Debt of Honor

by Ann Clement

  What a fool he had been!

  Percy almost tore at the pages now, looking for the dates coinciding with his departure for London after only two weeks of married paradise, or so he had foolishly thought at the time. He finally reached the first such entry.

  Bromsholme, Saturday, 18 June 1796

  My latest letter, my dearest love, will reach Lady M’s hands through my husband’s good services. He was obliged to leave for town for a fortnight—to his great chagrin and my unbounded joy. I am ill each morning now and have trouble hiding it from everyone for at least a little longer, until it can be creditably attributed to him. How much I miss you! How much I wish you were…

  Percy turned the page once the usual litany of her feelings followed. The next entry was dated four days later.

  My dearest, dearest love. I would have given my life to have you now at my side, for what has happened is a tragedy and suffering beyond my endurance. I have cried so much since yesterday that I can scarcely see the paper on which I am writing this.

  Something very horrible happened yesterday. I slipped on the wet grass and fell hard on the ground. In the evening, I began bleeding profusely. My maid is certain I lost the child. She says she has seen this happen before. I don’t want to believe her! If that is really true, my only consolation is that no one seems to suspect anything. My tears, I’m told, have been understood downstairs as a disappointment at having my courses.

  Write to me, my love, and tell me you still love me, even though I no longer carry a part of you under my bosom. I am so lonely without you and I miss you more than I can tell you in any way. Write to me. Your letters are the only things that keep me alive.

  Percy lifted his head and looked at the hall with unseeing eyes. Raw pain and fury churned inside his chest, obliterating everything else. The woman he had once loved more than life itself had used him more cruelly than he would have thought possible.

  Impatient, he tore at the pages, looking for anything that might answer the last question. Was Lettie correct, accusing Sarah of more lies?

  Finally, he found what he was looking for. Two days before his return from London, Sarah visited the apothecary whose wife was a midwife.

  My dearest heart, Sarah confided in her journal. My maid was correct. Oh, my love, I lost the child! The local midwife and her husband, the apothecary, whom I went to see today, not only confirmed the miscarriage, but are of the opinion I shall never be able to conceive again. They ascribed this impossibility to a defect within my body and expressed their surprise I conceived at all. It does not matter to me now, of course, after I lost your child. I am the unhappiest woman in the world, married to a man I do not love, or even…

  Percy dropped the notebook to the floor. He did not want to read another word written by Sarah to the man who had not even had the courage to fight for her.

  For so long he had felt empty inside, a stranger to emotions and feelings. He had given up personal happiness and berated himself for being less than a real man, before forcing himself to come to terms with his defective masculinity.

  But all this was a cruel deceit.

  With still-shaking hands, Percy reached for the sachet. Just as he supposed, it contained several letters. It was not difficult to guess that these were the corresponding professions of love from Burdett to Sarah. Given their scarcity, Burdett had found life in India more interesting than the welfare of his dejected lover in Norfolk. There were fewer and fewer of them as time passed, until May 1802, a month or so before Burdett’s arrival at Pythe Park.

  My dearest darling love, Burdett wrote in bold letters, after a month in town my affairs have been settled enough to let me come for a prolonged visit to B. Lady M. has been ingenious indeed in making such superb arrangements for us. Who would have thought that I shall be staying under the same roof with you at last? We shall be extremely careful, of course, but I count days, nay, hours and minutes, until I can hold you in my arms again, until we can be joined in our love again. For six years I have lived for that moment!

  My love for you knows no bounds, my darling life. A.B.

  PS. Although I hate to apply to you with such a request, I am at the moment (a passing one) reduced to inquire if you can lend me three hundred pounds. I have had a few unexpectedly large debts of honor this past week that had to be discharged, and am presently waiting for the money from my banker, but that may be a while. Your adoring A.

  Percy shot up from the chair and began pacing the hallway. Bastard! He would kill him if he could—oh, he would. The pain he thought had been forgotten surged through him with such force that he could barely stand on his feet. His entire body trembled. He compulsively crumpled the letters still in his hand into a large ball and sent them to join the notebook and the locket.

  When he closed his eyes, he saw Sarah’s face after he asked her to marry him. How well she had pretended her sentiment for him. Or, how blind he had chosen to be! How much he had allowed himself to be deceived into believing that she reciprocated his feelings with a force equal to his own. What a prize ass he had made of himself, even though he had to admit that they were very clever about duping him so completely. Yet one’s own stupidity could deliver the hardest blow to one’s self-esteem.

  He had loved Sarah with all his heart, with all the youthful energy of life. He was not the one who ought to be ashamed. It was Sarah’s and Burdett’s dishonesty, aided by Ethel’s willing complicity, that was wrong. Sarah’s hatred for him and bitterness were still beyond his understanding. He had not been the source of her problems. It was Burdett who had chosen not to give her the protection of his name when she became pregnant. Their child would also have been the victim of their manipulations.

  Both Sarah and Burdett might congratulate themselves, if they could, on the success of their deception. Sarah’s last prayer had been amply answered—he had lived in hell for two years, and, now, after a glimpse of happiness this summer, he was falling headfirst into an abyss of painful loneliness.

