The Promise
Page 25
“Lady Wentworth, about my conduct the other evening…”
Holding up a gloved hand to him, she glanced toward the house. Without a word, she stood and walked quickly from the garden, turning her steps toward the path through the woods that eventually wound down to the Grove. Shocked by the suddenness of her action, Cunningham quickly followed. He saw her stumble once in her rush, but before he could reach her, she had recovered and disappeared into the trees. He hurried his steps,
“Lady Wentworth…Millicent!”
Not heeding to his call, she continued rushing down the path. He caught her beneath the protective limbs of a great oak.
“Millicent!” Cunningham called out, taking hold of her arm. For the first time, he realized she was crying. “Stop and talk to me. Please, Millicent.”
She struggled weakly as he turned her in his arms. When he drew her against him, though, her hands came up to push at his chest.
“I beg you!” he said softly. “I cannot concentrate on my work, knowing you are still angry with me.”
Millicent turned her face away, but he saw the tremble in her chin and felt the soft sob that wracked her body. He cupped her hands between his own and bent his head over them. “I am sorry! I am terribly sorry for my transgression. It was wrong of me to try to kiss you. I…I have been so frustrated with everything at Melbury Hall, with the lack of progress here while you were away. And then…then you were here with me…and all that I felt for you…feel for you...spilled over!”
“Do not!” she whispered. “Please, William.”
Cunningham lifted his head and found her veiled face before him.
“Please, refrain from such talk,” she whispered again. She gently pulled her hands free of his grasp and stepped back. “You should not speak what is in your heart. I am committed to the vow I took…to my marriage.”
“You are the only one who is,” he said bitterly. “Your servants this morning were more eager to speak of your husband and Lady Nisdale than…”
“I am not interested in them.” She shook her head and took another step back. “I respect you, Mr. Cunningham. I am…very…fond of you. Please! Do not deprive me of your friendship. Allow me one thing that is good and true in my life.”
He opened his mouth to protest. He knew Millicent felt much more for him than she was admitting right now. But her beseeching attitude—the pleading whisper of needing his friendship—gave him pause. More than anything else, he knew this was true. He bowed his head, surrendering to her wishes. For now.
“As you wish, m’lady. I am, as always, your devoted friend and servant.”
“Thank you, William.” Her gloved hand reached under the veil, and she wiped at her tears. “I was…I am to meet Mrs. Ford at the Grove.”
“I am going there myself. May I accompany you?”
She looked back toward the house nervously. “I…I prefer not. Would you be so kind as to allow me to walk on ahead of you?”
He bowed again, suddenly feeling bruised by her lack of interest. As Millicent departed, the schoolmaster leaned a shoulder against the trunk of the great oak, biding his time impatiently and brooding over the ache in his chest.
What William Cunningham didn’t see, though, standing in the shadows of the wood, was a very interested bystander hovering nearby. Mickleby, the bailiff, who had heard every word, smiled grimly at his good fortune.
The squire would, no doubt, reward him handsomely to hear even a portion of what he’d heard. Aye, the honest and proper Lady Wentworth might just prove to be a profitable little package for him, Mickleby thought.
Quite profitable, indeed.
CHAPTER 23
Though uncertainty filled her until she felt ready to burst, still Rebecca knew she could not leave Melbury Hall without seeing Millicent.
She was not daft enough to believe everything that Wentworth had told her, but something in the gleeful assuredness with which he had spoken filled her with dread. And Rebecca was hardly secure enough in everything that she had seen in the earl of Stanmore and in his relationship with his son to discredit totally the squire’s words. But the answers to her questions resided at Solgrave, and she was now painfully impatient to be returning there.
First, though, a woman…a friend…needed her.
Rebecca directed her horse down the path one of the grooms had told her would lead to the Grove. She saw the cluster of decrepit huts on the river at the same time as a large man of advancing years appeared out of nowhere and staggered into the path. It took all of Rebecca’s presence of mind to yank the horse’s head around. The black man stopped, gazing uncomprehendingly at the animal blocking his path. Rebecca slid off the horse’s back and, holding the reins, peered at the distracted man over the back of the mare.
Taller than Stanmore and strongly built, the man stared without moving. Rebecca was shocked to see that beneath short-cropped hair of black and gray, both of his ears had been cut off and his face was marked with innumerable scars. Despite his size and the fierce look borne of his mutilated features, though, he looked weak and faint.
Without thinking, Rebecca found herself going around the animal and standing next to him.
“I…I was in search of the Grove, but I believe I’ve found it.” She lifted a hand and patted the horse’s neck. The man’s gaze drifted to the movements of her fingers as she combed the long mane.
“She’s a friendly one, so gentle that even a novice like me has no trouble handling him.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am.” Rebecca turned with a start at the deep voice of a man coming up from the river. She watched him drop a large basket beside the path and walk toward her. “Moses meant no harm. No harm, at all. I’ll take him away, if you please.”
“He did no harm!” she said quietly to the newcomer.
This man—younger, shorter, and thinner than Moses—appeared weak and ill, but still showed a protectiveness toward the older slave that impressed Rebecca.
