Midnight Bride

by Marlene Suson

  Lady Rachel had bewitched him into momentarily forgetting that. Damn, but the woman was dangerous. He had been determined not to come into the maze. Yet he had not been able to stay away from her.

  And now he would not be able to escape her and Yorkshire today as he had planned. He could not possibly leave until he knew for certain that his brother was all right. If he was not careful, he could lose his heart to the ravishing Lady Rachel. And he knew too well the pain and disillusionment that would bring him.

  He abruptly deposited Maxi, who had dozed off on his lap, on the ground and stood up. For the remainder of his stay at Wingate Hall, he must force himself to keep his distance from the enticing Rachel, even if it meant enduring her aunt’s company instead.

  He despised Sophia but, unlike her niece, she was no temptation at all.

  After dinner that evening, a devastated Rachel hurried up the stairs to her bedchamber. She had eagerly looked forward to the duke’s company, but instead of taking her into the dining room as he had the previous night, he ignored her and took the seat Sophia had assigned him next to her. When the company gathered in the drawing room after dinner, Rachel seemed to be invisible to him.

  She was stunned and hurt by this sudden, inexplicable change in his behaviour toward her. Worse, it left her with no protection against Lord Felix’s fatuous attentions. Unable to bear the fop another moment, Rachel excused herself after a quarter hour in the drawing room, murmuring that she did not feel well, and fled to her room.

  She had been there no more than three minutes when Eleanor appeared, concern for her friend stamped on her face. “Are you sick?”

  Rachel smiled wanly. “Only of Lord Felix’s company. He attaches himself to me like a leech, and nothing I say discourages him.”

  “He is so full of his own consequence that he cannot imagine any woman is not ecstatic to have his attention.”

  Rachel sighed. If only the duke would show her a fraction of the interest that Felix did. No other man had ever excited her as Westleigh did, and he was good and honourable in the bargain. She was surprised and delighted by how similar their thinking was.

  He was precisely the kind of man she dreamed of marrying. An odd heat flared within her at the thought. When Eleanor had first suggested that Rachel should try to fix his interest to defeat Lord Felix’s suit, she had been appalled, but now she wanted to do so.

  Except that Rachel did not have the faintest notion how to go about it. She had never been to London nor exposed to sophisticated society. She asked Eleanor, who had both these advantages, “How do I go about fixing a man’s interest?”

  Eleanor looked confounded, then burst out laughing. “You are asking me how to do that when every eligible man in the shire has fallen in love with you.”

  “But I never tried to make them do so,” Rachel protested. “I mean it just happened, and I wish it had not.” The thought of being kissed by any of them as the duke had kissed her made her shudder in revulsion. The memory of his kiss, however, triggered a very different kind of trembling in her.

  Eleanor grinned. “I collect your quarry is Westleigh. You cannot make a more prestigious marriage. Your Aunt Sophia can have no objection to your marrying him instead of Lord Felix. And Westleigh was most attentive to you last night.”

  “But tonight he acted as though I did not exist.”

  “I noticed,” Eleanor admitted. “He is infamous in London for just that sort of behaviour—dancing attention on a lovely lady one night and ignoring her the next. You have picked a most elusive man. Every beauty in London will tell you that.”

  “What must I do to win him?”

  Eleanor shook her head. “I wish I could help you, but no woman alive has found the answer to that question.”

  “If Stephen does not return, the duke is my only hope of escaping marriage to Felix. Oh, Eleanor, I am certain that my brother is still alive, but where can he be?”

  If only Rachel would hear from Anthony Denton. Stephen’s friend had promised her that he would hire an investigator to find out what had happened to her brother and, if the man learned anything, Tony would come instantly to tell her. Every time Rachel heard a horse ride up, she looked out, hoping that it was Tony with word of Stephen.

  Eleanor said, “Speaking of your brother, his loving betrothed departed quickly enough today once she realized she had not a prayer of becoming Westleigh’s duchess.”

