“Er, Miss Crenshaw’s brief visit.”
“I heard Trevor and James laughing about that. James said the Duchess pinned your ears back on that one. Trevor said you did try, which was a good thing for a man to do occasionally, and that you did have her going wild for just a little while. Then he said something about her beating you with her boot, but that doesn’t sound at all likely. What did he mean, Marcus?”
“I haven’t a notion, the damned impertinent bastard. Excuse me, Ursula, for speaking so improperly within your hearing.”
“It’s all right. My brothers always do. Who is this Major Lord Chilton?”
“Actually, his name is Frederic North Nightingale, Viscount Chilton, and one of my best friends, though I didn’t know him well until two years ago when our small party was ambushed by the French. You want to know what he said when I shot the soldier whose sword was barely an inch from going through his back? He said, ‘Well, by God, saved by the man who has more sense than to touch Portuguese vodka.’ I left him in Paris over a month ago in the care and keeping of Lord Brooks.”
“What’s Portuguese vodka?”
“Well, er, you don’t want to know. I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that.” Oh Lord, thank God it was such an ambiguous idiom, for Portuguese vodka referred to the whores from southern Portugal.
“Oh no, how am I to learn if people don’t tell things in front of me? Is he as nice as you are, Marcus?”
“Of course not. He’s dour and brooding and surely he would hate this glorious day we’re enjoying. He prefers menacing heaths liberally strewn with rocks and gullies. He’s a man of moods and silences. He’s dangerous and looks it. I quite like him.”
She laughed and took his hand. He said easily, “Just don’t let the Duchess see you holding my hand. She’s very possessive, you know, quite jealous really. I would expect her to slit my throat if she saw this. I’m by far too young to croak it yet, don’t you think?”
“Oh! You’re dreadful, Marcus. The Duchess is more a lady than the queen.”
“Given that our dear queen is the farthest thing from a lady I’ve ever seen, I’ll give you that one. About the Duchess, Ursula, she’s already tried to do me in with a bridle, a riding crop, and her left boot. Yes, that sod brother of yours was right, she did get in several good wallops with her riding boot. She sat down on the drive, pulled off her boot, and ran at me like a banshee. I think a pistol is next on her list of weapons. Thank God she never carries one with her, else I might be underground with a tombstone over my head.”
She laughed and laughed, then skipped away, calling over her shoulder, “You probably deserved all of it. I’m going to the small brook just yon. Please don’t tell my mother you’ve seen me.”
Had he ever been so young? Laughter bubbling out freely, without restraint? Yes, he had, but then Mark and Charlie had drowned that summer, and he’d lost his youth.
He remounted Stanley and rode back to the stables. He was met in the entrance hall with pandemonium.
His friend, North Nightingale, stood on the bottom of the wide staircase inside the house. In his arms he held the Duchess. She was unconscious or dead. Marcus yelled like a wild man.
Marcus, frantic with worry, knew she was in pain, knew she was weak and afraid, and thus said in a voice as soft as a lone raindrop pattering against a window, “Tell me all you can remember, Duchess. Try to remember what you were doing before you reached the stairs.”
“I was going to have breakfast, nothing more, Marcus. I was at the top of the stairs. I remember thinking I saw something from the corner of my eye and I turned. That’s all I remember. When I woke up this strange man was holding me and his face was whiter than the paint on the wall.”
“That white-faced gentleman was Lord Chilton. I forgot to tell you he just might pay me a visit. You didn’t meet him in Paris, but he was there. I will tell him you described him as strange, it serves him right. That should elicit at least a noncommittal grunt from him.”
He’d spoken lightly, but inside, his belly was cramping with the fear he’d felt when he saw her. He remembered yelling, beyond himself in those few moments before he knew that she wasn’t dead. He didn’t realize he was squeezing her hand so very hard until she groaned.
“Damnation,” he said, and began to massage her fingers. “I’ve had Trevor fetch the physician from Darlington. This one isn’t a butcher like that wretched Tivit. He’s young and he knows all the newest things.” He frowned. “Perhaps he’s too young. I don’t want a young man looking at you or touching you. He might simply pretend to be objective, but I can’t imagine such a thing, not with a young man and you being so damned beautiful and vulnerable.
