The Obscure Duchess of Godwin Hall: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Read online

  “What is it exactly that you mean, Charles?” she asked, more sharply than she had intended. She was aware that she overstepped the mark in addressing him by his Christian name, but the overwhelming feelings of discomfort were making it a little challenging to remember to adhere to usual form.

  “I am aware that you refer to the happy event of our marriage,” — those last words were spoken through gritted teeth -— “but surely you know that such an event cannot take place until the mourning period for your late father is complete?”

  At this, Charles frowned. “What are you talking about, Lady Rebecca? Your father must have told you that our nuptials are scheduled to take place in a mere ten days’ time from now. The special license has already been obtained.”

  He must have realized from the way in which the blood was draining from her face that this was not, in fact, information with which she was familiar. His own color faded somewhat.

  “You mean… you mean your father did not tell you about this?”

  “Charles…” Rebecca now felt that there was no sense in standing upon ceremony with this man who she had, after all, known most of her life and was by his own account to become her husband in a mere ten days’ time. “You cannot possibly have believed that I would have agreed to such a hasty fulfillment of our engagement?”

  “Hasty?” At this, he laughed. “Rebecca…” he took her hand in his. At this moment she regretted her use of his Christian name, as he seemed to have taken it as a license to extend the same intimacy to her. “Rebecca, my dear, how can an action be hasty when one has been waiting for its fulfillment for the entirety of one’s life?”

  “You may have been waiting for it, but I certainly have not,” Rebecca replied. “I have scarcely had a chance to grow used to the idea of your becoming my husband at all, and have certainly received no preparation for the notion that such a drastic change is to take place so soon.”

  “Indeed?” Charles stared at Rebecca with a look of genuine astonishment. “Why did you think that your father and I agreed to delay our plans to go to London for the season? It is because I wished that we would go to town together to enjoy the season as man and wife!”

  The shock of it was starting to fall away, and Charles’ words were making a certain kind of sense, yet Rebecca had still not recovered her composure enough for speech. Charles took several breaths to calm himself and reached out once again for Rebecca’s hand.

  “I am aware that it may seem hasty to you, my dear.” There was genuine warmth in his voice, and he would have seemed kind were he not asking Rebecca to subject her own desires entirely to his will.

  “But I have been waiting to have you as my wife for so long, and I can scarcely bear the idea of waiting any longer. I must confess that I am a little surprised that you do not seem to look to our upcoming nuptials with a similar anticipation.”

  This was too much for Rebecca.

  “Anticipation!” she burst out. “Why should I feel any anticipation for the prospect of marrying a man whom I feel only sisterly affection for and nothing resembling the love that a woman wishes to bear for her husband?”

  Charles went quite white at her words. She could see that he was hurt, and was sorry for that, but was not ashamed that she had spoken her mind, having resisted the impulse for so long and in such significant circumstances.

  “Nothing resembling love?” he asked, his cold voice quietly echoing her words. “Is that really so?”

  Rebecca suddenly became aware that his grip on her wrist was very tight. She tried to pull her hand away, but he only tightened his grasp.

  “Let go of my arm, Charles,” she said, keeping her voice calm and even.

  He did not. Instead, he pulled her closer.

  “You may not feel anything resembling love now,” his voice low and rumbling in her ear. “But if you have any sense of what is good for you, you will do well to modify your feelings in the next ten days.”

  He is trying to bully you, she realized. Charles had always presented a kind, affable exterior to the world, but she knew him well enough to know that there was something of the bully in him and always had been. It was for precisely that reason that she knew she would not be able to meet the demand that he had just made - not in ten days’ time and not ever.

  “Feelings can’t be modified, Charles,” she said in the same cool, controlled voice. “You know me well enough to know that I always speak from my heart, and if you had any decency, you would take the fact that I do not love you in the way that you wish to be loved by a wife as grounds to call off this engagement.”

  “I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this brazen, contradictory fashion!” he said, his voice rising in anger. “I hope that you will learn to moderate your unseemly behavior when you are my wife, Rebecca, or there will be consequences!”

  His face was very close to hers, his hands gripping her shoulders uncomfortably. Again she tried to jerk away, but his grip was unyielding.

  “Let me go, Charles,” she said again.

  “Yes, let her go,” a deep, pleasant voice said from the doorway.

  In his surprise, Charles loosened his grip, and they both turned around to see the source of the voice.

  “Andrew!” Charles clearly had just enough composure left to remember the presence he had claimed earlier. “That business must have been settled quicker than I anticipated.”

  Andrew Godwin stood in the doorway. He did not react to his brother’s fumbled greeting.

  Despite her pounding heart and intense sense of discomfort with Charles’ behavior, Rebecca felt her cheeks warm at the sight of the younger Godwin brother.

