Chapter Three
Given the excitement of the evening and the unusual turn of events that had occurred, supper was served on trays as everyone retreated to their rooms. For Marcus, he had retreated to the study where his father waited for him.
The old man was stooped in his chair and aged far more than a mere eight years ought to have wrought upon him. Haggard, weak and rail thin, he looked to be near death and a far cry from the vigorous man Marcus had quarreled so heatedly with.
“You’ve come back,” the old man said, his voice low and quavering. His lips did not move as much as they ought to have and the words were garbled, though still audible.
“It was not my wish to stay away so long. I had not intended to be captured,” Marcus said, striving for a lighter tone. There were elements to his long disappearance that could not yet be revealed. There was too much at stake.
Marcus took a moment and studied the old man, noting every change in his appearance. It hurt him to see his father so. It was a stark depiction of the fragility and finite nature of life. It was also a stinging reminder that he did not have long to try and make things right, or as right as they might ever be.
“Your willfulness did this,” the old man mumbled. “You left, and I had to try to save face… we were barely keeping the creditors at bay. And then this… my own body betrayed me. You’ll make it right!”
Marcus didn’t protest. “If Miss Barrett agrees, I will honor the arrangement between our families. If she does not, I will not force her.”
“Bah! You will do as you are told,” he snapped and banged his fist against the wooden arm of his wheeled chair. “Finally! Why you can’t be as obedient and eager to save this family and our good name as your cousin, Charles, I will never understand!”
Some things had not changed at all while he had been gone it seemed. His father’s temperament was as ill as ever and his tyrannical demands remained the same. The same tired and repetitive comparisons to his worthless cousin continued. If only they knew, Marcus thought. The urge to blurt out the truth, that Charles had betrayed him for his own selfish ends was there, but it was too damaging.
He would not utter something that could ultimately hurt the future of the Elsingham estates. Marcus could not afford to have the same hotheaded response to those things that he once did. There was no driving need to test the boundaries or have his father concede defeat. He was no longer desperate for the old man’s approval and attention. Prison had taught him many things, and one of them was to choose his battles well. Fighting the old man would only end poorly. And as they were both in agreement on his course of action, it was easy enough to yield to some degree. “Yes. I will. Not because you demand it of me but because I committed myself to do so years earlier and now her age is no longer an impediment.”
“And if she’s unwilling? What then? We can’t repay the debt!” The old man snapped the words out with ferocity that was not at all impeded by his drawn mouth. “You’re as worthless as you ever were to me!”
Marcus let the hurt wash through him, settling deep. But on the surface, at least, he remained calm. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that does not happen, short of violating my own ethics.”
“We can’t afford your ethics! Your damned stepmother is going to break me… one new gown after another even when she’s been told no. And now you’re back and she’ll want more new gowns as the mourning rags won’t do! It would have been better if you had stayed gone and I’d had you declared dead in the House of Lords!”
It was not unexpected. He’d harbored no great illusions that his father would be overjoyed at his return. But he’d thought, or hoped at the very least, that there might be some relief. It had been a foolish hope it would seem. “I see. I’m glad to see that you’re so overjoyed and happy at my safe return, Father. It means the world to me.”
“I’m happy that the contract will be honored and that we can live as we were meant to all along instead of pinching every pence like a shopkeeper!” his father groused. “If you were a good son, you’d never have gone at all!”
Marcus rose. “And if you’d been a better father, I wouldn’t have had to. We all have things to regret in this. I won’t add more to it. Good evening, sir. I shall retire, assuming that there is a room for me here.”
“It’ll be yours one day whether I like it or not,” the duke said with a shrug that lifted only his right shoulder, the left remaining paralyzed at his side. “I’ll not raise a scandal by having you tossed out into the cold now.”
“At least your priorities are in order then,” Marcus said and rose to his feet. “By all means, let’s avoid a scandal.”
Exiting the library, he climbed the stairs and headed in the direction of his old suite. The maids were airing it out, having made the bed up with fresh linens. Water for washing was being kept warm for him on the hearth and a supper tray had been laid on a table nearby. As he entered the chamber, two maids were there.
“You may go,” he said. He wanted to be alone with his own thoughts and even the presence of servants was too much.
“Should we turn down your bed, my lord?”
“I can manage. It’s fine.” He gestured toward the door and the two maids rushed out giggling and whispering under their breaths.
