by Jane Feather
"Theo, you can't possibly do that!" Emily was genuinely shocked. "That's just like a common jilt… a flirt… Mama would never permit it."
"Mama wouldn't expect me to marry a man I loathed just because of an indiscreet moment," Theo stated.
"An indiscreet moment?" Clarissa inquired, her eyes alight with curiosity. "What happened?"
Theo felt herself blushing. "Nothing… it was nothing."
"Oh, come on, Theo. What happened? I'd dearly love to have an indiscreet moment."
Clarissa on the track of truth was like a terrier with a rat.
"I expect Theo means that the earl kissed her," Emily said with the same knowledgeable air as before. "It's perfectly proper between engaged couples… It's not at all indiscreet."
"But perhaps Theo means the earl kissed her before they became engaged," Clarissa said with a gleam in her eye. "Now, that would be indiscreet, wouldn't it?"
"Oh, be quiet, both of you!" Theo pulled off her nightgown and went to the dresser, bending to splash cold water on her face.
"Well, did he?" persisted Clarissa.
"If you must know, he did a great deal more than that," she said, her voice muffled by the towel as she dried her face.
"Theo!" exclaimed Emily.
"What did he do?" demanded Clarissa, regarding her sister's naked body with a new interest.
"I'm not saying." Hastily, Theo grabbed her chemise and pulled it over her head.
"Well, of course the earl is quite old," Emily observed judiciously. "A lot older than you, and much more worldly, I'm sure."
"Well, he would be – he was a soldier," put in Clarissa.
"But so is Edward."
"And I'll lay odds Edward's a lot more worldly now than he used to be," Theo said, glad to turn the spotlight away from herself. She rummaged through the armoire for a dress… something as plain as she could find. When she told Stoneridge she'd made a mistake, she didn't want him to remember what had led to the mistake.
"Have you told Mama yet?"
"No… It only happened a few hours ago. Everyone was asleep."
"You had an assignation in the middle of the night?"
"Not exactly… It wasn't an assignation… it was an accident." She pulled a hairbrush through her hair before deftly plaiting it. "In fact, this whole damn business has been one mistake after another."
"That's a bad word, Theo."
The three sisters whirled to the door. "Rosie, you really must learn not to creep up on people," Clarissa scolded.
"I wasn't. What's a jilt?"
"How long have you been hiding there?" Theo demanded, her mind racing backward, trying to remember what they'd been saying. It definitely hadn't been suitable for the child's ears.
"I wasn't hiding. I was just standing here," Rosie protested. "Is anyone going to come and catch butterflies with me?" She flourished the white net she held.
"No, not at the moment," Emily responded distractedly. Like Theo, she was trying to remember exactly what they'd said.
Rosie came into the room, hitching herself onto the bed. "So what's a jilt? Is Theo going to marry the earl?"
"One of these days those big ears of yours are going to get you into deep trouble," Theo threatened, scowling fiercely at her little sister.
"Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?" Elinor appeared smiling in the open doorway. "I was wondering why I was breakfasting alone. How are you feeling, Theo, dear?"
"I haven't been ill, Mama," Theo said.
"No, she's going to be a jilt," Rosie said. "But they won't tell me what that is… Oh, and she's going to marry the earl."
Her elder sisters sighed; their mother frowned. "Theo isn't marrying anyone, child, without my permission. And since there's been no discussion in my hearing on the subject, you may assume you misheard. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Mama." Chastened, Rosie slipped off the bed. "I just wanted someone to catch butterflies with me."
"Off with you." Her mother shooed her out the door before turning to the others. "Clarissa, Emily, I'd like to talk to Theo in private." The two exchanged a quick look with Theo and made themselves scarce, closing the door behind them.
Elinor sat on the window seat, regarding Theo gravely. "Now, perhaps you'd like to tell me what's going on."
Theo sighed and flopped onto the bed. "It's a mess, Mama…"
Elinor received a greatly edited version of the previous night's events, but if she guessed at the missing pieces, she gave no indication.
"So in the cold light of day you've changed your mind?"
"Yes," Theo said baldly.
