Never Deceive a Duke (21 page)

She swallowed hard. “When—after—Cyril died, Warneham did not send you into the navy? That, you see, was what he said. That he had taken you to Portsmouth, because he couldn’t bear the sight of you. That you were to become a midshipman.”

“No,” said Gabriel calmly. “No, Antonia. Warneham hauled me down to Portsmouth and gave me to a press gang. There is a vast deal of difference in the two.”

She recoiled in horror. “A press gang? Good God. How old were you?”

“I was twelve,” he said. “And barely that. Even the British Navy won’t stoop so low as to impress a twelve-year-old boy. They aren’t even supposed to take a grown man if he has no experience at sea.”

“So there was no chance of your ever being an officer?…”

His face suddenly blazed with anger. “Damn it, Antonia,
listen
to me,” he said, carefully enunciating each word. “I don’t know what cock-and-bull story Warneham told people about my disappearance, but the truth is this: He threw my grandmother out of Knollwood, snatched me from her, hauled me down to Portsmouth, and made it damn good and clear to the press gang that no one—
no one
—was apt ever to come looking for me. He did not place me in officer’s training. He told them to
get rid of me,
and he gave them a fifty-pound bribe to seal the bargain. He wanted me dead—he just didn’t have the guts to do it himself.”

Antonia pressed her fingertips to her lips. She wanted, suddenly, to cry. “But…but that is unconscionable!”

“Antonia, gently bred boys do not just become midshipmen in the Royal Navy,” he said. “One’s family must petition for an admission. It takes connections. And if you do not have them—if no one of at least
some
importance will vouch for you—it simply won’t happen. If Warneham let himself believe I somehow landed in that sort of clover, then he was simply assuaging his own guilt.”

“I—I begin to wonder what he did believe,” she said. “So…what happened to you if the navy would not take you?”

“The press gang traded me for a barrel of port.”

“
Traded
you?”

“Yes, to a turncoat merchant ship out of Marseilles—if you could call it that. In truth, they were but one step removed from plain pirates—and traitorous ones, at that.”

“My God!” Antonia looked stricken. “Do you think Warneham could have known that would happen?”

Gareth was bloody well sure he had known, but he said nothing. Instead he merely set one boot heel against the stone ledge and bit his tongue.

“What did you do?” asked Antonia. “Were you frightened?”

“Only of the water, at first,” he said. “Just walking along the docks made my stomach churn. But the people? No, I just wanted my grandmother. I was too naïve to be frightened. I kept telling the ship’s captain who I was, who my father had been, that there had just been a misunderstanding. He found it uproarious. My earnest pleadings kept the crew entertained all the way to Guernsey.”

“How…how did you survive?”

“I did whatever I had to do to survive,” he said grimly. “By the time we’d sailed around the tip of Brittany, I had learnt to keep my mouth shut and do whatever I was told. I was twelve years old, and I was terrified.”

“Did…did they hold you captive?”

“In the middle of the ocean?” He looked at her oddly. “I was made to work, Antonia. They were traitors. Algerian corsairs. Sicilian pirates. The dregs of Europe, for the most part—and the lot of them traveling under a forged letter of marque from the British government. They would cheerfully slaughter their own brothers, and I was their slave. A cabin boy. Do you have any idea what that means?”

She shook her head. “You had to…to do their chores?”

And then some,
he wanted to say.

But if he had been gently bred, Antonia had been utterly cocooned. She could not begin to comprehend what his life on the
Saint-Nazaire
had been like—and he did not want her to. Antonia had suffered enough of her own horror. And he could not suffer the utter humiliation of describing his. He could not bear to relive that sickening sense of powerlessness.

Antonia had lost a little of her newly won color. “Gabriel, w-where did they take you?”

“America had just declared war on England,” he said grimly. “It was expected to be a bloodbath—and privateers were prowling the Caribbean like sharks in the water. There was business aplenty for anyone with the stomach for it.”

“How long were you with these…these pirates?” she asked, her voice a little thready. “How did you escape?”

“I sailed with them for well over a year,” he said. “I thought about trying to escape every time we made port, but oftentimes, the places were foreign and frightening to me, and I could not understand the language. I had no money. At least on the
Saint-Nazaire
I had food and shelter—if one could call it that.” He realized his voice had dropped to a whisper, and he sharply cleared his throat. “When you are held in someone’s power like that—well, after a while you…you get confused as to precisely who your enemy is. Everyone around you looks rough and dangerous. And sometimes…sometimes you just choose the devil you know. Does that make any sense?”

