Chapter Twelve
IN THE UPSTAIRS HALLWAY, Alfreda was drawn to the far end of it where Gabriel stood with his ear pressed to Lord Wolfe’s door. She approached to do the same, but he stepped back, saying in an urgent whisper, “Wait! I think she’s about to burst out the door.”
“It’s not gone well?” Alfreda said with a frown.
“Indeed not.”
After a few moments when the door hadn’t opened, they both pressed their ears to it. Facing each other, Alfreda saw Gabriel grinning, as if he did this sort of thing often. Alfreda was only concerned for Brooke and would enter the room without permission if she thought Brooke needed help. Gabriel’s amusement annoyed her. She didn’t like sharing an intrigue of any sort, even one so minor as eavesdropping, with such an impertinent fellow.
Halfway between the bed and the door, Brooke was having trouble dealing with her own anger. She understood Lord Wolfe’s rage. Her father had been just as furious after the Regent’s emissary had left. Men who commanded everything around them naturally balked when they had to accept commands from someone more powerful than they were. But she shouldn’t be on the receiving end of that rage when she’d played no part in causing it. Robert had caused it.
You are sister to the man responsible for killing mine.
Brooke didn’t doubt that her brother was capable of any perfidy, but murder? Responsible could mean all sorts of things. But she couldn’t ask the wolf again for an explanation no matter how rampant her curiosity now was, not after the way he’d reacted to the subject. He might get out of that bed to demand an eye for an eye by killing her. She didn’t know him and what he was capable of, and he obviously wasn’t going to let her find out.
She didn’t leave the room. She was still angry enough at him for refusing even to pretend to be civil anymore to march right back to the side of his bed. He’d no doubt thought he’d just chased her out of his house. Too bad for him.
But he didn’t look disappointed, though his single raised brow spoke volumes. Was he waiting for a fight? Hoping for one? Or just curious about why she hadn’t fled?
As she gazed at the half-naked viscount who lay before her, she thought it was a good thing that she’d been raised by down-to-earth Alfreda rather than a proper lady. Otherwise she would be more embarrassed by Lord Wolfe’s undress. She noticed the sweat on his brow. It was early summer, but the room wasn’t warm enough to cause it. He must be running a fever. She stepped closer to the bed and looked at the wound on his left thigh to see if it was inflamed.
Watching her, he asked, “The sight of leeches doesn’t bother you?”
“I’m not repulsed by something that helps to heal.”
Brooke knew some herbs that could draw out the poisons in his wound more effectively than leeches, but she didn’t say so.
Instead she said, “May I?” Without waiting for his answer, she gently pressed a finger to his flesh near his stitches to see if yellow liquid would drain from the wound. It didn’t occur to her, at least not immediately, that she shouldn’t be touching him at all, that she was breaking a clear rule of etiquette. She felt her cheeks warming but she willed away the blush, reminding herself that he’d broken a couple of more important rules by insisting she enter a room where he lay less than half-covered by a sheet and by kissing her!
“These stitches look fresh.”
“How would you know?”
Now he sounded a bit testy. He obviously didn’t want her help for any reason. Yet she did have a reason, but she wasn’t going to explain to him that hating her brother as much as she did, it would give her perverse pleasure to heal his mortal enemy. The wolf’s dying wasn’t going to help her—unless he did it after they were married. Damn Robert for putting that thought in her head.
Keeping her eyes on his wound, she answered, “There is fresh bleeding around your stitches and not because of the leeches. I think you haven’t been following your doctor’s orders.”
“You are the reason the wound needed to be re-stitched today.”
Truly? He was going to blame her for that, too? Because he was too stubborn not to stay in bed and give his leg time to heal?
She still wouldn’t meet his eyes, afraid she’d get mesmerized by them again—or frightened into backing off—but she said, “Good. Reopening the wound drained it, which will heal the wound faster than those leeches will.”
“How d’you know?”
How to answer that without revealing too much of herself? Evasively! “It’s common knowledge in Leicestershire. And there are other ways to draw out the poisons more quickly.”
“A woman doctor? I’m impressed that you found a school to teach you.”
She heard the sarcasm. But he was right, no school would teach her. But Alfreda had. It wasn’t in her to let his condition worsen if she could prevent it, no matter if she might suffer for it afterward.
“D’you realize you are in danger of losing your leg if the poisons spread? Your leeches aren’t even close enough to the wound to do any good, and they will draw more good blood than bad.”
He snorted at her. “Your prognosis is not a trained one, so don’t expect me to believe you know what you are talking about. Dr. Bates would have warned me if my condition were as dire as you are suggesting. In a few days the doctor will return and prove you wrong.”
She supposed Dominic’s reasoning was sound from his perspective . . . well, from any male’s perspective. Like most men, he was absolutely certain that a woman could not possibly know more about any subject than a man did.
So she moved back away from him with a shrug. “You will do as you please, of course. But should you change your mind, my maid, Alfreda, who has great knowledge of herbal remedies, might know how to fix you, if I can convince her to help.”
