“No, please,” the guard choked out.
“Shut your mouth,” Justin said in a steely tone. His gaze came to Arabella and her mother. “What do you want me to do?”
Arabella considered his question as she rocked her mother back and forth and ran a soothing hand through her matted hair. The man deserved that dungeon and so much more. And she didn’t even want to consider how Justin knew of such a place, yet she didn’t think she could stomach sending any human to their torture and death. “Is there another way to teach him a lesson?”
“Certainly,” Justin replied. He inclined his head and then yanked Stewart to his feet and toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Arabella asked.
Justin paused at the door and turned to her. “To teach this scum a lesson, as you requested. There is no point in you and your mother having to watch.”
“Oh yes, I quite agree,” Arabella murmured, even as her mother chanted, “Watch, watch, watch.”
Arabella had calmed her mother and put cold cloths on her arms by the time Justin returned. Arabella licked her lips nervously at the spattering of blood on his white shirt. “You didn’t— What I’m trying to ask you is—”
Justin’s gaze bore into hers. “Of course not,” he answered, as if she had asked the question. “I showed him a few select punches to his rather bulbous nose, and one particularly entertaining pressure point.” Justin pressed a thumb between her collarbone and flesh, and for one second, numbness spiraled down her right arm. “Here, of course.” He released the pressure at once. “I explained to him that if I pressed hard enough I could cripple him for life. He agreed to leave immediately, and I made sure he understood that in a few hours, I will have my own guards on staff here. He won’t be back. Never fear.”
“Oh, Justin!” She scrambled off her mother’s bed and threw her arms around him. “Thank you. For everything.”
“You can stay,” her mother sang behind her in a calm, almost childlike voice. Arabella whirled around to her mother and gawked. Her mother actually held her gaze, then turned to Justin and smiled. “I like him,” she said in that same childlike voice. “Makes me feel safe, he does. George used to make me feel safe.”
Arabella blinked in surprise. Her mother had not said her father’s name, or even acknowledged that she remembered him, since the day he’d had his stroke. “Mama.” She started toward her mother, but Justin touched her arm and shook his head. She hesitated and her mother spoke again.
“George was strong and reliable, but then he sent my Daniel to war against my wishes.” Suddenly, she turned to Arabella. “Did you know George?”
Arabella swallowed back tears. “Yes, Mama. George, er Papa, is still alive.” She’d had no idea that her father had sent her brother to war against her mother’s wishes. She’d assumed they’d both agreed it was for the best.
Her mother shook her head. “No, George is dead. He fell over at my feet.” She pulled and tugged at her hair. Trembling, Arabella reached out and took her mother’s hands in hers. “No, Mama. Papa is alive. He had a brain attack, but he survived it.”
“No. No. I killed George. I screamed at him that I wished he’d died instead of my Daniel, and then he did.” Tears streamed down her face, and she raised a violently shaking hand to wipe them away. “I need my medicine,” she said and started to twitch and scratch her arms.
Justin advanced on her mother. “What sort of medicine do you need, Mrs. Carthright?” he asked in a soothing, gentle tone that contrasted vividly with the previous growl.
“My dark medicine. I get it twice a day. Never with visitors here.” She stared straight at Arabella. “Never with you. You’re not to know because you’ll want some. Not enough for everyone. Just me. I need it. Calms me.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Arabella demanded, grabbing her mother who immediately screeched.
“Let me go! Let me go! My skin hurts! It burns and itches. And my head.” She smacked herself in the head several times. “I need my medicine. Pleeease! I’ll take the beating to get my medicine!”
Horrified, Arabella released her mother. “I don’t understand. What have they done?”
Justin strode to the lone table in the room and snatched up a small dark bottle. He held it to his nose and cursed. “Opium. They’ve been feeding your mother opium to either control her outbursts or, more likely, to ensure she never gets better so they can keep taking your money. I’d wager that Stanhope does not receive all the money you pay. I’ll find out, but either way, she’s addicted. This is full, so it must be time for the next dose.”