“I was hoping to meet Lady Wentworth…or Mr. Cunningham here.”
“I don’t know if Lady Wentworth will be coming this way today, ma’am.” His somber expression told Rebecca that he must know of Millicent’s condition. Everybody at Melbury Hall seemed to have the same look about the eyes. The same sadness. The same downtrodden spirit. Even she herself was feeling the same oppressive mood.
The newcomer touched Moses on the arm, and the big man turned immediately to the other.
“Jonah…” The relief was instant—all traces of fear evaporating from the older man’s expression. “Jonah…”
The younger man shook his head at his friend, and the other went silent. “If you don’t mind waiting here, ma’am, I’ll find Mr. Cunningham for you.”
“Thank you.” Rebecca whispered, watching the two of them walk away. The backs of both men’s frayed shirts were stained with blood. Through a rip in Jonah’s sleeve, she could see an oozing cut that looked too much like the result of a fresh lashing. Rebecca’s stomach turned, and she grabbed at the bridle of the horse for support as the helplessness of these men’s situation struck her with the force of a club.
Millicent’s appearance sometime later did little to alleviate Rebecca’s dismay. Though dressed and wearing a hat and veil that hid her bruises, she glided through the trees like some forest-dwelling ghost.
“Thank you for meeting me here.”
Rebecca reached out and the two women embraced briefly before Millicent pulled back to wipe the tears away under the veil.
“I am the one who must thank you…for keeping my secret yesterday.”
“Walk with me a little,” Millicent asked, looking back the way she had come.
Rebecca nodded and tied the reins of the horse to the bow of a tree.
“Do not thank me yet. I may have done you great wrong,” Millicent said as soon as they stepped onto a path leading along the river. “I sent you a note this morning, apologizing and trying to reschedule our ride.”
“But I never received it.”
She didn’t have to ask why. While Lord Stanmore’s attention had elated Rebecca, she knew it had infuriated Lady Nisdale.
“She asked me many questions about you yesterday on our way back to Melbury Hall. None of which I answered, continuing the pretence of not knowing you. But I believe from the tone of my letter this morning—although I did not reveal your true name—she might guess at our deception…perhaps even our connection.”
It was only a matter of time. She was to be exposed. Rebecca knew it. And it was no longer the fear of prosecution and death that horrified her, but the possibility of bringing dishonor to Jamey and to the earl of Stanmore’s name. Wentworth’s words crowded her mind. What if he was speaking the truth about the illicit affair between Elizabeth and the late Lord Stanmore?
Stanmore’s aversion to establishing any type of rapport with Jamey supported such a claim. She had been a fool to insist on something between the two that could never exist. And who, other than an honorable man, a man who was devoted to his family despite the lies of the past, would search out and bring this child back…and claim him as his own? It was time for her to let them be. Jamey already had much more than she could ever have given him in life. He was strong enough to stand on his own. It was time for her to go.
“Why are you denying your past, Rebecca. Your upbringing in England?”
Millicent’s question drew her out of her reverie.
“Ten years ago, I killed a man.”
A fallen tree lay on its side by the river, and the two women sat down beside each other. Having made up her mind to go, Rebecca found that she had no fear of telling the truth. All of it. From her first meeting with Mary Hartington, to the murder of Sir Charles, to the carriage ride and ocean journey with Elizabeth Wakefield…and Jamey. She even told her friend about her years in Philadelphia.
“My God, I admire you!” Millicent said when she’d finished. “All that you have done!”
They sat for a few moments without speaking, the gurgling sounds of the river filling the air.
Millicent stared at the rippling currents. “I wish I had the courage to kill my husband.”
“There are better ways to deal with hardship than murder.” Rebecca took her friend’s hand. “I do not regret what I did that night so many years ago. The brutality of some men justifiably falls back on them. But if I had ever had an option—a family to escape to, to protect me, anything or anywhere outside of that doomed house that night that I could have gone—lives would have been saved. Mine and that evil man’s.”
“But Fate brought you life, too. If you had not acted when and as you did, you would never have found Jamey.”
Rebecca didn’t want to think of what her life would have been without him. True, she’d had an unexpected blessing. Still, though, as she watched Millicent slightly lift the veil on her face to wipe her tearing eyes, she could not wish her own path for her friend. Millicent had never done anything to prepare herself for such a life.
“You have family, wealth of your own. Why not leave the squire?”
Millicent shook her head and stared at the path leading back to the Grove.. “I cannot. He will not let me go.”
Rebecca watched her. The bruises, now visible with the veil pushed up onto the brim of the hat, were ugly marks of his viciousness.
“This is not the first time that he has treated you like this, is it?”
Millicent’s silence was her answer.
“Does your family know of his cruelty?”
Fresh tears rolled down her bruised cheeks. “I am rarely allowed to see any of them now. And when I do, he is always there. But even if they knew, I do not believe they can do anything, anyway. My two older sisters are the only ones left. Each of them has her own husband and children to keep them busy. And my uncle…he was all too glad to get rid of me when he gave me away to Wentworth. He surely has no desire to have me back again. He would not brook such disgrace being brought to his doorstep.”
