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“I didn’t find out until after we were wed, when she was so triumphant that he had perished.”
“Power,” he said. “That he would think he could force her into marriage…” He trailed off.
“She had to have the upper hand. She used me to have the upper hand. It’s the reason that I was so cold to her in our years together, that hatred that grew and grew and made her brother want to punish me for the love that I refused to give her.” He shook his head then, thinking of the past that would not be amended. “I could not love her. Not when she had tricked me into that. Not when she had used me to her own ends; put innocent blood on my hands.” He grasped Caroline’s own hands now with urgency.
“I tried to explain to Bennington. To make him see, but he wouldn’t. He refused to believe anything contrary about his sister.
Even now, he thinks I made up this story to keep you from him. That I would go to any lengths.
“And I would, but this was the truth. He would not hear me. It had only ever been, in his eyes, I alone that had brought her to shame. Never, never could it be something of her own doing. She was and continues to be his baby sister, sainted in his eyes. Especially now that she is dead.”
“I don’t understand,” Caroline said with a shake of her head. “Why would she want you to kill a man? Humiliate him perhaps, but to kill him? Why?”
“She was…” he hesitated obviously unwilling to broach this topic with his daughter. “I’d had no idea. I thought…” Her father paused, his words barely above a whisper. It was like he was speaking only for himself, and likely he was. This was not a topic shared with an unmarried daughter. “I thought I was her only love, but I was not. She hid it well. I found out that she’d been dallying with him for months, maybe longer. He was infatuated, intoxicated. I suppose, we all were. We were blinded by her beauty. She could shine down any other female in the room with the slightest glance. She played so innocent.” He stopped to think. “Perhaps that is why her brother could never think poorly of her.”
Still not able to see why Lady Anne’s dalliances would require the death of her lover when she had already been protected by the engagement to a baron, Caroline waited in silence for her father to go on.
“The lieutenant perhaps was not so innocent. He too wanted power. He wanted to marry up. She would not have him. He threatened to go to her father; tell him that he had despoiled her. Demanded payment for his silence,” the Baron revealed. “The knowledge would ruin her fully, free me of the obligation, remove all of her prospects. She’d been so sly that she had never once given a thought to the fact that her indiscretions might come home to light. To be outed twice in so many months would have been her undoing.”
“So, she had fooled you into handling the problem.” Caroline stated.
Her father nodded with solemn regret. “She had to silence him.” He shrugged. “One way or another. I was only the instrument.”
Caroline thought for a long while and then blurted, “but there’s no proof. It’s been ages and you’ve not been charged with his murder. The duel is long over. Why should this all matter now?”
“Because Bennington has proof,” the Baron corrected. “He has the letter, my formal challenge. I thought the lieutenant would have burned the thing, like any gentleman with an ounce of honor. Who knows what sort of scrubs the duke may have working for him, but he said it did not take him long after his sister’s passing to find what he called retribution.” Caroline still did not understand why this would all come to light at this moment, and not decades prior when he first discovered the letter. He could have punished her father long ago. She said as much and he continued. “George is conniving. He plots and moves the world around him like pieces on a chess board. He said a conviction was not enough. The gallows would be too swift. He wanted pain, the unending kind, and he is well aware that he will achieve it now that he has set his cap to you, my daughter in exchange for his sister.”
Miss Caroline could hardly breathe. She could not wrap her thoughts around the knowledge that her father had participated in a duel. More than that, since most duels ended with little more than a show of honor, that he had killed a man. Murder. A death in a duel, for honor or no, was illegal and still punishable to the full extent of murder in certain instances. Certainly, the duke would take advantage of this fact.
Her father nodded, knowing that she could now see their predicament. “And so, if you don’t marry him… I will hang. A baron cannot nay say a duke.” He gazed at her with sorrow and love in his eyes. A love that she had not seen light of in years. He was sorry that he could not protect them from this. “I would gladly give my life for you if that were to be the end of it, but if I am branded a criminal, all I have will be taken away, posthumously. Everything I own forfeited. Your income, having been settled after my crime, confiscated. I shall die and you will be destitute; put out to the streets, and left to starve or suffer worse fates.”
Caroline felt the world shift beneath her. A single tear ran down her cheek. She turned her head when her father moved to wipe it away. There was nothing for it. She would have to marry the monster who was blackmailing her father. She squared her shoulders, swiped at the tear, and nodded. “I understand,” she said softly.
“I am sorry,” her father murmured. “I am so so sorry, Caroline.”
