Dangerous Diana (Brambridge Novel 3) (25 page)

“Err, yes?”

“Yes. Debs don’t go for the damaged man. They want a cad. Believe me, I know.”

Hades grimaced. He didn’t really want to follow this conversation down that path.

“It’s got to be a woman,” Freddie said, suddenly sitting up straight. He subsided backwards with a howl. “Oww my leg!” He rubbed gingerly at the elevated leg and stuffed his cheroot in his mouth, puffing hastily at the cigar.

“I’m not sure that is going to help you,” Hades said dryly.

“I don’t care,” Freddie said plaintively, “it takes my mind off the pain, just as you hope running away from your home will take your mind off whatever is bothering you there.”

“I never said that there was a woman in my home!” Hades said quickly.

Freddie looked up from rubbing his leg and gritted his cheroot between his teeth. “If you remember, neither did I!” he said hoarsely around the cigar. “But since there is a woman in your house that you have just admitted to, then tell me more about her?”

Hades hesitated. How could he describe the one woman that had finally trapped him, and that he feared would vanquish him?

“It can’t be a Cyprian,” Freddie mused into Hades’ silence. “I would have heard about that. Nor a deb, that would have caused a ton uproar, and there had barely been a murmur.” He looked into Hades’ face. “Now who have I seen you with recently? Hmm the last time I came to your house there was a lady there with an appointment. One who desperately wanted to leave…” He stopped as Hades’ took a deep breath. “That’s the one, isn’t it?” Freddie said with a chuckle. “Neither a deb nor a Cyprian, but she has had a hand in both. No family to be concerned for her and a history of causing chaos. My, my, Miss Sumner does have a lot to answer for.”

“She has been caught up in this business with the Viper,” Hades said tightly. “She is under my protection.”

“Is that what you call it?” Freddie said archly. “Hmm, I recall the same used to be said about men and their mistresses.”

“She is not my mistress, Freddie.” Hades banged the table.

“At least you didn’t plant me a facer like old Anglethorpe did to you when you insinuated something similar.”

“That was different.”

“Yes. You said that the light of his life was a spy.”

“I didn’t know that she was the light of his life at the time.”

“You have hardly claimed that Miss Sumner is the light of your life.”

“Well, what if she is?” Hades banged the table again defiantly. Freddie’s mouth dropped open. Hades clenched his fist on the table

“I don’t believe it,” exclaimed Freddie, “the mighty elephant, felled by 1816’s greatest beauty. I seem to remember you left her alone on the dance floor that year.”

“So did you,” Hades said plaintively. “I thought she was deaf and mute at the time.”

Freddie choked. “What? What! Ha! Oh ho.” Pulling a decanter of port closer to him, he poured a fresh glass and pushed it across the table at Hades. Hades picked it up willingly. Taking a sniff and a sip. he savored the mouthful. Freddie had chosen beautiful wine to get drunk on.

“What was your excuse?” Hades asked.

“My leg hurt. And she was too sympathetic.”

“Mmm. That sounds like Melissa. She is too kind for her own good. She’s moved her charity case couple into my house to teach Carlos and Charles how to cook.”

Freddie choked again. “I can’t wait till your mother meets her.”

“She already has,” Hades said, thinking of the walking stick he had dislodged from the table. “I haven’t plucked up the courage to go and see her yet.”

“What did Miss Sumner say about the encounter?”

“She didn’t. There wasn’t time.”

“Time before what?”

“Before I left.”

“Ha. I told you, you were running away.”

“Escaping.” Hades took a swig of his port. It really was rather good.

“Avoiding defeat?”

Hades nodded. Freddie was too perceptive, even when he was bosky.

“I’ve always rather thought,” Freddie said, “that some defeats could be perceived as victories.”

“My mother would agree with you there,” Hades said glumly, thinking of his book on Cicero.

“I mean, take for example some of our greatest defeats on the Peninsular. They only allowed us to regroup and take the final victory. I rather think love was a bit like that.”

Hades spat out his mouthful of port. “Hold on, I might have mentioned that she was the light of my life, but I said nothing about love.”

Freddie looked at him in surprise. “But isn’t this what this is all about?”

CHAPTER 26

Melissa stood glaring at the door that had been shut with a bang in her face. Her lips trembled, although she kept her shoulders straight. She could feel the moment coming when her glasses would begin to steam up as hot tears cascaded down her face. That would not happen to her. She folded her lip under her teeth and bit slowly. Ow, but that hurt. But it also worked. She swallowed and allowed the heat to fall away from her face before she turned round.

