Angel In My Bed (20 page)

“I passed your maid before coming upstairs. She told me.” Working his collar loose, he walked past her into his dressing room. “Honesty is a potent medicine to swallow, Meg.”

Honesty indeed, she scoffed. He was enjoying needling her for some reason. “What happened between you and Mr. Rockwell?” She stood outside the dressing room.

“He convinced me that I should not give Kinley an excuse to seize you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means Kinley is a Sassenach pig. More so than I remember. I'm postponing my trip to London.” David returned to the doorway, his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose as he worked a cuff on his sleeve in a way that told her something else was bothering him. “Kinley is proficient at mopping up before the game is over,” he said after a moment. “There are some things I'm not ready to relinquish.”

Victoria had never seen David like this. But all she could grab on to was the realization that he wasn't taking Nathanial away. “Because you are a patient man?”

His eyes smiled into hers. “Patience caught the nimble hare.” He set his silver cuff links on a shelf next to his shoulder.

“To be redheaded is better than to be without a head. I believe
that
proverb belongs to the Irish.”

“You don't have red hair, Meg. Anywhere that I can remember.”

Victoria gasped and followed him into the dressing room. “Since we are in a state of grace and candor here, maybe you should tell your son the truth about your title. He thinks his father owns a castle in Scotland, for heaven's sake.”

David regarded her with an implacable expression. “You told him about us?”

“He asked. I told him the truth. As much as I could.” She scuffed a toe against the leg of a chair. “I believe that he's happy with the development.”

Reaching across her shoulder, he picked a robe off the brass peg on the wall. “Do try not to let it get your spirits down, Meg.”

“Don't call me that name.” She would rather die than have her son know her by that name. “Margaret Faraday is not a model of womanhood anyone would find to have attractive attributes.”

For a moment, she thought David hadn't heard her, not to come back with a rejoinder. “You know nothing of the inclinations of men to be so sure of that opinion, love.”

She opened her mouth to reply, only to find she was experiencing a heart flutter in her chest. Looping the belt across his waist, he padded past her. “Actually only part of the castle remains. A turret, to be exact, among a pile of stones. But to a nine-year-old who dreams of knights and sword fights, those stones were easily castle walls.”

“Oh, please, David.” She followed on his heels. “You're not going to tell me you are also a baron?”

For a moment, it looked like he would tell her nothing. But
David, being nothing less than courageous, turned. “Once upon a time, I was awarded a life peerage for service to my country.”

Folding her arms, she tapped her foot. “Of course you were.”

“It isn't something people know about me.”

“I see.” Silently condemning him with her eyes, she smiled. “I
see
that the more I learn about you, the more I realize you are an even
bigger
liar than I am.”

“Perhaps.” He leaned an arm on the bedpost. “But if you don't leave my room, I'll give you an excuse to call me worse.”

“Then we seem to be at an impasse.” Her heart beating a wild tattoo against her ribs, she took a step nearer. “Because you are standing in my way.”

His gaze flashed over her in warning. They both knew she could have walked around him. “Are you suddenly without speech, my lord baron?” Her voice was a whisper.

“Just…” His mouth grinned. “Not restrained, love.”

Every sense leaped as if a flame had been put to her flesh, not just from his heat, but from the look in his eyes, the brush of his robe against hers, every illicit stroke of cloth against cloth, and she burned from what lay beneath the caress of fabric.

Then he stepped to the side, his hands palms out. Chin high, she hesitated, then strode past him in a billowing cloud of ivory and shut the door firmly behind her.

David waited until he heard Meg's door shut before he allowed himself to breathe again. Guilt had towed his thoughts all these years. But it wasn't guilt he was feeling now.

“Aye.” He laughed and, in a moment of perfect clarity, glared at the ceiling, knowing someone upstairs surely mocked his sanity. “There is a fool born every minute and every one of them Irish.”

“O
n your guard, Donally!”