“Please,” her mother cried pitifully. “I didn’t get my dose last night because I was bad and wouldn’t take my beating silently. Please. Please. I need it!”
When her mother lunged for the bottle, Arabella grabbed her. “No!” Maybe this was the reason her mother had never come back to her senses. “No. You cannot have any more. You must come back to us.” Arabella choked back her tears. “Come back to me.”
“Give me my medicine,” her mother howled and jerked out of Arabella’s arms. Justin held up the bottle in one hand while holding up his other hand in a staying action.
“Get yourself under control,” he ordered in a commanding voice that filled the room and stopped her mother’s motion immediately. “I will give you some of your medicine, but you must calm down.”
“Justin!” Arabella cried out.
He motioned for Arabella to come to him. She did so immediately. He turned to her and whispered, “She will have to be taken off the medicine slowly. Otherwise the side effects could kill her. I’ll fetch Dr. Bancroft to aid her.”
Arabella nodded. “Could this be hindering her recovering her mind?”
“Most definitely,” he said grimly. “Opium keeps the mind clouded. I cannot promise you she’ll come back to her right state, but if they have been giving this to her the whole time she’s been here, then…”
Arabella clenched her hands together. “Now I wish you’d taken that guard to the dungeon you mentioned rather than letting him go.”
Justin nodded. “Don’t worry. I know where to find him. He’ll be getting a visit to the dungeon, and I’ll discover exactly what the Hendersons have been doing.”
She believed him. His eyes and voice held a note of determination that she didn’t doubt.
After he gave her mother a small dose and she calmed down, he took Arabella into the hall. “I’ll be back. I’m going to speak to the warden and her husband and retrieve my physician to examine your mother.”
Justin returned several hours later with Dr. Bancroft and a nurse who was going to stay with her mother. Dr. Bancroft examined her mother and confirmed what Justin had thought. Anger pulsed through Arabella to think her mother might have actually returned to her right mind if she’d not been addicted to opium.
When the doctor left, she turned to Justin. “You may go, but I’m going to stay with my mother tonight. I dare Mrs. Henderson to try to deny me the right.”
He grinned. “You are formidable indeed when pushed far enough, I see. Alas, I find I’m slightly disappointed that it will not come to a standoff between you and Mrs. Henderson, as I would wager all my money on you prevailing, and I’m quite sure it would be entertaining.”
She laughed, despite the terrible circumstances of the day. “Where is Mrs. Henderson?”
“In a cell. She and her husband attempted to deny that they had any knowledge of what their son was doing, but I don’t believe them. And ledgers in her office of an overabundance of opium orders and a secret tally column of cash make me think I am correct. So I had them locked up.”
“Can you do that?” she asked, praying he could.
“Of course, haven’t I already told you—”
“That you can do anything? Yes, yes you have. Do you know you give very evasive answers to almost all questions?”
“Do I?” He cocked his eyebrows. “What was the question?”
She stomped her foot, ha
lf-irritated and half-amused. “You know very well what the question was, but frankly, you don’t have to answer. I find I’m shamefully pleased all the Hendersons are being punished.”
“And I find I like that you are shamefully pleased,” he said in a low, distinctly seductive voice.
A flutter started in her belly as their gazes locked, but whatever moment that might have been was broken when the nurse came back into the room with several blankets. She immediately curtsied to Justin. “Your Grace, I swear I only left the room to fetch these blankets for Miss Carthright.”
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Frockenstone. When I told you that I wanted you to stay in the room, I did not intend that it be a prison. Would you mind fetching a blanket for me, as well?”
Her eyes popped wide, but she hastily bobbed her head and scurried out of the room.
Before Arabella could ask why, Justin faced her, his eyes sparking with some emotion she could not place.
“I’m staying, as well,” he said, giving her a look that warned he’d not relent, regardless of her protests.
