Nick was finally hopeful. “Which road? Did he say which road?”
“Dover Road, Yer Grace. Wouldn’t know it, but ‘e been screaming at his jervis ‘bout making Dover by midnight. Coachman looks like he’s to be put to bed with a mattock and tucked up with a spade. And no wonder; no amount o’ horses could get a coach to Dover by midnight when it’s near seven now.”
“What does the coach look like?” Firthley asked, nodding to Nick to indicate the other duke was the one they sought.
“Black, but paint chipped off, red stripe ‘long the side. Horses was one grey, one skewbald, and not high-steppers these. Mebbe a fast rider could catch up, Yer Grace, now I think of it.”
Firthley corrected, “I’m not a duke… never mind. It doesn’t signify. Thank you, my man.”
Nick spoke over him, “Perfect. We can catch him. Pay the men and let us be on our way.” He rapidly mounted his horse and while Firthley sent one of the soldiers back to the Royal Mews to await the king’s instructions, Nick was already on his way to Westminster Bridge.
Chapter 26
A scant half-hour later, they pulled up at a posting inn, where a decrepit coach with a red stripe was being pulled into the stable.
“He can’t have stopped this close to London. He was trying for Dover,” Firthley argued.
“He can’t make it there in time. If he is going to miss the tide anyway…” Nick surmised. “Perhaps he plans to stay in London, hide in plain sight and leave on a passenger boat or find a new coach. From the sound of it, anything would be better than the boneshaker he bought in Town.”
“And maybe this isn’t the same carriage.”
“Then it ‘beseems we should ask,’ do you not think?” Nick trotted his horse to the stable but didn’t dismount, declining to give the reins to a groom who came running. Instead, he demanded, “Where is the owner of that coach? Has he traded it for new?”
“No, my lords. Inside, ‘e is. ‘E and his lady take a room for the night.”
Firthley asked, “French?”
“As frog’s legs, Sir.”
“What color was her dress?” Nick asked, “And her hair?”
“Red, my lord, both. No, not quite. Hair was gold-red, like a ha’penny.”
Nick swung his leg over the saddle.
The groom continued as he took the reins, “‘E said she’s too sick from champagne at the wedding breakfast to go on ‘til tomorrow, and must be she is. Clothes was a mess, and she ain’t woke even with her head smacked ‘gainst the door.”
At Nick’s expression, the man hastened to explain, “He ain’t done it purposeful, my lord, only he was trying to carry her out of the coach himself. Won’t have no help from no one. Proper bridegroom ‘e was, agog to get to his room.” The man leered, and it was all Nick could do not to drub him with the blunt end of his pistol.
“Keep my horse here and saddled and water him.”
Nick was opening the front door before the man had finished mangling his title, with Firthley no more than a step behind.
Slamming the barrel-shaped proprietor against the nearest lime-washed wall, a forearm across his throat and a pistol to his belly, Nick demanded, “Where is she, you addle-pated puff guts?” Nick tried to leave a bruise with the barrel of the gun. “And do not lie to me, or I will see you dead.”
At the request of one duke to give information about another, the man hemmed and hawed, trying to persuade Nick he had no notion of a Frenchman with a sleeping woman.
The soldier with them came in then and confirmed, “If he doesn’t kill you, it will be Newgate by sunrise.”
The man couldn’t talk fast enough. “First floor, Yer Grace. Third door on the left.” Nick couldn’t run up the stairs fast enough, galloping two at a time, Firthley still close behind. The soldier called out, “I’ll keep him here, Your Grace,” then, apparently to a cohort coming in the door, “Up the back stairs, man, before Lord Firthley and His Grace get into the thick of it.”
When he reached the third door on the left, Nick slammed it open with his shoulder, breaking the lock and the door jamb. The first thing he saw was Malbourne throwing a sheet over Bella, as though her presence were an affront to his sensibilities.
Before it covered her completely, though, her motionless, unclothed body was all he could see, lying on the bed, white-faced, slack-jawed, bruises on her throat. As far as Nick could tell, dead. His breath stopped and he nearly lost control of his stomach.
