Never Deceive a Duke Page 13

  Kemble gave a dramatic, swooping bow. “Your wish is my command, Your Grace,” he said. “By the by, I feel a dreadful pair of bruises coming on from Lord Rothewell’s driving. I think that tomorrow I must consult a physician.”

  “For bruises?” said Gareth.

  “Yes, I’m frightfully delicate,” said Kemble. “Now, tell me again—what was that village doctor’s name?”

  The day following their arrival, Selsdon’s new houseguests gave every indication of settling in—perhaps until shooting season. Gareth knew that in part Rothewell was simply avoiding his sister’s leaving, though he likely did not realize it on any conscious level. That was just how the baron’s mind worked. He had stayed drunk for two days following the wedding. George Kemble’s motivation was harder to grasp. It was quite likely that Xanthia had simply paid him some exorbitant sum to do her bidding. Gareth should, of course, have been angry at having his life interfered with, but he had other, far greater concerns than Xanthia’s meddling. Besides, Rothewell was right. Kemble might prove useful.

  After breakfast, Kemble made himself busy in the study with a pile of correspondence, mostly routine letters of congratulations from people whom Gareth did not know, welcoming him to the lofty ranks of landed aristocracy. He doubted any of them sincerely wished him well. Most were secretly appalled, he suspected. After all, he was naught but a cutthroat, working-class Jew whose kinship to the late duke was so distant and convoluted that he himself could not track it. To the aristocracy, such ill-breeding was an abomination.

  Rothewell had not yet risen and would not likely do so before noon. Restless and on edge, Gareth dressed for riding and ordered his horse saddled. Since his first meeting with Antonia, he had dreaded the day when he would eventually have to visit Knollwood, but now he was inexplicably impatient to go. He had sat through dinner again last night, unable to take his eyes from her despite his guests. His curiosity about her—one might even call it a mild obsession—was growing. It made him realize that the sooner one of them was out of the house, the easier it would be for both of them. Besides, he was a little tired of catching sight of her unawares, and feeling his heart ratchet up like some besotted schoolboy’s.

  He would look about for a mistress as soon as he could get back to London, Gareth decided as his mount was brought round. He set off toward the village, turning the matter over in his mind. Perhaps he would visit Madame Trudeau again. A highly sought-after dressmaker, Madame Trudeau was polished and delightful, if not in the first blush of youth, and Gareth had spent one or two delightful evenings in her arms. She appreciated him for what he could give her, and asked no questions. Perhaps now that he was no longer pining for Xanthia, madame could be persuaded to something more regular? At that thought, he reined his horse to a stop. Was he no longer pining for Xanthia?

  No, he supposed he was not. Nowadays when he thought of her, it was with fondness and exasperation. Perhaps her marriage had drawn that fine, bright line he had needed to see. On the other hand, perhaps the change in his attitude was due to something more dire. That did not bear thinking about.

  His horse was prancing impatiently. At the foot of the hill, he turned north, away from the village, and sprang the beast. Eager to please, the horse ate up the ground, throwing up dust and stones as he flew. They reached the foot of the carriage drive in short order. As they made their way up the hill Gareth realized that someone—Watson, most likely—had kept the road up to Knollwood in good shape.

  It was a pity one could not say the same for the house. Knollwood was a fanciful three-storied house with two stone turrets which served little purpose, an elegant entryway, and what had once been carefully landscaped gardens. The house had been constructed perhaps a century and a half earlier and appeared to have been on the decline ever since. Gareth tethered his mount behind the house in an especially shady spot, then went back around to the stone steps, now surrounded by brambles and covered in moss. The key Watson had given him worked. Gareth turned the lock, pushed open the door, and was struck by a vague sense of dread.

  His last days in this sad old house had been the worst of his life. Even the abuse heaped upon him by the sailors of the Saint-Nazaire had not compared to this sort of grief. Gareth forced himself to step inside. He looked about the entrance hall as if it were a foreign land, yet realizing in the same breath that almost nothing had changed. Oh, the smell of damp and decay was worse—but the pale yellow walls were the same, just more mold-specked. Even the old oak settle by the door sat unmoved, covered in years of dust.

