The Bridal Quest (20 page)

"No. They were quite alone. The kidnappers got away clean as a whistle."

"How did you learn what had happened to them?"

"What? Why, Cecil told me."

"But how did he come to know? Did he receive a note?"

"Oh! Oh, yes, he told me that they had sent him a letter, demanding that he hand over the Bankes rubies for his son—and Selena, of course. Beautiful necklace, given to the family by Queen Elizabeth herself. Part of a treasure trove captured from the Spanish queen."

She stopped after that, and finally her sister said impatiently, "Well, go on, Pansy, what happened after that? What did he do with the necklace?"

"Oh, well, he gave it to his man, Owenby. You probably don't remember him. He was Cecil's valet, had been with him from the time Cecil was barely more than a lad. Owenby was someone whom Cecil could trust absolutely."

"So Cecil did not think that this chap took the necklace himself and merely pretended to give it to the kidnappers?" Lady Odelia asked.

"No! No, of course not." Pansy looked shocked. "Owenby would never have done anything to harm Cecil. Never. He— he took the necklace and gave it to them, but they did not return Gideon."

"Or Lady Radbourne," Irene added.

"Yes, of course."

"Do you mean that this valet met the kidnappers face-to-face?" Irene asked, her voice tinged with surprise. "Was he able to recognize them?"

"What? Oh, no, of course not. I believe he left the necklace ... somewhere, and then they were going to let Gideon go, but they did not. Gideon was supposed to be, um, up by that large old oak. The one along the road into town. So Owenby left the necklace for them, then went to the tree, but Gideon was not there. Owenby waited and waited, of course, but the boy never appeared. When Owenby went back to where he had left the necklace, it had been retrieved."

"What did Lord Radbourne do then?" Francesca asked, her interest obviously aroused.

"Why, he sent Owenby to look for them, of course. He looked everywhere. Went to Liverpool and Southampton, all the ports."

"The ports?" Irene asked, surprised. "He thought the kidnappers had taken them out of the country?"

The elder Lady Radbourne stopped, blinking, and color seeped into her cheeks. "Oh, well, I—I'm not sure. I suppose they would not have, would they?" She glanced around, as though seeking answers from the room.

Her sister fixed her with a firm stare. "Pansy, stop being so featherbrained. Where did Cecil send Owenby to look for them?"

"Well, I know the fellow went to London to make inquiries, but no one had seen them," Pansy offered weakly.

"And that is all you can remember about the affair?" Lady Odelia asked.

"It was a long time ago!" Pansy flared up. "And we were all rather overset at the time. I— My memory is perhaps not the best."

"It sounds as though this man Owenby is the person to talk to," Irene remarked. "Is he still alive, Lady Radbourne?"

Pansy turned to Irene with a look almost of horror. "No! I mean, well, yes, he is alive, but he no longer works here. He, um, left our employ after Cecil died."

"Does he live in the village? Gideon—I mean, Lord Radbourne—could go talk to him."

Pansy blinked, then said weakly, "Oh, I am sure that is unnecessary. My grandson needn't speak to the man. It would—it would be too painful, surely."

"Nonsense," her sister told her stoutly. "Why should it be painful? I imagine the boy would like to learn all he can about what happened to him. Better to know, isn't it, than to wonder?"

"Better to know what?"

Everyone turned to look at the doorway, where Gideon stood looking at them. He repeated, "Better to know what? Wonder about what? Is this boy you are discussing me, Aunt Odelia?"

"Yes, of course. Irene brought up the subject of what happened to you all those years ago."

"Did she now?" Gideon's gaze flickered to her.

"Yes," Irene replied, facing him calmly. "I am sorry if you find the matter disturbing. I had some questions ..."

"As you know
I
do," he told her. "And I do not find the matter disturbing. How like you, of course, to charge the battlements." A smile flickered across his lips. He turned toward his grandmother. "I should have broached the subject earlier with you."

"Pansy was telling us that the man your father sent in search of you is still alive," Lady Odelia told him, taking charge. "He could tell you much more about it, I am sure."

"Your grandmother was just about to tell us where Owenby lives now," Irene added, bringing the conversation back to the question she had asked Pansy just before Gideon came into the room, a question that she noticed the woman had never answered. Gideon's grandmother, she thought, seemed peculiarly reluctant to talk about the whole incident.

