Читать книгу Regency Redemption: The Inconvenient Duchess / An Unladylike Offer - Christine Merrill, Christine Merrill - Страница 18

Marcus looked at the house in surprise. Not what he had expected. Not at all. He’d imagined a quiet cottage where two ladies might spend their years in modesty, waiting for an improvement in position. Genteel poverty.

There was nothing genteel about his new wife’s old home. It was poverty, pure and simple. Smaller than the homes of his tenants and packed cheek by jowl between other similar houses. He strode to the door and knocked.

The woman who answered dropped a curtsy, but looked at him with undisguised suspicion. ‘Lost your way, milord?’

‘Lady Cecily Dawson?’

She glared back at him. ‘The “Lady” is long retired from her profession, and you’d best seek your amusements elsewhere.’

‘If I could see her, please.’

‘Come to get a look at her after all these years? What are you, then? The son of one of her clients, come to be initiated? A bit old for that, aren’t you?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘You take my meaning plain enough. Get yourself off, in every sense of the word. The lady will be no help to you.’

He got his foot in the door in time to halt the slam, and pushed roughly past her, into the tiny room. ‘Close the door. The questions I have to ask are better handled away from prying eyes.’ He tossed his purse on the table and watched her eyes light as it made a satisfying clink. ‘I require information. The money’s yours if you can provide it.’

She dropped another curtsy, this one not tinged with irony. ‘At your service, milord.’

‘I want the whereabouts of Lady Cecily Dawson, and any information you can provide about her ward, Lady Miranda Grey.’

The colour drained out of the woman before him. And she clutched the table edge. ‘Why would you be wanting that?’

‘To satisfy my mind in certain details of Miss Grey’s life before her recent marriage.’

‘She’s done it, then?’ The avarice in the old woman’s eyes changed to a glint of hope. ‘She’s safely married.’

‘Yes.’

The woman pushed on. ‘And her husband. What is he like?’

‘He is a very powerful man, and impatient for information. Provide it, and keep the gold on the table—delay any longer and things will go bad for you.’

A man’s voice rose from the curtained corner of the room behind him. ‘That’s enough, Cici. I’ll talk to the gentleman.’ The last word was said with a touch of scorn. The man that appeared from behind the curtain was in his mid-fifties, but hard work had left him much older. He walked with a cane, and the hands that held it were gnarled and knotted, the knuckles misshapen. He glared at the duke as though this were the reception room of a great house, and not a hovel, and said in a firm tone, ‘And whom do I have the honour of addressing, sir?’

‘Someone who wishes to remain anonymous.’

‘As do we. But you are the one who forced his way into my home, and you can take your gold and go, or introduce yourself properly. You have my word that your identity will go no further than these walls.’

‘Your word? And what is that worth to me?’

‘It is all I have to offer, so it will have to do.’

‘Very well, I am Marcus Radwell, Duke of Haughleigh.’ He heard a sharp gasp escape the lady behind him. ‘And you, sir?’

‘I, your Grace, am Sir Anthony Grey, father of the young lady you are enquiring after.’

Marcus resisted the temptation to grab the corner of the table for support. Just what had he wandered into this time? ‘Her father? I was led to believe—’

‘That she was an orphan? It could well have been the case. Indeed, it would have been better had it been true.’ He looked at the duke in curiosity. ‘Tell me, Your Grace, before we go further—are you my daughter’s husband?’

‘Yes.’ The word came out as a croak, and he cleared his throat to master his voice before speaking again.

‘And you have come to London, seeking the truth.’

‘I left on our wedding night.’ He coughed again. Facing the girl’s father, even under these circumstances, it was a damned difficult subject. ‘Before an annulment became impossible.’

‘And where is my daughter, now?’

‘Safely in Devon. At my home.’

‘And your decision about her depends on the results of your search here?’

‘And on her wishes. I have no desire to force marriage on her, if she is unwilling.’

Her father set his face in resolve. ‘Do not trouble yourself as regards her wishes, your Grace. Delicate sensibilities can be saved for those women that can afford them. My health is failing and I can no longer pretend to support the three of us. Her choices here are a place in service in a great house, or walking the street. If you still wish to have her, after today, she will choose you and be grateful.’

‘Proceed then, Sir Anthony.’

The man barked a laugh at the title. ‘How curious to be addressed so, after all this time. Very well, then. My story.

‘Once, some thirteen years past, I was a happy man, with a beautiful wife, a daughter who was a joy to me and expectations of a son to carry on my name. Unfortunately, my wife died, giving birth to our second child, and the child died as well. The grief quite unhinged me. Your Grace, are you, as Cici remembered, a widower for similar reasons?’

Marcus gave a faint nod.

‘Then you can understand the grief and disappointment, and perhaps sympathise with the depths to which I sunk. I turned from the daughter I loved, and, in the space of a few years, I destroyed her inheritance and my own, gambling away the land, drinking until late in the evening. When I ran out of money, I borrowed from friends. I depleted all resources available to me, and hoped to blow my brains out and avoid the consequences of my actions. When I was loading the gun to end my life, my daughter came into the room, still so innocent, and pleaded with me to spend just a few moments with her as I used to. One look into those eyes changed my course and hardened my resolve to find a way out of my difficulties.

