His Secret Heroine

by Delle Jacobs

  It was enough for her.

  "Weems," she called, and the old butler appeared in his magically silent way, as if he had been standing there all along.

  "My shawl. Have a horse saddled for me. I shall leave you in charge of the children."

  "I shall send to the inn, then, Miss Englefield," he said. "We have no riding horses."

  "We'll go ourselves," Reggie said. "My horse is waiting."

  They rushed outside. No horse was waiting at the hitching post. A pair of saddle bags rested on the steps.

  "He took my horse." Reggie turned to Chloe with a look of growing dread.

  Chloe threw the cashmere shawl over her shoulder and started down the sunken lane, tugging Reggie's hand. "It isn't far."

  At the inn, they hurried up the stairs to the room the duke had taken. But the duke had not been back to his room.

  "Then where the devil could he have gone?" Reggie asked, almost to himself as he searched about for clues.

  "Beachy Head. He said he would be going there. He said it was soothing. Oh, Reggie, I don't like this."

  "He's not a man to enjoy scenic overlooks."

  "He wanted to be alone."

  Reggie called for riding horses.

  "Got no side saddles, sir," the ostler said, casting an uncertain look at Chloe.

  Chloe glared. "Hardly a time for sensibilities. A man's saddle will do well enough. It's well after midnight, and we have no time to waste."

  Chapter Nineteen

  The faint glow of dawn was already lightening the horizon as Reggie rode with Chloe up the slope. From this side, it gave the appearance of just another one of the chalk downs. But Reggie had seen the cliffs from the sea. Just out of sight, what should have been more rolling hills was chopped off vertically into one of the most magnificent cliffs the world could ever offer.

  Beachy Head.

  Reggie studied his love, who rode beside him, astride a fresh horse. Tired, yet unwilling to quit or even to slow down, unwilling to wait for a side saddle that might slow them because she would have to be more careful.

  He hoped she was wrong. But some horrible dread slid off into the depths of his stomach and told him she was not. Something about the story she had shared with him made her conclusion too real, too frightening, to be ignored. In his mind, he still saw the image that had been burned into his mind so many years ago, of his distraught father holding the dead baby he had adored so much. Chloe was right. He would have tried to blame himself.

  But Chloe was also right, that Reggie must not hold himself responsible for what his parent had never told him. He must not take on his father's troubles, nor his unacceptable way of handling them. Still, if his father managed to, or even meant to, step over the edge of that cliff, Reggie knew he could never forgive himself. Spurring his horse, Reggie was glad they'd taken a few moments to secure fresh mounts in Eastbourne.

  A pale yellow ribbon of light outlined the eastern horizon behind them and traced faint edges of clouds out to sea. Reggie's eyes no longer strained to see the gray lane the horses followed up the slope. The top of the Head was broad and indistinctly rounded, but Reggie knew his father. For whatever reason brought him here, the duke would seek out the highest, farthest point.

  Against the brightening distant sky, the black margin of Beachy Head slowly lightened and took on the first hints of dusky green, its oddly quiet serenity clanging in his brain like a warning bell. Still, he saw nothing, nothing but the clean, undulating line of the downs.

  Then, there he was. Stark as the fractured stump of a lone pine tree, silhouetted against the vivid stripes of dawn, his garments tossed like tattered flags in the wind off the sea. The rolled brim beaver hat that was the mark of the duke's perfection lay upended on the down, blown there and forgotten.

  The man who had everything, yet had nothing. The loneliest man on earth.

  Reggie caught Chloe's eye. His beautiful heroine, riding beside him. So courageous. And so afraid.

  Reggie dismounted, and before he could reach Chloe, she had also alighted from the brown mare she rode. Reins in hand, they quietly approached the lone figure at the top of the cliff.

  Closer, closer. The figure faced them, and had the face of his father. Fear stuck in his throat like a stubborn bone.

  Step by step, they edged closer, until Reggie could see on his father's face the infinite sadness that had so frightened Chloe. Now he understood why she had been so moved.

  "Father, come away from the cliff," Reggie said.

