Buch lesen: «The Golden Lord»
A life of deceit…
On the surface, Jenny Dell appeared the model lady,
but nothing could have been further from the truth.
For her, every word and every act was a deception.
Until she met Brant Claremont, the Duke of Strachen,
and learned firsthand about love based on a lie.
“No matter how much any one of us pretends to be someone else, in the end we always are what we are.”
“Ahh.” For whatever reason, Brant relaxed. “Then you are a fatalist? You believe that we can never change from what we’re born? That our destiny remains always the same, with no hope of growth or improvement?”
“No, no, no! It’s not so complicated as that, Your Grace. I only meant that no matter how many changes you may make for the world to see, you are still at heart, or in your soul, the same creature you were born. That’s what I know,” Jenny said with conviction.
She did believe it. How could she not, when so much of her life was unabashed deception? If she didn’t believe in herself independent of whatever new identity she’d concocted, why, then, she’d have nothing at all.
Praise for bestselling author
MIRANDA JARRETT
“A marvelous author…one of romantic fiction’s
finest gems…each word is a treasure, each page
an adventure, each book a lasting memory.”
—The Literary Times
“Miranda Jarrett knows how to put life and love
into her pages and make you believe every word!”
—Rendezvous
“Ms. Jarrett’s ability to always draw the reader>
into a fast-paced tale peopled with likable and
realistic characters and a thrilling plot
is a crowning achievement.”
—Romantic Times
The Golden Lord
Miranda Jarrett
MILLS & BOON
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Prologue
Harrow Public School
Middlesex
1788
T he five boys sat cross-legged in a tight circle on the attic floor, the lantern in their center shaded so that just enough light filtered through to show the cards clutched in their hands and the hoarded heaps of coins before each of them. It was late, very late, and long past the six o’clock lock-up for the night, but no one would dare consider leaving this game.
Brant, as usual, had made sure of that. Through the sheer power of his personality, he’d made being asked to these clandestine games the most desirable invitation in the entire school, and the staggeringly high stakes that could gobble up a term’s allowance in a single hand of cards only served to increase Brant’s own mystique.
But why shouldn’t it? Brant Claremont was the sixth Duke of Strachen, Marquess of Elwes, admired as much for his wit as for his daring on the cricket field. As an orphan, he had only a distant, disinterested guardian to answer to, and his two younger brothers had been sent so far away that there wasn’t even a hint of fraternal competition. To the other boys in his form, Brant’s life seemed as close to perfection as any mortal British male could wish for.
Only Brant himself knew otherwise. Still months shy of his sixteenth birthday, he already understood all too well the terrifying obligations that his wastrel father’s death two years before had thrust upon him, along with the dukedom and a string of mortgaged, decaying properties.
Not that any of that mattered here in the chill of this drafty attic. Now Brant smiled as he leaned forward, the lantern turning his fair hair as gold as the guineas heaped before his crossed legs. He was winning, winning deep, and he did not want his luck to turn just yet.
“Your play, Galsworthy,” he said, his voice deceptively languid. “Draw or show. Any time before Michaelmas will do.”
The others sniggered nervously while the Honorable Edmund Galsworthy scowled down at his hand. “I say, Claremont, that’s cutting it a little rough,” he grumbled. “Not all of us are so deuced quick with ciphering as you are.”
“That’s why we call him the Golden Lord, Galsworthy,” said another boy, obviously with a better hand of his own. “He can turn pasteboard cards direct into guineas if you let him. Your guineas.”
“’Tis luck, no more,” murmured Brant with a modest shrug, careful to mask his own excitement. It was luck, but it was also skill, coupled with the rare gift he had for recalling cards. He could sympathize with Galsworthy’s dilemma—sympathize more, really, than anyone here would guess—but not now, and not with so much at stake. Nearly every shilling Brant won was sent off against his father’s debts, while Galsworthy’s mother was some sort of tin-mine heiress. The poor oaf could afford to lose almost in equal proportion to how desperately Brant himself needed to win.
“But you do know the rules of this game, Galsworthy,” he said. “Laggards must forfeit, else the rest of us fall asleep.”
