Her Duke of Secrets

by Christi Caldwell

  Of course, everything that her father had shared and journaled about would have changed through the years. Time marched on, and everything invariably did. It was foolish to expect that the items he’d found of value should still be sold at this very market.

  Nonetheless, Elsie drifted deeper into the increasing fray of the morning activity. All around her, calls went up as vendors hawked their wares.

  She stopped abruptly, and Bear collided with her legs.

  “I believe I’ve found it,” she whispered, with a loving stroke between Bear’s ears.

  The bright splash of green at the center of the other goods stood out, a stark, cheerful expression of the countryside in this desolate part of London. With a spring in her step, Elsie rushed over. The same thrill at finding a valuable herb in the countryside moved through her now as she examined the items on display.

  Searching. Searching…

  Elsie chewed at her lower lip.

  “Need ’elp, dear?”

  She glanced at the gap-toothed, graying woman, who smiled back. Arms filled with flowers, the rotund vendor held them out. “Blooms?”

  Elsie returned the smile. “No flowers this day.” The woman’s face fell. “I’m looking for something different,” she said, softening the rejection. She moved slowly around the cart filled with greenery and stalks. “Certain… blades of grass. Wheatgrass.”

  The woman made a tsking sound. “No wheatgrass here in this part of London.”

  Of course not. Elsie sighed. “Something like it, then.”

  “Feather reed grass?” The vendor held up several stalks.

  Elsie briefly considered the dried plants. “No.”

  Tapping a muddied fingernail against her lips, the woman spoke quietly to herself. “Bur reed?”

  “No… I…” Her words wandered off as she was drawn over.

  “Ah, thatching reed?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. With reverent fingers, she lifted the cylindrical stalk, dried from the sun, hardened. Of course.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?”

  She stiffened and glanced back.

  A darkly clad stranger came over. He strode with idle steps, unthreatening in the languid pace, and yet, there was a jaded hardness to his eyes.

  Reflexively, Elsie moved closer to Bear. And for the first time since she’d gone off on her own, even with her dog at her side, fear settled around her, for she and Bear had been alone together once before. The end result had been her father’s death and her near murder. Her palms moistened, and she discreetly wiped them along the sides of her skirts. But she’d not been cowed before, and she’d not do it now for a stranger. “May I help you?”

  The interloper tipped the edge of his bowler hat. “An odd purchase,” he noted by way of greeting, nodding at the items in her hand.

  Elsie thinned her eyes. What was he on about? “It is only odd if one does not have a proper use for it.”

  “Fair enough.” The ghost of a smile grazed his lips, lending him an almost wolflike quality. “Please, do not allow me to keep you from making your purchase.”

  And yet, as Elsie completed her transaction, buying the remainders of the thatching reeds, the stranger remained at her side, taking in her every movement.

  From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement as he tugged free his fine leather gloves and—

  Elsie’s body jerked.

  Bear growled, baring his teeth.

  The metal signet ring glinted, unnaturally bright in the early dawn light.

  It was the ring. The same one worn by so many patients who’d been brought to her father, a glittering scrap that marked their order.

  Fear turned her mouth dry, choking off the ability to draw a breath, at the reminder of the perilous world William inhabited and the world in which her father had inadvertently embroiled her.

  With fingers that shook, Elsie exchanged coin for the reeds, and then, unlatching her basket, she dropped her purchase inside, atop the precious books there. Snapping her fingers once, Elsie, Bear at her side, took a hurried step around the stranger.

  “Do you think they’ll help him?” he called after her.

  A chill scraped along her spine. Leave. Do not engage. He is one of them. Everything with these gentlemen is a game. Bear nudged her, urging her to leave. “Beg pardon?” she asked, turning to face him. Nonetheless, she’d lived in fear too long because of them… and because of herself. William had helped her to see that.

  “Come,” he called out, almost cheerfully. “You’re not very good at dissembling. Do you trust those reeds? Will they help His Grace?”

  She huddled deeper within her cloak. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Not even sparing a glance for the bearlike dog at her side, the stranger moved himself into her path. “I suspect the better question is why should you want to help him?”

  So that was what this was about, then? Those within the hated organization still saw her as the traitor’s daughter. They questioned her honor and motives. Elsie curled her fingers tight around her handle and faced the hard-eyed stranger once more. “Because that is what decent people do.” She enunciated each syllable slowly. “They help.”

  “And the wronged ones seek revenge,” he remarked, tucking his gloves inside his jacket. “Which one are you really, Miss Allenby?” he asked, almost conversationally. However, the steely edge to the query belied any hint of true friendliness. Something within his eyes indicated that whatever answer she gave mattered very much.

  Elsie drifted closer, and the stranger’s eyes flared with surprise. Good. Did he believe she’d back down from him? “The problem for those who live a life of treachery and lies is that they come to expect that is all anyone is capable of. But there is more to everyone and forgiveness to be found.”

  “Never tell me that you haven’t had resentment over how someone treated you or yours, Miss Allenby? That you didn’t hunger for revenge?”

