Lord of Fire (38 page)

He let out a furious roar of frustration. “If I don’t kill Bardou, he’s not going to
give
us any peace,
Alice! You have no concept of what this man is capable of! He has to be stopped, and I’m the one to stop him!” His rage charged the air between them like lightning. “We are mortal enemies. Do you understand? If I don’t go after him, he’ll come after me when he’s through making mischief for
England. Bardou wants my blood just as much as I want his.”

“Oh, my God,” she uttered. “Then you must come to Hawkscliffe Hall, as well!”

“Hide from him? The hell I will!”

She flinched. “Then you’ve made your choice.”

“That’s right,
Alice. I choose revenge!” he flung out, his chest heaving in untamed defiance.

“Then I choose never to see you again,” she forced out. She brushed past him and ran out of the room, blinded by tears.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

A stillness hung upon the gray, misty dawn as Lucien watched his carriage preparing to leave

The carriage paused in the courtyard, waiting for the guards to pull back the tall iron gates. Shrugging deeper into his greatcoat, he fought the urge to run after her. He held his ground firmly, his eyes narrowed with guardedness and concentrated intensity.

I’ll get her back when it’s over.

McLeish saluted him as he rode by on his chestnut gelding. Lucien nodded. He was sending the leather-tough Scotsman and two of his most reliable subordinates to escort
Alice to
Glenwood
Park
and to guard her there until his business with Claude Bardou was finished one way or another. He still would have preferred to send her to the more distant and heavily fortified Hawkscliffe Hall, but she had flatly refused to go. After upsetting her so deeply, he felt too guilty to say no. He knew that her beloved home and her Harry were the only things that could comfort her now. Admittedly, he tended toward paranoia. There was probably no reason whatsoever to worry. The only people who even knew she had been with him at

As the great iron gates of

I will get her back when it’s over,
he assured himself a second time,
provided, of course, that I live through this
. He had not attempted to soothe her after their awful fight the night before because if he did not survive, it was best to let her hate him. Her anger would brace her for the blow of his demise.

He watched the carriage as it crossed the wooden bridge and climbed the hill out of the valley. Even after it had disappeared, he still stood there in the bleak gray dawn, his chin to his chest, the cold stinging his cheeks, his hands thrust down in his coat pockets. A tremor of contained anger ran the length of his body. He lifted his brooding stare, his expression hardening. The time had come to hunt and kill Bardou.

He was ready. The beast in him was awake and hungry for blood.

The warm lights gleaming in the windows of home brought tears to
Alice’s eyes as the landau rolled through the darkness up the drive to
Glenwood
Park
. Her day had been spent dismally staring out the carriage window, nursing her broken heart, with a few stops along the way at coaching inns to break up the tedium of the long ride. Now, at last, she had come home. She could not wait to hold Harry in her arms. The very thought of his smell and his soft little body in her embrace made her chin tremble with threatening tears again, but after all that had happened, at least she still had her beloved home and the people who loved her—Harry, Peg, Nellie, and the others. Never had she been more grateful for their simple comfort.

Wondering what lie Caro had told them to explain her absence,
Alice quickly brushed her tears away as Lucien’s carriage slowed to a halt in front of the elegant manor house. She had no idea how to explain the presence of McLeish and his two rugged men. The landau had barely stopped when the front door flew open and Peg came rushing out with Nellie and Mitchell a few steps behind. When she alighted from the carriage, they hugged her and greeted her and made much of her.

“Oh, dearie, you’ve come back to us at last! Thank heavens you’re well again! I was so worried! Oh, let me look at you, poor thing.” Peg braced
Alice by the shoulders and looked into her face by the glow of the carriage lantern. “You still look weak. Have you been able to keep anything down?”

“There’s nothing worse than a bad salmon—nothing!” Mitchell said with a grimace.

So, that was Caro’s lie, she thought.

“Oh, Miss Alice, can you ever forgive me for leaving you? I begged Her Ladyship to let me stay with you, but she forbade it,” Nellie said anxiously. “That place was so strange! But she said if I gave her any cheek I would be dismissed!”

Alice
noticed the sharp look that Peg shot Nellie, but did not know what to make of it. “Of course I forgive you, Nellie. I am quite well now. Thank you all so much for worrying about me. It’s so good to be home,” she choked out, giving Mitchell’s arm a squeeze while Peg and Nellie both clung to her. She quickly schooled her composure back into order and turned to Lucien’s coachman. “It’s too dark to leave now. Please accept our hospitality.” She exchanged a meaningful glance with McLeish.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the Scotsman said, tipping his hat to her.

