A Wicked Pursuit (9 page)

“If you care for your leg, my lord, you’ll follow Sir Randolph’s orders,” she said tartly. “Of course you may continue as my family’s guest as long as you wish, and as our guest, I’ll see that you receive every comfort.”

“Panada is not a comfort, Miss Augusta,” he said sharply. “Nor am I a guest here. I’m a prisoner.”

“I assure you, my lord, that you are not a prisoner,” she said, her temper rising. “You may leave at any time, and you and your leg may go straight to the devil. I’d prefer that to the shame of having you perish beneath our roof simply because you were too willful to obey your surgeon.”

He glowered at her, his cheeks flushed above the dark beard. “Peterson, leave. I wish to speak to this . . .
lady
alone.”

“My lord, I implore you to consider the dangers of such a private conversation,” Sir Randolph urged. “If you grow intemperate in your passions and succumb to a forceful anger, then you risk unbalancing your humors once again, and—”

“I can guarantee that they’ll be unbalanced if I do not say what I must to Miss Augusta,” the earl said. “Leave us. Now.”

Reluctantly Sir Randolph bowed and withdrew, with his assistant and Mrs. Patton following. The door closed shut with a decisive thump, and Gus was left to confront the earl by herself. She’d been alone with him before, of course, and thought nothing of it. But that had been while he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness, so weak that he’d barely been able to raise his head. This Lord Hargreave, sitting up in his bed with his handsome face animated and his blue eyes full of fire and quite possibly brimstone, was a far different proposition.

Yet he did not speak, and neither did she, the silence stretching longer and longer as they each waited for the other to begin.
Sizing him up:
That’s what Papa would have called it, and Gus was certain the earl was appraising her as surely as she was him. At least the angry flush was fading from his face; as irritating as he’d been, she didn’t wish to be the cause of a relapse.

“Miss Augusta,” he said at last. “Dare I trouble you for a glass of your famous Wetherby water?”

With guilty haste, she flew to the table where the pitcher stood, filled a glass, and returned to hand it to him. He drank it slowly in long swallows, clearly savoring it, which made her feel all the more guilty for him having to ask her for it.

He handed the glass back to her, watching her closely.

“Well now, Miss Augusta,” he said. “Here we are.”

“Indeed, Lord Hargreave,” she said warily. She didn’t know why she felt so disconcerted, so off-balance, in his presence; it made no sense, really. “We are here.”

He sighed and waved toward the armchair beside the bed, the same one in which she’d sat for so many hours watching over him. “Sit, Miss Augusta, please.”

She perched on the very edge of the chair like a small bird, her back straight and her hands folded in her lap.

“That is better.” He leaned his head back against the pillows and winced a bit as he must have shifted his splinted leg, and with a twinge of guilt Gus thought of how he was still an unwell man.

“It is, my lord,” she agreed, resolving to put aside her earlier stridency. “I am glad you seem so much improved.”

“If this is an improvement, then I can only marvel at the depths to which I had sunk,” he said, and sighed with more resignation than she’d expected. “I have but the vaguest recollections of this past week, Miss Augusta, though I can recall you showed me considerable kindness. Kindness that I most likely did not deserve, for I’ve recollections of my own ill humor as well.”

“I did what was necessary, my lord,” she said, acutely aware of how awkward that must sound. In a way, she wished he’d no memory of what she’d done for him. He was almost Julia’s betrothed, and one day he likely would be her brother-in-law. No matter what the circumstances had been, it now made her uncomfortable to think of how she’d held his hand, and how, in his fever, he’d called her his angel.

“Necessary or not, it gives me hope that we can attempt a certain rapprochement between us,” he said drily, taking note of her reluctance. “It seems I have no choice but to be your guest here for some time to come, and a degree of civility will make it less of an ordeal for us both.”

“It will be my duty to look after you, my lord,” she said, drawing herself even straighter, as if to take the burden of his care literally onto her shoulders, “not an ordeal.”

