Andrew: Lord of Despair (24 page)

“This stair,” Gareth growled, “is giving my arse a pain. I am going to shave, eat something, then chase your wife out of Felicity’s bedroom, so I might pray my marchioness back to a semblance of health. Where shall I chase her to?”

“Bed,” Andrew said. “She’s been up far too long, and she needs her rest.”

“I am getting old.” Gareth rose stiffly and extended a hand down to assist Andrew.

“Yes. You are, old and wise. Gareth…” He dropped his brother’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Now you grow tediously maudlin. Good night, little brother.”

But as they turned to go to their separate rooms, Gareth grabbed him in one more hug. “And thank you too.”

They walloped each other on the back, once, hard, and went to face their separate challenges.

***

The marquess’s household remained unsettled, the marchioness’s health precarious at best, and the addition of two newborns upsetting established routines. Worse, neither the lord nor the lady of the house was available to reestablish order, because Heathgate spent almost all of his days with his wife.

Felicity slept. She slept for much of three days, rising to a stuporous wakefulness only to nurse her children, use the chamber pot, and drink either beef tea or sugared hot tea. While she suffered no fevers, she did continue to bleed heavily.

So Andrew did not leave, given that the servants were turning to him and to Astrid for guidance. Moreover, his original purpose in joining the household, to talk to his dear wife, remained a priority.

“Come, your lordship,” Andrew said irritably to an equally annoyed brother, “your eldest has not seen you yet today, and your wife is sleeping. Leave this room for at least the next five minutes, or I will haul you away bodily.”

“You can bring James down here,” Gareth argued.

“Gareth?” Felicity’s voice from the depth of the huge bed silenced both men, and Gareth was beside his wife in an instant.

“Right here, beloved.”

“Go with Andrew. If you keep arguing, you’ll wake the babies.”
In
addition
to
me
, she left unsaid.

Gareth scowled but kissed her cheek. “I will be back shortly.”

Andrew walked with him up to the nursery, mostly to make sure he went. Andrew himself had spent considerable time with James and little William, and had carried them down to see the new arrivals while Felicity and the babies napped, oblivious to the visitors. James had yet to visit with his mama, however, because she was still terribly weak and rarely awake.

And when they arrived to the nursery, they found James’s nanny had bundled him up for a brief outing in the snowy back garden.

“She’ll lose him in this damned snow,” Gareth groused.

“If she does,” Andrew replied, “he will howl loudly enough to summon the watch clear from Town.”

“And wake his mother, brother, and sister,” Gareth agreed, his expression lightening marginally. “I have been an utter ass, haven’t I?” he said, settling on James’s low bed.

“Yes—but you have also been enduring heartbreaking circumstances better than I would.” Andrew rummaged through a carved toy chest and found a ball he and Astrid had used to amuse James a lifetime ago. He tossed it to his brother, who caught it deftly in one hand.

Gareth tossed the ball back to Andrew, who perched on the toy chest.

“I tell myself if there’s no infection,” Gareth began, “then Felicity should rally and eventually recover. But then I look at her, slumbering in that bed, hour after hour. She forces herself to stay awake long enough to nurse the babies, but drifts off before she herself has anything to eat. She is not rallying, and she is still bleeding.”

Andrew tossed the ball to Gareth again.

“Fairly said it might take several weeks for the bleeding to subside entirely, and certainly a week of heavy bleeding is normal.”

“And what would
he
know of such things?” Gareth said, lobbing the ball back to Andrew.

“
He
has been trained as a physician,” Andrew said as he continued their game of catch. “Astrid told me Fairly lost a spouse who had borne him a child.”

“Fairly? The mercantile shark, the self-contained, brothel-owning, dapper, articulate, odd-eyed, insufferable, pain-in-the-arse brother of our respective wives was a
physician
?”

