The Marquess’s Hand_A Regency Romance Novel

by Rosie Wynter

  “If you can believe it, Peter needed very little persuading on the matter. Just as he saw me as a true and dear sister, he looked to Abigail with that same familial devotion from the very first moment and agreed with me at once that she should not have to suffer for being born out of wedlock. He assured me that he would speak to Lady Georgiana and begged her to consider taking Abigail as her own daughter. Enamoured as he was with the woman at the time, I believe he genuinely thought that she would agree to such a thing.” Harriet looked down at the floor once again, guilt seeming to return once more to her features. “When entirely honest with myself, I knew the chance of her accepting another woman’s child as her own was small indeed. However, by that point, I was desperate and clung to any lifeline that would see my daughter brought up right and proper.”

  Rosalie shook her head. Though she admired Mr Farrell for what he had tried to accomplish for Abigail and for Harriet, his wisdom was sorely lacking. “I believe I can surmise the general points of that conversation. Lady Georgiana had been hounding Peter for years, and I can imagine his suggestion did not sit well with her.”

  “Exactly,” Harriet agreed. “When he first spoke to her on the matter, she threw him out of her house in less than half an hour. I do not believe he was even able to tell her the whole story behind Abigail’s birth. Certainly, she could not have been aware of who I was, else I am sure she would have come after me and seen to it that we both received the kind of punishment she felt we deserved for having embarrassed her. Peter had enough sense and prudence to keep my name from her and even the fact that my child had already been born. Lady Georgiana was left believing that Peter had betrayed her with another woman and was making excuses to keep the child, while still gaining her hand. I suppose I cannot blame her for thinking so. There are not many men in the world who would choose to take on a daughter who was not their own and risk their reputation as Peter did. He is a rare breed.”

  “So then Mr Farrell invented a fake wife for himself? Did he not, at any point, simply think to marry you?” Rosalie was still trying to wrap her mind around the curious relationship Harriet shared with Peter. Though it was now abundantly clear that there was no physical intimacy between them, she still found herself slightly jealous of the relationship Harriet shared with the gentleman.

  At that moment, Harriet smiled at Rosalie in a most curious manner. It was a smile that was both benevolent and kind, friendly and warm. “Peter would never have married me, and nor would I ever have asked him to do so. I have said already, have I not, that our regard for each other was always of a familial sort. I could not have made him happy as a wife, just as he could never have made me happy as a husband. Although I wanted the very best for my Abigail and was willing even to sacrifice Peter’s own honour and standing to get it, I did not wish to ruin Peter’s entire life by denying him the chance to find happiness with a woman he could truly love.”

  “But you have ruined his life!” Rosalie insisted. “By his accepting responsibility for your daughter on your behalf and creating all these lies, the man has made himself a figure of the utmost contempt in London. Lady Georgiana and her family have seen to it down the years that his reputation could not recover, and he has had little to no chance of meeting any woman who could possibly love him as a result.”

  “I do not think that is true at all,” Harriet answered back. “You, Miss Curtis, have gone out of your way to discover the truth about Peter, refusing at all turns to accept the lie he has been forced to live. I understand you are even engaged at present, and so I must ask just what motivates you so fervently to clear Peter’s name, if not a desire you hold for him yourself.” Harriet stared in defiance at Rosalie. “Peter writes to me, often, with news of Abigail and has made me acquainted with the whole history of your time together. I have prayed, ever since your first meeting with him, that you would come to love him and accept him in spite of the cloud that hangs over his name. I prayed every day that the two of you might find happiness together. I carried that faith even when Peter wrote to me to say that you had been taken in by another man... and now, here you are.”

  Rosalie scowled at the woman. “Were it not for Abigail’s sake, I would brand you a true villain. Honestly, I believe Peter has been treated as poorly by you as he has by every other person in his acquaintance.”

  “But you understand, don’t you? You understand why I had to do what I have done? Abigail cannot be permitted to pay for my mistakes.” There was a look of desperation in the woman’s eyes now, a seemingly earnest desire for a vindication of her actions.

  Rosalie stood looking down on Harriet, as though in judgement. “You have been played a very poor hand in life and have suffered greatly at the hands of others. I know, truly, that blame here lies as much with the man who rejected you as with your own folly. At this moment, though, I cannot forgive you for what you have done to Peter and to me. You have been the cause of so much heartache and confusion for me over these last weeks and months. It galls me to think that I nearly gave up my love for a true and decent man because of the lies you have forced him to take on as truths in his life. For now, I must go.”

  Harriet moved uncomfortably in her seat but looked up to Rosalie with some optimism at her last words. “Do you intend to find Peter before he sails out to America?”

  “If that is at all possible, yes,” Rosalie replied. “I can only assume, as he has made you intimately aware of all other matters regarding my time with him, that he has furnished you with the details of when he is travelling. Would you provide me with that information now, please?” she spoke in a most perfunctory manner, trying to keep her frustrations and anger with the woman in check.

