The Marquess of Cake (20 page)

“She made it up the steps. I’m sure she can come down them.”

Michael judged his own legs. The carriage ride had given his body time to strengthen. “I’ll come up with you and wait outside the room. If you need me, call, and I’ll carry her.”

Uncharacteristically, Alys’s eyes brimmed with tears. He’d never seen any emotion in her other than passion before. She took a step toward him and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Thank you, for Rose’s sake.”

Lightly, she ran across the hall and back into the entry, then up the staircase. Michael followed more slowly, wanting to conserve his strength. He stomped on the steps as he went up, but found nothing more than a few squeaks with some of the treads. The hallway was clean enough, but no rugs. One door was open past the one Alys had entered, and he peeked in.

Years of being shut up had made the air close and palpably dusty.

At least sheets still covered the furniture. A bed, a couple of chairs and a table, a washstand. The walls were faded and he expected a shadow near the floor was a mouse hole. Thankfully Hatbrook Farm had been well cared for, not to mention it was about two hundred years newer construction. Sir Bartley had a lot to answer for. His business was minded better than his daughters.

“My lord?” Alys appeared at the door.

He turned.

“I will have to help Rose get dressed.” Creases appeared between her eyebrows. “She’s terribly cold. The fire died down while I was gone and no one checked on her.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this ill-use later. Why don’t you wrap her in a heavy cloak and I’ll take her down?” He heard coughing in the next room.

“It’s so improper.”

He ignored the pro forma complaint. “Do you have medicines for her?”

“Yes, it will be just the work of a moment to sweep it all into a bag.”

She went back into the room and he waited a couple of minutes until she called for him, then he came in.

Rose looked very pale indeed, though her bonnet obscured much of her face, and her breathing rasped. She sat in a chair and her mouth fell open when she saw him. “Your lordship?”

 “It’s only about a twelve-mile drive, Miss Redcake,” he said.

“You’ll be so much more comfortable at the end of the journey.”

“I expect so, sir,” she said faintly. “Father could not have known what this place was like.”

“We are lucky that I am your neighbor and that I met your sister in Polegate,” he said.

The air was bitterly chill for indoors. He heard footsteps outside as he swung Rose into his arms. A middle-aged woman in black came into the room.

“We’re going to Hatbrook Farm,” Alys said, picking up the satchel of medicines. “You’ll have to pack for us and send our boxes along tomorrow.”

“What about the footmen?”

“Hire the best candidates you find. You have a dreadful amount of work that needs doing here. If Robbie will take a job with us, please hire him on as well. A top wage, if you please, double what you offer the footmen, and new livery.”

“What livery?”

“Have him measured for a black suit with a red waistcoat. For the footmen you hire as well.”

“Will your family approve all this? With you not even in residence?”

“Of course,” Alys said. “The house needs to be made fit for our return. Write my father for the funds. Also hire two housemaids, a laundry maid, and then when you have them working, two kitchen maids.”

Rose coughed convulsively, then rested her head on Michael’s shoulder.

“I’m taking her down.”

Alys nodded to Mrs. Pelham, grabbed a second satchel from the table, and followed him down the stairs.

“I don’t think she’s up to the task,” Michael said when they were rattling along in the carriage.

Rose had been wrapped in furs, but still seemed chilled. She rested against his shoulder, like a boneless child. He had to keep his arm around her to keep her from being jostled. Alys sat across from them, her eyes flickering between them both.

She couldn’t be jealous, could she? He had no interest in her sister. But what did that mean? What was his interest in Alys? She had too much fire for him. He knew her to be borderline caustic. She took decisions she didn’t approve of with ill grace. In her favor, she had some skill in handling his mother, but only in servant lines. His mother would eat her, a tradesman’s daughter, alive, skin her, and have her cook roast Alys on a spit.

Then feed her to him under béchamel sauce with asparagus.

Yet here he was, bringing her under his roof. As Rose rubbed her cheek on his shoulder, he composed a letter to Sir Bartley in his head.

The deal was nearly ready to be signed. Surely his actions were to his profit. If Sir Bartley had to rush down to Sussex to take charge of an ill daughter, their deal would be delayed.

