Never Deceive a Duke (33 page)

“No.” Osborne hung his head. “He got wind of the wedding before they had even returned from Scotland. He left whatever woman’s bed he’d been warming to come to London to laugh, and to demand money for his silence. Warneham did not take that too well—and since he had kept the marriage a secret from his father, he simply left her.”

“When did de la Croix die?” Gareth demanded.

Osborne lifted his shoulders beneath the expensive fabric of his coat. “I…don’t recall,” he said. “I was six or seven. He was stabbed to death over a pack of marked cards in some hell near the
Quartier Latin
.”

Kemble still looked pensive. He was playing with Osborne as a cat might a mouse, but the doctor was too distraught to realize it—or perhaps too guilty to care. “So, returning to that morning before Warneham’s death,” he went on, “you brought him his usual medication. But you were in a rush. You were excited over something, I think? And you made a terrible mistake, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The word was just a whimper. “Father sent a note asking me to come up to Selsdon, and to bring Mother’s papers and her Bible.”

“The documents she had kept which proved their marriage at Gretna Green?”

Osborne nodded. “He said someone was coming from London who might look at them. A barrister he knew. My heart leapt into my throat when I read his note. I thought—I thought he meant to acknowledge me.”

“Oh, I suspect you thought a lot more than that,” said Gareth. “And if he had truly wanted to acknowledge you, Osborne, he could have done so at any time—certainly after the first duchess’s death.”

“He
loved
me.” The doctor looked up, his eyes bleary, and shook his head. “He hated you, and he
loved
me. He knew I never wanted the title. I just wanted people to know I was his son. Mother—yes, she wanted the dukedom. After a time, it came to obsess her.”

“Yes,” said Kemble dryly. “I daresay it did. So, you got the papers together. Then what did you do?”

“I realized I needed to take up his asthma medication,” said Osborne. “So I rushed into my clinic and dropped the brown bottle into my pocket. But I did not realize I had got the
wrong
bottle. The bottle with the uncut potassium nitrate—without the salt.”

“Oh, God!” Antonia’s voice was just a whisper.

“Where are your mother’s papers now?” Gareth pressed. “We should like to see them.”

Osborne shook his head and looked up at them plaintively. “I don’t know. I never saw Warneham again.” He cast a wary glance up at Gareth. “I was quite sure you had found them that day you turned up at my office. I was sick with worry. And to be honest, I’m glad it is over with.”

“Oh, it is far from over with,” said Gareth, looking at Rothewell. “Could Sir Harold Hartsell have the papers?”

Rothewell shook his head. “I got the impression he never actually
saw
them.”

“Well, they will turn up,” said Kemble. “Warneham would never have thrown them away, and just now, that is hardly our most pressing concern.”

“If they are here, I shall find them.” Gareth dragged a hand through his hair. “To think that all this time…Well, what must we do now?”

“
We
must do nothing,” said Kemble. “
Dr
.
Osborne
must go to that writing desk and pen his confession so that any shadow of doubt can be lifted from the duchess’s name—and we should like
two
copies, if you please!”

Osborne looked horrified. “You cannot be serious. Tell…
everything
?”

Kemble shrugged. “You may tell what you please,” he returned. “Save for the part about mixing up Warneham’s medicine. That you must confess. And in exchange for your cooperation, the duke shall do his best to see that you are not unfairly implicated in the other murders.”

“Other murders?” Antonia had risen a little unsteadily. “Dear God,
what
other murders?”

Gareth went to her and slid an arm beneath her elbow. “I fear Mr. Kemble is about to tell us, my dear,” he said quietly.

“Lord Gawd,” whispered Mrs. Waters. “What else has he turned up?”

Kemble flashed her a knowing smile. “As I think Mrs. Waters is aware, I have for some time been convinced that the last two duchesses were murdered,” he explained. “And that the only likely perpetrators were Mrs. Osborne and Lady Ingham—who, so far as I could tell, is an incurable rattle, which sometimes makes one wish for an early death, ’tis true. But it is not quite the same thing as outright murder.”

