Lord of Secrets

by Alyssa Everett

  “It’s most becoming.” He looked suddenly uncertain, as if he wanted to say more but wasn’t sure how to begin.

  She smiled at him, doing her best to keep the conversation going. “You know, when we were speaking of my years at Miss Stark’s just now, it made me realize there’s a great deal about you I don’t know. You rarely talk about your past.”

  Now he looked more than uncertain—he looked almost wary. “What would you like to know?”

  Oh, dear, she must be wandering into another of those conversational pitfalls. Did he imagine she was going to ask about the suicide? “Well, what was school like for you? I don’t believe you’ve ever said.”

  “Ah.” The wariness vanished. “I had tutors until university, and then...” He flashed her a sheepish smile. A footed Meissen bowl stood on the table between them, its opulent display of fruit serving as the centerpiece. After a moment of hesitation he chose an orange from the arrangement and held it up for her to see. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Yes, of course.” It must be some sort of trick question. “It’s an orange.”

  “It’s an orange now. But if not for the lazy enunciation of our ancestors, we might be calling it a norange.”

  A norange? “You’re quizzing me.”

  “No, I’m perfectly serious. The Persian word was narang. Moors brought the fruit to Spain, where the native speakers still say naranja. But in making its way north through France, somehow a naranja became une auranja, and eventually the Old French orenge. The n was swallowed up in speech by the article. We’ve done the same with a host of English words—a napron became an apron, for example, though sometimes the n moves in the other direction and words like an eke-name end up as a nickname.”

  “Truly?” She laughed. “You’re making me wish I’d misbehaved enough to reach the N in Dr. Johnson’s dictionary.”

  He smiled and sat back, looking more comfortable now. “That was how university went for me—I stayed up until all hours, reading at Oxford. I wanted to learn everything, couldn’t take it all in fast enough. I never wanted to leave.”

  “Never? But Lyningthorp is so lovely, I should think you were eager to come home, at least for the long vacations.”

  “No, I—” He hesitated. “Oxford was inviting enough.” He sat forward again, setting the orange carefully back in place. “Those were the happiest months and years of my life, devoting myself to my studies. I still read every book on philology I can lay my hands on. Before university, it used to frustrate me that my tutors wanted me to learn arithmetic and logic when language was vastly more interesting. There were so many fascinating words to learn, even if I had no one to say them to.”

  “No one?”

  He colored slightly and shrugged. “More often than not.”

  Poor David. What a lonely life he’d led. It made her months at Miss Stark’s seem hardly worth regarding. Their eyes met, and she smiled in sympathy.

  Impulsively, he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Rosalie, I’m sorry about last night.”

  A fresh ripple of hope ran through her. So he did regret their wedding night. And only moments before, she’d been on the verge of giving up. She searched for something flirtatious to say, something that would simultaneously laugh off their wedding night and make it clear she was eager to start over. But she was so tired, the best she could manage was a meager smile and the lackluster reassurance, “Yesterday was a long day.”

  She might say the same of today. A strange lassitude weighed her down. It lasted throughout the meal, and even through the after-dinner hour in the drawing room with David. She wanted to be all smiles and eager conversation, to encourage the overture he’d made. Instead, she sat in a fog over her needlework, staring down stupidly at the fichu she was supposed to be embroidering.

  Finally, she gave up and set her sewing aside. “I know it’s early, but would you mind if I went up to bed now?”

  David tensed and closed the leather-bound book he’d been reading. “No, not at all. I believe I’ll go up now, too.”

  What did that mean? Did he plan to join her in her room? Hoping to make it clear he’d be welcome, she lied, “I’m not especially sleepy.”

  But she was more than sleepy. She was exhausted, drained. Making her way up to her room, David following, she could barely lift her feet to climb the stairs. She hadn’t realized it was such a long way to the top. She set a hand on the banister to help pull herself along.

  A wave of dizziness swept over her, and the stairs tilted under her feet.

