The Obscure Duchess of Godwin Hall_A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Hanna Hamilton

  “A powerful jealousy indeed,” Mr. Langham agreed. He bowed for what he hoped might be the final time for a while and excused himself.

  “Forgive me, Your Lordship, but in light of all that you have just said I really feel that I must consult with my deputy.”

  “But of course,” Lord Peregrine replied, inclining his head in a stately motion. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of your important work, constable.”

  * * *

  Mr. Langham had not been expecting his inquiries at Godwin Hall to proceed in this fashion. Usually, when a constable was hired to bring a perpetrator to justice, he was directed towards the suspect by whichever person of means had hired him.

  Here it was different, though. It seemed that neither Lady Horatia nor the Duke had any interest in establishing who was responsible for the poisoning, but only on insisting who was not responsible. Mr. Langham scarcely knew what to make of it.

  “Well, I searched the kitchen, Mr. Langham,” Rattings said, as they stood together in the kitchen garden, where they had both agreed that they were unlikely to be overheard. “I did not lay eyes on anything that looked dangerous. Not so much as a jar of rat poison.”

  “And what about the servants?” Mr. Langham asked, puffing on yet another pipe. He felt a little self-conscious smoking his pipe around the upper-class inhabitants of the Godwin Hall. He knew people of that sort generally held a preference for snuff, which did not have nearly the same cogitative benefits.

  “The cook could nearly speak to me through floods of tears,” Mr. Rattings said. “She had her apron flung over her head the whole time, and I could hardly understand what she was saying."

  “She could have been acting, I suppose,” Mr. Langham said. “If anyone would have had the opportunity to poison the Duke, it would have been her.”

  “What does a servant have to gain from poisoning a duke?” Mr. Rattings asked derisively. “It's not like they’re going to read the duke’s will and find out that he left the whole place to the cook.”

  Mr. Langham shot his deputy a look to indicate that such jokes were not appropriate in these circumstances, but he had to admit that Rattings was entirely right, even if his mode of expression was perhaps a little indelicate.

  We need to be looking at whoever had something to gain from the Duke’s death. And in this case, that means that there is no more obvious starting point than the new duke.

  Chapter 29

  Breakfast was a strange affair that morning.

  Grandmamma Horatia had chosen to take hers in her room, having spent a very bad night and wishing to rest. Therefore the company consisted of Rebecca, Andrew, Caroline and Rebecca’s father, the Earl. Lord Peregrine was absent, a fact that made Rebecca feel very grateful.

  The Earl had spoken very little since Charles’ death and seemed to conduct himself in something of a daze. Rebecca was not sure exactly why that was -— her father had never demonstrated any particular liking for Charles, but his death seemed to have stopped him in his tracks. He seemed older, somehow, and less certain.

  “Perhaps we ought to consider returning to Sheffield on the morrow,” the Earl said while helping himself to a sweet bun and buttering it with an air of great distraction.

  “And what of the Season, Father?” Rebecca responded. She was surprised by her own words, having always cared very little for the London Season herself. But her father had always set a great deal of store by it, or rather, by what the fashionable people in London thought of him and of his daughter.

  “Ah yes, the Season,” the Earl said as if the thought had not occurred to him. “Yes. Well. I suppose you’ll be needing to find a husband now.”

  The Earl was not the kind of man who usually spoke so plainly in company, so Rebecca took it to be just another symptom of her father’s state of dreadful shock. This did not change the fact that the blood flooded to her cheeks at his words, and she occupied herself with doing her utmost not to look at Andrew.

  “I do not think that such things could even be entertained at present, Father,” she said, staring intently into her teacup.

  “Well, my dear, you will not be young forever,” the Earl responded. “How many years has it been since your coming out? Three? Four? There are younger and prettier faces appearing in London every year. I’ve never concerned myself with it until now, but now I fear that unless you make a good effort to present yourself favorably, you may find yourself an old maid.”

  Rebecca remained motionless, still staring into her lap. She knew that her father had always been a rather unfeeling man, but she had never before experienced this level of humiliation at his hands, much less in front of someone like Andrew. Her cheeks were aflame. It was not just the cruelty of her father’s words that struck her, but also their vulgarity.

  The only thing that comforted her about her father’s behavior was that he seemed to be certain that she would have a future, that she would not find herself imprisoned or hanged for Charles’ murder. She wished that she shared his confidence in that matter.

  “Do you not have anything to say for yourself, daughter?” the Earl asked briskly. “I know that you are fond of fancying yourself as a rebel, but that kind of behavior really will not do from now on. We shall have to look to the future, for you and for the Earldom.”

  Still, Rebecca did not speak. There was no sound in the room, save for the crackling of the fire.

