by Liz Carlyle
Gabriel was confused. “I…I think I’m to be an English gentleman, Zayde.”
“Oy vey!” His grandfather swept Gabriel up into his arms. “What nonsense those women have taught you. Blood does not make a man. A man is nothing if he does not work.”
And then they were dashing across the street together, a part of the madding, teeming throng.
The Duchess of Warneham had slipped away to Selsdon’s rose garden for an hour of solitude when Mr. Cavendish arrived the following afternoon. She carried a basket on her arm, but after an hour of aimless wandering had cut but one stem, which she still carried in her hand.
She was thinking again. Thinking of the children, though she had been told time and again she must not. That it did no good to dwell on the past. But here, beyond the constraining walls of the house, her mother’s heart could bleed in peace. She had surrendered much. She would not surrender this, her grief.
The late summer sun was hot, with the threat of a shower heavy in the air, but the duchess was scarcely aware. Indeed, she did not hear her husband’s solicitor approach until he was halfway along the garden path. She looked up to see him waiting a respectable distance away, wilted rose petals skirling about his feet in the breeze.
“Good afternoon, Cavendish,” she said quietly. “Your return to London was brief.”
“Your Grace.” The solicitor hastened forward and sketched an elegant bow. “I’ve just this instant arrived.”
“Welcome back to Selsdon,” she said mechanically. “Have you dined?”
“Yes, Your Grace, in Croydon,” he said. “Have you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Have you dined, ma’am?” he pressed. “Remember that Dr. Osborne says you must eat.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmured. “I…I shall take a little something shortly, perhaps. Pray tell me what you found in London.”
Cavendish looked vaguely uncomfortable. “As I promised, ma’am, I went straight to Neville Shipping,” he said. “But I am not sure what I achieved.”
“You found him?” she asked. “This man who works for the shipping company?”
Cavendish nodded. “Yes. I found him.”
“And?—”
Cavendish exhaled sharply. “It was Gabriel Ventnor, I am quite sure,” he admitted. “The man is the very image of his late father. The height. The golden eyes and hair. I am certain we have the right man.”
The duchess remained impassive. “So it is done, then. When shall we expect him?”
Cavendish hesitated. “I am not at all sure, ma’am,” he confessed. “He seemed…disinterested in our news.”
“Disinterested,” the duchess echoed hollowly.
The solicitor gave an embarrassed cough. “I fear he is not just some sort of dockhand or shipping clerk after all,” he explained. “He is an owner. He looked…well, rather prosperous, actually. And intractable.”
Her smile was wan. “Hardly the impoverished orphan you expected.”
“No.” Cavendish’s voice was sour. “And I am not perfectly sure he comprehends his good fortune in inheriting the title. I am not even certain if or when he will deign to return to Selsdon Court, ma’am. He would make me no answer.”
Nor did the duchess. Instead, she looked down at the rose, which she still clutched. The petals were bloodred against her skin. Bloodred. Deathly white. Like flesh when all the life was leached out—and yet she still lived. For a long moment, she studied it, wondering at fate’s twisted path. Thinking of death, and all that it wrought. All that it so indelibly altered.
What did it matter if the man came or not? What would change? What could his power and his pride possibly do to her that would make her life more unbearable than it already was? The days ticked by in silent oblivion, as they had these past four years. Or perhaps it was five. She was not sure. She no longer counted.
Gabriel Ventnor. He held her fate, or so they all believed, in his hands. But he did not. He was nothing. He could neither wound her nor torment her, for she no longer flinched at earthly pain.
“Your Grace?”
She looked up to see Cavendish peering at her intently. She realized she had lost her train of thought. “I—I beg your pardon, Cavendish. What were you saying?”
The solicitor frowned, stepped hesitantly nearer, and forced her fingers from the stem. “Your Grace, you have cut yourself again,” he chided. He plucked two thorns from her palm, one of them quite deep, and blood beaded from her flesh. “Ball your fist tight about this,” he ordered, pressing a handkerchief to the wound.
“It is just blood, Cavendish,” she murmured.
