Captive Bride (29 page)

“Papa?” she asked.

“
Cheriot
brought the physician along hours ago,
then
rode out to
Porthmadog
to take care of business. He expects to return late tomorrow.”

Bea’s hands went cold. She drew her shawl more tightly about her shoulders and led Lady Bronwyn toward the door.

Dinner was a strained affair. Lady Bronwyn attempted conversation, but Bea was the only person to respond and soon she grew too distracted to offer the girl much solace. Thomas provided no assistance whatsoever. When they rose from the table, Bea escaped tea in the parlor by claiming her duty in the sickroom. Lady Bronwyn said her good nights and hurried after her.

“Oh, Beatrice,” she grasped Bea’s arm, her eyes full of emotion. “I feel absolutely wretched for having left you alone here last night. However did you make it through to midnight? It must have been horrible waiting to discover if that horrid Lord
Iversly
would go through with his threat or not.”

“I never thought he would.” Bea started up the stairs. “How is Miss Minturn today? Better than during her visit here, I hope.”

“Oh, Minnie is well enough,” the girl said rather blithely. “I never imagined she had led such a dramatic life.”

To Bea, the governess’s life did not sound dramatic at all.
Merely pathetic, like her own until a few days earlier.

“Yes, well, she seems to have felt very deeply.”

“Oh, and she still does. She speaks unceasingly of him, crying and bemoaning her unhappy fate.” Lady Bronwyn’s clear face grew pensive. “Do you think that true love never dies?”

Yes
. “No. My parents once believed they were in love, and now they can barely speak to each other when they are in the same room. You may have noticed that.”

“Oh. Yes. I see.” The girl was silent to the top of the stairs. “Beatrice.” She laid a light hand on Bea’s arm again. “I know you must think I am a flighty thing, and a person of loose morals.”

Bea simply could not find words to reply.

“Oh, but you see,” Bronwyn assured, “I was very frightened.”

“Of course you were.”

“I did not know
Iversly
was merely bluffing.”

So, Thomas had not told her the truth. It was a somewhat surprising show of discretion on her brother’s part, but welcome.

“I would never have—” Lady Bronwyn continued. “Oh, you know. But I would not have done it if not for
Iversly’s
threat.”

“Of course not.”

“Your brother has asked for my hand.” Her brow puckered. “He told me he will await my response before announcing it to everyone.”

“You are considering refusing him?” 

Lady Bronwyn’s lashes quivered and she seemed to study her interlaced fingers. “I like him very much, but—but—” She stammered prettily.

“But what, Bronwyn?”

Her gentian eyes came up. “I have not yet had my first season in London. I understand that there are a great many gentlemen there who pay calls on ladies, and bring
them
posies and poetry and ask them to dance ever so many times.”

Bea held her mouth shut with effort. Her brother was as handsome as could stare—a striking male version of their stunning eldest sister—with easy charm, a more than comfortable allowance, and an excellent competence to anticipate when he inherited from their father someday. To Bea’s knowledge, young ladies in town hung all over him when he deigned to pay attention to them, and he was beset by invitations the minute he set foot in the countryside. Bea had never yet heard of a girl turning up her nose at Thomas
Sinclaire
.

Perhaps Lady Bronwyn was somewhat naive?

“Also,” Bronwyn said, more softly now, “I have been thinking. Or, rather, looking.” Her eyes seemed to glow peculiarly bright.

“Looking at what?”

“Rather, at
whom
.”

Unease twisted in Bea’s belly.
“Whom?”

“Lord
Cheriot
.”

Of course.
“Have you?”

“Oh, he is very handsome.” The girl dimpled, as though sharing a daring secret.

“Yes.”

“And a baron,” she said a little breathlessly.

“Indeed.”

“With no parents to disapprove of me,” the girl added with an endearingly desperate cast to her fine features that entreated one to sympathize.

Bea lifted a brow. “True.”

“Your brother told me the other day that Lord
Cheriot
is not promised to any lady.”

Bea could say nothing in response. She could hardly inform this girl of her betrothal before she told her parents.

Lady Bronwyn’s fingers tightened. “I thought that since you and he seem to be such good friends, you might put a fly in his ear on my behalf.”

“A fly?”
Bea’s stomach tightened. Even this silly girl did not see the possibility of any connection beyond friendship between her and Tip. It didn’t matter to Bea, really. She had his promise. She ought to be deliriously happy, like she had been that morning.
And all night.
Before he had deserted her at the precise moment when she most needed a friend.

But she was a hypocritical fool for blaming him, after her words in the broom closet
.

“Oh,” Bronwyn said, “you might mention my name a time or two in conversation, something about my pretty gown, my speaking eyes, and wouldn’t it be lovely to invite me for a stroll in the garden. You know the sort of thing. Don’t you?”

No, Bea had no idea. That was Sylvia’s area of expertise, not hers. And she’d never had any bosom bows of her own sex with whom to practice those sorts of games. She had always been too busy seeing to her mother’s needs, comforting her woes, and quietly wresting Thomas out of scrapes.

“Yes, of course,” she murmured.

“So you will speak to him about me?” The girl’s voice seemed lighter now.

Bea turned her gaze up. “Lady Bronwyn, I believe Lord
Cheriot
is under the impression that you intend to marry my brother.”

“Oh, well,” she said, a tiny furrow between her eyes. “That will be taken care of shortly.”

Naive, indeed.
But Bronwyn was probably so confident of her winning looks and sparkling charm she could not imagine what a pristine bride meant to a titled nobleman. Bea’s lips thinned. “My brother, I believe, is still in the parlor.”

