A Lady to Remember

by Samantha Grace

  “Are you certain your brother wants me in his chambers?”

  “I want you. Soon, you will be his brother, too.”

  The duke didn’t protest or question Marcus’s presence. He glanced at Adele and Marcus holding hands, and a fleeting smile crossed his face. While Dr. Portier relayed the results of his examination, Adele’s brother closed his eyes and his breathing evened out. He was sleeping again.

  “It is a good sign your brother woke,” Dr. Portier said, “but we do not know the amount or duration of his exposure. Complications could arise, and his recovery may take months.”

  “Months?” Adele released Marcus’s hand. Her withdrawal struck him like a fist to the gut. She refused to look at him while the doctor explained the type of care her brother might require in the coming weeks. “Who will see to his needs? I cannot ask it of the staff.”

  “A nurse could be hired to fulfill the duties,” Dr. Portier said.

  “Is it wise to entrust a stranger with a loved one’s health? Wouldn’t it be better if family cared for him?”

  Marcus clenched his teeth, willing himself to remain quiet. The conversation seemed to be leading either toward a postponement of the wedding or a prolonged stay with her brother. Neither prospect appealed to him, but to speak up now, when her brother could still be on the brink of death, would make him an insensitive bastard.

  “I would continue to make house calls, Lady Adele. The nurse will simply work under my direction. I know a couple of upstanding nurses who have cared for patients in similar circumstances. I would be pleased to provide a letter of recommendation to put your mind at ease.”

  “I see.” Adele nibbled her bottom lip while she seemed to mull over the doctor’s offer. “Thank you, sir. Your recommendation is welcome and appreciated.”

  “Very good, my lady. I will draft a letter this week,” Dr. Portier said. “If there is no objection, I would like to remain close for a few more hours to monitor your brother’s condition.”

  “Of course.”

  Adele invited the doctor and his daughter to stay in the adjoining chamber and insisted they allow her to call for a pot of tea. Once the doctor and his daughter cleared the room, she took Marcus’s hand between hers and gazed up at him.

  “I promised to wake Jefferson and Leo if there is news. Would it be an imposition to ask you to stay with Harry so he is not alone?”

  One look into her large cocoa eyes melted his resistant heart. He was here for her; she needed his support. “It is no imposition.”

  She squeezed his hand and excused herself to retrieve her younger brothers, leaving Marcus alone with Corbyn.

  “Thank you for staying with her,” the duke said. His voice was weak and wasn’t much louder than a whisper.

  Marcus approached the bed, studying him. Corbyn’s face had grown thinner since they had spoken two weeks earlier. His eyes were sunken and the skin beneath them appeared bruised. “I will never leave her side willingly.”

  The duke winced. Marcus hadn’t intended his response to be a gibe, but their history infused every word between them with veiled meaning.

  “A man never forgets when he has been betrayed,” Corbyn said.

  Marcus inclined his head, acknowledging the truth in his words.

  “I regret that night in Paris.”

  Marcus paused to consider the duke’s apology, if that was what it was. Perhaps Adele’s brother was sincere. Perhaps he was not.

  “I promised your sister I would forgive you. As you have astutely recognized, it might be beyond my abilities. Nevertheless, I will try, because her happiness depends on you and me being at peace with one another.”

  The duke nodded once, and his eyes drifted shut.

  Adele and her younger brothers entered the room. Jefferson’s and Leo’s shirts and breeches were rumpled as if they had fallen into bed still half dressed. Adele didn’t look much better with mussed hair and a wrinkled gown.

  “Convince her to sleep,” the duke muttered. Marcus was uncertain anyone else heard him.

  “I will try, but you must know she is as stubborn as you are.”

  Corbyn smiled, his eyes still closed. “Call her stubborn at your own risk.” He spoke haltingly, as if it required great effort.

  As Marcus expected, Adele refused to budge from the room until she was certain her oldest brother’s condition was truly stable. Her eyes were at half-mast, and she couldn’t talk without yawning when Jefferson and Leo insisted she go to bed.

