If Isabella weren’t so amused, she’d have been shocked. Though she supposed she should have stopped being shocked by the dowager’s behavior long ago.
Trevor cut her off. “I have no need of such a list. I already have a wife.”
The dowager’s eyes hardened. Isabella had seen the very same look precede some of her most heated quarrels with the dowager. Clearly Timms had not told her about Isabella’s marriage to Trevor, which was at once hilarious and terrifying. The dowager on a good day was not altogether pleasant. But the dowager on the day that she realized her greatest wishes had been thwarted was positively catastrophic. Even so, Isabella wouldn’t give up what she was about to witness for love or money.
“Isabella,” the dowager barked, “you may leave us. I am grateful that you were able to persuade my grandson to give up his sheep and come to London to do his duty, but we have much to discuss now.” She inclined her head in the manner of a god granting a prayer. “I will keep your sacrifice in mind when it comes to your sister, have no fear.”
But Trevor found nothing funny about the situation, apparently. “Isabella will remain here with me. As is only right.”
“Well,” the dowager conceded, “I do think it magnanimous of you to allow her to see the fruits of her labor, but there are things we should discuss that only family should be privy to.”
“Yes,” Trevor said patiently. “And Isabella is family.”
“This is foolish,” the dowager said, her patience wearing thin. “Yes, she is the sister-in-law of the former duke, but that hardly makes her—”
Isabella could almost feel sorry for the old woman. If she hadn’t brought the whole business down upon herself, that was.
“No, I mean she is my wife,” Trevor said firmly. “Surely that is enough to earn her a place in this conversation.”
The room grew eerily quiet as the dowager took in Trevor’s words. Isabella could hear the clock on the mantle tick. A costermonger calling out the price of his wares on the street outside. A door creaking in some other part of the house. Silently she slipped her hand into Trevor’s as the dowager opened and closed her mouth like a fish.
“Your,” she began, her voice increasing in volume as the words left her mouth, “your … what?”
To Isabella’s horror, the dowager’s face turned an unnatural shade of purple. “You married him?” she demanded, leaping up from her chair and approaching Isabella with menace. “You were supposed to bring him back to London! Not marry him! Do you know what you’ve done? You foolish, foolish girl!”
Trevor rose as if to stop the dowager from striking Isabella, but to Isabella’s surprise, instead of launching herself at her new granddaughter-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of Ormonde collapsed.
* * *
“She’s sleeping,” Perdita said, quietly closing the door to the old dowager’s bedchamber. Perdita didn’t have her sister’s dark hair and brows. Instead her hair was a lighter shade of brown. They had the same blue eyes, however, and there was something about the arch of their brows and the slant of their cheeks that marked them as siblings. “Dr. Henderson says that she should be kept quiet for the next few days to ensure she doesn’t suffer another attack.”
“How long has she been hiding this?” Isabella asked from her place on the settee. She had been shaken by the dowager’s fit, and Trevor had been surprised and pleased by her quick assessment of the situation. Like most men, he had little knowledge of what to do when someone fell ill, and since he was not acquainted with the dowager, he had no way of knowing if the collapse was due to something she often suffered from or if it was a new occurrence. Resuming his seat beside Isabella, he watched as Perdita tried to frame a response to her sister’s question, perching on a chair opposite them.
“I believe she has been having little spells for some time now,” Perdita admitted, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot on the table between them. “You know how proud she is, Isa,” she said with a shake of her head. “I would not be surprised if this was something she’s been hiding from us for a year or more.”
“Since your husband’s death, you mean?” Trevor asked. He was not surprised to see both women blanch, considering the way that the late duke had died, but Trevor was beginning to understand why his grandmother had been so adamant about him coming to London to assume the role of the duke.
If she was cowed by the question, Perdita didn’t allow it to enter her voice, however. “Yes,” she continued, “I suspect that the shock of his death was likely the incident that caused her to suffer her first spell. She took his death quite hard. Even knowing what a…” She paused, obviously trying to come up with some delicate way to describe her late husband.
“He knows, Perdy,” Isabella told her with a glance at Trevor. “I told him everything. About that night.”
Perdita looked from Trevor to Isabella, her creamy complexion turning paler. She swallowed before saying, “I suppose you had to.”
“He is my husband,” Isabella said, lacing her fingers through Trevor’s. He felt a lump form in his chest. But her next words made it dissolve. “And he is the duke, so if there is any danger of our being prosecuted he will stand up for us.” Suddenly their hasty marriage—despite his own insistence upon it—took on a different complexion altogether.
“Quite,” he drawled. “I will certainly ensure that you do not hang for murder. At the very least.”
He felt a fool for not seeing the possibility sooner. It had simply never occurred to him that Isabella might have orchestrated their reasons for marrying. She’d seemed so resistant to marrying again. Could that have truly been an act?
Now was hardly the time to consider the matter, however. There were other things to consider.
Beside him, Isabella had the grace to blush. Whether it was guilty or not he could no longer trust himself to decide. “I didn’t mean it like—”
But he cut her off, not wishing to hear excuses now, asking Perdita, “If the dowager has been ill all this time, who has really been running the Ormonde estates?”
