Suzanne Robinson (20 page)

“I’ll be out directly, Aunt Livy.”

They turned to stare at each other.

“Awful sudden, this illness,” Nick said. “Does he take sick like this often?”

“No. He’s never been delirious that I remember.”

He grabbed her hand and walked quickly back to the bedroom. “Looks like we’ll have to fight some other time.”

“I didn’t want to fight at all.”

Nick threw a dressing gown at her. “That’ll change quick.”

“What are you talking about, Nicholas Ross?”

“Bleeding hell, woman, this is no time to go saying my name in that deep, rough voice!”

A few minutes later, after Nick had stolen back to his own rooms, Georgiana emerged from hers fully dressed in one of her work gowns. Closing the door, she pulled her spectacles from her apron pocket and put them on. Her fingers were cold, but her cheeks were still burning from her recent momentous experience. She lifted her gaze and saw Nick coming toward her. He hadn’t bothered to do more than throw a coat over his open shirt. Taking her arm, he hurried her toward the earl’s chambers.

“Your aunt says to come quickly, love. The old scoundrel is in a bad way.”

As they entered Threshfield’s sitting room, Georgiana heard the sound of breaking glass. Evelyn and Prudence burst from the bedroom, hopping over an ottoman like frightened rabbits. A china basin sailed after them and hit the suit of armor standing beside the bedroom door. A torrent of obscenities pursued the pair all the way out. Evelyn stopped long enough to give Georgiana and Nick a rancid glare before he
slammed the outer door shut. Nick gripped her arm tighter when the earl’s thin, hysterical voice sounded.

“Where is she, where is she, where is she, where is she?”

Aunt Lavinia appeared and beckoned to them. “Hurry, my dears. He wants to see you, Georgiana.”

“Come on, love,” Nick said with a reassuring squeeze of her hand.

In the bedroom, lamps cast long shadows. They danced about the dark room as people moved around the sickbed. Georgiana started as she passed a diorite statue of an Assyrian king set in a corner. Drawing courage from Nick’s silent strength, she set her jaw, straightened her spine and approached the raving old man. He was propped up in the middle of a curtained bed, weaving from side to side. Dressed in a nightgown that hung limply on his thin body, the old man cursed the housekeeper and the newly arrived doctor. The physician was trying to take the earl’s pulse, but the patient kept thrashing about and calling him a giant toad.

“Listen,” Nick whispered to her as they neared the bed.

“He doesn’t mean those things. He’s delirious.”

“No,
listen.
”

She tried to disregard the earl’s ranting, and then she heard it—a loud, steady pounding accompanied by the old man’s frantic breathing.

Alarmed, Georgiana rushed to the bed. “Threshfield!”

At the sound of her voice, the earl sprang up from the pillows and lunged at her. He grabbed her wrist and would have pulled her onto the bed if Nick hadn’t thrust himself between them and broken his grip. The
earl crouched before them, breathing heavily and squinting.

“I can’t see. Georgiana? My dear Georgiana?”

“Threshfield, you’re ill. Lay back and try to be calm while the doctor treats you.” She put her hand over the earl’s, but he threw her off.

“Toads!” he shrieked. “Toads hopping all over the floor. Get them off my bed. Get them off me!”

“Threshfield, listen to me, please.” She reached out only to have her hand knocked away by the earl’s flailing arms.

Nick put his arm around her and drew her back. The doctor tried to get the earl to drink some preparation he’d just concocted, but Threshfield knocked the cup away, lunged up, then collapsed. His body jerked and writhed as it hit the bed.

Georgiana cried out and tried to go to him, but Nick stepped in her way. Facing her, his arm came up as she tried to shove past him. He held her against his body and spoke quietly.

“No, love. He’s too far gone.”

She looked up into his face and saw regret, certainty, and something mysterious and foreboding. Looking from the convulsing figure on the bed and back to Nick, she asked a question with her eyes.

“I’m sorry, love.”

Aunt Livy appeared again, her arms full of clean towels. She took one look at the earl’s spasming body and addressed Nick.

