Authors: Cathy Maxwell
Even if he had visited, he wouldn’t have stepped inside a church.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he began, and then stopped as the candlelight fell on another marker that had not been here years ago when Yale had last entered this vault, at his mother’s funeral. This marker was not as new as his father’s.
“I want you out of here now, sir,” she demanded boldly, but Yale dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
He squatted, the better to read the lettering on the marker:
YALE AETHELRED CARDEROCK
1776-1799?
His family thought him dead? The air in the crypt turned suddenly colder. Or was the chill inside him?
“I want you to leave,” Miss Northrup was saying, a touch of desperation in her voice. “Now!”
Yale looked up at her. It took him a moment to find his voice. “How did he die?”
Why did they believe him dead?
“How did both the duke and his son die?”
She didn’t answer him. “Please leave.” Her voice now shook slightly.
He came to his feet. “That rotting log is probably full of crawling ants. I’d drop it if I were you.”
Her eyes widened and she glanced at her hands, but she did not drop the log. Miss Northrup was obviously made of sterner stuff than most of the English women of his acquaintance.
“I want you to leave, and hand me the keys before you go,” she insisted.
Yale pulled them from where he’d tucked them in his waistband and held them out to her. “You can have them and I’ll go, but first I want you to answer my question.”
A frown line worried her forehead. She pressed her lips together.
“You don’t trust me,” he said, “and I don’t blame you, considering the way I’ve barged into your life in the middle of the night.”
“And trespassed on private property,” she added.
Yale hid his smile, agreeing readily, “And trespassed.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Yale hesitated. He glanced at the grave bearing his name. Would his family rejoice to discover him alive…or had they all been relieved that the black sheep was no longer able to upset their orderly lives?
“Marvin,” he said calmly. “Marvin Browne.” It was the name of the tutor he’d had when he was a child, and the first name that came to mind. “Browne with an ‘e,’” he added, mimicking his tutor.
Miss Northrup relaxed her stance a bit, lowering her arms, apparently deciding a man named Marvin couldn’t be all that dangerous. “Mr. Browne, you must be aware that you are on very private and sacred ground. Why did you force your way into this vault?”
“I was once close to the family,” he answered truthfully. “I was startled to learn the old duke was dead. I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Now that you’ve seen it, I will ask you to be respectful and leave. I’m certain any questions you have can be better answered on the morrow.”
Yale hid his smile. He’d never met such a persistent woman. “I will leave,
after
you’ve answered my questions, Miss Northrup.”
“What questions do you have?”
“I want to know about these men’s deaths.” A
thought struck him, one that filled him with remorse. “Did the duke suffer when he…died?” He should have been by his father’s deathbed. He should have begged forgiveness.
The set of her mouth tightened and he thought she would order him to leave again. Instead, she said, “His was a wasting illness. He’d been ill for several years. The doctors thought it was consumption, but I disagreed.”
“
You
disagreed?”
She lifted her chin proudly. “There are few doctors this far north. Only Dr. Rees from Morpeth. The duke’s children didn’t like him, so since the duke insisted on being at Braehall, they brought up London doctors. I was often asked to care for His Grace after the physicians returned to Town.”
“Do you know of medicine?”
“I have an understanding,” she said in her soft, almost lyrical voice, lighter than a Scots accent and pleasant to the ear. “My own mother was ill for years. I served as her nurse until her death last year.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Yale said, more because of his own father than out of real empathy.
But it was the right thing to say. Her expression softened. “It was actually a blessing when she passed on. Just as it was for the old duke. Mother and His Grace both had time to say their good-byes and make sense of their lives. My father died suddenly only two weeks after her death. It was the influenza that took both my
parents, but my father slipped away so quickly, and there was no time to say anything.”
Her words went straight to something he’d thought he’d lost long ago, his heart.
“But then your father didn’t suffer much,” Yale said. “At least, that is one blessing.”
“I don’t know that His Grace suffered that much, either. The Carderocks are a large and loving family and they worked hard to make his last days comfortable. He was surrounded almost daily by his children and grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren?”
Grandchildren!
But then, it had been eleven years…
“Yes, the current duke has three sons,” Miss Northrup volunteered. “His sister is also married and a mother herself, although I’m not certain how many children she has. Of course, the Carderocks rarely come to Sproule anymore. The new duke doesn’t enjoy country life the way his father did.”
Yale had been so focused on his father, he hadn’t given much thought to his brother and sister, both of whom were several years older. Before Yale had left England, his brother Wayland had seemed firmly ensconced in the country and destined to remain there. He’d rarely seen his sister Twyla, even though she’d lived in London with her husband. Brother and sister had never gotten along, and matters had only grown worse when Yale had shown up drunk at her wedding breakfast. He’d spent the previous night out carousing gaming dens and other
pleasures with some of his cronies. Twyla had not been amused.
He rubbed his temples, feeling the beginning of a headache. While he had pursued his goal of impressing his father, he’d never stopped even to wonder about his brother and sister.
“Please, Mr. Browne, the hour is very late and it’s cold here in the crypt. I ask you once again to leave.”
Yale ignored her request. “What about him?” He nodded to the marker bearing his own name.
Miss Northrup gave a weary sigh. “You’re not going to let me return to my bed, are you?”
Yale grinned, liking her lack of missish airs.
She set the log down, dusted off her hands, and crossed her arms to keep warm. “Yale Carderock isn’t buried there.”
