The Misfit Marquess

by Teresa DesJardien

  A sense of cheer flooded through her, followed immediately by a doubling of the pain in her foot. That which could be ignored when she was desperate now became painfully insistent the moment her greatest fear—abject poverty—was relieved. She slumped back, practically prone, but could not find enough purchase with one foot to lever herself back atop the rather tall bed.

  "Great heavens," she said aloud in disgust and not seme little pain. "I am quite stuck where I am!"

  There was nothing for it. She was going to have to hop one-legged around the bed to where the bellpull dangled, to summon assistance. The very idea made her brow break out in beads of perspiration.

  Before she could hop one step, however, there was a knock at the chamber door. "Come in," Elizabeth called in relief.

  A youthful maid poked her mob-capped head around the door, peering within. Elizabeth had just enough time to note that the girl sported a black eyepatch over her right eye, before the maid turned away to murmur something to someone on the other side of the door.

  The door was thrust open, and the maid stepped in, admitting Lord Greyleigh.

  Elizabeth felt a dark flush fill her cheeks, to be caught out of bed so, with naught but a night rail on, and by none other than the master of the house.

  He stopped short, not quite staring but looking directly at her all the same. He carried a sheet of paper, a quill, and an inkpot.

  "You should not be out of bed," he said in a level, serene voice, the type used in the presence of simpletons. Although his tone was undoubtedly appropriate in his mind, it was inordinately annoying to Elizabeth all the same. But this was no time to object to being patronized, because she must remain an unnamed stranger, and the only way to do that was to play the idiot. She had chosen this path, and it was a choice that still made the best sense for her future—and for Lorraine and Papa's future as well.

  She offered Lord Greyleigh a wobbly, one-footed curtsy. "Have you come to dance at my wedding?" she said, wondering if she looked as guileless as she tried to sound.

  "It is time to be abed, not dancing time," he said as evenly as before. He turned to the maid, handing her the items he'd brought. Without ado, he took the ten steps to cross to Elizabeth's side, scooped her up in his arms, and deposited her in a half-reclining position on the bed. Her heel protested the movement with sharp twinges, and a small moan escaped her lips. Lord Greyleigh seemed to take little notice, however. His hands were unhurried yet efficient as they pulled the hem of her night rail down around her ankles, adjusted the coverlet over her length, and tucked the cover's edges around her. If he noticed that Elizabeth tightly clutched a purse in her hand, and that it disappeared beneath the covers immediately once she was atop the bed again, his expression did not show it.

  "Do you think we should tie her down to the bed, to keep her—" the maid began.

  "No," Lord Greyleigh said calmly, but there was such steel underlying the word that the little maid lowered her chin as if she had been disciplined.

  Apparently Lord Greyleigh saw no reason to offer comfort, however, for he took the writing implements from her and then waved her away. The maid bobbed a curtsy, gave a quick glance back from her one good eye, and when she quit the room, she left the door wide open.

  "Now then," Lord Greyleigh said, snagging a chair with his foot. He dragged it in awkward jerks away from where someone had placed it before the fireplace, and when he was satisfied it was near enough to the bed, sat. "I will write. You will talk. We will find out something about you, and thereby be able to find your family. Or guardian, or whoever sent you to the asylum."

  He uncorked the inkpot and reached to place it on the nearby washing table, only to hesitate in mid-motion to stare at the half-open drawers. "You have been snooping," he said seemingly without censure, even as he slid the two drawers closed.

  He obviously did not expect a response, for he paused only long enough to inspect the tip of the quill, and then he turned his face to meet hers once more. "Do you know where you were born?"

  "No."

  He did not sigh or shake his head, but there was exasperation in the set of his shoulders.

  "Do you know why you were sent to the asylum?"

  It would be foolish to refuse all knowledge. "For my nerves," Elizabeth said. She left the purse under the covers, drawing out her hands to fold them atop the white damask. It was easier to look at her hands as she told lies than to look this man in the face. And she probably ought to be ranting, or chattering, or inappropriately ebullient. She ought to be putting on a show . .. but she was no actress. Such foolishness would soon pale. Better to be silent and act moody, whenever possible ... not unlike her host.

