Never Deceive a Duke (14 page)

Gareth approached his grandmother’s favorite reading table and picked up one corner of the dustcover to see that a porcelain
bonbonnière
still sat on the peeling marquetry top, a lumpy black residue lying in the bottom. Calcified chocolate? A dead mouse? It was disgusting, all of it. And yet this place, he suddenly realized, no longer held any power over him. It was as if by stepping inside, he had shattered an evil spell.

He continued to roam the ground floor, his boots echoing hauntingly through the lifeless house. The library with its old wooden panels. The parlor, its great Palladian window cracked. The once-elegant dining room hung with pink silk which had formerly been red. The rotting residue of a life which had long ago died.

From time to time, he could feel the old floor sag suspiciously. He kept to the edges and made his way to the staircase. He realized at once it was rotting, and he went up warily, sidling along the wall. This floor he found much the same, but in better shape, as it was further removed from the damp. The four chambers here had been put to bed with a little more care, their long, heavy draperies wrapped in Holland cloths. The beds still stood in their usual places, dustcovers laid neatly over the mattresses, and beneath, all of their bedding stripped.

In his grandmother’s room, however, the curtains had been removed, allowing the midday sun to stream in. It made the room seem almost lived in. Here the smell of damp was no more than a mustiness. His grandmother’s writing desk sat uncovered by the windows. He went to her bed and stripped back the Holland cover. This was the bed that, for the first months of his life at Knollwood, he had so often come to in the middle of the night, in order to have his fears assuaged and his demons shoved back into their wardrobes. He felt a sudden wave of wistfulness, and of loss.

In his old room, he looked down at the oak tester bed, and for a few dreadful moments, he was nine again. Gareth shuddered. The wooden canopy had terrified him when he was a child. Heavy and dark, it had seemed to loom ominously overhead, shutting out the light. He had grown accustomed to it, of course. He had had no choice.

Caught in the midst of his brooding, he became vaguely aware of a noise. Mice, he supposed.

The sharp, terrified scream, however, was not a mouse.

Gareth rushed for the stairs to the sound of splintering wood. Antonia was clinging to the banister with both hands, her black riding habit pooled awkwardly on the step above. “Don’t move!” he ordered.

Her face was etched with terror. “I cannot,” she cried. “Oh, Gabriel! I cannot free my boot!”

Gareth was edging his way back down, his spine to the wall. “Do not move, Antonia,” he said again. “Bear your weight on the banister, not your feet. I shall get you free.”

She nodded resolutely, eyes wide. “Yes.”

He reached her easily. Planting his weight near the wall, he leaned over her and set his right hand on the banister near hers. “How far down has your leg gone?”

“To—to the knee,” she said. “Almost.”

Quickly, he surveyed the situation. “Keep hold of the banister,” he commanded. “I am going to lift up your skirt.”

Her leg—a very fetching, well-turned leg—had gone completely through the rotted wood. A splintered chunk of the stair tread had caught the lip of her riding boot, wedging her awkwardly into place. It was so dark beneath that he could not make out the cellar stairs. Perhaps they had already collapsed?
Bloody hell
.

“Is your back foot secure?” he asked, forcing his voice to be calm.

She nodded, biting her lip. There was an ominous groaning sound somewhere beneath them, followed by the crack of wood.

Dear Lord. She was headed for the cellars, and he with her, most likely. “Don’t let go of the banister,” Gareth said calmly. “I will rip this splintered wood away, then lift you out with my arm round your waist.”

She gave a nervous bark of laughter. “Can you?” she said. “I seem to have put on a few pounds.”

Gareth smiled reassuringly. “You are the merest feather, my dear,” he answered. “The treads and risers have rotted in the center.”

“Oh,” she said quietly.

Gareth still wore his riding gloves, a lucky bit of happenstance which made ripping away the splintered wood an easy task. When the last one was pulled from her boot, he stripped off the glove and wrapped his left arm about her waist. Antonia did not panic as he’d feared but instead bore her weight on the banister as he lifted her. At the right moment, she let go and threw her arms round his neck. Her riding hat toppled off and went tumbling down the stairs. Gareth swung her across the hole to him, then edged up the stairs as he’d come down, clinging to the wall.

“Oh, thank you!” she managed to say when he set her down upstairs. “This feels like terra firma!”

