Because of You

by Cathy Maxwell

  “I was once close to the family,” he answered truthfully. “I was startled to learn the old duke was dead. I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Now that you’ve seen it, I will ask you to be respectful and leave. I’m certain any questions you have can be better answered on the morrow.”

  Yale hid his smile. He’d never met such a persistent woman. “I will leave, after you’ve answered my questions, Miss Northrup.”

  “What questions do you have?”

  “I want to know about these men’s deaths.” A thought struck him, one that filled him with remorse. “Did the duke suffer when he…died?” He should have been by his father’s deathbed. He should have begged forgiveness.

  The set of her mouth tightened and he thought she would order him to leave again. Instead, she said, “His was a wasting illness. He’d been ill for several years. The doctors thought it was consumption, but I disagreed.”

  “You disagreed?”

  She lifted her chin proudly. “There are few doctors this far north. Only Dr. Rees from Morpeth. The duke’s children didn’t like him, so since the duke insisted on being at Braehall, they brought up London doctors. I was often asked to care for His Grace after the physicians returned to Town.”

  “Do you know of medicine?”

  “I have an understanding,” she said in her soft, almost lyrical voice, lighter than a Scots accent and pleasant to the ear. “My own mother was ill for years. I served as her nurse until her death last year.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Yale said, more because of his own father than out of real empathy.

  But it was the right thing to say. Her expression softened. “It was actually a blessing when she passed on. Just as it was for the old duke. Mother and His Grace both had time to say their good-byes and make sense of their lives. My father died suddenly only two weeks after her death. It was the influenza that took both my parents, but my father slipped away so quickly, and there was no time to say anything.”

  Her words went straight to something he’d thought he’d lost long ago, his heart.

  “But then your father didn’t suffer much,” Yale said. “At least, that is one blessing.”

  “I don’t know that His Grace suffered that much, either. The Carderocks are a large and loving family and they worked hard to make his last days comfortable. He was surrounded almost daily by his children and grandchildren.”

  “Grandchildren?” Grandchildren! But then, it had been eleven years…

  “Yes, the current duke has three sons,” Miss Northrup volunteered. “His sister is also married and a mother herself, although I’m not certain how many children she has. Of course, the Carderocks rarely come to Sproule anymore. The new duke doesn’t enjoy country life the way his father did.”

  Yale had been so focused on his father, he hadn’t given much thought to his brother and sister, both of whom were several years older. Before Yale had left England, his brother Wayland had seemed firmly ensconced in the country and destined to remain there. He’d rarely seen his sister Twyla, even though she’d lived in London with her husband. Brother and sister had never gotten along, and matters had only grown worse when Yale had shown up drunk at her wedding breakfast. He’d spent the previous night out carousing gaming dens and other pleasures with some of his cronies. Twyla had not been amused.

  He rubbed his temples, feeling the beginning of a headache. While he had pursued his goal of impressing his father, he’d never stopped even to wonder about his brother and sister.

  “Please, Mr. Browne, the hour is very late and it’s cold here in the crypt. I ask you once again to leave.”

  Yale ignored her request. “What about him?” He nodded to the marker bearing his own name.

  Miss Northrup gave a weary sigh. “You’re not going to let me return to my bed, are you?”

  Yale grinned, liking her lack of missish airs.

  She set the log down, dusted off her hands, and crossed her arms to keep warm. “Yale Carderock isn’t buried there.”

  That was an understatement!

  She continued, “It is believed he died at sea. I know very little about his story, other than it has a bad end.”

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  She shook her head. “I know only rumor and gossip, sir. I’ve never met the man since he spent most of his life in London with his lady mother.”

  “What is said of him?” Yale asked, curious.

  “Oh, he was a rake of the worst sort,” she assured him. “His extravagances and peccadilloes—”

  “Peccadilloes?” Yale repeated, wondering what the blazes that meant. Remembering himself at a younger age, it could mean almost anything. He’d not been a saint.

  “He was disinherited by his father,” she said, with a frown for his interruption. “The villagers who worked up at Braehall say his father used to rant and rave for days over the scrapes and nonsense the younger Carderock tumbled into. But the lad had only himself to blame. He had an inheritance from his mother that he squandered. They say he gambled it away.”

  “They” weren’t wrong, Yale thought dryly. How many times over the past eleven years had he wished he’d been wiser, and a better steward of his inheritance?

  “When he’d spent that money,” Miss Northrup said, “he asked his father for his inheritance, which the old duke refused to give him. The boy then behaved in such a wild and ill-advised manner, he shamed the whole family. Oh, Yale Carderock was a bad one. From the stories I’ve heard, he was the very opposite of his brother, Wayland. You could go far and wide and never find a better man than the new duke.”

  Yale felt a stab of the old jealousy he’d always felt when hearing Wayland praised. Funny, that it could hurt him after all these years. Regrettably, the picture Miss Northrup painted of him in his youth was only too true. “So Yale got himself disinherited, and then what?” he asked.

  Miss Northrup shrugged. “And then nothing. Almost immediately he disappeared. His father worried incessantly. My father counseled him on a regular basis. Yale had kept bad company, and his family feared he’d been murdered and tossed into the Thames.”