  Unless he stopped the fall. There was still a chance.

  It would be only too convenient to blame his present misery on his first wife and her lover. Why, in his self-centered and obtuse preoccupation with the past, hadn’t he seen that Lettie was right?

  Percy stooped to pick up the discarded pieces and crammed them haphazardly back into the tole box, forcing the lid in place, then turned into the corridor leading to the library. Watching the evidence of Sarah’s duplicity turn to ashes would be the best way to close the door on his past and leave behind all its burdens and sorrows that had been poisoning his life and his soul for the past two years. And that might, in the end, cost him the woman from whom he had not expected anything, but who had given him everything. And to whom he wanted to give everything in return.

  Sarah was no longer a part of his life. He would never let her usurp a moment of it again.

  Where was Lettie? Where was his curricle?

  Just then someone opened the entrance door. Percy turned on his heel, expecting it to be one of the footmen to tell him the curricle was waiting.

  Instead, dismay mixed with anger at the sight of the intruder.

  Chapter Thirty

  Percy turned still.

  Slater had been right.

  Ethel glanced toward the servants’ door in the back, then, apparently satisfied that the hall was empty, glided toward the commode by Sir Giles’s portrait and pulled out the top drawer.

  Her face fell, consternation curving her mouth downward. She reached deeper inside the drawer, but still came up empty-handed, so she pulled the drawer out until it hung by its back edge like a gaping mouth. Yet nothing helped.

  “Is this what you have been looking for all along, Ethel?” Percy asked, coming out of the corridor.

  She shrieked, startled and whirled to face him. Then, with agility that surprised him, Ethel launched herself at him, trying to snatch the box
from his hand, but Percy quickly raised his arm beyond her reach.

  “Damn you to hell,” she cried, her voice trembling with fury. “You have no right to that box. You have no right to Sarah’s journal!”

  “To the contrary, Ethel. You do not. I pity you. Sarah revealed in it more than you’d ever wish her to.”

  Her fists pounded his chest. Surprised by such a violent reaction, Percy moved back until she stopped following him. After a moment, he lowered his arm. To his relief, Ethel did not repeat the attack, yet she watched him through narrowed eyes.

  “Damn you,” she repeated, her bosom heaving, “damn you, damn you!”

  “Oh yes, damn me,” Percy snapped, not even trying to mitigate his own anger. “Damn me for falling in love and marrying a woman who failed to mention that neither her feelings for me nor even my fortune had anything to do with her accepting my hand. Damn me for loving her all those years and for trusting her as one would a true wife. The only thing I wish to know is why you took part in this charade. What was your motive?”

  “You!” she cried, her face suddenly flaming. “You never paid any attention to me once you returned from Cambridge.”

  Percy took a careful breath. For years, he had walked a tightrope between Ethel’s not-always-subtle overtures and his own self-preservation. Ironically, while Sarah led another secret life, he did whatever possible to avoid playing into Ethel’s hand and causing even a waft of gossip. After Sarah’s death, acting in a manner that would not make him beholden to her in anyone’s eyes added another burden to his misery. His new marriage obviously meant nothing to her.

  “So that was why you agreed to help them?” he ground out.

  “You can be remarkably stupid when you choose to,” she retorted.

  “I came back to Bromsholme after fourteen years of absence.” He swallowed growing irritation. “You wed Marsden straight out of the schoolroom, less than a year after my return. Was that to attract my attention? Was it to attract my attention that you joined Sarah and Burdett in their scheme?”

  “You were no longer of consequence to me then,” she retorted with a derisive laugh that sounded a trifle forced, perhaps even tearful. “And you have no idea how many men of the ton I met during my marriage who would do anything for the mere chance to court my favor. You were just a bad memory. It seemed fitting to let you taste your own medicine.”

  “You’ve had your fill, then,” he rejoined.

  Her eyes turned suspiciously shiny. “I never meant you any harm.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t agree with you entirely,” he replied. “And I don’t really care, especially at this very moment.”

  “You never cared,” she said with feeling.

  Then she swiped at the spilling tears and straightened her spine. “I loved Sarah from the day Tony introduced her to me. She became my best, dearest friend, and I would do anything for her. She and Tony were made for each other. He could not marry Sarah since he was already married, and then you came along and took away from them the shreds of happiness they had in each other’s company, and you coerced her father into promising you her hand. And you wonder why I helped them?”

  She pointed a finger at him vehemently. Her voice rose to an angry shrill. “You killed her! You killed her as surely as if you strangled her yourself. And you killed Tony. You are nothing less than a murderer to me!”

  “You knew about the duel, didn’t you? Well, of course. Burdett wouldn’t keep from you the real reason why he was obliged to leave in such haste.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. I left the house that morning soon after my brother and waited for Tony, or for news about him, in the woods near the inn where he stayed that night. It was only bad news.” Her face crumpled again, but she managed to stop tears. “Oh, I wanted to gallop to Bromsholme and kill you with my bare hands!”

  Percy ignored that poignant declaration. “So you think Burdett is dead, don’t you?”

