Unmasking the Duke's Mistress

by Margaret McPhee

  ‘Grandmama is tired, Archie. She needs some peace and quiet. Go and find Charlie and we will take him to the park.’ And then to her mother, ‘We will leave you to your rest, Mama.’

  ‘I am sorry, Arabella,’ her mother said softly. ‘I did not mean to snap at him. I am just so worried for us all.’

  ‘I know, Mama.’ Arabella kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘Try to rest; it will make you feel a little better. We will not be gone for long.’

  Mrs Tatton nodded and watched them leave.

  Dominic had not slept again. He had cancelled all of his appointments for the coming week, refused to see Hunter when his friend had called upon him last night, and thought endlessly over Arabella and Archie and the nightmare in which they were all imprisoned. He knew it was too early to call upon them, but he called for his horse to be saddled anyway. Dominic made his way to Curzon Street and in his pocket was a neatly rolled little scroll tied with a red ribbon.

  Gemmell showed him in and as he waited in the drawing room he looked behind the curtain where Archie liked to play his games. A little boy’s den. He moved away when he heard her footsteps coming down the stairs. Followed them along the corridor. But it was not Arabella who entered the room.

  ‘Mrs Tatton.’ He bowed.

  ‘Your Grace.’ Mrs Tatton’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Arabella and Archie have gone out, but I wish to speak to you.’

  He gave a nod and gestured for her to sit down, but she ignored him and stood facing him with undisguised hostility.

  ‘Arabella tells me you have been unwell. I hope you are feeling better.’

  ‘How could I feel better, sir, with what you have done to my daughter and grandson, and with what you are doing to them still?’

  ‘It is a very difficult situation. My father—’

  ‘Oh, do not waste your lies on me. You may fool Arabella, but you do not fool me for a minute. Have you not already hurt her enough? Are you not yet satisfied that you must do it all over again?’

  ‘I would never knowingly have hurt Arabella. I loved her. I love her still.’ It was the first time he had admitted the truth even to himself.

  ‘Love? You, who, in her greatest hour of need, bought her as if she was some piece of cheap Haymarketware! She needed help. Any decent man would have given her just that.’

  Mrs Tatton’s words confirmed every thought that had taunted him since he had found Arabella in Mrs Silver’s. ‘You are right and I have regretted my action most sincerely, ma’am. There is no excuse. I should not have allowed myself to be influenced by her circumstance.’

  ‘Which circumstance was that, sir? That of her poverty?’

  ‘I found her in a bordello, Mrs Tatton.’

  Mrs Tatton hit out at him, her swollen old hands thumping ineffectually against his chest.

  ‘Do not dare condemn her!’ she cried and her breath was heavy and wheezing.

  ‘Mrs Tatton, please calm yourself. I make no condemnation of Arabella. I know she would not have gone there lightly.’

  He caught hold of her, worried for her health, and steered her to the armchair.

  She sat down heavily, sobbing and clutching her hands to her face. ‘I should have known it was such a place. But she told me it was a workshop where women sewed night and day to ready garments faster than anywhere else.’

  He remembered Arabella facing him so defiantly that night in Mrs Silver’s, and the expression upon her face when she admitted that her mother did not know she was there.

  ‘She wished to spare your feelings, ma’am.’

  Mrs Tatton nodded and, wrapping her arms around herself, began to rock. ‘She only went there to save me and the boy. After the robbery we had nothing. God knows we had little enough before, but after…’ She shook her head. ‘Arabella trailed the streets of London from dawn to dusk, looking for honest work. Day after day she walked those streets, walked until her feet were rubbed raw and bleeding, and her shoulders bowed with weariness, and the last of the doors had been shut in her face. She pawned the wedding ring from her finger, the cloak from her back, the shoes from her feet, to keep us from starving. And then there was nothing else left to sell.’

  Except herself.

  Dominic felt sick to the pit of his stomach. The thought of what she had suffered made him want to cry out against the injustice of it and drive his fist into the wall again and again and again, but he knew that he must control himself. Mrs Tatton was already distressed enough. He passed her his handkerchief and she took it with a murmur of gratitude.