T
he curtains were drawn in the little flat above the goldsmith’s shop. The air was stale, the rooms lifeless. Gabriel could hear the occasional murmurs from the next room and knew without listening what was being said. He felt at once bored and frightened.

Though he knew he ought not, Gabriel went to the window and pushed the curtains wide enough to lean out. Propping his elbows on the sill, he watched the black-garbed jewelers going in and out of Cutler Street below. For a time, he studied them and tried to imagine where they went with their strong, purposeful strides. Just then, he heard a noise, and whirled around.

Rabbi Isaacs!
Gabriel sat down on the floor, ashamed.

“Gabriel, my son,” said the rabbi, “you do not sit with Rachel?”

He made a face. “I—I was, but I got tired.”

“Tired of sitting shiva?” Rabbi Isaacs bent down and rumpled his hair. “Ah, yes. I think I understand.” He took the rickety ladder-back chair by the bed and turned it to face Gabriel, who sat on a rug beneath the window. “You have covered your mirror. Gabriel. That is right in the eyes of God. And you have put away your shoes. It speaks well of you, my boy.”

Gabriel looked down at his worn stockings. “I have tried to do all the right things,” he said. “But
Bubbe
keeps crying.”

Rabbi Isaacs nodded. “Shiva is the time for tears,” he said quietly. “But Rachel’s tears forge her strength, Gabriel. Never forget this.”

Gabriel did not understand. But because it seemed expected of him, he nodded.

“You were a good grandson, Gabriel, to Malachi.” Rabbi Isaacs patted his head, then rose from his chair to go. “I know he was proud.”

Gabriel waited but a moment, then returned to his window, and to his fears. He did not know what else to do.

Across the wide passageway at the top of the stairs, Gareth studied Antonia’s pale but otherwise lovely face. She seemed perfectly steady for a woman who had just experienced a near-brush with—well, if not death, then something dank and deeply unpleasant.

“You are all right?” he asked her. “You are not injured in any way?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No, but I must have given you a fright,” she said. “For a moment, I feared we were destined to go crashing into the cellar together.”

He winced. “That is the last place you should wish to go in this house, trust me. That is the source of all this damp.”

“Oh, dear!” Sudden alarm sketched across her face. “How shall we ever get back down?”

“There are stone staircases in the old turrets at either end,” he said. “They are dark and nasty, and likely choked with cobwebs, but I will go before you and knock them down.”

“Thank you. Oh, you are so kind.” Antonia relaxed and began to look about the upstairs. Against the dark gray of her habit, her face was as smooth and pale as porcelain, but there was a dash of color on her cheeks today, and her eyes looked bright and perfectly lucid. “How did you get up here without falling?” she asked.

“A sailor’s eye for rotted wood,” he said. “It is a hazard in my sort of work.”

“In the shipping business?” she said.

“I was at sea for a while, too,” he said. “One learns a great many survival skills on a ship.”

Antonia had begun to roam tentatively down the passageway. “Yes, you were in the navy, were you not?” she said over her shoulder. “That must have been exciting for a young man.”

He followed her, puzzled. “I was never in the navy.”

She turned around, the hem of her habit spinning about her ankles. “Oh,” she said. “I thought…I thought you were trained as an officer?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“Then I must be confused.” Her smile had faded a little. She turned to peek into the next bedchamber. “What a sad, lovely house this is,” she murmured. “Can you feel it?”

“Feel it?”

Her gaze returned to his. “The sense of grief,” she said quietly. “It lingers here.”

Gareth set his jaw and tried not to grit his teeth. He had felt the grief and sadness firsthand. He had lived it. But he had no wish to talk about the past, especially not with Antonia. Besides, however he might feel toward his dead cousin, none of it was his widow’s fault. “Did you come up to see the house, then?” he managed to say. “I would have invited you, but I feared it mightn’t be safe.”

That was true, so far as it went. But he had also wished to be alone on his first visit to Knollwood. He had not known, honestly, how it would feel to return here. Now, however, he was strangely glad to see her.

“I had no idea you were up here.” Antonia had strolled to the window which overlooked the front lawn. “I just rode up to poke about the place, and when I saw the front door was open—well, I couldn’t resist.”