  “Just as I knew,” Ethel hissed. “You are a coward and a liar too. Do not even think of denying the truth. I saw Tony’s shirt with a bloody stain where you shot him through the heart!”

  A shirt with a stain? Her words cut through the dull annoyance he was beginning to feel at her usurped right to meddle in his life.

  “Where did you see it?” he asked sharply.

  Ethel smiled triumphantly. “So, you admit to committing murder, in face of undisputable evidence?” she asked with mocking sweetness. “Why, his valet brought it with him and showed it to me as soon as the duel was over.”

  “Ah, so it was Burdett’s valet who told you that he was dead,” Percy murmured, half to himself, still turning over this statement in his mind with some amazement. “Did you also see Burdett’s body?”

  “Certainly not. I am a lady. Besides, you ordered it to be removed immediately, and so his valet was in great haste to be off, determined to take Tony’s body home to his wife, as was Tony’s own wish. He only met me for a brief moment to impart that horrid news and give me the ring and letter Tony had left for Sarah.”

  There was challenge in her gaze, and Percy felt as if he’d just awoken from a long, exhausting nightmare.

  “Well, Ethel,” he said, “someone in this affair was—or is—a coward and a liar. You guessed that part right. You just did not guess the right person. Sarah’s and Tony’s was a perfect scheme indeed. It appears now that I was not the only one duped. Tony’s valet told you a tall tale about taking his master’s body home. Burdett had no home in the country for a long time then. In truth, he sold his estate before moving to London nine years ago, before—presumably—meeting Sarah, or so I think, since it was almost a year before I married her. He was also no longer married then either. His wife died of consumption soon after Christmas of 1794, and Tony sold the estate his father-in-law gave them as a wedding gift. That was the only estate he had ever owned. His father’s entire property is entailed and will pass on to his elder brother.”

  Ethel’s smirk slowly gave way to an expression of complete incredulity.

  “What are you saying?” she croaked after a few seconds of such silence that they would have heard a pin drop on the stone floor.

  “I didn’t need to coerce Sarah’s father into anything,” Percy continued. “His own daughter pleaded with him not to delay the wedding by a minute longer than absolutely necessary. She never told you why? You would have known by now if you’d found the box before me. Sarah and Burdett’s ‘shreds of happiness’, as you put it, had consequences. If it is any consolation for you, Ethel, I did not know about it—and her subsequent miscarriage—until minutes ago.”

  Ethel’s eyes changed from slits to saucers, and dark blotches of color reappeared on her cheeks.

  “You are lying,” she said vehemently. “These are all lies and excuses for your dastardly behavior. I do not believe one word of what you said.”

  That did not surprise him. He himself still felt off-balance with all his newly acquired knowledge.

  “Your brother was my second, remember?” he replied. “Burdett’s ungentlemanly behavior on the day of the duel led us to find out more about his affairs. He no doubt will confirm what I told you when he returns.”

  Suspicion and incredulity marred Ethel’s face.

  “Ah,” Percy added, “I haven’t told you yet that I did not kill Burdett in a duel or otherwise. As it happened, my wife’s ardent lover and your friend apparently had a change of mind during long night hours at the inn. He never graced us with his presence at the appointed place and time. If he really died that day, it was not by my hand.”

  “No,” she squeaked and shook her head. “That cannot be true!”

  “Tony Burdett never arrived at the appointed place,” Percy repeated. “Your brother and I waited for him for a full hour, after which time we went to the inn where Burdett put up for the night. The innkeeper remembered him well. He had found it gr
eatly inconvenient to have the chaise Burdett ordered ready before dawn.”

  Ethel gaped at him, speechless.

  “Did you give Sarah that ring after you thought Burdett dead?” Percy asked when she made a sound reminiscent of a sob.

  When he had found Sarah, an ornate large ring with a ruby he’d never seen before shone on her finger. Percy wouldn’t remember it if not for its unusual size. It remained on Sarah’s hand when they closed the coffin.

  Ethel nodded. “Yes. Her maid came out, and I gave her the ring with letter Tony wrote for her.”

  Percy never found Burdett’s letter. Sarah must have burned it along with other papers. Her fireplace was full of ashes.

  Just then Slater walked into the hallway. He glanced at the box in Percy’s hand and Ethel’s reddened face.

  “The curricle is waiting, sir.”

  Percy thrust the box into Slater’s hands.

  “Burn the whole thing,” he said, striding to the entrance.

  “Certainly, sir,” Slater murmured.

  Ethel gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “No, wait.” Percy stopped in the doorway. “Burn the entire contents, but save the box.” For the first time since his confrontation with Lettie, he felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Get enough pennies or other small coin to fill it. Next time Mrs. Vernon brings her sons, they can have the treasure they found.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Letitia reached her father’s mansion on Park Lane in the early evening on the second day. Her heart beat erratically when the carriage came to a stop in front of it while she searched for signs of life in the windows.

  It was mid-September, so her father should still be in the country. Otherwise, she would have to find somewhere else to stay. Between the scandal and Percy’s intention to divorce her, she might sooner jump into the Thames than gain his sympathy.