To Protect An Heiress (Zebra Historical Romance)

by Adrienne Basso

  There were no other female senior members of the staff. Perhaps Meredith’s maid could be of help, but she barely knew Mrs. Pritcher. “Since I insist you do not go alone, Lady Meredith and I shall escort you to your sister’s home, as soon as you are composed and feel ready to make the journey.”

  Meredith lifted startled eyebrows. Trevor’s lips curled. It was obvious poor Mrs. Pritcher needed their assistance. Was it really so impossible to imagine he would offer to help? Did she think him a complete monster, devoid of all feelings of decency?

  “I could never impose on your kindness, my lord,” Mrs. Pritcher said as she blinked at him though watery eyes.

  “ ’Tis hardly an imposition,” Trevor said. “As Lady Meredith said, your sister needs you. Though it will be difficult trying to manage the household for the next few days without your expert guidance, I feel certain the staff will do their best.”

  “A few days?” The housekeeper’s eyes widened. “What will the duke say if I am gone for so long?”

  “You will leave the duke to me,” Trevor declared firmly. “Go and pack your satchel. I shall have the coach brought round to the front.”

  Meredith helped the housekeeper gain her feet. Mrs. Pritcher dropped a respectful curtsy to him and then shuffled away, the serving maids bustling in her wake. Trevor sank down in a chair and allowed a footman to serve him breakfast and hot coffee. As he began eating, he noticed Meredith take the seat to his left.

  “You were very kind toward Mrs. Pritcher,” Meredith said. “Thank you.”

  Trevor raised his head. “You seemed rather surprised by my actions at first.”

  “Well, it is a bit unorthodox for a man of your rank and position to bother with the problems of a servant.”

  “Mrs. Pritcher has taken care of my family for over twenty-five years. She deserves our consideration at such a desperate time.”

  “I could not agree more.”

  Trevor caught Meredith’s eye, and a moment of silent understanding passed between them. He could almost feel her admiration and regard for him, her pride in his decision. The sounds of the footman moving about the dining room faded, and for just an instant nothing existed except the two of them, sharing this moment together.

  He remembered how she had felt in his arms last night, so giving and sweet, so incredibly hot and willing—the taste of her mouth and tongue, the hardness of her nipples, the slick dew of excitement that soaked his fingers as he rubbed her feminine softness.

  His loins tightened, but Trevor steeled himself against the tempest of desire rising through him. Though he knew she could never really understand it, for he barely understood it himself, the respect he felt for her overruled his sexual drive.

  Since he felt incapable of providing her with the level of love and commitment he knew she craved, and, yes, so richly deserved, he would not exploit her natural sensuality.

  Though by all the saints in heaven, she was temptation beyond imagining.

  “More coffee, my lord?”

  Reality returned in a rush. Trevor tapped the edge of his cup and the footman obediently poured.

  Mrs. Pritcher’s sister lived in the northern section of London, in a respectable middle-class neighborhood of clerks and tradesmen of steady, modest means. Though the housekeeper did an admirable job of keeping her composure during the short carriage ride, she became visibly emotional when they arrived at their destination.

  “I think it would be best if I accompany her to the door,” Meredith said as she scrambled out of the carriage. “To make certain she is all right.”

  “I might as well come also,” Trevor decided. “I can convey our condolences to the family.”

  Meredith nodded. Flanked on each side by her noble employers, Mrs. Pritcher made the short walk to the front door. The woman who promptly answered their knock bore little resemblance to the housekeeper, but her hysterical outburst and subsequent embrace left little doubt as to her identity. Somehow, amid the weeping and sobbing, Meredith became swept up by the two sisters and was whisked off to a room toward the back of the small house.

  Trevor soon found himself standing alone in the cramped foyer. He was about to return to the carriage and wait for his wife when a young voice called out.

  “Who are you?”

  The marquess looked down and found a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes staring up at him. They belonged to a young lad of perhaps ten or eleven years old, who must have slipped into the space during all the hysterical commotion. Deciding it would be best to keep his answers simple, Trevor replied, “I came with your aunt.”

