by Nicole Byrd
“But—we cannot expect anyone to believe—”
“I have told your father—I have permission from your father to make the lie truth.”
Again, it took a moment, several moments, for the sense of his words to sink into her pain-befuddled brain. Madeline put one hand to her head and tried to push away the lethargy, the persistent ache, desperate to summon her usual quickness of intellect. “I don’t—don’t understand,” she stammered. “What—what kind of trick are you playing at?”
He frowned suddenly. “I’m sorry, Miss Applegate. With you so unwell, this is a terrible time to thrust all this upon you. It’s just that we must act quickly to save your good name, to avoid any outcry of public condemnation. I do not wish to see you hurt, whether in body—as I first thought you were—or in spirit, as you might be if the village thinks the worst of our night together.”
She must have paled, because he stared at her with a concerned expression.
They had spent the whole night together, then? Oh, God help her. Yes, the village would be not just whispering; the gossips would be shouting it from the rooftops. Her reputation would be savaged, and no one would ever believe her blameless.
She swallowed hard. “I—I did not plan to marry, regardless,” she said, her voice sounding hollow. “So really, it’s—it’s of no matter.”
“And your sisters?”
“They are all married, some just recently,” she told him. “Although my middle sister has been widowed at a young age, also lately. But surely it will not affect her.”
He looked skeptical. “It could. And are you prepared to not be received by your own neighbors?”
She felt an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. Would their old friends turn their backs on her? She ran through a mental list. Some would likely stand by her, but yes, some would no doubt enjoy a chance to show their moral superiority, real or imaged. She would have to endure it, but—but her father would be so grieved.
Madeline felt her eyes fill with tears, and she blinked hard to hold them back.
“If you are imagining the worst, you are forgetting my offer,” he broke into this abysmal daydream suddenly. “We can have the banns read. I am ready to do it.”
“But—”
“My name, which I don’t believe you have heard, is Adrian Carter, Viscount Weller, Adrian to my closest friends and family.” He flashed her that sudden smile, which changed his face from handsome but somewhat forbidding, with its strong nose and chin and dark brown eyes, to purely irresistible. “I have a respectable name and fortune, and my character is also that of a decent man. I do have one main blot on my past, which I will explain in more detail later, but it will also offer you the solution to any disadvantage to our engagement, and I hope, marriage.”
“Marriage?” Madeline, who was still breathless from the word betrothal, now felt downright giddy. She felt as she had as a small child when she’d slipped on the top of an ice-covered hill and every attempt to save herself had only added to the speed of her descent. The whole world seemed to be flashing past. “Marriage? No, no, I just tried to explain. I have to stay with my father, take care of my father. My sisters have all gone. Did you not see that he is an invalid—he must have someone here to take care of him—I promised my mother on her deathbed. I cannot leave him!”
“I will not expect you to leave him,” the stranger said, his tone soothing.
She stared at him in bewilderment. What kind of man was he, and what kind of ruse was this, then? What kind of bogus marriage did he offer?
“It would be to both our advantages, Miss Applegate—may I call you Madeline?”
He had already seen her naked—he could call her anything he wished! Maddie drew a deep breath. She felt the heat rise inside her as that dark-eyed gaze raked her body, and she could not keep her thoughts in order.
“Let me tell you why we must marry.”
Four
“Have you lost your wits?” Maddie blurted. “Why would you do such a thing for a stranger?”
It was his turn to raise his brows. “Do you think a gentleman would allow a lady to be compromised by his rash actions and not do the honorable thing? Or, even worse, do you doubt that I am a gentleman?” The hint of reproach in his voice made her blush even harder.
Dropping her gaze to the counterpane, she couldn’t quite bring herself to add what was so obvious. But I am only a poor man’s daughter, and you are a viscount! You could have your pick of so many more well-connected, wealthier, more pleasing ladies.
“I always thought that was rather—rather an extreme action to take” was all that she could manage.
She suddenly realized she had sat up in her shock, allowing the concealing bedclothes to fall away, and she wore only a thin nightgown. Yet it would seem very cowardly to crawl back between the sheets now.
She reached for her shawl and draped it around her shoulders, pulling it about her to cover herself more modestly. Not that he hadn’t seen everything there was to see already—the thought made her blush even harder.
“Extreme or not, it is the only thing we can do,” he told her, his tone steady. “I must insist that you allow me to offer you the protection of my name, Miss Applegate—Madeline.”
Her name sounded so natural on his lips. She found the sound of it so enticing that she hesitated too long, and he seemed to take her silence as assent.
“We could have the first reading on Sunday, and—”
“No, no, didn’t you hear what I said?” she broke in. “I cannot leave my father alone!”
“Madeline, do not fear, I will never make you leave your father if you do not wish it,” he said, his tone patient.
What kind of husband would allow his wife to linger in her father’s house?
“Are you planning to reside here as well?” she demanded. Was he hiding out? Was he wanted for some crime? None of this made sense; there had to be something he was not telling her. In fact, hadn’t he said there was some other part that he had to explain? Oh, if only her head would stop hurting so that she could think!
