by Sahara Kelly
Léonie awoke to find herself in a moving vehicle…most likely a carriage, bumping over what felt like a mountain range.
The pain in her head was excruciating.
She moaned. “Merde.”
“Easy, my dear.” A voice above her sounded familiar and she relaxed a little as a cool cloth brushed softly over her forehead. Then she realized her head was on a pillow and the pillow was on his lap.
She struggled, trying to sit up.
A strong arm stopped her and cradled her against the velvet squabs of the luxurious carriage. She discovered that her strength had deserted her.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my home. Deverell House. Once there, I will summon our family physician to ensure your recovery, and then, when you feel up to it, we shall take the appropriate steps to restore you to your family.”
His words were calm and logical, and Léonie found them soothing, as if he had lifted a weight off her shoulders. “Thank you. I’m sorry to be such trouble.”
“If you are indeed a Deverell relation, then you are being no trouble at all. And believe me, Deverell relations can be the very devil when it comes to being a nuisance.” She could almost hear the smile in his voice. “I have asked my aunt to join us. Aunt Bertrande has lived a—colorful life, shall we say? And she is the least obnoxious of my relatives. She will lend her countenance to your visit, so please do not concern yourself with the proprieties.”
Oddly enough, those proprieties hadn’t even crossed Léonie’s mind. Of course the headache that was washing over her in waves didn’t help her focus on much of anything. “All right. Thank you.”
“Is the pain bad?”
“Yes.” She left it at that.
“You have a large egg on the back of your head. Perhaps you fell backward onto something sharp? The unpleasant alternative is that someone must have meant to do you serious harm…”
“I can’t remember…”
There, it was out. Léonie cursed herself for being so gently led into revealing the one thing she had hoped to keep to herself. The longer she could have maintained her composure, the more likely it was that her memory would return.
But now? He knew. And he would pity her, look at her as a poor fragile creature that needed protecting and wrapping in cotton.
She was nothing of the sort.
Her teeth clenched against another wash of pain. Well, perhaps just this once she might need a bit of cossetting, but as soon as she was back on her feet she would reassert her independence. She’d fought long and hard to achieve it. She wasn’t about to surrender it now.
A particularly large bump jostled her and she gasped aloud.
“It’s all right. We’re here.”
*~~*~~*
“It’s a serious wound.”
Dr. Pennyhaven shook his head and frowned as he quietly closed the door to Léonie’s guest suite in Deverell House.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Dev walked with the older man down the carpeted hallway.
“Well, the young lady has a hell of a hard head, I’ll say that. No disrespect intended, of course.”
“Of course.” Dev nodded. “In fact you’re the second person to tell me that today. So she hasn’t broken anything serious? Like her skull?”
“Came damn close. On other people, that could easily have been a death blow.” He paused and looked Dev straight in the eye. “I can vouch for the fact that it was a blow, Dev, not a fall. She was hit hard with a blunt object of some kind.” He sighed. “I would hazard a guess, from some of the bits of debris I took out of the skin, that it might have been something from a ship. There were tiny bits of splinters, wood that looked like it might have been caulked at one time or another.”
“All right. Given where she was found, that makes sense.”
The doctor tapped the small glass hanging around his neck. “I trust this little eyepiece. It lets me get up close to an injury. This time it showed me that although the blow was savage, there didn’t appear to be crack in the bone beneath. No chips or softness or anything to indicate she is suffering from more than a serious concussion.”
“So she will recover?”
“In time, yes. With rest and care, she should regain her strength before too long. I’ve given her a small drought of laudanum, since what she needs now is sleep. Best medicine there is. And I’ve left a couple of drops in a bottle with the maid. If the pain is bad in the night, give her the rest of it. It will help. Of course she’ll need a bit of watching. If she throws a fever or becomes dizzy…you know the sort of thing.”
Dev, who remembered quite well his own experiences with a tall pear tree, ripe fruit and a concussion, nodded. “I do indeed. But how about her memory?”
They turned and descended the stairs to the front hall as Dr. Pennyhaven shrugged.
At the bottom he turned to Dev. “That is harder to predict. It’s quite common for a blow such as this to damage the memory. Mostly of recent events. So I would hope that as the body repairs itself, some—if not all—her memories will return. But I must point out that there is no way of proving how much of her memory has vanished.”
“What do you mean?” Dev frowned.
“I mean that a patient, under these circumstances, may selectively choose to remember that which is most convenient. Conversely, they may ignore memories of things which are unpleasant.”
Dev thought about that as he followed the doctor to the front door. “So she might remember more than she admits to?”
“It’s possible.” The older man looked troubled. “An attack of the kind she has sustained implies great violence. I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to say that somebody wanted her dead. So if she knows that, she must be terrified, especially if there are gaps in her memory. I know I would be. Put yourself in her position right at this moment, and ask yourself—who are you going to trust?”
“I see your point.” Dev nodded, understanding the issue.
“Send me a message if matters change.”
“Of course. And, Doctor, you are a wise man.”
“I’ve been telling you that for years. Pity it took you so long to admit I was right.” He started down the front steps. “By the way? Get more exercise. You look downright peaked and you’re getting a bit of a belly.”
