In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL)

by Maggie Robinson

  He had warned her. She covered her ears with her blankets, but it was no use. His agitation was rising, his voice ragged. Someone besides herself was bound to hear him, even though they had privacy at the end of this wing of the house.

  Louisa would have to wake him. Perhaps offer him a spot of medicinal brandy to soothe his nerves. He had nerves, no matter what he thought. There was brandy in the sitting room cabinet. They could build up the fire in there and talk till his night fevers passed.

  She plucked her satin robe from the foot of the bed and hurried into it, not pausing to put her discarded nightgown back on. Louisa flushed, thinking of her fantasy. It had been very diverting inserting Captain Cooper into her little ritual. Which was only fitting, as he was taking mythical Maximillian’s place. When she’d conjured up her “husband” as she sought her pleasure in the past, his physical details had been sketchy.

  She knew what he would look like now.

  She lit a taper from the fire and swept through her dressing room and bath. The shouts were muted now but somehow more desperate. Louisa rapped once on the thick oak door and turned the handle.

  The little room was a shambles. The bedside table had tipped over and her father’s books were scattered half open on the floor, along with all the bedclothes. The fire had gone cold, but she could see the captain thrashing on his narrow bed. She swallowed hard. He was as naked as she had been a few minutes ago.

  She straightened the table and closed its empty drawer, then set the candle into a brass holder she found on the carpet. “Captain Cooper. Charles. Wake up.”

  He gave no indication that he heard her, and how could he? Her words wavered between a croak and a whisper. Louisa took a step forward and placed a hand on his muscled arm. “Charles—”

  Oh Lord, a mistake. He pulled her down on top of him in a swift, violent embrace. Before she could gather her wits, Charles Cooper had flipped her on her back and rolled over on top of her, one of his broad hands perilously close to pressing all the air from her throat. Louisa’s fists flailed at his back. His body was hot and heavy against her, his manhood pressing against the bare skin her disarranged robe had exposed. She had never been in such a position of intimacy before—her previous encounters had lacked finesse. And a bed as well.

  “Captain Cooper! Wake up now! You are hurting me!” She didn’t dare to scream, couldn’t have, really.

  His eyes opened and he stared down at her without any recognition, not relaxing his hold an inch.

  “It’s all r-right. You were dreaming.”

  He was still. Hard and still, like a slab of granite that had toppled upon her. She couldn’t mistake the prod of his penis against her belly—it was becoming more granitelike as the seconds ticked by.

  “Charles?”

  He shook his head, like a spaniel emerging from the water. “Who are you?” His voice was rough, but there was fear behind those three words.

  “Louisa Stratton. We are at Rosemont, my home.”

  “Good Christ.” He released her and scrambled off the bed. My goodness but the man was beautiful, long and very lean, although there were red marks and divots on his skin. Battle wounds, she guessed. He bent to pick up a sheet to cover himself. It was a shame Louisa could not tell Kathleen about the very perfection of the man’s arse.

  He didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, gruff. His fingers were clumsily fastening the sheet low on his hips. It was all Louisa could do to ask him to leave it and come back to bed.

  “That’s quite all right. You weren’t yourself. And you did warn me there was difficulty at night.”

  “I did, didn’t I? And now you have all the proof you’d ever want. I’ll leave in the morning.”

  “No!” Louisa sat up, oblivious to the fact that her dressing gown covered very little of her at the moment. “You can’t go! We have a plan.”

  He collapsed in the chair next to the fireplace. There was no warmth there, and the man looked like he needed some to recover. He was shaking from cold—or something else. He stared at his feet, which were long and oddly appealing in their nakedness. Much like the rest of him.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you, but you were crying out. Why don’t we go into the sitting room? Have something to drink. We’ve both had a shock.”

  “Don’t pity me. I can’t bear it.”

  “I’m not pitying you. One might think you were very clever—you got me in your bed, did you not, after I expressly forbid such familiarity. Why, you might have ravished me and no one would be the wiser.” She pulled the folds of her robe tighter.