She put one hand to her right temple, pressing the spot where the deepest ache lingered as if she could push back the pain that refused to leave her. Becoming agitated would only make it worse, but it was hard to relax when this handsome stranger was ready to rearrange her future with such alarming alacrity.
His expression sympathetic, Lord Weller watched. “Don’t fret about it now, Madeline. Lie back. Let me massage your temples. It might help the pain in your head.”
The thought of those long, supple fingers touching her tormented head made a curious shiver run up her back, and if she were not feeling so wretched…
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she demurred, but he had already lifted her shoulders to move the pillows behind her head and before she could argue further, he had laid her flat on the bed and was smoothing her hair across the linen sheets. Did this man always get his way? When she was herself again, she would tell him.
“Shut your eyes,” he was saying now, his voice soft. “Try to let it all go, let your thoughts fly away. There is nothing to trouble you, Madeline my dear, all will be well.”
He said it with such authority, she could almost believe it would be so. And yet it was all nonsense, it must be, she argued with herself silently. Even that quarrelsome voice inside her mind faded as he touched her head.
She jumped, she couldn’t help herself, but then the touch of his strong hands—at once pleasing and oh so soothing as he stroked her temples with a light but sure touch, then down her shoulders and over her forearms, up and down, back up to her shoulders and up into the hollows of her neck, kneading the sides of her neck until the hard knots wrought by her tension loosened.
Maddie felt as if she might dissolve into the bedclothes and slip away, yet she couldn’t wish for that, either, because she could not bear to lose the wonder of his touch….
It was such an intimate sensation, his hands moving easily over her neck, his warmth adding to her own, h
is sun-bronzed skin and slightly roughened fingers against the softer skin of her throat—she found her whole body reacting to his closeness. An unfamiliar tingling woke deep in her belly and she found her breath coming more quickly…and the headache did indeed seem to fade a little into the background. It was still there, but she was less conscious of it.
He continued to rub her shoulders, and now he eased her onto her side and rubbed her back as well, and Maddie felt even more languorous. Sighing, she felt old tensions ease, and she wondered if she might turn right into jelly. And if so, perhaps Lord Weller would scoop her up and—and what?
Who knew that her body could have such strange and wondrous feelings? If only her headache would fade completely, she could concentrate on the other.
“That feels so good. I fear you are taking advantage of—”
Too late, she heard the sound of the door opening, and the gasp and rattle of china as their faithful Bess took in this shocking tableau.
“I never! I’m fetching the broom and I’ll dust yer backside meself, ye presumptuous no good—”
“Bess!” Maddie said, “You misunderstood! I didn’t, he didn’t—he was massaging my head because it aches so.”
“I know where yer ’ead is, and it ain’t what ’e was a’rubbing.” The maidservant sat down the tray with a clatter of china and folded her arms in suspicion.
Blushing once more, Madeline struggled to find some dignity. Lord Weller had straightened, but she had a dreadful certainty that if she glanced at the viscount she would find him choking back laughter.
“Bess! You mustn’t speak so. This is Lord Weller, our guest and—and my—my fiancé.” There, she had said it, she was bound to this man, and she would indeed have to go through with this crazy plan.
Because, really, what other choice did she have? She could not shame her father and her whole family by having stories of their night in the woods together repeated throughout the village—through the whole shire, no doubt.
At least her announcement made Bess hesitate, and Lord Weller was wise enough to make a tactical withdrawal while the moment was ripe.
“I shall leave you to the ministrations of your faithful servant,” he said, and slipped out the door before Bess could remember her earlier fury.
Unhappily, Maddie’s headache throbbed once more, still very much with her. Sighing, she put one hand back to her temple.
The maidservant forgot her indignation in her haste to come to her mistress’s aid. “’Ere now, I got a fresh cold compress, and more of me ’erbal tea, what always ’elps yer stomach when yer ’ead is so bad.”
Maddie agreed meekly and allowed the woman to bustle about until everything was settled to Bess’s satisfaction. Maddie managed a few swallows of the liquid, then settled back with the cool cloth on her head, and the pain subsided once more into a low throbbing roar.
But she thought with a pang of Lord Weller’s incredible hands and how they had felt stroking her neck and throat. Still, she should not allow such liberties—their engagement was only a ploy to save her reputation—and why was he doing it? Was it only to save her honor?
He had not told her the rest—why he would benefit, too, from this engagement. She could see no reason at all why he would want to marry a penniless and unimportant girl from the wilds of Yorkshire. Perhaps he had only said that to ease her mind. Or perhaps he didn’t mean them to actually marry. Was the betrothal only to be a ruse? And what was it he’d said—something about a blot on his name…no, perhaps she had not heard him aright.
She could not imagine that he could do anything truly disgraceful. He was so kind and yet so forceful.
Sighing, Maddie shut her eyes and prepared to wait out the rest of this bloody headache. The same illness that had gotten her into this predicament in the first place made it hard for her to reason out what she should do about getting out of it.
She spent the rest of the day lying in the darkened room, moving as little as possible. By late afternoon, she was able to bear the light of one candle, and she wrote short letters to her sisters, although she was able to tell them only an abbreviated version of her ordeal.