  She stood, stretching her hands overhead and yawned again. “Very well, I will go, but wake me if there is any change.”

  “We promise,” Leo said, “but it is our turn to help, remember? You must trust us.”

  “I do,” she said in a soft voice.

  Marcus retrieved a candelabrum and placed his hand on the small of her back to guide her from the room. “Where is your chamber, love?”

  She pointed toward a door at the end of the corridor. Once they reached her room, Adele plodded toward the canopied bed and sank onto the edge of it, rubbing her eyes. “I only now realize how exhausted I am. Would it be awful if I slept in my gown?”

  He smiled. “Sleeping in one’s evening attire does not warrant its own circle of hell, but you might be uncomfortable. Should I ring for your lady’s maid?”

  “No”—she rubbed her eyes—“Allow her to sleep. It has been a trying day for everyone.”

  Tomorrow was unlikely to be any better for the staff. The butler intended to interview every servant in the house, despite the near certainty no one had intended to poison Corbyn, or anyone else. The duke was the only victim due to him being the only one in the household with an insatiable sweet tooth. Adele turned her nose up at the sugary concoctions.

  Thank God.

  Marcus set the candelabrum on a chest of drawers and sat beside her. “Would you like my assistance? I can unfasten a gown and loosen a corset well enough with your direction.”

  “That would be lovely.” She shifted on the bed to present her back to him.

  “Faith! Who designed this trap?” No less than twenty pearl buttons the size of green peas ran the length of her gown—too delicate for a man’s hands and daunting as hell.

  Adele’s breathy laugh washed over him. “An evil modiste named Madame Lesauvage.”

  “The wild? You are jesting.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes twinkling in the candlelight. “I promise, I am not. I am certain she does not know the meaning. Her accent is as fake as her persona, but she is undeniably skilled with a needle, and I like her.”

  Adopting a French persona was a fashionable practice for English seamstresses. Many ladies thought patronizing dress shops with a French modiste was more exciting than buying from a commoner.

  “I am less enamored with her”—Marcus wrestled with the first button—“and her penchant for tiny loops. You, on the other hand, I adore. It is the only reason I am playing lady’s maid.”

  A broad smile spread across her face before she turned her head away. “I will love you more when my corset is loosened, and I can draw a deep breath.”

  “Minx,” he grumbled, but it was all in good fun.

  When it was only the two of them, they enjoyed a carefree playfulness that had been present from the moment he had helped her chase her bonnet across the bridge over the River Seine. The wind had whipped it from her head, and a second gust had carried it over the railing. They had stood side-by-side, watching as it floated on the air and eventually landed in the water. She had laughed, finding humor in the situation and pleasantly surprising him.

  Her brother and one of his ladies, who had been walking several paces ahead of her, failed to notice her dilemma, and she became separated from them. Marcus had assisted her in searching for them and had become hopelessly smitten by the time the couple was found.

  He was eager to have her alone at Crossing Rivers to rebuild the bond they had formed early in their courtship. It would make the price he had paid to his si
re worth it.

  The first button proved to be a bugger. Once it slipped through the fabric loop, he doggedly attacked the others. Adele remained silent while he worked to release them all.

  “Did you fall asleep sitting up?” he teased as he pushed the gown off her shoulders. Her creamy skin beckoned to him, and he placed a light kiss to the fragrant curve of her neck. Adele’s scent filled him with nostalgia for the happiness they’d had in Paris and hope for their life together.

  She shivered and leaned back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist, steeling himself against an onslaught of desire rushing through his veins. He had come to her bedchamber to care for her—not to seduce her—but his body knew nothing about honor.

  He nuzzled her ear and gently captured her lobe between his teeth. She sighed and sank further into his chest. “I should go,” he whispered.

  “No.” She grabbed his wrists when he attempted to untangle himself from her while he still had the willpower. “Please stay this time.”

