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

by Hamilton, Hanna

  Andrew had never known a truly dangerous situation before. At Cambridge, his fellow students had occasionally drunkenly challenged him to duels, but he had always managed to diffuse the situations with cheer and good grace. Once, he had been out riding in a storm, but he had known the area enough to find a barn in which he could shelter.

  Yet it was no danger like this — danger to my very life.

  Yet, on the other hand, he was the happiest he had ever been in his life. Who could not be happy when they loved as much as Andrew did and knew that that love was reciprocated? It was the greatest feeling in the world, and even in his moments of darkest despair he needed only to meditate for a few minutes on the image of Rebecca’s face, and then that all-consuming sense of happiness was restored.

  Yet he needed to call upon that sense of inner strength very frequently in this terrible place, where the cries and screams of his fellow inmates kept him awake all night, and where he was constantly reminded that he was locked in — a caged animal.

  At times he wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Only a few weeks ago he and Charles had been the grown sons of a duke who appeared to be in excellent health. He had not had a care in the world beyond which diversions in London he planned to attend and whether or not he really needed to buy another horse.

  Now here he was, and all the events that had caused him to end up here seemed like the strange and fantastical happenings of some salacious play, where the situation seemed desperate, but all would be well in the end.

  Other times he wanted to weep. Weep for the father he had lost, the brother who had been taken away from him and whose murder he had been accused of in a double injury.

  Sometimes he was angry — enraged, in fact — by Lord Peregrine’s actions. Truly he would like to have believed that Lord Peregrine was at the bottom of all the terrible events that had taken place recently, but something at the back of Andrew’s mind stopped him from this thought.

  It was not that he did not believe Lord Peregrine to be capable of all manner of treachery — he had learned never to underestimate the vices of the English aristocracy. Nor did he believe that Lord Peregrine really was convinced that Andrew was responsible for Charles’ death.

  He believed his uncle to be the most reprehensible kind of opportunist. Callous, certainly, even cruel.

  But not villainous. Not quite.

  Because there was something else. Something at the back of his mind. Something that stubbornly refused to come into the light, no matter how much he tried to force it.

  What is so loathsome about this situation, he thought, is that none of it makes any sense. Why should anyone in the house have wished to harm Charles? The only people whom one might argue to have had any motive are me and Rebecca, and we are innocent.

  He felt like slamming his head against the stone wall of the cell, but he knew that he would not be able to do anyone any good if he were trying to solve this terrible quandary in a state of concussion.

  Nonetheless, he did violently kick the door. It made him feel better.

  Over and over again he played to himself the memories of the dinner the night before Charles’ death. He was certain that there had been something slightly wrong that night, though he could not think exactly what. Something that he had seen, that had seemed harmless enough at the time that would take on a new meaning given Charles’ death.

  But what was it? It was on the tip of his tongue, so close to being articulated that he felt he would go mad if he could not express it soon.

  It was a glass of something.

  A glass of punch.

  A glass of punch that had first been offered to Rebecca and then she had turned it down.

  So then the servant had offered it instead to Charles.

  And who was it who had been standing by the punch bowl with a strange look in their eye?

  He could see the image clearly but could hardly make sense of it. He saw the knot of black hair, the marble pallor, the expression of perfect wretchedness.

  He saw the little glass bottle and knew what had happened all in a flash of understanding.

  He was certain that he knew who had been responsible for Charles’ death. And if his instinct was correct, then there was no one more in danger than his beloved Becca.

  Chapter 39

  Rebecca swung around with great speed and relatively little grace, dropping the crumpled note onto the carpet.

  “I shall take back what is mine,” Lord Peregrine said, quickly stepping forward and scooping up the note — perhaps the evidence of his guilt — and placing it into the safety of his waistcoat pocket. Rebecca felt her heart drop. If the note might be considered evidence against Lord Peregrine, she had lost it and had only herself to blame.

  “Forgive me, Lord Peregrine,” she said automatically, while she frantically tried to come up with some excuse for having entered his private chamber. “I was only searching for…”

  “Evidence of my guilt?” Lord Peregrine interjected. He smiled, but it was not a friendly smile at all. It was the expression of a predator baring its teeth at its prey.

  Stand your ground, Rebecca told herself. You are not the one who has done anything wrong.

  “I take it,” he continued, “That you have not come to my room to rescind your refusal of my proposal? I do hope you have. It would make me an exceedingly happy man.”

  The desperation of the present situation was dawning on Rebecca with a creeping horror.

  She was alone in a bedchamber with a man, a man whose proposal of marriage she had just refused. If this fact should ever leave the room, then her entire reputation would be ruined.

