His Compromised Countess

by Hale Deborah

  One instant Bennett had been telling Wyn about the old abbey ruins and the next he found himself waking in the rosy light of morning with one arm flung protectively over his wife and son. When he tried to shift it, the stubborn limb resisted his efforts, as if it was quite content in that position.

  With her delicate features in repose, framed by soft golden curls, Caroline looked so young and vulnerable, part of him felt compelled to protect her. Experience reminded him that a woman like her would find plenty of gullible men willing to offer her protection. He should be more concerned with guarding his son and his reputation. In both cases, she constituted the greatest threat.

  That thought gave him the spur he needed to move his obstinate arm and shift his gaze away from the tender sight of mother and son snuggled together.

  Chapter Five

  When she woke the next morning, Caroline basked in welcome tranquillity after the storm. Rain no longer hammered against the windows. The wind had stopped moaning in the eaves and battering the house with violent gusts. Off in the distance, she heard waves breaking upon the shore in a muted bass harmony. Last night’s violent tempest had passed over the island, leaving the sun to rise on a new day and the birds to sing as if nothing had happened.

  Then she recalled the tempest of scandal that had ravaged her life, threatening to leave nothing but desolation in its wake. Her eyes flew open.

  She barely managed to stifle a gasp of astonishment at the sight of Bennett lying on his side facing her, with their son cradled between them. All that prevented her from tumbling backwards off the bed was Bennett’s arm, draped over her and Wyn in a protective embrace.

  After the first shock wore off, the soft, rhythmic drone of their breathing lulled her to gaze at her husband’s face as she’d never seen it before. Sleep had softened the fierce angles of his nose, brow and cheekbones, giving him a much stronger resemblance to their son than she’d ever noticed before. The past twenty-four hours had shown her many facets of her husband that she’d never suspected. It had been a strange experience, drifting to sleep with the sound of his voice in her ears, so gentle and soothing she could scarcely believe it belonged to him.

  That thought fled from her mind when Bennett suddenly stirred.

  Fearing his reaction if he woke to find her watching him, Caroline quickly shut her eyes and pretended to sleep. After a few tense moments, she felt Bennett carefully withdraw his arm from her shoulder. Then she heard him slip out of the bed and steal from of the room.

  Once he had gone, she opened her eyes again to drink in the bittersweet sight of her sleeping child. Her yearning gaze lingered over his features, as she strove to commit his dear little face to memory…in case today might be the last she ever saw of him.

  Wyn’s eyelids fluttered open. ‘I’m cold, Mama. Still so cold.’

  Though the child was covered up to his chin with several blankets, Caroline could feel him begin to shiver again. Her hand flew to his forehead, only to find it fiery hot.

  Wyn thrashed about, giving a soft moan.

  ‘I think you may be ill, dearest.’ She strove to conceal her alarm from him. ‘Lie quietly like a good boy and I’ll fetch your papa. He’ll know what to do.’

  She rushed into the hallway, calling Bennett’s name.

  Finding her husband’s bedchamber empty, she was about to start down the stairs when he came flying up them. ‘What’s wrong, Caro?’

  He hadn’t called her by that diminutive in years. His use of it now, together with the look of concern that furrowed his brow, stirred something inside her that she did not want stirred.

  ‘It’s Wyn. He’s running a fever. Quite a bad one by the feel of his forehead. He must have picked up a chill yesterday, out in that cold rain. We must summon a doctor for him.’

  ‘This isn’t London, where you have scores of fashionable physicians within easy call. There might be one doctor on St Mary’s to tend to the townsfolk, but on the off-islands…’ Bennett shook his head.

  ‘There must be someone we can call.’ Caroline chided herself for not considering this when she’d made her impulsive decision to bring her son to these isolated islands. ‘What do the people here do when they fall ill or get injured?’

