by Emily Larkin
Marcus leaned over the bed and gripped Albin’s upper arms, pinning him to the mattress. Albin didn’t stir when the needle pierced his skin. He was deathly pale, breathing so shallowly his chest seemed barely to move.
Marcus stared down at him. It was Albin’s face, Albin’s body—but Charlotte was inside that. Live, damn it.
“You may let go now, sir.”
Marcus released his grip, but he didn’t step back. He stayed beside the bed, looking down at Albin.
Dr. Baillie bandaged the shoulder, his movements neat and precise. “That’s all I can do, sir. Now we must wait.”
“He will live, won’t he?”
Dr. Baillie pursed his lips again. “I can’t say that for certain, sir. If the wound is infected, if he becomes feverish or develops lockjaw . . . But Mr. Albin is young and healthy—that’s in his favor.”
Marcus stayed at Albin’s bedside once the doctor had gone, trying to understand his emotions. Why did he care so much whether she lived or died?
Because Charlotte had taken a blow meant for him, a blow meant to kill—and he’d turned his back and walked away.
“Sir?”
He glanced up. Leggatt stood in the doorway, and behind him, one of the footmen.
“Your clothes are bloody, sir.”
Marcus looked down at Albin. “He shouldn’t be left alone.”
“Howard can stay with him, sir.”
“He needs to be kept warm.”
“Yes, sir.” It was Howard’s voice this time. “I’ll keep the fire high.”
Marcus reached down and pulled the coverings up around Albin’s throat. Live, damn it.
* * *
Marcus washed the blood from his skin, dressed in clean clothes, and returned to the Blue Bedchamber. “Any change?
The footman shook his head.
“I’m going out for half an hour, to Chandlers Street. If anything should change . . .”
“I’ll send for you, sir.”
Marcus strode round to Chandlers Street. Mrs. Stitchbury was in bed with the vapors. One of her housemaids let him into Albin’s rooms. “How’s poor Mr. Albin, sir?”
“Still alive.”
“Ma’am will be pleased. Right overset she is. We all is! We ain’t had nothing like this happen before. Terrible, it is, sir. Terrible!”
Marcus nodded politely and shut Albin’s door on her. He turned, surveying the room. Why am I here?
Because he needed to understand.
Why had Charlotte gone to Hyde Park? Why had she stepped between him and Monkwood?
His breath hung in the air in front of his face. The window stood open. Marcus closed it, then looked at the room once more, trying to get a sense of who Charlotte was.
The room didn’t look any different from when he’d first visited a week ago. Table and chairs, writing desk, bookcase, two armchairs on the rug beside the fireplace. A bachelor’s sitting room.
He walked through into the bedchamber. Clothes were flung on the bed: waistcoat, neckcloth, stockings. The items Charlotte hadn’t been wearing when she’d come to Hyde Park.
She was in a hurry. To save me.
The bed, the washstand, the dressing table, the chest of drawers, the wardrobe—they were generic. A hundred bachelors slept in rooms like this. A thousand. They told him nothing about her.
Marcus stripped off his gloves and searched methodically. Under the bed was a valise containing women’s clothing. Gown and petticoat and chemise, all neatly folded, stockings and stays and shoes. They were familiar. Miss Brown had worn them.
The wardrobe and chest of drawers held men’s clothes. A couple of shirts, a couple of neckcloths, a couple of pairs of stockings. Marcus frowned. Even his footmen had more clothes than these. Could she not afford more?
She had a comb and hairbrush, but no shaving brush or razor. Marcus studied the washstand, perplexed. How did Albin shave?
Tucked into the corner of the mirror was a square of folded paper. Marcus removed it, unfolded it, and scowled. It was a sketch of a young man wearing a toga and carrying a lyre. He knew where the sketch had come from—Swiffen’s Cyclopaedia—and he knew why Albin looked so like Orpheus.
Marcus screwed up the sketch and tossed it into the cold grate.
On the nightstand lay a silver pocket watch and a pair of spectacles. The watch was the one he’d rescued from the Honest Sailor. Marcus picked up the spectacles and turned them over in his hand. Albin didn’t wear spectacles. Miss Brown didn’t wear spectacles.