“I don’t know that he practiced, but when I asked it of him, he filled my head with more detail about women’s, er, plumbing, than any man should know. He endorses breast-feeding, by the way, and says it might help the womb heal and return to its original contours, so stop arguing with Felicity about it.”

“And does he endorse having a mother starve to death so she can nurse her babies?” Gareth shot back. “And he’s a widower who has buried a child?”

Andrew held the ball for a moment, looking Gareth straight in the eye. “Yes,” he said, firing the ball. “He has lost both a wife and a child.”

Gareth absently threw the ball back. “Shite.”

“Probably as accurate a summation as any.”

“Are you making headway with your wife yet?” Gareth had turned his attention to something besides his marchioness for the first time in days, and yet it was a subject Andrew wished he’d not brought up.

“My wife has been sleeping nearly as much as yours, and when she isn’t sleeping, she’s taking care of her sister or the babies, or answering the servants’ questions so we will continue to have clean laundry and hot meals.”

“Coward.”

“Quaking in my perpetually soggy boots,” Andrew agreed mildly. “I can’t find a good time to approach her.”

“You aren’t even sleeping with her, which is pure foolishness. Women like to cuddle, and you’re the creative sort. You should be able to work with that.”

Andrew fired the ball at Gareth’s chin. “So women like to cuddle, do they? Imagine the opportunities I have missed because this subtlety eluded me.”

“Let me put it this way,” Gareth said, matching the force Andrew had applied to the ball. “If my wife were not bleeding her life away, I’d be sharing that bed with her every spare moment I had, even if it were simply to hold her.”

Andrew caught the ball and held it. “I take your point, Brother, but I have not yet accepted that your wife is bleeding her life away, and neither should you. Though now that I have you alone, I have a question for you.”

“Ask,” Gareth said flatly. “If it’s a question about funeral arrangements, be warned I am up for a bout of mean, bare-knuckle fisticuffs.”

A tempting offer.

“The other night, you told me Julia was not expecting, not my child, not Jeffrey’s—I believe your words were, there was no baby.”

Andrew had repeated those words over and over in his mind, the relief of Gareth’s pronouncement renewed each time.

“Those were my words, and I meant them. When we realized four years ago some aspects of that accident hadn’t been fully resolved, I had Brenner go back and talk to anyone we could find who’d been employed on our Scottish property that summer. Brenner interviewed Mother, Julia’s parents, and as many of the servants as he could locate.”

“That must have been some undertaking.”

“It took weeks, and more than one trip North,” Gareth said, “and he would have interviewed you, but you had already taken yourself off to foreign shores. In the course of his efforts, he came across the woman who had been Julia’s lady’s maid. She had since become a nanny to a cousin of a cousin and so forth, but she recalled the whole summer quite well.”

Why had Andrew never thought to do this? Why had he thought exile on the Continent his only option? “And?”

“Julia’s courses had arrived the morning before we went out on the boat, Andrew. The maid recalled how irritable and difficult her employer had been in the days leading up to the accident, knowing full well Julia had been swiving anything in breeches to try to conceive her much-vaunted child. The maid knew Julia’s patterns, however, and dreaded the tantrum that would ensue when Julia realized she wasn’t pregnant.”

Andrew tossed the ball from one hand to the other. “And that was the
more
you referred to?”

“Not all of it. Brenner uncovered evidence Julia had paid one of the local sailors to tamper with the rudder.”

“What in the bloody hell could she have been about?” Andrew said, standing and pacing to a dormer window, because tampering with a rudder was tantamount to…
murder
. Cold-blooded, premeditated, malice aforethought
murder
.

“Even her maid had no conjecture as to why Julia would have sabotaged a boat she herself was on, but the tampering would not have been evident except in heavy seas. If enough force were applied to the guides and cables, they would have snapped, but not in calm seas. And if you’ll recall, Julia was not sanguine about joining the outing.”

Gareth had carried her up the gangplank bodily, her objections peppering the air.

“Jeffrey loved to take that boat out,” Andrew recalled, facing his brother, “and the seas were calm when we cast off.”

