Bewitching the Baron (30 page)

BOOK: Bewitching the Baron
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“Yes, I believe his comment was something to that effect. I did, of course, make a hasty retreat.”

Nathaniel imagined the aftermath that must have followed after Lord Carlyle left. He very much doubted that Paul had been able to finish what he had started. “You have only to ask for another room,” he offered weakly.

“I did, and it awaits me even now. But for the moment, I prefer it here.”

Nathaniel took a sip of his brandy, sensing that the tale was not finished. It would take more than catching Paul in flagrante delicto to send his father to the brandy and a sleepless night, he felt sure of it. Several minutes passed, and when Lord Carlyle spoke again, it was on such an unexpected topic that his wandering attention was caught in full.

“Who was the lady in green, the one with ivy wound through her hair?”

“Sir?”

“You could not have missed her.”

“I believe she left before the unmasking,” Nathaniel prevaricated.

“Damn,” Lord Carlyle said under his breath, and after a long look into his glass drained what was left in the bottom. He reached again for the decanter.

“Why do you ask?”

“I do not know if I am sufficiently foxed to tell you that.” He swirled the liquid in his glass, then set it on the side table with a clunk of glass on wood. “Hell, maybe I am.”

Nathaniel remained silent, afraid that anything he said would stop the man from speaking. Anything that touched on Valerian, he wanted to hear.

“You will think me a damned fool, not that it matters. I mistook her for a woman I once knew, the first woman I ever loved.”

Nathaniel sat forward, intrigued. “Will you tell me about that woman?”

Lord Carlyle’s eyes settled on a point in time that only he could see. “She was a beautiful creature. Hair black as sin, eyes of a green to make you ache, and a bearing like she was a royal princess, which she would have been had circumstances been different.” At Nathaniel’s raised brow, he clarified. “She and her sister were both bastards of Charles II. Their mother was a widow, wealthy, and for a time one of his favored mistresses.

“I pursued her for months,” he continued, “intending to make her my own mistress. And then, just as I won her, she was taken from me.”

“How?” Nathaniel asked, caught up in the story.

“Her mother, in addition to being a former mistress to a king, was reputed to be a witch. As were her daughters. The mother made one dark prediction too many at just the wrong time, and she was killed. Her daughters fled for their lives, and that was the last I or anyone else ever saw of them.”

An uncomfortable sensation was riding up Nathaniel’s neck. “And the lady in green tonight, what was it that you found familiar?”

“Her hair, her chin. But most especially the dress. My Theresa wore one like it the night she fled. But it was not her, of course not—the woman tonight had blue eyes, not green, and was young enough to be Theresa’s daughter.”

“And what—” Nathaniel had to pause to take a swallow of brandy, for his throat had gone dry—“and what was her family name, this Theresa?”

“Harrow.”

Harrow. Storrow. Not so very different. “And no one ever heard from either of the daughters?”

“Not a word. I wanted to go after Theresa, to help her to hide. To marry her, if doing so would give her protection. I thought myself in love with her, after all.”

“What stopped you?”

“I thought that nothing would, but my brother more or less sat on me and talked to me of honor and the family, and my fiancée, God help her, until I relented. I think I wanted to be persuaded against it, truth be told. I was afraid of her, even as I loved her, and I was just realistic enough to wonder if giving up family and funds was worth pursuing a woman who might feel no more than amused tolerance for my sorry self. Still, I have never forgotten her. Never forgiven myself, either, for not doing more to help her.”

Nathaniel considered for several minutes, but in the end knew what he had to say. “My lord, there is something I must tell you.”

Lord Carlyle looked at him with barely any curiosity, still lost in his own memories, so Nathaniel spoke bluntly. “Theresa Harrow is living not two miles from this hall. It was her niece you saw in the green gown tonight.”

Lord Carlyle sat up straight and turned wide eyes on Nathaniel. “She is here?”

“I have spoken with her. She goes by Storrow now, but it can only be the same woman.” He looked at the stunned man, and knew that now was not the time to ask if he wished to see her. “We can talk again in the morning, after you have had time to think on this.”

Lord Carlyle’s attention focused inward, and Nathaniel barely heard his response, more sighed than voiced. “Aye, I shall do nothing but think on it.”