Osborne would not look at Kemble. “What about this, Doctor?” Gareth demanded, circling around until he could see his face. “Have you any knowledge your mother may have done such a thing?”

Osborne looked up, his eyes a little glassy now. Nervously, he licked his lips. “Mother…was not well,” he finally said. “She became obsessed, as I said, over the possibility of the dukedom.”

“Yes?” said Gareth a little harshly. “And precisely what did she do about it?”

“Nothing, so far as I know,” he whispered. “Once or twice she tried to convince Warneham to fall back on their old marriage lines. She wanted to pay someone to destroy the record of her first marriage—it was made in France, after all, and de la Croix was dead. This, she said, could give Warneham his heir—the heir he so desperately wanted to displace
you
. But I discouraged such insanity. It would never have worked.” Here, he glanced bitterly between Gareth and Kemble. “Someone always turns up the truth.”

Kemble ignored the look. “But with Warneham unwilling to endure the scandal, it hardly mattered,” he said musingly. “Until he realized he was impotent, and that there was absolutely no chance of his begetting an heir—my apologies to you, Your Grace. I can only imagine how this discussion must make you feel.”

“No,” said Antonia. “You cannot know. It makes me feel…free, somehow.”

Osborne looked at Antonia with hurt in his eyes. Suddenly Gareth remembered the look in the doctor’s eyes the first night they had all dined together. The many times he had admonished her to take her medication. There had been other things, too—small but telling things. In the only way he’d known how, Osborne had perhaps tried to make Antonia dependent upon him. But in that, she had held fast, thank God.

Gareth turned to Kemble. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How did Mrs. Osborne commit these murders?”

“Well, the second duchess was silly and rather spirited,” said Kemble quietly. “Like most young people, she had no sense of her own mortality. I think Mrs. Osborne enticed her to take a jump she was not skilled enough to handle, and when that did not induce a miscarriage, I suspect Mrs. Osborne somehow dosed her with an abortifactant—something so strong it killed her. Ladies of the demimonde often have more than a passing acquaintance with such things.”

“Yes, they would, wouldn’t they?” Gareth scrubbed his hand across the stubble of his beard. “And she pulled a similar trick with the third duchess, too, I daresay.”

Kemble nodded. “Yes, I think the poor girl confessed to her dear friend Mrs. Osborne that she had some hope of being with child,” he said musingly. “It was unlikely, of course. The girl was ill, I think, not
enceinte
. But it was a chance Mrs. Osborne dared not take. And once again, it was easy to substitute a pure opiate for the duchess’s regular sleeping draught.”

“Good Lord,” said Antonia.

Gareth looked at her in sympathy. “The poor girl just went to sleep and never woke,” he said quietly. “And you did not dare look too closely, did you, Dr. Osborne, for fear of what you might find?”

“It’s not true!” Osborne swore. “It is not. If Mother did
anything,
I know nothing of it.”

“Your mother frequently delivered medications for you, did she not, Dr. Osborne?” Gareth challenged. “Especially to the ladies? You told me that yourself.”

Osborne made a sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

Kemble opened his hands expressively. “It would be a simple matter indeed to deliver a bottle of pure opiate when only a weak tincture was prescribed. I wonder, Doctor—did you ever have a bottle go missing?”

“I don’t recall,” he rasped. “Sometimes things get broken, you know. It is very hard to keep account.”

“Yes, I’ll just bet it is,” said Kemble softly.

“When did your mother die, Dr. Osborne?” Gareth demanded.

“Over two years ago,” Osborne snapped.

“Yes, less than two months after Antonia’s marriage to the duke, I believe?” said Kemble. “Would you care to tell us how she died?”

Osborne was glaring at Kemble now. “She fell down the stairs,” he retorted. “She broke her neck. For God’s sake, do you mean to make me relive it?”

“Why?” asked Kemble softly. “Were you there?”

This time, the doctor went for Kemble’s throat. “You bastard!” Osborne roared. “You goddamned meddling bastard!”

Gareth grabbed him almost as he leapt, wrapping one arm around his neck and dragging him backward across the carpet.

