Never Deceive a Duke (26 page)

He looked up at the sky above the lake and narrowed his eyes against the sun. “That we shall always have a regard for one another, I suppose,” he said. “That we will be…friends. Always, Antonia. Friends who are able to share things. To—To wish one another well. To remember one another fondly.”

She set her hand against his cheek. “Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered. “That is such an easy request to grant.”

His eyes had returned to the water. They were distant again; a little haunted. “Cyril drowned,” he finally said, his voice hollow. “He drowned. There.” He lifted his hand, perfectly steady, and pointed to the center of the lake. “I—I hit him. I did not mean to do it, but I did. And then he just…died.”

“I see,” Antonia murmured. “And you were boating? Or swimming?”

Gabriel’s gaze still focused on the lake, which seemingly held him in thrall. “I cannot swim,” he choked. “I…never learnt how.”

“You cannot swim?”

“No,” he blurted. “The water, it…it terrifies me. I—I have learnt to cope. To hide it.”

This Antonia could not fathom.
Gabriel afraid of the water?
He had lived over a year at sea and come to manage a vast shipping empire. He had spent a lifetime on the docks and piers and quays of the West Indies. How could such a man
fear
water?

Antonia took him by the arm and led him to the old bench. “I want you to sit down,” she said. “I wish to ask you a question.”

He dragged his fingers through his curling blond locks, but finally he sat. “I never meant to do it.” His voice was still flat. “I told them. It was an accident—a sort of accident, I suppose.”

“No, you do not strike me as a person who would deliberately hit someone in such a way,” said Antonia soothingly.

He turned to look at her, his expression stark. “No, I meant to hit
Jeremy,
” he said. “I wanted…I think, in that moment, I
wanted
to kill him.”

Antonia furrowed her brow. “Jeremy?”

“Lord Litting,” he said. “The duchess’s nephew.”

“Oh,” said Antonia. She had met Litting on two or three occasions, the last one being the day before her husband’s death, when he had come to Selsdon to spend the evening. “I know him vaguely,” she said. “And yes, I can imagine that one might occasionally wish to swing something at him.”

“Oh, Antonia, he was just a boy then,” said Gabriel almost wearily. “He was full of the devil, yes, and a bit of a bully, as bigger boys are wont to be. But he was not…evil. Just cocksure and stupid.”

Antonia wondered if that was true. “Very well then,” she murmured. “And the three of you were playing?”

“We were rowing,” said Gabriel, pointing again toward the distant water. “Way out there.”

“Rowing when you could not swim?” said Antonia sharply. “That seems unwise.”

He dragged a hand down his face. “I didn’t wish to go,” he whispered. “I didn’t. But everyone else had taken a turn. The duchess’s entire family was here. I wasn’t even supposed to be invited—but at the last minute, Cyril had begged his mother, and she gave in to him. There were no other children Cyril’s age. Jeremy was the closest.”

“So you were twelve,” Antonia mused. “And Cyril was what? Eleven?”

“Almost twelve,” said Gabriel hollowly. “And Jeremy was…fourteen, I think? He wanted to go back out in the boat, but the men were all tired. So Jeremy decided Cyril and I should go. I refused, so he began to taunt me and say that I was afraid of the water—which I was.”

“Oh, dear,” said Antonia quietly. “Children can be so terribly cruel.”

Gabriel’s jaw clenched until it twitched. “I should have held firm,” he gritted. “I was used to standing up to Jeremy, especially if he was after Cyril. I was almost as big. But some of the men—the duchess’s brothers, perhaps?—they began to laugh at the notion I might be afraid of the water.”

“And adults can be crueler still,” she added.

His expression was bleak. “Then one of them said that perhaps they should just take me and chuck me in the lake,” he continued. “He said it was the best way to learn to swim. Then another one quietly joked that perhaps Jews were like witches and would simply float. Looking back, I don’t think he meant me to hear, but—but I began to fear that they really might do it. And that was a far more frightening prospect than rowing with Jeremy. So…I got in the boat.”

“What can those men have been thinking!” Antonia whispered.

