To Protect An Heiress (Zebra Historical Romance) (20 page)

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Authors: Adrienne Basso

BOOK: To Protect An Heiress (Zebra Historical Romance)
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He had more respect, more regard for her. He knew what she wanted from him. Love, devotion, fidelity. Trevor smiled and reached for the goblet of brandy he had set aside earlier. Perhaps the alcohol would help take the edge off his discomfort. He took a long sip, then smiled again.
How ironic. Of the three, love, devotion, and fidelity, the only one he felt capable of providing to his wife was fidelity—a lowly state of affairs for a confirmed rake.
Life had settled into a pattern that was not much different than before he married. He had the same friends, same club, same late hours, same drinking, same wagering, same reckless fun.
One notable exception was the lack of females in his bed. Though he insisted to himself it was not because of any chivalrous sense of duty, Trevor found the idea of breaking his vow of fidelity repugnant.
If he were incapable of giving Meredith what she truly desired, the least he could do was be faithful to her. Tonight he had wanted to discuss moving to a new London residence, a town house his secretary had located, with Meredith. Perhaps if he were away from so many reminders of Lavinia, he could find his way in this new marriage.
Yet the moment he had seen the flare of passion glaze Meredith’s eyes, he knew living in these apartments of his father’s house was not the problem. The memories of Lavinia, the life and the love they had shared and the unquestioning pain and despair he had suffered at her death would follow him wherever they lived.
And thus was the crux of his torment.
Twelve
The marquess suspected there might be dramatics and even tears to contend with at breakfast the next morning. But he never thought they would be coming from the usually composed housekeeper, Mrs. Pritcher.
As Trevor entered the dining room, he found the housekeeper sitting at the table, hunched over and sobbing into a crumpled square of white linen. Meredith stood beside the servant, her hand resting solicitously on the older woman’s shoulder.
“What has happened?” Trevor asked.
Both women turned to him in surprise.
“My lord!” Mrs. Pritcher made a move to rise from the chair, but Meredith’s hand pressed down on her shoulder.
“Mrs. Pritcher has received some terrible news this morning,” Meredith said. “Her niece, her sister’s oldest daughter, has died most suddenly.”
“Such a lovely creature she was, too.” Mrs. Pritcher blew her nose loudly into the handkerchief. “Only seventeen years old and pretty as a picture. I don’t know how my sister will manage without her. It breaks my heart just to think of it.”
Mrs. Pritcher pressed the linen to her trembling lips and began to weep again.
“You have our deepest sympathies, Mrs. Pritcher,” Trevor said helplessly. Emotional women were hardly his forte, especially older women.
“You are too kind, my lord,” Mrs. Pritcher said with a sniff. “And my lady, too.”
“Dear Mrs. Pritcher.” Meredith patted the housekeeper’s shoulder. “How I wish there was more we could do to ease your suffering.” She turned to Trevor. “I was just telling Mrs. Pritcher she should take the day off and go to her sister’s home at once. A family needs to be together at such a difficult time.”
“Yes, of course.” Trevor nodded his head vigorously. “Where does your sister live?”
“Here, in town, near Hampstead.”
“Then there is no need to delay your departure—though it would probably be best if you took someone with you.” The marquess looked at the frightened young faces of the two serving maids who had crept into the room and concluded they would be of little help.
There were no other female senior members of the staff. Perhaps Meredith’s maid could be of help, but she barely knew Mrs. Pritcher. “Since I insist you do not go alone, Lady Meredith and I shall escort you to your sister’s home, as soon as you are composed and feel ready to make the journey.”
Meredith lifted startled eyebrows. Trevor’s lips curled. It was obvious poor Mrs. Pritcher needed their assistance. Was it really so impossible to imagine he would offer to help? Did she think him a complete monster, devoid of all feelings of decency?
“I could never impose on your kindness, my lord,” Mrs. Pritcher said as she blinked at him though watery eyes.
“ ’Tis hardly an imposition,” Trevor said. “As Lady Meredith said, your sister needs you. Though it will be difficult trying to manage the household for the next few days without your expert guidance, I feel certain the staff will do their best.”
“A few days?” The housekeeper’s eyes widened. “What will the duke say if I am gone for so long?”
“You will leave the duke to me,” Trevor declared firmly. “Go and pack your satchel. I shall have the coach brought round to the front.”
