Trevor laughed without mirth. “I can barely believe it myself.”
“Where is your wife, now?” Rainsleigh asked. “In hospital?”
Trevor answered carefully. “She has arranged to be cared for in an undisclosed location. That is actually another long story, which I don’t have time to tell. The good news is, Straka’s spies primarily watch me. I’m careful about how I come and go. Now, you should take care, too,” Trevor added, crossing to the door. “The threat of Janos Straka is very real, I’m afraid. As I said, he may be watching us, even now. I will tell him I need more time to squeeze you for the money; meanwhile I will endeavor to come up with some more permanent evasion. But just because I refused to do his dirty work does not mean someone else will. He can be very persuasive.”
“I will bear that in mind,” said Rainsleigh, tucking the papers in his coat. “I retain the services of some equally persuasive men for exactly this reason. I am also on excellent terms with Scotland Yard. If he threatens me, he may find himself on the inside of a Crown jail. But I do appreciate the warning. I don’t suppose I owe you my gratitude for not blackmailing me, considering it’s the decent thing to do, but I am glad about it.” He followed Trevor out of the room.
“My parents were a great embarrassment to me—to everyone,” the viscount continued. “I toil, daily, to live down their reputations, to pay their debts, to set the viscountcy to rights.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Something like this would be a setback. I am looking to marry soon.”
“Good for you,” Trevor said, leading the way down the hall, “and I mean that. I would not have, ten days ago. I had no idea, but marriage suits me. Marriage to the right girl, I suppose.”
“Well, I’ve no one in mind yet, it is simply on my list of things to do. Another step in returning the family name to respectability.”
“I’m gratified that I was not another setback,” Trevor said, reaching for the door. “But now you’ll forgive me if I must leave you. I wish to get to my wife’s bedside as soon as I can.”
“Indeed. But, Falcondale?” He descended the stairs, stopping on the middle step. “I am taking you at your word. I like you. This honesty you profess does you credit.” He stared Trevor in the eye. “But take heart. If I discover that this is a trick or a trap, if you are giving me only half of the damning evidence with the idea of a double-cross . . . ”
Trevor followed him down. “I’ve given you all I have, my lord. The truth. The documents. My heartsick story of woe. By all means, you should employ due diligence. Have me followed, if you like.” He laughed. “Your spies may join the crowd. If you need to speak to me directly, you will find me with my wife. My serving boy, Joseph, can get a message to me.”
Rainsleigh stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. “Will you really sell this house?”
“With any luck.” Trevor sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Know anyone in the market?”
“I do, in fact,” said Rainsleigh. “I would consider buying this house.”
Trevor dropped his hands. “You’re joking.”
“No,” Rainsleigh said.
“I could be persuaded to give you a very good deal—” Trevor paused, suddenly struck dumb by the weight of a very good idea. A very good, very lucky idea. While he stared at Rainsleigh, the roots of the idea spread and took hold in his brain. He took only a moment to weigh the risk of what he was about to ask. Really, what choice did he have? Desperate had become his middle bloody name. Piety’s safety and their future was all that mattered. “If you would be willing to help me get the best of this Grecian thug,” Trevor asked, “I could give you a very good deal, indeed.” He held his breath.
The other man studied him. “I don’t require a good deal, Falcondale, I have money to spare. Trust—trust is what seems to be in short supply.”
“I’ve never been more honest in my life,” Trevor said, his heart pounding.
Rainsleigh considered him a moment more and then gave a firm nod. He turned and headed down the walk, waving without looking back. “I will be in touch.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Piety passed the hours in the new rented apartments in Knightsbridge in very much the same manner as she passed them in Falcondale’s bedroom—fast asleep. According to the doctor, her body was conserving its energy to heal, but Piety knew that she slept for another reason altogether. To dream.
The dreams of Trevor began on the second or third night. The most glowing, wonderful dreams of her life. So wonderful, in fact, she wished, for the first time ever, that she would never awaken.