“Get her out of here.”

“But what if he calls for me again? I want to be near so that I can comfort him.”

Aunt Livy exchanged glances with Nick, then left them alone. Nick took Georgiana’s hands in his and
turned her so that she couldn’t see the bed and what was happening.

Drawing her close, he said, “I’ve seen blokes this sick before, love.” He placed his hand on her cheek. “He isn’t going to—”

“Oh, no.” Tears blinded her. Quickly taking off her spectacles, she rubbed her eyes and dropped the glasses in her apron pocket. Then she turned back to see the doctor and the housekeeper trying to bind the earl’s contorted body to the bed with sheets. Nick tried to move her, but she set her feet.

“We’re in the way now,” he said firmly. “There’s nothing we can do for him.”

She shook her head, but Nick slipped his arm around her shoulders again, circled her wrist with his free hand and forced her to turn away.

“I can’t leave him!”

“Yes, you can, love, because you know he wouldn’t want you to see him like this. The old rascal is bleeding proud.”

Georgiana stopped resisting then and began to sob. As Nick guided her out of the room, she cast a last glance over her shoulder. All she saw was a shroud-white sheet distorted by the earl’s agony. Her vision blurred, and she closed her eyes, trusting Nick to see for them both. She knew they were in the hall somewhere, but as they walked, she had to blink away tears again. When her vision cleared, she found that Nick had escorted her to a parlor near the top of the stairs and closed the door.

He plucked her handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to her. “Sit down for a moment before you join the family. They won’t be any better behaved in
this situation than they have been in others less difficult.”

Georgiana allowed him to take her to a settee upholstered in gold damask. Her mind refused clarity. Stray thoughts wandered in and out of her perception as Nick found a liquor cabinet and poured sherry. Her fingers traced the floral design woven into the damask. The material was so polished she had almost slid off the first time she’d sat on the settee.

Nick was back. He handed her a glass full of amber liquid. Georgiana took a sip, then grimaced and handed it back to him. He took it and held it to her lips.

“Drink it all, love. You’re going to need it.”

“I don’t want it—oh, very well. You’re such a despot.” She drank the rest of the sherry and patted her lips with her handkerchief. She could hear hurried footsteps in the hall outside. Her tears started falling again. “Poor Threshfield. Poor, poor Threshfield.”

Nick took the sherry glass from her and set it on the floor. Grasping her shoulders, he turned her to face him.

“Look at me, love. I know you’re upset, but I’ve got to talk to you before we go downstairs.”

“How could this have happened?” Georgiana whispered. “He was fine today. His heart wasn’t giving him any trouble, and he’s been careful not to overdo, used his wheelchair as the doctor ordered.”

“Bloody hell, love, it ain’t his heart,” Nick said harshly. At her surprised look, he swore and began again. “Sorry love, but I seen this kind o’ thing before—the loud heartbeat, the ravings, the fits. This ain’t his heart. It’s something else.”

Georgiana glanced at the closed door, distracted
by the voices of servants rushing between the kitchen and the earl’s bedroom. “Yes?”

“I seen it in St. Giles, all over the East End. He’s got hold of some drug.”

Turning her gaze back to Nick, Georgiana attempted to make sense of what Nick was saying. He sat there, his dark hair falling over his forehead, his strong hands holding hers in a reassuring grip, his pliant lips taut and severe. He wasn’t making some foul joke. He was serious. Her body grew suddenly cold.

“Will he die in pain,” she asked.

He shook his head. “He’ll fall into a stupor from which he will never recover.”

“How do you know—”

“Not now, love. Just trust me.”

Georgiana closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I can’t think. This is so bizarre.” She felt his hands encircle her wrists and drag her arms down. Looking up at him, she met a gaze so intense that it banished her confusion and grief for a moment.

“You understand what I’m saying?” he asked.

Her mouth had gone dry so she nodded.

His eyes held hers without wavering. “Then you know what you have to do, love.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Drawing in a long, deep breath, she rose. He dropped her wrists and stood with her.

