Chapter 20
Twenty
Castle Under Siege
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Ton,
It has come to the attention of this author that the Duchess of N has banished the male members of the staff at Castle C in anticipation of the birth of an heir. One cannot help but wonder if the bastard duchess really is with child or if she’s preparing for battle against the real heir to the duchy. Will there be a child born of the Duke’s blood or will blood be spilled?
—The Whispers of the Ton, London, 5th of March 1811
Published upon the Duchess of Nithesdale’s return to Caerlaverock
S he shivered in the crisp evening air. Despite being inside the coach, the day had cooled the bricks at their feet and their breath formed little puffs of fog like clouds blowing in the wind. Already the trip was rough and bitterly cold. She felt terrible for putting the servants through such a brutal experience. If it had not been for Jarvis’s arrival at Phoebe’s house party she would have waited, but she could not risk the insinuations he would drop or the discoveries he could make if she remained at Drake Manor.
“He’s going to follow you.”
“No, he won’t. I made sure of it.”
Phoebe laughed. “You think a few words on a piece of vellum will stop the almighty and powerful Duke of Ross?”
“I think he will respect my wishes to raise my child as I see fit.”
“It’s his child, too, Iseabail.”
“I don’t even know why we’re discussing it. I won’t know if there’s a child for some time.”
“Your menses are due this week?”
Iseabail refrained from rubbing her belly. This was her only hope for a child. “Yes.”
“And what will you do if you are pregnant?”
“I will raise Nithesdale’s child to inherit Caerlaverock.”
“The child is not Nithesdale’s.” Her words were not unkind, Phoebe had been in the wretched plot from the beginning, yet she suddenly seemed to doubt the reasoning for it.
“No one knows that but me.”
“And the man who took your virtue.”
“He didn’t take it, I gave it. There’s a difference.”
Phoebe’s voice softened. “The fact that you would even say that tells me you care more about him than even I had realized.”
“There is no place for romance in this world. Love between a parent and a child, between siblings—yes. Anything else is just a fairy tale. Nithesdale loved Nash even more than my parents loved me and my siblings. I will honour that and love my child as strongly. Nithesdale would be very happy to see his grandchild grace the halls of Caerlaverock.”
If nothing else, that was the one thing she knew in her heart to be true.
With the quiet lengthening between them, Phoebe’s head began to loll to one side as the carriage bounced in the ruts. They would be home soon. Their three-day trip had been long and treacherous. Each night she had made certain the servants received an extra share of warm food for their bellies and blankets to bed down for the night. Tonight, the men would not have to sleep in the haylofts as they had the two previous nights at the posting inns, and she was glad for that. The thought of sleeping in the hay did not appeal to her at all, until she thought of a particular large masculine body that knew how to keep a woman warm.
“You’re dreaming of him.”
Iseabail started. “Pardon?”
“You were dreaming of Ross.”
“Hardly.” To admit that to Phoebe would be like admitting it to herself. She wouldn’t do it.
“I wasn’t in love with my husband.”
Iseabail stilled and tried to make out the expression on Phoebe’s face in the glooming light.
“Mine, like most marriages, was one of convenience.” Now in her late twenties, there had been twenty-five years that had stood between Phoebe and her husband. She’d cringed at the similarity of years between her and Nithesdale.
“Did you love Nithesdale?” She asked.
Phoebe’s head whipped around to look at her in the darkness, and in that instant Iseabail realized her mistake. All this time she had thought Nithesdale and Phoebe were lovers. “I … I’m sorry. I just assumed …”
“If anyone knew the truth of my relationship with Nithesdale, I would have thought you did.”
“You never?—”
“Cared for propriety? Gave a fig about what the Ton thought of me?” Phoebe laughed. “You’re right in that respect. The Ton has always seen me as a tradesman’s daughter, grasping at what I would never be. I stopped caring in my first year of marriage. Richard found me crying one evening over the cruel words of a countess. He told me I was made of better stock than any woman he had ever known. It was at that moment that I realized I didn’t need to love my husband to be a good wife to him.”
“It didn’t bother you that he was … was …” Lord, but she was tongue-tied.
“Older? No. I mean at first it did, of course. Every young girl dreams of a love match, but Richard doted over me. I can’t tell you how many of the girls I knew from finishing school who thought they had married for love only to find out that their husbands kept their mistresses after their nuptials were exchanged. The countess who treated me so poorly was one of them. I pitied her later that year when she tried to lord her station over me.”
“You pitied her? Whatever for?”
