Barbara Metzger (8 page)

“He was fine a minute ago. What should I do?”

“Hold him up so I can try to get more of the medicine into him.”

The medicine dribbled out of Troy’s unresponsive mouth. He did not answer Athena’s urgings, and his skin felt cold and clammy.

“I sent for the
surgeon. Perhaps we should send for your Mr. Wiggs, too?”

“No! Troy does not like him. And he does not need a minister. He is not dying. He cannot be!”

Ian feared he was, though. And the sister was grasping the boy’s hand, but looking at Ian, crying, “Do something!”

The dog was at the side of the bed, whining, looking up at him, too.

He wasn’t God, although he had already done the Devil’s work. What could he do? Attie was all red-faced again, tears streaming down her cheeks, staring at him as if he could put a broken doll back together. Ian had to do something. He could not let the boy die. He could not, for his sake, for her sake, for the sake of his own miserable soul.

So he prayed.

Ian prayed for the first time in more years than he could remember. He swore he would be a better man, if only the boy was saved. He’d do anything, give up women and become a monk if he had to—get married, even. May he be struck by lightning if he ever stepped off the straight and narrow path again, if the boy lived.

When he was done with his admittedly self-serving, once-in-a-blue-moon bargaining, Ian started to sing a hymn—all the while holding Troy, while Athena tried to get more medicine down his throat. More landed on Ian’s sleeve. Athena’s off-key voice, choked with tears, joined Ian’s.

And Troy winced. He lowered his brows, opened his eyes, and said, “You…sing…almost as badly…as m’sister.”

Athena grabbed for Ian’s arm. “He is going to be all right!”

The earl felt as if his horse had won at the Derby, as if he’d been dealt four aces, as if…as if his prayers had been answered. He did remember to send a silent thank you heavenward. Then he felt obliged to remind the girl that her brother was not out of danger yet.

“Oh, but I know he will recover. He will! I knew he was much stronger than everyone said. And he never gives up, not my baby brother! He never did—not from the first time I held him, when our mother died and he was so sickly.”

Athena was laughing and crying at the same time, with relief and exhaustion and enough overwrought emotion to level an elephant. Now that this latest crisis was over and she did not have to be strong anymore, she fell to pieces. She could not keep herself from great, gulping sobs and shaking shoulders.

The surgeon had not arrived and Mrs. Birchfield was asleep, so who could comfort the girl? There was nothing for Ian to do but gather her into his arms. She fit under his chin, wetting his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt. He awkwardly patted her back, thinking, Zeus, he hated a woman’s tears, but this one deserved a good cry.

A woman’s tears?

A woman?

Ian felt the dampness, but he also felt the unmistakable press of firm, tender, womanly flesh against his chest. For all her slight stature, Miss Renslow did not have a schoolgirl’s figure under that loose-fitting gown. No, he was tired and imagining things that could not be there, like breasts. His mind was suddenly jarred into a frantic recollection of her earlier words, though, words he’d been too concentrated on Troy to absorb. She’d bathed Troy as a child. She’d held him when their mother died. She’d called him her baby brother.

Her fifteen-year-old baby brother. Which made Miss Athena Renslow older than that. How much older?

Surprised that his lips were able to move, considering he’d just been run over by a hay wain, Ian gasped, “Just how old are you, anyway?”

With her face still pressed to his chest, Athena sniffed and said, “Nineteen. Twenty next month. People think I am younger because I am small.”

Nineteen.

The earl’s arms dropped to his sides and his feet stepped back so fast he tripped over the dog, who snapped at his toes.

Nineteen.

And she was alone in this room with him. Alone at his home, except for a half-comatose brother and a handful of servants. Alone in the world, except for a missing uncle and two brothers, one a miser and one an underage invalid.

Nineteen. And alone in his arms while he wore no coat, no cravat. Bloody hell, he did not even have shoes on his feet.

Ian waited for the lightning to strike him.

Maybe no one knew. That was it. No one knew she was here except the servants, and they would not talk if instructed not to…unless they already had, at the pubs and the next door servants’ halls. No, Ian hastily told himself, his mind in a maelstrom, his people did not gossip about him. He was not sure about hers. Or who had seen her arrive this morning. Or if Carswell had mentioned her to anyone. He started to pray again—but two prayers in an hour was too much to ask.

