The Wild Marquis

by Miranda Neville

  “Me,” Juliana said softly.

  “It seems that Cassandra had been abandoned by her seducer and was traveling home to her father’s house when she was brought to bed. The good vicar took her in and summoned her father. Alas, she died a few days after his arrival. The child”—he looked at Juliana for the first time since he began the tale—“you, Juliana, came home with him and he brought you up as his ward.”

  “Why did he never tell me I was his grandchild?”

  Fitterbourne looked astonished at the question. “Your very existence was a disgrace to the name of Fitterbourne. I strongly advised him to find a suitable family to care for Cassandra’s child. But my uncle insisted on keeping you. At least he had the sense to give you a different name and put out the tale that you were the child of distant cousins.”

  “No one believed him,” Juliana said bitterly.

  “Of course not. But the forms were respected.”

  “Where was this place that Juliana was born and her mother died?” Cain looked down at her and gave her hand a comforting pat. “I fancy, my dear, that you would like to visit your mother’s grave.”

  Juliana shook him off. “Why wouldn’t you tell me all this when I asked, Frederick?”

  “My uncle never thought it proper to acquaint you with the full story, and naturally I respected his example. But as your intended husband, it is of course Mr. Johnson’s right to know the whole story.”

  Cain was prepared to prevent Juliana from leaping at Fitterbourne’s throat, when her cousin’s next words drew a gasp from her.

  “I told Merton the whole story.”

  “Joseph knew? He never told me!”

  “Of course he didn’t tell you. He never went home again, poor fellow. In fact it was the very day of his unfortunate death that he came here asking for information.”

  “Joseph came here that day?” Juliana repeated.

  “Yes, he had some odd notion that Cassandra had been married and you were of legitimate birth.”

  “Do you know why he thought such a thing?” Cain asked.

  “He didn’t explain.”

  “We have reason to believe he may have been right.”

  Fitterbourne frowned and shook his head. “Why would Cassandra have kept her marriage a secret? No, she must have been abandoned unwed.”

  “If her parents had been wed, would Juliana have inherited the estate?” Cain asked.

  “No. The estate is entailed to the male line.”

  So much for that idea.

  “But of course under that circumstance Juliana would have come into her mother’s fortune.”

  “Cassandra had her own money?”

  “Ten thousand pounds, from her mother. Settled on the children of the marriage. Since Cassandra died unmarried and intestate, her father inherited it.”

  “I thought,” Cain said carefully, “that the late Mr. Fitterbourne died penniless, aside from his collection.”

  “He did. Didn’t I already say he squandered everything on books?”

  Someone, Cain thought, had a good motive to suppress the fact of Cassandra’s marriage. Too bad that he was already dead.

  And what exactly had Joseph Merton known, or suspected?

  Someone very much alive had killed Merton. And Cain would wager the same person was responsible for Juliana’s present troubles.

  Chapter 19

  “If Cassandra was married, my grandfather didn’t know it.” Juliana had steadily, during two hours of travel, refused to even contemplate the possibility of such perfidy on the part of the late Mr. Fitterbourne. She was prepared to discuss theories about Joseph Merton’s investigation into her parentage. But not a suspicion of her grandfather’s motives would she entertain.

  “He loved me,” she insisted. “As far back as I remember, even as a tiny child, I came down to the library to visit him every day.”

  “Your later relationship has no bearing,” Cain pointed out logically. “If he made the decision to suppress Cassandra’s marriage, you would have been a newborn infant at the time.”

  “You heard what Frederick said. He insisted on keeping me instead of finding me a home elsewhere. And made up a name and a story so I wouldn’t have to live with the stain of illegitimacy.”

  “I can’t believe you are defending him now! From everything I’ve heard of the man, he was obsessed with books to the exclusion of all else. And your mother’s ten thousand pounds must have bought him a lot of books.”

  “We bought them together,” she insisted. “He taught me all he knew and we became companions and partners. When he received offers from booksellers I would read them aloud to him and give him my opinion. And I wrote all the letters back. I unpacked the books when they arrived by carrier and collated them to make sure they were complete. He couldn’t have managed without me.”

  Cain barely restrained himself from saying it sounded more like slavery than partnership. Juliana couldn’t see that the old man had been a selfish monster, not the loving grandfather of her memory. Even if Cassandra hadn’t been married, Fitterbourne had still spent all his daughter’s money and made almost no effort to ensure the future of his granddaughter.

  “He was my grandfather and he loved me.”

  Juliana kept saying those words, like an anthem, as though repetition made them true. As though, poor deluded woman, the fact of kinship inevitably led to affection.

  They sat side-by-side on the plush red seat, but as they argued during the journey from Salisbury she retreated from his proximity. He reached across that distance, only a couple of feet. Her hand felt cold in his, her delicate fingers cool, tense, and unresponsive to his grasp.

  He murmured her name. She snatched away her hand.

  “The ties of blood mean nothing, nothing at all,” he said bitterly. “I haven’t the least doubt my own father would have declared me a bastard had he the power. He would have loved to see his titles and estate pass to my cousin, a godly member of my wonderfully godly family.”