“They were, so perhaps she was merely laying a trap to rid herself of Jeffrey at a later date, should he have been her spouse. She resisted my insistence she join the outing, if you’ll recall. Resisted bitterly. But then, Grandfather also considered himself quite a yachtsman, and Julia’s fatal trap could have been intended for him.”

“But you were prepared to spare Jeffrey the chore of marrying her, and Grandfather was happy to let you do it,” Andrew reminded his brother as he tossed him the ball.

“The offer I made to Julia was to marry her and to live with her in the household of my choosing. She did not accept that offer, because she ‘wanted to raise Jeffrey’s child’ at the family seat, where she knew Jeffrey would be forced to reside at least some of the time. I believed Jeffrey’s protestations regarding the child’s paternity, and would not capitulate to Julia’s conditions. So at the time of her death, she was not, in any sense, my fiancée, despite press and portraits to the contrary.” He punctuated that statement by aiming the ball straight at Andrew’s chest.

Andrew caught it and tossed it up into the air.

“These things you tell me…” he said, heading for the door. “I feel disoriented, as if I’ve taken a bad fall from a fast moving horse.”

“Give it time,” Gareth said as Andrew tossed him the ball one more time. “Where are you off to?”

“Going to ride my horse,” Andrew said, because a man needed to plan his strategy if he were to reclaim his wife’s affections—and her trust.

“There’s nigh two goddamned feet of snow on the ground, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“You know how some horses are mudders? Most horses don’t like sloppy footing, they hate the mud hitting their bellies, and they don’t have the knack of keeping their feet under them in bad going.”

Gareth shoved up from the small bed. “And others bestir themselves to a decent effort only if they’re on a muddy track,” he finished the thought.

“Well, Magic is a snow horse. He marched right over here through more dirty footing than I’ve ever asked a horse to negotiate. Five miles of it was nothing to him, thank God.”

Gareth considered the little rubber ball in his hand. “I haven’t thanked you yet for making that journey, Andrew. It was inexcusably risky of you, but I appreciate it all the same.”

A little scold made the thanks go down more easily. “I needed to be here.”

“Yes, you did, but I’ve been meaning to ask you: What exactly did you and Astrid do while I was taking my nap in the freezing hallway?”

“Astrid didn’t explain it to you?” Andrew said, his hand on the door latch.

“She evaded the question, which I will not tolerate from you, so talk.”

“Why not browbeat her?”

“Because I can beat the stuffing out of you,” Gareth replied in the same pleasant tone Andrew had used.

“If you must know, all we did was turn one of the babies in the womb,” he said. “I’ll just be off now…”

But before he could get the door open, a rubber ball hit his backside with stinging force, and his brother’s “You did what?” roared through the nursery. By the time Andrew turned, Gareth had launched himself across the room and effected a neat tackle, bringing himself, Andrew, and a shelf full of toy soldiers crashing to the floor.

Felicity kissed the smooth brow of the tiny infant in her arms. “What is that sound?”

Astrid glanced upward, only to hear another loud crash, followed by a series of bumps and thumps. “Our husbands went up to visit James in the playroom.”

Though Andrew did not keep her informed of his comings and goings, and Astrid lived in fear of a note telling her he’d decamped for Town—or Sweden or the Antipodes.

“If these babies had been sleeping…” Felicity muttered darkly. One child was at her breast; Astrid was returning the other—already enjoying a postprandial nap—to the bassinet.

“But we’re all awake,” Astrid pointed out, smiling, “so let the boys play. It’s hard on Andrew being cooped up in the house and being away from his horses. I can’t imagine Gareth is used to this much inactivity either.”

Another sharp thump had both ladies peering at the ceiling.

“Gareth needs to quit fretting,” Felicity said. “I am stronger by the day, and there have been no fevers. Here.” She held Pen out to Astrid, wiped off a damp nipple, and fastened the bodice of her nightgown. “Pen was slurping and dreaming and slurping some more. My arms are too tired for that.”

