Never a Gentleman (39 page)

“It’s really none of your business,” Diccan suggested.

Kate spun back on him with a vengeance. “It is when it is destroying one of my dearest friends. I don’t know what game you
all are playing, but Grace doesn’t deserve the humiliation and pain you’re serving her. Do you even know where she is right
now?”

Diccan looked around. “I assume she came here with you.”

“She’s upstairs seeing Olivia’s doctor because she hasn’t held down a decent meal in ten days. Not that you should care, of
course, except for the fact that it’s undoubtedly your fault.”

“
My
fault?” he echoed. “I haven’t done anything to…”

And then, it clicked. His stomach plummeted. Oh, sweet Jesus. Kate couldn’t be serious.

Harry leaned against the wall, a half-smile on his face. “Are congratulations in order, old son?”

Diccan pressed knuckles to his eyes. He didn’t need to count. He would never forget that first night they’d made love. He
hadn’t even had the courage to call it that. He’d called it sex. He knew better now.

Could this have happened at a worse time? Smythe had drawn Diccan farther into the group, promising a wonderful chance if
he’d just attend Jack’s wedding and report back to them any new memories Jack had recovered. If Smythe found out Grace was
pregnant, it would put her in his sights.

“Where is she?” he demanded, already walking.

“I’ll go with you,” Kate said. “I’m beginning to think somebody needs to protect her from you.”

He sighed, really tired of this. “Don’t be daft.”

Kate didn’t say a word. She just led the way. He could only follow. He didn’t need to ask which room Grace occupied. Olivia
stood outside the door, whispering to one of the maids.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

Olivia turned placid eyes on him. “We should find out any moment, although I’d hope you’ll let Grace be the one to tell you.
I think she’s terrified you won’t be pleased.”

It came out before he could think. “I’m not.”

He wasn’t, for so many reasons. Because he didn’t want to satisfy his father’s misplaced dynastic expectations. Because he
was still involved in business too dangerous and subversive to consider a family. Because he simply damn
well did not want children. And Grace knew that. He’d told her that right after he had, evidently, impregnated her.

If all that was true, though, why was he suddenly feeling so oddly elated? Why the sudden need to hold Grace?

He wanted to groan. He wanted a stiff drink. He wanted, suddenly, to be with Minette, where he knew to a button just what
his responsibilities were. More importantly, what his feelings were.

“If you so much as
hint
to that poor girl that you are displeased,” Kate warned him, getting right in his face, “I will serve a vengeance on you
that even your sainted father couldn’t envision on his most biblical days.”

“Don’t, Kate,” Olivia begged, a hand out. “We need to think of Grace. The poor thing is so sick we found her on the floor.
This isn’t going to be an easy time for her.”

He was swinging around to demand an explanation, when the door opened. Everyone in the hall turned to see a robust young country
gentleman in tweed and eyeglasses follow a maid out into the hall.

“I think it’s time to decamp,” Harry muttered, making to go.

His words caught the doctor’s attention. “I think you should stay.”

His expression jolted Diccan to his toes. The man was afraid.

Suddenly Diccan wanted to shove him aside, to go rescue Grace from whatever it was that was wrong. Was the pregnancy bad?
Was she to lose the baby? How could he be so terrified at the thought?

“Who is the husband?” the doctor asked, wiping his hands on a towel.

Kate snorted again. Diccan took a tentative step
forward. “I am. Is there something wrong? She’s all right, isn’t she?”

The doctor’s eyes were a piercing green, and they pinned Diccan like a frantic butterfly. “No.”

Even the women gasped.

“Mr. Hilliard,” the doctor said, pulling off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes. “There is something seriously wrong here.”

“What, damn it?”

Again, the doctor met his gaze, and Diccan felt even more afraid. “Your wife is not pregnant, Mr. Hilliard. She’s being poisoned.”

G
race wasn’t sure what to do. The doctor had been kind and gentle and thoughtful. He had listened to her symptoms and answered
most of her questions, and then, smiling, asked her to dress and wait for his return. But he hadn’t given her a verdict. Was
there a babe? Was the babe in jeopardy? She felt increasingly ill, as if being swamped by a wave, and her stomach had begun
to cramp. Even so, the doctor had assured her not to worry; he would take care of everything. But what did that mean?