Meredith helped the housekeeper gain her feet. Mrs. Pritcher dropped a respectful curtsy to him and then shuffled away, the serving maids bustling in her wake. Trevor sank down in a chair and allowed a footman to serve him breakfast and hot coffee. As he began eating, he noticed Meredith take the seat to his left.
“You were very kind toward Mrs. Pritcher,” Meredith said. “Thank you.”
Trevor raised his head. “You seemed rather surprised by my actions at first.”
“Well, it is a bit unorthodox for a man of your rank and position to bother with the problems of a servant.”
“Mrs. Pritcher has taken care of my family for over twenty-five years. She deserves our consideration at such a desperate time.”
“I could not agree more.”
Trevor caught Meredith’s eye, and a moment of silent understanding passed between them. He could almost feel her admiration and regard for him, her pride in his decision. The sounds of the footman moving about the dining room faded, and for just an instant nothing existed except the two of them, sharing this moment together.
He remembered how she had felt in his arms last night, so giving and sweet, so incredibly hot and willing—the taste of her mouth and tongue, the hardness of her nipples, the slick dew of excitement that soaked his fingers as he rubbed her feminine softness.
His loins tightened, but Trevor steeled himself against the tempest of desire rising through him. Though he knew she could never really understand it, for he barely understood it himself, the respect he felt for her overruled his sexual drive.
Since he felt incapable of providing her with the level of love and commitment he knew she craved, and, yes, so richly deserved, he would not exploit her natural sensuality.
Though by all the saints in heaven, she was temptation beyond imagining.
“More coffee, my lord?”
Reality returned in a rush. Trevor tapped the edge of his cup and the footman obediently poured.
Mrs. Pritcher’s sister lived in the northern section of London, in a respectable middle-class neighborhood of clerks and tradesmen of steady, modest means. Though the housekeeper did an admirable job of keeping her composure during the short carriage ride, she became visibly emotional when they arrived at their destination.
“I think it would be best if I accompany her to the door,” Meredith said as she scrambled out of the carriage. “To make certain she is all right.”
“I might as well come also,” Trevor decided. “I can convey our condolences to the family.”
Meredith nodded. Flanked on each side by her noble employers, Mrs. Pritcher made the short walk to the front door. The woman who promptly answered their knock bore little resemblance to the housekeeper, but her hysterical outburst and subsequent embrace left little doubt as to her identity. Somehow, amid the weeping and sobbing, Meredith became swept up by the two sisters and was whisked off to a room toward the back of the small house.
Trevor soon found himself standing alone in the cramped foyer. He was about to return to the carriage and wait for his wife when a young voice called out.
“Who are you?”
The marquess looked down and found a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes staring up at him. They belonged to a young lad of perhaps ten or eleven years old, who must have slipped into the space during all the hysterical commotion. Deciding it would be best to keep his answers simple, Trevor replied, “I came with your aunt.”
The boy took a step closer. He was dressed in what was most likely his Sunday best, a pair of black knickers, white stockings, cumbersome shoes, and a white shirt. A black armband threatened to fall below his elbow and he had a smudge of dirt on the cuff of his left sleeve.
“The buttons on your coat are very fancy. Are you the duke?”
Trevor smiled. “No.”
The child seemed disappointed by the answer. He hung his head and scuffed the tip of his shoe against the wooden floor. “My sister’s dead.”
That calm, matter-of-fact announcement startled Trevor, but then he realized it must be the way of children. To treat something they did not truly understand with commonplace normalcy.
“I am sorry for your loss.”
The child shrugged. “Mum just keeps crying and crying. Buckets full of tears.” He frowned, then sighed. “Didn’t know that a body had that many tears. Wanna see her?”
“Your mother? No, I believe I’ll wait here. Better still, I’ll wait in my carriage. Kindly tell Lady Mer—ah, the lady I came with where I am.”
“I wasn’t asking you to see Mum,” the child said in an exasperated voice. “I was asking if you wanted to see Betsy. She’s laid out in the drawing room in her best dress, the one she and Mum made last year with the pink flowers embroidered all over it.”
The marquess had difficulty hiding his shock. The body. The lad was asking if he wanted to view the deceased. What he initially thought was going to be a brief stop now had the mark of a prolonged visit. “I am not sure it is proper. Perhaps we should wait for your mother.”
