A Reckless Promise (11 page)

Thus did he learn that Lord Clathan and one of the housemaids had found a way to pass the time without having to listen to his daughter murder a harp.

“Nailbourne!”

“Clathan,” Darby responded affably with a tip of an imaginary hat as the maid simultaneously leaped off His Lordship's lap and pulled up the bodice of her uniform. “Don't mind me, I'm merely passing through on my way somewhere else. You're free to continue as you were, although I would advise locking the door. Oh, and this one, as well, once I'm gone.”

“Damn you for a one-eyed—”

Darby chuckled as he closed the door behind him, neatly pocketing the key he'd slipped from the keyhole, rendering the door impossible to lock.

Who knew a musical evening could be so enjoyable?

He headed down the hallway, depositing the key in a potted palm as he passed, unerringly led to the music room by the sound of what might have been a clutch of hens laying square eggs.

He stood just to the side of the doorway and waited for Sadie to notice him, which she did in short order, bless her. He put a finger to his lips, and then tipped his head in the direction of the hallway before disappearing.

She was a bright girl, and would soon follow.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“N
OT
ONLY
DID
our Mrs. Henderson recognize Clarice. She wants to hire her away from you.”

“From
me
?
Whatever would make her think Clarice is my—oh, yes, of course. What else would she think? Do you know how annoying it is for women to have to move about in packs, it would seem, or have a maid in attendance? What would a maid do if the lady was attacked on the way to a withdrawing room, pull a hidden saber from some unknown pocket and slay him dead?”

“I'd rather like to see that. However, right now, were she privileged to see us, I'd imagine Mrs. Henderson would be thinking how strange that the so-handsome and kind viscount is currently occupied in a dark coach with the unknown-to-him blonde woman from the front row, with not a maid or chaperone in sight.”

Sadie nodded. She'd thought of that, belatedly, as she'd watched the duchess and Clarice following the duke out of the music room. They had dispensed with the idea of bringing along one of the maids, allowing the duke to act as chaperone, for both Darby and Rigby had arrived separately.

“Yes, if the withdrawing room is bad, I suppose being alone with you in a coach could be likened to an unforgivable sin. But, to be sensible about the thing, it's not as if we're heading into the wilds. We're only a few blocks from Grosvenor Square.”

“True, leaving us without sufficient time to formulate any sort of plan to deal with our Mrs. Apple-cheeks, which is why I've instructed my coachman to drive around the perimeter of the park before returning to the square. You did say you wish to be involved.”

“I did, yes. I do. Clarice is always so bright and sunny, and has been endlessly kind to Marley. Seeing her so suddenly terrified was heartbreaking. I've already thought about sending Thea a message, asking her to return.”

“I don't think that's wise. Thea's reappearance would only cause the woman to approach her, asking about Clarice. Lies lead to more lies, and eventually we'd trip over at least one of them, especially if the woman's daughter doesn't take before the Season ends—which I seriously doubt—and they decide to stay for the spring Season.”

Sadie tapped her foot as she considered his words, studiously ignoring his reference to lies leading to more lies, and then agreed. “Still, we can't ask Thea to hide along with Clarice, can we?”

“Gabe might cut up stiff at that idea simply on general principles. Besides, there's this business of the ball to celebrate the duke's birthday, remember? Everyone who is anyone will be there, to either help Basil celebrate or to be able to say they were present when he
erped
. We must all be there that night, to lend him support.”

“The duke isn't going to
erp
,
er, die. There's no such thing as the Cranbrook curse. After all, who would have cursed them?”

“Sadie Grace, I never thought of that. None of us has. Indeed, who would have put such a curse on the family?”

“A wicked witch?
Fie on you, you damned Sinclairs. I curse you all, seed, breed and generation. No male shall reach his sixtieth birthday, this I decree by all the devils in hell and Beelzebub himself.
Nonsense!”

Darby applauded softly, but only briefly.
“Nonsense or not, please don't reprise that fairly impressive performance anywhere near Basil, or all Gabe's hard work convincing him there is no curse will have gone for nothing. Shall we get back to Clarice?”

“Yes, certainly. But first I'll say that I'm impressed by your loyalty to your friends. John had told me you were all very close, but I see it goes beyond that. How fortunate you are, all of you are, to have such a strong bond.”

