Sea Scoundrel (32 page)

“Now that you know I’m the Marquess, you may as wel know this was my grandmother’s house. She left it to me, but I haven’t lived in it since I was seventeen and she was alive.” Patience watched him rub Amy’s back. “After my mother abandoned us, when my father came to town, he left us here with my grandmother, Lady Briarleigh. She was an old dear. We spent hours in this room, Shane and I. He loves this place. I’m going to give it to him and Rose as a wedding present. I have other houses.” Patience pursed her lips. “I wish you would not do anything admirable while I am so angry with you.” Grant put Amy on the counterpane of the little bed and placed a coverlet over her. “Do you think she’s warm enough?”

“Yes,” Patience said grudgingly.

He took her hand and led her through a connecting door into a lovely sitting room, leaving the door open a crack so they’d hear Amy if she woke. Urging her toward two chairs facing a large bay window at the far end of the room, he sighed. “Tel me why you’re angry.”

“Furious. I’m absolutely furious with you. Rose should have been the one to tel Shane about the baby. Not you. I told you in confidence, Grant. How could you be so cal ous?” She got up to pace and stopped almost immediately.

“Nothing you do should surprise me, not where the heart is concerned. Your shameless disregard of Rose’s feelings in this instance is proof you know nothing of love. And Shane was right, you do not possess an ounce of feeling in you.

Do you realize how emotional Rose is right now? Shane charged into this house as if you were forcing him to marry her. She may never get over it.”

Grant wondered for a minute why he felt so betrayed by Patience’s words. Everyone had
always
assumed he knew nothing of love. He liked it that way. Most of his life, he’d cultivated an attitude of hard-shel ed invulnerability, so he should be pleased at his success.

Yet, Patience’s charge was like to bring him to his knees.

Why?

Because he knew of love. He loved
her
.

Did he?
Dear God, no.

As if a stone pil ar fel on his chest, Grant began to fight for air. He turned toward Patience, turned away, the light in the room dim. Gazing out at the dark streets, an occasional carriage-lamp bobbing along like a beacon in the mist, Grant almost wished he rode safely away.

He wanted to say something, but no words would come. He couldn’t bear to look at Patience, yet he ached to feast his eyes on her. Her face was too ... dear, a peril if ever he’d known one. He couldn’t love her. He couldn’t. He would not al ow himself to.

Shane and Rose came in, breaking his web of panic, saving him as surely as if they wielded swords. Grant took a breath, another, until the room came, once again, into focus.

“Where’s Amy?” Shane asked.

Grant breathed easier, forced a smile. “Sleeping like a kitten in her new papa’s old room.”

Rose smiled as Shane put his arm around her waist. He looked at Grant and Patience. “I want you to know why I didn’t ask Rose to marry me the day I brought Amy back. It broke Rose’s heart that Amy was attached to me and not her. I wanted to give them time alone, for Amy to know her mama, again. Otherwise, I feared they’d never have that special connection. The covenant between a mother and child is powerful, but if it’s broken....” He looked at his brother. “Wel we know how that can be, don’t we? I didn’t want to come between them, so I waited. It was the longest wait of my life.” He smiled, then. “Father’s gone to arrange for a special license. We’l be married tomorrow. I’d like you to stand with me, Grant.”

“And you with me, Patience.”

Patience rose to congratulate them. It would be the only time she and Grant would ever stand together at the front of a church.

Several hours later when sleep would not come, Patience found her room too smal . And when she heard what could only be the sound of Shane opening the door to Rose’s room, it became stifling. Why?

Because she wanted Grant in here. She missed him.

How could she be angry with him and miss him at the same time? “Damn you, Grant St. Benedict. Damn. Damn.

Damn.” Yes she was furious, and haunted by the look in his eyes when he left. She couldn’t let this chasm of anger grow wider. Their friendship meant too much to her. He meant too much to her. She dressed quickly, and ran down the stairs and out before anyone could warn her against going.

She hailed a hack just outside the door. Midnight wasn’t the least late in London.

At Grant’s front door, Patience wondered if she should have come and almost left. Then she peered through the long, side window, just to see if perhaps Grant was around, and something caught her eye. A glowing light, moving, weaving in and out, like ... fire.