  Yale had never once wondered if his father worried over his whereabouts. He’d assumed his father had been glad to wash his hands of him.

  Miss Northrup continued. “The old duke told Father it was almost a blessing when word reached the family that Yale had died in a storm at sea almost two years after the disinheritance. Of course, they didn’t hear this until almost four years after his death. Apparently, Yale had signed on with a merchantman. I think the duke gained comfort in the idea that his son had passed on attempting worthwhile employment versus the more nefarious ways he could have gone.”

  Yale knew what storm she referred to. It had blown up on them around the Cape of Good Hope. The ship had been destroyed. A good number of the crew had been lost, although Yale had not been one of them.

  He frowned at Miss Northrup. “Was he really that much of a blackguard?”

  “His story is a lesson for the sinner,” she assured him without hesitation. “My father commented more than once that the story of young Carderock paralleled that of the prodigal son, except it lacked the happy ending of a reunion with his family. He often used him for his sermons—without mentioning the family name, of course. Still, everyone in Sproule knew who it was Father used as an example.” She frowned at Yale’s headstone. “His was a sad and wasted life. They say he was a handsome boy but died a victim of his own good looks and folly.”

  Yale didn’t know how he felt about being a morality tale.

  And yet he didn’t correct the impression he was dead.

  “Did anyone mourn for him?”

  “The younger Carderock?” she asked. “The old duke mourned, although he was too ill to attend the funeral. Unfortunately, the elder son had obligations in London that prevented him from coming, and the daughter, I believe, was expecting her fourth child. My father officiated at the funeral to an
empty church, save for myself. Since there was no body and no duke, the villagers weren’t interested in attending.” She sighed. “We had a hard time coming up with good things to say about the man. Few decent, reputable people knew him.” She shook her head before changing the subject. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, will you please leave?”

  Yale nodded dumbly, too stunned to do anything else. No one had attended his funeral? That was worse than being thought dead.

  His feet heavy, he walked past the vicar’s daughter, that guardian of his ancestor’s remains. She watched in silence, unaware of the turmoil, rage, and pain roiling inside him. He’d been such a bloody fool.

  His father had waited for him. His father had been the one person in all the world who had cared.

  Why had Yale waited so long to come home? He could have returned at any time over the past five years. He’d had the money. But it hadn’t been enough money. He’d wanted a fleet of ships and his company and warehouses and a huge home as grand as Braehall. And he had had them, too, back in Ceylon.

  But now it didn’t matter. Now it was too late.

  He lingered outside the vault. The cold night air felt good against his hot skin.

  He handed the vicar’s daughter the keys and she locked up. She then waited for him to be on his way.

  Gallantly he picked up her shawl from the ground and offered to her. She protectively threw it around her shoulders, the color high on her cheeks.

  He smiled at her obvious embarrassment. Only in England did a woman worry about such silly things. He’d seen more naked women than he cared to remember. Miss Northrup’s nightdress was not going to throw him into a frenzy.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I hope you found what you were looking for.”

  Her words surprised him. “I don’t know,” he admitted sadly.

  She looked as if she were going to say something but then changed her mind. “Good night, Mr. Browne.”

  “Good night, Miss Northrup.”

  She stood waiting, and he knew she expected him to leave. He walked to the edge of the cemetery toward the road leading into the small village of Sproule. He’d already taken the liberty of stabling his horse with the village blacksmith.

  But instead of making his way toward the only inn in Sproule, the Bear and Bull, he slipped into the shadows of a huge hemlock tree.

  Miss Northrup waited until she was convinced he was gone before returning to her house attached to the stone church. He watched as she blew out the candle in the kitchen and the windows went dark.

  Yale hunkered down, his back against the trunk of the hemlock, and stared off in the direction of the decorated iron doors guarding his family’s vault. The damp cold seeped up through his boots, but he ignored the discomfort.

  He didn’t know what to do or where to go, other than he needed to stay here and keep a silent vigil. It was a sign of respect for the man who had been his father.

  It was the only thing he could do.

  Miss Northrup didn’t go to bed immediately, but spied on him from the dark window. So she knew he hadn’t left. He could feel her presence, disapproving but curious.

  What would she say if she knew his true name? What a twist that fact would give her biblical lesson. The prodigal son returns, but instead of the welcoming arms of his father, he finds an empty life.

  At last she determined that he meant no harm and returned to her bed. Yale concentrated on the vault. He was not a praying man…but that night he learned to pray.

  In the wake of a bleak dawn, Yale rose. His joints were stiff and aching from the cold. His years in the tropics had thinned his blood. He walked the length of Sproule to the Bear and Bull.

  As a boy, he and his father had visited the inn a time or two—but no one recognized him now. They all thought he was dead.

  Yale registered under the name Marvin Browne, ordered a bottle of brandy to warm his blood, demanded privacy, then did something he hadn’t done since he’d awakened aboard that ship eleven years ago. He got good and properly drunk.