Darby put his fingers under her chin. “You're a part of us now, Sadie Grace, remember that. Thea, Dany, Clarice and now you. We're all here for you.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “For when I finally tell you this truth you keep talking about. Yes, I know. I can't do that, not tell all of them. It's painful enough to know that someday I need to tell you. No one else can ever know, please. Not that part.”

“There's more than one part?”

“Please. Not now.”

“You're right. I did promise not to press you. Forgive me.”

Oh, how she wanted to tell him, tell him all of it. Every moment she was with him she trusted him more, liked him more. Admired him more. They had become, as he'd said, friends. The longer she waited, the more difficult it would be to confess the truth. But the pain was still too raw for her to relive it again this soon. Her mistakes, her haunting feeling of guilt.

Still with his fingers beneath her chin, he leaned in and kissed her. Like the first, it was maddeningly gentle and wretchedly brief, before he leaned back against the squabs once more, the coach traveling on through the dark.

He was no fool, Darby Travers. He was wearing her down by inches, tiptoeing rather than crashing into her life, seemingly content to proceed slowly, and with caution, until she felt an actual need to tell him everything she'd hidden inside her since John's death. Would telling him lift at least a part of the guilt that weighed so heavily on her?

She'd even had time to wonder if he'd understand, and felt she had reason to hope he wouldn't judge her. Or was that wishful thinking on her part?

Whoever and whatever the viscount was on the outside, he was an entirely other person on the inside...the part of him he probably shared only with his friends. If she had secrets, she had already decided that he harbored a few of his own, as there had been both sadness and anger in his voice the day he told her about his childhood at the cottage.

She sensed rather than saw him raise his hand to his forehead, a sure sign that the headache he suffered from had made its presence known.

“Turn your back to me,” she told him, already stripping off her evening gloves.

“I beg your pardon?” he returned with a smile. “Are you about to do something I would be shocked to see? Adjust a garter perhaps? We're engaged, Sadie Grace, and I'd like to consider observing such a delightful exercise a privilege of our approaching union.”

“You really can be impossible, you know. You have the headache again, which may account for some of it, but I believe you actually enjoy being outrageous. Now turn your back, slip off the patch and let me see if I can ease the pain.”

“I don't think so, no.” His voice was clipped now.

“Don't be so prickly. I won't look, if that's your concern. John suffered from the headache when he returned from the war, and I massaged his head many times. He taught me how, after learning from one of the Spanish doctors he met. Not to be immodest, but he told me I have magic in my fingers. Please, you've done so much for us. Let me do something for you in return.”

He looked at her for some moments, and then shifted on the squabs, turning his back to her as he reached up to untie the ribbons of the eye patch. “You can be much like a dog gnawing away on a bone. I can't believe I'm doing this.”

Sadie was suddenly nervous. What if it didn't work? What if she touched her fingers to his bare neck and head, and swooned away like some silly child? That certainly had never happened before, but massaging her brother and massaging the viscount were as unlike as chalk and cheese.

The space inside the coach was so intimate, the darkness melting away inhibitions she might not be able to overcome in the daylight. She would do what she had to do, what her fingers had itched to do each time she sensed he was in pain.

She ordered herself to be calm, be sensible, and put her hands on his strong, broad shoulders. A thrill went through her, all the way to her toes. How absurd. He was wearing his evening jacket; it wasn't as if she was touching his bare skin, even if she could feel his muscles through the fine material. His tense, tight muscles.

“Relax, for goodness' sake. I'm not going to hurt you,” she said as she began to push her thumbs against either side of his spine, slowly working her way up his back until she could feel those muscles relax beneath her touch.

With her hands bent inward toward her palms, she continued her ministrations, with thumbs and her flattened knuckles never leaving his body, moving in a hopefully soothing rhythm as she inched slowly upward, applying pressure directly against either side of his neck.

Darby bent his head slightly forward, most definitely relaxing. “Delightful. Are you certain it was a Spanish
doctor
who introduced John to this sort of thing?”

“What do you mean by—oh. I didn't press him, no. For the sake of my blushes, we'll make no assumptions.”

“You won't, no. All I can say is good on John.
Ahh
, yes, that feels oddly wonderful.”

