Juliet, still standing outside, hugged herself and traced a design on the rug with her toe while Lady Nerissa conversed with the maid.
The matronly woman who had made off with Charlotte emerged from the room, yawning. “Lord Andrew ’ad it done, milady. Said ’e didn’t think mother and daughter’d want to be separated. Also said it was too short notice to find a wet nurse in the village, so the babe would ’ave to stay in ’ere with ’er mother instead of up in the nursery. The little mite’s a-sleepin’ now, but I ’spect she’ll need a feedin’ soon.”
“My goodness! I am amazed that Andrew knows anything about such matters,” Lady Nerissa mused, raising her brows.
Juliet lifted her head. “Thank you for your help, Martha.” She turned to Charles’s sister. “And you, too, Lady Nerissa. You have all been so kind to us.”
Martha beamed. “Think nothink of it, mum. We ain’t ’ad a babe in this ’ouse for far too long, if’n ye ask me.”
“Indeed,” Nerissa said wryly. “Off with you now, Martha. I am sure Miss Paige wishes to rest. We can both see Charlotte at breakfast.”
“Yes, milady. Lookin’ forward to it, I am!”
Martha bobbed in a curtsy and ambled off down the hall.
Nerissa watched her go. “I sense that you’re an independent sort, but if you need Molly’s assistance, there’s a bell-pull behind the bed.” She put her hands on Juliet’s arms, looking at her for a long moment before pulling her forward in a quick embrace. “I’m so glad you’ve come here. Good night, now, and I shall see you in the morning.”
Juliet returned the other woman’s smile. “Good night, Lady Nerissa.”
Charles’s sister moved off down the hall, her footfalls fading. Juliet stood watching her, hating to see her go. But she had to face the inevitable. Taking a deep breath, she slowly pushed open the door and entered the room that had belonged to Charles.
All was still. Dark. A sleepy fire crackled in the hearth, and before it, in silhouette, stood a brass bath and a towel stand and the cradle that held Charlotte. Juliet took a step forward, softly closing the door behind her. A great curtained bed filled the shadows. Dim shapes marked out furniture. On a chest of drawers, a lone candle flickered in the drafts, a tiny finger of light against the darkness. Arms at her sides, barely able to breathe, Juliet stood very still in the silence, letting it engulf her.
Charles.
She had thought to feel him here, but the room was empty. There was only the little candle, herself, and her sleeping daughter. Nothing else. No overwhelming sense of his presence, no lingering hint of his scent, no rush of memories, nothing. It was just a room, and nothing more.
She moved slowly around the huge, chilly chamber, her skirts whispering over the floor he had once walked, her fingers trailing atop the furniture that had once held his clothes. He was not here. He was as far away from her here, as he had been all these past lonely months in Boston.
Oh, Charles… I have never felt so alone in all my life.
The fire snapped. A little shower of embers trickled through the grate, a mournful sound in the darkness. She leaned against the bedpost and gazed dismally at their red glow, feeling somehow betrayed by his absence, feeling sad and confused and lonely and lost.
“Charles.”
But there was no answer.
The baby awoke, whimpering. Juliet went to the cradle, picked her up, and hugged her to her breast, rocking back and forth in quiet, dry-eyed agony. Charlie-girl, Lord Gareth had called the baby. What an endearment. Grief welled up in the back of her throat.
He’s dead, Juliet. Dead and gone. Doesn’t this empty, lifeless room prove it?
She held Charlotte close for a long time, gathering what comfort she could from her baby and trying, in vain, to cling to something she’d once had but would never have again. The wild and breathless euphoria of first love. A heart that had leaped with joy at just the thought of her handsome British officer. How young and naive she had been, assuming that with Charles she had found her “forever,” that death would never touch someone as youthful, as virile, as he had been. And how far away those memories, that giddy, soaring, girlish excitement, now felt.
And yet something inside her had stirred tonight when she’d seen his brother—beautifully masculine, powerfully muscled—lying in his bed, his nakedness covered only by a loose sheet. Something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Desire.