  She wasn’t sure what kept her from falling—her hand on the banister, or David’s arm flashing out quickly to steady her. “Careful.” He drew level with her on the stairs. “You nearly missed the step.”

  With a weak laugh, she resisted the urge to let her head droop. “Thank you. I don’t usually lose my balance when the ship rolls.”

  “The ship?” David peered down into her face.

  “Yes.” She felt woozy. “Or no. Did I say ship? I meant—” But she couldn’t think what she’d meant to say instead.

  David set a hand on her forehead. His jaw went slack. “My God. You’re burning up!”

  His palm was cool against her skin. How good it felt to have David touching her, even if she was too weary to appreciate the feeling as it deserved. “But I can’t be ill.” Her voice sounded thin and distant even to her own ears. “I’ve already had the mumps.”

  “It’s not the mumps, then, but you’re burning up just the same.”

  Was that why she felt so strange? Though David stood beside her, he seemed to be speaking to her from a great distance. When the stairs tilted under her again, this time she couldn’t summon the energy to right herself.

  She would have fallen if David hadn’t caught her. He swept her up in his arms, lifting her as if she weighed next to nothing.

  She made a soft sound of protest. She was never ill, and she would hardly be so foolish as to turn feverish on only the second night of their marriage. She wanted David to come to her bed that night. She was determined to make herself indispensable to him. So why should he be carrying her up the stairs?

  She couldn’t be ill. She couldn’t.

  And the most confusing part was, David looked almost relieved.

  * * *

  David deposited Rosalie gently on her bed. She’d looped her arms around his neck, but they fell away weakly as soon as her head touched the pillow. She was shivering.

  “I’ll send for the apothecary.” He went to the bell pull and rang for her lady’s maid.

  “No, don’t. I can’t be ill, I know I can’t.”

  “As much as it pains me to contradict a lady, you are.”

  “But we’re supposed to dine with the Meltons tomorrow.”

  “I’ll send our excuses.”

  Rosalie closed her eyes, apparently too fatigued to argue with him. David regarded her with a worried frown. She must have taken a chill, visiting the estate village. It had been wretchedly cold in that miserable cottage. Too cold.

  It wasn’t cold in this room, though, and her teeth were chattering. Pacing the figured carpet, he cast an impatient glance at the door. Damn it, where was that abigail of hers?

  Never mind the abigail. He wasn’t going to stand around ineffectually while Rosalie shivered with ague. “We need to get you undressed.”

  She made only a weak objection when he propped her up in bed to unlace the back of her gown. He untied the strings, the task simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. He’d undressed his mistresses on many occasions, had viewed the experience as everything from a pleasant preliminary to a time-consuming delay. This was the first time, however, that undressing a woman had qualified as an emergency. When his knuckles brushed Rosalie’s back, her skin was hot to the touch.

  He drew the gown off over her head, tossing it aside, and she cooperated with a kind of limp acquiescence that unsettled him every bit as much as the feverish heat radiating from her skin. Her petticoat followed, a column of
pintucked cotton, revealing long slim legs under her chemise. He sat behind her on the bed, making quick work of unlacing her stays.

  He wouldn’t be consummating their marriage tonight, wouldn’t have to make his confession, and now that he knew as much, a disconcerting wash of emotions—relief, tenderness, even unbidden desire—crowded in amid the worry he felt for Rosalie. How soft and slender she was, and how smooth and white her skin looked in the candlelight. She smelled sweet, and when he stripped her down to her chemise he could see the rosy outlines of her nipples through the thin linen, glimpse the curve of her small waist and the flare of her hips.

  He did his best to ignore the sight and get on with undressing her. Her corset gone, she settled against him, her back to his chest. There had to be something wrong with him, enjoying the feel of her in his arms this much when she was clearly weak with fever. He concentrated on removing the pins from her hair, one by one, until her curls spilled over his hands in a silken tumble.

