All I Ever Needed (8 page)

"Termagant?" Eastlyn shook his head, thinking of Sophie's serene countenance, the perfect line of her lush mouth, the solemn expressiveness of her eyes. He did not recall that she had ever once raised her voice or given him reason to believe that she was possessed of a nature that could. His dressing-down had been accomplished in a completely reasonable tone of voice. "No, Lady Sophia is no shrew, but I defy you to name a woman who can deliver a more cogent argument."

"On what subject?"

"On any subject, I fear, though marriage and my character were the main points of discussion."

"She was disinclined to see the merits of either, I take it."

Eastlyn's half smile was disarmingly self-effacing. "Called me to task for wagering."

"I see." The colonel raised one hand to his chin, massaging it thoughtfully to rub out his growing amusement.

"Drinking, too," East added.

Blackwood cleared his throat. "Is that right?"

"She pointed out that I was a murderer."

The colonel was immediately sober. "A murderer? What would make her level that charge at your head?"

"She has apparently heard about the Hagan affair. We know it is a very old business, but there is always someone willing to repeat it. Her cousin perhaps." Eastlyn shrugged. "It hardly matters. I
did
shoot the man."

"You did not kill him."

East said nothing, plowing his hair back with his fingertips instead. A small puff of air parted his lips, the passing of a weary sigh.

"Ah," Blackwood said. "You did not clarify that point. You allowed her to think just the opposite."

"It seemed important to her. I endeavor not to disappoint."

The colonel wheeled himself to the sideboard where he poured himself two fingers of whiskey. "You are an odd one, East," he said over his shoulder. "After all these years, you are still something of an enigma."

"It is not by design."

"Isn't it?"

Eastlyn realized he should have known the colonel would not permit him so easy an exit. "Perhaps it is," he said finally. "But it is also true that you know me better than most."

"As well as the Compass Club?"

East considered that and decided the colonel was in the right of it. "Yes. Every bit as well as they do."

"Then it follows that you are still a puzzle to them."

"I suppose I am, though they are kind enough not to refine upon it in front of me."

The colonel laughed shortly and wheeled himself around. He sipped his whiskey. "Your point is taken."

It did not seem odd to him that it was as if he had known Eastlyn and his friends for a lifetime. This was not the case at all; indeed, the years of his acquaintance with each member of the Compass Club were varied. It was Brendan Hampton, now the Earl of Northam, who had made the introductions. Blackwood had first heard of the Compass Club when young Hampton, then a second son with no expectation of inheriting the title, served under his command in India. The stories his lieutenant told of his Hambrick days were harmless enough, mischief really, of schoolboy tricks and intrigues, and yet there was some bit of cleverness in the schemes of these particular boys that stayed with him. Later, when illness forced him to leave his post in India, he returned to London and accepted a position in the Foreign Secretary's office at Wellesley's request. In very short order he had cause to elicit North's special talents as a soldier and strategist. When it was a sailor's specific skills he required, he asked North about Matthew Forrester, Viscount Southerton. Evan Marchman, West to the others in the group, came to his attention next, and finally it was the tinker, Gabriel Richard Whitney, now the Marquess of Eastlyn, whose expertise was required to make an unusual and sensitive repair between a certain Austrian archduke and a former mistress of the Prince Regent.

It was not always possible, the colonel had learned, to achieve even a fragile peace with customary diplomacy. Eastlyn often had an imaginative way of striking a balance.

"Balance," the colonel said, plucking the thought from his head to test it aloud.

Eastlyn frowned, wondering if he had briefly fallen asleep. It seemed he was having difficulty following Blackwood's conversation of late. "Pardon, sir?"

"Balance," he repeated, more firmly this time. "It occurs to me that you have lost yours." The creases at the corners of his dark eyes became more pronounced as he made a thorough examination of Eastlyn's person. There was a deepening of the slight downward curve of his mouth.

Having little choice, East waited for the colonel to finish his assessment. It was not the first time Eastlyn had been virtually held immobile by the strength of that black gaze, but there was no likelihood of ever becoming accustomed to it.

"Yes," Blackwood said after several long moments. "It is most certainly true that you have managed to lose your equilibrium."

"It is true now," East said. "For I haven't the vaguest notion what you mean. I had it when I came in here."

The colonel snorted, the nostrils of his hawkish nose flaring slightly. He raised his glass of whiskey and took a drink. "Look at yourself," he said, gesturing with the glass. "You are sprawled across my wing chair as if it were a chaise longue. Your appearance would suggest you are either boneless or were raised without benefit of civilizing influences, quite possibly in the Americas."

Eastlyn's half smile was not a proper smirk, but it edged very close to that disrespectful line.

Blackwood noted the look but made no comment. To his way of thinking it was further proof that the marquess was no longer in command of his faculties. "Perhaps it is sheer weariness that makes one eyelid droop a definite degree below the other or your head list to the side, but I have known you to go two full days without sleep and still be able to negotiate a settlement. At the moment I doubt you could negotiate a path to the door."

East turned his head slightly and eyed the exit with his hooded glance. "I could make it."

"It was not a challenge, though you are welcome to try. I was speaking metaphorically."

"I'll stay where I am, then, if it's all the same to you."

The colonel's eyes narrowed at the faint slur in East's speech. "When did you last eat?"

"Haven't." His eyelids fluttered briefly, then closed.

"Nothing at all?"

Eastlyn managed to shake his head, but it was with noticeable effort.

Blackwood's brow furrowed with considerably more than avuncular concern. He was charged with the care of the men under his command, and he took this obligation seriously. In the case of East and the rest of the Compass Club, it no longer felt like something dictated by duty. He had long ago acknowledged his genuine affection for them. "What have you had to drink, East?"

