Unmasking the Duke's Mistress

by Margaret McPhee

  ‘Mrs Marlbrook received Smith’s visit without question?’

  ‘No, your Grace. He gained admittance by means of a message.’

  ‘What was the message?’

  The hint of a blush crept into the butler’s cheeks. ‘It was the name, your Grace…of a lady.’ Gemmell cleared his throat and shifted his feet and did not meet Dominic’s gaze.

  ‘And the lady’s name?’

  ‘Miss Noir.’

  The words fell into the silence and the study seemed to echo with their significance. Dominic felt everything in him focus and define. Arabella had done none of this of her own accord. He felt sure that the man calling himself Smith had threatened her. What he did not understand was why she had not just come to him and told him.

  He rose abruptly and walked away to look out of the window until he was sure the emotions were schooled from his face. He felt his resolve harden and he knew he would find who this man was and just what dangerous game he was playing.

  ‘Smith—what did he look like?’ Dominic glanced round at Gemmell.

  ‘He had dark hair and was well dressed. He carried a cane and was well spoken.’

  Just like a hundred other gentlemen in London, thought Dominic.

  ‘Tall, short? What of his build?’

  ‘I am afraid I did not notice.’

  ‘There was nothing else to distinguish him?’ Dominic needed every scrap of information Gemmell could give.

  ‘Nothing, your Grace.’

  ‘And what of his carriage?’

  ‘He travelled on foot. I am sorry I cannot be of more help.’ Gemmell looked worried.

  ‘Thank you for telling me, Gemmell.’ Dominic sought to reassure the old man.

  When the door closed quietly behind Gemmell Dominic rang the bell for his horse to be readied.

  If ‘Smith’ had known that Arabella was Miss Noir, there was only one place he could have learned that information.

  Mrs Tatton was settling back into life in Amersham just as if she had never been away. Arabella was not.

  Dominic had had the cottage refurbished but, aside from that, the little house and its long garden were as Arabella remembered, except that now there was no need to scrimp over coal or count the pennies for food. The generosity of the allowance that Dominic had settled upon her made the misery weigh all the more heavily in her heart.

  Dominic. She tried to turn her mind away from consciously thinking of him. She had to survive for Archie’s sake, but if she allowed herself to think of Dominic and of the extent of the hurt she had been forced to deal him, she was not sure she could make it through the rest of this day, never mind the next.

  He would come to visit Archie, and Arabella dreaded to see him. But she longed for it too.

  She toyed with the food on the dinner plate before her.

  ‘Eliza Breckenbridge invited all three of us for dinner next week,’ her mother was saying with an excited air. ‘And Meg Brown could scarce believe what a fine boy Archie was.’

  The country air had been good for her mother’s lungs, Arabella thought as she glanced across the kitchen table at her. Mrs Tatton’s appetite had improved and Arabella had not seen such a healthy colour in her cheeks in years.

  ‘Are you even listening to me, Arabella?’

  ‘Of course, Mama. You were telling me of your friends.’

  ‘And not one bad word have they said, not one slight, though they must have guessed by now the truth of Archie’s parentage.’ Mrs Tatton added a little more butter to her potatoes before finishing them off. ‘It is good to be back here, Arabella; I had not realised how much I missed the village.’

  ‘I am glad that you are happy, Mama.’ Arabella forced her lips to curve in the semblance of a smile. But it felt as dead and wooden as the rest of her.

  ‘Dear Arabella.’ Her mother sighed and reached across the table, taking Arabella’s hand in her own. ‘You are so brave in light of what that man did to you.’

  ‘Please, Mama. Let us speak of it no more.’ She was not proud of the lie she had told her mother, but she knew Mrs Tatton understood her too well to believe that Arabella had just changed her mind over the marriage. And she did not trust that if she had explained about Mr Smith and his threats her mother would not have gone straight to Dominic and told him of it. And she could not risk that. Not when Dominic’s life and her son’s welfare hung in the balance. Any thaw in relations between Mrs Tatton and Dominic had ceased with Arabella’s lies. In her mother’s book Dominic Furneaux was akin to the very devil himself.

