Lord Harry's Folly (30 page)

“Damn but you’re stubborn,” he said and pulled her fingers from the spoon. “Now, lie back, open your mouth, and stop trying to prove how invincible you are.”

She did, and opened her mouth.

The bowl was empty and the fresh bread rested comfortably in her stomach and still she felt her mouth watering. She wanted more. She wanted the entire pot of soup. She wanted another loaf of bread, buttered liberally. He stood and removed the tray. As if he read her longing, he said, “No, any more and you’ll get ill. Trust me in this. You can have some more in a couple of hours.”

She turned her face away from him and he saw her fingers bunching at the cover.

“Are you in pain?”

She shook her head, then suddenly turned to face him and whispered, “I know Millie is here. I heard her. I wish to have her, please.”

He said cynically, “Really, Hetty, it is I who have looked after you for the past three days. You have no need of Millie. Come, what is it you want?”

“Damn you, get me my maid.”

Understanding dawned. “Very well, but listen to me, Hetty. Millie will have only fifteen minutes with you. I can’t allow any gossip to start among the servants. As you know, that would be fatal. You’re Lord Harry, don’t forget that.”

He said over his shoulder as he strode to the door, “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Then, Hetty, we must talk, if you feel up to it.”

It seemed an age before Millie’s large, spare figure appeared in the doorway, and Hetty wondered if the marquess had been giving her all sorts of orders. Probably so.

“Oh, Miss Hetty, oh my poor little lamb.”

A poor lamb she was destined to be at least for the next fifteen minutes, for Millie clucked over her like a mother hen finally returned to her lost chick.

Hetty’s more basic needs having been attended to, she nervously eyed the clock. “Quickly, Millie, tell me everything you know before the marquess returns.”

“Well, his grace isn’t a dreadful man as I’d sworn he would be. It’s a tangled state of affairs he’s saved you from, and I’d say he’s taken better care of you better than any doctor. Not, of course, that I approve of an unmarried man being so intimately familiar with a young girl, but I agree with him that it had to be this way. Yes, you must remain Lord Harry, else I shudder to think what might happen.”

“Did his grace tell you it would be all right if you brushed my hair?”

“Now, Miss Hetty, no need to get snippety.” She grinned down at her mistress. “I daresay I’ll have to since his grace hasn’t seen fit to render you this service.”

Millie was gentle, Hetty gave her that, still the pain grew with each gentle stroke of the brush. She sought to distract herself. “What have you been doing the past three days? How did the marquess justify your presence here?”

“Naught of anything, Miss Hetty. His grace said I needed a holiday after all the wild doings you put me through. Of course, Sir Archibald believes I’m attending you here during your visit with the marquess’s sister. As for what he told his servants, they simply think I’m a visitor from his sister, here to see if she would like anything changed when next she visits. I don’t think they believe it, but they’ve kept quiet. I like most of them. That Croft, now, he’s a handful. Careful as a vicar he is while the marquess is here not to fall into drunken stupors. He’s always peering around corners, afraid his grace will catch him with a bottle in his hand.”

Hetty pulled away from the hairbrush. “Millie, listen to me. It seems you’ve begun to think his grace is a virtuous, kind man. You know what he did. He’s cruel and ruthless. If his behavior now belies that, well, it’s because he doesn’t want a scandal, he told me so himself. His nobility is only word deep. He’s a sham, Millie, he’s”

“Is arrogant or evil next on your list of compliments, Miss Rolland?”

She looked up quickly to see him standing in the doorway. “Very probably,” she said, her voice as cold as the ice storm of the previous week. “I also should say devil. Oh damn you, you’ve made my side hurt.” She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself, not in front of him.

The marquess said calmly to Millie, “The fifteen minutes are gone. You can see your mistress again perhaps later this evening when it is likely that she will prefer your services again to mine. I’m sorry, but we mustn’t risk giving you more time with her.”

“I quite understand, your grace,” Millie said. “It will be as you wish.”

Hetty watched Millie curtsy to such an obsequious depth that she would have liked to kick her.

