His Lordship's Darkest Secret: Chapter Six
In Claire’s luminous eyes Flavian saw hints of confusion and hurt, though she did her best to hide it. She had every right to wonder at his coldness, but how could he tell her? How could he confess the one thing that would destroy them? He couldn’t. He couldn’t even face it himself… Yet, though their future was hopeless, he also couldn’t bear to let her go. Beautiful soul that she was, she stayed, mixing her herbs, stewing them, experimenting with measures of this and that, and awaiting responses from Mrs. Martin on ways to help his Arabella. And God help him, his love for her grew exponentially each day until the agony of it threatened to tear his sanity from its roots.
To keep his distance, to avoid the question Claire silently asked with those magnificent blue eyes, to crush the longing of his body for the feel of her pressed beneath him, Flavian kept to the outdoors.
First, he tackled the horse barn, replacing boards the animals had chewed. Next, he expanded the pig sty, then reset the stone foundation on the sheep barn, and last, converting a rocky patch of scrub trees into a hay field. Pitting his muscles against granite weighing hundreds of pounds, against tree trunks buried in unyielding soil, he toiled until the oxen bellowed for the barn and his men turned faces gaunt with exhaustion toward him, waiting for the signal to end their day.
But it wasn’t enough. Reeking of sweat, his arms and back aching from physical labor, at night he would still be dressed, and shaved, and clean for dinner, which meant he’d see her. Like a pair of strangers, they discussed the weather, the Prince Regent’s lusty appetite, and the weather again. And he tried not to allow himself the pleasure of observing her curved brows and the perfect contours of her mouth, and he tried to chew and swallow rather than gaze at the smooth plain of her chest and the rise of her pearl-like breasts.
This morning at breakfast, however, both a packet of dried valerian root and another of morphine arrived. Experimentation with the dose would begin, and with it, the end of his days with Claire, and possibly the end of Arabella’s madness.
* * *
Assembled in the dining room, Claire bit her lower lip, then carefully poured the mixture into a teacup, hoping she’d added the right amounts of valerian, St. John’s wort, and morphine to the brew. Too much and Arabella would sleep all day—too little and it would have no effect.
Flavian took the cup and placed it before his ward. All the girl did was stare.
They had talked about what to do if she refused the drink, and each conversation ended with them agreeing that they hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Flavian pulled out a chair and sat. “A little sip, that’s all, Bella.”
The girl lowered her tongue into the liquid. The squinched look on her face testified that no amount of honey could dampen the bitterness of the brew. She coughed, and he patted her back. “Poor thing. Just have a little more and you’ll be done.”
“If I drink whole cup, you let me go London with Lady Claire?”
“We’ll have to see what effect the medicine has on you,” he told her.
“What if I no can sing when I drink this medicine?”
He rubbed his chin and looked at Claire. Go on, she urged silently. Gently, he answered, “Your voice will be fine.”
“But my performance—I be sleepy?”
Again, he looked to Claire. His need was so endearing that despite his emotional retreat from her, she wanted to nuzzle those rugged cheeks, feel the scrape of stubble from his jaw, and most of all, kiss the worry from his gaze.
“Arabella,” she said, “this remedy will do nothing but good. You can trust me.” She glanced at Flavian, and their eyes met briefly.
He put an arm around the girl’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “Please try it, Bella. If you’re well enough, London shall be at your feet by autumn.”
In spite of herself, Claire felt a pang of jealousy, and she wondered for the thousandth time how he could love someone so troubled, yet shut her out.
The girl put the cup down, clanking china against china. “You remember horses at pond this winter?”
His shoulders sank, “That was a terrible accident.”
The girl’s lids reddened. “In winter seven horses went to pond,” she said to Claire. “No wind was there. So, they stand on ice together. They touch each other in the cold. And then ice crack. It must have happen quick—maybe like sky went under their hooves. Seven horses—they scream in the water—fighting. And then there nothing but broken ice. I feel like those horses, Vav. Sometimes I be screaming in the ice.”