So why does she have them?
He crouched and opened the nightstand. Inside was a clean chamber pot, nothing more.
Marcus moved into the sitting room. There were no personal items on the table, no personal items on the mantelpiece, but in the bookcase were half a dozen books.
He examined them carefully. A battered three-volume set of the Iliad in the original Greek, heavily annotated, with the name Charles Appleby scrawled inside the covers. One tome from the Aeneid in Latin, ditto battered and annotated and inscribed. A slender volume of French poetry with marbled endpapers that had been owned by a woman. Albinia West-something, 1776.
Marcus frowned and tried to decipher the surname. Westcole? Westcott? Westcolt?
The last book was also in French, a sturdy edition of Perrault’s Fairy Tales. He could read its owner’s name easily. Charlotte Appleby. The handwriting was careful, childish.
Charlotte Appleby. Daughter of Charles and Albinia?
Marcus closed the book and put it back in its place on the bookshelf. He crossed to the writing desk and opened the left-hand drawer.
Here were more things that told him about Charlotte. A man’s signet ring, heavy and silver. A coiled necklace of red coral beads, inexpensive, but clearly treasured, folded carefully into a scrap of muslin. Two silhouette portraits, each no larger than his palm, one a man, one a woman. Were they her parents?
Marcus studied the silhouettes, trying to discover a likeness to Charlotte. Perhaps the woman’s chin? The angle of the man’s nose?
He replaced them in the drawer, and closed it.
The middle drawer held two one-pound notes. Marcus frowned at them. Were these all the funds Charlotte had? Two pounds, and the few pennies that had been in her greatcoat pocket?
The right-hand drawer held paper, ink, quills. Nothing personal. No letters or notes or calling cards. It seemed that she’d had no contact with anyone since arriving in London.
Marcus lowered the drop-flap. A dozen sheets of paper lay inside, covered with writing.
He picked up the topmost one. The ink was smudged, but the handwriting was familiar. Albin’s handwriting. Charlotte’s handwriting.
Dear Sir, I owe you an apology and an explanation.
Marcus pulled out the chair and sat down to read.
* * *
Charlotte told her tale chronologically, starting with her twenty-fifth birthday and ending with his dismissal of her yesterday. What she’d done. Why she’d done it.
Marcus read to the end. It was disconcerting to see the past two weeks through someone else’s eyes. It made him feel slightly off-balance, as if he wore spectacles and the focus wasn’t quite right. So much that he’d been unaware of, so much he hadn’t noticed. Am I so blind?
When he’d finished, he folded the pages carefully. This must be the letter Charlotte had sent him. The letter he’d thrown in the fire. It wasn’t what he’d expected. No excuses, no pleas for forgiveness. The language was plain and starkly honest, unemotional—but emotion permeated the pages. He felt it through his fingertips, as if the paper had soaked up more than just ink.
Grief. Despair.
He cleared his throat and placed the letter in his breast pocket. Charlotte’s betrayal, her deceit, no longer seemed as unforgivable as it had this morning.
If she tells the truth.
But he couldn’t doubt that she did. She’d crossed out words because they were misspelled, because they lacked specificity, not because she w
as trying out different versions of the truth.
Marcus glanced at his watch. He’d been gone almost an hour. Too long.
He crossed the room with long strides and opened the door—and looked back. He’d come here to discover who Charlotte was. What had he learned?
That she lived on the edge of poverty.
That she was alone.
That her motivations hadn’t been what he’d thought.
Marcus touched his breast pocket, feeling the thick wad of folded paper. That she loves me.
He closed the door and walked back to Grosvenor Square through the silent, drifting snow and climbed the stairs to the Blue Bedchamber and stood for a long time looking down at Albin. He wanted to be angry, to feel the same rage he had yesterday—but it wouldn’t come.
Chapter Forty-Five
Marcus passed the night in the armchair beside Albin’s bed. Twice he thought she stopped breathing, twice he jerked to his feet and bent over her, and twice he discovered a pulse, heard a faint exhalation, and sat back in the chair, his heart thudding in his chest.