  In many ways, Andrew looked very similar to Charles, but he had somehow been put together in a way that made his appearance far more pleasing than that of his brother.

  He shared his brother’s height, yet his figure was far better-proportioned and was graceful in every way that Charles was gawky. Like Charles, he had thick dark-blond hair and blue eyes, but his face did not have the childish rosy flush that constantly made Charles look both adolescent and bad-tempered.

  Instead, he had high cheekbones, a genuine smile, kindly eyes and every other component that made up a pleasing countenance. However, his face was at present clouded over in anger at the sight of his brother’s hands gripping Rebecca’s arms so tightly.

  “You forget yourself, brother,” he said in the same calm, pleasant tone with which he had spoken before. “No doubt the Earl of Sheffield has trusted you to conduct yourself honorably with Lady Rebecca, so perhaps it falls to me to remind you that she is not your wife yet, and therefore you would do well to relieve your grip on her arms and honor the lady’s request to let her go.”

  Charles was clearly seized by some kind of discomfort, although whether it was anger or shame, Rebecca was not entirely sure. She had always known that Charles possessed a temper, but she had never felt the force of that temper directed at her before.

  It added a layer of fear to her unwillingness to marry him and made her wish above all things that she could hasten across the room to stand alongside Andrew, where she knew that she would be safe and treated with respect.

  “Good morning, Lady Rebecca,” Andrew said, bowing to her and behaving now as if the exchange of a few seconds ago had not even taken place. “I trust that your journey to Godwin Hall was a pleasant one?”

  “Very pleasant,” she replied faintly. She realized abruptly that she was feeling somewhat shaken by the force of Charles’ anger and wanted to sit down. However, she had no intention of giving Charles the satisfaction of seeing that he had distressed her so.

  “Forgive me,” she said, crossing the room to brush past Andrew on her way out. “I am afraid that I am all at once feeling indisposed.” She turned to Charles who was still standing by the bookcase. He had the grace to look shamefaced, but apparently had no intention of apologizing, much less of doing so in the presence of his brother.

  “I think I’d better retire for a lie-down
before dinner,” she said. She noted how faint and shaken her own voice sounded and hated herself for it.

  “But of course,” Charles said. She realized that he thought he was giving her permission to leave, although she would never have dreamed of asking for it. “I look forward to seeing you refreshed at luncheon, Lady Rebecca.”

  “Indeed,” she said and barely sank into a brief curtsy before hurrying away down the hall and out of the house. She felt that she needed to snatch a gasp of fresh air, but scarcely had time to gather her thoughts before that soft, pleasant voice hailed her again.

  “Becca.”

  Chapter 7

  She turned. She knew that she did not need to prepare an appropriate face for Andrew, but she took in a little breath and steeled herself nonetheless. She was going to have to get used to holding Andrew at a distance, so she may as well start now.

  “Lord Andrew,” she said stiffly. The coolness of her voice was mainly to conceal the tremble that she could feel inside herself, but that she would rather die than reveal.

  “Since when were you so formal with me, Becca?” he asked. He smiled to soften the question, but it was apparent to her that he was a little hurt by her coldness.

  “I have had to adjust to a great many things in recent days, Lord Andrew.” She had gained control of her voice, and it did not waver, but merely sounded nothing like it usually did. That was not such a bad thing, she decided. She may as well get used to playing the role.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I am extremely sorry for all that you are going through, Becca. If I could change anything, I would do so in a heartbeat. I hope you know that.”

  Though she knew that his words were intended only with heartfelt sincerity, her distressed spirit found a reason to be angered by them.

  “It is well for you to say that you wish things might be changed, Andrew!” she burst out. “You are not the one who is being forced to submit to a life dictated by the desires of others with no prospect but to oblige.”

  “I do not like this any more than you do,” he said miserably.

  “What a thing to say!” she replied in passionate anger. “As a man, you have your liberty, and as a second son, you are free of the weight of expectation. You may be sorry for me for a time, but when the sorrow passes, you will proceed with your life, whereas I will be trapped forever!”

  She realized that perhaps her use of the word ‘trapped’ was a little injudicious. After all, she had to keep in mind that Charles was Andrew’s brother, and the two had always been very fond of one another.

  He did not seem at all concerned by her choice of language and shook his head.

  “You are right,” he replied simply. “I will stop speaking as if I am the party suffering most in this affair.”

  The humility in his voice left Rebecca feeling that there was nowhere left for her anger to go, and to her dismay, she realized that tears had risen unbidden to her eyes.

  “I do not know what to do, Andrew,” she said, her voice taut with the weight of all the emotion that she was doing her best to keep inside. “I’ve always thought of Charles as a brother, but I know that I can never love him as a husband.”

  She shuddered. “And after what just took place, I am hardly sure that I will ever be able to respect him as a man.”

