Blood Marriage (12 page)

"I'll do that. You find the doctor." 

He stared at her before nodding. "I'll send someone up to build a fire and bring hot water. She must be kept warm."

Elizabeth waved him away and started unbuttoning Margaret's dress. The girl was moaning, rocking herself against the pillows, her face almost as white as the linens. Devlin closed the door behind him, his deep voice rumbling from the other side as he shooed the ladies back to their rooms.

Some of Margaret's hair had pulled loose from its bun, wrapping one side of her neck like bloody fingers. Taking care of that would have to wait on hot water and a comb. In the meantime Elizabeth gently undressed the maid, speaking soothing nonsense as she worked. Whether it was the effect of her words or simple exhaustion that calmed the maid Elizabeth was unsure, but by the time she'd removed the last stocking Margaret had ceased rocking. She was tucked beneath a mountain of blankets by the time Lennie knocked on the door with a basin of hot water and a stack of clean towels. Elizabeth snatched the towels from him and pointed to the nightstand. He set the basin on it. 

"Did you do this?" Elizabeth demanded. 

Lennie's bushy brows shot high at the accusation.

"I know you met Katie and Margaret in the forest tonight. What happened?"

"What are you talking about?" Either the man was an extraordinarily accomplished actor or he really didn't know. His expression turned considering. "Why would you think I met Margaret in the forest, miss?"

"Margaret said you sent her a note asking her to meet you there tonight. She took Katie along as a chaperon. Do you deny you sent her that note?"

"It's an interesting question, of course," Dr. Bergen said from near the window. "But not one that can't wait while we attempt to save the patient's life, yes?" 

Lennie crouched and spun. Elizabeth frowned. Why hadn't she heard the door open when Dr. Bergen entered the room, and who had opened the window? She hurried to shut it against the cool night air. Dr. Bergen moved to the bed and began to examine Margaret. 

"Lennie, isn't it?" the doctor asked. The footman nodded. "We'll need a fire, Lennie. The bigger and hotter the better. More blankets and plenty of beef broth."

"Will she live?" Lennie asked.

"Not if we don't get her very warm very soon."

When the footman had gone, Dr. Bergen turned to Elizabeth. His eyes traveled the length of her, taking in her modest nightdress and beribboned braids. "Vlad's right. You do look like a virgin sacrifice. Go to your room, Miss Smith. And lock your door. I'll care for Margaret."

"I'm not leaving," Elizabeth said. "But someone needs to find Katie." 

As if she'd conjured the girl with her words, the door opened and Katie rushed in, Nicholas behind her. Tears streamed down her bruised and swollen face. The same dark substance that covered Margaret's clothing was splattered across Katie's dress. Elizabeth had been around bleeders all her life. She knew the look and smell of blood. Katie threw herself to her knees beside Margaret's bed and clutched her friend's pale hand.

"Forgive me, Margaret. Please forgive me." 

Margaret's eyes were closed. She no longer moaned. Katie shook the girl's hand in frustration causing the blanket to jerk from beneath Margaret's chin, pulling the blood matted fingers of hair free from her neck. Her head lolled to one side. Katie sobbed and buried her face against the bed at the sight. Elizabeth couldn't take her eyes from it. Twin punctures marred the white flesh of Margaret's throat. They were still oozing blood.

Chapter Seventeen

The all-encompassing flannel gown and simple hair ribbons should have made her look demure, almost prudish, but that was not the way she felt in his arms. Nicholas shifted Elizabeth on his lap so that the soft mounds of her breasts no longer pressed against his chest. It did no good. She mumbled something unintelligible and burrowed back against him in a way that caused the heat in the already over-warm room to seem unbearable.

"Why don't you take her to her bed?" Dr. Bergen sat in an overstuffed chair, his leg cocked up over one chair arm, his sleeves rolled high.

He'd just finished battling broth into Margaret for the third time that night. Keeping the girl conscious long enough to get her to swallow had proved no small task. Earlier the two men had pushed Margaret's bed as close to the fireplace as they dared and moved the sofa and chairs that had occupied that space as far to the other side of the room as possible. Now Nicholas sat on the sofa across from the doctor, Elizabeth sleeping against his chest. 