He read her letter again, skipping the beginning, concentrating on her reasons for becoming Miss Brown. You thought me bashful, but that wasn’t why I blushed and grew tongue-tied whenever you were close. It was a physical response that I had no control over. Each day it grew worse, and I knew that soon you would recognize it for what it was and dismiss me.
Marcus lowered the letter and looked at the motionless figure in the bed. Charlotte had rated his powers of observation too high.
He found his place again: . . . and dismiss me. I was most anxious to avoid that; working for you was better than anything I had dared hope for. I cannot imagine having an employer I liked and admired and respected more than you.
Marcus grimaced, and rubbed his brow. She placed him on a pedestal that he was ill-fitted to stand on. God knew he had enough flaws.
When I saw you at Gentleman Jackson’s my physical reaction to you almost overmastered me. I was desperate to be rid of it, so I decided to take your advice. I know it’s not advice you would have given to a female, but it was good advice. It worked.
He had a flash of memory: Miss Brown’s nervousness, her tension, her resolute expression, her voice saying, “It’s very important.”
He’d wondered what reason could be so imperative, so pressing, that she would put herself through such an ordeal. Me. I was her reason. Marcus grimaced again, rubbed his forehead again.
He turned the page, skimmed over Charlotte’s description of visiting the Pig and Whistle, the fight she’d narrowly avoided, and focused on her account of his second meeting with her.
I should have refused your request. That was my downfall. But how could I refuse when my actions had caused you distress? I could not be that selfish. And afterwards—after you’d been so kind and so gentle—how could I not love you?
Marcus lifted his gaze to her. Albin lay as still as a waxwork figure.
Had her breathing become irregular?
He jerked out of the armchair and leaned over her. Albin’s breath fluttered against his cheek, so faint he barely felt it, barely heard it. Inhalation. Exhalation. Even and regular.
Marcus sat again, his heart hammering against his sternum. He poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea and sipped, while his heartbeat slowed.
He picked up the letter and continued reading, seeing events unfold through Charlotte’s eyes—the Smiths’ attack at the Honest Sailor, the visit to Whitechapel, the growing sexual intimacy between himself and her. He halted when he came to why Charlotte had refused his carte-blanche and read the paragraph three times. I wanted to spend my life with you. As your secretary, I could do that. As your mistress, I couldn’t. You’ll marry again, and I will not be an adulteress.
The words made him feel shame—and they answered the question he’d asked himself two days ago. If he’d offered marriage instead of a carte-blanche, Charlotte would have said yes.
Marcus went back to the first page and reread the encounter with the Faerie, reread what the woman had said about metamorphosis. I asked her what the dangers were, and there was only one: I’ll miscarry if I change shape while pregnant. She did say that if I die, I’ll change back into my own shape, but I count that an awkward inconvenience, not a danger. Inconvenient for whoever finds me, that is. It won’t matter to me; I’ll be dead.
He grunted. Inconvenient, yes. He lifted his head and gazed at the motionless figure in the bed. What would he do if she died? If Albin became Charlotte? How did one explain the presence of a dead woman in one’s house?
Marcus read the letter through to its end again, caught between anger at her many deceptions and admiration for her courage. I’m sorry for the harm I have done you, she concluded. For pretending to be someone I was not, for lying to you, for abusing your trust. You need not worry that I shall take another person’s shape and try to enter your life again. I give you my word that I won’t—if you can bring yourself to believe it.
He could. He did.
Marcus refolded the letter and placed it in his breast pocket and looked at Albin. At Charlotte. He didn’t agree with all the choices she’d made, but he understood them. He could forgive them. As it had been with Barnaby, it wasn’t a conscious decision, wasn’t something he had control over. It was a choice his heart made: forgiveness.
He placed more coal on the fire and turned his attention to the seven diaries Charlotte had stolen for him. Reading them elicited quite different emotions. Revulsion. Fury. Guilt. He’d failed Lavinia. Failed to notice that Monkwood’s brotherly affection was in fact something warped and foul. Failed to rescue her.