Her dress was ruined, as were a black jacket and waistcoat, all tossed carelessly on a chair. Before he fully registered Malbourne in his shirtsleeves and tidy cravat, the blood seeping onto the pillowcase under Bella’s head coated Nick’s vision in red.
He charged across the room.
“Damn you to hell, you oily bastard!”
When the Frenchman rushed to stop him from entering any further, Nick aimed his fist for the bruise he had left four days earlier.
The force of Nick’s blow threw Malbourne against the bed frame, then to the floor.
Nick was on Malbourne before he could finish the first scream of terror, beating him until blood flew off his fists, spattering across his face. The Frenchman’s attempts to block Nick’s rage with his hands only made them additional targets.
Malbourne’s voice grew quieter and more sluggish as Nick’s abuse gained in volume, overshadowed only by the buzzing of a crowd forming behind his back.
“Ten shillings on the blond duke!” “No bet! The dark one’s nearly dead!” “Five-to-one the black one don’t last five minutes!”
It sounded like every person in the building had charged up the stairs to watch and place wagers on the outcome. The crowd jostling for the best view grew larger every time the sound of flesh striking flesh flew into the hallway.
“You had no right to her! No right!” Nick yelled, barely aware of his own words as he pummeled his weakening adversary. He saw Firthley remove Bella’s silent body from the room, and at the sight of her corpse, his breath hitched. Even through the choking, Nick somehow managed to hit Malbourne harder.
“I will—” Slam. “Damn well—” Slam. “Kill you—” Slam.
One of the soldiers had pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “Your Grace!” he called out, trying to inject a sense of law and order, but Nick’s murderous glare was all it took for him to hold up his gloved hands in front of his immaculate uniform and step away. In a haze of fury, Nick went back to work on the semiconscious Frenchman, banging his head against the floor in time with his screaming.
“Thrice-damned—” Slam. “Murderous—” Slam. “Whoreson!” Slam.
At the last solid strike of skull against floor, Malbourne stopped moving, but Nick could not bring himself to end the beating.
“Wellbridge! Wellbridge! You’ve done your worst. Stop.” At the risk of his own safety, Firthley had thrown his arm across Nick’s chest, hauling his fists away from the senseless man. “Let the king’s men take him,” he shouted next to Nick’s ear. Everyone nearby stepped back, assuming they were about to see a peer of the realm commit a second murder in as many minutes.
Nick, still straddling Malbourne’s motionless, breathless frame, and without quite understanding why he shouldn’t also cause injury to Firthley, somehow knew he should allow himself to be drawn away. Four more soldiers appeared at the top of the stairs and the crowd reluctantly parted to let them through. With one last hard strike of his boot against Malbourne’s unmoving head, he finally saw the crowd of vulturous peasants exchanging coin won or lost on how many minutes it would take Nick to dispatch him.
Under the noise of men dragging Malbourne’s carcass away, Nick was all but catatonic: he could force no sound from his lips, no spark from his eye; every sound fell on deaf ears. His shoulders slumped, bruised, bloody hands dropped like anvils to his sides. He could barely bring himself to move, knowing he would now be forced to live without his Bella.
While the soldiers cleared the final onlookers from the room and hall and
shut the door, Nick’s eyes remained locked on the bloodstained bedcover and pillows. Firthley snapped his fingers in front of Nick’s face, but he just stared, not quite comprehending why the marquess needed his attention.
“Wellbridge!” Firthley was nothing more than a buzz in his ear. “The Devil, Wellbridge, wake up!” The blood. By the Gods, the blood. “She’s alive. He drugged her with something, but she’s alive. Wellbridge!”
Nick’s head snapped up, eyes suddenly cleared of the red haze, but vision jagged, afraid Firthley was a hallucination, blood the only real thing in the room. “Alive?”
“Alive,” Firthley confirmed, searching Nick’s face with apparent concern, probably for Nick’s faculties. With a steadying hand, he continued, “Unconscious, but breathing. A split on the side of her head. A great deal of bleeding, but it’s stopped now, and obviously, she was sick at some point. Copious bruises, but nothing broken I could see. He didn’t have time to—”
Nick tried to rip his sleeve from Firthley’s hand, not sure why he wanted to be let loose, nor where he would go if he could but clear his head enough to walk. When his knees bobbled, Firthley placed his hand at Nick’s elbow to keep him on his feet.
