The Light in the Duke's Shadow: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 13

  There was nothing so long and cold as a night spent when the one you wish to see was so close and yet so far. Penelope rolled over and cursed herself. She cursed her governess too. Perhaps her father was right, and those love poems and prose should have been left aside. No, she had no way of saying the things she felt, and there was no point in saying the words even if she knew them.

  She sat up on her bed, her legs crossed in a fashion that her mother would not approve of at all. Her thoughts wandered away and crept down the hallways. Her thoughts went into the Duke’s room, but she stayed in place like all good and decent ladies should.

  Penelope sighed and fell back against the blankets. The Duke’s dark eyes asked her all sorts of questions, but she had no answers. She thought of the moment at the table when his foot had fallen onto hers. He had acted as if it was not on purpose, but Penelope imagined that it was. She giggled at the thought of it despite herself. She clapped her hands over her mouth to keep the sound from carrying.

  Finally, she lay still and exhausted. “Will sleep never come?” Penelope asked the ceiling, but it stayed quiet on the matter.

  “You must be very good at keeping secrets,” Penelope whispered to the ceiling.

  Penelope sat up and looked around her dark room. It was quite plain that sleep would not be coming to Penelope anytime soon, so she got up and went to her desk. She lit a candle and sighed.

  Her eyes fell on her wardrobe. She went over to the wardrobe and opened it with a smile. “Want to see where I keep my secrets?” Penelope asked the ceiling then laughed at her own silliness.

  Inside the wardrobe was a little piece of wood that could be removed if you knew how to do so. She had discovered it only a few years back, and it had become her secret stash for all things she wished to keep to herself. Penelope opened the wooden compartment and pulled out a leather bound journal.

  She brought it over to her desk and sat down under the light and warmth of the candle. The journal was really more of a diary. It had belonged at one time to her mother. Penelope had found it while rummaging in the attic for interesting tidbits. Their attic was a treasure trove of family heirlooms and secrets if you knew where to look.

  Penelope opened the book and let the pages slide through her fingers until she came to the place where she had marked the book. Finding the book a few months back had marked the end of Penelope’s golden view of the world. There were no great and noble princes riding out to save their princess. No, the only thing that took place in society was the bondage and muzzling of bright, clever young women.

  Lady Winchester had gone into her marriage with the Marquis of Winchester full of hope. Her light shone through the words hurriedly written down between kisses and dances. There were passages exalting the very love of the pair, then the clouds had come.

  Her mother’s writings had grown sparse and brittle. Lady Winchester wondered in her writing if this was all life truly was. What a cruel joke had been played on her mother.

  Penelope flitted her fingers through the weeks and months after her parents married. Her mother withered away until the woman’s bitterness consumed her hurried sprawling words. Then the worst of all happened.

  Her mother became resigned to her fate. Her writing became subdued. She wrote of her child growing within her and of her husband less and less often. When Lord Winchester was mentioned, it was merely a matter of fact remark. Gone were the words of that clever, bright young lady describing a love she could hardly imagine, let alone contain within herself.

  Sighing, Penelope stood and made her way back to the bed. Along the way, she tucked the journal in her dresser drawer before she collapsed over into bed. She should sleep, Penelope told her tired brain. If it heard, then it did not let on, but little by little, Penelope’s eyelids did droop, and she became blissfully unaware of all that was around her.

  Penelope lay in her bed and dreamed of swirling gowns and strong arms, of grassy meadows and fields of flowers. There was nothing there but music and the feel of his arms around her. His smile made her feel safe. She would always be safe here. There was nothing to fear in the Duke’s embrace. The man had never harmed her, would never harm her.

  Yet, there was a shadow at the edge of the meadow that threatened. Her father was the shadow, and Penelope knew it. It was not the man, but what he was. For the man was the idea and the image of what all men were.

  The Duke changed as the music changed and became a dark melody. Even in this perfectly painted world of her own brush strokes, the hand of man crept in and changed the subtle notes. Penelope cowered; she fled. He was horrible. There was a tyrant in the man who made her less, who ripped her gown and broke her spirit.

  Penelope ran, and she found herself in a dark place between buildings. No, it was not just any alley, it was the very alley she had found him, saved him. Only she had not saved him at all.

  The Duke lay cold and blue in the alley. Penelope raced forward to grasp the man and pull him to safety, but unseen hands yanked him away. She screamed for fear of his fate.

  There was nothing to do but to follow into the deep blackness, and yet Penelope waited. She listened. She pleaded that she should hear something. And she did.

