Lord of Secrets Read online

  Rosalie was too dismayed to keep the consternation from her voice. “Oh, no. That wouldn’t be right. My mother was Lady Whitwell.” And now her aunt was. The thought brought a fresh pang of loss.

  Mrs. Howard surveyed her critically. “Hmm. Your Christian name is Rose?”

  “Rosalie.”

  She smiled. “Then I’ll introduce you as Lady Rosalie.”

  Rosalie let the sewing fall to her lap. “Oh, please, Mrs. Howard, you mustn’t do that. It doesn’t work that way. The daughter of a baron isn’t Lady anyone. I’m just plain Miss Whitwell.”

  Mrs. Howard’s lips thinned. “It’s not as if anyone cares about such things in America.”

  No, Rosalie didn’t suppose they did, though Mrs. Howard seemed determined to give her a title just the same. “But it isn’t me.”

  “What difference does it make what I call you, when no one in New York even knows who you are?”

  Rosalie ducked her head and resumed her sewing without reply, hoping her silence would speak for itself. Why should she pretend to be what she was not? She was proud to be Miss Whitwell, her father’s daughter. Besides, what if one of Mrs. Howard’s New York friends learned she had no right to call herself Lady Rosalie? She could scarcely imagine the shame of being branded a fraud, an imposter who put on airs. Mrs. Howard might as well call her Maharajah or Your Holiness, since she had just as much right to those distinctions.

  The silence stretched out. At last Mrs. Howard tired of Rosalie’s stubborn refusal to transform from a drab nobody into the magnetic and cosmopolitan Lady Rosalie, companion to the great, and rose with a disappointed sniff. “We’ll talk more about this later. For now, I’m going below, before this sun gives me another case of the megrims. You may bring down my gown once you’ve finished trimming it.”

  She marched away—well, perhaps not marched. She walked away, really, but to Rosalie it seemed a forceful motion, as if trumpets were sounding a charge in Mrs. Howard’s head.

  Rosalie sighed and jabbed the needle into the copper gown. She should have tried harder to make herself agreeable.

  “Perhaps you might choose some other title for yourself.” Lord Deal’s even baritone came from behind her. “Tsarina has a fine ring to it.”

  His remark so closely mirrored her own thoughts, she turned on the bench, a smile springing to her lips—only to remember the last time she’d approached him. She’d made him uncomfortable, trying to press him into joining her at dinner. He’d all but backed away in an attempt to wriggle free of her when she’d insisted.

  Fortunately he sounded not at all as he had in the dining saloon, his tone more amused than uneasy. “Forgive me for eavesdropping yet again. I couldn’t avoid it, when the two of you were sitting so close to the companionway.”

  Rosalie stood, dropping her sewing to the deck in her confusion. “I’m afraid Mrs. Howard is not very happy with me.”

  “If I were you, I should wear that as a badge of honor.” He bent and picked up the gown she’d dropped, tossing it deftly into Mrs. Howard’s workbasket. “How are you faring, Miss Whitwell? You must be missing your father a great deal.”

  “Well enough, but—yes, I am.” How strange. Unlike Mrs. Howard, Lord Deal didn’t shy away from mentioning her father. Was he less concerned about her grief, or did he simply understand that Papa was always on her mind, whether mentioned or not, and she welcomed any opportunity to speak of him?

  The marquess turned to look out over the water. Leaning on the rail, he began reciting Shakespeare.

  “‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

  To give these mourning duties to your father:

  But, you must know, your father lost a father;

  That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound

  In filial obligation for some term

  To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever

  In obstinate condolement is a course

  Of impious stubbornness;...’tis a fault to heaven,

  A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

  To reason most absurd: whose common theme

  Is death of fathers...”

  He had a wonderful voice, so low, resonant and well bred it gave her the shivers. With his back to her, he had an unfamiliar grace about him, too, as if he were never completely relaxed unless he felt himself unobserved.

  Rosalie turned the speech over in her head. “I don’t think I can be that philosophical.”

  He looked over his shoulder at her with a fleeting smile. “I never could be either, Miss Whitwell. But then, the words are spoken by one of the more sinister characters in the play. I believe we’re meant to take them with a grain of salt.”

  “Oh.” Now he was probably thinking her green and ignorant—and with perfect justification, too.

  He straightened. “Besides, even if the speech were meant to be taken literally, not everyone can comfort himself with thoughts of heaven. My father died by his own hand, and I have it on good authority Paradise was therefore barred to him. But at least you’ve no such cause for fear. Your father lived a good life to the end.”

  “Yes—though I have a bone to pick with whoever told you such a vicious thing about your own father. Surely God is more merciful than that.”

  The marquess studied her for a moment, then looked away and cleared his throat in what, in any other man, would have seemed a self-conscious gesture. “Allow me to apologize for my clumsiness last night. I’m unaccustomed to conversing with young ladies, and it took me by surprise when you invited me to join you and your cousin for dinner. I beg your pardon for having been so disobliging.”