Lizzy helped her dress and then carried away the latest chamber pot. Left behind, Grace curled up on the bed, feeling abominably
weak and wondering when the doctor would return, what he would say. He said that her symptoms were indicative of breeding.
He had even offered some new suggestions for the nausea. But in the end, he hadn’t really given her a real answer. She was
just about to gather her courage and get up, when there was a tap on the door. For some reason, it made her heart thud.

“Yes?”

She couldn’t seem to uncurl, the anxiety overwhelming her. She clenched her hands at her waist to give them something to do
as she lay there, not at all certain she could rise, even for Dr. Spence. But it wasn’t Dr. Spence. It was Diccan.

Grace blinked. “Oh.”

Diccan smiled and closed the door behind him. “Hello, Grace.”

He looked as handsome and urbane as ever, which didn’t help Grace’s anxiety. She felt sick and ungainly and smelled of sweat.
She couldn’t bear the comparison. Marshalling her strength, she climbed to her wobbly legs and smoothed down her dress. “It’s…
nice to see you, Diccan.”

His smile was stiff. “You, too. Can we sit for a minute? I was just speaking with Dr. Spence.”

Grace opened her mouth, uncertain how to answer. Of course if Diccan were there, Dr. Spence would tell him first. But somehow
it felt like a betrayal. This was
her
baby, not Diccan’s. She was the one who wanted a herd of noisy, rambunctious children tumbling over her lawn at Longbridge,
shrieking with glee when they sat their first ponies, creeping like red Indians through the woods when they collected butterflies
and bugs, looking like improbable angels when they slept. She was the one who wanted all that. Diccan didn’t.

But Diccan was her husband, and he had the right to be told first. So she took a calming breath and dropped into one of the
yellow wing chairs by the window. Diccan took the matching chair. Before he said a word, he reached over to collect her hands.
His hands were cold. She almost pulled hers away.

“Grace,” he said, looking down at her hand. “I saw Dr. Spence.”

She nodded. She felt sick again, but she thought it was just fear. “I would have told you…”

He shook his head. “I never gave you the chance. I’m sorry. But I’m here now. But, Grace…” He too took a breath, and it suddenly
made Grace afraid. “Things aren’t as you think.” His smile was fleeting. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that you won’t be
forced to put up with my butterstamp.”

The words seemed to lodge like barbs in her chest, and she wasn’t sure she could breathe around them. “What?”

Surely she wasn’t understanding. He was just being witty, and the rest of the joke was coming.

But his gaze was steady, and it was troubled. “You’re not going to have a baby, Grace. You’re sick because you’re being poisoned.”

Later she would think of those words as the cannon shot that toppled the fortress wall. Now, she just stared. She shook her
head, as if that would change Diccan’s words. As if it could negate them.

“We think it’s arsenic, Grace,” he was saying, leaning closer, as if that made any difference. “The doctor thinks it’s been
going on for a while, now. We’re going to give you something to counteract it, of course. I hope you like garlic, because
that seems to be one of the remedies…”

He kept talking; Grace knew, because his mouth moved. But she didn’t hear him. She didn’t feel his hands anymore, even though
she saw that he still held hers. She couldn’t seem to draw in any air, and surely that was her heart careening off its base.

Poison. She was being poisoned.

There would be no baby.

She yanked her hands away. She stood and almost fell over. But when Diccan jumped up to help her, she pushed
him away. She turned, not really sure why, not sure what she meant to do, but feeling a terrible need to see the green outside.
Her verdant green. The green she had allowed herself to dream of, when peace and comfort had seemed so far away. When she
had been too afraid to dream.

“Grace?”

She heard his voice and it seemed far away, too. She kept rubbing at her chest, certain it was on fire. It was being scoured
with acid, filling so fast she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t
breathe
.

Oh, God, her babe. Her babe.

Her verdant green.

“Grace, sweetheart, please.”

She opened her mouth, but there weren’t any words. Only a noise, and it was terrible. It was the sound of her defenses disintegrating.
She was sobbing.

