He sat down on the cot and pulled the thin, scratchy wool blanket around his chilled body. Since he’d felt relief that his wife lived, all William could contemplate was what would happen to him. Would he be given a chance to prove his innocence? Had Wentworth believed he could possibly be guilty of attempting to murder his beloved wife? Would Wentworth listen to reason?
William jumped up and paced the room. Six steps in one direction, four in the other. Why was Amelia not telling them he had not hurt her? Did she think he tried to kill her? William lunged for the chamber pot and vomited. Or was it worse? Maybe she could not tell anyone what happened because she was injured so badly she could not speak. William dragged his weary body back to the cot and curled up on his side, fighting the demons trying to overtake his mind.
William fought to stay asleep, but a bright light and a clanking noise made it impossible.
“Wakey, wakey, Looord Bridgeton. You have a visitor.”
William sprang up off of his cot so fast he had to sit back down to stop his head from spinning. “Who is it?”
“Hell, Cousin, you look like death.” Spencer’s voice echoed off the stone walls.
After taking a deep, calming breath, William walked toward the bars. “Thank God you’re here. Have you seen Amelia? Is she well?”
Spencer handed the guard some coins, and the next thing William knew the two of them stood locked inside his private dungeon. “No. I have not seen her. There was no time to travel there before I came here.” Spencer paced the small room. “What the bloody hell happened?”
“How the hell do I know?” William cried out. Then he lowered his voice. “Sorry. Not in my right mind. I’m going crazy in here. I need to see Amelia.”
“That is not going to happen any time soon,” Spencer warned as he took a seat on the rickety chair, fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, and covered his mouth and nose. “It stinks worse than the sewers. How can you stand it?”
“You get used to it.” He spoke the truth. William hardly noticed the smells anymore.
“I have sent word to Wentworth,” Spencer continued. “If I do not hear back from him by this evening, I will travel to his estate first thing tomorrow.”
“Have you talked to Smythe? I know he said he could find no proof, but I should have insisted they continue to tail him,” William said as he stood in a corner, arms across his chest.
“Seems his services have now been requested by none other than Wentworth,” Spencer replied.
“What?” William asked. “Since when did Smythe change loyalties? I paid him well.”
“Fear not, Cousin,” Spencer said as he leaned at a precarious angle. The chair legs were not all the same length. “Smythe will get to the bottom of this. Wentworth may have hired him to prove you guilty of attempting to murder Amelia, but Smythe, during his investigation, will find the true culprit. Which you and I both know is Trenton.”
“Smythe damn well better get proof of Trenton’s guilt. It is high time Katherine’s brother paid for his crimes, past and present.” William rubbed his sore chest with his hand. If his heart did not slow soon, he would certainly die of heart failure. He changed the subject to ease his pain. “On a happier note, how are your sisters, your mother, and our grandmother?”
“They’re all worried to death,” Spencer said, and William groaned. “Sorry. Bad choice of words, but you know what I mean.”
“Thanks. Yes, I do.”
“You do not honestly think Wentworth can have you hung without a trial, do you?” Spencer asked.
“Why, thanks, Spencer, I was just beginning to feel better,” William said wryly.
“He is an influential duke after all. Our esteemed Prince Regent thinks highly of him. Not to mention no matter how much I bribe the warden, Wentworth pays more to keep you miserable. Too bad dukes rank higher than earls.”
“That may be true,” William agreed. “But our grandmother is quite influential as well.”
“Time is up.” The guard reappeared and opened the door to let Spencer out.
“I will either call on you tomorrow or send a message,” Spencer said as he faded into the darkness of the hallway, the hall that was the only way to William’s freedom, to his Amelia.
***
For five long days Amelia’s family hovered around her bed. Praying she awoke. Each day the family doctor came and proclaimed the same thing. “She may wake or she may not. Only time will tell.” Wentworth’s heart could not take anymore. At times it beat so fast he thought it would jump right out of his chest. He wondered if everyone felt the same way he did. A cursory glance at all his family’s faces and he knew they did. When would this nightmare end?