The marquess made to reach for the glass of whiskey that was no longer on the table at his side. His fingers closed around air before his arm fell heavily to his side.

The colonel put his glass down and rang for his butler. It wasn't possible the whiskey had put East in this state. He hadn't had sufficient libation to hammer his senses.

"Lemonade," East said.

At first Blackwood could not make sense of what he'd heard. He pushed himself closer to Eastlyn's chair and leaned in. "How is that again, East?"

"Lemonade... with Lady Sophia."

"Of course," the colonel said dryly. "Lemonade. I could more easily credit the lady herself doing this to you."

East roused himself to offer up a lopsided smile. "She made me lose my balance."

"Indeed." It was satisfying to know East had not lost his sense of humor. "Then all is explained." The colonel watched Eastlyn drift into a sleep that had more in common with a drugged state than exhaustion. When the butler appeared, Blackwood directed Eastlyn be made comfortable in one of the bedchambers with a physician's visit to follow.

* * *

Sunlight slipped through a part in the heavy velvet drapes and slanted lengthwise across the four-poster. Eastlyn looked down at the bar of light lying against his wrist like a golden shackle. It had been a near thing yesterday, he thought. Had Lady Sophia not exercised some remarkably good sense in turning down his proposal, he might have found himself shackled to her in a permanent fashion.

Groaning softly, East pushed himself upright. The pillow behind his head slipped to the small of his back. Eastlyn plumped it once for a better fit and responded to the scratching at the door.

One of the colonel's servants entered the bedchamber carrying a breakfast tray. She bobbed a curtsey as soon as she settled the tray on the bedside table. "Colonel Blackwood was most particular that I bid you good morning, your lordship, and inform you that he selected your food himself. He will see you in the library once you have broken your fast."

Eastlyn nodded. "Prettily said."

She bobbed again, and bright yellow wisps of hair fluttered around the ruffled trim of her cap. Her eyes darted between the covered dishes on the table and the marquess. "Do you require assistance, m'lord?"

"Did the colonel suggest you inquire or are you improvising?"

She frowned, uncertain of his meaning.

Watching her befuddlement, Eastlyn sighed. "It is of no importance. Please tell the colonel I will join him in short order."

"Very good, m'lord."

Eastlyn waited until the pleasant rustle of crisp skirts passed into the hallway and the door was closed before he pulled the tray onto his lap. He had never been one to dally with the servants, even when he was a much younger man. It had been a critical part of his father's instruction that one did not use one's position to take advantage of others. If position came with certain privileges, then it also carried the equal in responsibilities. Influence could be brought to bear, but only when the other party was truly free to choose. Had Eastlyn closed his eyes just then, he could have easily brought the exact nuance of his father's tone to mind, instead of the young maid's agreeably husky voice. It was an unfortunate truth, Eastlyn supposed, that the privileges of his title did not relieve him of responsibility to the servants, even when those servants were not in his employ. The colonel's coquettish upstairs maid might give the appearance of one able to make her own choices, but Eastlyn could never be certain that he had not subtly forced her hand.

Far better, then, to stay in one's class in matters of the flesh. In matters of the heart... well, it was only commonsensical that one simply stayed away.

Eastlyn uncovered the dishes Blackwood had chosen for him: a soft-cooked egg, toast, two thin slices of tomato, and a single strip of blackened bacon. The selection was exactly right in content and quantity, and East imagined that his disposition—and his rumbling stomach—would be much improved after he'd eaten.

He had a vague memory of last evening's ending; the question of balance that had been put to him by the colonel echoed faintly in his head. He recalled the overwhelming pressure of weariness, but something more than that also, the intuitive awareness that he was not only weary, but weak. There was a slippery difference in the two that he could not quite define, yet he knew it was so. It did not bear thinking what Blackwood would make of it, so East applied himself to his meal instead.

The colonel was waiting in the library as promised. In spite of the warmth of the day, a rug covered his thin legs, and a small fire had been laid. His chair was situated close to the fireplace, and he held a poker across his lap. Eastlyn dutifully stepped inside the room when he was gestured to do so and shut the door behind him, also at the colonel's prompting.

"It keeps the heat in. Deuced warm for you, I'll wager, but I find I'm often cold these days." Blackwood pointed to the same chair Eastlyn had occupied last evening. "Sit. We'll see if you can manage the thing without sliding to the floor this time."

Eastlyn raised an eyebrow but did as he was told.

The colonel's soft grunt was approving. "You seem to be all of a piece."

"And I was not last night?"

"You were
liquid
last night."

"Foxed? I confess I don't remember anything beyond a single drink."

"You had hardly more than a single swallow. You were not foxed, East."

"Then tired beyond my experience and feeling every one of my two and thirty years."

"I doubt that your journey from Battenburn explains what befell you last evening. Until my physician assured me otherwise, I was in fear that you had some seizure of the brain."

Reflexively, Eastlyn touched the side of his head with his fingertips. "Not a fit, then?"

"No. Nothing like that. Doctor Keeble suggests you were drugged."

Eastlyn smiled crookedly and allowed his hand to drop to the arm of the chair. "You should not allow the quack to treat you."

Blackwood did not mirror East's good humor. "Belladonna, he says. It would explain your symptoms. Perhaps a tincture of opium. Your pupils were dilated and your muscles were inordinately weak."

"But I didn't eat yesterday. There was quite a row at Battenburn before dawn, and it was every bit loud enough to rouse me from my bed."