The Light in the Duke's Shadow: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 6

  Lord Winchester frowned. “I suppose it would not do for this to leave you unaffected. However, I cannot see any good reason why my home was deemed worthy for the Duke of Richmond’s recovery. Could you not have taken the man elsewhere?”

  “But Father, did Mother not tell you?” Penelope asked as she glanced over at her mother.

  Lord Winchester asked warily, “Tell me what?”

  Penelope wrapped her arms around herself. “He saved me from a roguish man who would have harmed me. Mother and I were simply standing on the sidewalk when the man launched himself at us. If not for the Duke, then we could have been killed.”

  Lady Winchester stared at Penelope blankly. Lord Winchester seemed to be thinking before he said, “In that case, I cannot begrudge a Duke a place to rest. I shall speak with him tomorrow, however, and we can see what we might be able to manage from this situation.”

  “The man is desperately ill,” Lady Winchester said in a scandalised voice to her husband.

  Lord Winchester said, “The doctor said he should recover. Our noble deed should win us something, should it not?”

  “Kindness is a reward unto itself, Father. Do you not listen to the sermons we attend?” Penelope saw the pink on her father’s nose and knew the man’s temper was about him, but she did not back down. Penelope straightened herself. She might not be as tall as her elegant mother, but Penelope would not bow to anyone, especially not her father.

  Lord Winchester frowned at his daughter. “It is that headstrong notion of yours that will keep you from marrying,” Lord Winchester reminded his daughter. “Men like softness in women. You are like an old gnarled oak that refuses to bend except the way it wants to.”

  “I beg to differ,” Penelope said. “Oaks can break; I will not.”

  ***

  Penelope wanted to sleep, but sleep would not come. The house was silent, and everyone else, she assumed, had succumbed to their exhaustion. She rolled over and pulled the covers up around her neck. There was a chill in the room, but not enough of one to light a fire for.

  She fell slowly into her dreams. She fell so slowly that she did not even know she was asleep at first. Penelope danced in the ballroom at the Earl of Havenshire’s home.

  She caught sight of the blue tailcoat, the one she had seen when she and her mother had been arguing. She saw it, but more important, Penelope saw him. The breath left her for a moment as he held out his hand to her, and Penelope took his hand as if it were a leap of faith.

  Where the man led, she would follow, and that was all she knew. Penelope wondered at the strangeness of it, of herself. She had never wanted such things, yet here she was practically swooning at the feeling of his hand lightly against the small of her back.

  There were scandalous whispers, and Penelope did not care if the whole world saw them. She did not mind at all if they whispered their rumours because all it meant in the scheme of things was that Penelope was whole and safe. She was loved.

  Gasping, Penelope sat up in bed. She glanced around herself. “Oh Lord,” Penelope whispered. “What folly has this thing called a heart brought upon me? I do not seek marriage or love. Love is not true.” Duty to the family was the truth, and that was her reality.

  She chided herself for acting like some silly little girl. It was normal she supposed for her to experience such things, but it made it no easier to deal with. Penelope fell back against the bed and shook her head at herself.

  It could have been worse. Penelope had heard of young women wasting away and pining for dream lovers. The idea was absurd, of course, and the writings of poets and authors of dashing young men were what her father hated the most. It was one of the things that her governess and her father had always butted heads about.

  It was one of the few things that her father and mother seemed to agree on. Penelope frowned and thought about that. Her father and mother did not seem to have that bad a marriage, yet Penelope knew that what most people saw of her parents was not true.

  She had found her mother’s diary, and she had read enough of it that she knew that there was nothing good or lovely about marriage. There was nothing to be gained there and everything to lose. Penelope sighed up at the ceiling unsure of what she should think. There was no one there to tell her what the right thing to do or say was. What way would lead to happiness and in what direction lay sorrow?

  Penelope got up, pulled on her dressing gown, and gently opened her bedroom door. There was only silence. Penelope crept out her door and pulled it to quietly behind her. The moonlight slanted in the windows that lined the hallways on the East. Penelope had always thought the manor house laid out in an odd way.

  It was three stories, but she rarely ever had reason to go beyond the ground and first floors. The second floor was where her mother and father resided along with another set of bedrooms that were often occupied by relatives or important guests.

  Penelope made her way down the hallway, especially careful not to make any noises as she passed by the room where the Duke slept. She wondered what he dreamed of. Did he dream of anything after the doctor’s administrations? Penelope had never liked doctors much, and she liked them much less once she had taken the time to study science.