Wentworth sent and received daily messages from Prince Regent. The Prince agreed to keep Bridgeton in Newgate until proof of his guilt or innocence became known. Wentworth didn’t need proof of his guilt, he witnessed it every time he saw his sister’s unconscious body.
***
“Is anyone there?” Amelia cried out in a weak voice. As she awakened in her room at her family’s country estate, confusion set in. How did she get here? The last thing she remembered was attending a ball in London and dancing with her betrothed, Captain Rycroft, and dreaming about their wedding night.
“Amelia,” Wentworth, alone in the room, left his chair by the fireplace and approached his sister’s bedside. “You’re awake,” he said looking pale and tired.
Amelia tried to climb out of bed, but her legs shook and would not hold her weight. She leaned back into the pillows and grimaced at the pounding pain inside her head. “What is wrong with me?”
“Wait one minute.” Wentworth hurried out of the room and immediately came back with Sebastian, Bella, Emma, and her mother. They surrounded her bed, each talking at once. Amelia could not understand anything being said. Why were they behaving oddly? Why did they all have dark circles beneath their eyes? Had something terrible happened?
“Please, stop,” Amelia said as her breathing increased in panic. “Could someone explain what happened? Last night we were all attending a ball at the Sheffields’. Yet today I’m in bed and feeling strange. Where is Captain Rycroft?”
No one made a sound. The room became eerily quiet. “What? What is it?” Amelia asked as she fought the panic attack threatening to overtake her.
“I want to speak to my daughter alone,” her mother said as she shooed everyone out of the room. Before her mother shut the door she whispered something to Wentworth that Amelia could not hear.
“Now,” her mother said as she sat down on the edge of her bed, “what year do you think it is?”
“What do you mean, what year is it? It is 1816. William and Emma recently got married. I am betrothed to Captain Rycroft, and we are currently planning our wedding.”
“Oh, dear,” her mother cried out as she dabbed her eyes with her lace handkerchief. “You do not remember Olivia, or the Earl of Bridgeton?”
She suddenly felt pain so intense it stabbed clear through to her brain. Amelia thought her head would burst. “What is wrong with me? Why are you asking me about people I don’t know? And where is Captain Rycroft?” Amelia shouted, or at least she wanted to shout––if her head and voice would allow her to do so.
“Do not fret, daughter,” her mother said as she hastily vacated the room, leaving Amelia to panic more than ever. Amelia knew her mother and knew she worried about something. It showed on her face and in her eyes. Her mother also looked frail and old. “Oh dear,” Amelia whispered, was her mother ill?
Amelia had expected her mother to come right back. Instead the family physician came in with his brown leather bag packed with medical paraphernalia.
“Lady Amelia, how are you feeling today?” the doctor asked as he listened to her heart with his cold metal instrument.
“I do not know. Perhaps you can tell me.”
After the gentle doctor lifted, twisted, and examined her arms and legs, he stood at the foot of her bed. His brows were drawn and his lips t
ight. His expression did not help calm her accelerated heart.
“There is no easy way to tell you this. You have suffered a serious trauma. Your brain does not remember what happened. You have lost nearly two years. It is 1818.”
“What? What do you mean?” Amelia struggled to sit up. It took three tries, but she finally sat on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling off the side. “That is impossible. I remember what I did last night.”
“I am sorry, Countess, but you have been unconscious for five days,” the doctor said.
“Unconscious for five days…How is that possible?” Amelia asked as she wrapped her arms around her waist to ward off the chill that crept up her spine and spread throughout her body. “I am not a Countess. Why did you call me that?”
She glanced at her left hand, at her ring finger, and found a sparkling emerald and diamond ring. Where had that come from? Bile rose up her throat, causing her to gag.
The kind physician wiped her mouth with a cloth. “I am sorry. I will send in your brother, the duke, to speak with you. Good day, my lady. I will look in on you tomorrow,” the doctor said as he left the room.
