Page 29 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

She sighed. “I was alone here for ten years, Diccon. Alone with that monster… And then Isabella came, and I was no longer lonely.” A little smile hovered on her lips as she dropped her gaze to the book in her lap and his large, tanned hand covering her own pale ones.

The pathos of her words struck at Richard’s heart.

A lump formed in his throat for the girl he’d so casually abandoned to her fate, while he, being male, had been able to escape to a new life.

He’d waited until he was fifteen before he left.

She’d been fourteen. Marcus had been eighteen and about to go up to Oxford.

He’d comforted himself with the thought that with Marcus becoming a man he would spend less time at Stourbridge and she’d be safe.

Perhaps he’d been wrong. But he’d been young, and the army had become everything to him.

He hated to have to admit it, even to himself, but he’d scarcely thought of Dora in all of the last nineteen years.

Guilt colored his words now. “How can you ever forgive me for leaving you with him? It was heartless of me.”

She looked up, tears sparkling unshed in her eyes.

“What for? You have nothing to apologize for, my Diccon. You had to save yourself. You were in far more danger than I ever was. I think if he could have got away with it, Marcus would have killed you one day. And everyone would have said it was an accident…” Her words trailed away again, and she looked down, as if afraid to look him in the eye.

Richard nodded. “You’re right. He came close enough times.”

A vivid image leapt into his head of himself tied to a tree with an apple on his head and Marcus standing twenty yards off with a full-size bow and arrow in his hands.

“I’m William Tell and I’m going to split that apple in two.

” Marcus had been fourteen, Richard just eleven.

Ten-year-old Dora had been leaping up and down, desperate to get Marcus to abandon his game.

Marcus had knocked her down before continuing.

He must have given himself away by touching his hand to the top of his head. “You’re remembering when he wanted to be like William Tell, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “I suppose I was lucky he was a bad shot and didn’t even hit the tree.”

She turned her hand over under his so she could thread her fingers through his. “And that time he made you be Little John by the river, while he was Robin Hood. And you had to fight with staves. I thought he’d knocked you out and you’d drowned.”

He gave a chuckle, although it wasn’t a pleasant memory. “I thought I had too.”

“Things would only have got worse if you’d been there when he became duke. I was glad you’d gone. Sad, of course, to lose you, but glad you were safe. If the army can ever be seen as safe.” Her eyes wandered again. “Or I was glad, until he told me you were dead.”

This time his chuckle held more bitterness.

“How typical of him to torture you that way, knowing how much we meant to one another.” He shook his head.

“But you’re right. I was safer in the army than I would have been remaining here with him in charge.

” He closed his other hand over hers. “Now, tell me about Isabella.” The fact that she fascinated him was not something he wanted to reveal to even Dora.

He’d had women enough in his time in the army, but none of them had been ladies, and even though Isabella had been born the daughter of a tradesman, she was a lady now.

But was she a Lucrezia Borgia or just a young woman in a bad marriage that fate had freed her from?

He pushed aside the thought that the Prince of Wales himself appeared to be interested in her.

Dora sighed again. “She has been a godsend to me. When they married… oh, I suppose I must tell you how that came about.”

“I know a little, from what Mr. Allsop told me when I went to his office in Newbury.”

She nodded. “Her papa was one of the richest of merchants in the city. I think the term ‘rich as Croesus’ would have fitted him to perfection. Added to this, he was not young, his wife was already long dead, and Isabella was his only child. His sole heir. He had ambitions for her, believing that money such as he possessed could buy her way into high society. He was right, of course. Although many turned up their noses at him, and her, at the balls of the Season, a large number of the most eligible young men come from families where they are land rich but money poor, and a girl with a fortune such as she had drew them like the proverbial bees to a honeypot.” She gave a watery smile.

“And of course, it helped that she was quite the most beautiful debutante of the Season.”

He could believe that. At eighteen she must have been a delicate, newly opened flower. At twenty-eight her looks had ripened into the true beauty of a woman grown.

Why were his cheeks warming? He spoke quickly to cover his embarrassment, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

“Of course it would. But how did her foolish father allow her to marry someone like Marcus? There must surely have been more suitable matches on offer?” A girl with her looks and fortune must have had men queuing up to court her.

If he’d been in their situation, he couldn’t deny that he’d have been dancing attendance on her himself.

Before she’d become the damaged goods she was today.

Dora curled her upper lip. “Not a duke among them. Remember how few dukes there are in Britain, and how infrequently they enter the marriage mart. I think most of the others are old codgers, as Isabella would say. Her father had set his eyes on Marcus from afar, and all unbeknownst to him, Marcus had also set his eyes on the Hope fortune. He meant to have it for himself. By any means.”

“No need to tell me he succeeded. Mr. Allsop filled me in on the allocation of Mr. Hope’s fortune after his death.”

Dora bowed her head. “Marcus took great pleasure in telling both me and Isabella how he managed it. After the marriage, of course. When it was too late for her to escape.”

“How did he persuade the old man to cut his daughter out of his will?”

She sighed. “He was clever in his wooing. He pretended disinterest in her. He pursued other young ladies of smaller fortune but better breeding. He let it be known he could never sully the Stourbridge blood and title with a shopkeeper’s daughter.