“None of this makes any sense,” Antonia whispered. “None of it. You were twelve years old. I can’t think how you survived.”

“Ultimately, I made a run for it,” he said. “We came into Bridgetown on a brilliant, beautiful day, and I saw that Union Jack snapping in the breeze, and I knew—I just
knew
it was my chance. Likely the only one I would ever get. And by then, my captors had become a little lax. They knew as well as I did that my options were few. I bolted the first clear chance I got. Unfortunately, someone raised the alarm.”

“They went after you?” she said. “Could they do that on British soil?”

Gareth laughed bitterly. “They didn’t give a damn whose soil it was,” he said. “You’re bloody well right they chased me—and caught me by the shirt collar twice. Then I had the good fortune to run smack into Luke Neville coming out of a back-alley tavern, and that was the end of it. He believed me. He…he saved me. I know it sounds melodramatic, but he literally saved my worthless hide.”

“And then you went to work for him?” she asked. “You were twelve years old, and you had to work for your living. What was that like?”

“I was thirteen by then,” he said.

“Oh, well, that made it perfectly acceptable,” she murmured.

He forced himself to smile. “Antonia, I was glad to work—daylight to dusk, if need be. I learnt everything I know from Luke Neville. Besides, my grandfather had raised me to believe I would go into some sort of profession one day. He never wished me to think of myself as an aristocrat. He felt that the expectation of a gentleman’s life too easily instilled a lack of character—and in hindsight, I feel he was right. He was ruined, you see, by a group of so-called gentlemen who borrowed vast sums from him, then chose to flee the country rather than do the honorable thing. There was nothing honorable about them.”

“Heavens,” Antonia murmured. “That is a little blunt.”

He looked at her sympathetically. “I apologize if it sounded harsh,” he said. “I’m afraid, Antonia, that the—the quiet comfort of having you near entices me to speak more freely than I ought. I am sure you were brought up quite differently.”

Antonia looked still faintly uncomfortable, and pensive, too. Gareth said no more. The conclusions were hers to draw, but from what he had heard so far, both her father and brother sounded spoilt and self-indulgent to him.

Gareth looked up at the easterly sky. Gray-blue clouds were indeed beginning to gather, unthreatening still. But Statton, it appeared, had not been wrong in his predictions. He dropped his boot from the balustrade and picked up his riding gloves. “I daresay we’d best go on up to Knollwood if we are going,” he mused. “I think we might get rain later.”

She set one small, warm hand on his knee. “We need not go,” she said. “Not unless you require my opinion on something. I know how you dislike the place.”

His gaze fell to her hand. “Antonia, I—” Gareth stopped and measured his words. “I just want it to be perfect for you. I just want—”

But he could say no more, for he scarcely knew what he wanted. He wanted her—yes. And on some level, Antonia wanted him. But there had been so much water under the bridge for both of them. So many old hurts and slights. His snide remark about aristocrats, for example, showed his own prejudices in very stark relief. Doubtless her fine old aristocratic family had a few prejudices of their own. They would not welcome the grandson of a Jewish money lender into their blue-blooded dynasty—particularly if they knew what the rest of his life had been like—even if Antonia wanted him.

And was Antonia even capable of making clear-thought choices just now? She had spent the whole of her adult life, since the age of seventeen, in either an unhappy marriage or the moral equivalent of Bedlam. She had been allowed not even the slightest measure of independence, nor any opportunity to make her own decisions. If she was free to live her own life—if this horrid gossip about her dead husband was laid to rest—and she had the wherewithal and the confidence to travel, to socialize, to do whatever she pleased wherever and however she pleased, well, why on earth would she still want him? Other than for the sex, of course. When he was good for nothing else, there was always sex.

Abruptly, he rose and offered down his hand. “They are running the water pipes from the new spring box up to the kitchen,” he said. “Perhaps they can pipe some water upstairs as well. We should go and have a look, don’t you think?”

Her gaze had grown distant. She put her hand in his. “Yes, thank you,” she said mechanically. “Let us go, by all means.”