Astrid cuddled the Mad Slurper to her shoulder. “Maybe when you are not too tired to hold a baby for more than a feeding, your husband will be less inclined to fret.”

Felicity flopped back against her pillows. “You know, Astrid, when people say they are tired in their bones?”

“Yes.” Astrid’s burden emitted a tiny burp, sending his aunt into a round of appreciative cooing.

“Now I know what that means. I am so utterly fatigued, even breathing is an effort. If I stand to use the chamber pot, I get light-headed. At least I’m getting out of this bed, though.”

“It will take time,” Astrid chided gently. She tucked Pen in beside his sister in the bassinet and sat on Felicity’s bed. “You lost a lot of blood, and you are still bleeding.”

“I bleed, and I use the chamber pot, and I leak milk… I feel like a human drain, Astrid. And my poor stomach will horrify Gareth out of any amorous thoughts he’s ever had about me. I look like the world’s largest prune.”

Astrid was saved from casting about for a diplomatic rejoinder by a knock on the door. She hopped off the bed, then grabbed the bedpost to steady herself.

She went to the door at a more careful walk and opened it a crack.

“David!” She threw the door open the rest of the way and wrapped her arms around her brother. “Oh, it is so good to see you,” she said, drawing him into the room. “You’ve arrived at a good time. Felicity is awake, and the babies are asleep.”

“And best of all,” David added, “Heathgate is not straining on the end of his chain, threatening to breathe fire on all passersby. Hello, Sisters.” He returned Astrid’s hug, then kissed Felicity’s cheek. “How are you?”

“Tired,” Felicity said, smiling up at him. “Relentlessly tired. But alive.”

“Of course you are,” he replied, propping a hip on the bed and giving her a pensive look. “You are much, much too pale, Lissy.” He put the backs of his fingers against her forehead. “No fever, though. Well done of you.”

“I had help.”

“Really?” David raised an eyebrow at Astrid. “I handed my horse off to a groom at the foot of the steps, so you’ll have to enlighten me. And ladies, do not even think to dissemble.”

“Astrid and Andrew had to turn one of the babies,” Felicity said. “Heathgate, fortunately, was felled by exhaustion for those few moments and spared us his presence for the actual deliveries, though it was a near thing.”

“Divine providence, though there’s doubtless a part of him that would delight in shocking the gossips.” He ambled over to the bassinet and picked up one bundle. “What unbelievably lovely little babies these are. Be proud of yourselves, ladies. When God wants to add to Creation, he chooses only the most worthy assistants.”

“What a lovely sentiment,” Felicity said.

Astrid remained silent but thought of Andrew, of his calm in the birthing room, of his methodical study of childbirth—in multiple languages—when Astrid had mentally accused him of hiding in his study by the hour.

“Babies,” said David, picking up the second child, “make everything lovely.”

He kept the child—Pen—in his arms when he came back to sit on the bed.

“Now,” he said, “pay attention, Sisters, because Heathgate will soon come through that door like a jealous horse and shoo me off to drink brandy with Greymoor in the billiards room. Felicity,” he continued, “you are to eat red meat at every meal until the bleeding stops, and then twice a day until your energy is back where you need it to be. Liver or other organ meats would be best. Some Spanish oranges would be well advised too. You are to drink as much as you can stand, because you will be nursing two babies, not one, and you are to get out of this bed for a few minutes at a time, starting immediately.”

His tone dared either sister to argue with him, but they merely exchanged a look of sororal curiosity.

“You are justifiably exhausted, Lissy,” he pointed out. “But for the past week, you haven’t even gone up and down a flight of stairs. Soon you will lose the strength you had when you climbed into this bed, and thus you will invite more fatigue. I will take my leave of you now, but I sincerely hope that before you blow out the candles tonight, you will consider reading for a few minutes by the window, sitting by the fire while Astrid changes your sheets, or taking a turn about the room.”