Pansy shot her a look that, coming from some other woman, would have been venomous, but which from Pansy came across as more agonized than fierce. "Lady Irene ... it really ..." She swiveled her head toward Gideon but obviously found no comfort there. "I—I'm not sure where the valet went. But really, Gideon, there is little point in your seeing him." Her face turned entreating. "It would be better if you just let this whole matter ... remain in the past."

Gideon looked at her for a long moment. "No, I don't think so. I am sorry if this distresses you, Grandmother, but I would like to talk to this man. Owenby, you said his name was?"

"Please, Gideon ..." Pansy's voice was soft, seemingly on the verge of tears. "What good will this accomplish? Owenby probably does not remember it well. It was so long ago."

"Oh, stop being such a ninny, Pansy," Lady Odelia told her sister bluntly. "As if he wouldn't remember charging all over the country, searching for a gang of kidnappers!"

"Odelia!" Pansy looked from her to Gideon. "Please, can we not talk about something more pleasant?"

Gideon's expression hardened. "Why are you so reluctant to discuss this? Do you not want me to learn the truth? Are you afraid that I will find out how very little my father cared? How little interest he showed in finding me?"

"No!" Pansy cried. "Cecil cared! He was devastated! You must not think that your father was indifferent. He was in such a state—I have never seen a man more overset than he was. She didn't deserve his sorrow!"

Gideon froze. The air was suddenly thick with silence.

"What?" Gideon asked at last. "What do you mean, 'she didn't deserve his sorrow'? Are you talking about my mother?"

"No! I didn't mean—" Pansy cast a panicky look around the room.

"Pansy!" Lady Odelia's voice was sharp and commanding. "Stop dithering. Tell me right now—what
did
you mean by that?"

Pansy looked as if she might faint, but finally she squared her shoulders. "Forgive me, Cecil," she murmured, throwing a glance upward, then added, in a stronger voice, "But I refuse to let you believe that your father was not concerned about you, Gideon. It was Selene who separated you from your father and your family."

"What?" She was greeted by a chorus of astonished voices.

Pansy raised her chin somewhat defiantly. "You were not kidnapped, Gideon. Your mother ran off with her lover and took you with her."

For a long moment no one spoke, too shocked to utter anything. Irene cast an anxious glance at Gideon, who had gone pale and was staring at his grandmother.

It was Lady Odelia, not unexpectedly, who spoke first. "Are you mad? Pansy!"

"No. I am not mad," Pansy replied, though her voice had dropped to so low a whisper that it was difficult to make out what she said. "It's the truth."

"No! It cannot be!" Lady Teresa's voice rose in a wail. "She was kidnapped. Everyone knows that. She died years and years ago!"

"Are you saying that Cecil lied to everyone all those years ago?" Lady Odelia pressed her sister. "That you lied?"

Pansy nodded, and suddenly her eyes flooded with tears that began to spill down her face. "Yes. Yes. We lied. To everyone."

She pressed her hand against her mouth, as if in a futile attempt to stop her words.

"No, no," Lady Teresa moaned, shaking her head.

"But why?" Irene asked, unable to keep still. Her heart clenched in her chest as she thought of what Gideon must be feeling now. His whole world had been overturned only a few months ago when the duke had found him. Now it had been thrown into a tumult .all over again. "Why did you pretend that they were kidnapped?"

"Because Cecil could not bear for anyone to know the truth!" Pansy cried. "The scandal ..."

"He did it to cover up a scandal?" Irene asked, appalled.

"Not for himself!" Pansy cried. "For her! He did it for Selene. Even then he loved her. He—he was certain that she would see the folly of her ways and return to him in a few days. He did not want her to have to suffer the sort of gossip that would ensue if everyone knew what she had done."

"More likely his pride would not let him admit that his wife would leave him," Odelia snapped.

"Odelia! How can you say that?" her sister protested. "Cecil's heart was broken. You were always unfair to him."

"And you were always a weak reed," Odelia retorted. "How do you know that she ran away?"

"Why, Cecil told me, of course." Pansy looked at Odelia with amazement. "He would not have withheld such a thing from me. He came to me, waving the letter Selene had left for him. It was all blotched with tears—as if she were the one whose heart had been broken. She told him that she was sorry, but she loved someone else, and that she was leaving with him that night. She begged him to let her go, not to look for her. Cecil found it in his study the next morning."

"And he just let her go?" Gideon asked. His voice was quiet, his face like stone. "He let her take his son from him?"