Dev laughed as he shut the door. Then glanced into the hall mirror.
No, he did not look at all peaked. He turned sideways. There wasn’t a hint of fat around his waist. Damn Pennyhaven for suggesting such a thing.
He grinned again, remembering that the good Doctor was one of the few people who could beat him at his own game.
A small figure entered the hall, bringing a lot of silky fabric with her, along with a rather improbable head of riotous red curls.
“So, dear boy. How is the poor patient? I heard all about it from Baxter when Madge and I arrived. She’s finishing my unpacking now, but I heard the doctor’s carriage, so I thought I might sneak down for a bit.”
“Aunt. You look…Olympian. Or is it Titania this season, rather than Aphrodite?” He hugged her.
She chuckled. “It’s whoever I feel like at the moment, dear idiot. I don’t give a damn. I like to swan around trailing things. It’s attention-getting.”
“And damn dangerous. Stay away from open fires, please.” Dev neatly back-stepped and avoided trampling an errant trailing thing.
“The doctor, Dev. What did he say?”
She led him into the small parlor and drifted to a sofa, where she subsided like a rose drifting amidst the waves, and awaited his response.
He sighed and sat across from her, leaning back and resting one ankle on the other knee. “She’s hurt, Aunt Bertie. She got one massive hit on the back of her head from a blunt instrument. Something, according to Pennyhaven, that might have come from a ship.”
“Oh bloody hell.” Bertie’s eyes were wide. “The poor thing.”
“Her memory of it is apparently gone, since she cannot recall what happened to her. I’d
bet more than a few guineas that she has a bigger gap than just that incident…like what she was doing on the docks in the first place.”
“One would assume that she had arrived on a boat?”
“That is logical, yes,” agreed Dev. “But…that part of the shore isn’t where passenger boats tie up. Or even ferries. She was in the area where cargo ships load and unload. Most all either to or from the continent—I think the ones that sail to the Americas or Africa have another set of berths downstream where the wharves can handle larger ships.”
“All right then. She had passage on one of the merchant vessels.”
“With sacks of fruits or barrels of wine?”
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility, you know. When I first went to France, I was in a boat with chickens and…”
Dev held up his hand. “Moving on…”
“Oh all right.” She pouted and twitched a streamer of silk. “So what’s the plan, nephew?”
“First, we must get her well. While she’s recuperating, I have a few avenues of inquiry to pursue.” He patted his pocket. “She had this on her when they found her, and she demanded it the minute she regained consciousness. I slipped it off her finger just before the doctor came, and told her I’d look after it until she was better.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure she believed me, but she was in too much pain to make a fuss.”
He stood, reached into his pocket and then crossed to Bertie. “Seen anything like this before in your travels? Especially in the family?”
Bertie took the ring into her palm and turned it to the light. The emerald darted green fire from its facets. “Wheeoooo.” She whistled the word between her lips. “That’s one hell of a jewel she’s got here.” She squinted. “I’d guess between two and three carats of clear, pure perfection.”
Knowing that when it came to jewelry, Aunt Bertie was an unacknowledged expert, Dev took her words seriously. “But it doesn’t look familiar.”
“Hell, if I’d ever seen this stone before, I’d have remembered it without a doubt.” She turned it again, looking closely at the unusual setting and the gold around it. “It’s as if it’s embedded in the gold, with only the tiniest lip holding it there. Very beautiful work.” She sighed and handed it back to Dev. “No, I’ve never seen it. Sorry. No help there at all.”
“It was a long shot, Aunt. Don’t worry about it.” He returned it to his pocket. “She had a note—my address was on it, which is how she ended up here. The note referenced a Lord Aubrey Elwyn. How about that? Does that ring a bell?”
Bertie was silent for a moment, a finger against her lips, her eyes vague and lost in thought. “You know…” Her voice tapered off.
Dev held his tongue. Bertie was most effective when left to act in her own unique way.
“I believe I have heard that name.” She turned to him, her dark eyes flashing in the afternoon sunshine. “The Elwyns were intimates of the Earl of March, I think. Can’t recall Aubrey or any particulars about the family, but that’s not surprising. I don’t believe I met any of ‘em. Just heard them mentioned by some of the members in March’s club.”
“Ah.” Dev blinked. “If my memory serves me correctly, the Earls of March are mentioned somewhere in our family bible. I’ll have to dig it up.”
“You buried it somewhere?” Bertie grinned.
“Yes. In my library. At the bottom of the darkest shelf. There are relatives in there that I don’t want to know about. I’m afraid if I accidentally speak their names aloud, they’ll appear on my doorstep in a puff of foul-smelling black smoke.”
“Always knew you were going to be the brightest Deverell.”
“Always knew you were my smartest Aunt.”
They both shared a laugh, and then Dev sobered. “You’ve given me a couple of points to think about and perhaps investigate, so for that I’m very grateful. Now if you can tell me how we’re going to handle this delicate situation—my having a beautiful young woman staying in my guest suite unaccompanied by any adult at all—I’d be a lot easier in my mind than I am at the moment.”
