The Dangerous Love of a Rogue (47 page)

“I need my bonnet.” Mary turned and hurried inside, glad for a focus to prevent her crumbling entirely. She could help Andrew by helping his sister.

She returned to the hall within a quarter hour, tying the ribbons of her bonnet in a bow beneath her chin.

Andrew’s letter was tucked in her bodice against her skin, beneath her day dress and spencer.

John looked ducal as he offered his arm. “We will be as quick as we can, Katherine, you must not worry.”

John’s unmarked carriage stood waiting on the drive, and his grooms and footmen were no longer dressed in the Pembroke livery. When they drove off Pembroke land, it left by the rear exit from the park. “Just in case Kilbride has someone watching the gates,” John said quietly.

When the carriage reached Maidstone they stopped at a coaching inn. “Where are we to go then, Mary?”

Her fingers shaking Mary slipped the letter out from her bodice, and showed John the address.

“Come then.”

One of John’s footmen opened the carriage door, bowing with a little less gravity than was normal.

John must have told them to act as if he was not a duke.

Mary gripped John’s arm as they walked past the Bishop’s Palace, and the ford beside it, to find the row of terraced cottages Andrew had described to her.

Most of the narrow front gardens were planted with vegetables, apart from one; Caroline’s was planted with a mass of flowers, hollyhocks and delphiniums, and beautiful frail little flowers which looked like tiny bonnets.

“I think it is best you wait here,” Mary said to John as they neared. “Lady Kilbride may not open the door if she sees a gentleman calling.”

John nodded, stopping.

Mary’s fingers slipped from his arm, and she bent to open the low gate. It led onto a narrow, paved pathway.

The aged oak door was wide but just as squat as the thatched cottage.

Lady Kilbride must be very aware of her fall in circumstance. Previously she must have lived in properties almost as grand as John’s.

Mary dropped the knocker against the door four times. The low thuds vibrated through the wood.

There was no answer.

But beyond the door Mary heard whispers. She waited.

“Who is there?” It was an older woman’s voice.

“It is Lady Framlington.” Mary leant a little towards the door, so her voice would not carry on the air. “Your brother sent me, he could not come himself.”

Another hushed, urgent conversation ensued.

Then finally the sound of a bolt shifting breached the door.

A woman Mary presumed to be a housekeeper opened it. She wore a black dress, dusted with flour; as though she had been interrupted at work in the kitchen, and stripped off an apron a moment ago.

She bobbed a curtsy.

Beyond her, Mary saw Lady Kilbride. She stood in the shadows further back, with a brown woollen shawl wrapped tightly about her. Her dress beneath it looked plain, homely, and her hair was simply coiled and pinned in a knot.

“May I come in? My brother is with me.”

Lady Kilbride’s gaze reached past Mary, instantly afraid.

Mary entered, holding out the letter as the serving woman stepped aside. “I have this from Andrew, so you know that what I say is true.”

Lady Kilbride took it, her hand shaking.

Mary turned to the door, and beckoned John.

When she turned back Lady Kilbride had paled. “He has accused Drew of being my lover.” She looked at Mary. “Incest is a crime. I never thought…
Oh God
.” She suddenly turned from pale to a sickly white.

Mary hurried forward and gripped her arm, as John entered behind her, removing his hat and bending his head to pass beneath the low lintel.

He could not even stand straight in the hall.

“This way Ma’am,” the serving woman directed them to a parlour.

“You must sit,” Mary whispered, guiding Lady Kilbride. There were two armchairs in the room; Mary helped Lady Kilbride to one and bid John take the other, as he could not stand comfortably.

“Drew will regret helping me,” Lady Kilbride said quietly, her fingers gripping Andrew’s letter so hard it crumpled.

“He does not. In fact the last thing he said to me, was that he could not regret it.”

“Your Grace.” Lady Kilbride moved to stand suddenly, when John sat, but Mary pressed a hand on her shoulder to keep her seated.

“Forgive me, I would continue to stand but it is a little awkward,” John said “and I would rather you felt able to be informal in my presence… besides it is far easier to converse, with us both seated.”

Lady Kilbride’s hands trembled as they rested in her lap, the letter quivering in her fingers.

