Dair Devil (50 page)

There was an imperceptible pause, and Antonia thought she saw Shrewsbury’s arrogant façade crack but he quickly regained mastery of himself and gave a bluff response.

“
Me
? She threw herself off a balcony just hours after giving birth to her baby daughter. What mother leaves a newborn to fend for itself? And she made her six-year-old son motherless into the bargain!”

“That is fact, but it is not why she killed herself. Your son, he too, took his own life, out of grief, because he loved his wife, and from shame, because he knew you, his father, was a depraved monster, and he did nothing to stop your abuse of his wife.”

“Depraved? Monster?” Shrewsbury blustered. His smile was supercilious. “Fanciful moonshine! I’ll grant grief sent my weak-willed son mad. Any amount of unsubstantiated stuff and nonsense comes out of the mouth of the insane. None of my daughter-in-law’s pronouncements bear close scrutiny.”

“But Monseigneur was not insane, and he never spoke nonsense of any kind, thus what he told me, I believe. He thought you a monster, too. But he wanted to spare Christina’s children the torment of knowing what their grandfather had done to their mother, and the truth about their parents’ deaths. And he could not let social ruin befall you because it would befall them, if the ugly reality of what you had done ever became public. So M’sieur le Duc he agreed to take your loathsome secret to his grave.” Antonia dared to smile slightly. “But before he did, he told me.”

“Told you? I don’t believe you!”

“M’sieur le Duc he never promised you he would not tell me. Which he did, because he did not trust you, and he knew such knowledge would be useful should England’s Spymaster General decide to become an enemy of my family.” She frowned. “He did not like telling me. It pained him to have to recount your unconscionable behavior, but he knew I would rather know as not. He also knew it would not change my feelings for my goddaughter. Although, it did forever change how I view
you
. Monseigneur he was clever in telling me because it meant that if some day I needed to protect my family from harm, to protect them from
you
, I had the perfect weapon in your secret. And now that time, it has come, Edward. I intend to protect my family, and you will now do as requested or I will go to my son.”

Suddenly the old man looked ill. Yet he made one last attempt to call Antonia’s bluff.

“My old school friend would never betray a friend’s trust, not for anyone.”

Antonia gave a little sigh.

“Again I say, it is obvious, you have never been in love. When you love someone, you will do everything and anything in your power to ensure their happiness and well-being.” She came away from the window. “So now, me I will fetch my cousin, and you, you will fetch your family and Rory, and we will all join in a toast to Lady Grasby’s breeding, and to the forthcoming marriage between your granddaughter and my cousin.”

Before she made it to the door, Shrewsbury caught her by the upper arm and spun her to face him. She was so shocked to be manhandled that she looked up into his face unable to speak or move.

“Perhaps I will snap your pretty neck, here and now,” he breathed down at her. “Then all those petty little secrets locked away in that beautiful head will be gone forever, and you can join your precious Monseigneur sooner rather than later.”

“To do so would not save you, M’sieur,” Antonia replied, his proximity and hot breath making her instantly nauseous.

She pulled her arm free and stepped away, to put distance between them, brushing down the delicate tiered lace flounce of her sleeve, as if cleaning off the stench of him. It also served to give her a moment to compose herself. After all, he had just threatened to kill her. But a wave of nausea brought everything back into clear focus. She knew she must get through this interview for the sake of her cousin and her goddaughter. She also wanted to end this interview as quickly as possible. She forced her morning sickness away, and said in a clear, strong voice,

“I know you too well, and of what you are capable. A sealed letter sits propped on my dressing table. It is directed to my son. I have instructed it be sent to M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton in the event something untoward befalls his maman. My servants—”

“Clever!”

“—they will not fail in their duty. Kill me and you will be ruined. So, too, your grandson and his family, and to the everlasting sorrow of your daughter—”

“You mean granddaughter.”

“Do not play me for a fool, M’sieur! I meant what I said. Rory is your granddaughter, but she is also your daughter.
N'est-ce pas
? You forced your attentions on her mother, your daughter-in-law, and through threats and intimidation you violated her and the sanctity of her marriage. You are a monster and a defiler and were it not for my goddaughter, I would have nothing to do with you, ever!”

