Marriage of Mercy

‘Yes, my lord, a bastard, so you needn’t fear you will lose a penny of your inheritance,’ Mr Selway said. ‘While his regiment was quartered in New York City during much of the American War, your uncle dallied with one Mollie Duncan, the daughter of a Royalist draper. The result was a son.’ He looked at the document again. ‘Daniel Duncan.’

‘How could this possibly concern any of us?’ Lord Thomson snapped.

‘Ordinarily, it would not. Through various means, your uncle managed to keep track of Daniel Duncan’s career. When this current American war began, Duncan commanded a privateer called the Orontes, out of Nantucket.’

‘So Uncle’s bastard is making life difficult for British merchant shipping,’ the marquis said, smirking. ‘Why do you think I even care about this?’

Mr Selway picked up the document again, and pulled a thicker packet from a drawer in the desk. ‘Because before his death, your uncle arranged for Captain Duncan, currently a prisoner of war in Dartmoor, to be paroled to Quarle’s dower house.’ He glanced at Grace, his eyes kind. ‘He specifically requests that Grace Curtis provide his food and care during his parole here. When the war ends, he’ll go free. That is all the connection you will have with him.’

Lord Thomson laughed. ‘You can’t seriously honour this. The old devil was crazy.’

He had gone too far. Grace could see that in the way the other relatives whispered to each other. The new Lord Thomson seemed to sense their disgust of him. He folded his arms and sat silent, his lips in a tight line. ‘Well, he was,’ he muttered.

Mr Selway spoke directly to him, leaning forwards across the small desk. ‘Lord Thomson, your predecessor would have done this sooner, had he not had this sudden decline that led to his death. Everything has been approved for such a transaction. I tell you that the deceased had friends in high places, whom it would be wise not to cross. You are in no way rendered uncomfortable at an estate you seldom visit, anyway.’

Apparently Mr Selway was not above a little personal pride. He smiled at Lord Thomson, even though Grace saw no humour there. ‘I build only airtight wills, Lord Thomson.’ He looked down at the document before him. ‘Any attempt on your part to alter or in any way hinder the carrying out of this stipulation would be folly. I repeat: Lord Thomson had friends in high places.’ Mr Selway folded the will and left the room.

Lord Thomson sat slumped in his seat. After a disparaging glance at her husband, the new Lady Thomson rose and gestured his relatives toward the dining room, where refreshments waited. Grace sidled out of the door ahead of everyone, eager to leave the building by the closest exit. If I hurry, I can be out of here and pretend none of this has happened, she thought.

But there was Mr Selway, obviously waiting for her. She sighed.

‘Mr Selway, please don’t think I need any of the provisions mentioned in Lord Thomson’s will,’ she told him, even as he guided her into the bookroom. ‘I want to go back to the bakery.’ She tried to get out of his grasp ‘Mr Selway, please!’

‘Sit down, my dear,’ he said, his expression kindly. ‘There is no stipulation that you must remain in the dower house, if you don’t wish to. The thirty pounds is yours annually for life, though.’

Grace nodded. ‘I want to save money to buy the bakery some day, when the Wilsons are too old to run it.’

‘Then this is your opportunity.’ The solicitor said nothing else for a long while. When he spoke, his words were carefully chosen. ‘Grace, I have observed in life that most of us place our expectations abnormally high and we are disappointed when they remain unfulfilled. Have you placed yours too low?’

She shook her head. ‘I have not,’ she told him quietly. ‘You know as well as I do that thirty a year will not maintain me in any style approaching my former status. It will not induce anyone to marry me. Heavens, sir, I am twenty-eight! I have no illusions.’

‘Indeed you do not,’ Mr Selway replied. ‘You may be right, too.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Think about this, Gracie: it is 1814. This war with America cannot last for ever. Dartmoor is a fearsomely terrible place. You would be doing a great favour to our Lord Thomson to succor his only child, no matter how boisterously he was conceived.’

‘I suppose I would,’ she said, feeling that the words were pulled from her mouth by tweezers. ‘Could I discuss this with the Wilsons? If I have to live in the dower house with a paroled prisoner, I’d like to keep working at the bakery.’

‘I see no harm in that, as long as the parolee is with you.’

Grace stood up, relieved. ‘Then I will ask them directly and send you a note.’

‘I ask no more of you, my dear,’ Mr Selway said.

