“He said he’d never seen a woman work so hard to heal the wounded, and he’d never seen anyone, man or woman, who had a better instinct for the workings of an amputee’s mind.”
The couple disappeared from sight, and Sylvan banished them from her thoughts. “Your brother’s not an amputee. From what I saw today—and I saw quite a bit—he has everything he was born with.”
Garth reddened from his chin to his hairline, and she saw one more difference between the brothers. Garth’s forehead was quite a bit higher than Rand’s—his hair had lost the battle of Waterloo, and now made its long retreat.
With a gulp, Garth said, “I’m sorry about his…ah…lack of proper clothing today. He loves to offend our aunt Adela with his outrageous behavior, and removing his shirt is his new tactic.”
“From the little bit I heard from your aunt Adela, offending her would pleasure a saint.” He stopped and stared at her, and she realized she’d overstepped the bounds of courtesy. “Forgive me, Your Grace. It was insufferably rude of me to speak so of your aunt. If you would make allowances for my travel-weary mind—”
He cackled. “Pleasure a saint, eh? I confess, it pleasures me, and I’m no saint. When we were boys, Rand and I used to have contests to see who could best offend Aunt Adela. Of course, I always won, for as duke, whatever I did counted more than whatever he did. And whatever James did, poor cousin, counted more than whatever I did, for he is third in line for the dukedom—and, most important, her son.”
“That must be a difficult role to fulfill.”
“It weighs on him. She would do anything to advance his cause, and he would do anything to make her happy and keep her from nagging.” Abashed, he asked guiltily, “But you never properly met any of them, did you?”
“There wasn’t time.” Mounting the steps to the terrace, she kept one hand on the rail to steady herself.
He summed her up shrewdly. “You never changed from your journey nor took refreshment. Betty will have my head for this.”
“Betty?”
“My…the housekeeper. She bosses us all—except Aunt Adela, of course. Aunt Adela knows what’s proper, but Betty knows what’s hospitable.” Cupping her elbow in his hand, he led her up the stairs and tried to move her to the house, but she resisted.
“I think I would like to sit out here,” she said. “Just until Lord Rand comes into sight.”
“I’ll watch for him,” Garth volunteered.
“I think not.” She sank into one of the chairs set about the terrace to take advantage of the afternoon sun. The light struck her directly on the face, and the warmth the seat had absorbed prowled through her gown until it sank into her bones. “You’d go after him, or at the least hover anxiously.”
“I confess.” He lifted his hands. “I am anxious.”
“He’s not a child.” She leaned her head back and thought how pleasant it would be to fall asleep. Her anticipation at meeting Lord Rand had disturbed her the night before, and the night before that, she’d been awake anticipating the trip. “He shouldn’t be spoiled like one.”
“So I have repeatedly said.” Lady Adela swept onto the terrace. Dressed as if she were attending a fashionable tea, she came to a halt before Sylvan. “I didn’t greet you properly when James introduced us. I bid you welcome to Clairmont Court.”
Garth’s eyes narrowed, and he called, “Mother, come out so you, as duchess, can greet our guest.”
It was the cut direct, but Lady Adela nodded. “Quite right. I shouldn’t have thrust myself before the dowager duchess.”
“Not at all.” Lady Emmaline Malkin stepped onto the terrace and shaded her eyes against the setting sun. “I don’t mind, you know that, Adela.”
“Emmie, you’re the dowager duchess, and you have the right—”
“I know, but I don’t want to thrust myself—”
“You’re wrong, dear. You should—”
Garth cut them off with a gesture. “Ladies, if you would please let me finish—”
“Garth, our guest hasn’t even taken tea yet.” Lady Emmie, petite and concerned, bustled over. “You can’t drag out these courtesies.”
From Garth’s shrug, Sylvan deduced the greetings were over.
Lady Emmie’s gaze darted around. “Er…where is Rand? I didn’t see you pushing him when you arrived.”
Sylvan’s worst suspicions were confirmed. The family had had their noses pressed to the windows the entire time she walked with Rand, and they hovered now in expectation of some further tragedy. Her failure to bring him back, she feared, would be viewed as catastrophic.
