A Fiery Escort For The Roguish Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency)

by Scarlett Osborne

  Still, she thought dully, no doubt such a thing was evident from the way she slunk home at this time of night without a husband at her side.

  Rachel trudged up the stairs of her tenement and pushed open the door to her single-room apartment. She lit a candle and poured a cup of brandy from the bottle on the shelf. She sank into a chair at the rickety table in the center of the room and took a long sip. She felt the alcohol slide down her throat, easing the tension in her shoulders. The flickering candlelight made shadows dance across the table. Outside, she could hear drunken laughter and the distant barking of a dog. The first birds of the dawn twittered noisily. She could smell the faint waft of baking bread coming from the bakery at the end of the road. Rachel closed her eyes, exhausted.

  One day soon, she told herself, this life would be nothing but a memory. One day soon, she would find a far better way to make her living. She would go to work each morning, and this edge of the night would be a time for sleeping.

  She laughed to herself as she took another gulp of brandy. Fine ideas. And yet that far better way of making her living remained an elusive, unreachable thing. She couldn’t sew, and her reading and writing were messy and uncertain. She had no references that might see her hired in one of the grand houses that many of her clients lived in.

  Still, plenty of the girls she had worked with had made better lives for themselves. Some had married clients and been swept away into lavish lives of manor houses and motherhood. Ellen Bailey had even scrabbled her way out of the taverns and brothels and masquerade balls and found decent work as a governess.

  So, Rachel had hope, however faint and fading. Her parents had had hopes for her too. Her father had been a waterman, with a boat all of his own. He had made enough money to give his wife and daughter a comfortable home, a comfortable life. For a few years, Rachel had even attended the local charity school. She had learned to read and write, to do simple arithmetic. She told her parents she would grow up to become a governess. But then a brutal, unending winter had fallen over the city and turned the Thames into a ribbon of ice. With her father unable to work, their money had disappeared quickly. Within months, their comfortable home had been seized by the bank.

  Her family had found lodgings here in Bethnal Green; a sorry, single-roomed apartment in a building that looked as though it would topple over with each breath of wind. There had been no fireplace in the room—not that they’d had money for coal anyway—and the patched windows did little to keep the winter outside. Their water jugs had frozen over, and they had shivered in their beds. Illness had seized her father first, then, less than a month later, her mother. Rachel had been sixteen years old when she had watched her parents’ coffins lowered into the earth.

  And so, an escort.

  It was not the life either Rachel or her parents had hoped for. But it was far better than frozen water jugs and a room without a fire. The room she had now was a palace compared to the place she had shared with her parents.

  She had been living this life for three years. And while it often felt as though it had been far longer, Rachel had not lost that faint glimmer of hope that one day things would improve.

  “You’ll be out of this life soon,” she told herself aloud.

  She didn’t know how; she only knew she would.

  * * *

  Ernest awoke early, determined. He had slept little, but despite his heavy eyes and a lingering, port-induced headache, he felt full of energy. There were questions to be asked. Truths to uncover. Something about that box of clothing in the wardrobe was just not right, and he intended to find out what.

  There was something strangely pleasant to his determination, something stimulating about having a renewed sense of purpose. With the season upon them, his life of late had been an endless cycle of balls, in which a parade of lacy, feathered, pink and purple potential wives had been thrust upon him. Ernest had danced and chatted and laughed that laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.

  He knew, of course, it was high time he married. After the war, he’d told himself. But he’d been back from the war for almost three years. His bachelorhood was a thing he’d become reluctant to dispose of. The women he’d met at the balls had felt like copies of each other, dull and uninspiring. Their conversations had revolved around trivial things like the weather, or so-and-so’s upcoming marriage to the duke of who-cared-where.

  No, Ernest had thought, he did not want any of those women as his wife. If he were to marry, it would be to a woman he would be excited to wake up beside. And the more balls and garden parties he attended, he felt that such a woman simply did not exist.

  And so, a sense of purpose. Solving the mystery of the clothing in the chest felt far more pressing than finding a wife or entertaining the likes of the Earl of Landon.

  Where do I begin?

  Though he knew he was treading on painful ground, Ernest had to speak to his mother.

  He found the Duchess in her withdrawing room, dressed in a shapeless grey gown. An embroidery sampler lay in her lap, the needle and thread dangling from her listless fingers. She was gazing out the window with faraway eyes.

  “Mother,” said Ernest, “may I speak with you?”

  The Duchess forced a smile. “Of course.” She gestured to the chair opposite her with a limp hand. Ernest sat.

  “It’s about my sister,” he said bluntly, “about Unity.”

  The last hint of color drained from the Duchess’ face. “Unity,” she murmured, turning back to the window.

  “Yes, Mother. What can you tell me about her?”

  The Duchess continued to stare vacantly for a for moments. She glanced down at her lap. Seeming to remember the sampler, she lifted it up and began to stitch. Ernest saw a faint tremor in her hand. “Your sister died as an infant,” she said, her voice low and cracked. “You know that.”

