Drops of Gold (21 page)

“What is going on?” Philip demanded the moment the door closed.

“I might ask the same thing,” His Grace said. “Lady Marion’s whereabouts have been unknown for several months. A discreet search has been conducted with no results. Until now.”

“
Lady
Marion?” Philip shook his head in obvious disbelief.

“Yes. Lady Marion Linwood.”

“Linwood,” Layton muttered under his breath. Not Marion Wood, then. He digested that bit of information. Mary was a perfectly unexceptional pet name for Marion. He’d thought nothing of that discrepancy. But to give him the wrong surname was tantamount to hiding her very identity. She’d pretended to be someone she wasn’t. She’d lied to him.

“Linwood!” Philip seemed shocked. “As in the Marquess of Grenton’s family?”

“Her father,
late
father, I should say, was the Marquess of Grenton, a friend of my late father.”

The Marquess of Grenton.
Marion had told him her family was genteel. The family of a marquess was far more than that. She hailed from the aristocracy. She was a lady of rank and position and title. She had to have known
genteel
didn’t correctly describe her upbringing. She had to have known that word alone was deceptive.

The duke continued his explanation. “My parents and I spent our summers in Derbyshire, near Tafford: Grenton’s seat. Marion and I grew up quite as brother and sister. I didn’t realize you knew her.”

“Obviously we didn’t,” Layton grumbled as he paced to the window. He hadn’t even known her real name.

“She has been employed as Caroline’s governess,” Philip explained behind him.

“Governess!”

“I didn’t realize her rank when she was hired,” Layton defended himself. “She presented herself as Miss Mary Wood and never bothered to correct that misrepresentation.”

“Why would she invent an identity?” Philip asked to no one in particular. “Hire herself out as a servant? Why the need to dupe all of us?”

She’d said she had no money, that she’d been destitute. Was that even true? All the things she’d told him of her family, of her circumstances, had it all been fabricated?

Layton had opened his very soul to Marion, and she had never even told him who she really was.

Marion opted to sneak up the stairs to the nursery the next morning. Adèle and Roderick had taken great pains to explain to her that she was, as of that moment, no longer employed by Mr. Jonquil and that she was remaining at the Park as a guest of the Duke of Hartley. Her reputation and social standing quite depended upon it. And, they assured her, neither were entirely in shreds. Being the daughter of a marquess was not without its benefits. Although, growing up, the greatest benefit she’d ever seen in it was sitting beneath a shade tree with her family. They were not particularly hung up on their rank.

Despite now being gowned in splendid clothing, thanks to her being quite close in size and height to Adèle, Marion was unhappy. She missed Caroline. So she slipped into the nursery wing, hoping to go unnoticed.

“Mary!”

Perhaps not entirely unnoticed.

“My darling girl!” Marion exclaimed, clasping the child to her fiercely. “How I missed you last night.”

“Papa read me a story and tucked me in,” Caroline reassured her. “He said you will not be my governess anymore.” She spoke as if completely convinced her father was short a brick or two.

“I am afraid not, dearest,” Marion said.

Her lips stuck out in a pout. “He said your name is not really Mary.”

“My given name is Marion,” she confessed. “Mary is short for Marion.”

“Oh.” That seemed to settle
that
question. “I like Marion better.”

“Do you?” Layton had said the same thing.

Caroline nodded. “Everyone has been calling you
Lady
. Do I need to call you that?”

“Do you remember when I first came to Farland Meadows,” Marion asked, “and you said you wanted to be just plain Caroline because that would mean that we were friends?”

Caroline nodded, wide-eyed.

“I would like you to call me Marion or Mary. Because we are friends.”

The look of confusion hadn’t left Caroline’s eyes, and Marion began to worry. Was it all too much for the child to take in? Had she lost the girl’s trust?

“Why won’t you be my governess anymore?”

Marion sighed and searched for the correct words. “I would like to take Caroline down to the library,” Marion informed the reigning governess, using the lady of the manor voice her mother had schooled her in when she was as young as Caroline. The governess seemed to hesitate for a moment then reluctantly agreed. “Come with me, Caroline,” Marion instructed. “I will tell you one more story.”

