by Betina Krahn
“I kn-new him”—it tumbled out without much thought—“at school.”
With that, his legs began to wobble. She noticed and yanked his arm up and across her shoulders. “Don’t you dare fall,” she ordered irritably. “We had a terrible time getting you to bed.” A second later she clasped him around the waist and ushered him toward the doors.
“What is your name?” she demanded, breathing hard.
“M-Michael.” He managed to provide a reasonable half-truth, despite the way his attention was glued to the nubile young form against him.
Any other time, he might have been embarrassed to have to lean on a female for support, but this was no ordinary female, and right now he was getting light-headed and felt like he weighed a bloody . . .
* * *
The man weighed a ton, she thought as she struggled with him up the stairs. “I could use a little help, here, Michael.”
He moaned and threatened to sink—she had to finish getting him up the stairs or they would both take a nasty fall.
“No, no—stay awake.” She struggled to keep his half-naked body upright. “We have to get you into bed.”
By the time they reached the top of the main stairs, she knew she would never get him up another flight of steps to the bed waiting in the nursery. Where the devil were the servants? She called out for Dolly, Mazie, Deidre, Ned, and even Edgar . . . there was no response. Her patient was tottering determinedly toward the duke’s chambers—groaning “bed”—and there was only one course open.
She steered him toward the duke’s grand repose, and it was all she could do to get him close enough, quickly enough, for him to collapse onto the bed. Fortunately, he fell on his uninjured side. Breathing heavily, she rolled him onto his back and spotted fresh blood on the binding of his shoulder.
“Dang it. You’ve made it bleed again,” she said irritably.
“Water,” he croaked with a sandpapery rasp.
Muttering about headstrong fools, she poured water from a pitcher lurking behind the medicine bottles and lifted his head, ordering him to drink. He obeyed and downed the entire glass before melting back onto her arm and closing his eyes. She stood holding him for a moment, cradling his head, staring at his face and thinking of that voice. Deep, with a hint of a rasp. He claimed to be an old school chum of Ashton’s. Was he here for a reunion? A job? A handout?
It was then that she noticed the scar around his neck, paler than the rest of his sun-bronzed skin. She ran her fingers over it lightly. How on earth did an old school chum of Ashton’s acquire a scar like—
“Tickles,” he said thickly, startling her.
He had opened those piercing eyes partway and was staring at her. She jerked her arm from under his head, dropping it onto the pillow, and propped her fists on her waist, above her holstered guns.
“Just checking your health,” she said, her cheeks warming. “It appears you’ve had other injuries.”
“A few,” he said, eyeing her from beneath half-closed lids. “This is my second gunshot.”
“Really?” She sounded skeptical in her own ears as she looked over his bare chest, thinking that she hadn’t seen that sort of scar.
“Leg,” he said, pointing to his left. “Old sea battle.”
“And you managed to survive,” she concluded.
“Seems to be my fate, surviving.”
“The navy, then,” she said. “You served aboard a British ship?”
His half smile was tainted by pain. “Not exactly.”
“American?” She pressed for an answer, though it betrayed an unseemly interest in him. “Canadian?” He must have figured she would continue guessing through the list of the world’s naval forces, for he sighed.
“It wasn’t naval. Or voluntary.”
“Oh?” She scowled, trying to make sense of it.
“Shanghaied.”
“Ah.” She had heard of the press gangs that operated in port cities and weren’t picky about how they filled “recruitment” orders for able-bodied seamen. Her infamous appetite for reading had led her to a few seagoing memoirs that she had found shocking but fascinating.
“Food,” he said, meeting her gaze again and grabbing her hand. “Don’t let me starve to death.”
There was a hint of—desperation? teasing?—in his expression and a warmth in his touch that confused her. She was suddenly jittery. She pulled her hand back and his fell to the bed beside him. When she looked up, his eyes were closing and his lips were settling into a what might have been a grimace or a smile. Whatever it was, it sent a trickle of warmth through her.