“Well, now, that sounds so much better, doesn’t it?” he said, not bothering to hide his chagrin. “My God. I never thought I’d ever become some young woman’s
duty
.”

“I did not intend it like that, my lord,” she said swiftly. “Not at all.”

“Oh, you needn’t explain further, Miss Augusta,” he said with an exasperated wave of his hand. “I should not be surprised. Your sister warned me the two of you were as different as the proverbial night and day, and you are. I’ve only to look at you to see that.”

She knew she’d never be as beautiful as Julia. She’d known it nearly all her life. But the casual conviction of his words stung, stung hard, and swiftly she looked down at her clasped hands, not wanting him to see the unhappiness that must surely show in her eyes.

Unhappiness, and confusion, too. Why should she care if he thought her plain? What did it matter if he preferred Julia to her? They weren’t rivals for his attention. Just as Papa had said, the pretty faces always paired off, and she was not pretty, especially not to a gentleman as handsome as the earl.

“Julia and I are half sisters,” she said. “We each favor our mothers, not each other.”

“I guessed as much,” he said absently, his thoughts shifting to something else. “Listen to me, Miss Augusta. It is no secret that I came here intending to ask for your sister’s hand in marriage, and I still mean to do so. I have every reason to believe she will accept.”

Still Gus looked down, troubled by what she knew about Julia and her present whereabouts that he didn’t.

“I hope to wed your sister as soon as possible,” he continued. “I do, however, have one question. Where exactly is Miss Wetherby at present?”

Gus had prepared herself for this, and was ready with an answer that was truthful, yet unspecific.

“Julia is not at home, my lord,” she said briskly. “She has ridden out to visit our aunt.”

“When do you expect her to return?”

“I do not know,” she said, again truthfully. “She can be unpredictable in her habits.”

He smiled, the same sort of maddeningly indulgent male smile that Papa often smiled where Julia was concerned.

“You know, I have no memory of her visiting me while I was ill,” he admitted sheepishly. “Not one. Though I beg you not to tell her, Lady Augusta.”

“Oh, no,” she quickly agreed, thinking of how very lucky Julia was. “Your secret will be safe with me.”

“Then I must beg one more indulgence,” he said, rubbing his palm across his bearded jaw. “I do not wish the dear creature to see me in my present state, like some wretched, wasted castaway. Could you possibly contrive to keep her from this room until I am more agreeable?”

“You wish me to keep her from you?” she asked with astonishment. This was beyond mere luck: this was the best possible good fortune with a blessing or two thrown in besides, and—though she felt disloyal even thinking it—was far more than Julia deserved.

“Only for a few days,” he said, misinterpreting her surprise. “I can do nothing about this infernal leg, not for a good long while, but I trust that with a razor and a bit of food I’ll begin to look more civilized.”

He tried to smile, but winced again, and closed his eyes against the pain.

She rose quickly. “I’ll fetch Sir Randolph,” she said. “This is my fault for tiring you with so much talking. He’ll prescribe a fresh draft, so that—”

“No,” he said raggedly, his eyes still squeezed shut. “I want no more drafts, no more laudanum. I’d rather feel the pain than be numbed into nothingness like that again.”

“But Sir Randolph—”

“Peterson can go to the devil for all I care,” he said, and slowly opened his eyes halfway. “He can join me there. I’m told it’s much more agreeable with company.”

She flushed, wishing he’d forgotten her earlier outburst along with Julia’s nonexistent visits. “I’ll fetch him.”

“No.” He caught her hand, holding her there. “I am serious, Miss Augusta. You do me infinitely more good than that man ever will. If you care for my welfare, you’ll bring me a bowl of your cook’s finest panada, and speak nothing more of Peterson.”

She looked down at his hand holding hers, and tried not to think of how warm and familiar it was.

