Of Noble Birth (50 page)

It was a cold day in late
September, and snow had fallen through the night, leaving a thin
white blanket on the ground that had quickly turned to slush.
Nathaniel and Alexandra shivered with the others as they waited for
the prisoner to appear, but despite the chill weather, no one
left.

Nathaniel’s mood was
nervous, somber. He did not want to be here, yet he couldn’t stay
away. He had spent many years hating his father and brother. Now he
felt empty. He could scarcely believe what the papers had
reported—a wild fervor had surrounded this hanging above all
others—though he knew the truth had finally been
revealed.

Alexandra gave him a
reassuring smile. “Are you sure you want to see this?”

Nathaniel nodded. “But you
don’t have to stay, my love. I’d rather you not have to
witness—”

“We’ll see it through
together,” she insisted.

He could feel her love
flowing through him at the slightest touch, supporting him like the
wind at his back. How he admired her inherent strength and beauty.
He hugged her closer to him. He had thought he didn’t know what
love was, but he had proven himself wrong. He loved Alexandra with
a ferocity that surprised him.

She smiled at him again,
and he turned his attention away, focusing on the comments of those
around him.

“He deserves what he’s
getting, that he does,” a heavyset country woman said to her
friend. “If it was one of us, they’d string us up in two
shakes.”

The man behind her said,
“But
why
did he
do it? There was no call to take such a risk.”

Nathaniel had spent many
long nights wondering the same thing. But he thought he finally
understood—as well as he ever would, anyway.

Scanning the crowd, he
searched for Lady Anne. She stood near the front, weeping
uncontrollably, alone except for her maid. He couldn’t help but
feel a twinge of remorse at her pain.

Finally two servants
forced their way through the mass of people and escorted the duke’s
daughter back to her carriage. Evidently she could not bear to
watch.

Alexandra nudged him. “You
didn’t do this to her,” she murmured.

Nathaniel nodded slowly.
Lady Anne was gone now. There was nothing left to see but the
gallows.

* * *

Inside a small rectangular
cell, the Duke of Greystone paced back and forth. He couldn’t
imagine more outrage than he felt, and wondered if he could bear
it. All his life he had been able to take what he wanted, change
the rules if need be, break them if they wouldn’t bend. And there
had been no punishments. He had gotten away with murder, literally.
Yet he could do nothing now, nothing to save his son—the one person
in life whom he truly loved—despite his money, despite his power,
despite it all.

“Just tell me why, Jake.
Why did you do it?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from
trembling.

The marquess sat in the
corner of his cell, slumped against the bars, staring at the floor.
His eyes, when they lifted, were filled with contempt. “You still
don’t understand, do you? You probably never will. You gave me
control of Greystone Shipping and assumed I’d run it expertly, like
you always did. But I’m not like you. Or Nathaniel. I couldn’t do
it any other way.” The bitterness in his voice deepened. “And I
wanted you to be proud of me. Can you believe that? You, who cared
no more for my mother than to bring her syphilis from your
whores—”

The duke’s hand struck
almost of its own accord. “How dare you—”

“What? Face you with the
truth?” Jake touched his cheek where the blow had left a red mark.
“Nathaniel, of all people, had to tell me. Yet I lived with you,
nursed you when you were ill not two years past, and all the while
my mother grew sicker, alone, in Scotland. That’s how gullible and
trusting I was. Will you deny that it’s true?”

Greystone thought he heard
a trace of hope in his son’s last question. For a moment he
considered telling the boy what he wanted to hear. They couldn’t
part this way forever.

But he knew Jake’s eyes
had been opened. The boy could not ignore the steady decline of his
mother’s health as if he didn’t finally understand the cause. Nor
could he deny the cursed reason for Greystone’s own illness before
the disease went into its latent stage.

Nathaniel had truly robbed
them at last. “I don’t expect you to understand,” the duke
said.

Jake’s lips twisted in a
sneer. “There’s never been anything to understand but your own
selfishness.” He laughed—a cold, humorless sound that reverberated
in the cold cell. “I thought if I rebuilt Greystone Shipping into
the giant it once was, you’d have to acknowledge me as a son worthy
of your legacy. Montague claimed he knew how, and you provided the
opportunity for the first shipment with the load of supplies you
wanted to send to the Turks. It took a bit of doing, but it wasn’t
a difficult matter to sell the stuff and use the money to purchase
guns, from which we planned to achieve a high profit. An investor
had to be brought in when Nathaniel interfered, but our banker made
a healthy return, like Montague and myself. Perhaps you would have
figured it all out, had you not been so busy bringing shame upon my
mother and our family.”

As Jake’s words poured
out, Greystone felt as though a knife turned in his gut. Nathaniel
was to blame for this, and ironically enough, his own damn
patriotism. If he’d never planned to send blankets, clothing, and
medical supplies to the Turks, his son couldn’t have...

The duke cut off his
thoughts, knowing they did little good now, and closed his eyes to
shut out the vision of his son’s derision. Jake had been imprisoned
twenty-four days since being sentenced to death. By law three
Sundays had to pass between sentence and execution to give him time
to repent, and every day had been an agony for them
both.