T
he Red Indians sat cross-legged inside the folly, sharpening their arrows and awaiting the American onslaught. Tall Feather notched the ends of his sapling branch, bowed it, and looked at it in satisfaction. “That’s a good one,” he said. “Hey, Cyril, give me the twine.”

Cyril scowled up from his whittling. “You’re supposed to say Growling Bear,” he reminded Gabriel, “or it doesn’t count.”

“Just give me the twine,” said Gabriel a little irritably. “I’m going to string my bow.”

Cyril bent forward with the twine, then winced. “Wait,” he said, springing up. “I’ve got to piss.”

“Me, too,” said Gabriel, following him to the edge of the folly. “But Mr. Needles says you should say ‘make water’ instead of piss.”

“Poo, that’s for children!” said Cyril derisively, hitching loose his trousers. “I’ve got to
piss.”

“Here, let’s aim for that tree,” Gabriel suggested. Together, they gave it a royal drenching.

“I won,” said Cyril, shaking himself off.

“Did not!” said Gabriel. “If anything, we tied.”

“Wait,” said Cyril, peering down at Gabriel’s trousers. “Take it back out.”

Gabriel looked at him strangely. “Take what back out?”

“Your penis, ijit,” said Cyril, whipping his from his drawers. “Here, I’ll show you mine.”

“Well, all right, then.” Reluctantly, Gabriel obliged him.

Cyril bent down as if to study it. “It looks just like mine,” he said, frowning. “Maybe longer.”

“Well, of course it looks like yours,” said Gabriel. “Cyril, you’re the ijit. All penises are the very same.”

“No, they aren’t.” Cyril straightened up and tucked himself back inside his drawers. “I heard the housemaids talking. Maisie said if you’re a Jew, you have to cut it off.”

“Eeewww!” said Gabriel. “Cyril, that’s horrid!”

Cyril grinned and slapped him in the back of the head. “Well, you’re all right—probably ’cause you’re a halfbreed,” he teased. “Hey—I know—maybe we should change your Red Indian name from Tall Feather to Tall Cock!”

Coggins greeted Gareth on Selsdon’s top step immediately upon his return from Knollwood. The dark clouds seemed to have intensified, both on the horizon and over the house itself, it seemed, for the butler’s face was a little fretful, and his hands were laid neatly over one another, as if he was resisting the urge to wring them.

Curious, Gareth passed his reins over to Statton, who had returned for the horses, then lifted Antonia from the saddle.

“The post came early,” said the butler as they ascended the stairs.

Gareth glanced at Antonia. “Not bad news, I hope?”

The butler made an equivocal gesture with his hand. “Well, I
think
not,” he said. “But Mr. Kemble seemed to have a great many letters from London. He opened one of them in some haste, then said he must go at once to West Widding.”

“West Widding?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” said Coggins a little irritably. “And I am afraid…well, I am afraid he took your gig, sir.”

“Well, it’s not as if I have ever used it,” said Gareth. “Besides, I instructed him to go. There was some particular business I wished him to take care of, and I daresay there was no other way to get there?”

Coggins looked relieved. “Not easily, sir,” he answered. “It’s five miles away.”

Just then, Dr. Osborne came down one of the staircases. “There you are, Your Grace,” he said upon seeing the duchess. “I am so glad you caught me.”

Antonia hastened toward him. “Oh, heavens, have you been here all this time, Doctor?” she asked breathlessly.

“No, no, I had to return to the village for more medications,” he said. “I’ve just this instant come back.”

“How is she, Dr. Osborne?” asked Antonia anxiously. “How is my poor Nellie?”

Osborne smiled down at the duchess. “She is resting comfortably,” he reassured her. “I have given both her and Jane a little something to keep the cough at bay and to help them sleep quite soundly. In a few days, they should both be well on the mend.”

“Thank you, Osborne,” said Gareth, stepping forward. “How are our patients in the stables?”

The doctor’s gaze swiveled toward him, as if he was just now noticing Gareth’s presence. “Oh, good afternoon, Your Grace,” he replied. “They are much improved, thank God. Now if we can just keep everyone else well?”

After a few more polite exchanges, Antonia excused herself and went up the stairs to sit with her maid. Osborne stood beside Gareth, watching her go.

“She is a lovely creature, is she not?” said the doctor.