  ‘They send for one of the Aunts,’ Bennett replied after a moment’s thought. ‘Healer women who brew them a tea or fix a poultice. My mother used to consult them often when we came here. She said the Scilly Aunts did her more good than any physician or apothecary back on the mainland. Can you tend Wyn, while I go find one?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ Caroline caught her lip between her teeth. ‘I’ve never looked after a sick child before. What should I do?’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he insisted gruffly. ‘Bathe his forehead with cool water. I’ll have Parker fetch you a basin and cloth. I won’t be gone long.’

  She was surprised Bennett hadn’t proposed that Parker take charge of the feverish child, Caroline reflected as he hurried away and she returned to sit with their son. She was tempted to suggest it herself when her maid appeared a few minutes later with a brimming basin. Not because she didn’t want to help Wyn feel better, but because she felt so inadequate to the task.

  What if he began to cry and wouldn’t stop? What if he had a fit? She had heard a very high fever could cause them.

  ‘I’m so c-cold, Mama,’ the child whimpered. ‘I feel like I’ve got a toothache in all my bones.’

  Her son needed her to comfort him. That conviction helped ease Caroline’s paralysing self-doubt. After all, bathing his forehead was not so very different from a loving caress.

  ‘You’re running a fever, dearest.’ She took the basin from Parker and dipped the cloth into the cool water. Then she pressed it to Wyn’s brow. ‘Papa has gone to fetch someone who may be able to make you feel better.’

  ‘I wish Greggy was here,’ Wyn murmured plaintively.

  ‘So do I, dearest.’ Much as it grieved her to hear her son yearn for his nurse, she could not blame him. Until now, Mrs McGregor had always been the one to take care of him when he was ill. She’d been particularly insistent on keeping his mother away from the nursery at those times.

  Now Caroline bitterly regretted that she had not done whatever was necessary to be with her child when he needed her most. ‘Why don’t I tell you a story about Mrs McGregor?’

  The child nodded. ‘You tell good stories. So does Papa. I hope he’ll take me to visit some of those places on the island he told us about last night.’

  Caroline doubted that would happen. Now more than ever, Bennett would surely want to whisk Wyn back to the safety and comfort of London the moment he was well enough to travel.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ she murmured, moving the cloth down from Wyn’s brow to cool his blazing cheeks, ‘Mrs McGregor set out from Sterling House for a holiday in Scotland.’

  Caroline spun out the story for as long as she could, hoping it would distract Wyn from how miserable he felt. When at last she heard a door open and close, followed by Bennett’s brisk, purposeful footsteps on the stairs, she heaved a sigh of relief.

  An instant later, he strode into the sick room, his striking features set in an anxious look. ‘How is Wyn doing? Any improvement?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Caroline leaned down and cupped her son’s cheek. It alarmed her how hot he still felt in spite of her best efforts. ‘He says he’s cold and he aches all over, but he has been quiet for the past little while.’

  A small, solid woman hobbled into the room behind Bennett. ‘It looks as though you got him to sleep, ma’am. Whatever ails your boy, that’s one of the best remedies.’

  The woman had deep-set eyes and plain, broad features. Tufts of grey hair protruded from beneath her cap. She had an air of calm capability that reassured Caroline without intimidating her.

  Bennett lowered his voice. ‘My dear, this is Mrs Hicks. I’m told she is the most knowledgeable and experienced healer on the island.’

  ‘Thank you for coming at such an early hou
r, Mrs Hicks.’ Caroline rose from the edge of Wyn’s bed. ‘I hope you will be able to help our son.’

  The woman chuckled. ‘I get called out at all hours, ma’am. And nobody on Tresco calls me Mrs Hicks. It’s always Aunt Sadie.’

  She drew closer to the bed, looking Wyn over carefully. ‘Your husband tells me the lad was caught out in the rain yesterday.’

  ‘That’s right. We got him dried off as soon as we could, but he seemed chilled and he didn’t have much appetite for his supper.’

  The healer asked several more questions. When Wyn woke up, she examined him, looking in his mouth, checking his skin for pockmarks, feeling his belly and behind his ears. All the while she spoke to him in a quiet, soothing tone. Mrs Hicks might not have trained at any fine college of medicine, but already Caroline trusted her.

