Deverell's Obsession: A Risqué Regency Romance (3 page)

“All right now,” he disentangled himself. “I’m not going off to war, you know. Just Deverell House. And I’ll be back shortly.”

“Yes, but it’s just that you’re such a
dear
lad.”

He took the reins from wee Brenna and patted her on the head. “I must remember to pass that on to my mother. She’d be quite surprised.”

A coin passed surreptitiously from his hand to wee Brenna’s. “Thank you little one. You took good care of my friend here.”

He swung himself up into the saddle. “I’ll be back soon, ladies. Thank you again.”

All the way home he turned over the morning’s events in his mind. And one particular problem gnawed at him.

How on
earth
was he going to explain what he’d just done?

Chapter Three

Léonie awoke to find herself in a moving vehicle…most likely a carriage, bumping over what felt like a mountain range.

The pain in her head was excruciating.

She moaned. “
Merde
.”

“Easy, my dear.” A voice above her sounded familiar and she relaxed a little as a cool cloth brushed softly over her forehead. Then she realized her head was on a pillow and the pillow was on his
lap
.

She struggled, trying to sit up.

A strong arm stopped her and cradled her against the velvet squabs of the luxurious carriage. She discovered that her strength had deserted her.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To my home. Deverell House. Once there, I will summon our family physician to ensure your recovery, and then, when you feel up to it, we shall take the appropriate steps to restore you to
your
family.”

His words were calm and logical, and Léonie found them soothing, as if he had lifted a weight off her shoulders. “Thank you. I’m sorry to be such trouble.”

“If you are indeed a Deverell relation, then you are being no trouble at all. And believe me, Deverell relations can be the very devil when it comes to being a nuisance.” She could almost hear the smile in his voice.  “I have asked my aunt to join us. Aunt Bertrande has lived a—colorful life, shall we say? And she is the least obnoxious of my relatives. She will lend her countenance to your visit, so please do not concern yourself with the proprieties.”

Oddly enough, those proprieties hadn’t even crossed Léonie’s mind. Of course the headache that was washing over her in waves didn’t help her focus on much of anything. “All right. Thank you.”

“Is the pain bad?”

“Yes.” She left it at that.

“You have a large egg on the back of your head. Perhaps you fell backward onto something sharp? The unpleasant alternative is that someone must have meant to do you serious harm…”

“I can’t
remember
…”

There, it was out. Léonie cursed herself for being so gently led into revealing the one thing she had hoped to keep to herself. The longer she could have maintained her composure, the more likely it was that her memory would return.

But now? He
knew
. And he would pity her, look at her as a poor fragile creature that needed protecting and wrapping in cotton.

She was nothing of the sort.

Her teeth clenched against another wash of pain. Well, perhaps just this once she might need a bit of cossetting, but as soon as she was back on her feet she would reassert her independence. She’d fought long and hard to achieve it. She wasn’t about to surrender it now.

A particularly large bump jostled her and she gasped aloud.

“It’s all right. We’re here.”

*~~*~~*

“It’s a serious wound.”

Dr. Pennyhaven shook his head and frowned as he quietly closed the door to Léonie’s guest suite in Deverell House.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Dev walked with the older man down the carpeted hallway.

“Well, the young lady has a hell of a hard head, I’ll say that. No disrespect intended, of course.”

“Of course.” Dev nodded. “In fact you’re the second person to tell me that today. So she hasn’t broken anything serious? Like her skull?”

“Came damn close. On other people, that could easily have been a death blow.” He paused and looked Dev straight in the eye. “I can vouch for the fact that it
was
a blow, Dev, not a fall. She was hit hard with a blunt object of some kind.” He sighed. “I would hazard a guess, from some of the bits of debris I took out of the skin, that it might have been something from a ship. There were tiny bits of splinters, wood that looked like it might have been caulked at one time or another.”

“All right. Given where she was found, that makes sense.”