  ‘Abandoning you for a second time. I knew I should not have trusted him for a minute. Such untruths, and about his own father!’

  ‘Mama,’ she said firmly, ‘I have asked you not to discuss these matters in front of Archie.’

  ‘You are right, Arabella.’ Mrs Tatton had the grace to blush. ‘I beg your pardon.’

  Arabella turned her attention to Archie, who was sitting listening with a worried expression upon his face. She reached across to Archie’s plate and cut the chicken breast that lay there untouched into small tempting pieces. ‘Now come along, slowcoach. You have not eaten your chicken. And you have not told me how school was today.’ Archie was a new attendee at the village school.

  He seemed unusually quiet this evening, and he had eaten little of his dinner.

  ‘I am not hungry, Mama.’ He kept his face downcast and did not meet her gaze.

  ‘Archie?’ Arabella looked more closely at her son’s face, placing her fingers on his chin and angling his face in the light to peer at the faint beginnings of a bruise around his eye and a slight swelling upon his lip. ‘Is there something that you wish to tell me?’

  ‘No, Mama.’

  ‘Have you been scrapping with the other boys?’

  ‘The bigger boys said bad things about you, Mama, so I hit them and they hit me back.’

  She felt her heart turn over. ‘Well, I thank you for your defence of my good name, Archie.’ Arabella stroked a hand to his hair. ‘But they are just silly boys and they do not know what they are saying. Stay away from the big boys and play with the little boys who are more your age.’

  ‘What is a bastard, Mama?’

  Mrs Tatton gasped with the shock of it, inhaled the mouthful of food she was chewing and started to choke and cough. By the time Arabella had dealt with her mother and the coughing fit was over, Archie had run off to play in the garden, and there was no need to answer his question. But Arabella knew she could not avoid it for ever, even if Archie was not illegitimate in the strict sense of the word.

  Arabella stood that night at the window of the little room she shared with her son. Archie’s soft breathing sounded from the truckle bed behind her, regular and reassuring. She stared out at the darkening blue of the sky and the tiny pinpricks of stars that twinkled there. A crescent moon curved its sickle amongst the stars and she knew that soon the sky would wash with inky blackness. Her heart was heavy and aching as she stood there and watched the night progress. No matter how bad she had thought it when she believed Dominic to have left her all those years ago, nothing compared to how she felt now. A part of her had died. She wondered if she would ever feel alive again.

  It did not matter what she did, she could not protect Archie from every hurt. She was all that stood between him and the world, and she thought of how she had deprived Archie of his father and Dominic of his son. And for the first time she wondered if she had done the right thing over Mr Smith’s blackmail. Maybe she should have gone to Dominic and told him of the man and his threats. Maybe Dominic would have dealt with Smith…and maybe Dominic would have been found dead in an alleyway with a knife between his ribs.

  She could not risk his life because of her own weakness. She stood and watched the night and she knew that, were the choice laid before her again, she would make the very same decision. The knowledge did not make her feel any better. She dropped a kiss to Archie’s forehead and silently slipped from the room.

  ‘I paid you
most handsomely, madam, and now I find that you have been less than discreet.’

  Within the drawing room of her House of Rainbow Pleasures, in which they both were standing, Mrs Silver paled beneath the cold raze of Dominic’s gaze. ‘My girls and I took your money, your Grace, and we kept our side of the bargain. We have spoken not one word of Miss Noir to anyone else. Of that I give you my most solemn word.’

  ‘You cannot be so certain of your girls.’

  ‘I am certain enough, your grace.’ The dark coiffure of her hair made her skin look almost bloodless. ‘I trust them.’

  He was thinking fast. Smith had to have recognised Arabella somehow. There were possibilities about which he did not want to think, and yet he knew that he had to.

  ‘Was there ever any trouble between Miss Noir and any of her…’ he forced himself to say the words, ‘…gentlemen customers?’

  Mrs Silver looked at him with a strange expression. ‘There was no one else, your Grace.’

