Barbara Metzger (3 page)

Eliza Linbury was Delia’s mother’s spinster sister, with no claims on the Croft side of the family. Nanny had been nursemaid to the Linbury girls, and was far too old to take on a new family of youngsters, especially Gwen’s unruly, undisciplined brood. Besides, Gwen already had her own woman to care for the unattractive, unappealing trio, thank goodness.

As for Belinda, she was no relation to the Crofts whatsoever, and Clarence refused to accept responsibility for her at all. Gwen refused to speak her name out loud. Delia, however, could no more throw Miss Gannon out of the house than she could Nanny or Aunt Eliza, for as long as she had the house. She supposed she ought to be thankful to Clarence and Gwen for letting them stay on until the baby arrived. Theirs was stone-cold charity, however, refusing to enter their new inheritance while it was under such a cloud.

After the birth? Delia could not imagine what was to become of them. Without George, she had almost no options left. She was a mere woman, without income, without a profession. Heavens, she no longer had a home to call her own. Marriage was a wisp of a possibility, since she still had her dowry—or Clarence did—if Aunt Rosalie could find a gentleman willing to marry a tarnished bride, with such encumbrances. No, Delia thought, any man so willing would merely want a bed warmer, a brood mare, an unpaid bondwoman. Miss Croft would rather be paid for her labor, she decided, and she’d rather clean chimneys than cater to any such man. If she married, a rapidly fading dream, she’d wed for love or not at all. Hadn’t she turned down Lord Dallsworth numerous times? She could have had security, a home, a settled future—at the cost of sharing them with Lord Dallsworth. She shuddered, and not from the cold seeping through her cloak. Not for a minute did she regret refusing the baron when George was alive to support her and her decision. Dallsworth would not have supported her dependents now.

For the millionth time, Delia wondered how George could have left them like this, how they were to go on. The daffodils would bloom, the trees would unfurl new leaves, a baby would come into the world—the ultimate miracle—and she’d have another mouth to feed.

Exhausted from worry and work, Delia sank down onto the hard bench beneath the bare-branched lilacs, glad of the solitude. Inside the house she was alone in the midst of the other women, more alone than she’d been in her life, but having to be strong for their sakes. Now, out here, she could confess to herself that she missed her mother, dead these six years, and her father, gone for two. They had always sheltered her, cared for her, guided her. She missed dear bacon-brained George, despite all his faults, the worst of which, of course, was dying.

Delia dabbed at her eyes with the mobcap she’d taken to wearing in a vain attempt to appear more respectable, as if a cap were going to prove her decency when over twenty years of virtue had not.

Foolish, foolish girl, she chided herself, tears would not pay the piper. She pulled the cap back on, over the long coiled braid she wore for simplicity these days. She tucked a few errant red locks beneath the brim, and rose from the bench. Enough of privacy and self-pity, she told herself. She had things to do, preparations to make. The baby would need clothes whether it had a father or not.

On her way back toward the house, Delia paused when she heard a horse on the high road. She waited to see if the rider passed on, although heaven knew she was not expecting company. The horse trotted to the gates to Faircroft, slowed, and turned up the drive. Delia saw the big horse, so pale as to be snowy white in the sun, and the rider in a scarlet coat.

George had come home after all! The army was wrong, they’d buried the wrong man! “Mindle,” she shouted toward the house and her waiting butler, her father’s old valet, “Mindle, get Aunt Lizzie, get everyone. Come see who has—”

It was not George, of course.

The bare-headed rider had fair hair, Delia could see now, not George’s flame-shaded red. He was bigger, bulkier than her slim brother, and he had a deal more gold trim and ribbons on his regimental jacket. Most telling of all, he sat like a sack in the saddle. George would never have slouched that way, nor would he have held Diablo on such a loose rein, not that horse, not if he wished to arrive home intact.

Horse and rider made a weaving course up the garden path, trampling one of the budding primroses along the way.

Heavens, Delia thought, the man was foxed! She was glad she’d called for Mindle, for they’d all heard frightening stories of returning soldiers turning to crime. Dover, the new boy she’d recently hired, also came from around the side of the house at her shout, a water bucket in his hand. Her allies might be barely seven and pushing seventy, but they were better than nothing.

