chance of leading a happy life.

  “It is you, Your Grace,” Mr. Walford agreed. “The only way that the peers of the realm will be able to understand this murder is in terms of what a man might materially gain from it.”

  “Money,” Andrew nodded.

  “Money, property, prestige,” Mr. Walford agreed with a sigh as if a man’s capacity for greed merely existed to hamper the efficiency of his profession.

  “All these things are what the rich men of this country are able to understand. What is more, this murder will have frightened them. It will make them feel vulnerable. They will fear that what was done to your brother — what you allegedly did to your brother — may be done to them too, unless they make great efforts to stamp it out.”

  Andrew shook hands with Mr. Walford and the man promised, with tears in his eyes, that he would do everything in his power to defend Andrew against the charges.

  “I do not for a second believe that you are guilty, Your Grace,” Mr. Walford said. “The fact that you have been arrested is nothing short of a disgrace to the English legal system, and I will do my utmost to prove it in court.”

  “It would be far better,” Andrew observed, “if the true perpetrator of this crime were caught and then there would be no question of my going to court.”

  “That is certainly true, Your Grace,” Mr. Walford agreed, removing his hat in order to bow deeply. At Andrew’s words, he shivered. “It frightens me a great deal to think that the person who is really responsible — a person capable of murdering a duke of the realm — walks free.”

  This thought had been torturing Andrew, too. Despite all his differences with Charles, he had been unable to escape the thought that the person who had murdered his brother had not been brought to justice. Perhaps they were walking the halls of Godwin Hall. Perhaps they might hurt someone else.

  Perhaps they might hurt Rebecca.

  Andrew leaned back against the stone wall of the cell and let out a great sigh.

  He knew everything that Mr. Walford was saying was true and he knew that his life hung in the balance.

  With this in mind, he realized that he could not leave anything unsaid.

  With a sudden burst of energy, he sat down at the small, rough wooden table that stood beneath the tiny barred window of the cell. He had been supplied with pen and paper — one of the luxuries that his gaolers saw fit to grant him as an imprisoned duke.

  His hand flew over the paper as he emptied his head of all the thoughts that he longed to express to Rebecca.

  My beloved Rebecca,

  He paused after writing these words, wondering whether he ought to cross them out and replace them with some more formal salutation.

  But no. The time for formality was now in the past. He thought back to when Rebecca had been standing with him here in his cell, in his arms, her lips against his.

  He had felt closer to her at that moment than he had ever felt to anyone else in his life. The idea of placing some distance between their two hearts, purely for the sake of form and good manners, seemed absurd to him. After everything that had happened, they ought to be passed past that kind of senseless pretense now.

  He let his passionate greeting stand and continued to pour out his heart onto the paper. Allowing himself to express himself freely through writing just made him realize how deep his feelings ran, how long he had held them, and the extent to which he had been forced to hold them back.

  No more. There is too much at stake for us not to be honest with each other.

  When he was finished writing, he folded the letter up carefully, kissed it and called for the guard.

  “Yes, Your Grace?”

  The man was clearly deeply uncomfortable with being tasked with the imprisonment of a duke and had handled the situation by demonstrating such an excess of politeness and respect that one would have been forgiven for mistaking him for a butler.

  “Can this be taken to Godwin Hall?” Andrew asked. He was not much expecting the man to reply in the affirmative, but to his surprise, the fellow nodded.

  “There are coins in my purse,” Andrew began. “Take whatever you…”

  But the man held up his hand to stop Andrew in his tracks.

  “I assume that this is for the lady who came to visit you, Your Grace,” the man said.

  “That is correct,” Andrew replied, his heart pounding a little at the mere mention of Rebecca, even though it was not by name.

  “There are very little opportunities in my line of work to do anything that makes anybody happy,” the man said, with a straightforward ruefulness that endeared him to Andrew at once. “Most of my work is keeping men in cages. Any opportunity to bring a little joy into the world, Your Grace, is not to be wasted, not in my opinion. I will get the letter to your lady directly, no need of payment.”

  Andrew was more touched by the man’s words than he could possibly express.