Falcondale was there, in her new room, kneeling by her bed. He held her hands and stroked her hair and whispered the most endearing words of love, and promise, and hope for a future together as husband and wife. It went on for hours, this dream, and it was so vivid, so richly detailed, she could smell the musky scent of his skin and feel the rough calluses of his hand on her cheek. Even his body felt warm beside her, staving off the usual chill that seemed to pulse from her very core.
When she awakened in early afternoon, she was alone in the room, except for Jocelyn. It surprised her, even though she knew it was foolish to think his presence had been anything more than a dream. Even if it was so colorful, so real, she had trouble shaking the feel of him, long after she was wide awake. It was as if his very spirit still loomed, leaving muddy boot tracks on the rug and heavy dents in the cushion of the chair beside the bed.
“I think I am delirious again,” she told Jocelyn, looking around. The older woman raised her eyebrows and settled a tray on her lap. Taking up a spoon, she hastened to feed her a bowl of broth.
“Well,” she said, “you have consented to eat without a fuss. If that is delirium, I’ll take it.”
Piety smiled weakly. “No, it’s not that. ’Tis this dream I’ve had. I cannot lose the feeling of it. It’s as if I’m still half asleep.”
“Oh?”
Piety took the spoon from her hands and began to eat. Jocelyn gave her a skeptical look but then scooted back, watching her.
“It’s silly, I know,” Piety said between slow, small spoonfuls, “but I dreamed of Falcondale. He was here. In my dream. With us—with me. Kneeling right beside the bed.”
“Is that so?” Jocelyn said, idly picking errant threads from her skirts.
“And now that I’m awake, it’s almost as if I can sense his presence in the room. I can smell him. I can taste him.”
“Well, I can assure you that we did not cook him and put him in the broth. It’s lamb, my dear, and you should eat as much as you can. Will you take some bread?”
“No, thank you.” Piety shook her head and felt foolish for revealing such a fanciful, intimate dream. She pushed her tray away and stretched her neck. “I . . . I feel like walking.”
Jocelyn’s head shot up. “Walk? But to where? You cannot think of going outside.”
“No, no. Just a turn around the rooms. To the window. I don’t care where, really, but I’ve been in this bed for so long, I think I’ve sprouted roots.”
“Really, Piety.” Jocelyn tsked and rose to standing, “I cannot think that is wise just yet. Let us consult with Dr. Hollingsworth when he calls in the afternoon. It worries me to see you overexert yourself so soon after we’ve relocated.”
“But surely walking into the very next room and back is not too much.” She tried to wrestle the bedclothes away. “Didn’t you tell me the apartments had a sunny parlor?”
Jocelyn heaped them back around her shoulders. “You feel stronger today, and this is a praise, but let us not overdo and suffer a relapse. When you enjoy two days of strength, and the doctor approves, then we may venture out.” Nervously, she looked over her shoulder at the door.
Piety squinted at her, annoyed and confused, but the moving beneath the weight of the coverlet drained her energy, and the sheer breath required to argue made her dizzy. Frowning, she flopped back against the pillows and allowed Jocelyn to check her bandages and hol
d a goblet of water to her lips.
“There, now.” Jocelyn’s hand soothed her brow. “Rest after your meal. I will send a boy out for the doctor and ask him to call earlier in the day, if possible. Then we may have his professional opinion about leaving the bed.”
Piety refused to agree, but she did not press, and in moments, she was asleep again.
In time, the dream returned. Falcondale was with her again. This time, he seemed so close, it was almost as if he were in the bed with her. She tried to speak to him, tried to smile and call out his name, but her mouth felt dry and heavy, and he shhhed her gently and urged her to lie still. When she complied, he spoke, soft but clear. Assurances. Love. Words that she had longed to hear since they first met. He wept—wept!—and begged her to recover. Sometimes, he slept, balancing on the bed beside her, but he never left. In her dream, he was always there.
