, where only moments earlier Jeremy had returned home. He had spent a day and a half on the Great North Road
beset by growing fear that something dreadful had happened to Alyssa while she had been left to stand alone on a dark and dangerous street, and that that was why she had not been there when the elopement party belatedly arrived. Although Jeremy was no longer in love with her, he had been responsible for her waiting on the street. If anything had happened to her, it was his fault. By the afternoon of the previous day, his suspicion of foul play had grown into a conviction, and he had announced his intention to return immediately to London while the others continued on to Gretna Green.
He had no hesitancy about leaving George. Once on the road, his friend’s initial timidity about the trip had evaporated, and under Jeremy’s tutelage, he was soon hiring new teams and ordering ostlers about as though he had been doing so for years. It was clear to Jeremy that his friend could now manage the trip himself without his help, and indeed, it might be better for him if he did. So the young marquess handed George most of his blunt, keeping only a few pounds for himself. Bidding farewell to the runaway couple, Jeremy turned his horse towards London.
He was too exhausted to ride through the night and stopped for a few hours’ rest at an inn before riding into London in the morning. His first stop in the city was at Mrs Raff’s, where he was told Alyssa had left hastily two nights ago to nurse a friend and would be not be back for several days.
Jeremy’s worst fears were confirmed: Alyssa was missing. Had been missing for two nights. Swallowing hard, he said, “I must see Mrs Raff.”
“Ain’t home,” the maid-of-all-work, who had answered the door, replied. “Most likely won’t be for hours.”
After she shut the door, Jeremy, beside himself with anxiety, stood on the steps, wondering morosely what he should do next. He had no idea how or where to begin searching for Alyssa. As he stared down at the stone steps, he was struck by a sudden, happy inspiration: his father would know what to do. Jeremy had never yet presented his father with a problem that he had been unable to solve.
Heartened, the youth rushed to Grosvenor Square
, only to learn to his dismay that his father had unexpectedly gone to Beauchamp on the very night that Jeremy had left for Gretna Green. But His Grace had left a note for his son.
Jeremy broke the wafer and read the brief note, dated three days earlier and written in his father’s scrawling hand:
My dear son,
This is the most difficult note that I have written in my life. It is my most unhappy duty to inform you that your divine Alyssa came to me today to reveal your plans to elope tonight to Gretna Green. She had concluded that, given my relative youth, it would likely be a very long time before she could enjoy either the title or the fortune that were her only reasons for wishing to marry you. So she made me an offer: If I would give her a carte blanche (she assures me that I will not be her first protector), she would cry off her engagement to you. If I would not, she would elope with you this very night.
Given her scheming, perfidious nature, I could not let that happen, and I have agreed to her offer. That is why she was not waiting for you when you came for her tonight.
Please understand that, hurtful as this is to you, I do it only for your sake and your future happiness. I know of no other way to make you see her for what she is in time to save you from a disastrous mistake that will cause you a lifetime of unhappiness.
The paper slipped to the floor from Jeremy’s nerveless fingers. He had already learned to his sorrow that Alyssa was a very different woman from what he had first thought her to be, but never had he dreamed that she was the cunning, faithless, mercenary creature his father’s note revealed. It was a mark of how far she had fallen in his esteem during the past two weeks that he did not doubt the contents of the note.
She must have gone to his father as soon as Jeremy had cried off their betrothal, lying about the real reason for their journey to Gretna Green. Jeremy’s face flushed with anger. What a liar he must appear to be to his father, thanks to Alyssa. He would never have dreamed her capable of such perfidy. He bent down to retrieve the fallen letter from the floor. He must go at once to Beauchamp to expose Alyssa’s lies and to try to make amends to his father. Jeremy ordered the fastest cattle in the duke’s stables to be hitched to his chaise immediately.
The order was scarcely out of his mouth when Mrs Raff rang the bell.
Seeing Jeremy standing in the hail, his father’s letter dangling from his hand, she pushed boldly past the startled butler, demanding, “Where is my daughter?”