  She swung around and faced him, her face contorted with fury. “Your father rejected you because you were a dissolute rake and everything you’ve done since has proven him correct. You have no notion of the behavior of a gentleman. My grandfather was a gentleman and he would never have stolen from anyone.”

  Something shriveled inside Cain. He’d heard such charges from scores of others and tossed them off with a laugh. But, fool that he was, he’d believed Juliana saw him differently, that she’d looked behind the mask of defiance he’d presented to the world for eight years and seen the real man.

  The previous night had been one of the sweetest he’d ever spent. He and Juliana had dined together, laughed together, made love and slept together. And though no words of any great gravity were spoken, he’d believed that he was more to her than he had been to scores of other women. More than merely an amusing companion, a satisfactory lover, and a deep pocket.

  He was a fool. Because his own feelings were exceptional in all his experience, he’d made the mistake of thinking hers were too.

  As they passed Bath, Cain stared out of the window at the mellow stones of the famous city. He barely registered the architectural beauties, any more than he could have described the glories of the Wiltshire and Somerset countryside on this fine spring day. For every second of an hour or more he was aware only of Juliana, squashed into the opposite corner of the carriage, as far from him as the confines of the vehicle would allow. Each time he looked in her direction she was gazing out of her own window. He wondered if she saw as little as he did.

  In all that time neither one of them uttered a single word, until they entered the village of Greatfield, a misnamed punctuation mark on the main road from Bath to Bristol. According to Frederick Fitterbourne, this scattering of houses surrounding a shabby public house and a small undistinguished church had witnessed Juliana’s entrance into the world, and Cassandra Fitterbourne’s departure.

  It was the first record in the parish register for the year 1796. �
�Jany 5th. Cassandra Fitterbourne, of Fernley, Wilts. was buried.”

  The next line read, “Jany 5th. Juliana Cassandra, born Jany 3rd, daughter of Cassandra Fitterbourne, was baptized.”

  “It’s not much, is it?” Cain said.

  She gazed at the neatly written inscription, the final confirmation that she was filia nullius, the daughter of no one, in the eyes of the law. Her unmarried mother didn’t count as a person when it came to providing a name and social position for her offspring. Juliana hadn’t expected, but she’d still hoped, quite desperately, to discover the identity of her father.

  “I don’t usually record the child’s birth date,” said Mr. Howard, the clergyman who had led them to the vestry of the church and found the volume containing the records of baptisms, marriages, and burials for the last decade of the last century. “But I remember the occasion. I pitied the child with her mother dead and no father. I thought if I didn’t record her birthday perhaps she’d never know it. Especially since she was born in my house.”

  “I was?” Juliana asked, dragging her eyes away from the words that demolished her slender hope.

  He peered at her curiously, his faded eyes compassionate and without judgment. “You were that infant?”

  “Yes. I’d be very grateful, sir, if you could tell me how I came to be born here.”

  “Would you like to sit down?” He indicated a plain wooden bench.

  Cain remained standing, sideways to them. He continued to stare at the parish register where it lay open on a table. Despite his sober dress, he was a vibrant presence in the small room with its whitewashed walls and arched stone windows. Juliana was intensely aware of the warmth and restless energy of his body, of the questing mind she’d learned was uncommonly incisive in its perceptions. At the same time she’d never felt more distant from him.

  Waking this morning in his arms she’d felt a harmony of mind she’d never experienced with another soul. His support in getting her through the difficult interview with Frederick Fitterbourne had deepened the sense of intimacy and left her in danger of losing her heart.

  Then he’d ruined it all with his cruel and unfounded suspicions about the only person Juliana had ever loved. She glared at him from her seat next to the vicar. As though sensing her regard he looked up. For barely a second their glances held and the fathoms-deep blue of his gaze caused the familiar skip in her heartbeat. But she still burned with rage at the way Cain had accused her grandfather of betraying her. His eyes returned to the parish register as the parson spoke.

  “The stage from Bristol drives straight through Greatfield, but that January day it stopped to let out a female passenger, a lady whose time had come. The Kings Arms is only a tavern, without an inn’s accommodations, so the landlord summoned me and I took the lady to the parsonage and summoned the midwife. Poor soul, her labor was long and hard. But finally a daughter was born. The midwife said she was very weak and seemed distraught with grief.”

  Although she had a thousand questions, Juliana couldn’t speak. Her heart ached at the tale and at the knowledge of what would come next. For though death in childbed was common, it dismayed her to hear in stark terms that her birth had killed her mother.

  “The midwife said the lady lacked the will to live, and when the fever came upon her she had no strength to throw it off. I went to her bedside and tried to encourage her, but she was barely sensible. All she could do was cry out for ‘Julian.’”

  “My father,” Juliana whispered.

  “So I inferred. Once it became obvious she was dying I tried to prepare her for the end. The truth must have penetrated her tormented mind. She managed to let me know the name and direction of her father and begged me to summon him.”

  By this time Juliana was choked by tears. The kindly clergyman patted her hand.

  “Mr. Fitterbourne came the next day. I believe the distance was not great. He arrived and sat at his daughter’s bedside for the last hours of her life. When she passed away he arranged for her burial and for the baptism of the child. For your baptism, Mrs. Merton.”