  Upon peering into the drawing room, he realized that someone had simply tossed Holland covers over the furniture and walked away. He could make out the settee, the side chairs, even the lumpy old chaise. The botanical drawings on the wall still hung, mildewing in their frames. The oil landscape over the marble mantelpiece had faded, and one corner hung loose, torn from its stretchers.

  Gareth approached his grandmother’s favorite reading table and picked up one corner of the dustcover to see that a porcelain bonbonnière still sat on the peeling marquetry top, a lumpy black residue lying in the bottom. Calcified chocolate? A dead mouse? It was disgusting, all of it. And yet this place, he suddenly realized, no longer held any power over him. It was as if by stepping inside, he had shattered an evil spell.

  He continued to roam the ground floor, his boots echoing hauntingly through the lifeless house. The library with its old wooden panels. The parlor, its great Palladian window cracked. The once-elegant dining room hung with pink silk which had formerly been red. The rotting residue of a life which had long ago died.

  From time to time, he could feel the old floor sag suspiciously. He kept to the edges and made his way to the staircase. He realized at once it was rotting, and he went up warily, sidling along the wall. This floor he found much the same, but in better shape, as it was further removed from the damp. The four chambers here had been put to bed with a little more care, their long, heavy draperies wrapped in Holland cloths. The beds still stood in their usual places, dustcovers laid neatly over the mattresses, and beneath, all of their bedding stripped.

  In his grandmother’s room, however, the curtains had been removed, allowing the midday sun to stream in. It made the room seem almost lived in. Here the smell of damp was no more than a mustiness. His grandmother’s writing desk sat uncovered by the windows. He went to her bed and stripped back the Holland cover. This was the bed that, for the first months of his life at Knollwood, he had so often come to in the middle of the night, in order to have his fears assuaged and his demons shoved back into their wardrobes. He felt a sudden wave of wistfulness, and of loss.

  In his old room, he looked down at the oak tester bed, and for a few dreadful moments, he was nine again. Gareth shuddered. The wooden canopy had terrified him when he was a child. Heavy and dark, it had seemed to loom ominously overhead, shutting out the light. He had grown accustomed to it, of course. He had had no choice.

  Caught in the midst of his brooding, he became vaguely aware of a noise. Mice, he supposed.

  The sharp, terrified scream, however, was not a mouse.

  Gareth rushed for the stairs to the sound of splintering wood. Antonia was clinging to the banister with both hands, her black riding habit pooled awkwardly on the step above. “Don’t move!” he ordered.

  Her face was etched with terror. “I cannot,” she cried. “Oh, Gabriel! I cannot free my boot!”

  Gareth was edging his way back down, his spine to the wall. “Do not move, Antonia,” he said again. “Bear your weight on the banister, not your feet. I shall get you free.”

  She nodded resolutely, eyes wide. “Yes.”

  He reached her easily. Planting his weight near the wall, he leaned over her and set his right hand on the banister near hers. “How far down has your leg gone?”

  “To—to the knee,” she said. “Almost.”

  Quickly, he surveyed the situation. “Keep hold of the banister,” he commanded. “I am going to lift up your skirt.�
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  Her leg—a very fetching, well-turned leg—had gone completely through the rotted wood. A splintered chunk of the stair tread had caught the lip of her riding boot, wedging her awkwardly into place. It was so dark beneath that he could not make out the cellar stairs. Perhaps they had already collapsed? Bloody hell.

  “Is your back foot secure?” he asked, forcing his voice to be calm.

  She nodded, biting her lip. There was an ominous groaning sound somewhere beneath them, followed by the crack of wood.

  Dear Lord. She was headed for the cellars, and he with her, most likely. “Don’t let go of the banister,” Gareth said calmly. “I will rip this splintered wood away, then lift you out with my arm round your waist.”

  She gave a nervous bark of laughter. “Can you?” she said. “I seem to have put on a few pounds.”

