“I know the secret,” Oliver said. The length of the room separated them, and Needham had to turn his head to keep Oliver in his sights.
“What secret?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Needham. I know you were blackmailing her into marrying you. Was it because you could not get a woman the normal way?”
Rage flattened the doctor’s eyes, but he seemed to tamp it down and didn’t respond. Oliver stopped pacing, not yet ready to approach.
“I know Philip is my child.” He didn’t really know that for a fact but was going on his gut. “I won’t allow you to blackmail Ellen or punish Philip.”
“The boy is a bastard, through and through, both by blood and by nature.”
With supreme force of will Oliver pushed away the ever-increasing rage inside him and made himself practice patience.
“That is enough.” His voice was calm, quiet, forcing Needham to concentrate on his words.
“Or what? What will you do to me? No one will believe that I did that to her.”
“Two scandals in one week, Needham. That’s hard to overcome.”
Needham made a noise of dismissal. “The other was preposterous. No one believes it anyway.”
Oliver grinned, and Needham paled just a bit. “Do you think so?”
“I know so. I am highly regarded in Society. No one will believe you, just as no one believed that I knew about the dead bodies.”
“Ah. So you were aware that your assistants were killing people to provide bodies to you for autopsies.”
“Of course. How else was I supposed to get them? The Resurrectionists couldn’t provide me with enough, and I was in competition with other physicians. That wasn’t acceptable. I needed a steady supply. People were relying on me to teach them. They were coming to me because I am the best, and they wanted to learn from the best. It was a necessity. Besides, those people were nobodies. They didn’t matter.”
They didn’t matter?
What kind of person, a physician no less, thought a human life didn’t matter? That his career and his reputation were more important than their lives?
“You are a sick man, Needham. Sick in the head.”
Needham laughed. “I am the most gifted surgeon in England, possibly all of Britain. I’ve sacrificed everything to become so. Hours and hours of cutting bodies open and studying them. My knowledge could save mankind. That is not sick. That is fact.”
Oliver had never met a man so full of his self-worth, who put himself above everyone.
“And how did Ellen fit into this?”
“She is my perfect mate. She’s beautiful, and she handles herself well in social situations.”
Oliver waited for more, for a declaration of love or something other than her charm and her looks. But nothing else was said, and Oliver felt a sadness for Ellen that this man did not appreciate her inner beauty as well as her outer beauty. She was so much more than her looks.
“And when she didn’t cooperate with your plans you blackmailed her?”
“She didn’t see what I saw. All she could see was you, and when I figured out why, I used it against her.” He shrugged as if that was what happened when you crossed him.
“How did you discover her secret?”
Needham chuckled again. “It’s so obvious. I can’t believe you didn’t see it yourself. The boy looks just like you, and by the way Ellen looked at you, I knew.”
Oliver felt a rush of pride that Needham thought Philip looked like him. How had he missed it? How could he not have known? Because it had been the furthest thing from his mind, and even when Ashland had mentioned it he still hadn’t believed that Ellen hadn’t told him.
Oliver sidled closer but Needham was so far into his story, talking about himself and how wonderful he was that he didn’t even notice that Oliver had stepped up to him until Oliver’s fist met Needham’s cheekbone.
The man howled and staggered to the side, clutching his face. Oliver quickly followed it with a punch to Needham’s soft underbelly and another to his groin, causing him to double over and sink to the floor with a strangled sound.
“The first was for Philip’s black eye. Don’t ever touch my son again or I will kill you. The second was for the people you had murdered, the ones you believe aren’t important. Those people were far better than you could ever be.”
Oliver crouched down close to Needham’s face. He was on his side, gasping, clutching his hopefully shriveled and throbbing cock, his eyes clenched closed.
“Look at me,” Oliver said softly. “Look at me,” he repeated when Needham didn’t obey.
Needham slit one eye open and Oliver whispered in his ear. “The last one was for Ellen. If I see you go near her again, even if you’re across the street or across the park, I will put you on your operating table and cut you up myself. I will pull your organs out one by one, while you are still alive.”
Oliver stood and brushed the dust from his trousers.
Needham’s hand fell to his side, and Oliver casually stepped on it, watching as Needham’s eyes widened and he howled in pain. Slowly Oliver increased the pressure of his foot on Needham’s hand until the bones crunched underneath.
He took his foot away and Needham rolled to his side, clutching his broken fingers. “And that is for all of the future surgeons you will never teach because you won’t be able to hold a scalpel again.”
The door opened and O’Leary, Ashland, O’Leary’s commander, and Needham’s housekeeper entered.
The housekeeper was pale and shaking. The three men looked grim.
“I’ll take it from here,” O’Leary said.
“Did you hear him admit to the murders?” Oliver asked.
“We did.”
Oliver looked down at Needham’s gasping, moaning body. “Your career is over.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Oliver returned to Ellen and Philip. Ellen was still in that dreamland of sleep and healing.