“What a bloody coil, and it’s all your fault. I don’t want to worry about you either. I have it, I’ll simply stay and watch every move he makes. If he succumbs to you, I’ll thump him into the floor.”
“Thank you, Marcus, for wanting to protect me from a young man’s possible lustful advances, but I’m all right, truly. I wish you hadn’t sent for him. Now he’ll poke and prod about and make me drink vile potions. It’s only my head that aches so abominably.”
“You fell down the stairs. You hit other parts of yourself than just your head, which is so hard I really don’t have too much worry about that. Do you forget you’re pregnant? You could have harmed yourself. You could have done some sort of damage to yourself. You will obey me in this.”
“Why would you care?”
“You ask me a question like that again, and I’ll strangle you. I’ll take my own riding boot to you. I don’t want you hurt, is that so difficult for you to comprehend?”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “Yes, it is,” she said, then turned her face away. He wanted to blister her ears, but held himself silent. He wanted to see what the physician—the young, quite good physician—had to say before he said anything more on the subject. He began to gently rub her temples the way Badger had shown him a while before.
She concentrated on ignoring the searing pain in her head. She concentrated on Marcus’s fingers, gentle and strong, easing the pain more each moment. She remembered Lord Chilton’s name from their days in Paris. He was a man both Badger and Spears very much wanted to avoid during all their machinations. He was, they said, very much Marcus’s friend since they’d heard that Marcus had saved his life and he wouldn’t take kindly to anyone coercing Marcus into doing anything. He was also dangerous, they’d said, and silent and very threatening.
She’d certainly given him a diverting welcome.
25
DOCTOR RAVEN, SURELY an overly romantic name for a man who was as short as the Duchess had been at twelve, was thin as one of the stair railings, and had the most beautiful head of blond hair. He didn’t appear to be unduly influenced by the Duchess’s overwhelming beauty. His voice was soft, his manner matter-of-fact. He even gave Maggie only a cursory look upon entering the Duchess’s bedchamber, and that brought a grunt of surprise from her and a rude gesture. Marcus dismissed her, then immediately closed the door after her.
Marcus watched Doctor Raven closely, ready to smash him into rubble if he offended.
Doctor Raven said calmly, as he lightly touched his fingertips to her head, “Your husband tells me that you struck your head before, my lady. Yes, I can still feel a slight rising there just behind your ear. There is no swelling from this fall. I think you will have headaches for perhaps several more days, but nothing more. You will take some laudanum. It will help.”
“She’s pregnant,” Marcus said. “She fell down the stairs and she’s pregnant. There’s more here than just her head.”
Doctor Raven merely nodded and smiled easily at her. “Just lie still then and let me feel your belly.”
Marcus moved closer to the bed. Doctor Raven merely eased his hands beneath the covers and felt her stomach without pulling up her nightgown.
“Do you have any pain or cramping?”
“No, nothing.”
“Any bleeding??
??
“No.”
“That’s good.” His hands were light as the petals of a rose, yet she felt his knowledge in the way he touched her. She looked at him to see that his eyes were closed. She was, she supposed, a collection of familiar landmarks to him, and he was checking for something unfamiliar.
“Have you been ill, my lady?”
“She’s been very ill, vomiting up her breakfast, her lunch, her dinner, and everything in between. She’s skinny as a stick, but now she’s felt well for at least a week and a half.”
She grinned at her husband, who was hovering like a preacher over his collection plate in a room full of thieves. “I do feel quite all right now, Doctor Raven. I tire more easily than I used to, but Badger assures me that’s normal.”
“Badger?”
“He’s our chef.”
“And my valet.”
“Interesting,” Doctor Raven said. He didn’t say anything more, merely continued pressing here and there, his eyes still closed. Then he pulled his hands away and straightened, bumping into Marcus.
“Well?”