  ‘Think back very carefully. It is important. Maybe there was someone she made mention of as—’

  ‘No, your Grace,’ Mrs Silver interrupted him. ‘When I say that there was no one else, I mean exactly that. Arabella only came to me on the day of your visit. She had sold herself to no one before you. I thought you knew.’

  Dominic was reeling. Arabella had not been a whore, until he had made her one. He felt the chill ripple right through him and with it the magnitude of the guilt of what he had done to her. No wonder Mrs Tatton had thought him a scoundrel. No wonder Arabella had balked at him making her his mistress. He had spent the last few weeks blaming it all on his father. But he knew now that he was as much to blame as the late duke.

  It was even worse than he had thought. Mrs Tatton had been right; had he been a better man he would have helped Arabella without making his own selfish demands. He would have given her the money to leave the brothel and set her up without making her his mistress. And it should not have mattered if she was already a whore or not. But Dominic knew he was not a good man. He had wanted her…and he had taken her. And now he must live with the knowledge of the terrible thing he had done to her for the rest of his life.

  And he had wondered why she had not told him of Archie!

  Mrs Silver was staring at him and he knew he had to pull himself together. He composed his thoughts.

  ‘How did she come to be here?’

  ‘I saw her in a dressmaker’s shop when she was seeking employment. Times are lean; there is not much work to be had. She looked tired and down on her luck.’

  She had been desperate.

  Dominic remembered what Mrs Tatton had said of her selling her shoes. She had sold herself to him to save their son. And he, like the bastard he was, had bought her.

  ‘But, even so, she was a beautiful woman, and I knew she would be an asset to my rainbow. So I told her of the money she could earn and gave her my card. And she came here the very same evening as you.’

  Hell! He clenched his teeth to stop the curse escaping. ‘And the dressmaker in whose shop you found her?’

  ‘Madame Boisseron.’

  Dominic closed his eyes and bit down even harder. He wondered if he had done anything right by Arabella in all of this time.

  ‘She has a shop in—’

  But Dominic was already on his way out to find the woman he had employed to dress Arabella as his mistress.

  In Amersham Archie was suffering from another sore stomach.

  ‘This is the third time this week that the boy has been in this state, Arabella.’ Mrs Tatton’s face was creased with worry.

  Archie was moaning and tossing and turning within the bed. A faint sheen of sweat was moist upon his brow and his face was pale. Arabella placed a hand over his forehead to feel how hot he was, and found the skin beneath to be surprisingly cool. She peered anxiously into his face.

  ‘My tummy is sore, Mama,’ Archie moaned.

  ‘We have sent for the doctor to come and examine you.’

  Archie began to cry. ‘I do not want the doctor.’

  ‘What nonsense is this?’ said Arabella gently. ‘He is a kind old man who will make you better.’

  Archie said nothing, just closed his eyes.

  There was a knocking at the front door of the cottage and Arabella hurried down to let in the elderly Dr Phipps whom she had known all her life, and indeed who had delivered her into this world as a baby. But when she opened the front door it was not Dr Phipps standing on the step.

  ‘Mrs Marlbrook?’ The man was as young as Arabella, and had striking blue eyes that held a tinge of green. His hair was muddy blond and he was smiling a very pleasant smile. ‘I am Doctor Roxby, Doctor Phipps retired last year, I am afraid. You sent a message that your son is unwell.’

  Arabella invited the young doctor inside. ‘Archie has been complaining of a sore stomach, twice last week and three times this week. The pains are severe enough to keep him bedridden and they seem to be getting worse.’

  Arabella and the doctor climbed the narrow spiral staircase of the cottage to reach the bedchambers upstairs.

  Doctor Roxby ducked his head to enter the bedchamber that Arabella and Archie shared. ‘Rest assured, ma’am, I will do everything that I can for him.’

  The doctor examined Archie carefully while Arabella and her mother looked on. His manner was kind and reassuring. And while he worked he spoke to Archie telling the boy what he was doing and asking Archie questions. Did it hurt when he pressed here? Was this worse? Or better?

  ‘Is he using the chamber pot regularly, Mrs Marlbrook?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘And eating as normal?’