  He flinched. Her words were an unwelcome reminder of a time he wished to erase from memory. The night before his incarceration, Marcus and Adele had been alone at her brother’s apartments. Drunk on love and the promise of becoming man and wife in a few days time, they had ventured close to making love before reason had intervened.

  Lying in his cell at night, he had been filled with relief that he had not risked leaving her with child. Yet, he had regretted having no memory of her skin against his to provide him comfort. He tried to tamp down old hurts, but they settled in his chest, the heaviness making it difficult to draw a deep breath.

  She seemed to sense the change in him and allowed him to withdraw. He stood to place distance between them as his body clenched in protest. She swiveled to face him; her gown pooled around her waist.

  “I said something wrong,” she murmured.

  He wanted to deny it, but the lie stuck in his throat. “How can you forgive your brother for what he did to me—to us? Do you have any idea what I have lost?”

  “I believe I know.”

  Her tongue darted over her bottom lip, leaving it glistening in the candlelight. His gaze dropped to the soft flesh swelling above her lacy pink corset. Damn him for wanting her with a desperation he couldn’t fathom.

  “Do you?” Marcus raked his fingers through his hair and exhaled slowly, trying to stem the emotions flooding him. “He stole the best of my memories with you. We were happy in Paris before that night.”

  “We can be happy here, if we are allowed to start anew.” Her chin quivered, but she lifted it defiantly. “You question my loyalty, but I owe Harry everything. If he had not come to my rescue, I never would have met you in Paris. We would have no shared memories.”

  “Rescue you how? How many times was your reputation compromised during your travels?”

  A crimson blush infused her skin. “Harry took me with him when he traveled the continent with Lady Liliwen, because I had nowhere else to go.”

  Sixteen

  Adele heard the soft intake of Marcus’s breath. A sickening flutter originated deep in her belly. Early in their relationship, she had spoken of being raised by her stepmother’s kin, but she had led him to believe her life had been ordinary. She was fed, clothed, and provided a lady’s education. Never shown any favor, but never mistreated either.

  As a child, she had been invisible to Millicent’s brother and sister-in-law. Her surrogate parents allowed her the same privileges afforded their own daughter, although Rebecca clearly was considered Adele’s superior. The girl wore finer dresses, received the larger box of candies at Christmas, and had her own pony. Envy for Rebecca’s status had churned inside Adele and brought her no small amount of shame since her playmate was her closest confidant and only friend.

  Adele’s position in the household and her friendship with Rebecca changed as they grew older. Her step-uncle began to draw Adele into conversation at dinner and bring her small gifts from his excursions to Town while neglecting his daughter. He would summon Adele to his study on the pretense of evaluating her education so he might report her progress to her father. At the end of their sessions, he would tell her about the latest book he had read and allow her to borrow it as long as she promised to discuss it with him once she had reached the end.

  In the beginning, she had welcomed his interest and believed it to be the result of fatherly affection. She had been giddy over being treated like the special one for once in her life, even though it meant Rebecca was no longer talking to her. How gullible and stupid Adele had been.

  Marcus returned to the bed to sit beside her. “Why did you have nowhere else to go?”

  “I simply didn’t.” Her head hung heavy, and she couldn’t meet his gaze. Dredging up her past would bury her in humiliation. She couldn’t catch her breath.

  Marcus’s touch to her hand grounded her, and she was no longer back in her step-uncle’s study but here with the man she loved—the man she was on the verge of losing.

  She inhaled shakily, lifted her head, and forced herself to hold his gaze. “I convinced myself everything that happened before I met you was insignificant—past events have no bearing on the future, but I was deluding myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have not been honest with you...” Her mouth was uncomfortably dry. “About how Harry and I came to be in Paris.”

  Marcus’s blue eyes narrowed. “Your brother took a lover, Lady Liliwen. When she abandoned you in Paris, he did not have the funds to return home, so he embarked on a life of debauchery to divert his guilty conscience. If you intend to make excuses for him again, I will not listen.”

