The Enigmatic Lady in the Ivory Tower

by Hazel Linwood

  “Get him out now!”

  Diana turned the corner to find the Dowager Marchioness standing in the middle of the library breathing furiously, her face a deep purple crimson. The Marquess stood between her and Gabriel’s prone form, his stance firm, his face set into hard lines of disapproval.

  “Mother, please see reason. He is in no condition to be moved.”

  “I do not care what condition he is in! I come to seek you out and find you holding the hand of a mere servant as if he were your equal! How could you do such a thing to me, to your noble name?!”

  The Marquess opened his mouth to answer when he spotted Diana standing in the doorway. The Dowager Marquess noticed the expression change on her son’s face and turned to see what he was looking at.

  “Diana,” the Marquess greeted calmly. “If you would give my mother and I a moment to finish our discussion, we will meet you in the dining room for the evening meal. Your sister, Lady Georgette, will be taking her dinner in her room due to the sudden onset of a rather painful headache.”

  Diana opened her mouth to ask about Gabriel, but the Marquess shook his head in warning and so she stopped, thinking better of it. Nodding, she turned and left the room as instructed.

  Why does she dislike Gabriel so? Surely, she does not know anything about our feelings for one another.

  Diana considered going up to check on her sister but knew that if she was having one of her headaches, she would rather be left alone to rest. Entering the dining room, she sat down to wait.

  A brief time passed before the Marquess and Dowager Marchioness entered together in stony silence. The meal was a tense ordeal without a single word being spoken amongst the three of them. The steely undertone of anger that was radiating around the room was palpable and made the food seem tasteless in Diana’s mouth. She did not understand why the Dowager was so against her servants receiving any form of special treatment, or why she was so vehemently against Gabriel specifically.

  The more time that Diana spent with the family, the more that she realized that its matriarch was not what she at first appeared. The Dowager Marchioness was far worse than her initial impression and that was saying something. As if the Dowager could sense that Diana was thinking about her, the Dowager shot her a disapproving look.

  “I have learned of what you have been doing with your time since the Earl’s arrival here at the manor house. It is unseemly for a lady of your standing to be spending all of her time in the company of a mere servant. I do not want you going anywhere near that stable hand again.”

  Diana opened her mouth to argue.

  “I have been caring for a wounded man. Is it not our Christian duty to do so?”

  The Dowager Marchioness’ face flushed in anger once more.

  “You are a noblewoman, not a physician or a house maid. I will not have your foolishness masquerading as charity be the downfall of both of our families. Your parents entrusted your care and reputation to me, and I will not see it ruined. When the Earl returns from his search for the brigands who attacked him upon the road, you will accept his betrothal and then you will return to your father’s household to be wed.”

  Diana attempted to argue again but was cut short by a quick, sharp gesture of the Dowager’s hand signaling silence. Diana, unwilling to be overstepped in the matter of her own life, ignored her.

  “I will not be forced into a marriage that I do not desire.”

  “You will do as you are told, or I will see that stable hand and his entire family removed from Westwallow without a reference.”

  “Why would you do such a thing? How could you do such a thing?”

  “I will do whatever it takes to maintain my reputation, which is now inexorably linked to yours. I should never have agreed to the favor that your father asked of me. I agreed for your grandmother’s sake alone and I fear now that it was a grave error in judgement on my part. There is no changing your rebellious ways through usual methods, so I have no choice but to resort to unusual ones.”

  “Mother,” the Marquess spoke in warning.

  The Dowager Marchioness turned fury-filled eyes upon her son, silencing him.

  “You may be the lord of the manor, my son, but I am the lady of the house and as such the servants are under my purview. I will do with my servants as I wish. Lady Diana has also been placed in my charge and I will do with her as I wish.”

  The Marquess turned to meet Diana’s eyes.

  “Would you please be so kind as to give my mother and I another moment alone?”

  “Of course,” Diana nodded and arose to leave the room as fast as her legs would carry her.

  Running to her room, she told Frances everything that had transpired.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Diana frowned in thought.

  “I need something to use against the Dowager Marchioness to keep her from forcing me to wed the Earl and to keep Gabriel’s family safe. The Marquess is speaking with her now, but there is no guarantee that he will be able to keep her from being difficult toward everyone concerned.”

  “Not if what the maid Sarah told us is true,” Frances agreed. “It is clear that she is accustomed to getting her own way, regardless of whom she might harm, as is the privilege of her station.”

  Diana paced the floor. “I need to do something, but what?”

  “Did you find anything else in the Marquess’ room with the painting of the baby?”