David glanced at the ceiling, then looked at them askance. “What
is
that noise?”

“The playroom is directly above us,” Felicity said. “Gareth and Andrew went up there to visit him.”

“I will offer mine host a proper greeting,” David said, kissing each sister on the cheek. He handed Pen to Astrid before adding, “Remember: red meat, fluids, and moderate activity.”

When the door closed behind him, Felicity flopped the covers back and wrestled her way to the edge of the bed.

“I feel like Dr. Mayhew’s younger, better-informed assistant paid me a call,” she said. “Dr. Mayhew said to remain abed for at least a week after James was born, and mentioned neither fluids nor red meat.”

“David has medical training,” Astrid replied. Also good timing and a way of dealing with the difficult topics directly. “Could I talk you into some cold slices of beef, perhaps taken by the fire?”

Felicity pushed to her feet. “I suppose so. After which, by God, I am going to read something besides that dreadful Mrs. Radcliffe.”

“She awaits you by the fire. I’ll order you a tray, then, and see what all that rumpus was about in the playroom.”

Astrid made it as far as the hallway before a footman stopped her with a note.

Meet me in the stable in twenty minutes.

Greymoor

Now this was interesting—Andrew hadn’t, apparently, decamped for Sweden without notice.

Astrid and her husband had developed a cordial, superficial means of communicating over the past few days. They had worked as a team when Felicity had needed them, and Andrew exhibited better spirits than when Astrid had left him at Enfield.

But he was too thin, and he avoided her by day and slept elsewhere at night, suggesting they were in the midst of a cease-fire, not a rapprochement. Astrid wasn’t about to question him directly regarding his preferences for their next move.

But neither would she run from a confrontation, so she made her way downstairs to the kitchen entrance fifteen minutes later and retrieved her old, heavy cloak from a peg by the door. When she was bundled up against the cold, she grabbed a few lumps of sugar and eschewed gloves, mittens, scarf, or hat.

The stables were deserted when she gained the door to the barn. The grooms had done their morning chores, fed the midday meal, and repaired to their quarters over the carriage house to clean harness, play cards, or nap. Fairly’s mare stood in a loose box, demolishing a pile of fragrant hay, Andrew’s gelding doing likewise in the stall beside her.

Andrew’s timing, at least, would guarantee them privacy.

And what, in fact, did Astrid want to tell her husband?

That she loved him, of course, but love to Andrew was apparently no inducement whatsoever.

“Greetings, dear Astrid,” a cheerful male voice called from behind her.

Astrid whirled in surprise then had to grab an empty saddle rack to catch her balance. “
Henry?
”

He grinned and bowed. “Your most devoted and doting caller, in the flesh. I understand felicitations are in order, if what Lady Quinn told my mother is correct.”

“Felicitations are in order,” Astrid said, smiling. “The marchioness presented her husband with a healthy boy and girl just three days past. It is good of you to call.” Though unusual, given the weather, the state of things between their families, and the normal restrictions on a new mother’s social calendar.

Henry pulled off riding gloves, finger by finger, and stuffed them in his pocket. “Lady Heathgate was waving the note from Heathgate around at some tea or other yesterday, letting all and sundry know exactly where you bided. If her coach weren’t too heavy for this snow, she’d be here, I’m sure.”

Unease prickled up Astrid’s neck. “I don’t see your horse.”

“Tied him at the bottom of the drive,” Henry said, fingering a bridle that hung by an empty stall. He took it off its hook and fiddled with it, which was presumptuous, riding equipment being among a gentleman’s more personal property.

“I’ll summon a groom to fetch him,” Astrid said. “I’m sure, after toiling all the way out here from Town, you don’t want to leave a valuable animal standing in the cold.”

Henry shook his head as he unfastened a buckle. “Can’t let you do that, Astrid dearest.” He hung the bridle back on its hook, though he’d unfastened the thin snaffle reins and was drawing them across his palm in an odd, repetitive motion.