“I’ll fetch the panada, my lord,” she said firmly, pulling her fingers free of his. “Mind you, if I bring it, you must eat every morsel.”

“I vow to devour it.” His eyes were still half closed, his slow smile shockingly disarming. “So long as you, Miss Augusta, agree to sit beside me as I do.”

She pressed her lips tightly together, trying to be stern. “I will return with the panada.”

She was nearly at the door when he called her name again. She turned expectantly, her hand already on the latch.

“Miss Augusta,” he said, still smiling. “Please. Say you’ll sit beside me. You must agree, for the sake of your fair panada.”

She took a deep breath, suspecting that none of this had anything to do with the panada. She guessed he was teasing her. To be sure, she’d very little experience with gentlemen—especially handsome gentlemen, and most especially handsome gentlemen who were supposed to be in love with her sister—teasing her, but her older brother, Andrew, often teased her when he was home, and this was suspiciously similar. Except it wasn’t, because the teaser wasn’t her brother, but Lord Hargreave.

“I’ll promise,” she said finally, “on the condition that you
will
eat it.”

“Oh, I will,” he said easily. “So long as it contains a sufficient amount of honey, as you earlier described. You should know, Miss Augusta, that I have the most wicked desire for . . . sweets.”

Blushing furiously, she did not deign to answer but hurried through the door, his laughter following her down the hall.

She paused on the stairs, pressing her hands to her cheeks to compose herself before she faced Mrs. Buchanan and the rest of the kitchen staff. This was going to be a very, very long and taxing convalescence. That length would have nothing to do with how fast his lordship’s leg healed, but everything to do with
him
.

Five days later,
Harry sat in the bed with his eyes closed, relishing the familiar pull and scrape of a razor across his jaw as Tewkes shaved away his nearly fortnight-old beard. With his eyes shut like this, he could almost pretend that his life was the same as it always had been, and that nothing had changed from its pleasantly predictable course.

But his life wasn’t that way any longer, and if the pair of grim-faced physicians were telling him the truth, then the pleasantly predictable days might be forever gone. His leg had been preserved, and his life with it. He had not died of a fever, or mortification, or gangrene, or putrefaction, or any of the other gruesome possibilities that had apparently hovered about him while he’d been dosed into insensibility. For that much he was supposed to be grateful, or so Sir Randolph and Dr. Leslie had informed him, almost in unison.

But Harry wasn’t grateful. Not at all. Because according to these same two rascals who dared to preach gratitude, the leg that had been salvaged was never again going to be a match for the one beside it. The best hope they offered was that this sorry excuse for a leg might support his weight when he stood, a kind of prop for stability, not locomotion. There had been too much damage, too much displacement, to expect any more.

They told him if he was fortunate, he would be able to learn to walk with the aid of a cane or a stick. If he was not, he would require crutches or, even worse, an invalid’s wheeled chair. His days for running, dancing, riding, hunting, fighting with swords or fists were now all in the past. In the handful of seconds that it had taken him to be thrown from that damned horse, he had gone from being a young man of twenty-four with all the world’s possibilities stretching before him to one now confounded by limitations and restrictions.

Instead of being the dashing Earl of Hargreave, he’d become an object of whispered pity, and those less kind would give him some heartless nickname like Halting Harry.

No wonder there seemed to be precious little to be grateful for. But during the long hours he lay in this bed staring up at the hideous yellow silk hangings, he kept returning to the only positive that he could find in this entire wretched mess, and that, of course, was Julia.

How thankful he was that he’d already won her! He still had to make his actual proposal, but he was certain she’d accept. Although she’d led him on a coquettish chase this entire season, she’d made her affection clear enough. His life might not be what he’d planned, but at least there’d be some pleasure in it with a wife to love and support him, and to warm his bed, too. Thank God that part of him hadn’t been damaged, and he could not wait to prove it to her. Just the thought of her lovely face—and even lovelier person—was enough to make him smile.