Patience tried the unlocked door, rushed in, a blast of heat slapping her in the face. She gasped, smoke licking her throat and bringing tears to her eyes. Oh God. Oh God. The acrid smel turned her stomach, fear trebled her heart.

“Grant!” She screamed above the crackling roar of flames.

“Grant? Where are you? Answer me, blast you. Grant!” She brought her skirt up over her mouth and nose as a barrier, removing it to cal Grant at intervals, then protecting herself again. Making her way blindly, she knocked over a smal round table. When it rol ed toward the flames and became engulfed, she realized she’d unintentional y added fuel to the fire and she sobbed.

She ran up the stairs cal ing Grant, though her throat was raw and the smoke she swal owed burned her lungs.

From the little she could see, the fire centered the upper hal . She stood foolishly stil , looking into doorways, and thought she spied a form in a smal salon. “Is someone there?” she cal ed. If there were someone in that corner chair—and she could not be certain, for the flame glowed so strongly before her that it made everything the blacker behind—and difficult to enter the room. Though smoke hazed the air and crackling heat hissed a warning, she made an aborted attempt.

In al likelihood, the room had another doorway that opened off a side hal near the servant’s stairs, which she must reach, for it did look as if someone slumped there.

Patience made her precarious way to where she expected to find the servant’s hal , but a wal of flame danced in her path. With no intention of giving up, she covered her head with her skirt so she could jump the flames without fire catching her hair. Once done, she leapt through the blazing rampart. Fast. Blind. Screaming.

On the other side, she smothered the fire licking at her petticoat. Afterward, praise be, she found that second door.

“Grant, oh Grant. It is you.” She locked her arms around his waist and tried to pul his unconscious form from the chair.

A dead weight, she fel instead. The paper in his hand feathered away, flamed. The picture Rose had drawn of her blackened and shriveled, its extinction snapping Patience to action.

She slid Grant to the floor, the sound of him landing making her wince. Then she got behind him and dragged him by his wrists toward the servant’s stairs, her arms pul ing from their sockets, God alone knowing where she found the strength.

She dragged him down the stairs, the thud, thud, thud, of him hitting gruesome accompaniment to the conflagration hissing at the top of the stairs.

An enormous wel ing of emotion assailed her. Laughter threatened, teetered, and became tears. Hysteria took root.

When she got him to the scul ery, she lay him on the floor and ran to slam the door behind them, cutting off the smoke and flames chasing them. She flexed her arms and rol ed her shoulders, crying out with pain then she dragged him the last few feet and out the service door.

A maid with her beau in the outside doorway screeched when they appeared. “Help me,” Patience begged, her voice a husky rasp, the pain in her throat intense. The maid’s young man dragged Grant clear of the house.

Patience fol owed, taking in drafts of cool air, afraid she’d never breathe free again, sick with worry that Grant would never regain consciousness. “Anybody else inside?” she asked the maid, refusing to consider the worst.

The girl shook her head and gazed with horror at Grant.

“The house is aflame!” Patience said. “Don’t just stand there. Get help!”

The maid wailed and ran. After the young man dragged Grant to the farthest reach of the property, he went to fetch a doctor.

Patience slapped Grant’s face. Gritty voiced, she
ordered
him awake. Tears blurred her burning eyes and scored painful trails on the painful flesh of her cheeks. “Wake up,” she sobbed. “Wake up you snarly Captain.” She pushed at his chest and cursed. “Don’t you die on me, Grant St. Benedict. Don’t you dare die.” She rol ed him to his side and slapped his back hoping to knock some breath into him. “Breathe. Breathe, damn you!” Nothing seemed to work. Kneeling with her hands between her knees, she let her tears fal . “Oh, please, no.” Covered with soot, sick with despair, Patience placed Grant’s head in her lap and wiped her eyes to see him better. Holding his head to her breast, she rubbed his chest. “You make me so bloody mad. If you ... if you leave me....” Her voice broke. “I’l
never
forgive you.” She touched his cheek. “I won’t, you know.” She sat him up and knelt behind him, pounding his back while keeping one arm about his waist.

“Yel at me.”

THUMP.

“Cal me Lady Patience.”

THUMP.

“Swear, damn you.”

THUMP.

“But, don’t leave me.”

THUMP.

“If you do ... If you do....” Patience lay her head against his back and let her tears fal .