Phoebe gave a sad smile. “Between the two of us, I was the lucky one. My husband was older and only a baron. Her earl was young and handsome and gave her the pox. Richard loved me. Only me, and he didn’t take anyone else to bed. I thank God for him every day.”
The sadness lingered on Phoebe’s face, and it seemed blatantly obvious that she hadn’t told the whole story. “And yet …”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. In life, Richard took care of me beyond my dreams. I never wanted for anything. I rode in the best carriage, wore the latest fashions, had our house decorated with the finest luxuries, but he spent beyond what our coffers could afford. What Richard didn’t count on was taking care of me after his death. It was out of the kindness of Nithesdale’s heart that I have survived.”
“But he let everyone believe you were his mistress,” she said in shocked dismay. “Even I believed?—”
Phoebe shrugged. “You don’t understand. Before Richard died there was a public scandal involving Nithesdale. Let’s just say a certain widow announced his inability to … to perform in the bedroom.”
Iseabail gasped. “What?”
“You see? The Ton can be quite cruel to men and women alike. This particular widow not only disparaged Nithesdale’s manhood, but she did it in the middle of a ballroom … and it was a lie.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“The very woman he loved with all his heart.”
She wasn’t sure she could believe it. “The Dowager Duchess of Ross?”
Phoebe’s head nodded and even in the dim light Iseabail could see the sadness in her friend’s eyes. “By all accounts, the Duchess had been in the worst of marriages. She blamed Nithesdale for being stuck in that marriage, and he blamed himself for her predicament, so he didn’t even attempt to dispel her attack. That night, my husband and I watched as Nithesdale bowed gracefully and left the ball.
“And then he rescued me from financial ruin after Richard died. Everything we owned was mine before we married and then my parents died while I was on honeymoon. Everything we owned, the house, the estate, the family milner business was left to me, and I allowed my husband to take over everything. I was so young, and he was so mature. I assumed he knew better than me.” She shook her head as if chastising her younger self. “He did not. After he died, I found out what a shambles our finances were. Nithesdale taught me how to run my company with a trustworthy business manager. The previous one had nearly run my family’s business into the ground, thanks to bad business investments. When Nithesdale asked if he could fire Richard’s solicitor, I agreed. I didn’t like the man in the least. We hired Forrester on the agreement that the job was temporary until I understood the estate business and could choose for myself whom I wanted to assist me.”
“You chose to keep Forrester on?”
Phoebe smiled. “You’ve seen how competent he is.”
Iseabail suspected there was another reason as well, but kept her mouth shut. This was the most Phoebe had ever shared, and she didn’t want to risk shutting her down, but the sudden stop of the carriage did it for her.
The driver knocked on the door. “We’re home, Your Grace.”
“Thank goodness.” Phoebe said. “I was becoming as loose-lipped as a drunken sailor.” She folded the blanket on her lap and pulled her hood down close to her face. “No better cure for garrulous chatter than some bright lights, good food, with a cozy fire and a pillow to lay my head.”
Iseabail would have to agree, all of that sounded nice, but she wished she’d extracted more information about the Harding family before Phoebe stopped talking for the night. Yet did it really matter? The less she knew about Nash, the better. Her heart had already softened way too much for the man she should hate.
Snowflakes clumped to her eyelashes as she stepped into the frigid night air, and she couldn’t help but think they were the tears from her frozen, troubled heart.
* * *
They hadn’t been home but a few days when winter announced how very lucky they were to have reached Caerlaverock. The wind blew as if the devil’s fury was sweeping through the castle. A shiver ran down her spine as the fire struggled to keep the chill of the storm at bay. Something felt wrong. It was as if the halls of Caerlaverock had been barren for centuries with only ghosts to inhabit the many rooms. She felt … at risk. As if the enemy was camped outside Caerlaverock’s walls, looking for the best possible place to breach the castle.
Leaving the library for her bedchamber, her futile attempt to locate a distraction only exacerbated her unease. With all the precious books within her reach, she hadn’t found one to soothe her troubled thoughts. Iseabail was a duchess alone, stalking through the corridors of her dead husband’s home with a possible babe in her womb that was not his.
Nothing made sense. Time was ticking by, yet her life was standing still, and with each passing moment, the thunder boomed through the night like an enormous clock echoing the passage of every second she had left at Caerlaverock.
Iseabail picked up her pace, sensing danger at every turn. Insecurity engulfed her as she looked away from the raging storm. On the opposite wall hung the portraits of dead dukes. Each staring down his nose in judgement of her misdeeds as if he was condemning her duplicity. She condemned her duplicity, why wouldn’t the aristocracy who’d walked these halls before her? To them, she would be nothing but a grasping bastard.