  Gareth smiled reassuringly. “You are the merest feather, my dear,” he answered. “The treads and risers have rotted in the center.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  Gareth still wore his riding gloves, a lucky bit of happenstance which made ripping away the splintered wood an easy task. When the last one was pulled from her boot, he stripped off the glove and wrapped his left arm about her waist. Antonia did not panic as he’d feared but instead bore her weight on the banister as he lifted her. At the right moment, she let go and threw her arms round his neck. Her riding hat toppled off and went tumbling down the stairs. Gareth swung her across the hole to him, then edged up the stairs as he’d come down, clinging to the wall.

  “Oh, thank you!” she managed to say when he set her down upstairs. “This feels like terra firma!”

  Chapter Nine

  T he curtains were drawn in the little flat above the goldsmith’s shop. The air was stale, the rooms lifeless. Gabriel could hear the occasional murmurs from the next room and knew without listening what was being said. He felt at once bored and frightened.

  Though he knew he ought not, Gabriel went to the window and pushed the curtains wide enough to lean out. Propping his elbows on the sill, he watched the black-garbed jewelers going in and out of Cutler Street below. For a time, he studied them and tried to imagine where they went with their strong, purposeful strides. Just then, he heard a noise, and whirled around.

  Rabbi Isaacs! Gabriel sat down on the floor, ashamed.

  “Gabriel, my son,” said the rabbi, “you do not sit with Rachel?”

  He made a face. “I—I was, but I got tired.”

  “Tired of sitting shiva?” Rabbi Isaacs bent down and rumpled his hair. “Ah, yes. I think I understand.” He took the rickety ladder-back chair by the bed and turned it to face Gabriel, who sat on a rug beneath the window. “You have covered your mirror. Gabriel. That is right in the eyes of God. And you have put away your shoes. It speaks well of you, my boy.”

  Gabriel looked down at his worn stockings. “I have tried to do all the right things,” he said. “But Bubbe keeps crying.”

  Rabbi Isaacs nodded. “Shiva is the time for tears,” he said quietly. “But Rachel’s tears forge her strength, Gabriel. Never forget this.”

  Gabriel did not understand. But because it seemed expected of him, he nodded.

  “You were a good grandson, Gabriel, to Malachi.” Rabbi Isaacs patted his head, then rose from his chair to go. “I know he was proud.”

  Gabriel waited but a moment, then returned to his window, and to his fears. He did not know what else to do.

  Across the wide passageway at the top of the stairs, Gareth studied Antonia’s pale but otherwise lovely face. She seemed perfectly steady for a woman who had just experienced a near-brush with—well, if not death, then something dank and deeply unpleasant.

  “You are all right?” he asked her. “You are not injured in any way?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “No, but I must have given you a fright,” she said. “For a moment, I feared we were destined to go crashing into the cellar together.”

  He winced. “That is the last place you should wish to go in this house, trust me. That is the source of all this damp.”

  “Oh, dear!” Sudden alarm sketched across her face. “How shall we ever get back down?”

  “There are stone staircases in the old turrets at either end,” he said. “They are dark and nasty, and likely choked with cobwebs, but I will go before you and knock them down.”

  “Thank you. Oh, you are so kind.” Antonia relaxed and began to look about the upstairs. Against the dark gray of her habit, her face was as smooth and pale as porcelain, but there was a dash of color on her cheeks today, and her eyes looked bright and perfectly lucid. “How did you get up here without falling?” she asked.

  “A sailor’s eye for rotted wood,” he said. “It is a hazard in my sort of work.”

  “In the shipping business?” she said.

  “I was at sea for a while, too,” he said. “One learns a great many survival skills on a ship.”

  Antonia had begun to roam tentatively down the passageway. “Yes, you were in the navy, were you not?” she said over her shoulder. “That must have been exciting for a young man.”

  He followed her, puzzled. “I was never in the navy.”

  She turned around, the hem of her habit spinning about her ankles. “Oh,” she said. “I thought…I thought you were trained as an officer?”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “Then I must be confused.” Her smile had faded a little. She turned to peek into the next bedchamber. “What a sad, lovely house this is,” she murmured. “Can you feel it?”