“I have promised to protect you,” John continued. Ignoring her discomfort. “You will be far safer at Pembroke Place, no one can come within miles of the house without being seen, and my wife, Katherine, and Mary and I, will be there to keep you company. Of course the house and grounds will be at your disposal. You may mix with the family, or avoid us entirely if you wish. But there is a music room and a library to entertain you also. It need not be confinement as this must feel, and you need not live in fear, Lady Kilbride?”

“Why would you help me?” She looked from John to Mary.

Mary remembered Andrew’s poisonous family. They had been Lady Kilbride’s family too. “Because you are my sister now…” Mary dropped to her haunches and gripped one of Lady Kilbride’s hands.

“You are together again?” Her light brown eyes were like Andrew’s. Like their mother’s Mary supposed.

“Yes.”

Lady Kilbride’s other hand gripped their joined ones. “He deserves to be happy and I knew you would make him so. But he is a stubborn man.”

“And a good one.”

“Yes, and a good one.” Lady Kilbride smiled. “I owe him much.”

“The two of you are not alone anymore. Will you come with us?” John asked, his baritone cutting the stillness in the room.

Lady Kilbride glanced at him, but then her gaze found Mary’s. “I will come.”

“Then we should go directly.” Mary stood. “John can send a cart back for your possessions.”

Chapter 38

As Drew stood before the magistrate, accounting for his actions, the Duke of Wiltshire sat nearby watching.

The pompous ass who quizzed Drew merely grunted at his answers, and glowered, as a clerk scribbled every word on paper.

Every expression said the man did not believe Drew innocent. The world believed too deeply in the façade rumour and his family had cast.

But incest… That was a hideous crime. Drew’s stomach rolled.

His only counter evidence was that he had been protecting Caro. But there was no law against a man beating his wife – and how the hell did a man prove he’d not had intercourse with his sister.

Nausea spun in his blood again.

How could people think him so low? Where were his mother and his brothers to deny such a thing?

Hatred burned in his veins as he walked from the court to await an intermediate verdict on his fate.

Wiltshire sat on the hard wooden bench outside the court rooms, beside Drew, in silence.

Drew leant forward, his hands gripping his brow.

The fear biting at his innards was not for his own fate, his thoughts were for Mary – and Caro… Where was Caro now? What would this mean for her?

“Lord Framlington!” His name echoed about the stone hall.

As he stood, he met Wiltshire’s gaze. The man did not look as though he believed Drew’s fate would be positive.

In the wood panelled, dark court room, he faced the magistrate. “You will be held in custody until I have spoken with Lady Kilbride,”

Drew bit his tongue, he would not tell them where she was.

Kilbride had influenced this. He would use it to find Caro – and regardless the evidence of a rogue against the evidence of a Marquis would not count.

“You will tell the clerk Lady Kilbride’s address. Lord Kilbride has assured me that you know it, and remember Lord Framlington, fleeing from London at the point you were accused does not imply innocence.”

No words from him would solve this. He was being found guilty by the bias of society, who judged the person they had painted, not the truth.

When he left the court he looked at the clerk. “If you think I will give my sister back into Kilbride’s hands, you may—“

“Lord Framlington!” Wiltshire gripped Drew’s arm. “Have sense. Unless you wish a noose about your neck then you must agree, and I do not wish to see my niece a widow when she is barely wed.” Then he leaned to Drew’s ear and whispered harshly. “Lady Kilbride is safe with John. Tell them.”

Damn it.

“I shall agree to it if the magistrate will go to her, and if His Grace, the Duke of Wiltshire may accompany him and be present while she is questioned.”

“I will make sure of it.” Wiltshire agreed. But it was not his decision. Yet the weight of a Duke’s voice exceeded any, bar royalty, and Wiltshire was a principled man.

Wiltshire paid for Drew to have a solitary cell, sheets on his bed, and hot meals.

“Your Grace, I am grateful. But please tell Mary—”

“I will tell her that I am doing my utmost to get you home to her.”

Drew held Wiltshire’s gaze. He had done nothing to deserve this man’s help, and yet he was helping.

He was helping because he valued Mary.

“Tell her I love her too, and tell Pembroke to make sure she eats, she has a habit of not eating when she is distressed and she has lost enough weight recently, she must think of the child.”