Heart pounding, she increased her pace, nearly running for her rooms. She clutched her wrapper and night rail in one hand, while she clamped the flickering candle in the other as she ascended the spiral staircase. The sound of footsteps matched her own as she raced down the hallway. She slammed the door to her bedchamber harder than she’d intended. Leaning against the door, she looked around the empty room, the fire burning brightly as if having just been stoked. Despite the loud disturbance of her entry, the room remained silent, the crackling of the wood in the hearth punctuating the peacefulness within. Only the storm broke the silence.
Iseabail drew in a heavy breath and exhaled. “You’re running like a frightened ninny,” she chastised herself, her chest heaving as if she’d taken her mare out for a race across the Highlands.
Setting down her now extinguished candle, Iseabail slid into the cold bedcovers and thought of her sisters. If they were at Caerlaverock, she would have shared the large bed with them, the six of them giggling and teasing Caillen for the icicles she called toes. “I wouldn’t be cold, if you were here,” she said to the empty room.
“There’s no reason for either of us to be cold,” a menacing voice whispered. The promise of violence in those words stabbed like a frozen dagger to her heart.
“Leave!” she commanded. It was the only word she could utter. Sitting up in her bed, she caught sight of the specter hidden in the shadows. Fear gripped her throat as if the malevolent man had a hand choking the air from her body.
“Why Duchess , after all the years I’ve served you, you’re going to tell me to leave?”
She recognized the resentful sneer contained within the honourific long before she saw the form approaching her from Nithesdale’s doorway. Then he made that noise she knew so well—the sound she despised with everything she was. Part brutality, part vulgarity, it was beyond foul in its intent.
“Take one step closer and I’ll scream.”
“Who will hear you? Your maid is abed in the attic and your husband is buried in the castle cemetery, rotting to dust as we speak.”
“Don’t you talk about him in that manner,” she ordered.
Her former footman, Louis, laughed, an ugly sound without humor. “Would you like me to stoke the fire, Duchess?” He made that sound again through his teeth as if he was sucking on a juicy piece of meat.
Iseabail flinched and his snicker personified everything a woman should fear. Iseabail pushed the covers from her body and stood on the opposite side of the bed. “I dismissed you weeks ago,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady despite the quaking of her nerves, and the shaking of her knees hidden by her night rail.
“Give a whore a little station and she’ll forget her roots are in the working class. But then again, you were born to whore on your back just like your mum, weren’t you.”
She may have cowered before, but with his disparagement of her mother, Iseabail stood taller, her knees no longer shaking as she addressed the footman who had tormented her since her first day at Caerlaverock. “Louis, you were dismissed from service, permanently. I now withdraw my references. Leave at once.”
She couldn’t see his face with the glow of the fire behind him, but as he stalked across the room, the malice rolling off him was like nothing she’d ever encountered. This man didn’t care about her rank or his job prospects. He cared about hurting—her.
Iseabail grabbed the pewter candle holder next to her bed, but he was there before she could swing. Stars flared to life in her eyes as pain exploded in her jaw, and the candlestick toppled from her hand. He shoved her back onto the mattress, and he was on top of her before she could scream. Terror tore through her body. She balled her fist and struck his head until he landed another strike to her temple and darkness shrouded her vision. She could hear him cursing her, feel his rough treatment of her clothing and body, and questioned if she would ever see the light of day again. A moan filled her ears and she realized it was her own voice rising through the dark rubble of unconsciousness.
He would not do this to her. Her baby would not suffer at his hands. If she was not pregnant, her future would be born out of choice, not force. It would not be determined by the likes of Louis.
With her hands now trapped above her head, the neckline of her gown was torn, exposing her breasts as he pushed her shift up to her waist and struggled to undo the falls of his breeches. He lay on top of her, dominating, defiling and degrading her, but he would not get any further. Nithesdale had prepared her for blackguards such as Louis in a manner her father had not.
Iseabail drove her knee up with more force than she would have dreamed possible and connected with his exposed flesh, driving him up and off her with a twist of her hips. An inhuman scream escaped his lips, the pitch reverberating off the walls as Iseabail scrambled across the bed and reached for the candlestick on the opposite side. Louis grabbed at her ankle, and she rolled on her back and brought the candlestick down on top of his head. The hollow thump was not enough to stop him.
“Bitch!”
He scrambled on the bed and grabbed for the candlestick, but missed and she swung a second time, connecting with his temple as he ducked. His cursing ceased. His body slumped.
