A Lady Unrivaled

by Roseanna M. White

  Lord Cayton rubbed at his neck. “Why are you women all so stubborn?”

  “We have to be.”

  Her eyes went to her door, which was closed. She gave up on the whispering they’d both been doing. “I want to be here for her. I will not be able to do much, but it will give her comfort, knowing I am here. She has more faith in my skills than she should.”

  “You seem to know as much about it as the doctor does.” He pointed himself toward the stairs she’d just come down. “Remember my offer.”

  She nodded and headed up the opposite way, toward the kitchen.

  Dorsey still stood just inside, the bloody rags nowhere in sight and the floor spotless. His eyebrows were two slashes of suspicion. “Did I hear Lord Cayton say something about an offer?”

  “To hire a nurse. For Felicity. I told him it wasn’t necessary, I could handle it.” The lie came easily, making the Babushka in her head cluck her tongue.

  But Dorsey’s eyebrows returned to their normal positions. “Was that Catherine throwing a fit—the crashing?”

  Catherine? Yes, Kira had thought of her that way a few times. But she would never be so familiar in speech, not so long as she was her maid. There were rules. Everyone knew that. But then, he had been in their house so long—and she’d still been so young when he came. They must know each other well. “Yes. Lord Rushworth gave her laudanum.”

  The suspicion returned. Or no, it wasn’t quite suspicion, it was . . . She didn’t know what it was, but it darkened his eyes. “He didn’t call for me.”

  “I helped him.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “He always calls for me when he needs help sedating her. I hold her down. It’s the only time he lets me touch her.”

  That sick feeling came back to her stomach. Catherine. “Why would you want to touch her?” Did she sound jealous—or concerned? “Do you . . . fancy her?”

  Would that explain why he had served their house so long?

  His eyes cleared, his smile flashed. “Nah. But she’s pretty, aye? And she fancied me for a while, when she was younger. Not that I’d have anything to do with her, of course.”

  Hadn’t she said she’d loved Pratt her whole life? Perhaps that didn’t preclude a bit of an interest in another handsome man who lived under her nose, though. Kira couldn’t really be sure. She’d had eyes only for ballet. Either way, she could see why Rushworth wouldn’t like them near each other, if there were interest on either side. She nodded and reached for the bandages still sitting out on the table. “She cut her feet. I need to wrap them.”

  “Very good. Then that walk to the village?”

  “All right.” Maybe she’d just keep on walking. All the way to the end of England, across the Channel, over the Continent. All the way to Russia, where the snows would barely have begun to melt. Where her brothers could cajole her for staying away so long, for forgetting where she’d come from. Where Babushka would wrap her in her arms and say she had some chak-chak left, if she was in the mood for a sweet. Where Papka would tell her how much like her mother she looked.

  Where life was simple and death was simple and faith was too deep to question.

  She wanted to go home.

  Twenty-Three

  Ella glanced at the clock on the mantel, trying to gauge how much time she had before Cayton was likely to join her in the library. It was eleven—a full hour after he usually came. Odd. She pushed to her feet, telling herself it was no reason for concern. He must just be talking longer than usual with Stafford—that was all. They were studying Romans—that could get interesting, and involving. Time probably slipped away from him.

  Still, it was much later than usual. She had heard his car drive up before she made her way to the library, so there was no question that he was at Ralin. And her back was feeling tight, her neck getting sore from craning over her books. Her bottom had gone positively numb.

  She needed her walk.

  Well, he would find her if she started out on her own. She jotted him a quick note, left it on his chair, and hummed her way outside.

  Sunshine had found their corner of the world again, and she welcomed it with a smile as she stepped out into the garden. Her ears strained for the sound of baby squeals, but all she heard were birds chorusing from the wood and horses whinnying in the pastures. Sounds of spring, of life.

  Life. A letter had come from Midwynd yesterday. First a note from Rowena, saying all was well and that she missed her, that Annie—Rowena’s stepsister who had been staying with them since last fall—wanted to know when she’d be home. That Sussex wasn’t the same without her.