Vaguely, Gabriel shrugged. “Jeremy wanted to row into the center of the lake.” He sounded deathly tired now, his words flat and emotionless. “He and I had taken the ends, because Cyril was the smaller. His mother insisted he sit in the middle. But once we were there, Jeremy stood up and began to rock the rowboat back and forth with his feet spread wide, laughing. He wanted to see me panic—and I did. Water was sloshing up over the sides. I was terrified. Cyril wasn’t much better. He began to scream.”

“Dear God,” said Antonia. “What dangerous behavior.”

Gabriel shook his head very slowly. “I just wanted Jeremy to stop,” he whispered. “I just wanted him to
stop
. I wanted Cyril to stop crying. So I—I got to my feet and—and I
swung
. I swung my oar at Jeremy. And by God, I meant to hit him, too. But Cyril—I don’t know—he must have stood up or something. The oar caught him across the temple. And then the boat—it just went over. I remember going under, but I—I came back up somehow. I grabbed for the boat and clung for dear life. I did not know, you see, that Cyril was underneath.”

Antonia winced. “He was unconscious when he hit the water, I daresay.”

“They said I’d knocked him cold,” Gabriel admitted. “I suppose that I had. I’d swung for my life, meaning to hit Jeremy. He swam for shore. I must have been screaming. Two of the footmen swam out, and the duchess’s brothers brought the other rowboat. But it was…too late. Cyril was facedown in the water all that time.”

“And Jeremy swam for shore,” Antonia echoed. “Knowing that you could not swim, and that Cyril had gone under?”

“I don’t know,” said Gareth. “I don’t know what Jeremy thought. Perhaps he was as frightened as we were. He certainly seemed shaken afterward. And he didn’t precisely deny what he had done. But all the duchess could see was that I had hit Cyril in the head. She convinced herself I had meant to do it; that I had been just waiting for the chance. I suppose…I suppose that was easier than blaming her own nephew.”

Antonia threaded her fingers through his and gave his hand a strong squeeze. “Dear Lord,” she murmured. “You were just a child.”

“Not to her,” he whispered. “Not to her, or to Warneham. To them, I was the embodiment of evil. She cried, and said that I was scheming to get what was Cyril’s. That I had been jealous, and meant to do it all along—that they should have known ‘a Jew would do anything for money.’ At the time, I was utterly clueless. I was twelve, for Christ’s sake. Now I realize that even then, she was afraid I might inherit. But how could such a thing have crossed my mind, Antonia? I was a nobody. I was here on charity. Until Cavendish turned up in my office a few weeks past, I had no notion such a thing could even happen.”

“But they had known it all along,” Antonia murmured. “They had to have known.”

“To me, it made no difference,” he said sadly. “Cyril was dead, and I had loved him. He had taken me as his friend, blind to the prejudices around him. To Cyril, it did not matter if I were Jew or a Red Indian or a Barbary pirate. He just wanted a playmate. He was a kind boy with a good heart—and I killed him. It was an accident, but he died by my hand, and I have had to live with that every day of my life. I did not need Warneham to punish me. I did not want this”—here, he lifted his hands expansively—“my friend’s birthright.”

Antonia wanted to cry. Not just for Gabriel, who had been wronged, but for Cyril as well. And strangely, for the former duchess, who had lost a child and had perhaps gone a little mad in her grief. Antonia could sympathize.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I can only imagine what such a loss would be like when you were twelve. And then to lose everything else. Your grandmother. Your home. And then Warneham took you deliberately down to Portsmouth, did he not? To the
water
.”

Gabriel was silent for a moment. “He came at dawn the next morning,” he whispered, “and tossed me into his carriage by the coat collar. He said that he was going to give me something, by God, to be scared of. And he did.”

Antonia set one hand to her forehead and imagined the terror. What was it Gabriel had said of Portsmouth?
“Just walking along the docks made my stomach churn
.” He had been so naïve that he had not been afraid of the people, he had been afraid of the water. But Antonia was sinkingly certain he should have been afraid of the people. He had been a child amongst wolves.

It was as if Gabriel read her mind. He bent forward, legs splayed, and set his elbows on his knees. “Do you know what life is like, Antonia, for boys who go to sea on such ships?” he asked, holding his head in his hands. “Have you any notion of the…the degradation to which they are exposed?”

“No.” The word came out very small. “But I have a feeling it is a life too ugly for me to imagine.”