“She has, for the most part,” Perdita said, though she looked a bit uncomfortable at the byplay between Isabella and Trevor. “And you, I suppose. Also, I believe a great deal of the estate business has been handled by Archer.”
“The duke’s—rather my—secretary.” It wasn’t a question. He’d found, through their correspondence, that Lord Archer was a competent and at times brilliant secretary, maintaining both the estates and the at-times-complicated management of the various dependents on the dukedom with a light but firm hand. “He resides here, does he not?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Perdita said with a slight blush. “I believe he is currently in his—I mean your study.”
Trevor didn’t miss her corrected mistake. Was he going to have to put the fellow in his place as well as ensure that the dowager relinquished her control of the dukedom?
Trevor stood, deciding to leave the sisters to the conversation. “I’ll just go pay him a visit then,” he said. He turned to Isabella. “I trust I’ll see you at dinner?”
Perhaps still regretting her earlier slight, Isabella smiled up at him. “Yes, of course.” Giving in to impulse, Trevor leaned down and kissed her full on the lips. Before either sister could comment, he left the room and went in search of the duke’s … his … study.
* * *
“That certainly doesn’t look like a marriage of convenience,” Perdita told her sister with a grin.
Isabella knew her face flamed with color but tried to pass it off. “He just wanted to prove a point, or some such nonsensical masculine thing. I can hardly blame him given what I just said about possible prosecution.”
“Yes,” her sister agreed, leaning back in her seat to survey Isabella. “He wanted to prove that you are his wife and that he’s in love with you.”
Perdita had always been the more romantic of them. Even before they made their debuts, she’d waxed philosophical about the handsome young beaux who would come and swe
ep them both off their feet. She’d been sorely disappointed when the opposite happened. Now Isabella wondered how her sister had survived marriage to someone like Gervase yet still believed in happy ever after.
“It truly is a marriage of convenience, Perdy,” she said, feeling like a clod for crushing her sister’s romantic notions but unable to let her continue to think of Isabella’s marriage as anything but what it was. “We were caught in a compromising position at a country ball. Trevor needed someone to look after his sisters and I agreed to it.” She didn’t mention the fact that Trevor seemed to be the only person who believed that she wasn’t going stark raving mad.
“Isa,” her sister said with a look of reproach. “You might gammon everyone else in Christendom about the circumstances behind your match, but I know you. And there is no way on earth you’d have consented to marry again unless you were head over ears in love.”
The situation was far more complicated than Isabella was willing to reveal to her sister at this point. Aside from the fact that Isabella did, indeed, fear that she was falling in love with her own husband, the knowledge that someone was trying to discredit her made her current relationship with him one in which she relied upon him for far more help than she would have liked. Now that they were finally back in London, where she was in her preferred milieu, she hoped that the balance of power would shift a bit and she would be able to repay Trevor for the support he’d given her when they were in Yorkshire.
Aloud, however, she merely said, “We are fond of one another, and that’s the end of it. Besides, we’ve only known one another for a few weeks. That’s hardly the basis for true love.”
But Perdita remained unconvinced. “Say what you will, Sister, but I know what I see before me.”
Deciding to get a bit of her own back, Isabella asked her sister, “What of you and the Earl of Coniston? Are we to see an announcement in the papers before too long?”
To Isabella’s surprise, however, her sister did not break into a bashful grin as she’d expected; instead Perdita looked troubled. “I’m afraid I have some bad news on that front. Lord Coniston and I have decided that we should not suit after all.”
Isabella could not keep from gaping at her sister. “What do you mean you ‘should not suit’? I thought you had all but accepted the man! At least that is how things were before I left for Yorkshire. Did the dowager perhaps put some sort of spoke in the wheel there? For if she did I will have no compunction about—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Perdita said quickly, her tone placating. “This was between Coniston and myself. I must ask you to keep this solely between us, but the truth of the matter, Isa, is that I simply do not love him.”
Isabella took her hand. “But when did this happen? How? I thought you had decided that what you felt for Lord Coniston was far more real than your feelings for Gervase.”
“I can’t really say when or how it happened,” Perdita admitted. “I simply knew one day while we were having a rather stilted conversation over the luncheon table. It really should not be difficult to carry on a conversation with the man you are supposed to love. And we were always arriving at some sort of conversational impasse.”
“No, you are right about that,” Isabella said thoughtfully. Even when she and Trevor were arguing, they never had difficulty finding things to say to each other. It was one of the things she loved about him.
Startled at the turn of phrase, she nevertheless chose not to overanalyze the thought. After all, it was simply a way of speaking. It didn’t mean she loved him, for pity’s sake.
But Perdita’s next words gave Isabella pause.
“I know you are surprised, but I must say that your arrival just now has only reinforced my certainty that we have made the right decision in breaking off our prebetrothal, I suppose you’d call it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Isabella asked with suspicion.
“Only that seeing you with your Trevor has reminded me of what true love looks like,” Perdita said with a laugh. “And I can tell already that the two of you are madly in love.”
