Heir to the Duke (The Duke's Sons #1)

by Jane Ashford

  She almost abandoned the whole enterprise there and then. How could she add to her mother’s burdens? But…what if she could help? She was a married woman now, with her own household and resources. Grandmamma no longer ruled her. If there was anything she could do… And what in the world could be so bad? Still, she had to swallow twice before she could say, “A pleasant outing, just the two of us.”

  “But I can’t…”

  If she hesitated now, all was lost, Violet thought. She just had to push through. “I’ll come with you to get your bonnet.” She couldn’t give her mother a chance to argue or delay.

  “Your grandmother may be back at any—”

  “Not for two hours,” Violet assured her.

  Her mother gazed at her as if she’d run mad. “How can you know that?”

  “Because I made sure of it.”

  “You?” She could not have looked more amazed if the Earth had stopped turning.

  Feeling uncomfortably like another tyrant in her mother’s confined life, Violet took her arm and led her out into the hall. “Let’s get your things,” she insisted. “It’s quite warm out.”

  There were more protests and foot-dragging, but at last they were on the stairs and then outdoors. And in that moment, Violet realized that she hadn’t thought where they would go. She couldn’t believe she’d been so heedless. She’d spent hours worrying about her feelings and the oddities of her childhood, but she’d made no proper plan. What was wrong with her?

  Her mother was casting furtive glances up and down the street. When a cart driver at the intersection shouted, she jumped as if she’d been shot. They couldn’t risk encountering her grandmother, not even a passing glimpse. Where could they go?

  And then Violet thought of the church. It had been as sparsely populated on her second visit with Marianne as on the first. Nathaniel and her grandmother would never think to go there. It would serve for a private meeting with Mama.

  Feeling almost as anxious as her mother, Violet hurried her along the streets. Only when they entered the church and found it empty did she relax. She examined the space, found a shielded spot at the end of one pew, and urged her mother over to sit there. A sigh of relief escaped her as she sank down beside her.

  “A…a fine church,” said her mother in a quavering voice.

  “Yes, Mama. I wanted to—”

  “The font looks very old.”

  “It is Norman.”

  “Really. As old as that? Fancy how—”

  “Mama, I need to speak to you about something.”

  Her mother looked at her like a rabbit facing a fox.

  Violet had to force herself to continue in the face of this pathetic fear. “I must understand why Grandmamma treats me as she does.”

  “Wh…what do you…?”

  “So harshly,” Violet continued. “And so completely unlike the way she treats Cousin Delia, for example.”

  Her mother looked startled.

  “We are both, equally, her granddaughters. Why has she criticized and…and oppressed me all my life when she does no such thing with Delia? Or her grandsons, of course. There must be some reason.”

  Her mother looked frightened.

  “There is a reason, isn’t there?”

  She hunched in the pew and looked away.

  “I can see that you know what it is.”

  Her mother started to cry—slow, hopeless tears. Hands limp in her lap, she didn’t bother to wipe them away. They dripped off her chin onto the bodice of her gown.

  “Mama, please don’t…” Violet was deeply shaken, but she was also more curious than ever. What could cause such a reaction? “Please don’t cry. I’m not going to do anything to you.”

  The silent tears simply continued. Her mother said nothing, offered no protest or argument. She merely hunched on the wooden seat, seemingly unable to lift a finger to alter the situation. As she always did, always had. “It’s not fair that I shouldn’t know!”

  “It’s far better than you don’t,” said her mother.

  At least she was speaking. “No, Mama, it is not.”

  “It is! Won’t you trust me on that?”

  “What cause have you given me to trust you?” It came out bitter. Her mother flinched, and Violet felt cruel. But her curiosity and sense of justice were on fire. “We are not leaving here until you tell me,” she declared. “Grandmamma can institute a search of the whole town. She can call out the troops—”

  “I swore never to mention it again as long as I lived,” her mother cried.

  “What?”

