Authors: Pamela Britton
Scandal (18 page)
The directions Rein had written down were not hard to follow. She and her grandfather had lit a lantern when they’d gotten off the main thoroughfares so they could better see the scrap of paper he’d written his map upon. Fortunately, they’d been less than two hours away from their destination. Fortunately because Anna felt ready to pull her hair out by the time they arrived, her grandfather undoubtedly able to drive King George batty with his constant ramblings about the French and militia and foot soldiers and the like.
So as they passed the final landmark Rein had described on his map, she felt a surge of relief—well, as much relief as she could feel given the circumstances. The cart clattered down an overgrown road with tall trees on either side, their outline more black than the star-studded sky above.
“Where the blazes are you going?” her grandfather asked, obviously realizing they’d left the main road.
“I wish I knew,” she murmured. A cottage, he’d said. An abandoned cottage. She’d asked him how he knew it was still abandoned, but his cryptic reply had been no help. He simply knew it was.
“You do not know? Those bloody Frogs are at our heels and you don’t know?”
“’Tis a hideaway, Grandfather. We’ll be safe there.”
At least she hoped so. But in case they’d been followed, Anna had taken every precaution. She’d extinguished the lantern whenever possible, pulled off the road a few times to listen. She’d even changed directions once as if heading back to London, for which her grandfather had called her mad.
“Mad, I say,” he’d yelled.
She’d laughed. At this point, there was nothing left to do but laugh.
“A hideaway? Excellent. Excellent,” he murmured now.
The trees around them opened up, gray stone barely visible through a river of darkness. A small cottage, judging by the shape of it. Of course, it was hard to see this close to midnight.
She pulled to a stop. The poor horse they’d driven lowered its head. Anna gave it a pat and a scratch in thanks, her hands smelling of horse as she turned to face her new lodgings.
Up close, it appeared to be an abandoned farmhouse of sorts. Cozy, she would call it, but more spacious than the rooms they occupied back in St. Giles.
“Come, Grandfather,” she said, as she helped him down, then grabbed the lantern she’d lit. Taking a deep breath, she approached the front door. A name hung above the entrance, final proof that she’d found her way even in the dead of night.
Rosewood Cottage.
The name Rein had given her.
In the end she needn’t have worried about the place having a tenant. She suspected the roof had holes in it, a suspicion that was confirmed when she woke early the next morning to see pin-point beams of sunlight dotting the earthen floor and illuminating broken and abandoned furniture and a tiny hearth she’d started a fire in last night. Her grandfather lay next to her, snoring, the sails she’d unloaded last night acting as both bed and covers. And though they’d only been hoisted once, the smell of the Thames clung to them. The sweet scent of cut grass and open spaces mingled with the river scent, giving her peace for a moment before she shook her head and reminded herself that her world was far from at peace.
So she kept herself busy. That would be her routine for the next few days: rise in the morning, prepare a meal, set the house to rights—well, as much as she could—fix a midday meal, then a supper, only to repeat the process all over again. And wait. And worry. Worry a lot. And walk. Walking helped to soothe the edge of her anxiety for there could be no communications between her and Rein—they both feared whoever might be after him would find her that way.
The week was nearly up when she discovered the house, although
house
seemed far too ludicrous a word to use to describe it. Estate. Fortress. Castle, though the last not in the strictest sense of the word. There were no turrets or parapets, but there didn’t need to be, not when the center portion rose two stories above the left and right sides, a gilded brass dome sitting square in the middle, the thing glowing with a green patina nearly the same color as Rein’s eyes.
It was an estate, one sitting in the midst of a treeless park that stretched far and wide—like the fields near Dover where they grew hay. Hedges shaped into long, rectangular squares stretched out from the front of the home, one after another, like dominoes that lay on their sides, each one with a fountain in the center that was surrounded by red roses.
Magnificent. Palatial.
Old.
And as she stared, a suspicion began to take form. She turned back the direction she’d come, for she had a vantage point from where she stood upon a small knoll, one that allowed her to visualize roughly how far away Rosewood Cottage was from the estate. There was a wood in between, and a pasture or two, but still…
I breed roses.
The words came back to her.
She turned and set off down the hill, eyes squinting beneath the brim of her straw hat as she kept her gaze fixed upon the mansion.
It might be a coincidence, she told herself. The name of the cottage; Rein breeding roses. For surely if Rein were in some way attached to wealth and prestige and a heritage such as this, he would have told her.
What if he hadn’t?
She narrowed her eyes, unsure what she intended to do, but determined to discover what she could.
