Table of Contents
Title Page and Synopsis
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Afterword
Discussion Questions
More Victorian Romantic Suspense From Amanda DeWees
Also by Amanda DeWees
About the Author
Books by Amanda DeWees
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2012 Amanda DeWees
Synopsis: In Victorian England, innocent young Oriel Pembroke is disowned by her cruel father and takes refuge with the aristocratic Ellsworth family at their seaside estate. But as she falls in love with the brooding young duke, Herron, she begins to fear for his sanity—and for both their lives—as sinister events unfold.
Chapter One
After the funeral we returned to the house. We sat in the parlor listening to the drumming of rain against the windows until Father strode to the drapes and jerked them closed as if slamming the door on an eavesdropper.
It had rained all through the funeral. Not the gentle trickle that a sentimental person could interpret as tears from a sympathetic Nature; this was a soaking, squelching rain, the kind that gets under collars and into boots and eyes. Nor was it some special manifestation for the funeral; it had been raining like this all month. My brother Lionel, who had never troubled to guard his speech around me, would have said that it was pissing down.
It was Lionel we had buried today.
Because of the filthy weather the minister had rushed through the service, and the few mourners willing to brave the downpour at the graveside shook our hands quickly and damply before slogging off to their waiting carriages. Their hasty words of consolation were as grey and comfortless as the weather.
“You may be proud that he died a hero’s death,” intoned Abel Crowley, one of my father’s colleagues.
“Indeed; a bullet in the head at twenty-three is far more gratifying than pneumonia at seventy,” returned Father, and Crowley, a man not highly attuned to sarcasm, nodded sagely and clapped my father on the back before ambling away. Mrs. Merridew, the pastor’s wife, was the next to say the wrong thing.
“He is strolling the streets of heaven now, and is one with the angels above,” she quavered, all three of her chins trembling with emotion. I smothered a hysterical giggle in my handkerchief. If Mrs. Merridew had set eyes on Lionel since the day of his baptism, she would have known that he would most likely not have been admitted into heaven at all. As much as I loved Lionel, I was well aware that he was more likely to be throwing dice in a warmer clime. If by some oversight he had been admitted into the Elysian Fields, he was probably wishing he were at a dog race instead.
My father, a partisan of evolutionary theory, attended church only for the sake of appearances, so that his law practice would not suffer from his views. He gave the good lady a level look of scorn, which she was fortunately too nearsighted to catch.
But it was left to Mrs. Armadale from down the street to make the most foolish attempt to console my father for his loss.
“At least you still have your daughter,” she said.
Father stiffened. I kept my eyes lowered, but I could sense the withering glance he directed at me.
“Madam,” said Father, in his deep, solemn voice, “you cannot imagine how that fact has cheered me.”
* * *
Now I sat in a chair as near the fire as I dared, spreading out my rain-sodden skirts to try to dry them. Father stood on the hearth, feet planted wide, staring into the flames. It was one of his favorite positions: it both established his mastery and effectively blocked any of the fire’s warmth from reaching me. He was a handsome man, and created an imposing picture in his mourning black, which contrasted with his silver hair and moustache. He wore no beard, perhaps because one would have hidden his strong jaw.
He rang for tea, and Molly, the housemaid, brought it in. My hands were still stiff with cold from our vigil in the graveyard, and when I poured, tea slopped into the saucer. My father watched me with a derisive twist to his mouth.
“Such is my consolation,” he said drily. “My brave, handsome son is killed in battle, and my blundering, useless daughter remains to cheer me. How comforting it will be during the decades to come that you will always be here with me. Every day, every hour I will have the solace of seeing your face and being reminded that, while I have lost my son, I will never lose my daughter.”
I cleaned up the spilled tea as best I could and handed him his cup without answering. I had learned years ago that it was safest to say as little to Father as possible. Consequently, he added dullness to the list of my shortcomings.
Not least of these was my plainness. A daughter with dimples and glossy gold ringlets might have won his approval, even a smattering of affection. Since, however, I was from my earliest days small, thin, and drab, with no natural vivacity to lend any semblance of beauty, my father dismissed me as a financial burden and an inconvenience; sometimes, in a temper, he would go further and call me far worse.
I learned very early in life just what he thought of me. I remember being six years old and practicing at the pianoforte when he abruptly appeared at the door.
“Cease that blasted noise, girl,” he snapped. “I am attempting to get some work done.”
My instructress fluttered to him with an anxious smile. “Miss Pembroke must practice, sir, if she is to be musical.”
“Your optimism does you credit, Miss Dalby.” He regarded me with the cool calculation I know so well. He is a tall man, and at that time he seemed to tower over me, his deep-set eyes glaring out from under the strong silver brows. “She has no talent to foster; your lessons these few months have made that fact amply plain. I had hoped that, since the girl is utterly lacking in looks or charm, she might at least be accomplished, but it seems I am to be denied even this feeble compensation. I am saddled for the rest of my life with an unmarriageable brat who cannot even provide an evening’s entertainment in exchange for her room and board.” He turned swiftly to Miss Dalby, whose eyes were as wide in shock as was her mouth. “Madam, I see no reason to retain your services. Good day.”
