Devotion (14 page)

"That it was him
speakin
'?" Thaddeus barely glanced at His Grace. He grinned and hooked his thumbs over his waistband. "I reckon that ain't too likely."

"Have faith, Thaddeus. Miracles do happen." Collecting herself, struggling to put the shockingly outrageous image from her mind, as well as the lingering
flutterings
of disturbance still swirling around inside her, Maria struggled to her feet, only to discover her knees shook like aspic.

"I've come for yer dinner tray," Thaddeus declared.

"Please pass on my appreciation to the cook. The food was splendid." She moved around the duke's chair, placing it between her and her watchful companion, her discomfiture growing as he continued to stare, obviously enjoying her mounting sense of unease—as he had last evening. "I would prefer that you leave Salterdon's food. I may try one last time before bed to get him to eat."

"Yer just like all the rest," he said.

"The rest?"

"All them others wot come here to companion him, thinkin' they could do wot the one before him couldn't
. '
Course, he was different then. Least he had some fight left in him, for whatever good it did him. He were little more than an idiot—"

"Thaddeus!"
she cried. "Take care how you speak—" "It don't matter. Even if he were still alive inside his head he ain't got the good sense God gave to a
bleedin
' goose. All he once
were
was wiped out with that damned blow to his head." A look of intense anger coming across his gaunt features, Thaddeus glared at his employer. "He didn't have
no
memory—didn't even know his own grandmother or brother. He couldn't talk, or walk. For six months he didn't do aught but choke in his own drool and roar like some—"

"I beseech you," Maria implored, "stop this horrible account!"

"It's the truth. Best to let '
im
die. Put him out of his
misery,
and us too."

"I intend to speak to the duchess about this contemptible—"

"She won't do aught, and do
ya
know why?" He reached for her tray of food, leaving Salterdon's on the table. "'Cause she won't have me loose out there,
informin
' the entirety of England just wot an imbecile the duke has become."

He started for the door,
then
stopped at the edge of the firelight, his gaze going once again to the duke. His eyes becoming distant, his voice softer, wearier, and oddly forlorn, he added, "He ought not to have fought
them
bloody highwaymen. He
shoulda
just given '
em
over the money. He'd be alive and well now if he had.
Damned fool.
Bleedin
' hero."

As Thaddeus exited the room, Maria stared after him, her eyes burning, not with the anger that had, at first, assailed her, but with a sudden wave of sorrow, not only for Salterdon, but for his friends and family as well. She empathized with their pain, facing his slow disintegration day after day, becoming a shadow of
himself
. The grim reaper hovered over their lives like a plague. They waited for the inevitable fall of its sword, but when would it come? Aye, impending death was a foul prison to the living as well as the dying.

Upon completing her toilette, dressed in her white nightgown, Maria reposed before the fire in her bedchamber, allowing the comforting heat to dry her hair that curled softly around her face and over her shoulders. Absently, she ran her brush through the pale strands, her mind running its course, from Paul, to John (she would write him again tonight—mayhap she would find the right words with which to convey her confusing emotions), to her father, to her mother who, as she did this time every evening, went to her knees with her husband and prayed to be forgiven for any unworthy thought or action she had committed during the day.

Since they were old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, Maria and Paul had been there as well, praying until their knees had become sore and their necks weary and the candles had burned low enough to douse themselves in their own gutter. Paul had prayed feverishly, believing in his prayers, believing they would make a difference, while she had watched him from the corner of her eye and prayed that this torture in the name of God would hurry and end. She had not gone to her knees and prayed since leaving her father's house, and would not, despite the pang of guilt gnawing at her now.

Maria sighed and finished her tea, grown bitter with cold. True to Gertrude's word, the drink had relaxed her, made her drowsy. With an effort, she gathered up a candle and made her way to Salterdon's room, stood for a moment on the threshold, flickering light raised before her as her eyes adjusted to the dark.

She tiptoed to the bed, the hem of her gown sliding against her ankles.

Salterdon, having been dressed in fresh nightclothes, lay on his back in the clean linens, his dark hair spread over the pillow. As always, his eyes were open. His hands lay peacefully upon his chest atop the folded back sheet and counterpane.

She bent over him, regarded his face in the flickering candlelight, lightly brushed a heavy curl from his brow, and adjusted the down blanket more snugly over his shoulders, allowing her hand to linger along his jaw— so, his beard was not nearly so coarse as she had imagined, but soft and thick, gleaming like bronze in the faint light.