Impulsively Perdita hugged her sister, and though Isabella wasn’t quite sure she agreed with her sister’s assessment of her marriage to Trevor, she hugged her back.
“You’re quite mad,” Isabella told her, “but I do love you. And I hope that one of these days you will find a husband who loves you to distraction.”
“I love you, too,” Perdita said with a grin. “Even if you have stolen a march on every other lady in London by marrying Trevor before the rest of us even had a chance to meet him.”
Eager to change the subject, Isabella asked, “What has really been going on with the dowager since I left?”
Perdita shrugged. “Once she convinced you to leave for Yorkshire, she seemed to … deflate.” Her eyes darkened with worry. “I know that she blackmailed you into going,” she said, “and I do hate that in choosing not to marry Coniston I made your trip to Yorkshire utterly unnecessary—aside from your marriage to Trevor of course. But I just don’t think the dowager had it in her to stop my engagement if I’d wanted to go through with it.”
“She’s a sour old woman,” Isabella retorted. “If I didn’t believe her capable of doing those very things I wouldn’t have left town.” She reached across to take her sister’s hand. “I know you hold her in some affection, dearest, but she truly believes that we were responsible for Gervase’s death. And she’s never for a moment believed him capable of the things he did to you.”
“You just don’t know her as I do, Isa,” the younger woman said with a sigh. “I know you don’t trust her. You have every reason not to, considering how she returned you to Ralph that time you tried to run away. But she thought she was doing the right thing. She’s from a different generation. The Duchess of Devonshire put up with all sorts of outrages from her husband and never really left him. I believe the dowager thought that you were simply being headstrong or overreacting.”
“I was not overreacting,” Isabella said through clenched teeth, remembering again just how betrayed she’d felt when her own godmother had told her husband where she was hiding from him. “He killed the child I was carrying, Perdita. If I’d remained with him he would have killed me as well. As it was, he nearly did so when I was returned to him.”
“She didn’t know, Isa. I promise you,” Perdita said, tears forming in her eyes. It was an old argument between them, and one that Isabella knew her sister took to heart. Maybe if Isabella had spent as much time with the dowager as her sister had she’d understand the old woman’s behavior like Perdita did. But Isabella still couldn’t understand how her sister could defend the woman who had accused her of intentionally killing her husband. “She stayed with the old duke, so she didn’t understand why we shouldn’t stay with Ralph and Gervase.”
“Let’s not argue over her, Perdita,” Isabella said, a sudden weariness coming over her as she recalled all of the heartache and drama that had surrounded her first marriage. “There is something I must tell you.”
At Perdita’s squeal of delight Isabella realized that she’d perhaps phrased that wrong. “No,” she said with a nervous laugh, “I assure you it is not that I am with child.” It was far too soon for such a thing. Besides which, she had enough on her plate at the present time without the addition of a pregnancy to the mix.
“It is something else entirely,” she said firmly. “Something much more sinister.” Quickly she explained to her sister everything that had happened to her while she was in Yorkshire, beginning with the intentionally broken carriage and ending with the dead rabbit.
“Who would do such a thing?” Perdita demanded. She could be quite fierce when her loved ones were endangered.
“I don’t know,” Isabella said with a lift of her shoulders. “At first I thought it might be someone who knew about how Gervase died, but this last note is almost eerily similar to Mama’s last words. Who knows about that but us? Papa is dead, after all. And I only told Wharton.”
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“No one that I can think of,” Perdita said. “I was always quite careful not to say anything to Gervase about it. Especially after I saw how Wharton used it against you.”
“That’s what I thought,” Isabella said. “But god knows who Ralph told. He was quite angry about it when I told him.” An understatement if ever there was one.
“Someone obviously knows now,” Perdita said, her light brows drawn. “What would someone have to gain by making you think you’re going mad?”
“I’m not sure,” Isabella said truthfully. “There’s no reason I can think of for someone to persecute me in this way. I thought at first that it might be the dowager, but her illness makes that a slim possibility.”
“There is the fact that you were there when Gervase died,” Perdita said carefully. “The dowager might not be capable of perpetrating such a scheme, but Gervase left any number of friends and associates with reason to hate you.”
“But what of you, and Georgina?” Isabella asked, not liking to think of her sister and her friend being subjected to the sort of games that this villain had put her through.
Perdita looked down.
“Perdita?” Isabella asked, her stomach tightening. “What is it that you aren’t telling me?”
“I didn’t tell you because I thought you were in Yorkshire falling in love.…” She looked sheepish at her own foolishness. “But both Georgie and I have received notes in the past week or so.”
“What did they say?” Isabella asked, though she knew what her sister would say.
“‘I know what you did last season.’”
Nineteen
Trevor found the personal secretary to the Duke of Ormonde in the massive study, just where Perdita had said he would find him.
He didn’t bother knocking, preferring to simply walk in like he owned the room, since he did. And he wanted to gauge how the man responded to such a tactic. Trevor wasn’t sure who was terrorizing Isabella, but as the man who ran the Ormonde estates, Lord Archer, younger son of the Duke of Pemberton, was in as good a position as anyone to orchestrate such a campaign of mental attacks.
Why Dukes Say I Do Page 25