Garth stepped in before she could speak. “Rand’s making his own way back, Mother. Sylvan thought it would be salutary for him to learn how much he can do.”
Lady Emmie’s mouth moved without a sound.
“Remember, Mother, we discussed this,” Garth said. “Sylvan knows better than any of us what is right for Rand.”
If only that were true. Sylvan hoped her dismay at their misplaced confidence didn’t show.
But Lady Emmie recovered with all the grace of a true-born English lady. “Won’t you come inside, dear Sylvan? May I call you Sylvan?”
“I’d be honored, Your Grace, but I prefer to stay out here, thank you.” And cast fearful glances toward the sea.
“Then we’ll stay with you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t, Your Grace. I hate to have Lord Rand think anyone is apprehensive about his ability to return.”
As if she didn’t hear, Lady Emmie sank onto a sofa-length seat, her ample bosom sloshing within the constraints of her low-cut bodice. Sylvan held her breath, waiting for the gelatinous creatures to lap over the edge, but the lady seemed to have them well-trained, for they settled as she did.
Sylvan tried again. “Really, Your Grace, I’d prefer—”
“I hear you say we’ve been spoiling Rand.” Rand’s mother touched the fichu that hung around her neck, then tucked it into her cleavage. “We haven’t spoiled him. We just—”
“Emmie, don’t be a fool.” Lady Adela sat beside Lady Emmie. “You’ve spoiled him terribly.”
“I’ve spoiled him? I think I’m not alone in this.”
“You don’t mean to insinuate I’ve spoiled him?”
“No, not you. You’ve always maintained a proper distance. But what about your son?”
“Oh.” Lady Adela sighed so that Sylvan knew the despair of a woman whose son had failed her. “James.”
“You called, Mother?” James sauntered out.
Malkin blood must run strong in the veins, Sylvan thought, noting the family resemblance between James and his cousins. But James displayed a freer quality, as if he’d escaped the burden of responsibility and reveled in his luck. He wore the finest tight pantaloons, tied his cravat in the most intricate knot, and had his brown hair cut into the latest style. His boots shone in the sun and a monocle hung from a chain around his neck. In town, he would have been a dandy. In the country, Sylvan had to wonder who the display was meant to impress.
“The nurse here, Sylvan…” Distracted, Lady Adela pursed her lips. “Young woman, where did you get that dreadful name?”
“My mother is a country girl living in London. She misses her home terribly, and when I was born she named me for a wood fairy.”
Lady Adela sniffed. “Common.”
“Yes,” Sylvan agreed. “She is.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Lady Emmie said firmly. “Better good common English stock than some foreign material.”
“It’s the common stock which put the taint in Malkin blood.” Lady Adela gestured at the horizon where the smudge of factory smoke hovered. “And you see the results.”
“My son is not tainted,” Lady Emmie snapped.
“His ideas are a disgrace.”
“Enough!” Garth’s cultured drawl could sharpen with anger, and anger edged it now. “We’ve gone over this before, and I hardly think we need discuss it in front of Miss Sylvan.”
James broke the uncomfortable moment of silence. “Miss Sylvan, did you suggest we’ve spoiled Rand?”
Sylvan wanted to ask if the entire family listened at doors, but manners interfered. “I did.”
“So we’ve spoiled him,” James said. “Deserved it. Came back from Waterloo a hero.”
Pride strengthened Lady Adela’s spine. “So did you, my dear.”
“Oh, yes,” Garth said, sarcasm in his tone. “One of our national icons.”
Lady Adela sounded shocked at Garth’s cavalier comment. “James was very brave.”
James shrugged as if he could brush off Garth’s asperity. “Garth’s right, Mama. Nothing but one of the lesser players. M’ wound was slight.”
“Slight!” Lady Adela leaned forward and touched Sylvan’s knee. “He lost two of his fingers.”
“An amputation?” she asked him.
“Easier than that.” He wiggled the remaining digits on his right hand. “Shot off. Clean. No infection.”