Again and again over the next three days, she experienced the dream. Each time, she awoke with a small, strange hope that it was real. Each time, she found herself alone with Jocelyn or Tiny. Still, she could not deny that the room held the vestiges of what seemed like her husband’s very essence. Once, she even thought she saw his glove lying forgotten on the nightstand. She reached for it, but then Jocelyn was in the way, fussing with her bandages. When she looked again, it was gone.
It wasn’t an unpleasant way to experience delirium, she thought. Eventually, God willing, she would recover, and then she would have years to truly grieve the bleak path that their doomed relationship and marriage had taken. But for now, her arm hurt like the dickens, she still had bouts of fever, and she could scarcely stay awake longer than ten minutes. Even when she was awake, her consciousness was blurry, at best. Why not indulge in the most perfect dream?
On the sixth day in her rented suite, Piety awakened in time for breakfast. It was her first morning meal in more than two weeks. Lemony morning sun coursed through the windows, brightening her groggy mood, and her stomach actually grumbled at the smell of breakfast wafting in from the next room. And for the first time, there was no dizziness when she moved. Emboldened—indeed, energized—she sat straighter, rolled her neck and shoulders, and took several deep, cleansing breaths.
She felt better.
She felt, if not good, then certainly far more like herself than she had in two weeks.
“Jocelyn! Tiny!” she called, smiling at the door to the next room. “Prepare yourselves, I’m sitting. With no discernable light-headedness. And I’m warm! Gloriously, stunningly warm. Hot, actually. Get these covers off. I think the fever may have broken.”
“Wait,” called Tiny, sailing in from the parlor. “You wait just a minute before you go hopping out of that bed!”
“Feel, Tiny,” Piety exclaimed, slapping her hands on her own cheeks. “It’s broken. The fever is gone. Ow, ow, ow!” She cringed as pain traveled down her damaged arm.
Tiny felt her head and cheeks and neck. Next she checked her eyes and pulse and bandages, gently pressing Piety back against the pillows. Piety endured it all, smiling—humming!—to herself, reveling in the first morning in more than two weeks that she felt like a functional, living human again.
“Just in time, too.” Tiny helped to pull back the stack of blankets and quilts piled on Piety’s bed.
“In time for what? Where is Jocelyn?”
Tiny mumbled something again, shaking her head, but then a commotion in the next room drew her attention. She heard Jocelyn’s voice uncharacteristically loud and firm.
She shot Tiny a questioning look, as she craned to hear.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” Jocelyn was warning, “but you may not enter the countess’s sick room. Not only has she been explicit about no callers, the doctor himself has said, no guests.”
“Out of my way, woman!” replied an unmistakable voice. “I have no idea who you think you may be, endeavoring to restrain me from seeing my own daughter, but you are sorely mistaken if you think you can stop me.”
Idelle. Piety collapsed against the pillows.
Her mother had come. A tumble of male voices followed, along with more footsteps. All of them had come.
Piety locked eyes with Tiny. “How did they find me?” she whispered. “Why have they remained in England?”
Tiny shook her head, her expression grave. “Just showed up ten minutes ago. Miss Breedlowe has been holding them in the hall for the last ten minutes, but I guess they pushed their way through.”
“But what do they want?” Piety asked. It was a stupid question; she knew the answer. There were more than a million of what they wanted, and they were all in the bank.
“Your color is good,” said Tiny, pinching her cheeks and smoothing her hair. “You look like your old self. You’re a countess now. Remember that.”
Idelle burst into the room, and Tiny bowed her head and stepped back, leaving Piety alone on the giant bed.
Idelle gasped. “Piety, my heavens, what have you done?”
“Good morning, Mother.” Piety sighed.
“Have you broken your neck?”
“I have not broken my neck. I have suffered a puncture wound to my arm.”
“Boys!” Idelle called to the men in the parlor. “She is decent. You may enter.”
“No,” said Piety, her head throbbing at the exertion. The effort was wasted. The five brothers, led by Eli, crowded into the room behind Idelle.