“I’m considering, not lagging,” snapped Galsworthy, his fingers leaving moist dimples in the edges of his cards as he studied the red and black figures one last time. Slowly he puffed out his cheeks and spread his hand on the floor for the others to see.
“There now, Claremont,” he announced. “That was worth the wait, wasn’t it?”
“Indeed,” drawled Brant. He kept his expression unchanged as he fanned his own cards out on the floor in front of him. “I’d say I’ve won again, Galsworthy, and I— What the devil is that?”
Abruptly the door flew open, scattering cards and panicking boys as two large men thundered into the attic. Brant scrambled to his feet, stuffing guineas into his pockets as Conway, his boardinghouse monitor, caught him roughly by the collar of his coat while Parker, his tutor, gathered up the cards and loose coins as evidence.
“I’ll give you all the devil you can handle, Claremont,” growled Conway, yanking Brant’s feet clear from the floor. “Least I will after Dr. Keel’s through with you.”
“Dr. Keel will have little interest in this,” protested Brant as Parker now seized his arm. “This—this was harmless amusement, a mere game among gentlemen!”
“That’s not what Dr. Keel believes,” warned Conway ominously. “Now walk, you cheating little weasel. Walk!”
Brant twisted, struggling vainly to free himself from the grasp of the two stronger, older men. He heard the tear of fabric, the sound of the sleeve of his superfine coat ripping away at the shoulder, and as he turned to look, one of the men cuffed his ear, hard enough to make him see bright flashes before his eyes.
“You—you have impinged my honor as a gentleman and—and as a lord, Conway!” he gasped, desperate not to show his growing fear as the monitor shoved him stumbling toward the dark attic staircase. Of course he’d felt Conway’s wrath many times before—at Harrow even dukes were flogged regularly in the Fourth Form rooms—but never before had the monitor singled him out away from the others like this. “You cannot—cannot treat me like this!”
“I can treat you a deal worse if I please, Claremont,” said Conway. Like most of the monitors, he was a hulk of a man, able to worry even a tall boy like Brant like a terrier with a rat. “And I would, too, if Dr. Keel didn’t want you in his rooms directly. Now walk.”
This time Brant did as he was told, forcing himself not to panic, to order his thoughts as they half dragged him down the stairs and across the empty courtyard. Dr. Keel was a sensible man; surely he could be made to see this for the foolishness it was. Card-playing after lock-up was hardly the most grievous sin that took place at the school, scarcely worth this sort of melodrama.
But what if this wasn’t about the card game at all? What if Dr. Keel or one of the tutors had finally discovered his blackest, most shameful secret? Was this the reason that Conway and Parker had stopped trying to hide their contempt for him? And what if this were only the first, stumbling step to his complete disgrace and ruin, and a cell in the madhouse where he’d always suspected he belonged?
The headmaster must have been waiting for them, for he answered the door to his study at once. To Brant’s surprise, he was still dressed as precisely as if it were first dawn, instead of near midnight, but then there were whispers that Dr. Keel never slept at all, nor needed to.
“Claremont,” he said grimly, studying Brant from beneath the stiff curls of his wig. “Enter, pray.”
For once Brant did as he was told and, with a final shove from Conway, he slowly went to stand in the center of the bare floor before the headmaster’s desk. His heart pounding, he raised his chin and squared his shoulders in the torn coat, prepared to meet whatever disaster came next. He’d only been in these rooms once before, on the day he’d first arrived at the school, but from Dr. Keel’s glower, he knew better than to expect the same welcoming hospitality this time.
“Claremont,” the headmaster repeated more ominously. “Given all the blessings that your birth has showered upon your head, I’d looked for more from you.”
Brant took a deep breath to steady his words and his nerves. Despite the chill in the room, he was already sweating, his legs itching to carry him from this room and to run as quickly as they could away from this mess.
“I am sorry, sir,” he began. “And you are right. At such an hour, so long after lock-up, I should have been either asleep or preparing tomorrow’s recitation, instead of allowing myself the indulgence of a mild amusement among friends—”
“Is that what you believe your time here at Harrow is to be, Claremont?” interrupted Dr. Keel incredulously, his brows bristling together with astonishment. “Your indulgence and amusement?”