  But, she reminded herself sharply what does my reputation matter if Andrew is dead? I would a thousand times sooner he were alive, and we lived together, even if I was in disgrace. If he is not cleared of his crime, then my very life is worth very little and my reputation even less.

  “I have not,” she replied simply. “Nor will I ever change my mind.”

  Taking a breath to steel herself, she looked Lord Peregrine square in the eye.

  “You are a perceptive man, Lord Peregrine and I believe that you have a strong will of your own. I think you of all people can understand that my mind on this matter is made up, and it cannot be unmade.”

  “Yes,” Lord Peregrine said, advancing slowly on Rebecca. “I know that you are trying to flatter me in the hopes of helping yourself, but it is true nonetheless. Yes, I can easily believe that of you, Lady Rebecca.”

  “I have no wish to flatter you, Lord Peregrine,” Rebecca replied, “Because there is nothing that I want from you.”

  “You say that,” Lord Peregrine said, “yet I observe that you are standing in my chamber. As you yourself have said, I am a perceptive man, and from this, I perceive that there is indeed something that you want.”

  “Just the truth,” Rebecca shot back.

  “My dear, silly girl, you have the truth already,” Lord Peregrine said. “The truth is that you have doomed yourself by continuing to insist that you will marry my nephew even as he faces trial for murder. Through concern for your wellbeing and an appreciation for your beauty, I have offered you an alternative.” He sniffed as if reminded anew of the insult.

  “It really is the most unfathomable behavior. If you want the truth, Rebecca, you would be best to begin by being honest with yourself and acknowledging that Andrew is a murderer.”

  “He is nothing of the sort!” Rebecca snarled. “Only someone with murderous thoughts of his own would ascribe those wicked motives to others!”

  “Does it not alarm you,” Lord Peregrine continued as if he had not heard what she was saying, “that a man who has professed to love you as Andrew has, a man who you say you are engaged to, has behaved so recklessly? Has murdered his own brother? Clearly he cannot care for you as much as you hope. You would do far better to forsake him.”

  He took another step closer to Rebecca, and she reflexively stepped away from his advancement.


  “Never.” She cursed her shaking voice for sounding far less sure than she felt inside. “Besides, you will not persuade me with such foolish arguments. You know Andrew is innocent, just as well as I do.”

  “Do I?” Lord Peregrine asked, with a frown of what appeared to be genuine confusion. “And why, pray, is that?”

  “Because you were the one who murdered Charles!” Rebecca burst out. Despite her fear of being alone with Lord Peregrine, she could contain the accusation no longer. “You were the one who poisoned him and then framed Andrew! It was all so that you could assume the dukedom!”

  Rebecca expected Lord Peregrine to respond in fierce denial and towering rage, but she was not expecting the expression of genuine confusion that filled his face at her words.

  He really is surprised that I think this, she realized. He really thinks that Andrew is responsible and that either I am too naive to see it or I am covering up for him.

  “Murder my nephew?” Lord Peregrine echoed. “Why, you absurd little wench, why should I do such a thing as murder my own flesh and blood?”

  “I do not believe it is very difficult to discern why,” Rebecca responded, her heart thudding like a drum in her chest. “Money, power, the glory of the dukedom.” She paused and then gestured out the window. “You professed love of this place.”

  “I do love this place,” Lord Peregrine agreed. “But I love my liberty far more. I would never do anything as foolish as what Andrew has done. I value my life far too dearly to dabble in murder.”

  Rebecca frowned. The strange thing was that he sounded sincere and yet she could simply think of no one else who might have been culpable for Charles’ death.

  “You are clearly a man who will stop at nothing to further his own interests,” she said. “You ask me to believe that you are not capable of murder.”

  “I did not say that I was not capable,” Lord Peregrine replied, “Only that I have no wish to embroil myself in such a messy situation as the one in which your fiancé” — the last word was said with a vile sneer — “currently finds himself in.”

  “You are lying,” Rebecca said quietly, but her voice rang out in the silent room as though she had shouted at the top of her lungs.

  “How melodramatic you young people are,” Lord Peregrine responded with a sneer. “Do you believe yourself to be in some sort of preposterous novel, full of murder and intrigue? My dear girl, it is a great deal more simple than the convoluted scenario that you have imagined for yourself.

  “Your beloved Andrew has killed his brother because he wants the dukedom and that is the end to it. He is just as petty and jealous as the rest of us, and because of that, he will end his life soon with a noose around his neck. But no more of that. You have been prying into my private affairs, and you must learn your lesson on that score for when you are my wife.”

  Seizing Rebecca by the wrist, he half-dragged her out of his room and down the hall. With his free hand, he pulled open the door of the little sitting room that Rebecca and Caroline had been given to share, and flung Rebecca inside with such force that she fell into a small table and knocked it over.

