A Foolish Heart (Regency Shakespeare Book 1)

by Martha Keyes

  He stilled, the blood pounding in his ears. “You are mistaken.” He turned his head toward the windows.

  “Am I?” Her voice was still soft and timid. “It stands right before you, but you refuse to acknowledge it.”

  He whipped his head around to face her. What did she mean?

  He didn’t dare ask. No, he would not venture into that territory. He had promised himself he never would.

  She held his gaze. “Whatever you said to Mercy when I came for her yesterday, it cut her deeply. Surely you can see that only the words of someone she cares for profoundly could have such an effect upon her.”

  Solomon’s heart seemed to rise into his throat for a moment.

  “If she had cared for me as much as you say, we would not be having this conversation, Miss Pawnce. Miss Marcotte and I would be married. But the fact of the matter is that she did not care for me in that way.”

  Miss Pawnce’s eyes widened, sincere and alert. “She did.”

  Solomon shook his head, anger and annoyance gripping him. “Forgive me, but you were not there. I was. She made it very clear that it was fortune that would decide whom she married.” He inclined his head at her. “You are a great advocate for love, Miss Pawnce, so I imagine you can understand the message I received from your cousin’s decision.”

  She primmed her lips together. “Yes, of course. But have you never misjudged what was most important to you, Mr. Kennett? Or did you always know your own heart and mind so perfectly?”

  He glowered at her. He didn’t even know his own mind and heart now.

  Miss Pawnce watched him. “If fortune was truly all Mercy cared for, she would be long married by now.”

  “Please,” he said. “I wish to be alone. I am tired.” He didn’t want the hope Miss Pawnce was offering him. He had worked too hard and too long trying to rid himself of it.

  Her brows drew together, and her eyes grew somber before she retreated toward the door and closed it softly behind her.

  Solomon stared after her for a moment, almost wishing she would have stayed so he could have made her understand. But he owed her no explanations

  He looked to the side table. The bowl was still there. Hopefully someone belowstairs had a liking for cold concoctions, for Solomon had no intention of drinking it.

  He shut his eyes and pushed out a breath through his nose, willing his heart to slow.

  He had rejected love? Love had rejected him—if it ever had been love.

  Surely the fault wasn’t to be laid at his door if he refused to open himself up for a second spurning by the same woman. Or to lay his heart at her feet when she had rejected it before? His pride wouldn’t permit such a thing.

  He wiped his mouth with a harsh hand.

  But what if Miss Pawnce was right? Even the thought made him chuckle wryly. The odds were slim, given how deranged her senses seemed to be. Indeed, this was the only conversation he’d had with her where she hadn’t hurled poetry at him. Yet somehow he found it even less intelligible than verse.

  He let his head fall back on the board behind him with a thud. If he was admitting the truth to himself, he wanted to see Mercy. Badly. And yet he couldn’t bear to.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mercy scaled the stairs to the second floor of Chesterley, feeling her heart quicken more than it should have from the exertion.

  She wanted to see how Solomon was faring, but she was hesitant. It was all she could do to keep her mind from jumping between his anger toward her and the tender way he had said her name and taken her cheek in hand.

  Before vomiting all over her, of course.

  She reached the top of the stairs, and her eyes landed upon Viola leaving Solomon’s bedchamber. Had someone relieved her of duty? Mr. Coburn was tending to Deborah—apparently she had not fared well in the sickroom—and Miss Pickering? Well, Miss Pickering was also tending to Deborah’s needs, though she seemed more interested in ensuring that Mr. Coburn didn’t do anything to strain his injured arm than in ministering to Deborah.

  Viola shut the door, and Mercy frowned. They had been keeping the door open—it had seemed the only way to maintain some vestige of propriety in a house full of unmarried ladies and gentlemen, where one of the men required constant supervision.

  “Vi,” she said, picking up her pace to reach her cousin.

  Viola stopped and looked to Mercy, smiling wanly.

