Once a Scoundrel

by Anna Harrington

  “No, darling. That’s your influence.” Kate ran her fingertips lovingly through the gray hair at his temple. “Independent, strong, stubborn...She is her father’s daughter.” She traced her fingertip along his jaw, enjoying the scratch of midnight stubble. “But she’ll marry him, I have no doubt.” She crooked a brow. “Of course, she’ll also make him grovel for embarrassing her by letting them get caught.”

  He gave a low chortle. “Did you see the way he jumped when we found them? The look on his face—”

  “The look on yours!” Kate countered, laughing as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face against his neck.

  She closed her eyes and let the warmth and strength of his arms seep into her, along with the love he carried for her and the passion they still shared, even after two and half decades of marriage and five children. What she wished most for all her children was a marriage as wonderful as the one she shared with Edward.

  His laughter faded, and he commented grimly, “He’s not good enough for her.”

  “Darling,” she reminded him patiently, “he was born a marquess.”

  Then she kissed him before he could say anything more.

  Chapter Eight

  Faith picked a chrysanthemum and sank onto the nearby bench. The afternoon was growing late, and soon she’d have to go inside for tea with the ladies. But for now, she was content to be alone in the garden, alone with her misery and confusion.

  As Papa had requested, Stephen left that morning. He’d stayed just long enough to speak to his parents at breakfast, then quietly stepped into his carriage and left for London. Faith had no idea what he’d said to them or what excuses he made for leaving the party early, but now Lady Emily beamed a bright and happy smile at her whenever Faith walked into the room. So to avoid all awkward conversations, Faith had escaped the house for the gardens.

  With a heavy sigh, she plucked at the tiny petals. If only it were that easy to escape love.

  Oh yes, she’d fallen in love with Stephen. She’d accepted that, although acceptance didn’t make the situation any easier or alleviate her fears of being hurt again. After all, she’d loved him before, too, and the wounding he’d given her had nearly undone her.

  But for him to return to her like this, whispering apologies and promises of a future just when she’d finally moved on...How could she be confident that the rogue he’d been was truly gone forever and that he wouldn’t revert to his old ways? All she had was his word, and she knew first-hand how little his word had been worth.

  Confusion and exasperation rioted inside her until she didn’t know what to believe or think, didn’t have anything about him that her heart could cling to with certainty. Worse—the romance of the carefully planned picnic, all the flattery, all the kisses he’d so easily taken from her in an attempt to manipulate her...That was purely the old Stephen, a man who cared about nothing but getting whatever he wanted. His goals might have changed from four years ago, but his methods of pursuing them remained the same.

  And if that hadn’t changed about him, how could she believe that he’d changed where it mattered most, in his commitments and resolve? Because she knew that if she pledged her life to him, only for him to fall back into old ways, he would not simply break her heart but shatter it beyond all repair.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, she couldn’t bear it!

  “Faith?”

  She wiped at her eyes to erase any tears which might be visible and forced a smile as her mother approached. “Yes, Mama.”

  “You’ve been gone from the house for a good while.” Her mother sat beside her on the bench and handed her a handkerchief from her sleeve. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be.” Many years from now, when she was old and gray and had finally stopped loving Stephen Crenshaw.

  Mama squeezed her hand. “Love is never easy, is it?”

  Easy? She nearly laughed despite her heartache. For her, love was proving downright impossible.

  Mama paused and lowered her voice. “Is it the gossip about Mrs. Halstead that’s causing you such distress?”

  “No.” And it truly wasn’t. Those rumors would be quelled if they married and Mary Halstead relocated away from Elmhurst Park.

  “Well, that’s good, then,” her mother assured her soothingly. She asked gently, “Does Stephen make you happy?”

  “No...yes...oh, I don’t know!” She groaned and hung her head in her hands.

  “To be that confused about a man, it must be love.” Mama smiled knowingly and slipped her arm around her shoulders. “And I think he loves you, too, a great deal.