"In a few more hours. I don't want to leave her alone. Not yet. Not like this." Nicholas looked down at the elegant hand curled over his heart and felt a twinge of guilt. It was the second time he'd drugged her in the three weeks since they'd met. But she'd left him little choice. She'd pushed herself dangerously hard tonight, and then refused to leave Margaret. The drug and the deep sleep it produced had smoothed the lines of pain from her face.

"She'll be fine. The dose I gave you for her tea was very mild." Dr. Bergen grinned. "But if you don't trust yourself, if you're afraid to carry her to her room, I could do it."

"You could, but then who would care for Margaret after I killed you?"

The doctor laughed. "I'm not so easy to kill." He stood and stretched, glancing at the clock on the mantel. "It's been two hours since his last visit. Lennie should be along again soon to check on his light o'love." Dr. Bergen tilted his head toward the woman sleeping in the bed. "Or on us, as the case may be."

"We'll need to find out," Nicholas agreed. "If he's not who he should be, we need to know."

Bergen nodded. "He's asking too many questions for a footman. When I went to the kitchens to get more broth, he was looking for Katie. He wasn't happy to hear I'd given the girl a sleeping draught and sent her off to bed...doctor's orders."

"Could be he's just curious," Nicholas said.

"Could be something worse."

"Well, he won't learn anything from Katie. She was waiting in the bushes when Margaret began screaming. She told me all she saw was a dark figure bending over the girl. When she tried to go to Margaret's aid she was struck in the face, knocked from her feet. She ran. She was hiding in a ravine near the old castle ruins when I found her. Katie won't be able to tell him anything helpful." Nicholas glanced over at the bed. "What about our patient? What will she remember?"

"Nothing. They never do. Not the first time."

"We were fortunate tonight. If things had gone differently, if the girl had bled to death, that would have brought lawmen, and difficulties...for all of us."

Both men were quiet for a time. Finally, Nicholas spoke again. "It was reckless to hunt so close to home. Maybe Vlad is right."

"Yes, well, sometimes things get out of hand." The doctor moved to the window, his back to Nicholas. 

"Sometimes things get out of hand," Nicholas echoed Bergen softly. Elizabeth stirred against him. He dropped his head to brush his lips against her forehead, breathing deep, letting the sweet scent of her fill his senses. Hunger clawed at his insides.

Chapter Eighteen

It is urgent I speak with you before the wedding.
Nicholas noticed this time she hadn't bothered to sign her name beneath the hastily scrawled words on the thin white paper. The word urgent had been underlined several times.

He crumpled the note and tossed it on the bed beside two others, then pulled his great coat over his shoulders. Outside, wheels crunched along the gravel drive. The carriages that would carry his guests to the church were being brought around to the front entrance. He would have preferred to ride his own horse. The exercise might have helped to clear his head. But as Leo had pointed out, a man shouldn't show up for his own wedding smelling like an animal.

Knocks sounded simultaneously on both doors of the room. The knock on the door to the hall would be Leo coming to take him to the church. The other would be his lovely, if persistent, note writer. He checked his pocket for the ring and picked up his hat. The knocking on the door leading to Elizabeth's room grew louder. The doorknob rattled violently. Fortunately, he'd made a point of locking it, after tucking his sleeping beauty into her bed just before dawn. 

"Devlin, stop ignoring me! I need to talk to you! Devlin?" That was not the voice of a happy bride.

Nicholas checked the folds of his cravat in the mirror one final time, then opened the hall door. Leo stood there dressed in his best suit, a smile on his face. Nicholas raised a finger to his lips, forestalling whatever greeting his friend might have made him. Leo stepped into the room. His brow wrinkled at the noise coming from the adjoining dressing room. He spotted the crumpled notes on the bed and shot a questioning look at Nicholas.

Nicholas shrugged and picked up his gloves. The banging continued, harder. The flat of her hand hitting solid wood made him wince as he imagined the bruises that would surely form. He took a step toward the door, then stopped, shook his head, reversed course, and ushered Leo silently out into the hall. He closed the bedroom door behind them with a soft click.

"Bride's nerves," Nicholas said. 