He followed her to the window. Their shoulders brushed as they stood looking out. He pointed to a place just above the distant tree line. “Over there is Selsdon’s roof,” he said. “Can you make it out?”

“Yes, just barely,” she answered. “And look, there is the tithe barn! And that break in the trees—is that the old bridle path?”

“Yes, it winds back down to Selsdon’s stables. I walked it often as a boy.”

“I tried to use it once,” she confessed. “But it was overgrown.”

“I will have it cleared for you,” he assured her. “It will take some time, Antonia, but this place can be a home again. The grief and sadness can be ripped out along with the rotted floors. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you,” she answered quietly.

“Antonia?”

“Yes?” She did not look at him.

“Will you be lonely here? I…I don’t want that for you.”

He had set his hands on the frame and leaned nearer the window. She followed suit. “I don’t know,” she said, still staring through the grimy glass. “Perhaps I shall be. But no one ever died of loneliness.”

She was right about that. For a long moment, neither spoke. There was a strange, peaceful stillness which enveloped them. A sense of intimacy which he hesitated to sever. Finally, he cleared his throat. “A few moments ago, on the stairs,” he said awkwardly, “you…you called me Gabriel.”

She turned to face him, her lips almost expectantly parted. “Yes, Your Grace,” she answered. “It was inappropriately familiar. I apologize.”

He gave a muted smile and shook his head. “You needn’t call me ‘Your Grace,’” he said. “I meant only that…well, that I have not been Gabriel in a very long time.” Not since the night they had made love in the rain, and not for many long years before that.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I have rarely heard you spoken of by any other name. You do not care for it? Shall I call you something else?”

He shrugged. “Call me what you wish,” he answered. “But that part of me—the Gabriel part—it feels as if it was lost a long time ago, Antonia.”

“What do you mean?”

“Within a few months of leaving this place, I knew it would be best if no one ever found me again. And I did not like the weak, frightened person I had become. So I became someone else.”

“I see,” she murmured. But she did not see. She could not possibly.

Antonia was looking deeply thoughtful. “But if a part of you has been lost,” she added, “perhaps it needs to be found again? I know what that is like, you see. I once lost myself—my joy, my faith—everything that made me…well,
Antonia
. I have not got it all back, quite honestly. But some days, I see glimmers of hope. Isn’t that what we are all working toward? To simply be—oh, I don’t know—what we were meant to be?”

Gareth glanced away. “I am happy enough,” he said, “with what I have become.”

Antonia straightened up from the window. “Then tell me,” she said brightly, “which room was yours when you lived here?”

He strolled toward the door, and she followed him in. “This one,” he said. “I loved the chest inside the window seat for my toys—what few I possessed. But the bed terrified me.”

Antonia looked it at with a theatrical shiver. “Lord, it’s positively medieval, isn’t it? That horrid wooden canopy. A child would feel quite trapped, I think.”

Gareth laughed, but he was strangely relieved that someone understood. He found himself telling her of his childhood notions and nightmares. Of his belief that goblins lived beneath his bed, and ghosts hid in the wardrobe. Of how the utter silence of a country night could frighten a child so accustomed to the hustle and bustle of London.

They strolled through the room as they talked, Antonia picking up the corners of the Holland cloths to see what lay beneath. “You poor thing,” she said when he was done. “You had come to live in a strange place. A place nothing at all like the city you were accustomed to. When my husband and I removed to the country, Beatrice was terrified of—”

Gareth turned to look at her. Antonia’s face had gone white. Her eyes were round. He caught her gently by the hand and drew her towards him. “Beatrice was terrified of what?” He sensed that he must keep her talking. “Tell me, Antonia. Who was Beatrice? What was it that frightened her?”

Antonia swallowed hard and tore her gaze from his. “Beatrice—she was my daughter,” she blurted. “She was frightened of the hedgerows. I—I am not supposed to talk about her.”

Gareth did not let go of her hand. “Who told you that?” he gently demanded. “Who said you mustn’t speak of her?”

“No one wants to hear it,” she said, tripping over the words. “Papa says that another person’s grief is very tiring.”

“You just listened to a quarter hour of mine,” he pointed out. “Do you feel tired?”

“Pray do not make fun of me.” She was speaking very rapidly now, and her eyes held that look again—like a colt that had been spooked. “I am trying…trying to do my best.”