  What fine eyes he had, so dark it was hard to tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. She’d hoped he hadn’t really meant to rebuff her. Now it appeared she’d been right, and poor Lord Deal suffered from the same unfortunate shortcoming she did, a tendency to become flustered and say the wrong thing.

  Perhaps he’d be more at ease if they kept to small talk. “Thank you. We’ve had smooth sailing, don’t you think? We must be making good time to England.”

  “I bow to your expertise in such matters. This is only my second ocean crossing, the first having been the voyage in the other direction.”

  “Truly? In that case, I hope the journey wasn’t too tiresome for you.”

  “Not tiresome at all. In truth, much about America intrigued me.”

  The top of her head came barely to his shoulder, which meant she had to stand several feet back if she wanted to meet his eyes without having to crane her neck. “Such as?”

  He smiled. “To quote Hamlet’s answer when Polonius asked him what he read: ‘Words, words, words.’”

  She tilted her head to one side, regarding him in bemusement. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’d wanted for some time to visit America. One could hardly have devised a more interesting linguistic experiment if one had done it by design—an entire nation, separate and now wholly independent, speaking the same language we do, but at a remove of more than three thousand miles. Think of all the differences in accent, grammar, vocabulary and even spelling it’s already produced.”

  “You’re a student of language?”

  “Only a very amateur one. While in the States, I made a pilgrimage to New Haven in Connecticut to meet the American counterpart to our Dr. Johnson, Mr. Noah Webster. He published his own dictionary some ten or eleven years ago, perhaps the first attempt at standardizing a uniquely American system of spelling and pronunciation.”

  “It must have taken him years. When I was at school, we had to copy out passages from Dr. Johnson’s dictionary whenever we misbehaved. I never made it past the letter C.”

  “Perhaps you misbehaved less than most.”

  “No.” She laughed. “Quite the contrary. None of the other girls even got through B.”

  He glanced across at her, and a look of almost boyish embarrassment crossed his face. “I’ve made myself sound wretchedly dull and pedantic, haven
’t I? But language fascinates me, especially its history. In America, for instance, they say fall for autumn and gotten for the past participle of got, exactly as Shakespeare once did. The words have been preserved there, tucked safely away across the ocean, though they’ve since faded from use in England.”

  “So you’re interested specifically in the history of English?”

  “Yes, though of course our language has been influenced by a host of other tongues, from the Old High German of the Anglo-Saxons to the French of their Norman conquerors. One can even read the clash of those two cultures in the words we use today. While the conquered Saxon peasantry worked the land and gave the animals they tended good Anglo-Saxon names like cow and pig and sheep, their Norman rulers were enjoying the benefits of that labor, conferring French names on their food like beef and pork and mutton. As a result, our animals have one name, while their meat has another.”

  “Oh. I never realized...”

  “All the borrowing English has done has given it a richness of nuance no other language can match. We have both an Anglo-Saxon and a Latinate word for nearly every idea, with the Latinate generally giving the loftier impression, and the Anglo-Saxon the more direct. My favorite example comes from Macbeth. ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.’”

  Rosalie savored the words. They sounded so stirring when he spoke them, so poetic. “‘Making the green one red...’”

  “Incarnadine.” He nodded. “I’m hardly the first man to say it, but Shakespeare was a genius—’not of an age, but for all time.’” The marquess smiled ruefully. “I have been droning on, haven’t I? I apologize for inflicting my eccentricities on you.”

  “No, I’m most interested! I’ve been to several of the places where Shakespeare set his plays—Verona, Venice, even Kronborg Castle in Denmark. Do you speak any other languages, Lord Deal?”

  “I do, though I’m interested principally in their influence on English. Greek and Latin, of course, but also French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, and a smattering of Persian and Hindi.”

  “All those?” She gaped at him. “You speak that many languages?”

  “Well, I can read and write them, with varying degrees of fluency.” Again, he looked vaguely embarrassed. “I had the misfortune to inspire one of Brummell’s witticisms a few years back, when he remarked, ‘I’m told Deal speaks ten languages—just not to anyone we know.’”

  Rosalie giggled. “Oh, dear. I suppose I shouldn’t laugh.”

  “No, I don’t mind. I laughed myself, when I heard it from my valet.”

  How comfortable she felt with him, talking amid the familiar sounds of the ship’s creak and the lapping waves—how much freer and lighter than before. For the first time since her father’s death she’d been feeling like her old self again, if only for a little while.

  But beside her, Lord Deal had broken into a pensive frown. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation yesterday after your father’s burial service.” He slid one hand along the ship’s rail. “Indeed, it’s been so much on my mind I feel I must ask you another personal question.”

  She waited, searching his face.

  “You’ve said you mean to live with your uncle. What is it about him that your cousin considers...”

  “Rackety?”

  Faint worry lines appeared between the marquess’s brows. “Yes. I’ve no right to ask, I acknowledge, but I feel compelled to nonetheless. Is your uncle a gambler, a drinker, a womanizer...?”

  “A bit of all those things, I’m afraid. But you needn’t fret for my sake. If I do go to live with him, I’m sure we’ll deal quite well together.”