Michael rubbed a chilly glove across his face and wished for a bun. That was the problem. His brain was going muzzy from lack of a solid meal.

On one level, Alys knew it was all Rose’s fault. She’d been the one curled into Hatbrook like a cat. She’d been the one cradled in his arms while he rushed her into a room at the Farm fit for a queen, while Alys chose a bed in the dressing room so she’d be nearby. Rose had kissed Hatbrook’s cheek in thanks and received beef tea from a cup held in his hands because her dainty paws shook when she tried to lift it.

Hatbrook had merely been kind. But oh, she wanted to be in his arms, in his best guest room, drinking from his hands.

Now, Rose was asleep, medicines having had good effect along with hot food and a warm room, and Alys had been offered a bath in a chamber designed for that purpose complete with a hot-water boiler.

Clean and dressed in her freshly brushed, green wool gown with black velvet accents and a sateen underskirt, she regarded herself with pleasure. It fit her shape to perfection, even if the design was a year old. Since she didn’t want to go far from Rose, a housemaid led her into a pretty, feminine sitting room with rose-patterned wallpaper that was only across the hall. She brought a tea tray set for two but Alys went to the writing table in the corner and began to compose a letter to her father. She’d also need to write her mother separately and update her on Rose.

When she was but two lines into her first composition, she heard a knock on the door and someone entered. A whiff of soap and sandal- wood drifted to her and she turned to see Hatbrook, also considerably refreshed.

“Shall I pour?” she asked.

“Please. How is Rose?”

“Resting comfortably. Thank you for your many kindnesses.”

He nodded. “I stopped in to speak to my aunt. She said she would have you to tea in her room tomorrow.”

“Very kind of her. Milk, sugar, or lemon?”

“Milk and sugar. As long as you visit a short time it shouldn’t tire her too much. She is good for perhaps one long conversation a day.”

She handed him the tea and a plate of shortbread. “Your aunt is a very elderly person?”

“She is nearly eighty, I believe. Must be.” He frowned. “She is my late grandfather’s older sister. Never married because her fiancé died of a fever three weeks before the wedding and it made her a bit peculiar for a time. Stole the bloom from her, I’m told.”

“How very tragic.”

His hand shook slightly as he lifted the fragile teacup to his lips.

“It happens that way, people who are only capable of loving once.”

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

He spluttered a bit. “A girl, you mean? No, I suppose not.”

She took a bite of shortbread, wondering what his lack of love at his age meant for his character. “Should we ring for something more substantial?”

“No, it’s late for teatime. We’ll have dinner at eight. I’ll be fine until then.” He set down his cup and took a large bite of shortbread, which he had smeared with blackberry jam.

She wanted to mention the shaking but didn’t want to be rude.

“You were quite heroic with my sister.”

He smiled faintly.

She leaned forward and put a finger to the side of his mouth. “You have a crumb.”

He allowed her to dust it away.

“Do you really mean you have never been in love, or only that you have never been in love with someone suitable?”

“A gentleman never expects to answer a question like that.”

“I suppose a lady wouldn’t ask it. But I’m not some aristocratic virgin who has never seen the other side of life, you know.”

“You aren’t?”

“No, not at all.” She pressed her lips together, then decided he might as well know. “I’m not only working class, I’m not a virgin at all.”

He smiled tightly. “You’d be surprised how many aristocratic virgins aren’t virgins either, Alys.”

She felt deflated. “Oh.”

He drained his cup, then set it down hard enough to clatter against the tray. “Were you in love?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just a silly factory girl. He’d been making eyes at me for close to a year and at fifteen I was simple enough to be flattered. When he caught me behind an outbuilding one day, I couldn’t stop him, but I managed to avoid him after that. I stopped going anywhere alone.”

“You mean you were raped.”

She shook her head. She didn’t like to think of it. She’d relived the experience in bad dreams for years, until they’d left Bristol. “No, I just mean it wasn’t nice.”

“That sounds like rape to me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does. Didn’t you tell anyone?”

“No. Once I saw there wasn’t a child, I tried to forget.”

“That is appalling.”

