Page 4 of The Phantom Duke
“I see now that I was right in my initial judgment. You are too easily influenced, and those witches that gather around the Dowager Countess of Thornwall are the cause of all your most undesirable traits. When I think of the girl you were while your mother was alive…”
“Please, Father, let us not talk of mother,” Maria said wearily. “It only ever seems to agitate you more.”
She wanted to let out her anger at his behavior, vent her frustration. But she controlled it. To express her fury would do no good; it had never done any good. From her mother, she had inherited her love of justice and fairness. From her father, she had inherited a tinder-dry temper that could ignite in a moment.
“What agitates me will no longer be your concern. You will go to Northumberland. For the rest of your damnable life, in fact!” he roared.
Maria was dumbstruck. She stared at her father, gaping. He stood before her, quivering with rage and inebriated infirmity. His eyes were wide, and spit flecked the corners of his mouth.
Maria backed away. “You cannot make me,” she faltered.
“The wheels are in motion. Your belongings were packed while you were away this evening! You leave at first light.”
The man flung himself into an armchair and laughed.
“I did not say you could not plan to make me. I said, you cannot actually make me,” Maria said firmly, pointing a finger at him. “You think I will just abandon my friends and my boy Gilbert and meekly go into exile?”
“Gilbert? The urchin that you fawn over in that damned poorhouse?”
“It is an orphanage, and he is an orphan through no fault of his own. Something I think I would be better off being!” Maria snapped, losing control. She could bear her father’s venom when it was directed toward herself, but the task when infinitely more difficult when it was aimed at someone else.
“You will go, or I will cut you off! I will buy up this wretched orphanage and destroy this cesspool of peasantry that takes up so much of your time. I will buy it and close it!”
An icy fist closed around Maria’s heart. Her mouth was suddenly dry. The finances of the orphanage were always precarious. The trustees may well be tempted to sell it to her father, and he was certainly capable of lying to them about his intentions. Butwould he leave orphans on the streets of London? Could he be so cruel?
She saw the answer in his face. He could.
“You are drunk, and you are angry,” Maria said, her voice steady despite the turmoil stirring within her. “I understand how disappointed you must be. But there will be other eligible gentlemen for you to marry me off to.”
Speaking those words made Maria shrivel inside. She had allowed the engagement to Landsdowne to be arranged because he had seemed charming and kind, honorable and noble. She did not think she could trust like that again, but she needed to placate her father. There was more at stake than her freedom. The future of the orphanage hung in the balance.
“This is not a negotiation,” he said. “I have told you what options you have.”
Maria bit the inside of her cheek, desperate to find some escape from the horrible options presented to her.
I cannot believe he would go through with it. Not once he is sober and has calmed himself.
But the doubt remained. Even if the threat was unlikely, she could not risk putting the orphanage in danger.
“Very well. I will do as you ask,” Maria said. “I will go to Northumberland and show that I am obedient to your wishes. You do not need to take out your anger at me on the orphanage.”
Her father slumped down in the chair. The drink he had imbibed was suddenly overtaking him, as though his rage had drained any resistance he might have had to its influence. She knew this was the beginning of a rapid decline into unconsciousness. Ever the dutiful daughter, she stoked the fire, helping him into slumber with its warmth.
She then retrieved a woolen blanket from a chest kept in a cupboard. His eyelids were drooping by the time she spread it across his legs.
“You will go, or you will be damned,” he muttered as his eyes closed.
“We shall see,” Maria whispered.
Her eyes went to the portrait of a lady with tumbling brown hair and pale, gray eyes. Her face had the same heart shape as Maria’s. A deep sigh tore from Maria, and her chest ached with longing.
“I am sorry, Mother. He is not the man you married. I could not keep him so, and I cannot stay if it means leaving Gilbert and the other children.”
She left the library, her mind working furiously. If she took the trap and told the staff that she was driving herself to Northumberland, that was the story that would be told to her father when he awoke. He would consider her exile complete, which would give Maria the gift of time.
Time in which I must make sure that the trustees of the orphanage are not tempted to sell to him. That he cannot put his hands on it. When he is sober, he will likely think better of it, but I cannot take the risk that he does not change his mind.
She clung to that hope as she went in search of Elmsworth, the butler, to put her plan in motion.