That was an understatement!
She continued, “It is believed he died at sea. I know very little about his story, other than it has a bad end.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
She shook her head. “I know only rumor and gossip, sir. I’ve never met the man since he spent most of his life in London with his lady mother.”
“What is said of him?” Yale asked, curious.
“Oh, he was a rake of the worst sort,” she assured him. “His extravagances and peccadilloes—”
“Peccadilloes?” Yale repeated, wondering what the blazes that meant. Remembering him
self at a younger age, it could mean almost anything. He’d not been a saint.
“He was disinherited by his father,” she said, with a frown for his interruption. “The villagers who worked up at Braehall say his father used to rant and rave for days over the scrapes and nonsense the younger Carderock tumbled into. But the lad had only himself to blame. He had an inheritance from his mother that he squandered. They say he gambled it away.”
“They” weren’t wrong,
Yale thought dryly. How many times over the past eleven years had he wished he’d been wiser, and a better steward of his inheritance?
“When he’d spent that money,” Miss Northrup said, “he asked his father for his inheritance, which the old duke refused to give him. The boy then behaved in such a wild and ill-advised manner, he shamed the whole family. Oh, Yale Carderock was a bad one. From the stories I’ve heard, he was the very opposite of his brother, Wayland. You could go far and wide and never find a better man than the new duke.”
Yale felt a stab of the old jealousy he’d always felt when hearing Wayland praised. Funny, that it could hurt him after all these years. Regrettably, the picture Miss Northrup painted of him in his youth was only too true. “So Yale got himself disinherited, and then what?” he asked.
Miss Northrup shrugged. “And then nothing. Almost immediately he disappeared. His father worried incessantly. My father counseled him on
a regular basis. Yale had kept bad company, and his family feared he’d been murdered and tossed into the Thames.”
Yale had never once wondered if his father worried over his whereabouts. He’d assumed his father had been glad to wash his hands of him.
Miss Northrup continued. “The old duke told Father it was almost a blessing when word reached the family that Yale had died in a storm at sea almost two years after the disinheritance. Of course, they didn’t hear this until almost four years after his death. Apparently, Yale had signed on with a merchantman. I think the duke gained comfort in the idea that his son had passed on attempting worthwhile employment versus the more nefarious ways he could have gone.”
Yale knew what storm she referred to. It had blown up on them around the Cape of Good Hope. The ship had been destroyed. A good number of the crew had been lost, although Yale had not been one of them.
He frowned at Miss Northrup. “Was he really that much of a blackguard?”
“His story is a lesson for the sinner,” she assured him without hesitation. “My father commented more than once that the story of young Carderock paralleled that of the prodigal son, except it lacked the happy ending of a reunion with his family. He often used him for his sermons—without mentioning the family name, of course. Still, everyone in Sproule knew who it
was Father used as an example.” She frowned at Yale’s headstone. “His was a sad and wasted life. They say he was a handsome boy but died a victim of his own good looks and folly.”
Yale didn’t know how he felt about being a morality tale.
And yet he didn’t correct the impression he was dead.
“Did anyone mourn for him?”
“The younger Carderock?” she asked. “The old duke mourned, although he was too ill to attend the funeral. Unfortunately, the elder son had obligations in London that prevented him from coming, and the daughter, I believe, was expecting her fourth child. My father officiated at the funeral to an empty church, save for myself. Since there was no body and no duke, the villagers weren’t interested in attending.” She sighed. “We had a hard time coming up with good things to say about the man. Few decent, reputable people knew him.” She shook her head before changing the subject. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, will you please leave?”
Yale nodded dumbly, too stunned to do anything else. No one had attended his funeral? That was worse than being thought dead.
His feet heavy, he walked past the vicar’s daughter, that guardian of his ancestor’s remains. She watched in silence, unaware of the turmoil, rage, and pain roiling inside him. He’d been such a bloody fool.
His father had waited for him. His father had been the one person in all the world who had cared.
Why had Yale waited so long to come home? He could have returned at any time over the past five years. He’d had the money.
But it hadn’t been enough money.
He’d wanted a fleet of ships and his company and warehouses and a huge home as grand as Braehall. And he had had them, too, back in Ceylon.
But now it didn’t matter. Now it was too late.
He lingered outside the vault. The cold night air felt good against his hot skin.
He handed the vicar’s daughter the keys and she locked up. She then waited for him to be on his way.
Gallantly he picked up her shawl from the ground and offered to her. She protectively threw it around her shoulders, the color high on her cheeks.
He smiled at her obvious embarrassment. Only in England did a woman worry about such silly things. He’d seen more naked women than he cared to remember. Miss Northrup’s nightdress was not going to throw him into a frenzy.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I hope you found what you were looking for.”
Her words surprised him. “I don’t know,” he admitted sadly.
She looked as if she were going to say some
thing but then changed her mind. “Good night, Mr. Browne.”
“Good night, Miss Northrup.”
She stood waiting, and he knew she expected him to leave. He walked to the edge of the cemetery toward the road leading into the small village of Sproule. He’d already taken the liberty of stabling his horse with the village blacksmith.
But instead of making his way toward the only inn in Sproule, the Bear and Bull, he slipped into the shadows of a huge hemlock tree.
Miss Northrup waited until she was convinced he was gone before returning to her house attached to the stone church. He watched as she blew out the candle in the kitchen and the windows went dark.