“And now, Hetty,” the marquess said after Millie had closed herself out of the bedchamber, “we have, I believe, much to talk about. I find Miss Rolland as viciously insulting as the indomitable Lord Harry. Would you now care to inform me exactly why I am a vile, cruel, and arrogant”

“Don’t forget devil.”

“Yes, naturally I’m a devil, and evil to boot. Do you hurt or do you want to talk to me now?”

He pulled a winged-back chair close to her bed and sat down. He leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest.

“It doesn’t stop hurting but that doesn’t matter.”

“Very well. What do you have to say to me?”

She stared at him. For so very long she’d planned on telling him why she’d killed him. He was to have been mortally wounded, lying at her feet. But not this, not her lying here, hurting, with him saving her life, taking care of her. God, she wished she had a gun so she could shoot him, but she didn’t, even a cane so she could strike him over the head.

At her continued silence, he said, “You know, Hetty, while you were in a high fever, you were delirious. You spoke of many things. You thought, for instance, that I was your brother, Damien, and screamed at me that you couldn’t do it that you couldn’t kill me.”

“So you admit your guilt?”

“Guilt? What wretched guilt? I just wanted to know what Damien has to do with any of this.” He tapped his fingers together. “You seem to think that I was or am involved in some way with Damien. Come, Hetty, you’ve never been at a loss for words in any guise I’ve known you.”

“You killed my brother. Damn you to hell, you killed Damien!”

He stopped tapping his fingers and stared at her. “What did you say? You think I killed Damien? What arrant nonsense is this? Your brother was killed at Waterloo, in a very ill-advised cavalry charge, at least that’s what Jack told me.”

“Yes, he was killed at Waterloo. And you’re right, of course, about that charge. At the last moment before the battle, he was assigned to lead a cavalry charge that meant certain death. You killed him, your grace. You sent him to lead that suicide charge.”

She fell back, gasping as a sudden jab of pain ripped through her side. As the waves of pain wouldn’t subside, she hugged her arms about her waist and gritted her teeth. To her shame, she felt tears swimming in her eyes and tightly closed her eyelids. She couldn’t be weak now, not now.

When she felt his hand upon her forehead, she didn’t have the strength to draw away.

“Drink this,” he said. She didn’t want to, but she opened her mouth. He held her head in the crook of his arm and held the glass to her mouth until she’d drunk all of it. It was barley water. She hated barley water.

It was several minutes before the laudanum began to take effect and dull the pain. She concentrated all her energies on not moaning aloud. She was only vaguely aware that he was clasping her limp fingers in his hand. At a particularly sharp wave of pain, she realized that she was clutching his hand, in some way seeking comfort from him. She heard him say something to her about sleep, and when the laudanum dulled her mind and her body, she willingly obliged.

When she again awoke, it was night. She had no idea how late it was. She turned her head carefully and saw the marquess standing in front of the fireplace, staring down into the crackling embers, a thoughtful expression on his face.

She queried her body, received no painful reply, at least for the moment, and slowly began to pull herself back up in a sitting position.

Her movement caught his eye, and he smiled as he strode over to her.

She held herself in stiff silence as he put his arms about her and eased her up. He straightened over her. “If you promise not to yell at me, I’ll feed you.”

“You changed my nightshirt.”

“Well, yes. The soup you spilled was very sticky.”

She felt beyond embarrassment. She felt strangely out of time, as if this man wasn’t the same man she’d hated and sought to kill for the past nearly five months. Everything had gone awry and she felt herself floundering. She didn’t know what to do, so she said, “I’m very hungry.”

It was near to midnight before Hetty had finished another ration of soup, more bread, and Millie had left after her fifteen-minute allotment.

The marquess closed the door, locked it, and walked to the bedside. He eyed her intently. “The fact of the matter, Hetty, is that you didn’t kill me when you had the opportunity. You either doubted my imagined guilt over your brother’s death or you hadn’t the stomach for murder. Which is it?”

She cocked her head to the side, staring at him, perhaps even through him, trying to understand why she’d done as she had. She saw so clearly the tip of her foil against his heart. One thrust, that’s all it would have taken, just one thrust, yet she hadn’t done it. She said aloud, “I’ve never doubted your guilt for a single instant. But when you just stood there and stared at me, no fear on your face, just waiting, looking at me, I knew I couldn’t do it. When Damien died, part of me died with him, but yet I still lived, still knew I lived and was grateful for it. You lived as well. I couldn’t be your killer. I couldn’t be like you.”