"I told you, he was certain she would be back. He was positive that she would regret her actions and return, full of apologies, so he made up the story of the kidnapping, pretended that the letter he had found in her room was a notice from the kidnappers. He had Owenby take the necklace and ride off as if he were fulfilling their demands, but of course the man just brought back the necklace and Cecil hid it away, then pretended that it was gone."

Pansy sighed, then went on, her voice quavering a little. "After a time, when he realized that Selene was not going to return or even contact him again, Cecil fell into a dark despair. He stayed in his room. He lost interest in everything. Why, the estate manager had to come to
me
to ask about problems that arose, because Gideon would not see him."

Pansy's face reflected the seeming horror of that memory.

"But eventually he must have come to his senses," Lady Odelia told her sister. "I know Cecil did not spend the remainder of his life locked away in his room, grieving."

"No, of course he did not," Pansy agreed. "Finally he returned to himself. He began to take an interest in things again, bit by bit. He did send Owenby out to try to find her and Gideon, but by then the trail had grown terribly cold. He could find no trace of Selene or their son. Cecil was sure that she and her lover must have had a plan laid out before they left. He thought they must have driven straight to a port and sailed out of the country almost immediately. Owenby went to London, even to Liverpool, but he could find no record of their having been there or having boarded a ship, though no doubt they would have been smart enough to use false names. And they could have sailed from anywhere. Cecil sent a man to Europe to look for them, but he had no success, either. In all likelihood they sailed to one of the Colonies. Any place where they would have been impossible to find."

"But what about his son?" Lady Odelia burst out.

Irene's eyes flashed to Gideon's face. The old woman's question was the same one that burned on her tongue, but she would not let herself speak it, knowing the agony that Gideon must be suffering. He had learned that he had not been torn from his home and family and thrown into a life of hardship and poverty by villains, but by his own mother. And his father had not even tried to get him back, at least at first.

Obviously Lady Odelia had no such compunctions, however, as she said, "Gideon was his heir. I cannot believe that Cecil would not have gone after him and brought him back."

"I urged him to look for the boy," Pansy insisted. "I reminded him that he must have an heir. It did not matter if she was gone, but the succession was at stake." She shook her head. "He did not seem to care. He said it did not matter, that his brother was there to inherit after him. He refused to pursue a woman who did not want him. Who had gone to such great lengths to escape him."

She looked around at the others' shocked expressions, then added guiltily, "He did not know that Gideon was on his own in London. It never occurred to us that Selene would abandon the boy. How were we to know? We thought that Gideon was all right, that he was with his mother."

Lady Odelia shook her head, looking dazed. "I cannot believe it. Even of Cecil. How could you have let him? How could you have been so bacon-brained?"

"I didn't know!" Pansy wailed, bursting into full-blown tears. "I—I meant no harm!"

Gideon turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

"Oh, hush, Pansy!" Lady Odelia exclaimed in irritation, turning to her sister and mechanically patting her shoulder.

Only a foot away from her, Lady Teresa looked about to succumb to a similar bout of tears. Irene, ignoring them both, jumped to her feet and hurried out of the room.

"Gideon!"

He was already halfway down the hall, but he stopped and turned back to look at her. She hurried toward him.

"Wait! I will go with you," she said.

He shook his head. His face was dark with emotion, his eyes fierce. "No. I am not fit company right now."

He swung around and continued down the hall, not waiting for her. She ignored his words, trotting after him.

"I am sure you are not," she told him, catching up to him as he opened the door onto the terrace. "But neither are you fit to be alone."

Ungraciously he shrugged and strode off across the terrace. She walked with him, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. Wisely she did not try to talk to him, merely walked with him down through the garden.

Finally, as if he could hold it in no longer, he burst out, "Clearly he cared nothing for me! He let me go without even trying to get me back." Gideon cast a burning look at Irene. "How can that be? A father who has no interest in his son? Even my grandmother seemed to care nothing about me except for the fact that I was his heir!"

"Perhaps your father believed that you were best off with your mother. You were quite young, only four. And he did not know that you were on the streets of London, after all."

Gideon gave her a speaking look, and Irene did not try to continue her argument. Clearly it was weak, and, in truth, she could not even believe it herself.

After a few more minutes, Gideon came to a halt. They had reached a wide-spreading oak that stood at the far end of the garden, a large and solitary outpost of the woods that started not far past it. An iron bench stood beneath its shady branches, and during the day one could sit upon it and contemplate the countryside spread out before one.

