Lord of Secrets

by Alyssa Everett

  On the morning of the wedding, several of the curious slipped into St. George’s to observe the ceremony firsthand. Standing in the church waiting for Rosalie to arrive, David was unnerved to discover so many faces in the pews. Spectators he barely recognized gawked at him as if he were a two-headed goat at the fair. He wished fleetingly that Rosalie hadn’t wanted a church wedding, since he would have preferred to marry in her uncle’s drawing room. He felt both conspicuous and hypocritical, standing before the altar.

  But whatever his feelings, he strove to appear unconcerned. Had the onlookers come to see if Rosalie was actually marrying him of her own volition? Did they imagine she’d been forced into it somehow, a victim of family pressure, sent to the altar like a lamb to the slaughter? If they’d come hoping to find a scowling groom or a tearful, quaking bride, they were doomed to be disappointed. He was too preoccupied to scowl, and as for Rosalie, from the moment she arrived she fairly glowed. Making her way up the aisle toward him, she beamed as if it were impossible for her to stop smiling.

  At her radiant expression, David’s mouth went dry—though whether from excitement or trepidation, he wasn’t sure. It should have been excitement. She looked young, eager, happy. Certainly he felt a measure of happiness, too, knowing her future was settled. Yet together with that happiness came such a crushing sense of responsibility, he rather suspected the feeling gripping him must be dread. If she was his to spend the rest of his life beside, she was also his to look after and protect.

  Beside him, his groomsman, Sir Thomas Langley, leaned in confidentially. “I must say, I admire your taste, Deal.”

  “Lovely girl, isn’t she?” The casualness of David’s tone belied the thudding of his heart. He’d asked Sir Thomas to stand as his groomsman only because they’d been at Oxford together and the baronet’s had been the first familiar face David spied upon returning to White’s. Sir Thomas had looked understandably surprised at the request. They were little better than strangers. In fact, David had been careful to avoid him after learning years before that his old schoolfellow had an unmarried sister languishing in the country. But the sister was married now, and Sir Thomas had agreed to act as his best man—in fact, he’d been treating David as if they were boon companions, speaking to him with bachelor camaraderie. Though Sir Thomas gave no sign he saw anything odd about this ready-made friendship, David found their exchanges unsettling.

  But then, it had been a morning for unsettling exchanges. David knew it was something of a tradition for the father of the bride to have a heart-to-heart talk with the groom before the wedding, hinting at the unpleasant consequences to befall the new husband should he ever neglect his family responsibilities. David had expected Rosalie’s raffish uncle to step in and perform the duty. Instead, the task had somehow fallen to young Charlie Templeton. As David was dressing for the wedding, Templeton had arrived unannounced, blushing and hedging on the threshold of David’s dressing room for several long seconds before blurting out, “I say, you will treat her right, won’t you, Deal?”

  David stiffened as his valet helped him into his coat. “My dear boy, of course I will.”

  “Because she deserves it. Rosalie has a good heart—truly good. You’ll never find a sweeter or a kinder girl anywhere.”

  “I’m convinced of it.”

  “That’s good, because, well...” Templeton looked down with evident unease. “No offense, but I made inquiries, and I’ve heard a few things about you.”

  A nagging sense of anxiety crept over David, but he inspected his appearance in the mirror with every appearance of composure. “Such as?”

  “Well, talk, you know. I hate to bring it up, but there are quite a few rumors circulating about the kind of ladybirds you keep.”

  David wished he were facing down the dissolute uncle instead of Rosalie’s earnest young cousin. “Are there?”

  “Yes, and the number of them.” A flush stained Templeton’s cheeks. “I grant you most men take a mistress or two, but I hear you go through them like water. I would have warned Rosalie away from you, to be honest, if I’d known then what I know now.”

  David struggled to keep his tone casual. “But you do know now.”

  Templeton frowned. “Yes, but it’s not the kind of information one likes to share with an unmarried girl, and besides, even a blind man could see she has her heart set on marrying you. Then there’s the license and the dress and the way word of the engagement spread... By the time I learned about your reputation it just seemed too late, somehow, and I thought she was probably better off not knowing.”

