Nobody's Darling

PROLOGUE

London, 1878

The duke of Wyndham’s outraged bellow echoed through the cavernous halls of Wyndham Manor, throwing his household into utter chaos. Two underfootmen came rushing through opposite doors in a blind panic, colliding with a painful thud. In the basement kitchen, a startled cook threw a tray straight up in the air, raining fresh biscuits down upon her head. One of the parlor maids dusted a priceless Ming vase right off of its terra-cotta pedestal while old Brigit, who had served the lords of Wyndham for longer than anyone still alive could remember, crossed herself as if she’d just heard the wail of a banshee arising from an open grave.

In truth, none of them had ever heard their master’s voice raised above a scathing murmur. Which only made its current volume more alarming.

The duke’s servants came scurrying from all corners of the massive estate. Half running, half stumbling, they skidded to a halt in the marble-tiled foyer outside the smoking room’s towering teak doors and congregated in a nervous huddle, transfixed by the unintelligible howls coming from inside the room.

Not a single one of them dared to intrude upon His Grace’s private domain until his normally imperturbable sister, Anne, came flying down the curving staircase, her trembling hands struggling to fasten a brocaded wrapper at the waist. Having never seen her hair in anything but a tidy chignon, most of the servants gaped to realize the iron-gray mass tumbled nearly to her rump.

“Dear God, Potter,” she gasped, yanking a knot in the wrapper’s tasseled sash. “What happened?”

The butler sniffed, as if Lady Anne’s frantic question somehow implied that he was to blame for this debacle. “I can’t possibly say, my lady. I brought the duke his buttered scones and his Morning Post, which I had just finished ironing because he does so love the pages to be nice and crisp. I folded his napkin and salted his porridge for him, then I—”

“I’m well aware of my brother’s daily habits,” Anne snapped. “He hasn’t varied them since Victoria came to the throne.”

“Oh, and there was a letter,” Potter added, wrinkling his patrician nose with visible distaste. “From America.”

Anne paled. An inexplicable silence fell within the room, somehow louder and more disturbing than the cacophony that had preceded it. Dragging her apprehensive gaze away from Potter’s, Anne closed her icy hands around the crystal knobs and threw open both doors at once.

The servants cowered behind her, plainly expecting to find their master sprawled facedown on the Persian rug, felled by a fatal bout of apoplexy.

Anne peered through a jungle of potted palm fronds, thinking rather uncharitably that if Reginald were dead, her first act as mistress of the house would be to turn this Turkish-decorated monstrosity with its leering Oriental masks and grim leather furniture into a nice sunny sewing room. Stale pipe smoke assailed her nostrils, making her eyes water. Potter rushed over to the window and threw open the velvet drapes.

Morning sunlight flooded the funereal gloom. Anne and the servants recoiled as one at the shocking sight that greeted them.

Contrary to their fears, their master did not lie prone on the carpet, a final sigh seeping from his lungs. Instead, the duke of Wyndham, whose dignity had been unimpeachable for nearly three-quarters of a century, appeared to be having a full-blown slipper-stomping, cane-banging tantrum. This was no minor bout of pique or flare of annoyance that might result in a withering rebuke or a stinging lash of his acidic tongue, but a genuine temper fit. His square face ruddy with rage, he sputtered and coughed like an overgrown toddler, literally choking on his fury.

Anne clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a horrified laugh. She’d never seen her brother in such a snit. As a child he had only to hint at his vaguest wish to have his every desire granted. Their parents had found it far easier to give extravagant gifts than affection. Except to Anne, to whom they’d given neither.

Finding himself the object of fascination for a gaping audience did little to improve the duke’s disposition. He leaned forward in his wheelchair and brandished his cane, his face darkening to a striking shade of purple.

Alarm banished Anne’s amusement. Guilt and panic assailed her as she realized her brother might actually work himself into a stroke.

Scandalized by her lapse of Christian compassion, she swung toward the servants. “Stop gawking like a flock of dim-witted sheep and return to your posts immediately. If any one of you breathes a word about what you’ve seen here this day, you’ll be dismissed without so much as a farthing.”

“Aye, mum.”

“As you wish.”

The servants dutifully filed out, the bolder ones casting curious glances over their shoulders.

“Brandy, Potter,” Anne commanded, sweeping the doors shut before rushing to drop to her knees at her brother’s side.

While the butler fetched a snifter of brandy from a satinwood cupboard, she gently pried the cane from Reginald’s grip and laid it aside. His hand immediately fisted in the lap rug, kneading the thick wool into a ball.

“What is it, Reggie?” she whispered urgently, addressing him by a nickname she hadn’t dared use since they’d shared a nursery. “What terrible thing has vexed you so?”

Before he could answer, Potter returned to press a brimming glass to his master’s whitened lips. The duke gulped the brandy instead of sipping it, causing a fresh coughing fit. Potter pounded him vigorously on the back.

“Hell and damnation, man,” he wheezed, shooting the butler a murderous glare. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Potter wisely withdrew to a far corner of the room. Smiling wryly, Anne settled back on her heels, reassured that her brother would make a full recovery.

He turned his black scowl on her. “What in the bloody hell are you staring at, woman? Haven’t you ever seen an old man lose his senses?”

“Not without good reason,” she retorted, refusing to be shocked by his profanity. “Now suppose you share it with me?”

Reginald flung a finger toward the fireplace where a piece of paper lay crumpled on the hearth. He had apparently hurled it at the flames only to have it fall short, worsening his rage. It was then that Anne noticed the rosewood box overturned at his feet, the yellowing letters spilled across the rug, the locket chain tangled around his fingers. “It’s that lunatic granddaughter of mine,” he bit off. “Impossible chit will be the death of me yet. She’s just like her bloody mother.”