  Slipping out from behind her, he stood and eased her back against her pillow, tucking her in between the sheets. She closed her eyes as he drew the coverlet up to her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she said in an exhausted whisper, her teeth chattering.

  If he leaned in just a little closer, he could kiss her throat. Or perhaps not her throat—no, he’d choose the hollow just above her collarbone. He’d start there, trailing upward, finding the place where the pulse beat in the slender column of her neck, tracing the delicate curve of her jaw, ending in a slow, deep kiss on the mouth in which his tongue would—

  A scratch on the door announced the arrival of her abigail.

  He gave a guilty start. Good Lord, had he really been imagining seducing Rosalie? She was shivering with ague.

  To cover his confusion, he turned a look of impatience on her abigail. “Bridger, is it? Stay with your mistress while I send for the apothecary.”

  The girl’s eyes went wide, though she answered in the same whisper the servants at Lyningthorp had been using for as long as he could remember. “She’s ill, my lord? Is it the mumps?”

  “I don’t believe so, but I’ll know more once Mr. Cousins has examined her.”

  He left Rosalie to the girl’s care and hurried downstairs to his study. Dispatching a footman for the apothecary, he paced the carpet for several seconds, then sat at his desk with a frown.

  He’d promised Rosalie he would send their regrets to the Meltons. The chore was as welcome as a hangnail, but putting it off would only make the job more awkward. Reluctantly, he drew a sheet of writing paper from his top drawer.

  How to begin? He didn’t want to sound too conciliatory, not after the way Melton and his ilk had snubbed him for the past twenty years. On the other hand, he was acting on Rosalie’s behalf, and they were canceling a dinner engagement with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. Devil take it, how did one strike a fitting compromise between lofty condescension and basic civility?

  He dipped his pen in the inkwell and wrote,

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Melton,

  Though I regret the necessity of canceling our dinner engagement, Lady Deal is unwell and I must tender our apologies.

  Frowning, David read what he’d written. It accomplished all he wished to say, yet the single line looked so brief and unadorned as to seem almost disrespectful. After lengthy deliberation, he added another sentence before scrawling his signature.

  I look forward to renewing our acquaintance at some future date.

  Your most humble and obedient servant,

  Deal

  He reread the finished effort, wondering if his addition had only made the tone worse. There was something insultingly vague about some future date.

  He tossed down his pen in frustration. Damn it, why should he care? If he offended the Meltons, so be it. It wasn’t as if the insult was intentional, and none of his neighbors had ever shown the least compunction about the way they’d treated him.

  He was mildly surprised, therefore, when a footman from Radcombe Priory delivered Melton’s reply at nearly eleven o’clock that same night.

  My dear Lord Deal,

  I trust Lady Deal’s indisposition is not serious. Naturally we should be happy to reschedule. Shall we make it Saturday instead?

  Yours etc.,

  Robert Melton

  David read the note with a furrowed brow. What the devil did happy to reschedule mean—that Melton was eager to set a new date, or that it delighted him they wouldn’t be keeping the original engagement? For that matter, was Yours etc. mere shorthand or studied insolence?

  Oh, good Lord. Why was he wasting his time, fretting over Melton’s meaning when it mattered not one whit to him what his neighbors thought? He’d got along this far without them. He was better off without their prying gazes and judgmental scowls anyway.

  And still there was no sign of Mr. Cousins, the apothecary. Casting Melton’s message aside, David went to the window and peered out into the darkness, searching for carriage lamps or a lone horse and rider. Nothing.

  Restless, David went back upstairs—but not to his own room to change for bed and retire for the night. Instead, he went to check on Rosalie again. He told himself he was returning to have another look at her because he was worried about her welfare, and not because of the stir of lust he’d felt, undressing her for bed. He trusted that was the real reason. He hoped it was.

