The Light in the Duke's Shadow: A Historical Regency Romance Book Read online

  Could he love like that? Dare he even try? Jules paced across the room and fell onto the bed. His eyelids were heavy, and he did not bother to even remove so much as his coat. He drifted off to dreams of his mother and father.

  When Jules’ eyes came open, he looked at the moonlight on the foot of his bed. He sat up, his stiff muscles protesting every movement. He looked out the window that was over his bed. The moon was high in the night sky, which lay clear and dark.

  The room felt small and overly warm. It was absurd that it was this warm. The air that lay still and quiet now felt like it would suffocate him. Jules struggled to remove his coat and finally after wrestling with it for some time managed to get it off. He tossed it away as if to rebuke it for its stubbornness.

  Still, the air was so warm. Was he fevered? Jules pondered it. Did not fevers make a person cold? Jules stood up and felt a thirst for air. He got up and forsook his cane in his eagerness to get out of the ever-shrinking room.

  The air in the hallway hit him like an ice shower. Jules breathed in the cool air and marvelled that a thin wooden door could bar such heat. His dreams came back to him, and he looked out the window that adorned the far side of the hallway.

  Dare he love as his parents had? Jules still had no answer to that question. He had sought it in nightmares and dreams of splendour, but all he had were the smiling faces of his parents in his dreams.

  Chapter 7

  (Seasonal home of the Marquis of Winchester, London. Earlier that same evening)

  Penelope left the dining hall after the meal and went straight to Miss Lorraine’s rooms that were set down a hall from the library. The woman liked it that way. The governess was off by herself in the stillness of the house which was perfect for her love of reading.

  She knocked on the door and called, “Miss Lorraine, are you in?”

  There was a long pause before the woman’s soft voice called back, “Come in.”

  Penelope pushed open the door and spied the governess sitting on a sofa in her sitting room. Miss Lorraine waved her over, and Penelope obliged by letting the door close. Penelope walked over and took the seat beside the woman when she patted the cushion.

  “How was the meal?” Miss Lorraine asked as she closed the book she had been reading, marking the page carefully with her bookmark that Penelope had made for her many years ago.

  Penelope laughed. “Well, it would have been better if father had not been trying to auction me off to the Duke of Richmond the whole meal, while mother tried half-heartedly to interrogate the man.”

  “Oh dear,” Miss Lorraine said with a laugh of her own. “Well, parents will be parents. Each of them is looking out for your best interests in their own way.”

  Penelope scoffed, “I do not know what Father hopes to gain, but I know the man thinks that he will gain something.”

  “If he is looking for affluence, then he might gain something. If he is looking for reputation, then I am not sure that your Duke of Richmond has much to offer,” Miss Lorraine said as she picked up a dainty teacup adorned with poppies, which were her favourite flower.

  Penelope eyed her curiously. “You spoke last time we talked as if you had heard the rumours about him. I was not aware that you listened to gossip so much?”

  “I do go out occasionally, and I correspond with a few ladies of society. It is hard to avoid gossip if you speak with ladies of society, Penny.” Miss Lorraine shrugged her shoulders with such a delicate grace that Penelope envied the motion. The robe she had over herself was a silken affair that Penelope would never have been allowed to wear, but Miss Lorraine liked to dress so in the comforts of her own rooms. Outside of the rooms, she maintained English decorum, but inside her rooms, her French sensitivities reigned.

  Penelope nodded her head with a sigh. “I barely go out, and I still have to hear about things that have nothing to do with me. The Duke’s woes, however, do perplex me. I do not know how anyone can see the man as a murderer if they looked in his eyes.”

  “Not everyone has a painter’s soul, Penny,” Miss Lorraine said before she took a sip of her tea. When she sat the teacup back on its saucer, she turned towards Penelope and said, “The question you need to ask is why does it bother you so much what others think of this Duke?”

  Penelope frowned. “I have not stopped long enough to think of it. I helped save him, should it not be right that I worry over his continued existence. The Lord threw us together, and I feel as if there must be some grander design that I cannot see with my flimsy mortal eyes.”

  “Perhaps,” Miss Lorraine said as a smile spread across her lips. “Or perhaps it is the heart of a girl who has only recently discovered that she can contain the love of a man as a woman does.”

  Penelope shook her head to fervently deny the claim. “I barely know the man.”

  “Yet you can know he is innocent,” Miss Lorraine countered. “You can know something so intimate to his very nature, and yet you proclaim that you do not know him well enough to love him. I think you misunderstand the very nature of love, Penny.”

