His Secret Heroine (31 page)

Reggie glanced over his shoulder, then back to her. "Intelligent of him," he said. "This time he's gone too far, Chloe. Are you sure you're all right?"

Dread, like a hard lump, hit the deepest pit of her stomach. "It's all right, but he controls my sisters, Reggie. He made me promise I'd stay in hiding until you married Portia. Reggie, he could take them from me."

"He won't. I won't let them or you out of my sight again. Mythe and Castlebury will back me, and I have the Special License. We
'll ride to London and be married tomorrow. He will look more than strange if he tries to keep them from us, since he has no relationship to them."

No, that was not what worried her. But what was it? Not what the duke would do to them. But what was it? Was it simply that on the morrow he must deal with the anniversary of his tiny daughter's death? If he had dealt with it for one-and-twenty years, why had it become so weighty now?

Because of her. She had poked and prodded and dragged, bringing all his deeply buried hurts to the surface, the way a grave-robber disturbs a corpse. She had left the duke at the rawest edge of his soul, and something told her he lacked the strength to survive.

And it all had something to do with Beachy Head, a windswept cliff high above a pounding surf, beautiful, perhaps soothing, but unbearably lonely.

"We've got to find him," she said.

"My father? Let him go, Chloe. He won't hurt you now, I promise."

"No, Reggie, you don't understand. Don't you know what tomorrow is?"

"The fifteenth," he replied with a worried frown. "The day Elizabeth died. But sweetheart, he can't hurt you now. I know he has some odd notion because you have the same birthday as Elizabeth, but
—"

She shook her head. "He isn't insane, Reggie. He has done nothing but talk about losing her. Losing his family, Reggie. He can't lose you! He just cannot!"

Reggie drew her close. "He's forced me to choose between you and him, love. I don't know what happened to him, but he is not the father I loved. What he has done to you is beyond forgiving."

"But that's what I mean! Reggie, he is not the same man. He's lost somewhere. He is sure his control of you is all that keeps you from abandoning him, just like everyone else has."

"But we can't let him run our lives."

"No, and we won't. We are the ones who are strong, not he. Despite all his power, he is a weak and tragic man. But he needs us, and he needs for us to be too strong to be bullied by him."

Reggie gave her a skeptical look. It wasn't his fault that he didn't understand. He hadn't heard all the things the duke had told her. But they were wasting time.

"Please, just trust me. He's in danger, and we're the only ones who can help him. I said things to him I ought not, Reggie. He is in the very depths of despair. I am afraid for him."

"But how can you even care, after all he's done to you?"

"Because I love you, Reggie. And he's your father."

Reggie seemed to shake his head and nod at the same time, and took her into his arms again. "All right, love. I don't understand. But it is obvious you know something I don't know."

It was enough for her.

"Weems," she called, and the old butler appeared in his magically silent way, as if he had been standing there all along.

"My shawl. Have a horse saddled for me. I shall leave you in charge of the children."

"I shall send to the inn, then, Miss Englefield," he said. "We have no riding horses."

"We'll go ourselves," Reggie said. "My horse is waiting."

They rushed outside. No horse was waiting at the hitching post. A pair of saddle bags rested on the steps.

"He took my horse." Reggie turned to Chloe with a look of growing dread.

Chloe threw the cashmere shawl over her shoulder and started down the sunken lane, tugging Reggie's hand. "It isn't far."

A
t the inn, they hurried up the stairs to the room the duke had taken. But the duke had not been back to his room.

"Then where the devil could he have gone?" Reggie asked, almost to himself as he searched about for clues.

"Beachy Head. He said he would be going there. He said it was soothing. Oh, Reggie, I don't like this."

"He's not a man to enjoy scenic overlooks."

"He wanted to be alone."

Reggie called for riding horses.

"Got no side saddles, sir," the ostler said, casting an uncertain look at Chloe.

Chloe glared. "Hardly a time for sensibilities. A man's saddle will do well enough. It's well after midnight, and we have no time to waste."

Chapter Nineteen

The faint glow of dawn was already lightening the horizon as Reggie rode with Chloe up the slope. From this side, it gave the appearance of just another
one of the chalk downs. But Reggie had seen the cliffs from the sea. Just out of sight, what should have been more rolling hills was chopped off vertically into one of the most magnificent cliffs the world could ever offer.

Beachy Head.

Reggie studied his love, who rode beside him, astride a fresh horse. Tired, yet unwilling to quit or even to slow down, unwilling to wait for a side saddle that might slow them because she would have to be more careful.

He hoped she was wrong. But some horrible dread slid off into the depths of his stomach and told him she was not. Something about the story she had shared with him made her conclusion too real, too frightening, to be ignored. In his mind, he still saw the image that had been burned into his mind so many years ago, of his distraught father holding the dead baby he had adored so much.
Chloe was right. He would have tried to blame himself.

But Chloe was also right, that Reggie must not hold himself responsible for what his parent had never told him. He must not take on his father's troubles, nor his unacceptable way of handling them. Still, if his father managed to, or even meant to, step over the edge of that cliff, Reggie knew he could never forgive himself. Spurring his horse, Reggie was glad they'd taken a few moments to secure fresh mounts in Eastbourne.

A pale yellow ribbon of light outlined the eastern horizon behind them and traced faint edges of clouds out to sea. Reggie's eyes no longer strained to see the gray lane the horses followed up the slope. The top of the Head was broad and indistinctly rounded, but Reggie knew his father. For whatever reason brought him here, the duke would seek out the highest, farthest point.