“Mitchell, will you be so kind as to show Lord Lucien’s servants to their quarters and help them with their horses?”

He bowed and quickly went off to see that McLeish and the others, as well as their horses, were given comfortable accommodations for the night.

“Come now, into the house with you,” Peg said in a businesslike tone. “You’re barely recovered from one ordeal. I won’t have you catchin’ the ague next.”

“Her Ladyship said there were half a dozen people from Lord Lucien’s house party who were laid low from the fish,” Nellie said confidentially as they walked back toward the house.

“Yes, er, we were all quite ill,”
Alice answered, hating herself for lying to her loyal maid and her beloved old nurse, but what choice did she have? She was not about to admit that she had been Lord Lucifer’s plaything for the week.

“By the by, we’ve kept the neighbors at bay,” Peg informed her. “Everyone thinks you’ve been sick in bed here all week with influenza.”

“Oh! That’s a relief, but I am sorry you had to lie for me.”

“We couldn’t tell them the truth. It would risk your reputation. Now, there’s something in here that should lift your spirits,” Peg said with oddly forced cheer as they walked up to the entrance of the house.

“My lambkin?”
Alice exclaimed.

“No, dearie—look.” Peg held the door open for her.

“What is it?”
Alice walked into the brightly lit entrance hall and found it overflowing with six lavish bouquets of flowers. “Oh . . . how beautiful!” After the gray, dreary day, the vibrant colors and the sweet perfume lifted her spirits a bit. There were hothouse roses and orchids, irises, carnations, and delphiniums. “Where did they come from?”

“Your young gentlemen sent them.” Peg closed the door, giving her a rueful wink. “You know how those three are always trying to outdo one another to impress you.”

“Roger, Freddie, and Tom?” she asked as she took off her cloak.

“Who else? I’ve been calling it the war of the roses,” Peg said with a chuckle. “It appears when they learned of your ‘influenza’ they were quite beside themselves. A few of your young lady friends also sent flowers—Miss Patterson and the Misses Sheldon from
London.”

“How kind.”
Alice’s heart clenched at the abundant evidence that she was cared for and loved by so many people. She felt awful for lying to them—or rather, for Caro’s lying to them—but it was necessary in order to preserve her reputation and to hide the link between her and Lucien from this Frenchman he was stalking. Perhaps the excuse of illness was not so far from the truth, she thought, for Lucien Knight had infected her blood like a fever.

Nellie took her cloak and hung it on the peg.

“Thanks. It really is wonderful to be home. Nellie, would you mind making tea?”

“Right away!”

“Bring it upstairs when it’s ready?”
Alice asked. “I’ll be either in my room or in the nursery with Harry.”

“Oh, dear,” Nellie murmured, exchanging a worried look with Peg.

Alice
felt her heart stop. “What is it? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine, dearie,” Peg said, then pursed her lips. “But he isn’t here.”

Alice
stared at her in shock.

“Lady Glenwood has taken him to
London.”

“Is he all right? Did he need a Town doctor?”

“Nothing like that,” Peg soothed, fidgeting with her apron as she always did when she was nervous.

Alice
realized she had been so wrapped up in her own heartbreak that she had failed to notice how out of sorts her servants were. “What’s happened here?” she cried.

“I’m afraid Her Ladyship found country life, well . . . a trifle dull,” Peg said delicately. “It was all I could do to make her wait until he was past the contagion stage.”

“Oh, Lord.”
Alice pressed her hand to her forehead and stared at Peg incredulously. “Do you mean to say that she put that child with full-blown chicken pox through a four-hour carriage ride to
London because she was
bored
?”

“Just so, I’m afraid.”

“Peg! Why didn’t you go with them?” she asked angrily.

“Because she fired me, dearie.”

Alice
gasped in horror.
“What?”

“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve been staying on here, waiting for you.”

Alice
gasped and stared agape at her, utterly appalled. “Fired you?” she sputtered.

Peg nodded, her hurt and indignation eloquent in her serene nod.

“But how? Why?”

“Well, we butted heads for days over the care of the boy. I was able to avert any real disasters, but I’ll say it frankly—” she lifted her chin, “—that woman is a blunderer.”

“Master Harry was running a fever, and the baroness spanked him for crying,” Nellie added. “She said the most awful thing, Miss Alice. She said she would not have Master Harry growing up to be a nancy-boy like his papa.