Blood Marriage (6 page)

"Who do you think pays the bills here, Elizabeth? The so grand Countess of Glenbury has no funds. It was my father's revenge for enduring a lifetime with her. He left everything to me."

A few more steps and Randall would round the bed corner, trapping her in the 'U' formed by the bed and wall. Scrambling over the bed would be her only escape, but the pain and stiffness in her joints told her she'd have little chance of winning such a race. Elizabeth glanced at the dress on the bed, one of the few she owned in the modern high-bodice, waist-less Empire style. Its brown wool stood in stark relief against the white bed linens. She wished she wore it now. Her nightgown, though arguably even more modest than the dress, made her feel vulnerable.

"Do you understand what I'm saying, m'dear?" Randall used the remaining wineglass to point at Elizabeth's bed. "This bed, this house, your wages, the doctor who 'ends your mother, I pay for them all. Doctors aren't cheap, Eliz'beth."

"So you're the reason Countess Glenbury offered me this job?" Elizabeth's stomach felt like it'd fallen into her heels.

"Grateful?"

"But I'd never met you. How could you know about me?"

"My mother's last companion ran into some hard luck. Got
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and my mother sacked her. I was helping her. And there, coming out of the very building she was moving into...." Randall sipped his wine and wriggled his eyebrows over the rim at her. "When your landlady told me of your sad situation, I knew you would cost me a small fortune. But those eyes..." 

He reached across the corner of the bed and touched her chin. Elizabeth jerked away. He didn't appear offended.

"I knew I had to have you, regardless of the cost. It was a bonus when your beauty put my spoiled little sister's nose out of joint. Forcing Harriet and Mother to take you on during Harriet's first season, to stand beside you, to be compared to you -- that's been great fun."

"I'm no longer your mother's companion." Elizabeth kept her voice firm despite the panic pounding through her. "I'm to be married to Lord Devlin."

Randall's face contorted with anger. "Yes, now Devlin wants you. Shall I send him a bill? Or would you prefer to pay me yourself, in your own way, and save your future husband the money and embarrassment?"

Elizabeth felt herself calming. If Randall had intended to attack her, he would have done so already. For Randall the triumph had to be more than physical. He wanted to best her mentally, to manipulate her, to make her surrender. 

"The Devlin family is a powerful one," Elizabeth said, stalling for time. "It could be dangerous to compromise the virtue of the Duke of Marlbourne's future daughter-in-law."

Randall snorted. "Have you met the duke? Not a man inclined to protecting virtue."

"You would be taking a great risk," Elizabeth insisted. Her eyes kept going back to the dress on the bed. 

"You're worth it. Is refusing me worth the risk you would face? Would Devlin still marry you if he knew you'd come into this house not to be a companion, but a mistress? What would happen to your mother if you lost both my support and his?"

Elizabeth lowered her head and let her shoulders slump. She crawled up to kneel on the bed facing Randall. Her hands clinched and flexed at the dress, pulling it toward her until it lay bunched at her knees. She patted the space she'd just cleared on the coverlet with one hand.

Randall's head snaked merrily from side to side like a gleeful cobra. "Knew you'd see reason."

He climbed up on the bed and knelt facing her, downed his wine and tossed the glass to the floor. "I've always preferred long seductions, to tease a skirt slowly over weeks, even months, into the game. P'haps I've been missing something. Blackmail works much faster and is just as titillating. You'll enjoy this, Eliz'beth. I promise. And Devlin need never know. It will be our sss-secret." 

Randall planted both palms on the coverlet, pursed his lips, and leaned forward for a kiss. Elizabeth jerked the dress up by the hem and dropped it over his head, yanking it down hard, wedging his narrow shoulders tight into the waist. Startled eyes peered dish-round from the neck hole. Shrieking curses were muffled by the wool bodice. 

Elizabeth scrambled off the bed and limped for the door, sliding and teetering through the wine spill. Haste made her fumble with the knob. She glanced back. Randall's arms were pinned at his sides to the elbows by the dress. His forearms and hands flailed wildly from beneath the skirt, giving him the look of a creature from a comic nightmare. The awkward lurching took him close to the edge of the bed. He teetered there for an instant, eyes round and darting above the dress's neckline. Then the coverlet slipped beneath him and he toppled to the floor with a satisfying thud. 

