The Bachelor's Bargain

by Catherine Palmer

  Ruel scowled at the small container. “Alex, I do not want laudanum. It puts me into a foul humor, and I cannot think clearly. There is something . . . someone . . .”

  “You are to take two hundred and fifty drops, enough to relax any man. I confess I have had a little myself just to calm my nerves. Come now.”

  His hand started toward Ruel’s mouth. “No, I said!” Knocking the vial to the floor, Ruel let out a growl. “My head feels like a pumpkin! And my shoulder . . . Where is my valet? I should have eaten breakfast long ago. I have things to do today. I have got to find out where . . . to see . . .”

  “If you will not lie down and rest, I shall end up the next Duke of Marston, and by all accounts, that will be a dreadful situation. Father has been ranting all night, storming about the place in high dudgeon.”

  “Father? Why?”

  “No one can find the gamekeeper, of course.”

  “Gamekeeper . . .” Ruel gripped his sheets in his fists as pieces of the puzzle began to grind into place. If only his head would stop pounding.

  Alexander leaned back in his chair and propped a foot on the bed. As if the spike-heeled boots were not enough, the young man wore a blue silk coat and trousers far too tight to be comfortable. Ruel considered tossing out a barb against dandy fashion, but he could not make his befuddled brain or his thick tongue function.

  “Personally, I hold it was a highwayman who shot you,” Alexander said, fingering the white cravat at his neck. “He must have used a rifle for the ball to have traveled so far and so true. He might have had a blunderbuss, but I understand there was only one ball. Can you recall?”

  When Ruel did not answer, he went on. “I shall wager the highwayman knew you would be leaving church Sunday morning, saw that you were afoot, and determined to have your money.”

  “No one robbed me, Alex.”

  “Perhaps the highwayman did not expect you to be armed. It was rather rash of you, I think. Do you always carry a coat pistol, Ruel?”

  “Since America.”

  “I should continue the practice if I were you. I have it on good authority that more than one gentleman is displeased at your return to England. Have you considered that the assassin might not have been the gamekeeper or a highwayman at all? It might have been Barkham. When you were exposed in a dalliance with his wife—”

  “Fiancée.”

  “At any rate, I suspect he has not forgiven you. Wimberley, too, has every reason for hostility. You ruined him, you know. He has not been the same since you took his money.”

  “Won it.”

  “Fairly? He hardly thinks so, and it would be like him to travel from London with a rifle that could shoot right through a man’s arm and a woman’s—”

  “Where is she?” Ruel interrupted, remembering suddenly. He tore back the sheets and surged out of bed. “The woman . . . where is she?”

  Alexander leapt to his feet and grabbed the bellpull. “Brother, do calm yourself. Foley! Come at once.”

  Ruel’s valet hurried across the carpeted floor, closely followed by two footmen. “My lord, calm yourself,” the valet urged. He turned to one of the footmen. “Fetch Mr. Errand.”

  “Stop!” Ruel commanded. He caught the bedpost for support as the three servants stiffened into obedience. Turning to his brother, he grabbed the man’s cravat and pulled Alexander close.

  “Where . . . is . . . she?” he repeated slowly, anger burning each word into the silence of the room.

  “Who?” Alexander asked. “Please, Ruel, you are making no sense at all. Foley, the laudanum!”

  “Two women were with me—where are they now? One of them was wounded.”

  “I cannot say where they are. Honestly, Ruel, you should return to your bed at once.”

  Pushing past his brother, Ruel staggered toward the door. The room spun like a child’s top. He could hear the mad scramble behind him, the shouted commands. Idiots.

  Where was she? He lurched out into the corridor and leaned on a marble bust to catch his breath. “She is only Anne Webster . . . my lady’s maid.” She would be in Miss Prudence Watson’s quarters, of course. Upstairs.

  “Lord Blackthorne.” It was Mr. Errand, the butler. He approached, gave Ruel a formal bow, and cleared his throat. His bushy eyebrows floated on his face like a pair of matched clouds. “My lord, do be reasonable, I beg you. It is imperative that you follow the doctor’s orders and return to your room.”

