The Light in the Duke's Shadow: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 5

  A sound of wheels brought Penelope’s eyes up as the carriage came into view behind her. “There you are,” Penelope said with visible relief to the coachman as he calmed the horses.

  “Aye,” Reginald said as he hopped down off the carriage. Reginald had come to work for Penelope’s family when Penelope was just a slip of a girl. Penelope gave the man a smile as he came to relieve her of her duty and take over with the Duke’s still form. “Oy, Stuart, come give me a hand,” Reginald called. Stuart was their footman, and a man younger than Penelope leapt off the footboard at the back of the carriage at Reginald’s call and rushed to help Reginald pick up the fallen Duke and load him into the carriage.

  Penelope watched them move the man as she clutched her hands anxiously in her shawl. “Watch his head,” Penelope said as they manoeuvred the man up onto one of the carriage seats.

  Reginald assured her, “We have him, Ma’am.” Penelope still kept her vigil until they had him lying on the seat.

  “Where to, Ma’am?” Reginald asked Penelope’s mother as they finished getting the Duke into the carriage.

  Lady Winchester frowned and replied, “Home. We shall need you to fetch the doctor as soon as we are there safely, Reginald.”

  “Of course, Ma’am,” Reginald said with a crisp nod and a curious glance at the still form of the Duke. The footman offered Penelope a hand up into the carriage before he went back to his station at the back of the carriage.

  As the carriage moved over the cobblestone streets, Penelope was never more aware of every bump and turn the contraption made. The Duke groaned once or twice but was for the most part silent. It was the silence from the man that bothered Penelope more than any moans or cries would have.

  The light from street lamps as they made their way towards the Mayfair district illuminated the carriage in passing frames of light. Although their address was a far throw from Grosvenor Street, it was still a very fashionable place to reside during the season. Penelope would have preferred a quieter section of London, perhaps one of the growing outlying areas, but her father was desperate to hold onto some sort of standing even as their reputation slipped more each year. Her father’s title was all that ensured that Penelope received invitations to any of the balls and parties that adorned the season.

  Penelope’s eyes went to the still form in the seat across from her mother and herself. Here she was thinking of invitations when that man was fighting for his life. Penelope felt guilty about her wayward thoughts and made herself keep vigil on the man. She would not waver this time, she promised silently.

  The carriage creaked as it twisted and turned up a narrow street. Penelope noted the fog outside the carriage window. “The fog seems to be thicker on the closer we get to home,” Penelope said.

  Her mother’s eyes went to the window. “I despise the fog,” she commented.

  “You told me that before, but you never did explain why,” Penelope said with a frown as she looked at the blanket of fog hiding all but the closest objects from them.

  Lady Winchester drew in a breath. She seemed to hesitate before she said, “It is neither the time nor the place.”

  “I can think of scarcely a better time or place,” Penelope remarked. She took a handkerchief out of her purse more to have something to do than out of a need for the cloth. She folded it in her lap as she waited for her mother’s reply.

  Lady Winchester sighed. It was not a frustrated sigh; it held a tremor that Penelope took as fear. When her mother did speak, her voice was low as if she did not want to be overheard. “My mother and I were travelling to meet a friend of hers for luncheon. It had been raining. The air was so cool and the ground so warm that the mist rose up as if in defence of the ground itself. Mother said that the wee ones were about.” Lady Winchester looked over at Penelope and smiled a sad, hollow smile. “We have Irish blood in us, and she had learned from her mother of the wee folk. She was always saying things like that.”

  “And were they? About I mean?” Penelope asked as her mother’s eyes grew distant.

  Lady Winchester looked at Penelope and nodded. “I suppose they must have been. The carriage lost its way, and we went off the side of the road.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Penelope whispered.

  Lady Winchester nodded and agreed, “It was. We screamed. We learned later that the fog was so thick that the coachman had lost the road in a bend and had simply carried on forward when the road turned.”

  “But you were okay? You and Grandmother?” Penelope asked. She wondered how she had never heard this story before. Her mother seemed to cloister so many unnecessary secrets. Secrets that Penelope had only in recent months begun to discover when she had found the woman’s diary amid a collection of journals written by her mother and grandmother tucked away in the attic. But even that journal of words had not contained any whisper of this tale.

  Penelope’s mother drew in a breath and said, “Yes, I was fine. I got jostled, but Mother held me safely. She hurt her ankle climbing out of the carriage. It never was quite the same after that. She always had a slight limp that grew worse when the air was cold and the ground warm. She said it was there to remind her to be more careful of travelling when the wee ones were out at play.”

