Hundreds of French naval officers were held in parole towns, under curfew but mostly by their honor. A smuggler who successfully transported an officer out of England could charge three hundred guineas or more. Suddenly Anthony and Thomas’s trip to the prison hulks made a great deal more sense.
Avoiding a tax on goods was one thing, abetting Napoleon was quite another.
The captain—Chev—had left her with a kiss to the brow and a promise he would do everything he could to protect her and Thaddeus.
That kiss had left a brand—a stamp that had comforted as she had drifted off into a restless slumber.
Last night she’d trusted Cheverley.
She’d been dazed by his presence, the very fact he existed. She’d absorbed the horrible blow of his suffering and then opened to his tentative care.
In his embrace, the heavens cracked, and she’d caught a glimpse of a vastly reordered world. Beneath the stars, in the romance and magic of night, she had trusted Chev would, eventually, reveal the truth.
What if she’d been wrong? What if he’dneverintended to reclaim his place?
How had he answered when she’d asked him if he intended to return to his love?
I have not decided.
As Ithwick emptied of suitors for an excursion to Penzance, even dawn’s rosy fingers could not pierce her heavy gloom.
And then, the duke began to thrash. His turn seemed a bitter omen.
She stood with Mrs. Renton in His Grace’s bedchamber, worrying her lip with the edge of her thumbnail.
“His Grace is worse,” Mrs. Renton said. “He’d been doing so well. Yesterday, he called me by name and even told me to go to the devil like he used to and now, he’s confused again...”
He was more than confused. He was flushed, sweating. And he looked so very small in the middle of his massive, golden bed.
“He’s vomited up everything I’ve tried to feed him,” Mrs. Renton finished.
“You prepared the meals yourself?”
“I prepared them,” Mrs. Renton chewed her lower lip. “But with Thaddeus ill—and you gone most of the evening, there were times he was alone. Do you think—?”
Penelope went to the side of the bed, placing her palm against the duke’s forehead.
“You cannot be everywhere,” she said to Mrs. Renton. “And I confess I’ve been...distracted.”
“Piers!” the duke cried out suddenly. “Cheverley!”
“Please, your Grace,” Penelope murmured. “Rest.”
His fevered eyes met hers. “You,” he said. “You.”
The accusation was present in his tone, his gaze. The accusation had always been present. Even when he couldn’t speak at all, he’d gazed at her as if she were something he did not trust.
Like a sorceress or a witch.
He held her responsible for every curse brought down on the house of Ithwick because she’d disrupted his plan for Cheverley.
But why should she accept sole responsibility? Here at Ithwick, His Grace had been king-like in his power.
“You, too,” she replied, with equal accusation.
If Ithwick had been cursed with death, dissipation, violence and greed—His Grace had played more than a small part.
In creating a world devoid of anything that resembled true affection, he had made his elder son a devotee of drink and his younger, a man chasing some illusion of male perfection.