  “No, that is not the way of everything. Harry did not have the funds, it is true, but he did not lose his fortune at gaming tables as you have assumed. Our father disowned him. He cut off financial support to both of us when Harry refused to take me back to our step-uncle’s home.”

  Marcus’s lips parted as if he intended to speak but couldn’t capture the words.

  “If I had told you the truth, perhaps it might have changed how you judged Harry’s actions.” Speaking haltingly at first, she relayed the tale of her step-uncle’s attempted seduction. “He said I must”—she swallowed hard, her hands shaking with remembered rage—“I must tend to his...needs. Otherwise, I could find my own way back to my father’s estate.”

  Marcus didn’t turn his head in disgust or release her hand like she had worried he might. Instead, he said softly, “You do not need to continue, love.”

  But she did. She needed to explain her loyalty to Harry. “Millicent’s brother kept my pin money. He knew I had no means to leave. He believed I would be an easy conquest, that perhaps I would even be grateful for his attention.”

  Marcus held tightly to her hand, lending her security.

  “I was able to persuade Millicent’s niece to post two letters for me, one to my father and one to Harry. Rebecca and I had been close at one time, but I believe she helped because she was happy to see me go. Everyone seemed to recognize what was happening. Perhaps long before I did.

  “The day Harry received my letter, he left University and traveled through the night to reach me. He told me to pack my trunks. He was taking me home, and he threatened our step-uncle with bodily harm if he tried to stop us from leaving.

  “When we arrived at our family home, our father was furious with us both. Millicent had convinced him my letter was evidence of female hysteria, and she accused me of making false accusations. Father would not allow me to plead my case. He ordered Harry to take me back and return to school.”

  Marcus’s eyes darkened. “He did not believe his own daughter?”

  “Millicent alone had his ear. He followed any advice she imparted. I am sure she was behind his decision to disown Harry.”

  “I never liked that woman.”

  “You are in good company,” she said. “After her outburst tonight, I hope we’ve seen the last of her.” When Marcus’s eyebrows li
fted, she promised to explain after she finished her story.

  “Our mother’s family provided shelter for a while, but as soon as Father learned where we had gone, he wrote to demand they turn us out.”

  “Did your mother’s family make you leave?”

  “Yes, but they had no choice. My father promised to ruin them. Millicent was afraid of what Society would think about me running away from her family. Our mother’s kin regretted being unable to help and allowed us time to make other arrangements. Harry formed an association with Lady Liliwen during that time and arranged for me to accompany them to the Continent. He refused to return me to Millicent’s brother.”

  With tenderness glimmering in his eyes, Marcus raised her hand to his lips to place a loving kiss on her fingers. “I am sorry for all you have endured, Adele. You did not deserve the life you were given, but I vow to make the rest of it happy.”

  “Harry endured even more,” she said, “so I could live my life with you. Please, I beg you to understand. I cannot turn my back on Harry, because he never turned his on me.”

  Marcus nodded slowly like he was considering everything she had revealed. Her heart knocked against her breastbone. Her mouth was dry.

  “He never touched me,” she murmured. “Millicent’s brother. I need you to know.”

  Any remaining sternness in his face melted away, and his loving gaze caressed her. “I need no reassurances, darling. Your past is part of who you are, and I love you as much today as I did yesterday. No, that is untrue.” He gently captured her chin when she tried to lower her head and urged her to look at him. “I love you more.”

  “Oh, Marcus.” Her voice broke and her eyes misted, his handsome face blurring. “I love you, too.”

  He leaned toward her to kiss her with such heartwarming gentleness that more tears sprang to her eyes. She tasted their saltiness on his lips when his hand burrowed into her hair and angled her head to claim more of her mouth. She sighed with pleasure and slipped her arms around his neck.

  His soft hair brushed her wrist, creating delicious gooseflesh on her arms and sent a heaviness rushing into her breasts. Leisurely, he slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and swept into her mouth when she moaned softly.