“She appears to be fine, my lord. However, I would like her to remain in bed for two more days. She isn’t very far along in her pregnancy and there might be aftereffects from that fall. The first three months in a pregnancy are the most critical. I simply don’t know, no one does. Just keep her in bed and keep her calm. If she has any cramping or bleeding, have me fetched immediately.”
The Duchess said gently, “Doctor Raven, you really can speak to me, you know. I hear quite well and I have a modicum of intelligence.”
“I know, my lady, I know. But your husband appears to be very protective of you. I fear if I spoke to you he would accuse me of attempting to make an assignation. I’m young and just beginning my profession. I’m doing quite well. I don’t wish to be cut down before I’ve even reached the prime of my craft.”
“You’re quite right. At times my husband is most unaccountable. I will remain in bed.”
“Excellent. I will come to see you on Wednesday, if you have no more symptoms.”
Marcus ushered Doctor Raven from her bedchamber. She closed her eyes, wishing the headache would just stop, but she knew it wouldn’t. Badger would appear any minute now with laudanum. She didn’t want it, but she knew she had no choice. She had too many hovering friends and a husband who appeared suddenly as possessive of her as Aunt Wilhelmina was of the wretched Wyndham treasure or legacy, whatever.
She dutifully drank down the lemonade Badger silently handed her, knowing it was laced liberally with laudanum. As she fell into a deep sleep, she remembered again seeing that shadow, that slight movement before she tripped and fell down the stairs. And she knew in that final instant before sleep claimed her that she hadn’t tripped, that a hand had struck her hard between her shoulder blades, shoving her forward, and then she’d tripped. She heard again her own scream of terror, felt the blinding helplessness as she rolled and tumbled, trying desperately to grasp the railing to stop her fall, but she couldn’t, and then, suddenly, there were hands to stop her, hands drawing her up, and she fell into welcome blackness.
“I don’t like it, any of it.”
“Nor do I. I’ve never been so scared in my life, Marcus. I was standing there in the entrance hall, being intimidated by all those ancestors of yours glaring down on me when I heard this horrible scream and looked up to see your wife tumbling down the stairs. I got to her as quickly as I could.”
“If you hadn’t moved so quickly, she would have hit the bottom of the stairs and been thrown hard onto the marble and probably been killed. God, it curdles my blood to think about it. Thank you, North. Now we’re even. No more looking over my shoulder to see you behind me with you, in turn, looking over your shoulder for ruffians out to snatch my purse.”
“Oh no, not yet, Marcus.”
Marcus just shook his head. He’d never met a more stubborn, more loyal friend. “Have it your way, but I’m now in your debt, at least in my poor view. Like I said, when I came through that front door and saw you holding her and she was all limp, Jesus, I don’t want to be that afraid again in my life. No, I don’t like it, not a bit.”
“Would you care to be more specific, Marcus?”
Marcus told him about the Wyndham treasure or legacy, told him of the Duchess finding the old book in the library and being struck down, told him about the American relatives, Aunt Wilhelmina in particular, who was eccentric in the extreme, and who had probably poisoned a neighbor. “When James Wyndham found her unconscious on the floor before dawn in the library, I wanted to believe that she was struck down because of that damned book, but now I don’t believe it for an instant. Someone pushed her down those stairs, just as someone struck her down in the library and left her for dead.”
“Good God, man, you become an earl, you get stripped of your wealth, you get yourself married, regain your wealth, and now someone is trying to murder your wife?”
“That’s about the size of it. You want a brandy, North? My bastard uncle, God rot his soul, the former earl, has only the best French brandy.”
As he poured North Nightingale a snifter of his uncle’s prized smuggled French brandy, he heard him say, “A gentleman, your butler, I believe, was wringing his hands, nearly in tears, saying something about the Duchess being pregnant. Is she, Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“Well? Is the babe all right?”
“I assume so. The doctor examined her. She’s just to stay in bed for two days.”
“Congratulations. On your marriage and on the coming birth of your son or daughter.”
Marcus grunted.