Elizabeth wrenched open the door and fled, neither stopping nor looking back until she reached her mother's bedroom. She burst into the room, locked the door behind her and leaned, panting, against it. She smiled at her mother's astonished nurse.

"A nightmare," she explained.

Chapter Ten

Elizabeth sat in Countess Glenbury's parlor tapping her foot with impatience, her baggage stacked near the door. It had been two weeks since the incident with Randall. She'd moved a cot into her mother's sickroom the following day and been careful never again to be alone. But to her immense relief Randall had pointedly avoided her. Whether it was out of belated remorse, humiliation at having been bested by a woman, or, if once sober, he'd seen the perils of offending the heir to a dukedom, Elizabeth didn't know. Or care. Whatever his reasons, Elizabeth was grateful. She'd had no more trouble with the Earl of Glenbury. Nevertheless, she was eager to put him and this house behind her.

"Why you need to go alone when Harriet and I could so easily accompany you, I don't understand." The countess paced in her morning dress and voluminous shawl, pausing often to peer through the multi-paned glass of the large bay windows. For the past twenty minutes she'd been dividing her attention between lecturing Elizabeth, who sat perched in a chair close to the couch where her mother lay sleeping, and watching the darkened street outside her London townhouse.

"After all, Harriet and I are practically family. It would only be proper for us to travel with you."

Elizabeth didn't respond. She'd grown tired of repeating to the dowager what the woman already knew. Their invitations for Lord Devlin's house party had arrived separately. The one for Elizabeth and her mother had requested their presence at Heaven's Edge, the Duke of Marlbourne's country home, immediately. A carriage would pick up the Smith ladies before dawn today. The invitation for Countess Glenbury and Harriet had also included the courtesy of traveling in the duke's own carriage, but they were to follow in a week's time. The countess had not been pleased.

Elizabeth understood the feeling. It had been two weeks since Lord Devlin had arrogantly rearranged everyone's lives in Mrs. Huntington's parlor. The banns for both couples had been read, and announcements published in the London paper two days later. Mr. Fosse had wed Amanda by special license the following week in Mrs. Huntington's white rose garden before the newly restored arbor. Amanda had looked like a bespectacled angel with the morning sun sparkling in her blonde hair and her white lace dress dazzling like pure sunlight amidst the clouds of white flowers. Remembering the way Mr. Fosse had looked at his bride throughout the ceremony and the wedding luncheon that followed, still filled Elizabeth with longing. What would it feel like to have a man care for her like that? 

"I must say, if Lord Devlin were anything less than the heir to a dukedom, I wouldn't put up with his high-handed ways," the countess declared.

For the first time since she'd entered the dowager's employ, Elizabeth agreed with the woman. Devlin was worse than high-handed. He was positively selfish. Other than at the Fosse's wedding ceremony, where she'd been unable to speak with him alone for even a single moment, Elizabeth had not laid eyes on her husband-to-be since the Huntington's ball. Though he'd sent the invitations to the house party, he hadn't bothered to reply to the message she'd sent him. 

At least not to the second one. 

The first she'd sent the morning following the ball, offering him the opportunity to cry off, to rescind his offer of marriage. The reply had been a single word printed on heavy vellum stationary: No. 

Her second message hadn't been answered at all and of the two it had been, in Elizabeth's mind, the more urgent. She'd sent it two days ago, the same day she'd received the invitation to the house party. It was a long essay on her mother's fragile condition and the need to make any journey that must be made as short and easy as possible. Though she'd made no mention of her own condition, Elizabeth had ended the letter with a second offer to allow Lord Devlin to change his mind. There had been no reply.

Now she sat in Countess Glenbury's parlor with her hands gripped in her lap, watching her mother move restlessly in her sleep, and waiting for the stranger who was her fiancé to collect them. Carriage wheels rattled on the cobblestones outside.

"He's here." The countess hurried to a wall mirror, patted her hair, and arranged her face into a pleasant social mask. 