  After the man had left, Andrew scrambled over to his bed, standing up on it and using the bars on the tiny window of the cell to pull himself up so that he could look out into the small, miserable courtyard.

  From his inferior view, he could just glimpse the gaoler mounting a grey cob and setting off in the direction of Godwin Hall, with the precious note grasped firmly in his hand.

  Despite the pit of fear that was growing in his heart, all he could think at that moment was that Rebecca’s eyes would read the words that he had written, and that thought alone made his heart swell with the warmth of love.

  Chapter 37

  Rebecca’s heart was still pounding from the conversation with her father and Lord Peregrine. She had been filled with a kind of righteous anger while she stood there in the drawing room, which had been the source of her defiance and had filled her with a strength she had never before known in herself.

  She realized now that that anger had been building up inside her for her entire life, yet she had never allowed herself to feel it until now. But now that she had, she knew that she would never be able to push it back down again. Her relationship with her father was, she knew, forever changed.

  But so is my relationship with myself, she thought. I know now that I can stand up for myself, that some things are more important to me than pleasing my father or securing a comfortable future for myself.

  That knowledge filled her with a strange power — the same power that she had felt when she had decided to go to visit Andrew in gaol. The same power that had grown even stronger
when she had shared that precious kiss with Andrew and realized that she would go to the ends of the earth to ensure that they had a future together.

  “My Lady?”

  One of the maids was hurrying towards her with a note in her hand. “This just came for you from…” the girl trailed off, seeming unsure as to how she might say what the note’s origin was without alluding to something a little indelicate. How, after all, might a maid politely say, ‘from my master, who wrote it in his gaol cell’?

  She did not need to elaborate further, however, as Rebecca recognized Andrew’s hand at once, and tore the note open without ceremony.

  My beloved Rebecca,

  I know that you want us to hold back in our declarations, believing that we shall have plenty of opportunity for them when I am free, and we are married.

  However, I must admit that so long as I remain in this gaol cell, listening to the screams and protestations of innocence of my fellow inmates, I cannot share your confidence. And while I am here, I have nothing on my hands but a great deal too much time. I begrudge every minute that I do not spend in your company and therefore writing to you is the only possible substitute.

  Yet despite this pessimism, this apparently gloomy array of facts, a strange optimism still lingers on in my heart. Perhaps it is my grandmother’s blood in my veins that infuses me with this strength, that keeps me steadfast in the face of apparently desperate odds. I do not know. Whatever it is, it refuses to die. I simply do not believe that a love like ours, a love that comprises the perfect harmony of two hearts, can be destroyed or harmed by any machinations of man.

  I feel that I cannot leave anything unsaid, not because I believe that we will not have the chance to say these things in person, but because I know that I must share my thoughts and my heart with you in all things.

  I am sorry, Becca, that I did not fight harder for you when Charles was alive. I am sorry that I did not come out and say the thing that I longed to say, but also feared. I am sorry that I did not hold out my hand and beg you to take it so that we might run away together and be happy.

  I did not do these things because you and I both set a good deal of store by what is ‘proper’, what is the ‘done’ thing. This is not wrong, for the most part. I believe in manners, I believe in scrupulousness, but I do not believe in the use of either of those things to extinguish passion and set apart two who love each other more than anything else in the world.

  The gravity of my failure struck me when I heard the way that your father spoke to you about finding a husband in London this Season. I believe that until that moment I felt myself the most injured party in all of this, the person whose freedom and happiness were most being damaged by the demands of society.

  I realized at that moment that whatever I felt, it paled in comparison to what you must be feeling, with your fate and happiness forever in the hands of foolish and unfeeling men.

  It strikes me, Becca, as one of the strangest and hardest things in all of life that one is not able to choose one’s own family. The sole opportunity that we do have is when we marry and my heart soars at the thought that we will make our own family together, that we will seize our own opportunity to be truly happy.

  Yours forever,

  Andrew

  Rebecca read the letter twice, first to devour the sight of Andrew’s hand and to imagine his voice reading aloud to her, whispering these words of intimacy in her ear.

  The second time she read it for its meaning and was struck in particular by one phrase.

  I am sorry, Becca, that I did not fight harder for you when Charles was alive.

