O'Rourke's Heiress

by Bancroft, Blair

  “Terence, stop this, this instant,” Tildy commanded.

  “Of course, it could be a madman, some strange creature of the moor,” Terence continued softly, ignoring her outburst. “An isolated incident. And Beth’s in no danger from anyone but that bastard Monterne.”

  “That’s why you’re going,” Tobias pronounced grimly. “So get to it. Select your men and go!”

  Momentarily ignoring his mentor, Terence looked down into the anxious eyes of the only mother he’d known since he was eight years old. “I’ll bring her back, Tildy, truly I will.” He bent and kissed her cheek, trying not to think about the tears that brimmed her eyes. After exchanging a significant glance with Tobias, he gave a firm nod, then strode out of the room with all the panache of a soldier off to war.

  In the silence which lingered behind him, a chair scraped the wood floor as Tildy suddenly jumped to her feet. “I must go,” she murmured. “Please let me know as soon as you have any news.”

  “Sit down, woman.”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “You heard me,” Tobias growled. “Sit back down.”

  Miss Matilda Spencer drew in her breath, looked down her nose at the Welsh upstart who dared to speak to her in that tone. “May I remind you, Mr. Brockman, I am no longer in your employ,” she pronounced in ringing tones.

  “I can cancel your annuity any time I damn well please. Now, sit!”

  Tildy’s skirts swished as, head high, she turned and started for the door.

  “Matilda! Dammit, woman, come back here. I need you.”

  Tildy slowed, but didn’t turn around.

  Bloody hell, he’d not expected to miss her so much. With Beth’s marriage he’d lost not one light in his life but two. And he’d already sent the boy away. Which meant he’d spent the winter bereft of his entire family. It had been . . . difficult. Damn difficult. Miserable. How many mistakes could a man make in such a short time? After a lifetime of successes, his world had gone to hell in a handbasket in a matter of months. His baby was hurt, in danger of her life. His son was risking his own life to save her. And his best friend outside the boy—yes, at last he could admit it—was once again walking out of his life.

  “Matilda, I’ve missed you.”

  The admission nearly brought Tildy to her knees. She barely made it back to the chair in front of Tobias’s desk. It was only much later that Tobias picked up Beth’s letter and read it again. Nell Archer? This time the name leaped out at him. He’d been so upset the first time, he’d skimmed over it without thinking. What the bloody hell was Nell Archer doing anywhere near his daughter? Their daughter.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Mrs. Archer . . . Mrs. Archer!” Ferris—his stately walk disintegrated into a near run—pulled up six feet from Nell Archer, swallowed hard, and gasped: “Ma’am, there’s a person at the door—dressed like a gentleman, but I’d not vouch for it! He wishes to see Lady Monterne. He says he’s her brother. Told me he’d go round me or through me, but see her he will!” With shaking hand, Ferris presented the stranger’s calling card on a silver salver.

  The boy! Nell thought. The thin waif whose eyes had shone with awe at his first sight of the six-months-old Elizabeth Brockman. Oh, yes, she remembered him well. Terence O’Rourke, Managing Director, Tobias Brockman & Company, London. The Merchant Prince, the newspapers called him, a man of power and wealth. “Show him in, Ferris,” she said.

  Nell’s breath caught in her throat. Whatever had made Ferris doubt this man’s gentility, she could not imagine, but butlers were the worst of snobs. Perhaps it was the untamed glint in his eyes, or his threat to roll right over the staid Ferris. Certainly, from his appearance, the Merchant Prince of the Brockman empire might have been paying a call at any noble residence in Mayfair. His tailcoat of finely woven blue wool was open to reveal a white on white brocade vest of heavy Chinese silk. A diamond sparkled in his relatively simple cravat. A bit ostentatious for daytime, but the boy was undoubtedly sporting his colors. His buff-colored pantaloons were stretched tight over muscles which caused Nell to stare.

  Beth had talked about her father, her governess, her foster brother, and his friend Jack. But, somehow, Nell had been unprepared for the reality, the astonishing presence of the waif grown to manhood. By all that was holy, he was beautiful! Stepped straight out of a painting by some decadent French or Spanish artist.