Alone once more, he removed his coat and jerked at the knots of his neckcloth. After so long in the rags that were all that remained of his uniform and then the simple clothing he’d procured for the journey home, the trappings of his old life felt stifling in so many ways.
In prison, working like any common laborer, back-breaking hours hauling rock and dirt with the hot sun beating down on him, all he’d thought about was returning home. His survival had been fueled by only two things, revenge and reclaiming what was his. He would make Charles pay for his part in sending him to that hellhole. But it had been the idea of retreating once more into the isolated luxury of the upper classes that allowed him to cling to hope in those early days. The idea of sleeping in soft beds draped with clean linens, of eating rich foods and washing them down with only the best of wines had become more and more distant until those things seemed more fantasy than memory.
“I do not belong here anymore,” he whispered aloud to the empty room. But if not there, where? He was not a common laborer though his hands would belie that at present. But he wasn’t the same spoiled aristocrat he’d once been. He was lost in some netherworld between the two. Somehow, he’d have to make that work, to carve out a place for himself in a world that now seemed rather useless and silly and amongst people who seemed the same. Regardless of what his fate might hold, he would not allow Charles to claim the dukedom.
Miss Barrett was an intriguing aberration though. And she had a secret. He would find out what it was. He would also find out what Charles was up to. His cousin had never been the trustworthy sort and his proposal to Miss Barrett smacked of desperation. While Marcus found her wholly appealing, she was not the sort of woman that Charles typically gravitated to. She didn’t simper and flirt. She was too smart, too inquisitive, and too much of a handful for him.
Lifting the cover from his supper tray, Marcus took in the assortment of food, the freshly baked bread and then examined the bottle of wine sent to accompany it. There were pleasant aspects of his return, regardless of his less than warm welcome by all parties involved.
*
In her chamber, Jane sat at her desk with her supper tray untouched before the fireplace. How could she eat at such a time? Her entire future was hanging in the balance, and she still had a deadline to meet.
Withdrawing a blank sheet of foolscap from her writing desk, she decided that the very least she could do was to announce her betrothed’s return in her latest pamphlet. The news would be well received by many and it was just the kind of story that her readers wanted—the contentious homecoming, the less than willing bride. She would use her own life in those short booklets for a change instead of simply relaying gossip about everyone else’s.
Althorn’s return would be the scandal of scandals. Everyone would talk about it and everyone, from the highest to the low, would be fascinated by it. And if she were to include in the column that there were questions as to whether or not he was truly who he claimed to be, it would buy her the necessary time. She didn’t trust his offer of six months. She didn’t really trust anyone. If what he’d said tonight about her father was true, her lack of trust in men was well founded.
Her maid entered and took one look at her ink-stained hands and sighed heavily. “Where are your writing gloves, miss?”
“They’re not writing gloves. They’re more akin to never write again gloves. I’ve tried… it’s all just illegible scratching when I wear them. We’ll just scrub extra hard in the morning to get rid of all the ink stains.”
“Miss, there’s only so much I can do,” the maid said.
“Sarah,” she began, having eschewed the tradition of calling one’s lady’s maid by their last name. As the girl worked in the kitchens when they were back home at Oakhaven, it only complicated matters to change the rules midstream. It was only when they came to town that her father, to keep up appearances, assigned her such duties. “If I can get this column written and to the printer by tomorrow, I can have the story of his return out to the public in greater detail than any of the news sheets. That means I will sell more copies and can request a higher wage! And when I leave Oakhaven, you can come with me. I’ll have enough money to hire you on as my housekeeper. It won’t be grand, but you won’t have to work yourself to the bone like you do for Father and Mrs. Barrett.”
“I suppose you can wear gloves when with company tomorrow,” the maid said softly.
Jane glowered at her. “If you’re only here to scold, then you can leave!”
“He was very handsome,” the maid said quietly as she began tidying up the room. “Very handsome. I couldn’t help but notice that when I brought your pelisse earlier.”
“He’s handsome… and arrogant, high-handed, rude, demanding, utterly conceited and full of himself,” Jane said, continuing to write. The man was as insufferable as he’d ever been, but she was far less inclined to tolerate it in her current state.
“You gathered all that in the short conversation you had in the garden, did you?” Sarah asked with her tongue in cheek.