Such ugliness, under his nose, and he’d been oblivious to it.
Marcus grimaced and turned a page. A paragraph jumped out at him: Today I received a letter from my beautiful Helen, asking for more sponges. She wants to reign for another Season, not grow fat with Cosgrove’s child. I shall purchase them tomorrow and take them down to Hazelbrook next week.
Rage flared in his chest. He might have had an heir if not for Lavinia’s vanity, if not for Monkwood’s connivance.
But some of the rage was directed at himself. A blind fool. That’s what he’d been: a blind fool. Too deeply in love to notice that his bride was taking precautions not to have his child.
Why had he not realized?
Why had Lavinia’s maid not realized?
Marcus lowered the diary. Lavinia’s maid must have known about the sponges, just as she must have been aware of the incest. For years, she must have known—and been complicit.
I should have spoken to Monkwood’s servants before I offered for Lavinia.
He glanced at Albin. What would the servants at Westcote Hall tell him about Charlotte? Was she the person he thought he knew—Albin, Miss Brown, the Charlotte of her letter—or did she have another face? A face he hadn’t yet seen.
* * *
A housemaid knocked before dawn. She smelled of furniture polish and coal dust. “Sir, Mr. Plaistow’s arrived from Hazelbrook. He says he needs to speak with you.”
“Plaistow?” What was his bailiff doing here? “Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir. He says it’s some’ut to do with Mr. Monkwood, sir.”
“Monkwood?” Marcus pushed to his feet. “Stay with Mr. Albin, please, Lucy.”
He took the stairs two at a time and found Mr. Plaistow in the study, huddled over a newly lit fire.
“Plaistow? What’s wrong?”
“Sir!” The bailiff wore travel-stained riding clothes and a distraught expression. “Something’s happened at Hazelbrook. Right terrible, it is.”
“Monkwood?”
“Yes, sir. He . . . He . . .” Plaistow’s face twisted. “He’s killed himself!”
“Ah . . .” It wasn’t distress Marcus felt unfurling in his chest. It was satisfaction. Satisfaction—and a prick of disappointment. I would have liked to have been the one to kill him.
He crossed to the decanters, poured a glass of br
andy, and gave it to the bailiff. “Tell me.”
Plaistow took a large gulp. “Mr. Monkwood arrived yesterday, sir. Almost at dusk. He asked to be taken up to the roof, where her ladyship had fallen. Mr. Gough didn’t see no reason not to let him—he was her la’ship’s brother!”
“He jumped?”
“He jumped, sir. Right at the very spot her la’ship fell. Killed himself dead!”
“Did someone inform the magistrate?”
“Immediately, sir. And then I came straight here. I’d have got here sooner, sir, but the roads—”
“You did well.”
Plaistow turned the glass in his hands. His face twisted again. “Mr. Gough is right cut up about it—”
“No blame attaches to him,” Marcus said firmly. “Absolutely none.”
The only person to blame for Monkwood’s death was Monkwood himself. He’d seduced his own sister, and everything had spread outwards from that act.
* * *
Dr. Baillie visited at ten o’clock. “Good, good,” he said, clucking his tongue as he examined the wound. “No more bleeding, no infection, no fever. He’s doing well, sir. Very well.”
“But he hasn’t woken.”
“Give it time, sir. Give it time.” Baillie cast him a shrewd glance. “You look as if you could do with some rest.”
Marcus dismissed this with a shake of his head. “You think he’ll live?”
“I can’t say that, sir. Not categorically. But it looks hopeful. Very hopeful.” Baillie rebandaged the wound, his fingers deft. “Rest, Lord Cosgrove. Let someone else watch over him.”
Marcus rubbed eyes that were gritty with tiredness. “That injury was meant for me.”
Baillie pulled the covers up to Albin’s chin. “Depriving yourself of sleep won’t keep him alive, sir. Or make him heal any faster.”
I know.
But he didn’t take Baillie’s advice, didn’t send for one of the footmen to take his place, didn’t go to his bedchamber and strip off his clothes and crawl into bed.