No one knew, he assured himself. They could squeak through this with her reputation intact. He’d write to his mother in Bath. And his sister in Richmond. No, he would send carriages for both of them. By the time anyone realized Attie—gads, he had to remember she was Miss Renslow—was here, at a notorious bachelor’s establishment, his female relations would be at hand to lend respectability. Thank goodness.

Then he recalled his butler’s parting words to her: “Your letters have been delivered, miss.”

Letters. Which likely informed her friends, her uncle’s staff, and that tutor cum clergyman where she was.

Nineteen.

He had stepped in more than dog droppings today.

Chapter Six

Women are fragile and flighty, like butterflies.

—Anonymous

Men are toads.

—Mrs. Anonymous

By midmorning of the following day, the seeds of Miss Renslow’s letters brought their first fruit: a bitter lemon.

“The Reverend Mr. Wiggs, my lord, for Miss Renslow,” Ian’s butler announced, his nose slightly wrinkled as if from an offensive odor. The earl had learned to read a visitor’s character by the flare of Hull’s nostrils. “What shall I tell him?”

Hull could tell the tutor that the boy was a trifle better, having taken some beef broth this morning, and that Miss Renslow was resting in her own room. Ian had both bits of information from his valet, since he had fled to his own bedchamber early after his dire discovery. Once there, he had penned urgent missives to his mother and sister, then kicked himself nineteen ways to Sunday for being a fool.

He had not been back to the sickroom since. He made sure his housekeeper and two maids kept Miss Renslow company during her vigil, and a footman stood outside her door, but Ian was not going within nineteen yards of the chit.

He had slept for a few hours, then woke up with nineteen hammers pounding in his aching, brandy-soaked brain.

Nineteen. Hell.

After breakfast and a bath, he was still in a foul enough mood to welcome an interview with Troy’s disapproving tutor, the minion of the miserly Lord Rensdale. He’d have preferred a session at Gentleman Jackson’s boxing parlor, pounding something—a leather bag or a sparring partner—into the ground. Wiggy would do.

“Show him in.”

Ian had expected an older man, a saintly graybeard mistakenly entrusted with the job of bearleading two children—no, a boy and a young lady—about London. Instead he saw a man younger than himself, of perhaps twenty-five summers, although one could not tell if the fellow had ever been out in the sun, he was so pale. Wiggs was nearly Ian’s height, but half his weight, it seemed, with angular bones, a long nose, and a jutting Adam’s apple. The man of the cloth was dressed head to toe in severe black, without a sop to style, comfort, or color. His straight mouse-brown hair was parted in the middle, and his mouth seemed permanently tilted downward. He stood stiffly erect, bowing at Ian’s greeting as if his spine were made of steel.

Ian disliked him on sight. To be honest, he had disliked the man when Athena—Miss Renslow, dash it—had spoken of him. Now his assessment was proven correct as the man waved his bony fingers in the air and said, “This will not do.”

Ian looked around his library, one of the finest in all of England, he believed, filled as it was with shelves of rare volumes, cases of priceless heirloom treasures, walls of fine art representing centuries of his family’s collecting. It was a warm, inviting place, with soft leather chairs and thick Aubusson rugs. He raised one dark eyebrow. “I thought my library entirely satisfactory.”

“Not your library, my lord. Your house.”

“You do not like the architecture? Or perhaps the wall-hangings?”

“This is no time for levity, Lord Marden. I am, of course, speaking of Miss Renslow. Your house is singularly unsuitable for a young, unmarried female. She ought to have realized that, of course, and not troubled your lordship.”

“I assure you, the lady was no trouble at all.” Ian was going to hell, anyway; one more lie would not matter.

“Of course not. Miss Renslow is the sister of a viscount, you know. Of course she is well-mannered. She does, however, have a lamentable tendency toward unthinking impetuosity. Especially where the lad is concerned.”

“She is certainly devoted to him,” Ian agreed.

“But at what cost, I ask? She should never have entered the portals of a bachelor’s lodgings, much less stayed the night. Forgive me, my lord, but that is especially true of your house, as pleasant as it might be. Your reputation is not fit for innocent maidens.”