This growing interest in him was not healthy, she told herself. Who knew what kind of man he was or what he was doing here? She scowled. She had to get him well enough to travel and send him on his way, pronto.
“You’d better heal quickly, friend-of-Ashton’s,” she said as she headed for the door, the stairs, and the kitchen. “Not even an old school chum should be sleeping in the duke’s bed.”
* * *
Arthur heard that last bit through a deepening haze and smiled groggily to himself. In the duke’s bed. He’d never had a chance to sleep in it when he was the duke. Uncle Bertram had occupied it throughout his tenure as guardian and long after Arthur came of age. His own room was down the hall. He couldn’t help wondering what had become of it and of the collection of butterflies and other insects he had amassed and displayed upstairs in his old schoolroom.
Fatigue and discomfort from the exertion combined to overwhelm him. His last disjointed thought as darkness claimed him was of Sarah Bumgarten’s arresting green eyes as she pointed a gun at him.
Chapter Four
“You have to sit up,” Sarah commanded the next morning. She had stacked pillows at the head of the bed and now urged him to move up and onto them while Young Ned drew back the drapes and opened the windows. “We’ve brought you some nourishment.”
“Food?” he managed to croak. She could have sworn she heard his stomach rumble.
Watching him struggle to reposition himself with one arm, she gave a “tsk” of annoyance and put her arms around his shoulders to help him. He turned his head toward the lock of hair that fell over her shoulder and inhaled. Slowly. Deeply.
Alarmed, she yanked her arms from him as if he had scalded her, and pushed her hair back behind her shoulder. She was definitely putting it up today, no matter how much time it took.
“I’m starved,” he uttered in a whisper that gave her a shiver.
Then his lidded eyes fastened on her and her breath caught. A second later, she blinked and turned away. He was either well enough for double entendres or she was imagining things.
He groaned as he lay back on the pillows, and she took a steadying breath and retrieved a bowl from the tray. Settling on the edge of the bed, she spooned some broth and held it out to him. He sniffed, then opened his mouth and a second later pushed up enough to peer into the bowl.
“Broth?” He was clearly taken aback.
“It’s beef and bone broth. You need simple nourishment so your body can begin to repair itself.”
“What I need is beef. Good, honest, British beef.” He took the bowl from her hands and tilted it up to drink it down in several gulps. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and thrust the empty bowl back at her. “Potatoes . . . sides of bacon, fried good and crisp . . . a pan of scones . . . jam . . . coffee . . .”
She sprang to her feet. “Well, you’re getting broth. Until you’re ready for something more solid.”
“I’m ready now,” he declared, scowling.
“Well, I’m the doctor and I say you’re not.” She crossed her arms.
“You’re a doctor?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
“Why do you think Thomas brought you here?”
“Where did you study?” he demanded, his color deepening. She could have sworn his chest broadened. She had to find the wretch a shirt, and soon.
“With Dr. Everett Millhorn. In London. And I
’ve read widely . . . all the latest journals and findings.” Then it struck her. “Where did you study?”
He gave a snort. “The school of hard knocks. Years of experience. And it’s taught me that patients need to eat when they’re ready, not on some nannyish regimen of sops and pablum.”
“Nannyish?” She was taken aback by his ungrateful attitude. How dare he criticize the quality of her care? She scowled and uncrossed her arms. “Very well. We’ll feed you normal fare . . . when you’re able to make it down the stairs to the dining room under your own steam.” She dropped the bowl on the nearby tray for a servant to collect, and headed for the door. “Luncheon is served at twelve o’clock sharp.”
* * *
The wall reverberated with the force of the door slamming behind her, and he stared at it for a moment before realizing that his heart was pounding. She acted like an imperious old dowager—laying down orders and conditions as if he were a servant instead of—what? What was he here? Besides comfortable and unwilling to abandon his sumptuous surroundings. He hadn’t slept in a bed this good since the maharaja’s palace in Bombay.
