“You’re a commoner, then?” the Duchess butted in.
“Lord Galdhor does seem to have a surprising keenness to associate with commoners,” Lady Katherine said. The malicious bite had returned to her voice, Adrian noticed. “We’ll have to be very careful in our selection of household servants when we marry.”
“Katherine,” the Duke said sharply. “Haven’t I taught you anything about empathy for your fellow human beings?”
“Of course, Father,” she replied. “But that’s just the problem. How does empathy manifest itself? If we are unclear with the lower classes, if we allow them to garner ideas above their stations, then they become unhappy. Aspirational. And their behavior becomes laughable. That’s what happened to poor Lenora. She’s been throwing herself at Lord Galdhor since he arrived, because she doesn’t understand that she can’t have him.”
“This has to stop,” Adrian interjected. He felt suddenly exhausted. How did Lenora stand it? How could she go through life knowing that the people around her were speaking of her this way all the time? “Lenora has done nothing like what you describe, Lady Katherine.”
“Of course, you would think that, but—”
“No. Stop it. If you say she has me deceived in some way, you insult me as much as you do her. I am not a foolish man, Lady Katherine. I know when I am being manipulated. Lenora has been nothing but honest with me.”
He turned to Lenora. “The truth is that you captivate me,” he said quietly. “You always have, Lenora. From the very first moment I saw you. I’ve yearned to know more about you. To understand you.”
She stared at him.
“And it’s not because you were trying to ensnare me,” he continued. “I know enough to know that. You wouldn’t even speak to me at first. If anything, I was the one who ensnared you.”
“You didn’t,” she said quietly. “I wanted to talk to you, Lord Galdhor. It was the finest part of my day.”
“The truth is that I fell in love with you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know that’s unfair, Lady Katherine. I know I came here for you. But I can’t marry you.” He turned to the Duke. “I’m very sorry, Your Grace. Your daughter is lovely and charming, and I’m sure she will have no troubles at all in finding a suitable match. But it isn’t me.”
He reached across the table and took Lenora’s hand in his own.
“I’m in love with somebody else,” he said quietly. “And now that I know she lives, I can give my heart to no other.”
For a moment it seemed as though no one breathed. Lenora gazed at Adrian, speechless. Lady Katherine looked as though she had been slapped. The Duchess had gone white.
But the Duke nodded slowly. “The choice you make is your own, Lord Galdhor,” he said. “No one will hold animosity toward you for that.”
“What?” Lady Katherine sputtered. “You’re going to let him do this, Father? You’re going to let him make a mockery of us in this way? What will people say when they realize he came here to marry me and left because he fell in love with the maid?”
The Duchess recovered herself somewhat. “Lord Galdhor will keep his feelings to himself,” she said firmly. “He would never shame your father that way. He would never shame himself that way. You’ve nothing to worry about, Katherine. It disgraces him far more than it does us if anyone learns he gave his heart to a serving wench.”
“You’re wrong,” Adrian said. “Nothing about her disgraces me. She’s lovely. I would be fortunate to have her as my wife.”
Lenora let out a soft gasp.
“Your wife!” Lady Katherine gave a scream of laughter. “Have you forgotten that she’s my servant? I’m not going to release her to you! How could you think that I would? After you imposed on my family’s hospitality and insulted us like this?”
“Lenora doesn’t need our permission to go,” the Duke said. “We don’t own her, Katherine.”
“I thought you wanted me gone,” Lenora said. “You certainly seemed to a few hours ago.”
“A lot can change in a few hours,” Katherine said caustically. “Clearly.”
“So?” Adrian asked, anxious to keep the discussion on track. “What do you think, Lenora? I know it’s a surprise, my asking you this. I know you might need some time to think about it, and I respect that. But I’d like you to come with me when I leave this place. I’d like to marry you, and to make you a lady. You’ll never have to serve again. What do you say?”
“She’ll say yes,” Lady Katherine said bitterly. “Who would say no to such an offer? But don’t be deceived, Lord Galdhor. She doesn’t love you. She simply wants the riches and the titles. She wants the life of a lady.” Lady Katherine shook her head. “She’s always wanted it. I feel sorry for you, being taken in like this.”
Adrian ignored her. He looked at Lenora and waited for her answer.
She took a deep breath. He looked down and saw that her hands were shaking.
“I can’t,” she said quietly.
“You can’t?” Adrian felt his stomach drop. He had been so sure. He had been so sure that she would say yes. The last half hour had been packed with miracles. Surely one more was not too much to ask for?
But apparently it was. She was shaking her head. “I’m a chambermaid,” she said. “That’s all I am. It’s what I’m meant to be. I know what people will say about you if you choose to marry someone like me. I can’t let you do that.”