  She’d smiled at that one. And then smiled even more when she’d read Brice’s note, which told her that Rowena had been having contractions. False ones, but they indicated her time was likely to be soon.

  Ella was going to be an aunt, and she couldn’t wait. He’d promised to ring the castle the moment the baby arrived, and she was already anticipating the static-filled line, the familiar voice, the joyous news. “Boy,” he would say, “and little Worthing is perfect.” Or, “It’s a girl, and she’s as beautiful as her mother. Come meet her, Ella-bell.”

  Maybe, when she was home visiting, she’d tell him about Cayton. About how Rushworth had told him to court her, about how he tried so hard to make it seem like he didn’t want to.

  About how she’d fallen in love.

  Then she’d let him know oh-so-delicately that she knew very well where the Fire Eyes were, and she didn’t much appreciate being kept in the dark about them when she’d been wearing them around as if they were nothing but priceless heirloom rubies.

  Wait, that didn’t sound quite right.

  Then . . . then, while she was home, she’d have to go to the sanitarium where Stella lived now, locked away in a room where she couldn’t hurt anyone. She’d have to listen to her oldest friend prattle about Brice and how happy they would be together someday. She’d have to look into troubled eyes and see the madness so clearly now and wonder for the millionth time how she had missed it before. How she’d been fooled for so long.

  She stepped around a flowering lilac bush and came to an abrupt halt. Cayton stood in the middle of the path, staring up into the sky. Addie wasn’t with him. Nor Stafford. No one was, but he had that look about him—as if he’d been standing there so long moss was likely to be growing on his shoes.

  “Cayton?” He hadn’t come to see her. It pierced, even as she told herself she shouldn’t let it. Reminded herself it was just a fake courtship, so he was entitled to let it slide now and then.

  But it wasn’t. She had been so sure it wasn’t.

  He turned to face her, revealing a face etched with worry. “Sorry. I was going to . . . It’s been a bad couple of days. Felicity had a seizure. Something called eclampsia.”

  “Oh, James. I’m so sorry. Is she all right?” She rushed to him, took his hand. Dared to touch a hand to his face.

  Her mind flashed to a morning’s fog, Rushworth’s face. This one was so much better.

  Cayton closed his eyes and gusted out a sigh. “I don’t know. It could happen again, the doctor said. Is likely to, until she delivers. But she won’t let them take the child, though he said it was less risky than the pregnancy continuing. She won’t listen to anyone.”

  Of course not. Babies needed all the time they could get in their mothers’ wombs. She’d read all about it when she learned Rowena was expecting. And a bit about eclampsia and its precursor too. That part had been terrifying, and she’d hidden the book to keep Rowena from picking it up.

  There were some things people just didn’t need to know about unless they needed to know about them. And since it wasn’t as though there was anything they could do to prevent it, why invite worry?

  She stroked her thumb over his cheekbone, feeling bold and yet right. “Why didn’t you come and tell me about it? You needn’t carry this on your own.”

  “Because . . . because I can’t pretend today. I can’t put on a smile for whoeve
r’s watching. I can’t.”

  “No one would expect you to. And you don’t have to pretend. We’re friends, remember?” His cheek was warm under her fingers, his jaw just a bit rough. There was no paint on his neck today, and she found she missed it.

  His eyes slid shut. “It’s all coming to a head, I think. Maybe it’s just my paranoia saying so, but . . . Kitty had a breakdown after Felicity’s seizure. Rush was in a fit of his own because of it. Muttering all night about no more time, no more time. He’s going to do something, Ella. Soon. Or make me do something. And I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to. If he tells you to, you come here, and . . .”

  He shook his head, dislodging her fingers, and opened his eyes. An echo of anger painted shadows in their depths. “No one wants to listen—as if better answers will just appear. Whitby is still in Yorkshire. Who knows if he has gathered anything useful since he wrote that last cryptic letter. Stafford has been trying to locate more rubies to pass as the diamonds—but it wouldn’t work a second time, which I have tried to tell him. But why should he listen to me?”