Elizabeth said a final prayer that the journey would not be too much for her mother, stood, and followed the dowager out onto the town house's wide stoop. The countess waited at the top of the stairs, pulling her shawl tight against the pre-dawn chill, while her footman opened the carriage door and let down the steps. Elizabeth hugged the satchel containing her mother's medications and other travel necessities close to her chest, straightened her spine, and descended the stairs to meet her fiancé. 

He was swathed from neck to boot in a dark wool coat. His unfashionably wide-brimmed hat deflected the dim light of the street lamps, casting his face in sinister shadow. He turned away just as she reached him, bending back into the carriage without even acknowledging her. The man was unbearably rude. 

Elizabeth thought of her mother and the toll this journey would take on her. She thought of the way Devlin had rearranged their lives on a whim. She'd poured her heart out to him in that last message, practically begged him for reassurance her mother's needs would be provided for, that she would survive the journey without unnecessary suffering. Elizabeth had promised herself she would hold her tongue. No matter how insufferably high-handed Lord Devlin might be, she and her mother were both now dependent on his generosity. It was important to court his good will.

"You sir, are a bloated, odious toad!" Elizabeth hissed at the back of his head. 

She glanced over her shoulder to reassure herself the countess had not heard her. When she turned back, she forgot to breathe. White teeth gleamed in the lamplight, the prominent incisors exposed in an amused smile. Pale blue eyes twinkled from a ruggedly handsome face. But it was not the face she was expecting.

"You must be Miss Smith." Though his accent was not heavy, it was obvious he was not an Englishman. "I am Doctor Bergen. Lord Devlin sent me to escort you and your mother to his home."

Elizabeth stared open-mouthed at the physician's bag he'd pulled from the carriage and pressed a cold palm to the blush creeping up her face. The doctor motioned to the driver who stopped loading the women's baggage, grabbed a lantern and illuminated the interior of the carriage. 

A feather bed had been installed across the far side of the carriage, blocking the adjacent door. Two narrow seats faced each other on either side of the open door, one at the head of the bed and one at its foot. It was obvious great care had been taken to assure her mother would be as comfortable as possible. Elizabeth started to speak, but the doctor politely cut off her apology. 

"May I see the patient?" 

Dr. Bergen moved past her, removing his hat as he ascended the townhouse steps to bow over Countess Glenbury's hand. Black hair, so like Lord Devlin's, curled and twisted at the edge of his collar. Elizabeth followed meekly in his wake and stood silent in the parlor as the doctor examined her mother with gentle hands. He motioned her forward and she held her mother's head up while the doctor administered a drug. Almost at once, the tension Elizabeth was accustomed to seeing in her mother, even when she slept, seemed to leave her. For the first time in weeks Amelia Smith relaxed completely. A footman carried her from the house.

As the carriage rolled out of London, Elizabeth's mother lay peacefully cocooned in the feather bed, protected from the bumps and jolts inevitable in even a carriage as finely sprung as the duke's. Elizabeth's eyes stung with gratitude and relief. Dr. Bergen, having settled into the seat opposite Elizabeth, opened a book and began to read. Elizabeth opened the window curtains, wanting a last look at the city she would likely never see again. 

London was shrouded in pre-dawn darkness, quiet save for the rattle of their carriage wheels upon the cobblestones. A waxing moon hung dull above the rooftops, providing only enough light to outline the coal smoke that snaked from the chimneys. Dogs barked as the carriage rolled by. A cat, slinking along a low wall on stealthy paws, paused to stare with yellow eyes. Its disinterested gaze pierced Elizabeth, awakening a deep loneliness. Over the years, as one death in her family had followed the next and their straitened means had forced them to move to a series of increasingly humbler lodgings, Elizabeth had lost touch with what friends she'd once possessed. Her time and energy had been completely consumed with the urgencies of surviving, of protecting and providing for her loved ones. Now she was leaving behind the city that had for so long been her home, and like the cat, no one in London would care that she had ever lived here at all. 

The close-set buildings of London gave way to the cottages of the suburbs. When those melted into the open fields and deafening quiet of the countryside, Elizabeth turned away from the window. 

"Is something wrong?" The doctor's accented voice startled Elizabeth. He'd been still for so long that she'd almost forgotten his presence. She'd been frowning down at her mother's peaceful form, but her mind had been on Lord Devlin and how he'd managed to avoid her once again.