  Penelope sat, her brows furrowed, and her mind working. “What is the nature of the thing then? What is it that makes love so vexing?”

  “You cannot control it,” Miss Lorraine said with a smile. “That is what people fear so much about love. There is no rhyme or reason to it. There is only insanity and chaos. A man and woman might meet with their eyes, and in that instance, there is love. There are desire and passion without knowledge or time.”

  Penelope laughed and waved her gloved hand at Miss Lorraine dismissively. “What you speak of is lust, not love,” Penelope assured the woman.

  “What I speak of is the yearning of one soul for another,” Miss Lorraine said. She had never taken offence to Penelope’s aggressive stances, and Penelope laughed at the smile that played over the woman’s lips as she countered Penelope’s point.

  Penelope nodded. “Very well,” she said. “If love is so beyond reason, then you are assigning away the guilt of those embroiled in scandal.”

  “Not at all,” Miss Lorraine said. “Psh, Penny, of course not. We as humans were given divine free will for a reason. Just because our nature says we want something, does not mean that we have to follow it blindly. If we had no free will, then there would be no sin, because the fault would not lie within us.”

  Penelope grinned. “Ah, so we are talking theology then?”

  “I find that in most societies, everything comes back to theology. Why is that?” Miss Lorraine asked, and Penelope heard the teacher in her rise up to the surface, asking Penelope to answer a question for a quiz to prove her mastery.

  Penelope sighed and said, “I suppose it would seem that way because most civilisations are based around common moral rules of conduct. Most often rules of conduct are derived from the teachings of the spirituality of the civilisation.”

  “You sound like a philosopher, and I have never been prouder,” Miss Lorraine said with her soft musical voice encased in a smile.

  Penelope smiled back at the woman and leaned back heavily against the cushions. “Debating with you is wonderful, but I fear it has not helped calm this battle between heart and head.”

  “Well, nothing can do that,” Miss Lorraine said and gave Penelope’s arm that lay on the cushion a comforting pat. “That is the curse of free will. You have to decide it for yourself.”

  Penelope nodded and thought that was probably true. That sounded like just the kind of curse that she would be stuck with. “I do not suppose you could offer some straightforward advice?”

  “Men are simple mysteries,” Miss Lorraine said with a smile.

  Penelope laughed at the wordplay. “If ever men were anything, then they are at odds with themselves.”

  “Exactly,” Miss Lorraine said with a nod.

  With a frown, Penelope asked, “Do you think he is innocent?”

  “I thought you had certainty on your side?” Miss Lorraine asked. “I have not met the man. Indeed, if I did, t
hen he would just look like any man to me. I do not have a painter’s soul.”

  Penelope frowned. “You act as if by painting that I gain some supernatural to discern people.”

  “Painters are often observant people,” Miss Lorraine explained. “They see this that others simply overlook. I would see a man, but you might see his calloused hands and the way he limps and discern something about him that I would never have known.”

  Penelope suddenly wished to talk of anything other than the Duke of Richmond. She sighed. “What will you do once my father has sold me off?”

  Miss Lorraine clucked her tongue and gave Penelope a chiding look. It was just the sort of look that a mother would give her wayward child who was exaggerating about some perfectly normal thing. “It is a normal state of affairs for parents in this world to help their children find appropriate marriages,” Miss Lorraine reminded Penelope.

  “Yes, I am aware of that,” Penelope said with a nod of her head. “I just wish that perhaps I did not have to marry.

  Miss Lorraine smiled. “I thought you were pondering that Duke of yours.”

  “He is not my Duke,” Penelope whispered as if scandalised. “I think you are only catching me out on minor things to keep from answering my question.

  The woman patted her hair which was twisted up into a bun that was pinned most flippantly to one side with strands hanging here and there defiant of any order that might be set for them to follow. “You are perhaps wise,” Miss Lorraine said. “In truth, I do not know what I shall do. I have been your governess for so long, it seems odd to contemplate a new chapter.”

  “Will you be governess to some other girl then?” Penelope asked with interest.

  Miss Lorraine lifted her arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I had thought of going back to France once you were happily paired off with your husband of choice, but I do not know now. I have grown fond of England’s ever dreary weather. It makes me shine in comparison.”

  Penelope giggled softly. “I wish you could stay on with us.”

  “Perhaps when you have children of your own, I can come and stay with you,” Miss Lorraine said with a smile.

  Penelope had not given that any thought. If she were to be married, then the children might need a governess. “Would you really?”