  “I am glad she is gone.” It was rare for Rachel to dislike anyone, but she did Fanny. The girl could think of nothing but pedigrees and parties, and her eagerness to abandon her betrothal to poor Stephen if she could snare the duke had shocked Rachel. Her brother deserved better than that.

  A quiet scratching sounded at the door. It was a chambermaid, “Cook asks ye come to the kitchen at once,” she whispered to Rachel, glancing nervously up and down the hall to make certain that she was not observed.

  Rachel knew what the summons meant. Since Aunt Sophia’s ban on her treating the sick, requests for her assistance were being funnelled through Cook, who risked the loss of her position to deliver them.

  Rachel slipped down the backstairs. Cook, an ample, gray-haired woman, was waiting for her at the foot of the staircase with a Wingate Hall tenant, Sam Prentice, a burly, bushy-haired man in his early thirties.

  There was a frantic look in his steel-gray eyes as he told Rachel, “‘Tis me little Sammy. Me fears him’ll not last the night if ye don’t help him, m’lady.”

  “I shall come as soon as I change into riding clothes and get my case. While I am doing that, have Benjy, the stablehand, saddle my mare.” Benjy was utterly faithful to Rachel and could be counted on not to tell anyone of her departure.

  She turned and ran back upstairs. When she came down again a scant ten minutes later, she had on the nondescript brown riding habit she had worn that morning and was carrying her leather case.

  Prentice was waiting near the stable with her mare and his horse. Once they were mounted, he led the way at a sedate walk until they were out of earshot of the house. Then he urged his horse to a gallop and Rachel did the same.

  They did not slow until he left the road for an overgrown path so narrow that they could not ride abreast, and Sam went first. It twisted through a beech wood in a remote section of the Wingate estate.

  Rachel wondered at the peculiar route they were taking, and she felt a prickling of alarm. No faint-heart was Rachel, though, and she tried to quiet her unease by telling herself that Sam must have picked a shortcut that would get them to his son’s bedside more quickly.

  They came to a building so well-concealed by the trees surrounding it that they were almost to its door before Rachel saw it. Sam stopped abruptly in front of her and was off his horse in an instant. This was no humble tenant’s cottage but a substantial slate structure, like a gentleman’s hunting box, with large glass windows.

  “Why are we here?” Rachel asked in consternation.

  “This is not your home. Little Sammy cannot be here!

  Chapter 8

  “Nay, m’lady, but I beg ye to help the poor creature inside for ne’er was one o’ God’s creations more deserving o’ help.”

  Sam Prentice looked at Rachel with such an object, pleading expression that her alarm faded. He was a good man, and Rachel trusted him.

  Puzzled she followed him into the lodge. It was, she belatedly realized, the place that her grandfather had built for his mistresses,

  Her father had ordered it boarded up after her grandfather’s death years ago. Rachel had thought no one had been inside it since then, but it was clearly being lived in now. But by whom?

  It was the first time that she had been inside the lodge, and she looked around curiously. To her left off the entry was a handsomely furnished drawing room and to her right a kitchen with a trestle table in the centre.

  The rear of the house was devoted to a large bedroom that boasted a big tester bed with ornately carved walnut posts, a sitting area with a comfortable settee and
chairs, and a sizable walnut cupboard in one corner.

  A stone fireplace along the far wall had a small blaze burning in it. A large kettle of water was suspended over the flames. That pleased Rachel immensely. Her mother, contrary to prevailing opinion, had been a devout believer in cleanliness and had attributed her success in healing as much to her insistence upon it as to the remedies she concocted from her herb garden.

  After Mama died and Rachel succeeded to her healing work, she took to instructing all those she helped to put a kettle of water on to heat before they set out to get her so that it would be ready when she came. By now, it was rare for her to arrive without hot water waiting for her, as it was here.

  The glow of a triple-branched candelabra on a bedside table illuminated the outline of a form beneath the covers. She hurried to the bed, curious to see her mysterious patient.

  He was a man, full grown and startlingly handsome despite a nasty bruise on his temple. His rich, russet-coloured hair was damp and curling about his face, which had a disturbing pallor. His eyes were closed, and she could not tell whether he was unconscious or merely asleep.