“Convince?” he scoffed. “She’s a maid. You give her the order—”
“No, I do not. She raised me. From the week of my birth she’s been more a mother to me than mine ever was. I don’t treat her like a servant and never will. And she’s only ever helped people who can’t afford a real doctor, which means she’s never helped a lady or a lord before. So as I said, I could try to convince her to have a look at your wound, but she may balk at breaking that rule of hers.”
“So she’s a healer, just not a traditional one?” he speculated.
Brooke didn’t answer. She wasn’t about to give away Alfreda’s secrets. She shouldn’t even have made the offer. He would probably survive for a few more days.
But her silence prompted him to say, “I’m aware there are self-trained healers with knowledge that has been passed down from one generation to the next who still treat the sick in areas where doctors are not available. This far north, we are lucky to have even one doctor who lives nearby. But why would your maid have a rule against helping the nobility?”
She’d revealed too much! This closeness to him must be rattling her thoughts. She blanched when he added, “Is she a witch?”
“Don’t be absurd! There are no such things.”
“Of course there are. It was a witch who cursed my family.”
He believed he was cursed? She was incredulous. He was an educated man, wasn’t he? He should know better than to succumb to superstition. But then it dawned on her that he was going to use that supposed curse as another means to get her to flee. He must think that if he professed to believe in it, then she would, too. Ha! She wasn’t falling for that ploy.
He didn’t say anything more about his family curse. He closed his eyes instead. Apparently, he’d taxed what little strength he had. They shouldn’t have met yet. He should have waited until his fever was gone and he was not in pain.
“You should rest if you hope to survive until your doctor returns,” she suggested matter-of-factly, and turned toward the door.
“You can ask your maid,” he said, opening his eyes. “But why do you even want to help me?”
Not expecting the concession, she glanced back at him. “Because you are going to be m
y husband.”
He growled at that answer. She raised a brow, silently questioning if he was going to be the one to fail to comply with the Regent’s demand.
“So you think you can make me love you by healing me?”
“Not a’tall. I’m confident that you will find many other reasons to love me.”
He didn’t seem to like that answer and scowled darkly. “You are mistaken, Brooke Whitworth. I am not pleased to allow you into my home, nor should you feel welcome here, because you are not.”
Her back stiffened. She had been nothing but cordial, even helpful to him. “Then tell me to go.”
He didn’t. No, of course he wouldn’t. He’d already made it clear he wanted her to do the fleeing on her own.
“Just as I thought,” she added bitterly. “You are as stuck with me as I am with you, no matter how much we both hate it.”
Chapter Thirteen
BROOKE WAS TOO UPSET to notice that Alfreda was in the group of people waiting outside the viscount’s door. She turned away from them and ran down the narrower corridor to that tower Gabriel had led her to earlier. She peeked into the dark stairwell and saw only a faint light emanating from above, but she mounted the stairs anyway. She wanted to see for herself exactly where the wolf had wanted to put her. When she reached the top of the stairs, she blanched. Nothing was in that circular tower room except cobwebs.
The windows were small and narrow, letting in only a few narrow sunbeams. This wasn’t a bedroom, it was a dismal cell.
“Well,” Alfreda huffed, coming to look over Brooke’s shoulder at the empty room. “Now we know.”
“And have Gabriel to thank for not making me sleep on the floor in here tonight.”
“Don’t you thank him. I will find some way to—if he ever stops annoying me.”
Brooke turned about and hugged Alfreda because she needed a hug just then. She didn’t want to stay in this house. She didn’t want to argue with Dominic Wolfe again. Even as sick and wounded as he was, he’d quickly lost his temper. God help her when he regained his full strength. If that happened. Maybe she shouldn’t ask Alfreda to intervene, should just let nature and one incompetent doctor take their course.
Rubbing Brooke’s back soothingly, Alfreda said, “If he’s not really a wolf, it will be all right.”
Since neither of them believed he was a real wolf, Brooke knew the remark was meant to lighten her mood. She appreciated Alfreda’s effort, but it didn’t work. She’d clung to a slim hope on the way to Viscount Rothdale’s estate that he and she might get along eventually—if he didn’t simply refuse to marry her. That hope was gone now that she knew how deep his antipathy ran for her whole family.
Such a dismal thought and such a shame. Had she met Dominic Wolfe under different circumstances, she could have been quite attracted to him. He was young and handsome, after all. A very different outcome might have been possible, even a courtship if her family had approved—no, that was only what should have happened, not what could have happened, not when he was only a viscount. Her father would have aimed higher, not for her, but for himself. Not that it mattered when Dominic despised her and was determined to make her despise him as well. He had made that abundantly clear.
Brooke turned toward the stairs, wanting to leave this horrid room, confessing, “The wolf hates me. He wants me to flee.”
“We anticipated this outcome.”
“I know. It was illogical to hope that he might like me and not immediately hate me because I’m Robert’s sister.”
“No, just optimistic. But it won’t be pleasant for you at home if you do flee.”
“My parents won’t have a home if I do.”
“Well then, we need to consider that there are ways to have a marriage that is not really a marriage.”
“To pretend?”