  Diana’s head snapped up and her eyes focused on Frances’ face. “The painting—perhaps there is more that it can reveal to us than I had an opportunity to discover.”

  “Do you think that it is still there? You said that the Marquess knew that you had seen it. Surely he would have moved it by now if he was attempting to conceal anything to protect his mother.”

  “There is only one way to find out.”

  “How are you going to enter the Marquess’ bedchamber to search for it without him knowing?”

  “I do not know, but I must find a way. If I do not, then I will have nothing to keep her at bay.”

  Frances nodded. “Then we must find a way.”

  “We?”

  “I am not going to leave you to face such dangers alone. If the Marquess is protecting his mother as you fear, then he is not the ally that I had hoped he was for you.”

  “I truly believed him to be a good and honorable man, but there is nothing that can be done about that now.” Diana walked over to the door and laid her hand on the handle.

  “Now is as good a time as any other, while he and his mother are otherwise engaged with their arguments about proper servant etiquette.”

  “I will stand guard outside of the room while you search for the painting.”

  “Are you certain, Frances? I do not wish to put you in any more of a difficult position than I already have.”

  “I am certain.”

  “Then let us pray that we are not discovered.”

  Chapter 32

  The two girls left the room together and walked quietly down the hallway so as not to be noticed. Diana slipped into the Marquess’ room while Frances remained out in the hallway to sound the alarm if someone approached. Diana stood in the doorway for a brief moment, scanning the walls of the room for the painting. Not finding it, she stepped further into the room and began to search more thoroughly through the drawers and cabinets of the various pieces of furniture.

  Bending over, she looked under the bed and it was there that she found it. Careful not to make any scraping noises against the floor, she crawled under the bed and pulled the portrait out from the dusty shadows. As she grasped the frame, her finger went through the thin paper on the back, making a tearing sound that caused her to pause and listen before she continued on.

  Standing up, she turned the frame over in her hand to appraise the damage and realized that there was an extra layer of rough paper that was not traditional for such portraits. She pulled her fingers free from the hole that she had created and saw something shift be
neath the paper. Taking a breath to steady her nerves, she carefully tore a small portion of the paper away to reveal what lay beneath. To her surprise, she found a small stack of folded papers in the space between the painting’s canvas and the extra layer of backing paper.

  Hiding the papers in the bodice of her gown, Diana put the portrait back under the bed and slipped silently back out into the hallway.

  “My Lady?” Frances inquired her brows raised in concern.

  “I found something,” Diana whispered in confirmation and motioned for Francis to follow her back to the safety of her bedchamber.

  Upon entering her room, Diana immediately spread the folded papers out on the bed and selected the one nearest her to study. Frances stood beside her and peered over her shoulder. She moved from page to page until she was done with the stack. By the time that she was done, she sat on the bed, gaping in shock.

  Among the papers was a small handful of letters and an official-looking document with the former Marquess’ own seal in a brilliant red wax. The first letter, a love letter, confirmed that the late Marquess did indeed have an affair with a maid named Caroline and that the two of them had been very much in love. The same letter also confirmed that Caroline had fallen with child and that the late Marquess was truly the father of her baby.

  The second letter was written as more of a tearful, soul-wrenching farewell and Diana could only assume that it had been composed after the maid Caroline’s death as a way for the late Marquess to cope with his grief over losing her forever. In it, the former Lord Westwallow made a promise to his precious lost love to do everything in his power to protect their newborn son.

  He wrote that his wife had known about the nobleman’s affair with the maid and that the Marchioness had attempted to murder the babe in cold blood soon after its birth, but that he had managed to stop her just in time. The Marchioness had demanded that the babe be sent away from Westwallow, had even gone so far as to demand that the poor infant be sent out of England to France.

  The late Marquess was unable to do as his wife demanded as there would be no way to properly protect the lad once he was out of the Marquess’ care. He was equally unable to keep the babe at Westwallow Manor with the Marchioness bent on murder. Departing for the family estate in Wales, he took only a small number of trusted servants with him from Westwallow, who were already aware of the situation, to aid in caring for the child, leaving the Marchioness behind.

  The third missive was written by the late Marquess as a farewell letter to his newborn son, with instructions on a separate piece of paper that it was to be delivered only upon the event of the Marquess’ death. This one Diana read aloud to Frances as its contents held the most clues as to what had befallen the infant.

  “Frances, listen to this,” she murmured in sympathy of the nobleman’s predicament.