“Lookin’ for work?” a kitchen maid with a gray apron and black dress asked after opening the door to the servants’ entrance. Anna’d had to ask three groundskeepers where to find the thing, the number of staff working at the residence seeming to be infinite, the building towering over her now that she stood next to it. The bloody thing was almost as long as the block she lived on, and Anna felt like a tiny bug swallowed by a large shadow.
“I am,” she lied. “But first I should like to know where I am.”
The maid looked shocked that Anna didn’t know.
“I’m new to the county,” Anna lied again. “I was told by someone in town to come to the grand house to look for work.” She splayed her arms, gave her a friendly smile. “But I confess to not knowing whose grand house this is.”
The suspicious look faded a bit. “’Tis Wroxly Park, mum,” the girl said. “And I don’t know how you could arrive in Wroxlyshire and not know it.”
Wroxly. Why did that name sound so familiar?
And then she stiffened.
Who owns the ship?
she’d asked Rein.
The duke of Wroxly.
“Good lord,” Anna said.
“Aye,” the maid said proudly, strands of her black hair dancing around her face as she lifted her chin. “’Tis a ducal estate you’ve come to. Course, the old duke passed on a few weeks back.”
The old duke had passed on.
Passed on?
The new duke ain’t even been on board yet…
No. She refused to believe it. But her pounding heart belied the words. “The new duke,” Anna asked, her heart beginning to beat so hard her limbs shook, too. “Might you know his name?”
“Only the family name, mum. Montgomery, it is.”
Anna felt her shoulders slump. Montgomery. Not Drummond. But still…
“I thought the Wroxly dukes were connected to the Drummond family,” Anna said.
“Drummond? Ain’t never heard that name afore.”
And yet Anna’s mind refused to let it rest. Might Rein have lied? Might his last name not be Drummond? It was possible.
“Well, now. If you’re looking for work, you’d best speak with Mrs. Powell.”
“My thanks,” Anna said as she was led into the kitchen, past the pantries—dried goods on the left, fresh vegetables on the right—and toward a room that contained what Anna took to be the supper table for the staff.
“I wonder,” Anna asked the maid as she turned to leave, “do you happen to know the new duke’s first name?”
Anna held her breath as she waited for the woman’s response. But all she got was a shrug. “Not my place to know.” She bobbed her head, saying, “I’ll go fetch Mrs. Powell.”
Anna turned away. Like as not she was chasing silk clouds. The cottage’s proximity to the estate might be a coincidence. Rein couldn’t be connected to this grand family—the Montgomerys. That would be too far-fetched to be believed. Even she’d heard of them before, their name entwined with history.
“Lookin’ for work?” a stern voice asked.
Anna spun toward the door. A tall, gaunt-faced woman with eyebrows that arched like a frightened cat and a face nearly as sharp as a feline’s stared back at her, her black hair drawn atop her head in a knot that looked so tight Anna thought it might hurt.
“I…” she forced her mind to work, forced it to think logically. “I am,” she said, though she knew in an instant this woman would not welcome questions about the family she worked for.
“We are in need of a house maid. Pays fourteen shillings a year. Are you interested?”
Anna could only nod, uncertain how she’d ended up not only in the bloody house, but in an interview to work for the duke of Wroxly, by the looks of things.
“Have you references?”
“I… do.”
The woman held out a hand that looked stark white against the black cuff of her dress.
Anna wasn’t quite sure what to do. She patted the pockets sewn into her pelisse in a vague way, and when they came up empty (and of course they would), she made a great show of saying, “My references,” in a plaintive voice. “They must have fallen out.”
The housekeeper’s eyes narrowed. “Have they?” she asked.
Anna forged on. “On the way over, I suppose.”
“Well, then, my dear, when you find them, perhaps you might return with them.”
She turned toward the door, stopped, then turned back, motioning with her hand that Anna should leave.
Anna didn’t move. The brows arched higher, the woman obviously not fooled a whit by her.
“I…” Oh, bother, why not? “I’m not really here for work,” Anna admitted.
The woman’s eyes swept her up and down, taking in her white pelisse, the tan hat—the same hat she wore to market—all of it before meeting her gaze again. One brow dropped, but the other remained up in question.
“I’m a market maid from London trying to discover some truths about a man.”
That very same day—indeed, at almost the very same hour—Rein stood before his uncle’s solicitor, furious beyond belief that he’d spent his precious last coins to ride in and see him, only to have the man flatly refuse to cancel the challenge.
“Surely you understand the seriousness of the situation.”
“I understand nothing but that you wish to be released from the challenge, something the will does not allow you to do.”
“My life is in danger, sir. Surely that changes things.”
“So you claim,” the man said, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose like a bird about to take flight. “But I see no proof of this, sir.”
