The Secret Pearl (43 page)

She had removed it carefully, hoping that he was asleep too and would not know. But he had been quietly looking out of the window. Her hand had still been in his. And he had turned his head to smile at her. She had smiled back a little shamefaced but not nearly as confused as she might have expected to be.

It was almost as if, she thought, when they had left Heron House they had also left behind them the world and normal life and normal propriety. Almost as if they had made a tacit and mutual agreement to live these two days as if they were the only two days left in life.

And in a way they were. By the next night they would be back at Heron House. The morning after, he would leave and she would never see or hear from him again.

Two days seemed very little time.

No, there was no time for embarrassment or awkwardness between them. There was only the rest of that evening and the next day.

They sat a long time over their dinner. And she discovered that he had been quite right. When she started talking about her childhood, she found that she remembered incidents and feelings she had not thought of for years.

“I suppose,” she said at last, “that I should be thankful for those eight years. Many children do not have even that long a time of love and security. I have been in the habit of thinking that I had a rather hard lot. It does me good to remember.”

“Fleur,” he said, his dark eyes smiling at her, “you
have
had a hard lot. But you are a strong person, a survivor. I hope that one day you will find a happiness you have never even dreamed possible.”

“I will settle for contentment,” she said. And she told him her plans.

“The children will be fortunate,” he said. “I know you are a good teacher and care for children, Fleur. And I would guess that Miss Booth is well-liked too. And what about the Reverened Daniel Booth?”

“What about him?” she asked warily.

“You were to marry him,” he said. “You loved him, didn’t you?”

“I thought I did,” she said. “He was kind to me at a time when I did not know much kindness. And he is a handsome man.”

“You don’t love him now?” he asked.

“I think he is too good for me,” she said. “He can see a clear distinction between right and wrong, and he will stick by what he believes to be right no matter what. I can see too many shades of gray. I would not make a good clergyman’s wife.”

“Has he asked you again?”

“Yes,” she said. “I said no.” She hesitated. “I told him everything. Except your name.”

“Yes,” he said, “you would tell him. And he did not repeat his offer?”

“I had already refused,” she said.

“He cannot love you, Fleur,” he said. “He is not worthy of you. If I were in his place, I would fight for the rest of a lifetime to get you to change your mind. And I would honor you the more for your courage and your honesty.”

She repositioned the spoon in her saucer. “A clergyman is not worthy of a whore?” she said. “Are we living in a topsy-turvy world?”

“Did he call you that?” he asked.

“Yes, he did use the word.” She took her hands away from the spoon and clasped them in her lap. “It is the simple truth, is it not?”

“It is a good thing he is thirty miles away,” he said. “My fists itch to rearrange the features on his face.” He slammed his napkin down onto the table and got to his feet. “I could kill him, the sanctimonious fool.”

“I should have added,” she said, “that he said the word more in horror and pain than in condemnation.”

He moved around the table and leaned over her, one hand braced on the table. “Fleur,” he said, “don’t ever let yourself be dragged down by that label. Promise me you won’t.”

“I have accepted the fact that I did the only thing it seemed possible to do at the time,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “It is in the past. Like your scars with you, it will always be with me and it will always affect my life. But I will not let it destroy me.”

“I would double my own scars and live with them,” he said, “if only I could remove yours from you, Fleur.” His eyes burned down into hers.

“Don’t.” She reached up one hand and cupped his scarred cheek with her hand. “Don’t, please. What happened was not
your fault. None of it was. And I think that everything that happens in life happens for a purpose. We become stronger people if we are not destroyed by the troubles of life.”

“Fleur.” He held her hand against his cheek. “And is there a purpose to this too? To you and me and to the fact that we must never see each other again after tomorrow?”

She bit her lip.

He straightened up and released her hand. “I am going for a walk,” he said. “Come. I will see you to your room first. It has been a long and an eventful day. Tomorrow we will find what you have come to see, I promise you.”

She preceded him up the stairs and turned the key in the lock of her door. He was standing at quite a distance from her when she looked up.

“Good night, Fleur,” he said.

“Good night, your grace.”

“Adam,” he said. “Say it. I want to hear you say it.”

“Adam,” she whispered. “Good night, Adam.”

And he was gone, his booted feet heavy on the stairs even before she had closed and locked her door behind her.

T
HE
D
UKE OF
R
IDGEWAY
walked back from the red house on the hill the following morning, deep in thought. Had Brocklehurst been that obsessed with her? It seemed that he must have been if he had gone to such extraordinary lengths to get her within his power.

And yet he had been content to net her, knowing very well that she neither liked nor respected him and could never love him. There were some strange men in the world.

There was something not at all normal about Brocklehurst.

Unless he had misinterpreted events entirely, the duke thought. But what other possible explanation could there be?

Fleur was in the private parlor at the inn, where he had left
her after an early breakfast. He had persuaded her, with some difficulty, to allow him to go alone to Mr. Hobson’s house.

“Well?” She stopped moving as he opened the door, and gazed tensely at him.

“It seems that the burial took place at Taunton,” he said. “It is about twenty miles from here, forty from Heron House. Mr. Hobson has been there and seen the grave. There is a tombstone there now.”

She stared at him. “At Taunton?” she said. “But why?”

“It seems that Hobson was killed close to there,” he said, “when he and Brocklehurst were returning from London. Brocklehurst buried him there before traveling on here to break the news to the family.”