  The duke breathed deeply and turn back seaward, wind tossing his silvered hair. "It is so beautiful here, Reggie. When I see the clouds sailing across the sky like ships, I understand why you love the sea so much."

  "It is beautiful," Reggie replied, noting his father's use of the nickname he had not called his son since childhood. Since that time when the family had fallen apart. "But you are too close to the edge, Father. It crumbles into the sea, you know."

  "Not so close, Reggie. I have been here many times, and I have not fallen yet."

  Not yet. But something was different about this time. Reggie could feel it in his gut.

  "Have you come to protect me, then, Reggie? You and your lovely termagant?"

  Reggie opened his mouth, but wisely shut it when the duke began to speak again.

  "She has vanquished me, you know. Quite unfairly, but I concede defeat."

  "She's not Elizabeth, Father. And you cannot make her into Elizabeth."

  "Oh, yes, I know. My attic is not to let. Yet she haunts me. I cannot look at her without thinking of Elizabeth, yet there is no fathomable reason, beyond the odd coincidence of their birthdays. I assume you have discovered that."

  Reggie nodded.

  "Your Grace..." Chloe stepped forward, yet she also hesitated. Who knew what the duke would do?

  "You do think you are protecting me, don't you, Miss Englefield? I have customarily sought solitude as a means to sort out my problems, you know."

  "If I may say so, for such a meticulous person, you have an uncommonly disordered life that is much in need of sorting out."

  Alarmed, Reggie reached to Chloe to hush her. But her eyes flashed back warning and her hand suddenly extended to stop him. She knew something he didn't know.

  The duke faced the sea, jaw set, wind blowing the graying hair back from his face.

  "Be forewarned, Reginald, she is the most obtuse of female creatures."

  Reggie glanced back and forth between them, suddenly feeling like the audience in a play.

  "I am grateful, Miss Englefield."

  "For what, Your Grace?"

  For a moment, he did not reply, but kept staring out over the immense darkness of the sea that was slowly brightening.

  "I have made quite an inglorious shambles of my life. All I ever wanted was to protect my family, to keep them from harm. Yet it seems the harder I tried, the more things disintegrated before my very eyes. Elizabeth died. You are right, I could have done nothing to save her. Somehow, that is very hard to admit. Perhaps it really is easier to be guilty than to be helpless. My marriage crumbled into ruins. The duchess left me because I could not bear to allow her to have another child."

  "But how could you— oh."

  "I would not allow even the possibility. And so I lost her anyway. She always did have more courage than I. It was she who left me, and I could not stand to admit that, so I allowed it to be said I had exiled her. I could not bear to be without my children, yet could not leave her bereft of them, so I took Robert and left Reginald to her care, thus earning Robert's hatred for taking him, and Reginald's for leaving him behind.

  "Robert resented me so much, he threw himself headlong into a war to get away, and I have been afraid ever since that he would die. I swore I would not lose you, Reggie, but the more I tried to tame you, the more elusive you became. You would not fight me directly, like Robert, so I could not tell what to expect of you. I suppose that made me try even harder to hold onto you. I told myself you could no
t be depended upon to make good decisions, for you were far too impulsive. I did not even want to let you choose your own bride, for fear you would bring ruin to yourself."

  Reggie clenched his fists to keep himself from dashing up and ruining the strange recital. Yet he wanted to drag the duke back from the precipice, throw his arms around him, and at the same time scream at the arrogance that was perhaps not arrogance after all. Just loss, and terrible fear of even more loss. His fists tightened even more in his effort to contain himself.

  The duke stared off over the gray-cast sea, once again silent for a moment. "How I have feared that you loved me no more than those who had already turned their backs on me! You have as much reason as they, perhaps even more. I cannot help but wonder, Reggie, have I lived my entire life in vain?"

  Did the duke still seek to twist them to his will, using pity where his other weapons had failed? Or did he at last call out for help? Reggie gulped again, trying to make that unpassable lump go down. What if he said the wrong thing? Still standing only a few feet away from the crumbly edge, the duke could step over before Reggie could stop him.