But nothing like this.
When he had thought Jake still respected him, he could be the
doting, blameless father, and could believe, to an extent, the part
he was playing. Now he felt utterly exposed, as if his son had
peeled back the husks of an ear of corn to reveal nothing but
crawling worms.

“Haven’t I given you
everything?” he asked.

The marquess looked up.
“Everything? You’ve abused my mother’s trust, cost her her life.
You’ve ignored my sister, and for years I could garner only the
smallest crumb of your attention. In a way, even Nathaniel had more
of your respect and admiration than I.”

Greystone covered his face
with his hands. The fact that he had somehow brought this calamity
on himself, and Jake, seared him to his soul.

“It’s time.” The guard
outside the cell moved closer. The duke knew the man had allowed
them time together only because he had been ordered to do so from
somewhere much higher in the chain of command. The Greystone title
still held some weight, but it was getting late, and even a duke
could stall the wheels of justice only so long.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace,
but I’m going to have to ask you to leave now,” the guard told
him.

Greystone could hardly
believe that this horror was reality. Leave so they could kill
Jake? His son? His heir? He hesitated. They couldn’t part like
this.

“Your Grace?”

The duke tried to swallow
the lump that threatened to choke him. He wanted one kind word from
Jake, who had stood at the guard’s request and waited to be led out
onto the gallows, one small sign of forgiveness.

“I’m sorry,” he said to
his son, uttering the words so softly that at first he wasn’t sure
if Jake had heard him.

The marquess’s gaze rose.
“Not sorry enough.”

As the guard led Jake out
of his cell, Greystone tried to do something he had never done
before: he tried to take his son in his arms and hold him tightly
for an instant. But Jake’s body was stiff and
unresponsive.

“Don’t touch me,” he said,
and the duke turned away. He wouldn’t have a mere guard witness his
humiliation. Besides, he couldn’t bear to watch his son pass
through the door and enter the blinding light of day.

* * *

When the trapdoor dropped
away, Nathaniel had to avert his gaze. He was sick at the sight of
Lord Clifton’s body writhing as the life was wrung from it. His
half brother had had everything—the money, the power, the family.
And he had thrown it all away. For what?

Nathaniel stared at those
privileged members of the aristocracy who watched at the fore.
Somber and downcast, they murmured to each other. That one of their
own could swing from a rope like any common man struck at the very
heart of England’s social order. From what Nathaniel saw and read
in the papers, they felt sorrier for themselves than they did
Clifton.

He would have been one of
them, had his life taken a different path. There had been a time
when he had wanted to take his place among the gentry, but now they
seemed more like the living dead. Worried over a crease in their
clothes, or a pudding that lacked a little spice, they were not
alive in the same way Alexandra was. Her heart beat strong and
true, and she had a mind that knew what mattered.

Nathaniel’s gaze came to
rest on the woman he loved. Her head was bent; he couldn’t see her
enormous green eyes, but he knew what he would find in them. Pity.
Despite everything Clifton had tried to do to them both, she knew
what the marquess did not: that he had never truly
lived.

As Nathaniel led Alexandra
away, she instinctively buried her face into his coat. They had
both seen enough.

Though the crowd resisted
his efforts to get through, so enthralled were they in watching
Lord Clifton’s body swing, Nathaniel insisted. He physically
removed those from their path who would not bend to his words until
they were finally free and hurrying toward their rented
carriage.

Before Nathaniel handed
Alexandra inside, he put his arms around her and held her close.
She was crying. “How brave you are, my love,” he soothed. “It’s
over now.”

They clung to each other
until the pounding of his heart slowed with the spasms of her
tears. Now that his father’s title and lands were not forfeit,
Nathaniel knew he would inherit them someday. And his sons after
him. But they wouldn’t do so in England. No, he would take
Alexandra to America and have a family there. And he would teach
his sons what it truly meant to be of noble birth.

Three years later a letter
arrived at Bridlewood Manor. Addressed simply to the Duke of
Greystone, it had come all the way from Virginia. The duke studied
the return address as he sat alone at his desk, but he knew who the
letter was from.

Finally, with a sigh of
defeat, he broke the seal. The delicate script of a woman’s hand
covered a single page, wrapped around the portrait of a chubby
baby.

Greystone set the picture
gently to the side as he read.

Your Grace,

It goes against my better
judgment to write. Nathaniel would tell me that some things never
change, but I cannot help but hope they can and sometimes do.
Nathaniel and I were married shortly before we left England. He has
been heavily involved in shipping since then, and while his empire
may never rival your own, he has been very successful. He is a son
to be proud
of.
I
have enclosed a portrait of our first child, a boy named Theodore
Nathaniel, born nearly a year ago. I felt it only right that you
should know.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Kent

Setting down the letter,
Greystone lifted the photograph he had placed to one side. He
donned his glasses and held the picture close, though he’d grown
sick and his hand shook with the effort of doing so. There was no
denying that his first grandchild was a beautiful baby, with a
ghostly resemblance to his first wife through the eyes, and a
strong Kimbolten nose and chin.

His grandson. The heir of
his heir.

At that moment, the duke
wasn’t sure if Alexandra meant to be kind or cruel, but he stared
at little Teddy for a long time.