Grant was dead.

She had failed him. Something sharp and caustic, like hot lightening, struck her heart, ripped through it, and she knew the wound would never heal. If her life were to end now, she would welcome the decision.

Sagging against the lifeless body of the man who had become her other half, silent tears began to fal , until an outward tremor shook her.

She raised her head. Another tremor, the barest rumble.

She pul ed away from Grant and pressed her hand against his back. “Oh, please. Oh, please.” A quivering against her palm set her to rubbing his back with brutal force, then she began to pound it, again.

The tremor grew to a great heaving gasp. A horrendous cough—which at any other time would have frightened her senseless, but it drew from her a delighted whoop.

Patience pounded mercilessly, while Grant struggled for each and every breath.

He might have said, “Stop!” She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t taking any chances, so she continued, until his large muscled arm swung around and grabbed her mid-slap. He pul ed her around and against him. “Stop it you bastard.” He coughed, then caught his breath and looked,
really
looked
at her. “Patience?” He peered closer, unfocused, and bleary-eyed. “Jesus, you look like hel .” She laughed, or more precisely, gasped. “Those are the most beautiful words I have ever heard.”

“Why the devil were you beating me? And what in bloody hel are you doing here?” He took several deep breaths and closed his eyes, as if he were in pain. “It took two bottles of Brandy to blot you from my mind and here you are again?”

“Brandy?” Patience wanted to beat him bloody now, maybe use a few of Sophie’s techniques, but she was stil too grateful he was alive. Almost. “Grant St. Benedict, have you been drinking?”

The dul -minded oaf nodded and smiled.

Just like Papa
. Patience denied a crippling surge of despair and chose rage, instead. “You bastard! You get drunk as a sailor—”

“Am a sailor.”

She ignored that. “You let your house burn around you—and you along with it. If I hadn’t come along....” Trembling overtook her.

“Wha’d’ya mean burn?”

“Fire, fool. Your house is aflame as we speak.” Patience’s words did for Grant’s foggy brain what the air had not accomplished. He looked at his house. “Shane.” He tried to rise. “I’ve got to get Shane.” She pul ed him back down; it didn’t take much effort, the dolt was sotted. “Shane’s at Briarleigh with Rose. Safe. I sent your maid for help. She said no one else was inside.” Men were yel ing orders now in the street out front.

Grant stood, unsteadily, and pul ed Patience up with him.

Her choking frightened him. He tried to soothe her. What must have happened final y registered in his mind. Her voice was hoarse, more so than his. It cost her dearly to speak. He examined her more closely, her smudged face, filthy gown, scorched and torn. A puckered, leaking burn striped her arm from wrist to elbow. Tears lay sooty trails on her red, dry face.

She had run into a burning building to save him. The thought overpowered. She had risked her life. For him. “Oh, God.” Mindful of her wounds, he pul ed her against him, his heart hammering a wild beat. He kissed her beloved face, her red-rimmed eyes, her cracked, parched lips. “I could have lost you,” he said on a shudder.

“I thought I
had
lost you.”

Her tears tasted of salt, and sadness.

Blind panic slowed and Grant’s brain began to take over.

Why hadn’t she gone for help instead of risking her foolish neck? Why had she put herself in danger?

He turned her toward the moonlight so he could see her clearly. Such an adorable, dirty face. “You little idiot! That was a bloody stupid thing to do. Downright half-witted, running into a fire and injuring yourself.” He lifted her arm to examine the burn. “Wil you tel me why a woman, as practical as you are, would rush into a house afire?” Patient wasn’t certain. She gazed from the bloody gash on her arm to his angry, handsome face. Why
had
she rushed into a house ablaze?

For him, of course. Didn’t he realize that? She’d done it to save the man she loved.

“No,” she whispered.
Please God, no. Don’t let me love
the drunken sot.

Footsteps grew loud, too loud. The pounding of them hurt her head, expanding it at each thud, like great heaving waves in her brain.

She tried to maintain her dignity as she fought dizziness.

Thump, thump. “I’l thank you to ...” Thump. She held her head. “Stop cal ing ... me ... names. I’ve ... Oh.” She blinked to clear her vision. Thump, thump, thump. Why wouldn’t the pounding stop? “I’ve never been foolish a day in my....”