  “If...?”

  “You didn’t overhear that part of my conversation with Mrs. Howard, then? I’m hoping she’ll agree to take me on as her companion.”

  “Do you mean to say you consider working for her preferable to living with your uncle?”

  The question might have been a mere gibe at Mrs. Howard, not very different from the one Charlie had made, if not for the concern written plainly on his face. So Lord Deal was a worrier. The discovery surprised her. Why did he pretend to be the cool, aloof figure everyone supposed him? A good deal more went on beneath his reserved exterior than met the eye.

  “I think I could be useful to Mrs. Howard,” Rosalie said. “And I’d like to remain in one spot for a time.”

  “Modest enough goals, I should think.”

  “They seem quite ambitious to me, after nine years of travel. And my aunt and uncle lead a somewhat unsettled life.” Rosalie stole a glance at the marquess. She could have happily spent hours marveling at the perfection of his jaw—the strong, square lines, firm and sharply chiseled. When had he last had his portrait painted? Recently, she hoped, and by a skilled artist, one capable of capturing both his dark good looks and the compassion that lurked beneath his austere manner. “May I ask you a personal question of my own?”

  “Turnabout is fair play, or so I’ve been told.”

  “Why do you avoid society? At first I supposed you simply didn’t care for the company on board, but I’m told you have a reputation for keeping to yourself even in England. Do you really prefer to be alone?”

  He looked away but managed a credibly offhand shrug. “I’ve found that the fewer people one has in one’s life, the fewer problems and worries one encounters.”

  “I suppose that’s true, but it also means one has fewer friends and fewer happy memories to share. That seems a rather unrewarding way to go through life.”

  He gazed out over the water. “I’m sure there are worse fates.”

  “Yes, of course.” Rosalie knew she ought to let the matter drop, especially when the stiffness was creeping back into his posture, but the urge to learn more about him won out. “Then again, you’re a gentleman of title and property, with a duty to your family name. Have you never thought of marrying?”

  He flashed her a look of surprise.

  “Oh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. That—that came out sounding dreadfully coquettish! I wasn’t angling to fill the position, truly.”

  He broke into an unexpected chuckle. “You may relax, Miss Whitwell. I doubt you’d point out the coquettishness of the question if you were really that calculating.”

  Her cheeks burned. “Not unless I were so utterly Machiavellian I hoped to disarm you by calling attention to my wiles—which, I assure you, I’m not.”

  His chuckle faded to look of admiration. “No, you strike me as one of the least Machiavellian ladies I’ve ever met.”

  Even as he said the words, she realized he was giving her more credit than she deserved. A part of her was interested in Lord Deal, and in a more than merely friendly way. She’d never before found any man so powerfully attractive—or so mysterious. He could be remarkably kind one moment, and distant the next.

  Her cheeks still hot, she looked down. “I expressed it clumsily, but I did hope to make a point. I can think of only two types who prefer solitude, the coldly misanthropic and the painfully awkward, and you strike me as neither—or, at least, there’s nothing at all awkward about you once you begin talking. I don’t know how you can be happy, keeping so much to yourself.”

  He smiled wistfully. “How many people are really happy, when one comes right down to it?”

  She gaped at him. “Why, lots of people. Charlie, for example. I was happy, looking after my father. My mother and father were blissfully happy together, and so were Charlie’s—”

  “Shall I escort you to your cabin, Miss Whitwell?” the marquess said with an air of finality. “It’s nearly time to dress for dinner.”

  * * *

  Rosalie had hoped she and Lord Deal were on their way to becoming friends, but to her disappointment, he made no effort to further their acquaintance after the conversation on deck. Even when Charlie invited him to join their party for a game of Pope Joan after dinne
r—an offer Charlie made reluctantly, and only at Rosalie’s urging—Lord Deal responded with a vague, “Thank you, Mr. Templeton, but I shouldn’t wish to intrude on you young people.” Which, as Rosalie pointed out to Charlie, was quite ridiculous, since Lord Deal couldn’t be more than a few years older than they were, however more proper and sophisticated he might seem.

  She smiled at the marquess whenever she caught his eye, and even stopped to speak to him as she left the dining saloon with Charlie or Mrs. Howard. Her attempts to start a conversation met with polite but unencouraging replies. The Marquess of Deal was clearly not in the market for a friend.

  “It’s for the best, Rosie,” Charlie said, observing her downcast expression as he walked her to her cabin at the conclusion of one particularly discouraging evening. “We’re not used to moving in circles that grand. Besides, you like to mother the people in your life, while he seems the last man in the world who would allow any woman to fuss over him.”

  She strove to hide her disappointment. “It’s not as if I had designs on the gentleman. He just seems so alone...”

  Charlie frowned. “Now don’t go making a virtue out of the fellow’s disagreeable manners. If he’s alone, it’s only because he prefers it that way. You’ve seen how rude he is to everyone, and how he considers himself too good for us.”

  “But that’s just it. I don’t believe he considers himself too good for us at all. I think he’s simply been on his own so long, he doesn’t know how to let anyone get close.”