“But you see why I can’t marry. I’m not fit for the kind of man my father thinks I’m suitable for, the Theodore Blivens, if not the Ralph Pophams, of course.”

“I don’t see why. This was forced upon you. You aren’t loose.”

She begged to differ. “I’ve kissed you a time or two.”

“But you like me.”

“I do, very much.” She stared at her hands.

“I like you as well. Have you kissed anyone else?”

“Never in my life,” she admitted. “You make me feel different.”

“Like how?”

She blushed. “I don’t know. All tingly inside. Like I can’t quite breathe.”

“I’d like to kiss you now.”

She perched forward on her chair, then was alarmed by how her body had responded, even before her thoughts had time to form.

He chuckled. “You look like a country miss about to receive her first kiss.”

But despite his tease, she felt the soft brush of his mouth against hers. The teacup in her hand rattled in her lap as his tongue brushed the seam of her mouth. She opened to him, felt his tongue dance over the underside of her lip. This was heaven.

Then he cursed, left her mouth, stood.

She opened her eyes, shocked by his sudden change of mood, and found her tea was spreading down his trousers. She leapt up, spilling the cup to the floor, and grabbed her napkin. She scrubbed at his leg while he swore at the burn.

“I am so sorry.”

“No, no.” He grinned ruefully. “Entirely my fault.”

A knock came on the door and before either of them could do more than look toward it, the door opened.

The housemaid’s eyes widened at the sight before she schooled her expression. “Miss Rose is asking for Miss Redcake.”

Michael cleared his throat. “Thank you, Marian.”

After she shut the door, Michael lowered his hand and helped Alys to her feet.

“I’m afraid I’ve embarrassed you,” she said. “Both my conversation and my actions.”

“No, Alys,” he said. “Both intrigue me greatly. And to answer your question, no, I really have never been in love, despite a liaison or two with less than respectable women, though I now find myself curious.” He slapped at his leg.

“Curious?”

“Yes. Could I feel love the way the poets describe it?” He struck a pose, making her smile, and declaimed, “ ’Twas a new feeling— something more/Than we had dared to own before/Which then we hid not;/We saw it in each other’s eye.”

Alys hugged herself as he dropped his pose, feeling transported by the romance of the moment. No one had ever recited to her before.

He was splendid.

“Well, that poem by Thomas Moore ends with the lovers not having what they wished,” he said. “You’d best go to Miss Rose. I’ll call for a doctor if you think I should.”

Was he telling her he couldn’t have what he wanted? Was that something her? He shifted and she saw he must be uncomfortable in his wet, stained trousers. “I hope you aren’t burned.”

“I shall be fine. I take worse punishment from my stable hands.”

“I did not intend punishment.”

“I know. An untimely accident.” He shifted again.

“I’ll ring if it is necessary to have a doctor for Rose,” she promised, reluctant to move. “I’ve never found myself so full of regret to leave another person as I do now.”

He took her hand from her waist and kissed the back of it. “If I were a poet I could come up with a very nice verse from that thought alone.”

She nodded, confused by this marquess who seemed to be courting her so very unsuitable self, and trotted out of the room, feeling like she ran on air. Any woman, even the highest, would be lucky to have him. Why was he focused on her? How could she resist poetry and boxing and kindness? And those kisses too. It was enough to turn a spinster into a wanton.

In the end, the doctor did have to be called. Rose developed a fever along with her lung issues. Alys and Rose had spent three nights under Hatbrook’s roof before Rose rallied. When Alys was finally sure her sister slept deeply and comfortably early Monday morning, she crept out of the bedchamber and into the bathroom.

After having helped Rose with baths she knew how to work the boiler and she sat wearily on a stool as the steam rose, watching weak rays of sunlight stream through the window. Thankfully, she’d brought an old work dress made of stout Oxford shirting in her boxes. She’d never have survived the past few days if she’d been restricted by lady’s finery. But after three days of the sickroom the dress needed a good wash.

Hatbrook had rallied his staff to assist and he had visited each day at teatime to read to Rose from magazines. His aunt had sent soothing messages as well as one of her afghans. Still, Alys had insisted on doing most of the work herself, feeling guilty for ever putting thoughts of her cakes over her sister’s fragile health.