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Chapter Twenty-Two

The Ambush…

January 22, 1843

C aleb had completed his errands by the afternoon and was eager to return home. It had been only night before last that their plans to marry more quickly and with some degree of secrecy had been solidified. It had taken some effort to camouflage his movements and to misdirect anyone who might be watching as he’d obtained the license that morning. Then he’d made arrangements with the vicar to hold the ceremony that following day. It was, at that point, a matter of hours until she would be his wife.

That thought prompted an uncomfortably sleepless night for him, as he’d been beset by memories of holding her in his arms, of kissing her sweetly curved lips—and anticipating the moment when they could do so much more. Marina Ashton had become an obsession for him. But it was not love, he reasoned. It wasn’t even infatuation. It was attraction. Desire. He liked her. He admired her. And he wanted her. It was a sound basis for marriage if not an overly romantic one.

Entering his house, he found his good mood to be fleeting. It was remarkable how instantly irritated he could be by the presence of someone in his house. There was no question that Jacob was there. The man had left his coat and hat draped over the banister in a quite slovenly fashion.

“Where is he?” Caleb demanded of the butler.

“I believe he is in your private chambers, my lord. He claimed you were expecting him. Is that not so?”

Caleb felt the rush of fury. “He is no longer permitted in this house. If I am here, you may ask whether or not I wish him to gain entry—otherwise he is barred. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly, my lord. I will be certain the remainder of the staff is thusly informed,” the elderly man said with a curt nod then made off to do just that.

Caleb took the stairs two at a time and burst into his private chambers to find Jacob passed out on the settee, his mud splattered boots leaving smears on the velvet. “Get up and get out!”

Jacob opened his eyes, appearing as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “You’re in a foul mood. A spat with your potential bride to be?”

“No. I have not had a ‘spat,’ as you put it, with Miss Ashton.”

Jacob smirked. “Any announcements on the horizon? I presume, of course, that I’ll be invited to the wedding?”

Caleb shook his head. Thinking of the handkerchief he’d found in the park the day before, he decided to test the waters by seeing how Jacob responded to the next bit of news. “There will be no grand wedding, I’m afraid. Given the ugly nature of the latest gossip, we’ve elected to marry quickly by special license. As soon as possible.”

Jacob sighed. “Why the rush, really? This girl is unknown to you, Caleb. What if she’s a fortune hunter?”

Caleb laughed bitterly. “Says the man who is currently living entirely on my charity. Or have you forgotten that it is I who have paid the lease on your apartment at The Albany? That I have covered your bill at the tailor and the bootmaker and the haberdasher. You dine at the club on my account. I’ve even covered your markers at several of the gaming hells!”

Jacob grinned. “You’re very generous to your friends.”

There was something in Jacob’s tone, some small shred of resentment, that sparked his ire. “Are you my friend, Jacob? Really? Or has our friendship slowly melted away as I’ve simply become a resource for you to exploit?” Caleb demanded.

Jacob rose then, agitated. A flash of what might have been guilt appeared briefly on his face then vanished, replaced with the sardonic mask that he hid behind. “It’s easy enough for you to judge when you’ve never had to struggle. You’ve never been without funds or prospects!”

The self-pitying and woebegone argument was hardly persuasive. “You had prospects. You were left a very generous bequest—which you then squandered,” Caleb pointed out. It hadn’t been a king’s ransom by any stretch, but it would have done him well as a stake to begin building something of his own.

Jacob began to pace, his hands clenched in fury at his sides. “Fortune? It was a pittance and well you know it! No man could have lived on such a sum!”

“It wasn’t supposed to be your livelihood forever, you dolt. It was intended as a means for you to establish your own enterprise… for you to make your way in the world. But you elected to toss it away on the turn of a card.”

“Spare me the lectures and piety, Caleb. You’re far from perfect,” Jacob sneered. “You’ve indulged in your fair share of vices over the years.”

“Indulged. Past tense. And never with such abandon! You are digging yourself deeper and deeper into this pit of debt and debauchery every day. And for what it’s worth, it does not seem to be making you happy. If anything, you are more miserable than ever.”

“What else am I to do? Work? Hardly. I was raised to be a gentleman and then expected to become a laborer! There is no place where I truly belong. My invitations in society are dependent upon your goodwill. My only value to anyone in this blasted city is my connection to you. I have no work experience because I was never permitted to work at the mines and actually learn how to run a business!”