“Take a deep breath, Wellbridge. Breathe.” Nick went along with this plan. Breathe. “Good. Keep breathing. You butchered the Frog, so no use going after him again, and the king’s men can wrap it up all right and tight without you.”
No argument from Nick. Keep breathing, he thought. Keep breathing.
“Prinny sent his guards and his own physician, and he is looking at her now to decide if we can take her home.”
“Home.” Keep breathing. “She’s alive.”
“Yes, Wellbridge, she’s alive, which is more than I can say for Malbourne. Let me take you to her.”
Nick allowed himself to be led downstairs and through the taproom. The front door stood open, so many people coming in and out that finally, someone had blocked it with a heavy stone. Just outside, a town coach waited with six horses, six outriders, and a royal crest. If Bella needed transport to London, this was the transport he wanted her to have. Breathe.
Once past the front entry, Firthley explained she was under guard in the owner’s quarters, being seen by the physician and attended by the innkeeper’s wife. Their two rooms were more comfortable than any of the guest rooms, the least of which Malbourne had rented.
Nick pushed past Firthley, entering the room without knocking, just in time to see the doctor shear Bella’s hair away from a bloody three-inch gash on the side of her head. Nick fell to his knees. “Dear God. Dear God, she can’t live.” Grasping at her hand, Nick cared not a whit the doctor was trying to push around him, until Firthley finally dragged Nick out of the way.
The doctor said, quietly, “We’ll keep her here for now and see how she does.” He added, “It will be better for me to do my work without the countess’s… ahem… family in the room.” The man nudged Firthley and Nick into the hallway. “And someone should fetch a vicar.” He shut them firmly outside the door.
Nick’s legs buckled again at the thought of Extreme Unction, but he managed to keep one hand on the wall as the floor folded underneath him. With Firthley supporting one side, a wall the other, and no one to observe him, Nick was able to right himself without a complete loss of self-possession.
“I need to be seated, Firthley.” Breathe.
“You do.” Firthley agreed. He helped Nick to a rough, wooden bench along the wall. “When you can walk again, the innkeeper’s sitting room is about six steps away. We can shut the door there and speak freely.”
As Firthley bent to ensure Nick’s balance, one of the soldiers strode up, silently begging their attention. The marquess straightened, taking up a defensive position protecting Nick’s shaken dignity. Breathe. Nick rubbed at the splotches of blood staining his hands, shirt, coat, and trousers. Breathe.
“Your Lordship, Your Grace. Captain Darby. I wished to report the death of the prisoner.” For the first time since Bella had left his home, Nick felt himself smile.
“I see,” Firthley intoned, glancing sideways at Nick.
“’Twas the butt of a gun, my lord. Trying to escape a British officer is an exercise in poor judgment.” Being killed in custody was all but legal. “The men concerned wished to express their appreciation to Your Lordship and Your Grace for voting last month to increase military pay.”
The bark of laughter from Nick’s throat felt incongruous, but also like it might, with the least provocation, continue indefinitely. He had traded that vote for one removing a fair number of soldiers from Ireland, and his bill had failed in the end.
Nick’s budding hysteria hung in the air until Firthley answered, “Very good, Darby. I’ll let the king know what a help you’ve been.” Breathe, Wellbridge. Keep bloody breathing. “The duke and I need to discuss what he would like to do next, but send for the vicar, and someone report to my wife that the countess has been found. I’ll speak to you outside in ten minutes.”
Chapter 27
“It has been six days. Will she never wake?” Nick begged rhetorically, turning away from Charlotte to hide incipient tears. His head fell, listless, onto Bella’s motionless shoulder, hoping against hope if he jostled her even slightly, she would regain consciousness.
He needed no mirror to know his face was creased and unshaven, eyes red-rimmed, broad frame missing half its bulk, as though the flesh had followed his half-dead will to live, leaving his dirty shirt to hang off his shoulders like a ship’s flag in a ghost wind.