  “Of course,” Miss Lorraine said as if the answer to that question should have been obvious.

  Penelope leaned over and whispered, “What about that captain you keep mentioning?”

  Miss Lorraine’s laughter was bright and warm. “Oh, that devilish fellow only knows the sea as his beloved. I fear that I may never surpass the love Captain Ralston has for his ship and the ocean. But he is a handsome rogue.”

  “And here I thought he would whisk you away the moment a ring was placed around my finger,” Penelope said with a grin.

  Miss Lorraine chided, “That man would sooner die than be tied to the shore.”

  “Then you should go sail the world with him. I have heard of such,” Penelope said encouragingly.

  Miss Lorraine laughed. She seemed lost completely in mirth. “For someone who does not want or need love, you have a strange way of wanting to foster it in others. Do you wish me such torment then?”

  “Not at all,” Penelope assured her. She flipped her hand over helplessly. “Just because the women of my family have poor luck in love it does not mean that everyone does. Surely someone out there has a love like the poets write about.”

  Miss Lorraine gave Penelope’s hand a squeeze. “You must not give up on love, dear. It is what makes the very world go around. Take your friend, Gina, for example. Love keeps her going.”

  “I do not know if I can love like that. She is braver than I,” Penelope said in a soft voice. “Besides, her husband is gone. I am grateful that she had family to fall back upon. I dare not even think what would have happened if she had not had them.”

  Miss Lorraine nodded slowly. “The world can be a cruel place for a woman. Yet, you let the cruelty win if you give up. You have to stand up for what you want.”

  “Like my mother?” Penelope asked.

  Miss Lorraine had been with the family since Penelope was a small child. If anyone outside of her parents knew of what had happened between her mother and father then Miss Lorraine would. Penelope watched the woman intently.

  At length, Miss Lorraine sighed. “I know that you think the worst of your mother. Truth be told, I have had my moments where I wondered what sort of woman she was, but I have found over the years that you cannot judge something you are not privy to, Penny.” Miss Lorraine shook her head, her expression solemn. “Lady Winchester is a driven woman, who has to deal with a wall of a man. She does her best.”

  “I used to think Father was the bravest man in the world,” Penelope said. “Then I started seeing him, really seeing him. I saw a man who was afraid of so many things, but mostly losing control of what he deemed his.”

  Miss Lorraine eyed Penelope and said, “Your painter’s soul serves you well. I have often thought your father was an odd man. He was so doting upon you when you were little and in the same breath so severe with your mother and the staff … and even me. I thought he might just split in two if he contradicted himself any more than he had already. “

  “I am glad that I no longer hold such a fantasy of the man in my mind,” Penelope said. “It is better to just know the truth.”

  Miss Lorraine frowned. “Do not let your father strip away from you what you want out of life, Penny. Do not give him that power.”

  “I do not even know what I want out of life anymore.” Penelope made a helpless gesture with her hand. “What should I do?”

  With a nod of her head, Miss Lorraine said, “Only you can answer that. I know from what your mother has said that you are not making a good showing this Season. I would think that a clever and beautiful girl like you would have suitors by the carriage load arriving here to ask your father for your hand.”

  Penelope looked down at her hand. She probably would have a suitor or two if she had put her best foot forward. Now she wondered if the men had truly been so bad or if she had just seen her father in them because she had been looking for it.

  “Perhaps I can work as a governess as you do,” Penelope suggested.

  Miss Lorraine nodded. “You are certainly clever enough. You have the bearing for it, but is that truly what you want? You have always seemed like you wanted a family of your own.”

  “I do not know what I want anymore,” Penelope said with a sigh.

  Miss Lorraine gave Penelope’s hand another squeeze. “I am sure that what you want will occur to you. You simply have to stop trying to press your hopes into someone else’s mould. Forget your mother and father, Penny. Think about what you truly want.”

  ***

  The evening after everyone retired to bed lay heavy and desolate before Penelope. If this were any other evening, Penelope might read or paint to pass away the time until she was beckoned to sleep. This, however, was not any other evening.

  On this particular evening, the Duke of Richmond laid scant rooms away dreaming. What did Dukes dream of? Penelope did not know. She imagined it was the same sort of things that others dreamed of, but perhaps their dreams were on a grander scale.

  Penelope was filled with that energy that radiated out, or seemed to, from her belly. It spread to every corner of her and set her ablaze until she thought for sure that she would just explode or perhaps burn away. Instead, she just lay there in agony, and Penelope thought that the worst fate of all.