David parried Rockwell's lunge, testing the other's weapon, and waiting for an opening to attack. Ian's riposte drove David back two steps, their clicking foils a driving force in the studio as both men crossed the floor a second time. A leather vest covered David's white shirt. Beneath his mask, sweat trickled from his brow, and he welcomed the damp breeze as he passed an opened window overlooking the valley below. Outside the temperatures had risen and a steady drizzle of rain wiped away the last evidence of snow.

But the weather mattered little when he intended to find his entertainment inside today. Rockwell proved to be a worthy sparring opponent, which made baiting him all the more enjoyable. “You are bloodthirsty this morning.” David countered the younger man's attack, his strength extending into the blade as he defeated Rockwell's efforts to score a single point.

“And you are not?”

Ian Rockwell, for all of his self-perceived expertise, was about to get his bloody clock cleaned. “Control, Rockwell.”

Then as if on cue, both men switched their foils to their left hands and began the exercise all over again. The sound of steel sliding against steel followed. What had begun as a fencing match quickly degenerated into a sword fight. Rockwell ducked beneath David's blade, his breath harsh behind his mask.

“Not bad, Donally. But you still won't win.”

David laughed. “I don't have to win to beat you. I only have to stop you from gaining a point.”

Foils clicking, they went around the room two more times, until Rockwell finally bent over his knees and ended the drill. “I think…we've tortured each other enough.” He breathed the words. “I call it a draw.”

David waggled the foil tip in front of his adversary's nose, giving him no such satisfaction. “In your bloody dreams, Rockwell.”

“Then strike your point,” Ian rasped.

Despite his want to thrust the tip of his blunted foil into Rockwell's chest, despite having overslept the sunrise by an ample two hours this rainy morning, and leaving that day's tasks undone, David was feeling relatively sanguine for all that weighed on his mind. He had decided last night he wasn't playing anyone else's games. Let Rockwell know what it felt like to be toyed with and baited.

“I know what you're bloody doing.” Ian swung his foil to knock aside David's and missed, as David's reflexes were still faster. “So there is no need for you to waste your time in trying to make me lose my temper. Strike the bloody point or draw.”

David reached a hand to remove his mask, and found himself staring over Rockwell's shoulder. The sight froze his movement. His pulse thumped in a quicker pace to the vision of his wife and son, standing beside the potted fig tree at the back of the room. Her hands resting on the boy's shoulders, a halting movement to her chin betrayed her calm and mirrored his racing senses. For an instant, they all seemed caught by the other's gaze. Whatever irritation he felt toward Rockwell dissipated. The sun could have been shining for all the warmth that suddenly infused him.

“I hope we aren't intruding,” she said.

A lock of damp hair fell over his brow as he finished removing the mask and tucked it beneath his arm. “You're not,” he said, his eyes moving to his son's.

Nathanial, who had never exhibited an ounce of shyness in front of him, turned his attention to the scuffed toe of one shoe.

“Nathanial heard the click of foils,” Meg said. “He wasn't sure if it was all right to watch.”

“Master Nate—” Rockwell presented them both with a debonair bow. “You have just witnessed the two most excellent swordsmen in all of England spar to a stalemate.”

Inwardly, David groaned and might have commented had his son's eyes not flickered with interest. A smile tilted Meg's mouth. “Indeed,” she said. “Who am I to challenge a man's opinion of himself?”

Rockwell observed her. “You've held a foil then, my lady?”

“Mother knows how to handle a blade,” Nathanial interjected. “Last year, she whacked Cousin Nellis's in half.”

David cocked a brow at the same time Rockwell cleared his throat and said, “That must have been interesting.”

“He was a poor sport about it, too.” Nathanial tugged at his
mother's sleeve. “Wasn't he? He never sparred with you again.”

“Cousin Nellis was wise,” she said pleasantly.

Softly amused, David met Meg's gaze.
What a far less pleasant meeting I might have had with Nellis had he succeeded in touching you,
the unspoken thought touched his eyes. “Wise, indeed,” he said.

On that note, Ian returned his foil to its place on the wall and excused himself, leaving David alone with Meg and Nathanial.