  ‘You spoke of a robbery.’

  He saw Mrs Tatton raise her head and look at him in surprise. ‘She did not tell you?’

  ‘She told me nothing.’

  ‘I do not understand…’

  And neither did Dominic, but he was beginning to. ‘Arabella believed the worst of me. It must have been beyond humiliating for her to see me there that night.’ He did not tell the old woman sitting before him the full extent of how he had humiliated her daughter, taking her, unknown, masked, to slake his lust upon. The knowledge raked him with agony; he knew it would hurt Mrs Tatton all the more. ‘All she had left was her pride.’ He took her hands in his. ‘Tell me of the robbery, ma’am.’

  She looked into his eyes, as if she were seeing him for the first time and was trying to take his measure. She looked and the minutes seemed to stretch, until at last she began to speak.

  ‘Villains broke down the door of our lodgings with a hammer and stripped the place bare. They took every last thing save our mattress from which they had already prised the little money we had hidden there, and that damnable gold locket you gave her. We had already sold most items of value through the years, to make ends meet. But she would not sell the locket for all that it pained her to look upon it.’ She looked at him steadily; the fury was gone and in its place was a terrible sadness and exhaustion.

  ‘You have made my daughter your mistress and my grandson your bastard, to be looked down upon and shunned by all society. Set Arabella and Archie and me free, Dominic. Give us enough money to set up elsewhere, to start afresh and at least pretend we are respectable. Please. I am begging you.’

  ‘I cannot do that, Mrs Tatton. I will not lose them again.’

  ‘Then damn you to perdition, Dominic Furneaux.’ Her complexion was puffy and grey, and her eyes swollen and red as she looked at him, yet there was about her the same dignity that he had seen in Arabella. ‘I have nothing more to say to you, your Grace. If you will be so kind as to leave this house…’ The hand with which she gestured to the door was shaking. ‘Please leave at once.’ She looked ill and trembling with passion. He dared not risk her health further.

  Dominic rose from where he sat beside her on the sofa and did as she bid.

  It was later than Arabella anticipated by the time that she and Archie returned to Curzon Street. Mrs Tatton had retired to bed and Dominic had not arrived.

  The day wore on and when there continued to be no sign of Dominic Archie’s excitement gradually changed to something else.

  ‘Where is Dominic? Why does he not come, Mama?’ Archie looked up at her with disappointment in his eyes.

  Arabella smoothed his hair into some semblance of tidiness. ‘Dominic is a very busy gentleman. I am sure that he will call upon us when he is able.’

  ‘But he said that he would call today.’

  ‘I know he did, little lamb. A very important matter must have arisen to prevent him.’ But she was angry at Dominic for dashing a small boy’s hopes, and angry at herself for trusting in him.

  Archie climbed down from her knee and went off to play behind the curtain.

  ‘Mama, Mama!’ He came running up to her a minute later. ‘Look what I have found.’ In his hand he held a small scroll of paper tied with a red ribbon.

  Arabella unfastened the ribbon and looked at the pen-and-ink coloured drawing on the paper before her. And she felt a wave of affection wash through her.

  ‘This is your own little horse
drawn by Dominic.’ She smiled at Archie.

  Archie’s eyes widened. ‘It is Charlie, Mama!’

  ‘Yes, I think it is.’ Arabella smiled, thinking that Dominic must have sent the drawing for Archie because he could not call.

  ‘I cannot wait till I see Dominic!’

  It was only later when Archie had been put to bed and her mother had risen from hers that Arabella learned something of what had really transpired that day.

  ‘You sent Dominic away? But this is his house, Mama.’

  ‘I sent him away, like the rogue he is.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Arabella. I told him what you should have.’ Her mother looked even more pale and exhausted than when Arabella had seen her last, despite the hours of rest.

  A shiver of foreboding moved down Arabella’s spine.

  Her mother looked at her with the strangest expression. ‘Sweet Arabella, with your dignity and your pride,’ she said softly. ‘Why did you not tell him? And why did you not tell me?’