He drove her father, who I should point out was not a shopkeeper, to despair, for the more he found obstacles in his way, neatly laid by Marcus, the more he wanted his daughter to be a duchess. Just as Marcus intended.”

“And was the girl fooled?”

Dora shrugged. “Marcus could be quite charming when he wanted to be, so I suppose he used that charm to win her over. Perhaps she thought she loved him. For a short while.” She paused.

“No. I know she thought that, because she told me. It didn’t last long, though.

She soon realized what she’d married.” She shook her head.

“But by then it was too late, for Marcus had persuaded her father to leave him, not her, his entire fortune in his will.” She leaned closer.

“And very shortly after that the old man died.” She dropped her voice still lower as though she thought the walls of the summerhouse might have ears.

“I have it in me to wonder if his death was quite natural.”

What? Another possible murder? Or was this suggestion made to justify Marcus’s death? Did Dora know how he’d died? Well, the truth of it. Perhaps.

“Were they never a happy couple?”

Another shrug. “Perhaps for the first few months. I believe it is intoxicating to a man to be worshipped by a beautiful woman, and that was what Isabella did when she was first married.” She hesitated, her eyes darting from side to side.

She dropped her voice even lower. “If I tell you this, please don’t let Bella know I told you. ”

Aha. A secret was about to be revealed. At last. “I won’t. I promise.”

“Very shortly after they were married she found she… she was increasing. You understand?”

“A baby?” Yet there was no child at Stourbridge.

“Yes. A baby. Marcus seemed quite pleased. An heir, he said. For once he seemed in a better mood with her and she was not quite so frightened of him.”

A hollow feeling opened in Richard’s stomach, but he had to ask. “What happened to the baby?”

More hesitation. “As you might expect with a lady in that condition, Bella grew large and ungainly, and Marcus grew angrier with her with each passing day, as though it were her fault. I heard him calling her a… a cow, an elephant, a hippopotamus. I heard him tell her how she repulsed him with her swollen belly.” She put her free hand to her eyes and the book slid unnoticed from her lap.

“I know I should not have listened, but his voice was so loud, and he made no effort to disguise his feelings. He spoke like this in front of everyone, servants included.”

“I see.” But did he? He’d come back here to claim his inheritance, marry and beget an heir, and if his unknown wife-to-be obliged, he would surely relish her growing belly and look forward to the birth of his son, or daughter, not harangue her for something she couldn’t help.

Or would he? Might he be more like Marcus than he thought, horrible as that idea was?

The thought sent a cold shiver of dread through his body.

“Then, one day…” Her voice had gone low and small, scarcely above a whisper now, as though conjuring up the memory was abhorrent to her.

“One day at the top of the stairs they fought. He struck her across the face, and she lost her balance. She fell to the foot of the stairs.” Her voice shook.

“The baby came. She was in her eighth month. It lived an hour only. A little girl. Perfect in every way, but tiny. She died in my arms, for Isabella was unconscious.” Tears trickled down Dora’s wan cheeks.

“Good God.” A turmoil of emotions washed about inside Richard’s head like wild waves on the Bay of Biscay.

Marcus had brought about the death of his own child, and perhaps nearly of his wife, as well.

He might, if Dora were to be believed, have also had a hand in killing his own father-in-law to get his hands on the man’s fortune.

Isabella, that brittle, bright, determined, and rather wild young woman, had gone through hell at Marcus’s hands.

His heart went out to her, prepared, on an instant, to forgive her anything, even murder of the man who’d done that to her.

But Dora hadn’t finished. “Marcus was furious. Not for any reason other than that the child had been a girl. He’d wanted an heir, and a girl didn’t count.

He didn’t care that the baby was dead. No female has ever counted for Marcus.

As soon as he saw the baby was a girl, a dead girl, he took himself off to London for the next six months to his mistress.

We didn’t see him at Stourbridge once in all that time.

Isabella was ill for weeks, and took months to recover completely, if she ever has.

Not once in all that time did he send her his condolences.

Nothing. It was as if she, too, were dead to him. ”

The suspicion that Marcus might have been mad washed over Richard.

Surely his actions were not those of a sane man.

He’d always been cruel, but this was taking it too far.

Leaving his sick wife and going off to join his mistress.

Inspiration seized Richard, as the pieces of a puzzle dropped into place.

“And would that mistress possibly be called Lady Dangerfield?”

Dora nodded. “It would.”

Richard grit his teeth together. No wonder Isabella had been so cold, so downright rude, to the woman.

And out of politeness and adherence to the mores of society, he’d kissed her treacherous hand.

“Isabella goes a long way to wearing her heart on her sleeve. She would do well to be less obvious in her dislike. Lady Dangerfield has about her the air of someone who would make a bad enemy.”

Dora sucked in her lips. “You must remember your promise and mention nothing of this to my darling Bella.” Her eyes met Richard’s.

“And whatever you do, you must not separate her from me. We need to keep each other safe, just as we always have. She’s like my little sister.

More so than Grace ever was. We are forever linked. ”

Richard gazed into Dora’s eyes. Yes, there was something she was keeping from him. Some secret still between her and her Bella. A pressing necessity to keep each other safe even though Marcus was gone.