“All she’ll do is start crying again. Come on.”
The lad grabbed Trevor’s hand and tugged. Reluctantly the marquess ascended the stairs to the drawing room. The parlor faced the street, and even the heavy drapes could not completely muffle the bustling sounds of activity outside.
The sofa had been pushed to one side to make room for the trestles that held the coffin. It was a simple pine box, flanked on each side by unlit candles.
“She looks like she’s sleeping,” the child whispered. He scrambled up on a chair and leaned over the open coffin.“But Mum says she’ll never wake up again.” Curious, the marquess approached. He gave a cursory glance inside, only enough to catch a fleeting impression of pale white skin and golden hair. Though the look had been brief, Trevor was struck by how young and frail Betsy appeared, hardly older than the boy who gazed at her with such rapt fascination.
“She was very pretty,” Trevor commented.
The child nodded. “Mum tied the scarf around her neck real careful. To hide the ugliness.”
Puzzled, Trevor looked again inside the coffin and noticed a white scarf wrapped around the young woman’s neck. For modesty’s sake? But the rounded neckline of the gown she wore rode high on the collarbone. The boy reached down and gently tugged at the carefully wound fabric.
“See,” he whispered solemnly. “It’s ugly.”
Trevor gasped. Vivid marks of deep blue and purple marred the fragile paleness of Betsy’s lovely long neck.
The air tightened around the marquess’s lungs. He had seen bruises almost identical to these—on Lavinia the day of her burial. Had this poor young girl also met with a terrible accident?
“What happened to Betsy?” he asked.
“I’m not supposed to know,” the boy confided. “But I heard Da talking this morning. Betsy didn’t come home from work yesterday. We waited and waited until supper got cold. Da got mad and said he never should have allowed her to work in the glove shop in the first place and he was going to make her quit. Then he told us to eat our dinner.
“But even after we were done and the dishes were put away she still didn’t come home. It was real dark outside and Mum said she was scared, so Da went to look for Betsy. He came home crying. There were a bunch of men with him. They were carrying her body. They didn’t have a cart with them and Da wouldn’t leave Betsy, not even for a minute.
“They found her in the alley, right near the shop where she worked. One of the men said she had been strangled. And another man said they had found two other girls last month the same way as Betsy, only outside of different shops. Guess strangled means you hurt your neck real bad, right?”
Every nerve in Trevor’s body began to quiver. Strangled? He looked again at the marks on Betsy’s neck, then forced his mind to remember Lavinia. Time, shock, and sorrow had dulled much in his brain, but the memory of his beloved in death was a sight he saw as clearly as though it were yesterday.
Vivid lines of dark purple streaking across the creamy whiteness of Lavinia’s elegant female neck that rested at an unnatural angle: the result of a broken neck. Deliberately done? By whom?
“Harold? Harold? Where are you? Come down at once and say hello to your auntie.”
Harold raised his head in alarm. “My Mum’s calling me.”
“Then we had best go downstairs and see her,” Trevor said calmly.
Thoughts of the pitiful corpse resting in the drawing room began to fade slowly from his mind as the marquess descended the staircase. He gave the appropriate condolences to the grieving family, which now included Betsy’s father, then escorted Meredith out to their coach.
The ride began in a strained quiet, broken only by the crunching of the carriage wheels.
“Did Mrs. Pritcher or her sister say anything about how Betsy died?” Trevor asked.
“No. Considering how young she was, I merely assumed it was an illness. Consumption, most likely. Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason.”
Yet Trevor’s mind could not relinquish the picture it carried of Betsy’s bruised neck. The stunning reality of violence that had been visited upon her person was a brutal reminder of the fragility of human life. Had she indeed been murdered—strangled, as young Harold suggested?
It was almost too horrible to conceive of such a frightening end for an innocent young woman. The grief visited upon the family was doubly understandable under these circumstances.
And what of the striking similarity of these bruises to Lavinia’s? In the anguish and grief over his wife’s death nearly eight years ago, had he somehow missed an important clue? Was it even possible to consider that Lavinia’s sudden, shocking death had not been an accident, but rather a deliberate act of murder?
Yet perhaps the most chilling aspect was young Harold’s mention of two other women who had recently come to a similar end. If there were truly a connection between the deaths of these young shop girls, would more now follow?

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