To his shock, Kemble followed them, his gaze never leaving Osborne’s. His eyes were afire with an almost unholy light. “Did you fall in love with the duchess, Dr. Osborne?” Kemble demanded. “Did you? Did you push your mother down the stairs because you knew what she was capable of? Did you fear who her next victim might be?
Did
you?”

“To hell with you!” said Osborne, wrestling backward against Gareth’s relentless grip. “Let me go, damn you! Let it be a fair fight.”

From the back of the room, Rothewell softly chuckled. “Osborne, the duke is protecting your worthless arse, had you but sense enough to know it.”

Suddenly, all of the anger and pugnacity seemed to drain out of Kemble. “No, the acorn never falls far from the tree, does it?” he murmured to no one in particular. “Let him go, Your Grace. He is as impotent as his father—and as manipulative, perhaps, as his mother.”

Gareth did as Kemble asked. Osborne shrugged his coat back into place, his hot glare sweeping over them. “You people know nothing!” he said. “You cannot know what I have been through! I said there had been an overdose from the very first, didn’t I? I said they had been smoking cigars and that Warneham must have overreacted. I tried to protect Antonia! I
tried!
”

Kemble waved his hand. “Too little, too late, Osborne,” he said wearily. “If you’d loved her more than you loved yourself, you would have explained it fully, then and there. Now all we want from you is that signed statement that you accidentally mixed up the drugs. I think you’re probably hedging a bit about the rest of it, but I cannot prove it, and if the duke agrees, I am content to let God sort it out.”

“I want what I have always wanted,” said Gareth darkly. “I want Antonia’s name cleared. You may do it willingly, Osborne. Or I can beat it out of you. The choice is yours.”

Osborne grabbed his leather satchel. “I am going home, damn you,” he said. “I shall write the statement and send it at my leisure.”

Kemble made a little
tsk
-
tsk
sound in the back of his throat and stepped in front of the door. “You are not leaving my sight to so much as piss, Osborne, until the ink is dry on your statement. I won’t have you go home and stick a pistol in your mouth, thereby leaving a cloud over the duchess’s good name.”

Apparently, the doctor did not properly estimate his adversary. This time he leapt, and when Gareth did not catch him, he got his hands round Kemble’s throat. Gareth moved to tear him off, but suddenly the tables were turned. In a flash, one of Osborne’s arms was twisted up behind him and he was facedown on the Axminster carpet with Kemble’s knee between his shoulder blades and blood spewing from his nose.

“Christ, my finger!” cried Osborne. “You son of a bitch! You deliberately broke my finger!”

His left index finger, Gareth noted, was indeed lying crookedly to one side.

Rothewell peered over the tea table. “Now that’s a nasty piece of work,” he said admiringly.

Kemble pressed his knee in harder. “You’ve got nine more to go, Osborne,” he growled against the doctor’s ear. “What will it be? A thumb? Or the statement?”

Antonia was looking a little faint, Gareth realized. He cut a glance at Mrs. Waters. “I think the ladies should leave the room,” he gently suggested. “Actually, they should never have been here.”

Mrs. Waters was looking at the scene in obvious satisfaction. She clearly would not have missed it for the world. But Antonia’s gaze was fixed upon the man bleeding on the carpet.

Mrs. Waters laid a hand on her arm. “My lady?”

Antonia jerked into motion. “No, we should have been here,” she said, casting one last disdainful glance at Osborne. “I am
glad
I was here. But now I have seen—and heard—quite enough.”

T
he place called Neville Shipping was stuffed near to bursting with desks, tables, and stacking drawers. The clamor of the port rang through the open windows, most of which had wide white shutters, and people dashed in and out so fast, the front door never shut. But the place was tidy, and it smelled familiar; of ink and of fresh paper, as his grandfather’s office once had—it was the smell,
Zayde
always said, of money being made.

At a copy stand by the windows, a young girl sat on a tall stool with her head bent to her work, her tongue poking out one corner of her mouth and a tatty quill pen clutched in her hand. Her long dark hair hung to her waist, and her eyes were serious.

Gabriel took a step nearer. The girl laid down her pen. “Hullo,” she said shyly. “Are you the boy Luke found?”

Gabriel nodded and flicked a glance at her desk. “What are you doing?”

