by Nicole Byrd
Both the women stared at him. He smiled ruefully. “I was young once, and not bound to this damned chair, you know. I didn’t go quite that far into its low life, but I did spend a year or more in London. I learned a thing or two about its seamier side. If Weller’s cousin plastered the worst part of the city with these flyers, if he sent them out to other cities in England, which also possess criminal elements—I wondered how his cousin always managed to find him, you know, and often so quickly. The cousin does not appear as smart as all that.”
Maddie gasped. “But if he has petty criminals all over Britain working as his eyes and ears, so to speak—oh, Papa, Adrian must know this! And I don’t know how to get in touch with him!”
She clasped her hands together in frustration. No wonder Adrian was in such danger. It was worse than even he suspected. She must warn him!
“And Jerod picked this up, thinking that he might have the opportunity to make a few pounds—which he did, if he is the one who alerted the would-be assassin to Adrian’s presence here. Oh, Madeline, I’m so sorry!” Felicity looked concerned.
“It’s not your fault,” Maddie told her. “You could do nothing to prevent it.” But the fact remained, she had to find her husband. She looked down at her plate, but her appetite was gone. Adrian would continue to be in danger, even as they sat here at the dinner table. She had to find him, warn him—and then what?
He had to at least know what he was up against.
She slept very little that night, and after hours of tossing and turning, she rose early and packed a bag. Her mind was made up. She could stay here and wait to hear that she, like Felicity, now was a widow, or she could try to do something. Even if her chances of finding her husband were not good, knowing that he was trying to cover his trail, she would rather be actively searching than going quietly mad at home.
Before she told her father, she sought out Felicity for a quiet talk. Maddie had told her friend in the past about her promise to her mother.
“So I am truly torn, Felicity. I do not want to feel that I am breaking my oath, but—”
“But you have sworn another vow to your husband, have you not?” Felicity said, her tone grave. “I will stay with your father, if you wish it, Madeline. After all you both have done for me, it would be a very small thing I can do to repay your many kindnesses.”
“I would not think of it like that, exactly, but your presence would relieve my mind,” Maddie confessed. “With you here, I would feel that I could leave without so much guilt. Thank you!”
“Please don’t worry about your father,” Felicity told her. “I will do everything I can to see to his welfare and comfort.”
Her father frowned when she told him her decision, but she met his gaze with a firm one of her own.
There was a brief silence, then he nodded reluctantly. “I see you have made up your mind. You must take Bess and Thomas with you.”
“No, you will need them,” she said.
“I will not have you going off alone,” her father said more sternly. “And what do you think Weller would say to you traveling unprotected?”
She rather thought he had a point, and as it turned out, Bess had a few words to say on the subject. “If ye think ye be trottin’ about the countryside all on ye lonesome, Miss Madeline, ye best think again,” the maidservant admonished, waving her wooden spoon at her recalcitrant mistress. “Just what do ye think yer good mum would ’ave said?”
“But Papa will need you here,” Maddie tried to argue.
“I’ll fetch the baker’s two lasses and put them into the kitchen while I’m gone,” Bess told her. “They’ll not be so good a cook as me, but they’ll keep ’em ’ere from starvin’.”
Adrian’s letter of credit from the bank had come through, and Maddie set up enough funds to keep the household comfortable while she was gone. She also drew out money for her own use. Fortunately, Thomas was not as insistent on escorting her as Bess. Since she suspected that their gray-haired, slightly bent coachman and farm-worker would only slow them down, she did not regret the loss of his company.
She told Thomas to hire more men to have as protection about the estate, and more maids, as well, then she had him drive her and Bess into Ripon to catch the coach. She began her inquiries there, asking at the coaching inn about anyone who might remember Adrian. Since he preferred to ride his own horse, she didn’t expect the viscount to have purchased a ticket, but she asked the ticket vendor anyhow. He remembered nothing about a tall, handsome man with a pleasing deep voice, who had left at the time that Adrian would have passed through.
This was going to be a difficult search. But she had known that from the start, Maddie told herself. She would not give up just as she was beginning!
The first lead that seemed promising came from an inn and posting house near Yarm. She heard a tale of a mysterious dark-haired man who seemed to want no one to know his name or where he was headed.
“Perhaps it is his lordship, Bess,” Maddie told her maid. She hired a private chaise and followed the trail to a smaller town, where she almost lost the man completely. But after asking everyone in town, and then casting out to several villages in the surrounding areas, she at last picked up news of a stranger staying in a small house near a lake up “by the vale where the mill used to be, afore the laird built his new boathouse.”
After interviewing two more farmers, she finally found the right road, and just as night was falling, the hired chaise took Maddie and Bess bumping along a truly dreadful lane.
When they came to a stop at a small, dilapidated manor house that looked as if it had been abandoned for years, she couldn’t believe this was the right place. But when the hired postboy came to consult with her, he told her it was the only habitable residence along this lonely road.
Maddie stared at the house again. Obviously, they took the term habitable loosely in this northern shire. But now she could make out the faintest sheen of candlelight reflected within, even thought the windows were covered by patched draperies that seemed to be carefully drawn.