She had slid her spread fingers up and into Darby's thick dark hair and was pressing the balls of her thumbs just behind the base of his ears. Holding the position, the pressure, and then sliding her thumbs upward. She repeated the action until she could feel Darby's head drop even lower, a sure sign that he no longer had any thoughts in his head beyond the rhythmic ministrations of her fingers.

Only then did she dare slowly adjust her approach, until her thumb pads rested on his temples, lightly dragging her fingertips from the center of his forehead to his temples, her strokes light, even, measured. A gentle stretching meant to relax him, ease the tension and pain.

He didn't resist, not even when her fingertips encountered the rough scarring along his left brow, the small puckers of skin that had been roughly drawn together to close a wound. She could tell that half his eyebrow was gone, replaced by scars, even though John had already told her that he'd regretted the necessity, but it was the only way to get to the ball that had lodged in the bony protection around the eye, a heartbeat above instant death. The scar, John had believed, was a small price to pay. Darby raised his head, probably not even realizing what he was doing, and she gently pulled him back against her breasts, so that it was easier to reach him.

Her touch became lighter as she stroked his forehead and into his hairline. Only with great effort on her part did she control her breathing as the weight of his head had served to bring a not unpleasant pressure as well as an awareness of Darby as a male, and not a brother or any patient. There was this feeling of closeness, oneness, here in the darkened coach, a stirring of emotion she had never felt before, an unspoken rapport between the two of them, a strange, silent communion that both pleased and worried her.

Was she about to become a victim of hopeful wishes she'd not acknowledged from the moment of their first meeting in his study and she'd felt so drawn to him—him and the silly sleep marks on his cheek? Had her lonely spinster heart begun to melt as she watched him sit on the floor, being the man, not the viscount, playing with Marley and the puppy? Was it his easy affection for the outrageous duke and duchess, his teasing nature with Rigby, his acceptance of Clarice and the flash of real anger she'd seen in his eye when he realized the maid-turned-lady was in danger of being exposed?

He
cared
. He pretended he didn't, laughing and joking about most anything, including his own wound, but she didn't doubt he would lay down his own life for any of his tight-knit circle of friends.

And now he'd included her in that circle. She and Marley both.

Sadie knew her heart was involved now, an emotion totally separate from her gratefulness toward him because he'd taken Marley as his ward. He'd protect her now as he did his friends, with all of him, heart and soul and body.

She could only pray it didn't come to that.

Darby's slow, even breathing told her he had fallen asleep against her, hopefully to wake sans the headache. For a moment she was tempted to move her hands down onto his shoulders, leaning over him as she stroked his chest, dropped a kiss on the top of his head while he wasn't awake to make a joke of her actions. Or question them.

The side door of the coach opened, and the steps folded down as the groom unnecessarily announced that they'd arrived in Grosvenor Square.

Sadie had been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn't even noticed the slowing of the coach.

“Darby,” she whispered gently. Then, “Darby! We're back at the duke's mansion.”

He roused then, rather all at once. “Love a duck,” he said, sitting up, his features now partially illuminated thanks to the light thrown by the twin flambeaux burning on either side of the mansion's grand entrance.

Sadie watched as the groom, seeing his employer without his eye patch, swiftly put a hand to his mouth, his eyes all but popping from his head as he backed away from the coach.

“Bloody hell,” Darby said as he searched the squabs for his patch and quickly positioned it over his eye, fumbling with the ribbons. “He'll probably have nightmares.”

“He's probably merely shocked to have opened the door to see his employer intimately lolling against a lady's bosom, soundly asleep,” Sadie improvised quickly.

He turned to look at her, his hair smoothed, the familiar patch covering the scar and accentuating the perfect handsomeness of the rest of his face. “I was lolling? And I don't remember it? Shame on me.”

“Indeed. How is your headache?”

He raised a hand to his forehead. “Gone.” He smiled in her direction. “It's totally gone. John was correct—you apparently have magic in these fingers.” He raised both her hands and, over her protest, kissed her fingertips. “You should hang out your shingle, Dr. Hamilton. Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” she said quietly, embarrassed and rather thrilled at the same time.

He helped her down to the cobblestones and escorted her to the door.

“I have to go inside now, don't I? Do you suppose Rigby is there?”

“If he is, have one of the footmen come inform me and I'll drag him away by his coattails, promising all four of us will put our heads together tomorrow morning. The last thing any of us needs is a strategy session that includes helpful suggestions from either Vivien or Basil.”