“I don’t care,” Adrian said. “I don’t care what people say, Lenora. It’s you I care about. Please.”
“I don’t think I have a position here any longer,” she said. “If you care for me, then perhaps you have room for another maid in your home? I have enjoyed getting to know you. I would like to continue our conversations. If you’re open to something like that…”
“I don’t want you to serve me,” Adrian said. The idea was abhorrent. The woman he loved, lighting his fires and shining his shoes? Walking around as if she didn’t deserve to speak to him? It would be excruciating.
“You stupid girl,” Lady Katherine said scathingly. “You’ve always been a stupid girl. You have no idea what you’ve been offered, do you? You just want to be a servant? Really?”
“There’s no pleasing you, is there?” Adrian asked her. “First you insult her because, according to you, she doesn’t know her place. You call her aspirational, as if that’s the worst thing a human being could be. And now you mock her for choosing a life of service. Why do you hate her so?”
“Lord Galdhor,” Samuel said, “might I interject?”
“Must you?”
“It’s just that I believe I can shed some light on what’s going on here,” he said. “That’s what drove me to ride up to Brackhill Manor at night in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember when you asked me to investigate this maid for you?”
Adrian blinked. He had forgotten all about the investigation he had solicited. It seemed like such a long time ago now. So much had happened since then. He hadn’t even known Lenora’s name at the time, and now here he was asking for her hand in marriage.
And yet he had asked for the investigation, and he had never asked for it to be called off. And Samuel had come with the results.
He reached into his suitcase now and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Adrian longed to reach for them, to read the answers he knew were written there, but at the same time, he was afraid. Whatever was on those pages, he knew, would change everything forever.
And things were different now. He wasn’t the same idly-curious man who had made his way into Samuel’s pub and asked him to investigate an anonymous maid. Now he was a man in love. And Lenora was no longer that anonymous woman. She was a woman he cared for deeply. A woman he respected.
So he turned to her.
“Tell me what to do,” he said quietly. “I want to read this. I want to know everything about you. I know there’s something in here, something you haven’t told me, and I think you know what it is.”
She was shaking, he saw. She was on the verge of tears.
“I won’t read it if you don’t want me to,” Adrian said, finding that he meant it. “If you tell me to, I’ll give it back to Sam, and he’ll take it away, and that will be the end of it.”
Lenora pressed her lips together. Adrian wasn’t sure if she was refusing to speak, or if she was unable to find words, but whatever the case, she said nothing.
It was the Duke who spoke.
“It’s time,” he said.
That got a reaction.
Lady Katherine let out an indignant cry. The Duchess started visibly, then touched her husband’s arm. “Do you really think…I mean, after all this time? It doesn’t seem as if there’s any need…” she trailed off, looking unaccountably anxious and frightened.
“He wants to marry her,” the Duke said. “I’ve been very wrong. I’ve been wrong about everything.”
“You can’t do this,” Lady Katherine stammered. “You can’t do this to me, Father. Think about what you’re saying.”
“I have,” the Duke said. He gestured to Samuel. “Go ahead, Mr. Peters. Say what you came here to say.”
“You already know what it is,” Samuel said.
The Duke nodded.
Lenora was crying quietly now, tears leaving tracks in the dirt on her cheeks. Her soup sat forgotten on the table. Adrian longed to go to her, to embrace her and tell her that everything would be all right, that whatever was in those papers, they would overcome it.
But she had turned him down.
Did she even want him?
He turned to Samuel instead. “Tell me everything,” he said.
Samuel nodded. “At first, I was at a loss,” he said. “That’s why it took me so long to come back to you with information. I didn’t know where to start. After all, you hadn’t even given me her name. I had very little to go on.”
“When did you solicit this investigation?” the Duke interrupted.
Adrian hesitated. “After the ball,” he said. “After I met Lenora for the first time.”
“You loved her even then?”
“I didn’t know what I felt,” Adrian said. “I knew she had captured my attention, that was all. But we hadn’t spoken. I didn’t know who she was. And my mind was on Lady Katherine. I simply wanted to know more about her.”
“But you felt something,” the Duke persisted.
“Yes,” Adrian admitted. “Yes, I felt something after the first time I met her. She was so lovely. And so different from any maid I had ever seen. There was an alertness to her that I was unaccustomed to.”
“The only clue I had to go on was the eyepatch you said she wore,” Samuel said. “I spoke to midwives. I asked if anyone knew anything about a baby born with a blindness in one eye. You had given me her approximate age, so I knew the time frame as well.”
“What if I had been injured sometime after birth?” Lenora asked.
Adrian was shocked by her voice. He had gotten so caught up in the drama of the events that were currently unfolding that he had almost forgotten she was listening to all of this too.