Caleb shook his head, dismayed at how his oldest friend had become a veritable stranger. “If you are unhappy with your current financial state then you have no one but yourself to blame.”

“It isn’t as simple as that!” Jacob protested. “We were the best of friends, Caleb, and now you will not even welcome me into your home!”

“I can’t welcome you, Jacob. Not when you are already making free with it… and it isn’t your presence to which I object. I simply dislike coming home to find you making so free with not only my home but my personal chambers. You are not the man I once knew, Jacob. Not the true friend whom I could count on. You’ve changed.”

“I’ve changed?” Jacob said, his voice rising with ire. “Your newly elevated station has gone to your head. You’re so puffed up with your own importance you can’t even see what a prig you’ve become! All this talk of marriage and settling down. It’s all obligations and responsibilities when you should be sowing the most glorious wild oats a man could enjoy!”

Caleb shook his head. “There is more to life, Jacob, than going from one party to the next, one card game to the next, one bawdy house to the next! We are nearing thirty. Isn’t it time to do more with your life than simply sow wild oats?”

He shrugged. “Some of us haven’t the luxury of settling down with a wife… After all, you’ve never allowed me any say in the running of the mines. Now I’ll never have the sort of income required to maintain a household and support a woman in anything other than genteel poverty!”

“Perhaps finding a woman who would think genteel poverty worth it to be with you might be the answer to your unhappiness,” Caleb suggested.

Jacob began to pace. “I didn’t come here to fight with you or to be given advice like I’m some halfwit. I came because… I’m in a bit of trouble.”

“Of course, you are. How much do you owe?” Caleb asked, completely exasperated with the whole of it.

“It’s not that sort of trouble. There was a bit of a row the other night and the gentleman who kept me from being beaten to a pulp has asked to meet with you. He has an investment opportunity he wishes to present to you, and I told him I would arrange it… It’s a debt of honor, Caleb. Surely even you cannot deny me that courtesy?”

“Tell me who he is and I shall make an effort to seek him out.”

“It would be easier for me just to take you there.”

Caleb stared at him for a moment. Lying. It was obvious he was being deceitful. Feeling that he had no choice but to call his bluff, he reached into his pocket and retrieved the handkerchief he’d found in the park. “I believe you dropped this?”

“In the corridor?” Jacob asked, his expression inscrutable.

“No. In the park. Where you had just sabotaged the wheel on my phaeton. Miss Ashton could have been gravely injured or even killed. But that was rather your point, wasn’t it?”

“You’re mad.” The accusation fell flatly from Jacob’s lips, lacking any real sincerity.

A muscle ticced in Caleb’s jaw. “No. I thought I was, at first. I questioned myself… what could my oldest friend possibly have to gain by attempting to murder my betrothed, after all? But then I remembered those old and terrible rumors. The ones about your parentage. That the man who worked for my grandfather was not your sire at all.”

“It’s rubbish.” Again the denial lacked any power.

“Is it?” Caleb demanded. “We look alike, Jacob. So much so that everywhere we have gone for years people have thought us siblings. Are we?”

Jacob’s expression hardened. “Does it matter? Whatever my blood may be, the pittance left to me by the old man says all that need be said.”

Caleb shook his head. “You’re wrong. He loved you. I know he did. But he was fearful for you… he didn’t leave you more because he knew you’d squander it. He made me promise to keep you out of the running of the mines because he no longer trusted you to do what was in the best interest of everyone there. You’d cut corners and endanger lives. That is quite obvious to me now, even though I wondered then if it was the right choice.”

“And now you’re turning on me, as well,” Jacob accused.

“No. You turned on me. You tried to kill an innocent young woman to prevent me from marrying her.”

“I bloody well did not!” Jacob shouted, and it rang with truth. “I made no attempt on your betrothed’s life. If you can believe nothing else, believe that I would not dirty my own hands to do such a thing… and we are both well aware I lack the funds to hire someone for the deed.”

Caleb took note of that primarily because it was the first thing Jacob had uttered that contained even the faintest ring of sincerity. But he wasn’t done. Not by far. “You’ve done nothing but try to prevent me from making a match and assuming my inheritance… from day one you’ve been working against me. Even more so since I informed you of my intent to marry her. Why?”