  “There,” he said. “Now, would you have the goodness to remain in there and cease to cause so much trouble.”

  “I will do what I think is right,” Rebecca shot back, scrambling to her feet and trying to ignore the pain that had shot through her body on impact with the table. Don’t let him see how much he frightens you.

  At this, Lord Peregrine merely laughed.

  “You know, your obstinacy has almost put me off the idea of marrying you at all.” He paused, allowing his cold dark eyes to drag over Rebecca’s figure. “Almost, but not quite,” he corrected.

  Then he slammed the door shut and left her alone.

  Rebecca stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. She had hurt her hip and wrist where she had slammed into the table, and they slowly began to throb.

  Between the pain and the fury of the insult of Lord Peregrine’s behavior, she wanted to weep.

  But she was distracted from this impulse when she noticed that in the impact of falling to the floor, a little drawer on the table had broken open.

  It was a table that had been reserved for Caroline’s use, and Rebecca had assumed that she stored her few little treasures in that small locked drawer.

  Among the spilled contents of the drawer were Caroline’s diamond brooch - her sole fine piece of jewelery, given to her by Rebecca in a display of friendship, and to be truthful because she had not much liked it herself. There was a fan, a pair of good silk gloves, a prayer book — and a small glass bottle.

  The bottle had a small yellow label which bore the words ‘rat poison’, and underneath another label. This was black and contained a picture of a skull with two bones crossed behind it. The bottle was half-empty.

  The pain in her body having entirely disappeared, Rebecca stepped closer to the mess on the floor, and, on instinct, she bent down to pick the little bottle up. She knew at that moment that she was on the verge of understanding everything that she needed to know, that the answer to the terrible secret of Charles’ death was there, in her hands.

  The answer to Andrew’s salvation, too.

  And yet she did not believe it, could not believe it. Too many of the basic assumptions of her life would need to be entirely unpicked to make sense of this little bottle in her hands, and the murderous label that grinned out at her in black and white.

  “Going through my things?” a voice said from somewhere behind Rebecca. “How like you to have no respect for my privacy.”

  Chapter 40

  It was the punch. That was the cause of it all.

  Andrew was certain — more certain than he had been of anything. It was if clarity for that whole evening had flooded back to him — a clarity that had previously been clouded by the fog of emotions that he had been experiencing that fateful night.

  He remembered the strange tinge of the liquid. He remembered too that he had not drunk any of it. None of the ladies had partaken, and Rebecca’s father had stuck to the usual glass of port.

  He remembered, moreover, that it had been unlike Charles to sample the punch. Usually, he went straight for a glass of claret at dinner, but not that night.

  Someone had not calculated for that.

  “Hello there!” Andrew shouted through the barred door of the cell for what felt like the hundredth time. “Is there anyone there?”

  As soon as he had realized who was responsible for his brother’s death, he had felt like he might have spontaneously developed the strength of Samson and broken himself out of the cell.

  Unfortunately, however, he was still locked in, and his voice was just one in a chorus of men who believed themselves to have been falsely imprisoned, who banged on the metal bars of their cells and screamed, begged and jeered at the guards at every hour of the day or night.

  Andrew knew exactly what needed to be done, but there was no one to hear him.

  He dashed back over to the small table and dashed off a note to the only person he could think of who held the power to make things right.

  How is it possible that I can be locked in at a moment like this? he thought desperately. Damn my uncle to hell. If Rebecca is harmed, then I will hold him forever responsible.

  “Hello there, he called again, brandishing the note, which he held out through the bars of the door.

  “Alright, alright, steady on,” replied a voice, full of sarcastic amiability, while its owner made leisurely progress down the long row of cells.

  “I need your help, sir!” Andrew called out, hoping that the desperation in his voice would persuade the man to move a little faster. On the contrary, it only seemed to amuse him.

  “This needs to go to Godwin Hall,” Andrew said, thrusting the note through the bars of the cell.

  This gaoler was clearly of a far less kind and obliging nature. He took the note from Andrew’s hand, and his dirty fingertips created black smudges all over it.
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br />   “It needs to go to my grandmother, Lady Horatia. Godspeed, man!” Andrew said, feeling weak with relief that someone had taken the note and would be able to pass it on. With every moment that went by, he became more fearful that it would be too late to save Rebecca from the murderer at Godwin Hall.

  The murderer who concealed themselves among us so perfectly that no one would ever have suspected.

  “Needs to go, does it, Your Grace,” said the somewhat dirty and unappealing gaoler.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, it does, and I would appreciate it very much if it could be done quickly,” Andrew said, the words tumbling out of his mouth so rapidly that he was not even sure they were in correct sequence. “Someone — a lady — is in very grave danger, and it is of vital importance that this note gets to someone who may be able to prevent a disaster from occurring!”