He looked around at the rich tapestry bed hangings and the velvet paper on the walls. Whoever refurbished the duke’s chamber had deep pockets and an artist’s eye. Wine-red backgrounds hosted delicate tracings of gold and green leaf motifs in the heavy satin hangings and drapes. The gold fringe, wine and gold pillows, forest green upholstery, and rich Persian carpet contained every jeweled hue known to humankind. On the walls freshly gilded frames surrounded portraits of the first Meridian to bear the title of duke, along with one of his lady wives and numerous children.
Curiosity drove him from the bed to peruse the paintings more closely. He didn’t recall them being so bright and vividly detailed—had they been cleaned somehow? But then, he was never really allowed in the chamber; he’d only gotten distant glimpses of his prime forebear.
He thought of the portraits of the other Meridians in the great hall and parlor. Most were hung so high it was hard to tell what the faces truly looked like. He shook his head. It had never occurred to him to have a portrait painted of himself—the sixth Duke of Meridian—to place among them. His thieving, penny-pinching uncles certainly would never have suggested it.
A hollow feeling grew in his chest as he realized that his short tenure as titled master of this house and these estates would scarcely rate a footnote in the annals of Britain’s nobility. He had produced nothing, introduced nothing, increased nothing . . . left nothing for posterity but a void. An empty title his brother now had to fill.
He steadied himself on the backs of chairs, a lowboy, and a writing desk as he made his way around the chamber and paused at an open door to peer at the marble bathing fixtures that had been installed in what was once an attached dressing room. Marble. Lots of it. There was a sense of permanence now, a subtle grandeur in this renewed heart of Betancourt. No doubt Daisy’s doing. The heiress he had courted and almost married. The first woman he had ever kissed. The one he traveled the world to forget.
Now he had come home to find her younger sister—the very image of Bumgarten energy and vitality—had taken up residence in the heart of his lost inheritance. He didn’t know whether to laugh at Fate’s wicked sense of humor or despair at its heartless jest.
He stood in the middle of the room, feeling out of touch and out of place . . . grappling for footing in this new and unexpected version of home.
How long he stood there, stuck in a quicksand of memory and regrets, he couldn’t later say. A thump at the door and the turn of the handle, startled him and set him staggering for the bed.
“Cursed beast—git—go away!” A rotund woman in servant gray, a mobcap, and an apron struggled to keep something from entering with her. She shut the door with a bang, turned, and spotted him. “Oh, sarr—ye dasn’t try to get up by yerself. Ye still got wickle-foot. Ye’ll be landin’ on yer nethers, like as not.”
He stared at her as if she spoke Chinese, but allowed her to bustle him back under the covers.
“Mazie, sarr.” She introduced herself and managed something approximating a curtsy. No one had curtsied to him in years.
“Mazie.” He nodded to her, thinking she hadn’t been here during his time as duke, and then looked to the door, which was rattling again. Something thumped against it and it sounded for all the world like claws were raking the wood. “What the devil is that?”
“Devil be right, sarr. That beast’s Old Scratch in disguise. Or his hellhound, sure as the sun rises.”
“A hell—?” He looked from her back to the door. “Oh, a dog. Big and gray, I suppose. And hers.”
Mazie knew just which “her” he referenced. “Daft over that beast, th’ duchess is. An’ he’d chew nails fer her. Ye should see the pair of ’em.” She abruptly changed course, squared her shoulders and smoothed her apron.
“I come to give ye a warshin’. Part o’ nursin’, she says. Keepin’ a body clean.” She shook her head as if it made little sense to her.
Between fending off the determined housemaid and making good his insistence that he could bathe himself, he all but forgot the noise at the door. Through his soreness and aches, he managed to wash most of himself and had to admit that he felt better for it. Then came a dose of “powders” mixed with water, which tasted slightly astringent and reassuringly medicinal. Afterward, he stretched out under the cover, ready for a rest, and smiled to himself. Lord, he could get used to this.
