The Archaeologist's Daughter (Regency Rendezvous Book 3)

by Summer Hanford

  Lanora mulled that over while they rode. She wished to ask him about his mother, and his brother. What Lethbridge had meant when he said he knew all. Even in the dim interior, she could see the strain on William’s features, the pain etched there. She kept her lips pressed tight over her questions.

  She couldn’t keep the shock from her face when she was handed down from the carriage. She was quite familiar with the street. Not long ago, she’d spent hours staring at it. They’d arrived at William’s mistress’s townhouse. She shot him an incredulous glance. He replied with a slight shake of his head.

  He led the way up the steps and knocked. After a moment, the door swung inward. William ushered her inside. To compound the strangeness, the boy who’d accepted bread from her was there. He was clean, and dressed in new clothes, but she couldn’t fail to recognize him.

  “No new servants yet?” William asked the boy while tugging off his gloves.

  “No, your lordship.”

  “Good. That simplifies things.”

  The boy darted a look at Lanora, then turned back to William. “You gone and done yourself harm again, haven’t you? Her ladyship is going to be right angry.”

  “Yes, well, I second her complaint.” Tossing his gloves toward a table, William pressed his hand to his side. “I’ll go to my room. If you could tell her I require her services?”

  He required what? Lanora stared at him.

  The boy nodded his chin at her. “Why’s Mrs. Smith dressed like a lady?”

  “Because Mrs. Smith is really Lady Lanora.” He offered Lanora a smile tight with pain. Sweat stood out on his forehead. “This is Dodger.”

  “Lady Lanora?” Dodger’s eyes were wide. “So she’s the one you’re wanting to marry?”

  “She is. Now, go get the lady of the house and please, help her with whatever she asks. I’m afraid I’ve pulled my stitches.”

  “Yes, your lordship.” The boy scurried off.

  He was sending for his mistress? He required her services? Lanora drew in a breath and reminded herself that she trusted William. He had an excellent explanation. She was sure of it. She was also sure she’d better hear it soon.

  “Would it be impertinent of me to ask you to walk beside me up the steps?” William asked.

  “Do you need to lean on me?” She moved to his side, worry for him driving back suspicion.

  “No, I can manage. Your presence alone will bolster my spirit.” He offered a grimace that was likely meant to be a smile. “Rather, the desire not to fall down the stairs while you watch will bolster my resolve. I don’t want to ruin the image of masculine strength I’ve cultivated.”

  They made their way up the steps and down the hall, where William let them into a room that was neat, modish and clearly his. It even smelled like him, shaving soap, clean linens and masculinity. He settled on the edge of the bed. A woman burst through the adjoining door.

  Petite, blonde, with an almost unearthly beauty, she looked to be perhaps four years Lanora’s senior. She stopped when she saw them. Her lips broke into a wide smile. She rushed forward and embraced Lanora.

  “Welcome.” She stepped back. “I am so happy to meet you. You have no notion how much so. You’re the first friend I’ve had in years.” For all the brightness of her smile, tears stood in her luminous blue eyes.

  “Lanora, this is Lady Cecelia Greydrake, my stepmother.”

  “Your…” Lanora took the woman in again, with new eyes. “You’re not in the Mediterranean.”

  “Heavens, no. Didn’t he tell you?” She raised a hand to her mouth. “He brought you up here without telling you who I am?”

  “He promised he had a good explanation,” Lanora said, dazed by the revelation. He hadn’t lied.

  Lady Cecelia’s smile would brighten even the dreariest winter day. “And you believed him? Oh, how wonderful.” She looked as if she might shed more tears. “Still, William, how could you—” She broke off as she turned to him. He was pale, his gaze slightly unfocused. “Oh. I see. Not quite yourself.”

  Cecelia’s tone remained bright, but Lanora saw worry in her face, the tension that sprang up around her mouth.

  “He said you could help him,” Lanora said.

  “Yes, likely. I’m good with this sort of thing. I’ve had a lot of time to read, and learn, and plenty of practice on him.” Her worry remained. “I’ll go set Dodger to boiling more water. We’ll need lots of clean linen.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Get his clothes off, for a start.”