The library was empty, just as Marion had hoped. She sat down on a royal-blue brocade window seat and pulled Caroline onto her lap. For a moment, she simply held the girl and looked out over the snow-covered grounds of now-familiar Lampton Park. She liked it nearly as well as Tafford, where she’d grown up, but not as much as she adored Farland Meadows. Despite the staff who disliked her and the initial feeling of suffocating sadness in the house, she had grown to love it and rejoice in the slow transformation she’d seen there.

“Is this story about that family?” Caroline asked, snuggling close to her.

“Mm-hmm.” She hugged Caroline tightly for a moment. “That family in all of our stories is
my
family, Caroline. My real family.”

“Really?” Caroline sounded amazed.

“The handsome young man is my father. The kindhearted young lady is—”

“Your mother?” Caroline guessed.

“Yes. The strapping son is my brother, Robert. And the loving daughter is—”

“You!” Caroline said in obvious amazement.

“And all the things I told you about the Drops of Gold and the silly pepper and so many other things”—she squeezed Caroline as she said it, and the angel-child giggled—“are all true things that actually happened to my family while I was growing up.”

“You told me they were positively true.”

Marion realized Caroline had never doubted her claim. Ah, the faith of a child! “Well, I need to tell you some things about my family, dearest, so you will understand why I cannot be your governess anymore.” Marion felt Caroline nod her head silently. She could tell the poor girl was nervous. “When I was a young girl, several years older than you are, my mother became very ill. Though we cared for her and did our best to make her well again, she didn’t get well.”

“Did she die?”

“She did,” Marion answered plainly, honestly.

“Were you sad?”

“Yes, I was. I still am sometimes because I miss her.” Marion held Caroline and thought of times like this with her own mother, being held when she was confused or tired or sad or happy. It was both a comforting recollection and a painful one.

“But I still had my father and brother, and we were happy together. When my brother was all grown-up, he decided he wanted to be a soldier and help the other soldiers who were fighting in the war.” Marion pushed down the burning lump in her throat.

“Like Stanby?”

“Yes, dear,” Marion whispered. Tears stung her eyes, and her throat felt like it was closing off. She sat silently for a moment, trying to regain enough composure to continue. Marion was determined that Caroline know she was not being abandoned and that Marion’s change of situation in no way meant she had stopped loving her. “My brother Robert was brave. He wanted so badly to keep his family and his country safe.”

“Was he a good soldier, Mary?” Caroline asked.

She hesitated as she thought back on his letters. “I
think
he was,” she answered frankly.

“I know he was,” a voice declared.

Marion looked over her shoulder. Captain Stanley Jonquil stood watching her, a look of pain on his face. Marion wiped at a tear trickling down her cheek but didn’t release Caroline. “You knew my brother?”

“Lieutenant Robert Linwood, Viscount Yesley. Fifteenth Light Dragoons,” Captain Jonquil confirmed, crossing the room to sit on the wide window seat then turning to look at her and Caroline. “We all called him Bobert.”

Marion nodded. “He wrote about his nickname.”

“Everyone called him all sorts of a fool for joining up, he being the heir to a marquess and no spare. But none of us would have felt as confident going into combat without him there. I fought with the Thirteenth, but I knew him well.”

The tears flowed faster, pictures of a smiling boy pushing her in a swing, teaching her to snatch sweet biscuits from under Cook’s nose, running across Tafford with his loyal dog, returning wet-cheeked without it. He still seemed so real to her, as if she would turn a corner and he would be there laughing at her look of surprise.

“He fell at Orthez,” Captain Jonquil said.

“Yes,” she choked out. Marion felt Caroline’s short arms wrap around her neck, an act of childish comforting that kept Marion from being overwhelmed by the grief she’d been too at a loss, too overwhelmed, to fully experience nearly a year earlier.

“He saved the life of his commanding officer,” Captain Jonquil said authoritatively. “I don’t know if you were told that.”

Marion shook her head.

“He was a good soldier. And a good man.” Captain Jonquil handed her a handkerchief. Marion dabbed and wiped, trying to get herself under control.