Nathaniel was settling down to sleep in his own bed, longing for Valerian, when a piece of Lord Carlyle’s story came back to hit him in the face. He sat up in the dark, and exclaimed aloud to the empty room. “Good God. Her grandfather was the bloody King of England!”

Chapter Twenty-two

“Keep her away from me!” Charmaine cried.

Valerian locked eyes with Howard. “Explain to her. I must be allowed to help.”

Howard stood motionless, his eyes wide as he stared at his wife, writhing on the mattress, her brow being cooled by the wet rag in Alice Torrance’s hand.

“Howard!” Alice commanded, evidently as frustrated as Valerian herself. “Do as Valerian says. Your wife will not listen to anyone but you.”

Valerian flashed a look of gratitude to the woman. She had not expected help from that quarter.

Howard shuffled slowly over to the bed and tried to take Charmaine’s hand, but she snatched it away and pointed her finger at his face. “You will not let her touch me, you know what unnatural forces are in her hands. You know, Howard!”

“Your mother cannot come, darling. She told me to fetch Valerian.”

“I want my mother, not her,” Charmaine cried.

“She cannot come,” Howard said, his voice rising, spurred on by his fear for her.

“I want my mother! Go back and get her!”

“You cannot have her, Charmaine!” the normally gentle Howard shouted at last. “Shut up for once and listen to Valerian. She knows what to do.”

All three women blinked at him, and a silence fell. Howard mumbled an apology, then beat a quick retreat from the room, the door shutting quietly behind him.

“I never knew he had it in him,” Alice said. Valerian felt the woman’s eyes turn to her, examining for the fourth or fifth time her bizarre outfit. Alice’s voice hardened. “I do not trust you. I know the evil forces Charmaine speaks of are real, but you know the healing ways, and I cannot think that you would hurt your own kin. I will give you what help you need.”

“Thank you.” Even grudging assistance was more than she would have hoped for from the woman.

Valerian slowly approached the bed. “Charmaine, will you let me touch you?” she asked in her most soothing tones, the ones she used to lull people into trance.

“I wanted my mother with me,” Charmaine complained, turning her face into her pillow.

“I know. I would have wanted her with me, as well. You are frightened and need comfort. You hurt and need healing.”

Valerian waited while Charmaine made up her mind. Another contraction convulsed her body, making her cry out.

“Oh, go ahead,” Charmaine gritted out as the pain faded. “You cannot make it any worse.”

Valerian sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand over Charmaine’s belly, closing her eyes and gathering her thoughts to send her senses seeking for what was wrong, for what had caused the baby to come early.

She did not expect what she found.

The baby was not right. She caught a confused sense of two hearts, one of which did not beat, both within the same form. There were the wrong number of limbs, and yet it was just one body in Charmaine’s womb, one body that even if it survived the birth, would not survive more than an hour or two in this world.

“Charmaine,” Valerian said, “Listen to me. The baby must come now. You cannot keep it within you.” Charmaine’s body had chosen to abort the child, and it would be best to trust it. If it continued to grow, the birthing of it at full term might be fatal to Charmaine.

“It is too soon, it has not been nine months,” Charmaine said, pleading in her voice. “Help me keep my baby, Valerian. Do whatever you have to, just let me keep my baby.”

“I am sorry, Charmaine. It must be now.”

Time moved slowly as Valerian and Alice sat with Charmaine, waiting for her body to go through the process of birth, the contractions still far apart. Dawn came, and then morning turned to afternoon, and still the baby did not come. Valerian lay her hand again on Charmaine’s belly, and listened to what her cousin’s body told her. The contractions were growing further apart, not closer. The labor was ending, without delivery.

Valerian went to her basket of medicines, and then to the fire where there was water heating, and mixed up a concoction of ergot. It would bring back the contractions, and help expel both the child and the placenta, and help as well to prevent hemorrhage. It was a drug she only used in the most critical of cases, for it had side effects that could be severe.

Charmaine made a face at the ugly brown liquid, but drank it. She was too tired to protest.

It was over an hour before the drug began to take effect, and the first signs of it were not good.

Charmaine’s eyes darted from one side of the bed to the other. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Valerian asked.

