Lord Harry's Folly (33 page)

“I’m alive and that’s good. Other than that, I have only your word for the rest of it. For example, maybe this sister of yours doesn’t even exist.”

He laughed, tousled her hair, hugged her until she squeaked, and said, “You will obey me. I intend to marry you. I suppose I must now that I’ve seen you naked, looked at every delightful inch of you, spent days alone in your company and you wearing only my nightshirt. I’m a gentleman and see no other honorable path for me to tread. I’m still too young and now I’m caught again.”

He got all he’d hoped for. She shoved against his chest, then shoved her fist in his belly. It wasn’t hard enough and she tried again, but he was laughing now because she couldn’t gain enough leverage.

“Maybe I won’t marry you. I don’t even know you. You’ve been a bad man to me for a very long time. Perhaps that was just a stray part of you at the Ranleaghs’ ball. Perhaps that was the only night in your life that you were charming. You do look nice and you kiss well enough, but even then, I’ve never been kissed before so perhaps you’re a troll with no talent or skill at all or”

He kissed her just to shut her up.

“Oh, another thing, your grace,” she said when he allowed her to pull back for a moment. “You play that arrogant role of yours and I’ll cosh you. You know that I could simply announce to the world that the wonderful Marquess of Oberlon, that famous Corinthian and black-hearted knave who’s wicked and amusing and fascinating, fought a duel with a girl. I shudder to think what would happen to your reputation. Would anyone speak to you again?”

“You’re very good,” he said, his fingers lightly stroking over her white throat. “If I squeeze just a bit, will you whimper for me? Will you call me cruel and”

“I’d die before I’d whimper for anyone,” she said. She lightly touched her fingertips to his mouth, to his jaw, to his nose. “Yes, you’re a spanking handsome fellow.”

“And you, Henrietta, you have a tenacious will.” He could probably threaten her all he wanted, but it wouldn’t matter. She’d just look at him and probably laugh and poke fun at him. No, she wouldn’t be bowed by any threats from him. He realized that the last thing he wanted was to make threats or demands or give her orders. He probably would want to in the future and he could just begin to envision what would happen between them when he did. It seemed quite a nice future to him. Four days ago, he couldn’t have begun to imagine such a thing. Life was, he thought while kissing her ear, very strange and unexpected. He decided that the marriage he’d jested about with her would come to pass. He wanted her.

He looked at her and everything he was thinking was in his expression. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip. He stared at her tongue and that bottom lip of hers. He wanted her right now. He wanted to love her and caress her and not stop.

“Damnation, this has got to cease. I know things, Hetty, things that you know about as a gentleman but have no notion about as a young lady. They’re fun things, but I can’t share them with you yet, else I’d have to challenge myself to a duel.” He gently eased her back onto the pillow. “I’ll fetch Millie for you. Rest now. I’ll be back soon enough. I can’t seem to keep away from you. All very odd, but there it is.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

Hetty gritted her teeth and held herself as still as she could. He was gentle, he was matter-of-fact, as he carefully snipped away the dressing from her side. The wound had closed nicely and the flesh surrounding it was a healthy pink. The black thread looked obscene but that couldn’t be helped. She’d grown thinner, he thought, as he gently bathed her side with warm soapy water. With great deference to her modesty and to his own control, he’d slipped the nightshirt only midway up her chest and the sheet down to the middle of her belly. She trembled as the soft washcloth touched her skin.

His hand paused momentarily in the hollow of her belly. He spoke his thought aloud. “You’re beautiful, even a doctor would have to recognize that, but your father would think that Lady Alicia has been starving you. You must force yourself to eat more, Hetty. We’ve but a day to fatten you up. By God, your flesh is white and soft, and I’m sorry. This is not well done of me. I’m your doctor again, bloodless, with no thought beyond that the wound is closing well. Millie will remove the stitches after you’re home again.”

She was silent as a stone. He felt a tightening of her muscles beneath his hand, and gingerly moved to another spot. In but a few more minutes, he’d dried her with a soft linen towel and was reaching for the basilicum powder.