“I’ll scrape the junk off it, Stanby,” Caroline promised, hugging Marion even tighter.

Marion half sobbed, half laughed, a trembling smile turning up her lips. Captain Jonquil chuckled as well.

“Thank you for telling me, Captain Jonquil.”

“If Bobert had known you were working as a servant, he’d have skinned me alive.” Captain Jonquil shook his head. “He talked of ‘Maid Marion’ all the time.”

Marion laughed at the old nickname.

“But his consolation seemed to be that your father would take care of you should anything happen.”

Marion sighed. “News of Robert’s death reached us within days of Orthez.” Marion took deep breaths to keep her emotions under control. “Father was struck down by it. A stroke, the doctors said. Within a matter of days, he was dead. He and Robert were buried next to my mother on the same day.”

“And why did you then decide to become a governess?”

“I had no choice.” Marion tried to put into words the panic that grew over the months that followed the burial. “My father made no provisions for me. None whatsoever. I had no allowance to live on, no dowry to tempt a suitor, though I was hardly in a position to consider matrimony. The estate passed to a distant cousin I have never met, who doesn’t even live in England—the West Indies or America or something like that. The solicitors were squabbling over control of the estate, one insisting he acted for the new marquess, the other insisting he would do nothing without the express written instructions of this cousin of mine.

“I couldn’t pay the servants’ wages, and the solicitors would not do so. Soon the house was unstaffed, the larder empty. I wrote to relatives, seeking help, but those who returned my missives indicated they could not take on a charity case. I did the only thing I could think of.”

“You lied.”

Marion turned on the seat so quickly she nearly tumbled Caroline to the floor. Layton stood not five feet behind her, watching, obviously listening.

“You made up a name,” he continued, sounding almost accusatory. “Hid your background. Probably even forged your references.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.” Marion pleaded with him to understand.

“You could have told me.”

“If I had told you when I first arrived that I was the daughter of a marquess and was working at your estate without the permission of my guardian, you would have fired me.”

He didn’t argue. She hadn’t expected him to. Any gentleman with sense would have immediately dismissed a disaster waiting to happen.

“Was there never a point when you trusted me enough to tell me the truth?” Layton asked quietly.

“I couldn’t,” Marion whispered.
You had enough burdens
, she added silently.

“Of course not.”

“Where will you go now, Lady Marion?” Captain Jonquil asked. Marion had forgotten he was even there.

“Rod—er, Hartley—is writing to my cousin, the new Marquess of Grenton. He is my guardian.”

“Perhaps he will allow you to remain for the wedding.” Captain Jonquil’s eyes shifted between Marion and Layton.

Marion shook her head. “I think it would be best if I left.”

“No, Mary! No!” Caroline cried, clinging to her to the point of near suffocation. “Don’t leave me!”

Marion looked to Layton for support, for some kind of intervention.

“Come on, Caroline” was all he said, and he held his hand out to his daughter. “Lady Marion must do what she feels is best.”

He scooped up Caroline and walked out.

“The daughter of a deuced marquess, Flip!” Layton grumbled. He let out a frustrated breath. “Sorry ’bout the language, Harry.”

Harold nodded his forgiveness, which made Layton roll his eyes. Harold was so ridiculously pious that even the least offensive interjections required his forgiveness. Holy Harry at his most devout could be a little much.

“What exactly bothers you about her parentage, Layton?” Philip asked. “Is it that she outranks you?”

That rankled a little, yes. “No. A little, maybe. But not like that . . .” He ran a hand through his hair. “She must think I am a pompous imbecile.”

“I always did think she was pretty intelligent,” Philip said.

“Shut up, Philip.”

“Sorry, brother.” Philip didn’t sound sorry in the least. “What, in your opinion, has led Lady Marion to this rather unflattering assessment of your character?”

“You should have heard some of the peals I rang over her head,” Layton said as he paced. “She was the most impertinently behaved servant: talking back, taunting, jeering, acting like . . . like . . .”

“The daughter of a deuced marquess?” Philip asked innocently.

“Exactly.” Layton spun back to look at him. “And I lectured her about proprieties and proper behavior and being conscious of rank and position.”