Charmaine’s eyes moved as if tracking something, over to the corner of the room where the shadows had begun to gather. “That,” she whispered, staring, and then was overcome by the pain of a contraction. She shut her eyes and writhed, moaning. Alice held her hand and murmured soothing words to her.

When the contraction ended, Charmaine opened her eyes, staring again at the corner of the room. “It is still there. What is it?” Her voice rose. “It is watching me, stop it, it is watching me!”

“Charmaine, listen to me,” Valerian said calmly, her voice as low and commanding as she could make it. “It is the medicine I gave you. It is making you see things that are not there. It is not real, whatever you see.”

Her cousin seemed not to hear her. Her feet jerked, and then she was kicking at the empty space at the foot of the bed. “Get away! Get off me!”

“What is it?” Alice asked, eyes wide. “What do you see?”

“Do not touch my baby!”

“What is it?” Alice shouted, catching Charmaine’s panic.

“Alice, it is an illusion,” Valerian explained, but the woman did not hear her, her eyes focused on Charmaine.

“A demon, a black demon with yellow eyes,” Charmaine cried. Another contraction hit her, and she screamed. “It claws at me! It rips my belly!”

Alice backed away from the bed, dropping Charmaine’s hand and beginning to recite the Lord’s Prayer, her eyes wild. “Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be—”

“Alice. Mrs. Torrance!” Valerian demanded, trying to pull the woman out of her terror, to no effect.
Damn. Damn, damn, and double damn,
she cursed silently.

The contraction ended, and the room fell quiet except for the soft chant of Alice’s prayer, “. . . this day our daily bread, and forgive us . . .”

Charmaine’s terrified gaze slowly moved from her feet, across the bed, and then over Valerian’s shoulder. Despite herself, Valerian turned her head to look, so intense was Charmaine’s gaze.

“You brought it,” Charmaine said. “You called forth the demon.”

Alice’s chanting stopped as she listened.

“It is the medicine, making you see things, Charmaine. That is all. I will try to take its effects from you,” Valerian said, moving towards the bed, reaching out a hand to lay on Charmaine’s forehead.

Charmaine shrank from her, then rolled to her side and tried to claw her way off the bed. “No!”

“Where is it now?” Alice asked, her eyes darting about the room.

“Do you not see it?” Charmaine cried, clinging to the edge of the bed, her legs drawn up around her belly. “It crouches there upon her shoulder, its tail wrapped round her neck.” The next contraction hit, and she screamed, the cry one of terror and pain. “It claws me! It chews upon my baby!”

Alice gaped in horror first at Charmaine, and then at Valerian, and then ran from the room.

Chapter Twenty-three

It was late afternoon when Nathaniel and Lord Carlyle rode into the meadow around the cottage. No smoke rose from the chimney, and all was quiet. Nathaniel dismounted, Lord Carlyle following suit, and went to go knock upon the door.

There was no answer. Nathaniel could almost feel the tension in his companion’s body, waiting for some sign from within the silent cottage. To come after all these years to find no one at home seemed to Nathaniel too much for the man to bear. He sent a silent plea for forgiveness to Valerian and her aunt, and pushed open the door uninvited.

The familiar scent of herbs and wood smoke was overlain with an odor of illness. The interior of the cottage was no warmer than the outside, the fire long dead in the grate, and at first he thought that there could not possibly be anyone at home. And then, in the quiet, he heard the rasp of labored breathing.

He took the three strides that separated him from the curtained bed, his boot heels loud on the plank flooring, and pulled back the draperies. The sight that met his eyes hit him like a punch to the gut.

“My God,” Lord Carlyle swore behind him, as he too saw. “Theresa.”

Nathaniel stepped away as Lord Carlyle shoved the draperies farther back and knelt beside the bed, finding one of Theresa’s hands and taking it in his own. “Theresa, can you hear me?”

Nathaniel watched as her eyes slowly opened in the gaunt, yellowed face. The body that he remembered as being stout and robust now barely caused a rise in the blankets that covered her. She must have been ill for several weeks, and Valerian had never told him how bad it was. The thought that she had been living with this secret for weeks, and had not trusted him with it, made him almost dizzy with rage and hurt.

And where was she now?

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