  “I can see why you would be uneasy travelling when it is foggy,” Penelope said. She had not guessed that her mother’s anxiety rose from any place of reason. So often her mother had seemed to cower before shadows that only she could see, but now Penelope could see them too. She could see them and understand them.

  They grew silent as they both watched the fog outside their windows. The wee ones were frolicking tonight, Penelope mused to herself silently. How they must be playing with the fog dancing so alongside the carriage. They must be dancing and twirling and racing to keep up even with the slow pace of the carriage.

  The Duke’s mouth moved as if he spoke words that only his dreams could hear. Penelope wondered if he heard their words and now wee ones danced in his dreams. What dreams did one have when one brushed along the curtain of death? Penelope did not know. She had never walked that path or seen those sights.

  Do not wander too far, Penelope pleaded silently to the man.

  ***

  Getting the Duke settled into one of the upstairs rooms was the easy part, then came time to get him looked after, and Penelope was practically shoved out of the room. The servants insisted that she leave, as did her mother. Penelope was led away by her mother as three male servants undressed and cleaned the man’s wounds.

  “I could help,” Penelope said in frustration. “What good is learning of science and healing if I am not allowed to practice any of it?”

  Lady Winchester led her daughter into the sitting room and poured some tea from the teapot that was awaiting them on a silver tray. “Sit down and rest yourself. The doctor will be here soon. We have but to wait.”

  Penelope sighed. “Waiting is not helpful.”

  “You might as well get used to waiting now,” Lady Winchester assured her daughter. “Women have to be patient creatures, Penelope. It is our lot in life, but it is also our advantage. Men are rash things that rush about without the gentle steering of women in the right direction.”

  Penelope frowned. She pondered her mother for a moment. “Why learn all of the sciences and such, though? I shall never be allowed to do any of that.”

  “Some say it is a disservice to fill young ladies’ heads with such things,” Lady Winchester noted as she stirred some sugar into her tea. “I think that it is the least I can do for you. You should have your own mind.”

  Penelope picked up the tea that her mother had poured her and sipped it. “Perhaps it is a disservice, and it gives us all sorts of ideas. For instance, it might give me the idea that I do not need a man.”

  Lady Winchester laughed and sighed. “Unfortunately, men are a necessary thing, my daughter. Women can do so little in this world without the aid of a man, but men need women too.”

  “You would not think
it the way men treat women,” Penelope said with a frown.

  Lady Winchester nodded her head slowly. She took a small sip of her tea before she looked at Penelope. “Not all men are like that, Penelope. Surely, you do not truly believe that?”

  Penelope shook her head, but deep in her heart, she held onto the fact that she did believe all men were like that. Her father was like that and her grandfather before him. If not all men were like that, then surely the women in her family were cursed to be yoked with overbearing men. No, Penelope would not suffer the fate of her mother and her grandmother.

  “I am feeling very tired,” Penelope said as she set her teacup down. “Oh,” she said in a mournful voice. “My poor dress.”

  Both Penelope and Lady Winchester looked at the front of Penelope’s dress and the red stain that was darkening on the silken fabric. Lady Winchester said, “It will need to be done away with, I am afraid.”

  “I should change,” Penelope said as she stood up.

  Lady Winchester set down her tea. “Do remember to go to your room and stay away from our guest’s room.”

  “Of course, Mother,” Penelope said as she fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Good night, Mother.”

  Lady Winchester nodded and returned the sentiment as Penelope slipped out the door to the sitting room. Penelope looked around the hallway and found it empty. Some of the staff must be awake, but Penelope heard nothing apart from an owl somewhere outside.

  She made her way towards the front hall and the stairs that led up to the bedrooms. She preferred their country home, but Penelope had fond memories of her governess telling her stories while her mother and father attended parties on the ground floor of the home. Penelope had been blissfully unaware of what Seasons and balls were for back then.

  To young Penelope, the beautiful dresses and lovely music had been something out of her fairy tales. She had even longed to be allowed to attend the wonderful parties. Oh, how Penelope had begged her governess into letting her take a peek.

  If only she had known then what she knew now. Penelope shook her head at the dancing couples on the wall covering that her mother had chosen. The couples twirled among the lanterns on the print. Penelope could almost imagine the music that would be drifting around the dancers.

  As Penelope stepped onto the landing at the top of the stairs, she heard a moan and bit her lip. She fought the urge to go towards the door that sealed off the room where the Duke was being cleaned up. Penelope forced herself to walk on by.

  Her own room was further down the hallway, and Penelope swiftly slipped through the door to her room when she reached it. Once inside her room, Penelope tried her best to put the other thoughts out of her head.

  “Miss,” Gina, Penelope’s chambermaid and lady’s maid, called softly.