  The boy took a step closer. He was dressed in what was most likely his Sunday best, a pair of black knickers, white stockings, cumbersome shoes, and a white shirt. A black armband threatened to fall below his elbow and he had a smudge of dirt on the cuff of his left sleeve.

  “The buttons on your coat are very fancy. Are you the duke?”

  Trevor smiled. “No.”

  The child seemed disappointed by the answer. He hung his head and scuffed the tip of his shoe against the wooden floor. “My sister’s dead.”

  That calm, matter-of-fact announcement startled Trevor, but then he realized it must be the way of children. To treat something they did not truly understand with commonplace normalcy.

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  The child shrugged. “Mum just keeps crying and crying. Buckets full of tears.” He frowned, then sighed. “Didn’t know that a body had that many tears. Wanna see her?”

  “Your mother? No, I believe I’ll wait here. Better still, I’ll wait in my carriage. Kindly tell Lady Mer—ah, the lady I came with where I am.”

  “I wasn’t asking you to see Mum,” the child said in an exasperated voice. “I was asking if you wanted to see Betsy. She’s laid out in the drawing room in her best dress, the one she and Mum made last year with the pink flowers embroidered all over it.”

  The marquess had difficulty hiding his shock. The body. The lad was asking if he wanted to view the deceased. What he initially thought was going to be a brief stop now had the mark of a prolonged visit. “I am not sure it is proper. Perhaps we should wait for your mother.”

  “All she’ll do is start crying again. Come on.”

  The lad grabbed Trevor’s hand and tugged. Reluctantly the marquess ascended the stairs to the drawing room. The parlor faced the street, and even the heavy drapes could not completely muffle the bustling sounds of activity outside.

  The sofa had been pushed to one side to make room for the trestles that held the coffin. It was a simple pine box, flanked on each side by unlit candles.

  “She looks like she’s sleeping,” the child whispered. He scrambled up on a chair and leaned over the open coffin.“But Mum says she’ll never wake up again.” Curious, the marquess approached. He gave a cursory glance inside, only enough to catch a fleeting impression of pale white skin and golden hair. Though the look had been brief, Trevor was struck by how young and frail Betsy appeared, hardly older than the boy who gazed at her with such rapt fascination.

  “She was very pretty,” Trevor commented.

  The child nodded. “Mum tied the scarf around her neck real careful. To hide the ugliness.”

  Puzzled, Trevor looked again inside the coffin and noticed a white scarf wrapped around the young woman’s neck. For modesty’s sake? But the rounded neckline of the gown she wore rode high on the collarbone. The boy reached down and gently tugged at the carefully wound fabric.

  “See,” he whispered solemnly. “It’s ugly.”

  Trevor gasped. Vivid marks of deep blue and purple marred the fragile paleness of Betsy’s lovely long neck.

  The air tightened around the marquess’s lungs. He had seen bruises almost identical to these—on Lavinia the day of her burial. Had this poor young girl also met with a terrible accident?

  “What happened to Betsy?” he asked.

  “I’m not supposed to know,” the boy confided. “But I heard Da talking this morning. Be
tsy didn’t come home from work yesterday. We waited and waited until supper got cold. Da got mad and said he never should have allowed her to work in the glove shop in the first place and he was going to make her quit. Then he told us to eat our dinner.

  “But even after we were done and the dishes were put away she still didn’t come home. It was real dark outside and Mum said she was scared, so Da went to look for Betsy. He came home crying. There were a bunch of men with him. They were carrying her body. They didn’t have a cart with them and Da wouldn’t leave Betsy, not even for a minute.

  “They found her in the alley, right near the shop where she worked. One of the men said she had been strangled. And another man said they had found two other girls last month the same way as Betsy, only outside of different shops. Guess strangled means you hurt your neck real bad, right?”

