by Liz Carlyle
Kemble drew a deep, pensive breath. “I think him venal and manipulative like his mother,” he said. “But has he gone so far as to kill deliberately? No, I think not.”
Gareth shook his head. “He hasn’t the stomach for it—I hope.”
Antonia frowned faintly. “What will happen to him now?”
“I cannot say,” Kemble answered. “I doubt he has done anything for which he can be successfully tried, save for perhaps diagnosing Warneham with asthma when he didn’t have it—but what can be done to prove that now? We can’t very well dig the poor devil up. And perhaps Osborne had some degree of complicity in his mother’s shenanigans. But her actions will be hard to prove after so many years, therefore his will be nearly impossible.”
“It is just as well, I suppose,” said Antonia quietly. “I am a little surprised my husband never suspected. I think, you know, that had he loved his wives, he would have. Don’t you?”
Kemble shook his head. “I cannot suppose to understand such a man, my dear.”
“Nor can I,” Gareth added. “But it is over now, Antonia. At last it is well and truly over.”
Together the three of them walked out into the brilliant afternoon. To the left, the sun was slanting from the clouds to form a perfect pool of light over the village, and from beyond the carriage house and stable block, the sounds of hammers and saws rang out sharp and clear in the warm air. Gareth looked down to see that Rothewell’s high-perch phaeton waited in the carriage drive, his fine matched blacks tossing their heads and literally chomping at their bits.
“Good Lord,” he said appreciatively. “How did you manage this?”
“Well, it was this or your gig,” said Kemble. “And I am not returning in glory and triumph to London driving anything so ordinary as that. Besides, Rothewell is a danger to the general populace in this thing.”
“But how is he to get home?”
Kemble smiled. “Oh, I’m sending my barouche for him in a day or two.”
Gareth turned serious as Kemble climbed up into the high seat and took the reins from the groom. “I really don’t know how to thank you,” he said, looking up. “Antonia and I owe you so much.”
Beneath his fine beaver hat, Kemble’s sharp black eyebrows went up a notch. “Dear me, did Rothewell not tell you?” he said, shaking out his whip. “I shall be sending you a bill—quite a large one, I daresay—unless, that is, I get an invitation.”
“An invitation?” asked Gareth, confused. “To what?”
“Why, to the wedding, of course.” With that, Kemble touched his whip smartly to his hat brim, then snapped it above Rothewell’s horses’ heads. The phaeton set off at a fine clip.
Suddenly the door opened behind them. The baron himself came out, looking rather the worse for wear, with one hand lifted to his eyes as if to shield the sun. “Gone, then, is he?” said Rothewell. “Wait! Good God!—is that—is that my phaeton he’s driving?”
“Well…yes,” said Gareth.
Rothewell looked at him incredulously. “Damn it, Gareth! You—you just let him take my phaeton? It’s brand-new! And I am on my way to the village. How the hell am I to get there?”
“You may walk, I daresay,” Gareth suggested, “and spare my gateposts.”
Antonia looped her arm through Gareth’s. “I am so sorry, but if you mean to quarrel with Lord Rothewell, you must wait,” she said sweetly. “I was here first, and I have something I wish to quarrel about.”
With a grunt, Rothewell stepped back and made a sweeping motion toward the door. “Have at it, ma’am.”
With her stomach in a bit of a knot, Antonia led Gabriel back into the conservatory and closed the door on Lord Rothewell’s blazing visage. She drew her quarry into the center of the greenery, to a little fountain surrounded by ornamental palms. She felt as if her head were still swimming from all the day’s incredible events—but her mind was perfectly clear now. It always had been, really, where Gabriel was concerned. From the very first, something deep inside her had been drawn to him; to his strength, and to his essential goodness.
She took one of Gabriel’s hands in hers. His thick, golden hair had grown too long, and it had fallen a little forward to shadow his eyes—eyes which looked tired and more than a little anxious.
“It is quite ironic, is it not?” she said. “Just as the golden egg was almost within his grasp, Osborne killed his goose?”
