Never Deceive a Duke (34 page)

Gabriel’s smile warmed with tenderness. “Perhaps, Antonia, to the right man, a few broken pieces of you would be better than a whole and perfect someone else?” he suggested.

Antonia’s expression grew more poignant, if such a thing were possible. “Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered. “Oh, my dear, that is so beautiful. And I know, sadly, that you once had that perfect someone in your life. Someone long before me. I wish I could say I am sorry things did not work out for you. But I…well, I am not sorry. I am greedy. I would not give you back to her. No, not even were it within my power. I love you too much to be unselfish.”

He pulled her back to him and set his cheek to hers. “It was not like that, Antonia,” he said. “It certainly was not like
this
. What I felt for her—for Zee—was more about security. We’d come up hard, both of us, in sometimes squalid circumstances. I felt she would not judge me harshly. And I feared losing the only family I had. But what I feel for you, Antonia—it defies all explanation. It is a love which takes my breath. It leaves me in awe.”

Antonia leaned forward and put her hands around his neck. “Then ask me to marry you, Gabriel,” she whispered. “Ask me, and I shall be the very best wife I can be. Ask me, and together we will make one another stronger. I know that we will. Just please…
ask me.
”

Gareth looked down into her bottomless blue eyes. “You once said, my dear, that you wanted an independent life,” he reminded her. “Will you give all that up, just to marry me?”

“Oh, Gabriel, don’t you see?” she whispered. “You have
given
me my independence. You have helped me break those awful chains which bound me to the past. I know that life isn’t perfect—that even you, my love, are not perfect. But you are so close. So very, very close. Yes, whatever it is I would be giving up, I give it up willingly.”

“You do not wish to return to London, not even to clear your head, or—or give society another try?” he asked, his voice choking. “You know what you want? You will stay with me, and bear your father’s disapproval if it comes?”

Wordlessly, she nodded.

Gareth drew a deep breath. “Well, then, Antonia,” he whispered. “Will you marry me? Will you bind yourself to me for all eternity? Will you be my duchess? For there is nothing—
nothing
—that would make me happier.”

She stood on her tiptoes and lightly kissed him. “For all eternity, Gabriel,” she answered. “And into the great hereafter.”

Baron Rothewell pulled his hat down over his eyes to shield the sun and set off in the direction of the village proper. He did not like the sun. Indeed, since leaving Barbados, he had rarely ever seen it. Men of his ilk were almost never awake at such a godforsaken time of day as—well, as daylight.

The trek down the hill was not a long one, but Rothewell allowed himself to steep in misery all the way. He was going to knock George Kemble’s perfect, pearl-white teeth down his throat as soon as he got back to London. Well, he might have to sober up first and get a little sleep. But he could do it. At present, however, a higher and more noble duty called. Rothewell rarely did anything which was either high or noble, but he tried to get into the spirit of the thing.

Martin Osborne lived in a lovely old half-timbered house that had certainly cost someone a tidy sum, and he had plenty of servants to staff it with, too. One let the baron in, another came carrying the doctor’s apologies—not once, but twice—and yet a third brought tea. And eventually, Osborne must have decided Rothewell simply wasn’t going to leave, and he, too, came in. He appeared to have splinted his finger, and his nose had turned a swollen and nasty shade of red which, Rothewell knew from personal experience, was destined to turn blue, then purple, and finally, an appallingly jaundiced shade of yellow.

“What did you tell the staff?” Rothewell asked without preamble. “That you walked into a door?”

Osborne quivered with indignation, then relented. “That I tripped, if you must know,” he said. “On a chair in the duke’s study.”

“Oh, I must know,” said Rothewell, “since it would be best we all get our stories straight.”

“Then do sit down, Lord Rothewell,” said the doctor tightly. “And by all means tell me what I can do for you.”

Rothewell rubbed a finger along the side of his nose. “See, here’s the thing, Osborne,” he began. “I have been thinking about what happened today, and I am not at all sure the justice of the peace over in West Widding isn’t going to cut up a little rusty when this confession you’ve signed gets out.”

“It was an accident,” hissed the doctor.

“Nonetheless, Osborne, you are a physician,” said the baron. “As unfair as it may seem, you do not get to have accidents. And let’s face it, there have been so many
accidents
in this little village, there are bound to be questions over this one. Hard, awful questions. Do you really wish to answer them?”

“What do you care?” Osborne demanded. “It’s my hide, not yours. Besides, there’s no avoiding it now that I’ve written your bloody statement.”

“I care because the new duke has already been through hell—twice,” said the baron. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll have him put through it again. They do not need any more gossip or innuendo up there; they’ve had enough to choke on already, thanks to you and your father. As to avoiding it, yes, you can avoid it. You must leave town. No, you must leave England—and preferably Europe. You must go someplace with a vast deal of water between here and there.”

“You must be insane,” said the doctor.

“I think it quite likely,” said Rothewell. “But that is neither here nor there, no pun intended. You are ruined in Lower Addington, Osborne. You were never destined to become wealthy working in this village backwater—and you damned sure won’t do it now. But in, say, Barbados—why, the white ruling class is filthy rich, and physicians are both rare and welcome. That, I am persuaded, is where you shall go.”

The doctor’s eyes widened. “There is no way in hell I am going to the godforsaken West Indies!” There was a hint of umbrage in Osborne’s tone. “It’s hot. They have insects. Large ones. And horrific, infectious diseases. No, I demand to see the duke.”

“That’s why they need doctors,” said Lord Rothewell with a logical shrug. “And the duke cannot be involved in something which might later be construed as obstruction of justice.”

“And what of yourself, Rothewell?” asked the doctor with a soft sneer. “Above the law, are you? You certainly behave it.”