“I think I want to be alone now,” she whispered, and without another word, her father left the room, closing the door softly behind him.
CHAPTER5
Caroline allowed herself to be loaded into the carriage no sooner than she and her new husband had passed through the church doors and out into the open air; loaded, like nothing more than the trunks and hatboxes strapped behind and above the carriage. She was a thing, a showpiece, a possession and she had blatantly refused to participate in the congratulatory breakfast that would have been expected to follow the ceremony. She had not spoken a single word to the duke. She felt frozen, like a block of ice. She was a stone statue of herself devoid of emotion, or so she told herself. Perhaps it would hurt less if she could keep the façade.
A fortnight was all that it had taken for the duke to receive the special license and throw this farce of a marriage together. Sped along by his royal connections, she had neither the time nor the opportunity to extricate herself from the bargain. She had declined to participate in the planning, little good it did her. She had even refused to order or choose a special gown, instead opting for the oldest thing she could find in her closet. It was still fine by any standard, a deep burgundy that had not suited the spring season, but that was all the defiance she could muster. Her father recognized the gesture for what it was with a sad frown. As a true lady, Caroline did not own anything that could not have been considered presentable in public. Anything that she no longer cared to wear had always been given to Marilee to alter to her own, much shorter, measurements. Caroline would have asked to borrow one of her friend’s repurposed gowns had they not now threatened to hang scandalously above her ankle. She had always prided herself that Marilee was dressed as fine as any lady, if slightly behind in the current fashions, but for once she wished that she had kept one, just one gown to age and crumple in the back of the wardrobe. She would have worn that garment.
Best of all, or worst depending on one’s perspective, Caroline had refused to even speak to her father or the duke since the evening that she had been informed of their engagement. She had not come out of her room, not even for meals. She had not accepted the gifts or notes that had been sent from both gentlemen in the attempts of incurring her favor. The gifts had been left in the hall and the notes thrown promptly in the fire, unread. She felt that if she should open her mouth, she would break. She did not speak, lest she might burst into tears.
Finally, she had refused to allow any witnesses beyond the bare minimum. She was attended only by her father, Marilee, and the unavoidable addition of the local rector’s wife.
The woman was a bane. Her husband had tripped all over himself when given the chance to sanctify a union blessed by the King himself. Mrs. Adelman had not stopped prattling all morning about how Caroline would be forever honored by the connection and what a blessing it was. Caroline wanted to slap the woman silly.
“A blessing?” Caroline had hissed to Marilee while they sat in the carriage waiting to be joined by the duke. “A wedding so hasty will only lead to speculation that I am with child!”
“When the appropriate time has passed and there is no babe, the gossipmongers shall be put to rest,” Marilee said.
The thought of children and the act to get them made the bile rise in Caroline’s throat. “If His Grace,” she said with disgust, “has any say in it then there should be very little time wasted.” The thought brought her pause. The idea of being bedded by the duke was repulsive. Their brief kiss in the church had made her stomach roll. His breath was rotten. The odor of his body was pungent as if no amount of bathing could wash the taint from his skin. Even his lingering looks left an oily feeling upon her. She had no desire to feel his actual touch, but she would have no choice. As his wife, she would belong to him. She supposed, if she looked at his features from very far away he may have been passable in his youth, although it was clear he was no Adonis, but his looks did not dissuade her. It was the ugliness of his character. Still, her bitter aversion had sprung Marilee into action and thus their plan had been hatched. At least, they could delay the act.
By forcing the carriage to make an immediate departure for the long trip to Heatherton Hall, the Duke’s Manchester estate, the women hoped to delay the dreaded consummation for a few days. The horses could be changed out to keep the pace for a day or two, but it was inevitable that at some point on the long journey they would be forced to take a room at an inn. Thus began the next twist in their ploy. Miss Caroline was to claim severe illness, a result of the harrowing journey, as she was unused to travel these many years.
Marilee had somehow procured a small vial of tartar emetic without suspicion. Caroline did not ask for explanations. The tiniest pinch in her drink would be enough to empty the contents of Caroline’s stomach but not enough to make the effects linger. They knew that such a display could not be disputed by the duke and he would leave her to her feigned rest and recovery for the duration of their travels. Another pinch here and there would maintain the ruse. Once they reached Heatherton Hall, it would become more difficult. Busy as he must be, there was no chance of the duke leaving to attend his business without fulfilling his husbandly duties first. Marilee guessed that they could prolong the illness for a week at most after their arrival.