“It is a life which someone as gently bred as you should know nothing of.” Gabriel seemed unable to look at her. “It strips the humanity from you. It reduces you to—to something less than an object. It taints you.”

“You were gently bred, too,” she answered. “And you are not tainted. You are a strong and decent man, Gabriel.”

“I know more of the world than I should wish to, Antonia,” he whispered. His fingers were pressed to his temples now, as if his head hurt. “Luke and Kieran—Lord Rothewell—they understood, I think, without our even discussing it,” he went on. “They could guess what life on the
Saint-Nazaire
had been like for me—and frankly, I am not sure they had had a life much better.”

“Were you…beaten?”

“Oh, God, yes,” he said quietly. “But not like the regular sailors. They did not want to mar me in any way, you see. I was worth more to them if I were…pleasing to the eye. Antonia, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I…I am not sure.” Hoping to comfort him, she reached down and set her hand lightly on his knee. Gabriel flinched as if she had struck him. She jerked her hand away. “Were they going to sell you, perhaps?” she asked, conjuring up the worst horror she could imagine. “Or—or trade you, like an African slave?”

He shook his head. “No. No, not like that.”

Antonia felt frustrated with herself, and with her inability to grasp something which Gabriel seemed so deeply affected by. “I want to understand,” she whispered. “I want to know what you lived through. It is a part of you, Gabriel, for good or ill.”

“Yes, it is a part of me.” He lifted his head from his hands, but for a long moment, he looked at the lake, not at her. “Antonia, a ship goes to sea for weeks, often months, at a time,” he finally continued. “Generally, there are no women on board. So it is tacitly understood that the officers and crew…that they may use the younger, more powerless sailors—cabin boys, and the like—for their…their sexual gratification.”

Antonia felt vaguely ill. “For sexual gratification?” she echoed. “I don’t…I cannot…”

At last he swiveled his head to look at her. His face was a mask of agony, his beautiful features twisted. “Do you understand, Antonia, what I am telling you? Or have you heard enough to be thoroughly revolted?”

She shook her head. She felt a little light-headed, as if the world about her was floating away.

His features hardened. “It’s called
buggery,
Antonia.” Gabriel’s voice came as if from a distance. “That’s what those sorts of sailors like to keep young boys for. They rape them. Sodomize them—and sometimes worse.”

Antonia’s hands began to shake. “My God,” she whispered. “How? How can they just…do that?”

Gabriel misunderstood her question. “How?” he asked. “They wear you down with whipping and humiliation until they make you into—into this perverted
thing.
A weak, frightened thing which they can use for their own satisfaction. And after a while, you…you just quietly let them do it. You learn to give them pleasure—and you learn to be damned good at it. Because you have no choice. It’s how you survive.”

“Oh, dear God!” She felt a sudden explosion of nausea—a surge of bile scorching up her throat like scalding vinegar. Clapping a hand over her mouth, Antonia leapt from the bench and bolted for the edge of the pavilion.
The rape of a child.
The pain he must have felt was incomprehensible. Clinging to one of the columns, she bent nearly double and retched. And when at last the nausea subsided, the mortification set in. For an instant, she closed her eyes.

When she moved to straighten up, Gabriel slid a warm, strong hand beneath her elbow. “Christ, I am so sorry,” he whispered, his voice laced with agony. “Oh, Antonia. I should never have—”

“No, it—it is all right.” She turned her face away and dragged the back of her hand across her mouth. “I believe it is I who ought to apologize. Please forgive me. I just—never imagined—”

At last she turned back to look at him. His face was utterly without emotion. Abruptly, he went down the steps toward the stream which fed the lake. There, he knelt, returning with his fine lawn handkerchief soaked with cool water.

Gratefully, she took it. “I am so sorry,” she said again, wiping her face. “I never thought—never dreamt—dear God, Gabriel, you were just a
boy
.”

He turned away and cursed again. “I ought to be horsewhipped,” he said, walking away from her toward the next column. “There was no need to tell you how—”

“But there
was,
” she interjected. She followed him and caught him by the arm. “I asked you, Gabriel, didn’t I?”

He spun to face her, his face twisted with sudden rage. “But it is my duty to know what you should and should not hear,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion. “You are a gently bred aristocrat, Antonia. And I am
not
. I have seen and done things which—which I have no right to expose you to.”