  “What is it?” Mercy asked. She could imagine that much of Solomon’s ire would be directed at Viola. Certainly the bulk of it would be reserved for Mercy, though. “I was just coming to ask how he was faring.”

  “I think my company was not conducive to his healing,” Viola said, “so I have left him with the restorative I made.”

  Oh dear.

  Viola smiled. “I think he will welcome your care after having been with me, even if it was only for five minutes.”

  Mercy highly doubted that, but she thanked Viola all the same, and Viola strode down the corridor, leaving Mercy to debate whether or not to enter.

  She ran her hands down her skirts nervously. Solomon might well send her away, but she would at least try. She had promised the doctor, after all, to ensure that he wasn’t left alone, and it was becoming apparent that she could not rely upon anyone else to stay with him—or for him to allow anyone to do so.

  She opened the door softly, and a scoffing noise met her immediately.

  “Did Miss Pawnce send you? In hopes that you would be able to persuade me to drink that?” Heavy-lidded but apparently lucid, Solomon tilted his head toward the side table where a ceramic bowl sat, a few wisps of steam rising from it.

  Mercy laughed, relieved to see that he was not still angry with her from earlier—or at least not obviously so. “Would I be successful if I did try to persuade you?”

  “If by successful, you mean would you leave this room with hot ginger whatever-it-is on your face, then yes! You would experience raging success.”

  Mercy approached the bowl, wafting the steam toward her nose. “It smells very much like what she made for my father a few months ago when he was sick. I believe it did him good.”

  Solomon’s brows rose in faux polite curiosity. “Did him good, did it? What wonderful news. Perhaps my gravestone can say something to that effect: ‘He believed it would do him good.’”

  Mercy stifled a laugh. “Come, Solomon. You must be starving. I think a bit of ginger would be just the thing. Viola does have a way with paregorics and restoratives, even if she has much to learn when it comes to elixirs.”

  “Ah yes, I can hear her voice even now: ‘Drink my potion and you shall be, / Healed from this catastrophe.’”

  Mercy’s hand flew to her mouth, but it was no use. The laughter sprang through.

  “How unkind of you!” she said, trying to compose her mouth.

  “Unkind? It was you who were unkind, assuring me that the elixir was harmless. And then”—he talked over her remonstrations—“abandoning me to the care of, first, Mr. Coburn, who is capable of nothing but obsessing over his love life; second, Miss Lanaway, who should never again be let so much as near a sick room; and lastly, Miss Pawnce, who insists upon adding insult to injury by making me yet another concoction which will bring me to death’s door.”

  Mercy sat down in the chair beside the bed, her lips twitching. “I certainly did not abandon you.” She felt a blush steal into her cheeks as she thought on his delirium. He had no memory of what he had said or done, of course. “But I am very flattered to know that you prefer my care to that of everyone else.”

  “Ha!” he shouted.

  Mercy raised her brows and made as if to stand. “Oh, have I misunderstood? Should I perhaps fetch your Aunt Priscilla to take my place?” She rose and turned toward the door.

  Solomon’s arm shot out, grasping hers at the wrist.

  She looked down at him, feigning surprise.

  There was near panic in his eyes. “If you leave me,” he said, “I shall never forgive you.”


  Her smile wavered. Surely he had still not forgiven her for her last offense. She managed a soft chuckle as she sat back in the chair. “Very well.”

  He relaxed and let go of her hand.

  “And now,” he said, pushing himself to sit up, “you can help me out of this dratted bed.”

  “Not,” Mercy said, putting her hand out to keep him from throwing off the coverlet, “until you have taken a sip of Viola’s restorative.”

  “Not a chance,” he said fiercely, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. He shifted toward the edge and put his weight on his legs, but he wobbled precariously, and Mercy was obliged to steady him and guide him back down.

  She sat beside him, keeping a steadying hand on his arm. “You have nothing in your stomach.” She reached for the bowl and offered it to him.

  “I am well aware of that fact, thank you very much.”

  “Well, then,” she said matter-of-factly, “drink some of this first, and then I promise to help you.”