Once the doctor had settled her unresponsive form at the Firthley’s townhouse and allowed visitors, Nick had barely left the room but to use the chamber pot. The cheerful, yellow, floral wallpaper mocked him every time his eyes focused enough to take it in. His hand was always entwined with Bella’s; at the moment, both hands, holding on like she was his life preserver. Or rather, he was hers.
Charlotte tried to soothe Nick, her hand patting his back. “She’ll be fine, Wellbridge. The doctor said there was every reason to hope, and she’s so very strong.”
Firthley knocked lightly on the open door, inviting himself in and sitting across the bed from them, the candlewick spread as white as Bella’s face. He motioned to Charlotte’s maid to adjust the curtains, as the afternoon sun would soon be blinding.
Of the three in the room, Firthley was the only one whose person was in any kind of order. As the functions of government hadn’t ceased without Nick’s acknowledgement of them, Firthley planned to attend The House of Lords in the afternoon, so was flawlessly attired in a day suit of dark grey broadcloth with black kid gloves, hair powdered in the fashion of the old men Firthley aligned with in Parliament.
Charlotte, by contrast, may as well have been dressed as a servant. Her faded cotton gown might have started orange or yellow, now worn to the color of hay, the print blurred and indistinct beneath a floor-length linen apron, stained and spotted with the residue of a sickbed.
When he heard the choking sound in Nick’s throat, Firthley stood. “Wellbridge, it’s time for a brandy. Past time, in fact. You should be half-dead from drink by now.”
Nick looked up at him, confused and forlorn. “A drink?”
“Yes, old man, a drink,” Firthley countered. “You’ve spent almost a week alarmingly sober, and it’s time you act like a proper Englishman, not a woman. Crying at her bedside. It’s disgraceful. Bella needs a man, not a milksop.”
Nick’s shoulders straightened. “I am not a milksop, Sir.”
“I have pistols in my study if you have the bollocks to prove it—please excuse the indelicate language, my dear.”
“Given the circumstance, husband, I think it—”
“Come along, Your Grace.”
Charlotte objected, “Alexander, he is only—”
“I’ll have no argument from you, Lady Firthley. You’ve done more than enough, encouraging him in this unseemly display. You may send a footman if there is a change. Wellbridge?”
Charlotte merely huffed her strenuous objection.
Nick stood, took a deep breath, and followed Firthley out of the room, looking back over his shoulder. The sunlight that had been about to light up Bella’s face was now muted, leaving her in shadow. When he saw her shoulders twitch and head loll to the side, he started to turn back, but Charlotte was only adjusting the pillows. Firthley waited, tapping his toe.
Once he had closed the door, and as soon as they were out of earshot, Firthley mumbled, “Apologies for the slur, Wellbridge. Charlotte would never follow two men on the verge of fisticuffs.” Nick nodded to acknowledge Firthley’s thin ruse, but narrowed his eyes when the marquess followed with, “Though you have been acting rather too womanish.”
Ignoring the insult, Nick asked, almost in a whisper, “The burial is done, then?”
Firthley’s brow furrowed as he led Nick down the hall, thick carpet muffling their steps. “It is, though I do not look forward to Bella’s reaction when she hears. If the doctor had any idea how long… well… I would have waited. It is an awful betrayal of them both.” His stride hitched and he inhaled, then exhaled, deeply. “If we only knew how long it will be until she wakes.”
“If she does,” Nick mumbled.
Firthley straightened his shoulders and jaw. “No need to be maudlin. She is yet breathing. It isn’t as though we could keep her husband on ice much longer, and I had to consider His Majesty’s schedule. He was quite insistent he attend before he leaves for Brighton.”
“It pained me not to make the effort, but—”
“But you were exactly where you should be: tending to the living.” Firthley looked him up and down. “Not to mention Charlotte would never let you leave the house,” he flicked his hand toward Nick, “in that condition.” He coughed and sniffed with his head turned studiously toward the wall, wrinkling his nose against the days on end Nick hadn’t bathed.
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