Gabriel smiled softly. “I like to think that in the end, we all get what we deserve, Antonia.”
Antonia lifted her chin. “But you do not think that you deserve all this,” she said quietly.
“All what, my dear?”
She tilted her head toward Selsdon’s great hall. “The house. The land. The dukedom. Indeed, I was a little bit afraid you were going to tell Osborne to take it all and go hang this morning,” she said, only half in jest.
“Oh, for one fleeting moment, my dear, I thought about it,” he confessed. “But then I realized…”
Antonia laid her hand lightly against his lapel. “What, Gabriel?” she asked, leaning into him. “What did you realize?”
He smiled a little ruefully. “I realized, Antonia, that a man who toiled the livelong day in a shipping office in Wapping would never be thought good enough for…well, for someone like you.”
She set her head a little to one side and studied him through her soft blue eyes. “Thought by whom?” she finally asked. “Does anyone’s opinion of you matter, save mine? You must understand, Gabriel, that I have stopped living my life by other people’s standards.”
Gabriel looked down at their clasped hands. “You may regret that choice, Antonia,” he said quietly. “I want only your happiness, you know.”
“And I have decided, Gabriel, that I want my happiness, too,” she whispered. “I want it quite desperately. I have spent a very long time being miserably unhappy. I shan’t do it any longer, no more than I can help, at any rate. I told you when we argued at the pavilion—this time I mean to fight for what I want.”
He lowered his sweeping, dark brown lashes for an instant. “Is that what you meant?”
“What did you think I meant?” she asked. “I mean to grab what happiness I can, however little it may be.”
“You deserve more than just a little happiness, Antonia,” he said. “Now that we have Osborne’s confession, your life will be different, in that respect, at least. I cannot restore to you your fairy-tale dreams or your lost children, but at least your name has been cleared completely.”
“I do not want fairy tales any longer, Gabriel,” she answered. “I want only what is real, and what is true.”
He bowed his head, and took both her hands in his. “Antonia, I know that I have done things in my past which make me feel…ashamed, and I just—”
Antonia cut him off. “Oh, Gabriel, you have it all wrong,” she whispered, her eyes going soft with pain. “You have had things done to you. That is not at all the same! I am not speaking of just the—the physical horrors you have been forced to endure, but of the way you were treated here, by your cousin, by other people. Your abandonment. The shame you have been made to feel. It…it breaks my heart.”
He looked at her with an old pain in his eyes. “We all make choices, Antonia,” he said. “And I have made some which I regret. Things which are repulsive to you, and—”
“Gabriel, thirteen-year-old boys do not make choices like that,” she said stridently. “They choose between whether to conjugate their Latin or go skipping stones. Whether to run barefoot in tall grass or dance about in the rain without a hat, or do the thousand other foolhardy little things boys are told not to do. But they do not choose to be beaten and to let—oh, God!” She squeezed her eyes shut.
“You cannot even say it,” he whispered. “It disgusts you.”
Antonia gathered her strength and forced her eyes open. She looked at him very directly. “I cannot even say it,” she repeated hollowly. “It disgusts me. But it is not what you chose. I am not so emotion
ally fragile, Gabriel, that I cannot tell the difference.”
“You are not fragile,” he said hotly. “You are strong, Antonia. You had an emotional collapse—and for a very good reason. You will fully recover someday, if you have not already.”
Antonia was beginning to believe he was right. “There was a time, Gabriel, when I was considered a great catch,” she said. “When I was very young and very naïve and knew nothing of the world’s cruelty. Now my strength and my resolve are returning. And yet, some days, I worry I mightn’t be capable of being a good wife. The doctors have said I am ‘not well,’ but that sounds as if I am…sick. I am not sick. I am broken into pieces. And on those very darkest days, Gabriel, I sometimes still fear I will never be whole again.”
Gabriel’s smile warmed with tenderness. “Perhaps, Antonia, to the right man, a few broken pieces of you would be better than a whole and perfect someone else?” he suggested.