  Charles’s lip curled. “I could claim I was exercising my rights.”

  “You know perfectly well you have no rights. Come. Let’s go where it’s warm. Your room is like an icehouse.”

  How could he have thrown the covers on the floor? Louisa swore she could see her own breath.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “At least let’s do something about the fire in here then. I’ll fetch the brandy.” She slid off the bed and stood up, a little shaky herself.

  He looked up. “Didn’t Mrs. Evensong tell you about my problem?”

  “I only know of your bad dreams, and you told me about them.”

  “I drink, Miss Stratton. As much and as often as I can. I promised her I would try to do this job sober. I wouldn’t be plying me with brandy if I were you. There isn’t enough in the house for me once I get started again, and I might not remember I’m supposed to be a gentleman. Next time you come in the room in the middle of the night, I really might ravish you.”

  “Oh.” Oh. Charles Cooper was no sort of white knight at all. “Then what can I do? Shall I ring for tea?”

  “Do whatever you want. You’re my employer, after all.”

  He looked so bleak and miserable in the dim room, the candle guttering with each draft of wind from the uncaulked windows. Louisa would see to getting that fixed.

  Someone would still be up in the house—Grace prided herself on round-the-clock service. And if she had to, Louisa could manage herself. She’d spent most of her lonely childhood in the kitchens with the servants. “I’ll rustle up a tea tray. You tend to the fire. Or do you want me to?”

  “There are some things I can still do myself, Miss Stratton. But you’re safe from me. Bedding a woman is not one of them.”

  Chapter

  12

  Charles opened the window wider to clear his head. He estimated he was up high enough in the house so if he threw himself out the rattling window, he’d fall to his death. That wouldn’t do much for Louisa’s reputation, but it was a tempting thought nonetheless. He was sick of being sick, driven mad with dreams of carnage and his complicity in it.

  After the injury to his eye, he’d been sent to one of the concentration camps to “tidy” it before it was inspected by members of the do-gooders of the Fawcett Commission. Word had spread that something was seriously amiss in Kitchener’s army, finally reaching Parliament and the public. Somehow he and his ragtag team were supposed to convince the visitors that the brutal conditions of the Boer women and children were not as bad as initially reported.

  No. They had been worse. A full quarter of the inmates under his brief tenure died. The simplest hygiene was nonexistent. His own men died as well—more soldiers were felled to disease than battle. Charles had felt as though he was swimming against an impossibly polluted tide, where death by drowning would be a welcome thing.

  The clean sea beyond the ledge outside Rosemont beckoned. But again, he couldn’t do that to Louisa. What sort of husband sought to end his life when a new one was just beginning? He felt protective of her in this gilded snake pit, even if their relationship was a sham.

  He shuffled to the chair and sat down. He shouldn’t sit here wrapped up in his sheet like a wrinkled Roman emperor. Louisa would return soon with her bloody tea and sympathy and
he would have to pretend to be civilized. He’d already behaved like a beast, crushing her under him before he knew who she was.

  On the whole, she’d been remarkably calm about it. And naked and soft under that pink silk robe. They had been flesh to flesh, like a true husband and wife, but he’d awakened before he could do too much damage. Not that he was capable anymore—he’d tried a time or two after he got back on British soil. His cock had denied him when presented with a real live lady, not that the women he’d sought comfort with could be described as such. Thank God his hand still worked on those very rare occasions his mind cooperated with his need.

  Really, what did he have to live for? He couldn’t fuck, did not want to fight ever again. He was done, washed up at twenty-seven. At least he’d go out in a lark as Maximillian Norwich.

  Charles was just rising from the chair when he heard the click of the door to the hall opening behind him. Goodness, service in the old ancestral pile was spectacular. She’d left only a short while ago. He settled back in the chair and waited for the tea and some of Louisa’s bracing conversation.