"Then you'd best explain that to the earl with all dispatch," Elinor said, rising to her feet. "It's a most unpleasant thing to do to anyone under any circumstances, and you owe it to Stoneridge not to leave him in ignorance of the true state of your regard another instant."
"You're vexed," Theo stated.
Her mother turned at the door. "I simply wish that you had managed things with more principle, Theo. To agree to marry a man in one breath and withdraw it in the next smacks of an indelicacy that I find hard to accept in one of my daughters. I'm not going to imagine what went on between you and the earl last night, but if it gave him permission to believe you held certain feelings for him, I trust you will find it very uncomfortable to disabuse him."
She went out, leaving Theo ready to weep with frustration. Her mother had put her finger on the problem with disturbing accuracy… And why was Elinor so set on this match? Theo was in no doubt that her mother was on the earl's side and had been from the first minute.
So it was going to be uncomfortable telling him. But better to endure even excruciating embarrassment for a few minutes than a lifetime of misery. Her face set, she went downstairs in search of Stoneridge.
Foster hadn't seen his lordship. He didn't believe he'd breakfasted as yet, although it was nearly ten o'clock, and his lordship was known to be an early riser.
Puzzled, Theo went back upstairs, pausing outside the closed door to the earl's bedroom. It opened as she stood there in frowning indecision, her hand half-lifted to knock.
Henry came out, closing it softly behind him. "Can I be of assistance, Lady Theo?"
"His lordship…," she said. "I need to speak with him urgently. Could you ask him to spare me a moment?"
"His lordship is indisposed, Lady Theo," Henry said. He'd known the worst the moment he'd entered the earl's bedchamber at sunrise. As he'd moved to open the curtains in his customary fashion, a thread of voice had spoken from the darkness of the bed curtains: "No light, Henry." It would be many hours before the Earl of Stoneridge was fit to talk with anyone.
"Indisposed?" Theo blinked in surprise. Men didn't become indisposed… at least not strong, powerful men like Stoneridge. Indisposition was for gouty old men like her grandfather.
"That is so, Lady Theo," Henry reiterated, politely but firmly indicating that he wasn't about to expand on the statement. "If you'll excuse me." He bowed and slid past her toward the stairs.
Theo stared at the closed door. What abominable timing! Why couldn't he have become indisposed… or whatever it was… an hour or two later?
She went downstairs to the breakfast parlor to discuss the earl's puzzling condition with her mother and sisters.
Stoneridge lay in the merciful dimness, fighting the nausea that increased with each knife of pain slicing through the right side of his head. Retching exacerbated the pain to an intolerable level, so that if he had the strength, he would scream, would bang his head against the bedpost – anything to divert the agony. But already the insidious weakness was in his limbs, even though they could find no rest, and the debilitation would get worse until uncontrollable tears would squeeze between his eyelids.
The door opened and Henry padded softly to the bed. "Will you take some laudanum, my lord?"
"I'll never keep it down," Sylvester said. It worked only if he could take it the minute the warning signs appeared, but this morning he'd awakene
d, as so often happened, when the attack was well established, and there was nothing now that he could do except endure.
"Lady Theo wished to speak with you, sir," Henry said, laying a cloth soaked in lavender water over his temples. "She said it was urgent."
Sylvester lay still; for a second the throbbing eased. He knew it merely heralded renewed violence but was pathetically grateful for the tiny respite. Why would Theo need to speak to him urgently? Second thoughts?
The pain overwhelmed him in a throbbing wave, and he moaned, grabbing for the bowl beside the bed, retching in desperate agony as the pain pierced his skull as if nails were being driven through the bone with a hammer.
Henry held the bowl, it was all he could do. And when it was over, he wiped his lordship's gray face, offering a sip of water. Sylvester lay still, trying to concentrate.
"Henry, I want you to ride to London immediately."
"To London, my lord?" The man's surprise was clear in his voice.
"Deliver an announcement to the Gazette. It must be there tonight so that it can appear tomorrow."
He held the pain down, ignored it, his hand reaching to grip Henry's with convulsive pressure. "Go immediately."
