The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  He released her hands and she covered her face with them, taking deep breaths to steady herself.

  “I will have Jeremy escort you upstairs,” he said, straightening up. “Rest in your room for this morning. I shall leave orders that you are not to be disturbed—by anyone. I shall take Pamela.”

  She got to her feet. “That will be unnecessary, your grace,” she said. “I have lessons planned.”

  “Nevertheless,” he said, “you will do as I say.”

  She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and turned to the door. “It will be unnecessary to send Jeremy with me,” she said. “I can find my own way, thank you.”

  He smiled fleetingly. “As you wish,” he said.

  And so she made her way upstairs alone and into her room. And she stood at the window staring out at the back lawn, deserted at that hour of the morning.

  THE DUKE FULLY INTENDED to talk with Lord Brocklehurst without further delay, but a series of events conspired to frustrate his plans.

  The doctor was with her grace, Jarvis told him when summoned to the library. His wife and her doctor must come first, then, his grace decided, dismissing the butler with the instruction to bring Dr. Hartley to him before he left.

  A bad chill during the winter had left her grace with a weakness in the chest, the man gave as his opinion when he appeared in the library sometime later. Her health had always been delicate. It probably always would be.

  “I would recommend a quieter life and less of the outdoors, your grace,” he said. “Perhaps a month or two at Bath partaking of the waters would effect a significant improvement in her grace’s health.”

  “She coughs constantly,” the duke said. “She suffers from frequent fevers. She has lost weight. It is all the result of a severe chill that just did not go away?”

  The doctor shrugged expressively. “There are certain ladies who have delicate constitutions, your grace,” he said. “Unfortunately, your wife is one of them.”

  His grace dismissed the man and stood looking out through the window for a while. He should, he supposed, have insisted on sending for a more learned physician from London. But Sybil had always been adamant in her refusal to hear of any such thing.

  He drummed his fingers on the windowsill and turned away. She had refused to admit him the night before. This time he did not wait after tapping at the door of her bedchamber. He let himself in, as he had early the evening before, when he had caught his brother almost in the act of making love to her.

  He looked at her grace’s maid, who curtsied and withdrew to the dressing room.

  “Good morning, Sybil,” he said. “Are you feeling any better?”

  She had turned her head aside on the pillow at his entrance. She did not answer him.

  He walked a little closer. “The fever still?” he asked, laying the backs of his fingers gently against one of her cheeks. “The doctor suggested Bath and a course of the waters. Would you like me to take you there?”

  “I want nothing of you,” she said. “I am leaving with Thomas.”

  “Shall I bring Pamela down for a few minutes?” he asked. “I am sure she is longing to tell you about Timothy Chamberlain’s birthday party yesterday.”

  “I am too ill,” she said.

  “Are you?” He smoothed back her silver-blond hair from her face. “I shall entertain our guests for today, then. You must lie quietly here and not worry. The doctor has given you some new medicine? Perhaps you will feel better by tomorrow.”

  She said nothing, and he crossed the room to the door. But he paused with his hand on the knob and looked broodingly at her for a long moment.

  “Would you like me to send Thomas?” he asked.

  She neither turned her head toward him nor answered. He let himself quietly out of the room.

  The ladies were on their way into Wollaston with Sir Hector Chesterton and Lord Brocklehurst. His grace joined some of the gentlemen for billiards. Lord Mayberry, Mr. Treadwell, and Lord Thomas Kent had gone fishing.

  After luncheon, when the duke suggested a ride and picnic at the ruins, most of the guests accepted with delight. Lord Brocklehurst, though, with Sir Hector, expressed his intention of remaining at the house, since he had been invited to call upon Sir Cecil Hayward later in the afternoon, whom they had met in Wollaston that morning.

  Before leaving for the stables, his grace assigned the footman Jeremy to patrol the upper corridor outside the schoolroom and to escort Miss Hamilton and Lady Pamela wherever they might choose to go during the afternoon.

  And he found himself half an hour later in the midst of an encounter that he had planned to postpone until the following day.

  “It seems that you and I are doomed to ride together, Adam, since everyone else is paired off,” Lord Thomas Kent said. “Perhaps it is as well. I shall probably be leaving tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Alone?” his grace asked.

  His brother looked across at him and smiled. “I cannot think you were serious in the suggestion you made the other day,” he said.

  “I would not have made it if I had thought for one moment that you would take it seriously,” the duke said, his eyes directed forward to where Sir Philip Shaw was flirting quite openly with Lady Underwood.

  “There,” Lord Thomas said. “You see what I mean? Of course I could not take it seriously, Adam. How could I take Sybil away, knowing what scandal she would be facing? She has lived a sheltered life and can have no conception of what would be in store for her. And of course, women are incurable romantics. They are never prepared for cold reality.”

  “I think you left her with a large dose of cold reality the last time,” the duke said.

  Lord Thomas shrugged. “Besides,” he said, “she is unwell. I would not be at all surprised to find that she is consumptive.”

  His grace’s lips tightened.