Gideon clamped his hands around the back of the bench and looked out, as if he could see the vista before him. He shook his head and began to speak again, not looking at Irene out staring straight in front of him.

"My father's indifference to me does not really matter, I suppose, I have long suspected that he did not care enough to look for me. But to find out that my mother—" He bit off the words.

Irene reached out silently and laid her hand upon one of his. "I am so sorry."

"I always assumed that my mother was dead. Otherwise, I thought, she would not have let me go. Even as a child, I recall being certain that she must be dead or I would have been with her. After Rochford found me and I learned about the 'kidnapping', I was more certain than ever that she was dead. I knew, deep down, that she, at least, had loved me. Now ... to find out that she abandoned me, that she fled with a lover and left her child to whatever fate awaited him on the streets of London ...! What sort of woman could do that? What kind of a woman was she?"

"You do not know any of that is true!" Irene protested. "Perhaps your mother
did
die. You cannot remember what happened—you were too young. Just because the two of you were not abducted, it doesn't mean that she abandoned you. After all, why would she have taken you with her at all if she did not want you? It would have been far easier to have left you behind. It is quicker to travel without a child. Easier to pass unnoticed. And she must have realized that a man would be more likely to chase his wife down if she had taken his son and heir with her when she left him." She shook her head. "No, I cannot help but think that she took you only because she could not bear to leave you behind. She must have loved you very much. Whatever she might have felt about her husband or her marriage or this supposed lover, she must have loved you."

"Then how did I end up alone in London?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose we shall ever know," Irene replied honestly. "Any number of things could have happened. She might have fallen ill and died there, so the man she was traveling with left you. Or perhaps he abandoned her along with you, and then she grew ill and died, or was somehow taken from you."

"Or her lover could have grown tired of hauling a brat around with them and demanded that she leave the boy behind. She betrayed her husband. She besmirched her own name. Why would she balk at abandoning an inconvenient child?"

Irene's heart was heavy with pity for Gideon. She could not imagine how it must feel to have learned that his mother had abandoned him. Despite her troubles with her father through the years, she had at least always been certain of her mother's love. What, she wondered, must it be like to have had none of that sure, abiding love? Gideon had been on his own for as long as he could remember, with no one to depend upon or trust absolutely.

"I am so sorry," she murmured, aware of how weak her words must sound. She could think of no way to convey the depth of her sympathy, and of course, she could not fully understand how he felt.

Gideon shrugged, his face set and unemotional. "This news changes nothing in my life. After all, I have no real memory of my mother. It is not as if someone I knew betrayed me."

"Yes, but what you believed is as important as what you actually remembered. You were certain that your mother did not abandon you or else you would have been bound to feel betrayed by her."

"What I believed did not change the facts. I was alone then, just as I am alone now."

"No, you are not alone!" Irene cried, taking a step closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm. She drew a breath, ready to point out that she was with him, but she realized at the last moment that she was committing herself to a closeness that was not true. She might be literally with him right now, but that situation would not last long. She would not remain with him as a wife or even as a friend when these two weeks were gone.

Her hand fell from his arm, and she looked away from him. "That is ... I mean, you are about to get married. You will have the companionship and support of your wife, so you will no longer be alone."

He let out a short, unamused laugh. "A wife who is willing to marry such a disreputable sort as I in order to gain wealth and a title? Somehow I cannot feel that ours will be a close union."

"It does not have to be that way," she protested.

Gideon cocked an eyebrow in a look of disbelief. "You cannot really believe that. It scarcely jibes with your refusal to marry. How can I expect support and companionship, even affection from a woman whom I will, in your opinion, tyrannize and abuse?"

"I do not think that you will tyrannize or abuse your wife," she replied candidly.

"You certainly made a very good pretense of believing just that."

"No, I am simply not willing to subject myself to the life I would have if I am wrong. But I am not like most women. Few women expect or even think of the worst that a marriage can provide. Many woman are in love with their husbands. There are those who maintain that marriage is a partnership, a true union of two people. At the very least, it will provide you with a wife and children—you will have the family you never had as a child."

"I am not looking to create a family for myself," Gideon replied curtly. "I told you that when I first met you. I am simply doing what is reasonable for a man in my position. What is expected of me. I have no intention of marrying for love."