  ‘What do you mean, Mama?’ She had a very bad feeling. ‘What was said?’

  ‘I damned him to hell and told him to leave.’ Mrs Tatton smiled, but it was the saddest smile that Arabella had ever seen.

  ‘Oh, Mama,’ she said softly. And she handed her mother the drawing he had penned for Archie.

  Her mother unrolled the scroll and in the silence there was only the ticking of the clock.

  And her mother looked at her and knew what she was thinking. ‘Do not go to him, Arabella.’

  ‘You know that I have to.’ Arabella pecked a kiss on her mother’s cheek. ‘Archie is asleep. Listen out in case he wakens before I am returned. I should not be gone for long.’ And she rang for her carriage and her cloak.

  Dominic glanced round at the commotion that was sounding from his hallway. He raised an eyebrow at the man seated opposite him within his study.

  ‘Please excuse me for a minute.’ He set down his brandy and the pile of political papers that had just been handed to him and went to investigate, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Out in the black-and-white chequered floor hallway Bentley’s frame partially obscured a dark figure with which he was engaged in an altercation.

  ‘I tell you that he will see me!’ the voice insisted. Dominic’s stomach tightened as he recognised it as Arabella’s.

  ‘And I tell you, madam, that he is not at home. Now if you do not leave the premises I will be forced to—’

  Dominic stepped quickly forwards. ‘It is all right, Bentley. Let her in.’

  ‘Dominic,’ she said and slipped the voluminous black velvet hood down to reveal herself, and he smelled the waft of cool night air mixed with the rose scent of her perfume. Her hair had been scraped back into a chignon, but the hood of the cloak had displaced some of the pins enough to let some golden curls escape. She looked beautiful and worried.

  ‘What are you doing here, Arabella?’ His voice was hushed as he hurried her into the shadows. His first thought was of the risk she was taking coming here, much more than she realised. And his second was that Arabella would not have come were there not a very good reason. A horrible fear suddenly struck him. His hands tightened around her arms.

  ‘Has something happened to Archie?’ he asked and his eyes searched hers.

  She shook her head. ‘Archie is fine.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘She is well enough, Dominic.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘What did you say to my mother today? I have to know.’

  ‘Much as I wish it otherwise, now is not the time to be having this discussion, Arabella. You must leave here at once.’

  He saw the hurt flicker in her eyes before cynical realisation showed on her face.

  ‘You are angry that I have come.’

  ‘Very.’ He could not lie.

  ‘I see.’ Her lips tightened slightly.

  ‘No, you do not.’ He hauled her to him, until their faces were only inches apart. He stared down into her eyes, his heart thudding too hard at the danger she was in. ‘Arabella, I am not alone this evening. I have visitors, albeit unwelcome ones, in the library—the Earl of Misbourne and his son Viscount Linwood.’

  ‘Misbourne?’ Everything about her stilled. ‘Lady Marianne’s father.’ He could see the sudden doubt that flashed in her mind as clear as if she had voiced it aloud.

  ‘Their visit is on a political matter and has nothing to do with Lady Marianne.’

  Her gaze was fierce and strong and determined. ‘If you mean to marry her, Dominic, please be honest enough to tell me. I understand your position and your obligations mean that you are required to marry and beget an heir—’

  But he cut her off, his voice harsh and urgent. ‘We have been through all of this before, Arabella. There has only ever been one woman I wanted to marry and that is you.’

  ‘We both know that is an impossibility now,’ she whispered.

  ‘Is it?’ His grip was too tight around her arms, but he could not loosen it. ‘Do I not already have my heir?’

  They stared into one another’s eyes and he could feel that she was trembling.

  ‘Return to Curzon Street, Arabella. I am bound into this meeting, but I will come to you tomorrow and we will talk then.’ He pressed a short hard kiss to her lips before pulling the hood up over her head and releasing her.

  Bentley and a footman appeared and Dominic spoke softly and quickly. ‘Help the lady to her coach. Discretion is paramount.’