Shrewsbury staggered back, as if her words had struck him hard across the face. Shocked to hear it so baldly stated, and with such vitriol, he was momentarily lost for words. Antonia gave him no quarter.

“Christina she pleaded with you time and again to stop your visits to her apartment. But you would not stop. You used the pretext of visiting your grandson. But that was a ruse. You sent your son, her husband, on a pointless diplomatic mission to The Hague so you could spend uninterrupted time in her bed. She endured your abuse for seven long months, and it was only when you had impregnated her did you have your son recalled from the Continent for fear the truth, it would out—”

“No! That is not true! I was never happier when Christina told me she was carrying my child. It was what we both wanted—”

“Liar
.” Antonia stared at him as if he was mad. “Of course she wanted the child. She thought pregnancy would stop you! And do not speak to me of your-your
happiness
. You broke God’s law passed unto Moses by taking your daughter-in-law as your mistress, and you have the gall to tell me to my face that you were
happy
you impregnated her? You—
disgust
me!”

Shrewsbury had heard enough. He held up a hand, as if this would stop Antonia taunting him with the truth. He had thought that episode in his life long buried under two decades of living. He had almost convinced himself it had never happened. He held to the truth Rory was his granddaughter; that she was also his daughter he had carefully suppressed. To have his carnal cravings for his daughter-in-law and their consequences baldly stated to his face made him suddenly ill.

He, the keeper of other people’s vile little secrets, who had no conscience in using those secrets to further his ends as Spymaster General, had been bested at his own game, and by the widow of his best friend. In a moment of supreme weakness he had confided in the old Duke of Roxton. He had felt better for having purged his conscience, little realizing that his own vile little secret would be tucked away, but always at the ready should it ever be needed. His shoulders curled in on themselves knowing that day had come. Yet, despite recognizing he had been defeated, enough arrogant self-belief remained that he tried to justify his behavior.

“You must understand. Christina bewitched me. I knew it was wrong. I was ashamed, but there was nothing—
nothing
—I could do to stop myself! Men are but weak creatures against divine beauty. It is a-a sickness—”

“
Ne parlez pas
! I will hear no more! It is no wonder the poor creature she jumped to her death.
Mon Dieu
, I do not know how Monseigneur he did not run you through with his rapier upon hearing your pathetic confession!”

“M’sieur le Duc knew intimately the-the—
agony
of being in the grip of an all-consuming passion for a much younger beautiful woman. He married you when you were half his age, and the most divine—”

Antonia gasped, horrified. And then her face flooded with color and her green eyes glittered with an anger she had rarely experienced.

“How dare you—How
dare
you compare yourself and your wickedness to the great love Monseigneur and I shared! You know
nothing
of love! Never
ever
speak to me of him again. I cannot bring myself to even contemplate your twisted mind. It makes me ill!”

She took a deep breath and forced herself to regain her calm, to remember why she was putting herself through this distasteful ordeal. Yet, she could not help wondering how she had stomached the presence of this abhorrently loathsome man. But Monseigneur had shielded her from the horrific truth about Rory’s parentage, and the deaths of Christina and her husband, almost until the end of his own life. The revelation had come just weeks before his passing. But she had been so consumed with grief at losing the love of her life, unable to cope with the reality of her beloved leaving her, that anything and everything else paled into insignificance.

Now, three years on and married to a man she loved and adored, she had returned to the land of the living, strong and determined, and with a desire for all members of her extended family to live happy and fulfilling lives. If she had a grain of sympathy for Shrewsbury, it was because he had been a doting grandparent to both Harvel and Rory.

The supreme irony was that because he had raised Rory to regard her frailty as just another characteristic of her being, and not a hindrance to her existence, he unwittingly gifted her with self-belief and confidence. But he had wrongly assumed no man would want to marry her, and thus she would never leave him. She would be the ideal companion of his old age. It never occurred to him she would fall in love, least of all with the heir to an earldom, and that gentleman none other than the ruggedly handsome Major Lord Fitzstuart.