The doctor tapped the small glass hanging around his neck. “I trust this little eyepiece. It lets me get up close to an injury. This time it showed me that although the blow was savage, there didn’t appear to be crack in the bone beneath. No chips or softness or anything to indicate she is suffering from more than a serious concussion.”

“So she will recover?”

“In time, yes. With rest and care, she should regain her strength before too long. I’ve given her a small drought of laudanum, since what she needs now is sleep. Best medicine there is. And I’ve left a couple of drops in a bottle with the maid. If the pain is bad in the night, give her the rest of it. It will help. Of course she’ll need a bit of watching. If she throws a fever or becomes dizzy…you know the sort of thing.”

Dev, who remembered quite well his own experiences with a tall pear tree, ripe fruit and a concussion, nodded. “I do indeed. But how about her memory?”

They turned and descended the stairs to the front hall as Dr. Pennyhaven shrugged.

At the bottom he turned to Dev.  “That is harder to predict. It’s quite common for a blow such as this to damage the memory. Mostly of recent events. So I would hope that as the body repairs itself, some—if not all—her memories will return. But I must point out that there is no way of proving how much of her memory has vanished.”

“What do you mean?” Dev frowned.

“I mean that a patient, under these circumstances, may selectively choose to remember that which is most convenient. Conversely, they may ignore memories of things which are unpleasant.”

Dev thought about that as he followed the doctor to the front door. “So she might remember more than she admits to?”

“It’s possible.” The older man looked troubled. “An attack of the kind she has sustained implies great violence. I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to say that somebody wanted her dead. So if
she
knows that, she must be terrified, especially if there are gaps in her memory. I know I would be. Put yourself in her position right at this moment, and ask yourself—who are you going to trust?”

“I see your point.” Dev nodded, understanding the issue.

“Send me a message if matters change.”

“Of course. And, Doctor, you are a wise man.”

“I’ve been telling you that for years. Pity it took you so long to admit I was right.” He started down the front steps. “By the way? Get more exercise. You look downright peaked and you’re getting a bit of a belly.”

Dev laughed as he shut the door. Then glanced into the hall mirror.

No, he did
not
look at all peaked. He turned sideways. There wasn’t a hint of fat around his waist. Damn Pennyhaven for suggesting such a thing.

He grinned again, remembering that the good Doctor was one of the few people who could beat him at his own game.

A small figure entered the hall, bringing a lot of silky fabric with her, along with a rather improbable head of riotous red curls.

“So, dear boy. How is the poor patient? I heard all about it from Baxter when Madge and I arrived. She’s finishing my unpacking now, but I heard the doctor’s carriage, so I thought I might sneak down for a bit.”

“Aunt. You look…Olympian. Or is it Titania this season, rather than Aphrodite?” He hugged her.

She chuckled. “It’s whoever I feel like at the moment, dear idiot. I don’t give a damn. I like to swan around trailing things. It’s attention-getting.”

“And damn dangerous. Stay away from open fires, please.” Dev neatly back-stepped and avoided trampling an errant trailing thing.

“The doctor, Dev. What did he say?”

She led him into the small parlor and drifted to a sofa, where she subsided like a rose drifting amidst the waves, and awaited his response.

He sighed and sat across from her, leaning back and resting one ankle on the other knee. “She’s hurt, Aunt Bertie. She got one massive hit on the back of her head from a blunt instrument. Something, according to Pennyhaven, that might have come from a ship.”

“Oh bloody hell.” Bertie’s eyes were wide. “The poor thing.”

“Her memory of it is apparently gone, since she cannot recall what happened to her. I’d bet more than a few guineas that she has a bigger gap than just that incident…like what she was doing on the docks in the first place.”

“One would assume that she had arrived on a boat?”

“That is logical, yes,” agreed Dev. “But…that part of the shore isn’t where passenger boats tie up. Or even ferries. She was in the area where cargo ships load and unload. Most all either to or from the continent—I think the ones that sail to the Americas or Africa have another set of berths downstream where the wharves can handle larger ships.”

“All right then. She had passage on one of the merchant vessels.”

