Chasing the Heiress

by Rachael Miles

  Below, in the carriage yard, she could hear men’s voices, demanding entrance. She looked for a place to hide. She turned the lamp down low. Perhaps they wouldn’t search the room of a sick lord. Perhaps she could hide under the bed, or slip into the drawing room, then into the next bedroom while they searched for her.

  He was sound asleep. She’d given him more laudanum when he’d awakened last, wanting to give his body more time to heal.

  After their days of games, she had intended to ask him for protection, an officer’s daughter to an officer. But after their kiss in the garden, she needed to reconsider if she would propose it. Now, even if she wished to ask him, he would not awaken in time.

  “Down here, down here.” She could hear Josiah’s voice sounding conciliatory and strained. The sounds of footsteps grew closer.

  She moved to the adjoining door. She put her hand on the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. Stuck or locked. She was trapped. Her heart pounded hard. Without thinking, she moved back to her chair, as if being near to Colin could protect her.

  The door to the hall opened, and Josiah entered with two lamps, followed by a tall man with dark hair. Not her cousin, nor Ox, nor any of the men she had seen in the stable yard asking questions. Perhaps she might still be safe.

  “Lucy, trim that lamp. The duke is here to see his brother.” Josiah placed his two lamps in the corners by the door and on the other side of the bed. With the lamp at her side fully aglow, the light in the small room was almost sufficient. Her relief made her almost faint, and she clenched the back of the chair for stability.

  Behind the dark-haired man stood a slender woman with nut-brown hair and another fair-haired man farther back. The family resemblance between the duke and Colin was unmistakable.

  Forster sat on the side of the bed and called to Colin. He seemed unsettled to see his brother so wan in the light of the lamps. The shadows from the placement of the lamps accentuated the hollows in Colin’s cheeks.

  “Where is the surgeon? When was he last here?” Forster demanded, his gaze never leaving his brother’s face. He touched Colin’s arm, then his forehead, gently. He let his hand rest at the center of Colin’s chest above his heart.

  Josiah looked at Lucy, hands out to his side, palms up, shoulders raised momentarily, then lowered. A gesture of helplessness.

  “Your brother’s fever broke four days ago, and he has been improving steadily.” She pitched her voice to be reassuring but firm. “But today he tore open one of his wounds. He is sleeping so heavily only because I gave him laudanum some hours ago.”

  “You are acting on the surgeon’s orders?” Forster regarded her, noting her servant’s wool and dismissing her in a glance.

  “The surgeon would have only bled your brother.” She folded her hands behind her back and straightened her spine. “By the time your brother arrived, he had already lost so much blood that I thought further bleeding was unnecessary.”

  “You thought?” Forster stood, using his height and natural authority to cow her. “Who are you?”

  “She’s Lucy, Your Grace. The scullery maid,” Josiah answered helpfully.

  “The scullery maid?” Forster turned his glare on Josiah. “You listened to a scullery maid rather than call the local surgeon?”

  Josiah was a kind man, unused to opposing his highborn guests. He looked at Lucy for help.

  “You, girl, get the surgeon now. And do not return,” Forster commanded. “I will not have my brother under a scullery maid’s care.”

  “No.” Without thinking, she stepped forward.

  “No? No!” Forster growled, raising up slightly on the balls of his feet. “Do you not know who I am?”

  Lucy raised her chin and stood her ground, feeling the surge to fight in her stomach and heart. “You are a man who loves his brother. And you are afraid for him. But he will be well. He merely needs to sleep for another couple of hours. I promise.”

  The slender woman with nut-brown hair came to his side and placed her hand on his elbow, but she spoke directly to Lucy. “What have you done for him?”

  Lucy described her methods, how often she had given him laudanum, and each of his symptoms since his gunshot.

  “And you believe, even at this point, this surgeon will only bleed him?” the woman asked gently.

  “Yes, my lady.” Lucy held the gaze of the woman’s kind grey eyes. “I do.”

  “Then, Forster, I believe we should give your brother’s nurse a couple of hours to prove if her treatment is good.” She reached down to feel Colin’s head. “He is not hot, and he seems to be sleeping soundly.”