  He could knock him away. He just had to move fast enough. All the years Reggie had spent climbing ratlines and walking the yard had given him a strength and agility his father could not hope to match.

  But if he did, he would be controlling his father, just as his father had controlled him, and Chloe, his mother, his brother. And just as he himself had attempted to control Chloe's fate, so certain he knew what was best for her. So certain she should not be allowed to make her own mistakes.

  But this mistake could cost his father his life.

  No, there was a better way.

  Chloe was right. The Duke of Marmount might be one of the most powerful men in the Realm, but he was as fragile as an abandoned hatchling. They-he and Chloe-were the ones who were strong. But Reggie must not stop him if he chose to step over the cliff. He had to let the duke make his own choice.

  Reggie took a deep breath. He stepped back instead of forward.

  A flicker in the corner of the duke's eye told Reggie his movement had been noticed. And interpreted.

  "You cannot make me hate you, father," Reggie said softly. "You can destroy my respect, but not my love, no matter how hateful your actions. But for all that I love you, you can lose me. I will walk away from you forever if I must. I will not give Chloe up to your manipulations, and I will not allow you to hurt her or her sisters. It is time you grew up, Your Grace. It is time to let go of what you have lost and let those you love have their own lives."

  "I can see that." Again the duke sighed. "Now that I have come to know her, I can see there is no power on the face of this earth strong enough to keep you from her."

  "Why would you want to?" Reggie asked.

  "I don't. I just wanted my way, as usual."

  Reggie stole a glance at Chloe, whose wide green eyes flicked back and forth apprehensively between him and the duke, almost pleading. What was she thinking? Did she plead for herself, or the duke?

  "I don't believe you," Chloe said to the duke. "You're afraid of happiness. Afraid of what happens when you lose it. And you don't want your son to suffer the way you have. But you cannot stop happiness any more than you can stop pain and suffering."

  The duke's nostrils flared in that very minuscule way he had, and Reggie thought he saw the muscle in his cheek bulge,

  The duke turned away and stared up at the dark lines of clouds that floated away from the sunrise. "There is a creature in the New World known as the snapping turtle which, once it has latched onto something with its powerful jaws, will not let go even if its head is severed. I believe you have an affinity with that creature, Miss Englefield."

  Chloe cocked her head. "Thank you, Your Grace. Although I would appreciate it if you do not choose to lop off my head to prove the resemblance."

  Reggie gaped like a country bumpkin.

  She reached out and touched the duke's arm. Reggie cringed. Nobody touched the duke.

  "Come back with us, Your Grace. Your family needs you."

  Still facing the sea, wind tossing his hair like a wild pennant, the duke grasped Chloe's hand.

  So that was it. It had been there all the time. Reggie had even seen it, himself, but he just hadn't truly understood. He had been so absorbed in his own need for his father's love that he had never understood a father might need the love of his son even more desperately. But Chloe knew. She had found it, buried deeply beneath the duke's hard crust.

  Reggie bit his lip. He reached out, his heart pounding. He touched the duke's shoulder.

  As the duke stepped back from the brink and turned to face them at last, Reggie saw the tracks of tears that streaked his face. Reggie grasped the hand that Chloe dropped, gently tugging, encouraging the duke back to safety, his eyes pleading.

  "Reggie..."

  Who knew what it was his father wanted to say but couldn't put to words? Reggie didn't care. The aching deep in his heart needed something words couldn't say. Tears streaking his own cheeks, he threw his arms around his father, and his father's chest heaved with sobs.

  The duke took long minutes before the aching sobs finally subsided. Finally with a heaving, ragged breath, he stepped back, holding his son's arms. Reggie looked eye to eye with his father in a way he had not since childhood.

  With a silent, accepting nod, the duke turned away, straightening himself and tugging at clothing that had never before been in a state of disarray.

  "I do beg your pardon," said the duke. "I cannot think what came over me."

  Reggie let a smile creep into the corner of his mouth. Perhaps it was too much to ask that the duke change his stiff ways in one night.