  “Hang the doctor! Where are the stairs?”

  “His Grace, the Duke of Marston, is below, down the staircase at the end of the second corridor beyond—”

  “Not that staircase.” Ruel swung away from the wall. The bust he had been leaning on tottered and fell to the floor with a crash. Mr. Errand leapt aside to avoid having his foot crushed. Ruel had rarely been in the women’s halls where his sisters had grown up, but their staircases meandered up and down, giving access to every floor. He had played in them as a boy. Now, if he could only remember . . .

  “Lord Blackthorne!” Mr. Errand stepped over the fallen bust and hurried down the corridor after him. “Your wound is most grave, my lord. Please do consider your father, I beg you. The duke is beside himself with worry. Quite, quite frantic.”

  Ruel turned a corner. The walls swayed. He caught a rope to steady himself, then realized it was a bellpull and knew he had probably summoned Mrs. Smythe and half the kitchen staff. Cursing laudanum, he worked his way down the corridor. A green baize curtain hanging at the end of the hall promised a door. A door promised a staircase.

  “Ruel, what on earth are you doing? You cannot mean to go up.” It was Alexander. “Ruel, do be reasonable. The doctor has ordered you to bed. You must be prudent.”

  “Prudent? Reasonable?” Ruel mocked as he pushed back the baize and stepped through the doorway. This household was filled with a grand lot of circus clowns. The staircase, narrow and dimly lit, proved almost impossible to navigate. As Ruel struggled upward, the stairs dipped. He braced himself with an arm against each wall and felt a stab of pain in his shoulder. The woman . . . had to find her . . . had promised to protect her.

  They scurried up the stairwell after him—his brother, the butler, his valet, the footmen. Like the pied piper, he worked his way up past the third floor, then to the fourth barely ahead of them. He threw open the door at the top and careened out into the narrow corridor.

  “Anne!” he bellowed. “Anne Webster!”

  Like blank-faced sentinels, an endless row of closed doors lined the hallway. He flung them open one by one. Identical rooms with gilt beds and damask hangings. Was this where they had slept . . . his sisters?

  “Anne Webster!” he called again.

  A door at the far end of the corridor swung open. The vicar of Tiverton, round-headed, ashen-faced, and perspiring heavily, emerged. He leaned against the doorframe, mopped his face with a white handkerchief, and gaped at the oncoming parade.

  “Lord Blackthorne,” he uttered. “But you must . . . she is . . . ”

  “Is she here?” Ruel could not wait for the answer. He shoved his way past the clergyman and through the doorway. “Miss Webster?”

  A loud gasp greeted him. “The marquess!” Miss Prudence Watson leapt up from her chair beside a narrow bed and made him an awkward curtsy. “Lord Blackthorne, good morning to you, sir.”

  Ruel stopped. Anne Webster lay propped on a white pillow, her face as still as death. A thin gray wool blanket covered her fragile body. Her hands, pale and limp, were crossed at her breast.

  “Oh no.” Ruel covered his eyes. This shared guest room had been her home. This small iron bed her last resting place. “She is only Anne Webster . . . my lady’s maid.” Of course that was true. But she was Anne with the bright brown eyes and the sharp tongue and the keen mind.

  “Dear God in heaven,” he muttered, turning away and realizing he had not the slightest idea how to pray.

  “Ruel?”

  At the soft sound, he lifted his head. She was looking at
him, her eyes as dark and liquid as ink.

  “Anne?”

  “Oh, it is you . . . Ruel. You sat with me after I was shot.” She smiled. “I remember your eyes. Gentle, dove-gray eyes. You protected me under the hedge.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Lord Blackthorne!” The butler burst into the room. Sir Alexander rushed to his brother. Footmen swarmed.

  “Ruel, you must go back to your chambers,” his brother gasped. “This roving about like a madman will never do. The women’s floor! Good gracious, man, think what will be said of you.”

  Ruel stared in confusion as Errand the butler fluttered about the bedroom. Footmen made vain attempts to usher everyone out into the corridor. The vicar slipped back inside and stood trembling against the far wall.