“Yes,” said Gareth quietly. “A lovely creature indeed.”

Nestled between the river and the forest, the village of West Widding was a pretty little gem, save for the eyesore of a massive brick workhouse which sat along the water’s edge. The parish boasted an inn, two public houses, a justice of the peace, and a small medieval church whose bell tower had collapsed during the Lord Protector’s reign and had never been rebuilt. It was the third of these boasts, however, which most concerned George Kemble.

He drove past the squat, towerless church, turned left at the second public house, and, at the end of the narrow lane, found what he sought. The home of John Laudrey was a wide, hideously modern cottage made of brick, and standing in gardens so new they looked over-pruned and shrunken. A maid in a gray serge dress opened the door and let her eyes sweep down his attire. He easily passed her examination. She showed him into a parlor at the back of the house.

When Laudrey entered, he at once struck Kemble as being overly self-important and moderately intelligent—always a dangerous combination. He was a large, bristle-haired man whose shoulders looked about to burst from his coat seams. The justice opened the letter which deVendenheim had sent down from London, a remarkable shade of red burning slowly down his cheeks as he read, until he looked rather like a boil about to rupture.

“Well!” he said. “It is always helpful to have the Home Office step into our business after we’ve done with it.”

Kemble smiled and seated himself without being asked. “I rather suspect Mr. Peel views murder as being very much the Home Office’s business,” he said tartly. “Particularly when it has gone unresolved for some months.”

“Oh, a murder now, is it?” Laudrey thrust the letter at Kemble and sat down. “No one wanted to hear of
that
last year when the deed was done.”

“Well, it certainly was a questionable death.” Kemble folded his hands neatly over one knee. “And the new duke has ordered me to get to the bottom of it. He hopes a second set of eyes will help.” It was not a request, so Kemble barged on. “I’m told you were called to the ducal estate by the local constable on the morning of Warneham’s death. You examined the body, found signs consistent with potassium nitrate poisoning, and interviewed the doctor, who ventured an opinion that the duke had used too much of his asthma medication. Do I have that right?”

“If you know all that, why must I be bothered?” asked the justice.

“Right, then, thank you,” said Kemble. “Warneham—the new duke—tells me that you and the doctor disagreed as to whether it was a case of murder or an overdose. An inquest was held, and the doctor’s opinion prevailed?”

“Yes.”

Kemble considered it a moment. “May I ask, Mr. Laudrey, whether or not you interviewed the two gentlemen who were houseguests at Selsdon that evening—Sir Harold Hardell and Lord Litting?”

“I tried,” Laudrey admitted. “But they had left at dawn unaware of the duke’s demise—or so they claimed. Afterward, it being a suspicious death, I went up to London to talk to the gentlemen, but I got naught from them except for the fact that there had been a good deal of smoking going on in the billiard room that evening.”

“Yes, so I heard,” murmured Kemble. “Let me ask, Mr. Laudrey, if there was anything else which made you suspicious about the late duke’s death?”

Laudrey shifted uncomfortably. “The London gentlemen were hiding something, I thought,” he said quietly. “The upper classes will go to a great deal of trouble, you know, to avoid even the breath of scandal touching them, even if it means a death must go unanswered for.”

“Perfectly true!” said Kemble. “And you are thinking, are you not, of the duchess? It’s quite all right. The gossip is still going round Lower Addington.”

“Everyone knows she was married against her wishes,” said the justice. “And while it mighn’t be common knowledge up so far as London, it did not take a doctor to see that the lady was not wholly in her right mind.”

Kemble imagined that seeing one’s husband lying dead on his bedroom floor would unsettle even the hardest of nerves, but he said nothing. Instead, he leaned forward in his chair. “Do you know what caught my attention, Mr. Laudrey?” he asked. “The fact that in ten years, there have been at least three premature deaths in that house. And I am not going back so far as to count the first duchess. What killed her, by the way?”

“A broken heart, they say, over the little boy that died,” Laudrey admitted, then his voice flattened. “But the fellow who did the postmortem said it was just an infectious appendix which ruptured and poisoned the poor lady.”

“Ah,” said Kemble. “Well, that is fairly cut-and-dried, is it not?”

Laudrey reluctantly admitted that it was.

“And the second duchess,” Kemble murmured. “Yet another tragedy! Do you recall what happened to her?”