“This is very embarrassing,” she said after he’d covered her again. He looked up, expecting to see her face flushed, and was taken off guard to see her staring at him, wide-eyed, with a kind of stunned expression on her face. She’d felt something for him, despite the pain she must still feel in her side. She liked him touching her? Oh God, he liked it as well.

He tried to make himself feel like a bishop at a baptism as he slipped the linen beneath her waist to bind the wound loosely again. It was damned unnerving and he felt sweat break out on his forehead. He felt a clumsy oaf, thinking that he must be hurting her.

“Do you really want to marry me?” she asked, staring at him straightly.

“Yes,” he said, standing over her now. “I must as I told you. I’ve taken more advantage of your innocence than a man is allowed to take. Yes, I must hie myself to the altar with you, noble fellow that I am.”

“You haven’t asked me if I’m even interested in becoming better acquainted with you,” she said. She watched his face closely as he pulled the nightshirt back down and rose from her bedside.

“I already know you’re interested. You smile at me, you ask me to kiss you, and I fancy you like it. Now, you’ll be a bit sore for another week, but Millie will be able to see to you quite sufficiently after you’re home. Would you like to become better acquainted with me? Learn if I can mind my tongue and be gallant and flatter your very pretty eyebrows?”

“Are they really?”

“What’s really?”

“Do you really like my eyebrows?”

He rolled his eyes, strode back and forth three times beside her bed, gave her a crooked grin and took himself off.

She told herself as sleep tugged at her again, as it always seemed to do, this weariness that was so deep she didn’t even know where it came from, this weakness she hated, that he knew at least that she wasn’t like many females. She wasn’t helpless or fragile or soft, as men seemed to like women to be. She’d never be remotely helpless, regardless of what he would admire.

Enough of that. She had to think. Just because he’d turned her life upside down in four days, there was still Damien and still the man out there who’d been responsible for his death. Someone had forced Damien to leave England; and that same person, still maddeningly unknown, had sent him to his death at Waterloo. Lord Harry still had much to do.

The following morning, dressed as Lord Harry and leaning heavily upon Lord Oberlon’s arm, Lord Harry bade a silent farewell to Thurston Hall, a mansion she was quite certain she could come to admire, if the opportunity were offered to her, which it had been, but had he been truly serious?

As she expected, Sir Archibald’s carriage was standing in front of the gothic-pillared entrance, with both Millie and Pottson standing by the open door. She pulled her greatcoat more closely about her shoulders to ward off the frigid winter wind. Of course, she had to leave Thurston Hall as Lord Harry for the servants’ sake the marquess had said, and naturally she’d agree with him. She didn’t relish the prospect of changing back into women’s clothes, even with Millie’s assistance, in a cramped carriage.

She looked at his set profile. He was in close conversation with Pottson. She felt a knot of loneliness. She didn’t want to leave Thurston Hall. She didn’t want to leave him. She wasn’t going home. She was leaving it. She realized the marquess was speaking to her and turned up her pale face to meet his.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accompany you. Millie and Pottson have my instructions. You’ll be well taken care of. I shall call upon you in a couple of days to see how you’re doing.”

“I’ve been well taken care of all my life,” she said. “When will I see you?”

“In three days. I doubt I could last longer away from you. You madden me and I want to kiss you, very badly. Oh lord, I hope that Jack the footman didn’t hear that, else I would quickly gain a reputation as a pederast. Go, Lord Harry. Take care and rest. I’ll see you soon.” He wanted to touch her face, but he knew he couldn’t. They had to maintain the charade.

He closed the door to the carriage. He turned and walked back up the steps. “Silken,” he shouted, “have the carriage ready in half an hour. We’re going back to London.”

Tired and somewhat depressed, Hetty arrived dressed modestly in a woman’s gown at the stroke of noon. Thinking that her father would demand all sorts of details of her visit to Thurston Hall, she had carefully invented several parties and outings. She was rather unnerved when her sire, after greeting her with a negligent kiss on the cheek, asked only, “I understand the marquess was in residence during your visit and that you got along very well with him.”

“He put in an occasional appearance, Father.” She picked up a roll, but still, from the corner of her eye, she saw his speculative look. She smiled to herself. If her father only knew.