“Pish tosh. That one’s simple.” Bertie stood and fluffed out her trailing things with elegant gestures of her hands. “She is the niece of one of my oldest friends. Having lost her way when she landed her in London, she was lucky enough to mention my name and a good Samaritan guided her here, where I was awaiting her arrival. The poor girl contracted a fever on the voyage and was unwell when finally admitted to Deverell House, so you have graciously opened your home to us for as long as it takes for her to recover.”
Dev took a breath and then broke into applause. “My God, Aunt Bertie. You are a marvel. Have you considered a career as a writer of novels? You can spin an excellent tale.”
She waved his comment aside. “Of course I’ve thought about it. But it’s hard work and doesn’t pay enough to keep me in rouge. Besides, nobody would ever believe half the stuff I could write about and the other half would shock the petticoats off most of ‘em.”
“Good point.” He gestured to the door. “Well, I’m going to start my investigating. Would you like to go up and peek in on your guest?”
“Love to. Er…Dev?”
“Yes?”
“What’s her name?”
Dev slapped his forehead. “Aaargh. I’m losing my mind today. Her name is Léonie. Léonie Petrova Girard.”
As the words rolled off his tongue, as smooth as honey in sunshine, something inside him woke up—and smiled.
Chapter Four
The room was almost dark when Léonie opened her eyes. She closed them again for a moment, listening, hearing the sound of rain against windows and every now and again the soft pop of a fire.
She felt numb—in body and in mind—the vague remembrance of odd things scuttling around the edges of her consciousness.
Shifting, she felt her leg cramp and she moaned as her toes began to curl.
“What is it? Is it your head?” A hand came down and stroked the hair away from her face.
“N-n-no,” she stuttered. “My leg. Cramping…”
“Ahh, how very much those things hurt.”
He, and it was a he, eased the covers away and she felt the chill air against her skin as his hands found her foot and began to massage the toes. She sighed with pleasure as his fingers dug into her calf, loosening the tightness and allowing her to relax once more.
“Merci. Thank you…”
Confused, she didn’t know which language to speak, although her savior seemed to understand her.
She was covered again by the bedding and tucked in.
“Hush. You must rest. You are safe, Léonie. Safe at Deverell House in London.”
She closed her eyes and absorbed his words. Something did sound familiar to her. “Deverell House.” She paused. “You are Deverell.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you in this room? Do I live here with you?” It was all so muddled.
“You are my guest and will remain thus until you are well. You suffered an injury and although the doctor tells me you will fully recover, it will take a bit of time.”
“I am to stay?”
“Yes. Here in this lovely suite of rooms. When you are better I look forward to showing you the rest of my home.”
“I shall like that, I think.” Her head was floating.
“I hope so.”
“Why is my head fuzzy?”
She heard a soft chuckle. “Because it’s better to be fuzzy than in pain.”
“I suppose so.”
“The doctor gave you a little laudanum to help you sleep. Rest is important in your healing process.”
“Laudanum. I remember Countess Vorlinka took it. She always looked half asleep.” She yawned.
“And now you know why.”
The hand came back and smoothed her forehead again. It was strange, but comforting. “Thank you Mr. Deverell…” She felt her tongue slur the words.
“Don’t mention it. And my name is Dev.”
“I shouldn’t…” She blinked, a flash of fear darting through her and taking away her breath. “My ring. Where is my ring?”
“Shhh. I have it safe.”
“Why? Did you steal it?” Her fingers scrabbled on the sheet covering her.
“Here, Léonie. Feel. Here is your ring.”
She realized he had taken her hand, turned it over and placed the ring on her palm.
With a sigh of relief, she enclosed it, drawing strength and pleasure from the familiar touch. “Oh thank God.”
“You entrusted me with it when you arrived, my dear. Will you entrust me with it again? I promise I will guard it with my life. It is yours and will always be yours. My word as a Deverell.”
He spoke softly but with a firm determination she could not miss, even in her confused state. “Very well…Dev.” She relinquished the ring back into his keeping, and closed her eyes again as the fog threatened to overwhelm her. “But protect it. It must be secure at all costs. It is the key, you see…”
Her final whisper ended as sleep crawled over her mind and blotted out everything once again.
*~~*~~*
“The key to what, I wonder?”
Dev voiced the thought aloud, even though he was alone in the small ante-room of a business belonging to a Mr. Harold Tomlinson-Scott. During his brief contact with Rundell and Bridge, the foremost jeweler in London, Mr. Tomlinson-Scott had decided that his preference lay with antique items. Estate pieces from earlier eras, rather than some of the magnificent but modern pieces being created and sold by his peers.
He would not, for example, have had much enthusiasm for the creation of the twenty or so snuffboxes, which had been distributed as diplomatic gifts after the Congress of Vienna. The budget for that little enterprise was beyond belief.
No, Harry Scott liked the history associated with ancient pieces of finery. He enjoyed imagining the thoughts of the artisans who made such things, and the lives of those who wore them.
Since Dev had known Harry for more years than he could remember, this small, quiet home and office was the only place he knew he could safely take Léonie’s ring for an appraisal. And maybe a bit of history as well.