“With sacks of fruits or barrels of wine?”

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility, you know. When I first went to France, I was in a boat with chickens and…”

Dev held up his hand. “Moving on…”

“Oh all right.” She pouted and twitched a streamer of silk. “So what’s the plan, nephew?”

“First, we must get her well. While she’s recuperating, I have a few avenues of inquiry to pursue.” He patted his pocket. “She had this on her when they found her, and she demanded it the minute she regained consciousness. I slipped it off her finger just before the doctor came, and told her I’d look after it until she was better.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure she believed me, but she was in too much pain to make a fuss.”

He stood, reached into his pocket and then crossed to Bertie. “Seen anything like this before in your travels? Especially in the family?”

Bertie took the ring into her palm and turned it to the light. The emerald darted green fire from its facets. “
Wheeoooo
.” She whistled the word between her lips. “That’s one hell of a jewel she’s got here.” She squinted. “I’d guess between two and three carats of clear, pure perfection.”

Knowing that when it came to jewelry, Aunt Bertie was an unacknowledged expert, Dev took her words seriously. “But it doesn’t look familiar.”

“Hell, if I’d ever seen this stone before, I’d have remembered it without a doubt.” She turned it again, looking closely at the unusual setting and the gold around it. “It’s as if it’s embedded in the gold, with only the tiniest lip holding it there. Very beautiful work.” She sighed and handed it back to Dev. “No, I’ve never seen it. Sorry. No help there at all.”

“It was a long shot, Aunt. Don’t worry about it.” He returned it to his pocket. “She had a note—my address was on it, which is how she ended up here. The note referenced a Lord Aubrey Elwyn. How about that? Does that ring a bell?”

Bertie was silent for a moment, a finger against her lips, her eyes vague and lost in thought. “You know…” Her voice tapered off.

Dev held his tongue. Bertie was most effective when left to act in her own unique way.

“I believe I
have
heard that name.” She turned to him, her dark eyes flashing in the afternoon sunshine. “The Elwyns were intimates of the Earl of March, I think. Can’t recall Aubrey or any particulars about the family, but that’s not surprising. I don’t believe I met any of ‘em. Just heard them mentioned by some of the members in March’s club.”

“Ah.” Dev blinked. “If my memory serves me correctly, the Earls of March are mentioned somewhere in our family bible. I’ll have to dig it up.”

“You buried it somewhere?” Bertie grinned.

“Yes. In my library. At the bottom of the darkest shelf. There are relatives in there that I don’t want to know about. I’m afraid if I accidentally speak their names aloud, they’ll appear on my doorstep in a puff of foul-smelling black smoke.”

“Always knew you were going to be the brightest Deverell.”

“Always knew you were my smartest Aunt.”

They both shared a laugh, and then Dev sobered. “You’ve given me a couple of points to think about and perhaps investigate, so for that I’m very grateful. Now if you can tell me how we’re going to handle this delicate situation—my having a beautiful young woman staying in my guest suite unaccompanied by any adult at all—I’d be a lot easier in my mind than I am at the moment.”

“Pish tosh. That one’s simple.” Bertie stood and fluffed out her trailing things with elegant gestures of her hands. “She is the niece of one of my oldest friends. Having lost her way when she landed her in London, she was lucky enough to mention my name and a good Samaritan guided her here, where I was awaiting her arrival. The poor girl contracted a fever on the voyage and was unwell when finally admitted to Deverell House, so you have graciously opened your home to us for as long as it takes for her to recover.”

Dev took a breath and then broke into applause.  “My God, Aunt Bertie. You are a marvel. Have you considered a career as a writer of novels? You can spin an excellent tale.”

She waved his comment aside. “Of course I’ve thought about it. But it’s hard work and doesn’t pay enough to keep me in rouge. Besides, nobody would ever believe half the stuff I could write about and the other half would shock the petticoats off most of ‘em.”

“Good point.” He gestured to the door. “Well, I’m going to start my investigating. Would you like to go up and peek in on your guest?”