The pianoforte was removed the next afternoon.
Now, not wishing to attract more rancor, I poured a cup of tea for myself and rose to take it to my room.
“Sit down,” he said without looking at me. “You are perfectly aware that we must be at home to condoling callers for the rest of the day. For once it is in your power to do something helpful, and you will not leave me to receive them alone.”
“Yes, Father.” I sometimes thought of myself as being one of the students in a Socratic dialogue when I spoke with Father. To whatever he said, however caustic or cruel, I answered only Yes, Father; As you say, Father; To be sure, Father. I wondered if Socrates’ students, like me, had entertained secret longings to reply, “What rubbish, Socrates”; “You’re a hypocritical tyrant, Socrates.”
Father glanced at me sharply. “And stop grinning, girl. You look completely witless.”
I erased the smile from my face. “I beg your pardon, Fath
er.”
“What you can find to smile about on the day you bury your brother, I cannot fathom.”
That smarted, as he knew it would. Lionel had been the dearest person on earth to me, and the only one to have shown me any affection.
Our closeness did not arise from any likeness to each other; indeed, we resembled each other scarcely at all. He possessed all the blond good looks and appealing manner that I did not, and seemed incapable of being unhappy for a more sustained period than a quarter of an hour, while I have always, due perhaps to the difference in our upbringing, been inclined to seriousness. Although I found his unflappable buoyancy endearing, it could also be exasperating. Our fondness for each other was mixed on both sides with a sense of condescension: he found my gravity endlessly amusing, while I shook my head at his genial lack of understanding and his sometimes disreputable escapades. Not through malice, but through a lack of forethought, he seemed constantly embroiled in some scrape, from getting a housemaid in trouble to losing his horse in a card game—which two events he considered to be about equally trivial.
It was in the same spirit of thoughtlessness that he went to the Crimea to fight. That was the only time I ever saw Father angry with Lionel. My brother’s disastrous encounters with cards, drink, and women were met with an indulgent smile, but this was one exploit my father protested.
“I’ll not have you going off and getting yourself killed,” he boomed. “Leave that to the fools who won’t be missed. I won’t tolerate my son and heir getting his young head blown off, or rotting of malaria in some army hospital.”
“Surely there are more alternatives than the two.” I could hear the smile in my brother’s voice from where I sat sewing in the room next to the study in which they wrangled. I could envision Lionel lounging in an armchair, stroking the luxuriant golden moustache he took such pride in. He fostered that moustache as tenderly as a mother would her firstborn.
“My boy, you are too important to risk your life in this offhand manner. You are young, handsome, brilliant”—only Father would have applied this adjective to Lionel—“and need only reach out your hand for the best the world can offer. Everything you want is yours for the taking—so why choose this?”
I could hear him shift uncomfortably in the armchair, his spurs jingling. “To tell the truth, Pater, I’m bored. There’s not much to do ’round here, and I’d love the chance to be in some real fighting. You needn’t worry so; you know I’m a crack shot. I shall return heaped with laurels.”
“And if you do not return?”—grimly. “What is to become of the Pembroke line then? And of your father?”
“Dash it, it’s not as if you’d be all alone. The Mouse will be here to look after you. Besides, she’ll be married one of these days and you’ll be looking forward to whole battalions of new heirs to bounce on your knee.”
There was a pause, while my father probably entertained that possibility and assessed it.
“My boy,” he said finally, “I consider myself to be an enlightened man, and I hesitate to stake my confidence in miracles.”
In spite of Father’s protests, Lionel had left within a fortnight, bidding us farewell with a jaunty grin and a demand for letters, which he agreed to consider replying to.
“And you, Mouse,” he said to me, “must promise to be careful while I’m gone. Any day young bucks will be thronging around you, and they may just try to take advantage of my absence. Until I come back to defend your honor—”
“Lionel, really.”
“—I want to know that you won’t let yourself be won over by any smooth-tongued young blade.”
I laughed; the prospect was so ridiculous that I could only marvel at his serious tone. It was typical of him to be oblivious to the fact that I had never been sought out by so much as one shy curate, let alone a succession of scheming seducers. “Lionel, I don’t think you need worry about that.”
“But I do worry,” he said, sounding so earnest that I wanted to hug him. For all his two years’ advantage, I frequently felt as if I were much older than my brother.
“I think I have enough sense to tell a cad from a gentleman,” I said, to soothe him.
“The trouble is, so many gentlemen are cads,” he said doubtfully. But he let himself be coaxed out of his worries, and it was only as he swung himself into the waiting hansom that I felt regret that I hadn’t continued the argument and thus delayed his departure a few minutes more.
Father, too, was silent and morose as the coach drove away. It was the one time I can remember when we were so in accord. Our apprehensions were fulfilled; Lionel was killed in battle less than a month later.
