by Liz Carlyle
“Oh, Papa trusted my judgment when it came to rogues and rascals.” Grace flashed a muted smile. “After all, he befriended you.”
“And some things last beyond the grave,” said Rance solemnly. “I swore I would always look after you—and I will, should Ruthveyn fail. Which he won’t, trust me. And yes, Grace, I told Henri precisely who and what I was. He always knew.”
“But why do the papers keep hounding you?” she asked. “And asking questions about your father? There’s been a reporter around. A man by the name of Coldwater.”
A dark expression passed over Rance’s face. “Coldwater, eh?” he said. “I’ll have to deal with the bounder eventually, I suppose. He and half of London are obsessed with my release.”
“Because the witness against you made a suspicious deathbed recantation?” said Grace. “I read about it in the Chronicle. Who was this man they say you killed?”
Rance’s expression had sobered. “Oh, I’ve killed many men, love,” he said quietly. “That’s a soldier’s burden to bear. But the one I didn’t kill—Lord Percy Peveril—was heir apparent to an earldom. His uncle was a member of the Privy Council, and had the old King’s ear. Alas, I chose my enemies poorly.”
“And was he your enemy?”
Rance’s smile twisted. “Peveril was just an overbred fop who cheated me at cards,” he answered. “Back when I was young and rash, and didn’t understand I’d no business at the table. A dozen people watched him cheat, too. But like El-Bahdja, Gracie, that’s water gone by. Tell me, what do you think of my friend Ruthveyn?”
Grace hesitated. “I think he is very kind.”
At that, Rance laughed uproariously. “Oh, damn him with faint praise, Grace! No one thinks Ruthveyn kind. Now, be honest with me. You always knew how to sum up a man’s character better than any woman I knew.”
It was true. Her father had often remarked upon her good sense, especially where men were concerned. But with Lord Ruthveyn, she was oddly uncertain. What she felt for him seemed to come only from her foolish heart—and when he kissed her, from a few other places as well. And then there was that extraordinary, mesmerizing heat in his touch…
“Grace?” Rance prompted.
Grace let her gaze wander to the window. “All right,” she said, staring blindly out. “I think he is a little frightening. His eyes—they look right through me. They make me feel—”
Safe. Breathless. Frightened. Of myself, and of him.
But those words she would not say aloud. Grace closed her eyes. “—I don’t know how he makes me feel,” she finally finished.
Rance leaned forward and caught her hand. “Grace, he is a good man.” His voice was low and, for once, serious. “He’s enigmatic, yes. Even a little…otherworldly, perhaps. But just trust him. Trust him to take care of you. And what you feel for him—well, trust yourself, my girl. Your father was right. You have uncommon good sense about men. And good taste, too.”
Grace’s eyes opened wide with embarrassment. She opened her mouth to speak, to rebuke him, perhaps. But to what end? Rance had always spoken his mind—and possessed an almost uncanny knack for knowing everyone else’s.
She exhaled sharply. “I just buried my fiancé, Rance,” she said, “or would have done, had I been able to go to the funeral.”
Rance gave a bemused smile. “Is that meant to chide me for my blunt tongue?” he asked. “Or yourself for falling in love? Either would be a waste of time, Grace. It is what it is.”
“Rance, arrête!” Abruptly, she jerked to her feet. “What it is is quite enough, thank you.”
He laughed again and caught her hand. “By God, you are Henri’s girl through and through,” he said, tugging her back down. “All right. I overstepped. Now listen, and let me be serious a moment.”
She glowered at him warningly. “Oui,” she said. “Please do.”
Rance dropped her hand. “Whatever you do, Grace, do not tell Royden Napier we are friends,” he warned. “He harbors a great hatred of me.”
“Why? Have you given him advice for the lovelorn?” When Rance scowled back at her, she relented. “All right. I’m sorry. Why would he hate you?”
“Seeing me convicted and sentenced to the gallows was his father’s last great gasp of bureaucratic glory,” said Rance. “His final and finest effort at social justice, or so he pretended. But in truth, I was just a bone to be tossed to the madding throng of radicals and Chartists—a sop meant to show even a highborn gentleman could be called to account for breaking the law.”