To the twins, Ophelia and Cordelia, she wrote almost the same letter.
Are you back from your wedding trips? I yearn to hear about the South of France, and if Italy is as picturesque as it is said to be. Do write long letters, and I hope you come north soon to see us. I have missed you so!
Sighing, she put the pen down, blotted her somewhat messy script—they would know she had a headache just from her handwriting, she thought—then folded the pages and put them into the lap desk and pushed it aside. She lay back onto her pillow again and shut her eyes.
She slept off and on through the night, and by the next morning she woke with the pain gone at last, and only an overwhelming sense of fatigue and lassitude hanging over her, the last stage of her headaches.
Sighing with relief, she sat up gingerly and pulled on a robe. When she came back from the necessary, she found that Bess had brought warm water. She bathed and then was glad to sit back on the bed when the maidservant warned her not to do too much.
It was true that she still felt very shaky.
“I’ll ’ave ye a tray up in a two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” the servant told her, casting a worried eye at her mistress.
“How is my father?”
“’E’s right as rain,” Bess told her. “Seems to ’ave taken quite a liking to the hoity-toity lord. And I will say the fancy viscount ain’t above playing chess with our good master, nor talking for ’ours ’bout ’is books and stuff,” she finished with reluctant approval.
Startled, Maddie stared at the servant’s wrinkled face. “Really? That is a surprise—I mean, that’s good.”
It had not occurred to her before that her father, with his family of daughters and few male friends in the neighborhood, might be hungry for male companionship, but it was probably true. The local squire was interested in little beyond a day’s hunt and the chance of a good harvest, certainly not in books or thoughtful conversation, and the gentleman farmers were mostly cut from the same cloth. Madeline suddenly felt impatient to be out of her bedchamber and back downstairs so that she could join them and see for herself if her father and Lord Weller had struck up an accord.
But her energy was still limited. Perhaps she would feel up to going down for dinner.
However, to her annoyance, she found that she would be seeing company much sooner than that.
She ate breakfast and then Bess helped her dress in a faded muslin day gown and put up her hair. Then Maddie lay back upon her bed, content to rest a little longer before venturing out. She thought with anticipation of a walk in the garden, and she found herself hungry for fresh air as well as her new fiancé’s presence.
But hardly had Bess taken her tray away when the door to the hall suddenly burst open and Mrs. Masham, a stoutly built matron somewhat overdressed for a morning call in the country, stepped into the room.
Madeline blinked in surprise.
“Oh, there you are, looking so pale, too. I declare, poor Miss Applegate, I just had to come and see about you,” the young matron declared.
“I beg your pardon,” Maddie answered, knowing her tone was somewhat stiff. “I don’t believe I said I am in to callers today, Mrs. Masham.”
“Oh, so your maid said, but I knew you didn’t intend that prohibition to stand for your close friends, such as I!” The woman batted pale lashes over slightly protuberant eyes and smiled coyly. “And there are such stories being passed around the village—well! I just had to come and see with my own eyes that you are not at death’s door after your perilous night in the woods!”
Translation: she couldn’t bear to wait another moment to ferret out more gossip, Maddie thought. Mrs. Masham knew perfectly well that it was people such as her that Maddie would definitely want excluded, which was why she had waited until Bess’s back was turned and then nipped up the stairs.
But unless Maddie
barred her from the house and caused a total scandal—and that might upset Papa—she would have to put up with her. No wonder Maddie’s sister Juliana had once fled to London just to escape Mrs. Masham’s arrival in their shire.
While Madeline hesitated, Mrs. Masham looked around for something to sit on and finding no chair, pulled the stool in front of the dressing table closer to the bed. “Now, you must not exert yourself in the slightest, just lie back and rest, and tell me everything about your secret engagement and how on earth you ended up in the woods overnight. I thought you were reasonably proper, even if you are so sad as to have lost your mother so young and to have had no one to teach you what it is to be a lady, but to end up so totally depraved, I mean, really…”
She fastened her toadlike eyes on Maddie, who felt as transfixed as a gnat on a lily pad, and as unable to flee.
“I beg your pardon…” Maddie began, her voice stiff, but she couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. While she hesitated, she heard a light knock at the door, and another familiar face appeared in the doorway.
This time, it was someone she was actually happy to see.
Mrs. Barlow was a penurious widow who had moved into the neighborhood not too long ago. Some of the neighbors had turned a cold shoulder to the new arrival, feeling that her background was not sufficiently vouched for. No one seemed to know where the petite young woman had come from, or who her relatives might be.
The widow said little about her past and, indeed, did not try overmuch to insert herself into the social life of the shire, but Madeline felt sorry for her and had been friendly. The widow was hardly past her thirtieth birthday and often seemed pensive if caught in an unguarded moment, though she was always good company. She lived quietly in her rented cottage and, showing evidence of a sharp mind and a kind heart, enjoyed reading and quiet conversation, which pleased Maddie a great deal.
Like her father, Maddie did not always find sympathetic companions in her neighbors, especially since her sisters had all flown the nest. Of late, Mrs. Barlow and Maddie had taken to walking together now and then, and Maddie often invited her over for tea and lent her books to read.