Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

“ D o you remember the first time we walked up these stairs to bed together?” Charles asked Madeline as they mounted the stairs, her hand on his arm and a lamp in his other hand.

The question surprised her, but Madeline saw the glint in his eyes as he evoked this memory. Oh yes, she vividly remembered that night and every other occasion her tall, dark and handsome husband had embraced her since then. It touched her that it meant something to him too, whatever that might be.

“I was so nervous, Charles,” she confessed with a smile. “I really did not know what to do. But you made everything good. I never knew I would enjoy having a husband. I did not understand how it would be.”

“You taught me what it is to have a wife,” Charles responded, returning her smile. “I had not understood fully either. Thank you for that.”

Madeline swallowed, thinking that this sounded far too much like a farewell for her liking. She squeezed his arm and said nothing more for now, wanting only to reach Charles’ rooms where they could be naked and communicate more by touch than speech. It seemed simpler and more meaningful right now.

On the landing, they could still detect the storm rattling around the walls of the house although it seemed to be losing some of its earlier force.

“I hope I was right in what I told everyone about the solidity of Huntingdon Manor,” Madeline commented, listening to the rattling of windows and pattering of rain.

“As solid as its duke,” Charles assured her with a suggestive smile. “And I shall demonstrate that solidity to you presently…”

Madeline paused before they continued up the next set of stairs, something in the sounds she was detecting ringing a warning bell in her brain. Noticing her distraction, the Duke stopped speaking and turned to her.

“I hope no one has left a window open,” said Madeline, thinking aloud as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing. “What does that sound like to you?”

There was definitely a strange thumping noise coming from somewhere, and then the muffled sound of woman’s scream followed by something like a muted gong being struck.

“Cecilia!” shouted Charles and bounded up the stairs in the direction of his sister’s rooms. “That’s Cecilia…”

Madeline raced after the Duke although she could not keep up with his longer legs which seemed to move with even greater urgency at the sound of angry voices and running footsteps ahead of them. Charles almost seemed to fly up the next flight of stairs before rushing down the corridor to Cecilia’s rooms.

By the time, Madeline got there, a weeping Cecilia was in her brother’s arms while Cecilia’s maid, Ellen, pointed down the corridor, gabbling incomprehensibly and with great agitation, both women in their nightclothes. Gabrielle stood there too for some reason. She was fully dressed and holding a long copper bedwarmer like a weapon, its stem gripped tightly in her small but capable hands.

Ushering Cecilia’s maid back inside and closing the door to avoid rousing the rest of the household, Madeline could get no more immediate sense from Ellen than Charles could get from his distraught sister. She turned instead to Gabrielle, who had now lowered the bedwarmer to the ground and stood leaning on it.

“What happened here?” Madeline asked.

“It was that dog, Oakley,” said the young Frenchwoman with distaste. “He thinks he can just come here, lock Mademoiselle Ellen in the dressing room, and insult Lady Cecilia without challenge while the house is asleep. I teach him otherwise, I think.”

Now, Ellen found her tongue properly off the back of Gabrielle’s words.

“Yes, Your Grace. It was him! He barged in here without any warning, shoved me in the dressing room, and locked the door. I banged as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get out. Thank God, Miss Gabrielle heard, and then you, Your Grace. My poor mistress!”

“I was listening for such trouble tonight,” said Gabrielle darkly. “I do not trust that man.”

“I tried to scream,” Cecilia said now, “but he put his hand over my mouth. I did try. You believe me, Charles, don’t you?”

Charles held her closely and stroked her hair as if she were a small child again, his face appalled.

“Believe you? You are my sister, Cecilia. You have my complete trust, and no one has the right to lay hands on you. Did Oakley hurt you?”

“Not so badly as last time,” Cecilia said with a sob that turned into a semi-hysterical laugh. “Gabrielle came and laid him out on the floor with the bedwarmer. I thought he was dead!”

Last time?! Madeline and Gabrielle looked at one another with horrified and wondering eyes and then both of them looked at Charles.

“That man has hurt you before, Cecilia?” he asked, his face pained but his voice effortfully gentle with his distressed younger sibling.

Cecilia nodded, tears streaming down her face.

“Lord Oakley was at the ball Mother and Father gave in my first Season. He was staying somewhere nearby. The next afternoon, everyone else was out at a neighbor’s picnic, but I stayed at home to write some letters. Lord Oakley came back here…”

She paused, her mouth trembling, despite the reassurance of Charles’s presence.

“You are safe now,” he murmured softly, his strong arms about his sister. “Tell me all. You have nothing to fear.”

“He knew I would be alone here apart from the servants. I had told him that was my plan the previous evening because he said he was looking forward to seeing me at the picnic. I did not like him and did not want to see him ever again…”

“ Sacre bleu! ” said Gabrielle under her breath. “Hanging would be too good for that man.”

Madeline nodded in silent agreement. She felt she already knew what was coming now and regarded Cecilia with compassion.