“Copying contracts.” The girl smiled. “It’s frightfully tedious, but Luke says it improves my script. Anyway, I’m Zee. What’s your name?”

“An excellent question!” The man named Luke Neville had stepped back out of his office. “What is your name, lad? We must know what to call you around here.”

Did they mean to let him stay? “It—It’s Gabriel, sir.” He felt himself almost sag with relief. “But I don’t think I like that name any longer.”

Luke Neville grinned hugely. “Feeling the hot breath of pursuit on the back of your neck, eh?” he remarked. “Have you another name you like better?”

“Gareth,” he said. “Just Gareth Lloyd, sir—if that’s all right?”

The man laughed. “People often come to the islands to lose themselves,” he said. “All right, Gareth Lloyd—tell me, how’s your arithmetic? Have you any sort of head for numbers?”

Gabriel nodded with alacrity. “I like numbers sir,” he said. “I do them in my head.”

Luke Neville bent over and set his hands on his knees. He looked Gabriel straight in the eyes. “So, if my hold is filled with fifty crates of bananas at one pound twelve shillings profit per, but I lose forty percent to black rot en route to port, what is my profit? And what have I lost?”

Gabriel didn’t hesitate. “You would lose thirty-two pounds even on the twenty crates’ spoilage, sir. And turn forty-eight pounds profit on the thirty good crates.”

“Well, damn!” Luke Neville’s eyebrows went up. “I think we can find something for you to do, boy.”

Late that afternoon, Gareth was in the great hall saying good-bye to George Kemble when Antonia came in through the conservatory carrying a basket of roses on her arm. She had once again put on her green-and-yellow walking dress, and her hair was falling down on one side. On the whole, it was a charming combination.

“Mr. Kemble, surely you are not leaving?” she said, hastening toward them. “Please do stay—at least for dinner?”

Kemble sketched a graceful bow. “I fear pressing business calls me to London, Your Grace,” he said. “But I remain, of course, your humble servant.”

Antonia’s eyes danced with laughter. “You may be a great many things, Mr. Kemble,” she said, handing him one of the roses. “But I think humble is not one of them.”

Kemble smiled and snapped off the stem. “This must be the last of the season’s blooms,” he mused, neatly tucking the rose into his hatband. “Well, there! Now, kindly make my good-byes to Mrs. Waters. I did not get the chance.”

“Yes, I left Nellie upstairs pouring all my tonics into the chamber pot,” Antonia confessed. “She was rather enjoying it.”

“The things Osborne prescribed?” Gareth slid a hand beneath her elbow and drew her protectively nearer. “I confess, I was going to ask you not to take them. God only knows what they might contain.”

“Well, I rarely ever really took them,” Antonia confessed. “But most were harmless, I daresay.”

“Most likely,” Kemble agreed. “Perhaps his intentions were not initially so benign, but Warneham’s cough before the wedding gave him a better idea than to simply let his mother commit outright murder. I still am not certain, however, that the saltpeter caused impotence.”

“Perhaps it was just guilt?” Gareth suggested darkly.

“It is all quite tragic, is it not?” said Antonia almost wistfully. “I do think Dr. Osborne wished people to become dependent upon him. But I intend to do without any medications. From now on, if I cannot sleep”—she paused to look at Gareth almost coquettishly—“well, I am persuaded I must simply find something else to do.”

“Ahem!”
Mr. Kemble slapped his very elegant beaver hat onto his head. “I’d best be off, then.”

Antonia laid a hand on his coat sleeve. “Mr. Kemble, could I just ask one more thing?”

Swiftly, he removed the hat. “By all means, Your Grace.”

Antonia seemed to carefully consider her words. “Do you think Dr. Osborne is truly sorry?” she asked. “Especially about the two duchesses who died? I mean, he confessed what he knew rather readily. Couldn’t he have insisted that he was legitimate and forced us to look for his mother’s papers? Perhaps even forced the issue of the dukedom?”

Kemble smiled. “An excellent question!” he answered. “Alas, we found the Bible, Your Grace.”