“You were close to your brother?”

“He was part of me.”

“I gather you must have some sort of proof, some sort of evidence, that makes you believe me guilty of your brother’s death. It must really be something for you to arrange your elaborate charade as Lord Harry. Now, tell me.”

“Very well, we shall see how well you can lie, Lord Oberlon. I trust you do still remember your wife Elizabeth Springville.”

His eyes darkened at his dead wife’s name. “What has any of this to do with Elizabeth?”

“You’ve a short memory, your grace, so I will refresh it. Not such a long time ago, you, Sir William Filey, and my brother, Damien, were all enamored with a beautiful young lady named Elizabeth Springville. Evidently your respective assaults to win her hand led you to lay a wager at White’s a large wager, I understand to see which of you would succeed in winning her. Is this true?”

“Yes, it’s true,” he said, grim lines etching about his mouth.

“Although I’m disappointed that Damien would do such a thing, and indeed, I can’t excuse him for that, what followed bears witness to your true nature. You’re correct in one thing, your grace, I do have proof of your treachery. Pottson was Damien’s batman. It was he who found a letter from Elizabeth to my brother. The letter damns you. She damns you. You will have to tell me the details of your plot to rid yourself of Damien. I will tell you what I know. Elizabeth chose Damien. Then you, your grace, getting wind of your defeat, used your influence with the ministry through your uncle Lord Melberry no doubt and we both know he has more than enough influence, and you had Damien quickly removed from England to be sent on a series of dangerous missions that, you hoped, would lead to his death. It is my belief, your grace, that Elizabeth gave herself to Damien as a proof of her love. When she discovered she was pregnant with Damien’s child, she had no choice but to wed her lover’s murderer.

“Perhaps the reason she died in childbed, your grace, was that she loathed you so greatly, particularly after hearing of Damien’s death, that she simply had no further wish to live. There is much on your conscience, if you have one, for even Damien’s child didn’t survive.”

The marquess stared at her long and hard. Then he jumped to his feet and strode to the fireplace where he stared down at the warmly glowing embers. Then, without speaking, he strode back to her, stood over her and said, his voice remarkably level, ah, but she could feel his rage, a deep rage, but he was controlling it, “I damned well don’t believe this. You’re telling me you engaged in your suicidal charade all on the basis of a letter written from Elizabeth to your brother? You planned to track me down, insult me until my eyes crossed with anger. And I challenged you to a duel, and then kill me all because of a bloody letter from Elizabeth to your brother? Jesus, this is madness.”

“Yes, it was enough, more than enough.”

“By God, you’re a fool, a damned irresponsible, blind as hell female fool and God knows a female fool is the very worst kind. No, I take that back. There can be no greater a fool than a man brought low by a woman. Now you will listen to me. When you’ve recovered, I shall want to see this infamous letter of yours. In the meanwhile, allow me to disabuse you of your romantic, ridiculously idealized reading of the entire sordid affair. Despite what you believe of me, I’m a man of some scruples. Were I not, I wouldn’t have kept quiet about the true facts, and none of this need ever have happened.

“On several points, you are quite correct. The three of us, Filey, your brother, and I, all wanted Elizabeth Springville. Obviously, you have heard that she was an exquisite girl, sought after and feted from the instant of her coming out. Foolishly, too, one evening when all of us were deep in our cups, Filey suggested the wager to add spice to the chase, he said.”

He stopped and she knew he was debating with himself what to tell her. He gave her a look of utter loathing, then began to pace back and forth beside the bed. “Ah, to hell with it,” he said more to himself than to her. “Let’s get it all out in the open. Listen, Hetty. Although the next day both Damien and I regretted our action, it couldn’t be undone. Elizabeth was courted like a princess. Like a woman with all the wiles of Cleopatra, she gave each of us encouragement in turn, yet never declared her preference. Although you may not choose to believe me, after several weeks of this sport, my supposed affection for the young lady began to wane. I began to believe her vain, cold, and quite calculating in her actions.”