She Was Forced to Wear Black and Sit in Silence… Until the Feared Duke of War Chose Her

Chapter 13

The confession came out of him in pieces, in the order that a man tells the truth when he has spent two years telling himself a lie.

He had been called to the house at two in the morning. He had come expecting a fever. He had found the Duchess in her bed, and the room in disorder, and Mr. Edgar Marsh standing in the doorway with his shirt cuffs undone, and a maid being sent away down the passage.

“There was blood,” he said. “Not a great deal. Not from childbirth. There was no childbirth — Your Grace, there was never any child, I swear it on my life. She was not ill. She had been — she had been hurt.”

“Say the word,” the Duke said. “I want the word.”

“Violated,” Dr. Pell whispered.

Rosalind heard her own breath go out of her.

“She was alive when I came,” he went on. “Not for long. She had taken something — laudanum, from her own cabinet, a great deal of it — and she was going. She was not in her senses. And Mr. Edgar came in and shut the door and put five hundred pounds on the foot of the bed and told me it was a fever, a putrid fever, that killed her, and that I was to burn the letter she had left on the pillow.”

“And you burned it?”

“There were two letters.” The physician’s hands were shaking. “The first was to her husband. The second was to her sister, and both named him. Mr. Edgar took them from the room. He told me later that he had destroyed them. I never saw either one burn.”

The Duke said nothing.

“He told me the family would destroy me if I spoke. He told me the scandal would destroy the family, that it would be in every paper, that the Duchess’s memory would be dragged. And he said — he said Your Grace would have to live with it, and that it would be kinder if you never knew. He said it as though he were doing you a kindness.”

“He said that.”

“He said that.” The physician looked up with red eyes. “And I took the money, and I have not slept since, and I have wished a hundred times that I had let him do whatever he liked to me instead. That is the truth. That is all of it. I will swear it anywhere you like.”

They took him to the servants’ wing and locked the door, and Blackwood set a man outside it, and the library went quiet.

Rosalind found the Duke standing by the long windows, looking out at the dark park.

She came and stood beside him. She did not touch him.

“There were two letters,” she said.

“Yes.”

“He has the second one. Or he had it.”

“Yes.”

“Then we know what the weapon is.” She turned to face him. “The letter names him. If he burns it, he has only the physician and the certificate and a maid’s word — and now he has a confession and two witnesses and a paid doctor who will talk. But if he still has the letter—”

“Then he can burn it in front of me and I will have nothing.”

“Then we must make sure he cannot reach it.”

The Duke was silent.

“He will know,” he said at last. “By now he knows Blackwood rode to Brighton. He will know I am not at the ball tonight. There is only one reason I would miss a night in London in the week before my own wedding.”

“And what will he do?”

“Something stupid,” the Duke said. “Men like Edgar always do. He will not run, because running admits it. He will come here. He will come to this house and look me in the face and tell me a story, and he will want me to believe it, because he has spent his life being believed.”

He turned away from the window.

“And while he does that,” he said, “someone else will be moving the letter.”

Rosalind understood.

“Seraphina,” she said.

“Miss Harrow has been in this from the beginning. She has the paper, or she knows where it is.” He picked up the crimson-sealed letter from the table and turned it over in his hands. “And she has one advantage over us.”

“Which is?”

“She has nothing left to lose if she fails,” he said. “We do.”