* * * *

Ty knew it was a miracle he hadn’t fallen out of the saddle long since. If the horse had not seemed to know the way, they’d never have arrived. As it was, every step Diablo took drove spikes of pain through his head. His hands were trembling, and he could barely see the ground ahead. But he was close, and he was going to pay his debt to George Croft if it killed him.

Thank God he did not have to call out to the house, for his lips were parched and his tongue was thick, and he’d been clenching his teeth so tightly against the pain that he doubted he could have opened his mouth, A woman was waiting for him, though. The right woman. Unless he was hallucinating again, George Croft’s sister was waiting for him, in some mysterious way he’d have to think about later. That had to be she, standing in front of the door like a vixen defending her den. A red curl trailed down the shoulder of her mourning gown. She seemed to have Croft’s same slender build. No, that could not be right, unless he was too late. He could not be too late. He
would
not be too late.

“M-m’Crof?” Ty croaked as the horse came to a halt a few feet from the woman.

She nodded.

He dismounted. What he actually did was take his feet out of the stirrups, swing one leg over, and slide, holding onto the saddle with his good hand, praying Diablo would not pick now to get up to his old tricks.

No one moved. Even in his fevered state, Ty’s soldier’s instincts told him two men were approaching from an outbuilding, one with a pitchfork, and two others were taking positions at Miss Croft’s sides. Zeus, they must think him a footpad.

He tried a bow, with one hand still on Diablo’s saddle for balance. “Ty. T-tyverne,” he mumbled.

“No, this is not a tavern,” Miss Croft stated. “There is an inn in the village. Now, get back on your horse and leave us be.”

The man with the pitchfork waved it, in threat. Diablo hopped away, ears laid back, nostrils flaring.

Left with no support, Ty took a wavering step forward. Miss Croft’s minions closed ranks. The elderly servant brandished a silver teapot and polishing cloth. The boy raised a heavy wooden bucket.

“No harm,” Ty managed to say. “George Croft
...
a debt.”

Miss Croft did not unbend an iota. “Whatever was between you and George shall have to stay that way. I refuse to be held responsible for George’s gaming debts, on top of everything else.”

“Not ... a game. My life.” Tyverne had to bite back a moan as he stumbled one step closer. He raised his arms to prove he came in peace, which was a fatal mistake for his precarious balance. Falling to his knees, just before he fell unconscious, the viscount finally delivered his message: “And I have come to marry you.”

Chapter 4

As far as proposals went, this one went beyond the pale, which just went to prove that when things were at their most dismal, they could always get worse.

Fusty old Lord Dallsworth had made Delia three awkward and embarrassing offers in form, but he never made a May game of her in front of half her staff. Nor had he required courage from a bottle to tender his troth.

This man, this absolute and absurd stranger, was undeniably foxed. Why, he positively reeked of spirits. So did his horse. The horse, incidentally, having frightened off the gardener and Jed Groom, seemed about to stomp the jug-bitten soldier to death, nuzzling at his pockets, while Delia gave a fair imitation of Lot’s wife. She managed to rouse herself from her horrified paralysis enough to shove the horse away from the still-lying sot, which cost her the ugly mobcap, and a few long red hairs with it.

Rubbing her head, Delia watched the horse prance off with his booty. That was George’s mount, all right, the devil’s own namesake, that had taken them ages to tame after rescuing him from the circus. The only good thing about George going off to war was that he’d taken the troublesome trooper with him. Now Diablo was back, with a drunk on his back.

Well, neither horse nor high-seas-over soldier was staying. Delia reached for the bucket her newest servant held. If Dover’s pail contained water, fine. If slops, too
bad for the big, handsome fellow and his clean uniform. She was about to toss the contents over the unconscious officer when she noticed his arm shaking. She also took time to note the high color in his cheeks and the dampness of the hair plastered to his forehead.

She gingerly reached a finger to touch the stranger’s face, but swiftly drew her hand away. “Confound it, the man is sick, not inebriated,” she told her waiting subordinates. “He is burning with fever. The man wasn’t pot-valiant when he’d made his offer; he was delirious.”

The boy backed away, but Mindle bent over, his joints creaking, to see for himself. “Dangerously ill, I would say. What shall we do with him, Miss Delia?”