The Wilsons had no objections to any of the details of Lord Thomson’s will, so amazed were they that a marquis would consider doing so much for their Gracie, a woman others of her class seemed content to ignore in perpetuity.

‘What’s a year or less?’ Mr Wilson asked. ‘You can live in a nice place, take care of a paroled prisoner, then return to us and all’s well. Or keep working here, if you wish. Maybe he’d be useful to us.’

‘Maybe he would be.’ She hesitated. ‘And… and might I some day buy your bakery?’ Grace asked timidly. ‘I’d like nothing better.’

Both Wilsons nodded. ‘The war will end soon, Gracie,’ Mr Wilson assured her. ‘You’ll be doing a favour for old Lord Thomson. How hard can this be?’

Grace had sent a note to Mr Selway and was greeted by him the next morning as she opened the shop.

‘We’ll go at once,’ Mr Selway told her. ‘I’ve heard tales of Dartmoor and how fearsomely bad it is. Let’s spring the man while we can.’

‘Must I be there, too?’

He nodded. ‘I fear so. Lord Thomson stipulated there would be three signatures on the parole document. Yours and mine, signed and notarised in the presence of the prison’s governor—a man called Captain Shortland, I believe.’

‘Three?’

Wordlessly, he took the parole document from a folder and opened it to show her the first signature. Grace gasped. ‘The Duke of Clarence?’

‘Sailor Billy, himself.’ Mr Selway put away the parole. ‘Let’s go get a man out of prison, Gracie.’

And they would have, the very next day, if news had not circulated through all of England—glorious news, news so spectacular that all of Quimby, at any rate, had trouble absorbing it. After nearly a generation of war, it was suddenly over. Cornered, trapped, his army slipping away, the allies moving ever closer, Napoleon had been forced to abdicate.

Mr Selway told Grace he must return to London, muttering something about ‘details’ that he did not explain.

‘If the war is over, will the American return home?’ she asked, as he came by the bakery in mid-March. She didn’t want to sound too hopeful, but as each day had passed, Grace realised how little she wanted to honour Lord Thomson’s will, not if it meant the continuing animosity of the new marquis, who still remained in residence.

‘Alas, no. That is a separate conflict. We still have a parolee on our hands, or at least, I think we do,’ he told her. He nodded his thanks as she put a generous handful of Quimby Crèmes in a paper for him. ‘Our recent peace could be worse for the Americans, if better for us.’

‘How?’ she asked, embarrassed at her ignorance of war.

‘Now we can focus all our British might on the pesky American war.’ He nodded to her. ‘I expect I will be back soon, though. War seems to grind on.’

He was back in less than a week, knocking on the bakery door after they had closed for the night and she was sweeping up. She let him in and he gave her a tired smile.

‘I am weary of post-chaises!’ he told her, shaking his head when she tried to help him off with his overcoat. ‘I just dropped by to tell you that we are going to Dartmoor tomorrow.’ He sighed. ‘Captain Daniel Duncan is still ours.’

She could not say she was pleased, and she knew her discomfort showed on her face. Mr Selway put his arm around her. ‘Buck up, my dear. At least we needn’t stay in Dartmoor.’ He gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘Let’s make old Lord Thomson proud of us Englishmen.’

Chapter Three

Grace knew she had a fertile imagination. After only a brief hour in Dartmoor, she knew not even the cleverest person on earth could imagine such a place.

Her mood had not been sanguine, but she credited their first stop of the morning to the lowering of her spirits. Mr Selway had had the key to the dower house and said they would visit her new home first, as he handed her into the post-chaise.

When they had arrived, the solicitor had unlocked the door and they found themselves in an empty house.

‘I thought the will mentioned house and contents,’ Grace said, as she looked around the bare sitting room, where even the curtains had been removed.

A muscle began to work in Mr Selway’s jaw. ‘Wait here,’ he said. He turned on his heel and left the dower house.

Grace wandered from room to room, admiring the pleasant view from uncurtained windows, even as she shook her head over Lord Thomson’s petty nature.

Mr Selway had returned in no better humour. He walked in the door and threw up his hands. ‘Such drama! Such wounded pride! Lord Thomson can’t imagine what happened to the furniture in the dower house and heartily resents my accusation that he emptied it out like a fishmonger’s offal basket.’ He shook his head. ‘He says all will be restored to its proper place.’

‘I won’t hold my breath,’ Grace said.