  “Did he choose my name?” she managed to ask through her tears.

  Mr. Howard frowned. “No. He wished to name you for your mother, but she had told me she wished to call you Juliana. Mr. Fitterbourne was unhappy about it, but he acceded to my suggestion that his daughter’s last wish be respected. I particularly remember this because his next revelation was such a shock.”

  A pit opened up in Juliana’s stomach.

  “It came as a complete surprise to me when Mr. Fitterbourne informed me his daughter was unmarried, that the father of her child was an unscrupulous seducer. She wore a wedding ring and had given the midwife her name. We both had the impression she was a widow.”

  Juliana could scarcely breathe. “What name?”

  Mr. Howard thought for several seconds, then shook his head. “I don’t remember. It’s been a long time, and once her father told me the sad truth the name no longer seemed important.”

  “Would the midwife remember?” Cain asked. “Can we question her?”

  “Mrs. Smith died five years ago.”

  “What of your own household?”

  “I am unmarried and keep few servants. Like Mrs. Smith, my housekeeper from those days is no longer with us.”

  Cain uttered a word under his breath that was probably unsuitable for their location and company. Whether Mr. Howard heard it or not, he must have caught their frustration.

  “I am sorry, madam,” he said. “I had no reason to disbelieve Mr. Fitterbourne, who appeared a proper gentleman. And why would he proclaim his own daughter unchaste if it were not true?”

  Chapter 20

  Juliana sat in the vestry awaiting Cain’s return. Mr. Howard had been called away, but had invited her to remain there as long as she needed to recover after his tragic tale. Cain had walked to the tavern where the postilions were taking refreshment.

  He’d said nothing of what they’d discovered. “If we leave now we can cover a good part of the distance back to London tonight,” he said. “I’ll return with the carriage.”

  One side of her shied from a continuation of their previous argument. Mr. Howard’s narrative gave Cain ammunition in his fight to proclaim George Fitterbourne a villain. And much as she didn’t wish to think ill of him, Juliana now had to accept that if she was, indeed, of legitimate birth, her revered grandfather had almost certainly lied about it. And robbed her of her rightful inheritance along with her name.

  On the other hand, having been given an intimation that she might not be a nameless bastard, she found herself reluctant to relinquish that hope, however faint.

  Her feelings about Cain were equally contradictory. If her legitimacy was proved, it would mean George Fitterbourne had treated her villainously and how could she bear it? How could she forgive Cain for being right?

  She stood up and shook her head in irritation. Ever since the Romeo and Juliet had appeared in her shop and they had deciphered Cassandra’s code, her emotions had been in turmoil. She hardly knew the tearful and irrational woman she seemed to have become. She needed to rediscover her grounding. Looking around the room she fastened on an object that had, unfailingly, provided the anchor in her life. A book.

  It was a Bible, bound plainly in black morocco. A late seventeenth-century edition, she guessed as she opened it. Not a valuable edition but a clean, fresh copy of a nicely printed book with good wide margins. She turned a few pages, the sight of crisp black type on creamy paper exercising a calming effect. Then a word caught her eye. A name, Amnon.

  Who was Amnon and why was the name familiar?

  The evening Cain had brought her dinner came back to her, the first time they’d eaten together. She’d drunk too much and her memory of much of the conversation was fuzzy, but a fragment of speech floated through her mind.

  My father called me Amnon.

  It sounded like a biblical name, in keeping with the late marquis’s well-known enthusiasm. Later she’d le
arned from Esther that Cain’s Christian name was John and she’d been surprised. Now she realized why. But who was Amnon?

  She read the page of the Book of Samuel that had caught her eye. Amnon, a son of David, had fallen in love with Tamar, his own sister.

  “Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her.”

  Amnon had raped Tamar. Cain’s father called him Amnon.

  She could hardly believe the words. Yet she’d always had the impression Cain hadn’t told her the whole story of his family estrangement, that a deeper conflict with his father lay beyond vague charges of debauching maids. Esther had been eight years old when Cain had left. Her mind reeled with the horror of the accusation.

  Not for a moment did Juliana credit him capable of such an outrage. She had no doubt that brother and sister were sincerely attached to each other, but definitely not in that way. During the time she had spent with Esther, the girl had expressed nothing but artless sisterly affection for her older brother. Her delight at their reunion was, Juliana would swear, uncomplicated by any shadow of evil.

  True, Cain was no saint. But she had faith in his ultimate goodness. His nature was fundamentally kind. She’d always suspected much of his attitude was snapping his fingers at the world. Now she understood why. Her own anger at him dissolved in the face of indignation that his father had accused him so cruelly, and a profound sympathy for what he must have suffered.

  She was ashamed of herself. Cain had problems and responsibilities of his own, yet he’d dropped everything to set off with her on this voyage to unearth her past. He’d been nothing but a rock of support every step of the way, and his care of her was wholly unselfish.

  Now Juliana could only wonder why she had become so irate at his speculations about her grandfather. Speculations that were, she had to admit, reasonable. They might or might not be true, but either way Cain hardly deserved the level of wrath he’d invoked. And she’d said cruel things to him.