  Miss Lorraine often said that she had a clever brain, but sometimes Penelope felt her brain could stand to be a bit less clever. She sometimes wondered what it would be like to just want the trivial things that other women her age admired. Those lovely new dresses that everyone adored or perhaps a husband to keep happy.

  It was not that Penelope did not want children. She walked along the hallway and thought of a house filled with children. What house it was she could not say, but she wanted that house. Unfortunately, children meant men, and men meant grief. The world was a cruel place that tore women asunder, and Penelope expected no less from it.

  Downstairs, she padded softly in her slippers through the rooms and hallways towards the kitchen. Once there she set about warming some of the milk to help her sleep. She was just lighting the stove when she heard a voice behind her. “What are you about now?”

  Penelope jumped and turned guiltily towards the cook. Cook was an older woman, with her hair always pulled back and pinned. Even now, freshly roused from her bed, the woman’s hair was pinned up to perfection. Penelope guessed that she must sleep that way.

  “So, cat got your tongue?” Cook asked. All Penelope had ever called the woman was Cook, but her name was actually Margaret. Penelope knew that because she had heard others call the woman by the name. But she dared not do so.

  Penelope gave the woman a sheepish smile. “I could not sleep.”

  “And you thought you’d come into the kitchen to warm some milk? More like burn some milk,” Cook grumbled. “Move, let me.”

  Penelope obliged the woman and quickly got out of her way. Cook was gruff, but Penelope had known her since she was a little girl. Cook also would not let Lord Winchester boss her around, and Penelope admired that about the woman. Short, stocky, but filled with fire, Cook never took anything off anyone. She would just as soon hit the King himself with her rolling pin as to take a sharp word from him.

  Penelope sat on a stool and watched the woman work busily to warm the milk. Cook added spices to it, and Penelope watched with interest. A wonderful aroma wafted over as Cook took the pot off the stove. She sat it on the table in front of Penelope and then set out two mugs. “I might need a bit myself,” Cook explained with a wink as she filled the mugs with the warm white liquid.

  Cook nudged a mug towards Penelope who eagerly picked it up. Penelope cupped her hands around the mug and sipped the liquid. She made a noise of appreciation. “How do you always make it taste so good?”

  “Practice,” Cook said simply as she sipped her own mug of milk. “A pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg makes it better, and my mother swore on its ability to help her sleep. I find it helps me too.”

  Penelope smiled. The spicy flavour of the milk drink and its warmth going down her throat made her relax. They
sat there for a long while sipping their milk until Penelope could hold back a yawn no longer.

  Cook gave her a smile. “I think it is off to bed with you. I am not surprised that you have had a hard time sleeping. You’ve been through a shock.”

  “I feel so tired now that I could sleep through a battle,” Penelope said as she stretched her arms over her head.

  Cook nodded. “Feeling like nodding off myself. Go on with you.”

  Penelope gave Cook a wave and headed back up to her room. The walk back did not lessen the warm fuzzy feeling that the milk had given her. She went straight to her bed and collapsed into the soft blankets.

  Rolling into them she drifted off to sleep not worried about men or marriage. There was plenty of worrying that she could do tomorrow.

  Chapter 4

  The dreams lay heavily upon Jules. There were words and voices all around. The forest was dim and dark, and he wondered where the stones had gone? Had they fallen away and he with them? Perhaps that was what he felt when the angel stood before him.

  Now the forest stretched quiet and still. He turned around and pondered that he felt nothing. The wound in his side was still there, the blood still on his cheek, but he felt nothing beyond a numbing cold.

  He took a tentative step forward, and the earth lay still and flat. Jules sighed with relief. No more did the rocks roll up in waves beneath him. He felt no pain or fatigue. Was this death?

  Had the angel caught him and brought him here? The angel was gone, and she had taken the light with her. Jules looked around, but the trees that edged the clearing he was in seemed to all resemble each other, creating a wall of likeness that halted his steps.

  Dread welled up in Jules that he had never felt. Was he asleep? Was he dead? Where were his parents? This was his punishment then for not finding them the truth. Jules nodded as if that was right and just.

  There was movement. No, Jules corrected. Nothing moved. Everything moved. Pain seared through him as if he had been burned alive, and he cried for it.

  “Is it cold?” a feminine voice asked. Jules whipped around but saw no one. He could not speak. He could not bring forth sound. Fear stood with him in the dark forest and stole his voice.

  Jules sank to the ground. For a long while, he sat in the dark with the night. Then he felt the world move. It swayed and bounced. The pain made Jules’ mouth open in agony, but no sound came out. The forest had stolen his voice, and he had nothing but the pain.

