*
It was afull council of war when they met again after noon. Even Cornelius and Thomasina were there, having entered through the tunnel. All the brothers were keen to fight back, but for some time, the discussion centered on the marquess’s wrongs.
Allan didn’t particularly want to discuss his marriage. “Ancient history,” he said. “My wife’s second child was a stillborn son. Not mine. I had not shared her bed for over eighteen months, ever since she and the marquess taunted me with their affair. She died of childbirth fever a few days after the little boy. No need to revisit any of it.”
Mel left the subject alone and forbore to add those sad details to her notebook. Allan clearly still carried considerable pain over the matter. At some point, though, she needed to know what had happened to his first child.And was the marquess responsible?
Cornelius was brutally frank about his marriage. He had seen what happened to Allan and had not wanted to marry, especially to someone chosen by the marquess. However, he and Thomasina had been attracted to one another from their first meeting. Their happiness was fleeting, though. The marquess soon attempted a seduction, and when Thomasina rejected him, he had both her and Cornelius beaten. With the help of Allan and Baldwin, Cornelius and Thomasina arranged her disappearance, leaving evidence behind to suggest that she had committed suicide.
The other brothers had tried various methods to discourage the matrons of the ton from considering them as prospective husbands.
They pretended to be fools, or rakes, or profligate gamblers. They talked about the marquess’s predilection for raping anyone in skirts, including his daughters-in-law. They hinted atsomething shady about the deaths of his three wives and Allan’s wife.
Indeed, it had been the antics of some of the brothers—and Allan’s open support of those antics—that had resulted in them joining Jerome and Frank in the tower.
“Jerome had been here since he was ten, and Frank since he joined the army and was forcibly retrieved,” Baldwin explained. “They had been exploring and had discovered many of the hiding places. And in one of them, they found a previous Teign’s journal.”
The man had been the predecessor to the current marquess, but back when he was merely the heir, he had lived in the tower. In his journal, he wrote about its secrets. “My ancestors secretly continued to follow the old religion,” he had written. “When the Roman Catholic mass was forbidden, they converted the lower tower to be a chapel and a hiding place for visiting priests, while the upper tower was traditionally the home of the heir.”
“So why was the knowledge of the secret ways lost?” Mel wondered.
“Ah,” said Cornelius. “That was because the current marquess was a distant cousin to his predecessor. But when the man and his three sons were all killed in a carriage accident, Teign inherited, having—as far as we know—never met his predecessor nor set foot in the house before it became his own.”
“We discovered some of the secrets, though, when Allan, Baldwin and I were shut up here the first time,” Cornelius explained. “That was when the marquess married his third wife, Isaac’s and Jerome’s mother. He thought we—and Allan in particular—were too friendly with his bride.”
“Too handsome and too close to her own age for him to compete, I imagine,” was Thomasina’s dry comment.
“It was all in his own mind,” said Allan. Irene had made a confidant of him because she feared her husband and wasmiserable. Allan, who was the same age as his stepmother, felt sorry for the timid lady, and had tried to be kind. It had got him and his full brothers imprisoned in the tower and then exiled to a remote estate in the north of England.
Mrs. Blackmore nodded. “We see in others a reflection of ourselves, my nanny used to say.” She went on to ask, “What happened to his third wife? In fact, tell me about all three wives.”
“My mother died when I was five, and the twins were three,” said Allan. “I have a vague memory of a pretty, sweet-smelling lady with soft skin and a gentle voice.”
“I don’t remember her at all,” Baldwin offered.
Cornelius agreed, adding, “As to how she died, she had a fall on the stairs at the marquess’s country seat. Ever since I found that out, I have wondered whether the marquess killed her, but no one has ever suggested that in my hearing, and it is more than thirty years ago, so it is unlikely we shall ever know.”
“She was the only child of an earl,” said Allan. “The Earl of Arlesley. He died without an heir not long after Cornelius was born. She inherited everything that wasn’t entailed, and the title became extinct.”
“The marquess married his second wife shortly after our mother’s funeral,” Allan said. “The lady was kind enough to the three of us, even after her own sons began to arrive. If she was at home with us in the country, we were all taken to see her most evenings, while she was dressing for dinner.”
Given how quickly the marquess married his second wife, Mel wondered if the evil man had murdered his first wife to make room. Yes, and perhaps his father-in-law as well, but—as Cornelius had pointed out—more than thirty years had passed. They would probably never know.
“Our second mother always smelt wonderful, and she asked each of us to say what had been the best thing about our day.” Cornelius’s voice was soft with memory.
“My mother gave birth to a son every two years,” said Donald. “I was six when she died of childbirth fever not long after the twins were born. I remember her, but only just. As Allan said, we saw her every evening when she was at home, but if one of the babies cried, we were all sent back to the nursery, even if we had not had our turn to talk to Mama.”
“Isaac and I don’t remember our mother at all,” said Jerome. “Don, you knew her the best.”
“Yes, I was ten when she arrived. At first, I was inclined to resent her, because the marquess said he had to send Allan away, since our new mother was only a little bit older, and Allan might bother her. I didn’t understand it, then. I only knew that I missed him, for Allan was both father and mother to us, and I missed Baldwin and Cornelius, too, for they were sent away with him.”
“But she won you over,” Allan commented. “You were heartbroken after she died. You all were.” The marquess had sent for his three eldest sons after his third wife died, leaving two sons, one just turned three and one eleven months younger. They had arrived back at the marquess’s country estate to find the nursery party in deep mourning.
His five sons by his second wife had had her as their mother for only four years, but she had spent more time with them during those years than any other person had done in their lives.
Of course, the servants hired to care for the children were with them for every hour of the day, but their tenure tended to be short. Allan could not think of a single nanny or nursemaid who’d lasted in the marquess’s employ for more than six months.
That would be, in part, because servants were also victims of the marquess’s volatile temper and his lusts, and in part because they were neither well paid nor well housed. The marquess persisted in thinking that working for him was reward enough.Given that they mostly went on to better positions on the strength of their time in a marquess’s house, he had no problem replacing one hapless skivvy with another.