  When he finished that, he ordered another, pausing only long enough to compare his life to the empty bottle. As twilight of his first day home approached, the lonely coldness of the night before seemed to have settled in his bones and made them heavy. He closed his eyes and passed out into blessed unconsciousness.

  And that was when the fever started.

  John Sadler, the innkeeper, didn’t know what to do. Mr. Browne had come down ill. At first, Sadler had suspected the man was little more than passed out drunk.

  However, in the early hours of the morning, the sound of his retching woke both John and his wife.

  “He’s only getting what he deserves,” his wife said. “A man shouldn’t drink like that.”

  John wasn’t so certain it was only the drink.

  When Mr. Browne didn’t make an appearance at breakfast, John decided to wake him. “It will serve him right for keeping us up half the night,” he told his wife, and she agreed.

  He pounded on Marvin Browne’s door, but there was no response.

  He beat his fist against the door again, harder.

  Nothing.

  He turned the handle. There were no locks on the doors at the Bear and Bull. The inn was too small and out of the way for such an expense.

  John walked inside and quickly backed out.

  “The man’s bloody sick,” he told his wife.

  “How sick?”

  “I don’t know, but he looks close to dead.”

  “Then let us send for Miss Northrup,” his wife said. “She’ll know what to do.”

  “Aye, she will.” He dispatched his eldest son to go and fetch the vicar’s daughter.

  Chapter 2

  Samantha scraped the bottom of the tea drawer and managed to collect only the most pathetic pile of leaves in the bottom of her cup. The water in the kettle was already boiling hot and she dearly needed a good strong cup of tea.

  It was so cold today, she’d been forced to use some of her precious fuel and build a fire in the kitchen hearth. She even wore both her dresses, a trick she’d learned from exercising the strictest economies over the past year. One was the black mourning dress she’d just set aside, and the second was a serviceable brown dress. She wore it on top because she was heartily sick of black.

  She felt bleary-eyed and cranky. After her adventure the other night with Marvin Browne, she’d spent a good portion of yesterday running errands and nursing the Chandlers’ youngest daughter, who had come down with the fever. She should have slept soundly last night. Instead, she’d tossed and turned, her mind full of worries.

  It had all started when the ladies of the village, led by Squire Biggers’s wife, had paid her a morning call. Apparently, a village meeting had been held at the Bear and Bull on Monday night. Samantha had not been invited to the meeting because it was about her.

  After drinking the lion’s share of her meager supply of tea, the village women had announced that a vote had been taken and it had been decided the time had come for Samantha to leave the vicarage. Her mourning was over and the new vicar, who’d recently married, wished to move in.

  Remembering their ultimatums, Samantha caught her hands shaking as she carefully poured the cup half full of boiling water and let it steep.

  Of course, she had been expecting such a decision. By rights, she should have moved from the vicarage after her father had died—but she had nowhere to go. Her mother had been an orphan, and her father’s family had all passed on before him.

  She’d hoped perhaps the village would offer her a cottage. After all, it would only be right, since her father, who had always worried over their penury, had spent the majority of his living to help feed and clothe the poor.

  But upon his death, the villagers seemed to have forgotten all Vicar Northrup had done for them…or else they considered letting Samantha live in her home during her time of mourning to be repayment enough for his lifetime of service. Her own charity
and nursing skills they took for granted.

  For a moment, her thoughts strayed to Marvin Browne and their strange meeting in the graveyard. A bit superstitious, she realized his appearance had been the first warning that her life was about to change.

  She moved restlessly around the small kitchen. There had to be more to life. She just didn’t know what “more” was…but she was reasonably certain letting the villagers scuttle her off to live with the two spinster Doyle sisters wouldn’t help her find it.

  A part of her yearned for what other women had: a husband, children, a home of her own. But at her advanced age, Samantha knew that would never be.

  She lifted her teacup, silently toasted her impending future, and was about to take a sip when someone knocked on the kitchen door.

  She was tempted to ignore it. Then a young voice called, “Miss Northrup! Please, Miss Northrup, we need you!”

  She recognized the voice. It was Tommy Sadler, the innkeeper’s oldest son. The innkeeper would not send for her unless there was sickness.

  Setting her teacup back on the table, she rose and hurried to the door. A blast of frigid air greeted her as she opened it. “Whatever is the matter, Tommy?” she asked, waving him inside.

  The redheaded boy pulled his hat off. “One of the guests has taken ill, Miss Northrup. Pa needs you to come and see the man. He’s been very sick, miss. We fear he’s dying.”

  Samantha did not hesitate. “Let me gather my basket and my cape.” Her basket was filled with different medicines, herbs, salves, and, of course, the book from Dr. Rees, the physician in Morpeth, whom she often consulted. She also had her own journal of different remedies she’d found could help.

  Tying the ribbons of her black bonnet beneath her chin, she shot a regretful look at her tea. Well, there was naught to be done. The habit of tending the sick ran deep inside her. She would not turn her back, even on a stranger.

  Outside, heavy gray clouds threatened more bad weather. Samantha huddled deeper into her cape. The cold seeped up from the hard ground and through the thin soles of her boots.