She shook her head. No wonder she didn’t feel Charles here. How could she, with the image of that splendid younger brother emblazoned so vividly across her brain?
“Ouch!” Charlotte had grasped a lock of Juliet’s hair, yanking it hard from its pins and reminding Juliet that she had someone else to think of besides herself. Gently, she pried the hair from the baby’s fist and pulled up a chair, where she sat nursing her daughter and staring into the red embers of the dying fire. She thought of Charles. She thought of her reaction to Lord Gareth. She thought how horrible she was for even having such a reaction.
And eventually, she became so tired she didn’t think at all.
The water was cool by the time she had finished tending to Charlotte, shed her soiled clothes, and crawled, shivering, into the bath. It had grown much colder still when she finally emerged. She toweled herself dry, put on her nightgown and crawled beneath the cool, crisp sheets, her cheek sinking into the feathery softness of the pillow that had once held his dear head.
His pillow, his room, his bed.
And he had probably been the last one to sleep in it.
She pulled the other pillow close and curled her body around it, hugging it and staring at the shadows flickering against the far wall. Then she closed her eyes and dreamed of Charles.
She saw him again, the fine British officer on his mighty charger, surveying his troops with a coolly assessing eye as they filed smartly past. She lived again that moment when he’d first caught her watching from the window and had touched his cocked hat in acknowledgement. And she was there once more, on that day he’d finally stridden into the shop spoken to her met her behind the woodshed two weeks later, where they’d shared that first magical kiss, and she had found herself enfolded within the hard circle of his arms. Oh, Charles. She sighed softly and turned over, sinking back down into the depths of sleep.
The dream faded out.
Charles?
Oh, my dearest love, come back!
But Charles was no longer there. Someone else was coming toward her now someone riding out of a rainy English night, lifting a pistol, tumbling through fierce, stinging nettles to shield the child in his arms even as the ball tore into his side.
She ran to him, and when she lifted his head from the nettles, the sleepy, down-tilted eyes that gazed up at her were not Charles’s, but Lord Gareth’s.
Chapter Seven
Gareth awoke, briefly, sometime just before dawn. Faint light was just starting to creep through the parted drapes, and from somewhere outside the first blackbird was calling. He shivered, pulling the covers up over his shoulders. The room was cold and empty, the hearth a pile of dead ashes, his friends long gone. Lucien must have kicked them out sometime during the night, he thought, not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. As he lay there wondering if it was worth moving to retrieve and use the chamber pot, the words of the doctor played through his head like a litany.
You were lucky, damned lucky, my lord another half-inch and you would’ve lost your rib; a little more than that your lung, and very likely your life.
It was a sobering thought.
They’d told him the ball had peeled a strip of flesh off a lower rib, plowing a furrow in the bone and leaving a loose flap of skin that had bled profusely. As wounds went, it was far less serious than it had initially looked. But plague take his rib, Gareth had thought then—and thought now as he groaned and finally reached for the chamber pot, it was his head—the entire left side of his face—that was killing him.
He’d do well to stay out of the nettl
es in the future.
And, he allowed ruefully, Irish whiskey.
Still, he knew that if he had the chance to live the robbery all over again, he wouldn’t do a thing differently. Despite his hangover, his raw cheek, and the throbbing of his nicked rib, he felt quite good about himself just now. Quite good, indeed. He slid back beneath the covers, smiling like a fool. It was rather nice, being the hero of the hour and there were no words to describe how he’d felt when Miss Juliet Paige had come in to say good night to him and bent down to touch her cool, sweet lips to his brow. He sighed and lay back in bed with a happy grin. Such attentions made him feel quite special, indeed. And, appreciated.
He wasn’t used to anyone appreciating him.
He closed his eyes. The blackbird was still singing, and as he began to drift away, he allowed himself to imagine that Juliet Paige was gazing reverently down at him, standing watch over him as though he were some mighty fallen warrior-hero and she, heaven’s dearest angel.
When Lucien came quietly in to check on him an hour later, Gareth was fast asleep and still smiling.