“Lonsley left him in the library to await Father’s return, but Lord Oakley came to the drawing room secretly. Then he…threw himself on me and started forcing kisses on my person. I tried to escape, but he was too strong. He kept insisting that I had led him on, saying and doing the most terrible things. When he tried to lift my skirts, I bit him.”

Hearing this story, Charles looked as though his heart were breaking almost as much as Cecilia’s.

“Oh God, Cecilia…” he muttered, his hands never ceasing their comforting stroking of her hair. “I should have been here to protect you. I should have been here…”

“That’s when he hit me,” Cecilia added, her hand coming up to touch the small, pale scar above her brow. “He struck me with the back of his hand, and his ring cut my face, here. The blow knocked me down to the floor. When I looked up, he was standing over me and unfastening his breeches. That’s when I screamed and screamed and screamed…”

“Someone came then?” Madeline guessed.

“Mother,” Cecilia said, almost choking on the word. “She had returned for some new watercolors she wished to show to the other ladies. She was furious…at me. She demanded to know what I was doing on the floor, alone with a man, and showing my legs…”

“What?!” Charles exclaimed and swore colorfully despite the presence of the three ladies.

“The old story…” Gabrielle said under her breath to Madeline, both of them thinking of her aunt Marguerite’s sad history.

“I couldn’t even speak,” Cecilia continued. “Lord Oakley told her the most awful lies, saying I had arranged to meet him when everyone was out at the picnic. He claimed he did not even know I would be alone until he arrived, and then I would not let him leave. And she believed him! She believed him…”

The young woman descended back into desperate sobs now, the full story finally out, for better or worse.

“Mother made me swear not to tell anyone, Charles, not even you. She said it would ruin our family if I was thought to be dishonored. She said I must continue exactly as before, but that she would be watching me even more closely because I clearly couldn’t be trusted around men.”

“That damned woman!” he commented, and for a moment, Madeline thought she saw tears in his eyes as well as Cecilia’s.

“It didn’t matter anyway, whatever I promised her. Afterwards, I could not bear to go out, to eat, or even to speak for a long time. I was terrified I would meet Lord Oakley again or another like him. Mother was so angry at me. She had my horse Lightning shot when I refused my second Season.”

“Forgive me, Cecilia,” Charles addressed his sister now. “Forgive me that I wasn’t here and that I never realized how badly you had been hurt. Forgive me that I brought this man into our home again and put you at such risk.”

“It is not your fault, brother,” Cecilia said, wiping some of her tears on the sleeve of her nightgown. “Lord Oakley is an evil man. He schemes and plots and has no honor. He has no shame and even writes his wickedness in ink. Ellen, where is that note?”

Ellen looked around, stooped, and then held out a single folded sheet of paper from the floor to Charles. Madeline came to his side to read it too, putting an arm about Cecilia as Charles released her to take up the letter.

“That bit of paper was on the floor when we returned up here after dinner,” the maid reported. “I thought it was part of some old letter that had fallen from Lady Cecilia’s pocket, but that man must have pushed it under the door while we were at dinner. Neither of us read it in time.”

Lady Cecilia

It is in your power to rescue your brother from his own foolishness. How, you might ask?

Allow me, without undue fussing, to renew the addresses that were so rudely interrupted some years ago, and I will take no further legal action. This must be tonight, whether in my chambers or yours.

I brook no false modesty or pretension to innocence on your part and expect a most welcoming reception. Unless I am satisfied, I will destroy your brother and you, too. Remember that his fate lies in your hands.

It was unsigned but could clearly have been written by no one else, at least in the eyes of those party to the wider facts.

“I thought the same as Ellen and put it on the table without reading it,” Cecilia added. “Otherwise, we would have locked the doors and rung for assistance before Lord Oakley burst into my room. If only I had read it…”

“We had no chance, Your Ladyship,” Ellen added. “It all happened too fast. Thank God he didn’t lock the main door.”

Cecilia nodded and continued to explain.

“After he’d locked Ellen up in the dressing room, he seized hold of me and made me read that note. I knew then what he intended. I would never have submitted to him, but without Gabrielle, I fear what would have become of me.”

It was anger that blazed again now in Duke Charles’s eyes, more powerful than the devastation previously wrought by Cecilia’s story.

“I will wring Oakley’s neck for this!” he stormed. “No court in England could say I was not provoked beyond endurance. He has challenged the honor of my sister not once but three times with truly evil intent. He will not see even another sunrise under my roof.”

The Duke flung open the door.

“Charles,” Madeline said warningly, the specter of a prospective murder trial again raising its ugly head.

“Stay with Cecilia,” he barked, turning on his heel. “All of you.”

“I cannot,” said Madeline immediately to Cecilia and Gabrielle, hoping they would understand her inability to obey her husband in this. “I must protect Charles from himself. Lord Oakley is not worth Charles’ own life.”

Cecilia only nodded.

“Go!” she said. “Go quickly! Do not let him throw his life away on my account.”

Madeline needed no such urging as she hurried after her husband for the second time, wishing she had wings on her feet.