A flush colored her cheeks, and for the briefest flicker he saw she was afraid of him. Not of him, he realized, but of losing her son to him.

But he should have known she wouldn't flinch from any challenge or duty, including facing him. “Your father is very adept with his sword.” Meg smiled at her son in that brilliant, arresting way that took his breath, but her eyes were filled with something else entirely different when she looked at David. A mother's protectiveness, yes, but also a compassion for him he didn't expect to see from her. “I have work to do,” she said, bending down to touch her lips to Nathanial's hair. “Will you be all right here?”

Nathanial nodded at his feet, and David wasn't certain if that was a yes, a no, or even a maybe, but at least he wasn't running out of the room.

“I'll be in the orangery if you need me,” she said, and David suspected she was speaking to him. “For anything.”

“Mother?” Nathanial ran to stop her at the door. “Don't you want to stay with us?”

She rippled his dark head, and without looking at David said, “Not unless you want to help me clean the orangery later, Squirrel.” Meg walked out of the room.

His son looked over his shoulder at David—still standing in the middle of the floor, holding his foil and mask beneath his arm. And for a man who had been so sure of himself five minutes ago, he was surprised to feel a flutter in his stomach. They had spent two weeks in each other's company, but this was the first time they'd ever been alone as father and son.

“I should have been here for you sooner, Nathanial.”

The boy shrugged. “Mother told me it wasn't your fault. She said you weren't going to go to London without me.”

“No.” Looking into his boy's eyes was like looking at Meg. “So you want to duel with this Ethan Birmingham, do you?”

Again, he shrugged. “He goes to school at Winchester and takes fencing lessons from the best master in all England.”

“So he says.” David grinned. “Have you learned how to hold a dueling sword?”

Nathanial's eyes brightened. “Only blunted foils. Mother thinks I'll cut myself.”

“She's right. There is a lot more to mastering swordplay than the desire to best Ethan Birmingham. You have to know how to wield a blade and to do so without hurting yourself.”

“Are you a master?”

A slow smile touched his lips. “That I am, son.”

 

An hour after leaving Nathanial with David, Victoria quit trying to keep herself occupied in the orangery. She cast aside her gloves and returned to the studio, for there was no accounting a mother's desire to reassure herself all was well with her only child.

She pressed her ear to the door. Listening to the rumble of male voices, she felt a skein of warmth. She heard her son laugh in response to something David said. Then all grew quiet. Edging open the door, she looked inside.

David's back was to her as he walked his son through what resembled a strange dance—she recognized the kata he had once taught her. A breeze pulled at his dark hair. He wore no shoes. He'd changed out of his clothes into something consisting of a long white-sashed robe with scarlet underneath. Mirroring his father's movements, minus the sword, Nathanial held what looked like a peg leg, his profile intent, his concentration fierce, his movements precise as David spoke each of the steps aloud.

Neither of them saw her at the door.

The desire to watch, even to take part, brought her up short, and she eased the door closed. They didn't need her in there. She held a hand to her side. Her wound was not yet healed, but the ache she felt had nothing to do with her ribs.

Victoria grabbed her cloak and asked Mr. Rockwell to take her to the cottage. Sir Henry was asleep when she knocked on his bedroom door an hour later and Esma was upstairs helping Bethany sew her new gown.

Victoria left the cottage, and for the first time in days, lost herself to her work. She didn't hear the door into the root cellar open.

“They've been up at the house for three hours,” Sir Henry said.

Victoria looked up from where she was shoveling loam from the herbal garden into the row of half barrels against the wall. Sir Henry stood just outside the lantern light, his hip hitched against the workbench where she'd finished labeling the last jars of herbs.

“How do you know?” She wearily brushed soil from her knees.

“I know, because that's how long you've been in here.” His
mouth crooked at one corner. “I wasn't asleep when you knocked.”