He patted her back. “Take a sip, and maybe the horses will go away.”
Ashamed, Claire banished her envy. This girl suffered mental agony while she wallowed in nothing but hurt feelings.
Lifting the cup, Arabella held her nose, and downed the bitter liquid. When she placed the draught back in its saucer, she shuddered, sat very still with her eyes closed, then gagged a little on the brew.
“I’m sorry it’s got such an unpleasant taste,” Claire said. “I’ll try to make the next batch more palatable.”
The girl’s face contracted. “The next batch . . .?”
He patted her hand. “I’m so proud of you. You’ll get used to the taste.”
Arabella gripped his arm, and a tear dripped down her cheek, though her eyes were still shut. “Maybe you think there only six horses on the ice at first?” she said. “That a seventh come, and it too much. Too much, and the ice shatter?”
“I don’t know, Bella.”
“What I done to God that He take my Hernando and leave me with seven horses in my head?” Arabella put her face in her hands, and her shoulders convulsed with a sob. “Why God give me voice of angels and make me weep alone?”
Clearly stricken, Flavian turned to Claire, and her throat tightened. Please let the remedy work, she prayed.
* * *
The sweet notes of Arabella’s voice drifted through Claire’s turbulent thoughts as they sat in the music room. She caught Flavian’s eye. Without taking his gaze from his ward, he lowered a hand between their chairs and squeezed her fingers.
She squeezed back, and in that instant, Arabella’s singing faltered.
“Pardon, I make mistake, sí.”
Flavian kept Claire’s hand, but his fingers had gone stiff. And was it her imagination, or had the warmth drained away?
Arabella’s focus remained on the music. She seemed oblivious to them, and continued fumbling with the keys of the pianoforte. The room filled with the girl’s displeasure, like smoke from a blocked chimney. “Stupid manos,” she mumbled, flexing her fingers.
Claire slipped her hand from his grip and rested it in her lap.
Still without looking up, Arabella smiled tightly and made another attempt at the verse. This time her voice sailed through the difficult passage with the grace of a dancer.
Claire kept her eyes off Flavian, though she occasionally felt his gaze drift toward her. Had she become afraid of upsetting Arabella? Perhaps he was too. The atmosphere of Bingham Hall was tense, as if everyone were waiting for another clock to shatter. Would the concoction she’d brewed cure that?
At the end of the song, Arabella shuffled the music propped on the pianoforte. “What I sing next?” she said, more to herself than to them.
“Play something cheery,” Mrs. Gower said. “I liked the tune about the lovers.”
The girl’s features clouded. “In this song, the damsel die.”
“Then don’t play it,” said Flavian. But his ward hit the keys hard, drowning him out.
About midway through the song, her nimble fingers failed. She halted as if stunned and looked at the instrument in confusion. “I start again.”
The notes rang true through the stanza, but stumbled on the next passage. “I tired,” she said, looking shocked, then collapsed into herself like a rag doll—balanced, but without the bones to hold the toy up.
The herbal remedy must be working, Claire realized,
and though the dose obviously needed tinkering, she felt nothing but triumph.
* * *
That night, Claire’s bedroom was black as pitch when she woke, her body in a violent cramp. With only seconds to spare, she found the chamber pot beneath the bed. A sudden bout of retching had her pouring out the contents of her stomach.
When the nausea subsided, she crawled to a bureau on the far side of the room upon which rested the basin and pitcher. Dragging herself to her feet, she prepared for the next wave of sickness. Panting, crying, the pain doubled her over in agony, her stomach contracting again and again, as if it could never rid itself of enough fluid.
As the sickness abated, she took her robe and left the reeking bedroom, stumbling down the stairs and out the front door, headed toward the bushes.
On the lawn, another spasm brought her to her knees. When the pain subsided, she lay trembling in the cool grass. Nearby she heard the sound of someone else vomiting and of another person further away. Sitting up, she saw candlelight moving swiftly in the servant’s quarters, in the master suite, and in Mrs. Gower’s room. Had plague come upon them? The grippe?