  She heard that scraping noise of wood on stone. She heard it, and she had heard it that night. Penelope remembered it as if she would never forget the sound. She remembered it like the beat of her blood in her ears.

  Penelope took a step forward but found her way barred. Her arms held by her parents and nobles with mouths that moved but said nothing stood in her way. Penelope yelled at them, but they were deaf to reason.

  She woke up with a start in her own bed. Penelope felt the blankets to assure herself that she was indeed not surrounded by the stones of the alley. Sinking back into her pillows she sobbed to release the feelings that the dream had left in her chest.

  ***

  As Penelope lay sobbing in her bed, something made her stop and take notice. She lifted her head from the pillows. Penelope frowned as she heard a noise from down the hall. It took her a moment to realise that the noise was not just in her mind, some trick of her nightmare-laden brain. She could not place the sound.

  Getting up, Penelope pulled on her dressing gown and went to the door. She leaned near the door and listened. Was that footsteps? Penelope frowned and turned the doorknob slowly. The thuds seemed to be coming closer and then going further away as if someone were pacing up and down the hallway.

  She pulled the door open and peered out. She could hear the footsteps more clearly, and she felt certain now that it was just someone in the hall, but she could not say who it was. Penelope slipped out into the hall.

  Further down the hall near the top of the stairs, she saw a figure walking back and forth in the moonlight. Her heart forgot to beat for a fraction of a second as the Duke strode through the moonlight. She could not say what he was doing. Penelope’s forehead wrinkled up. The man seemed to be unaware of her presence, and she crept forward slowly.

  He paused for a moment to stare out the window and then swung around to walk again. The man looked agitated. He paced with his head bent, and his hands seemed to move as if he were talking. Perhaps he was having a conversation with himself.

  Penelope said, “Pray, are you having an argument with the ghosts?”

  The Duke startled, and Penelope had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing at the sight. He stared at her for a moment then he too chuckled, and Penelope did not feel so bad for her reaction. “I certainly thought a ghost had me for a moment there,” the Duke said with humour.

  Penelope remarked, “You must be feeling better if you can stand to be out here walking so.”

  “It hurts, but at least that means I am alive,” the Duke said. “That night that I was attacked, while I was brought here and cared for, I was in a forest.”

  Penelope did not know quite what to say. It was such an odd thing to say. The Duke’s tone was slightly unnerving. Penelope had heard of people having anxiety and bouts of unc
ontrollable fear after such things. Soldiers returning from war often had the ailment as they relived what happened repeatedly in their minds.

  “Are you well?” Penelope asked the man as she took another step forward.

  He nodded, then he frowned, and he seemed to be giving the matter some thought. At length, he said, “I am better than I was.”

  “That might not be saying much if you were worse than this,” Penelope said and then added, “Your Grace.”

  The Duke laughed then. “When you call me that it sounds for all the world like an insult and slur.”

  Penelope watched the man’s mirth. She had wondered what he looked like lost in laughter, and here he was. Penelope decided the Duke looked unhinged, beautifully unhinged. He looked like a depraved prince bathed in moonlight, laughing as his kingdom burned.

  “I do not truly mean to insult you,” Penelope assured the man. “I just often only remember it as I finish speaking, and I find things that do not flow naturally often sound as if we are forcing ourselves to say something unpleasant.”

  The man shrugged. “You could call me by my name.”

  “I could not,” Penelope said with a nervous laugh. “That would be—”

  “Scandalous?” the Duke finished. Penelope nodded, and he asked, “You are alone with me in the middle of the night. It is intimate.”

  Penelope looked around and fretted her bottom lip. “I should go—” She was going to say that she should go before someone saw them, but she never got the chance to finish her words. The Duke grasped her arm. He moved quicker, was stronger than she thought a man who had recently visited death could possibly be.

  Before she could even fathom a scream, she was tugged into a nearby room that was empty. The Duke shut the door behind them, and Penelope stared at him not sure what to do. She should yell by all accounts, but what then? Would anyone hear her?

  “Please, do not fear me,” the Duke pleaded. “I just want to talk to you.”

  Penelope put her hands on her hips. “We were talking before we came in here.”

  “I wanted to talk somewhere we would not be overheard,” the Duke clarified.

  Penelope whispered, “Oh. What would we talk of then?” She forgot that they were cloistered in a room that they should not be in at an hour that they should not be speaking. Penelope had wanted nothing more than to speak with the man, and that was all they were doing. What was the harm in that?

  The Duke said quietly, “I was in a forest, and I kept hearing things. My parents came to me and told me horrible things. My friends whispered that I should have died. I found I did not disagree with anything that anyone said. I had tried my best, but that just was not good enough.”