“She hasn’t moved,” Philip said. “I watch her to make sure she’s still breathing.”
“She just needs to heal.” Oliver settled into a chair and trained his gaze on Ellen. The restlessness was gone. He felt surprisingly calm and confident in Ellen’s recovery, now that Needham was taken care of.
“Where did you go?” Philip asked. He appeared a little less sullen, a little less frightened and more awake.
Oliver could see that the housekeeper had tried feeding him. A nearly full tray of food sat to the side.
“You’re not hungry?” Oliver tipped his head to the tray.
“No. Where’d you go?”
Oliver had hoped to change the subject, but Philip was having none of it.
“I had business to attend to.”
“Did the business involve scraping your knuckles?”
Oliver looked down at his hand. He’d not even noticed that his knuckles were raw and bleeding. He flexed his fingers, wincing at the slight sting. But the satisfaction of taking Needham to the ground far outweighed roughed-up knuckles.
“Is he dead?”
Oliver glanced at Philip. “No.”
Philip turned his head to look at his mother. “Too bad.”
“Killing him would have caused more problems.”
“But you thought about it?”
“Of course I did.”
“I thought about it, too,” Philip whispered. “Killing him. I wanted to.”
“But you realized it was not the right choice. We’re not like him, Philip. We don’t resort to violence. And we certainly don’t hit women.” Oliver folded his fingers over his knuckles.
“No,” Philip said softly, still looking at his mother.
Oliver leaned forward. “Remember this. Remember what happened to your mother and never, ever touch a woman in anger. If I hear that you did, I will hunt you down.”
“I would never do that,” Philip said. “On my word.”
Oliver nodded. “A man’s word means everything. If you don’t have your word, you have noth
ing.”
“I understand.”
They descended into silence, comforted by Ellen’s steady breathing.
“We’ll figure this out,” Oliver said into the silence, not knowing if he was speaking to Philip, Ellen, or both of them. “We’ll sort all of this out.”
“Will we?” Philip asked.
…
She pictured the pain as an ocean. She’d gone to the ocean once. In France. With her family. It had been beautiful and magical and it had called to a primitive part of her and she’d never felt that type of connection again. She’d always thought that if she could, she would live on the ocean and listen to the waves for the rest of her life, and every day she would walk with bare toes sinking into the wet sand and the small waves lapping at her ankles, and life would be good.
The pain came in waves like that, and if she rode the wave and pictured the endless water and the horizon in the distance, it made it better. Tolerable, at least.
But certain things would pull her back. Like the driftwood that would gather at the edge of the water. Voices. People touching her. She didn’t like the touching, but they were gentle hands and at times she recognized her housekeeper and a kindly gentleman who came and went.
A doctor maybe.
And then there was Oliver, always talking to her, trying to convince her to open her eyes and leave the ocean. Well, not really leave the ocean. He didn’t know she was at the ocean, but that was the effect of his voice, making her leave the one place she felt safe and happy.
She listened for Philip. Occasionally she would hear his voice talking in the background, mainly to Oliver, never to her. But she knew he was there. She could feel his touch on her arm, and she knew her son was by her side.
In the back of her mind she knew why she was in this strange nowhere land, a place in her brain that she had escaped to. She knew about William and what he’d done to her, however, when the memories tried to surface she pictured herself floating on the endless waves and everything went away.
Eventually the water became more and more distant. She could hear the roar of it but could no longer see herself on the waves or feel its warmth cocooning her.
The insistent voices prodding her to wake up overtook the sound of the ocean and her eyelids would flutter and she would look around her bedchamber. Not the sea, not the small cottage that she had conjured in her mind, but her bedchamber in London. And she would close her eyes again.
…
Oliver made his way down the hall and to the terrace where Ellen sat in a pillowed chair, wrapped in a blanket, staring at her gardens.
It had been two weeks since the attack. She’d been asleep for four of those days, and he had despaired that she would never wake up. But gradually she’d come back to them. Not the same. She liked to sit in silence more than she liked to talk.
Her bruises were healing. The swelling had gone down. She still winced when she moved, because her ribs pained her, and her hand was still wrapped in a splint.
She spoke. It wasn’t as if she were completely mute. But she talked only about superficial things and never about Needham or that night. Oliver hadn’t even dared to bring up their own relationship.
They were in a sort of limbo.
Philip was due back at school soon, and Oliver wanted to discuss things with her. Difficult things.
He sat in a chair next to her. She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile, bereft of her once sparkling personality.
“I want to go to the ocean someday.” It was the first time she’d initiated a conversation, and the fact that she was declaring something she wanted to do was unexpected.
“Very well. We will go to the ocean.”
She turned her head back to the gardens. “When I was asleep,” she said. “I dreamed of the ocean. Floating on the ocean, walking in the ocean, dipping my toes in the ocean.”
“Did you?” He treaded carefully, not knowing how he was supposed to react.