  Rachel noticed a pile of discarded clothing, caked with mud and blood, near the bed. “What happened?” she asked tersely.

  “Tis his leg m’lady,” Sam said.

  She flipped the covers off him. He was a big, impressively muscular man, and he wore no clothes but a pair of breeches. The garment’s left leg had been cut off, revealing a raw, ugly wound on his thigh.

  “Why he’s been shot!” she exclaimed.

  Memories of Sir Waldo’s braggadocio the previous night about hitting Gentleman Jack swirled through Rachel’s mind. She remembered assuring the duke that Fletcher could not hit the broad side of a barn, but now she had the proof before her that the duke’s puzzling concern for the highwayman had been merited.

  “What happened?” Rachel asked Sam. Although she was certain she knew, she wanted to hear what he would tell her. “Who is he?”

  “Me cousin from the other side o’ York coming t’ see me. Him was walking through the woods someone musta took him for a deer.”

  Rachel said sharply, “Do not lie to me, Sam. He is Gentleman Jack.”

  Sam looked crestfallen. He opened his mouth as though to deny the identification, hesitated for an instant, then said in a defiant tone, “He be as good a man as e’er there lived, m’lady. Please, ye must help him.”

  “Of course I shall, Sam.”

  The highwayman moaned, and she touched his forehead. He was burning with fever.

  She bent over him to examine his wound. Blood had clotted and dried about it. Worse, dirt had gotten into it, and it had not been properly cleaned. It should have been attended to hours ago. Had it been treated then, it would not have been that serious, but she did not like the look of it now.

  Nor did she like the look of him, what with his raging fever and the pallor that indicated he had lost considerable blood.

  “It doesn’t look good,” she told Sam frankly. “You should have come for me last night instead of tonight.”

  “Me didn’t know he’d been shot then,” Sam said grimly. “Me and me brother found him this morning in the woods.”

  “Not until then!” Rachel exclaimed, remembering the storm that had moved through the previous night. She was horrified at how long the highwayman must have lain wounded and helpless on the cold, muddy ground as the rain beat down on him. No wonder he was so sick. It would be a miracle if he were not stricken with an inflammation of the lungs.

  “His horse ran away. Tried t’ crawl here, he did, but didn’t get far afore he passed out. Still out cold when we found him.”

  Rachel examined the swollen bruise on the highwayman’s temple, then checked the rest of his body for other injuries, but found none. The ball might have chipped a bone in his thigh, but nothing had been broken. “Why did you not come for me earlier in the day, Sam?”

  “Him was conscious then and wouldn’t hear o’ it.”

  Is there any clean linen?”

  “In the cupboard in the corner.”

  Rachel went to it and found a man’s clothing arranged in neat stacks. She pulled out two cravats of finest lawn and several linen handkerchiefs. From their quality Rachel suspected that Gentleman Jack’s nickname was more accurate than people suspected.

  As she opened her leather case beside the bed, Gentleman Jack was suddenly racked with shuddering chills. Another bad sign.

  Rachel went to the fireplace to ladle hot water into a basin from the kettle and set about cleaning the highwayman’s angry, festering wound. Then she made a poultice to draw the inflammation and pus from it.

  He moaned frequently as she worked on him but, to her relief, did not regain consciousness. He was much easier to deal with this way.

  With Sam’s help, she forced her herbal concoctions down the highwayman’s throat to fight the inflammation and lower his fever.

  When she had done all she could for the moment, she pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down beside him, resigning herself to a long, anxious night.

  Sam said, “Me best get ye home now, m’lady.”

  “No, I cannot leave him yet. He will require careful nursing if he is to make it through the night.” Rachel prayed that her absence from Wingate Hall would not be discovered. She would be taking a terrible chance by remaining here. She shuddered at the thought of Sophia’s rage. Even worse, if Rachel were found with the highwayman, it would go very badly for her with the authorities. She knew that she should go home rather than chance it, but she could not abandon the wounded man.

