Chapter Eight
“The same people who murdered my brothers.”
She had not intended to eavesdrop. Her intention was to make a dramatic exit and leave Endymion to stew in his arrogance. The extent of his meddling where he had no business had her ready to march him to the River Tamar at gunpoint. He’d corrupted her servants and made plans for her day with not even a pretense of consulting her.
And then he’d spoken of his brothers. His uncle had taken every opportunity to inform her His Lordship, and later His Grace, had few, if any, memories of his life before London. The fever Endymion had suffered for months after he left Cornwall had supposedly burned away his memories. Lord Richard had warned her never to speak of the past as it tended to upset the poor boy. Useless advice when she had not set eyes on her husband these seventeen years.
“Are you waiting for the door to open itself?” Bea asked.
Rhiannon started. Somehow, she’d traversed the corridors and stairs and now stood before the doors to the duchess’s chambers. She tossed Bea a speaking look and marched through the duchess’s sitting room into her bedchamber.
“The same people who murdered my brothers.”
“He remembers Hector and Achilles, Bea,” Rhiannon announced as the maid set about getting her out of the silk gown. “He remembers…what happened to them.”
In the midst of unlacing the back of the gown, Bea’s hands froze. “He…remembers?”
Rhiannon went over the conversation in the drawing room carefully in her mind. Endymion did all in his power to display no emotion, even when he spoke of the loss of his brothers. A strange thing she’d never considered. All people, even the strongest of men, showed their true feelings in little things, and these things often remained the same from childhood.
“His uncle told him they were murdered.”
“Despicable man,” Bea muttered as she resumed helping Rhiannon to undress. “There is something about Lord Richard I cannot like. I never have.”
“There is a great deal about him I do not like, but now is not the time to confess those sentiments at large.” She slipped out of the gown and handed it to Bea, who hurried into the dressing room to hang it up, to be inspected for stains in the morning. By the time Bea returned to the bedchamber, Rhiannon had rid herself of her stays, petticoat, and chemise and donned her sensible thick cotton nightgown.
Bea retrieved the flannel robe from the bed and handed it to Rhiannon, who promptly put it on and tied the belt in a loose bow.
“How did the plan to dazzle them into complacency fair?” Bea asked.
“You were correct about the gown. It worked quite well. Everything did until His Grace revealed someone in this household has been carrying tales, and then he insisted on using the tales to order me about like a servant.”
“Carrying tales about?” Bea had an annoying habit of asking questions to which she already knew the answers.
Rhiannon rolled her eyes and sat before her vanity so Bea might help her take down her hair. “The accidents. The duke immediately came to the conclusion they are not accidents, at all. He believes them to be nefarious attempts on my life…by the same people who murdered his brothers.”
Not Bea’s most helpful response.
Rhiannon looked over her shoulder to study the friend who had become her maid for reasons only Beatrice truly knew. She was born a lady, unlike Rhiannon, yet she unpinned and brushed out Rhiannon’s hair with the intent efficiency of the most well-trained lady’s maid. The most well-trained lady’s maid with an entire regiment of secrets.
“Nothing I care to discuss, Your Grace. Save, I believe His Grace makes a great deal of sense.”
“There is always a first time, I suppose.”
“So, you agree? These accidents are not accidents at all?” Bea finished braiding Rhiannon’s hair into one long braid and secured it with a bright red ribbon.
“Apparently, what I think is no longer important. Josiah Thomas and Tall William have seen fit to put the matter into His Grace’s hands, as if I have not managed every situation to occur at Pendeen since my father died.” Perhaps she should be grateful for Dymi’s interest and assistance. Somewhere inside, she might well be. Overriding all of that was the galling fact his arrival had, in little over a week, usurped her role and made her feel…less. Like the girl who woke up the morning after her wedding to find herself abandoned, unnecessary. Nothing.
“Perhaps they are merely enlisting his help to keep you safe,” Bea suggested.
“I have survived the last seventeen years without his assistance, no matter what the men in my service have decided.” Rhiannon settled into her favorite chair before the fire and picked up the novel she’d left on the tapestry-worked footstool.
“I fear they have decided His Grace intends to stay. Until he has what he came for, at least,” Bea said, eyebrows raised in knowing amusement.
“He is doomed to disappointment,” Rhiannon declared and opened her book. “And now he will use his theory about these accidents as an excuse to take control of the estate and control of me.”