The justice looked at him a little disparagingly. “I daresay you know already. The young lady took a bit of a spill whilst hunting.”

“A bit of a spill?” Kemble had never heard it characterized quite so benignly. “Do we know how this spill occurred?”

“Mrs. Osborne said her horse shied at a fence,” he said. “The poor lady was beside herself, for she was in the lead. She felt, I think, that she’d led the girl into something which was beyond her skill.”

“Yes, the second duchess had a good bit of cheek, I’m told,” said Kemble. “Was she not a good rider?”

“She had been raised in Town, as I understand it,” answered Laudrey. “Riding to hounds in the countryside is a different kettle of fish.”

“Just so,” said Kemble. “And it was such a tragedy that the child was lost.”

“Well, that part was never clear to me,” said Laudrey. “But then, I’m not a doctor. In fact, I was not involved in the matter at all, as it was considered a natural death.”

The hair on the back of Kemble’s neck suddenly rose. “I beg your pardon?”

Laudrey opened his hands expansively. “The child, as I understand it, was not lost until some days later,” he answered. “The young lady was abed mending her bruises, then the tragedy occurred. Afterward, she took a fever—something to do with female things not happening as they ought—and
that
was what killed her.”

It was an interesting but subtle difference. “A fascinating story, Mr. Laudrey,” said Kemble. “Who did the postmortem? Osborne?”

“No, no,” said Laudrey. “He had not come down from Oxford. It was probably Dr. Frith here in Widding, but he is dead now.”

“Was he any good?”

Laudrey nodded appreciatively. “Very good indeed.”

Kemble looked at Laudrey a little coyly. “And is Osborne any good?”

Laudrey hesitated. “Osborne is a fine physician too,” he said. “But perhaps more beholden to opinion than to science.”

Kemble looked at the man with a new appreciation. “You mean Osborne is more apt to find what the family wishes to find, do you not?”

“I didn’t say that,” Laudrey answered. “But he obviously catered to Warneham’s whims and fancies. I never saw such a lot of powders and pills and unguents in my life.”

Having seen the bulging box of medications, Kemble did not disagree. “What was she like, the second duchess?”

Laudrey shook his head. “Too far above my social circle,” he said. “I never heard any ill spoken of her. She was very young, and doted on a bit by the village ladies.”

“Which ones, specifically?” asked Kemble.

Laudrey considered it. “Well, there was the rector’s wife.”

“Mrs. Hamm?”

Laudrey slowly shook his head. “I believe this was in the time of the previous rector,” he said. “The name escapes me. And then there was Mrs. Osborne. And Lady Ingham—her husband had just bought North End Farm, and she is a bit—well, pardon my saying—”

“Yes, a social climber,” Kemble added ruefully. “I had noticed.”

Laudrey seemed to relax in his chair.

“Tell me, Mr. Laudrey,” he said, “since you seem a man of sense. What was the duke’s third wife like?”

Laudrey pulled a sad face. “Oh, a quiet girl, and terribly nervous. She simply was not up to the duties of a duchess, I never thought.”

“Oh, dear,” said Kemble. “It sounds tragic already.”

“It was, rather,” said Laudrey pensively. “She was the eldest daughter of Lord Orleston, whose seat was just to the south of here. His younger girls had married, but Lady Helen was not a beauty, and it was said she preferred church work and gardening to marriage.”

“Why did she marry, then?”

“Well, Warneham offered for her—because she was convenient, I always thought,” Laudrey said, shrugging his big shoulders again. “And like the duke, Lord Orleston hadn’t a son, so all he possessed was to pass to a nephew. I daresay he wished to be sure the girl had a home of her own when he was gone—which he is now. But then, she is too, isn’t she, poor girl?”

“She became overly fond of her laudanum tonic, it sounded,” said Kemble.

Laudrey’s eyes narrowed. “Doctors nowadays are bit quick with the laudanum, I’d say,” he answered. “And all the other things in those tonics.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kemble. “What, precisely, was she taking?”

Laudrey shrugged. “I cannot recall,” he admitted. “Just the usual hodgepodge of opiates, herbs, and sedatives which ought just as well be dispensed off the back of a Gypsy’s cart, if you ask me. And nearly any apothecary will sell you laudanum. Peddle it like gin, they do.”