  Beautiful was the wrong word, of course. The eyes had seen too much, the mouth was too grim. His body radiated anger, determination . . . anxiety. But his smooth pale Irish skin, his tempting lips inspired a woman to kiss away the hurt. Oh, yes, this was a man!

  “Madame.” He sketched an almost mocking old-fashioned bow. “A most unexpected pleasure.”

  “You remember me?” Nell breathed.

  Terence nodded. “And I’m not such a barbarian that I’ve not attended the opera a time or two. And I’m well aware curiosity can be an insidious emotion,” he added softly. “Almost as deadly as love.”

  Nell, too intrigued to be offended, invited him to be seated. He complied with obvious reluctance, sitting on the edge of the gold silk brocade chair as if he were declaring it a very short stop on the way to his goal. “Now,” he pronounced, “you will tell me what you’re doing here and why that benighted butler told me Beth was ill.”

  Gorgeous he might be, but at that Nell came close to boxing his ears. The irony of it, she conceded, was almost laughable. This man was Beth’s savior, the White Knight charging to the rescue, and he was treating her as if she were the enemy. Calling upon her acting skills, she summoned what she hoped was a stern maternal gaze. “I assume, Mr. O’Rourke, from your presence here, that you received Beth’s letter. Please recall that it is I who posted it for her. I am not the enemy, sir. I am here because I do indeed love her. As her friend”—Nell emphasized the term—“Lord Monterne has been kind enough to allow me to help with her care.

  “I must caution you,” Nell added, cutting Terence off as he started to speak, “Beth does not know I am her mother. She has enough to deal with at the moment without adding any further problems.”

  “What’s happened to Beth and where’s Monterne?” Terence snapped. If the blasted woman didn’t stop pussy-footing around this so-called accident, he was likely to strangle her.

  “Beth was injured in an accident just over a week ago,” Nell said, taking pity on him. “A rein broke and her pony cart went into the river. Monterne never left her side until this morning when he went on one of his business trips to Exeter, leaving me in charge.” She could not resist adding those last words. Such an arrogant young man, to question her authority.

  His face, even those incredible eyes, seemed to go dark. Nell would have sworn a chill swept the room. “How badly was she hurt?” Terence asked in a voice little above a whisper.

  “She is mending,” Beth assured him. “But for a while we were quite worried.”

  Silence enveloped them as Terence, frowning at the carpet, seemed to lose the momentum that had carried him so far. “You say a rein broke?” he asked at last. “Was it an accident?” The words were soft and sibilant, enunciated with such cold deliberation, a shiver went up Nell’s spine.

  She kept her hands in her lap, her eyes fixed on her guest’s face. Here was a man of action, a man Beth needed. He must be told the truth. “Lord Monterne says the rein was cut. That—in addition to Beth being attacked on the high moor in the winter—leads us to believe we have an enemy in our midst. Though the why of it is not comprehensible.”

  O’Rourke’s lips curled into an expression Nell hoped never to see again. Part sneer, part chilling smile, part incredulity, part promise of retribution to come. “Monterne says there’s an enemy?” he mocked.

  Nell had not read Beth’s letter, but her suspicions had been confirmed since entering the Renfrew household. For Beth, the Refuge was anything but. The sooner she was elsewhere, the better. This Knight Errant might be a bit rough about the edges, but she’d lay odds he was capable
of dealing with a whole slew of villains.

  “You may see her, of course,” Nell told him. “As a brother, you have that right, no matter how unusual for a gentleman to visit the sickroom. But you must remember she is weak, her emotions fragile. Your visit will undoubtedly be a shock. You have been away in the colonies—our former colonies—have you not?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She could see the guilt behind his grim look. The knowledge that he had failed his sister—who was not really a sister. Who . . . Was it possible? Nell wondered. Was there more here than she had realized? “Come with me,” she told Terence, a bubble of excitement lifting her spirits. “I will go in first and warn her. Otherwise, I fear the shock will be too much.”

  Obediently, more shaken than he cared to admit, Terence followed Mrs. Helen Archer from the room.