  What he got instead came as a surprise before the dim room darkened completely.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Louisa struggled up one of the narrow back stairs with a tea tray. The gleaming white kitchen had been scrubbed clean and was completely deserted—unusual, but then the kitchen staff had worked hard for her homecoming dinner party and deserved the respite. The stove had been slow to relight and her favorite tea hard to find—Cook had put it in a different canister from a year ago. Louisa still thought a drop of brandy in the tea might not go amiss. If the captain did not want to join her out of moral principle, that was all right.

  She’d seen enough red bulbous noses, broken veins, and paunches on the Continent. Not all Frenchmen and Austrians and Italians were handsome and debonair. But Charles Cooper did not have the look of a souse. If anything, he was too lean and ascetic. The hair on his head was shorn as any monk’s, and he rarely smiled. There was something very grave about his demeanor that intrigued her.

  And she didn’t believe he had no interest in sex. Even if he’d been more or less unconscious when he’d attacked her, his anger had rapidly turned to arousal. She’d seen the paintings and the statues. Had unfortunately seen Sir Richard. Charles Cooper would fit right in to any museum, his lengthening manhood an improvement over those mysteriously attached fig leaves, at least from an educational perspective.

  Louisa rounded the last corner that led to their suite. The captain’s bedroom door was open, but no spill of light fell on the carpet. Had he left to go in search of her? Did the foolish man not start a fire first? She was cold herself now in her flimsy robe and couldn’t wait to pour herself a cup of tea.

  “Here we go, Maximillian,” she said, pausing in the doorway, as if someone might be around to hear her. “Max?”

  A gust of air blasted from an open window straight across the little room. The candle she’d left had gone out, but she could see the bed was empty save for two plump pillows. He must have gone to the sitting room after all. Louisa was tired of balancing the tray and decided to set it on the bed so she wouldn’t have to struggle with closed doors. It was then she heard the faintest rasp coming from the floor.

  A prickle of unease took hold of her. She bumped up against the club chair that was no longer angled next to the hearth. It was so damn dark in the room, she was afraid she’d trip. There had been books all over the floor, so she scuttled carefully around the chair. “M-Max?”

  A groan. Then her bare foot encountered ice-cold flesh and she gave a little shriek. The captain was lying facedown on the floor in front of the fireplace, still wrapped in his temporary toga. Louisa sank to her knees. Her hand hovered over a shoulder, but she was afraid to touch him after last time. “Charles,” she whispered.

  He couldn’t be asleep in this extraordinary position—no one liked sleeping on the floor when a bed was so handy, did they? Though perhaps his soldiering had inured him to discomfort and he actually preferred some hard surface. How odd it would be for the maidservants to find him like this when they lit his fire in the mornings.

  She would leave him sprawled out, half on the carpet, half on the hearth tile, but she could shut the window—the poor man would be covered in frost by morning if she didn’t. He might catch his death, and it was much too soon to rid herself of Maximillian Norwich.

  Besides, Louisa had never seen a real dead body and had no interest whatsoever in doing so. It was one thing to kill off Max in concept; to do the actual thing to poor Captain Cooper seemed very unsporting.

  She rose to tiptoe around him, but his hand shot out and clamped her ankle, pulling her down to his level in an exceedingly graceless tumble. Louisa felt rather like a loaf of braided bread, all twisted around herself. They were eye to eye now, although he hadn’t moved except to blink once as he realized whom he held captive. The bristly carpet nap pressed into her cheek and his hand was like an iron cuff on her leg.

  “Not again. Really, Captain, this has got to—”

  “Shut. Up. Is there anyone else here?”

  “Of course there’s no one else here! I had to make the tea myself. It’s on the bed if you want some. I’ll be happy to pour if you’d only let me up. What peculiar habits you have, lying on the floor like a mastiff. This is most unpleasant.”