He led her back to the window seat and gently urged her down. “So Beatrice was afraid of the hedgerows?” he prodded. “Because they were so tall?”

Again, she swallowed hard. “Yes, tall,” she agreed. “They…they shut out the sun sometimes. And trees which hang over the road? They terrified her. And now I think of her—of where she is—and I think how frightened she must be.” Her voice caught on a sob, and her trembling fingertips went to her mouth. “I know she must want me. And…and I am afraid—oh, Gabriel!—I am so afraid she is in the dark.”

Gareth put an arm about her waist. Dear Lord, so much was coming clear to him. He knew what it was to be afraid. To be a child, lost and without hope. But Antonia’s child was quite obviously beyond this mortal coil. “Beatrice is not in the dark,” he whispered. “She is in the light, Antonia. She is in heaven, and she is happy.”

“
Is
she in heaven?” Antonia choked. “Do we know that? Do Jews have a heaven? If they do, how can you know it is really there? How? What if…what if everything they taught us was
wrong
? Just lies to—to placate us? To make us hush?”

“Antonia, I think most of us believe in the afterlife,” he said, taking one of her hands in his. “I have studied more than one religion, and it is a fairly universal construct.”

“Is it?” Her voice was teary.

“Yes, and I believe quite firmly that the wicked burn in hell,” he said, “and that all children go to heaven. I am quite sure your Beatrice is at peace. But my knowing it is not the same as your knowing it. There is nothing wrong with fear or doubt, nor anything wrong in talking about it.”

Her free hand was really shaking now. “Oh, I just don’t know!” she cried. “Sometimes I am just so tired of crying.”

Gareth cupped his hand around her cheek and gently turned her face to his. “A wise rabbi I once knew told me, Antonia, that our tears forge our strength,” he said quietly. “In my grandparents’ faith, mourning is a sacred process which cannot be hurried. We remember our dead at holidays. And on the anniversary of their passing, we honor and commemorate their life.”

“How strange that sounds to me.” Her limpid blue eyes widened. “I thought everyone believed I ought never to think of it.”

“A good Jew would tell you that you
need
to think of it.” He massaged her hand as he spoke, forcing her fist to relax. “And to talk about it, too. You should set aside times to do these things, and honor them like the momentous commitments they are. If your father suggested otherwise, then he was wrong.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said, her voice flat now. “I should get on with my life. People lose children all the time.”

“Children are not disposable, Antonia,” he said angrily. Good God, it was no wonder the poor woman was half mad with grief—they had forced her to bottle it up. “No one should simply throw a child away. I, more than anyone, know that much. And if God takes a child, you
should
grieve. You must grieve. If anyone has tried to make you believe otherwise, then they should burn in hell.”

“That…that is what I sometimes thought,” she confessed. “But everyone thinks that it is just is a part of life. And that I should forget about Beatrice—and Eric.”

“Eric was your husband?” He already knew that, of course. Kemble had told him—but apparently he had not known about the daughter.

“Yes, my—my first husband.” Her voice was a whisper.

“And I am sure you loved him very much,” said Gareth softly.

“Too much,” she interjected harshly. “I loved him too much. Until the end—and by then I did not love him at all.”

Gareth did not know what to say. He squeezed her hand again. “Why don’t you tell me about Beatrice?” he suggested.

She looked at him through grief-stricken eyes and said nothing.

“How old was she?” he encouraged her. “What did she look like? Was she adventurous? Shy?”

Antonia’s face broke into a watery smile. “Adventurous,” she whispered, tugging a handkerchief from inside her riding coat. “And she looked like me. We were so very much alike. Everyone said so. But…I am not
me
anymore. I am not adventurous. I barely recognize myself. Beatrice was a wonderful child. She…she was three years old.”

“I am so sorry, Antonia,” he said. “I cannot imagine the depth of your loss, but I am deeply sorry.”

Gareth meant every word, too. He could not comprehend the horror of what she had been through. He had been twelve when fate had torn him from his grandmother. He had been thrown away like so much refuse, mourned by no one save for her. And Rachel Gottfried—a vigorous, sensible woman—had lived but two years after that. If that sort of grief could strip the will to live from a woman of her strength and faith, then it could bring anyone to their knees.