  “Of course,” Harriet agreed. She stood up and practically ran to her bureau. Opening it up, she snatched a whole pile of letters and thrust them willingly into Rosalie’s hand. “This is every letter and correspondence I have had from Peter over these last weeks. It will provide you with all you need to know regarding the specifics of his leaving. I must warn you, though, that he is due to sail any day now, and you do not have long to reach him. I do not know what you intend to do regarding your fiancé, but time is against you, here.”

  Rosalie nodded and hurried to the door. She turned back to look at Harriet one last time. A shadow of a thought had come to her mind, and she looked again at those brown eyes that did not match her daughter’s. She asked one last question. “The man who wronged you and left you in your predicament: he would not, by any chance, be Lord Wareham?” She studied Harriet, remembering that Peter Farrell and Lord Wareham had been friends in the past.

  As she had done frequently during the conversation, Harriet looked down at her feet, giving Rosalie all the answer she needed. Considering all she knew of the Marquess’s manner and foibles, it barely came as a surprise to Rosalie. As she thought of the man’s irrepressible tendency towards flirtation and ready eagerness to fall in love with seemingly any woman, and considering his meadow-green eyes, she wondered how she had not seen the resemblance between the man and Abigail sooner. Realising, then, that Harriet had kept this from Peter caused her anger to boil up anew, and she found she couldn’t take another minute in the woman’s company. “I very nearly married that man,” she said darkly. “Your silence on all fronts has nearly cost me my own happiness as well as that of the man you profess to love as dearly as a brother. Honestly, I do not know if we will meet again. If we do, I hope you prove yourself a better kind of sister to Peter than you have in the past.”

  Harriet gave no answer to that, and Rosalie did not have the time to indulge her further.

  Once out of Miss Donne’s house, Rosalie sped through the streets like a woman possessed. She clutched to her breast the series of letters Harriet had given to her. She would be sure to read them all in detail once she was out of Sussex and en-route back to London. First, however, she had to find her sisters and arrange some form of transportation. Knowing all she did now, she had absolutely no qualms about leaving Wareham’s side
without explanation. After what he had done in his past, and concealed from the world, he was not worthy of the courtesy.

  As soon as she arrived on the main street of the village, Rosalie looked in all directions for signs of either Grace or Claire. There was not much to the village, and she quickly spied the two girls loitering outside the window of a fabric shop. Immediately, she picked up her skirts and ran to them, calling out their names loudly and garnering a lot of attention from the villagers passing by.

  Grace and Claire turned sharply and gave each other concerned looks as Rosalie hurried towards them. They both abandoned their window shopping and moved towards Rosalie, surprised to be pulled into a three-way embrace by their elder sister. Rosalie held them tightly in her arms and spoke in a most relieved voice, tears springing from her eyes as she did so. “Peter is innocent,” she declared. “The man I love is innocent!”

  As happy as both sisters seemed, Grace quickly tried to shush her older sister, looking about her with furtive caution. “That is wonderful news, really. But you don’t need to share it with the entire village. Now tell us, just what did Miss Donne say?”

  Rosalie shook her head. “There is no time,” she insisted. “We need to get back up to London at once. Peter and Abigail will be catching a boat to the Americas any day now, and I cannot miss him.”

  Claire looked uncertainly to Grace, but she wore a determined expression as she listened to Rosalie’s plea. “We have money on us, enough at least to engage transportation back to London. Claire, give me the contents of your purse, now.”

  Claire obediently did as she was told and handed over her amply filled purse to her sister. Grace then inspected the money they jointly held. “Hmm. It’ll be enough.” She then looked up at Rosalie with the utmost seriousness. “I’m with you to the end of this, but are you absolutely certain this is what you want? If we flee from here right now, without any word to the Marquess, or to Mother and Father, you know what that will do to our reputation.”

  Rosalie took a deep breath and nodded. “That is exactly why neither of you will be coming with me. Your names are going to be tarnished enough from what I am about to do, and, for that, I apologise truly and sincerely. However, you will only make matters worse for yourselves if you are seen to be colluding with me in my plans. Get me as far as the staging house here in the village, if you can, and then I want you both to return to Lord Wareham’s estate. Tell everyone that I slipped away from you while you were both shopping, and that you have not seen me since. I do not want either of you to give any indication that you know where I am or what it is I am about to do.” Claire seemed to understand the importance of what Rosalie was saying, but Grace seemed hurt, and Rosalie hugged her sister once again in reassurance. “I need you to do this for me, Grace. I do not want to enter into the next stage of my life thinking that I have injured either of you or set your own futures at risk. Now please, just do as I say. There isn’t much time for arguing.”

  Grace, at last, accepted her sister’s words, and the stubborn expression on her face melted into a somewhat wistful smile. “When all this is over, I want a detailed letter from you telling me everything.”

  “I guarantee you will have it,” Rosalie assured her.