Alfreda paused at the bottom of the stairwell to clarify. “It’s probably too soon to consider this, but what I refer to is a mutual agreement not to live together intimately. You would be surprised how often such arrangements have been made over the centuries, when families, especially noble ones, joined for reasons that had nothing to do with love and esteem and everything to do with land, power, or wealth. An heir is usually needed first, but once that has been accomplished, the husband and the wife go about their own interests, even living in different households—if they can agree to such an arrangement.”
Brooke thought that sounded incredibly promising. “Is any of that actually true, or are you just trying to make me feel better?”
“Did it work?”
“So it’s not true?”
“It is. You have so very little knowledge of the ton because your parents socialized in London without you. But my mother worked in London before I came along and she moved back to the country. She was privy to a good deal of gossip in that big town and used to amuse me with tales of the inner workings of the nobility’s households.”
“So if such couples do hate each other, why wouldn’t they agree to such an arrangement?”
“Because the husband will do as he pleases anyway and might not care about his wife’s feelings—unless he is afraid of her family.”
Well, that was a brief hope, wasn’t it? It didn’t even last one minute.
Brooke sighed. “The wolf doesn’t fear my family, just the opposite. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to kill us all because of what my brother did.”
“Do we know yet what he did?”
“All I learned is that he blames Robert for the death of his sister. He got too angry for me to want to press for more information about it.”
“That’s a good reason for a duel, but it’s an even better reason to get your brother imprisoned or hung. I wonder why Lord Wolfe didn’t pursue that course of action.”
“Because he wants to be the one to kill Robert. Three duels definitely suggest that.”
“Possibly,” Alfreda conceded. “We can find out what really happened from the servants here.”
“I asked Gabriel, but he just said I should ask Dominic about it. I have the feeling no one here wants to talk about it.”
“To you, maybe. But servants will talk to other servants. Let me give it a try. . . . So, did you decide to be yourself with him?”
“I wasn’t going to, but he got me so angry, I’m afraid I couldn’t hide my true feelings.”
“He must have provoked you.”
“Deliberately.”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t tell him much about you, poppet, now would it? It wouldn’t reveal that you’re as quick to laugh, that you aren’t vindictive and wouldn’t seek revenge even if warranted, that you have a good, pure heart, despite the family you come from.”
Brooke sighed. “Suggesting a pretend marriage would probably just make him laugh because he would be the husband who would do as he pleases with no care a’tall for my feelings. Besides, he doesn’t want any marriage to me, he made that perfectly clear. All he wants is for me to leave, which I can’t do.”
“Would you like a love potion instead?”
Brooke blinked in surprise and choked back a laugh. “There’s no such thing.”
“Yet there are herbs—and I do have a tiny supply left—that will stimulate . . . Well, the villagers called the tonic I made from these herbs a love potion because it stimulates desire, and some people equate that with love. But if the wolf suddenly wants to bed you, then he will look more favorably on the marriage, and everything can go uphill from there.”
“He already kissed me.”
“Did he?”
“But it was just a ploy to frighten me off. He got quite angry when it didn’t work.”
Alfreda raised a brow. “Did you like the way he kissed?”
“I didn’t mind it. It was quite—surprising.”
Alfreda looked pleased. “That’s an excellent start, poppet.”
“For me, not for him. He’s certainly not repulsive. I wouldn’t mind a’tall having him for my husband—if he didn’t hate me.”<
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“You’ve only just met him. We’ve only been here a few hours. In time he won’t hate you.”
“That’s not a certainty, Freda. And, no, don’t give him one of those potions you mentioned. He’s got far too much rage in him right now for me to want him to want me. It could turn out much too unpleasantly.”
“We’ll just keep it in mind as a last resort then.” Alfreda winked.
Brooke rolled her eyes before she broached Dominic’s condition. “Speaking of your herbs, would you be willing to have a look at the wound Robert gave him? It’s not healing and his fever appears high.”
Alfreda snorted. “Just because you take pity on every sick dog you come across doesn’t mean you need to feel sorry for a wolf.”
“Pity is the last thing I feel for him right now.”
“Then why do we want to help him?”
“Because then he might be inclined to deal with me more reasonably and not see Robert whenever he looks at me.”
“Well, we’re going to have lunch first to give him a bit of time to take in his first glimpse of you and realize the remarkable favor the Prince Regent has done him.” Alfreda put her arm around Brooke’s waist to lead them back up the corridor. “Besides, we are not in a hurry to fix him after the insult he’s dealt you.”
“You were listening at the door!” Brooke accused, hearing Alfreda use the word fix and the same phrase she used with the wolf.
Alfreda didn’t admit whether she had, she just nodded toward the tower. “I’m talking about that room we just left. That was an insult, poppet, of the worst sort.”
Brooke agreed, but she still grinned. “Lunch sounds like a good idea. He’s not going to get worse in the next few hours—I don’t think.”
Chapter Fourteen
BROOKE AND ALFREDA FOUND a big kitchen at the back west corner of the house. Two men and four women were in it, and two older children doing menial chores. Two Biscanes, three Cotterills, one Jakeman, and two others who weren’t members of those three families that had worked at the “big house,” as they called it, for hundreds of years. But the two newcomers didn’t learn all that until Alfreda got angry when their lunch was set before them in the dining room.