Outside, a beam of sunlight broke through the overcast skies. Victoria looked up at the narrow cellar window, as the room grew brighter. She returned to the workbench and began the process of cleaning. “You have a supply of peppermint. But we need—”

“Victoria.” Sir Henry touched her forearm and her hands stilled their task. “Stop.”

She wrapped her palms around an empty jar and set it on the shelf before turning to face him. “I didn't know it would be this hard. My son needs his father. I understand…”

“Think how he must be feeling.”

“Nathanial?”

“Chadwick.”

Victoria opened her mouth to correct Sir Henry's use of Chadwick as David's name, but she could not. Instead, she picked up a hand broom. “Nathanial's very relationship to David excludes me.”

“As Chadwick is excluded by yours to Nathanial. You're doing the right thing, Victoria.”

From an angle, she could see the palsy in Sir Henry's hand as he gripped the cane, and she set down the broom, her own problems no longer important. “How are you feeling?”

“Daniel Gibson and his son Robbie were here,” Sir Henry said, leaning both hands on the cane as if it pained him to stand. “He said Lord Chadwick asked to see him. I've sent Mr. Gibson to the manor house with a message to bring him here. We need to talk.”

 

“Would you like your coffee with cream, mum?” Esma asked.

Victoria looked up from the documents in her hand. She was sitting at the kitchen table. A fire crackled in the hearth and mixed with the tangy aroma of a baking pie, all familiar smells of warmth and comfort she'd grown accustomed to in this cottage. Esma stood beside her, a small creamer in her hand.

“When did Sir Henry do this?” She set down the documents.

“His solicitor returned with the papers this morning, mum.”

The sound of an approaching horse drew Victoria to the window. She pulled aside the yellow curtains. David cantered Old Boy into the yard. He wore his coat, gloves, and hat, and she almost didn't see Nathanial riding in front of him on the saddle.

Mr. Rockwell came out of the stable to take the reins. David eased Nathanial from the saddle when he saw Robbie exit from the stable. Her son ran across the yard. Even from behind the glass, she heard him talk about everything he'd done all morning, and say that when he grew up, he was going to be a knight.

As if sensing her presence at the window, David looked at the cottage—at her. She did not hear what Mr. Rockwell said as David threw his leg over the saddle and slipped to the ground. She dropped the edge of the curtain and, leaning her head against the sill, closed her eyes.

This morning he'd solved the apprehension in her heart in regard to the welfare of their son. Nathanial idolized him. Yet, somehow, she'd thought it would take longer for the two to form a bond, that she would hold more importance in her son's life.

The back door shut. David ducked through the archway into the kitchen. Pulling off his hat, his eyes touching hers,
he looked around as if expecting to see that something terrible had befallen her. “Is everything all right?” he asked, handing his coat and gloves to Esma as she bustled forward.

Behind him, Mr. Rockwell and Bethany entered. Sir Henry appeared in the kitchen. “Lord Chadwick,” he said, and asked David to sit at the table, while directing Bethany to another chair.

Esma brought tea. Knowing what Sir Henry was about to ask David, Victoria looked at her hands as she took her place across from him.

Sir Henry was ill. No one knew better than Victoria did from the first time she'd recognized his symptoms a year ago. Two days ago, he'd decided to put his affairs in order. He didn't want the responsibility of Rose Briar. Even if he could talk David out of the deed, which at this point she suspected he easily could, Sir Henry would never be able to raise the funds needed to make the land productive again. But today was about something closer to his heart, and she sat at the end of the table half afraid to listen.

“I'm exhausted,” Sir Henry said to David and Bethany, finally turning to her. “I've finished all the treatment I'm going to take, and we both know that no herbs or miracle potions exist to cure what ails me. I could live another year or die tomorrow, I don't know. But then who understands God's plan for us all.”

“Peepaw—”

“Bethany, for once I need you to listen. I need both of you to understand,” he said, looking between Victoria and Bethany before turning his attention to David. “I am willing everything I own to the Rose Briar Estate, and ask that you remain,” he said. “That you not sell, if only because this is Nathanial's home. You have the means to put life
back into this land and give something to this town I failed to do.”