  “I can’t tell you—”

  “Did you murder someone? Or commit high treason?”

  Her mother jerked as if she’d been struck. “Violet! How could you even imagine…?”

  “I have a very good imagination. And if you will not say, I can imagine all sorts of dreadful things.”

  “I can’t, I can’t,” she moaned.

  “Mama!” Violet could see that she was winning. Her mother didn’t have the fortitude to resist a determined assault. Hadn’t she shown as much all Violet’s life? “Just tell me,” she commanded.

  Her mother hunched even lower, as if she might hide her whole person in the pew. “Please don’t make me—”

  “I have to know!”

  “I don’t want you to think badly of me,” her mother murmured, almost too low to hear.

  Violet did not say, and would never say, that she already viewed her mother as weak. Whatever had happened, whatever secret she was about to reveal, she should have stood up to Grandmamma, and for Violet. “I won’t,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Shall I promise you?”

  Her mother took her hands in a painful grip. “Will you?”

  Violet nodded. “I promise.”

  A long silence followed, but Violet was wise enough not to interrupt it. She could see her mother gathering the courage to speak.

  “There was a murder,” the older woman whispered finally.

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t me!” She shook her head, eyes on the stone floor. “It had nothing to do with me, in the end. Except that it wrecked everything.”

  Although she was shocked to the core, Violet controlled her voice. “Everything?” she prompted softly.

  Her mother nodded, swallowing. Then she sat a little straighter. She took a deep breath. When she spoke again, it was in a stronger voice. “My family arranged the match with your father. He was heir to an earldom. That was all that mattered to them. I had a large dowry. The Deveres cared only for that.”

  She gazed out over the church, or perhaps into the past. Violet wondered if she should acknowledge these facts, which she had always somehow known.

  “But I was in love with someone else.”

  Violet was silenced.

  “This was soon after the troubles in France, you know, and London was full of émigrés.” Her mother’s tone had gone dreamy. “Rene was the son of a marquis, though they had lost everything, of course. They’d had huge estates and a fortune.” Briefly, it sounded as if she was arguing. But with the next sentence, her hopeless tone was back. “The revolution took all that away. But, oh, Violet, if you could have seen him in his blue satin coat, with the lace falling over his wrists. He was the handsomest man I’d ever met. And such an air about him! Like a fairy-tale prince among the English clods. And he made me feel like a princess. A beautiful princess.”

  Violet gazed at her mother in amazement. She’d never heard her speak at such length in her life.

  “When they announced my engagement to your father, Rene threatened to put a bullet through his head. He said losing me had already killed him. He railed and ranted. I was so frightened that he would really do it. And so unhappy. And in love. So…I said I would run away with him. To Gretna Green. So we could be married and be together forever.”

  Violet nearly exclaimed aloud. Her timid, anxious mother had eloped? Seeing the worried looks being cast her way, V
iolet nodded, and smiled. The tale mustn’t stop here.

  “I…I gave him what money I had, and Rene found the rest to hire a chaise. We slipped away early from a ball and raced out of town. It was terrifying. Every minute I thought my father would find us. And exciting. The most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.”

  She stopped and began to twist her hands in her lap. Violet was afraid she wouldn’t go on. But finally she did, in a whisper almost too low to catch.

  “We stayed at inns along the way. Together. It was…he was…glorious.”

  Violet felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. It was…odd to hear such words from her mother.

  “We nearly made it to the border,” she went on, a little louder. “We came so close. A few miles… But someone caught up to us.”

  “Your family?” Violet asked.

  “No. It was another Frenchman.” Her mother hunched in the pew once again, looking as if she wanted to disappear entirely. “No one I knew,” she murmured. “Though I will never forget his face. A hard, vulgar man. He had some quarrel with Rene about a debt. They spoke in French, and I couldn’t catch it all. I believe he thought Rene was running away to escape paying him. He pushed into the inn parlor where we were, shouting. They fought.”