  Penelope looked towards the door that joined to the next room. “Would you give me a hand, please?” Penelope asked as she motioned to her dress.

  “Bless me, what on Earth happened to your dress, Miss?” Gina said as she came into the room and shut the door behind her. She was quickly over and helping unbutton Penelope’s dress down the back.

  Penelope sighed. “I had someone fall on me,” she said.

  “Oh? Is it that gentleman they have cloistered away in the first bedroom?” Gina asked, her voice full of conspiracy and curiosity.

  Penelope nodded and said, “Yes. I do hope the doctor is able to help him. I had not realised until now how much blood he had lost.”

  “By the looks of your dress, I’d be surprised if he had any left in him,” Gina said with a shake of her head and a cluck of her tongue.

  Before long, between the two of them, they had Penelope’s ruined dress off, and Gina rushed to find a replacement. “Do you want your sleeping gown, Miss?”

  “Yes,” Penelope said. “It is not likely I shall be entertaining our guest tonight, after all. Mother will not stand for me being in the doctor’s way, so I shall just have to content myself with what I can hear from the adjoining room if anything.”

  Gina frowned. “Your mother does not like it when you eavesdrop, Miss,” Gina reminded Penelope gently.

  Penelope should have scolded the girl for her impudence, but Gina had been Penelope’s chambermaid for the last couple of years, and the girl was only a year older than Penelope herself. Yet, how different Gina’s life was to Penelope’s own. Gina was widowed and had two children already. Penelope, by comparison, was a mere slip of a girl, still innocent in the ways of the world at times.

  “Then I shall just have to make sure that I do not get caught,” Penelope said with a smile to her friend.

  Gina shook her head and said, “As you say, Miss.”

  As soon as Penelope was in her nightgown, Gina took her leave to go to her own room. Penelope often asked after the woman’s children, who stayed with Gina’s mother while she worked. The father of Gina’s children had died shortly after the twins had been born, but Gina’s father and mother had been generous enough to let her stay on with them. In return, Gina helped bring money into the household.

  Penelope frowned at her own reflection after Gina had left. The Duke had called her an angel. Penelope eyed her face. Her cheeks were a bit too rounded, and her eyes a bit too wide. Penelope saw nothing in her face that resembled a heavenly host, but then the man’s vision had been a bit clouded by the loss of blood.

  Her mother had said that the man was a killer. Penelope amended that to be an alleged killer. She had heard the rumours before from her mother’s lips but had simply dismissed them. Having seen this killer for herself, Penelope pondered what a killer should look like. Penelope had always imagined the sneer and sharpness of a murderer’s face would give them away.

  There was no harshness in the face of the Duke of Richmond. Penelope remembered the lines of the man’s face as he lay unaware in the carriage. He had a kind face. How could someone with such a beautiful face be a monster?

  Penelope blushed at her own thoughts. She glanced up at her reflection and saw the tell-tale pink rising to her cheeks. A sound made Penelope jump, and she realised all at once that it was someone banging on the front door. The sound echoed up from the ground floor and ricocheted up the hallway. There were footsteps that pistoned up the stairs, their noise deafening in the stillness of the house. The banging of their rhythm like the horrible machines that ran in the factories, the steady thuds rang closer as Penelope rose to her feet.

  Pulling her dressing gown on over her night clothes, Penelope eased her bedroom door open. She saw a couple of men she did not recognise and Reginald. The men were swiftly into the bedroom that contained the Duke. Penelope eased her door shut and slipped into the adjoining room which was a bit closer to where the Duke lay.

  With her ear pressed against the wall, Penelope listened as the doctor talked to his fellow men about the man’s injuries. The men were silent for long minutes while they worked, and each time they fell silent, Penelope’s breath would catch in her throat. With each word they uttered, Penelope remembered to breathe, and she gasped in the air as if surfacing from underwater.

  After what felt like hours, the men congratulated themselves on having completed their task. Penelope waited until they were gone before she ventured out into the hallway. Lord and Lady Winchester were standing in the hallway, Penelope realised too late. Her parents turned to look at her as Penelope grimaced.

  “I thought you were asleep,” Lady Winchester said with obvious disapproval.

  Lord Winchester grumbled, “Clearly, our daughter was too concerned for our guest’s well-being to go to bed.”

  “Is it not right that I should be concerned?” Penelope asked even as her mother bowed her head ever so slightly at the tone of Lord Winchester’s voice.

  Lord Winchester was a towering man, and Penelope had thought him brave and true for most of her life. However, it had taken her finding her mother’s diary for Penelope to see the man for all that he was. Lord Winchester, much like Penelope’s grandfather, was a tyrant wh
o had her mother cowed into submission.