  “Only because he has been drugged, Sophia.” Forster spoke with a set jaw.

  “Aidan.” The grey-eyed woman looked into Forster’s eyes, but said nothing more. Lucy watched the unspoken argument going on between them.

  It wasn’t clear who had won until Forster turned to Lucy coldly. “I give you until tomorrow morning before we call the surgeon. He must show improvement by then. However, if my brother dies as a result of this delay, I will have you arrested on charges of murder.” He paused. “Are you so confident that he is well that you wish to take such a risk?”

  “If you promise not to call the surgeon, I will take the risk, yes.” She kept her head held high. She had won or, at least, won Colin another day. She looked back at her patient, still sleeping sounding, and prayed one more day would be enough.

  “But I will not have you near him,” Forster decreed, turning to Josiah. “Innkeeper, I want this servant locked in her room until we see if my brother will recover. Seth, accompany them. Lock her in and take the key.”

  The blond man at the back of the room came forward, “Come along, miss.” He put his hand on her arm and led her to the door.

  In the hall, he pulled the door closed behind them, then dropped her arm. “Besides, the innkeeper’s wife says you are in need of sleep yourself. Forster will come round. Once Colin awakens, Forster will be pleased you saved him.”

  “Please.” She stopped walking and looked directly into his eyes. Green eyes, not blue like Colin’s. “Keep the duke from calling the surgeon. He has lost a great many more patients than he has saved.”

  “He might call for the surgeon, but I promise: I will not allow any bleeding.” Seth examined her face, then smiled. “But you must also promise me, if I stay with my brother, you will go to sleep.”

  “If you will stay with him.” Her eyes felt wet, both from the fight to protect Colin and from his brother Seth’s kindness. She turned away before Seth could notice, and they followed Josiah from the wing, across the courtyard, and up to her room. At the door to her room, Josiah took out the key and handed it to her blond ally, then retreated back down the stairs.

  Lucy walked into her room and sat on her bed. Seth leaned his head in. “Besides, Lady Wilmot is on your side. My brother may distrust you, but he will do as she wishes.”

  Then he was gone, and she heard the key turn and lock. She lay on the bed to consider her possibilities, but she was asleep before Seth had put the key in his pocket.

  Chapter Five

  The next afternoon, Colin awoke to his brother Seth lounging in the corner at the table, eating a meal that smelled wonderful. He tried to sit up, but his head and side disagreed.

  “Why are you here?” Colin growled.

  Seth looked up, fork halfway to his mouth. “Ah, the dead awakens. How do you feel?”

  Colin slowly tested his various limbs, tensing then releasing muscles in his legs and arms. His body felt heavy, sore. So much wearier than it had before his ill-advised bowling match. “Like I’ve been run through with a bayonet or a bullet.”

  “That’s the sum of it.” Seth cut another bite of pie, then gestured with the empty fork. “Except for the raging duke fighting with your nursemaid as you slept.”

  Colin remembered Lucy’s gentle hands cool on his brow. “Where is she?”

  “In her room. Aidan refused to let her near you once he arrived. Only family. T
hus me.” He stood and stretched. “I should call him; he’s been beside himself.” Then his expression turned serious. “He is going to hate admitting she was right.”

  “What do you mean?” Keeping his head still, Colin pushed himself up a bit onto his pillows, then up a bit more, slowly moving himself to a partially seated position.

  “It took three days for Fletcher’s letter to reach us. You know that Fletcher doesn’t like words in the best of times, and when he’s distressed, his notes become cryptic. ‘Brother shot. Come to Grey Goose Inn, Ellesmere Road north of Shrewsbury.’”

  “How long did it take Aidan to determine the shot brother was me?”

  “Since I was at the estate and Fletcher only travels with you or me, it was an easy process of elimination. But the ambiguity made Aidan cross. I don’t think he slept in the fourteen hours it took us to reach you. Then when we arrived, you were unconscious, the surgeon had never been called, and the scullery maid was playing physician.” Seth moved to Colin’s side, helping him sit upright.