“Yes, I hadn’t had an opportunity to tell you, my dear,” said Gareth. “It was in plain sight on my bookshelf—and inside it we found
all
of Mrs. Osborne’s papers, including the record of her marriage to Jean de la Croix. Osborne believed he was only confessing what we already knew—or would soon discover.”

Antonia gave a muted smile. “And you were very clever to make him think that, Mr. Kemble,” she said. “Do the two of you believe Dr. Osborne is a murderer?”

Kemble drew a deep, pensive breath. “I think him venal and manipulative like his mother,” he said. “But has he gone so far as to kill deliberately? No, I think not.”

Gareth shook his head. “He hasn’t the stomach for it—I hope.”

Antonia frowned faintly. “What will happen to him now?”

“I cannot say,” Kemble answered. “I doubt he has done anything for which he can be successfully tried, save for perhaps diagnosing Warneham with asthma when he didn’t have it—but what can be done to prove that now? We can’t very well dig the poor devil up. And perhaps Osborne had some degree of complicity in his mother’s shenanigans. But her actions will be hard to prove after so many years, therefore his will be nearly impossible.”

“It is just as well, I suppose,” said Antonia quietly. “I am a little surprised my husband never suspected. I think, you know, that had he loved his wives, he would have. Don’t you?”

Kemble shook his head. “I cannot suppose to understand such a man, my dear.”

“Nor can I,” Gareth added. “But it is over now, Antonia. At last it is well and truly over.”

Together the three of them walked out into the brilliant afternoon. To the left, the sun was slanting from the clouds to form a perfect pool of light over the village, and from beyond the carriage house and stable block, the sounds of hammers and saws rang out sharp and clear in the warm air. Gareth looked down to see that Rothewell’s high-perch phaeton waited in the carriage drive, his fine matched blacks tossing their heads and literally chomping at their bits.

“Good Lord,” he said appreciatively. “How did you manage this?”

“Well, it was this or your gig,” said Kemble. “And I am
not
returning in glory and triumph to London driving anything so ordinary as
that
. Besides, Rothewell is a danger to the general populace in this thing.”

“But how is he to get home?”

Kemble smiled. “Oh, I’m sending my barouche for him in a day or two.”

Gareth turned serious as Kemble climbed up into the high seat and took the reins from the groom. “I really don’t know how to thank you,” he said, looking up. “Antonia and I owe you so much.”

Beneath his fine beaver hat, Kemble’s sharp black eyebrows went up a notch. “Dear me, did Rothewell not tell you?” he said, shaking out his whip. “I shall be sending you a bill—quite a large one, I daresay—unless, that is, I get an invitation.”

“An invitation?” asked Gareth, confused. “To what?”

“Why, to the wedding, of course.” With that, Kemble touched his whip smartly to his hat brim, then snapped it above Rothewell’s horses’ heads. The phaeton set off at a fine clip.

Suddenly the door opened behind them. The baron himself came out, looking rather the worse for wear, with one hand lifted to his eyes as if to shield the sun. “Gone, then, is he?” said Rothewell. “Wait! Good God!—is that—is that my phaeton he’s driving?”

“Well…yes,” said Gareth.

Rothewell looked at him incredulously. “Damn it, Gareth! You—you just
let
him take my phaeton? It’s brand-new! And I am on my way to the village. How the hell am I to get there?”

“You may walk, I daresay,” Gareth suggested, “and spare my gateposts.”

Antonia looped her arm through Gareth’s. “I am so sorry, but if you mean to quarrel with Lord Rothewell, you must wait,” she said sweetly. “I was here first, and I have something I wish to quarrel about.”

With a grunt, Rothewell stepped back and made a sweeping motion toward the door. “Have at it, ma’am.”

With her stomach in a bit of a knot, Antonia led Gabriel back into the conservatory and closed the door on Lord Rothewell’s blazing visage. She drew her quarry into the center of the greenery, to a little fountain surrounded by ornamental palms. She felt as if her head were still swimming from all the day’s incredible events—but her mind was perfectly clear now. It always had been, really, where Gabriel was concerned. From the very first, something deep inside her had been drawn to him; to his strength, and to his essential goodness.