  The room felt suddenly airless and oppressive. It took all his self-control to wait out Rosalie’s cousin in noncommittal silence.

  Templeton didn’t meet his eye, but neither did the young man retreat. “You will make her happy, won’t you, Deal? I mean, if you can’t give up the petticoat line completely, you’ll at least make sure Rosalie never hears about it?”

  David hadn’t known whether to feign offended dignity or pretend to laugh off Templeton’s fears. Mostly he just wanted the young man to leave so he could sit down until the uneasiness gripping him subsided.

  But Templeton meant well. David needed to remember that. He’d produced a wry smile. “Do give me a little credit for knowing how to go on. Never fear, I’ll look after your little cousin.”

  And now, watching Rosalie fairly floating up the aisle toward him in her shimmering white gown, he had to live up to that promise. He had to look after her. It was more than a promise he’d made to young Charlie Templeton, it was a promise he’d made to himself. In a moment, he would make the same promise to God.

  Not that he supposed God believed a word he said anymore.

  Watching with outward aplomb, David waited for Rosalie until she took her place at his left and they both turned purposefully toward the rector.

  * * *

  For most men entering into matrimony, the actual ceremony was the most nerve-racking part of the day, a public recitation of soberingly permanent vows. For David, however, it was the least objectionable of the day’s events. He’d no sooner made it through the ceremony and signed the register with Rosalie than they were obliged to attend the wedding breakfast. Though the uninvited spectators from the church were not so bold as to try to bluster their way in, and though Rosalie’s recent loss necessitated a quiet celebration, he still had to mingle with the kind of distant connections and nodding acquaintances he usually took pains to avoid.

  He’d met Rosalie’s uncle before, of course, but only in passing, when bringing Rosalie home after church or collecting her for a drive. David had kept their meetings as brief, cool and forbidding as he could, hoping to suggest by the sheer force of his standoffishness that if Whitwell were ever to lay a hand on Rosalie, David would cheerfully and unhesitatingly cut out his heart.

  The wedding breakfast marked his first extended look at the man, and the new Lord Whitwell was every bit as loose in the haft as David had been led to believe. Rosalie’s uncle was so unmistakably inebriated from such an early point in the day, it was clear he must have been drinking since his first waking moments. Lord Whitwell called David “my lad” in tones of drunken familiarity, lurched about the room on unsteady legs, and at one point seemed in danger of urinating into an ornamental vase in full view of all the wedding guests, at least until one of his footmen discreetly urged him from the room. His wife, the new Lady Whitwell, was blessedly sober, but she wore heavy paint and dressed more like a stage coquette than a respectable Mayfair hostess. At least he’d spared Rosalie from having to remain with her uncle, sinking into the same barely respectable circles in which he moved—or, worse yet, from becoming an actual victim of the man’s drunken recklessness.

  The thought comforted him, and, he was surprised to find, so did the polite chatter of the guests. He’d been avoiding parties all his adult life, but now that he found himself at his own wedding breakfast, the reality was less disturbing to his peace of mind than he’d feared. In fact, aside
from Lord Whitwell’s obvious inebriation, the gathering was rather tame, if not a trifle stodgy. But then, it was broad daylight, everyone present had come directly from church, and Rosalie’s family was still in mourning. There was little danger of either wild debauchery or pointed snubs among grieving wedding guests at one o’clock in the afternoon.

  After the meal, his mind wandered as the guests took turns congratulating him on his marriage. Rosalie was moving among her small family, bestowing an impulsive hug on Charlie Templeton here, speaking with animated gestures to her aunt there.

  At one point he spotted her stooping down, talking to a young boy. Ah, yes, the aunt had an illegitimate son—Nate, his name was. David watched Rosalie and the boy speak, absorbed in what looked like a heart-to-heart talk, both of them so caught up in the conversation they were mirroring each other’s gestures. He couldn’t remember anyone paying him that much attention when he was that age, with the possible exception of his aunt Celeste. Curious, he drew closer.