  Ernest hummed noncommittally. “How old was she?”

  The Duchess paused. “A few weeks. A month, perhaps.”

  Strange that she would not remember such a thing.

  Surely the date of a child’s death would be imprinted in her mother’s memory.

  “A month,” he repeated.

  “Yes.” This time there was more certainty in the Duchess’ voice. “A month. That’s right.”

  But Ernest knew a lie when he heard one. Ought he press his mother? Tell her he had found the chest of clothing in the wardrobe? Admit he could see through this thin-veiled falsity?

  He opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated. Regardless of whether or not his mother was lying, his sister was not in their lives. No doubt such a thing brought the Duchess great pain. He needed to find out more, but his fragile mother was not the person to press on the matter.

  He gave her a short nod. “I see.”

  Ernest found himself pacing across the parlor, his shoes clicking rhythmically across the floorboards. The conversation with his mother had left him even more certain that there were things he didn’t know about his sister’s death.

  What if she is not dead at all?

  The possibility swung at him suddenly. Was it completely mad to entertain such a thought? He had visited Unity’s headstone on countless occasions. But was there even a scrap of possibility that there might be no grave beneath?

  Yes, Ernest decided. He had to consider that such a thing might be the case. If he was to find out the truth, he had to stay open to all possibilities, however strange.

  So perhaps his sister was alive. She would be thirty years old by now, and would have a life of her own. Perhaps a family of her own. Ernest inhaled sharply at the thought. If his sister was really out there, he had to find her. But how? His mother had all but closed down on the issue, and Ernest knew she would be of no help at all.

  Where does one begin when he seeks to find a woman within the heaving maze of London?

  There was nothing, Ernest realized, to say Unity was even still in the city. Perhaps life had taken her to some far-flung county, or even another land. And then, of course,
was the far more reasonable possibility that those clothes had belonged to someone else entirely. Perhaps they had belonged to a child of a servant or a cousin. Perhaps his bored mind was finding mysteries, instead of seeking out the most rational explanation. Perhaps finding his sister was just an intriguing distraction from the drudgery of finding a wife. Ernest heard himself laugh out loud at the bizarre path his thoughts had begun to careen down.

  But then he stopped pacing. Unity was alive. He felt strangely sure of it. There was something stirring inside of him, a restlessness he had always been aware of, yet unable to explain. What if his missing, living sister was the cause of it?

  He had to search. Had to know the truth. But, where to begin? Why, in the household itself, of course. There was a seemingly endless parade of scullery maids and grooms, stewards and lady’s maids who had come and gone as Ernest had grown up.

  But there were also those who had stayed. Fresh-faced kitchen maids who had become hunched and greying women as the years had passed. Their butler had seen decades of visitors through the duke’s front door. And the groom, Phillips, was the only person the Duke had ever trusted with his family’s horses. Perhaps these faithful servants might have something to offer Ernest about his missing sister.

  Mrs. Graham, the housekeeper, had been with the household for as long as Ernest could remember. She would be a fine person to ask.

  He made his way down toward the basement kitchen, feeling very much an intruder. He hurried past the laundry and Mrs. Graham’s sleeping quarters, averting his glance in case he should see something not intended for his eyes. As he burst into the kitchen, Mary, their teenaged kitchen chambermaid, snorted a mouthful of porridge in surprise. She leaped to her feet, her spoon clattering against the bowl.

  She bobbed a curtsey and used the back of her hand to wipe hurriedly at the milk dribbling off her chin. “Lord Dalton. I was just…I—”

  Ernest gave her a warm smile. “It’s all right, Mary. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He looked about the kitchen. He had not been inside since he was a boy, when he and his cousin Thomas had sneaked in looking for sweetmeats. “I’m looking for Mrs. Graham.”

  Mary knotted her fingers into her apron. “She’s upstairs, My Lord. Pulling that new housemaid into line. Shall I tell her you wish to speak with her?”

  Ernest gave her another reassuring smile. “That’s quite all right. I can find her myself.” He nodded toward the porridge. “Please. Finish your breakfast.”

  He found Mrs. Graham and the new housemaid in the parlor, exchanging terse, muttered words. Ernest waited in the doorway. At the sight of him, Mrs. Graham let out a gasp.

  “Forgive me, Lord Dalton. I didn’t—”

  Ernest made his way toward her, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “May we speak, Mrs. Graham?”

  The housekeeper frowned in surprise, the creases on her forehead deepening. “Why yes, My Lord. Of course.” She shot a fierce glare at the housemaid, shooing her away with a leathery, lined hand.

  Ernest folded his hands behind his back. “You were here when my sister passed away.” He kept his voice low, not wanting his mother to overhear from the withdrawing room across the hall.

  Surprise flickered across Mrs. Graham’s eyes. Then she nodded. “Yes, My Lord. It was a sad time indeed.”

  Was the old woman’s voice wavering slightly? Or was he simply imagining things?

  “Can you tell me how she died?”

