The seeds of gossip had followed him here and found fertile soil in which to breed a crop of noxious weeds. Young footmen turned pale and fled when he approached. Tenants eyed him with wary, resentful servility. Housemaids trembled when he cast the briefest glance in their direction. His cousins’ governess sprang to her young charges’ defense like a tigress protecting her cubs.
Gideon had to admit he preferred Miss Murray’s open antagonism to the sullen aversion and dread of the others. And he could not fault her willingness to shield the children, even if there had been no need. Unfortunately, his flicker of grudging admiration for Miss Murray only made her suspicion and wariness of him sting all the worse.
As he entered the house quietly by a side door, Gideon could no longer ignore a vexing question. How could he possibly expect the Admiralty’s board of inquiry to believe in his innocence when his own servants and tenants clearly judged him guilty?
Passing the foot of the servants’ stairs, he heard the voices of two footmen drift down from the landing. He did not mean to eavesdrop, but their furtive, petulant tone left Gideon in no doubt they were talking about him.
“How long do you reckon we’ll have to put up with him?” asked one.
The other snorted. “Too long to suit either of us, I can tell you that. With old Boney beaten at last, I’ll wager the navy won’t want him back.”
Gideon told himself to keep walking and pay no heed to servants’ tattle. He knew this was the sort of talk that must be going on behind his back all the time. The last thing he needed was to have their exact words echoing in his thoughts, taunting and shaming him. But his steps slowed in spite of himself, and his ears strained to catch every word.
Did part of him feel he deserved it?
One of the footmen heaved a sigh. “So he’ll stay here to make our lives a misery instead of his crew’s. It’s not right.”
“When did right ever come into it?” grumbled the other.
Gideon had almost managed to edge himself out of earshot when a third voice joined the others—a woman’s voice he recognized as belonging to Miss Murray.
“Wilbert, Frederick, have you no duties to be getting on with?” she inquired in a disapproving tone, as if they were a pair of naughty little boys in the nursery.
“We just stopped for a quick word, miss. We’ve been run off our feet since the new master arrived.” They were obviously counting on the governess to sympathize with their disgruntled feelings.
By now Gideon had given up trying to walk away. He braced to hear the governess join in abusing him.
“Perhaps if you’d kept up with your duties during the past few months,” she reminded the young footmen instead, “you might not have to work quite so hard now to get the house back in decent order.”
“Why should we run ourselves ragged for a master who’s done the things he has? They say he did away with a young sailor. If he wasn’t the captain of the ship they’d have called it plain murder.”
As he waited for Miss Murray’s reply, Gideon wondered if he’d been wrong to assume her opinion of him had been tainted by the kind of gossip she was hearing now. Surely, she would not have wanted her young pupils to remain in the same house as a rumored killer. Perhaps this was the first time she’d heard the worst of the accusations being whispered against him.
Though he tried to tell himself one unfavorable judgment more or less did not matter, Gideon shrank from the prospect of Miss Murray thinking even less of him.
“I am sorely disappointed.” The gentle regret in her tone troubled Gideon worse than the harsher censure he’d expected. “I thought better of you both than to condemn your master on the basis of malicious rumors.”
Had he heard her correctly? Gideon shook his head.
The young footmen sputtered in protest, but Miss Murray refused to back down. “Has the captain mistreated either of you in any way since he arrived at Knightley Park?”
“No…but he is very haughty and ill-humored. You must grant that, miss.”
“And did you hear he threatened to give Mr. Dutton the sack?”
“I have heard such a rumor, though that does not guarantee it is true. Besides, Wilbert, I have often heard you complain what a poor job Mr. Dutton has been doing of late. If you were in the captain’s place, would you have kept him on?”
After an awkward pause, Wilbert muttered, “I reckon not, miss.”
“And you, Frederick, would you be jovial and talkative in a place where you were made to feel as unwelcome as I fear we have made Captain Radcliffe?”
Gideon did not catch the young footman’s muffled reply, but that scarcely mattered. What did matter was that someone had defended him against the whispered slurs he could not bring himself to acknowledge, let alone refute. What astonished him even more was to find a champion in Marian Murray, a woman he could have sworn detested him.
And not altogether without reason, he was forced to admit. None of their encounters since his arrival had been particularly cordial. And his reaction to the children’s presence might have given her cause to regard him as a very hard man indeed. Yet there she was, taking his part against the prevailing opinion of the other servants. He did not know what to make of it.
To be championed in such a way when he neither expected nor deserved it stirred a flicker of welcome warmth deep within his fallow heart.
The hangdog looks of the two young footmen reproached Marian. What was she doing?
For as long as she could recall, she had felt compelled need to stand up for anyone who was the victim of mistreatment. The stronger the forces against them, the more fiercely she felt called to intervene.
It had not occurred to her that a man of strength and authority like Captain Radcliffe might need anyone to defend him, let alone her. But when she’d heard Wilbert and Frederick exchanging backstairs gossip about the captain, she had suddenly seen the matter in a whole new light. A sense of shame for the unfair things she’d thought about the man and her manner toward him had made her leap to his defense all the more fiercely.
Now she realized that that was not fair either. “I beg your pardon. I have no right to reproach you when I have behaved just as uncharitably toward Captain Radcliffe.”
Her rueful admission seemed to have better effect on the young men than her rebuke.
“That’s all right, miss.” Wilbert hung his head. “I reckon we may have been too hard on the master.”
Frederick nodded. “It’s true enough what you said, miss. The captain hasn’t done us any harm. We’ll mind our tongues after this.”
“We should get back to work,” Wilbert added, “before Mr. Culpepper comes looking for us.”
After brief bows, the pair hurried off below stairs, leaving Marian to follow as far as the ground floor. Lost in thought about her encounter with the footmen and the sudden reversal of her opinion toward Captain Radcliffe, she rounded the corner and nearly collided with him.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” She started back, frantically wondering whether he’d heard what had just passed in the stairwell. “I didn’t expect to find you home at this hour.”
The captain seemed every bit as rattled by their sudden meeting as she. “I…er…just got in. I’m sorry if I startled you.”
Caught off guard, his whole appearance was far less severe than Marian had yet seen it. The austere contours of his face seemed somehow softened. The sweeping arch of his brow looked less forbidding. His steely gray eyes held a tentative glimmer of warmth. Had he changed so much or was it her perception that had altered?
“No, indeed,”