  “I suppose we cannot leave at present,” the Earl continued, “Until some of the circumstances around the Duke’s death have been cleared up. But rest assured, Duke, that we will not be intruding upon your hospitality for too long. London calls, and I believe that we must answer.”

  “Certain members of your party do not represent the slightest intrusion on my hospitality,” Andrew replied icily. “Some, however, feel to me to be a little more of a trial at present.”

  “Oh, my dear Duke,” the Earl continued, “I hope that you will not take unkindly to my looking forward to my daughter’s future. I mean it as no slight upon your brother’s memory, of course. But as you know, the time for young ladies is very short. I need to think of my daughter’s wellbeing, you understand.”

  “Oh, I understand perfectly, Sheffield,” Andrew replied heatedly. “I understand that your daughter is in great distress at present and that your words at this time serve to exacerbate her unhappiness.”

  Rebecca wanted to speak.

  She had no wish to allow anyone else to fight her battles with her father on her behalf, even if that person was Andrew. But she had spent so much of her life subject to her father’s domineering temperament that she had no idea how she might even begin to oppose him, and at the present moment could think of nothing apart from how earnestly she wished she could escape this miserable situation.

  “Unhappy?” The Earl gave a snort. “Why should my daughter be unhappy? She has been provided for her whole life, and all I am saying now is that I will continue to do what needs to be done in order to provide for her. If she is unhappy with that, it is only because she is an ungrateful sort of creature.”

  “You are describing someone else, Sheffield!” Andrew burst out, rising from his seat in agitation. “You speak of your daughter as if she were a spoilt, complacent creature, concerned only with herself and content to let others shape her life for her when in truth she is none of those things!”

  “Is that so, eh?” At this moment the Earl’s tone changed, and he leaned back in his chair to regard Andrew with a sort of intrigued calm. “Why, my dear Duke, I was not aware that you knew my daughter so well that you could give an account of her to her own father.”

  Andrew fell silent and sat back down. He seemed ashamed of himself, which struck Rebecca as peculiar since he had nothing to be ashamed about. On the contrary, it is my father who should feel embarrassment at the scene that has just taken place. She could scarcely believe that a man of his station and breeding could conduct himself with so little delicacy.

  It struck her, knowing Andrew a
s well as he did, that he was not yet comfortable with the sense of authority that his newly-acquired dukedom afforded him. He was still in the mindset of a second-son, believing that he did not have the power to effect change over those around him.

  She was certain, moreover, that Andrew would soon grow into his role. That he would not long tolerate the ignorant utterances of people like the Earl of Sheffield, her own father, of whom she was deeply ashamed.

  She tried to catch Caroline’s eye, hoping that she might derive a little comfort from her friend’s sisterly solidarity, but Caroline was still staring resolutely into space, her eyes rimmed with red.

  Rebecca felt ashamed of herself that Caroline was mourning Charles more wholeheartedly than she was, but the fact of the matter was that it was far easier for Caroline to be sorry for the death of a young man when she had no real stake in his life.

  * * *

  The rest of the day was passed in a weary ennui. No one knew what to say to each other, and there always seemed to be too many people in every room. The constable and his deputy continued to sniff around ineffectually, and Rebecca was certain that they were no closer to establishing the real cause of Charles’ death.

  She suspected that this boded ill for her. The longer it took them to find any evidence of real foul play, the more likely they were to take the easy option of scapegoating Rebecca. After all, Charles had provided them with a murderer as his final act.

  Grandmamma Horatia continued, with her looks, her little smiles and sense of indefatigable will, to remind Rebecca that she believed entirely in her innocence and would allow no harm to come to her.

  Caroline, however, seemed to have retreated into herself since Charles’ death, and would not be drawn into any conversation with Rebecca about the matter. This hurt Rebecca greatly, as a vote of confidence from her friend would have meant a great deal.

  At about four in the afternoon, she took matters into her own hands and went for a long walk. She had been avoiding leaving the house, anxious that the constable might treat it as evidence of a guilty conscience. But after a while, she could bear it no longer.

  There was little daylight to be had, and she was determined to make the most of the crisp autumnal air, striding out the length of the park and straying as far as the distant woods.

  The walk filled her with a sense of great vigor and brought a healthy flush to her cheeks. For the first time since she had witnessed Charles draw his last breath, she felt alive, and as though there might be some chance of a future.

  For a while, she walked along, with her thoughts flowing in the agreeable and calming sort of way that is only possible when paired with light exercise and fresh air. She was so distracted, in fact, that at first, she did not see Andrew walking towards her.

  When she did notice him, she almost caught her breath.

  His greatcoat was unbuttoned and trailing behind him in the light autumn breeze, his color heightened by the walking and made golden by the light of the setting sun.