Fleur stared at him. “I don’t understand,” she said. “It was at Heron House that he died.”

“Of course,” the duke said.

“The only reason he was not buried there was that his family was here,” she said.

“Yes.”

She frowned at him.

“We will go to Taunton and see this thing through,” he said. “Are you ready to leave?”

She continued to frown at him. The truth, or what must clearly be the truth, had not yet dawned on her. And perhaps it was as well. Perhaps it was not, after all, the truth. He would say nothing of his suspicions to her.

“Yes,” she said.

Fifteen minutes later they were on their way.

“This makes no sense,” she said. “Taunton is not even on the direct route to Wroxford.”

She reached out her hand for his without even realizing what she was doing, he guessed. He took it in his and rested it on his thigh.

“Relax and enjoy the journey,” he said. “We will ask questions when we get to the end of it.”

“We will not get home today,” she said. “Your journey will be delayed for another day.”

“Yes,” he said. And he raised her hand to his lips before returning it to his thigh. He looked into her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m not.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

“What shall we talk about today?” he said. “School? Tell me about yours. It was not a happy experience, was it?”

“Oh, in some ways,” she said. “I learned to love books while I was there and to love music even more than I had before. I learned to live with my imagination. It can add a wonderful dimension to life.”

“Yes,” he said. “It can make a dreary life seem bright, can’t it?”

They smiled at each other before she talked on.

T
AUNTON WAS A VERY
small village. There was nothing there beyond the church and a few houses, one shop, and a small tavern. His grace had pointed out a decent posting inn on one main road a few miles back. They would stay the night there, he had said.

But Fleur did not take a great deal of notice. They were close, and she was leaning forward in her seat. Her heart was thumping.

And this time there was no missing it. It was there and new and large and proclaimed its legend for all to see: John Hobson, Beloved son of John and Martha Hobson, 1791–1822. RIP.

God. Oh, God. Fleur stood beside it, turned to stone herself. She had killed him. He had been thirty-one years old. He had been someone’s beloved son. Martha Hobson had borne him. John Hobson had watched the son named after him grow up.
They both must have felt pride when he became valet to Lord Brocklehurst of Heron House. They would have boasted of him to their friends. And now he was dead and cold beneath the ground.

She had killed him.

“Oh, God,” she said, and she went down on one knee beside the grave and touched the cold headstone.

“Fleur.” There was a light hand on her shoulder. “I am going to the vicarage for a moment. I will be back.”

But she did not hear him. Hobson was lying in the ground beneath her, that large and powerful and handsome man. He was dead. She had killed him.

She did not know how long she knelt there. Finally two strong hands took her by the arms and helped her to her feet.

“I’ll take you back to that inn,” he said. “You can rest there.”

They were inside the carriage again, without her having any memory of having walked there.

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” she said. “At first I did not think a great deal about him. I was too concerned about myself. I did not even have many nightmares. And then I thought that perhaps he had deserved what happened, though I was sorry. And in the last week I have known that I must come here, must see his last resting place. But I did not know it would be like this.” Her hands were over her face.

“You will be able to lie down and rest soon,” he said. His arms were about her. One hand had loosened the strings of her bonnet and tossed it aside. He had her head cradled on his shoulder, his fingers smoothing through her hair. He was murmuring to her.

“I didn’t want him to die,” she said. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

He secured two rooms for them at the posting inn, rooms far larger and better-appointed than those they had occupied the night before. There was a private parlor between them.

“I want you to lie down for an hour,” he said, leading her
into one of the bedchambers, taking her by the arms, and seating her on the bed. “We will have a late dinner together. I want you to sleep.”

She obeyed the pressure of his hands and lay back against the pillows. He removed her shoes for her. She felt numb, still not quite in touch with reality.

“You will want to remove your dress, perhaps, when I have left,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I have a few calls to make,” he said. “I will be back.”

“Yes,” she said. It did not occur to her to wonder on whom he would be paying calls in a part of the country that was quite strange to him. She closed her eyes.

And felt his lips touch hers briefly before he left the room.

She must have slept, she thought. It felt as if she had been gone for a very long time, though she was still wearing her dress, she saw, and he was standing over her as he had been when she had closed her eyes. And indeed there was a candle burning in the room, and darkness beyond the windows.

“I thought you would have given me up for lost long ago,” he said. “I thought you would have eaten and sent my dinner away cold already. Have you been sleeping all this time?”

She looked at him, dazed. The right side of his mouth was curved into a smile. His dark eyes sparkled down into hers. She was lying on an inn bed, she thought, the Duke of Ridgeway standing over her.

“I have some good news for you,” he said. “You had better not stand up until you have heard what it is. Or even sit up, for that matter.”

“Good news?” she said.

“You have not killed anyone,” he said. “By deliberate intent or by accident or by any other means. You did not kill Hobson. The man is still alive somewhere, doubtless with a great deal of Brocklehurst’s money in his pockets.”

She stared up at him, at the strange bizarre dream that had just walked into her sleep.

“The only thing that is buried in the cemetery here,” he said, “is a coffin filled with stones. It seems that our man was merely stunned by the hearthstone, Fleur. You are quite, quite free, my love—free of the noose and free of your conscience.”

T
HEY DINED VERY LATE. THE DUKE HAD NOT expected to be gone quite so long, and Fleur had not expected to sleep so deeply.