“Oh, I cannot go back there. Your mother—” She broke off, her cheeks coloring. At least the blush did not seem contrived.

“Of course.
Perhaps later.”
Bea moved down the corridor. “I am needed in my aunts’ room now. Good night, Bronwyn.”

“Oh, good night, Beatrice.
And thank you for your assistance with Lord
Cheriot
!” 

Bea spent the night watching her great-aunt Julia sleep, mopping her fiery brow with a damp cloth, and dosing her with fever powders every few hours. Peg relieved her at dawn. Too weary to eat and too agitated to sleep, Bea wandered into the fog-shrouded gardens, to the place where she had fainted days earlier. She stepped past the spot, then another ten paces. She breathed deeply of the misty, chill air of the early November morning, her blood sluggish from lack of sleep but her muscles and head in perfectly good order.

It could not have all been a dream. Tip had been there, and Julia confirmed it.
Iversly
had been telling the truth, and he probably still was.

The ghost had not visited the sick chamber all night. That was not a particularly good sign.

Close to noon Julia’s fever climbed, remaining high for several hours, then dipping again.
Bea returned to the house and Lady
Marstowe
ordered her to rest. She went to her mother’s chambers.

“Finally!”
Lady Harriet sighed when she entered. “Begin with the gowns, then the undergarments. And when you are finished there, you will dress my hair for dinner. Do you think Lord
Cheriot
will return from
Porthmadog
in time?”

“I’m sure I do not know, Mama.” She didn’t know anything about Tip, his whereabouts, why he’d left without a word to her, or why he’d been so horrified when she cried. But men were like that. Her own father complained of his wife’s moods incessantly.

Tip had always seemed different, though.

Her mother’s porcelain brow wrinkled. “Why didn’t Lady Bronwyn set her cap for him
rather than your brother? She seems a conniving little thing, the sort who would look to a lord rather than a plain Mister.”

“I couldn’t say, Mama.” Bea unfolded
a glorious frock of sapphire muslin and lace
.

“Put that back in the trunk, Beatrice,” her mother scolded. “I cannot possibly wear muslin when I am so overset. Give me the silk instead.” She held up a pair of stockings to the light to examine for tears. “I do not think she could nab him,” she returned to her musings. “She is far too giddy. After his parents’ disreputable behavior, I suspect he wants nothing to do with drama and tears. What a horrid scene they used to make. But Clarissa
Cheriot
did have the most enviable taste in gowns. Why I have one right here that I had made up by the
modiste
she used to employ.”

Bea’s mother continued her running monologue, but Bea heard nothing of it. And her throat was so tight she was not even able to reply “Yes, Mama” when required.

Tip returned after dinner as the party was dispersing from the parlor for bed. He met Bea’s gaze for a moment, then Lady Bronwyn claimed his attention, her slender hand making itself familiar upon his coat sleeve. Bea turned away, irrational jealousy spinning through her.

He left the parlor before she did. When she climbed the stairs later, he was nowhere to be seen. She conferred with Aunt Grace, who assured her that Julia’s fever had not spiked again. Then Bea returned to her bedchamber and fell into exhausted sleep.

She dreamt of Tip holding her in his arms, making love to her, and refusing to let her go when her parents insisted that she must remain as a companion to her mother rather than marry a man she did not deserve.

She awoke weeping.

He was not present at breakfast. Bea hadn’t any stomach for food. She returned to the sickroom for the morning, quitting it only once to look in on her mother.

“Thomas refuses to leave without you,” Lady Harriet exclaimed.

“I think he is concerned about Aunt Julia and does not wish to depart until we are certain of her recovery.”

“He is a horrid boy, lacking all filial devotion. You must take him in hand, Beatrice, and make him see the right of it. I cannot go on another day in this wretched castle in the middle of nowhere.”

“I will do my best, Mama.”

After preparing her mother’s midday repast, instructing the two maids Lady Harriet had brought from Hart House as to where in the castle they could find the necessary items for steaming and ironing their mistress’s gowns, and relating everything she knew about Bronwyn’s sickly grandmother to her mother, Bea escaped. She ran her brother aground in an antechamber near the kitchen, slouching on a barrel in an attitude of thorough defeat.

He started when she touched him on the shoulder, pivoting around to face her.

She peered at him. “Thomas, are you hiding out here?”

“What gives you that idea? You’re as nosey as our father sometimes.”

She bit her tongue.

A contrite twist overtook his face. “I beg your pardon, Bea. It’s only that I’d rather not come across . . . someone in particular at this time.”

“Lady Bronwyn?
And Mama and Papa?”

His eyes opened wide. “How do you know that?”

“Tom, we have been on this earth nearly the exact number of minutes, born from the very
same womb.”

“So what?”

“I guessed.”

He cracked a grin. Bea wished she could return it.

“You’re a great gun, Bea.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Father is adamantly against the match, and Mama insults Lady Bronwyn every time they meet.”

“Mother always insults women prettier than her. Avoiding them all will not help with any of that.” Bea’s mouth shut hard upon the final word. She could easily seek out Tip and speak with him. But she was afraid. Afraid to see the desire in his eyes now dimmed, and to read reticence on his handsome face.

“I know, I know.” Thomas’s shoulders hunched. He peeked up at her. “But, Bea, I might have made a mistake concerning Lady Bronwyn,” he said in a rush.

“Oh?”

“Yes, oh.
She is beautiful and spirited. But I don’t know that she’s a very nice girl after all.”

“Thomas.” Bea’s blood spiked with prickly energy. “You are a thorough cad. At this moment, I am ashamed to call you my brother.”