Rothewell smiled faintly. “Let us just say that I believe I can more zealously safeguard the Ventnor family’s interests than your incompetent justice of the peace could ever do,” he murmured, withdrawing a fold of papers from his coat pocket. “And English law, I long ago learnt, is often apt to protect the criminal far more than the victim.” He handed the papers to the doctor.

“What is this?”

“My signature granting you passage on Neville’s frigate, the
Belle Weather,
” he answered. “She embarks with the evening tide from the West India Docks a se’nnight hence. You will sail with her, Dr. Osborne, or you will be accountable to me—and I have far less to lose than my friend the duke.”

“But—but this is ridiculous!” the doctor gritted.

“Do remember, by the way,” Rothewell continued, “that we have retained the second copy of your confession, if you should be tempted to commit any malpractice whilst in Barbados. I am not without influence there, and I will not hesitate to see that you are prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law—and then some.”

“You think me guilty of murder.” Osborne looked outraged.

“I think you guilty as sin, Osborne—of negligence, at the very least,” Rothewell replied. “But the duke and duchess have already been touched by enough scandal. The man is like a brother to me, so this, you might say, is my wedding gift to him. I am getting rid of his problem.”

“Your wedding gift?” Osborne sneered. “So he has convinced her, has he?”

“By now, yes, I expect so.” Rothewell looked at him pathetically as he rose from his chair. “Or she, perhaps, has convinced him. In any case, Osborne, she was never going to have you.”

Osborne’s face went white with anger. “You think I don’t know that? Do you? Well, let him have her. She’s as fragile as a piece of Sevres, so I wish him very happy. I never wanted her anyway. I should never have felt sorry for her. Never.”

“Wishing you’d let Mamma do your dirty work again, are you?” Rothewell laughed nastily. “It takes a mighty small pair of ballocks to hide behind a woman’s skirts ’til you’re damned near forty.”

Osborne started to come out of his chair, but Rothewell lifted his boot and planted it squarely in the doctor’s chest. “Not another word, Doctor, for you’re about to convince me you aren’t nearly as stupid as you’ve been pretending. Now I want your assurance, sir, that you will sail with the
Belle Weather
and that thereafter you will never draw another breath in England again.”

“Or what?” said the doctor snidely. “You shall turn the justice of the peace on me?”

Rothewell leaned very near. He wanted Osborne to see the pupils of his eyes and smell the anger on his skin. “Now mark me, sir, and mark me well,” he whispered. “For what
I
shall do to
you,
the justice of the peace will be the very
last
tool I shall need.”

He removed his boot to see that Osborne was now shaking. His work here was done. Rothewell threw open the door and started the long hike back through the village and up the hill.

T
he gossip rags read that Duke and Duchess of Warneham were wed on a beautiful autumn day during a weeklong house party at the country estate of the notorious Marquis of Nash. Much was made of the duchess’s good fortune in reclaiming her old position, and the fact that her groom was the grandson of Malachi Gottfried, a Jewish money-lender.

What they did
not
say was that the bride wore cerulean blue to match her eyes or that the groom danced with her beneath the stars until midnight, or that they did not give a damn what the gossip rags said. Over a buffet of roasted sturgeon, fresh prawns, and very expensive champagne, old Malachi was toasted—not once, but at least half a dozen times—and mostly by the Neville family, who had been amongst the chief beneficiaries of his extraordinary wisdom.

After the sun had vanished, Lord Nash had ordered a bonfire built and a table laden with sumptuous sweets laid out. His bride Xanthia tried to ignore the trifles and cakes. Instead, she floated amongst the guests, attempting to keep her burgeoning belly obscured by her shawl, and her brother from flirting with the bride’s stepmother, a deceptively fresh-faced girl of perhaps twenty, who quite obviously had a penchant for dangerous-looking men. Lord Swinburne seemed destined to wear the cuckold’s horns in his May-December marriage.

“I have tried to distract Kieran, Gareth, but he is quite unmanageable,” Xanthia whispered to the groom as the evening drew to a close. “I shall ask him to give me his arm and escort me inside.” She turned then to Antonia and lightly kissed her cheek. “My dear, I am so glad you have given Nash and me the honor of hosting your wedding. I hope from this day forward, you will think of me as a sister, as Kieran and I think of Gareth as our brother.”

Antonia smiled and returned the kiss. She had not thought to like Lady Nash, but it was a challenge.

“Gabriel, does everyone save me call you Gareth?” she asked her husband as they strolled through the dark toward the house. “It sounds so strange to my ears.”

He was silent for a long moment, but he wrapped his arm a little tighter about her waist. “I changed my name when I arrived in Barbados,” he said. “In the West Indies, it is easy to—to reinvent oneself. To become someone else—someone stronger than you were.”

Antonia curled her arm beneath the warmth of his coat and hugged him to her. “I understand.”

As if by mutual agreement, they stopped beneath a canopy of trees and let the others proceed on in the gloom. Antonia set her head on his shoulder. “Shall I call you Gareth, then?” she asked. “Would that be better?”

He pondered it for a time. “No, I think perhaps that I am ready to be Gabriel again,” he eventually answered. “I think, Antonia, that I have found the part of me that was…lost. Or perhaps shut away is the better term? I begin to believe that with you, I can bring together the good parts of both my lives. I have begun to believe that perhaps—just
perhaps
—I can be whole again.”

Antonia did not know what to say. Gabriel had given her an inestimable gift—the gift of his strength and his wisdom. That she might have given him something in return had never occurred to her.

Gabriel looked down at her and pulled her fully against him. “Kiss me, Antonia,” he whispered. “Kiss me, and make me—for about the hundredth time today—the happiest man on earth.”

Gladly, she did so, rising onto her toes and cradling his beautiful face in her hands. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Gabriel, my angel.”