  ‘His appetite has been impaired of late.’

  ‘Nothing that we cannot sort, young man,’ said the doctor, smiling down at Archie.

  Arabella and her mother went downstairs with the doctor, leaving Archie to rest.

  ‘I can find nothing wrong with him, ma’am. Perhaps it is more a problem of his sensibilities. Archie tells me that he has recently started at the village school. Might there have been any associated problems?’

  Arabella saw her mother throw her a meaningful look, and thought of the fight that Archie had got into during his first week there.

  ‘I will look into it, Doctor,’ she said, not wishing to reveal the details of the affair.

  Mrs Tatton, who had been standing quietly listening to all that the doctor had to say, stepped forwards. ‘My daughter has been a widow these years past, Doctor, and the boy suffers for the lack of a man’s influence.’ She looked pointedly at Arabella as if to remind her that it was all Dominic’s fault.

  Arabella looked away, feeling the sting of guilt at blaming Dominic for a crime of which he was innocent.

  ‘I will call again in a few days to check upon Archie.’ Doctor Roxby accepted his payment and took his leave of them.

  As soon as the door shut Arabella leaned her back upon it.

  ‘Well, I have never heard of such a thing in all my life,’ said Mrs Tatton.

  ‘Now that he has said it, I begin to see the signs,’ said Arabella. ‘Archie is better on the days he does not have to go to school. After only one day back there he is ill again. He speaks so very little of it. And never makes mention of the other boys.’ She felt quite sick at the thought that the bullying had continued. ‘Why did he not tell me, Mama?’

  ‘Maybe he did not wish to cause you worry or perhaps he has been threatened into silence by the bullies.’

  How could she not have realised?

  ‘We can guess the cause of the bullying. You heard what he asked at the dinner table the other week.’ Her mother lowered her voice. ‘Bastard, indeed! You see what he has done to the boy, Arabella? Why could he not have just married you, and been done with it? And then none of this would have happened. But, no, he decides that you are not good enough for him—again—and now we are come to this, with your son lying upstairs afraid to go to school for fear of what the other boys are saying about h
is parentage.’ Mrs Tatton sat down heavily and placed her trembling hands upon the parlour table.

  ‘There is no good to be had going down that route, Mama. Let us just deal with this the best we can. Please be kind enough to check upon Archie while I visit the schoolhouse.’ And Arabella left before she could no longer stopper her tongue and the terribleness of the truth burst out, revealing to her mother the whole mess of it.

  Dominic’s visit to Madame Boisseron’s shop had convinced him of her innocence. The woman was honest and he believed her assertion that, such was the delicacy and secrets involved in the affairs of her clientele, for her to talk of any of her customers would be to lose her business.

  That evening he was sitting alone in his study trying to think of how on earth he was going to trace the man calling himself Smith, when Bentley showed Hunter in.

  Hunter sat down in the wing chair on the other side of the desk from Dominic.

  Dominic poured his friend a large brandy using the crystal-cut decanter and glasses on the silver tray by the window.

  ‘Not having one yourself?’ Hunter took the glass with thanks and lounged back in his armchair.

  Dominic shook his head.

  ‘Misbourne has been asking around about you at White’s.’

  ‘Just what I want to hear,’ said Dominic. ‘Did you come over to tell me that?’

  ‘No. I came to see how you are.’ Dominic could feel Hunter’s watchful gaze.

  ‘I take it you know?’ Dominic could tell from the compassion on his friend’s face that he did.

  ‘All of London knows. It makes no sense, Dominic. Arabella has even more reasons than you to want this marriage. Why would she break the betrothal?’

  ‘I believe she was acting under duress. Someone got to her, Sebastian. Someone who knew that she was Miss Noir.’

  Hunter’s face sharpened. He sat up straighter in his chair. ‘I think there is something you should hear, concerning Miss Noir, Dominic. I paid another little visit to Mrs Silver’s house the other night, to see Tilly, Miss Rose. In the course of things she mentioned that there have been quite a few enquiries about Miss Noir.’ Hunter met Dominic’s gaze.