She shoved a fist against her mouth to hold it in. She couldn’t weep. If she started, she would never stop. She would end
up wailing like a madwoman, and it would destroy her.

Another sob breached her hand, though, spilling out like water over a weir. Another. Deep, anguished cries, dredged up from
her very soul. Not a woman’s sobs, but the sobs of an animal, a harsh guttural keening that seemed to be gathering in her
chest like an unstoppable tide, too vast to hold back. It was just too much.

Too much.

The tide broke loose.

“Grace… Grace, look at me.”

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything but sob. She sobbed until tears clogged her nose and eyes and soaked her neck and
dress. Until she crumbled beneath the weight of the tears and found herself on the floor, curled into
herself, fists jammed against her gaping mouth, wailing like a madwoman.

She spent herself on that bedroom floor, drained her life away in salt and water until only a husk of her remained. Only a
husk, because everything she had filled it with had been illusion. She was nothing but lost wishes. Spent dreams. Duty and
honor and responsibility, the bitter ashes of hope.

Finally the sobs died away, but the silence that followed was worse. It was empty.

Diccan shook as if he had the ague. He was so cold, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, his Grace in his
arms. She slept now, her chest heaving sporadically with left-over sobs, like a child exhausted from pain. Her hands were
clenched at her middle. Her face was flushed and damp, her hair straggling over his hands. He should get up and wash her face.
He should put her to bed so she could rest. He should go away where he couldn’t hurt her anymore.

He couldn’t bear this. He wasn’t made for it. No one had trained him to suffer this kind of devastation. His shirt was soaked
with tears: Grace’s tears. His tears. He felt shattered. He couldn’t even imagine what she felt. He hadn’t realized until
this minute that he had never suffered real pain in his life, because he had never suffered for someone he loved.

He loved her. What kind of a dolt was he that he hadn’t realized it within moments of meeting her? How could he not have realized
that hidden beneath that plain wrapping lay the most precious of gems? What exactly had been so vital to him that he couldn’t
admit how much he wanted
her, how much he enjoyed her, how deeply he respected her? How he would move Heaven and earth to keep her from being hurt?
There would not be a day in his life he would be able to close his eyes and not see the wasteland in Grace’s eyes when her
life finally fell apart.

When he pulled it apart.

How had he not noticed how strong she was to withstand all she had suffered? How could he not have seen how fragile she was,
a woman so sure she deserved nothing that she asked for nothing? Who had suffered her greatest blow when she had finally allowed
herself to hope for more?

He had done this to her.

“Diccan?”

He didn’t even bother to look up. He had cursed at every person who’d tried to breach the door, knowing that they wanted to
take Grace from him. But this was his task. This was his penance for a life lived on the edge of humanity. He had to protect
Grace from exposure, to cushion her fall, to bear her grief. He knew that his Boadicea couldn’t have borne revealing her weakness
to her friends, which was how she would see her tears. So he had collected them himself and hidden them away for her.

He’d thought they would send in Kate, but it was Olivia who crouched before him, her hand gently resting atop his. Pulling
in a harsh breath, he finally looked up to see the fear and compassion in Olivia’s eyes. “What have I done to her?” he asked.

And oddly, Olivia smiled. “Don’t be so full of yourself. You aren’t responsible for everything, you know. Grace had suffered
the world long before you pushed your way into it.”

“But I used her.”

Olivia sighed. “We all did. It’s so easy, isn’t it? Do you know she never even took the time to cry for her father? She was
too busy caring for everyone else.”

His laugh was sore as he brushed a damp lock of hair from Grace’s ashen forehead. “I think she just did. My poor girl.”

He couldn’t seem to stop stroking her cheek, as if he could reassure her, ease her, even in her sleep. “What are we to do?”

Olivia climbed to her feet. “We need to get her to bed. You need to find out who it is who’s been trying to hurt her.”

He looked up, anguish tightening his throat. “Besides me?”

Olivia frowned. “Now you’re becoming maudlin. Come, Diccan. We need your brain. The rest of the Rakes are downstairs trying
to figure this out. Your footman Benny is missing, and Jack found a half-full bottle of arsenic in his room.”