  “She was in the hospitals at Waterloo. I trusted her skill, and her treatment has been good. I was simply a fool yesterday and ignored her advice.” Colin tried to breathe to the bottom of his lungs, but stopped when the dull pain in his side began to throb.

  “Well, whoever is at fault, the best part was watching.” Seth sat in the chair next to the bed and began to pull on his boots, having padded around the room in his stocking feet. “Your nursemaid stood toe to toe with Aidan across your sleeping body and told him she was not going to let the local surgeon bleed you to death.”

  “I wish I had seen that.” But somehow he could imagine it: Lucy, his ministering angel turned warrior.

  “As one would expect, Aidan responded with threats suitable to his rank.” Seth finished with one boot and began on the other, lifting one foot to reveal a sock in need of darning. “Magistrates. Murder charges. The usual. Lucky for your scullery maid, Sophie is here.”

  “Why?” Colin tried to raise himself up further, but the muscles in his side refused. Was Lucy really in danger of imprisonment? Or was Seth exaggerating to make a good story?

  “In Italy, Sophie and Tom ran in circles which thought bleeding counterproductive.” Seth turned serious. “But the maid . . . I like her spunk. Are you interested? Or is the field open?”

  Colin growled, surprising even himself. Somehow Lucy had found a way past all his defenses.

  “All right, dear brother. I’ll find other entertainment.” He stood and stomped his boots into place. “Let me get Aidan. He’s been making arrangements.” Seth slipped from the room before Colin could object.

  * * *

  The door flung open only moments later. Clearly Aidan had the suite of rooms across the hall.

  Of the three elder Somerville brothers, Colin had always felt closest to Aidan. Their eldest brother, Aaron, had been an ox of a man, moved by his passions for women, game, and drink, a hard brother from whom the younger boys had hidden when he was in his cups or feeling cruel. None of the brothers had mourned when Aaron died from riding his horse too recklessly after a night of drinking and whoring. The next eldest, Benjamin, had been the diplomat, their advocate, finding ways to protect them from Aaron’s more overt cruelties. Benjamin’s death in the wars was a tender wound with all. That had left Aidan to be the confidante and the accomplice, the older brother the younger ones could admire and emulate and adore.

  Crossing the room in three quick steps, Aidan clasped Colin to his breast. “The last time I was this frightened, you had challenged Aaron to a duel with pistols.”

  “I was nine.” Colin endured a brotherly muss of the hair.

  “Aaron would not have cared; he still would have shot you, then blamed you for being foolish.” Fussing, Aidan helped Colin arrange his pillows. Then he looked at Colin carefully, checking his color, the temperature of his forehead, his eyes.

  “Would you like to inspect my teeth? I am sure they are as good as those of your horses.” Colin bared his teeth and opened his mouth wide.

  Seth laughed from the doorway. “Colin’s personality has not improved with his injuries.”

  Aidan turned serious, motioning to Seth to shut the door behind Sophia. “Fletcher says the postboy you were carrying from Wrexham to Shrewsbury was part of the robbery. He knocked Bobby from the coach, then hit Fletcher in the head to bring the horses to a stop.”

  “It wasn’t a robbery. Fletcher and I took the regular precautions.” Colin turned his hand palm upward, then let it drop. “I thought I was merely an escort.”

  Aidan nodded. “Even though the infant is not of the parish, we had his birth registered in the local church.”

  “Your brother intimidated both the local clergy and the magistrates,” Sophia added conspiratorially. “He hasn’t yet learned that sometimes diplomacy is better than a battering ram.”

  “In intimidating the local authorities, you have not also had my nurse arrested, have you?” Colin noted that Aidan would not meet his eyes.

  “If that woman is a scullery maid, I’m Zeus.” Aidan colored. “But I have not had the magistrate take her in.”

  “Which means what?” Colin pressed for a more direct answer.

  “Your brother is unused to a servant refusing him his way. I think it was good for him.” Sophia straightened Colin’s bedcovers and sat beside him.