“I have a wound in my arm.”
“The injury to your arm might have been self- inflicted—”
“Self-inflicted!” Rein shot up from his chair, pain slicing through his injured arm for his efforts. With his good hand he slapped the desk in front of him with so much force, papers fell off the edge. “Someone is trying to kill me, sir. I may have no evidence, but I have no reason to lie.”
“On the contrary, you have every reason to lie. Likely you are at the end of whatever funds you managed to raise from the sale of your clothes and your boots. You might be facing a week of starvation, of begging on the streets without my help.”
“I have lodgings,” Rein gritted out.
“So I have heard from Mr. Stills, but a roof over your head does not help a burning in your belly.”
Rein leaned even closer. To his credit the man didn’t move. “You think I have fabricated this tale so that I can escape the last days of my challenge?”
“I do.”
“You’re mad.”
“No. I am in charge of your uncle’s will and I mean to see it through to the end. Indeed, I have helped you quite enough. There was no reason to let you use the duke’s yacht, but I allowed it.”
“
My
yacht,” Rein growled.
“Not at present. However, I regretted allowing you to do so almost the moment I agreed. Why, you might have pilfered something from the ship to sell. Perhaps asked someone to take a shot at you so you could pretend to be in fear of your life.
“Pretend—” Rein straightened, words failing him for a moment. “I have a hole in my arm, one I should like you to see.”
“I have no interest in seeing your injury, most especially when it could have been gotten at any place and any time.”
“Why, you—” His neck muscles hurt he had to work so hard to control his rage. Daft fool. And people called
him
slow.
“Very well. You leave me no choice but to challenge the will in a court of law.”
“If that is your choice.”
“It is.”
“Then I shall see you in court.”
Anna knew the homes of the nobility were something to be seen, but she’d had no real notion of exactly what that meant until that day. After all, hearing about the homes noblemen owned was one thing, actually being in one was quite another.
“Of all the times for Mr. Camden to be absent,” Mrs. Powell, her new champion, said. “He’s been here an age and would likely remember what the young lord looked like, though I must say, the name Reinleigh does strike a chord.”
Which filled Anna with… what? What would it mean if she discovered Rein was connected to a ducal family? Or if he was the duke himself? Would it truly matter?
“Whoever he is, this man who had… who—”
“Seduced me,” Anna said. Very well, she’d embellished a bit in order to enlist the woman’s aid.
“Took your innocence,” Mrs. Powell said. “If he is connected to the family, his portrait is certain to be hanging in the portrait gallery.”
If he was connected.
And if he was…
She looked around her, at the mirrors that hung opposite each other in the great hall, the reflection of the white marble floor broken for a moment by their own passing. Polished, dark oak side tables with plants as big as those found out-of-doors stood around the perimeter of that hall, thick molding as tall as her foot encircling both the floor and the ceiling, all of it carved with the images of lions. It smelled of lemon and beeswax, smells from her childhood, smells that roused memories.
Do bees really make wax, Mama?
They do, my dear. They do.
They traveled toward the front of the home, a double-wide oak door at the end of the hall. Anna stared around in awe at the red velvet chairs that stood, empty, along the wall. To think she’d once marveled over the velvet on Rein’s jacket when by the looks of things the nobility used it for sitting. Sitting!
Shaking her head, Anna tried to walk softly so as to keep the echo of her feet from becoming too loud. Mrs. Powell stopped, turning to her right and opening a door that revealed a room so stunning, so beautiful, Anna felt the breath leave her.
“This was Her Grace’s favorite room. It connects the main hall to the portrait gallery.”
Anna stepped through the doorway, her feet feeling almost numb as she did so, her eyes traveling around a room so filled with plants, she felt as if she’d stepped into the middle of a forest. Moisture hit her cheeks, warming them, making the air heavy. To her left rose windows that overlooked the front lawn, the ceiling in this part of the home having been designed so that windows could be placed in them, allowing sunlight to filter in.
“Lord above,” she murmured.
“Here we are,” Mrs. Powell said, opening yet another door.
Anna found herself entering another room with windows on her left, only this one had portraits hanging on the right. Hundreds of them.
“The old duke’s portrait hangs near the middle. We’ve recently discovered the current duke’s portrait in the attic. It’s next to the old duke’s.”
“The attic?” Anna asked, curious.
Mrs. Powell’s brows lowered. “He was banished as a youth. Lord, people weren’t even allowed to speak his name, though I wasn’t around at the time they had their falling out. We thought his portrait destroyed until we discovered it while cleaning.”