‘Alas, there was no honourable course available. The creditors were at my door. So I decamped—’ he gestured around him ‘—to a place so low that my friends and creditors would never think to look for me. It must be better, I thought, to find honest work and keep what little I earned than to face debtors’ prison in London. And if I went to prison, what would happen to my Miranda?

‘There was a factory here with an opening for a clerk. It was less than we were used to, but if we lived simply we could manage. I spent my days in the office, totting up figures and copying, and things were well for a time.’ Sir Anthony waved a clawed hand before his face. ‘But it was not too long before my eyes would no longer focus on the small print, and then even the big print became hard to decipher. And my hand cramped on the pen. The owner had an opening in the factory proper, running a loom. It was not so much money, of course. But it was not a difficult job to learn and when the last of our savings ran out and there was nothing left worth selling, I was not too proud to take my place with the other workers. If people in these parts had any suspicions about the strangers in their midst, time set their minds at rest. Cici and Miranda did what was necessary to help keep us afloat, taking in washing and mending, and hiring themselves out to the great houses in the area when they needed extra help. And thus, slowly, my daughter forgot the world she was born to.’

‘And now that she is neither fish nor fowl, you think she should marry a duke?’ Marcus stared in disbelief at the man before him.

Sir Anthony’s mouth tightened. ‘Yes, I do. I can no longer work.’ He held out his twisted hands in evidence. ‘I am useless, too clumsy to run even the simplest machine. Unless we can find another means of support, it’s the poorhouse for us all. Do you understand what it means to watch your daughter forced to wait upon people who would be her inferiors, had I but kept a cool and sober head some years back? To sit idle and watch my only child forced into service to expiate my sins?’

And it grew still worse. Marcus listened in horror as Sir Anthony explained. ‘Recently, Miranda had grown popular at a certain house—her occasional position serving there was to be made permanent. Humiliating, perhaps, if I’d had any pride left. But then it became clear to me that the lord wished to offer her a position above stairs that had nothing to do with service. Miranda is a bright girl, and she loves us too well. It was only a matter of time, your Grace, before she realised that she was the solution to all our problems and agreed. I needed to get her away and safely married before a local lord took what he wanted and I completed my daughter’s ruin by sacrificing her honour to put bread on the table. It was Cici’s idea to try to find her a husband that suited her station in life. Someone who seldom visited London, and was unaware of the scandal attached to our name.’

‘But why me?’ There must be something, a sign on his face perhaps, that labelled him easily gulled.

The woman spoke. ‘Your mother owed me for a wrong, done long before you were born. I called in the debt.’

‘I read your letters. You threatened her with exposure. Exposure of what?’

‘There was little threat, really, other than the weight of her own guilt. And perhaps the embarrassment of having known me. But she responded to the letters I sent and I took advantage of the fact.’

‘She was dying.’

Lady Cecily looked coldly into his eyes. ‘I know. And I can’t say that I cared, other than that it left me little time to form my plan. I am sorry to be so blunt. But your mother, as I knew her, was a hard woman, and jealous. If she wished to repent before death, she had much to repent for.’

He nodded. ‘Please explain.’

‘We knew each other first as children. We went to school together and shared a room. We were best friends as girls and both as sweet and beautiful as one could hope. When I was fourteen, my father died. He left sufficient funds to see me through school, and provide a modest Season when I came of age, and left my guardianship to an aged aunt who knew little of what happened while I was away.’

Her mouth twisted in a bitter line. ‘There was a trustee there who took, shall we say, a personal interest in my case. He took every opportunity to remind me that my funds were limited, and my position at the school in jeopardy. Finally, he persuaded me to meet him one night in an office. To go over the details of my father’s will. How was I to know what he intended? I was only a girl.’ There was anguish in her voice and Marcus felt the man next to him tighten protectively.

‘I returned to my room afterward crying and shaking and your mother helped me clean away the blood and swore she would tell no one what had happened. And she kept the secret for me because I begged her to, even though the man continued to use me on and off for the rest of the term. I escaped to my aunt’s home after that, and saw nothing of your mother until the year we had our Season.

‘She was a great beauty, as was I.’ Cecily smiled as she remembered. ‘I’d put the difficulties at school far behind me and hoped to make a match with an understanding man who would not question the lack of blood on the sheet. I had several fine prospects, including my dear Anthony, and …’ she looked appraisingly at Marcus ‘… your own father. Many of the same men who hovered about your mother, in fact. We had been friends at school, but we were rivals now. When it looked like your father might be ready to offer for me, when it looked like she might lose, your mother let my secret slip out, and then spread it enthusiastically about the ton. Suddenly I was not a poor, abused girl, but a young seductress. And the offers I received?’ She laughed. ‘Well, they were not offers of marriage. Eventually, I accepted one. And when he tired of me, I found another. And that is when I was known as “Lady Cecily”. And why I responded as I did when you came to the door. Anthony was the last of the men that kept me, and I loved him from the time before my fall from honour. When he became too poor to keep me?’ She shrugged. ‘I kept him. And he ran through all I had saved before I could persuade him to take his daughter, abandon his honour and run.’

‘And you sought to ruin me, as my mother ruined you?’

‘No, your Grace. I swear we meant you no harm. I only sought to find the best possible home for Miranda. And I do you no disservice in sending you a wife. She is not so great as the ladies you might choose, but she has had no opportunity to be a lady since she was ten, and no mother to guide her. Had the past been different, she would be every bit as fine as the woman you would select for yourself.’