Collapsing into the grass, Claire put a hand to her forehead. It was clammy and beaded with sweat, but it didn’t have the heat of an infectious fever. “Poison,” she moaned, “we’ve all been poisoned.”
Struggling to her knees, she inched toward the mournful cries of other sufferers. Then her arms gave out and she lay still, panting and watching her pain like a shower of meteors beneath her lids.
* * *
She woke, what may have been hours later. The horizon wore a thin bracelet of silver—enough to illuminate the white mounds of human misery, lying like battlefield casualties on the lawn. A bone chilling cold shook her from the gut outward, and her teeth chattered.
Only dimly aware of movement, she realized Flavian was nearby and that he’d pushed himself onto his elbows. His face was pale and his eyes, red rimmed. As if unable to focus, he gazed at her blankly until recognition seeped in. “Are you all right, my love?” he said, at last.
My love, he’d called her, my love. The words burned a path of joy through her. “I’ll be fine.”
He crawled towards her, and she towards him. When they met, his comforting arms formed a snug cocoon into which she gratefully crept. They both shook with chills, but her body drank the heat of his nearness. With her cheek against the thin fabric of his nightshirt, and the powerful thud of his heart, the tremors that rattled her, calmed.
A piercing scream split the morning. “Vav,” Arabella shrieked, “Help me!”
Claire scanned the field. Arabella, her face green with sickness, dragged herself toward them, clawing the sod, inching forward as she tore the tender roots. Her hair was matted, her eyes wild and desperate, her nightgown soaked with filth, and as she eyed Claire, her face contorted with fury.
Flavian let Claire go, struggled to his feet, and stumbled toward his ward.
Where his arms had been, cold now soaked to her core. Claire started to rise to go to them, then froze at the sight of Arabella. If the girl had howled in her ear, the message in her eyes could not have been clearer: Scared little bunny, you have been warned!
* * *
A few hours later, Flavian stood in the bedroom of the devastated tower. Too upset over the illness that had swept the household to fight Arabella, he had permitted her to recuperate where she pleased, which of course, was in the midst of her blasted junk heap. Covered in stained, torn quilts, the girl tensed like a cornered animal as Collingwood, her lady’s maid, passed him a tankard of healing broth Claire had made.
“I will not drink,” Arabella exclaimed, nearly knocking it from his hand.
“It’s just salted chicken broth.”
“Her and her poisons . . . why I trust again?”
Collingwood went wide-eyed.
Good God, could the maid really believe Claire would do such a thing? “What nonsense, Bella. Collingwood, you may go now.”
“Don’t you leave,” Arabella screamed. “Don’t you leave me alone with him. That lady trying to poison us!”
“Contain yourself! That is an out-and-out lie!”
Arabella, pale and delicate beneath the ragged quilts, extended a slender arm. “Collingwood, hold my hand. Don’t let her make me sick again.” She raised herself on an elbow and glared at him. “I see her stirring in kitchen. Stirring and dropping little powder in pot. Where this sickness come from, if not her?” she barked. “One day we fine. Then she cooking, brewing. ‘Drink’ you all say, and den everyone get sick.”
“You were the only one who drank the tonic,” Flavian said.
“Call Apple Bess. Ask if she use pot for dinner. Is a witch’s brew, and make us sick!”
Collingwood shivered and wrapped her arms across her chest.
“Why would Lady Claire make herself sick too, Bella? Answer that, but be warned, if you say another word against her, I shall punish you in a way you shall not enjoy.”
Arabella’s face turned red and she pounded her fists on the bedspread. “I no care what you say. On pain of death, I never drink that potion again. And I no drink this either!” In one violent gesture she hurled the chicken broth across the room. China smashed against the wallpaper, splattering soup everywhere.
“Great God Almighty,” Flavian grabbed the bedstead and lifted the structure off the floor. Terrified, Arabella scrabbled for a hold on the mattress. He dropped the bed with a crash. “Not. One. More. Word!”