“Very well,” she told the boy. “Have the driver hold the carriage ready. I shall try to see if this is the man I am seeking.”
He touched his cap and took the news to the driver, then returned to lower the steps and help both the women out.
Maddie knew that both her two hired employees were keenly curious about her mysterious mission, but she was not of a mind to enlighten them. Instead, she pulled her pelisse and her long muffler closer about her—the wind was howling around them—and picked her way along an overgrown path to the front door.
She pounded on the door, at first to no avail.
“Mayhap we should come back on the morn, Miss Madeline.” Bess had to almost shout to make herself heard. The wind was growing even stronger.
Maddie shivered, but she had no wish to come back to this godforsaken spot again. Her hopes were fading—somehow, she could not imagine Adrian hiding out in such a spot as this, but it would be folly to have come this far and not make sure. “I will see who is here, first,” she said grimly. “And I’m sure someone is here!”
“But what if it’s a robber, or a murderer?” Bess asked, the whites of her eyes showing.
Maddie had never seen her intrepid servant afraid before, so she felt a tremor of apprehension herself. The darkness around them was truly dark, and now it was going to be hard to see to drive their hired vehicle back to the nearest town. She had not been thinking very wisely when she had decided to come this far tonight.
Just as she was castigating herself, however, a gleam of moonlight showed through the thick clouds overhead, and she drew a deep breath.
“There, the moon is coming through,” she said. “We will leave in just a minute, but first, I will see who is here.”
She pounded again.
“There, my lady!” her driver suddenly called. “’E’s getting away out the back.”
“What?”
To her astonishment, she stepped to the si
de of the house and saw a figure bent over, a shawl pulled over his—its—head and running across the shadowy heath.
Just as she debated the wisdom of trying to follow, through the darkness, the moon went behind a cloud and the fugitive seemed to hit a low spot or a rabbit hole. The shadowy figure went down and a howl went up.
The moon reemerged, and Maddie could not resist circling the building quickly and running to catch up with the now downed man, who was clutching his leg.
“I think I’ve broken my ankle!”
“Who are you?” she demanded, stopping a few feet short, just in case. It obviously was not Adrian, who would never have run like a rabbit. The voice was wrong, and what she could see of the man showed no resemblance at all. She swallowed hard against her disappointment.
From the house, another face looked out the back door. “Are you hurt, Terrence, dear?”
“Get back inside, Celie, didn’t I tell you to stay out of sight?” he bellowed. To Maddie, he retorted, with no less change of tone and a sad lack of civility, “Who the bloody hell are you? I thought you were my wife!”
“Ah,” she said. That did explain a lot, probably as much as she needed to know.
Beside her, Bess had swelled up like a broody pigeon. “Ye donna talk in such tones to me lady, I’ll ’ave ye know, ye common bit of no good dog spit—”
“Come along, Bess,” Maddie interrupted hurriedly, trying hard not to laugh. “This is an—ah—honest mistake.”
They reentered their carriage as quickly as they could, especially as the man in the field has suddenly changed his tone and called after them, “Wait, you could give me a lift over to—”
The postboy slammed the door and Maddie, who had no desire to share her small carriage with the philandering couple, didn’t wait to hear the rest. He had gotten himself there; he presumably had a plan to get himself home again.
And she was no closer to finding Adrian than she had been when she left her own home. The slightly hysterical laughter on her lips faded quickly, and, as they made their way slowly along the rocky road before the moonlight faded, she tried not to feel discouraged.
The house seemed very quiet after Madeline and Bess had departed. Thomas drove them to Ripon where they could catch a stage, and he reported they had gotten off without incident. Felicity kept an eye on the new girls in the kitchen, and, as Bess had predicted, their cooking was adequate, if not exciting. Felicity lent a hand now and then, although John told her not to feel obligated.
“You should not feel like a servant; you are a guest in this house,” he told her gently when they sat together at dinner.
It felt strange to her to sit alone with him at the table, only the two of them.
She looked down at her plate, and when Livvie, the girl who had been serving, retreated to the kitchen, Felicity met his gaze. “You’ve been so kind, Mr. Applegate—”
“I did ask you to call me John,” he reminded her.
“I don’t want the servants to talk,” she said, smiling a bit shyly. “They will think I’m taking too much liberty. And you know I would do anything I can to help the household run more smoothly. I had thought of offering to fill the position of housekeeper, if that would ease Madeline’s mind; she does worry about your comfort and your ease.”
“Madeline is a loving daughter,” he agreed, with something in his expression she couldn’t quite read. “But you are a lady born, Mrs. Barlow—and I cannot call you Felicity if you will not call me John! And as I said; you are a lady. You are not suited for the position of housekeeper.”
“But—”
“If you mean to speak of—what you do not wish to speak of in front of the servants”—he paused as Livvie returned with a new dish to place on the table—“that was not your fault and does not come into the discussion. And there is another problem.”
“Oh?” Puzzled, she glanced back at him.
“Perhaps we can finish this discussion later?” he said, his tone polite as Livvie served them a new offering of lamb and mint sauce.