  Every nerve in Trevor’s body began to quiver. Strangled? He looked again at the marks on Betsy’s neck, then forced his mind to remember Lavinia. Time, shock, and sorrow had dulled much in his brain, but the memory of his beloved in death was a sight he saw as clearly as though it were yesterday.

  Vivid lines of dark purple streaking across the creamy whiteness of Lavinia’s elegant female neck that rested at an unnatural angle: the result of a broken neck. Deliberately done? By whom?

  “Harold? Harold? Where are you? Come down at once and say hello to your auntie.”

  Harold raised his head in alarm. “My Mum’s calling me.”

  “Then we had best go downstairs and see her,” Trevor said calmly.

  Thoughts of the pitiful corpse resting in the drawing room began to fade slowly from his mind as the marquess descended the staircase. He gave the appropriate condolences to the grieving family, which now included Betsy’s father, then escorted Meredith out to their coach.

  The ride began in a strained quiet, broken only by the crunching of the carriage wheels.

  “Did Mrs. Pritcher or her sister say anything about how Betsy died?” Trevor asked.

  “No. Considering how young she was, I merely assumed it was an illness. Consumption, most likely. Why do you ask?”

  “No particular reason.”

  Yet Trevor’s mind could not relinquish the picture it carried of Betsy’s bruised neck. The stunning reality of violence that had been visited upon her person was a brutal reminder of the fragility of human life. Had she indeed been murdered—strangled, as young Harold suggested?

  It was almost too horrible to conceive of such a frightening end for an innocent young woman. The grief visited upon the family was doubly understandable under these circumstances.

  And what of the striking similarity of these bruises to Lavinia’s? In the anguish and grief over his wife’s death nearly eight years ago, had he somehow missed an important clue? Was it even possible to consider that Lavinia’s sudden, shocking death had not been an accident, but rather a deliberate act of murder?

  Yet perhaps the most chilling aspect was young Harold’s mention of two other women who had recently come to a similar end. If there were truly a connection between the deaths of these young shop girls, would more now follow?

  “John Coachman wishes to know if you want to return to the house or if you prefer to be dropped at your club.” Meredith’s gentle voice cut through the marquess’s musings.

  “I have no specific plans for the day.” Trevor frowned. “Is there anywhere you wish to go? Bond Street, perhaps, for some shopping?”

  Meredith sighed. “After the morning we have had, I am hardly in the mood for something as frivolous as shopping.”

  Trevor rapped on the roof and the coach slowed. He lowered the window and bellowed up to the driver, “Take us out to the park. Her ladyship and I would enjoy a slow turn around the paths.” Trevor glanced over at Meredith. “Unless you object?”

  “This is a most unfashionably early hour to be driving in the park, my lord.”

  “You should know by now that I never like to follow the dictates of fashion.” Trevor watched his wife for a moment. “Therefore I would very much appreciate if you would please address me by my Christian name. You are so formal at times I half expect you to start curtsying when I enter a room.”

  Meredith’s eyes flared and Trevor felt a jolt of satisfaction. Good. At least he had managed to wedge a crack in her infernal composure. It was starting to get on his nerves.

  “I was under the impression you preferred formality between us. Your behavior, Trevor, since our marriage has certainly told me you wish to have as little to do with me as possible. I was merely following your wishes.”

  “You have rarely, if ever, followed the dictates of any man,” the marquess replied. “You do it to annoy me. Or garner my attention?”

  She almost leaped across the coach in protest. “Balderdash! I own that I can be stubborn and foolhardy at times, but I would never stoop to such unsavory tactics and push myself on a man who does not want me. You proved that point most admirably last night in your bedchamber.”

  “I would like to explain about last night, Meredith.”

  “That is hardly necessary.” Her eyes became slits of blue outrage. “You did not wish me in your bed. I understood that very clearly.”

  “You were mistaken.”

  She shook her head and gazed steadily into his face. “Since our marriage you have treated me with nothing but apathy and disinterest. Or do you deny you have shown more deference to the servants than to me?”

  “I had my reasons,” he said.