  Her breath lodged in her lungs, she shook her head. “I’d be lying if I told you that.” Elsie looked over her shoulder to an old vendor struggling to shove her cart along the uneven cobbles. “But I find that my anger didn’t bring me solace, and the only thing that can bring me peace”—and contentment—“is letting go of the darkness and finding the light.” There was something so very cathartic and freeing in that. A healing buoyancy suffused her chest and lifted her. She and William had both been haunted. They weren’t different in that regard. He’d helped her to see that.

  The man gave her a long look. “That is… not the answer I was expecting, Miss Allenby.” The agent gave her a long, pitying look. “You’re naïve if you believe that.”

  “I’m hopeful for believing it,” she countered softly.

  With that, he touched the brim of his hat and started off through the throng of carts and tables.

  Elsie’s heart kicked up a panicky beat, and she followed his retreating form with her gaze until he’d gone. This stranger knew who she was. He knew and sought to gauge the depth of her loyalty. Well, he and the rest of the Brethren could go to hell with their ill opinion of her, and the world on the whole.

  Somewhere, a rooster crowed, the country sound at odds with the bustle of London activity.

  Springing into movement, Elsie held her basket close and, with long strides, found her way to the hack. The driver sat atop the perch and immediately jumped down when he spied her.

  Too many missteps in the past had proven how rot she was at identifying the perils around her until it was too late.

  “Miss?” the driver called impatiently.

  Steadying her basket, Elsie accepted his proffered hand and climbed inside. Bear jumped in behind her. As the carriage started its slow roll down the unfamiliar cobblestones of London, Elsie peeled the curtain back a smidge and peered out.

  The stranger’s words lingered in her mind.

  And the wronged ones seek revenge. Which one are you really, Miss Allenby?

&nbs
p; Before she’d come to London, she would have said she was just that… consumed by her own hatred that she could not separate it from the fabric of her soul. Living alone in the Cotswolds, removed from the villagers and the rest of the world, it had become all too easy to believe that about herself.

  William, and the other men within the Brethren, had existed in her mind as entities and not people. It had been far too easy to see him as a caricature of a person, one who was maniacally evil and who destroyed lives without a thought and who was wholly incapable of love.

  But he wasn’t. She bit the inside of her cheek. He was a man who’d so desperately loved another that he’d become a shell of a person, dwelling in a prison of guilt he’d constructed for himself.

  For everything his wife had lost, how very lucky she’d been to have that gift.

  It was certainly a mark upon Elsie’s own soul that she sat here envying the late duchess for the love she’d known with William.

  Elsie’s mind balked, shying away from the path her thoughts were dangerously traversing.

  The carriage rolled to a halt, and reaching inside her basket, Elsie fished out the fare.

  Opening the door, her driver took the basket from her hands and, with his spare hand, helped her down. With a word of thanks, Elsie collected her things and started down the narrow alley between William’s Mayfair townhouse and the next. Using the servants’ entrance, she let herself into the kitchens already bustling with men, women, and children at work for the day.

  The same kitchens where she and William had sat hours ago—a lifetime ago?—when he’d at last gathered who she was, and the truth had been laid bare between them.

  Climbing the narrow stairwell at the back of the household, Elsie found her way to her chambers. She shifted her basket to her hip and reached around it to open the door.

  Bear ambled into the room and, with an excited yap, bound over to—

  Elsie gasped. Stepping inside the room, she set her basket down.

  “William,” she breathed as the fear left her. He stood at the side of her bed, the slight wrinkle to the coverlet hinting that he’d sat there. His face was a somber mask, and Elsie searched for a hint of what he was thinking. What did he want?

  *

  She is here.

  As Elsie closed the door behind her, juggling the basket she was never without, William stood there, afraid to so much as breathe lest she vanish. As all good things and people invariably did.

  Except, she didn’t. She glided forward with long, sweeping strides, fiddling with the wood clasp at her neck, divesting herself of the coarse wool cloak, and setting it along the back of a desk chair.

  “You’re here,” he said hoarsely, the observation nonsensical.

  Elsie stopped with several paces between them. Watching him with guarded eyes, she retrieved her basket and moved deeper into the room. “I am,” she said in veiled tones.

  That was it.

  I am.

  Nothing more than the simplest of confirmations that revealed nothing in terms of her intentions.

  He took a step toward her. “Where did you go?” he gritted out, his jaw immediately radiating agony.

  Fire flashed in her eyes, and Elsie dropped her basket to the floor. “Is that what this is about, William?” He opened his mouth, but she continued over him on a rush. “Did you wonder if the ‘traitor’s daughter’ would deceive you and you set your team of spies after me?”

  That was what she thought of him. “Of course not,” he sputtered, heat suffusing his cheeks. “It wasn’t about your father. It was…” All his senses went on alert as he homed in on the latter part of the accusation she’d tossed. “Who approached you when you were out?” he demanded, his voice coming out sharper than he’d intended.

  Ignoring his query, she settled her hands angrily on her hips, breathtaking in her fury. “My father was not a traitor.” Ice dripped from each word she clipped out.

