Furthermore, it struck her that morning that Caroline looked somewhat ill — a little pale and pinched as if she had not slept. Rebecca was not sure whether this was caused primarily by Caroline’s distress at Charles’ death, or distress at the whole situation with Andrew and Lord Peregrine.
Either way, it was clear to her that her friend was suffering. She thought longingly of suggesting that the two of them find the time to take a walk together later so they could speak freely and in confidence with one another. She knew that in this situation when there was so much to fear and to be distressed by, that the calm and wise counsel of her friend would do her a great deal of good.
Yet for the first time in her life, she had an allegiance that exceeded that of her duty to her father, or even her desire to confide in her friend. As far as she was concerned now, Andrew was her fiancé, though no announcement had been made and no soul but the two of theirs knew of their promise.
My first loyalty lies with him, she thought. If I feel that it is best to keep my findings secret, then I owe it to my future husband to trust in that instinct.
As Lord Peregrine held forth on how dearly he had loved the countryside around Godwin Hall when he was a boy, how he had run and played in the fields, trees and forests, Rebecca began to block out his speech and focus entirely on his face. The long, patrician nose, the dark, cold eyes, the finely groomed grey hair and mustache.
Could it perhaps be that Lord Peregrine had been the one to poison Charles? If she were to look deeper into this man’s motivations, might she uncover the evidence that would set Andrew free?
It would be a feat of breathtaking nerve for Lord Peregrine to be so assured of his success that he would not only murder Charles but frame Andrew for the murder. And whilst it certainly seemed that Lord Peregrine had seized upon every opportunity that had been available to him since Charles’ death, it was difficult to conceive of a way in which he might have planned all of this out himself.
Nonetheless, Rebecca felt herself involuntarily recoiling when she looked at Lord Peregrine. Regardless of whether or not he had killed Charles, he clearly had no scruples about capitalizing upon the situation to incriminate Andrew in the hopes of seizing the dukedom for himself.
A vile, shameless, amoral man, she thought. But a killer?
She could not be sure.
“I had hoped, Lady Rebecca,” Lord Peregrine said, breaking her out of her thoughts by addressing her by name, “That we might take a walk in the Park after breakfast? It is an uncommonly fine day, and a little excursion might do us good to take our minds off of the recent unpleasantness.”
“Recent unpleasantness, sir?” Rebecca responded. “I take it that you refer to the death of one of your nephews and the incarceration of the other? I should call that a little more than mere ‘unpleasantness’.”
“However you care to term it,” Lord Peregrine responded, his voice artificially jovial in response to her coolly accusative tone, “I believe that it would do all of us a great deal of good.”
“Indeed, sir,” Rebecca said, glancing at Caroline to ensure that she would be happy to accompany them on the walk as chaperone. Her friend nodded to her, her face still tired and pinched. “I should be delighted.”
Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, she thought, but it might give me some opportunity to observe him.
The look that he shot her from the other end of the table suggested that he intended to observe her just as closely. It was a frightening look — the look of someone who wanted something and was not going to stop until they had obtained it.
Nonetheless, Rebecca reminded herself, it was useless to be afraid. Fear would do nothing to help Andrew.
* * *
They set out on the proposed walk a little after breakfast - Lord Peregrine cheerfully, the two young ladies evidently somewhat more reluctant.
Caroline was walking a little distance behind the pair of them. Initially, Rebecca had done her best to press her into joining the conversation, not wishing to be left alone to converse with Lord Peregrine.
However, attempting to involve Caroline had proven to be a feat of such intensive labor that Rebecca had eventually discarded the idea and accepted that her friend wished to walk fifteen feet or so behind them, apparently deeply absorbed in the surrounding trees.
“It does do one good to be back in the place where one grew up, do you not think, Lady Rebecca?” Lord Peregrine’s tone was cordial, his small talk immaculate, and so far on their walk, he had provided no insight into whether he was the sort of person who might be capable of murder.
“I have not had much opportunity in my life to be very far away from my own home,” Rebecca responded. So occupied was she with observing him that it did not occur to her to think too much upon her answer. “I have lived in my father’s house all my life.”
“But you must be hoping for that to change rather soon,” Lord Peregrine pressed.
“I suppose,” Rebecca replied vaguely, displeased that it appeared that in addition to having to tolerate Lord Peregrine for the duration of their walk together, the experience would be exacerbated by implications that she was, as it were, ‘on the shelf’ as far as marriage was concerned.
At this thought, she corrected herself. I am not on the shelf in any sense. She was, as far as she was concerned, an engaged woman, and she ought to behave accordingly. She was not prepared to treat her future with Andrew as though it were hypothetical.
“Indeed, Lord Peregrine,” she corrected, “I look forward to departing my father’s home for a new one very soon.”