“Control of you?” Bea snorted. “Poor man has no idea.”
Rhiannon laughed. “No, he does not.”
“If you have all you need, I’ll bid you a good night, Your Grace,” Bea said and turned to leave.
“Bea?” Through their entire conversation, Rhiannon had pondered her next request. A dangerous request, but one she dared not put off any longer. She only hoped… It did not matter what she hoped.
Beatrice stopped, hesitated, and then turned around. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“Find a way to send your friend a message. Tell him…tell him everything I have told you. About His Grace’s suspicions, what he intends to do, and what he remembers. I would say tell him about what happened at the mines today, but I suspect he already knows.”
“No, but I want your friend to have this information. He will decide whether it makes any difference to his course or not.”
“Yes, he will.” Bea took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I will see to it.”
“I hope you know what you are doing, Your Grace.” Beatrice hurried from the room.
Rhiannon tucked her feet beneath her and dropped her book back onto the stool. “I hope so, too,” she murmured.
Was it the chill or the distinctly uncomfortable position of her head that awakened her? Rhiannon unfolded from the chair one limb at a time. A quick check of the mahogany bracket clock on the mantel revealed she’d dozed off hours ago. One minute she’d been staring into the flames of a warm fire in the hearth. The next, it was nearly three in the morning and the fire was mere embers.
She rubbed her hands together against the cold and shoveled several scoops of coal from the coal shuttle onto the glowing ashes. A few stirs of the poker and the fire burned high enough for her to warm her stiff arms and legs. If she were a better liar, she would tell herself she’d foregone her bed to read or simply to contemplate what she had to do tomorrow.
She’d fallen asleep going over Endymion’s orders and suppositions, his determination to keep his confusion and sorrow from her, at which he’d failed, and from his friend, at which he’d most likely succeeded. Her last thoughts had been of her decision to communicate with…Bea’s friend. She dared not even think his name at this point. So much was uncertain. Giving him information about her husband’s intentions might place them all in danger. Rhiannon, most of all. Not a danger to her body, but a danger to her heart.
Then she heard it. The sound she had listened for until sleep took her. The door to the duke’s bedchamber opened and closed. By the time she stumbled through her sitting room, boot-shod footsteps, accompanied by the pad of a large dog’s feet, went past the doors to her chambers and faded down the corridor toward the back of the house. Rhiannon ran back to her bedchamber. She spun around in several circles in search of her grey woolen mules. They lay next to the bed, just where Bea had placed them.
“Good heavens,” she muttered as she jammed her feet into them and ran back to crack one of the double doors leading from her sitting room into the corridor. She peered right and then left. The corridor was empty. A lamp on the marquetry hall table at one end of the Turkey carpet runners shone bright, illuminating the top of the stairs leading to the first floor. At the other end, Tall William stepped out of the shadows of the side corridor, another glowing lamp in hand. Rhiannon padded on nearly silent feet to join him.
“You told him about the ruins,” she accused.
“Yes, Your Grace.” The young footman hung his head.
“And Mr. Thomas told him about the bridle.”
“I don’t rightly know, Your Grace.”
“William Waters, don’t you lie to me.” Rhiannon crossed her arms and patted her foot silently on the floor.
His face flushed. He swallowed once, twice. “He did, Your Grace, but—”
She narrowed her eyes on his contrite expression.
“Or perhaps I should tell the upstairs maid I saw you walking out with the downstairs maid,” she said with as much solemnity as she was able to muster.
He raised his head so quickly she heard the bones in his neck crack. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. Until he saw the smile she could not suppress.
“You are a hard woman, Your Grace, and no mistake,” he said with a shake of his head.
“And you are a traitorous wretch,” she replied as she took the lamp he offered. “If you promise to shut your bone box around His Grace, you can keep your position.”
“Don’t let Mr. Thomas hear you use that language, Your Grace. He’ll say it’s not fit for the wife of a duke,” Tall William declared.
“Shut your bone box? The duke is the one who taught me that one. Where is he tonight?”