"But I can't leave you, sir."
"Yes, you can… Just tell Foster no one… no one.. . is to come into this room unless I ring. Now fetch paper and pencil, I'll tell you what to say."
"Very well, my lord." Henry fetched the required items. Arguing would only make matters worse.
Sylvester endured through a fresh wave of agony, and then, his voice a mere thread, dictated: "The Earl of Stoneridge is honored to announce his engagement to Lady Theodora Belmont of Stoneridge Manor, daughter of the late Viscount Belmont and Elinor, Lady Belmont." He waved a hand in weak dismissal. "That will have to do. See to it, Henry. And bring a copy of the Gazette back with you in the morning."
"You'll be all right, my lord?" The valet still hesitated.
"No, man, of course I won't. But I'll live. Just do it!"
"Aye, sir." Henry left without further protest, delivering his lordship's orders to Foster. Ten minutes later he was riding toward the London road, the announcement of the earl's engagement to his distant cousin safely tucked into his breast pocket.
Theo spent the rest of the day close to the house, waiting for the earl to reappear. Her mother refused to discuss the issue, and her elder sisters wanted to talk about it ad infinitum, and she found both attitudes a sore trial, since they merely highlighted her own confusion. She paced the corridor outside the earl's closed door, questioned Foster twice as to Henry's exact instructions, and tried to imagine what could have felled a man like Sylvester Gilbraith so suddenly and so completely.
It didn't occur to her to wonder where Henry had gone. The man was not yet part of the household, and his comings and goings were of little concern.
By evening she was feeling desperate. With each hour that passed, the engagement seemed to become more of a fact and less of a floating proposition. Every hour that Sylvester continued to believe they were to be married made disabusing him more and more difficult – not to mention unprincipled and hurtful.
She contemplated writing him a note and slipping it under the door but dismissed that idea as the act of a coward. She owed him a face-to-face explanation.
But what was the explanation? She didn't like him? She didn't want to marry anyone? At least not yet? She couldn't contemplate living her life with a Gilbraith? She was afraid of him?
There was some truth in all of that, but most important, she was afraid of him… of what happened to her when she was with him. She was afraid of losing power, of losing control over herself and her world. And if she lost it, Sylvester Gilbraith would take it. He would immerse her in that turbulent whirlpool of emotions and sensations into which so far she'd only dipped her toes. Part of her clamored for that immersion, and part of her was terrified of its consequences.
She went to bed with nothing resolved, to spend the night tossing and turning in a ferment of indecision – one minute clear and determined, her speech prepared, firm, rational, kind, and sympathetic – and the next minute the words lost themselves in confusion as she thought of what marriage to Sylvester Gilbraith could bring her. Stoneridge Manor and the estate, certainly, but more than that, much more than that. He'd awakened passion, shown her a side of herself she hadn't known, taken her to the brink of a sensual landscape she was impatient to explore.
If Theo had seen the object of her fear and confusion during the long, dreadful hours of the night, she might have felt less fearful.
The man was a husk, immersed in pain, blind to anything but the dehumanizing agony. He was swallowing laudanum now in great gulps, no longer rational enough to know it would do no good until the hideous nausea left him. Perhaps a little would stay down, enough to take the edge off, even for a few minutes. He knew he was crying, that ugly animal moans emerged without volition from his lips, but he was too debilitated to keep silent, thankful only that there was no one to witness his shameful weakness. He gave no thought now to his marriage, to Henry's errand, to Theo, or to what action she might be considering. He begged only for surcease.
And mercifully it came, after the sun rose and the household began its day's business. The last dose of laudanum stayed in his stomach, spread through his veins, and brought unconsciousness.
It was midday when Elinor decided she could no longer respect the earl's orders as relayed to Foster. He hadn't been seen for thirty-six hours. No one had entered his bedchamber since Henry's departure, and all kinds of sinister explanations ran rampant in her imagination. Was he a drunkard? Or addicted to some unnatural practices that kept him secluded for days at a time? If this man was to marry her daughter, there could be no such mysteries.
