Scandal

by Heather Cullman

  SCANDAL

  Heather Cullman

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  North Riding, Yorkshire, England, 1798

  "Dead?" Gideon Harwood echoed, his mind reeling in shock. Of all the things he'd expected to learn here, that Lady Silvia Barham had died most certainly did not rank among them.

  The swag-bellied majordomo nodded his wigged head in affirmation, his gimlet eyes growing round as he glanced over Gideon's shoulder to the gravel drive beyond. Gideon didn't have to follow the servant's gaze to know the source of his consternation. It was Jagtar, his sirdar, as the station of personal attendant was referred to in India, and even Gideon had to admit that the tall Sikh with his wiry black beard, his scarred, teakwood-hued face, and starkly contrasting white turban could be a very menacing sight indeed to those unaccustomed to it. The fact that he wore a lethal-looking kirpan, as the symbolic Sikh dagger was called, tucked into his blue silk waist sash did nothing to diminish the impression of barbarity.

  To the majordomo's credit, he gaped only for the briefest of moments before returning his attention to the man before him. Nodding again, this time rather stiffly, he confirmed, "Dead, yes. Her ladyship expired unexpectedly five days ago."

  The word unexpected seemed rather an understatement for the abrupt and startling untimeliness of her ladyship's demise, Gideon thought, the news dealing him a devastating blow. Indeed, Stiles, one of several Bow Street Runners he had hired to find his younger brother, Caleb, had spoken to Lady Silva on what had apparently been the day of her death and had carried back an invitation from her to call at his leisure. According to the runner, she claimed to have information about Caleb, the contents of which were too delicate to entrust to anyone but Gideon himself.

  Gideon, of course, had been elated by the news. After two months of searching, an excruciating time filled with endless dark moments punctuated by all-too-brief glimmers of hope, they had at last discovered a piece to the puzzle of his brother's baffling disappearance. Galvanized by this new hope, he'd naturally come posthaste. But he had arrived too late. Again. He was always too late, it seemed. As a result, he had once again failed those he loved when they needed him most.

  A paralyzing weariness swept over Gideon at the thought of his failures and the tragedy they had spawned, leaving him feeling drained, used up. Lady Silvia was dead, and without her help he might never find Caleb. Unless . . .

  His eyes narrowed with sudden speculation. If his memory served him correctly, and at the age of twenty-nine he had no reason to believe that it had grown faulty, Lady Silvia and Lord Gilbert had been inordinately fond of each other. That being the case, it was possible that she had confided in her husband about Caleb. Praying that his reasoning would prove sound, Gideon refocused his attention on the majordomo.

  "I truly am sorry, sir," the man was saying in a funereal tone. "Perhaps I can be of assistance?"

  Gideon nodded. "Indeed you may. You can announce me to his lordship."

  The majordomo couldn't have looked more affronted had he requested that he dig up Lady Silva and present him with her corpse. For several moments his mouth flapped open and closed in wordless indignation; then he boomed, "Must I remind you, sir, that his lordship is in deep mourning?"

  "I am well aware of that fact, I assure you," Gideon, smoothly countered. "And while I truly do regret disturbing him at a time like this, it is imperative that I speak with him on a matter of some urgency. So please do be good enough to inform him that Mr. Gideon Harwood is calling."

  "Harwood?" The man's smooth forehead puckered into jagged creases. After repeating the utterance at least a dozen times, his brow cleared and he ejected, "Harwood, yes. But of course." He smiled and bobbed his head. "Now I remember. Her ladyship informed me that you were to call-why, it must have been on the very day she died, God rest her soul. She said that you were to be received without delay. I believe she said your family had once resided in our village." His demeanor was decidedly less frigid than it had been mere seconds earlier.

  Gideon smiled, relieved to be finally getting somewhere with the man. "That is correct-?" He cast the servant a querying look.

  "Leighton, sir," the majordomo supplied with a bow.