The mighty hero slept straight through breakfast. By then, the flowers, tributes, notes and poems of praise had already begun to arrive as news of the robbery, and Gareth’s part in thwarting it, spread through Ravenscombe and into the surrounding countryside.
The Wild One had always been popular with the ladies, but never so much as he was this fine, late-April morning. His actions of the previous night—and the fact that he’d suffered a “grievous, life-threatening wound”—seemed to have driven every female in Berkshire into a frenzy. A group of blushing, giggling maids from the village brought him a bouquet of bright purple lilacs. A half-dozen red roses arrived from Lady Jayne Snow, only to be outdone by a full dozen from her sister Lady Anne. A box of sweet, juicy oranges were sent by Miss Amy Woodside, letters and notes poured in by the dozens, and a poem of ardent admiration came from the gushing pen of Miss Sally Chilcot, who was as brainless and silly as her fool of a brother, Neil.
Or so proclaimed an increasingly annoyed Lucien, as a footman entered the dining hall where they were all having breakfast, with the missive on a silver platter.
“For heaven’s sake,” he muttered, plucking the perfumed vellum and slamming it down into the growing pile before Gareth’s empty chair.
He picked up his coffee and went back to reading The Gentleman’s Magazine.
“Oh, do open it, Luce,” drawled Andrew, buttering a piece of bread and craning his neck to read the flowery writing that covered the folded vellum. “Let’s see Ah! A Poem: To the Brave and Dashing Lord Gareth de Montforte.” He made a noise of amused contempt. “Whatever she wrote ought to be priceless as far as breakfast time amusement goes.”
“Whatever she wrote is for Gareth’s eyes only,” snapped Nerissa, who was bouncing Charlotte on her lap. “You’re just miffed that Gareth is getting so much attention, and you’re not.”
“On the contrary, my dear sister. I have better things to do than fend off the attentions of pestilent females.”
“Perhaps that’s because there are no pestilent females giving you attention to fend off,” Nerissa shot back.
“Children,” murmured the duke, without looking up from his paper.
Feeling uncomfortable and more than a little out of place, Juliet silently stirred sugar into her tea. She was still smarting over the way the duke had treated her during the previous night’s interview, and even now she didn’t know whether he intended to take her in and make Charlotte his ward—or not. He hadn’t said a word about the subject, and until Nerissa had brought her down here to breakfast, Juliet had not seen him so that she could ask. She wanted to speak to him alone. Here at the table, with two bickering siblings listening in, did not seem the appropriate time or place in which to do so.
Perhaps she could request a moment of his time after breakfast.
“Don’t look so troubled, Miss Paige,” Andrew said amiably, mistaking the reason for Juliet’s preoccupied frown. “My sister and I fight like cats and dogs. ’Tis quite normal in this household, I’m afraid. In time you’ll get used to us.”
Juliet glanced at the duke, wondering whether or not he intended to give her that time, but he made no comment, only continued reading.
“And Andrew would have pestilent females chasing after him if only he’d get his nose out of those science books and venture out into the real world once in a while,” his sister added. “Tell her about the invention you’re working on, Andrew.”
“It’s nothing.”
Juliet noted the sudden tinge of color along Andrew’s cheekbones. “Invention?”
He shrugged and bent his head, making a big project out of buttering another piece of bread. “I’m trying to build a flying machine.”
“A flying machine!” Juliet nearly dropped the cup of tea she was just bringing to her lips.
“Yes.” He didn’t look up, but kept smearing butter on his bread, the color spreading out along his cheekbones. “I know it sounds daft, but if birds can fly, and kites, and even leaves on the wind, I don’t see any reason why it can’t be done.”
“Impossible,” the duke muttered, still reading.
“I don’t think so,” said Andrew.
The duke turned a page. “If God wanted us to fly, He would’ve given us wings.”
“Yes, and if He’d wanted us to ply the seas, He would’ve given us fins,” countered Nerissa, as Andrew, red-faced, set down his knife. “But He didn’t, so we had to invent ships. Why should flying be any different? I think Andrew’s idea is worthy and fine.”