But Anna was too busy scanning the faces of the paintings in front of her, some very obviously from centuries past. The designs of the women’s gowns changed with time, ruffs round the women’s necks, hooped skirts, powdered hair. The men, too, looked dressed in such a way as to follow history, many in pantaloons and silk stockings, fur mantles around their shoulders. She worked her way down, searching, searching, eyes alighting briefly on the portrait that belonged to the old duke, and next to that on his right…
Rein.
She stopped, something that felt like feathers dusting her face, but that she realized in an instant was actually the blood draining down.
“’Tis the current duke,” said Mrs. Powell.
She put a hand out to the wall. Current duke? Rein?
“Miss? Are you all right?”
Anna shook her head. “No, Mrs. Powell, I am not well at all.” She took a breath. “How do you know this is the current duke?” Because Anna was certain, quite certain, that the man’s name was Rein.
“Because Mr. Camden said it was him.” And when the housekeeper realized Anna thought the portrait belonged to the debauching man who’d gotten her with child (very well, Anna’d embellished
quite
a lot), she straightened. “But if it’s a name you be needing, I know of a way to find out. We’ve a copy of Debrett’s in the library.”
Rein decided he could get used to the view from Anna’s rooftop.
If he hadn’t been in fear of his life, and at his wits’ end about the situation he found himself in, and if his bloody arm and head didn’t ache, he’d be quite content. Alas, he could do nothing but challenge the will in a court of law, according to the magistrate he’d spoken to earlier in the week. He’d spent the whole week trying to circumvent a trial, but it was all to no avail. No one seemed to care that a madman appeared to want to end his life, nor that the challenge itself had been so unfair as to potentially succeed where the murderer had failed.
“Your Grace,” a soft, familiar voice called to him.
Rein turned, certain the voice had been a figment of his imagination, for Anna wasn’t due back until tomorrow.
“Anna,” he said when, indeed, he spied her standing there. “What are you doing here?”
And then what she’d called him penetrated his brain.
“What did you call me?”
Her amber eyes were as direct as he’d ever seen them as she said, “Charles Reinleigh Drummond Montgomery. Earl of Sherborne, marquis of Randolph, duke of Wroxly.” She curtsied, the gray dress she wore pooling around her feet as she did so.
So she had found out at last? Well, he supposed that was a relief.
But when she spoke next, she didn’t look relieved. “Clever of you to send me to your childhood playground.” And the look she gave him was one filled with… what? “You knew of the abandoned house, knew it would likely still be vacant.”
He stepped toward her, reaching for her hands, though it hurt his arm to do so. She left her hands by her side. His own arms fell away. “Anna, I am sorry you had to find out in such a way, but truth be told, I’m rather relieved.”
Again, that forthright stare, her eyes searching his as if she were looking for something. “She thought you ruined me as a way of amusing yourself,” Anna said with a tip to her chin. “Is that true? Did you tell me you loved me just so you’d have a place to stay? A roof over your head? Food in your belly?”
“Who thought such a thing?” he said with furrowed brows.
“Mrs. Powell, the new housekeeper at Wroxly Park.”
The accusation made him reach for her hands again. She ignored them once more. The way she looked at him with rage in her eyes made him shake his head, then say, “Anna, there is no need to look at me thus.” He lifted his good arm, touched the side of her face with his hand.
She jerked away. “Isn’t there, Rein?”
He shook his head. “I have never once misled you about anything other than my true identity and my purpose in St. Giles.”
He heard something, something that sounded like a catch in her breath as she inhaled.
“I love you, Anna. I want to be with you. I see no reason why that has to change.”
Another inhaled breath that caught in her throat.
This time, she let him touch her. Gently, firmly, he tipped her chin up. “Did you think that once you discovered the truth I would cast you off?”
She nodded.
He gave her a small smile. “For an intelligent woman, you have a very foolish imagination.”
She shook her head, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “I thought you might have been using me to win your challenge, that your words of love were all a sham.”
“No, Anna. I may be slow in the head, but I am no fool. I love you. I want to be with you.”
She held on to his gaze with her own. “Will you marry me, then?” she asked.
The words stunned him to the point that his hand fell back to his side. “Marry you?”
And when she heard his words, he saw something fizzle and die in her eyes, something that had been hovering within the amber depths, something that seemed like fear, but that he realized now had been hope. “Do not say another word, for I see the answer in your eyes.”
It took a moment for him to formulate words to say, to understand that he’d upset her. “Anna, I asked you weeks ago to be my mistress. Nothing has changed now that you know who I am. If anything, it should make you understand all the more why it must be so.”
The word made her facial muscles flinch. And as he stared into her eyes, he noticed the telltale signs of redness, the moisture which still lingered along her bottom lash: She’d been crying.