  Lanora’s face filled with heat.

  “Oh dear. I apologize. I only mean off the top half of him.” Lady Cecelia patted her on the arm. “Will that do? I mean, you’ll be all right baring him to the waist?”

  “I’ll offer her encouragement.” William’s voice was amused, but his words strained at the edges.

  “He’s losing blood. I need to get my things. I’ll stitch him up, but this is the second time. He’ll run out of skin. You must make sure he stays in bed for at least two weeks this time. Longer, if you can manage it.”

  “Yes, of course.” Lanora had no notion how, but she would make sure he healed. This time.

  Lady Cecelia gave her an encouraging smile, another pat on the arm.

  “Cecelia.” They both turned toward William. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?” The small blonde woman swayed.

  Lanora put an arm about her, worried she would topple.

  “He’s really dead?” Lady Cecelia whispered.

  “He’s really dead.”

  Tears filled Lady Cecelia’s eyes. She blinked, sending them skittering down her cheeks. A huge smile lit her face. “Finally,” she said, the word full of a ferocious joy. She gave Lanora a fierce hug and hurried from the room.

  Yet another thing in need of explanation, but one look assured Lanora now was not the time for lengthy talks, especially on delicate matters. She moved to stand before William, and steeled herself to do as Lady Cecilia asked.

  “I suppose we must start with your coat.”

  “Excellent plan. I knew you had a good head on your shoulders.” He smiled at her, though the expression looked pained.

  Lanora eased off his coat. Not sure what to do with it, she folded it, bloody side up, and set it on the floor. She hoped it wouldn’t ruin anything. Next, she unbuttoned his green vest, left side streaked with blood. Sight of the blood sent panic through her. How badly was he injured? She pressed her lips into a firm line, worried for him.

  Still, with each button on the vest, her face grew hotter. His cravat provided the distraction of a complex knot, but once it was removed and she was confronted with his shirt laces, her heart took up such a rapid beat, she thought she might faint. She couldn’t sort out her emotions. Fear for him was strong, but something else, as well. Something unfamiliar, frightening in its own right.

  She reached for the laces with hands that shook.

  William caught her wrists. “Cut it off.”

  Lanora stared at him, confused.

  “Use my shaving razor and cut the shirt off. I’ll never get it over my head.”

  “Oh.”

  She collected the blade and returned to the bed. She couldn’t cut the front. It would be…she couldn’t. To cut the back, she must climb onto the bed behind him. With a deep breath, she said a prayer she wouldn’t cut him or her shaking hands in the process and climbed onto the mattress.

  By the time she had his shirt off, revealing his bandaged-wrapped middle, Lanora shook all over. She felt as if she’d run a mile, uphill the whole way. She put the tattered shirt with his other garments. Her palms tingled, the memory of each time they’d brushed across his warm skin emblazoned on them. She tried not to look, even while she worked, but visions of his muscled back and sculpted chest were scorched in her mind.

  Lady Cecelia bustled into the room, followed by a burdened Dodger. The little blonde woman made a sound of dismay. “What have you done to yourself, William? Dodger, put that cle
an sheet down beside him. No, leave it folded. Perhaps we can save the bedclothes this time. William, lay down.”

  Lanora drew back, taking deep breaths. She let Lady Cecelia’s bright efficiency fill the room, a buffer between her and William. Legs unsteady, she settled into a chair. Trying not to be jealous, which would be foolish in the extreme, she watched Lady Cecelia tend William.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  William woke to a room lit by moonlight. He drew in a deep breath, aware each of his new stitches, but less pain. An apparition rose from the chair near the open window and glided toward the bed.

  “You’re awake,” Lanora said. She lay a cool hand on his forehead. “You don’t feel warm. Lady Cecelia said I must wake her if you have a fever.”

  William caught her hand and caressed her soft skin with his thumb. “I’m well. I’m strong.”

  “Fortunately.” She perched on the edge of the bed “What were you thinking, jumping over a desk with a bullet wound in your side?”