“I guess I wasn’t really dreaming. It was a strange alternate place. But I loved it there. I didn’t want to come back.”
It hurt to hear that she did not want to return to him, but at the same time he understood.
“I’d like to go there. To the ocean…” Her voice trailed off. Oliver was becoming accustomed to this. She would suddenly stop talking and lapse into silence.
If the ocean would bring back the old Ellen, then he would take her there. If the old Ellen was gone for good, then he would learn to love this Ellen.
“We need to discuss things,” he said, hating to bring it up but knowing it needed to be done.
She looked at him out of the side of her eye but didn’t say anything.
“You’ve never asked what happened to Needham.”
“You said he wasn’t coming back. That’s all I need to know.”
“He’s not. I can promise you that. But don’t you want to know what happened to him?”
She turned to look at him. “Do I have to marry him?”
“No.”
“Do I need to worry that he will return?”
“No.”
“Do I need to worry that he will…hurt Philip in any way?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to know. Maybe in the future I will ask, and you will tell me, but for now this is enough.”
In the future? His heart soared that she was thinking of them in the future.
“Very well,” he said. “Speaking of the future…”
She turned her head away, but he thought he saw a slight smile curve her lips.
“Or rather the past and the future,” he said. “We need to discuss Philip.”
She burrowed farther into her blanket. Even though it wasn’t that cold it seemed she’d not been able to get warm since awakening from her sleep.
“Is he my son?”
Long moments passed, and Oliver realized that he was holding his breath, waiting for final confirmation. In his head Philip was his son. In his heart Philip was his son. He just needed confirmation.
Ellen looked out over the garden, her chin tucked into the folds of her blanket. “I regret so many things,” she said softly. “It about killed me that I didn’t meet you that night we were to run away.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“All of my life I was raised with the knowledge that I was to make a good match and, while you would someday be an earl, it still wasn’t good enough for them. And the thought of… The thought of disobeying them terrified me. More than walking away from you. I thought of the wedding my mother had planned, the wedding breakfast that they had paid for, and the gown that we had picked out. But mostly I thought of their expressions when they realized that I had run away and what their friends would say about them. And I couldn’t do it.” A lone tear leaked out of her eye, and she rubbed it on the blanket.
“Knowing you were waiting for me, knowing that I was breaking your heart, was nearly unbearable.”
His throat had grown thick with emotion, and he found he couldn’t say anything. Finally, after all these years he was getting the answers that he had longed for.
“And so I married Arthur, and eventually the pain of forsaking you lessened, and I convinced myself that I had done the right thing. Arthur was kind and gentle, if a little inattentive. And then I found out I was with child and I had convinced myself the baby was Arthur’s. I simply told myself that there was no other option but for the child to be his.”
She paused, wiped another tear. This was the most she’d spoken since awakening, and he could tell it was taking a toll on her. And still she had not answered his question.
“When did you know for sure?” he asked.
She drew in a deep breath as if she needed courage. “Philip loved to play in Arthur’s study while he was working. When he was about a year and a half I walked in on the two of them. Arthur was at his desk, Philip was playing on the floor. The sun hit his blond curls and highlighted his profile, and all I could see was a younger version of you. It
was then that I knew I was the keeper of a terrible secret no one could ever know.”
Oliver covered her hand with his. She was so frail right now that she was nearly skin and bones.
“I-if I told,” she said. “Philip would lose the title. Arthur would be crushed, because he so loved his son. And you… I didn’t know what would happen to you or how you would react. I loved all of you too much to tell.”
Oliver absorbed the information, taking himself back to that time in his life, putting himself in Ellen’s shoes.
“Are you angry?” she asked softly, finally looking at him.
“No.” Curiously, he wasn’t angry. “You did what you thought best at the time.”
“I want you to know that Philip was very much loved by Fieldhurst. His father held him when he was just minutes old. Arthur walked the floor with him at night when no one else could get him to stop crying. He loved Philip like his own son, because he believed him to be his son.”
Oliver felt an intense jealousy of Fieldhurst that he had been there for that, and he felt an intense sadness that he had missed it all.
“You could have told me,” he said.
“What would you have done, knowing that Philip was your son, being raised by another man? Would you have been able to move on with your life? Marry? Have other children?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But that was my choice to make. And it’s not like I ever did move on and marry and have children.”
“Because of me?”
“No one ever measured up to you, Ellen. I was always comparing them to you.”
“Oh, Oliver.” She sighed. “What a mess we’ve made.”
“Not really a mess. A detour, maybe.”
“Will you ever forgive me?” she asked softly.
“There is nothing to forgive. I’m disappointed I missed out on so much of Philip’s life, but you are right. There was only one path you could take that would save everyone’s reputation.”
She turned her hand so it was palm up and squeezed his hand. “And where do we go from here? Does Philip lose his title?”
Oliver shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to him or Fieldhurst. In the eyes of the world, he is the Earl of Fieldhurst. Always.”
Deceiving an Earl Page 24