Iseabail’s chest heaved as she scrambled from the bed as if her life depended on it. She was quite certain it did. She ran through Nithesdale’s open door, out into the hallway, not stopping until she was pounding on Phoebe’s door. It was only then that she registered the cold against her bare feet as Phoebe opened the door in her pristine shift, her hair falling in a long braid over one shoulder.
“Help me.” Iseabail could only guess what she looked like, and she knew she couldn’t let anyone else see her looking the way she did. If any of the servants suspected she had been raped, her future would be determined regardless of what she said.
“Iseabail—” Phoebe froze, and took in the disheveled mass of curls, the swelling on her face, and the way her hands clutched her shredded night rail closed. Phoebe looked out into the hallway and then pulled her into her room and quickly closed the door. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes … but I may have killed him.”
“Who?”
“Louis.”
“Louis?” It took a moment for Phoebe to understand who she meant. “The footman you released from service?”
Iseabail nodded, her body beginning to shake uncontrollably. “We must get him out of my bedchamber. If anyone sees him there …”
“They’ll assume any child you bear is his.”
“Yes.”
Phoebe hesitated before quietly asking, “Is it possible?” Iseabail shook her head, and the relief they both felt was palatable. “Then we must get rid of him immediately, but we can’t do it alone. I’ll need to call for Paddington.”
“No!” She looked around the room for Phoebe’s maid. Frightened that word would get out to the servants somehow. How could they possibly hide this?
Phoebe grabbed hold of her arms. “We need help. You said you trusted Paddington.”
Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks as Iseabail nodded. She did trust her butler.
“Then I will be right back with him.” Phoebe squeezed her arm before she turned and pulled a clean nightshift and wrapper from her wardrobe. “Change into this while I’m gone, then wrap yours into a tight ball and throw it on the fire.”
When Iseabail nodded again in understanding, Phoebe said, “Lock the door behind me, I’ll be right back.”
It seemed hours before the soft tap on the door released Iseabail from the fear that threatened to grasp hold of her and not let her escape. “Iseabail, let us in,” Phoebe whispered through the crack.
Iseabail opened the door to find Phoebe with Paddington, his face a mask of controlled anger. “Are you well, Duchess?”
Unable to do anything else, Iseabail nodded and he accepted her response without further discussion. In a low tone she could barely hear, he said, “Wait here, I’ll take care of the rodent in your room.”
“I need to see if I killed him,” she whispered.
Paddington seemed disappointed when he said, “It’s harder than you might think to bludgeon a man to death.”
“Please.”
He sighed. “Very well, Duchess, but if he’s conscious, you must let me handle the blackguard as I see fit. Understood?” He looked to Iseabail and Phoebe, demanding each of their agreement with his plans. For a butler, Paddington seemed downright bossy, yet they both acquiesced.
The three of them made their way toward her bedchamber, the only light from the storm outside the window at the end of the hall. Paddington stopped in front of her door, but she guided them further to her husband’s door which still stood open. She prayed no one else had come along in the middle of the night to discover what all the racket was about.
Once in her bedchamber, her fear resurfaced. Louis was still sprawled on her bed with a dark stain soaking into her bedding from the injury to his head. His flaccid manhood still exposed, she couldn’t help but recall what it felt like with him on top of her, threatening to take away everything she held dear.
A snarl emanated from Paddington’s chest. “He’s lucky you knocked him unconscious.”
“He’s not dead?”
“No, but he won’t be bothering you again. You can count on it.”
“What will you do with him?” Iseabail wasn’t certain she wanted to know.
“I know a man who will transport him, no questions asked.”
She suddenly thought of a wife and children waiting for this man to return home. They would be left in worse straits than she and her sisters had been. “What about his family?”
“He has no family,” Paddington responded, as he began tying the man up with the cord from her bed curtain.
Paddington tore the bloodied bed linen and then tied a piece around the footman’s mouth just as Louis was regaining his wits. Paddington curled his fists in the man’s stolen livery and said, “If you dare make a noise or look in Her Grace’s direction, you will never see the light of day again. Is that understood?”
Louis nodded before looking to the floor as Paddington pulled him to his feet and pushed him toward the door, his limp manhood still exposed.
“As much as I’d love to have him paraded in front of all of the staff, his walk of shame needs to be at the docks, not here.” Phoebe stated.
Paddington readily agreed and covered him with the remainder of the ruined bedclothes. “I’ll cover him, but I can’t bring myself to touch him.”
Phoebe’s grin slipped to the surface. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Paddington. You are a credit to your position.” Phoebe stated.
Iseabail agreed, satisfied that a touch of quid quo pro was in store for her former footman. And that Paddington was the best of gentlemen.