  She looked caught off guard by his admission. “They must be fascinating.”

  Trevor smiled wryly. Even while he was trying to distance himself from her, his admiration for her spirit and strength grew. Most women had been taught from the cradle to placate a man. Apparently this was a lesson Meredith never took to, for she showed not a bit of apprehension at challenging him.

  It only furthered his opinion that she deserved far more than he could give her. It was time for him to be blunt.

  “Sex between a man and a woman can often be a physical release for one or both of them. Nothing more. It is not, as the poets suggest, woven together in an unbreakable bond with love.”

  Meredith had ceased squirming in her seat and was now regarding him with a look akin to amazement. Encouraged, Trevor continued.

  “And yet there is a sort of madness connected with sexual desire and fulfillment that can lead a person to forget everything that matters, everything they hold dear within themselves. They reach a point where they would say anything, do anything, risk anything to please and pleasure their partner.”

  “Is that not love?”

  “No,” he answered vehemently. “Many often confuse it with love, and therein lies the tragedy. This sexual obsession is a momentary flash. It burns fierce and bright and menacingly hot and then fades and fizzles just as quickly, leaving behind hurt feelings, anguish, even heartbreak for one partner.”

  “Me?” she whispered.

  “I fear so,” he replied, though in the back of his mind the voice of truth shouted, Liar. You are just as susceptible to this heartbreak as she.

  “If you find I have been distant and cautious these last weeks, ’tis because I fear if we let passion rule, you and I will find ourselves in this hopeless situation.”

  “If you knew this to be the predicament, why did you marry me?” she asked.

  “I was an idiot, blinded by some primitive need to bend you to my will,” he said. “Selfishly, I did not recognize the truth of our situation until it was too late.”

  She sagged against the seat, her brow furrowed. She was staring at him intently, but her gaze seemed unfocused. “Are we beyond all hope, Trevor?”

  He felt a trickle of shame at the sad confusion that laced her tone. “Now that you are aware of the consequences, perhaps we can eventually resume marital relations. But you must fully understand that all I can offer you is physical pleasure. Nothing more.”

  “Is more necessary?”

  “It should be
for a wife.”

  She flinched. “I had no idea you were such an incurable romantic. I thought most men felt exactly the opposite when it came to marriage, expecting nothing more than a woman of breeding, civilized conversation, and children. Good looks would be a plus, but hardly a requirement. And passion? Is that even a consideration between a man and his wife?”

  “’Tis your passionate nature that brings us to this juncture,” Trevor said. “It flows so easily from you, and I am merely a man, struggling to resist your allure.”

  “I am your wife. Why must you resist me?”

  “I thought you would want more between us than rough, hard, meaningless sex.”

  He thought he might have finally succeeded in shocking her. She looked as though she was about to roar with fury.

  “Is that what you are offering me?” she inquired with a chilly smile.

  “Is that what you are asking of me?”

  “You arrogant cur. I am not a complete ninny. I did not expect our union to be without its challenges. I admit I have been distressed to learn how very little you care about me. Despite what you may think, I have long accepted you would fail to love me. Ever. But it goes beyond that. Can you not be truthful with yourself? Apparently you do not even like me.”

  “Just the opposite is true. I like you very much. Far too much.”

  Irritation flashed over her lovely features. “You have a most peculiar way of showing this regard.”

  “In lieu of true affection, would you prefer I seduce you with passion?” He kept his voice reasonable, hoping to emphasize his sincerity. “Forgive me, but I know that is not enough. You deserve better than what I can give you.”

  “Ahh, but we seldom get what we deserve in life, do we, Trevor?” He felt a warm caress of air as she blew out her breath. Meredith’s foot began tapping an impatient rhythm, and her expression became pensive. “You have overlooked the obvious. There are practical reasons for having marital relations.”

  “Are you referring to children? You never mentioned them before.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully, trying to imagine her slender form swollen with his babe. The notion brought on a tender, pleasant feeling. “Do you have an overwhelming desire to be a mother?”