  “If you are so confident that it won’t kill me”—Solomon drew away from it—“then you will have no problem drinking it first—to demonstrate its harmlessness.”

  Mercy narrowed her eyes at him and looked to the restorative. Gone were the wisps of steam, and the golden liquid sat stagnant in the bowl.

  She bit her lip. She trusted Viola. Didn’t she? The answer would have been “yes” before today—before Solomon had become so violently ill.

  “Just as I thought,” said Solomon with a half-smile. “Let us throw it out the window and be done with it, then.”

  Mercy pursed her lips, staring him down with a severe expression. She took the bowl in hand and put it to her lips.

  He raised his brows. “I warn you that, if you fall ill, I shall have little sympathy. And what’s more, you shall have to subject yourself to the care”—he said the word with derision—“of the likes of your cousins and Mr. Coburn.”

  “Perhaps you are simply too demanding a patient.” She knew it was untrue, but teasing him felt too good, too familiar to forego.

  “Do you consider it overly demanding to wish for a caretaker who does not add her own retching to mine? Or to expect that one’s nurse not babble incessantly about his fledgling romance?”

  Mercy suppressed a smile and raised the bowl to her lips.

  He put a hand to the bowl to stop her, shaking his head. “No, no. Turn so that I can see. I shan’t permit you to get away with only pretending to drink it.”

  She lowered the bowl and laughed softly, adjusting in her seat so that Solomon could see her profile and the way her throat bobbed as she took two sips.

  She cringed, and Solomon drew back again.

  “No, it is just a bit sour is all,” she said, waving a hand as she set it down.

  He looked skeptical. “Perhaps I should wait a few hours. See how you fare.”

  “Solomon Kennett,” she said in feigned outrage. “You will drink this entire bowl this instant, or I shall be obliged to pour it down your throat!”

  He looked intrigued. “I should like to see how you propose to accomplish such a thing.”

  She shrugged, looking from the bowl to him. “You are very weak. I imagine it wouldn’t be terribly difficult.”

  He laughed, and Mercy could feel his shoulders shaking beside her. “I am not that weak, Mercy.”

  Her gaze flew to his face at the sound of her name, and as their eyes met, she realized with a jolt of the heart just how near they were to one another. But it was not only the physical distance—so great for the last two years—that was gone. There was some warmth in his eyes again.

  It beckoned her, inviting her to surrender herself to everything she felt, to bridge the final distance between them—to hold Solomon in a way that would make it impossible for him to doubt her heart.

  His eyes moved to her lips for the briefest of moments, and Mercy felt her mouth and the back of her neck tingle in anticipation.

  He looked away, breaking the thread between them so abruptly that Mercy blinked at the change.

  She shut her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t allow herself to be swept up by her love for Solomon. He hadn’t forgiven her and, more importantly, it did not seem that he wished to. She was merely the least disagreeable person to care for him in their strange circumstances.

  He reached for the bowl in her hands. “I shall drink the nasty brew since you insist upon it. But if we are both laid up retching, the first thing I shall do when I am recovered—assuming I do recover—will be to take revenge upon you.”

  “You terrify me.” She breathed out her relief. He had not reverted to cold aloofness, and that at least was something to be grateful for.

  He sent her a resigned look and raised the bowl in the air. “To your health, Miss Marcotte.” He grimaced. “And to mine as well, I hope.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  While Solomon’s legs still felt much like blubbering jelly, the restorative did grant him a measure of needed strength and energy. His stomach grumbled with hunger, and it still felt unsettled and unpredictable. He was desperate to leave the room, though, if only for a change of scenery.

  Mercy granted him her arm to lean upon as he walked the corridor of Chesterley in his crumpled clothing.

  He looked down at the state of himself. “I am not fit to be in company,” he said. His coat and cravat had been removed at some point, and his shirt hung open, wrinkled and loose.

  Mercy followed his gaze, averting her eyes as they fell upon his shirt. “I think it can be forgiven this once.”