  She could tell that Andrew was listening intently, but apparently, he had nothing to say that could possibly make anything better. They let the pause rest between them for a long while, until Andrew eventually broke the silence with a simple, “It is a pleasure to see you again, Becca.”

  “And you,” she said softly. Now that she had calmed down, she was able to focus her attention more closely on his face. She fancied that it had changed since she had seen it last, become more chiseled and manly, with the traces of the boy she had once known gradually dropping away…little by little.

  “I am so sorry about your father, Andrew,” she said.

  He bowed his head. “It is a blow that every one of us must bear at some moment in our lives. But I confess that I was not expecting to lose my father so soon.” He raised his eyes to meet hers. “It has hit me very hard,” he said simply.

  She wanted to reach out and take his hand the way that she would have done so naturally when the two of them were children. The way that, she realized with painful irony, will be socially accepted once again when he is my brother-in-law.

  “You have always been as dear to me as any brother,” she said quietly. “And soon you will be.”

  “Indeed.” He sighed and offered her his arm. “We will need to return to the house to dress for dinner. We must not aggravate the Duke.” Those last words were bitter and ripe with unspoken meaning.

  Rebecca shivered. Is this what it’s going to be like from now on? she wondered. Second-guessing Charles’ every whim to ensure that my behavior is to his liking?

  Chapter 8

  Andrew glowered into his looking glass. He had come up to his bedchamber to dress for dinner but had succeeded only in pacing agitatedly about the room and occasionally flinging himself onto the bed to mutter angrily at the ceiling.

  He had not expected to react so strongly to seeing Rebecca again. Perhaps that had been a naiveté on his part that he had fancied he could tolerate the sight of Charles’ hand laid proprietorially on her arm.

  It is primarily the feelings of a friend. Having known her for so long and being so familiar with her independence of spirit, I would never have been able to countenance the sight of a man conducting himself as though she were his mere property.

  He knew that his objections were underpinned by more intimate emotions, feelings that he had nursed in his breast for a long time, and he now realized had grown stronger and deeper in the months since he had last seen her.

  But now he did not have the time nor the inclination to contemplate those feelings. To what purpose would I torture myself with these ruminations?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Believing it to be his manservant, he called out curtly that he would get dressed by himself. But the door opened in spite of his protestations.

  “It is only me,” Grandmamma Horatia said, leaning heavily on her stick as she entered. “I hope you do not mind my coming in, my dear.” She smiled. "I know that you're a young man and your space is your own, but you will always be my precious boy, and as such, I demand certain grandmotherly rights to private conversations.”

  Andrew smiled wanly but made no reply. Now fatherless, and witnessing the impending misery of his brother’s marriage, he did not feel like a boy at all, save in the sense of childishness that is always the product of helplessness.

  "I thought I had better see how you were faring,” she continued, settling into a velvet armchair in the bay window. She caught his eyes with hers and continued, her voice soft and sorrowful, “I know that you must be suffering, my dear.”

  “Suffering, Grandmamma?” He kept his voice brusque and tried not to let any of his excesses of feeling spill out in his tone. “Why should I be suffering?”

  She smiled again. “You know that you do not have to pretend with me, my dear,” she said evenly. “I flatter myself that I can read your heart quite well. And Rebecca’s.”

  At this, Andrew felt his body become very still. He had not been expecting to hear Rebecca’s name, much less to hear her heart invoked in the same sentence as his own. However, he knew that there was no good to come of making the admission that Grandmamma Horatia was hinting at.

  “Charles is not ready for marriage, Grandmamma,” he said bluntly. “I know well that he is my senior, and by anyone’s estimate, he would be considered a young man in his prime. But he is crude and lacks gentility, and I fear that he will cause Rebecca some distress.”

  Grandmamma Horatia reached out to gently pat his cheek.

  “And, my dear, if you thought that Charles were demonstrating a maturity more in keeping with his years, do you believe that you would be wishing him joy of his marriage to Rebecca?” she as
ked.

  Andrew sighed. He had to admit that she had caught him in a quandary there.

  “I do not know if I could ever wish another man happiness in marrying Rebecca,” he admitted quietly.

  “Why should you?” Grandmamma Horatia’s voice was as kind and as even as it had been in the days when he used to go to her to confess some childish sin. “How could a young man ever be happy to see the woman he loves wed to someone else?”

  She said it so naturally that at first Andrew forgot to affect surprise or indignation and just nodded. Then he started, realizing that he had somewhat forgotten himself, and swiftly shook his head.

  “Grandmamma, you cannot be suggesting that I…”

  “Oh Andrew, dear,” she interrupted him with a reproving look. “I am far too old to participate in this business of deceiving people, much less in deceiving myself. I know that you love Rebecca and have done so for a great many years.”