  “To my dearest son,

  If you are reading this, then I am no longer among the living. By now, your elder brother Ernest, whom as my heir I am entrusting with this secret, will have told you about the circumstances surrounding your birth and your mother’s death. He will also have told you that due to your life being in danger, I took you away to Wales to keep you safe. It was never my intention to abandon you, but circumstances beyond my control have forced my hand and I must return to Westwallow Manor without you. I am leaving you in the capable hands of my most trusted servants who will raise you as one of their own until the day comes when you will be old enough to act upon the gift that I am leaving you with now.

  With this letter, you should be given a document with my official seal. Within this document lies the truth of who you are wherein I claim you as my rightful son. There will be many people, my legal wife included, who will shun you as illegitimate but know that in my heart you could never be such a thing. My body may have been wed to another, but my soul has always been wed to your mother. From the moment of your creation, I have claimed you as my own and this document will legally make it so, entitling you to the noble title of lord and everything else that comes with your noble blood, benefits and responsibilities alike.

  Though you are but a babe at the time of my writing this, I know that you will grow to be an honorable and strong man of worth. I can only hope that you will never need to read this letter and that I am there to see it come to pass so that I might tell you of all of these things myself. If I am not and you are indeed reading this, please know that I have loved you always and that everything I have done has been to protect you until the day would come that you would be old enough to protect yourself. May God bless you, my son, keeping you always in His benevolent care. Until we meet again at Heaven’s gates, my darling boy, please take care.

  In Eternal Love,

  Your Father

  Charles Augustus Jenson, Marquess of Westwallow”

  Diana and Frances met each other’s eyes. “The Dowager Marchioness did not kill the babe,” Frances breathed in relief, sagging down to sit on the edge of the bed as if exhausted. “Thanks be to God.”

  “We do not know that for certain. The letters were clearly never delivered,” Diana pointed out, frowning in thought.

  Frances’ face blanched white once more, the relief leaving her features. “And it does not give the baby’s name so that we might verify the truth of the matter.”

  “No, it does not,” Diana shook her head. “So, the babe could be anyone among the servants, he could have long left the estate, or he could be dead. There is no way of knowing.” Diana reread the letter silently to herself this time to make certain that she had not missed anything.

  “It says that the Marquess knows about his brother’s existence. From the sound of it, he would have been quite a bit older than the babe. It is doubtful that the late Marquess would have burdened a young child with such a secret and expected him to keep it.”

  “Perhaps he did not tell his elder son about it until closer to his death. Perhaps the letter was written with the intent of telling him at a later date. Mayhap he died before he felt it was right to tell him.” Frances’ words of reason gave Diana quite a bit more possibilities to think upon.

  “It is clear from the maid Sarah’s accusations of murder that if the babe did survive to adulthood that he was not informed of his birthright, otherwise it would be known to everyone. Do you recall seeing anyone among the male staff who resembles the late or current Marquess?”

  “No,” Frances shook her head. “I have not seen anyone that I can recall.”

  “Nor have I,” Diana answered, her frown deepening.

  “Do you think that the Dowager Marchioness discovered what the late Marquess was doing and had the babe killed in spite of his efforts to protect his son?”

  “It is quite possible. Such a secret would be a hard one to keep. People would have noticed if a babe suddenly appeared among them.”

  Frances shook her head. “Not if there was a believable story attached to the baby’s appearance. My mother took in her sister’s children when she died, and no one thought anything of it. Such things happen more frequently than one would think.”

  “So, we are looking for someone who supposedly came to live among the servants from another family member?” Diana thought that over for a moment, then nodded. “It is possible, but how would we discover who it might be without causing further alarm?”

  “I can inquire discretely among the staff, but after what happened earlier, I am not certain that it is the best way,” Frances offered, with some trepidation in her voice.

  “I can attempt to speak with the Marquess about it, but I do not know that he will tell me anything. The one opportunity that I had to speak with him about it, he was not receptive to my inquiries. His reaction to my having found the painting leads me to believe that he does, indeed, know more than he is willing to admit about all of this. It remains to be seen whether it is his mother or his brother that he is protecting.”

  “Perhaps he is attempting to do both?”

  Diana nodded. “It is possible, but
at this moment that is all that we can truly say about the matter, that anything is possible. It is unlikely that we will have found the answers we seek in time to save us all from the Dowager Marchioness’ machinations, but we must try.”

  “What are you going to do?” Frances asked, her eyes filled with concern for Diana’s wellbeing.

  “The Dowager Marchioness is a formidable foe to reckon with. Nothing short of proof of her wrongdoing would stop her from blackmailing me into marriage by holding the lives of Gabriel and his family hostage. These letters are a form of proof and from them we know that this document,” she raised up the red wax sealed document that she had found with the letters, “is the legal acceptance of the infant as his son, but if we break the seal without the proper witnesses we could cause even more problems.”