After luncheon, Hetty excused herself and trailed wearily up to her bedchamber. She lay very carefully down on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She thought of Jason Cavander’s manly command that she was never again to appear as Lord Harry. Still, no matter how much she just wanted to stare at him and kiss him, she couldn’t let him dictate to her. She knew what she had to do. She had to find out if Sir William Filey had indeed been responsible for Damien’s death. Nor could she turn her back upon poor Isabella’s plight. The thought of Sir William even being near Isabella made her ill. My motives are of the highest order, she told herself, and if the marquess goes into a snit, then so be it. Damn, why couldn’t gentlemen, the marquess in particular, not realize that they weren’t the sole guardians of honor and pride? Actually, truth be told, she hoped he didn’t really feel that way.

“You intend to do what?” Millie stared stupefied at her mistress the next afternoon when Hetty evenly informed her of her intention to invite Sir Harry and Mr. Scuddimore to dinner at Lord Harry’s lodgings.

“You heard me, Millie. If you don’t choose to accompany me to Thompson Street, I shall just have to go alone. But go I will. Lord Harry isn’t done yet. The marquess is innocent, but that leaves the man responsible still out there. I must get him.”

“But the marquess”

“To the devil with the marquess. I’m your mistress, and he has no say whatsoever in whatever I choose to do. Now, will you help me or no, Millie?”

Short of tying her mistress to a chair, Millie found that she had no alternative but to escort her to Lord Harry’s lodgings. When she tried to argue with her young mistress, she received only cold, uncommunicative stares.

Pottson served only to make Hetty want to strangle the man she was going to marry. “But no, Miss Hetty, the marquess told me that he would see to things now, that you were a young lady, after all, and you were still weak from the wound, and you would need to rest and remember how to wear your skirts again, and, well, he gave me strict orders to pack away Lord Harry’s belongings. He said that he was going to find out who was responsible for sending Master Damien away.”

Her hands were on her hips even though it made her side hurt more than necessary. “Oh, he did, did he? Well, he certainly has his nerve, doesn’t he?” Then she just grinned at Pottson. “All right, both of you. Lord Harry is still very much in existence, and it is I who will decide just when he will disappear from London. If you don’t obey me, I swear that I will go directly to White’s and yell the truth of this entire matter to the world. Just keep on with me and I’ll do it. Do either of you wish to take that chance?”

Millie glanced at Pottson. They knew they’d lost, but just for the moment. Hetty guessed that, at the first opportunity, Pottson would take himself to Jason’s town house and fill his ears with Miss Hetty’s obstinacy.

Although Hetty suspected that Pottson, after delivering her invitation to Sir Harry and Mr. Scuddimore, had paid a visit to the marquess, she didn’t question him, just stared at him coldly, making him feel the perfect traitor, she hoped.

As she vigorously pomaded down her blond curls and drew them severely back at the nape of her neck, she found herself wondering just how Sir Harry and Scuddy were going to react upon seeing her. They would have many questions, of that she was certain. I shall just have to take them as they come, she decided, as she pulled on her breeches. She directed a grunt of disgust at the thin body looking back at her from the mirror. If her breeches had been loose fitting before, now they positively hung. She heard a loud knocking on the outer door, and with a final glance at herself, she turned and strode from the room, hopeful that during her illness she hadn’t lost her masculine swagger.

“Good God,” Sir Harry said, clasping her hand and pumping it. “You’ve become a damned scarecrow. You still feeling pulled, old fellow?”

“Ho, Harry, it is only that I thought of you and became too ill to eat.” How strange it was that she had slipped back so easily into Lord Harry’s role.

“Well, Scuddy here ain’t the worse for wear. Ate like a man mountain, he did, in sympathy for you, at least that’s what he kept telling me.”

“I thank you, Scuddy. It’s good to be alive. It’s also good to see both of you again.”

“Well, we’re surprised to see you, Lord Harry,” Scuddy said.

“Surprised? Why? Did you believe I’d curl up my toes and pass to the hereafter?”

Sir Harry said, “What Scuddy means to say is that the Marquess of Oberlon informed Julien my brother-in-law, the Earl of March, you know that when you recovered from your wound you would be returning home. We’re dashed glad, though, that you returned to say goodbye before going back to that barbaric place.”