  “No!” Beth grabbed a strand of wilted blond hair with one hand, put her other hand over her eyes. “No, no, it’s not possible. He can’t see me.” She burst into tears, wailing between sobs, “No, no, no, no, no-o-o!”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Nell declared briskly. “I’ll brush your hair myself. We’ll straighten your pillows—”

  “No!”

  “He’s come all the way from London to—”

  “And he can . . . take me . . . straight back,” Beth gulped between sobs. “But he can’t look at me!”

  A-ah, Nell thought. So it was true. Tobias, how could such a smart man have made such an appalling mess of two people’s lives? Nell also experienced a brief moment of regret. Such a fine specimen of manhood. Almost, she had hoped . . . Ah, well, Italy was full of stalwart young men.

  “Go away!” Beth wailed.

  Startled, Nell looked around to discover that Terence, evidently overhearing at least some of Beth’s outcry, had not waited for permission to enter. A blue-fire glare, and Nell and the nurse scurried from the room.

  After that first horrified glance, Beth would not look at him. Terence could see nothing more than a mass of unruly blond curls, a shoulder hidden beneath a voluminous white nightgown, and one small hand clutching the bedcover. “Beth?” he coaxed.

  “You had only to hold out a hand, give me your strength. Tell papa no. You had only to say yes that night we were together. To take me in your arms and love me. Be a man.” She spoke in a whisper, addressing the far wall.

  “I was a man, Beth. I did what I thought was right.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “So were you.”

  “I was a child. You weren’t!”

  Terence groaned. “I thought I was being noble. Ironic, isn’t it? The street urchin seizing his one great chance to play the nobleman, be chivalrous, sacrifice everything for his lady.”

  “Sacrifice?” Beth retorted. “Running away to the Americas when I needed you was a sacrifice?”

  “Bloody hell, child, I didn’t know you needed me! I thought I was doing the right thing. Jack and I did everything we could to find something wrong with Monterne, and we couldn’t. We truly believed he was right for you.”

  “And that I’d live happily ever after like those silly girls in the fairy tales!”

  “I did believe it,” Terence asserted. “We all did.”

  “Well, I assure you, you were wrong.”

  Terence crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you going to look at me?” he demanded. “I need to know what’s going on here, so I can fix it.”

  Beth turned slowly, her amber eyes glowing like a tiger cub defending its lair, back to the wall. “The great O’Rourke is going to fix things, is he? He’s going to dispatch a murderer, change my husband’s vicious nature, wave a magic wand, and make it all go away.”

  It took every ounce of cool gamesmanship Terence had learned on the streets of Dublin and perfected in the board rooms of the City of London. Every swear word he knew boiled through his mind as he looked at his precious Beth. Her round pink cheeks were now sunken hollows, the circles under her eyes almost as dark as the ugly yellow-green bruise on her forehead, her glorious golden curls lank and matted. Amber eyes, dull and lifeless, reflected only a spark of anger in a sea of despair.

  He struggled to remember what they were talking about. “You deserve to be angry,” he said more softly, “but the fault isn’t all mine. There’s plenty to go round. But, yes, I’ve brought my men with me. Inquiries are being made. We will find out what’s going on.”

  “You speak as if you plan to leave me here so Rodney can save the murderer the trouble,” Beth hissed. “If, indeed, he is not the entire problem rolled into one.”

  Terence ran his hands through his hair, fought for reasonable words of explanation and failed. Stark truth was all that was left. “I can’t take you home, Beth, at least not quite yet. It would be kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping! Are you ready for Bedlam? My husband is a monster!”

  “According to the law, he has the right to discipline you any way he sees fit.” Terence’s jaw was set, his tone inexorable. She had to understand.

  Beth felt hysteria rising. Terence was failing her. Again. “You’re going to leave me here to die?”

  “What I’m going to do is move in,” Terence declared. “You’re the lady of the house, you don’t need Monterne’s permission to invite a guest. And I think it highly unlikely, particularly after the words Jack and I had with him one night last summer, that there will be anything more to fear. At least not from Monterne. The bog, the cut rein—those are different matters that require investigation. I intend to solve the problem.”