  Gideon acknowledged the introduction with a cordial nod. "To answer your question, Leighton, my father was Joseph Harwood, curate of Fellthwaite parish for nineteen years. He is buried in the churchyard. I, myself, was born and lived my first seventeen years in the old rectory." If Leighton was anything at all like the Fellthwaite residents he remembered, his pedigree as one of their own was certain to gain him favor, and perhaps an audience with his lordship. Wishing to cement the veracity of his claim, he added, "As I recall, a gentleman named Pryor used to occupy your position. I do hope nothing untoward has befallen him?" There was nothing like naming names to establish one's legitimacy.

  It appeared that he was accurate in his reasoning, for Leighton's smile broadened. "Pryor is my cousin, sir. I assumed his position when he retired a year ago last month." His tone was positively warm now. "Ifyou will pardon me for prying, sir, might I inquire as to the nature of your business with his lordship?"

  Hoping to gain the man's sympathy, Gideon explained about his brother's disappearance and her ladyship's cryptic message.

  The majordomo remained silent for several moments after he finished his account, his expression thoughtful. Then he cleared his throat twice and said, "I am sorry, Mr. Harwood. As much as I regret doing so, I must inform you that his lordship is not receiving at this time. He gave strict orders to that effect."

  Never one to give up on matters of importance without a fight, Gideon opened his mouth to argue, to plead, if necessary, when the man leaned forward. Glancing nervously around him, Leighton whispered, "I do believe that his lordship is at the churchyard, visiting Lady Silvia's grave." With a conspiratorial wink, he straightened back up again, adding in a low voice, "Of course, you did not hear it from me."

  Gideon smiled. "Never. You are the soul of discretion, Leighton." Nodding his thanks, he made his way down the steps to where Jagtar stood crooning in his native tongue to the horses, which had grown restless during the exchange at the door.

  The Sikh straightened at his approach, his demeanor, as always, deferential but never subservient. "Sahib?"

  Gideon shook his head. "I am afraid that I shan't be speaking with her ladyship now, or ever. She died five days ago."

  Jagtar, who had been aiding Gideon in his quest to find his brother and thus understood the importance of his interview with Lady Silvia, looked genuinely grieved by the news. "Ah. Such unhappy tidings. Many regrets," he murmured, his soft accent and melodious cadence lending a pleasing singsong quality to his voice. Bowing his head in proper deference to the deceased, he added, "What must we do now, Sahib?"

  "Her ladyship may have confided whatever she knew about Caleb to her husband, so I must speak with him. He is presently at the churchyard." He pointed to the opposite end of the village, where a single tower jutted up from behind a stand of ancient yew trees. Unlike many hamlets in England, where the lords of the manor had built their houses a distance from the town, thus segregating themselves from the villagers, Fellthwaite Hall stood in the village i
tself, towering majestically above the humble yet charming cottages that huddled around it. "I do not know how long he will remain there, so I-"

  Ooof!-Gideon's horse, Abhaya, snorted and tossed his head, a bit of fractiousness that caused Sarad, Jagtar's gray gelding, to dance a nervous jig.

  Shweet! Shweet! Tat! Tat! Tat! Jagtar's constant companion, Kesin, a sharmindi-billi, or slow loris, as the queer, owl-eyed primates were called in the English-speaking world, poked his wooly cream-and-brown head from the pouch tied to Jagtar's saddle, emitting a sharp, scolding twitter in protest to having his nap disturbed.

  Jagtar chuckled. "A thousand pardons, little one," he said, extending his arm to his indignant friend. The beast grasped the proffered limb with its almost-human-looking hands and sinuously climbed to his master's shoulder, where it perched and expelled a series of chirps and whistles. The Sikh laughed and turned back to Gideon. As if translating the animal's complaints, he said, "The little beggar is hungry, Sahib, as are the horses. Where may I get food for them, please?"

  Gideon considered the question, then pointed to the pale Yorkshire brick inn visible just down the road. "There. At the Three Lamb Inn." Mr. Galloway kept the best stable in the county, just as his wife distinguished herself as an innkeeper with both the bounty of her table and the cleanliness of her beds. At least that had been the case when he'd lived here. Since the Galloway family had adhered to those standards for the six generations they had owned the inn, Gideon felt safe in assuming that matters hadn't changed much over the past twelve years.