  She shivered. Violet put an arm around her.

  “They struggled back and forth, knocking over the table with our dinner and the other chairs. And then…” She panted as if she’d been running. “He had a knife. I didn’t see where it came from. But he…that terrible man…he got hold of Rene’s chin and…and slashed his throat. The blood…it…it fountained out. In a great scarlet stream. It hit me in the face, splashed down my gown…” She choked. “It was everywhere. Horrible!”

  Violet held her closer. “Oh, Mama.”

  Her mother gazed at her, wild-eyed.

  “I’m so…sorry.” The words were utterly inadequate, but they seemed to have an effect nonetheless. Slowly, the terror in her eyes subsided.

  “I told you there was a murder,” she continued mechanically. “He ran out. I don’t know what became of him. No one does. I suppose he went back to France.” She stirred under Violet’s arm—not as if to get away, but as if she wasn’t accustomed to gestures of comfort. After another pause, she went on. “So…I was left all alone at the inn. With…the blood and hardly any money. People kept questioning me. All these men. The…the coroner and the justice of the peace. Staring at me and asking the same things over and over. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do except to send word to my father. There was no one else, any longer.”

  Violet tried to imagine it. Her mother would have been—seventeen? A sheltered young lady suddenly in a perfectly dreadful situation.

  “Papa came for me,” her mother continued in a toneless voice. “He was terribly angry. Of course. He brought me back to London. And then there were days and days of shouting.” She shivered under Violet’s arm. “People said such horrid things. Mama was particularly…” She shook her head. “In the end, the Deveres agreed to take me even though I was ruined.”

  “You still had a fortune,” Violet said.

  “Yes,” her mother agreed. “As long as I did what Papa ordered. Not if I’d refused to marry. Then, nothing. Mama said they’d turn me out on the street.”

  She didn’t acknowledge Violet’s gasp.

  “They all said the money was what Rene wanted too. I suppose it was. I was never pretty. Never even striking, as you are now. Have I told you how well you are looking, Violet?”

  Tears flooded Violet’s eyes. “Th-thank you, Mama,” she replied.

  Her mother nodded. “So, the dowry saved me. Your…the dowager made certain no one knew of my…slip. She told everyone I’d been visiting her to cover up my absence, and made sure none of her servants said differently.”

  Violet struggled to absorb the horror and pathos of this story. It was heartrending, and outrageous. Her mother had been treated shamefully. Still, it had all happened almost thirty years ago. “But…Mama. I don’t see what this has to do with the way Grandmamma treats me.”

  For the first time, her mother turned to gaze at Violet. “Haven’t you understood? You are Rene’s daughter,” she whispered.

  “What?” Violet froze, her brain struggling to process these words.

  “We went to Ireland when it…became obvious that I was…that you were on the way. To the most out-of-the-way place you can imagine. In case, you see. And indeed you arrived at a time when it could not have been your…the earl who fathered you. Your birthday is really in March, not May.”

  “March.” Oddly, this small fact transfixed Violet.

  “The dowager said it was so lucky you weren’t a boy.”

  And heir to the earldom, supplied Violet’s reeling thoughts. “What would they have done?”

  “I don’t know.” She shivered slightly again.

  Violet sat there, frozen, barely noticing her mother’s anxious looks. “So, Grandmamma…but she isn’t my grandmother, is she?”

  Her mother shook her head. “You are no relation.”

  “And so I deserve no consideration from her.”

  “She has always feared that you inherited my wanton tendencies, along with…foreign blood.”

  A harsh, startled laugh escaped Violet. “And Delia’s mother is above suspicion?”

  “She has always been very respectable,” said her mother. “The dowager says these things run in families.”

  “And you let her take this position all these years? You made no argument?” Violet was still trying to accept the total alteration in her view of her life.

  “They saved me…and you. Moreley—”

  “Who is not my father.” The world was falling to pieces around her head.