“Anna—”
“No,” she interrupted. “Do not say more.” He saw her paste on a look of bravery, one that made him feel almost ill. “You are correct. You have always been honest as to your plans for me. I understand.”
Plans for her?
She looked away, and the devil of it was, Rein knew he’d hurt her, knew it though he didn’t fathom how things had come to that point.
Another deep breath, another direct stare. “Have you—” She swallowed. “Have you discovered anything more about who might have fired a pistol at you?”
It was a blatant attempt to change the subject, one that made Rein want to reach for her again, to pull her against him, to look in her eyes and ask her to please not cry, for he could see the longing to do so in her eyes.
“I—” He struggled with what to say, but in the end, he lost his courage. She must understand. Perhaps, given time, she would. “No, actually, I have not.”
And as quickly as he could, he told her the truth, though he suspected he did so as a way of turning her attention. A coldness had begun to fill him, a coldness born of the pain he saw in her eyes.
“And now I must wait to be heard before a court,” he finished, his fears only multiplying when she failed to move toward him, to express her shock and horror. It was as if she were numb. “I dare say I haven’t left your rooms but for a bit of fresh air up here,” he said, trying to tease her out of it.
Nothing.
“I see,” she said.
Rein suddenly felt miserable. “Anna, I—”
“Who has the most to gain?”
Rein jerked, lifted his head. Anna’s grandfather had joined them on the roof.
“Mr. Brooks, if you would give us a moment—”
“Who has the most to gain?” he asked again, gray hair sticking out as if the ride back to London had mussed it.
“Grandfather,” Anna said. “Please. Not now.”
“Who has the most to gain?” the old man repeated, his brown eyes intense.
“Pay him no heed,” Anna said. And then she gave Rein another brave stare. “You were about to say?”
Rein opened his mouth, only to be interrupted again.
“Who has the most to gain?”
Who has the most to gain
what
? Rein wondered. Curse it all, the old man’s timing was ill, indeed. He needed to work things out with Anna, for if he did not, he feared she might change her mind, that she would leave him. He couldn’t lose her. Not now. Now when he’d—
“Who has the most to gain?” Mr. Brooks repeated, causing Rein to curse.
“Let me take him below.”
“Yes, I think that would be wise.”
Only, as she turned to leave him, the wrong words played themselves in his mind.
Who has the most to gain?
The old man was driving him batty now. He needed to concentrate on what it was he needed to say to Anna, to convince her that life as his mistress would be every bit as good as life as his wife. More so, for she would have freedom, status and a lifestyle few married women enjoyed.
Who has the most to gain?
And then Rein stiffened.
A lifestyle…
Who had the most to gain?
Rein felt the blood drain from his face. “Good God.”
Abraham Lassiter had been expecting the knock on the door. His evening tea usually arrived about this time and so he didn’t look up as he said, “Enter.”
There was silence, Abraham thinking his servant might not have heard him, and so he turned in his padded armchair, looked right…
And gasped.
“Thank you for the invitation,” the duke of Wroxly said.
The cheroot he’d been smoking dropped from his fingers, sending lazy spirals of white smoke toward the sitting room’s ornate ceiling.
The duke. Here. Why?
There are moments in some people’s lives when they realize things have just taken a sudden, dramatic turn for the worse. Such was this moment for Mr. Lassiter.
“Your Grace,” he said, coming to his feet, tugging his black jacket down, the simple tie of his cravat suddenly feeling too tight. “Might I ask why it is you have called upon my private residence?”
Rein Montgomery moved into the room, Abraham relieved to note he seemed to be alone. The oak door behind him closed with a squeak of its hinges—something Abraham had been meaning to see to for months.
“Why, Mr. Lassiter, I feel certain you know exactly what it is I am doing here.”
Abraham nonchalantly stepped on the cheroot, snuffing it out, though the red and white carpet would have a permanent mark there. He faced the new duke of Wroxly, who came toward him. Though the room was absolutely silent but for the sound of the street outside the paned window at Abraham’s back, he had the sudden and unshakable feeling he heard an animal’s footfalls, the click-click-click of toenails upon hardwood floor, except a carpet lay there.
Wroxly stopped an arm’s length away from him. He looked horrid. Long, unkempt hair. Unshaven jaw. The jacket he’d worn to Lassiter’s office earlier that week looked stained with grime, as if he’d gotten in a scuffle or two, black and brown smears upon its surface. The same stains covered his buff breeches, too, the brown boots that encased his legs obviously too big for him, something Abraham hadn’t noticed during His Grace’s last visit, but now he could plainly see.
“Bastard.”