“Of course,” she assured him. Then she looked back at her plate, dipping a spoon into the concoction there. Gracious, she would have to show these girls how to make a decent sauce, or everyone here would be thinner before Madeline returned home.
When the meal had been cleared away, and she had retreated to the sitting room, John soon came to join her.
He wheeled his chair to a comfortable distance in front of the hearth, and motioned to her to take the chair next to his, so she did.
“What is the problem?” she asked. “If there is something I can mend, I promise I will see to it at once.”
He smiled at her, and she thought, not for the first time, what a handsome man he was, and how kind and wise were his deep blue eyes, no matter the fine lines about them that the passage of years and the pain of his accident had engraved there.
He was an honorable man, and there were few enough of those in the world, as she had cause to know!
“I said there were problems that would prevent you from taking the position of housekeeper,” he told her.
She flushed. “Oh. I should not have mentioned it. If you prefer that I leave the house, I will understand, Mr. Applegate. I do not wish to cause you or your family any embarrassment, and your daughter is so kind-hearted—I mean, she did not know about my divorce when she offered to be my friend, and—”
“Hush,” he said, his voice firm. “Leave Madeline out of this; it does not concern her.”
“Oh?” Now she was more puzzled than ever. “But—”
“And please call me John. We are alone now, you will note. I told the maids to go to bed after they finished in the kitchen. If we need any more tea, you will have to make it, I fear.”
“I don’t mind,” she assured him, not sure what this was about. “Indeed, I am happy to do anything—”
“Except what I most want you to do.” he interrupted.
“What?” This time she stared at him, nonplused.
“Felicity, my dear, I realize that I am only half a man, and it may be hard to see me as the man I once was.”
The pain in his voice made her wince, but she looked into his eyes and did not blink.
“Even so, I am going to risk the ultimate rejection. I know that you have not been treated well by one of my sex. So I can understand your hesitation if you have doubts…but nonetheless, my feelings for you have been growing ever since you have come to stay with us, and they demand that I dare to ask the question.”
Her heart was pounding so loudly that she could almost doubt the meaning of his words. He could not be about to say what she began to think he intended.
“I don’t want you to be my housekeeper, Felicity. I love you, my dear. I very much wish for you to be my wife.”
“Oh!” She adored him so, and to hear such words…She jumped to her feet and almost walked into the fire, then stepped back just in time. For a moment, she almost could not see.
John could not stop her, but he watched her in concern. “If it causes you distress to consider it—”
“No, no, I mean, your wife would be a most fortunate woman, indeed. It’s just that after the stillbirth, it was not just—not just more children that I was unable to consider in my future, John. I could not—I was so injured that—that I could not come together with a man without much pain. And my husband, my husband–”
She knew she must have flushed. She put one hand to her cheek. “He was most unhappy with the situation.”
“I see. If I had not already shot the bastard and shipped his body south, I think I should do it again,” John said, his tone dry.
She was so surprised she sat back down on her chair again.
“Felicity, do you recall that I am unable to walk, that my legs are useless to me? My injuries did, I fear, affect other functions of my body as well,” he pointed out, his tone gentle now.
“Oh,” she said, feeling very foolish. “Yes, I did realize that, John. I just—how thoughtless of me. I
have been so aware of my own—my own inadequacies that for a moment I forgot that you have your own—your own unique circumstances.”
He said, watching her, “That’s putting it tactfully.”
She felt a great weight lift. “So—so you would not mind that—you would not mind?”
He smiled. “I think we would suit, my dear.”
She had never expected to find any man, much less anyone as kind and wise and pleasant to be with as John Applegate, who would ever want her again. Blinking against sudden happy tears, she smiled back at him. “You make me very happy.”
“Oh, that is yet to come, I think,” he told her, his eyes glinting with the mischievous gleam of a much younger man.
He put out his hand and she extended her own eagerly, expecting him to clasp it. Instead he lifted it to his lips, kissing the palm very gently, then the soft skin of her wrist.
A ripple of pleasure moved up her arm, and her eyes widened.
“John!”
“There are many way to please a lady,” he told her, his eyes dancing. “Did your louse of a husband never teach you that? Ways which do not necessarily need all the body parts to be in prime working order.”
She gazed at him in amazement. “Jerod was more—more concerned with his contentment than with mine, I think.”
“I can well believe it,” John said. “Then we have delightful hours of exploration ahead of us, my love. And this Sunday, it will be our banns the vicar can read.”
He kissed her palm again, and she laughed aloud, thinking of the wonders of the life they could enjoy together.
Six weeks later Maddie was much more disheartened, and she knew little more than she did at the beginning, except to wonder just how Adrian’s mad cousin could locate him amid an island nation apparently teeming with tall, dark-haired men. She had traced a dozen such to dead ends, sure that each was her husband, and each had been a crushing disappointment.
She was tired and often wept into her pillow at night. Maddie was at least glad that Bess had insisted on coming with her. The good-hearted maid was her only link to home, and she could assure her mistress that her emotional responses to not just big setbacks but small things like a stale biscuit or a too cool cup of tea were sometimes only a result of her approaching motherhood. Otherwise, Maddie would have been sure she was losing her mind.