  “He treated you as his own.”

  Violet thought back. Had…the earl treated her just as he did her brothers? Her half brothers! But they were boys. She’d expected her—the earl to be more interested in them. So when he hadn’t paid much heed to her… Violet swallowed. She couldn’t get her mind around the fact that half of her family had been eliminated at a stroke.

  “It was kind,” her mother said.

  “Except that they weren’t, certainly not Grand—the dowager. Not at all kind. And you let her…oppress me. All my life.”

  “I owed them everything!” Her mother slumped again, gaze back on the flagstones. “After that night…all that blood. I wasn’t…I couldn’t…I just couldn’t manage.”

  “Then. Yes, I understand. Of course you were shocked and deeply upset. You had to put yourself in their hands. But it’s been…”

  “Something in me died with Rene,” her mother declared. She put her face in her hands.

  For one wild, anguished moment, Violet wanted to hit her, an impulse she quickly suppressed. She swayed under the onslaught of confused emotion. She was stunned and resentful and anxious and…ashamed. Despite the arguments of common sense, a thread of mortification ran through her. She’d done nothing wrong, she insisted silently. She had nothing to be ashamed of. But she was.

  With a terrible sinking feeling, she remembered Nathaniel’s proud statement—that she’d make such a splendid duchess. Her husband thought—knew—that she was the daughter of an earl. Their match had been agreed—she’d been married—on that basis. Lineage was important to people like the Greshams. The nobility. She’d been taught to value it herself. The next Duke of Langford was supposed to be the grandson of an earl, on his mother’s side. But he wouldn’t be. He’d be the grandson of a murdered Frenchman, who might or might not have been the scion of a marquis. It was well known that many émigrés had wildly exaggerated their heritage. Even if he hadn’t… What was she thinking? She couldn’t tell anyone even if he’d been the King of France himself.

  “We must go back before your grand—before she returns,” her mother said, raising her head.

  “You go on,” Violet said. “I need to think.”

  “About what?” She looked alarmed.
“You won’t tell anyone…”

  “That I am not who they think I am? That I am not even a Devere? No, Mama, I won’t.”

  She winced at the tone, but said, “I don’t want to leave you here by yourself.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “I know it is a great shock. I begged you not to ask me…”

  “You should go. You don’t want her to find you out.” Violet felt a twinge of guilt at her mother’s hunted look, but she really didn’t think she could talk anymore just now.

  “If you’re sure…”

  “Go ahead, Mama.” She put all the kindness she could muster into her voice. “It will be all right.”

  With a final anxious glance, her mother departed. Violet sat alone, grappling with a life turned upside down.

  The silence of the church fell around her. And just as she was managing to calm down a little, she thought of Marianne. If her grand—if the dowager countess ever found out that Violet had helped forward her friend’s clandestine meetings, she would conclude that all her worst fears had been proven right.

  Twelve

  “Your grandmother actually had some good ideas about amusements for girls,” Nathaniel said to his wife that afternoon. “Not too dreary at all.” He’d been eager to tell her this, and more, to hear what had occurred with her mother. Violet had been out far longer than he expected. He’d finally found her in her bedchamber, sitting at the dressing table, gazing into the mirror. When she said nothing, he added, “I succumbed to the temptation to ask her about her friend the bishop.”

  Violet sat curiously still.

  “Are you listening?” he said. She certainly gave no sign of it.

  “What? Yes.”

  “For Randolph,” Nathaniel added.

  “Randolph?”

  “The bishop. Your grandmother actually said that he might take an interest.”

  “My grandmother!” An odd sort of laugh escaped her, like a hiccup.

  “What’s wrong?” Nathaniel felt awkward standing behind her, seeing her face in the mirror rather than directly. The room was not large. There was no place else to sit except the bed, and that didn’t feel right somehow. “Come out to the parlor,” he said. “Tell me what happened with your mother.”