  “Cayton.”

  “We may have found the legend about the Fire Eyes, but it doesn’t really matter, does it?” He lifted a hand, rubbed at his neck. “He’s threatened Lareau. He’s threatened my daughter. I paid a call on the constable this morning to tell him, but he can’t do anything either, not so long as it’s just vague, idle-sounding threats with no evidence that he’s anything but an arrogant lord who likes to sound powerful when he isn’t.”

  Ella ran her thumb along the hand she still held.

  He pulled it away. “And you, I notice, didn’t bother telling anyone that you saw him in the village. But you did, didn’t you.”

  “Yes.” But she still didn’t know what to make of it. How to tell anyone about it without it sounding unreal. He offered to become whomever I wanted him to be. “He didn’t threaten me or anything. Just . . . just asked to court me. Officially.”

  “Just asked . . . Ella.” He lifted both hands, framed her face. It sent a little thrill through her, until she saw that his eyes were far from soft and imploring. They were hard, determined. “He is dangerous. And he is unraveling. I don’t think playing his game is going to work much longer. He’s going to snap, to strike, to . . . I don’t know what, but you can’t be in his path when it happens, and he seems far too determined to keep you in his path right now. You have to go home. You must.”

  She could, perhaps. Say the letter from Brice had said the baby would come any day and that she’d decided to try to get there in time for it. Rushworth would believe her. “But how would that help? If I go, he would either assume I took the diamonds with me and come along—possibly waylaying me on the journey and stealing them—or if I left them here and we somehow told him, he would just strike the Staffords.”

  “I’ve a plan. You’ll leave them here. I’ll say you left in such a rush that you forgot them. I . . . I’ll say I convinced Stafford to open the safe, to give them to me, that I’ll take them to you.”

  His hands were cool against her face, but warming. And warming her. “So you’ll keep all the danger focused on you? Cayton—”

  “We can make it believable. We’ll fight. Here, now. This is the one spot I’m absolutely sure someone is watching. Stafford has narrowed it down to just a few suspects. We fight, they report it, I go home and rant about it. Then you leave. He’ll tell me to go after you, and I’ll say I can use it as an excuse to get the diamonds. We have the constable and his men waiting. When he tries to get them, when I refuse, when he acts—they catch him.”

  Catch him with a gun raised, he meant. And what if he pulled the trigger before they could stop him? She shook her head. “Absolutely not. There has to be a safer way.”

  “Ella.” His eyes went even harder. “This is the way we’re doing it. Stafford approved it, more or less. You and I are going to argue. Loudly. Or better still, something visible. Slap me.”

  It was probably a bad time to be amused. But he honestly expected her to slap him? “I beg your pardon?”

  “Slap me. Like you mean it.”

  Her lips tugged up. Just a little. “It would look ridiculous. I don’t want to slap you. Why would I want to slap you?”

  “Oh, use your imagination. Perhaps I insulted you.”

  With his hands framing her face like this? “You’re always insulting me. But I’m just not the slapping type.”

  His eyes shifted, though she didn’t know what words to use to describe the change. “Fine. I’ll . . . I’ll kiss you. You pull away and slap me for taking liberties.”

  “I—” His lips cut her off. They weren’t gentle, probably by design. He did, after all, want her to pull away, to retreat, to get angry.

  But his hands cradled her head and his mouth moved over hers, and her breath balled up in her chest and forgot whether it should be inhaling or exhaling. Her hands settled on his chest and then, of their own will, slid around him to hold him close.

  “Ella,” he breathed against her lips. “You’re supposed to pull away.”

  “Was I? I forgot.” She moved her face, just a slight tilt, to make her lips touch his again. Her blood hummed through her veins. Should it have felt so daring? So right? “Try again. I’ll get it right this time.”

  He laughed. A rumbling in his chest, a pulling of his lips. “Liar.”

  “No, no, I’ll remember. Kiss me. Make it count.”

  She felt his hum all through her, resonating. He pulled her closer, or perhaps she pulled him. Tilted his head. Kissed her again, but more.