“Did I see you in hospital?”
“Yes.” He grinned with diffident charm. “Glad to see I always make an impression on a lovely woman.”
“Be glad you didn’t.” She looked down at her own ten fingers, twining and retwining in her lap. “You don’t want to be one of the patients I remember.”
“Rest assured, ma’am, that no patient you helped will ever forget.” His fervent protestation brought her attention back to him, and he touched his brow in a salute.
His charming gesture warmed her, empty though she knew it to be.
“James is more guilty than any of us for spoiling Rand,” Lady Emmie said triumphantly. “He always worshiped Rand.”
“That doesn’t mean he spoiled him.”
“James always dressed like Rand. He took an interest in politics because of Rand. He even joined the army because of Rand.”
James sighed in embarrassment, and Sylvan bit back a smile.
Lady Adela harumphed and said, “Well, James is eleven years younger than Rand. I suppose there might have been some hero worship.”
“James wants to go back to London.”
“He can go back to London any time he pleases,” Lady Adela snapped. “Our fortune is ample to keep—”
“James can’t be important if he goes without—”
James’s stylish facade began to crumple beneath the vexation of their prolonged quarrel, and Sylvan interrupted in desperation. “No one has told me the nature of Lord Rand’s wound.” A silence followed, and she looked sharply at the ring of guilty, dismayed faces. She turned to Garth. “Lord Clairmont?”
He wiped his hand across his face, then looked toward the west. “I don’t see him yet.”
“Nor I,” Sylvan agreed. “Therefore this is the perfect time to describe the wound which resulted in his paralysis.”
“Did you say you wanted to wait for Rand alone?” Garth persisted.
“Yes, but—”
“We’ll leave you, then, and have tea sent out. Come, ladies.” Lady Adela and Lady Emmie jumped up with an obedience Sylvan found suspect, and when James would have remained, Garth said, “Come, James.”
For a brief moment, James seemed possessed of an ugly mood. Then with a gesture of resignation, he entered the house on his mother’s heels.
Garth lingered for a moment to promise, “You’ll get the cooperation you require, I vow.”
Then he whisked inside after them all, leaving Sylvan to wonder what they were hiding. She had seen most of Rand this day, and he’d looked whole and unscarred. Yet something had placed Rand in the wheelchair. What was it, and where had it occurred?
“Miss?” Sylvan turned to find the broad-beamed maid at her side. “I brought your tea. You have here a hearty supply of biscuits and cakes, made by our Italian confectioner.”
Sylvan gave a gurgle of laughter. “An Italian confectioner?”
A slip of a smile escaped the maid as she placed the tray on the narrow table and pushed it close to Sylvan. “Aye, miss. Isn’t that grand?”
“Grand enough.” Watching gratefully as the maid poured, she added, “I’m glad my father isn’t here, or we’d have to have an Italian confectioner working in our kitchen tomorrow.”
The maid’s quiet amusement died and she examined Sylvan with a keen eye. “You’re quality, then.”
“Oh, no.” Sylvan spread a snowy napkin in her lap. “I’m only rich. My father’s a merchant baron. By that I mean, he was a highly successful merchant, and he bought himself a barony.”
“Have you quarreled with him, that you’ve hired yourself out as a nurse?”
Her outspoken curiosity amazed Sylvan, and she examined the maid as thoroughly as the maid had examined her. She saw a tall woman of perhaps thirty-five, with strong, handsome features and a way of carrying herself that one seldom saw in a servant. Indeed, many a fine lady would have been pleased to have this woman’s bearing and dignity. “You must be Betty,” Sylvan said.
“That I am, miss. Mr. Garth told you about me?”
“Only that you boss them all, and that your hospitality is impeccable.”
Wrapping her hands in her apron, Betty smiled. Dimples creased her cheeks, and beneath the lace cap she wore an abundance of auburn curls that bobbed when she nodded. “Mr. Garth is ever free with his compliments.”
Sylvan sugared the tea and drank with wholehearted enjoyment. “Why do you call him Mr. Garth?”