North raised an eyebrow. “There’s more here than just someone trying to murder your wife, find a buried treasure, and steal it from you, I gather.”
“Damnation, it’s none of your bloody business, North.”
“Fine. I believe I’ll go wash up before luncheon. I’m tired, my blood’s thinned out from being scared out of my skin, and I want to recover my strength to meet this Aunt Wilhelmina of yours. Do you think she’ll poison my soup because I saved the Duchess?”
Marcus laughed. “One never knows with Aunt Wilhelmina. It’s true she has not a whit of liking for my wife.”
“Your pregnant wife.”
“Damn you, North, go away.”
North just grinned, then looked thoughtful as he tossed the empty snifter to Marcus and strode from the room.
“Marcus said you were silent and brooding and ever so mysterious. He said you were dangerous.”
“I did not, Ursula. At least not mysterious. He’s about as mysterious as a toad on a lily pad.”
“Well, you said other things very romantic like that. Are you, my lord?”
“Yes, I am. I’m a melancholy fellow with little wit, a gloomy sense of humor, and a shadow on my soul.”
Aunt Wilhelmina announced to the table at large, “Gentlemen, particularly noblemen, Ursula, can be as surly as it pleases them to be. They believe it becomes them. The ruder they are the more romantic to ladies they think it makes them.”
“Oh no, surely not, Mama. Surely rude and surly aren’t at all like silent and dangerous and brooding.”
“It’s boring behavior, quite uncomfortable for those having to suffer it, and thus it is even more than surly. It is petulance and it is choleric. It is, as I remarked, a very manly thing to be.”
So saying, Aunt Wilhelmina went back to her ham slices, covering each one carefully and thoroughly with Badger’s special apricot jam.
Trevor was laughing. “Taken down by a lady from the Colonies, my lord.”
“Do call me North. If I allow Marcus to be so familiar I might as well allow the same courtesy to his cousin.”
Trevor nodded and raised his glass of wine. “Marcus, I have decided as the head of the American branch of the Wyndham family to remove all of us from Chase Park on Friday. Yes, old fellow, that’s only four days away. Then you will have only North here to get rid of so th
at you may enjoy the company of the Duchess alone.”
“Oh no,” Aunt Gweneth said. “Willie, you didn’t tell me you were going to leave so soon.”
“If she would but die I could stay.”
“Oh no! What did you say, Mama?”
“My dear girl, I said only that if she would but be willing to share dear Marcus with us, we could remain.”
North stared at her, mouth agape. This was far more promising than mere poisoning. “That was astounding, truly marvelous,” he said to Aunt Wilhelmina.
She stared at him. “You are supposed to be silent. You are supposed to brood. See to it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” North said and fell to his spiced pears, tangy with cinnamon.
“Willie, surely you don’t wish to leave now. Why, it’s really too unpleasant in London in the summer.”
“Dear Aunt Gweneth,” Marcus said, smiling at her, “you’ve never traveled beyond York. There are always amusements aplenty in London, no matter the month.”
“Marcus, it’s unclean in London in the summer. The heat makes everything smell abominable. I don’t want them to leave. Trevor, is this your notion?”
“Yes, Aunt Gweneth. This game of the Wyndham legacy grows old. Besides, if there is indeed such a thing, it is yours, Marcus, not ours.”
“Trevor!”
“Mama, take hope in the fact that we aren’t paupers. Indeed, I even plan to improve our coffers by marrying James off to a proper English heiress. What do you think, brother?”
James looked frankly appalled. “Married! Me? Good God, Trevor, I’m only twenty years old. I need many more years of seasoning, many more years of—”
“Dissipation? Wild oats? Come now, James, I was thrown over the anvil when I was but twenty-two.”
Marcus stared from one brother to the other. They seemed to be enjoying themselves vastly until James said, “Thrown! Good Lord, Trevor, you wanted Helen, you panted after her like a puppy, she was all you wanted.”
Antonia said, “Ursula told us that Helen was the most beautiful girl in all Baltimore. She said it was a love match, like it was just out of Mrs. Radcliffe.”