Jane looked up and gave the maid a warning glare. “No, I reaffirmed that opinion, formed all those years ago during our short conversation in the garden. He is as he always was. But I am not.”
“That’s not what the servants say. They’ve all remarked on just how different he is.”
Jane put her quill down. “If you had gossip you should have told me that first! It might change the entire tone of what I’m working on. It is really him, isn’t it?”
Sarah looked at her in shock. “Well, no one said it wasn’t, miss.”
“Drat! Of course they’re all certain it’s him. Why would they question it when he will likely be the one who pays their wages later on?” Jane murmured under her breath. Never mind that he looked every inch the part and had the same mannerisms. Never mind that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for every slight alteration to his appearance that could be attributed easily to the passage of time and the endurance of hardship. She was grasping at straws and she knew it.
“What was that, miss?” Sarah asked, eyeing her worriedly.
“How is it that he’s changed according to them?” Jane replied, not acknowledging or explaining her previous statement.
“The under butler was assigned to be his valet, but he declined. He said he could manage to dress without aid. And he does everything for himself. He turned down his own bed, dismissing the maids before they could!”
“That’s hardly noteworthy.” Jane couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice. She’d hoped for something more significant to support her claims.
“For a gentleman, an aristocrat no less, to decline a valet? I wonder if he was injured and is trying to conceal his scars?” Sarah mused. She uttered the questions with wistful dreaminess. “He must have been so brave.”
“Perhaps it isn’t the presence of a scar… it could be the absence? If he’s not Althorn, but an imposter, then he wouldn’t have the same marks on his body. A valet, or a servant who had been with the family for so long would know that! Maybe he really isn’t Althorn? But how to prove it?” Jane was muttering to herself, spinning plots as if she wrote gothic novels instead of gossip rags.
Sarah shook her head. “There would be no way to prove it. But if you could make other people doubt it, then perhaps he would have to prove it himself. Are you certain you wish to do this, miss? I think it might not go well for you if you do. Your father will be furious. Your stepmother will be more unpleasant than usual. And, well, it isn’t my place to say it, but are you certain marriage to such a man would be so bad?”
“So bad? It would. Of course, it would! I don’t want to be married. I want to be free!” Jane insisted. Freedom for women was, of course, a relative thing. She’d never be truly free but she might have the liberty of at least making her own choices in some aspects of her life.
“But he said you could call off the wedding! Isn’t it a bit dishonest to sabotage him so?”
It was, but Jane was desperate. “I’ll do whatever is necessary. I’m not letting any man dictate my life ever again. Father has done enough. I won’t trade one jailer for another!”
Sarah sighed heavily as she stepped behind Jane and began taking the pins from her hair. “Yes, miss. I only hope you don’t come to regret it. There’s something to be said for having the love of a man in your life.”
Jane looked down at the words on the page. “Love has no part in this particular play, Sarah. It’s all about money and has been from the start. I’d rather be alone than with someone who required compensation to be with me.”
The opinionated maid had no response to that. She worked in silence, brushing and then braiding Jane’s hair before saying goodnight.
Alone, Jane returned to her writing. She was sealing her fate in essence, creating a rumor that he was not truly the Missing Marquess as the scandal sheets had dubbed him. It was life or death, she reasoned. To her mind, being trapped in a miserable and loveless union with a man who would attempt to rule her every thought and action was a kind of death. The slow loss of one’s self to another was something she never wanted to experience it. Her mother, in the few memories that remained of her, had been a ghost of a woman. Bullied and downtrodden, browbeaten by her husband so often that she barely uttered a whimper of protest at anything—Jane would not let her own fate mirror her mother’s.
*
Charles entered his suite of rooms and, still in a fit of temper, slammed the door behind him with such force it rattled the windows. It reverberated so fiercely that empty wine bottles toppled from the table and tumbled to the thinly carpeted floor. He was living in poverty, subsisting on table scraps. After all that he’d done to ensure his future, he was still living on the fringes of the world that should have been his.
He’d stopped at a hell on the way home, lost more markers that he lacked the funds to cover and consumed copious amounts of brandy that he could not pay for. No doubt, there would be a stern talking to from his uncle in the near future. How dare that little cow dismiss his offer as if it had no merit?
The woman on the bed was draped in silk woven so finely it was transparent. She rolled to her side, propped her head on one hand and allowed the other one to rest on her hip, highlighting the exaggerated curve of her waist. “What a tear you’re in!”