Why all the secrecy? “Oh, dear God,” Amelia murmured. Could what the doctor said be true? Did she somehow lose almost two years of her life?
Amelia could hear loud voices in the hallway again. She could tell by their tone they were arguing. Her chamber door opened and in came Emma and Bella.
“Thank God, you’re finally awake,” Emma said as she climbed up on one side of the bed and Bella on the other. Just like they spent many nights doing, Amelia remembered. How she loved to sit at night and gossip and laugh with them.
“How are you?” Emma asked.
“I’m a little hungry and thirsty. Can you send for a tray?”
“Oh, dear, how awful of us,” Bella said. She stepped into the hall, said something, and came right back onto the bed. “A servant should be here momentarily with a tray.”
“Thanks,” Amelia said, looking back and forth between Emma and Bella. Why were they stressed? Their rigid posture attested to it. “Would you both please tell me what is happening? Not knowing is worse than knowing. Please have mercy on me.”
Both women looked at her with wide eyes.
“All right,” Bella said slowly. “The doctor told us to explain what happened and then give you little bits of the past. Which he hoped would trigger a full recovery of your memory.” She fidgeted with the ribbons of her sash. “You nearly drowned and spent five days unconscious. Now you do not remember the past two years.”
Amelia’s stomach clenched up tight at what she heard. The physician and her mother explained she had memory loss, but not how she had come to obtain it. “Drowned how and where?” It didn’t make sense, she never went into the water.
“Well,” Emma interjected, “in the little stream on the edge of this estate. Someone tried to…well…to…”
“To what?” Amelia interrupted in hopes of hurrying along the conversation because her head and heart hurt. “Someone tried to what? Please tell me, the suspense is killing me.”
Bella spoke up. “We think the Earl of Bridgeton tried to kill you.”
“Mother mentioned this Earl of Bridgeton. I don’t know him. Who is he and what does he have to do with me?” Amelia rubbed her chest in hopes of soothing her insides.
“You must remember our neighbor in Dover,” Bella answered. “The recluse who keeps to himself and nobody ever sees. The one rumored to have murdered his brother and his brother’s pregnant wife.”
Amelia’s head ached as she tried to understand what Bella said. “Are you trying to tell me the recluse is the Earl of Bridgeton. Once again I ask what that has to do with me.”
“What does that have to do with you?” Emma repeated her face pale as flour. “Well, there is no easy way to say this.”
“Please, just say it,” Amelia pleaded. She did not think she could take any more of this. The room was beginning to spin circles around her.
“You are the Countess of Bridgeton,” Emma patted her hand gently.
“I married the Earl of Bridgton?” Amelia closed her eyes to stop the room from spinning. It made it worse. “I married a man I do not know, even though I am betrothed to Captain Rycroft?”
“Yes. Only you did know the earl. You wanted to marry him. You loved him,” Bella chimed in.
“What about Captain Rycroft? I love him!”
Both Bella and Emma hugged her close.
“There is no easy way to tell you this. You never married Captain Rycroft,” Bella said softly. “Days before your wedding, he died in a hunting accident.”
“He…?” Amelia’s lips quivered. Tears clogged her throat making it impossible to say more.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Emma said. “How dreadfully unfair you had to live through it not just the first time…but twice.”
“Please, I want to be alone,” Amelia whispered with heaviness in her heart. Tears leaked from her eyes as she tried to digest the information Bella and Emma told her. Daniel was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead, her mind screamed. She tunneled beneath her covers burying her head.
As Daniel’s face flashed before her eyes, Amelia began to sob. Her sobs intensified. They violently shook her body until she could not take the pain any longer and fell into a troubled sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
For seven days William sat in his filthy cell in the bowels of hell. The slop they fed him was not worthy of a pig. As he moved his hands over his stomach, he could count each rib. His hands moved up to his face only to encounter sunken cheeks and protruding cheekbones.
“Bloody hell,” he swore. “I must resemble death. Where the hell is Spencer?”
William slowly paced the room. His muscles pulled tight, his bones creaking. How did one survive this place for long?
