Charity Falls for the Rejected Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Hamilton, Hanna

  Much as he hated to admit it, Adam knew that the Reverend Miller was right.

  As much as he would have liked to believe what Miss Campbell was saying, the fact of the matter was that all it did was exchange one unverified version of events for another. He had promised to himself and on the graves of Mary and Freddie that he would uncover the truth, and yet all that he had found so far was still greater doubt.

  It was with great pain and discomfort that he turned to Miss Campbell, and spoke words that sounded cruel even to his own ears.

  “I do not know if I can believe you, Miss Campbell,” he said. “All I have at present is your word, and yet there is one irrefutable piece of evidence that seems to weigh the matter against you. I told you earlier that I believed that a woman was responsible for the deaths.”

  “This piece of material,” he took the little scrap from his pocket and held it out before him for all of them to see, “seems to tell a different story.”

  Miss Campbell frowned.

  “I have never seen it in my life, nor do I know where it is from,” she said.

  “So you do not own a black gown with such a piece missing?” Adam challenged.

  “I do not,” Miss Campbell insisted. “I swear it to you, upon my honor.”

  Adam looked at her, not knowing how he ought to reply. Someone was lying, and perhaps he needed to discard the idea of honor in order to find the truth.

  An idea still lingered in his mind that the honor of a man was higher than that of a woman, that the word of a clergyman should be held in higher esteem than that of a layperson. All these prejudices filled his head, clouding it and causing him to wonder where he might best look for truth.

  “As you say, sir,” the Reverend Miller said, his voice strange, almost flat and emotionless, “this piece of material is tantamount to proof that the culprit was a woman. As such, I believe that we have every reason to suspect Miss Campbell.”

  “Why should Miss Campbell have done it?” Adam asked.

  Possibilities were darting through his mind, each more preposterous than the last. Had his father turned his eyes from Mary Warwick to an even younger woman? Could Miss Campbell perhaps have seen his father as a rival in love, and taken ruthless measures to prevent her rival from claiming the victory.

  “I do not know,” the Reverend replied to the question that he had just voiced. “But if you believe that the piece of fabric leads you to the true culprit, then I think that we must agree that it would point you in the direction of Miss Campbell.”

  “That is a lie!”

  A voice rang out through the acoustic stillness of the church. It was the voice that Adam had least expected to hear, but loved best in the world.

  He turned to see Charity walking toward the three of them from the vestry, with something black crumpled within her hands.

  “This is yours, I believe, Father,” she said, holding the thing out.

  For a moment, in the gloom of the church, Adam could not see what the item was. But as Charity held up the garment and it spread out like a bat spreading its wings, it all became clear.

  It was a loose clerical gown in black, of the kind that they had often seen the Reverend wear.

  It was made from black cambric, a very similar material to the dress that Miss Campbell was presently wearing.

  And there was a piece missing from the hem.

  A piece which, judging by the size and shape of it, might very well have been torn by the hand of a small child.

  Adam did not have any conscious thoughts at that moment. There was only one action to be taken, and he took it.

  He walked slowly down the aisle of the church toward where Charity stood and drew the fragment of black material from his pocket.

  It fit into the gap precisely.

  As one, the three young people turned to look at the Reverend Miller. He had not moved, his face had gone quite grey, and he was standing so still that he almost seemed to blend into the carved stonework of the church’s interior.

  For a few moments, none of them spoke. When Adam allowed the words to come out, they had a thunderous resonance that betrayed his anger.

  “You have been caught in a lie. A lie that is no doubt layered upon many other lies.”

  Adam did not shove the vicar, for Charity’s sake, but he would dearly have liked to seize the man by the throat. He could scarcely stomach the idea that he was in the presence of a child killer. For the first time, he understood why his father had been unable to look at him for the past year.

  He looked the Reverend Miller in the eye, and for the first time, as they stood together in the candlelight of the church, it was not Adam but Charity who spoke the word aloud.

  “You are not only a liar, but you are also a murderer.”

  Chapter 41

  “Murder?”

  The word seemed to rip itself from the Reverend Miller’s throat, and Charity could see immediately that the hurt in his eyes was entirely genuine. “Good heavens, child, surely you cannot believe your own father to be capable of murder?”

  “I did not think my own father to be capable of lying to me,” Charity replied, her eyes downcast and her voice ripe with unshed tears. “But it does seem at present that, in that quarter at least, I was mistaken.”

  The Reverend bowed his head, obviously pained by her words but unable to take any dispute with them.

  “That I cannot argue with,” he said softly. “Therefore I must ask you to appeal to the testimony of your own heart, my daughter. Do you truly believe me to be so cold-blooded, so godless, that I could murder a woman and child? Even if I had something to gain from their deaths — which I did not — my conscience would always forbid it. Surely you can see that, Daughter?”