“And I think it’s damned ridiculous,” the duke snapped, not bothering to look up. “Of all the men who’ve gone through Oxford in the last twenty years, Andrew was probably one of only a handful who didn’t waste his time drinking, whoring, and carousing, but actually got down to the business of serious study. And for what? A flying machine. What a waste of a fine education. What a waste of a damned fine brain.”
Andrew flushed hotly, his eyes sparking with sudden anger.
“Lucien, that was cruel and unfair!” cried Nerissa.
“It is the truth.”
“If people like Andrew didn’t invent things that others thought impossible, nothing new would ever be made!”
“Flying machines are impossible. He’ll never do it.”
Andrew slammed his chair back and stormed from the room, nearly knocking over a footman who was just entering. The servant never batted an eye as Nerissa also jumped up and went hurrying past him after her angry brother. The duke, meanwhile, calmly went on reading his paper as though the exchange had never happened. He didn’t even acknowledge the footman—bearing yet another note on the silver plate he held in one gloved hand—when the servant lowered it before his face.
“For Lord Gareth, Your Grace.”
Wordlessly, the duke took the note and tossed it into the growing pile as the footman glided soundlessly from the room.
Then he looked up and saw Juliet still sitting there, her face tight with disapproval. “Ah—” he gave a rueful, bland little smile—“I see that you, too, think I’m cruel and heartless. But Andrew cannot focus his mind, and attentions, on a single project. He has an annoying and unproductive habit of hitting upon an idea, then failing to follow it through.” He took a sip of his coffee and smiled benignly at Juliet. “If I do not mock and challenge him, he will never design his flying machine.”
“You’re a very manipulative man, Your Grace. Do you always employ such methods to get others to behave as you would wish?”
Again, that derisive little smile. “Only when it is necessary, Miss Paige. Now, be a good girl and take those letters up to Gareth, would you? I find that the scent of them is giving me a headache.”
Juliet managed to find her way through the maze of rooms and corridors to the great staircase that led upstairs. She paused at the summit. Half-way down the hall, the door to Lord Gareth’s room was standing slightly ajar. Her hand gripp
ed the carved banister and, with some surprise, she realized her heart was beating twice as fast as it should be. Now, why on earth was she nervous about entering that room? There were other things that deserved her concern far more than a common female reaction to the uncommonly handsome Lord Gareth de Montforte.
Such as whatever the Duke of Blackheath was planning.
It bothered her that he’d sent her on this errand when it would have been more appropriate—not to mention, proper—to have one of the servants do it. It bothered her because she suspected he was up to something, and she didn’t know what it could be. She had seen first-hand how Blackheath pulled strings and people unwittingly danced. She had seen how he’d manipulated Andrew by purposely mocking and angering him; he had done much the same with her during last night’s interview. In fact, he had even admitted as much—though what his motives were now, or even then, Juliet did not know and was not sure she cared to know. After all, she had nothing that His Grace could possibly be interested in, nothing he could possibly want of her.
She continued down the corridor, pausing at Gareth’s partly-open door and listening for sounds within. All was quiet. Slowly, shyly, Juliet pushed the door open, breathing a sigh of relief when it made no noise on its well-oiled hinges. Oh, she was nervous, all right; the letters in her hand had absorbed its dampness, molded themselves to the curve of her palm. Slipping quietly over the threshold, she paused just inside.
The room was preternaturally still. She took a deep breath, casting about for a place to leave the letters while trying not to look at the bed. A pillow was on the floor; yet another; in fact, a whole jagged trail of them, hurled off the bed by a sleeper who was either restless or in a considerable amount of pain. Juliet’s gaze followed this trail, across the floor and straight to the foot of the bed. She saw the tasseled ropes of deep crimson holding back the curtains of shimmering gold silk that dressed the bed; she saw the carved headboard framed between them; and she saw a man’s form, partially covered by a loose sheet. Rising above this form was the bare skin of one handsomely rounded shoulder and a tousled head of hair upon the pillow.
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