Lord Peregrine smiled enigmatically.
Rebecca decided that it would be better to shift the conversation back onto him so that she might be able to discern more information about him.
“May I ask a little about your residence?” she inquired.
“Dartley Park!” he replied eagerly. “Yes, indeed, what would you wish to know?”
“Is it very far hence?” she asked. The question that had been nagging at her, and that she hoped to resolve on this walk was why Lord Peregrine had arrived at Godwin Hall so swiftly after Charles’ death. Had he perhaps been anticipating the news?
“But fifteen miles,” he replied promptly, “A journey of a mere three hours. I would add that the roads are very good. I should estimate it to be less than half a day’s travel from your father’s house.”
Rebecca was slightly perplexed at the latter comment — what was it to her how long it would take to get from her father’s house to Dartley Park?
But the salient point was this: that it would not have been very difficult to receive the news of Charles’ death and set out for Godwin Hall to arrive as early as he had, without any supposition of his having anticipated the journey.
This came as something of a blow to her theory. Yet she decided to press the matter further.
“It is surprising that we have not met before, given how much time I have spent in my life with the Godwin family,” she observed. “Yet your ties with the place seem to have remained close. I note that you still know many of the servants by name.”
Lord Peregrine looked pleased with her observation and agreed readily.
“The relations between myself and the late Duke — that is, Charles and Andrew’s father — were never straightforward. I do not believe that such relationships can be straightforward when something as large as a dukedom is to be given to one brother, and the other receives no such honor.”
At this point, he sighed.
“Indeed, it is that very difficulty that we have seen played out to such dreadful ends with Andrew. I cannot condone his evident jealousy of his brother, which clearly led him to this desperate act. Nonetheless, I am not wholly without sympathy.”
Rebecca stiffened at the mention of Andrew’s name in such disparaging terms. She wanted more than anything to defend her future husband against Lord Peregrine’s baseless and infuriating slander, but she knew well that if she were to do so, he might cease to speak to
her, and the usefulness of their conversation to her cause would evaporate.
“You stayed away because you envied your late brother?” she asked instead.
Lord Peregrine laughed. “Why, Lady Rebecca, you are an uncommonly direct young woman. Yes, I suppose one could say that. I did not see my brother a great deal socially, and certainly not in the company of others. But I visited Godwin Hall as regularly as I could, although it hurt me to look upon the place that I knew could never be mine, though it is my true home.”
Rebecca was not sure what to say to this, so she proceeded to confine her remarks to the splendor of the park in the autumn and the pleasant weather at that time of year. When Lord Peregrine mentioned the superior rose gardens at Dartley Park and said that he hoped she would see them one day, she managed to reply with an expression that was as gracious as it was non-committal.
All of this was an extraordinary effort on Rebecca’s part. As far as she was concerned, she was speaking to the man who had, at the very least, falsely accused her fiancé of murder in the service of his own nefarious schemes. Pretending to be polite to him while she gathered information was not a concession to propriety, but an act of concealed warfare.
* * *
Rebecca came away from her walk with Lord Peregrine convinced of his moral bankruptcy, but still unconvinced that he had had a hand in Charles’ death. Apart from anything else, why would he have poisoned only Charles, and not killed Andrew too for good measure?
None of it made any sense. Perhaps I ought to discard the idea of things making sense, she mused. So far as I am concerned, the only thing that makes sense to me is the hope of my future with Andrew and the belief that we will soon be together. Everything else in my life seems comprised of pomp and pettiness, and devoid of any meaning.
It was in this gloomy frame of mind that she obeyed her father’s summons to the drawing room. She supposed that he planned to acquaint her with plans for the season, and perhaps present a list of eligible bachelors who would be in London whom she ‘might have the goodness to offer her charm to’.
She was not expecting to find Lord Peregrine standing there with her father, looming over the fire and smiling in a way that reminded her very much of a pointer hound that had scented blood.
“Good afternoon, Father,” she said, glancing uncertainly about.
“Sit down,” the Earl said.
Rebecca did not reply, but for some reason that she would not have been able to articulate, she felt it very important that she remained standing.
“I hear from Lord Peregrine that the two of you enjoyed a pleasant walk this morning,” her father began. She was suddenly struck by how aged her father looked, how frail his appearance and how quavering his voice.
“Indeed, Father,” she replied. “Or rather, I should say that it was as pleasant as it is possible for any distraction to be in such unhappy circumstances as those in which this household finds itself.”
“Quite so, Daughter, quite so,” the Earl said, nodding in a manner that suggested to Rebecca that he was not listening very carefully. He made a sound that suggested to Rebecca that he was trying to think of how to introduce his next sentence in a manner that sounded natural, but he seemed to give up rather quickly.