She could do little more than nod. She was so surprised that he wanted to stay with her and put off finding Ruby but also extremely glad and touched. “You don’t have to, you know.”
“Of course I know,” he said offhandedly. “I want to be here for you.”
His words, thrown so casually to her, tugged at her emotions. The nurse returned, and Justin helped Arabella make pallets in the cramped, mostly bare room. She watched him, all too aware he was indeed dangerous to the heart. Once the pallets were finished, the nurse, with Justin’s explicit directions, went to check on the other patients and gather the necessary supplies needed for Arabella’s mother. There were twenty women in the home, and all the guards on duty for the night had met Justin and had been warned he’d not tolerate ill treatment of the women.
Arabella and Justin sat on the floor and ate hunks of bread and cheese that he had surprisingly packed, and then he poured her a drink and handed her a cup. She sniffed the glass, the oaky contents almost overpowering. “What’s this?”
“Scotch,” he replied.
She started to push it back toward him, but he stayed her hand. “You need it. After this day, it will help ease you into sleep.”
“But my mother—”
“Is now under excellent care and cannot be helped by a daughter too tired to stay awake. Now, lie down and close your eyes.”
She was awfully tired, and with a sigh, she scooted onto her back and drifted off immediately.
Justin woke slumped against the wall at such an odd angle that every muscle in his body ached. He stood and glanced across the small room to where Arabella slept on the floor near the nurse and her mother’s bed. She lay on her side, curled into a small ball. Her beauty took his breath and made his heart catch peculiarly. It struck him that he’d never slept the night with a woman before. It was oddly amusing that the first time would be in a home for the mentally impaired and the woman had not even been in his arms. The peculiarity of the situation fit his life.
He motioned to the nurse, who was sitting quietly, and she followed him out into the corridor. “Did Mrs. Carthright sleep soundly through the night?”
The nurse nodded. “I’ll be waking her up shortly to administer a slightly smaller dose than she’s been getting. Do you want me to wake her daughter?”
He shook his head. “I…I trust you can keep it to yourself that I was here with her last night.”
The nurse nodded. “May I be blunt, Your Grace?”
“By all means.”
“Your kindness to that woman and her mother gave me renewed hope in men.”
“Er, thank you,” he replied, suddenly uncomfortable with the way she was staring at him with open admiration. “You may go do whatever it is that you need to do to see to Mrs. Carthright’s care today.”
The nurse bobbed a curtsy, and he was left there with his thoughts, the quiet stirring of patients and tapping of guards’ shoes echoing through the hall. He was hoping Arabella would sleep late this morning. When she’d finally agreed to try to lie down last night, dark circles had surrounded her eyes. He’d been dead tired himself after leaving once more to check on her father and his caretaker. But there was no time for weariness. This morning he needed to make his ownership of this home occur. Not to mention he had the small issue of the king’s lost letters to attend to.
As he left the home to see Stanhope about taking on his loan, Davenport’s thoughts on love swirled through his brain. It suddenly occurred to Justin that he was putting Arabella’s concerns over the king’s. He was struck with a flash of guilt, but it didn’t linger so long that he stopped when driving by the gaming hell where Ruby Rose supposedly now worked.
His meeting with Stanhope had successfully concluded, and he’d interviewed and hired a new warden to run the home, as well as several new guards based on the recommendation of Dr. Bancroft. He’d then stopped by the club, only to learn they had never heard of Ruby Rose, nor did they have a woman there that fit her description. He didn’t imagine they would forget her if they had met her. He’d been told by Madame Chauvin, who had measured Ruby Rose for the gowns, that Ruby was almost as tall as him with long, jet-black hair and golden eyes, rather like a cat’s eyes, Madame Chauvin had said.
He left Crockford’s and steered his horses back in the direction of the home, aware that instead of being irritated that Arabella had not given him a good lead on Ruby Rose, he was relieved. It meant he could spend more time in Arabella’s company before he had to part ways with her. But his relief was disturbing. It was another wave in the previously calm waters of his life. Just as he felt his pulse nick up and he started to count, damned if he didn’t see the very extremely beautiful entanglement that was upending his world marching toward him down the road.