“No, sir, not at all,” said Brant hastily, realizing he could not afford another such misstep. “I should hardly presume—”
“You should hardly presume.” The headmaster paused scornfully, as if struck silent with shock, and shook his head. “How can you venture such a statement, Claremont, when all you have done since you have arrived here is presume?”
“I am sorry, Dr. Keel,” said Brant again. “But if I could—”
“Could what, you sniveling little creature?” demanded Dr. Keel, his voice ringing with his scornful anger. “Is it the list of your iniquities that you wish to hear? Is that the kind of recitation that would please you most?”
“No, sir,” said Brant wretchedly. He tried to remind himself that he was a Claremont, a peer of the realm, while Keel was no more than a lowly public school headmaster, but the agonizing weight of his secret and the dread of its discovery smothered any self-defense. “No, sir, not at all.”
“But you will hear them, Claremont, because it pleases me,” insisted the headmaster, rapping his knuckles impatiently on the desk. “I have kept tallies of what Mr. Conway and the others have reported to me. Because of your rank and the position you shall hold in the world after leaving this school, I have looked away. Most wrongly, it now seems to me, considering how often you have been caught in your amusements after lock-up.”
Ah, thought Brant with bleak resignation, now would come every last misdemeanor that Conway had caught him doing, and that he’d already been duly punished for.
“You have been apprehended fighting with boys from other boardinghouses,” intoned Keen righteously, “swimming naked at night in the pond, gaming and gambling at every opportunity, and consorting intimately with the lowest sort of chits from the village tavern. Then there is the contempt you have repeatedly shown to this school and its scholars by your inferior work.”
In spite of his resolution to stand tall, Brant caught his breath, clasping his hands behind his back to hide their trembling. Here it was, the end at last.
“You have done well enough with your recitations,” continued the headmaster, “well enough to have kept you here by your tutor’s mercy. But from your first day, your written work has been an unfailing mockery of learning. Why, an African monkey with a pen in his paw could do better than these!”
He swept a sheaf of papers from the desk, brandishing it before Brant. “And now come these. What am I to do with you, Claremont? Have you any answers to share with me by way of enlightenment?”
Keel tossed the papers back onto the desk with disgust, and Brant closed his eyes against the awful proof of his shame. He didn’t have to see his examination papers to know what gibberish was scrawled across them or what that gibberish proved. He already knew.
He was no Golden Lord, but an imbecile duke, an idiot from his cradle. That was the truth. No matter how he tried, concentrating until his head ached with the effort, he could not make sense of the letters that others so effortlessly saw as words. No such troubles plagued him with numbers—certainly not at cards—and if a page were read aloud to him, like a nursery story, he’d comprehend and recall every line with ease. Throughout his life he’d contrived scores of little tricks and feints to hide his deficiency, and he’d done well enough to keep his secret, even here.
But to read and write like a gentleman was as impossible for him as flying through the clouds. Awake at night, he imagined that inside his skull his brain was a fraction the size of a normal man’s, woefully shriveled and defective.
And now, it seemed, the rest of the world was about to learn the truth, as well, and scorn and pity and mock him for the half-wit that he’d always been.
“Speak, Claremont,” ordered the headmaster, his voice booming through Brant’s private dread. “I await your suggestions for me.”
Slowly, Brant opened his eyes and met Keel’s gaze, determined to savor what might well be his last few moments as a rational gentleman. “I have no suggestions, sir.”
“None?” Scowling, Dr. Keel thrust out his lower lip and leaned toward Brant. “You surprise me, Claremont. You have taken these other boys sufficiently into your confidence to pick their pockets clean, and yet you have no notion of what I should write or say to their fathers?”
“Fathers, sir?” repeated Brant uncertainly, not following at first. What had the other boys to do with this?
“Yes, Claremont, their fathers,” said the headmaster furiously, once again reaching for the sheaf of papers. “I have had these six letters in the past three days. The accusations are all the same. Hundreds, even thousands of pounds lost to you whilst gaming!”
“’Tis luck,” said Brant slowly for the second time that evening, and what else could it be, to spare him in this marvelous, unexpected way? “Purest luck, sir.”