  Her upset pierced the panic knocking around his chest. She was hurting… because of crimes her father had been accused of. Charges that mattered more than the peril she’d unwittingly found in London. Tabling the questions demanding to be asked, he modulated his tones. “I didn’t know who or what your father was until now,” he said quietly, having learned long ago to diffuse most conflicts before they escalated into a heated row.

  Alas, she proved unlike every person, in every way, he’d ever dealt with. Elsie took an angry step toward him, sending her skirts whipping about her ankles, displaying a flash of that trim flesh. “No, that is correct. You didn’t know him. Or about his service. Or anything about his life, and yet”—Elsie turned her hands up almost pleadingly—“you have condemned him as dishonorable to king and country.”

  He swiped a hand through his hair. Theirs was a debate that had been due since she’d stormed off with the truth of their connection at last breathed aloud. “I did not condemn him.”

  Elsie shook her head sadly. “No. But ‘not knowing’ about the lives of those who worked for you on behalf of the country does not pardon you from guilt over their fate.”

  William winced. Her ill opinion struck like a well-placed kick to the gut. My God. What was worse was that Elsie deserved to have that opinion. In failing to know anything about her or her father, he’d failed the both of them. And how many other men and women who served on behalf of the Brethren did he also wrong? “You are correct,” he said hoarsely.

  She rocked back. “What?” He might as well have stated the earth was in fact flat and they were all about to sail over the edge of it.

  William glanced down at the signet ring upon his finger, the metal scrap that marked his connection to an organization, a marriage that he’d been more loyal to than even his own.

  You are never wrong, William. You are always and only… correct.

  His father’s booming command, issued as he’d passed the role as leader of the Brethren on to William, echoed around his mind. Admitting failure in any way went against every lesson ingrained in him. He weighed his words. “You are correct. I don’t recall your father’s name. I don’t know the circumstances surrounding whatever decision he made or did not make.” In the past, the Brethren’s final ruling would have determined guilt and the assignment closed. How… flawed. And how had he failed to see that until now? “But I have reopened the case and have ordered anything relating to his file gathered and brought for my review.”

  Elsie hugged her arms around her middle, searching her eyes over his face. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because it is the right thing to do,” he said simply.

  She took a hesitant step toward him. Then another. And another. Until they were separated by only a handbreadth. “You’d simply take my word against that of… the Home Office.”

  “I would.” Before her, he’d have doubted God himself before questioning the Brethren.

  “Thank you,” Elsie said softly.

  Discomfited by the undeserved gratitude, William held a palm up. “You mentioned earlier that you believe I sent a team of spies after you…”

  “You did not?” she asked, unease creeping into her tone.

  Christ. It was a prayer and a curse together. Not again. Not again. “I did not. I would not have you followed. I’d simply ask any questions I have for you myself.”

  “Oh.” She worried at her lower lip. For the first time since she’d launched the defense of her father, worry darkened her eyes.

  Because of me. I’ve brought peril into this woman’s life. Just like Adeline. Just like…

  No! He’d not allow it. “Can you tell me everything about him… and this meeting?”

  Elsie twisted her hands together and proceeded to offer an accounting of the encounter. When she finished, William stored each detail. He’d need to speak to his brother. They’d require additional men stationed.

  “Do I… have reason to worry?”

  “Yes,” he said, offering that truth because the lie of omission had left another woman in peril.
>
  Elsie brought her shoulders back and nodded. “I see.”

  Any other woman would have dissolved in a weepy mess. Any other woman, except this brave creature before him. William started to leave and then stopped at the front of the room. “I’d have you know… my response a short while ago was not because I do not trust you.” His fingers curled tight around the door handle. He forced himself to glance back. “I thought you’d left.”

  She cocked her head. “I don’t… understand.”

  Closing the space that divided them in three long strides, he gripped her by the shoulders and squeezed, assuring himself she was real, that the first flash of light in his otherwise dark existence had not been extinguished. “I thought you’d left,” he repeated, his fingers clenching reflexively upon her. As she should have. As she needed to. Soon. Pain lanced at his gut.

  Her lips formed a soft moue. “Why?”

  With a broken laugh, he closed his eyes. “Why did I think that?” he repeated incredulously. She was the only woman who’d dare ask that. The only one who’d not have hurled in his face her birthright and connection to a man who’d served the Brethren and send him on to the devil. “Why should you not have gone when I did not even know the name of a man who served…” Shame killed the remainder of that admission. At one time, he’d have been so cynical that he’d not have seen beyond Edward’s and Stone’s revelations that the doctor had been a “traitor.”

  Elsie’s heart-shaped face softened. She stretched a hand up and caressed his cheek. “And it… mattered to you? That I’d gone?”

  It would gut him all over again when she left. Squeezing his eyes briefly shut, William leaned into her touch, accepting that warmth that had been missing in his life. How could she not know? How could she not know how much she’d come to mean to him? She’d restored light to an otherwise dark world. He managed a shaky nod. “The moment I first saw you, I wanted to send you away.” Just as he’d wished to do to every other doctor and healer who’d arrived.