Now Betty blushed. “Forgive me, I should not, but we’re of an age and we grew up together.”
The Malkin family, Sylvan concluded, could rightly be termed eccentric. Their housekeeper treated the duke with familiarity; the dowager and her sister-in-law disagreed like two children; they had a cotton mill on their land and their own ghost.
But then, they were of an old, noble family of large fortune, and eccentricity was acceptable. Sylvan had no such cushion to fall back on, and she answered Betty’s earlier query. “My father didn’t want me to come as a nurse, but His Grace made me an irresistible offer. His Grace promised that no one would bemoan my lost reputation while I remained under his roof.”
“You lost your reputation, miss?”
“I don’t like to brag”—Sylvan leaned closer to Betty, and Betty leaned forward to hear—“but I’m one of the most infamous women in England.”
Betty stared at her, round-eyed, then burst into laughter. “Perhaps so, miss, perhaps so.”
Stupidly, Sylvan felt almost hurt by Betty’s incredulity. “You don’t believe me?”
“Ah, miss.” Betty wiped her hands on her apron. “A lot of noblemen visit Clairmont Court during the course of a year, and I’ve learned the difference between a lost reputation and a corrupted soul.” Betty nudged the plate of biscuits closer to Sylvan’s elbow. “You’ve got a fineness about you I never sensed with those corrupted ones.”
“Nevertheless, my reputation is gone. I’m no longer invited to the parties of the ton, and any man who shows interest in me does so to sample the wares.”
Betty piled thin slices of plum cake and a variety of biscuits onto a china plate and pressed it into Sylvan’s hand. “So ’tis your father who mourns your reputation, miss?”
“Bitterly and often. He does everything bitterly and often.” Selecting a macaroon, Sylvan tasted it with approval. “Do you know the nature of Lord Rand’s wound?”
She thought she’d slipped in the query casually, but while Betty never changed expression, Sylvan felt the barrier go up. “He can’t walk.”
However eccentric the Malkins were, they obviously had the loyalty of their servants.
“But he can use that wheelchair,” Betty added, pointing across the lawn.
Sylvan looked, and she saw Rand, struggling to push himself up the path. “Thank God.” Her hand shook in a sudden palsy, and tea slopped onto the napkin in her lap.
Betty patted her shoulder,
then she called, “Jasper!”
Jasper charged out the door so quickly, Sylvan knew he’d been waiting for their hail. She looked reproachfully at Betty, but Betty whispered, “He couldn’t hear us talking, miss.” Then, louder, she said, “The master’ll need help getting up the stairs. Best bring around your helpers.”
Jasper hastened to obey, and Sylvan said, “If you would, Betty, tell the family to play some cards, settle with a book, and greet Rand casually. He’ll not like it if he’s treated like a conquering hero for such a measly feat.”
“Do you think he’ll fancy having the family treat it casually, after months of having them jump at his every wish?” Betty demanded.
“Perhaps not.” Sylvan smiled. “But I prefer he be angered by lack of attention, not more.”
Betty placed her hands on her hips and looked Sylvan up and down. “Is nursing anything more than just common sense, miss?”
“No, but common sense isn’t that common, is it?”
“We’re going to get along fine, miss.” Betty bustled toward the house. “Just fine.”
Jasper and his crew reached Rand before he had wheeled himself across the drive, but with violent gestures he ordered them back. Sweat glued the strands of his dark hair together and dripped off his heavy eyebrows. It ran in trickles along the grooves of his frown and shone off his chest.
He ignored his state with imposing determination as he pushed himself across the driveway and to the bottom of the stairs. There he stopped and let Jasper and the footmen lift him. They carried the chair up to the terrace, then on his order, set it down in front of Sylvan.
If anything, his bitterness of spirit seemed to have deepened, and she would have sworn he hated her when he said, “I hope you’re happy, woman. You’ve proved me to be a coward, too.”
3
Mortification burned like a live coal in his soul.
He’d been too gutless to push himself off the edge of the cliff.
As if he had anything to live for! A helpless deranged cripple. What further proof did he require of his own uselessness, his own madness?
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