Tall William tilted his head toward the hidden door set into the wall at the end of the corridor. The green and gold oriental silk wallcovering made the wall appear of one piece. One had to know where to press to open the inset door that revealed a narrow staircase to the nursery floor. The late duke, and all the dukes before him, no doubt, had no desire to be reminded they required servants to make their life of ease possible. Servants, like children, were to be seen, not heard. Until one had a use for them. No one knew that better than the current Duke of Pendeen. His grandfather had chosen to ignore Endymion’s very existence for the first fifteen years of his life. Until he finally had no choice.
Rhiannon opened the door and made her way up the stairs, lamp in hand. She should have guessed he would visit the nursery after this evening’s conversation. Every night since his arrival, Endymion had wandered the many corridors and rooms of Gorffwys Ddraig. She’d bridled at Josiah and Tall William speaking out of turn with her husband. She had no such compunction when it came to discovering what His Grace was about every minute of the day and night. The servants had reported his nocturnal wanderings to Mrs. Davis. And she had reported them to Rhiannon.
“Someone has to look out for the poor lad.”
At the top of the stairs, a wide corridor ran the length of the entire wing of the house. This floor held the nursery, the schoolroom, chambers for a governess, tutors and nannies, and even bedchambers for the children too old for the nursery, but too young to be given a bedchamber on the second floor. The faint light from the first door to the left determined her destination.
His back to her, he stood before a large bookcase, hands clasped tightly behind him. He wore a long, black velvet robe, and she did not doubt he still wore his breeches, shirt, and waistcoat. He’d placed a lit branch of candles on the chess table before the window, a window with heavy curtains drawn against the cold. She knew, behind the curtains, the shutters had been closed, as well. Turpin had made himself comfortable on one of the three small beds in the room.
“My books are still here,” he said without turning around. “And Hector’s toy soldiers. We weren’t allowed to take them when we left.”
He did turn then, his face drawn into taut lines and angles in the lamplight. “That we were tossed out of the house when my father died? Why wouldn’t I remember? I was ten years old. We were each allowed one bag. Hector had to decide between his soldiers and Bertie.”
“Bertie the Bear,” she said softly. “A good choice for a boy of five.”
“Indeed. I loaded my bag with books, but I could not take them all.” He waved a hand at the bookcase, the top two shelves empty.
“You would have needed a trunk to take them all.” She had stopped a few steps from the door, not certain what his mood might be.
“Two trunks, I should think. There were more books in the schoolroom, although I do not know if they are still there,” he replied, a catch to his voice only she might notice.
“They are,” she assured him. “I saw to it after Papa died.”
“Ah.” He did a slow perusal of the room. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Dymi. I only saw to the return of your things to these rooms once I was given full charge of Pendeen.”
“From when we all played together. You always were the clever one. You remembered everything.” He took a step closer.
“I remembered, but Vaughn is the one who saved it all after that dreadful Mrs. Stokes ordered it taken out and burned.” Unable to stand still, Rhiannon strolled about the room. She ran her hand down the mane of Achilles’s rocking horse.
“Mrs. Stokes was…housekeeper here,” he said with a frown. “But I remember Mrs. Davis. She was here before my father died.” She watched him search his memory.
“Mrs. Davis was a maid in the house when we were children. I offered her the position of housekeeper when Mrs. Stokes and I had our final dust up.”
“Oh?” He sat down on the long leather ottoman before the fireplace. “When and why?”
She gave a short laugh and took a seat next to him on the ottoman. They’d often played this game as children. One of the four of them would have a grievance against someone. That person would name when and why the offense occurred, and the other three would pass judgement on the appropriate punishment.
“Papa would not allow me to change a thing after you and the duke decamped for London. Not a stick of furniture nor a single member of the household. Mrs. Stokes despised taking orders from Papa on behalf of ‘that common slattern who calls herself a duchess,’ but she did so in the hope His Grace would return and toss me back into the gutter where I belonged.”
Endymion’s expression turned to stone, save for the faint tic at the corner of his mouth. “Your father should have flung her from the house the moment she made her sentiments known.”
“I had Vaughn fling her from the house the morning of Papa’s funeral. When I returned from the cemetery, Tall William told me she had to be carried to the mail coach kicking and screaming. I wish I had seen it.”
She and Dymi tried to maintain some solemnity, but, in the end, surrendered to a brief but satisfying bout of laughter.
“You attended your father’s funeral,” he said when their laughter finally subsided.