He had received a short missive from Spencer stating he had traveled to Dover. Why had he not returned with news of Amelia? Now his heart constricted and his head ached. William curled up on the hard, lumpy, smelly mattress and pondered his future. There were two roads in his future. Neither one was pleasant. The first one had him stuck in this hellhole until starvation or disease took him, or, bless someone’s heart, he visited the gallows and hung.
The other road he envisioned twisted and turned through the countryside. Lavender scented the air. The sun’s rays warmed his face and at the end of the winding road was his salvation. Amelia stood with arms out in welcome.
Amelia. Would he ever see her again? He needed to see her, if only for a moment. Even if he went to the gallows, he wanted to see her once more to know she was healthy and fine. He didn’t care about living anymore. He only cared about Amelia.
***
For the third day in a row, Spencer had been turned away from the Wentworth country estate. For the love of God, how did he report back to his cousin? He could not travel back to Newgate without word of Lady Amelia. Thinking of Newgate sent an icy shiver up his spine. That first day he visited his cousin, it had taken all his willpower to act casual. He worried for William. He prayed daily for his cousin’s freedom and for Trenton’s demise.
All Spencer had wanted to do was run from there, and the nightmare it represented, and kiss the ground outside. He would never take his freedom for granted again.
Instead of getting on his horse and riding back to William’s estate, Spencer snuck around the back of the estate and entered the servants’ door. If he could find Lady Isabella and beg her help, explain all about Trenton, then maybe she could help him with the stubborn duke.
Spencer had never told a soul about what had transpired between Geoffrey, William, and Katherine. He would utter the words this day. This time Spencer would not watch William suffer for someone else’s crimes. More was at stake than ever before.
He sneaked down hallways and up staircases trying to find Lady Isabella. As he turned a corner he caught a glimpse of blond hair and a peach skirt. His pulse sped up as he quietly hurried down the hallway. The fem
ale person in question slipped behind a closed door. It could have been the duchess or Lady Bella as they both possessed blond hair. He would have to take his chances and follow her behind the closed door because William’s life was at stake.
Spencer slowly opened the door a crack and peered inside. His breathing slowed at the sight of Lady Bella. Another occupied the bedchamber with her though. Lady Amelia sat, propped up by pillows, in a large four-poster bed. From his vantage point, Spencer thought she looked pale and tired. At the sound of footsteps in the distance, Spencer hurried inside the room. He shut the door quietly and put his finger up to silence Bella and Amelia when both ladies gasped.
“Please. Have mercy on me,” he said as he approached the bed on wobbly legs. “Bridgeton is beside himself with worry about his Countess.”
“Mr. Spencer,” Lady Bella spoke softly, “you should not be here. If Wentworth finds you he will have you arrested.”
"Indeed, let him try,” Spencer said as he stood at the foot of the bed and tried to understand the shocked and confused look on Lady Amelia’s face. “Lady Amelia, he reached for her hands, but hesitated when he saw her draw back in panic. “Please tell Wentworth, Bridgeton did not try to kill you. Please, I beg of you. He loves you.”
“Bella, who is this gentleman?” Lady Amelia asked as her eyes darted back and forth between his and Lady Bella’s.
“Who?” Spencer queried in confusion. “I am your husband’s cousin.”
“Mr. Spencer,” Lady Bella said as she took his arm and led him to a quiet corner of the room, speaking in a hushed tone, “my sister does not remember the past two years. When she woke up two days ago, after being unconscious for five, she believed she was still engaged to Captain Rycroft.”
Spencer glanced back to Lady Amelia and a knot formed in the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean she does not remember?”
“Mr. Spencer,” Lady Bella said with sympathetic eyes, “please keep your voice down. Someone tried to kill my sister by drowning her. We found her unconscious, floating in the stream that separates this property with Bridgeton’s. She remained unconscious for five days. She now believes it is 1816. The doctor said we must be patient.”
The Lady and the Earl (Seabrook Family Saga) Page 17