  “I was most terribly homesick at first,” Rosalie was saying, “so you must expect that. But it fades with time.”

  “How much time?”

  “I suppose that depends on how quickly you make new friends and how busy they keep you. And it helps to receive letters—though of course, that means you must write letters, too.”

  “Oh, I will. I’ll write every day.”

  “Every week will do,” Rosalie said with a laugh. “But I’m sure your mama will be on pins and needles to hear from you, and so shall I.”

  “You will? Really?”

  “Of course. I’m going away, too, remember? I’ll quite depend upon receiving your letters. I want very much to know how you’re doing.”

  The boy gulped. “Then why not stay here with me? I mean, at least until I go away to school?”

  David felt a stir of disquiet. There was something familiar about the boy’s neediness, something that reminded him uncomfortably of his own lonely childhood.

  But Rosalie’s response, however sympathetic it might be, was brisk and uplifting. “I’m not really leaving you, Nate. I’m a bride now, so I’m going to live with my husband. Even so, I’ll always be your cousin and you can always write me—and perhaps visit me, too, I hope. If I’m lucky, someday I’ll have a little boy of my own, and if you’re not too grand and important by then to befriend a smaller boy, you can play with him and teach him how to defeat me at dominoes.”

  The two talked for a while longer, until Rosalie straightened, reaching out to ruffle the boy’s brown hair. David watched, a rush of tenderness overtaking him. She was going to make a fine mother someday. How could he help but feel easier about the future, perhaps even catch a small measure of her optimism?

  Any man would count himself lucky, marrying her. Her face was glowing and wreathed in smiles, and the shimmering white of her wedding dress shone like moonlight against the dark clothing of those around her.

  But it wouldn’t do to spend his wedding breakfast gawking, so he tried to busy himself in talking to his best man, who seemed happy enough to oblige him. Sir Thomas shared a story of some droll disaster or other at his sister’s wedding breakfast. David listened with only half his attention, stealing glances at Rosalie as he nodded along with the man’s congenial chatter.

  Across the room, Charlie Templeton whispered something to Rosalie, and she blushed and glanced in David’s direction. Drawn as if by an irresistible spell, David extricated himself from the one-sided conversation and went to her. She turned to him as he approached, as if she’d been waiting for him all along.

  He gazed down at her smiling face, and the tenderness he felt for her became an almost painful thing. “Have you been enjoying yourself?”

  “Yes.” She sounded a trifle breathless. “Is it time now for us to leave?”

  They were going to his country seat in Surrey. “I believe so. We have a considerable drive ahead of us.”

  “I’ll go up and change into my traveling clothes.” She didn’t sound reluctant. If anything, she seemed eager to be on their way.

  David’s feeling of well-being lingered as she changed and came down to say her goodbyes, giving quick kisses to Templeton and the young boy, the aunt, and even her floridly drunken uncle.

  But he and Rosalie no sooner stepped out of the house than David’s happy afterglow abruptly vanished as the enormity of what he’d done hit him. Good God. They were married. She was coming to Lyningthorp with him, to spend three weeks honeymooning in the country. Now it was her home, too. He handed Rosalie into the waiting coach and stepped in after her, feeling suddenly much older than his thirty-one years.

  When the carriage turned the corner into New Bond Street, Rosalie sat back on the squabs and gazed at him with an expectant smile.

  David dragged his thoughts away from the territory into which they’d strayed—their approaching wedding night—and produced his best attempt at an answering smile. “Well, something is clearly on your mind. What is it, my dear? Are you missing your uncle Roger already? Wishing we’d eloped to Gretna Green?”

  She laughed, her eyes shining. “Not in the least. I was only thinking that just yesterday, it would have been out of the question for me to ride unchaperoned in a closed carriage with you. Now, a scarce few minutes in front of the altar, a few brief words, and it’s not only acceptable, it’s positively expected.”