  Handing Jagtar several coins, he said, "Tend to the horses, and then kindly arrange for dinner and rooms for the night. I daresay that the horses can use a rest after the hard manner in which we rode them. I shall meet you at the inn in an hour." Because of the poor road conditions in this part of the country, coupled with his desire for speed, Gideon had chosen to ride rather than take the elegant coach he had purchased to transport his sisters to his newly acquired estate in Lancashire. He had been in the processof settling the girls in the house there when he had received Stiles's message.

  Jagtar accepted the coins with a nod. "Bahut acha" - very good.

  "Oh, and Jagtar?"

  "Sahib?"

  "You will find fruit for Kesin at the shop two doors down from the inn on the opposite side of the road." Damn if he hadn't developed a fondness for the comical little creature himself.

  Jagtar brought his palms together beneath his chin and inclined his head in the Indian gesture for respect. "Dhany-avad" -thank you. With that he set off, scolding the naughty Kesin, who now tugged at his turban. Smiling at the droll pair, Gideon started toward the churchyard.

  Now walking down Mucky Lane, an aptly named road given its miry condition when it rained, Gideon observed the village he had left what felt like a lifetime ago. It was exactly as he remembered, seemingly untouched by the hand of time.

  Which is something that most certainly cannot be said for me, he thought, grimacing at his reflection in the bakeshop window. The nine grueling years he'd spent in India, first serving in and later commanding the armies of the rajas and Rajput chieftains, had left their mark upon his face, stripping away the soft vestiges of youth that still graced the faces of many men his age. His was the face of a life lived hard: a lean, predatory visage made up of razor-sharp planes and deeply etched lines, the skin stained dark from the sun.

  Of course, he'd been paid handsomely for his bartered youth. In fact, his banker had confided that the fortune he'd accumulated in India made him one of the wealthiest men in England. And hadn't that been his goal all along? Hadn't everything he'd done, every battle he'd fought, every wound he'd suffered, every moment he'd endured beneath the brutal Indian sun, his flesh scorched and his body screaming with bone-crushing weariness, all been borne out of a lust for wealth?

  Turning from the window, Gideon admitted that it was true, just as it was true that that lust had, in the end, caused him to fail the very people he had sought to help by gaining riches. Those people were, of course, his beloved family. And while they in no way blamed him for the chain of misfortune that had fractured their lives, he blamed himself. After all, if he had not been so vain in his desire to be their hero, to rescue them with dazzling wealth, he would have returned to England in time to save them from their suffering. And they had suffered. All of them.

  Terribly.

  A knife turned in Gideon's heart, as it always did when he contemplated his sins. If only he had been satisfied with a smaller fortune, a less grandiose dream. If only-

  For several moments Gideon waged a battle within himself, fighting the savage emotions that welled up inside him at the thought of what his "if onlys" had cost his family. Taming it into the now-familiar hollow ache, he forced his attention back to the panorama that was Fellthwaite Village.

  White limestone cottages, many graying with age, mingled with redbrick shops and multihued gardens, lending the tiny town a gay, dappled appearance. On his right was the rough stone farrier's stable, where he and Caleb had passed many a boyhood hour watching in awe as Mr. Witty, the jolly, barrel-chested blacksmith, worked magic on bits of iron. To the left was the cobbler and dogger shop, supplier of the endless parade of heavy, wood-soled clogs that he and his siblings had outgrown, lost, or ruined on a monthly basis. And over there, behind the wall so fragrantly dressed in honeysuckle, jasmine, and sweetbriar, stood the tiny ivy-draped cottage of Mrs. Porrit, a blind widow who nonetheless baked the best ratafia biscuits in the village.

  On he continued, past the crumbling medieval village hall and the Jacobean grammar school. Though he recognized several of the villagers he met, none appeared to recognize him, so he simply returned their polite nods and continued on, unable to spare the time to renew their acquaintance.