Antonia’s expression grew more poignant, if such a thing were possible. “Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered. “Oh, my dear, that is so beautiful. And I know, sadly, that you once had that perfect someone in your life. Someone long before me. I wish I could say I am sorry things did not work out for you. But I…well, I am not sorry. I am greedy. I would not give you back to her. No, not even were it within my power. I love you too much to be unselfish.”
He pulled her back to him and set his cheek to hers. “It was not like that, Antonia,” he said. “It certainly was not like this. What I felt for her—for Zee—was more about security. We’d come up hard, both of us, in sometimes squalid circumstances. I felt she would not judge me harshly. And I feared losing the only family I had. But what I feel for you, Antonia—it defies all explanation. It is a love which takes my breath. It leaves me in awe.”
Antonia leaned forward and put her hands around his neck. “Then ask me to marry you, Gabriel,” she whispered. “Ask me, and I shall be the very best wife I can be. Ask me, and together we will make one another stronger. I know that we will. Just please…ask me.”
Gareth looked down into her bottomless blue eyes. “You once said, my dear, that you wanted an independent life,” he reminded her. “Will you give all that up, just to marry me?”
“Oh, Gabriel, don’t you see?” she whispered. “You have given me my independence. You have helped me break those awful chains which bound me to the past. I know that life isn’t perfect—that even you, my love, are not perfect. But you are so close. So very, very close. Yes, whatever it is I would be giving up, I give it up willingly.”
“You do not wish to return to London, not even to clear your head, or—or give society another try?” he asked, his voice choking. “You know what you want? You will stay with me, and bear your father’s disapproval if it comes?”
Wordlessly, she nodded.
Gareth drew a deep breath. “Well, then, Antonia,” he whispered. “Will you marry me? Will you bind yourself to me for all eternity? Will you be my duchess? For there is nothing—nothing—that would make me happier.”
She stood on her tiptoes and lightly kissed him. “For all eternity, Gabriel,” she answered. “And into the great hereafter.”
Baron Rothewell pulled his hat down over his eyes to shield the sun and set off in the direction of the village proper. He did not like the sun. Indeed, since leaving Barbados, he had rarely ever seen it. Men of his ilk were almost never awake at such a godforsaken time of day as—well, as daylight.
The trek down the hill was not a long one, but Rothewell allowed himself to steep in misery all the way. He was going to knock George Kemble’s perfect, pearl-white teeth down his throat as soon as he got back to London. Well, he might have to sober up first and get a little sleep. But he could do it. At present, however, a higher and more noble duty called. Rothewell rarely did anything which was either high or noble, but he tried to get into the spirit of the thing.
Martin Osborne lived in a lovely old half-timbered house that had certainly cost someone a tidy sum, and he had plenty of servants to staff it with, too. One let the baron in, another came carrying the doctor’s apologies—not once, but twice—and yet a third brought tea. And eventually, Osborne must have decided Rothewell simply wasn’t going to leave, and he, too, came in. He appeared to have splinted his finger, and his nose had turned a swollen and nasty shade of red which, Rothewell knew from personal experience, was destined to turn blue, then purple, and finally, an appallingly jaundiced shade of yellow.
“What did you tell the staff?” Rothewell asked without preamble. “That you walked into a door?”
Osborne quivered with indignation, then relented. “That I tripped, if you must know,” he said. “On a chair in the duke’s study.”
“Oh, I must know,” said Rothewell, “since it would be best we all get our stories straight.”
“Then do sit down, Lord Rothewell,” said the doctor tightly. “And by all means tell me what I can do for you.”
Rothewell rubbed a finger along the side of his nose. “See, here’s the thing, Osborne,” he began. “I have been thinking about what happened today, and I am not at all sure the justice of the peace over in West Widding isn’t going to cut up a little rusty when this confession you’ve signed gets out.”
“It was an accident,” hissed the doctor.
“Nonetheless, Osborne, you are a physician,” said the baron. “As unfair as it may seem, you do not get to have accidents. And let’s face it, there have been so many accidents in this little village, there are bound to be questions over this one. Hard, awful questions. Do you really wish to answer them?”