“The child?” Wiltshire’s eyebrows rose.

Andrew just looked at him in answer, what was there to say.

Wiltshire’s hand rested on Drew’s shoulder. “We will get you out of this.”

When he left, the key turned in the cell door locking Drew in and leaving him in gloomy silence.

He hated silence and solitude. It encouraged introspection and he had always avoided that.

He lay down on the narrow bunk, with its uncomfortable straw mattress, and shut is eyes. He could not sleep, though.

* * *

Drew paced the length of the small cell, then sat for a while and then paced again. He would hear nothing today, they would be out at Pembroke’s speaking with Caro.

At midday, Drew heard the jangle of keys.

He went to the small square of bars in the door and strained to look along the hall. The guard was trailed by Brooke. Gripping the bars, Drew’s forehead pressed to the cold metal, he smiled, as Peter did. But Drew’s smile had a bitter twist as he stepped back so the guard could open the door.

Confinement was torture.

Brooke threw a paper and a packet of cigars on to Drew’s narrow mattress.

Drew sat down, as the guard shut and locked the door.

Hands in his pockets Brooke looked down.

“Feel free to claim a seat…” Drew offered.

“If it has fleas I might decline.”

A humorous sound broke from the back of Drew’s throat. “If it has fleas then I do.”

“Mark and Harry came with me, but they would only let one of us up here.”

Drew looked up and met Peter’s gaze. “It is a sorry ending, is it not?”

“I doubt it is the end,” Peter moved the paper aside and sat among the fleas. “You are a part of Pembroke’s clan now, my friend. They are like a damned army, sweeping through every ballroom and salon dispelling the rumours. Someone mentions your name and one of them is there, putting them straight. Uncles, aunts, cousins, cousins of cousins… They have influence across three quarters of the society. You are in the fold and being looked after. Marrying that girl was probably the best thing you could have done.”

Drew looked at Peter. “It was.” But not for that reason.

Peter slapped a hand on his shoulder. “When you get out of here, you will no longer wish to know your old friends now you have such new and powerful ones.”

“You will always be my friend.”

“Mary, may not like that.”

“Mary will not mind. Things are good between us again.”

“I am glad for you then.”

“I’m to be a father.”

“I’ll be damned, although I suppose it was inevitable. Poor child.”

Drew smiled. “If I get out of here, just for your humour, and because I could not have you as my groom’s man, I shall make you godfather, and if I do not get out of here, you must tell Mary it is what I wished. The child will be in the cradle of her family, but my child ought to have some memory of me.”

“You wish me to share tales of how many cups you can drink and still stand…” When Drew did not laugh Brooke’s hand settled on his shoulder. “You have Pembroke’s and Wiltshire’s influence you will get out.”

“I hope so but I am not certain. Kilbride has influence too.”

“Enough!” The guard shouted through the square opening in the door, announcing that Peter’s allotted minutes were up.

* * *

Mary leaned against the drawing room door, her palms, and her ear, pressed to the wood trying to listen, but they were too far away, and Caroline spoke too quietly.

She pulled away and turned to look at John. “I cannot hear.”

“You should not be listening.”

“I know but what if they do not believe her.”

“Then they are idiots. It is obviously not true.”

Mary had been stalwart since they’d fetched Caroline, suppressing her fear, because tears would do Andrew no good. She’d ordered tea for the Magistrate and Richard when they had arrived because Kate was in bed, and acted hostess… Yet…

“Mary…” John held her as the tears suddenly flowed.

“I cannot bear it…I cannot think of what may happen. I cannot…”

John’s hand stroked over her back. “I can make no promises, but Richard is trying to solve this.”

She sobbed against his lapel.

“I sent a letter to Mama, I asked them to come. Mary, I think you need Mama here.”

She cried even harder. She’d been brave for two days, she did not wish to be brave anymore. She wished to be with Andrew. She lifted her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Do you think Richard will take me back with him so I can see Andrew?”

John’s hands framed her face. “No. It is better you stay away, let Richard manage it, and I doubt, with the amount of pride your husband has, he would thank us for letting you see him in such a situation. Stay here and support Lady Kilbride. That is how you may help. She needs you; you are the only person Lady Kilbride trusts.”