  Where am I? Jules thought the question so hard that perhaps someone would hear it. Perhaps the angel would hear his prayers if he just prayed hard enough. Was there not enough forgiveness in all of Heaven to save him?

  He did not know what his folly could have been that damned him to this particular corner of darkness, but Jules recanted it. He threw it into the fire, and he hoped it burned away. There was a movement then.

  The fog crept out from between the trees. He eyed it with trepidation. It moved like a thing of spirit and intellect. It moved as if it knew his fear and manifested it.

  “You are bleeding,” a familiar voice said.

  Jules’ head snapped to the side, and he saw his mother. Her long dark hair was braided, and she looked as she had when Jules was no more than seven in years. “Mother,” Jules tried to whisper, but no sound came.

  She eyed him with pity. Oh, if she could have eyed him with any measure of sympathy or comfort, but no there was only pity. She was the mourners at the funeral and his old friends he met in the streets. Pity was all that echoed back to him, and Jules drowned in it.

  Jules looked away for it was all that the forest had left him to do. He had no voice to speak with. Only his body listened, and the very earth trembled when he dared to defy the forest. He knew that he would die as surely as he knew that this was not Heaven.

  There was a carriage, a rumbling carriage. Jules could not tell if he were in it or outside of it. The images and sensations blurred, and he moved his lips. There were voices, and they were near, but he could not see their owners. His eyes were sewn shut by the forest and the dark.

  Back in the clearing of the forest, Jules gasped at the pain. He gasped at the sounds and the agony that tore his mind apart. He wanted to rest. He wanted to sleep. He… Jules marvelled that he even would take death.

  Someone was talking, but their words were not for Jules. He could not understand them. They seemed foreign, and when they hit his ears, he heard only noise. Jules covered his ears in a vain attempt to stop the sound, but it did nothing as if his hands were not real and solid enough to block the noise.

  Where am I? Jules asked in his mind yet again. And again, there was no answer. He closed his eyes, but he still saw the forest. His body was a thing of smoke and shadow.

  The fog that crept through the forest licked along his outstretched legs. He could not feel it. He could not feel the grass wet with cold dew beneath him. He could not feel even his hand upon his skin, Jules realised.

  All that Jules felt was cold, except when the world was shaken. When the world shook, Jules felt fire and pain so pure that he cried with it. Light and sound were echoes in his mind, and he could not reach them.

  Jules gasped and wondered if he breathed. He could not feel his lungs take in the air, nor the relief of it. Something was pulling and tugging him, but it was not of his design. Jules could not see what touched him. What he saw never touched him.

  “You should have died,” Thomas said suddenly. He was so close that Jules fell back away from the man. His appearance before Jules so suddenly made him scream out wordlessly. “Why did you think you were better than them? You deserved to die more than they did.”

  Jules shook his head. He moved his mouth to deny what Thomas said, but the forest allowed him no reprieve. Thomas sneered at him. The man seemed to blur and reshape himself. Jules cried out wordlessly, noiselessly at the sight. Thomas faded, and Lord Portland took his place.

  The man smiled at Jules and held out his hand. “Let me help you,” Lord Portland said. “You cannot do this alone. What happened when you tried?”

  Jules closed his eyes, but he still saw the man. Tears slid out of the corner of Jules’ eyes. Lord Portland clucked his tongue. “Poor Jules,” the man said. “Everyone knows you murdered your parents.”

  Jules shook his head. He did not murder them. He did not.

  Lord Portland said, “Well, someone did, and we all know that you bribed the court to say you were innocent. Look at you.”

  Jules found his eyes looking down at his hands. They were covered in blood. The blood was not his own, and he knew it as sure as he knew anything. “No,” Jules whispered.

  He blinked his eyes open. There was noise. There were lights. “Light,” Jules whispered in a hoarse voice. The pain seared through him, and he could not even scream as the agony seemed to press down on his lungs.

  “Your Grace,” a man’s voice said. “Doctor, he is awake.”

  A man came into view as if he were standing over Jules somehow. The forest was gone. He was in a room. Jules panted as the pain subsided.

  “Rest, Your Grace,” the man said in a kind tone. He held Jules’ gaze. There was something near Jules’ face. There was an odd smell, and then Jules’ eyelids grew heavy.

  Jules shook his head and whispered, “No. Do not make me sleep, please. Do not send me back there.”

  The next instant, Jules blinked, and he was in the forest again. Tears slid down his cheeks. He had been free, and the bittersweet of the momentary release made the nothingness of the forest all the more focused. Jules sank down into despair and refused to take note of the forest. He did not look up at passing wooden boots or familiar voices.