  ‘Is there anything you can do?’ she asked the healer in an anxious whisper.

  Mrs Hicks nodded. ‘I’ll make him up a brew of yarrow tea. That often eases a fever. You keep bathing his face and get him to drink and sleep as much as he will.

  ‘One more thing,’ she added when they began to thank her, ‘do all you can to keep the boy from getting agitated, or this could turn into brain fever. Bad business, that.’

  A bone-deep chill swept through Caroline. She glanced down to find herself holding tight to Bennett’s hand. Flustered, she tried to pull her fingers away, but he clung to them and would not let go.

  The next evening, Bennett’s hand still ached faintly from Caroline’s bruising grip. The physical proof of her fear for their son had further persuaded him that she loved Wyn as much as he did. That love and fear had kept them awake ever since, sitting vigil by the child’s sickbed.

  Mrs Hicks had come back to check on him and bring more of her yarrow tea. Her brew had seemed to ease the fever, allowing Wyn to sleep more comfortably. But later he would wake, achy and fretful, quaking with chills as the fever returned.

  Then his parents had sprung into action, his mother bathing his face while his father coaxed him to drink the yarrow tea. Later, when the healer’s brew had begun to work, Caroline told stories to divert him until he fell back to sleep. In spite of his concern for Wyn, Bennett had found it strangely satisfying, working together for the good of their child.

  Once Wyn had slipped into a deep doze, they collapsed back on to their chairs, watching for any change in his condition.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Caroline demanded during one such respite, ‘say it.’

  Bennett cast her a wary glance. ‘What is it you expect me to say?’

  ‘That you think it’s my fault Wyn is ill.’ Her delicate features looked drawn and…haunted. ‘He wouldn’t be lying there burning with fever if I hadn’t brought him to Tresco in the first place.’

  ‘I cannot pretend the thought never crossed my mind. But it also occurred to me that you would not have brought him here if I hadn’t ordered you away with so little warning.’ He swung around to face her. ‘Blaming each other is not going to make Wyn well again…and neither is blaming ourselves. Quite the contrary, I suspect. So let us try to put it from our minds and concentrate on what we can do for him now.’

  She stared intently into his eyes for longer than he found comfortable, perhaps trying to decide whether his offer was sincere. At last she gave a brief nod.

  ‘Good.’ Bennett rubbed his whisker-stubbled jaw. ‘Then why don’t you go get some sleep? I’ll call you if he wakes or there’s any change.’

  ‘I can watch him while you sleep,’ Caroline replied in a weary murmur. ‘Or do you not trust me to do something so simple?’

  Fatigue smothered any spark of irritation her remark might have provoked. Lately Bennett had begun to wonder if her lack of attentiveness to their son over the years sprang from something other than indifference to his welfare. ‘I was only trying to show you a little consideration. I realise it is not something you’re accustomed to.’

  He expected a bitter quip in return, but instead she replied, ‘Thank you, but I’d rather stay with Wyn. I owe it to him for all the times I wasn’t there when he needed me.’

  It was clear she recognised her shortcomings as a mother and was trying to atone. How could he disapprove of that?

  ‘I will let you see him sometimes, if you want to,’ he said, referring to what would happen after their divorce.

  ‘Of course I want to.’ Her words wafted out in a wistful sigh. ‘Though I wonder whether it might be better for him if I didn’t.’

  ‘How could that be better for him?’ Bennett rubbed his aching temples. ‘I would have given anything to see my mother after she left—even to know what had become of her. One day she was there and the next she…wasn’t. No one would tell me where she’d gone or why. I thought she must have been abducted or worse.’

  Those words slipped out past the guard he usually kept on his tongue to prevent such lapses.

  ‘How awful!’ Caroline started to reach for him, then seemed to realise what she was doing and pulled her hand back. ‘It was hard enough when my mother died. But at least I wasn’t left to wonder and worry. And I was young enough that I didn’t really understand our parting would be for ever.’

  This was the first time she’d talked about her mother and it came as an unsettling revelation to Bennett. Though he’d been aware that her father was a widower when they’d first met, he’d never stopped to consider that she, too, had suffered the loss of a beloved mother.