Against the brightening distant sky, the black margin of Beachy Head slowly lightened and took on
the first hints of dusky green, its oddly quiet serenity clanging in his brain like a warning bell. Still, he saw nothing, nothing but the clean, undulating line of the downs.

Then, there he was. Stark as the fractured stump of a lone pine tree, silhouetted against the vivid stripes of dawn, his garments tossed like tattered flags in the wind off the sea. The rolled brim beaver hat that was the mark of the duke's perfection lay upended on the down, blown there and forgotten.

The man who had everything, yet had nothing. The loneliest man on earth.

Reggie caught Chloe's eye. His beautiful heroine, riding beside him. So courageous. And so afraid.

Reggie dismounted, and before he could reach Chloe, she had also alighted from the brown mare she rode. Reins in hand, they quietly approached the lone figure at the top of the cliff.

Closer, closer. The figure faced them, and had the face of his father. Fear stuck in his throat like a stubborn bone.

Step by step, they edged closer, until Reggie could see on his father's face the infinite sadness that had so frightened Chloe. Now he understood why she had been so moved.

"Father, come away from the cliff," Reggie said.

The duke breathed deeply and turn back seaward, wind tossing his silvered hair. "It is so beautiful here, Reggie. When I see the clouds sailing across the sky like ships, I understand why you love the sea so much."

"It is beautiful," Reggie replied, noting his father's use of the nickname he had not called his son since childhood. Since that time when the family had fallen apart. "But you are too close to the edge,
Father. It crumbles into the sea, you know."

"Not so close, Reggie. I have been here many times, and I have not fallen yet."

Not yet. But something was different about this time. Reggie could feel it in his gut.

"Have you come to protect me, then, Reggie? You and your lovely termagant?"

Reggie opened his mouth, but wisely shut it when the duke began to speak again.

"She has vanquished me, you know. Quite unfairly, but I concede defeat."

"She's not Elizabeth, Father. And you cannot make her into Elizabeth."

"Oh, yes, I know. My attic is not to let. Yet she haunts me. I cannot look at her without thinking of Elizabeth, yet there is no fathomable reason, beyond the odd coincidence of their birthdays. I assume you have discovered that."

Reggie nodded.

"
Your Grace..." Chloe stepped forward, yet she also hesitated. Who knew what the duke would do?

"You do think you are protecting me, don't you, Miss
Englefield? I have customarily sought solitude as a means to sort out my problems, you know."

"If I may say so, for such a meticulous person, you have an uncommonly disordered life that is much in need of sorting out."

Alarmed, Reggie reached to Chloe to hush her. But her eyes flashed back warning and her hand suddenly extended to stop him. She knew something he didn't know.

The duke faced the sea, jaw set, wind blowing the gr
aying hair back from his face.

"Be forewarned, Reginald, she is the most obtuse of female creatures."

Reggie glanced back and forth between them, suddenly feeling like the audience in a play.

"I am grateful, Miss
Englefield."

"For what,
Your Grace?"

For a moment, he did not reply, but kept staring out over the immense darkness of the sea that was slowly brightening.

"I have made quite an inglorious shambles of my life. All I ever wanted was to protect my family, to keep them from harm. Yet it seems the harder I tried, the more things disintegrated before my very eyes. Elizabeth died. You are right, I could have done nothing to save her. Somehow, that is very hard to admit. Perhaps it really is easier to be guilty than to be helpless. My marriage crumbled into ruins. The duchess left me because I could not bear to allow her to have another child."

"But how could you
— oh."

"I would not allow even the possibility. And so I lost her anyway. She always did have more courage than I. It was she who left me, and I could not stand to admit that, so I allowed it to be said I had exiled her. I could not bear to be without my children, yet could not leave her bereft of them, so I took Robert and left Reginald to her care, thus earning Robert's hatred for taking him, and Reginald's for leaving him behind.

"Robert resented me so much, he threw himself headlong into a war to get away, and I have been afraid ever since that he would die. I swore I would not lose you, Reggie, but the more I tried to tame you, the more elusive you became. You would not fight me directly, like Robert, so I could not tell what to expect of you. I suppose that made me try even harder to hold onto you. I told myself you could not be depended upon to make good decisions, for you were far too impulsive. I did not even want to let you choose your own bride, for fear you would bring ruin to yourself."

Reggie clenched his fists to keep himself from dashing up and ruining the strange recital. Yet he wanted to drag the duke back from the precipice, throw his arms around him, and at the same time scream at the arrogance that was perhaps not arrogance after all. Just loss, and terrible fear of even more loss. His fists tightened even more in his effort to contain himself.

The duke stared off over the gray-cast sea, once again silent for a moment. "How I have feared that you loved me no more than those who had already turned their backs on me! You have as much reason as they, perhaps even more. I cannot help but wonder, Reggie, have I lived my entire life in vain?"

Did the duke still seek to twist them to his will, using pity where his other weapons had failed? Or did he at last call out for help? Reggie gulped again, trying to make that unpassable lump go down. What if he said the wrong thing? Still standing only a few feet away from the crumbly edge, the duke could step over before Reggie could stop him.

He could knock him away. He just had to move fast enough. All the years Reggie had spent climbing ratlines and walking the yard had given him a strength and agility his father could not hope to match.

But if he did, he would be controlling his father, just as his father had controlled him, and Chloe, his mother, his brother. And just as he himself had attempted to control Chloe's fate, so certain he knew what was best for her. So certain she should not be allowed to make her own mistakes.

But this mistake could cost his father his life.