  “No,” she whispered sadly, her heart full of doubt, “he doesn’t.”

  “You’re underestimating him and the man he’s become.”

  “He’s the same man he’s always been,” she answered miserably.

  “What makes you think that?”

  She drew a deep breath and confided, “When he asked me to marry him, it was so romantic and perfect…Everything I’d always wanted, everything I used to dream about.”

  “That’s wonderful.” When Faith didn’t agree, Mama’s smile faded into a worried frown. “Isn’t it?”

  With a grimace, Faith dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief and shook her head. “It was all pretense. He used empty flattery and promises to try to manipulate me, just as he always used to do. He didn’t even realize that he was doing it.” Her heart thumped hard against her ribs as she admitted, “It’s the same as before, when he would use women to get whatever he wanted. But now he’s willing to use me to gain the respectability and acceptance into society he didn’t have before.”

  “What did he say when you told him of your concerns?”

  “He assured me that he changed, that he would never intentionally hurt me again.” She wrung the handkerchief in her fingers. “The worst part is that I’m certain he believes he’s changed. But what if he’s wrong? What proof do I have that he won’t turn back into the scoundrel he once was?”

  “Oh my darling.” Mama hugged her close. “He told you that he’s changed, and you need to believe in that.” She placed a tender kiss on Faith’s forehead. “And in him.”

  Her chest ached hollow with misery. “But if I can’t? Do I marry him anyway when my heart is filled with doubts?”

  “No,” her mother confirmed with a sigh, “you do not.”

  She pulled away and sat back, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders against the chilly fall air. “Then I won’t marry him. And you and Papa can be assured that—”

  A clatter went up from the stables, followed by the sounds of shouts and horse hooves on the gravel.

  “What on earth...?” Her mother stood, and the two women hurried out of the garden toward the stables.

  A messenger dismounted and tossed the reins to one of the stable boys. He exchanged words with a groom, who nodded, then answered by pointing at Faith and her mother. He strode toward them.

  “Ma’am.” Removing his hat, he gave a nod to her mother, then one to her. “Miss. I’ve come from Elmhurst Park. I have an urgent message for the Marquess of Dunwich.”

  Her mother stiffened. “I’m Katherine Westover, Duchess of Strathmore.

  “Your Grace.” The man dropped into a belated bow.

  “The marquess is one of our guests. What does this business regard?”

  “One of his tenants has taken ill, ma’am. Mrs. Mary Halstead has come down with fever.”

  Faith’s heart somersaulted with dread.

  “Mrs. Olsen, our housekeeper, sent me to fetch him. If you could tell me, where might I find him?”

  “I am afraid that the marquess left Hartsfield this morning for London,” her mother explained. “You’ll need to ride on to Dunwich House in Mayfair. Go inside the stables and talk to Masters, our head groom. Tell him that I have authorized you to be given a fresh horse and a sovereign for your trouble.” She paused to punctuate the importance of her order. “Ride through the night if you can. It’s
urgent that you reach the marquess as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” With a hurried bow, he strode inside the stables.

  As soon as the man was out of earshot, Faith whispered around the knot tightening in her throat, “Fever?”

  Her mother nodded, her lips pressing into a troubled line. “And it must be severe if Mrs. Olsen sent a messenger after Stephen.”

  “What can we do?” Faith’s chest squeezed with equal parts sympathy and concern, not just for Mary but for Stephen as well. He already blamed himself for her situation. If she were ill, her life in danger...“He’ll be devastated if anything happens to her. We have to help.”

  Mama shook her head. “I’ve sent the man on to London.”

  “An entire day’s ride away!” If the messenger didn’t catch up with him along the road, two days would pass before Stephen would receive the message and reach Elmhurst. “It might be too late.”

  “I know,” Mama whispered with a sense of helplessness, and Faith could see how it tore at her heart not to be able to do anything to help someone in need. “And with Elmhurst only a few hours away.”