“You weren’t, though,” Samuel said.
“I could have been.”
“Had you been, my line of inquiry would not have been productive,” Samuel said. “And in fact, it was unproductive for quite some time. Would you care to tell Lord Galdhor why that was?”
She shook her head.
“You know why,” Samuel prompted her.
“Don’t plague her,” Adrian said.
“Your Grace?” Samuel said, turning to the Duke.
“I would imagine,” he said heavily. “That you were speaking to the wrong midwives.”
“What?” Adrian blinked. “What does that mean? The wrong midwives? And how did you know that was the problem with the investigation, Your Grace? You don’t even know what midwives he was speaking to.”
“Father, I beg you, don’t do this,” Lady Katherine said. “Don’t do this to our family.”
“It’s about to be revealed anyway,” the Duke said. “And she deserves this, Katherine. Everyone deserves love, don’t they?” He looked over at Lenora. “You can’t deny yourself happiness. I never wanted that for you.”
Lenora looked back at him, rapt, wondering, as if she was seeing something she had never seen before in her life.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Adrian said. “What midwives were you investigating, Samuel?”
“I was inquiring with peasant midwives,” Samuel said. “Midwives who serve at the births of commoners. Women like those my wife and I used. And that was my mistake, because I should have been speaking to higher-born women.”
Adrian shook his head. Rarely had he ever been so confused.
“My break came when one of the midwives I spoke to told me about a rumor she had heard,” Samuel said. “A rumor of a woman who had died in childbirth, and a daughter born with one milky-white eye because of the complications. I knew right away that that was your maid. But it didn’t make sense at first.”
“What didn’t?”
“The woman who had delivered the baby was a high-ranking servant who had been working in the houses of noblewomen for decades,” Samuel said. “Which meant that the baby in question was of noble birth.”
“So it wasn’t Lenora after all, then,” Adrian said.
Samuel looked steadily at the Duke.
Lady Katherine seemed not to breathe.
The Duchess gripped her wine glass so hard that Adrian feared it might break.
And suddenly he understood.
“It was her,” he whispered as the truth of it dawned on him. He looked at Lenora. “It was you. You’re of noble birth?”
She looked down at her lap and said nothing.
“She is,” the Duke said. “That’s the answer contained in your papers there, isn’t it, Mr. Peters? The truth of her parentage.”
Lenora looked up at him.
He reached out and laid a hand over hers.
“Lenora is my daughter,” he said.
Chapter 18
Lenora was in tears. The Duke looked as if he might be about to cry too. Adrian was at a loss for words. It was all he could do just to stare at them, to take in the scene before him.
His daughter?
Lenora was the Duke’s daughter?
But that would make her a lady in her own right. Lady Lenora, he thought. And all this time I’ve been treating her as a maid, thinking of her as a maid. She must despise me.
“Daughter,” the Duke said, his voice husky. “I beg your forgiveness.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Lenora said quietly. “You kept me, Your Grace. You gave me a home, a roof over my head, food to eat and books to read. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
“You were entitled to more,” the Duke said, “much, much more.”
“She was entitled to nothing,” the Duchess said. “We agreed about this. We discussed it long ago.”
“You did?” Adrian was stunned. “Your Grace…I beg your pardon…I don’t understand this at all.”
“I can explain everything,” Samuel said.
“And perhaps you should,” the Duke agreed. “Perhaps it is best that the truth comes out, finally. After all this time, these words ought to be spoken. Lenora ought to be acknowledged for who she is.” He pressed a hand to his temple. “Daughter, if what they had told me had been the truth, if you had died today, unacknowledged as my own—”
“Nothing happened, Your Grace,” Lenora said. “It was never true.”
“Will you not call me Father?”
Lenora hesitated.
The Duke nodded. “I understand. I have done nothing to earn that from you. Perhaps in time.” He turned to Samuel. “Go ahead, then. Lay my sins bare. It’s no more than I deserve.”
“Father,” Lady Katherine interjected. “Please. I implore you. Nothing has to change. This man…he’s just a commoner. It doesn’t matter what he thinks
he’s found out. No one is going to believe him. We can send everyone away right now and pretend this never happened.”
“No,” The Duke said. “I’m sorry, Katherine. I know this hurts you. My choices have set you up for disappointment. I regret that now. But this is a chance for me to start doing right by my daughter. By both of my daughters.” He nodded to Samuel. “Tell all, sir. If anything has been missed, I will confess it myself.”
Samuel nodded. “After Lenora’s mother died,” he said. “The Duke’s mourning was terrible. He had loved her deeply. And when, in his grief, he met the Duchess, she persuaded him to claim that his newborn daughter had died along with his wife.”
A Game 0f Chess With The Marquess (Historical Regency Romance) Page 23