  “I was thinking that Lethbridge might be fool enough to take you from me and I would do anything to prevent that.”

  “Oh.” Even in the dim light, he could see her smile.

  “Bullet wound?” he repeated, her words registering. “Cecelia told you?”

  Lanora shook her head. “No, but I believe I’ve finally figured you out, William Greydrake.”

  “What gave me away?”

  “Aside from the bullet hole? Which, you should know, Dodger mentioned to Mrs. Smith as belonging to Lord Lefthook.”

  “That’s my fault. I told him to trust you.” Because he did.

  “Lethbridge gave me the final clues.” Her voice was midnight soft. “There was the way you grew up, but also the writing tools. He placed them on the left side of the desk. That’s why the second will wasn’t knocked off. It was all to the left, as if that was the hand he knew you would use to sign. Then I recalled your signature below the list, smudged, as if signed with your left hand.”

  She pulled her hand from his, but only to reach across him for the other. His knuckles were a blur in the moonlight, but he knew they bore evidence of being buried in Lethbridge’s face. She ran gentle fingers across them. “And you hit him with this hand.”

  William shifted, and wondered if she understood the effect of her fingers on his body. He was in no state for antics of any sort, and Cecelia would kill him if he tore his stiches again, assuming he didn’t die doing it. Which seemed more and more worth the risk with each stroke of her fingers. He drew in a long breath and forced calm.

  Lanora raised wide eyes to his. “Are you in pain?” Her hand went to his forehead again. “Shall I wake Lady Cecelia?”

  He chuckled. She had no notion of the effect she had. He would educate her, once they were properly wed. “I’m well enough. There’s no need for Cecelia.”

  “You’re sure?” Lanora dropped her gaze. She pressed her lips together, as she did when she wasn’t sure if she wished to voice her thoughts.

  He brushed his fingers across her cheek. “What is it?”

  She shrugged, her gaze on the coverlet. “You and Lady Cecelia seem very close and she is, well, rather perfect. And terribly kind. It’s difficult for me to believe…that is, if you say it’s all in the past, I’ll believe you. I should never hold your past against you, William. Not that there’s anything wrong in it,” she added.

  “Lanora, there’s nothing between Cecelia and I save friendship, and never has been.” Gently, he placed a finger beneath her chin and tipped up her face so that she was forced to look at him. “She is all the things you describe, but she was never for me. I’ve been in love with another since I was a boy, and she was but a girl. I’ve been reading Darington’s stories of his daughter, somewhere in the countryside in England, for half my life. I was too entranced by her to ever look at Cecelia that way. I love Darington’s daughter and I always will.”

  “Oh. I see.” She jerked her chin away and started to stand.

  William caught her hand. Fool that he was, he’d left out a rather important piece of information. “I mean you, Lanora. You’re Darington’s daughter. I’ve loved you for years.”

  She stared down at him, face crumpled with hurt. She pulled free. Tears glittered in the moonlight. “You are fevered. I should fetch Lady Cecelia.”

  He started to sit up. He’d made a muddle of things. “No, you don’t understand. There is no Darington.”

  Lanora was at his side. She pressed him back down to the bed. “You’ll hurt yourself. Don’t get up. I’ll return, but let me fetch her. You worry me.”

  He captured her hand firmly in one of his, for fear she would go, and used his other to smooth tears from her cheeks. “You don’t need to fetch Cecilia, or to cry over me. I’m a fool. Let me begin again.”

  Lanora offered a smile that trembled at the edges.

  “There is no Mr. Darington. There never was. Your father invented him.”

  “You’re unwell. It’s the bullet wound.”

  “That’s why they have the same handwriting. They are the same man. When your mother died, your grandfather wouldn’t fund your father’s expedition to Egypt. The marquess did, in exchange for a story that would explain where I’d been for ten years.”

  “My father invented Mr. Darington?”

  William nodded.

  “And he’s been writing to you about me for years?”

  “Yes.”

  “You swear that’s the truth?” She sounded stunned.