  “My Lord Blackthorne. Sir Alexander.” The vicar gulped down a bubble of air as he executed a deep bow in the room. “Gentlemen, I beg of you—”

  “Ruel?” Anne’s brow narrowed as she looked him up and down. “The marquess?” She glanced at Miss Watson for confirmation. “Oh, but I thought . . . ”

  “Miss Webster, do you suffer much?” Ruel asked as he stepped to her bed. “Your leg?”

  She lifted her chin, and her eyes went cold. “I am well enough, Lord Blackthorne. I had just asked the vicar to hold a private conference with you, but you have chosen to come to me instead.”

  Confused, Ruel turned to the clergyman. The man was as pale and damp as the handkerchief he dabbed across his forehead. “I beg leave to speak with you in private, my lord,” the vicar mumbled. “Away from the young lady. It is a matter . . . a matter of some consequence.”

  “Do let us go down at once, brother,” Alexander concurred. “This maid is clearly delirious, ordering the vicar about and speaking to you in such a way.”

  Ruel held Alexander back with an outstretched hand. “Miss Webster, on the road you informed me you were prepared to die.”

  “I am,” she said firmly. “My soul rests in the hands of God.”

  He studied her for a moment and recognized that the peace underlying the pain in her dark eyes meant she had spoken the truth. He could not understand it. The woman had nothing— no wealth, no position, no future. Yet she possessed such calm confidence. Such grace.

  “In contrast to you,” he told her, “I have no faith in the existence of souls or of God, and I am not at all content to let you die.” He turned to the butler. “Errand, send to London for our physician. He must come at once and have a look at Miss Webster’s leg.”

  “My lord, His Grace the duke has already requested the physician to attend you.”

  “It is this woman, and not I, who needs his attention.”

  “Brother!” Sir Alexander glowered. “You cannot mean this. It is your shoulder that was wounded, and the woman is nothing to you. Your wits have been dimmed by laudanum. I insist you return to your chambers immediately.”

  “Upon my word, Alex, this is a scratch. An annoyance.”

  “But . . . but she is a maid.”

  “On the contrary.” As he spoke, Ruel realized that somewhere in the fog of the past night, his brain had discovered a perfect solution to the problem that had plagued his financial blueprint for the duchy. “She is the key to our future happiness.”

  Anne gritted her teeth as the two brothers argued. Her leg hurt much worse this morning, and she felt certain that infection had set in. At some point in the night, a weeping Miss Watson had blurted out the doctor’s prognosis: death was inevitable. Anne could only welcome the pronouncement, for she knew it would bring peace from the fever already beginning to rage through her body.

  Her only misery came at the realization that she would die without ever helping her father, without ever marrying or bearing children, without designing another scrap of lace, without starting the lace school of which she had dreamed. She had done nothing of much use to anyone, and her conscience tormented her. Though she knew she ought to pray, she was unable. How could she focus on anything so elusive as God and heaven and the hereafter? God was utterly absent during those dark hours, and she did little but worry and search her mind for reason to hope.

  Early that morning as her fever rose, she had arrived at the one solution that might save her family. As soon as Miss Watson was awake, Anne begged her to send for the vicar. But when Anne made her request, his horrified reaction had only made her more despondent. Why now had God chosen to allow the marquess to persecute her? Was she not suffering enough?

  “Perhaps you will recall that Miss Webster is the finest lace designer in Nottingham,” Lord Blackthorne was telling his brother. His voice mocked her own words. “She is the best pattern pricker in Tiverton, and one of the most skilled laceworkers in England.”

  Anne weakly lifted a hand and brushed it across her flushed forehead. “Is this your object in coming to my bedside, sir? To ridicule me once again?”

  “I have never ridiculed you yet.” He squatted on a stool near the bed, his long legs folding up almost to his chin and his great knees spread wide. He propped his arms on them and smiled at her with satisfaction. “Indeed, Miss Webster, I have been altogether serious on every occasion of our acquaintance. And now I shall continue to speak to you with all solemnity. First, I wish you to know I have been given the unwelcome intelligence that William Green the gamekeeper may have been our assailant.”

  “I saw no one in the forest.”