  Colin smiled at Sophia and met Seth’s eyes over her shoulder. “I imagine that growing up in the camps made her less sympathetic to ‘great men’ ordering her about.”

  “I see you have talked to her a great deal.” Aidan stood at the window, staring into the courtyard.

  “Lying in bed all day staring at the ceiling was not very interesting,” Colin averred. “But you haven’t answered: have you used your rank to bully her into a jail cell?”

  “Aidan compromised by having her locked in her room.” Seth leaned back against the wall. Aidan turned from the window to glare at him, but Seth only grinned.

  “Oh dear.” Colin groaned and rubbed one eyebrow with his thumb. “I would like to see her, to apologize for my brother’s arrogance.

  “After you rest,” Aidan commanded.

  “I will rest after I speak with Lucy.”

  * * *

  Lucy paced. She had spent the day locked in her room. Until the extra wing of the inn had been built, her room had served as a small upstairs sitting room for wealthier visitors or a bedroom when the inn was especially full. Since morning, she had likely paced five miles. It was foolish, but the exertion kept her heart from racing, though it did nothing to keep her mind from considering the various threats she faced.

  Ten steps from the door to the window. There, she surveyed the carriage yard for her cousin’s men. If they returned, and Colin’s family unknowingly revealed where she was, she would have no way to escape. Before the duke had arrived, she had played with the idea of throwing herself on Colin’s protection, even offering a part of her fortune for his aid. But the prominence of his family worried her. Did they know her cousin? Would they sympathize with her or Archibald? Few knew of his vindictive rages or his capacity for violence. No, returning to her cousin’s house would be far more dangerous than being charged with Colin’s murder, even with a man as powerful as Forster wanting to see her hung. Had she been wise, she would have run when the Duke of Forster told her to fetch the surgeon.

  Four steps from the window to the bed. Beneath the bed, barely visible, was her valise. The first thing she had done on rising was to pack her few belongings in the one small valise she had been able to take with her when she had run away. She had hidden it, fully packed, in the large declivity of a rotten oak for almost a week before she’d been able to escape Aurelia’s house. Big enough to carry a fine dress and slippers to trade and enough money to make it to her destination. Her jewels remained at the back of the hollow, buried in a tin box in the depths of the oak.

  When she had planned her initial escape, she had packed with the anticipation of a
new life and with the purpose of fulfilling her last promise to her great-aunt. And when she’d traveled the roads, hiding for a time in the crowds of laborers traveling to Manchester to hear Henry Hunt speak at St. Peter’s Field, she’d taken on some of their enthusiasm. This morning, however, she packed with a strange sense of loss. Whatever happened with Colin, she had to be ready to run.

  On top of the bed lay her knitting. Periodically, she would sit, forcing her mind to focus on mending the household’s worn socks and torn sweaters. But in the last hour, she found herself pulling out as many stitches as she put in, and for the sake of the yarn, she put it all aside.

  Six steps from the bed to the fireplace. She held her hands out to warm them in the dying fire. A chair was pulled to the side of the grate. For a while she had sat there, keeping her mind busy by tracing the complicated repeating pattern in the wallpaper behind the bed. But when she’d begun imagining faces and other shapes hidden in the pattern, she had determined that pacing was more healthful.

  Three steps from the bed to the door. At the door, she listened for any sounds of approach. If the magistrates arrived, it would mean she had failed and that, despite her best efforts, Colin had died. Surprisingly, the thought of Colin dead evoked the same empty loneliness she had felt when she had lost James.

  Strange how an attraction could form so quickly. She felt again the surge of longing his kisses had inspired, a longing that was more than mere physical response. At first she’d admired his humor and bravery in the face of injury, but in the past few days, she’d come to appreciate his willingness to be serious. She realized she would never read Quixote the same again.

  If his relapse were just a small setback, he should have woken by now. But she remained locked in. And she feared for him.

  She shook herself; he would not die. Once Colin awoke, she would no longer be of interest, and she could slip away to the next part of her journey. Only two weeks ago, she had thought it too soon; today she could not leave soon enough.

  She began another circuit around the room.