  These few little words made her reflect how much had changed in just a few days.

  Had it really been less than a week since she had been concerned with what was proper, what society expected of her? Had it really been so short a time since she would have been prepared to compromise her own happiness for the sake of making her father happy?

  One of the strangest and hardest things in all of life that one is not able to choose one’s own family. The sole opportunity that we do have is when we marry, and my heart soars at the thought that we will make our own family together…

  All at once, that future with Andrew became real, as solid and concrete as the walls of Godwin Hall that presently surrounded her. She knew what she wanted from life, and that thought made her bold.

  That sense of boldness was what carried her up the stairs, down the corridor and led her to the room where she knew Lord Peregrine was staying.

  She lingered there for a long time, with one hand on the doorknob.

  Could she do it? Could she enter a man’s room and search it for evidence of guilt?

  It was not proper. Of course, it was not. But as far as Rebecca was concerned, questions of what was or was not socially correct ceased to matter when one man was murdered, and another man’s life hung in the balance. Not just any man, of course, but the man she loved.

  …I simply do not believe that a love like ours, a love that comprises the perfect harmony of two hearts, can be destroyed or harmed by any machinations of man…

  Taking a steadying breath, she let herself into the room.

  It was much the same as any of the other bedrooms in Godwin Hall: elegantly and lushly furnished, and carefully made up by the maids.

  There was scarcely any evidence inside the room that Lord Peregrine had slept there at all, which came as something of a relief to Rebecca. The idea of entering into too intimate a space of Lord Peregrine’s made Rebecca feel sick. She was trying to pull herself away from the precipice of marrying this man. To venture too far into his world made the risk feel even more dizzying.

  For Andrew, she reminded herself and felt the strength flood back into her.

  She first went over to the desk and began a brief and methodical search of the contents within. The writing desk itself was locked, of course. Lord Peregrine’s sparse possessions were arranged neatly on the bureau, but she could see nothing among his various papers that appeared to be out of the ordinary.

  She wondered whether this attempted search would be entirely fruitless. She had spent enough time with Lord Peregrine to know that he was, if nothing else, an intelligent and cunning man, and if he had had a hand in Charles’ murder, then he was unlikely to leave signs of his treachery lying about for anyone to see.

  The only thing that was left visible on the desk was a note that had a slightly crumpled appearance, as though it had been read in haste and then shoved swiftly into a pocket without being properly folded.

  She picked the piece of paper up and swiftly read the few lines there.

  My Lord

  I regret to have to send you word that your nephew, Charles Godwin, the Duke of Leinster, died this evening of causes unknown. I thought it likely that you would wish to know at once in case you have affairs to settle in the house, and so I write this to you in all speed.

  Yours faithfully,

  William Burrows

  Mr. Burrows was the butler of Godwin Hall — one of the servants who Rebecca now realized had known Lord Peregrine all his life and was loyal to him, over and above his loyalty to any of the younger generation of Godwins.

  At this, a wild thought struck her. Could the butler perhaps have been in league with Lord Peregrine to murder Charles? Could this note suggest a far more nefarious meaning than its words alone contained — that the butler was letting Lord Peregrine know that he had executed his wicked plan, and that Lord Peregrine could now come back to the house to claim what he believed to be rightfully his?

  It was an extraordinary — almost fantastical — thought, and yet Rebecca was starting to feel that nothing was outside the bounds of possibility in this family, where everyone seemed to be making a grab for power.

  The irony is, she thought to herself, that if Andrew and I could simply find some small and modest cottage to live our lives, we would be happier than any duke who had obtained his riches through false and criminal means.

  She
tried one of the other drawers in the bureau, but it was locked.

  She did not quite know what she expected to find. A bottle of poison, perhaps? A signed confession?

  “What are you hiding, Lord Peregrine?” she asked aloud.

  “Nothing at all, Lady Rebecca,” came the reply from the doorway.

  Chapter 38

  Andrew sat on the bed of his cell if anyone could have called it a bed.

  It was a strange mixture of feelings that he currently lived with. On the one hand, of course, his situation was desperate. Even his own attorney had said, although not in so many words, that he did not hold out much hope that he would be acquitted.