Mazie, who had retreated to a chair drawn up to the open window and dozed while he washed, finally roused herself to check on her mistress’s patient. Finding him nodding off, she picked up the water basin and toweling and headed for the door.
Her cry, the splash of water, and the crash of the china basin, brought him rudely awake . . . in time to see several blurry shapes streaking through the door that had finally been jarred open. He sat up with a start, and a spear of pain made him realize he had used his injured shoulder. His next thought was that he was being attacked by wolves.
A huge gray beast climbed the side of the bed and two smaller fiends launched themselves onto the bench at the foot of the bed and sprang at him from there. A fourth bounded up on the far side and came to stand over him, panting hot breath one moment, sniffing every exposed part of him the next.
“Out! Get away, get off the bed!” he growled, pushing one inquisitive muzzle after another away from him, only to have it return immediately to poke, sniff and—ye gods—lick.
He was in danger of being consumed, literally, by their curiosity when she came rushing through the door.
“What on earth?” She paused for a moment, taking in the broken basin, Mazie’s drenched apron, and the dogs all over her patient. Her eyes narrowed and she stalked to the bed with her hands on her waist . . . just above those blessed revolvers. The woman was wearing guns again.
The nosing and licking stopped. The dogs froze in place, watching her.
“These beasts belong to you?” he demanded irritably.
“They do.” She snapped her fingers in a summons, but the dogs remained standing on his stomach and lying across his legs, watching her. “They’re usually better behaved.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” He had never told such a lie in his life.
“Nero,” she said sharply and pointed to the floor beside her feet. The big lug dropped from the side of the bed and lumbered over to the place she had apparently assigned him. “Gwenny.” She pointed to Nero’s side and the small wire-haired dog jumped from the bed to take a seat by the giant Nero. Next was “Lancelot.” And when he hesitated, she pointed again and spoke his name in a lower register that carried unmistakable threat.
The hound lowered his head and climbed across Arthur’s feet to drop from the bed and take his place beside the others. Then she looked at the final miscreant, a spaniel of some sort, who showed no signs of moving. She pointed emphatically to the final place in the line of dogs. “Morgie,” she said, “now.” And the dog didn�
�t move.
“Morgana!” she barked, eyes hot with irritation. “Don’t make me come over there.”
If dogs could look insulted, this one did. She looked away, then back at Sarah, then at him. She gave his arm one last, defiant lick, then walked calmly up and over him to drop to the floor. The seat she assumed was farther from the others than expected, but technically she had obeyed.
“I regret the intrusion,” Sarah said, bracing for comment. When none came, she continued, “They’re just curious.” Then she pointed emphatically to the door. “Out.”
He watched the dogs, led by a chastened Nero, trail out of the room.
“Well, that was a shock,” he said, wondering at the control she exerted over them. He’d never seen the like. “I thought I was going to be eaten alive.”
“They prefer more tender meat,” she said archly, folding her arms. “Now that you’re awake, we should move you upstairs to the nursery.”
“I was just falling asleep when your pack pounced on me.” He couldn’t resist engaging her eyes. “I can’t move just yet.” He grimaced and touched his injured shoulder. “I need to regain some strength.”
She considered that for a moment, and then looked away.
“As I said, luncheon is at twelve.”
“There is just one problem,” he said. “Unless you dine regularly with half-naked men.” He threw back the covers to display his chest and bare stomach. “What have you done with my clothes?”
Her eyes crackled with angry lights and she folded her arms.
“Your shirt was ruined.” She turned away with a tightened mouth. Was that outraged modesty in her expression or an attempt at righteous scorn? “Fine. Stay where you are today. I’ll see you are left alone.”
She stalked for the door and motioned Mazie—who stood watching between her mistress and their patient—to continue cleaning up the mess on the floor. The maid nodded as Sarah sailed out, then with a soft whistle, bent to retrieve the broken china.
Moments later, the door closed behind Mazie, and Arthur took a deep breath and pulled the decadently soft covers back over him. He grinned as he recalled Sarah Bumgarten’s visceral reaction when he bared his body.