  Charity looked between her father’s face and Adam’s. She longed desperately for one of these men to confirm matters for her, to tell her what was true and what was not in a way that excluded any doubt.

  But she knew that that was not possible. And even if it were, it was a matter for her own judgement. How could she call herself a grown woman — a grown woman who sought to marry and make her own life — if she could not even trust her own judgement?

  Acting purely on instinct, she replied. When she spoke her own words surprised her.

  “I would like to believe you, Father,” she said. “But I ask that you explain yourself to me. At this moment the situation seems unfathomable, and I do not even know how I could go about believing you.

  The Reverend gave a great sigh, as though he did not know how best to manage the relief that her words gave him.

  “Well then, daughter, that is all I could wish at this present moment,” he said. “Even if I am to go to the scaffold, so long as you believe me, I can leave this world with gladness in my heart.”

  Charity did not respond to this; what could she possibly have said? Her father continued as if to fill the silence, “If you will allow me, I will present to you all the account of what truly happened that day. May the three of you be the judges of whether I am telling the truth, and may you act as a jury in deciding what is to be done with me.”

  He turned to look at Esther.

  “I have just told lies about you that I know were greatly injurious to your honor,” he said. “I fear that lying has become a habit for me, the place in which I am most comfortable. For what it is worth, I beg your pardon, although I understand that you may have no wish to bestow it upon me.”

  Esther made no indication of how she felt about this utterance. Charity could only imagine that she was too angry and confused to even have considered how she felt about the matter.

  Still, no one spoke.

  “The first thing to say,” the Reverend Miller continued, “is that I had no quarrel at all with Mary Warwick, nor with her little boy. I never wished a moment’s harm upon either of them, still less could I ever have inflicted it myself.”

  “But what really did happen then?” Charity pressed. She wanted to believe her father — she did beli
eve her father — but it all seemed so impossible. How could a young woman and her child simply have drowned and mysteriously vanished?

  “It was the most foolish mistake I have ever made in my life,” the Reverend said. “And, judging from my behavior toward you in previous days, Daughter, and toward you, Mr. Harding, I have learned very little from the error of my ways. What a fool I am.”

  At this Charity really thought that he was going to break down into sobs. She walked over to her father and took his hand, saying gently. “It is not too late to learn, Papa. Tell us what happened, and that can be the beginning of your atonement.”

  “I met the girl,” the Reverend Miller continued, his voice still thick. “Mary Warwick. I had known her all her life, of course, seen her in the lane and thought her to be a radiant and charming creature. But it had only recently come to my attention — from a passing comment from Farmer Roberts — that she was living in the parish but not attending church. We all thought that she had disappeared.”

  “I remember,” Charity said. “No one saw anything of Mary after Freddie was born.”

  “I went to speak to her on several occasions,” her father continued. “To me, it was evident that she was a lost soul, and I wished to bring her back into the fold. How arrogant I was then, to believe that I had any right to judge sinners or to believe that I myself was without sin.”

  We all have plenty of things that we are ashamed of, Charity acknowledged. The question is whether we can bring ourselves to admit them.

  “Mary did not like me to come to her cottage, for she felt that it was drawing attention to her presence, and she preferred to live very quietly with Freddie. But she walked freely in the grounds of Lawley Hall. I wonder that you did not see her, Mr. Harding.”

  Adam thought back to all those times where he thought he had seen a woman walking through the grounds. He had believed that it was Esther, and when he had first seen Esther, he had believed her to be Mary. At this point, he hardly knew what he believed.

  “At any rate,” the Reverend Miller continued, “it happened that she preferred to meet with me in the grounds of the Hall, rather than at her home. She would bring little Freddie with her, and the three of us would walk together. The Duke saw no trouble with it; he was glad that she had some company other than him. He trusted me implicitly, of course.”

  At this, his voice became choked, and he passed a hand briefly over his eyes.

  “Freddie loved to play by the lake, so that was where we walked.”

  “On that final day, I was remonstrating with Mary particularly energetically, trying to suggest that she found ways of putting her sins behind her. I must confess that in the course of the conversation I became very heated. Undoubtedly Mary was distressed, and I fear that she was even a little frightened.”

  “Freddie became angry with me, angry that I was distressing his mamma. He flew at me as though he wanted to beat me. Of course, he was only a tiny little thing, but he did succeed in tearing at my gown. He tore a piece of the cloth off.”

  “At this, I grew very angry. I have always understood why anger is numbered among the Seven Deadly Sins that can do more mischief than any other mood man might experience. At any rate, I was quite overtaken by anger on that day. I roared at Freddie that he was a young scoundrel, a little knave, a fool. I am afraid that I frightened the little boy terribly.”