  Sam did not argue with her but said simply, “Me’ll be sleeping in the hall by the door. If ye need anything, m’lady, call.”

  After Sam withdrew, Rachel studied the highwayman’s face in the light from the candelabra. Something about his jutting jaw and the curve of his cheek and lashes reminded her of the Duke of Westleigh.

  Sweet heaven, had she become so fascinated by the duke that she was starting to see him in other men, too? But no other man, including this highwayman, had ever generated the odd, fluttery yearning deep within her that the duke did.

  If only she could inspire the same reaction in him that he did in her, she thought unhappily, her feelings lacerated by his indifference to her tonight.

  Looking around the large, comfortably furnished bedroom, Rachel wondered how long Gentleman Jack had been using the lodge.

  Her grandfather had clearly spared no expense in furnishing his love nest. It infuriated her to think of the way her grandfather had humiliated her grandmother, openly keeping his mistresses here.

  Rachel wanted a husband like her father who would be faithful to her. She feared, however, that such a man was rarer than she liked to believe. She had seen enough of Stephen’s male friends to know that they, married or not, thought it their birthright to bed as many females as they could.

  As the hours crept by, Gentleman Jack, tormented by delirium and nightmares bred of fever, tossed about on the bed, moaning and rambling incoherently.

  With Sam’s help, she poured more of her fever remedy down him. Then, holding his hand, she talked to him in low soothing tones, and that seemed to quiet him a little.

  Through the night, she bathed him repeatedly with lavender water and gave him more fever medicine.

  Then shortly after six, as Rachel’s hope for him was fading, his fever broke. Smothering a cry of joy, Rachel offered up a silent prayer of thanks for his deliverance.

  Once again, her fever remedy had worked. She did not know why it did, only that it did. It was a concoction that her mother had learned from the old healer in the fen country, a wizened crone whom many had called a witch. But Mama had not. She had known the woman’s real worth.

  Gentleman Jack fell into his first restful sleep, and Rachel prayed that the worst was over. To do her best to assure that it was, she gave Sam a supply of her remedies with precise, detailed instructions on how and when to administer them to the highwayman.


  Before leaving, she examined the highwayman’s wound one final time. Her poultices had done their job in drawing out the poison, and it looked much better than it had the night before.

  As she redressed it, Gentleman Jack’s eyes, sunken and dull, fluttered opened.

  It was a moment before they focused, but when they did, he gaped at her. His face was haggard from fever and pain, his chin covered with a reddish stubble, his russet hair boyishly tousled.

  “Good God,” he exclaimed weakly, “can it be that I have died and gone to heaven?”

  “Why would you think that?” Rachel asked.

  “Only an angel could be so beautiful.”

  She smiled. “Thank you for the compliment, but I must inform you that you are still alive and very much earthbound.”

  “I should have known.” He grinned at her.

  “Why is that?” Rachel asked. His condition did not dilute his charm. Yet she felt none of the strange excitement that plagued her in the duke’s presence.

  “If I were dead, heaven would never allow me in.” His voice was deep and cultured with no trace of a Yorkshire accent.

  It bolstered Rachel’s conviction that Jack was a gentleman in more than nickname.

  “M’lady, is he awake?” Sam asked, coming to her side.

  “M’lady,” the highwayman echoed in alarm. “Who the hell is she, Sam?”

  “Lady Rachel.”

  “Arlington’s sister?”

  “Aye,” Sam admitted.

  Gentleman Jack muttered a furious expletive under his breath. “And you brought her here! Are you out of your bloody mind? I forbade you to do so. Now, you will hang with me, you damned fool!”

  “Me couldn’t leave ye t’ die after all ye done for us.”

  “Better to let me die than for both of us to dance upon nothing.”

  “Neither of you will, as you so charmingly phrase it, dance upon nothing if I can help it,” Rachel interjected briskly. “I assure you I did not spend the night trying to save your life so that you might hang. Your secret is safe with me.”

  Gentleman Jack looked thunderstruck. “You have been here all night?”