  Mrs. Graham hesitated. “Why, she was a sickly baby. Weak from the moment she was born. We was all surprised she lived as long as she did.” She gave a sad, dramatic sigh.

  The same story Ernest had been fed throughout his entire life. No doubt the household staff had been given the same tale. Or told to tell the same tale. Ernest felt that restlessness inside him shift and build.

  Deciding he would get no more from Mrs. Graham, he made his way out to the stables.

  Ernest had always liked their groom. As a boy, he had visited the stables often to hear Phillips’ tales of his time at sea; adventurous yarns populated with pirates and smugglers and cannon fire. Ernest had known, of course, that Phillips’ stories were most likely made up, but the fact hadn’t stopped him from enjoying them.

  The Duke had frowned upon Ernest spending so much time with one of their servants, determined that his son associate only with people of his own standing. It was one of the few things Ernest and the Duke did not see eye-to-eye on. How could he come to know of the world, he argued, if he spent his time around people just like him?

  “All the things worth knowing,” his father would say in return, “can be learned by spending time with people of our caliber.”

  Ernest knew better than to fight with his father. And so, he had always waited until the Duke was out of the house to visit Phillips. His mother had always been too withdrawn to either notice or care.

  Phillips looked up as Ernest swung open the door of the stables. He was running a comb through the mane of the piebald mare, rubbing the animal’s nose and speaking in gentle murmurs.

  “You’re not taking her out again, My Lord,” he said, in a curt, husky voice. “You ran the poor girl ragged yesterday. She’s not as young as she used to be.” He turned back to the horse, as she nosed his shoulder. “You and I have that in common, don’t we, my girl.”

  Ernest smiled. “I’ll let her rest, Phillips. It’s you I came to speak to.”

  The groom raised his caterpillar eyebrows. “Oh yes?”

  “It’s about my sister.”

  Phillips didn’t speak at once. “Oh yes,” he said again. Ernest heard the strain in his voice.

  This time, I’m not imagining it.

  Ernest hesitated. “I believe she’s alive,” he said bluntly, watching the old man’s face carefully to gauge his reaction.

  Phillips’ face gave nothing away. He turned to Ernest. “And why do you think that?”

  Ernest held his gaze. “I have my reasons. What can you tell me about her? You were here when she—” He paused, “when she left.”

  The old man turned back to the horse, combing her mane with renewed vigor. The back of Ernest’s neck prickled.

  Phillips knows something.

  Ernest felt a sudden swell of resentment for the household he had grown up in. There was rarely a hair out of place in all of Graceton Manor, yet there were so many unspoken things lying beneath the surface, Ernest felt sure. Secrets stuffed into wardrobes and pain hidden behind curtains of pipe smoke. Sometimes this place was simply suffocating.

  He took a step closer to Phillips. “You know something,” he said.

  The groom shook his head. “No. I arrived here just months before you were born. Your sister was already gone.” He rubbed his bristly chin, as though deep in thought. “But there’s a man you might speak to. George Owen. He used to tend the gardens here when you was just a lad. I heard him speak of the girl on more than one occasion. Said he used to cut the thorns from the roses, so she didn’t prick her fingers.” He ran a wiry hand along the horse’s mane. “I used to think it strange. After all, everybody said your poor sister died when she was just an infant.”

  Ernest’s thoughts knocked together. He thought of a tiny girl playing among the rose bushes, dressed in a smock embroidered with flowers.

  “This man, Mr. Owen. Where can I find him?”

  Phillips shrugged. “I’m sorry, sir. I ain’t got any thought of where he is now. He was an east London man. Came from Bethnal Green. Perhaps you might try asking there.”

  Ernest nodded, full of fresh determination. He nodded at Phillips. “Thank you.”

  The old man narrowed his eyes. “Not a word to anyone about what I just told you. Your father would have me out on the street.”

  As Ernest made his way out of the stable, he heard Phillips call to him. He turned back to face the old man.

  “Be careful, My Lord,” the groom said, his eyes hard and determined. “If you go out there looking, make sure you’re ready for wh
at you might find.”

  Chapter 3

  Ernest stood in front of the mirror, feeling a right fool.

  The patched grey greatcoat he had borrowed from Phillips hung from his shoulders. Too embarrassed to ask the old man for his unmentionables, he wore a pair of faded corduroy trousers he had found by raiding the laundry room.

  He eyed himself. The trousers were far too big, and not wanting to give away the game by accessorizing with one of his own leather belts, Ernest had tied them at the waist with a length of rope. Phillips’ coat, in contrast, was so tight around the shoulders that Ernest could barely lift his arms. He buttoned the greatcoat to his neck, careful to cover the silk shirt he wore beneath. Catch a glimpse of such a thing, and the people of Bethnal Green would know he was a fraud. He combed his fingers through his thick auburn hair, doing his best to untidy it. His thick locks fell neatly back into place, half an inch above his collar. Ernest sighed and pulled on the blue woolen cap he had borrowed from the groom. Perhaps he might pass for a working-class man if he kept his collar up and his eyes down.