  “Nor did I, yet I understand he may have had motive. You rejected his offer of marriage, did you not?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “I wonder at that. Tell me, is our gamekeeper as great a blackguard as I?”

  Anne glanced at her mistress. Prudence had covered her face with her hands and seemed to be in ardent prayer.

  “Mr. Green is not a man with whom I wish to link my life, though under the current circumstances, I believe that now to be of little consequence,” Anne told the marquess. “The gamekeeper is unkind, vain, and rude, but I do not think him capable of murder.”

  “Why not? Surely your extraordinary beauty and keen wit merit such passion.”

  “Lord Blackthorne,” the vicar cut in, anguish lifting his voice an octave. “I beg you to guard your tongue.”

  “I shall not. Miss Webster is a promising young lady. Since our fortuitous meeting in the kitchen, I have been considering her situation here at Slocombe House and her obvious skill with lace. Once she is recovered from her injuries, I mean to make good use of her.”

  “She means to make use of you,” the vicar muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” Ruel turned on the stool.

  The vicar twisted his hands together. His round head glowed with perspiration. “Lord Blackthorne, I have been requested to tell you . . . to tell you that Miss Anne Webster . . . she accepts your offer of marriage.”

  “Does she now?” Ruel slowly faced Anne again. “Well, I am dumbfounded.”

  Five

  Silence dropped like a thick fleece over the room. Anne looked at the marquess. Ruel stared at her. Prudence dabbed her eyes. Alexander shifted from one foot to the other and glared at the vicar. The footmen held their breath.

  “Perhaps I misunderstood you, sir.” Addressing the clergyman, Ruel stood slowly. “Please repeat yourself.”

  “She . . . she accepts.” The vicar blotted his chin with the handkerchief. “I tried to tell her . . . tried to warn her . . . but I do think she is dying after all, which would remove the problem, of course. . . . Yet everyone who heard your declaration that afternoon knew it was made in jest.”

  “I have witnesses,” Anne said softly. “The Duke of Marston, the vicar of Tiverton, and Sir Alexander all heard your offer, Lord Blackthorne. You proposed marriage to me. I accept.”

  “You said you could not like him,” Sir Alexander burst out. “I heard you say you felt no affection for him in the least.”

  “Surely a nobleman such as yourself, my lord, knows affection is not necessary to marriage.”

  “Abominable girl.
Wicked insubordination. Ruel, say something to the wench!”

  The marquess returned his attention to Anne. His gaze traced the narrow outline of her body as she lay in the bed. Her brown eyes never left his face. Again he was struck by her unwavering fortitude.

  “Out,” he commanded, waving a hand at the assembly. “Everyone, out. I shall speak with her alone.”

  “Do not harm Anne, I beg you!” Miss Watson stepped out from the corner, her cheeks damp. “She is dying, the doctor said so, and you must not torment her! Sir, she has waited upon me faithfully these many months, and I assure you she is altogether the most kind and affectionate companion a woman could ever hope to find. I am certain that any words misspoken just now can be attributed to—”

  “Out!” Ruel pointed at the door.

  “Yes, my lord.” Prudence ducked her head and hurried away.

  When the door shut behind the murmuring, weeping, arguing throng, Ruel turned to Anne and crossed his arms over his chest. “You accept my proposal, do you?”

  “I do.”

  “Are you dying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why do you want to marry me, and why on earth should I marry you?”

  Anne drew down a deep breath. “Because you know you will not have a wife to burden you more than a day or two. Because you can extend your mourning a year or longer and stave off your father’s demands that you wed in Society. Because as my husband, you will see to the safety of my family in Nottingham. Because I have information about you that would be most useful in the hands of an enemy.”

  The corners of his mouth tipped up. “My goodness, Miss Webster, you astound me.”

  “No more than you astound me.”

  “Let me see if I grasp your logic.” He settled into the chair next to the bed where she lay, stretched out his legs, and propped a pillow under his shoulder. “I am to marry you because you will soon die, and I can play the merry widower. My father cannot expect me to wed for more than a year after your passing, and that should keep me quite happy and allow me to fulfill my own goals.”

  “Aye, sir.”