  Amber eyes glaring, Beth struggled to sit upright. “I will not stay with him, Terence. He will charm you, tell you how much he cares about me, how dearly he wants a child—and I truly believe he does, if only to secure papa’s fortune for the Renfrews. But underneath it all is a madman, at best a man with an illness. I think he cannot help himself. But I can. You will take me away from here, Terence. I cannot stay.”

  Anguish poured through him, his whole body shuddered. He wanted to climb onto the bed, take her in his arms, never let go. If it took a lifetime, he vowed, he would make up for his failure. But leaving a murderer on the loose, whether Monterne or someone else, was not the way out of this impasse.

  A new thought intruded. Was it, perhaps, a case of ransom? A different kind than was usually seen. Would Tobias receive a note saying the attacks would stop if the perpetrator was given some kingly sum of money?

  A possibility. One of the more believable.

  Circumstances dictated he must play the role he had performed for Tobias Brockman so many times before. Terence O’Rourke, the fixer. Once again, the lover would have to wait.

  “Call your housekeeper,” Terence instructed. “Tell her to prepare a room for me, as close to yours as possible. Tell her my stay will be indefinite.” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled the bell rope beside Beth’s bed. In silence, they waited for the drama to begin.

  Ignoring Nell and the nurse, who were attempting to fuss over her, Beth stared at the door which had just closed on Mrs. Ferris and Terence. For some reason she had received the impression the housekeeper was relieved. Certainly, she hadn’t blinked an eye when Beth told her to ready a room directly across from her own. Terence hadn’t been in the house an hour, and there wasn’t a person from cellars to attics who didn’t know he’d come . . . and why. Nell was humming softly; Ellie Freeman, positively bouncing with joy. Even the dour nurse, Mrs. Mapes, seemed to have spring in her step.

  Terence did that to women. Miserable man. Beth had dreamed of him, prayed for him, begged God to let him come for her. She’d fantasized, attempting to sweep away her suffering on a glowing cloud of what might have been. Of what could never be. Then he’d come bursting through the door as if he owned it. Larger, brighter, more forceful than even her dreams had conjured. And she’d screamed, burst into tears, turned from him as if he were the devil himself. She couldn’t bear for him to see her so weak and wasted away. Disheveled, defeated, her spirit broken.

&n
bsp; He’d said her name and, suddenly, they were back in the schoolroom, the boy struggling to become an educated man, the spoiled child delighting in wrapping him around her little finger. Once again, they were foster siblings, who sometimes squabbled as if blood ties were firmly in place. Not at all what she had pictured as their reunion. Nor what Terence had expected either, she was quite sure. As usual, they’d made a mull of it.

  Terence’s fault, of course. The man was an idiot. Surely she could simply tell her husband she wished to go home for a visit? And here Terence was, ready to provide a convenient escort to London. If that didn’t work . . .

  Yes, of course! The Season was about to get underway. She would convince Rodney to go early and, when they arrived in London, she could slip away. Disappear into one of the many secret places Tobias maintained around the world. Perhaps that plantation Terence had gone to Louisiana to buy?

  Beth dragged out a long forlorn sigh. Terence was right. No matter what method she used to flee, she would be forced to hide for the rest of her life. She had to be brave a bit longer, give Terence a chance to act. It was what he did best, after all. He was an accomplished man of action. If an abject failure as a lover.

  Three hours—and a great many anguished thoughts—later, Beth allowed Mary Mapes to plump up her pillows and help her sit up as the kitchen maid appeared with a tray full of covered dishes. When Beth peeked beneath the covers, she received a surprise. Real food, a generous sampling of what would shortly be served at the dining table downstairs. Had Terence had time to charm Cook as well as Mrs. Ferris? Very likely.

  After supper, she would have Ellie brush her hair, even if it hurt. She’d pinch her cheeks, find a ribbon somewhere. Put on her flowered silk dressing gown . . .

  Dear God, what was she doing? In her husband’s house she was contemplating how she would look for a man who was not her husband. A man who was not a blood relative. No matter how wicked Rodney had been, she had no right. No right at all.