He laid the rose in her empty basket. “Come, Your Grace, we must go back into the house now,” he said, taking her gently by the arm.
“My roses,” she protested. “I should like to finish.”
Cavendish did not relent. “Ma’am, it has begun to rain,” he said, leading her toward the terrace. “Actually, it has been raining for some moments now.”
The duchess looked up to see that spatter was indeed bouncing off the garden wall. The sleeves of her gown were already damp, another earthly discomfort beneath her notice.
“Do you wish to make yourself ill again, ma’am?” Cavendish pressed. “What good would that serve?”
“None, I suppose.” The words came out throaty and tremulous.
“Indeed, it will but make Nellie’s life more difficult,” said Cavendish, “for she will have the inconvenience of nursing you.”
The duchess halted abruptly on the garden path. “Yes, Cavendish, you are quite right,” she said, looking at him directly now. “And as I have always said, I should hate—above all things—to be an inconvenience. To anyone.”
In Berkeley Square the following afternoon, Baron Rothewell toed off his fine leather slippers and poured himself enough brandy to put a lesser man under the table. Damned if he didn’t need a drink. The day had thus far been a misery—though his sister, thank God, had not noticed it.
Zee’s wedding day. He had often thought never to see it. Other times, he had thought perhaps she might make a marriage of convenience, and of friendship, to Gareth Lloyd. But the day had come, and it had not been enough that Rothewell had had to watch his sister drive away from Berkeley Square with a man who was all but a perfect stranger to him—and a damned dangerous-looking stranger at that. No, Gareth had had to watch it, too.
Xanthia’s bridegroom, the Marquess of Nash, had taken the news of Gareth Lloyd’s societal elevation with his usual cool grace and had introduced him to all their wedding guests as “a dear family friend, the Duke of Warneham.” He had not meant ill by it, but Rothewell felt for Gareth, poor devil. Nash’s plain speaking would surely set society’s tongues a’wagging.
Just then his study door opened, and Gareth came in. “There you are, old fellow,” said Rothewell. “I was just wondering what went with you.”
“I’ve been belowstairs, helping Trammel carry the extra chairs.”
“A duke helping the butler move furniture,” mused Rothewell. “Why am I not surprised?”
“A man is nothing if he does not work,” Gareth remarked.
“Ugh!” grunted Rothewell. “Perish the thought. Will you join me in a brandy?”
Gareth flung himself into one of Rothewell’s wide leather armchairs. “No, it’s too early in the day for me,” he answered, then hesitated. “But not, perhaps, for the Duke of Warneham?”
Laughter rumbled deep in Rothewell’s chest. “You are one and the same now, old friend.”
“Then yes, damn you, give me a tot,” Gareth grumbled. “I think we both deserve one for having survived this day.”
“Well, now you outrank him,” said Rothewell, returning to the sideboard. “The Marquess of Nash, I mean. You take precedence, Gareth, over your competition. I find that rich.”
“Oh, I quit competing years ago.” Gareth’s tone was suddenly grim. “And we celebrated a marriage this morning, you will recall.”
“Y
es, only too well.” Pensively, Rothewell swirled the brandy in the glass, then handed it to his guest. “You have lost the object of your youthful infatuation, Gareth, but I…well, I do not deceive myself. I have lost a sister. You think it not at all the same, I do not doubt. But when you have been left alone as the three of us were—Luke, Zee, and I—with no one else to depend upon, you forge a bond which is not easily explained.”
Gareth was quiet for a moment. “Luke is gone, but you have never been without Xanthia, have you?”
Rothewell shook his head. “Indeed, I remember the very day she was born.” His voice caught a little on the last word. “Ah, but enough maudlin sentiment for one day. What is it to be for you, Gareth? Must I set about dragging you off to do your duty?”
“You refer to the dukedom, I collect.” Gareth’s voice was emotionless. “No, I promised Zee I would be at Neville Shipping every day until her return. I won’t leave you in the lurch.”
“I never imagined you would,” murmured Rothewell. “Since the day my brother hired you as his errand boy, you have been the one we all depended upon. It was for that reason—and to keep the competition from stealing you, of course—that we entered into this joint ownership venture.”