“That pie-faced cow turned me down,” he all but shouted as he paced the room. “Stated quite firmly that she had no desire to be married to me regardless of my cousin’s fate and that nothing I could say or do would sway her.”
The woman smiled at him and patted the bed. “Come sit here with me, darling. She’s not even a woman… upon my word, she was born a dried up old spinster! I still can’t believe you offered for her! We discussed this!”
“What has that got to do with anything?” he snapped, even as he settled onto the edge of the bed. She rose on her knees behind him. Her hands moved to his neck, massaging the knotted muscles there with a precision that had his eyes closing and his lips parted on a groan before she even replied. “I’ve no choice in the matter… the money lenders are breathing down my neck and your blasted husband keeps the purse strings tied up so tightly I’m lucky to see a guinea!”
Cassandra, the Duchess of Elsingham, pouted at her lover and her nephew-by-marriage. “I know he’s a tight-fisted miser… but we have bigger issues to deal with.”
“I should have seduced her,” he said. “If I’d ruined her entirely, then she’d have no choice but to marry me, would she? Course, I’d have had to drink a gallon of brandy beforehand. Plainest chit I’ve ever seen!”
“That plain chit’s father was willing to settle a hundred thousand pounds on the occasion of her marriage with additional funds to follow with the birth of each child,” she reminded him gently. “I daresay that even if her face wilted your manhood, those banknotes would rally it quickly enough.”
“How on earth am I supposed to seduce her, my love? When all I can think of is you… no other woman could compare,” he said quietly.
“But we cannot live on love,” she whispered, soothing the sting of the reply with a soft nip at his earlobe. “And now, we won’t have to.”
“I don’t understand,” Charles muttered. “Did he die? Did the old bastard cock up his toes? I’ll petition the House tomorrow to have my cousin declared dead!”
She laughed. “No, my darling. Your uncle, the duke, is still very much alive… but he won’t be for long. As for your not having to marry Jane Barrett, the pie-faced cow… someone else will marry her for you. Marcus has returned.”
Panic hit him, socking him squarely in the gut and making it difficult to even draw breath. That couldn’t have happened. It wasn’t possible.
“Think of the life we’ll have once they’re both gone! We’ll live in the lap of luxury with all of her lovely money. The finest parties, every sensual delight known to man at our fingertips. He’ll bring her to heel, add her little fortune to the family coffers, and then they shall both meet with a rather tragic and unfortunate demise.”
“God, but I love you,” he said. Her wickedness, concealed by her pretty face and her often mindless rambling, was the truth of her and that was the part that he savored, that was reserved solely for him.
She made a face. “It’ll be such a tragedy when they meet their untimely ends… reunited at last, and then taken from this world far too soon. We have to give them enough time to consummate the marriage, but not so much that there might be an heir.”
He clasped her hands and brought them to his lips. “I will shower you with jewels. You’ll never want for anything… and you’ll never again be obliged to let any man touch you but me.”
“You’ve worked so hard for this, my darling… when I think of the danger you faced at Corunna and what might have happened if you’d been caught! The dukedom will be yours… no matter the cost,” she said softly. And she would be his duchess.
“It’ll be a scandal when we marry,” he said.
“If there is one thing I’ve learned, my darling, society loves a scandal. We’ll be celebrated as the greatest of romances by them before the ink has even dried on the register. People already feel sorry for me because I’m married to such an old, ugly and impotent man. Little do they know, my maid’s herbs are the cause of his impotence,” she said with a laugh.
“Then keep her herbs well away from me,” he said, pushing her back onto the bed. “How did you get away tonight?”
“The same way I always do,” she said. “I gave him a little extra laudanum and then took the carriage. No one dares question me… you know that.”
He dipped his head and sucked lightly at the skin of her breast, just above her nipple. Only when he’d left a slight mark there, did he draw back. He pressed his fingertips to the mark, tracing it softly. “And do you explain such things to your helpful maid? Does she wonder at giving your husband a potion to make him impotent when she sees my marks upon your perfect skin?”
Cassandra reached for his cravat, untying the knot with skilled fingers. “She dares not. I’d have her tossed out without a reference and she knows it well enough. Trust me, my love, all will work in our favor or feel the consequences of crossing us!”
As excited by her viciousness as her beauty, Charles was done with talking.