“What do you care?” Osborne demanded. “It’s my hide, not yours. Besides, there’s no avoiding it now that I’ve written your bloody statement.”
“I care because the new duke has already been through hell—twice,” said the baron. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll have him put through it again. They do not need any more gossip or innuendo up there; they’ve had enough to choke on already, thanks to you and your father. As to avoiding it, yes, you can avoid it. You must leave town. No, you must leave England—and preferably Europe. You must go someplace with a vast deal of water between here and there.”
“You must be insane,” said the doctor.
“I think it quite likely,” said Rothewell. “But that is neither here nor there, no pun intended. You are ruined in Lower Addington, Osborne. You were never destined to become wealthy working in this village backwater—and you damned sure won’t do it now. But in, say, Barbados—why, the white ruling class is filthy rich, and physicians are both rare and welcome. That, I am persuaded, is where you shall go.”
The doctor’s eyes widened. “There is no way in hell I am going to the godforsaken West Indies!” There was a hint of umbrage in Osborne’s tone. “It’s hot. They have insects. Large ones. And horrific, infectious diseases. No, I demand to see the duke.”
“That’s why they need doctors,” said Lord Rothewell with a logical shrug. “And the duke cannot be involved in something which might later be construed as obstruction of justice.”
“And what of yourself, Rothewell?” asked the doctor with a soft sneer. “Above the law, are you? You certainly behave it.”
Rothewell smiled faintly. “Let us just say that I believe I can more zealously safeguard the Ventnor family’s interests than your incompetent justice of the peace could ever do,” he murmured, withdrawing a fold of papers from his coat pocket. “And English law, I long ago learnt, is often apt to protect the criminal far more than the victim.” He handed the papers to the doctor.
“What is this?”
“My signature granting you passage on Neville’s frigate, the Belle Weather,” he answered. “She embarks with the evening tide from the West India Docks a se’nnight hence. You will sail with her, Dr. Osborne, or you will be accountable to me—and I have far less to lose than my friend the duke.”
“But—but this is ridiculous!” the doctor gritted.
“Do remember, by the way,” Rothewell c
ontinued, “that we have retained the second copy of your confession, if you should be tempted to commit any malpractice whilst in Barbados. I am not without influence there, and I will not hesitate to see that you are prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law—and then some.”
“You think me guilty of murder.” Osborne looked outraged.
“I think you guilty as sin, Osborne—of negligence, at the very least,” Rothewell replied. “But the duke and duchess have already been touched by enough scandal. The man is like a brother to me, so this, you might say, is my wedding gift to him. I am getting rid of his problem.”
“Your wedding gift?” Osborne sneered. “So he has convinced her, has he?”
“By now, yes, I expect so.” Rothewell looked at him pathetically as he rose from his chair. “Or she, perhaps, has convinced him. In any case, Osborne, she was never going to have you.”
Osborne’s face went white with anger. “You think I don’t know that? Do you? Well, let him have her. She’s as fragile as a piece of Sevres, so I wish him very happy. I never wanted her anyway. I should never have felt sorry for her. Never.”
“Wishing you’d let Mamma do your dirty work again, are you?” Rothewell laughed nastily. “It takes a mighty small pair of ballocks to hide behind a woman’s skirts ’til you’re damned near forty.”
Osborne started to come out of his chair, but Rothewell lifted his boot and planted it squarely in the doctor’s chest. “Not another word, Doctor, for you’re about to convince me you aren’t nearly as stupid as you’ve been pretending. Now I want your assurance, sir, that you will sail with the Belle Weather and that thereafter you will never draw another breath in England again.”
“Or what?” said the doctor snidely. “You shall turn the justice of the peace on me?”
Rothewell leaned very near. He wanted Osborne to see the pupils of his eyes and smell the anger on his skin. “Now mark me, sir, and mark me well,” he whispered. “For what I shall do to you, the justice of the peace will be the very last tool I shall need.”