Grace’s eyes widened in horror. “You were made an example of?” she whispered. “And it cost you eight years in the legion? That is a long time, Rance, to walk in the desert.”
They both knew she was not referring to the geography of Algeria. He shrugged. “Royden Napier took no pleasure in seeing my conviction overturned and his father’s motivations impugned after the old man was dead.” He paused, flashed a bemused smile, then jerked to his feet. “Ah, well! More of that water—”
“—under the bridge,” Grace finished, rising.
Swiftly, he snatched her hand and planted a kiss on the back of her glove. “I will not see you again, Grace, until your situation is resolved,” he said. “Not unless you need me. If you do, you have only to send word to the St. James Society. I’ve been staying there until I find a place to settle down.”
“Rance,” she said quietly, “you will never settle down.”
He laughed as they strolled to the door. “Ah, you are likely right, Gracie girl! And you—well, you will not need me. You are in the best possible hands—and they are far more influential than mine.”
“Am I?” she asked softly.
Rance’s smile fell. “Oh, Napier will not touch him,” he said certainly. “Not without a mighty long sword—and a sure one, too, for he’ll get but one pass at Ruthveyn’s throat. And he knows it.”
Just then, heavy, measured steps sounded down the stairs. Lord Ruthveyn appeared, freshly dressed in a severely formal coat of jet black, his impossibly thick hair drawn back off his face, damp as if from the bath. With his waistcoat of cream brocade silk and the large cabochon ruby glittering on the last finger of his right hand, he looked every inch a Rajput prince—or at least what Grace imagined one might look like.
“Ah, Adrian, there you are!” said Rance amiably. “I forgot to say—I have some bad news for you.”
Lord Ruthveyn lifted both of his slashing black eyebrows in that condescending way of his. “Do go on, Lazonby.”
“Belkadi has evicted you from the guest suite,” he said. “We’ve a village padre visiting from Lincolnshire—one of Sutherland’s old cronies. And I—well, alas, old friend—I have taken the other.”
Ruthveyn’s gaze flitted from Rance to Grace and back again. “Remarkable timing,” he said tightly. “Simply…remarkable.”
That evening, Ruthveyn joined his family for dinner for the first time since the night of Grace’s arrival in Upper Grosvenor Street. Save for Lord Lucan, who spoke excitedly of a boxing match he meant to attend in Southwark the following day, they made for a quiet table. Lord Lazonby’s arrival seemed to have cast some sort of pall over Anisha and her brother, and Grace could not make it out.
That evening she retired to her room to write Fenella in some faint hope that whatever breach had opened between them might be mended. She said how happy she was to have seen Anne and Eliza in Hyde Park, and of her hope for their happiness in their new home. Then, on second thought, she tore the letter to bits and tossed it onto the smoldering coal. Her friendship with Fenella was obviously over unless Ethan’s killer was caught—and in part, she blamed Royden Napier. He had obviously spread his poison far and wide.
The awful truth was, not one person from Belgrave Square—not even the cook or the housekeeper—had written her so much as a note of sympathy, or even good-bye, and she had been exceedingly fond of them all. Perhaps everyone had leapt to the same conclusion without Napier’s help. She had been betrothed—almost bet
rothed—to Holding, and he had been murdered. Now there was a letter indicating he had jilted her. The police had likely warned the entire staff against her—which was understandable, since someone had clearly gone to great lengths to lay the blame at her door.
The fear was stealing over her again. Grace sank onto her bed, remembering her last meeting with Royden Napier.
“I wanted a family quite desperately,” she had said to him. “Ethan offered me that—to be my family. To try to love me, and to share his daughters with me. I would have done anything to preserve that.”
Even to her ears, those words now sounded vaguely damning. Napier had undoubtedly written them down in his black leather folio so he might quote them against her at will. No wonder Ruthveyn had ordered her to say nothing. Sometimes it felt as if the only thing that was keeping Grace from falling into a swamp of grief was his faith and strength. And today, when she had feared for one instant she might lose that faith, she had—for the very first time—felt like giving up.