  “He could have ridden there and back in the time since he left this morning,” Faith finished, feeling the same helplessness as her mother. Worse, because she was also alarmed for Stephen.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” her mother said quietly.

  But Faith heard that tone in her voice, the one that said Mama wanted to be talked out of believing that. “We can go to Elmhurst ourselves and help her.”

  Mama shook her head. “She’s not our concern,.”

  “She matters to Stephen, so she is my concern,” Faith countered. “You can help her, Mama. I know you can.”

  She shook her head. “There will be a doctor at Elmhurst to attend her.”

  “Only a country doctor, most likely,” Faith said carefully, knowing exactly where to strike to hit her mother’s heart. “Who knows what kind of superstitions he might believe in? He might even make her condition worse.”

  Mama hesitated, uncertainly darkening her face.

  “She has a child,” she barely breathed the words, afraid to utter her worst fears aloud. “If he should come down with the fever, as well? If he dies?”

  Mama’s shoulders sagged. “All right,” she acquiesced, “we’ll go. But only to check on her and make certain she’s under proper care. Then we return immediately, understand?”

  Her heart leapt into her throat as she kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Mama!”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she scolded with a grimace. “We’re going to have to tell your father.” Mama arched a brow and clarified, “You are going to tell him.”

  Faith took a deep breath of resolve. Facing Papa certainly wouldn’t be easy, not after what happened last night. But she knew in her heart that helping Mary Halstead was the right thing to do. “I know.”

  Then she hurried into the stable to ask Masters to ready the carriage.

  *****

  Three hours later, the carriage reached Elmhurst Park just as the sun was setting. As Faith peered out the window, what greeted them was nothing like she expected.

  Always before, Stephen had never cared about the estate, viewing Elmhurst as just another burden. One that represented what he loathed most about his life as a peer, trapping him into a life of responsibility and expectation. The last she’d heard anything about Elmhurst had been rumors of how neglected it had become. How a series of bad land agents had left the estate buildings and roads in disrepair, the farms untended, the fences and walls falling down...There had been grumblings from the tenants themselves about the absent marquess and how he simply didn’t care about them, and the constant turnover of staff at the manor house and stables only added to the troubles. None of that surprised her. It was exactly what she’d expected from Stephen.

  But the estate Faith now saw passing beyond the window looked nothing like that.

  The buildings had been freshly whitewashed, the roads and bridges all repaired. The farms were filled with crops in well-tended fields, and the animals were kept safely within mended fences and walls. The entire estate had been transformed from the disarray of the past. Was this Stephen’s doing? It had to be...and not just short-term fixes either to pretty it up but time-consuming and costly repairs that said he planned on returning Elmhurst to the grand estate it had once been. The same estate that he would leave as a legacy to his heirs and the generations after him.

  Confusion churned inside her. Had she been wrong about him? If he could make this kind of long-term commitment to the estate, then could he make the same kind of commitment to her as his wife?

  She simply didn’t know.

  They stopped at the manor house only long enough to speak to Mrs. Olsen. The housekeeper gave them directions to the cottage where Mary Halstead was living and confirmed that the physician had been called last night. The man had finally arrived that morning shortly before noon, tended to her for a few minutes, then left. He hadn’t been back since. Her mother muttered a string of opinions beneath her breath about old physicians and what they could do with their leeches and physic all the way back to the carriage and across the estate to the cottage.

  Yet it wasn’t a cottage that greeted them but what must have once been a former residence for a county squire before the estate subsumed it. With at least twenty rooms sitting nestled behind tall gables reaching into the darkening sky, the old Tudor house was an amalgamation of stone, timber, and waddle and daub fronting a garden. If Stephen had placed Mary Halstead and her son here, then he’d taken his commitment to them seriously.

  All the windows were dark, except for the soft glow of a lamp from a window on the first floor. The darkness crept a cold foreboding into Faith’s bones as she stepped down from the carriage. If they were too late, if the worst had already happened—oh how would Stephen bear it?