  The hints of what she had felt for him in previous moments seemed to flower in her chest at that instant. She had always, in abstract, thought that Andrew was a very handsome young man. She had always admired his figure and felt little hints and snatches of some strange and remote feeling, a feeling that made her forget her sisterly relationship with him.

  But that feeling had never blossomed until now, and at that moment it did so with a force that made her catch her breath.

  “I had hoped that I might be able to find you before you returned to the house,” he said. She was not sure whether it was the openness of his expression or the slight huskiness in his voice as he spoke, but at that moment she felt that they were immediately more intimate than they had been since they were children, and had nothing to pretend.

  “Well, now you have found me,” she said. The sensations that she was experiencing at that moment prevented her from giving a witty or teasing reply, and so she had to settle for stating the only fact that she knew to be true.

  “I am sorry for what you suffered at breakfast,” he said bluntly. “It was an intolerable insult.”

  “I have lived with my father these twenty years,” she replied. “I am quite accustomed to intolerable insults.”

  “Then you should have to live with him no longer,” Andrew said flatly. “I have spent all day trying to reconcile myself with the way that he spoke to you, and the fact that I failed to fully defend you.”

  “I do not blame you,” Rebecca said. “It is difficult to express what we really feel whilst remaining within the bounds of what is proper.”

  “I do not care what is proper,” Andrew replied. “If my musings on this day have made me realize anything, it is that I do not have great regard for what is proper when it comes to you.”

  If they had still been children and he had spoken like this, then Rebecca would have responded with a teasing, ‘what is it that you mean, Andrew?’ But they were children no longer, and the stakes were too high to hide behind mere jesting and banter.

  The fact of the matter, she admitted to herself, is that I know exactly what he means, because I feel it too, and do not quite dare to say it.

  “I will stand between you and anyone with the audacity to suggest that you were involved in Charles’ death, Becca,” he said softly. “You know that, do you not?”

  “I know that, and a great deal besides that,” Rebecca replied softly. She did not trust her voice not to betray her entirely, and so settled for speaking in as restrained a tone as she could manage.

  “You understand that the time is not right, yet, do you not?” Andrew said. He did not have to clarify which ‘time’ he was referring to. Rebecca looked up sharply. She had not been expecting this, even though she had understood his meaning immediately.

  “I cannot stand for you being taken to London for the Season to be paraded around all the eligible bachelors like a mannequin,” Andrew continued. “And I cannot stand for you being forced to continue to live with your father the Earl, who clearly has no appreciation for you.”

  “I know,” Rebecca replied. And at that moment, she did know. She knew that whatever happened, whether she was supported or completely alone in the world, she would never suffer being treated like a commodity again. Not by her father, not by anyone. She would rather be destitute and friendless than submit to the erosion of her soul. Not again.

  “But the time is not right yet,” Andrew said again. “My brother is not yet buried.” Abruptly anguish clouded his features. “My god, Becca. The only constant in my whole life, my only remaining family, gone! Not just gone, but murdered! How am I to bear it?”

  “You shall not bear it alone,” Rebecca said, stepping forward to take his hand. “I promise you that.”

  “As soon as the time is right. As soon as it can be done decently.” Andrew’s grip on her hand was so tight that she felt that she was the only thing stopping him from being swept away. “You will not have to go through with all the humiliating nonsense that your father was talking about, I promise you that.”

  Rebecca wanted to respond, but she did not quite know what to say. There is a gap somehow, she felt, between the question that was supposed to be spoken and the answer that I am longing to give.

  "Your father will consent when the time comes,” Andrew said, his eyes searching her face. He seemed to be thinking aloud. “If anything was made clear at breakfast, it was that he wishes for you to be a duchess, and he doesn’t much care about how that aim is achieved.”

  “Andrew…” Rebecca’s heart was racing, but somehow she knew that she was the more composed of the two of them. She could see that Andrew was speaking impulsively, without a plan, and knew in some inexorable way that they would both regret it if they did not take control of themselves.

  Andrew smiled. “You cannot know, Becca, after just one day of ‘Your Grace’ this and ‘Your Grace” that, how good it feels to be called by my own name.”

  “Oh, I can solemnly promise that I will neve
r address you as ‘Your Grace’,” Rebecca said, relieved to be able to slip into a teasing mood, if only for a moment. “But I have something serious that I must say to you before I allow you to speak any more.”

  “Anything, Becca!” His expression was entirely ardent as if there was nothing in the world but the words that were about to emerge from her lips. “All I want is to hear what you have to say. About this. About everything.”

  “Well, I shall speak on this first of all,” Rebecca said firmly. “I would tell you that I understand what it is you have to say, even if you cannot say it just yet, and I want you to know that I feel it too.”

  “You do?” He seized her other hand, seeming to long to pull her close to him but succeeding in resisting the impulse. “Good Becca, you have no idea how that makes me feel.”