  “Yes.”

  Her smile carved dimples in her cheeks. “Isn’t it strange? I woke up plain Rosalie Whitwell, with no real home of my own, and now I’m the Marchioness of Deal, traveling with my husband to our house in the country. It will take some getting used to. We’re married, and so much that was shocking before is perfectly unexceptionable now.”

  Again his thoughts strayed to their wedding night, now only hours away in the stillness of Lyningthorp. With an effort he relaxed his shoulders, trying to recover something of the cheerful glow that had warmed him all through the wedding breakfast. “So it is.”

  “It didn’t matter after all, did it? Whatever was troubling you two nights ago, I mean. Or is there still something you wish to tell me?”

  He swallowed. How could he tell her now, mere hours after the ceremony? She was still radiant with hope and enthusiasm. “No. Not now that we’re married.”

  She rewarded him with a happy look.

  Married. He leaned back, staring fixedly out the carriage window.

  Chapter Eight

  This looks not like a nuptial.

  — William Shakespeare

  Though Rosalie had spent most of the past decade traveling, she and her father had returned home to his country seat, Beckford Park, for brief intervals every year. Each time, their appearance in the neighboring hamlet had been an object of enthusiastic interest. Even in the rain and cold, villagers had emerged to watch their carriage rattle through the high street, children trotting after it in anticipation of the coins Rosalie’s father would toss to them.

  As she and David made their way through the estate village just east of Lyningthorp, no such interest attended the progress of their coach, though the spring daylight lingered and the Marquess of Deal was bringing home a new bride. Rosalie peered out the carriage window at the deserted streets, taking in the neat half-timbered cottages and the occasional tidy shop front, wondering where the curious locals could be. More than once a window curtain gave a telltale twitch, but no one emerged for a closer look. The only villagers she spotted out of doors, a middle-aged laborer and two young boys, neither smiled nor waved, but simply stood and watched with blank expressions as the carriage passed, their only acknowledgement a sullen tug of the forelock.

  The lack of welcome puzzled her, and disappointed her more than she cared to admit. Surely the villagers must have heard that David had just married. Didn’t they want to offer their good wishes? At the very least, weren’t they curious about the Marquess of Deal’s new bride?

  But all thought of the estate village vanished as soon as she caught her first glimpse of Lyningt
horp. The carriage passed through an elaborate gatehouse with the look of a miniature fortress, and the sprawling Tudor manor came into view—a storybook palace of warm red brick, mullioned windows, gabled wings and crenellated towers.

  Her mouth fell open. She looked from the carriage window to where David sat across from her. “Oh! Why did you never tell me? It’s like a castle from a fairy tale!”

  He’d been quiet most of the way from London, but at her enthusiastic outburst he produced an uneasy smile. “I’m pleased you like it.”

  She didn’t just like it. She’d dreamed about such a place. No, that wasn’t true. Her dreams had never been half so beautiful. Lyningthorp’s rambling roofline was a jigsaw puzzle of turrets and chimneystacks, towers and cross gables, the perfect combination of whimsy and warmth. An ornamental lake reflected the house like polished silver. The park’s neat yew hedges and colorful blooms only added to the enchantment.

  The coach pulled up before the front entrance, and David handed her down. The air was heavy with the sweet scent of lilac. Had David timed their arrival to coincide with the spring blossoming, or was the house always this magical?

  She followed him up a trio of stone steps and through the great double doors. Stepping into the shadowy interior, she discovered a spacious hall with a massive Jacobean staircase of polished oak—and an army of servants massed at the bottom of the stairs to greet them. From the elderly butler down to the youthful scullery maids, a hundred curious eyes fixed on Rosalie as her footfalls made unexpected echoes on the slate floor.

  Oh, dear. Rosalie swallowed down her nerves. As disappointed as she’d been with the lack of welcome in the estate village, she hadn’t expected to be faced with such a large and intimidating staff. A virtual wall of David’s dark-green-and-gold livery loomed before her.