  “And the child, of course, must be my primary concern,” Lord Thomas said. “How could I take her from you and from this home, Adam? And how could I take Sybil and not the child? Sybil’s heart would be broken.”

  The duke still said nothing.

  “Yes,” his brother said. “Of course I will leave alone. I really have no choice in the matter if I want to do the decent thing, do I?”

  His grace turned his head and looked at him coldly.

  “It is just rather a shame that we both fell in love with the same woman, that is all,” Lord Thomas said. “We had a good relationship until Sybil entered the picture.”

  “Perhaps it is a shame that we both did not fall in love with her,” his grace said. “I could have lived with her loss, knowing she was happy with you, Thomas. I would have recovered because I loved her. What you have succeeded in doing is destroying all her happiness and all my love. Yes, we did have a good relationship—once.”

  Lord Thomas continued to smile.

  “I left a message that you were to go to her when you returned from fishing this morning,” his grace said. “Did you go?”

  “She is ill,” Lord Thomas said. “I am sure she needed to be quiet.”

  “Yes,” the duke said. “It seems hardly worth the effort of visiting her if she is not well enough to be bedded, I suppose.”

  His brother shrugged.

  “I hope she finally realizes the truth about you,” his grace said, “though she will not hear it from my lips. Perhaps after all the pain she will finally be free of you and be able to make something meaningful of her life. Hindsight is easy. I can see now that I should have insisted that she listen at the start.”

  Lord Thomas shrugged once more and spurred his horse ahead to ride beside Miss Woodward and Sir Ambrose Marvell.

  Just before dinner that evening a note was delivered to the duke to explain that Lord Brocklehurst and Sir Hector Chesterton were to extend their visit with Sir Cecil Hayward to include dinner and an evening of cards.

  And so one rather unpleasant day was almost behind him, his grace thought, though the main order of business would hav
e to be postponed until the following morning. He left a message with Lord Brocklehurst’s valet that his grace would be pleased if his lordship would join him for an early-morning ride the next day.

  IT WAS VERY LATE. She should have been in bed long before, Fleur knew, especially since she would have to be up even before daylight. But she did not believe she would sleep anyway. She counted her money once more and cursed herself again for buying those silk stockings when they had been a pure extravagance.

  She was not sure she had enough. She was not at all sure. But if there was just enough for the ticket, she would not worry about food. She could go without food for a few days. She had done it before.

  She could, of course, try to borrow a small sum from Ned Driscoll. But she would probably never see him again to repay the debt, and perhaps she would never have the money with which to do so.

  Besides, Ned was already making a sacrifice for her. He had agreed to take her in the gig before dawn into Wollaston to catch the stage. He had been very unwilling to do so, and she was quite sure that if she had offered him money—if she had had money to offer—he would have refused quite adamantly.

  But she had had only her persuasive powers and her knowledge that he had a soft spot for her.

  Perhaps he would be dismissed for helping her. But she could not think of that. She could not take yet one more burden on her mind. There was no other way of getting to Wollaston on time beyond stealing a horse. She had never stolen anything.

  She looked again at the small bundle of clothing that she had tied inside her old gray cloak and wondered if taking the clothes she had bought with his grace’s money in London was theft. But the thought of putting on the old silk dress and gray cloak made her shudder.

  She was leaving Willoughby Hall. That much she had decided in the course of the day. She had felt rather like a bear chained to a post all day long—indeed, she had felt much the same for almost three months. She could take no more. If she stayed even one day longer she would lose a part of herself, of her innermost being, and when all was said and done, that was all that was left to her.

  She was going to the only place she could go and maintain her pride and integrity. She was going home—to Heron House. By doing so, of course, she was only going to certain destruction. But there were some things worse, she had discovered in the course of three months, than the prospect of facing charges that she could not defend herself against. There were some things worse than the fear of the ultimate punishment.

  If she were hanged, she would lose her life. If she remained as she was, she would lose herself.

  He could help her, he had said. He would help her. As Matthew had done? He would save her from imprisonment and death in exchange for certain favors? He had denied it vehemently and she had believed him—almost.

  But how could she believe him? How could he help her? And why would he wish to do so? To him she was only a whore whom he had pitied—perhaps. Or a whore he hoped to entice into a more lasting relationship.

  She wanted to believe him. She wanted to trust him. But how could she? She had been alone for so long. Even Daniel, who was gentle and godly, would not have been able to help her in her predicament. He would have had a crisis of conscience if she had asked for his help after admitting to him that she had killed Hobson—even though it had been in self-defense.

  She wanted so badly to believe him. She sat on the edge of her bed and closed her eyes. And she realized what had been happening to her over the past weeks. He had been turning—so gradually that she had scarcely noticed the transition—from her nightmare into her dream.

  Because she had come to know him as a man worthy of respect, liking, and perhaps even …? No. No.

  Because he had planned it that way? Gradual seduction by patient steps, more skilled than Matthew?

  She dropped her head forward until her chin rested on her chest. She did not know what to believe, but she did know that she must go away from him as much as she must go away for other reasons. He was a married man and perhaps an evil man.