  ‘What about your father?’ Caroline asked. ‘Wouldn’t he tell you anything?’

  An arid, rasping chuckle broke from Bennett’s lips. ‘If you’d ever met my father, you would know how absurd that notion is. The servants warned me never to mention my mother to him. Everyone acted as if she’d never existed. I was punished for asking about her. On my father’s orders, for all I know.’

  He really must wake that lazy guard and put a stop to all this talk of his past, but he could not exert himself. Besides, it wasn’t as painful to speak of as he’d feared.

  ‘If your father was that cruel, is it any wonder your mother fled from him?’ Caroline’s question succeeded in rousing his slumbering defences at last.

  ‘Her going was what made Father that way!’ he insisted in an emphatic whisper, even as his conscience questioned the truth of his denial.

  Was Caroline trying to excuse his mother’s actions because she’d justified her own dalliances on the basis of his shortcomings? Perhaps he hadn’t been an ideal husband, but he’d tried to give her everything she could want, while getting far less than he’d expected in return.

  Leaning back in his chair, Bennett crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I see no point in talking about any of this now. It is all long past and nothing we say or do can change what happened.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Caroline replied. ‘But don’t you think the past might influence our present decisions and actions? Would you have been so quick to brand me an adulteress if your mother had not run away?’

  Would he? That question made Bennett even more uncomfortable than sitting for hours on end in this hard chair. ‘I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Your father didn’t want to talk about what had become of your mother,’ she countered. ‘But that does not mean it was the right thing to do. How did you finally learn what had happened?’

  His chair had become a torturer’s rack with Caroline as his personal inquisitor. Bennett had no intention of revealing anything further, but the truth was like a mouthful of poison. He must spit it out or choke on it.

  ‘Fitz Astley told me!’ he hissed. ‘Every sordid detail while two of his cronies held me down so he could thrash me bloody during my first week at school!’

  ‘The scoundrel!’ Caroline cried as Bennett shot to his feet. ‘But I don’t understand. How did he know what happened when you didn’t?’

  ‘He knew,’ Bennett growled, ‘because his father was the scoundrel my mother ran away with. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I will try to get some sleep,
after all.’

  As he strode towards the door, Wyn stirred and whimpered. Bennett recalled the healer’s warning about not upsetting their son. Could the boy hear them, even through the haze of sleep, their angry tones disturbing his rest?

  Freezing in mid-step, Bennett returned to his chair and sat back down.

  ‘Who am I trying to fool?’ he muttered. ‘I’d never get a wink of sleep anyway.’

  No wonder Bennett had forbidden her to have anything to do with Fitz Astley. His revelation shook Caroline to the core, like a sudden glimpse into the murky depths of her husband’s past. If only she’d guessed what hidden dangers lurked there…

  She wished he had told her about his mother’s betrayal long before this. If she’d known, perhaps she could have made allowances for things he’d said and done during their marriage, rather than letting her grievances drive an even deeper wedge between them.

  As they continued to sit with their son, Caroline watched her husband out of the corner of her eye. After what he’d told her about the collapse of his parents’ marriage, she could better understand why he’d been so quick to believe she had betrayed him.

  ‘There’s something else that puzzles me.’ Though she knew it was something Bennett did not want to talk about, she could not bear to remain in ignorance. ‘Why did Astley give you a beating over something his father did?’

  She knew better than to blame all the troubles of her marriage on Bennett’s past, especially the enmity between him and Astley. But she sensed it was part of the reason he refused to believe her and why he could never forgive her. Surely she deserved to understand.

  ‘Astley blamed my father for driving them into exile in Ireland. If he’d divorced my mother, she could have remarried and become semi-respectable again. As it was, they were total outcasts, living in sin.’

  ‘But none of that was your fault.’ Caroline’s keen sense of injustice was roused. She could picture a gang of older boys picking on Wyn that way for something over which he’d had no control. It made her wish she could relive that night at Almack’s long enough to give Astley a taste of what he deserved!