Gareth’s smile was muted. “Shackled me with golden chains, eh?”
“Bloody well right.” The baron swallowed another sip of brandy, his muscular throat working up and down like a well-oiled machine. “And now you mean to uphold your end of the bargain. I respect that. However, whilst your share of Neville Shipping has left you quite wealthy, it can hardly compare to the wealth you have apparently inherited.”
“What is your point?” Gareth’s words came out more sharply than he’d intended.
“Perhaps you are watching the wrong pot boil.” Rothewell had begun to roam restlessly about the room with his glass in hand. “Far be it from me to lecture a man on duty and responsibility, but I strongly suggest you go down to—to—what was it called again?”
“Selsdon Court.”
“Ah, yes, Selsdon Court,” Rothewell echoed. “How very grand it sounds.”
“It is. Obscenely so.”
“Well, obscene or not, it is yours now. Perhaps you ought to go attend to it. It is not far, is it?”
Gareth lifted one shoulder. “Half a day’s drive, perhaps,” he said. “Or one can take the Croydon Canal down from Deptford.”
“Half a day?” said Rothewell incredulously. “That is nothing. Go attend to the matters which are pressing, and pay your condolences to the black widow—those are Zee’s words, by the way, not mine.”
Gareth grunted. “The duchess is a coldhearted bitch, all right,” he said. “But a murderess? I rather doubt it. She would not risk being ruined in the eyes of society.”
Rothewell looked at him strangely. “What is she like?”
Gareth cut his gaze away. “Supremely haughty,” he murmured. “But not overtly cruel. She had her husband for that.”
“I wonder if she has been left a wealthy widow?”
“There is no doubt,” said Gareth. “Warneham was disgustingly rich. Her family would have seen to generous settlements.”
“And yet she awaits you?” murmured Rothewell. “Perhaps you are expected to make some decision with regard to her future?”
That thought had not occurred to Gareth. For an instant, he let himself wallow in the fantasy of throwing her out into the cold to starve—or worse. But he could take no pleasure in it—indeed, he could scarce imagine it. And surely the choice would not be his?
“You are considering it?” asked Rothewell.
Gareth did not answer. He hardly knew. In all the dreadful days which had followed his exile from Selsdon Court, he had never once wished to return. Oh, at first he had wished for many things which were not to have been. Things children, in their naïveté, longed for. A kind touch. A warm hearth. A home. But he had found instead the very opposite. He had been pitched headlong into the bowels of hell. His childhood longing had boiled down to a man’s pure, unadulterated hatred. And now that he might go back to Selsdon Court—now that he might be master of them all—he wished to return even less. What a trick fate had played him this time.
Rothewell cleared his throat, returning Gareth to the present. “Luke never said much about your past,” he admitted. “Simply that you were an orphan from a good family who had fallen on hard times.”
Hard times. Luke Neville had always been a master of understatement. “It was pure luck which brought me to Barbados,” Gareth admitted. “And by God’s grace, I met your brother.”
Rothewell actually smiled. “I recall he caught you bolting from the dockyard with a gang of scurvy sailors on your heels.”
Gareth glanced away. “He snatched me up by the coat collar, thinking me some sort of pickpocket,” he answered. “Luke was a brave man.”
Rothewell hesitated. “Yes. Very brave indeed.”
“And I…good Lord, I must have looked like a drowned rat.”
“You were skin and bone when he brought you home,” Rothewell agreed. “It was hard to believe you were what—thirteen years old?”
“Barely that,” said Gareth. “I owed Luke my life for saving me from those bastards.”
Again, Rothewell smiled, but it was tight and humorless. “Well, their loss was our gain,” he said. “But when Luke said ‘of good family’ he rather understated the matter.”
“I never precisely told him,” Gareth admitted. “About Warneham, I mean. I said only that my father was a gentleman—an army major who fell at Roliça—and that my mother was dead.”
Rothewell sat down on the corner of his massive desk and pensively regarded Gareth. “Luke knew what it was to be orphaned young,” he said simply. “We have been pleased to account you as—well, as almost a member of our family, Gareth. But now a higher duty calls.”