“’Tis conniving tricks and cheats,” said Keel, thumping his fist on the edge of the desk. “I do not care if you are a peer, Claremont. No true gentleman would win as often as you do.”
“But I do not cheat, sir,” protested Brant. He didn’t cheat, not only because it was dishonorable and ungentlemanly, but also because he didn’t need to. “I never have, not once.”
“Don’t compound your iniquities by lying to me,” said Keel sternly. “Tonight’s game shall be your last here. I will not let you turn Harrow into a veritable Devonshire House of gaming. You are a sharpster, Claremont, a shark who preys upon the trust of your fellows for your own gain, and I shall not tolerate it any longer, or you, either.”
“You are sending me down, sir?” asked Brant, striving to keep the growing, giddy joy from his voice. “I am to leave Harrow?”
“As soon as is possible,” said the headmaster disdainfully. “By tomorrow noon at the latest. Until then I shall instruct Mr. Conway to keep the others in your house away from you. By your actions, you have demonstrated that you are no longer a young gentleman worthy of Harrow. I shall recommend to your guardian that a private tutor might continue with your preparation for admission to university.”
But Brant knew there had never been a question of him going to one of the grand universities at Cambridge or Oxford. His father’s estate was simply too impoverished to afford such a luxury, any more than Brant could expect to make a Grand Tour of the Continent like other peers his age. The disinterested solicitor who served as his guardian had explained it all with perfect clarity: when Brant left Harrow, his education was done.
No, he was done now. He scarcely listened to Dr. Keel’s final admonitions, too amazed by how swiftly one world was closing against him and another beckoning with possibilities. But outside in the shadows of the empty courtyard, returning to his boardinghouse for the last time, he could look up at the stars overhead and laugh with relief and exhilaration and a kind of fierce, wild joy.
He was a fifteen-year-old orphan with scarcely a shilling to his titled name. He could recite much of Homer, Aristotle and Shakespeare from memory, but he could no more read nor write than the commonest plowman. He had neither friends nor family to guide his choices and ease his path, and his two younger brothers were half a world away, if they even still lived. All he had to make his way was his title, his charm, his face and a gift for card-playing.
But he was free. He was free. Now, finally, he was done biding his time with school. Now he could make his own future and fortune, and keep the pledge he and his brothers had made to one another so long ago.
And best of all, his secret and his shame would now be safe forever.
Chapter One
Bamfleigh, Sussex
June, 1803
J enny Dell was exceptionally good at doing things silently and in the dark. She had to be, or else she never would have lived as long, and as grandly, as she already had.
Without so much as a candle to guide her, she now hurried across the dark chamber, her bare feet as quiet as a cat’s paws. While the innkeeper and his wife had been all kind welcome when she and her brother had first taken the house’s best rooms, Jenny knew that same welcome could turn as sour as vinegar wine if they realized she and Rob were leaving them now, in the middle of the night, and quite forgetting the nicety of settling their reckoning.
Jenny was sorry about that, for she’d liked this inn and the rooms that overlooked a pasture filled with sweet-smelling pink clover. But Rob had had his reasons, even if he hadn’t explained them to her just yet. Once he did, he’d be sure to remind her that there was always another inn or grand house waiting over the next hillside, filled with more folk eager for the amusing company of two genteel young persons like Jenny and Rob, and willing to share their own good fortune in return. And where, truly, was the harm in that?
Swiftly, Jenny pulled her three gowns from the clothespress and folded them into her little traveling trunk. Though limited by their travels, her wardrobe was always of the latest fashion, costly Indian muslins with silk ribbons, fine Holland chemises, the softest Kashmir shawl. Rob didn’t believe in skimping when it came to clothes. “Quality knows quality,” he’d say, and indeed Jenny did find it easier to play a lady when dressed like one. Rob was clever about such matters, just as their father had been before him. She shouldn’t forget that, especially now.
Somewhere in the inn a clock chimed three times and Jenny quickened her pace. The last of the men in the taproom had staggered home and the rest of the inn might be sleeping, but Rob would soon be waiting for her on the high road with the chaise. She closed and locked the trunk, and threaded a twisted bedsheet through the leather handles with well-practiced efficiency. Cautiously she pushed the window open—here, as at most country inns, the best rooms came with the most privacy—and tossed the bundle of her traveling cloak, stockings and shoes onto the grass below. Next went the trunk, lowered carefully down to the ground to avoid making too loud a noise when it landed.