  “Feel it?”

  Her gaze returned to his. “The sense of grief,” she said quietly. “It lingers here.”

  Gareth set his jaw and tried not to grit his teeth. He had felt the grief and sadness firsthand. He had lived it. But he had no wish to talk about the past, especially not with Antonia. Besides, however he might feel toward his dead cousin, none of it was his widow’s fault. “Did you come up to see the house, then?” he managed to say. “I would have invited you, but I feared it mightn’t be safe.”

  That was true, so far as it went. But he had also wished to be alone on his first visit to Knollwood. He had not known, honestly, how it would feel to return here. Now, however, he was strangely glad to see her.

  “I had no idea you were up here.” Antonia had strolled to the window which overlooked the front lawn. “I just rode up to poke about the place, and when I saw the front door was open—well, I couldn’t resist.”

  He followed her to the window. Their shoulders brushed as they stood looking out. He pointed to a place just above the distant tree line. “Over there is Selsdon’s roof,” he said. “Can you make it out?”

  “Yes, just barely,” she answered. “And look, there is the tithe barn! And that break in the trees—is that the old bridle path?”

  “Yes, it winds back down to Selsdon’s stables. I walked it often as a boy.”

  “I tried to use it once,” she confessed. “But it was overgrown.”

  “I will have it cleared for you,” he assured her. “It will take some time, Antonia, but this place can be a home again. The grief and sadness can be ripped out along with the rotted floors. Do you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” she answered quietly.

  “Antonia?”

  “Yes?” She did not look at him.

  “Will you be lonely here? I…I don’t want that for you.”

  He had set his hands on the frame and leaned nearer the window. She followed suit. “I don’t know,” she said, still staring through the grimy glass. “Perhaps I shall be. But no one ever died of loneliness.”

  She was right about that. For a long moment, neither spoke. There was a strange, peaceful stillness which enveloped them. A sense of intimacy which he hesitated to sever. Finally, he cleared his throat. “A few moments ago, on the stairs,” he said awkwardly, “you…you called me Gabriel.”

  She turned to face him, her lips almost expectantly parted. “Yes, Your Grace,”
she answered. “It was inappropriately familiar. I apologize.”

  He gave a muted smile and shook his head. “You needn’t call me ‘Your Grace,’” he said. “I meant only that…well, that I have not been Gabriel in a very long time.” Not since the night they had made love in the rain, and not for many long years before that.

  “Oh,” she said quietly. “I have rarely heard you spoken of by any other name. You do not care for it? Shall I call you something else?”

  He shrugged. “Call me what you wish,” he answered. “But that part of me—the Gabriel part—it feels as if it was lost a long time ago, Antonia.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Within a few months of leaving this place, I knew it would be best if no one ever found me again. And I did not like the weak, frightened person I had become. So I became someone else.”

  “I see,” she murmured. But she did not see. She could not possibly.

  Antonia was looking deeply thoughtful. “But if a part of you has been lost,” she added, “perhaps it needs to be found again? I know what that is like, you see. I once lost myself—my joy, my faith—everything that made me…well, Antonia. I have not got it all back, quite honestly. But some days, I see glimmers of hope. Isn’t that what we are all working toward? To simply be—oh, I don’t know—what we were meant to be?”

  Gareth glanced away. “I am happy enough,” he said, “with what I have become.”

  Antonia straightened up from the window. “Then tell me,” she said brightly, “which room was yours when you lived here?”

  He strolled toward the door, and she followed him in. “This one,” he said. “I loved the chest inside the window seat for my toys—what few I possessed. But the bed terrified me.”

  Antonia looked it at with a theatrical shiver. “Lord, it’s positively medieval, isn’t it? That horrid wooden canopy. A child would feel quite trapped, I think.”

  Gareth laughed, but he was strangely relieved that someone understood. He found himself telling her of his childhood notions and nightmares. Of his belief that goblins lived beneath his bed, and ghosts hid in the wardrobe. Of how the utter silence of a country night could frighten a child so accustomed to the hustle and bustle of London.