Anne sighed, knowing that no more contemptuous slur could have been cast. Reginald’s iron will had been thwarted once and only once, by his cherished daughter Lisbeth, who had left her father’s handpicked suitor, the earl of St. Cyr, languishing at the altar while she eloped with that most despised of all creatures—an American. Not even a wealthy American, but a painfully earnest writer whose modest aspiration had been to become a reporter for the Boston Gazette. Bartholomew Fine had stolen Lisbeth’s heart and what was left of Reginald’s as well, leaving nothing but a charred hollow in its place.

Lisbeth had been an accomplished musician. Before she ran away, the house had rung with music and laughter. After, it echoed only with silence.

Although she’d written faithfully every month, reassuring her father of her happiness and pleading for his pardon, Reginald had never forgiven her betrayal. He refused to acknowledge her letters in any way, although he kept them carefully preserved within the satin-lined confines of a rosewood box.

On a chill autumn eve thirteen years ago, another letter had arrived, this one penned not in Lisbeth’s sophisticated script, but in a hand that was girlish, yet painfully precise. Reginald had read the letter, his craggy face expressionless, before handing it to Anne.

It had been written by Lisbeth’s twelve-year-old daughter to inform Reginald that both Lisbeth and her precious Bartholomew were dead, struck down by an outbreak of cholera. Although the child’s account of her parents’ death betrayed no trace of self-pity, the smudged ink whispered of fallen tears, hastily blotted. Oddly enough, the girl was not writing to beg charity for herself or her six-year-old brother, but to inform her grandfather that she would ‘ honor her mother’s dying wish that he continue to receive a monthly letter apprising him of their circumstances.

In terse parentheses, she had scrawled, Why Mama should have continued to love such a cold and unforgiving ogre is beyond my comprehension. However, it is not mine to question her final wish, but to see that it is granted. The child’s bold rebuke had made Anne smile through her tears.

The letter had been signed Miss Esmerelda Fine and had been accompanied by the silver locket the duke had given Lisbeth on her sixteenth birthday.

Reginald had never acknowledged his daughter’s death, publicly or privately, but from that day forward, he had not risen from his wheelchair.

Esmerelda’s letters had followed every month without fail. Although Reginald gruffly “harrumphed” and “pshawed” at their arrival, he would eagerly clutch at them, tearing them open when he thought no one was looking. Sometimes Anne would slip into the smoking room to find him chuckling over some witty anecdote or gleefully savoring one of the thinly veiled insults the girl managed to sneak into nearly every letter. Although he would have denied it with his dying breath, his admiration for his resourceful granddaughter was growing. He silently applauded her successes and fretted over her failures.

His admiration, however, did not extend to his grandson. “A scribbler like his father,” he would mutter, scowling over some lengthy passage detailing little Bartholomew’s accomplishments. “Worthless boy won’t amount to anything.”

After reading and rereading each letter, Reginald would gently tuck it into the tiny rosewood coffin he had chosen to preserve his daughter’s memory.

Stricken by a sudden nameless dread, Anne gazed at the forlorn scrap of paper on the hearth. “Oh, my God, Esmerelda’s not—”

“Dead? No, but she soon will be if she pursues this daft scheme of hers.”

Shooting her brother a baffled glance, Anne dove for the hearth, rescuing her niece’s letter with shaking hands. She scanned it, the rapid movement of her lips betraying her agitation.

As she reached the end, her knees gave way. She sank down on a brocaded ottoman before the fire, gazing blindly into the dancing flames. “Dear God. What must she be thinking? To travel across an entire continent, alone and unchaperoned, in pursuit of this… this”—she reread the last paragraph of the letter, shuddering violently— “desperado.”

Reginald stomped his slippered foot. “She’s not thinking at all! The chit’s just like her mother. Weak, willful, and at the mercy of every ridiculous feminine whim that drifts through her empty little head.”

Anne felt compelled to defend the niece she’d never met. “Esmerelda has always struck me as such a practical little creature. She survived her parents’ death. She established a music school in her own home and tended her brother when she was little more than a child herself.”

Reginald shook a finger at her. “It’s that wretched boy who’s to blame. The father cost me my Lisbeth and now the son is imperiling Esmerelda.” He faltered as they both realized it was the first time he’d ever spoken his granddaughter’s name aloud.

“This letter is dated over two months ago,” Anne noted softly. “She might already be…”

Their eyes met. This time, neither of them was able to complete the grim thought. Reginald’s gaze strayed back to his lap. With a gentleness utterly foreign to his nature, he pried open the silver locket.

Anne knew what he would find there. A faded daguerreotype of a young girl with a plump toddler cradled in her arms. The little boy with the dimpled cheeks and nest of dark curls had been unable to resist smiling at the photographer, but the girl, striking despite her severe braids and starched pinafore, stared dutifully ahead, her solemn eyes betraying the faintest hint of wistfulness.

The duke studied the locket for several minutes before snapping it shut. “Potter, my cane.”

“Yes, sir.” The butler emerged from his corner to retrieve his master’s cane.

Anne fully expected her brother to resume brandishing it like a rapier, but to her surprise, he planted its brass tip firmly on the rug. Her surprise deepened to shock when he staggered to his feet. An alarmed Potter rushed at him, but Reginald waved him away, growling a warning.

Anne backed away from him as well, clutching her throat. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

She held her breath without realizing it as her brother straightened his hunched back with an almost audible creak. Beneath their gray-fringed brows, his dark eyes glowed with determination.

Standing fully erect for the first time in thirteen years, he pounded his cane on the floor once for emphasis and said, “I, my dear sister, am going to America to rescue my granddaughter from that… that…”

“Outlaw?” Anne whispered. “Renegade?”

Reginald’s upper lip curled in a regal sneer, warning that only the vilest of epithets was to follow. “Cowboy.”