  CHAPTER 26

  Throughout Rosalie’s long journey back up to London, she read quietly and diligently through each of the letters Peter Farrell had written to Miss Donne. After she had read through each one once, she went back to the very start and read them through again. The letters painted a marvellous picture, for her, of the man’s true mind and quality. His capacity for love and his infinitely caring nature were verified through each perfect pen mark on the page. The letters were always comprised of two parts. The first sections informed Harriet of her daughter’s health and happiness, and the second parts spoke of his own life and mind. In these latter sections, Peter’s words tended to speak of Rosalie herself. He praised her extensively, noting her goodness, kind temperament and willingness to know him as a person and not to judge him by what others said about him. He made it clear, as well, that he would not look to inform her of the truth regarding Abigail’s parentage or his own innocence in regard to the crimes laid against him. He reasoned, in his missives, that it was better for Rosalie to fall in love with some other man and that, though he wished with all his heart to be with her, he did not believe she could be truly happy living with a man whose own reputation would no doubt spoil hers.

  The journey back to the capital was a long one, and even reading and rereading Peter’s private thoughts and sentiments only served to pass so much of the time. During the rest of the journey, Rosalie found herself looking anxiously out of the window, willing the horses that pulled the carriage to greater speed, wishing there was some way she could be by Peter’s side sooner.

  From what she had learned from the last of Peter’s letters, he and Abigail had been but two days away from sailing to the New World. Rosalie knew she would be arriving on the very morning they were due to sail. Fortunately, his letters stated that the ship would not be leaving till afternoon, and Rosalie hoped this would give her plenty of time to find the man and confess to him all the feelings that lay inside her.

  As her journey wound on into the night, Rosalie tried to gain some respite through sleep. She might have managed the occasional hour, but she woke often, and her mind proved far too alive to permit restful slumber. She considered that by the time she found Peter, she would have been in the same clothes for almost two consecutive days and not washed for the same length of time. She knew she would likely look a mess when she found him, and, though she knew Mr Farrell was the last person likely to care about such things, she could not help but wish she could present herself better to him.

  Oddly, the issue of Peter’s moving to America played least on Rosalie’s mind. She had accepted, from the very moment she had abandoned her family in Sussex, that choosing to be with the man meant choosing a whole new life for herself in another country. Knowing now exactly why Peter refused to clear his name to society, Rosalie could not ask him to change his ways for her benefit. He accepted the brunt of London’s scorn for the sake of Abigail, and Rosalie was prepared to accept that same judgement for the sake of both the child and Peter himself. Were he to accept her, Rosalie knew that their best chance at happiness lay in new lands where they bore no reputation and where the ire of London society could not easily reach them.

  When, at last, the great city came into view on the northern horizon, the sun was just beginning to rise, and the buildings in the near distance were bathed in an orange glow. It was a heart-warming sight, and Rosalie knew now that she was in no danger of missing Peter’s boat. As the light improved, she dug out the letters she had been gifted by Harriet and checked once again the particulars of the ship on which he was to sail. Peter had stated in his letters that he and Abigail would board early in the day to ensure that the possessions they were taking with them were safely secured and to give Abigail time to adjust to the particular rocking motion that came with travel by boat. Rosalie knew nothing about etiquette when it came to ships. She did not know if she would be let on board without a pass, nor how much the passage to the New World would cost her if it proved necessary to buy a ticket in order to go aboard. Her sisters had provided her with an ample sum of money from their purses but she could only assume that the passage to America was more expensive than the sum she had on her person.

  Rosalie had to tip her driver a considerable amount to take her to the exact dock where Mr Farrell’s boat lay. The driver had to make enquiries to discover the location himself and added three extra shillings to the fare for his trouble. It was extortion, but the driver seemed aware that Rosalie was desperate to reach her destination on time and knew that he could exploit her without her making too much of a fuss. For all she cared, he could help himself to the entire contents of her purse and all her worldly possessions if it meant she got to Peter in time to tell him all she needed to say.

  The bells o
f the church tolled the half-hour after nine as Rosalie’s carriage trundled to a halt at the waterside. As soon as she caught sight of the ship on which Mr Farrell would be leaving, she paid her driver and rushed over to the gangplank where one of the crew sat in a slovenly manner at a makeshift desk. The fellow yawned, and his weathered brow creased as he observed Rosalie running towards him. He clambered from his chair and moved to block access to the ship, putting out a hand to stop her.

  “Miss, The Faithful Queen does not leave for another five hours yet. There’s no need to be rushing to get aboard. Do you have a ticket or a pass?” The man looked at her curiously. She doubted he could be impressed, considering her current state.

  “I am sorry if I appear overeager.” She spoke somewhat breathlessly. “I do not have a ticket, but I must speak with one of the passengers who is boarding today. His name is Peter Farrell, and his daughter Abigail should be with him, too.”

  The seaman wandered back over to his desk and flicked open a little brown book that lay there. He seemed in no great hurry. “Ah yes,” he said, after studying the pages. “Both the gentleman and his daughter are aboard and will be settling nicely into their quarters by now.”

  Rosalie breathed a sigh of relief and immediately brought out her purse again. “I do not know how much it is to travel to America, but this is all I have. If that can’t grant me passage, will it at least be enough to let me come aboard and see the man and his daughter before they set sail?”

  The sailor frowned as he looked at the small purse, opening it up and dropping its contents onto the desk. “‘There’s nowhere near enough here to grant you passage,” he said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “Still, so long as it is all well with the captain, there’s no reason why you cannot have a word with our passenger before he departs. I can tell by the mad look about you it must be something important.”