  At these words, the tears began to flow freely down the Reverend’s face and sink into his beard.

  “The little fellow ran away,” he said, scarcely able to gasp out the words, such was his distress. “He cried, and I believe that he cried so bitterly that he could not see where he was going. He fell… he fell into the lake. I shall never forget the sound of his mother’s scream as he fell.”

  No one said anything. What could one possibly have said?

  “Mary ran after him,” the Reverend continued. “She threw herself into the lake after her boy without a moment’s thought, and I just stood there, rooted to the spot. I thought that within a few moments she would come back up again. I really did. I thought that they would be shaken but safe.”

  His voice was brittle, as though he were constructing his story out of shards of broken glass.

  “I could have got into the water. I am an old man, indeed, but I am a strong enough swimmer. I could have helped them. I could have called for help. I could have done any number of things, but I did nothing.”

  All Charity could think about was the blind panic that Mary Warwick must have experienced while she was thrashing about in the water. She imagined the desperate search for the childish hand, the sensation of her skirts and petticoats water logging and dragging her downward, the last frantic glances toward the sunlight before the shadow finally took over.

  She could not bear to look at her father. She might faint from the thought of it all, from the sheer horror of it. She glanced sideways at Adam, who had grown very pale. Doubtless he, too, could only think of what it would be like to drown.

  “Why did I not help?” the vicar asked himself. It seemed that the question was partially rhetorical and partly a true plea to his past self. Make me understand what really happened.

  “I cannot say for sure. Who knows how they will ever behave in such a circumstance until it has come to pass. But what I do know is that in that moment, the cruelest and most wicked thought crossed my mind.”

  At these words, his shoulders began to shake.

  “I thought that God was punishing Mary Warwick for her sins,” he gasped out between sobs.

  Charity’s overwhelming impulse was to go to her father, take his hand and assist him through his suffering. But she did not. On some level, she felt it would not be right to do so. Her father needed to face his own sins, and she would not be doing him any favors in trying to shield him from the suffering.

  “I thought that if God willed Mary Warwick to be saved, then saved she would be. I thought that it was not for me to intervene. Perhaps I was appeased with the idea that I saw heavenly justice in action. I shall never forgive myself for such thoughts.”

  Charity was reminded of how, in past times, women accused of witchcraft were taken to ponds and tied to stools. If they floated, it was thought, then they had proven themselves as witches and would be killed. If they sank, then their innocence was proven, and death was a small price to pay for the proof.

  It felt to her that very little had changed for unfortunate women in the world like Mary Warwick.

  “As for the child…” the Reverend continued, seeming to gain some hold over himself and passing his hand over his eyes once again, “did I believe that he was a sinner? Did I condemn him in the same way that I condemned his mother? I do not know. Perhaps. All I know is that these wicked thoughts passed within a few seconds, but by then it was too late.”

  None of them said anything for a long while. They were all horrorstruck by what the Reverend Miller had said. It was not so much because it sounded so difficult to believe that a person could behave as he had, but rather that it was all too easy to fathom.

  All three of them had their moments of foolishness, weakness, and cowardice. It was not so difficult to believe that the same had been the case for the Reverend Miller, and when that moment had struck, he had made the most unforgivable mistake of his life.

  Chapter 42

  “I have another question,” Adam said, after a long pause. “You have given an account of your actions that was so brutal, so painful to hear, that I cannot but believe it to be true. But there was another sin that you committed that day, and that was the sin of lying to my father. Why?”

  The Reverend Miller looked up at Adam with tortured eyes, and it seemed that for a few moments he was deprived of speech. This muteness seemed to inflame Adam, for he continued, “Why would you cause my father the pain of believing that his loved ones were murdered and that his own son was responsible for the deed? Have you no heart?”

  “I do not know,” the Reverend replied, his misery complete.
r />   “I believe that I must have a heart, or else it would not feel as though it were breaking at present. Yet I have no answer to what you ask me. I do not know why I did what I did, except that I was terrified and knew not what else to do. Your father saw Mary and Freddie dead and was seized by a sudden and violent belief that you were the culprit. My sin was that I said nothing to correct his mistaken belief.”

  “What?” Adam’s voice faltered here. “Why should my father leap to the conclusion that I was to blame?”

  “I can only believe that the belief emerged from his own sense of guilt,” the Reverend replied.

  “Why should he feel guilty?” Adam responded, more perplexed than angry. “Granted, he had a son and mistress whom he concealed from the world, and that was wrong of him. But he is not the first man to ever do such a thing, nor will he be the last. It is not a sufficient reason to twist his own mental faculties into mad beliefs.”