As if that explained all Leo made a sympathetic hum. Father Vlad, the duke and Dr. Bergen waited for them at the bottom of the stairs. Vlad and his father were arguing in low tones. Nicholas avoided them and sought out Bergen.

"How's Margaret?" he asked.

"She'll recover with time. Katie's sitting with her now. Cook promised to look in on them often. I asked that Lennie be one of the footmen who accompany us to the church today so that he won't be bothering the girls."

Nicholas accepted his father's hearty hug and, ignoring Father Vlad's gloomy expression, led the men outside. They took the smallest of the carriages for the ride to the church, leaving the larger ones to transport Randall and the ladies.

Dozens of vehicles filled the fields and lined the lanes around the small village church. Inside, the church pews were crowded, gentry and commoner alike dressed in their finest. No one wanted to miss the wedding of the heir to the dukedom. 

Nicholas spent a few minutes with the rosy-cheeked vicar. He thanked the clergyman for allowing the wedding to be held in the afternoon, a generous concession of tradition. He also produced the special license he'd obtained from the bishop in London. The vicar smiled broadly at the document which granted permission for the marriage to be made in such haste and confided it was the first time in his career he had seen such papers. With some prompting from the vicar, Nicholas assured the earnest fellow that both he and Elizabeth were entering into this most sacred union with sincere hearts and clear consciences.

It was a blatant lie, but saying it seemed to meet some necessary requirement in the vicar's mind. Once he'd finished with the vicar, Nicholas followed his father's example and moved among the mass of people, greeting friends and acquaintances. Unlike his father, he spent as much time conversing with the men as he did with the ladies. He was speaking to an old friend when Leo tapped his shoulder.

"It's time," Leo said. "The ladies are seated and the bridal coach will be pulling around in a moment."

Nicholas and Leo took their places at the front of the church facing the long aisle. Countess Glenbury, Harriet, and Randall had settled into the Devlin family pew at the front of the church. Dr. Bergen sat beside the countess. The duke joined them and Harriet hastily shuffled places with her brother to win a seat beside him. The Duke of Marlbourne turned in his seat and, with a dramatic flourish, waved a hand to the footmen standing at the back of the church.

The people in the pews went silent.

The doors of the church opened, providing a view of the fields and forest beyond. White horses passed in a blur. Then the door of the carriage, its polished ducal crest gleaming in the afternoon sun, was framed in the church entrance. A footman, resplendent in Marlbourne's silver and black livery, stepped forward to open the door. 

Amanda came into the church wearing a flowing green gown, pink and white flowers braided in her blonde hair. The ruby bracelet she always wore was her only adornment. She walked up the aisle. Beside him, Leo murmured something, but Nicholas wasn't paying attention. Amanda reached the front of the church and turned to face the entrance. 

A slipper appeared from the depths of the carriage. A gloved hand extended to accept the assistance of the footman. Elizabeth emerged. Nicholas's indrawn breath was echoed by the muted gasps of the crowd. 

A dark-haired Aphrodite clothed in moonlight and roses. 

Her hair was piled high on her head in the Grecian style, a single white rose peeking from among the twists of dark curls. The wedding gown he'd had made for her, its delicate pink and white roses outlining bodice and hem, fell like cascading moonlight from her high round breasts. It skimmed past her hips, hinting at the soft curves beneath. She came slowly down the carriage steps. Nodding her thanks to the footman, she released his hand and stood framed in the church door, her bearing elegant, her face calm, her smile serene. She remained there for several seconds, as if allowing the crowd, who'd twisted in their seats to get their first glimpse of the future duchess, to look their fill.

The people in the pews sat mute, as if enchanted. For a moment Nicholas too was stunned by the sight of her. Then she began to walk down the aisle toward him in that smooth gliding way of hers and he noticed the way her breasts rose and fell in shallow ragged breaths; the way her smile quivered.

She was in pain.

It had been cruel to leave her to make her way down the long stairs of his home without assistance, and with the entire household watching. Cruel too to refuse to answer her notes and force her to endure the carriage ride to the church after being fussed over for hours that morning by the women. But had he stayed to help her down the stairs, had he responded to her notes begging to speak him, she might not be here now, walking down this aisle, about to bind herself to him irrevocably. That wasn't a chance he'd been willing to take.