Once a Duchess(6)
“Nothing?” Marshall asked, raising a brow.
Perkins scanned the parchment in his hand. He pressed a handkerchief to his lips, squeezed his eyes shut, and shook his head. “No, sir, nothing.” He cleared his throat. “Thomas Gerald’s name appears on the manifest of the Destiny, which sailed from Van Diemen’s Land August 17, 1809. He worked as a deck hand to pay his passage. All told, the voyage took the better part of a year, with stops for provisions, and repairs in the Caribbean islands. He could have disembarked at any one of these locations, rather than return to England. His name is not mentioned again, either in the manifest or the captain’s log. There is nothing more.” Perkins dabbed at the sheen of sweat that had popped out on his forehead as he spoke.
“How does a man just disappear for years?” He muttered to himself. “Are you all right?” he asked Perkins. “You’re looking a touch green.”
“Apologies, sir,” the secretary said through clenched teeth. “Reading in a moving vehicle causes a mild indisposition. I’m quite well, though, I assure you.” Marshall watched his fastidious secretary run a finger under his neck cloth, loosening it. “Shall we continue?”
“No, that will do for now,” Marshall said. “I’d rather you not cast your accounts on my boots.”
Perkins scowled.
“Take a rest,” Marshall suggested. “We’ll soon be stopping for the night.”
“Thank you, sir.” Perkins looked decidedly peaked, but neatly stowed away all the papers before leaning his head back against the squabs.
Marshall took up the Thomas Gerald file and flipped through it. He once again scanned the sole report his investigator had been able to generate about Gerald’s departure from the penal colony, having fulfilled his ten-year sentence for the willful destruction of Marshall’s father’s property, his prize mare and her foal. The information was now several years old. He could be anywhere, Marshall thought in frustration — Brazil, or Haiti … or England.
He closed his eyes, and the whole horrible scene was there, as though the incident had been yesterday, not twelve years ago. In his mind’s eye, he saw the mare, Priscilla, past due for her foaling, and the grooms worried about her. He saw Thomas Gerald, a young man just a couple years older than Marshall, laughing and jovial as he joked with the other grooms, tender and concerned when he looked after the ailing Priscilla.
And then Marshall saw himself: a boy of thirteen, bored with the confines of the schoolroom, desperate to prove his maturity, and longing to earn his father’s approval. His newfound interest in botany consumed his adolescent mind. He’d read a few books and had begun helping the gardener in the greenhouse, observing the way the man planted seeds in different fashions and watching carefully as he grafted one plant onto another. In short order, Marshall became the embodiment of the phrase about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
Priscilla’s swollen belly had the stable in a tizzy, and the duke on tenterhooks. But Marshall remembered the midwife’s words he’d once overheard to the blacksmith, offering the man’s wife a tincture of mugwort and juniper berries to help ease her birthing, and an idea took shape in his mind.
Then Priscilla ate from Thomas Gerald’s gentle hands. The mare convulsed. And then she screamed. Marshall pressed his hands to his eyes — dear God, he could still hear that horse’s scream. Marshall had never been so scared in all his young life. He squeezed himself into a corner, where he remained unnoticed as every hand in the stable came running.
So much blood. At first, Priscilla had thrashed and protested against the restraining hands that held her down while she was examined in her stall. Marshall heard the head groom yelling for a towel — he was going to try to pull the foal free. Gradually, Priscilla’s cries gave way to piteous whinnies, until even those declined into gentle moans, and then silence. Horrible, heavy silence.
They sent for His Grace, and explained to Marshall’s father that Priscilla’s womb had ruptured. Both mare and foal had been lost.
His father was terribly distraught. Marshall remembered his pale face, the concerned crease of his brow as he looked into the poor mare’s stall, how he pressed a handkerchief to his lips and then quickly walked away.
Marshall himself slipped out of the stable a short time later. He spent the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening wandering through the woods, throwing accusatory looks at every herb he encountered. They were supposed to help, not hurt! His beloved flora had betrayed him.