He pulled his carriage over and stared at her in wonderment as she neared. Surely, there was no woman on this earth as self-reliant as Arabella. “Where the devil are you going?”
“To my father,” she replied and started to hike herself into his carriage.
He scrambled down to help her up. When his hands encircled her waist, a bolt of need caused a physical ache that made him clench his teeth, and he was disturbingly overpleased when he felt her tremble under his hands. He glanced at the empty road and made a decision to take for one brief moment what he wanted. A kiss. Just a simple kiss. Nothing more.
He slowly edged her around to face him. “I’ve seen to your father this morning,” he murmured close to her ear, inhaling her scent deeply.
She turned toward him, and her mouth parted. “You have?”
He nodded as he slid his hand all the way around her waist and inched the other one up around her neck. He traced the long, beckoning, creamy column, allowing his fingers to come to a rest over the delicate skin. Her pulse beat fiercely underneath. Was she nervous over his touch or the scandalous way they were behaving? Gossip didn’t concern him in the least, but in regard to her, it did. He scanned the perimeter again. Still clear.
“Your father is resting. Alice is there still. Oh, and I’m now the proud owner of the Carthright Home for the Mentally Impaired.”
Her eyes rounded. “You renamed the home after my family?”
He nodded. “You are the reason I purchased it, after all.”
“Why—”
He stopped her question by pressing a finger to her lips. “I don’t know why.” Only he did. He’d done it for her. To help her. Foolishness. “Do you never do anything without a good reason?”
She shook her head.
Wise woman. “Kiss me, Arabella.”
“You want me to kiss you?” The question was a throaty whisper. It filled him with satisfaction and a dangerous desire to placate that need. He was fast losing boundaries and reason, and he couldn’t seem to grasp them and pull them back around him.
He brushed his finger over her lips. “I don’t believe I’ve ever wanted anything more.”
&nb
sp; She pressed her lips to his, and when her tongue touched his mouth, whatever small amount of self-control he’d still had in his possession, he willingly released for this moment. They stood on the steps of his carriage crushed together and everything vanished but her.
She ravaged his mouth with need, and he returned her longing with his own wild wanting. Their tongues swirled and retreated, then met again, until simply kissing her was not enough. Not nearly enough. He pulled her closer to him until there was not a place their bodies didn’t touch. Soft mewling sounds came from her, and she wiggled against him as if to get even closer. When they finally broke the kiss—he heard the wheels of an oncoming carriage—they scrambled onto the seat and stared at each other.
It took a moment for his raging blood to slow. He wanted her to come back to his home with him. He wanted to know all of her, and in ways he’d never bothered to learn a woman. He longed to explore her body, hear how she got any scars, and learn of her fears and hopes. He desired to bring her passion she had never known. He’d not ask it, though.
“I’ll take you home, if you wish.”
For a moment, hope spiked as uncertainty filled her eyes. “Yes,” she finally replied. “I need to go home.”
His disappointment that her need for him did not match his need for her, that he had not swept her away with the tide of desire to throw caution to the wind, made him feel as if he’d been plunged into the deepest part of an ocean. She was the ocean. She’d consumed him somehow, and he’d let her.
He nodded, picked up the reins, and silently drove her home.
Near the appointed hour of five and after confirming for herself that her father was doing well in Alice’s care, Arabella entered the Sans Pareil Theatre to meet Jude. Her thoughts should have been concentrated on what she was going to say to him, but all she could think about was Justin. The feel of his warm lips on hers. The way his mouth hungrily slanted over hers with passion and need. The desire for her that had made his eyes burn bright. She’d known without him saying a word that he’d wanted her. It did not scare her as she knew it should, as was proper. She wanted him, too. Very much. With an ache that almost drove her to distraction.
The Dangerous Duke of Dinnisfree Page 14