  ‘Very good, your Grace.’ Bentley gave a bow. Arabella was already gone by the time the butler’s gaze flitted towards the library door in a warning.

  Dominic glanced round to see Misbourne and Linwood standing there.

  ‘Everything all right, Arlesford? No trouble, I hope.’

  ‘No trouble.’ Dominic’s expression was cold and hard as he made his way back into the library and topped up his guests’ glasses. And he wondered just how long the men had been standing there and how much Misbourne had seen. For all their sakes, he hoped that the answer was not very much at all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  From the minute that Dominic arrived at Curzon Street the next day Arabella could see the determination in his gaze. She thought of what it was he had come to discuss and her heart missed a beat. She was frightened and hopeful and confused all at once.

  ‘Dominic!’ Archie ran up, so happy and joyful to see his father that Arabella’s guilt at keeping the two of them apart weighed heavier than ever upon her. ‘Are we playing the horses game today?’

  ‘Archie, let Dominic come in and at least remove his hat and gloves before you pester him. I told you that he is busy and might not have time to play today,’ said Arabella, but Archie was already by Dominic’s side looking up at him hopefully.

  Dominic smiled and ruffled Archie’s hair. ‘Of course I have time for the horses game…that is, if your mama and grandmama give us their permission.’

  Archie peered across at her and Mrs Tatton.

  Arabella glanced at her mother, who was watching Archie and Dominic together. ‘Mama?’ she said softly, wanting her mother to be a part of this.

  Mrs Tatton nodded. ‘Let them spend time together.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dominic. Arabella knew that he had no need to ask for permission—it was his house and his son. But the fact that he had understood how important this was to her and that he had consideration for her mother’s feelings gladdened her more than any fancy words or gifts could have done.

  ‘Hurrah!’ Archie shouted and produced a rather crushed and tatty-looking scroll of paper from his pocket. ‘I have my picture all ready.’

  And when they went through to the drawing room, Mrs Tatton did not make her excuses, but came and sat with them too.

  Dominic did not cease to marvel at Archie. The more he came to know him the more he realised that, although the boy had his looks, he had many of Arabella’s mannerisms. The way he tilted
his head to the side when he was listening, and the way he chewed his lip when he was unsure of himself. Dominic never tired of the wonder of his and Arabella’s child.

  His tailcoat had long been abandoned, his waistcoat was unbuttoned and the knot in his cravat loosened. Archie insisted on removing his shoes and demonstrating with pride to Dominic how well he could run and slide in his stocking soles across the polished floor. Dominic remembered doing the very same thing at home in Shardeloes Hall when he was a boy.

  Dominic took a seat on the sofa and felt something hard jab into his back. He glanced round and found a small carved wooden horse half-hidden by the cushion.

  ‘Oh, you found Charlie sleeping in his stable.’ Archie smiled.

  ‘So his name is Charlie,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Gemmell made him for me. For my birthday.’ Archie smiled even more widely. ‘And my mama took us to the park and allowed me and Charlie to ride upon a real horse.’ Archie was beaming fit to burst.

  ‘I am sure you enjoyed that.’ He slid a gaze to meet Arabella and wondered how all this could have gone on beneath his very nose without him having an inkling of it. Her cheeks flushed and she bit her lip.

  ‘Oh, indeed, yes! It was the best treat ever.’

  ‘So now you know, Dominic,’ piped up Mrs Tatton. ‘She should have told you of the boy and the rest of it at the very beginning.’

  ‘Mama!’ whispered Arabella, scandalised.

  ‘Well, you should have,’ said Mrs Tatton to Arabella before turning back to him. ‘And you, for all that you can plead your excuses, should have treated my daughter a deal better than you have.’

  ‘You are right, ma’am,’ he conceded. ‘But I am here today to resolve that matter.’

  Mrs Tatton’s eyes widened slightly. Her gaze shifted momentarily to Arabella and he saw in it both the question and anxiety before it came back to rest upon him.

  No more was said of it, but Dominic stayed for dinner and was still there to kiss his son goodnight when he went to bed.