* * *
Flavian sat Claire down at the long wooden table in the Great Hall, so close his knees nearly touched hers. The scent of roses filled his nostrils, and her blue eyes sparkled because at last, he was being intimate with her again. So when he told her Arabella had accused her of poisoning everyone, that light, that brief happiness, drained from her face. She seemed suddenly tired, defeated. Dread squeezed his chest until he could scarcely breathe because he could feel her retreat, feel that she would soon leave and he would never see her again.
She propped an elbow on the table and rested her cheek in her palm. “The staff will say I poisoned them even without proof.”
“Perhaps so, but they’ll forget, too.”
“I wonder…”
He took her hand and held it hidden beneath the tabletop. “Anyone caught spreading lies about you will be dismissed without a reference.”
Claire shook her head. “Please don’t do that; it would only make things worse.”
“It could be a whole lot worse for them.” He clunked his mug of chicken broth on the table.
She turned away. “This is ridiculous.”
“Please, I tell you, nothing will happen.”
But her look of exhaustion deepened. Without thinking, he touched her head, just to comfort her, just to caress her hair so she wouldn’t feel so alone. It was a colossal mistake. Instantly, he burned to clutch her to his breast, to devour her mouth with kisses that would let her know, once and for all, how much he loved her. By God, all the hardship of being at sea and all the bloody battles he’d fought hadn’t prepared him for the pain of not being able to possess her. The effort was driving him mad. He bowed his head, and exerting every ounce of self-control, he commanded his fingers to let go of the last strand of her pale, silken hair.
He rose and paced to the hall’s massive hearth, where he stared glumly at the ashes of a finished log.
“If I left for London, perhaps she’d take the remedy.” A bitter laugh ended Claire’s sentence.
God in heaven, if he could only get Arabella well! End her bloody collecting, stop her horrific fits and tantrums. How could he turn her lose on the world; a mad thing who rampaged through the house hurling lamps, kicking furniture, shattering glass and shredding paintings? She’d been calm yesterday, but now she wouldn’t take the medicine. Would he never pay his debt to Hernando… and to the beautiful, cinnamon-skinned Valencia? His fingers curled around the edge of the marble mantle. He wanted to break it from the wall�
��send it flying in one giant piece across the length of the Great Hall. Instead, he pressed his forehead against its cold, white surface.
A minute went by. Then two. Passing a hand through his hair, Flavian turned from the fireplace and looked, unseeing, at the naked walls. “We were so close.” His voice echoed in the lofty room.
“Then I should go,” Claire said.
He swallowed. “Don’t… Arabella needs you.”
Claire put her head in her hands. “Why do we always, always speak of Arabella? Have our own feelings no place in this house?” She banged her forearms on the table and looked at him with exasperation.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“What are you sorry for? I’m not sorry at all. So tell me, why are you sorry?”
He’d never seen her so angry. She had every right to be, but the iron walls of his predicament pressed in on all sides. And though he knew what his answer must be, it sounded hollow even before he spoke it. “For my lack of control.”
Her eyes flashed, and she nearly shouted, “When have you lost control, my lord?”
“When I let my emotions get the better of me and I kissed you in the field that day.”
She left the table and swept across the room, driving him back against the fireplace. “Then I’m guilty of the same transgression.”
To avoid her furious gaze, he concentrated on the neckline of the simple brown frock she wore. It cut high, yet he could see the triple valleys at the base of her throat. How the flush of anger reddened her perfect skin. In a choked voice, he answered, “I have led you to false hopes.”
“You have indeed, and I want to know why.” She put her hand on his lapel and forced him to look at her.
Gently, he removed her fingers, memorizing their delicate bones, their heat, their strength, then he let go. Drawing on years of commanding a ship, he put his shoulders back and focused a look on her that had made experienced sailors cringe. “I can never marry.” Before she could see the agony those words cost him, he turned his back haughtily and stared into the empty hearth. Violently, he kicked a burned log deeper into the cold ashes.
Her Perfect Gentleman: A Regency Romance Anthology Page 83