  The duke shook his head slowly, as if shaking away some strange sort of dream. "I thought for some time the fates were playing some terrible prank on me. But now, I begin to wonder if instead I have been given another chance."

  Grinning, Reggie took Chloe's hand and pulled her to him. He bent to snuggle a kiss beneath the golden curls, wind-tossed and fragrant with the smell of the sea.

  The duke cleared his throat. "Miss Englefield, have you not been in the company of this scoundrel throughout the night?"

  Chloe lifted her narrow little nose high. "I have indeed, Your Grace. More than that, I have ridden all night with him, astride, like a common hoyden, on a veritable steeplechase."

  Reggie would have laughed, but now he had to struggle to keep back his tears. "And now that I have found her again," Reggie replied, "I mean not to let her out of my sight."

  The duke's nostrils thinned. "Then it is obvious, you have been compromised, Miss Englefield, and that will not do. We shall return immediately to Upper Dicker and for the coach and hasten to London immediately for a wedding."

  "Now?" Chloe squeaked.

  Reggie chuckled. Something might have changed in the last few moments, but not everything.

  "I presume you have brought the Special License, Reginald. It is rather a shame we cannot wait for other family members, but it would seem the circumstances do not permit."

  "Today?" Chloe sounded like an echo of herself. "Wouldn't a good night's sleep be more the thing?"

  The dour-faced duke picked up the rolled brim beaver hat from where it lay in the dewy grass and jammed it onto his head. "You are no slowtop, Miss Englefield. It shall be today, or Reginald cannot stay with you. If that is what you want, then we can make Featherstone by tomorrow night, perhaps even with your waspish aunt and your sisters in tow, in which case you cannot make use of the Special License. Make up your mind."

  Chloe huffed and threw up her hands. Reggie laughed. For he knew his heroine’s pretense at defeat was really secret triumph.

  With a precise pivot, the duke strode in military fashion back down the slope toward the horse he had left to graze. And just at the moment he turned, Reggie caught a glimpse of something he had not seen in a very long time.

  The Duke of Marmount was smiling.

 
Epilogue

  "Give him to me," the duke said, reaching out for the crying baby in Chloe's arms.

  Reggie smiled as he watched Chloe pass her infant son to the duke, then heave a sigh of relief. She had been doing just fine. But the little rascal was wearing her out, and Reggie knew she would never admit it. As she settled back against the arm he draped about her shoulder, Reggie gave her a reassuring hug.

  All around them, the family gathered, and the sitting room hummed with the lyrical female voices of Chloe's sisters and aunt, and Reggie's mother. His brother Robert, at last using a cane after a long struggle with crutches, almost sourly accepted the adoration of Madeline and Allison. Reggie raised an eyebrow as the thought struck him that Robert was far more like their curmudgeon father than he would ever admit.

  "They do take a bit of getting used to," the duke told Chloe as he cuddled the little one into the cruck of his arm and rocked gently. His rough-edged voice softened into the soothing sounds of a lullaby, and the baby's squalling turned to whimpers.

  "I am simply amazed, Your Grace," Chloe responded.

  Reggie wasn't. True, in many ways, his crusty parent was an amazing person. It was just that Reggie had known it all along.

  The duchess peered around the duke's shoulder at the infant, who gave a little sniff like a hiccup, and quieted again.

  "He has always had a wonderful way with children," the duchess said. "It is a pity more fathers cannot take such an interest in their offspring."

  Behind her, Robert leaned on his cane and glared. In a way, Reggie felt sorry for Robert, who had spent so much of his life angry at his father. The duke was trying so very hard, but Robert would give him no quarter. Reggie supposed he should be content that the two of them could be in the same room without descending into verbal mayhem.

  Reggie couldn't say he actually understood the nature of their conflict. Certainly, Robert had been an adored child, and had probably loved their father as much as Reggie had. Had it been when Elizabeth died, and the duke had withdrawn so deeply? Or had it been the whispered arguments between the parents that both boys had heard, but neither understood?