“Evelyn and the others will be in the drawing room,” Nick said. “Are you sure you’re ready to face them?”

Stuffing her handkerchief into her sleeve, Georgiana gave a shuddering sigh. “Will you come with me?”

“Course. You can do it, love. It’s only for a bit longer.”

His hand clasped her arm again. Strangely, the feel of that warm grasp caused tears to well in her eyes again. She was losing a dear friend, and another even more dear stood at her side. She gave Nick a quick, sad smile.

“I’m ready. And don’t worry. I know what I have to do.”

Shortly after noon the next morning, Nick strode into his bedroom at Threshfield, yanked open a bureau drawer, and stuck his hands inside. He withdrew handfuls of underwear and handkerchiefs and hurled them onto the white damask bedspread. He strode over to a wardrobe, reached over his head, and pulled down a suitcase. This he threw onto the bed beside the linens.

“Pertwee, Perrrrrr—tweeeee!” Opening the suitcase, he scooped up a pile of handkerchiefs and dropped them into it.

“Perrrrrrr—oh, there you are.”

Pertwee marched into the bedroom holding a pair of freshly polished riding boots, nostrils quivering, bearing erect. “Sir bellowed?” The valet didn’t wait for an answer. “Sir has forgotten his decorum. May I remind him of the words of Lord Chesterfield? ‘Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.’ The mark of a gentleman is that he is composed at all times.”

“Sod Lord Chesterfield,” Nick said as he stuck his head inside the wardrobe to search among the coats and waistcoats. “You can tell him that from me.”

“Happily, Lord Chesterfield is no longer with us, sir.”

Hair tousled, Nick emerged from the wardrobe with his arms full and staggered to the bed. He dumped a load of shirts into the suitcase.

“We’re going to scarper, Pertwee. Move your arse.”

“Sir can hardly remove before the funeral.”

“Yes, sir can. That fool of a country doctor and the coroner have declared Threshfield’s death a natural one. They’re stupid or conniving with Evelyn bloody Hyde. Either way, I’m not staying to find out. And since Lady Georgiana no longer has a reason to stay here, my work is done.” Nick closed the suitcase and picked it up.

“I overheard Rebecca, her lady’s maid, say that her mistress would remain for a few weeks.”

Nick dropped the suitcase and turned on Pertwee. “When?”

“Only a few moments ago.”

Walking past the suitcase, Nick sat on the bed. “I told her I thought he’d been poisoned.”

“And Lady Georgiana said she would be leaving?”

“Hmm. She didn’t actually say that.”

What Georgiana had said was that she knew what she had to do. He’d assumed she agreed with him that they should both leave. Now he realized what he should have known when he first revealed his suspicions. She might be grief-stricken, but Georgiana Marshal was up to something.

He glanced at the valet. “Have you heard how the earl died?”

“The butler said it was some kind of seizure, sir.”

“Look, Pertwee, you know where I came from, and how much I’ve seen. That wasn’t no seizure. He had a racy heart, blurred vision, galloping pulse. His skin was hot and dry and red, and you could hear his heart across the room. Later he got belligerent, then succumbed to a fever and convulsions. At the last he went into a stupor.”

“How terrible.”

“Right. Terrible and familiar.”

Pertwee set the riding boots down and came closer, glancing around the room as if afraid of being overheard.

“Are you suggesting, er …”

“Right.”

“Then sir must go to the authorities.”

“Oh, right, Pertwee. Me, I’ll just trot along to the justice of the peace, Sir Nigel bloody Mainwaring, Evelyn bloody Hyde’s old school chum, and tell him I think old Threshfield was poisoned. Rum, that. Do you know the first person he’ll suspect? Not his old school companion, not any of these fine, blue-blooded twits who couldn’t wait to get their hands on his blunt. No. The first bloke he’ll suspect is me, who ain’t one of ’em, who didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, and whose blood is plain old red.”

Nick chewed on his lips, then glanced sideways at Pertwee. “You say Lady Georgiana is staying.”

“Yes, sir.”