“Heavens, I have no idea.”

“Well, you cannot bring him in here, Dilly,” Aunt Eliza called from the doorway, where she was shredding her handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. “Heaven knows we have enough sickness and woe. And we could all come down with whatever infection he carries. What would we do then?”

“But we cannot simply leave him here either, Aunt. He quite ruins the scenery, don’t you think?” she jested, trying to think. “I suppose we can haul him onto a wagon and drive him to the village.”

“I doubt they’d take such a sick one at the inn,” Mindle said. The old man was still bent over, searching through the stranger’s pockets for his identification. He held up a heavy purse. “Despite his blunt.”

“No, and he would not get much care there, if Molly Whitaker did deign to give him a bed,” Delia agreed.

Aunt Eliza sniffed. “Molly Whitaker would not give clean sheets to the bishop. But the vicar could take him in, or the apothecary.”

The soldier groaned and, without thinking, Delia knelt to put her hand under his head, to cushion it from the ground while they decided what to do. She wiped his forehead with her handkerchief, and sent Dover to fill his bucket with clean water.

“Dilly, keep away from him!” Aunt Eliza shrieked. “He is diseased!” She held her handkerchief over her mouth and nose.

From another pocket, Mindle handed Delia a small brown-paper packet of medicinal powders marked “Fever” on the label. Delia sniffed at it. “I suppose this means he has some recurring illness, not a contagion. Nanny might know what the stuff is and how to give it to him. Or else Mags will.” Mags was the local herb woman and midwife, who was already calling at Faircroft House on a daily basis.

“Then send him to Mags’s place. She can care for him.”

“In her one-room thatched cottage, with drying plants hanging everywhere?”

“That makes no never mind,” Aunt Eliza declared, back to wringing her handkerchief between twitching fingers. “He cannot come in here! For all we know he is a deserter, a ruffian who will murder us all in our beds.”

Mindle handed her a calling card from a silver case.

“No, Aunt,” Delia said after reading the expensive vellum card, “our caller appears to be an officer. A major, not a marauder. And a gentleman. Not that they cannot be one and the same, but I do think our uninvited guest is too ill to pose much danger.”

“A gentleman, you say?” Aunt Eliza came closer, peering over Delia’s shoulder. “My, he is a handsome fellow, isn’t he?”

He might be the most handsome man Delia had ever seen, if not for the gauntness about his cheekbones and the stubble on his jaw. The small scar over one golden eyebrow merely added distinction, and the aristocratic, slightly aquiline nose lent character to an otherwise classically molded face. She’d wager his eyes were blue, under long, thick lashes that any female would envy. She sighed.

Aunt Eliza sighed, too. “You still cannot bring him in here. If you are not going to think of the rest of us, dear, think of your reputation.”

Delia brushed that aside, with the lock of hair that had fallen across Major Lord Tyverne’s forehead. Her reputation had already sunk so low, she could dance on the tabletop at Molly Whitaker’s pub without shocking anyone.

“He did say that Master George saved his life,” Mindle volunteered.

“An’ they say as how iffen you save a bloke’s life, you’re s’posed to watch out for him forever,” Dover put in, back with the water and a clean towel.

Delia smiled at the boy for remembering the cloth. “Clever lad, but that’s just an old wives’ tale.” And wasn’t it just like George to leave her another burden, if it were true. She dipped the cloth into the water and dribbled some onto his lordship’s dry lips. “A viscount is not like some puppy you rescue from a ditch, you know. Besides, if my brother saved this man’s life—”

“A viscount?” Aunt Eliza squealed. “You never said he was a viscount. Tyverne? Isn’t that the St. Ives heir? Heavens, child, this man might be the next Earl of Stivern! Why, whatever are you thinking, Dilly? The dear boy could catch his death of cold out here on the ground.”

Delia was thinking that she did not need one more problem on her plate, but her aunt was calling for the gardener and the stable hand to come help get their guest indoors.

Jed Groom was willing to assist with the officer. Diablo was a horse of another color.

“I’ll help with the horse, Miss Delia,” young Dover offered, eager to do anything for the adored mistress who’d rescued him from the workhouse.

“No!” she and Jed and the gardener all yelled at once, lest the boy get tossed around and trampled like Delia’s cap.