  He froze, his hand flying to his stomach at the gurgling sensation within.

  Mercy looked at him warily, and he shot her an accusatory glance. “So it begins,” he said.

  “I imagine that it is only the aftereffects of the elixir. Perhaps some of the poison remains.”

  He half-smiled at her, raising his brows. “You are a staunch defender of Miss Pawnce, aren’t you?” He doubled over, aware even in his pain of her bracing hand on his back. How could someone’s mere touch produce such an effect?

  She shrugged lightly. “It is not hard to wish to. She has the best and kindest of hearts, misguided though her efforts may be at times. Besides,” she said, and he almost thought he saw her cheeks turn red, “she has taught me a great deal in the past year.”

  “Taught you? Taught you what?” He couldn’t help himself. He was far too curious what Mercy might learn from someone as silly as Miss Pawnce.

  Mercy glanced at him and wet her lips. “Oh, a number of things,” she said somewhat uncommunicatively.

  He leveled a skeptical glance at her.

  She lifted her shoulders. “Viola is so free, so unapologetically herself, and so happy— when she has every reason not to be. I often wish I were more like her. She has shown me beyond any doubt that happiness is a choice.”

  Solomon frowned. Two years ago, he would have given anything for Mercy to realize such a thing for herself, for perhaps then she might have taken the risk he had been asking her to take. She had been too convinced, though, that there could be no contentment or happiness without a fortune to ensure it.

  For those two years, he had villainized Mercy in his thoughts—reminding himself again and again of what she had done to him, fixating upon her failings until he had almost convinced himself that he had fallen in love with some sort of selfish and mercenary monster.

  But that picture he had painted—the one he had trusted would help him move forward—it bore no resemblance at all to the woman beside him; the woman who supported him as he stumbled down the corridor.

  At least she hadn’t been personally subjected to his vomiting yet. However incapable he felt of forgiving Mercy, he had enough pride to wish for her not to witness such a thing.

  “Perhaps we should turn back,” he said with effort. “There is still time to spare you the experience Miss Lanaway was nearly subjected to. After all, who knows but what you, too, might succumb.”

  Mercy laughed softly
as she helped him forward. “If I had Deborah’s weak stomach, I should have succumbed when you expelled the contents of your stomach onto my lap.”

  He stopped mid-step, staring at her. He would have remembered vomiting on Mercy. “You are funning.” His tone was somewhere between a statement and a question.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I am not.”

  His eyes narrowed, and for the first time he noticed her dress. It hung loosely on her arms, and the color hardly did her justice. He had never liked puce.

  She followed his gaze, swishing her dress skirts from side to side with her free hand and smiling. “Admiring my dress? Your aunt was kind enough to lend it to me after”—her lips twitched slightly—“the incident.”

  That movement of her mouth was so small and insignificant, and yet so familiar. Painfully familiar.

  Her arm stilled, and she scanned his eyes. “I imagine you remember very little of what happened.”

  Was there a hint of a question in her tone? He knew a moment of misgiving. Had he done something mortifying? Beyond vomiting on her, apparently. Curse the day he had agreed to drink that witch’s brew!

  “I think I remember most of it,” he said, putting a hand on the door frame of his bedchamber as they passed through the doorway. “I remember drinking the elixir, which, quite frankly, was very palatable—enough to lull me into a false sense of security.” His brows knit together in an effort to strain at the snippets of memory. “I remember walking toward the woods and beginning to feel very strange.” He paused. Vivid images flashed through his mind: shadows. High-pitched noises. Small, fairy-like creatures.

  He blinked to dispel the images. Another flash: his hand on Mercy’s warm cheek, so near he could kiss her. His heart raced at the…was it a memory? A dream? He blinked again and again. It made no sense.

  “Yes, it was there that I found you. In the woods.” Mercy threw back the bedcovers for him and guided him to sit down.

  His teeth began to chatter and his body trembled. Mercy looked at him with concern. “I should not have allowed you to get out of bed.”