Silently the marquess handed her his father’s note. As she finished it, he observed in a sadly disillusioned tone, “I cannot believe it.”
“Nor should you,” snapped Mrs Raff. “I know that prim and prissy daughter of mine well enough to know that she would never accept a carte blanche from any man, let alone ask for one. He has abducted her.”
Jeremy had never liked Mrs Raff, having been shocked and a little horrified by her excessive vulgarity. Now her ridiculous accusation against his father further fuelled his temper, already in high heat over Alyssa’s treachery, and he cried in a voice quavering with outrage, “My father would never do such a thing!”
“Of course he would!” Mrs Raff scoffed. “Where is he? Where is my daughter?”
“I don’t know where Alyssa is. Papa is at Beauchamp.”
Mrs Raff, playing to the hilt her role of angry mother determined to protect her innocent child, drew herself up indignantly. “I shall go there at once and discover the truth.”
“I am leaving now. You may accompany me if you wish,” Jeremy offered grudgingly, torn between his strong distaste for her company and an overwhelming desire to see the peal his father would ring over this odious woman for daring to suggest that he would abduct her daughter. Jeremy knew his father to be a man whose conduct was above reproach, and Mrs Raff would be sorry that she had ever set foot on Beauchamp. So would her daughter when Jeremy had exposed hr lie about the nature of the journey to Gretna Green.
Mrs Raff immediately accepted his invitation, and a few minutes later, the marquess’s chaise was awaiting them. Their departure for Beauchamp was somewhat delayed, however, by the difficulty attendant upon getting Mrs Raff’s enormous skirt through the carriage door. With the assistance of two footmen, it was at last bundled into the carriage after much manoeuvring that attracted a small knot of interested spectators. It filled the equipage’s interior like a giant purple balloon, leaving even the usually amiable Jeremy, who was half buried beneath the billowing silk, fuming at his unwelcome companion.
As the chaise sped through the streets of London, Mrs Raff was well pleased with the admiring stares the elegant equipage and its prime horses drew from pedestrians. She was even better pleased with the trap in which she now had the high and mighty Duke of Carlyle. Since their meeting at Vauxhall, Mrs Raff had been seething at him. Those hard eyes of his had told her that he would delight in carrying out his Newgate threat. For the first time in her life, a man had truly frightened and cowed her. Even odious Lord Eliot, with his sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude had not dared to talk to her with the roughness and contemptuous scorn that Carlyle had. How she had lusted for revenge! Yet she had known that she was powerless against him, which had made her all the more furious.
But now he had given her an opportunity for vengeance by abducting Alyssa. It was the only possible way that he could have got her to Beauchamp. Although he might think that he could carry off with impunity a Cit’s daughter, even the haughty Carlyle would learn that he could not ruin the illustrious Lord Eliot’s grand-daughter without paying the piper.
Mrs Raff smiled with glee at what the duke’s reaction would be when she revealed to him Alyssa’s aristocratic identity. Although Mrs Raff still feared him, she knew that she now held the trump card. She would insist that he marry Alyssa. She knew that he would refuse, and that she would have to go to Lord Eliot.
But that rigid old puritan would waste no time in seeing that the duke did right by his grand-daughter. Mrs Raff hoped that she would be privileged to witness the fiery confrontation between those two overbearing, toplofty men whom she so cordially hated.
Yes, indeed, she was very well pleased. How she would enjoy her revenge, and it would have the added advantage of ridding her of her odious elder daughter. Mrs Raff leaned her head, weighted down from added hairpieces and the bountiful harvest of fruit on her enormous hat, against the quilted squabs of the carriage, a satisfied smirk on her face. How much more impressive to be the present, rather than the future, Duke of Carlyle’s mother-in-law. Especially, she thought vengefully, when nothing would enrage His Grace more than to be forced to marry her daughter.
Chapter 22
Another unexpected caller chose that day for a surprise visit to Beauchamp. When she arrived late in the afternoon, the duke was at his large mahogany writing table in the library.