She knocked softly, and when there was no answer, quietly lifted the latch, slipping into the room, closing the door behind her, feeling she must respect the earl's privacy this far at least.
The reek of suffering hung heavy in the darkened room, and heavy, stertorous breathing came from behind the drawn bed curtains.
On tiptoe she approached the bed, drawing aside the hangings by the carved headboard. It was so dark, it was hard to make out more than the white smudge of the earl's face on the pillow, but as her eyes grew accustomed, she saw the lines of endurance etched deep around his mouth and eyes, the dark stubble along his jaw. She recognized from her father-in-law's illness the drugged quality of his breathing, and her eye fell on the empty bottle of laudanum on the side table beside the bowl he'd been using for the last harrowing hours.
What was this mysterious sickness? A legacy of the war, perhaps? There were many men across the continent crippled by such legacies.
She picked up the fetid bowl, covered it with a cloth from the washstand, and carried it away, leaving the room as quietly as she'd entered it.
Theo was coming up the stairs as her mother descended them. "Has Stoneridge come out of his room yet, Mama?"
"No, and I don't believe he will do so for some time," Elinor said. "He's sleeping at the moment."
"But what's the matter with him?" Theo exclaimed in frustration. "How could he just disappear like that for two days?"
"I expect it's something to do with his war injury," Elinor replied matter-of-factly. "Nothing to do with any of us." She continued past her daughter, taking the bowl into the kitchens.
Theo chewed her lip. Then she ran up the stairs to the earl's door. Her hand lifted to knock, but something held her back. Some overpowering sense of intrusion.
Her hand fell and she turned away. He couldn't stay there forever, but neither could she spend another day pacing the house, checkmated.
There was always work to do and she'd bury her frustration in fresh air, exercise, and useful business.
Thus she wasn't in the house when Henry returned in the late afternoon. He was tired, having ridden since early morning, changing horses frequently to maintain his pace. But the roads were good, and he'd made ex
cellent time. Tucked in his pocket was a copy of the Gazette, snatched at dawn from a vendor with the ink barely dry.
He left his horse in the stable and hastened into the house, wondering if the earl was still abed, or whether the attack had been a short one. They were very rarely short, but they'd never lasted more than two days.
Foster greeted him with the lofty condescension of an old retainer not yet prepared to accept a newcomer. "His lordship remains in his bedchamber, Henry."
"I see. Then he'll be wanting some tea, no doubt," Henry said briskly, not in the least put out by Foster's attitude. "Do us a favor and ask them in the kitchen to brew a pot. And hot water for his lordship's bath. I'll be down to fetch it when I've seen how he's doing."
Without waiting to see how his request was received, he hurried up the stairs, entering his lordship's chamber without ceremony.
The curtains were still drawn at the windows but had been pulled back around the bed.
"Ah, Henry, good man. You succeeded?"
The earl's voice was strong, and Henry stepped over to the bed, knowing what he would see. Stoneridge smiled at him, his eyes clear, his complexion, despite the stubble, pale but healthy.
He exuded an aura of peace, as if some hideous demon had been exorcised.
"Aye, my lord, I have it here." He handed the paper to his employer. "I'll fetch you up some tea and toast, if you'd like."
"Mmmm, thanks," Sylvester said absently, his eyes scanning the announcements. "I'm hungry as a hunter." He nodded with satisfaction at the brief notice of his engagement. It would require a lot more than vague reluctance or simple indecision on his fiancee's part to undo that announcement. He never thought he'd be thankful for an attack, but that one might well have proved timely.
"You'll be wanting a bath, too, sir."
"God, yes, I'm rank," the earl declared, folding the newspaper, running his hand over his chin with a grimace of distaste. "I must reek to high heaven."
Henry grinned with relief. "Not that you'd notice, sir. But I'll see to it right away."
Two hours later the earl examined his reflection in the cheval glass with a nod of satisfaction. His tasseled Hessians glimmered in the fading sunlight, olive pantaloons molded his calves and thighs, and his coat of dark-brown superfine outlined the muscles of his shoulders as if it had been made on him.