“I am not well enough for visitors, Mother,” Piety said emphatically. “I would ask you to leave. All of you.”
“Or what?” said Edward from the back.
“Silence, Eddie!” Eli advanced on Piety’s bed. “Piety wasn’t threatening us.” His voracious snake eyes barely blinked as he studied her.
Piety huddled deeper against the pillows, her pulse thudding in her head. If she thought they unnerved her when she was healthy and in command and surrounded by friends, she felt positively demoralized when she was sick and alone.
“But where is your husband?” Eli continued, clearly amused by her fear. “No doting earl wringing his hands beside your sick bed, my lady? Called away, perhaps? Pressing matters require his attention, no doubt, considering his vast new fortune.”
“Eli, stop.” Piety imbued her voice with strength she did not feel. “Not another step. You are not welcomed here.”
Eli chuckled and opened his mouth to say something more but was interrupted by a scuffle in the adjoining parlor. A door slamming. A gasp and Jocelyn’s hushed exclamations. A snarl of rage and—
“Who?” said a man’s voice, speaking over Jocelyn’s whispers.
Eli had the good sense to pause, take a step back, and glance over his shoulder.
The double doors to Piety’s bedroom flew back against the wall.
Standing in the light of the morning sun, his face a mask of rage, was Falcondale.
“Your life is worth little as it is, Limpett,” he said. “I’d step away from the bed if you value what’s left.”
Eli was stunned into stillness for half a second. His mouth dropped open. He backed away to the far wall.
“Get out, the rest of you,” Falcondale said, striding to Piety’s side.
“I will not get out,” Idelle said indignantly. “My daughter is injured. How dare you think to keep her from me. I am her mother!”
“I will think it, and you will do it,” he said. When he neared Piety’s bed, his expression softened. It was a look of tenderness she had never known.
She looked back through the sting of tears. He was here. In flesh and blood. It had been days—weeks—since she laid eyes on him. The sight of his face caused her heart to lurch. And the tears, they couldn’t be stopped.
At the foot of the bed, Idelle said, “I will not leave until I have been informed of the ailment from which she suffers and the expectations for her recovery.”
“She suffers from nothing that will involve a reading of a will,” Falcondale said, not taking his eyes off of Piety. “Get out.”
“Your treatment of me
—of us—is an abomination, sir. Now see here—”
Falcondale spun. “How is it that you remain in this country? We had an agreement about your immediate departure for New York. Pray, what has detained you?”
“Yes, and how did you find me?”
Before the brothers could stop him, Eddie said, “We followed Falcondale, coming and going every day.”
Falcondale went still. He shot Piety a frantic look over his shoulder.
She opened her mouth, closed it, blinked. Came and went? Every day? Realization covered her like a cloak that someone else had whipped on her shoulders. The dream . . .
There were no words. Perhaps for the first time ever. No words.
Falcondale turned to the Limpetts. “And what did you hope to discover with your spying?” He jerked the nearest Limpett by the arm. Little Eddie stood by the door, and he yanked him with his other hand, dragging them both along through the double doors and into the parlor.
“You will secure passage on the next ship back to New York,” he said. “Your ambitions here have come and gone. You may wait from now until doomsday to discover a fresh inroad into the countess’s fortune, but even then, you will not find it.”
Idelle allowed the brothers to be herded out while she scrambled to Piety’s side. “But you did not even know he was here, did you?” She searched her daughter’s face. “How curious. It causes me to wonder, why were you removed from Lord High-and-Mighty’s home to begin? Propped up in a rented room across town, almost as if you had been turned out by your new husband.”
Falcondale appeared behind her. “Will you go of your own accord, madam? Or shall I call the authorities?”
Idelle ignored him. “Tell me, Piety, if you’re so injured then why aren’t you at home in your own bed?”
“The first option is easy,” Falcondale said heavily, “the second, a bother. But both are preferable to the third option, which is me removing you from the premises myself.”
The Earl Next Door: The Bachelor Lords of London Page 33