  Her abigail was sitting in a chair beside the bed. The girl had been nodding off as he entered, but she shot to her feet with a look of wide-eyed apprehension as soon as she saw him. Why did all the lower servants stare at him in that frightened fashion? It wasn’t as if they knew his every secret. He’d lived soberly enough at Lyningthorp since his majority, confining his womanizing to London, where he’d done his best to be discreet. He kept to himself, to be sure, but was he really accounted such an ogre?

  Rosalie was asleep, though her head stirred restlessly on the pillow. David crossed to the bed and set a hand on her forehead. She was still burning up with fever.

  He glanced at her nervous abigail. “Is there something we should be doing? Some physic we should be giving her or remedy we should be trying, to bring her fever down?”

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t know, my lord.”

  He supposed it was too much to expect a servant girl of nineteen or twenty to have all the answers. He’d only hoped for more because Rosalie herself had seemed so capable, nursing the young woman in the estate village. “Find Mrs. Epperson and tell her she’s needed here.” Recalling the girl’s cowed look when he’d entered, he added on a gentler note, “After that, you’re free to retire for the night.”

  “Yes, my lord. Thank you.” She gave a quick, respectful bob and scurried out the door.

  David glanced helplessly at Rosalie, then took the chair the abigail had drawn up beside the bed. He was growing more concerned by the minute. A hectic flush stained Rosalie’s cheeks. Awake, she was full of earnest energy, but lying alone in bed, she looked frail and slight.

  At last Mrs. Epperson arrived in answer to his summons, and to David’s relief, Mr. Cousins came bustling in alongside her, medical bag in hand. The apothecary quickly set about examining his patient.

  David stood back, watching as Cousins pressed two fingers to Rosalie’s wrist to check her pulse. The apothecary frowned and set an ear to her chest. Rosalie stirred, though she seemed no more than half-awake.

  “She was in the estate village today, tending a cottager who has the mumps,” David said. “But she insists she’s already had them herself.”

  Mr. Cousins straightened. He ran his hands along the sides of Rosalie’s neck. “It’s not the mumps. This came on suddenly?”

  “It seemed so to me.” Too suddenly. He and Rosalie had shared only a single night together before she fell ill, and how had he spent it? Certainly not in being any kind of husband to her. He could have told her the truth about himself, he could have made a clean breast of his past, but he’d been too cowardly. If
something were to happen to her now...

  “I believe it’s the grippe,” Mr. Cousins said. “I’ll bleed her, my lord, and leave some squill extract and camphorated oil. Have her maid apply cool cloths to help bring down the fever, and don’t be surprised if her ladyship develops a cough before the night is out.”

  It all sounded simple enough, but David didn’t like the gloomy look on the apothecary’s face.

  Fortunately Mrs. Epperson nodded as if she had the situation well in hand. “I’ll see to it.” She looked to David. “I’ve dealt with many a case of grippe in my day, my lord. There’s no need for you to linger here if you’ve a mind to retire.”

  David breathed a sigh of relief. He was worrying for nothing. Just because he couldn’t bring himself to confess his past transgressions didn’t mean he’d called some ruinous cosmic curse down on their heads. Rosalie had an ordinary case of the grippe.

  Leaving the apothecary and Mrs. Epperson to tend to their patient, he headed to bed, expecting to find his bride more comfortable in the morning.

  * * *

  She had the grippe, or so Mrs. Epperson informed her during one of her more lucid moments. Rosalie nodded, mildly reassured. She’d nursed more than one shipmate through the same ailment, and the condition had not been especially serious.

  But her own case must have been worse than she’d supposed, for the hours that followed were a blur—sleeping and waking, being rubbed with camphorated oil or spoon-fed squill extract and honey, alternately sweating or chilled to the bone. She developed a cough that grew so persistent it exhausted her and left the muscles of her abdomen sore. Lying in a fog, drifting in and out of awareness, she was too weak to do anything but let the hours slip by. Mrs. Epperson sat with her, and then Bridger.