But his strength did sustain her. Indeed, it sometimes seemed as if everything that had happened between them really had been fated. Ruthveyn had even suggested as much on the day they met. Perhaps Grace was beginning to believe it, simply to have someone and something to believe in. Or perhaps she imagined that it somehow excused the deep and undeniable desire she felt for him. Rance, as usual, had not been wrong.
On a sigh, she rose and gathered her things, then went down the passageway to the marvelous bathtub for a long, hot soak. Afterward, she tried to read, having taken from Ruthveyn’s library a worn copy of The Muses Threnodie. But soon gave it up again as too deep and too philosophical for her comprehension.
At ten, she went to bed, only to toss sleeplessly between the night constable’s cries. At “twelve o’clock and all is well!” she came bolt upright in bed, suddenly certain that all was not well—and it had nothing to do with Royden Napier.
“Pssst, Miss Gauthier?”
This time the small, disembodied voice cut through her mental fog.
“Tom?” She whipped back the covers. “Tom, what’s wrong?”
“Ma’am, Teddy’s sick,” he whispered from somewhere near her footboard. “I think you’d better come.”
But Grace had already slid from the bed to feel about for her slippers. “Sick how?” she pressed, snatching up her wrapper. “Sick to his stomach? Or feverish?”
“He’s retching. Can you come? Please? And not tell Mamma?”
Grace felt for his hand and headed toward the door. “Tom, you know I can’t promise that,” she said quietly. “Has Teddy eaten something he oughtn’t? Please don’t hide anything from me.”
But Tom would say no more.
In the boys’ bedchamber two doors down, Teddy had managed to light a lamp, and now lay curled in a ball upon his sheets. At her entrance, he looked at her a little plaintively and managed to sit up.
“I puked again,” he said as if to reassure her. “I’m all better now.”
“Teddy, what’s happened?” Grace hastened toward him, and sat down on the edge of his bed. “Are you feverish?”
Teddy looked away, the scar on his forehead angrily red against his chalky skin. “I just puked,” he said. “It’s nothing. I’m fine now. Truly.”
“Let’s say you vomited,” Grace gently corrected—and indeed, the front of his nightshirt was soiled with the proof of it.
But there was a good deal more wheedling in the boy’s voice than she liked to hear from a child. Suspicious, and still gravely concerned, she stroked the hair back from his face to better feel his forehead, and it was then she realized the hair was matted with something disgustingly sticky.
“Teddy, dear, what have you got into?” she said. “I think you’d best tell me.”
“He ate Uncle’s sweets.”
Grace looked around to see that Tom had perched himself on the adjacent bed and pulled his knees up to his chin.
“Sweets?” she echoed.
Tom just shrugged his narrow shoulders, then pointed at the floor.
Grace glanced down to see an old chamber pot had been pulled from beneath the bed—kept to hand, no doubt, for just such a contingency. On an inward groan, she got up and lifted the lamp over it. The pot was a third filled with a disgusting, pale yellow sludge bobbing with lumps of something that looked suspiciously like melting sugar.
Like lemon drops.
Lots and lots of lemon drops.
Grace set a hand to her forehead. “Teddy, you didn’t.”
“Yes he did,” said Tom’s small voice.
“Tattletale,” said Teddy nastily. “You ate some, too.”
“I ate twelve,” Tom piped. “And I didn’t pu—er, vomit.”
Grace turned to face him, still holding the lamp aloft. “And how many did your brother eat?”
Tom shrugged again, and pointed at the empty jar on their night table. “The rest,” he said simply.
Grace set the lamp down and seized the jar. “Oh, Teddy!” she whispered. “Not the whole jar?”
Teddy set a hand to his stomach, which was beginning to look distended. “I guess,” he said morosely. “And it all came up, too.”
Grace sat back down on the bed. “Tom, fetch your brother a fresh nightshirt,” she said, turning to Teddy. “Come here. I want to see your hair.”
The boy bent forward. Two yellow lumps were caught in his dark blond hair, matting great knots of it together. “Oh, Teddy!” said Grace on a sigh. “Do you feel well enough to get up and let me change your sheets?”
As if resigned to his fate, Teddy slid from the bed.