She took two deep breaths to steady her racing heart, then clambered out the window, swinging down off the sill to drop into the grass. She untied the sheet from the trunk’s handles, gathered up the bundle of clothes and shoes, and ran barefoot across the sweet-smelling clover, her long, dark braid flopping over her shoulder and the trunk thumping awkwardly against her leg. The road wasn’t far, and even on this night with only a sliver of a moon, she easily spotted the hired chaise waiting in the shadows.
“Did anyone see you, pet?” asked Rob as he took her trunk and pulled it up into the chaise.
“Nary a soul,” she said breathlessly, climbing up onto the seat next to her brother. “Everyone was safely abed. Now will you tell me why we had to flee tonight, and so sudden?”
“Because we had no choice,” he said, no real answer at all. “Because we had to.”
Jenny frowned impatiently. Most everything they did was because they had to, wasn’t it? Their existence was precarious enough without Rob keeping the details from her like this.
“Here I thought we were doing so well with Sir Wallace,” she said. “The way he sought your opinion on those fusty old books in his library, I was sure we’d be snug there for at least a fortnight, and leave with a bit of gold in our pockets for your trouble, too.”
“We were.” Rob pulled the horse away from the tall weeds he’d been grazing and snapped the reins across the animal’s back to hurry him along. “I’d expected us to be invited as guests to Wallace Manor this very day.”
“I know,” said Jenny. “You’ve warned me before that we were perilously short of funds.”
“Well, yes.” Rob sighed, both for the shortness of their funds and the peril attached. “But there were certain, ah, complications that made it better for us to move along tonight.”
“Mrs. Hewitt?” guessed Jenny, pulling on her stockings and shoes as the chaise began moving faster. “Was she your complication?”
“Yes, and a powerfully difficult one, too.” Rob scowled. “All the time she’d been saying she was a lonely widow and coaxing me along, she’d neglected to tell me she’d another beau, a great, strapping grenadier who appeared out of the wainscoting. And I must say, Jen, he did not like my competition.”
“Did he call you out?” asked Jenny anxiously. She knew Rob always carried a pistol, a beautiful French-made gun that he’d won gaming, though he kept it hidden because he knew she didn’t approve. “You did not fight a duel, did you?”
“What, over Mrs. Hewitt?” asked Rob indignantly. “Faith, Jen, grant me more wit and judgment than that!”
Jenny shook her head, wiping the dirt from her fingers with her handkerchief. Although the name stitched on the linen was Corinthia, instead of her own—left from a highly profitable sojourn in Bath last winter when they’d posed as the Honorable Peter Beckham and his sister Miss Corinthia Beckham—she’d liked the Bruxelles lace edging too much to toss it away, even if it meant she’d kept the handkerchief far longer than she’d kept the name.
“So that is why we’re leaving now,” she said with a certain resignation, tucking the handkerchief back into her bodice. “So that you won’t have to defend your honor and Mrs. Hewitt’s virtue.”
None of this was, of course, anything new. Although Rob was twenty-five and clever as could be, he still had not one whit of sense regarding women, and if he continued to follow after their father, he never would. With his bright blue eyes and curling black hair, her handsome brother attracted the fair sex like flies to honeycomb. In that first glow of fliration he could always find some special feature or comely grace in every female he met, whether old, young or in-between. He was the most charming of rascals, for he honestly loved each new woman in turn, almost as much as they loved him.
Now Rob sniffed, wounded. “I’d always thought, Jenny, that you preferred to have me as a live coward, instead of an honorable corpse.”
“I do,” said Jenny quickly, patting her brother’s arm to reassure herself as much as him. “But I’d also rather you kept your breeches buttoned in the process. Now I’ll just have to pray that she didn’t pox you as a parting gift.”
“What could I do, Jen?” he asked forlornly. “The dear little widow played me false. If only she’d been true! You know I would have been as happy as the cows in that sweet clover near the inn if I could but spend the rest of my days with her in Bamfleigh.”