  Penelope stared at the man. “I have heard that we dream when we die,” Penelope said in a quiet voice. “I do not think what you saw was real. I think it was what you fear.”

  “If it was a trial, then I am afraid I probably did not pass,” the Duke admitted. There was a tremor to the man’s hands, and Penelope reached out to place her hand on top of one of his hands. It felt so cool beneath her touch that she folded her hands around his larger hand.

  He looked at her hand in what could have been wonder. They stared at each other for a long moment before Penelope asked, “What will you do now?”

  The Duke shook his head. “Truthfully, I do not know. I was following a man when I was attacked.”

  “You think it was that same man who attacked you?” Penelope asked in concern. She did not like the thought of the Duke in danger. Memories of her nightmare nagged at her, but she pushed them aside. Penelope dared not say such for fear that the man might stop talking of that night. Penelope had longed to know what happened, and if he stopped talking now, then he might very well never talk again about it.

  The Duke sighed. “I do not think he did it personally, but I do wonder if he might be involved somehow with my parents’ deaths.”

  “What happened to your parents?” Penelope asked with trepidation. She was not sure that she wanted to hear it, but she felt like the man needed to say it.

  The Duke’s eyes met her gaze, and he whispered, “They were poisoned, but it was not meant for them. It was meant for me.” Penelope frowned and shook her head. He ignored her protest and continued, “I should have been the one who got that lethal dose, but I decided on a whim not to partake of the wine that night.”

  “You did not know,” Penelope said as if beseeching the Duke to believe her words.

  The Duke nodded. “Lord Portland, the man I was following the night of the party, was there when my parents were killed. I ran into him at the party, and the way he acted caught me as odd. I decided to follow him. I went into that alley, and I know it was foolish. I just did it anyway.”

  “You were desperate to prove your innocence,” Penelope said. “Surely, you do not blame yourself for surviving the attack on you in the alley?”

  The Duke said, “No, I do not blame myself for that.” He smiled. “Of everyone I know, you are the first that has assumed my innocence before my guilt. Why is that?”

  “I told you. I can read people,” Penelope said with a shrug. “And when I look at you, I do not see a murderer. I see only a man that needs someone to share his grief and pain.”

  The Duke’s dark eyes read her soul, and Penelope did not try to hide behind false humility or modesty. She just let him see her as she was. The man said softly, “All I had was my revenge. I did not know if it was possible for me to achieve it, but that is all I had.”

  “I understand why you would search for it,” Penelope said as she stood a few feet from the Duke in the room that was lit only by the moonlight coming in the window. The man’s dark hair that Penelope likened to the midnight hour itself hung over his shoulders.

  Penelope had not noticed the Duke’s hair loose until that moment. She reached out a hand and touched the strands that lay against his shoulder. They were soft under her fingers. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Penelope said suddenly remembering her station and yanking her hand back as if it had been scalded.

  He regarded her for a long time before he said, “There is no need of apologies or pardons, Lady Withersfield.” He reached out and touched a loose strand of her blonde hair that had escaped her sleep cap. Penelope realised how ridiculous she must look, and she dipped her head in embarrassment.

  “Why do you do that?”

  Penelope looked up at the man who stood watching her with curiosity. “I just remembered the hour and how I am dressed. I fear that I was more expecting ghosts than you, Your Grace.”

  “My name is Jules, and in a way you found ghosts. I am nothing but a ghost of the man I was,” the Duke said, and he gave her a smile that was sad and forsaken.

  Penelope said softly, “My name is Penelope.”

  “So, I heard,” the Duke said, and just like that, his sad smile turned into a mischievous grin, and Penelope wondered at the transformation in the man. “I heard your father call you that. It took little deduction.”

  They stood there for a long moment before Penelope whispered, “It is good to meet you then, Jules.” The Christian name felt odd on her lips and tongue as if they could not quite grasp their pronunciation.

  Jules’ eyes sparkled with merriment for something about her saying his name gave him great amusement, but Penelope really could not say what. The Duke of Richmond was an odd man, a terribly singular man. What thoughts were in his mind, Penelope pondered, but she still could not say.

  “You must have loved ones waiting for you and wondering where you are,” Penelope said as the thought occurred to her. “Do you think they are very worried?”

  Jules gave her that one-armed shrug he often did to keep from pulling on his stitches. “I imagine that the cook and footman were out scouring the countryside for me before your mother’s correspondence reached them.” He sighed. “I should have returned to my home tonight, but I merely misplaced the thought.”