Fortunately, the yellow goo was limited to the pillow slip, Grace soon discovered. The boy had obviously fallen asleep with his mouth stuffed full. Grace tried not to laugh, remembering Lady Anisha’s horror at Ruthveyn’s having bought a whole jar. She had sensed, correctly, the potential for disaster.
Teddy seemed to read her mind. “Are you going to tell Mamma?” he asked miserably.
“My dear, I have to,” said Grace. “She is your mother, and you are very sick.”
“Not anymore,” he said on a heaving sigh. “But I will be when you tell her.”
Grace set a hand to his forehead again and found just what she expected: nothing. The boy did indeed seem himself. But the room was cold, and the fire banked.
In a trice, she had exchanged the pillow slip for a fresh one from the linen press, and wiped the worst from Teddy’s face. “Come along with me to the scullery,” she said, holding out her hand. “We are going to have to work those wads of goo from your hair and get you out of that nightshirt.”
Together, they went along the passageway and down the first flight of stairs. Near the landing, lamplight leached from a cracked doorway. It was Lord Ruthveyn’s private study, a room she’d never entered. Curious, Grace slowed just as one of the silvery cats nosed the door open a few inches wider and went slinking through.
Within, Lord Ruthveyn sat reclined upon a long leather sofa in a roiling cloud of smoke, his head propped in one hand, the other holding a cigarette. His eyes were closed. On a tufted ottoman before him sat a tray with a decanter and an empty glass. Attired in a sort of loose-fitting banyan, and a pair of baggy white trousers, he appeared unaware of their presence. Indeed, he looked the very picture of wanton repose.
Grace swiftly tugged Teddy past, at last recognizing the sweet, smoky smell that sometimes clung to Ruthveyn’s coat. Someone else, it would appear, had overindulged tonight—and on something a little less benign than lemon drops.
“Uncle Adrian looks scary again,” whispered Teddy, as they went down the stairs.
“Shh,” said Grace. “He’s tired. He has a lot of responsibilities.” And he also, according to his sister, never slept—which perhaps explained that incessant look of world-weariness etched upon his face.
Once inside the kitchens, she set Teddy up on the edge of the kitchen table and deftly stripped off his nightshirt. Unlike the upstairs rooms, here the old
stone floor still radiated with warmth.
“You mustn’t be scared of your uncle,” she chided, tossing the shirt and the sticky pillow slip into the basket kept for kitchen laundry. “He just hasn’t slept.”
“He never sleeps,” said the boy. “And I didn’t say I was scared, silly. I was just explaining. ’Cause you’re new. And I thought you might be frightened.”
Grace seized the poker. “Good heavens, Teddy. I am not”—here she knelt to poke up the fire a little too vigorously—“frightened of Lord Ruthveyn.”
The boy lifted his bony shoulders. “Everyone else is,” he said evenly. “Well, not me. And not Tom. But all the servants are—except Higgenthorpe.”
“What nonsense.” Grace went into the scullery to fill a pan with warm water. “Why should anyone be afraid of your uncle?”
“Because he has the Gift.”
Temporary distracted by positioning the pan, Grace glanced over her shoulder. “What gift, Teddy? Who gave it to him?”
Teddy was clutching both hands between his knees. “I don’t who gave it to him,” he muttered. “I just know he’s got it. I heard Mamma say she didn’t know why the Scots called it a Gift when it was nothing but a curse.”
“A curse? What sort of gift could be a curse?”
“I don’t know that either,” said the boy. “I just know the servants aren’t allowed to touch him on account of it. And Mrs. Henshaw told the tweeny never to look Uncle square in the eyes, or he’d know when she was going to die.”
“That’s just servants’ nonsense, Teddy.” Still, Grace mulled it over as she set the pan on the table, then rummaged about for a tub of lard.
“What’s that for?” asked Teddy suspiciously.
Grace set it beside the pan. “I’m going to work a little into the goo,” she explained, “so we don’t hurt you combing it out. Afterward, we’ll use soap, and dip warm water over your hair. Then we’ll dry you by the fire before putting you back to bed. Having braved a whole hogshead of lemon drops, it seems pointless you should expire of a chill.”