“You would not,” said Jenny matter-of-factly. “You’re just the way Father was. You like variety too much ever to be faithful. You’ll never stop your roaming.”
“For the right lady, I would,” he said confidently. “And you will, too, Jen, though with a gentleman, of course. You’re too young now, but I’ll wager five guineas that the first time you fall in love, you’ll be as moon-struck as every other Dell since Noah trundled down from the ark.”
“I’m nineteen, Rob, more than old enough to fall in love if I pleased,” she said wearily. This wasn’t a new conversation between them, either, nor was it one that Jenny particularly wished to revisit. “It’s more a matter of being sensible than too young. Just because I’m a Dell doesn’t mean I must be a ninny about men.”
Rob answered only with an incoherent grunt, and they fell into an uneasy silence that seemed to match the rocking haste of the chaise through the night. With a sigh, Jenny drew her shawl over her shoulders and propped her feet on the curved top of her trunk, letting both time and distance speed by in a leafy blur.
Rob would never understand her, or that she could want something different from life than he did himself. How could he know that the pastoral existence near the clover field that he’d described in jest was far more appealing to her than the charms of any mere lover could be? Her own snug cottage, a hearth that was hers without any fudging or dissembling: that would be her paradise. All her life she and Rob had spent roaming, first with her father and then by themselves, and wistfully she tried to imagine living in one place long enough to be able to call it home.
“I only hope, Jen,” said her brother at last, as if the conversation had been continuing all along, “that when you do fall in love, you have the decency to do it with some rich old codger who’ll put us both in his will.”
Jenny grumbled. “Oh, yes, so we’ll all three live happily ever after.”
“Don’t scoff, Jen,” said Rob easily, sorry proof that he’d been considering this all along. “It’s as easy to fall in love with a rich sweetheart as a poor one.”
“And don’t you scoff, either, Rob,” said Jenny sharply. She would flirt, and smile, and flatter, and beguile, yes, but she would not seduce, and though she’d yet even to attempt the last with any man, when she finally did, she wanted it to be because she loved him and not because her brother had told her he was rich. “I’ll play whatever role you wish, short of that. Didn’t we agree ages ago that I’d never be the bait for one of your codger schemes, not when I must—”
“Hush,” said Rob sharply, lowering his voice. He turned to look over his shoulder, his hair blowing back across his forehead. “Do you hear another horse behind us?”
“What, on the road at this hour?” She turned around, as well, holding on to the back of the seat as she peered into the night.
“It’s that infernal idiot grenadier, I know it, still looking for his satisfaction and my head.” He slapped the reins again, urging the horse into a faster pace. “Blast the man for being such a prideful idiot!”
“We must be close to the crossroads to London,” said Jenny, her heart racing as the chaise’s tall wheels rocked precariously over the rutted road. “Couldn’t we turn south, the way he wouldn’t expect us to go?”
“The devil knows what he’s expecting,” said Rob grimly. “But I don’t want him getting at you, too.”
“He’ll have to catch us first!”
“Which, given that he’s on horseback and we’re stuck in this ancient rattletrap with a hired nag, is entirely possible. Now, see that stand of trees beyond the next hill? I’m going to slow, and as soon as we’ve ducked below the hill, you’re going to jump out into the grass. You can hide in the trees and wait there, and I’ll come back and fetch you as soon as I’ve lost him.”
“I will not!” cried Jenny indignantly. “I’m staying with you, Rob, and I’m not about to go leaping like a frog from a running chaise!”
“And I say you will,” ordered Rob, concentrating on controlling the horse. “For your own good. You’d be a hindrance, pet. This idiot believes I have defiled his woman, and I don’t want to give him even the remotest chance to wreak his vengeance on you.”
Alas, Jenny understood. Most likely Rob could wriggle his way free more readily without her there in the middle. He’d done it before, and those other times, too, she’d been left or sent to wait elsewhere while he did it. She didn’t want to be a hindrance, nor, to be honest, did she wish to be defiled by an idiot grenadier, either.
“But what if he hurts you?” she protested. “What if you’re left bleeding somewhere? However will I find you again?”
“Because I always find you first, little sister.” He still smiled fondly. “Now come along, you’re only going to have the one chance. How different can it be from jumping out a window?”