Timidly, she drew her fingers down over his lids, closing them, holding them closed while her small hand grew warm on his flesh and the candle dripped hot wax on the fingers of the other.

"Sleep well, Your Grace," she bid him softly, and removing her hand, stared fixedly at his eyes that remained closed.

Mayhap it was the trick of flickering light that made the harsh lines around his eyes
appear
to ease, the deep grooves between his heavy brows to lessen, and even to brush faint spots of color over the rise of his cheekbones.

Surely, 'twas only her imagination.

The night grew deep.

He lay in his massive tester bed and stared at the ceiling. Occasionally, his gaze drifted toward the distant door, which was opened only enough to allow dim candlelight to intrude into his dark chamber. Now and then there came a subtle noise, a tinkle of glass, a splash of water. A shadow moved over the threshold then disappeared.

He swallowed and forced his eyes to wander the room that was so different now, since her arrival. It seemed grand again, and livable. A few hyacinths in glasses created an abiding perfume, faint but delicious. Other scents came to him as well, wafted in at times through the half-opened door of her bedroom: feminine scents: rose water, scented soap.

He turned his head, focused his thoughts on the dying fire whose embers sparkled out from a hearth made picturesque by painted China tiles, and glimmered with a softened light on two exquisite heads,
Night
and
Morning,
which formed the supporters of the white marble chimneypiece. But the sounds and scents emanating from the adjoining room nagged him, dragged his gaze back to the door while the memories of other women who had occupied that room, some whose names he could not even remember, tapped at his subconscious.

The door creaked open, just barely, and a form
appeared, draped in soft, flowing white cotton, a guttering candle dripping wax held aloft in one pale hand. She floated toward him like a vision, moonlight hair shimmering in the candlelight. Up until now he had thought he had dreamt her.

"Do you sleep, Your Grace?"
came
her whispered words, and she bent over him.
regarded
his face, his eyes, her own reflecting the bright flame in her hand. Her smell washed over him, sweet and clean and feminine. He felt dizzy, and desperate, but when the familiar anger roused inside him, something about her child-like look captured him; he lay still, barely breathing, like one in the company of a fawn. If he so much as blinked she might flee . . .

She looked so frightened.
So tentative.
Of what?
Him of course.
He
was the monster: The angel smoothed the counterpane over his chest, lightly touched her fingers to the spray of hair on his pillow. "I'm certain you don't mean to be cruel.
Your
Grace.
'Tis the anger and the belief that God and mankind have deserted you.
Trust, sir; that they have not .
. ..
Until tomorrow, good night, Your Grace,
" she
bid him softly, and drew her hand down over his lids, closing them. He did not open them again until she had quit the room, taking the light with her. Lying in the dark, he thought:
Don't go.
Please .
. . don't go.

She awoke with a start, stared blindly through the blackness of her room, her mind registering that her candles had burned out, as had the fire in the hearth.

There were sounds—women's high-pitched voices. Weeping?
Men shouting.

Flinging back the counterpane, she dropped to the floor, feet flinching from the cold, shaking fingers gripping her nightdress at the collar as she hurried to Salterdon's room, and to his bed. All was dark and quiet, but for the sound of his light breathing and the case clock ticking.

Again the shrill voices.

Hurrying from the room, she ran down the corridor until reaching the top of the stairs. There were lights below, and yes!
a
woman was weeping.

"Look wot we've got here," Molly said so suddenly Maria jumped. The servant shook her head as Maria leaned back against the balustrade and briefly closed her eyes, willing her heart to stop racing. "I'd ask wot

the
blazes yer
doin
'
dashin
' 'ere and there about the place dressed only in yer dainties but I already got a goodly idea of wot that is."

"I beg your pardon? I only—"

"I beg yer pardon?" Molly mocked. "Got airs ain't
ya
, Miss Ashton? Talk as if
ya
was
blue as the duchess '
erself
."

"
There's.no
decree of which I'm aware stating that one must be royal to acquire an acceptable vernacular."

Molly huffed. Hands plunked on her hips, she narrowed her eyes. "Where is he?"

"He?"

"Don't be daft.
Ya
think I ain't seen the way
ya
eyeball '
im
? Think I ain't heard the way he talks about
ya
? Always Miss Ashton this and Maria that—"

A woman wailed somewhere below.

Frowning, Maria tiptoed down several steps, leaned over the stair rail to better determine the commotion.

Molly pressed up against her, causing Maria to grab the rail for support. The girl's breath was rich with bad gin.