* * *
We received a number of visitors that afternoon, but not many friends of my brother’s: most were in the Crimea themselves, chasing after the dream of glory and excitement that had betrayed Lionel. The few who did call stood around awkwardly, holding a cup of tea with as much unease as if it had been a baby we had forced into their hands, and obviously wishing for stronger refreshment. Father’s cool reception of their stammered expressions of sympathy robbed them of the power of speech altogether, and since, as I have said, I speak as little in my father’s presence as is possible, we were not a lively group.
Nevertheless, I was sorry to see the last of the mourners leave, since that meant I was alone again with my father. More than ever I missed Lionel, who had acted as a buffer between us. In Lionel’s presence Father had treated me less harshly, made less display of his contempt for me; it surprised and amused him that Lionel was fond of me, but he humored the quirk as he humored all Lionel’s weaknesses. Since my brother had left for the war, the evenings had been tense; one night, when I dropped my thimble and startled Father out of a reverie, he stood, seized my mending, and flung it on the fire.
At dinner he was unusually silent. Even though he thinks little of my conversation, Father enjoys speaking—perhaps it is a characteristic of those in his profession—and would carry on a monologue in my presence, content for it to be punctuated by my murmurs of agreement. Tonight he watched me thoughtfully over the rim of his wine glass and spoke little. It made me nervous; but then, I am never relaxed in Father’s company. I wondered what he had in store for me. Doubtless it would not be pleasant.
“I’ll take port in my study, Molly,” he announced at the end of dinner, dabbing at his moustache with his napkin.
To my surprise, the maid continued to hover. “If you please sir, there’s a card for you,” she blurted, her black eyes bright with excitement. “It was left this afternoon.”
“This afternoon?” Pushing back his chair, he glanced at but did not reach for the square of pasteboard on the salver she extended. “You knew I was at home; why didn’t you admit whoever it was?”
“It was left by a messenger, sir.” Molly took a deep breath, and I wondered what sensational morsel she was about to unburden herself of. “Her Grace did not call in person.”
Her words did indeed cause a gratifying reaction. Father flung away his napkin and darted his hand out for the calling card, a hawk snatching at prey. “Her Grace?” he demanded, and even as his eyes gave him the name, Molly announced it, in ringing tones of personal pride.
“Gwendolyn, Duchess of Ellsworth.” She let the words die away solemnly, then added in an avid whisper, “her that’s just gone and married her brother-in-law.”
Now she had caught my attention as well. Gossip had made free with the duchess of late: a few weeks ago everyone had been gabbling about the scandal, so much so that even I, with my severely limited acquaintance, was familiar with the facts. Scant weeks after the death of her husband the duke, the duchess had married his younger brother. Many winks and nudges and knowing nods had registered awareness of her haste. There was more than a dash of spite in the gossip, as well, since the duchess had flown in the face of the law, which prohibited such marriages; there were grumblings about her having received special permission for the match. Some even cast a critical eye on the social conve
ntion that decreed she would continue to be addressed as a duchess even though her new husband held no title in his own right. I could understand Molly’s excitement at the knowledge that such a celebrated—or notorious—figure had sent her card to us. As for Father, I knew of old his reverence for the peerage. Little wonder now that he was exulting in this evidence that a lady of such rank had bestowed notice on his household.
The question was why she had. How would my father be acquainted with the duchess? And if she paid him enough notice to leave her card, why had she done so by proxy, instead of calling in person? It seemed as if she wanted to show her awareness of our bereavement without running the risk of seeing us face to face.
I was rapt in contemplation of the caprices of the peerage when Father’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“Thank you, Molly. I am glad to know Her Grace’s card was safe in your keeping all this time.” He had evidently recovered from his exultation, and the acid tone of his voice made her wince. Bobbing a quick curtsey, she removed herself as rapidly as she could. To me he added, “Bring the sherry and come with me.”
As usual, I said, “Yes, Father.”
To my surprise, the sherry was for me. When we reached his study, Father told me to pour myself a glass. He strode to the buffet where the port decanter was kept, and when his own glass was filled he turned to face me where I stood, standing awkwardly since he had not told me to be seated. He lifted his glass for a toast and, wondering, I raised my own.
“To the memory of Lionel,” he said.
“To Lionel,” I said.
He emptied his glass in one brief swallow and flung it into the fireplace. I hesitated, but he watched me impatiently, waiting for me to follow his example. The unexpected sentiment of his toast had tightened my throat, making it difficult to swallow, but I forced the sherry down before sending my glass after his. The crash of the glasses was shocking in the stillness of the room.
“Now, to business,” he said briskly. Opening his desk, he took out a paper and tossed it over to me. Startled, I did not quite catch it before it fell to the ground. Father shook his head in exasperation and turned his back to me, drawing a cigar from the humidor. “Read it,” he ordered, striking a match.
Sea of Secrets: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense Page 1