“Ah… Daughter, I have just been speaking with Lord Peregrine regarding the matter of your future.”
“My future, Father?” Rebecca repeated, her chest tightening at the words. She was not entirely sure where this was going, but she had had enough conversations with her father about ‘her future’ to know that they would never please her.
“Indeed, my dear,” the Earl said. Rebecca tensed even further. Her father rarely called her my dear — only when he was about to say something that he knew she would not like.
“It struck me, when we went on our walk today, that you were uncommonly eager to know the details of my life that would be of interest to a prospective bride,” Lord Peregrine said, with a smug assurance that Rebecca found unbearable.
“Asking about my house, for example. Enquiring into the details of my life and past. These are not the sorts of quests that a young lady makes in passing conversation, but the questions that naturally accompany thoughts of marriage.”
“Thoughts of marriage?” Rebecca felt as though she might explode, such was the strength of the picture of disbelief and fury that was building inside her. “Lord Peregrine, I can assure you that I have never in my life had thoughts of marriage in relation to you. If I were ever to do so, moreover, it would be purely in terms of how I might avoid such a fate!”
She knew that these words were not kind. But the truth was that she felt that she had spent too long being kind, too long humoring the desires of men who saw her only as a possession. She was not going to do it any longer.
“Rebecca!” the Earl of Sheffield interjected, rising from his armchair and glaring angrily at his daughter. “This sort of unladylike behavior is not what I would expect from you. I hope that you will apologize to Lord Peregrine, and listen carefully to his proposal.”
“I will not!” Rebecca said. Her voice was shaking, but her tone was entirely resolute.
“You will not what?” the Earl of Sheffield responded. At first, he seemed genuinely perplexed as if he must have mistaken his daughter’s defiance for something else. But that confusion swiftly gave way to anger.
“And what precisely is it that you mean when you say you will not?”
“Is that not quite evident, Father?” Rebecca replied. “I state for you unequivocally that I will not marry Lord Peregrine, and that I should prefer to be disowned and live like a pauper than to be married to a man like him.”
“A man like him?” the Earl echoed. “A lord of the realm, the younger son of a duke, with every prospect of becoming a duke himself? I do not understand what you mean when you say ‘A man like him’. Do you think that you can be so selective, Daughter? Do you think that the world will bend to your notions?”
At this, Rebecca’s words almost failed her. She thought back to the anguish that she had felt when she was engaged to Charles, the wretched knowledge that her father would never permit her to marry Andrew instead, precisely because he was the younger son of a duke
The irony of the fact that he was now proposing that she marry a different second son took her breath away. Not only that but in a sense, it made her stronger.
All my life, I have given my father the benefit of the doubt, believing that if nothing else he always endeavors to act in my best interests, she thought. I see now that that is not the case — he simply sees my marriage as a means of appeasing his own vanity.
This thought brought her the strength to speak the truth that was blooming up inside her, pushing at her lips and bursting to get out.
“I am engaged to Andrew,” Rebecca said. The words gave her a surge of strength. “I am engaged to a man who loves me more than anything else in the world, and I feel just the same about him. I am engaged, Father, and it would take a force far greater than the combined powers of you and Lord Peregrine to remove me from his side.”
“Andrew is going to be executed for the murder of his brother,” Lord Peregrine snarled. “You have created an idea of the future for yourself that will never happen.”
“Better that way,” Rebecca shot back, “than submit to marrying a man whom I despise. I will not debase myself in that way, Father. I have done it once, and it wrecked my self-respect. I will not do so again.”
“Your self-respect?” the Earl echoed her words in disbelief. “And precisely how much self-respect do you expect that you will enjoy when I cut you off, and you are living in this world as a pauper?”
“I have no fear of that,” Rebecca replied steadily, “For two reasons. The first is that I am engaged to Andrew and that we will be married as soon as his name is cleared. I know that he is innocent as clearly as I know my own name and it is only a matter of time before I succeed in proving it.”
“Oh really?” Lord Peregrine interjected,
raising one of his thick and pointed eyebrows. “And, madam, would you care to tell me what the second reason is?”
“The second reason,” Rebecca replied, “is that my inner resources are far greater than any outward circumstance. I know that whatever happens, whatever fate shall bring, I will be able to face it and survive.”
These words having been spoken, she saw no reason to remain in the room with these two men who cared nothing for her except as a possession.
She curtsied smartly, turned, and left the room.
Chapter 36
Despite the urgency of the situation and the fearsome quagmire of the law that now faced him, Andrew had been uncertain as to whether to send for his father’s attorney. Usually, it would have seemed like the natural thing to do, but he feared that the fact that he seemed likely to be standing trial for the murder of his brother rendered it likely that the attorney’s loyalties might be put into conflict.
The Obscure Duchess of Godwin Hall_A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 21