  "Why do you wear your hair long?" she asked of a sudden. There, that was a peculiar thing to blurt out. Elizabeth thought it fit the moment, but, too, she asked in part because she truly wished to know.

  "When you were found, outside the asylum, you were wearing a fine silk gown. Why?" he countered.

  He was not one to be easily led off the scent, she saw that now, if she had not gathered as much before.

  "Because 'tis my wedding day," Elizabeth replied calmly.

  "Ah. So you have said before."

  She frowned, trying to remember if she had said anything contradictory, anything that might make him think she was fabricating her replies. She couldn't think of anything, but the pain and medication of yesterday might have erased memory of prior claims. But any such contradictions might serve to make her appear all the more unsound of mind anyway. She parted her lips to answer him, but he spoke before she could.

  "Never mind," he said, and despite his perpetual cool politeness she got the feeling her frown had somehow chipped away at his patience. "I wear my hair long," he said in the resolute tone she was coming to know too well, "because I have not had a valet in six months, and I have not trusted anyone else to do the task properly."

  "Why have you not had a valet?"

  "We are speaking of your concerns now, Miss B, not myself."

  "Did you kill your previous valet?" There, he would think her truly mad now. It didn't signify that she could half-believe in her own ghastly question; it was easy to believe violence swirled through this oversized house with its brick walls stained the color of blood.

  "No," he answered her simply. She expected him to sigh, but instead he merely reached to dip the quill's tip in the ink. The simple reply ought to have been reassuring, but the blank, cold manner in which he had responded only served to chase a chill down her spine. "He left my employ over a dispute, that is all."

  "What manner of dispute?"

  "It does not matter. Now, tell me, Miss B—" Now he did sigh. "'Miss B' does not suit," he said. "Would you object to being called simply Elizabeth?"

  She shook her head no. It made sense and was certainly less awkward, even if there was an unwarranted intimacy in the use of her Christian name.

  He nodded his approval, then dipped the drying tip of the quill again in the ink. "Do you recall where you last lived before the asylum?"

  Elizabeth hesitated one long moment, in which she decided misdirection was the quickest way to satisfy him for the time being and to end these questioning sessions. "Nottingham."

  His gaze narrowed. "So far as that?"

  "I remember .. ." She squinted her eyes and tried to look as though her memory were being vexed. "We lived on a street that was not very pretty. It had a big oak tree out front, though. We picnicked in Sherwood Forest. I wanted to live there, where it was pretty, but Papa said no."

  He leaned forward, as though in interest. "And what is Papa's name?"

  "Papa?" Ah, she had almost lied herself into a tangle! She had disobeyed her own rule, to be as silent as she could—and the lies were beginning to grate in her own ears. "Why, 'Papa,' of course."

  "I meant his surname, or his title. I'm sure you've heard servants call him something."

  "Servants?"

  He compressed his lips. "Well, perhaps you did not have any,
but to judge by the softness of your hands, I have difficulty believing that."

  "Papa's name was Papa," Elizabeth repeated with a toss of her head. She added a pout, a childlike one she hoped.

  "Humph." Lord Greyleigh sat back again. "Do you recall what any doctors have said about your condition? Why your nerves brought you to Severn's Well?"

  "I came because there was nowhere else to go," Elizabeth said, and it was easy to sound sad because in this regard she spoke the truth. "I could not be with my family anymore."

  His gaze met hers squarely, and to her surprise she saw a muscle jump in his cheek, and she thought he must be angered. What had she said? Did he suspect her of dissimulating the truth?

  "Were you violent?"

  "Oh, no," she said at once, without thinking, but then she was glad she had said it for it was not in her nature to act violently, not even to keep her secret.