  She had an image of him standing in Mr. Chamberlain’s garden, talking with Miss Chamberlain, Lady Pamela sitting up on his shoulder shrieking excitedly into his ear.

  She had been his prisoner all day. Jeremy had been outside the library that morning and outside the schoolroom all afternoon. He had escorted her downstairs for dinner and back to her room after she had sat with Mrs. Laycock for a couple of hours.

  Had she been his prisoner? Or had he been merely protecting her? Jeremy had told her that Matthew had come upstairs during the afternoon and had been very annoyed to be told that Miss Hamilton had been ordered by his grace to work with her pupil all afternoon without interruption.

  But she had felt like a prisoner. Like a prey to both of them. Like a chained bear to their hounds.

  She had to leave. She had to go home. Matthew would follow her there, of course, and they would play out the last scene of the drama that had begun almost three months before.

  There was no mystery about the conclusion of that drama, of course. But she would no longer avoid it. She had to go back and somehow come to terms with what she had done and with what the consequences were to be.

  Better to go back freely than to be taken back in fetters. And better to go back alone and independent than as Matthew’s bride or mistress, her integrity forever gone.

  She finally blew out the candle and lay down fully clothed on top of the covers of her bed. She stared up into the darkness.

  IT WAS RAINING AGAIN THE FOLLOWING MORNING. That long warm, dry spell seemed to have deserted them for good, the Duke of Ridgeway thought as he stood at the library window looking out. It seemed that they must face a more typical British summer than the spring had been.

  Perhaps it was just as well that it rained. He had been able to plan his talk with Lord Brocklehurst more carefully than he would have done if the sun had shone. He strode restlessly to the desk, gazed down at the unfinished letter lying on its surface, and put it away in a drawer. There was no point in trying to concentrate on writing.

  She had not come down to practice in the music room that morning. Just on the day when more than ever he needed the soothing balm of music, she had not come.

  And perhaps that was as well too. He was going to send her away soon. In fact, that was the main topic of the letter he was writing to the dowager Countess of Hamm, an old friend of his father’s. Once he had had his talk with Brocklehurst, he was going to make other arrangements for her—unless by some miracle her fortune could be released to her.

  His left hand rubbed absently at an aching hip. He was going to have to learn to live without her music. And without the daily sight of her. He was going to have to find someone else who would be as good for Pamela as she was.

  His hand opened and closed at his side. Perhaps Sybil would not object to his taking Pamela to London with him for a few weeks or months. He could not leave her again for another long spell—he had decided that at this last homecoming. But how would he be able to stand the loneliness and the constant aggravations of life at Willoughby?

  Especially now that she had been there.

  Several of the guests had expressed their intention the evening before of leaving within the next few days.

  There was a tap at the door and Jeremy opened it to admit Lord Brocklehurst.

  “I’m sorry about the ride,” the duke said after the two of them had exchanged morning greetings. “Have a seat. Can I offer you a drink?” He glanced toward the half-open door leading to the music room.

  “I have just had breakfast,” Lord Brocklehurst said, sinking into the chair Fleur had occupied a few evenings before and waving a dismissive hand at the offer of a drink. “Devilish weather, Ridgeway. The ladies will be climbing the walls out of boredom. They love to stroll.”

  “They must do so in the gallery,” his grace said. “I understand you are planning to deprive me of my governess, Brocklehurst.”

  The other’s eyes became war
y. He laughed. “Miss Hamilton is a very attractive lady,” he said.

  “It is my understanding that the two of you have an unofficial betrothal,” the duke said. “You are a fortunate man.”

  Lord Brocklehurst was silent for a moment. “She has told you this?” he asked.

  The duke took the chair opposite his companion’s and smiled. “I hope I have not got her into trouble with you by speaking up,” he said. “But I am sure she has not been announcing the news to everyone. She probably thought that as her employer I should be given some notice of her leaving. She will be going with you, I believe?”

  Lord Brocklehurst relaxed back in his chair and returned the duke’s smile. “I am not at all annoyed at her telling you,” he said. “I wished to announce our betrothal officially here, but she has been reluctant. The fact that she is a servant has made her shy.”

  “Ah,” the duke said, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepling his fingers, “it is true, then. Congratulations are in order. When are the nuptials to be?”

  “Thank you,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “As soon as possible after we leave here. I hope you will not be too greatly inconvenienced, Ridgeway.”

  The duke shrugged. “Miss Bradshaw has given me a week’s notice,” he said.

  The other nodded, and then his glance sharpened. “She has told you that she has been living here under an assumed name?” he said.

  The duke inclined his head. “If the wedding is to be immediate,” he said, “you must have decided not to press charges. Of course, when the charges are theft and murder, the decision is not a justice’s to make. What you must have decided is that the death was not a murder and the removal of the jewels not a theft. Am I right?”

  “What has Isabella been saying to you?” Lord Brocklehurst was sitting up in his chair and gripping the arms.

  “Nothing at all,” his grace said, crossing one booted leg over the other. “Not even anything about marrying you. I have another source of information.”