But this made no difference to Antonia’s opinion of Shrewsbury, or her faith that he would spend his eternity in hell for what he had done to Christina. She looked at him now, and saw that her impassioned speech had drained all the fight from him. So she said in a much calmer voice, she the one now in command of the situation,

“I will allow you a few moments to compose yourself, and to find a way to rid White’s betting book of the offending page. Then you will give the performance of your life and be happy for the engaged couple. After the toasts, Rory she will stay with me until the wedding day, which is a week from tomorrow. It will be in M’sieur le Duc’s private chapel, with family present. If you value her happiness, and her new husband’s goodwill, you will attend.”

Shrewsbury stared at her with resentment, yet obediently nodded his agreement. When he spoke his voice was meek and pleading,

“Promise me you will not say a word of this, to anyone. Promise me, for Rory’s sake, and the sake of my family, you will burn that letter to your son.”

Antonia pretended to contemplate his request. In truth, there was no letter. Not in a hundred years would she commit to ink Rory’s true parentage and the sad story behind her parents’ deaths. It had been a bluff. One that had thankfully worked, for she had not formulated an alternative plan had Shrewsbury not swallowed her story and her threat.

“For the sake of my goddaughter and my cousin, and your family, yes. I will do as you ask. But only after they have been up before the vicar and are pronounced husband and wife.”

Shrewsbury nodded, satisfied. He shuffled across to the fireplace and retrieved an innocuous, leather bound volume that had been propped beside the leg of his wingchair. He opened it out to a dog-eared page. Folding the page into thirds into the margin, he then carefully tore the offending page from the book. He crumpled it up and tossed the paper ball onto the grate atop the smoldering logs. Antonia’s green eyes widened as the fire came to new life and the paper ball was consumed by flame. He did not need to tell her the page was from White’s betting book, and that the aberrant wager was now no more.

Her hand was on the doorknob when Shrewsbury called her back. She looked over her bare shoulder, but did not move.

“You are wrong, Mme la Duchesse. I do know how to love. I love my daughter. I love her beyond words.”

“
Bon
. Then as a loving father you will be overjoyed she is to marry well and for love. Oh, and Edward, if you dare strip me naked with your eyes again, I will have my husband put out your sight.”

T
HIRTY

T 
HE
D
UCHESS
had been inside the Gatehouse Lodge for less than fifteen minutes, leaving Dair outside in her carriage, when he decided it was ten minutes too long. He hated being confined, but he hated more being sedentary. He needed to be doing something, anything, than sit idly until fetched. One booted leg was unable to keep still, while the other was stuck out along the length of the silken cushion, toe tapping against the door’s silken padding. He took another look at the pearl face of his silver pocket watch for something to do, noted the minute hand had moved all of three minutes, and slid it back in a pocket of his silk waistcoat. He then shoved a hand in a pocket of his light linen frock coat, found his silver cheroot case and small engraved tinder box, which he could not remember placing there, and decided he had had enough of staring at the opulent dark blue watered silk walls of his carriage prison.

He scrambled out into the fresh air, using the carriage door on the far side of the Gatehouse Lodge, and walked a little way off, towards a stand of tall white rose bushes, keeping the carriage between him and the house, so that he would not be seen from the windows. On his haunches he went about using the contents of the tinderbox to light a cheroot. And once lit, he stayed low, and smoked, dark eyes squinting in the bright sunlight at the serene view of a well-ordered landscape familiar to him since boyhood: The gravel path leading to a winding road just beyond the gate that skirted the lake, then spliced through a long luxuriant avenue of majestic elms, crossed a three-span wide stone bridge, and curled on up to the palatial mansion of the Dukes of Roxton that dominated the second highest point on the estate. Only the family mausoleum commanded a higher vantage point. Yet, on this day the view barely registered. Major Lord Fitzstuart’s mind was crammed full with possibilities and scenarios of what must be occurring within the walls of the Gatehouse Lodge.