She took one of Gabriel’s hands in hers. His thick, golden hair had grown too long, and it had fallen a little forward to shadow his eyes—eyes which looked tired and more than a little anxious.

“It is quite ironic, is it not?” she said. “Just as the golden egg was almost within his grasp, Osborne killed his goose?”

Gabriel smiled softly. “I like to think that in the end, we all get what we deserve, Antonia.”

Antonia lifted her chin. “But you do not think that you deserve all this,” she said quietly.

“All what, my dear?”

She tilted her head toward Selsdon’s great hall. “The house. The land. The dukedom. Indeed, I was a little bit afraid you were going to tell Osborne to take it all and go hang this morning,” she said, only half in jest.

“Oh, for one fleeting moment, my dear, I thought about it,” he confessed. “But then I realized…”

Antonia laid her hand lightly against his lapel. “What, Gabriel?” she asked, leaning into him. “What did you realize?”

He smiled a little ruefully. “I realized, Antonia, that a man who toiled the livelong day in a shipping office in Wapping would never be thought good enough for…well, for someone like you.”

She set her head a little to one side and studied him through her soft blue eyes. “Thought by whom?” she finally asked. “Does anyone’s opinion of you matter, save mine? You must understand, Gabriel, that I have stopped living my life by other people’s standards.”

Gabriel looked down at their clasped hands. “You may regret that choice, Antonia,” he said quietly. “I want only your happiness, you know.”

“And I have decided, Gabriel, that I want my happiness, too,” she whispered. “I want it quite desperately. I have spent a very long time being miserably unhappy. I shan’t do it any longer, no more than I can help, at any rate. I told you when we argued at the pavilion—this time I mean to fight for what I want.”

He lowered his sweeping, dark brown lashes for an instant. “Is that what you meant?”

“What did you think I meant?” she asked. “I mean to grab what happiness I can, however little it may be.”

“You deserve more than just a little happiness, Antonia,” he said. “Now that we have Osborne’s confession, your life will be different, in that respect, at least. I cannot restore to you your fairy-tale dreams or your lost children, but at least your name has been cleared completely.”

“I do not want fairy tales any longer, Gabriel,” she answered. “I want only what is real, and what is true.”

He bowed his head, and took both her hands in his. “Antonia, I know that I have done things in my past which make me feel…ashamed, and I just—”

Antonia cut him off. “Oh, Gabriel, you have it all wrong,” she whispered, her eyes going soft with pain. “You have had things done
to
you. That is not at all the same! I am not speaking of just the—the physical horrors you have been forced to endure, but of the way you were treated here, by your cousin, by other people. Your abandonment. The shame you have been made to feel. It…it breaks my heart.”

He looked at her with an old pain in his eyes. “We all make choices, Antonia,” he said. “And I have made some which I regret. Things which are repulsive to you, and—”

“Gabriel, thirteen-year-old boys do
not
make choices like that,” she said stridently. “They choose between whether to conjugate their Latin or go skipping stones. Whether to run barefoot in tall grass or dance about in the rain without a hat, or do the thousand other foolhardy little things boys are told not to do. But they
do not
choose to be beaten and to let—
oh, God
!” She squeezed her eyes shut.

“You cannot even say it,” he whispered. “It disgusts you.”

Antonia gathered her strength and forced her eyes open. She looked at him very directly. “I cannot even say it,” she repeated hollowly. “It disgusts me. But it is not what
you
chose. I am not so emotionally fragile, Gabriel, that I cannot tell the difference.”

“You are not fragile,” he said hotly. “You are
strong,
Antonia. You had an emotional collapse—and for a very good reason. You will fully recover someday, if you have not already.”

Antonia was beginning to believe he was right. “There was a time, Gabriel, when I was considered a great catch,” she said. “When I was very young and very naïve and knew nothing of the world’s cruelty. Now my strength and my resolve are returning. And yet, some days, I worry I mightn’t be capable of being a good wife. The doctors have said I am ‘not well,’ but that sounds as if I am…sick. I am not sick. I am broken into pieces. And on those very darkest days, Gabriel, I sometimes still fear I will never be whole again.”