“Oh, I doubt it,” Gareth sneered, then tossed off the last of his brandy.
“Go down for a fortnight,” Rothewell suggested. “Just to make sure there is a competent estate agent in place. Have a good look at the account books to ensure you are not being cheated. Put the fear of God into the staff—and make sure they know for whom they work now. Then you can return to London, and quit that shabby little house of yours in Stepney.”
Gareth looked at him incredulously. “And do what?”
Rothewell made a circle in the air with his glass. “One of these grand Mayfair mansions hereabout must belong to the Duke of Warneham,” he suggested. “If not, buy one. You need not rusticate the rest of your days—and you certainly do not need to continue slaving in the service of Neville’s.”
“Impossible,” said Gareth. “It cannot be let go, even for a fortnight.”
“Zee is not leaving for a few days yet,” Rothewell said. “And if worse comes to worst, I daresay old Bakely and I can hobble along well enough to hire—”
“You?” Gareth interjected. “Rothewell, do you even know how to find Neville’s offices?”
“No, but my coachman has gone there almost every day for the last nine months,” he answered. “Look, Gareth, who is Neville’s nearest competitor?”
Gareth hesitated. “Carwell’s over in Greenwich, I suppose. They are a little larger, but we have been giving them a run for their money.”
Rothewell set his glass on the sideboard. “Then I shall simply hire away their business agent,” he replied. “Every man has his price.”
“Hire him to replace me?”
Rothewell plucked the empty glass from Gareth’s hand and returned with it to the sideboard. “My friend, you are just kidding yourself if you think that your old life is not over,” he said, drawing the stopper from the brandy decanter. “I know what it is to be saddled with a duty one does not want. But you have no choice. You are an English gentleman. A state of denial will get you nowhere.”
“You are a grand one to give advice about denial,” said Gareth churlishly, “when you are drinking too damned much, and letting your life and your
skills rot away.”
“Et tu Brute?” snapped Rothewell over his shoulder. “Perhaps I ought to dress you up in a muslin gown and call you ‘sister.’ I daresay I’d not miss Xanthia in the least.”
Gareth fell silent. Rothewell refilled both glasses, then gave the bellpull a sharp jerk. Trammel appeared almost instantly. “Tell the staff to prepare my traveling coach,” he ordered. “Mr. Lloyd shall have need of it at daybreak. They are to meet him at his home in Stepney.”
“Really, Rothewell, this is unnecessary,” said Gareth, springing to his feet.
But Trammel had vanished. “You cannot very well go to Selsdon Court in a gig,” said Rothewell. “Nor in a canal boat.”
“Well, I won’t go in a borrowed carriage, by God.”
Rothewell crossed the room and pressed the drink into Gareth’s hand. “The coach, if I am not much mistaken, is technically a company asset belonging to Neville’s.”
“By whom I am no longer employed,” snapped Gareth.
“But of which you are still part owner,” Rothewell answered. “I am sure any number of fine carriages await you at Selsdon Court, old friend. Send mine back once you are settled.”
“You will let me see no peace, will you?”
“I have seen none. Why should you?” Then, with mock solemnity, the baron raised his glass. “To His Grace, the Duke of Warneham. Long may he reign.”
Chapter Three
T he house was still as death, the scent of fresh bread and cabbage hanging thickly in the air. The ropes of the bed groaned as his mother pulled herself up, inch by agonizing inch. “Gabriel, tatellah, come to me.”
He crawled up the mattress on hands and knees, then curled against her like a puppy. His mother’s fingers were cold as they threaded through his hair. “Gabriel, an English gentleman always does his duty,” she said, her voice weak. “Promise…promise me you will be a good boy—an English gentleman. Like your father. Yes?”
He nodded, his hair scrubbing against the coverlet. “Mamma, are you going to die?”
“No, tatellah, only my human form,” she whispered. “A mother’s love never dies. It reaches out, Gabriel, across time and across the grave. A mother’s love can never be broken. Tell me you understand this?”