“There was no one else to go. I could not send him off alone.” She had to know. He’d come to the nursery for a reason. And she did not want to talk about Papa’s death and funeral. “Dymi, how much do you truly remember? You said it was very like a puzzle. How many pieces are you missing? It is just the two of us, and unlike my talkative mines manager and footman, I can keep a secret.”
“I remember a great deal. I remembered Mrs. Stokes.” He appeared to gather his dignity and demeanor as one might take a coat and gloves from a footman on the way out the door.
“Your uncle has taken great pains on more than one occasion to assure me you remember very little of your life before London and even less of me. You fell ill the day we married, were ill for months afterward, and the fevers burned it away. All of it. According to him, the entire first fifteen years of your life is gone. Just as it should be.” This last she delivered in a mock imitation of Lord Richard’s overbearing tones.
“It appears you are not the only one surrounded by people who talk too much.”
“What he said is true?” Rhiannon was half sorrowful for the years he’d lost and half hopeful, hopeful he would not remember everything about his mother, his brothers, and the circumstances of their marriage.
From the moment she’d entered the room, he’d held himself so stiff and upright, the perfectly postured duke. As if his height and build were not commanding enough. Slowly, he leaned forward and rested his forearms atop his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. He looked across the room at the three beds, made up with quilts his mother had made. Rhiannon had visited these rooms from time to time over the last seventeen years. Each time, the weight of remembrance had weighed on her a little more. What must it be to experience all at once the good and the bad, the ghosts of a once happy childhood, cut short by banishment, poverty, and death?
“I remember next to nothing of the last year I was in Cornwall. Apparently, being in the throes of a high fever and being dosed with laudanum at every turn will do that to a man.” He looked back at her with a grim half-smile.
Rhiannon’s heart broke. “Oh, Dymi,” she said softly.
“I have not spoken my brothers’ names for seventeen years. I have done my utmost not to think of them, or Mama, or Papa or anything of Cornwall since the moment I realized I was in London and heir to the dukedom.” He shrugged. “I told His Grace and my uncle I remembered nothing because it pleased them. I was a coward. And having an entire year swept away made it easier.”
She slipped her arm through his and wrapped her hand around his biceps. As much as she could. What need did a duke have for such arms? He stilled and then reached awkwardly to cover her hand with his. The warmth of his touch seeped into her bones like sunlight.
“You weren’t a coward. You were a child. They took you away from everything and everyone you’d ever known. They told you there was nothing for you in Cornwall—no family, nothing. And they offered you everything—London, a fortune, a title, Oxford.”
His head came up sharply. “Oxford?”
“Your uncle. He made certain I knew you were far too sophisticated and educated a man to parade your ignorant country bride about the best homes in London. After all, you did take a first in Greek and another in mathematics.”
“Did you not tell him you read, write, and speak Greek far better than he does? Far better than I do, for that matter.”
“I did not see the point. I have learned over the years not to argue with Lord Richard.”
“Hmm.” He shook his head. “He was wrong about one thing.”
“Heaven forfend! What could the infallible Lord Richard ever mistake?” Rhiannon asked, every word clothed in sarcasm. His dark chuckle vibrated against her body and turned her thoughts in an altogether dangerous direction.
“You, Rhee.” He took her hand in his, raised it to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “He did tell me I had nothing in Cornwall, more than once, but he was wrong. There was always you.” His green eyes held her transfixed. Clear, unflinching, and enticing as the devil.
“Dymi, please…” She was afraid, of so many things. The more time she spent with him the more of herself she lost. Or perhaps it was simply the more of him she found. More of the boy she’d always loved. More of the young man she’d married. He was so lost, and became more so every minute he spent in Cornwall. He just didn’t know it.
“You were the one person they couldn’t erase. Your name, I might speak. Your life, I might think on without pain. My uncle presented the estate reports as his, but I recognized your hand. You held all of my memories of Cornwall. You were alive, and well, and making my uncle’s life a misery.”
“I tried my best,” she joked. Guilt swirled around her like fog on the moors. How could she tell him?
“I am not the most romantic of men, Rhee.”
“You are doing fairly well so far,” she muttered as she stared at their joined hands.
“Eavesdropping can land a lady in all sorts of trouble, Your Grace.”
“You have no idea, Your Grace.”
“Will you come, Rhee? Will you picnic with me tomorrow? Not because I ordered you to, but because you want to?” He used his free hand to tilt her head up. He touched his lips to her temple and then the corner of her mouth.