And Astrid
dearest
? Unease lurched closer to dread.

“Whyever not? A decent horse is worth quite a sum, and even the worst shouldn’t be left to stand in the weather.”

She started to walk past him, intent on summoning a groom, but Henry’s arm snaked out to catch her in a punishing grip above the elbow.

“Henry, turn loose of me this instant.”

He grinned at her again, and the light in his eyes made Astrid’s flesh crawl. “Struggle,” he challenged her softly as he tightened his grip. “Please.”

“What are you about?”

“You won’t struggle,” Henry said, pulling the sort of face a doting swain made when a lady’s dance card was full. “Alas for me, but I suppose time being of the essence, it’s for the best. Still, I’ve never beaten a pregnant woman before—might have been fun, you know? One usually has to pay for that variety of sport.”

He shot a speculative look at the bulge of her stomach, and when his gaze dropped, Astrid wrenched away. She got all of two steps before Henry’s fist grabbing her voluminous cloak stopped her progress. He wrestled her around to face him and delivered a stinging backhand across her cheek.

“Naughty, naughty,” he crooned, raising his hand for another blow.

***

Andrew made his excuses as Fairly dragooned Heathgate off to the library for a celebratory tot—and wasn’t it a relief that somebody else was on hand to keep Gareth from hovering over his wife even as she slept?

Life was, in fact, full of relief. Relief that Felicity was slowly, slowly rallying. Relief that Andrew again dwelled under the same roof as his wife, and relief that Astrid’s tracks through the snow were singular, suggesting she’d hared off to the stables without maid, footman, or groom in tow.

Good things had been known to happen in stables, and at this time of day, the barn would afford Andrew privacy with his wife, so he followed her there, pausing outside the barn door for a moment to gather his courage.

The sun shone with the relentless brightness of a snowy winter day, the eaves dripped with a promise of moderating temperatures, and all was right with the world—or soon would be, if luck was with him.

On that fortifying thought, Andrew grasped the door latch.

The sound of a blow, flesh on flesh, rent the winter stillness, followed by a male voice, soft, snide, the words indistinguishable.

Astrid was in that stable.

Andrew’s entire life was in that stable.

Her voice came to him, defiant, bothered, not the least afraid, then more snide male taunts.

Andrew had no weapons, but
Astrid
had no weapons either, save her wit and courage. He crept closer and cracked the door.

***

Astrid cringed, her arms wrapped around her belly, as Henry cocked his arm back for a second blow.

“Touching.” Henry smirked, lowering his hand. “You protect my brother’s heir rather than yourself. Did you know”—Henry wrapped the reins tightly around Astrid’s wrists—“Herbert refused to share you with me? I had it all planned, the pitch darkness, the dressing gown, slipping up the back stairs of a Sunday night like a marital thief—what fun, eh? It wasn’t as if Herbert actually enjoyed servicing you, but that damned title does put certain requirements on a fellow. He wasn’t as stingy with some of his other toys though, or with your money.”

A pang of sympathy for Herbert’s hunters pierced Astrid’s ire, for a man who’d strike a petite, defenseless, pregnant woman would delight in abusing a helpless beast with whip and spurs. “What are you talking about?”

“My brother,” Henry said, giving the leather a vicious yank, “or should I say my late brother, was becoming too headstrong. He begrudged me the occasional loan from your funds, but then, he’d also married you against my wishes. He got you pregnant against my wishes, telling me it was what Father would have wanted. Bah! All Father wanted was to tramp around in the mud, shooting at anything that moved—a convenient propensity, in the end.”

Henry put a tight knot in the reins, painfully binding Astrid’s wrists.

“Is that snug enough for you?” he asked oh-so-pleasantly. “Such a shame we don’t have time to play…”

She needed to keep Henry talking. Sooner or later, somebody would check on the horses, or on her—wouldn’t they?