  Whatever his thoughts, he did not share them. Instead he stood, and quickly gathered up his writing tools. "I shall write to the mayor of Nottingham at once. Someone is bound to recognize a description of you, especially coupled with the name Elizabeth B. I will send one of my own servants on horseback, so we should hear in as soon as a week or perhaps a fortnight." He spoke brusquely, and his gaze did not meet hers anymore. He turned to leave.

  "Lord Greyleigh." Her call stopped him at the door. He turned back to face her, and she thought he did so with reluctance. "What dispute did you have with your valet?"

  The look he cast her was enough to set her cheeks to flaming and to raise the hairs on her nape. It was a darkly sardonic look, one that transformed his face by removing all coolness and replacing cold logic with something warmer but far more disturbing. "If you must know, Elizabeth, he left because he claimed there was a ghost living here at Greyleigh Hall."

  He did not persist with more of the tale, but merely stared at her, as though daring her to goad him into further explanation. It was impossible to know if he wished it of her or not, but he waited, and the hairs on her nape rose once more.

  "I do not believe in ghosts," she said, lifting her chin in a strangely defiant fashion.

  "Truly? Not what I would have expected from someone who suffers from nerves." Underneath that now restored cool politeness, was he laughing at her?

  "Nerves and sense are two different things," she pointed out.

  "So I've been told before," he said. "By my valet, in fact."

  Now he grinned, and Elizabeth felt both rebuffed and drawn at the same time, for his grin was not kind, but devastatingly attractive.

  "You fought with your valet, because he believed in a ghost and you did not?" she said, as if the skeptical words would make her feel more bold, less troubled by this man's disturbing and yet still oddly engaging smile.

  "We fought because I insisted he not mention ghosts in front of the other servants, but he could not seem to help himself. He was alarming everyone, especially the chambermaids."

  "So you think he did not actually see anything ghostly?"

  "I did not wish him to speak of such things, Elizabeth, but not because I did not believe in the ghost myself. In fact," Lord Greyleigh said calmly, "I do believe some manner of creature has been haunting this house for the better part of the last four or five months."

  So saying, he turned and left the room, leaving Elizabeth to frown at the closed door even as a shiver coursed up her spine.

  Chapter 5

  Unfortunately, after a day of sleep, Elizabeth was not the least bit drowsy. She sat alone in the bed, aching all over despite the warm touch of the orning sunlight. Only slowly did it occur to her that events had been so all-consuming that she'd given no thought to being grateful she was alive. And she had failed to thank her host for saving her from the ditch and the thief.

  The ditch. She remembered a sensation of falling, and that must have been when she'd tried to crawl away from her pain. She recalled the narrowing black tunnels that had formed before her eyes, the pain she had tried to escape—she had surely put herself in that ditch when she had crawled blindly forward.

  And who had fir^c lOund her there and been trying to steal her ring? The obvious answer was Radford. She must be sure to ask Lord Greyleigh if the thief had been finely dressed, a dandy even, and then she would know for a certainty that it had not been some mere common cutpurse.

  Radford. Did he think so little of her that he would leave her for dead in a ditch? If the would-be thief had been Radford, he could have taken the ring and at least called for help. While she had lain there unconscious, it would have been simple to see that she was cared for. He could have brought attention to her condition, and could have denied knowing anything about her, at least until he'd seen to it that she did not bleed to death. Instead, all he had done was to attempt to take back his ring, a distinctive ring that he'd said had been given to him by his father. Of course, even that ^xight have been a lie. Unfortunately for her, were the thief Radford, he had left her unconscious and bleeding at the side of the road.

  Elizabeth covered her face with her hands and gave a body-rattling shudder in place of tears. She would not cry. She had wept all the tears she ever would because of Radford Barnes, and there was no point in sobbing over her own folly.

  It was time to take stock of her situation, as it stood this day.

  She knew the cut on her heel was deep, which would make travel difficult. The thought of a carriage bumping and jolting over the public roads and what it would do to a bandaged foot made Elizabeth feel ill. But nothing else about her person would prevent travel, even if her wrenched shoulder and various cuts and bruises would make for an uncomfortable journey.