  He made it count. Parted her lips and made her head swim. Dug his fingers into her hair until it tumbled down around her shoulders. Held her so close the wind could scarcely breeze between them.

  She forgot to pull away again. But apparently he forgot to remind her, so she saw no reason to speak up. Far better to savor the moment, to discover how he would move next, to learn how to respond.

  Her first kiss—and she seriously doubted any other would ever surpass it.

  She barely heard the gasp coming from the right, didn’t quite register the sound of a book falling to the flagstone. But there was no missing the explosion of French that blistered the air. It ended with a heavily accented, “Get your hands off her!”

  It looked as though Brook would provide their argument for them.

  A caged tigress, perhaps, might stalk around with approximately half as much fury and explosive energy as his cousin’s wife. Maybe. Cayton could think of nothing else that would come close, unless one could bottle up a typhoon.

  He slouched into his usual chair in the library, wishing he had thought to run for cover. He could have been home by now. But that was the thing with Brook’s tempers—they just swept all hapless bystanders along.

  All right, he wasn’t exactly hapless. But if she would stop ranting in three different languages long enough for an explanation . . . No, that would achieve nothing. What was he to say? Perhaps the idea had sprung from the right place—keeping Ella safe—but that had flown out the window the moment he’d touched his lips to hers, and they all knew it.

  He was a cad. A reprobate. A selfish, untrustworthy rogue.

  He risked a glance at Ella. She wasn’t sulking in a chair like him—but then, she didn’t seem to be swamped by guilt at her lapse in judgment. She stood before the towering window, arms folded, watching her friend pace. Not a hint of remorse on her face.

  It was nearly as infuriating as the smirk upon Stafford’s. Didn’t she realize how terrible an idea it was to kiss him? She should have stopped him before he ever drew her closer. If she had so much as a stitch of sense, she would have.

  Brook paused in her tirade—it had been in Italian now, he was fairly certain. Utterly incomprehensible. Ella lifted her brows. “Are you finished yet? Because I’d like to say something before you have to run from the room to lose your breakfast.”

  Brook narrowed her eyes, though it failed, somehow, to withe
r Ella. “I’m too angry to be sick.” Anger sounded like French in her consonants and Monegasque in her vowels. “And all the angrier because this has obviously only been happening because I’ve been sick. What kind of friend goes behind my back with a man like him, knowing full well that if I weren’t confined to my chaise, I would put a stop to it?”

  Cayton had straightened a bit at that him. But she was right, so what in the world could he say? He glanced at his cousin.

  Stafford, odd creature that he was, watched his wife with nothing short of adoration as she fumed. “It isn’t quite what you think, Brooklet. It’s just a ruse to appease Rushworth.”

  Brook never had any compunction about whirling on the duke. Waving her arms about like a madwoman. Pointing accusatory fingers at one of her dearest friends. “That was not a ruse! And are you telling me you knew about this, Justin Wildon?”

  “Now, mon âme.” Having taught her last year how to box, Stafford was too smart to make any placating gestures. Or get within right-hook range. Cayton had glimpsed a few of the lessons, and he didn’t mean to get any closer to the duchess. “We tried several times to tell you, but you were just so unwell.”

  Her fury was a thousand suns.

  Cayton considered trying his hand at poetry to adequately capture it. Or perhaps paint her as an erupting volcano. He’d give it to Whitby for Christmas and earn himself a booming laugh.

  “We’ll discuss that later.” She spun back to Ella. “I know playacting when I see it, and I know what it isn’t. I’m shocked at you. Kissing him like that!”

  Ella snorted a laugh. It didn’t sound particularly friendly, which warmed his heart another few degrees. “Really, Brook, I knew you were many things, but I never dreamed you were such a hypocrite.”

  That managed to silence Brook, and drop her jaw too. For a moment. “Pardonnez-moi?”

  Ella lowered her arms, looking ready to step into the boxing ring herself. “Will you try to tell me you never kissed Stafford ‘like that’? What about before he ran off to India?”