  “I swear on my honor, my heart, anything and everything. It’s the truth.”

  She looked away from him, stared at nothing, her eyes bright in the moonlight. “I was never sure if he read my letters.”

  “He must have.”

  “But, all the things Mr. Darington has done. The adventures. The exploits.”

  “Your father.”

  “I can hardly believe it.” She sounded as if she did not.

  “I had it from the marquess’s mouth moments before he died.”

  “Would he have lied? To trick you?”

  “Not this time. He was overjoyed to impart the news. He thought it would turn me against your father.”

  She turned back to him, worried. “Did it?”

  “No.” William understood. He sympathized with Duke Solworth’s need to run from his pain, and wouldn’t let a single, simple lie tarnish their friendship.

  “I’m sorry your father died,” Lanora said, her voice soft.

  “I’m not.” William didn’t hide the bitterness in his tone.

  She considered that. “Lethbridge said he knew about your brother.” Her tentative tone made the statement a question.

  William closed his eyes for a moment. She had a right to know. He wanted her to. Someone must, aside from the dead marquess and Lethbridge. Even Cecelia didn’t know. “When I was four, the marquess beat my older brother, Charles, to death, because he was afraid of horses. Charles was six.”

  Lanora gasped.

  “He’d always been violent, but he’d never gone that far. My mother took me, and she ran. She didn’t take much with her, for she made her escape quickly. She had nowhere to go he couldn’t find her. A man has all legal right to his wife and child. We disappeared into the streets of London. She worked as a washwoman.”

  William’s mind filled with images of that life. The cold winters. Hunger a daily companion. Learning to defend what was his, little though it was. “It wasn’t a bad life. It wasn’t a good one, either.”

  “You were so young,” Lanora said. “Your poor mother.”

  “There was happiness. We had a slate. She taught me to read, to speak Italian and French. My figures. She made stories of history and the classics. Likely, I learned more at her side than I ever would have from some dry tutor.”

  “How did he find you?”

  It was the question, the memory, he dreaded. He swallowed. “When we left the marquess, she didn’t tell me why. I didn’t know Charles was gone, only that we had to leave.
When I was fourteen, she fell ill. I did all I could for extra coin, to buy treatments from that hack of a doctor who keeps shop at the edge of the borough.” He took another breath, aware his words were torn with anger, guilt and grief.

  “You don’t have to tell me.” Lanora’s voice was gentle, a soothing balm. “I don’t need to know your past, only the man you’ve become.”

  He squeezed her hand tighter in his. “Every man is his past. I want you to know.” He gathered calm to him. “She grew so ill, she became delirious. I knew the tonics weren’t helping. I had vague memories of the marquess, the staff. Clean rooms and beds. I went to find him. It didn’t take long. He knew me the moment he set eyes on me. He seemed…happy. The happiest I’ve ever known him to be.”

  William stared toward the dark ceiling. He could picture it all clearly, even after a dozen years. “I took him to her. Even delirious, she knew him. She screamed. He had her taken away. I went to his home. He said he was having her taken care of. I begged to see her. Finally, I was allowed.”

  A servant had taken him in a rented hackney, but had been told not to enter. No one was to know who William visited that day at the prison. A jailer who wasn’t told his name brought him to his mother, huddled on a cot in a cell. “I wasn’t allowed in the cell. She was too ill to come to the bars. That’s when she told me why we’d left, what happened to Charles. She told me, too, to do as the marquess asked. Always. She said a man filled with so much hatred couldn’t live long, and then I would be free of him, but for now I must not anger him.”

  He shook his head, trying to scatter the memories. Her tears as she said she loved him. The hard knowledge, as the jailer returned, that he would never see her again.

  He cleared his throat. “The marquess never told anyone. The world thought my mother had gone mad, and then died. Madelina doesn’t know she was born out of wedlock, and her mother never knew she wasn’t legally married to the old man. Not that knowing would have saved her when he pushed her down the stairs.”

  “Pushed her down the stairs?” Lanora repeated, her voice as dazed as her dimly seen expression.