Jacob sneered at him. “Because you don’t deserve it! You don’t deserve to have the mines, the title, and the fortune! You don’t bloody well deserve it. What about me? If I am your half-brother, and we both know the truth regardless of whether or not it is ever said, I am older by two whole months. By all rights, everything that is in your possession should have been mine!” The words rang with bitterness, with resentment and envy.

Caleb simply walked to the door, opened it, and waited. “Leave,” he finally ordered. “Leave and do not return.”

“You’ll regret this,” Jacob insisted. “You will rue this day just as you will rue your decision to marry a woman whose own mother was little better than a trollop.”

Caleb held his temper, but only just. “My only regret, at this time, is being foolish enough to call you friend. And it takes more than blood to render one family.”

*

Jacob left the house fuming. For nearly thirty years, he’d been second place, standing in the background as everything that should have been his went to Caleb. Initially, he’d been able to accept it. Bastards didn’t have rights to anything. It was simply the way of the world. But watching windfall after windfall drop into Caleb’s lap, it had become harder and harder to ignore the resentment. It bubbled within him constantly, like a pot ready to boil over. He was lashing out at the man who was his brother in truth, but had been his friend throughout life.

He was the eldest child of their father, though he had never been and never would be acknowledged as such. But he didn’t hate his brother. He didn’t despise Caleb, but that resentment was an ugly and insidious thing writhing about inside him, making him say and do things that he would only regret later. But his concerns about Miss Ashton were legitimate. Surely her reputation had been at least partially earned! And if so, she was not the sort of wife Caleb would need.

Was it truly such an unpardonable sin to stop him from marrying a woman who would likely cuckold him if rumors were true? Another voice whispered the answer in his mind. Yes. If that is his choice.

Jacob pushed such thoughts aside. He couldn’t afford them at the moment.

Stepping outside, he had not gone far when he noted a familiar carriage waiting at the end of the street. It was Williams. The man was there for a reason and Jacob knew it was best to get on with it and find out what that was.

Making his way to the conveyance, a footman hopped down and opened the door for him just as he reached it. Climbing inside, he took note that Williams was not alone. Lady Crowden was with him. None of it sat well with him. He didn’t like the lying and scheming. He didn’t like that a wedge was being driven between himself and Caleb, who was his only friend and also, even if never acknowledged, his only family.

“Did you learn anything new?”

“He has obtained a special license. I heard it from his own lips,” Jacob said. “He means to marry the chit by week’s end… He also stated that someone had made an attempt on Miss Ashton’s life. While I did follow them in the park, I did not tamper with his phaeton. Did you?”

Williams shook his head. “Of course we did not. Our goal, Mr. Danvers, is to see the woman humiliated and ruined socially. Not to see her dead. In truth, her death would be most inconvenient for us as it would make her an object of pity. He’s likely overreacting.”

Jacob knew Caleb was not the sort to leap to conclusions. If he’d said someone intended to see her harmed, then he believed it to be true. And yet what Williams said rang true. At least part of it did. He might not have orchestrated the attempt on her life, but he didn’t view Caleb’s response as an overreaction. And that could only mean that he knew more than he was willing to reveal. Given what he’d learned of the man during their short acquaintance, that made sense. It meshed with everything the man had said thus far. His former betrothed had abandoned him at the altar and humiliated him publicly. He wanted to turn the tables on her and see her as the object of ridicule. Lady Crowden’s involvement was something of a mystery though. Whether Williams was being entirely truthful or not, either about his motivations or the attempts on Miss Ashton’s life, Jacob understood that they were not to be trusted. Neither of them.

“You were supposed to lure him out… to get him to the carriage so he could be spirited away,” Lady Crowden stated. “But you failed.”

“He’s not inclined to trust me right now. Or anyone for that matter since someone tried to murder the woman he intends to marry,” Jacob snapped. “I’ll get him to accompany me somewhere and you can do whatever it is you’re planning to do. But I’ll be well out of it. Out of it and out of debt.” Even as he uttered the words, a pit formed in his stomach. Guilt, shame, regret—all of it coiled together inside him. He was betraying his friend. His brother, even if that would never be acknowledged publicly.

“That is our understanding,” Williams agreed.

It wasn’t a yes, but an evasion. Jacob realized then that he’d made a truly terrible error in judgment in throwing in his lot with the pair of them. Everything Caleb had said about his choices had been true. His present situation was entirely of his own making and that was a bitter pill indeed.