  They were so close she could see his lips quirk in the gloom. “I daresay. Did you hit me, Louisa?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Hit me. With a brick or a shovel or something equally ‘unpleasant,’ as you might say. Whatever it was, it knocked me off my chair. I only just woke up.”

  She squirmed under his hand, but he held her fast. “I—I—of course I didn’t do any such thing! How could you think it of me?”

  “Well, you did tell me on the train coming down here that eventually Maximillian Norwich had to die. I thought you might be getting an early start.”

  “I’m not really going to kill you,” Louisa huffed. “I’m going to kill an imaginary man. And not with a shovel or a brick. He’ll have a death befitting his station, something dignified.” She hadn’t decided Maximillian’s denouement yet, except to rule out train wrecks, mountain climbing, and flower picking. Now that she’d met Charles Cooper, it was impossible that a mere thorn could kill him.

  He relaxed his grip, but only just. “Very well. I suppose I’ll have to believe you.”

  “Of course you do! I never lie!”

  He said nothing, but the silence spoke volumes. Louisa supposed he had a point. What was all of this between them but one gigantic lie? “Someone really hit you?”

  “Yes. I think I may need some nursing. How are you at the sight of blood?”

  Blood? Was he lying there bleeding? It was too dark to tell. “Do get up!” Oh, what if he couldn’t? “I mean, can you get up?”

  He grunted. “I can try. You’d best light some lamps.”

  He released her ankle and she scrambled up. The match safe had fallen to the floor with the books, but she found it and lit the wick of the lamp on the fireside table. Charles was still prone on the floor, his short dark hair encrusted with something darker. “Oh my God.”

  “While I’m sure prayer can be effective, I’d prefer some sticking plaster,” he grumbled, hauling himself up on his haunches. He swayed and caught himself on the chair.

  “Oh yes! Of course. There must be something in the bathroom. Stay right there.”

  “Not going out dancing.” He slumped against the chair. “Dizzy.”

  “I’ll send for Dr. Fentress.”

  “No!” He winced at the sound of his own voice. “No. No doctors. I’ll be fine. Give me a cup of that tea before you go.”

  Louisa poured a cup with shaking hands. “It’s probably gone cold by now.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He took a loud slurp, something Max
imillian Norwich would never do even if he had been hit with a brick or a shovel. Maximillian did all things in moderation.

  Except in the bedroom. There, he was fiendishly artful, a sleek animal with endless, inventive sensual appetites.

  “It’s good. Thank you.”

  Louisa hesitated, feeling a swell of some unidentified emotion as she stood over him. The sheet was still mostly around his hips, and his torso was dusky in the lamplight. This was exactly how she pictured imaginary Maximillian, and Louisa wanted to examine real Charles further. But the poor man was bleeding, for heaven’s sake. “I’ll get the bandages. And some carbolic.”

  He made a face but said nothing, and she stepped into their shared bathing chamber. It was lit by a flickering glass lamp in case of nocturnal need. Louisa turned the wick up and began to methodically search through the drawers of the long dresser set under the windows. She found bars of soap and sponges, embroidered hand towels, face cream, balls of cotton. It wasn’t till she reached the bottom drawer that she found a first aid kit with bandages and scissors and labeled brown bottles. She blessed the staff for their attention to detail, for everything in the dresser was new and neatly arranged. Louisa filled a small basin with warm water and pulled some squares of flannel from the open shelves near the tub.

  “Ah. Florence.” Charles Cooper gave her a lopsided grin from the chair. He’d gotten himself back up and was fiddling with the draping around his waist. A drip of blood crept down his neck.

  “This is just awful,” she said as she dumped her equipment on the fireside table. “Who would do such a thing to you?”

  “Any one of the dinner guests. They struck me as a rum lot,” he said, more cheerful than he had a right to be.

  “They’ve all gone home. It’s just the family left.”

  “Even worse, you must agree.”

  “Don’t tease, Charles. Someone at Rosemont tried to kill you!” She dabbed his head with the wet washrag and heard his swift intake of breath.