  But where to go? A small, secluded village—but which? Every place that came to mind was wrong. She knew people in Chichester, and Tilbury, and Marlboro.

  She would need a map to find a place in a far county she had heard little of, and whose populace presumably had heard nothing of her or any of the Hattons of London. Surely Lord Greyleigh would have a map or two in his library? Or did he even have a library? Did she dare ask a maid to bring a map to her, provided Greyleigh had one?

  For that matter, she could start out upon the road without direction and simply find her way as she went. She could stop when she came to a place she'd never heard of, traveling by Post perhaps.

  And how to pay her fare? There was that worry again. Did Severn's Well—that was presumably the name of this village, for Lord Greyleigh had called the asylum by that name—did it have a shop where jewelry might be pawned? How would she get to it? Leaning on a crutch? Would Greyleigh obtain a crutch or perhaps canes for her, if she asked?

  He might, if she went to him and told him the truth and stopped pretending to be a scatterwit. But in telling the truth she would have to reveal all—and that only brought Elizabeth back to the realization that she could not protect her sister, Lorraine, if her folly became public fodder for the gossipmongers.

  Lorraine deserved better.

  Lorraine and Papa—and even Papa's new wife, Francine. Francine might be all that put one in mind of the epithet "shrew," but that did not mean she deserved to be dragged down by coarse gossip, especially not when anything that touched Francine touched them all.

  But it was really Lorraine's happiness that had prompted Elizabeth to flee her home, to agree to elope with Radford Barnes even though Elizabeth had known him but two weeks.

  Two weeks! Elizabeth shook her head at the shortage of time, at the madcap pace she had agreed to. She had allowed herself to be persuaded that all would be well, even though a moment's clear thinking would have shown that such haste was far beyond unseemly. But she had not wanted to think clearly; she had wanted to flee from shrewish Francine, who was so unlike the gentle, quiet woman Mama had been. And Elizabeth had wanted to clear the way for Lorraine.

  Would Lorraine's marriage go forward? The betrothal had all but been announced—but sweet, soft-spoken Lorraine could be persuaded to cry off if others felt the marriage unseemly, if en
ough pressure was applied.

  Her beau, the Honorable Broderick Mainworthy, one day to inherit the title of viscount from his father, was clearly smitten with Lorraine, but her advanced age of five-and-twenty had made his family look askance at the heir's choice. Lorraine's lack of fortune had also worked against her. That was the final reason Elizabeth had allowed herself to be persuaded to elope, because then her half of the dowry allotments would go to Lorraine. Papa could hardly be expected to support a vulgar elopement by awarding any income to the man who had carried his daughter away in the night. Everyone knew it took at least four days to reach Gretna Green—and everyone knew a girl's reputation was gone the minute a carriage rolled out of her yard with that location in mind.

  That was why Elizabeth had written in her parting note that she understood her share would not be forthcoming and must go to Lorraine, and why she had surrendered all chance of a dowry except for the few jewels she carried with her. Broderick Mainworthy's family would be pleased to learn Lorraine's portion had doubled. It was still no great sum, but any additional honey would only serve to sweeten the pot, surely?

  Of course, giving her dowry portion to Lorraine had made perfect sense when Elizabeth had thought she was marrying a wealthy man. She had been mistaken on more than one account.

  Eloping with Radford had been a gamble, of course. A foolish one, Elizabeth saw that now. But it had all seemed so logical, so neat and tidy, at the time.

  And unless Elizabeth stayed hidden, discreetly missing—so that some taradiddle about her going to visit an aunt or godmother or cousin could be got about, as she had instructed in her note—it would all be for naught. She could not let that happen. She had to be invisible. She had to smother any hints of scandal.

  That was that, then, Elizabeth thought. Her path was clear: she must play the part of addled inmate until such time as she was able to exchange her bits of jewelry for money to hire a carriage to carry her anonymously away. She must do all she could to become mobile once more, and if possible consult a map for the sake of finding an out-of-the-way hamlet in which to pass the next few months, or however long it was before Lorraine was safely married.