  After passing four more shops, a row of low, cozy-looking cottages, and a pair of elderly women out tending their garden, he reached the village green. The churchyard lay at the end of the path that cut through the far side of the green. As he crossed the broad, tree-shaded expanse of grass, the scene of so many memorable village celebrations, he spied a quartet of little girls engrossed in a game that had once delighted his sister Bethany. Using bits of stone to build sheep folds and fir cones as sheep, the smaller ones, of course, serving as lambs, the girls pretended to be sheep farmers, an occupation that provided the livelihood for the majority of the nearby cottagers. At the moment they clipped their sheep, their index and middle fingers acting as shears as they moved in a scissoring motion around the fir cones, their voices raised in a chorus of bleats punctuated by giggles. Charmed, Gideon paused a few seconds to watch, remembering Bethany as she had looked the last time he'd seen her play the game.

  She must have been about nine at the time, and had looked so enchanting with her dark hair tumbling around her dirt-smudged face and her sapphire-blue eyes dancing with mischief, as they had always done in those days. He and his siblings had been inordinately spirited children, or so their mother had once lamented. However, unlike he and Caleb, who could be quite wicked in their naughtiness and often landed in the suds because of it, Bethany's mischief had been innocently sweet and endearing in its light-hearted silliness. Bethany was still sweet and endearing, and still enjoyed an occasional spree of tomfoolery, though, sadly, she would never again be innocent-a heartbreak, the blame for which he placed squarely on his own shoulders. The fact that his youngest sister, eleven year-old Bliss, had never enjoyed the true innocence of childhood at all, well, he laid that fault at his door as well.

  So many memories, so many reminders of what should have been, but would never be.

  With a sigh, Gideon resumed his trek. Now coming to the path that led to the churchyard, the Road Home, some called it, referring, of course, to the heaven they hoped to attain when they were laid to rest in the sacred ground ahead, he noted that like the village, the pleasant white-poplar-lined walkway remained exactly as he remembered it ... as did the flowers edging it.

  With some relu
ctance he studied the prismatic skeins of snowdrops, primroses, and forget-me-nots that wove around the silvery tree trunks, his throat growing tight as he envisioned his beautiful mother kneeling among them. It had been she who had planted the flowers, she who had cultivated the knots of rosemary, the symbol of remembrance that formed the border of the cheerful garden. How like her in her love for the parishioners to make gay a place that held such sadness. How very typical of her compassionate nature to try to bring comfort to those so needful of its peace. Then again, she had been everything that was good and fine, a true inspiration to all who knew her.

  Desolate agony ripped through Gideon at the vivid memory of his mother. How he had loved her and wished to make her proud. Yet, in his zeal to do so he had failed her most of all. Choking on his sorrow, he more marched than walked the remaining distance to the churchyard and slipped through the timber lynch gate.

  Like the rest of Fellthwaite, the thirteenth-century church appeared unchanged by time. The same, unfortunately, could not be said for the churchyard itself.

  Unlike when his father was curate and his mother had so lovingly tended the property, the grounds surrounding the church were choked with weeds. Only the yew trees lining the stone perimeter wall had somehow escaped the neglect ravaging the rest of the lawn.

  As Gideon walked along he recalled the conversation he'd once had with his father about the yews. According to his sire, they were well over a thousand years old, an ancient reminder of earlier, more pagan times when the long vanquished Brigante warriors had stained their faces blue with woad and worshiped before the monolith that still stood in the south corner of the yard. He had also explained that yews were the pagan symbol of death, adding how they were believed to absorb the putrid miasma that many thought emanated from the graves at sunset. In short, the trees were planted to protect the village from the vile contamination of death.

  Smiling faintly at the absurdity of the superstition, Gideon spotted Lord Gilbert Barham, kneeling before a mound of raw earth in a posture that proclaimed profound grief. Not wishing to intrude upon what was clearly a private moment, Gideon discreetly proceeded to where his father was buried.