“My reputation or my company? They are not the same, I assure you.”

“Tut.” Wiggs actually said
tut.
Ian had never heard anyone
say it aloud before. “Tut, tut. Either way, Miss Renslow will be ruined.”

“Surely not, when no one has to know of her presence here.”

“Tut, tut.” One more
tut
and he’d find himself tossed out the door. “I might have expected such a response from Miss Renslow, who is a heedless green girl, but you have to know better, my lord. Nothing can be kept secret for long in London, and her presence here, without a chaperone, will be on everyone’s lips by nightfall.” Wiggs’s own lips turned down even farther, until he looked like an anemic bulldog with a bellyache.

“Miss Renslow shall have a chaperone by nightfall.” If Ian had to go to Richmond and drag his sister by her hair, he would have a duenna in the domicile.

“Tut, tut. Too late, with your reputation. Not that you are known as a rake leading innocent damsels to their downfall.”

Ian sarcastically thanked Wiggs for acknowledging that saving grace.

“Think nothing of it.”

Ian did not.

The tutor went on, oblivious to Ian’s growing anger. “I do not know what that uncle was thinking, to let his niece leave the protection of his household for that of a known philanderer.”

Ah, so Miss Renslow had not confessed about the absent uncle yet. Ian would not peach on her, not to this sanctimonious sprig. “The captain was undoubtedly thinking of his nephew’s welfare, as were Miss Renslow and I. The lad is somewhat better this morning after a frightening night, although you have not asked.”

That brought a hint of embarrassed color to the reverend’s cheeks. “I was so wrought over Miss Renslow’s condition, you see.”

Ian saw that the prig did not care about the injured boy, although Athena’s reputation seemed of paramount importance for some reason that Ian intended to discover. “The young lady is resting. She and I have been at Troy’s bedside throughout the night.”

Wiggs sucked in a breath of air. “That is entirely unseemly.”

“But effective. I believe we might have saved the lad’s life.”

“But you say he is recovering now? Then Miss Renslow can return to her own lodgings.”

“Aside from Troy’s continued need for her, and Miss Renslow’s dedication to him, I do not believe there is a respectable older female at the Cameron Street residence, either.”

“Tut.”

Ian did not like that affectation and he did not like the man, especially when Wiggs said, “But no ill can be spoken of her there as long as she does not go out and about by herself. Who could find fault with a female visiting her beloved uncle, a decorated military officer, versus…”

“Yes? You were saying?” Ian’s raised eyebrow dared Wiggs to accuse him of being a rakehell, a here-and-thereian, a despoiler of virgins. Any of them might be true, but they were not for mushrooms like Wiggs to say.

The man had enough sense—or self-preservation—to keep his downturned lips closed. They were pursed as tight as a miser’s purse strings, but he said nothing.

Ian did. “My thoroughly respectable housekeeper was in constant attendance, and Miss Renslow did not even join me for dinner. Or were you thinking that my unbridled passions would have me ravish the woman at her ailing brother’s bedside?”

“It is not what I was
thinking, my lord, but what
others might say. I never—”

“And neither did I. Miss Renslow managed to survive the night at Maddox House with her virtue and reputation both intact. Small-minded persons might suggest otherwise, but no one of intelligence or compassion can doubt her honor.”

The cleric tutted a few more times, headed for the door mumbling his intentions of calling later. Ian stopped him. “But you have not asked to see the boy. Your function was to tutor him, was it not? Was Miss Renslow also your student, that you made her reputation your concern?”

Wiggy wanted to reach for the doorknob and his escape, Ian could tell by the way his fingers twitched. He stayed, though, and admitted, “I did give Miss Renslow an occasional lesson, for she felt her education was inadequate. What use is geometry to a woman, I wondered, but since I was already there…”

“You took the opportunity to spend more time with the young lady.”

Now Wiggs thrust out his lower jaw, making him seem more like a runty bulldog than ever. “Their brother entrusted both of his siblings into my care.”

“How much of your care?”

“If you must know, Viscount Rensdale gave me permission to pay my addresses to the young lady.”

Attie with her boundless love tied to this cold stick? Ian could not reconcile that in his head. “Has the lady agreed?”