He had awakened two hours earlier, much refreshed. His first thought had been of Ellen, his second of Alyssa. He was told both were still asleep. He went into his daughter’s room, where she lay in her bed flanked by her abigail on one side and his sister on the other. He laid his hand upon Ellen’s cool forehead, then beckoned to Lady Hester to accompany him into the hail.
“There is no need for you to remain here longer. I know how anxious you are to get back to your own family.”
His sister nodded. “Yes, I am. Tell Alyssa goodbye for me. I like her.” She gave him a penetrating glance. “Why is she here?”
His thick brows knit together in a black scowl. “Ask me no questions about her.”
Lady Hester’s own eyebrows rose at her brother’s abrupt answer. “Very well. If you need me, do not hesitate to send for me.”
As Carlyle left his sister, he thought wryly that he himself had almost as many questions about Alyssa as Hester must have. His two days in her company and their long, agonising night at Ellen’s bedside had left him utterly bewildered. No heartless hussy would have shown the care and concern, the tenderness and attentiveness, that Alyssa had for his sick daughter. He was at last willing to believe that she might have been telling him the truth about the flight to Gretna Green. It would also explain, why Jeremy had failed to come to Beauchamp.
A disquieting thought gnawed at him: if he had misjudged her character and she had not been lying about the journey to the border, how could he explain her abduction to his son? Carlyle might well have sunk himself beneath reproach in Jeremy’s eyes. The duke, increasingly uneasy about the note that he had left for the boy, despatched a servant post-haste to Grosvenor Square
to recover it before Jeremy could read it.
Then Carlyle left word that he wished to see Alyssa immediately upon her awakening. This time, by God, he would have the whole truth from her, including the story of her liaison with Lord Eliot.
But Alyssa slept on, and he went into the library, intending to occupy his mind with business until she awoke. He tried without success to concentrate on the correspondence in front of him on the broad mahogany desk, remembering, instead, Alyssa as she had sat on the brocade settee by the window, reading as he had worked.
There was a scratch at the library door. Carlyle, thinking that at last Alyssa had awakened, called eagerly, “Come in.”
But it was Pedley announcing that the Duchess of Berwick had paid a surprise visit and was awaiting him in the drawing-room.
“Of all the wretched times for Selena to come,” Carlyle exclaimed in vexation. Ordinarily he was always happy to see the duchess, who was one of the very few women that he liked, but now he wished her to Jericho. “I have never known her to call without sending word of her intention to do so in advance.”
“She bade me to ask your forgiveness for arriving without warning like this, but she spent last night with Lord and Lady Bowdin on their way to Berwick Castle and wishes to see you before she leaves the neighbourhood.”
The Bowdins’ country property, Millbrook, was not far from Beauchamp. Selena had told Carlyle on the night that he had escorted her to the theatre that she would soon be stopping there on her way to her husband’s country seat. He had told her then that he would still be in London. How had she learned that he was at Beauchamp, after all?
“I suppose I must see her,” he said, curious as to what had prompted her surprise visit. “Tell her that I’ll join her shortly.”
When he emerged from the library into the hall, Alyssa was coming down the marble staircase. Damnation, he thought as he watched her regal descent, why could she not have woken ten minutes earlier? He wanted so much to talk to her, but now he would have to see the duchess first.
“I am told that you wished to see me immediately, Your Grace,” Alyssa said politely.
“Yes, I do, but I have an unexpected visitor that I must see first. Wait for me in the library. I’ll be with you as quickly as possible.”
Alyssa did as he bid, never noticing as she descended the staircase and crossed the hall that her progress was being watched with considerable interest by the visitor awaiting the duke in the drawing-room.
As he joined the duchess there, shutting the door behind him, she demanded, “Whatever in the world is Alyssa doing here?”
Carlyle’ s jaw dropped in surprise. “You know her?”
“Of course. I am from Northumberland, too,” Selena replied in her lilting voice as she seated herself on a sofa upholstered in white brocade. “Why is Alyssa here?”