  “Remain here in front, John, in case you’re needed,” her mother ordered the coachman. Then she gestured for the tiger. “You’ll come with us, Marcus.”

  He grimly tugged at the brim of his hat and followed them to the house. He pounded the iron knocker against the door, then stepped aside.

  A few minutes later, the door opened. A girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen peered out at them from the light of a candle stub. She looked curiously from Kate Westover to Faith to the uniformed tiger behind them. “What do ye all want?”

  “We’re here to tend to Mary Halstead,” Mama announced. “We received a message from Mrs. Olsen that she’d come down with fever.”

  The girl’s shoulders sagged as a look of relief crossed her tired face. “Oh thank the heavens!” She stepped back and held the door open wide. “This way.”

  In the dim candlelight, she led them up the stairs and down the hall. The house was silent, dark, and cold.

  “I put her up here in the last bedroom,” the girl explained, “ ’cause ev’ryone knows that fever likes them low places.”

  “Yes, everyone knows that,” her mother repeated in a mutter that Faith recognized as one of suppressed frustration, the same tone she’d used last month when one of the farmers sought to cut the pain of his wife’s childbirth by putting an ax beneath the bed. “Who are you?”

  “Polly, ma’am. The maid o’ all work.”

  “Where are the housekeeper and other servants?” Faith interjected. She’d not noticed another person in the dark house.

  “Ain’t none here, miss, ‘cept for Mrs. Bailey, who keeps the kitchens and cooks for us. And me, o’ course.”

  Her mother frowned. “Surely his lordship provided a manservant or footman for a house this large.”

  “Oh yes, ma’am!” She nodded earnestly. “He did. His lordship has been real good an’ kind to Mrs. Halstead—to all o’ us at Elmhurst, since he returned.”

  Another pang of doubt stabbed Faith’s chest about what to believe about him. Stephen was good and kind to the servants, right down to the lowest maid? The man she kn
ew before had never paid any mind to his staff or tenants at all.

  Polly stopped outside the last door. “But when the fever hit, Mrs. Bailey thought ‘twas best to send ‘em away, along wi’ th’ other maid.” She bit her lip. “Yer angels to come here. Thank heavens Dr. Howston sent ye.” She blinked as tears of fatigue and worry gathered in her tired eyes. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Dr. Howston did not send us.” Her mother’s mouth tightened. “And apparently he didn’t know what to do either.”

  She reached past the maid for the door and entered the room.

  The stench of sickness caught Faith unprepared. She nearly gagged, her hand flying to cover her nose and mouth. But her mother hurried forward toward the bed, her years of experience tending to the sick in the villages and serving on the boards of hospitals in London had left her unsurprised by what greeted them. Yet the emotion in her glistening eyes showed her concern.

  Mary Halstead lay on the bed. Beads of perspiration covered her red skin, and her dark hair hung tangled around her shoulders from tossing in troubled half-consciousness. Her face and lips were so pale as to be nearly white above the lace-edged neckline of her long-sleeved night rail. Her lips moved wordlessly in some fever-triggered hallucination, and she clutched at the covers as if clinging on for dear life.

  Her mother pushed up Mary’s sleeve and bit back a muttered curse.

  “Dr. Howston bled her, ma’am,” Polly offered helpfully, hesitantly approaching the foot of the bed.

  “So I see.”

  “He said them leeches suck the illness from th’ body, that they remove poisoned blood an’ disrupt the fever.” When her mother picked up one of the vials on the bedside table, the maid added, “Quinine pills, ma’am.”

  She set them down and reached for the second vial. “Along with calomel. She’s been purged, too, then?”

  “Yes. After the bleeding, to make certain all th’ poison in her was got rid of.” The maid’s voice took on an air of knowing authority and a hint of pride. “When she first came down wi’ the fever, I gave her some rhubarb root I’d prepared myself to purge her then. Dr. Howston said I most likely saved her life.”