Birdie and the Beastly Duke by Sofi Laporte

Chapter 21

“Hullo old mum. Fancy finding you here.” Freddie tapped his stick on the floor. “Bang up place, this. A bit old, no? Does the stone hold or will it come crumbling down on my head?”

Gabriel had scrambled to his feet.

“Ah. You are the Duke of Dunross, I presume?” Freddie took off his hat and made a flourishing obeisance.

“Yes. And you are?” Gabriel looked like the wind had been taken out of his sails.

“Alfred Talbot, Baron of Tottingham at your service. Birdie’s brother. Call me Freddie. I say, I like your eyepatch. Your scars, too. All the crack since that Byron fellow. But what is this?” He strolled over to the table and sniffed. His face brightened. “I smell whisky. May I?” He poured himself some of the caramel-coloured liquid into a glass and tasted it.

“I don’t understand.” Gabriel looked around for Birdie.

“Prime.” Freddie lifted the glass, held it against the light, and squinted into it. “You Scots sure know how to brew some powerful stuff. The elixir of life, this is.”

“Brother?” Gabriel pressed his fingers against his temple. “I was not aware you had a brother.”

“And two bloody sisters, spinsters both, and a mother who claims to be an invalid, even though she’s healthier than a horse,” Freddie added blithely before he took another sip. “And a dog, and a cat,” he added in an afterthought. “The parrot died. Thank the stars. But now mum is in mourning over the creature and refuses to leave her room. I say, sis. Been missing you awfully. Heard you got yourself married to a duke. That maid of yours croaked and tried it with blackmail but can’t squeeze blunt out of where there ain’t any.” He flashed a grin and looked so charming in the process that even Birdie understood how her brother wheedled every last penny out of his bankers’ vaults.

But Mary! Oh! That faithless, disloyal maid. She must have returned straight away to her family and sought out Freddie to tell on her.

“Since I was feeling the pinch in my pocket, and things were getting tight, I thought it time to whip off and visit my sis up here in the northern wastelands before they box me up. Say, you’re my brother-in-law!” Freddie’s face brightened as he turned to Gabriel, who took a step back. “That’s a bang-up thing, to have a duke as a brother-in-law. Rich and powerful, with castles and all. I daresay you have a mighty influence on certain people. Came to see whether it’s true.”

“Freddie! Do be quiet.” Birdie’s eyes filled with tears. She wished she could sink into the ground with shame. Turning to Gabriel, she said, “I wanted to explain. At this very moment. But of course, my infernal brother had to intervene.”

“What is it you wanted to explain, Birdie?” Gabriel asked in a deadly quiet tone.

“Dished you up a Banbury tale, my sister dear did.” Freddie cheerfully poured himself another glass and was oblivious to his sister’s dagger stares. “As did that other girl. Sicily. Sassily. Cecily. Yes. That’s it. Cecily.”

“Cecily Burns?” Gabriel’s face was hewn of granite. He turned to Birdie. “My understanding was that you were Roberta Cecily Burns Talbot. You insisted on signing the parish register that way.”

“Only Roberta Talbot.” Birdie felt ill. “I tried to tell you just now.”

“Swapped places with th’ other one.” Freddie made a swapping motion with his hands, while still holding his whisky glass. “Very cleverly done. Didn’t think you had it in you, old girl. Say, do you also have other types of whisky?” he asked Higgins.

Miraculously, Higgins understood.

“Yes, my Lord. Crates and crates full of them,” Higgins muttered. “Brandy too. Freshly smuggled from France.”

“I like this place!” Freddie was ecstatic. “What a prime old codger. Show me, man. Lead the way!” He followed Higgins out of the hall.

Gabriel’s eyes never left Birdie’s face. “You are not Cecily Burns.”

“No,” Birdie whispered. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She felt like the worst scum that existed on the face of this earth. She heard him breathe heavily.

“I have no excuse,” she stammered. “I was about to tell you the entire story. I met Cecily in a coach; she was on the way to Scotland. She didn’t—oh, Gabriel. I’m so sorry. She didn’t want to marry you. She was crying the entire time. I was on the way to my new position as a governess. I was supporting my family.” She waved her hand toward Freddie, who’d disappeared with Higgins through the library door, followed by the noise of barrels being wrenched open. “You’ve got a taste of what they are like,” she blurted out. “I was so tired of my life and of having to toil for a family who wasted away our entire fortune. It was no life. I didn’t know what to do. Then I met Cecily, and she suggested we trade positions. It was her idea. You must believe me! It wasn’t a malicious deception. Yes, it was dishonest and cowardly. But at that time, it seemed like an excellent thing to do; to escape my life by stepping into someone else’s. It isn’t an excuse at all, I know. But at the time I was so desperate, and I thought it was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”

“What? To marry a complete stranger who was someone else’s bridegroom and to deceive him and lie to him?” Gabriel’s voice sounded hard with condemnation.

Her shoulders slumped.

“All this time you’ve let me believe you are someone else entirely. You’ve had ample opportunity to come clear, yet you didn’t.”

Birdie winced. “I know,” she whispered. She really had no excuse other than she’d got herself so caught up in this fairy tale that she’d veritably believed it was true. She’d willed herself to forget that it had been a deception. “There is no excuse I can offer.”

“When you said that vow in church.” Gabriel swallowed as if the words pained him. “You lied even as you said it.”

Birdie hung her head.

“You’ve not only dishonoured your vow. You’ve dishonoured mine. Twice.” Gabriel got up. “I vowed to my father, and to Cecily’s, that I’d take care of the girl. You intervened. You made that impossible. Then the marriage vow. You vowed to love me.” His voice cracked a little on the word “love.” “It was nothing but a lie.”

Birdie remained in her chair, frozen.

“No, Gabriel, never that, never a lie…”

She heard his footsteps recede as he left the hall.

Birdie didn’t wait.

She jumped into her brother’s carriage and ordered the driver to return from where he came from.

After bribing him with a velvet pouch, the horses galloped over the drawbridge.

She’d give him a second pouch if they drove even faster. A little voice told her she needn’t bother, for Gabriel wouldn’t come after her.

As the horses galloped over the drawbridge and Dunross Castle disappeared in the distance, Birdie knew, without doubt, that she’d lost him forever.