Contrary to what the world thought, Carlyle and the duchess had never been lovers, but they were close friends of long standing. Nevertheless, he could hardly admit, even to as good a friend as Selena, that he had abducted Alyssa. “More important, why are you here?” he asked evasively, settling in an armchair, also covered in white brocade, across from the duchess.
“Curiosity,” she replied, her answer as succinct as it was unenlightening. “Now tell me what Alyssa is doing here.”
He knew that Selena would not be put off without a plausible answer. If the duchess knew Alyssa when she was living under Lord Eliot’s protection in Northumberland, then she had to know, too, what Alyssa was. It surprised His Grace that old Eliot had not kept his incognita’s presence at Ormandy Park a secret from the neighbourhood. The duke said with a rakish grin, his voice mocking, “Surely you can imagine?”
“If it were any woman except Alyssa I could, but her virtue is above question,” the duchess said with such certainty that Carlyle’s jaw again dropped in surprise. He had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that the earth was sinking from beneath his feet.
Selena’s eyes suddenly widened in disbelief. “Surely Alyssa cannot be the woman everyone is talking about? I was told the creature’s name was Miss Raff.”
“What do you know of Miss Raff?”
“The countryside is agog over the report that, for the first time, you have brought one of your ladybirds to Beauchamp. A gorgeous creature named Raff who arrived sans both chaperon and maid, and with only a portmanteau for baggage. That is why I came today. It is so very unlike you that I had to see whether the report were true.”
When Carlyle had arrived at Beauchamp with Alyssa, lie had done nothing to silence his servants from talking about her presence. Indeed, he had known it would quickly become the talk of the countryside for the very reason that he had never before entertained a woman here. When he had abducted Alyssa, he had been in a rage, intending to make her name so infamous that there would be no danger of her catching another innocent cub like Jeremy in a parson’s mousetrap. But now, not only was the evidence mounting that he had been wrong, but his own emotions toward her had altered to the point where he wanted to protect her.
“Alyssa has been nursing my daughter, who has been exceedingly ill.” It was not a lie, but neither was it the whole truth. “I truly thought that I would lose Ellen.”
To his surprise, the duchess seemed to accept this excuse for Alyssa’s presence. “How is the poor chil
d now?”
“Much improved,” he said, his relief clearly written on his face. “The fever broke this morning.”
“How very fortunate that you were able to secure Alyssa. I doubt that there is a sick person in Northumberland who would not prefer Miss Eliot of Ormandy Park to any doctor. But how on earth did you ever manage to pry her away from her ogre of a grandfather?”
What the devil was Selena talking about? Miss Eliot of Ormandy Park! Ogre of a grandfather! Suddenly Carlyle remembered the outrage in Alyssa’s eyes that night at the Hagars’ when he had exclaimed of Lord Eliot, “Good God! He is old enough to be your grandfather!”
“He is...” she had snapped, then stopped. Now at last the duke suspected, to his horror, what the remainder of her sentence would have been.
The duchess, blinking at the dreadful look on her host’s face, asked, “Are you ailing, too, Richard? You look in queer stirrups.”
“Who is her grandfather?” His voice was suddenly as hoarse as a frog’s croak.
The duchess’s lovely eyes widened in surprise. “Surely you must know that she is old Lord Eliot’s grand-daughter.”
His Grace the Duke of Carlyle was once again robbed of speech, a condition that seemed to afflict him with some regularity when the conversation involved Miss Alyssa Raff—or Eliot or whatever the devil her name was.
Selena persisted. “Surely Alyssa told you that he was her grandfather.”
The duke remembered her insistence after her abduction that Lord Eliot had not been her lover and his own jeering reply: “Given that magnificent imagination of yours, my dear Miss Raff, what will you try to convince me of next? That the old goat was in reality your grandfather?” The duke winced as he recalled the despair his answer had brought to her expressive face.
“She tried to,” he said grimly, “but I did not believe her.”
“How could you not believe her?” Selena cried in astonishment. “Surely one glance assures you of her quality.”
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