Millicent was far more vulnerable than Rebecca had thought. “There must be other ways. What about your own income…from your family? With that in hand, perhaps you can move away…run away if you have to.”
“He would kill me.” Her voice was cold, passionless, defeated. “That is what he did to his first wife. I know it now. Wentworth told me himself after the first year of our marriage…after I threatened to leave him if he ever beat me again.”
A breeze rustled the leaves in the tree tops. Millicent shivered.
“To him, I am just property, like everything else here—the land, these poor workers, his horses and dogs and sheep and cattle. He sees it as his right to abuse us and cut us down when we are no longer useful to him. His first wife’s family owned a number of plantations in Jamaica. That is where he made a small fortune, but just before he decided to move back to England, she mysteriously died.” Millicent’s gray eyes were empty of emotion, as if it were she who was dead. “Wentworth told me, in his drunken boasting, that she had worn out her value.”
Rebecca placed her arm around her friend’s shoulders. She was trembling.
“My uncle was more than eager to be rid of me. Twenty-three years old I was…and no eager suitors. So he gave me to him. Wentworth married me as many men of rising fortune marry—for name, for lineage, for connections in society. And now, after five years, he has gained everything that I could bring him. I too have worn out my usefulness, Rebecca. He is going to kill me. I know he is just looking for a way—one wrong step and I shall die. It is only a matter of time.”
“Oh, Millicent!” Rebecca hugged the shivering woman tightly. “You cannot stay here. Come with me to Solgrave.”
“I cannot!” She shook her head sadly before pulling out of the embrace and wiping her face. “If I cannot burden my own family, I certainly cannot drag strangers into it. You are the only one I have ever told any of this to. You are the only one I trust.”
“Then…then come back with me to the colonies.”
The idea unfolded in Rebecca’s mind as quickly as it occurred to her. Everything was suddenly making sense. This was what was meant to be. She was losing Jamey, but gaining someone else to help and to nurture until Millicent was strong enough to stand on her own. She was a friend who desperately needed her help. This was her opportunity to give to someone what Elizabeth Wakefield had once given her—a second chance at life!
“I told you…no one found me there in ten years. It is a great new world! We can disappear in it together. He cannot find you there, Millicent.”
“I shan’t have any access to my income.”
“Will you miss it?”
Millicent thought for a moment and then shook her head, her face brightening as a shred of fear dropped away. “I should be happy never to sleep in a real bed again. I would happily wear nothing finer than a rag, so long as no man could ever again raise a hand to strike me…or violate my body against my wishes.”
“Then you will be happy there. Between the two of us, we shall work and make an honest living. I have done it before. We can do it again.”
Millicent grasped Rebecca’s hands fiercely in her own. “Do you really mean it? Will you take me back with you?”
“I shall! I promise you, we shall do it together!”
***
The message from the Prime Minister was urgent in its tone, and Stanmore went to the Downing Street residence certain that Lord North would be asking him about his possible involvement in recent attacks on the British slave trade. In the previous fortnight, there had been yet another commotion in a shipyard—this time in Liverpool—which had been contracted to build two new slave ships. And only two days ago, a slaver had burned in the Thames, sinking into the murky waters off Deptford.
In and out of Parliament, it was no secret that Stanmore indirectly supported factions dedicated to creatin
g havoc for the slave traders. The Prime Minister had made a number of comments this spring, though, implying that the earl’s support was perhaps more active than had been commonly believed. And there could be no doubt, Stanmore thought as he waited for Lord North, the target-shooting destruction of the five ships by the Royal Navy had caused the government some embarrassment.
Lord North’s greeting, however, couldn’t have been more cordial. Following the Prime Minister into his private study, Stanmore was greatly surprised to learn that the nature of their meeting was to be unofficial…of a personal nature, even.
“Just another case of my rather zealous secretary over reacting, I’m afraid. I simply wanted to see you the next time you were in London, Stanmore. During those last hectic days of Parliament, I never had the opportunity of congratulating you on your son’s return.”
Stanmore arced an eyebrow in surprise, but tried to relax his defenses as he sat down across from the Prime Minister in one of the large, comfortably upholstered chairs. “Thank you, m’lord.”
The sound of children’s voices and small feet running in the corridor drew Lord North’s gaze to the doorway. With a look of contented amusement, the most powerful man in England waited until the footsteps had retreated toward other areas of the residence.
“Children are truly wondrous creatures. But they need room to run, fresh air to breathe. We are all ready for the country, I think.”
Lord North was well known for his fondness for his children, and the affection showed as his prominent eyes continued to focus on the door.
“So we shall depart tomorrow for Banbury and Wroxton Abbey.” A resigned sigh escaped his chest. “Unfortunately, I shall need to return to London shortly. I am expected to be at the White House at Kew, you know, to attend the King on his birthday.”
His Majesty’s personal friendship with the Prime Minister was no secret at Court. And Stanmore shared the feeling. Lord North’s complete lack of haughty self-importance, along with his personal integrity and unblemished sense of honor, made him a refreshing change from many recent leaders in British government.