The smile Melissa gave to Carter was tremulous but seemed to work. His look of concern cleared slowly, although he kept darting her quick looks as if expecting her to crumble at any moment.

“May I be of any help, miss?” he enquired.

“No, I’m not sure you can,” Melissa murmured. “This is one instance, Carter, where no one can help me, but myself.”

Carter gave her a longer, harder look and proceeded to haul away the bags that Hades had left strewn across the hall.

Melissa needed time to think. She had been caught off guard by Hades. She didn’t quite know what she had wanted to say to him when she had laid her hand on his arm. She might have spilled it all out with a bald “I love you.” She cursed Lady Harding for putting the words into her head. But somehow, they filled her mind.

But would he have received it from her? This was the man who received love letters a plenty from all and sundry. A man whose heart had been broken and to hear it tell, would never be ready for another woman again.

What did she have that she could offer him? She had no family, no money, definitely no
breeding,
and to square it all off, she was being harassed by the Viper. Not to mention the fact that she had run away from Hades in Brambridge. Although, she acknowledged, running
to
his home did seem to rather cancel things out.

Never mind that he had now run away from her.

How could she make him see that all he needed was her, spectacles and all? Melissa looked into the study. She couldn’t think in there. The memory of their kiss was too strong in there. It would befuddle her mind.

The front room was off the cards because she had changed the curtains. It was silly, but she had done that in defiance. Not that he had said one word about it in the twenty minutes he had spent in his home, even though he must have seen the change from outside.

And then there was the dining room. The scene of their last encounter.

Her bedroom it was.

“I noticed you were hunting for some new books to read, miss?” Carter said as he came back into the hall to take away the final trunk. “His lordship brought some new ones in with him and left them on the table. I’m sure he won’t mind you looking through them.” Carter prodded at the sack on the hall table. “It doesn’t look too heavy…”

“It’s alright Carter, I’ll take them up to my room myself.”

“But won’t you sit in the study?”

“Not today. Please could you give an instruction that I’m not to be disturbed.”

“Of course. Would you care for us to bring you up a tray of food for dinner?”

Melissa nodded. She was sorry that she couldn’t do justice to Carlos and Charles’ new lease of cooking life, but she just wished to be shut away to lick her wounds in private.

She grabbed the saddlebag and bumped the books up the stairs. Her feet plodded up the steps like lead. She dropped the sack just inside her bedroom door and sat with a thump on the bed. Swinging her legs onto the counterpane, she lay back.

All of Melissa’s formative years had been dominated by her so-called mother. A mother who had eradicated most of her father’s influence from her life, but who had been unable to stop Melissa following in her father’s first love of plants.

And then along had come Edgar, and he and her mother had attempted to maneuver Melissa into marrying for their own gain.

At no point had she been supported, listened to, laughed with, or
wanted
for her sake.

But neither had she by Hades. He had concealed from her, used her for his own ends just like Edgar. But when she looked into his eyes… she knew he wanted her. She had seen the man in flames before he had quickly doused the fires with remarkable self-control. He had said that he wanted to protect her, and that those were the reasons for using her. And he had certainly listened to her.

Melissa choked back hysterical laughter that bubbled up through her body. The look on his face when on the very first day in his house she had refused to give up his large leather chair. She had been so incensed that he had had her blindfolded, banged in the head and left perched on the torturous library chair for two hours before he would let her go.

And yet he had not replaced the arrangement of the two chairs, nor moved her books where she left them. Her eyes wandered as she gazed around the room. How was she going to be able to tell this man that she believed she loved him?

She found herself gazing at the dressing table mirror and made a moue of disgust. Even this room wasn’t safe to think in. She could almost feel the hot touch of Hades’ fingers on her spine as he did up that infernal buttoned dress.

She had not got any further and she was still thinking about Hades in a most unhealthy manner. Melissa swung her legs back over the side of the bed and tottered over to the leather saddlebag.

As dusk pulled in, Melissa lit a candle and pulled the saddlebag onto the dressing room table. She pulled the leather straps of the bag nimbly through their clasps and pulled out the first parcel of books. Tugging tiredly at the string, she unwrapped the parcel, and lifted her candle to look at the top cover of the first book. She froze in disbelief and put the candle down again, casting the table into shade.

Melissa stood and marched from side to side in the room. A knock at the door and a shout of “Dinner!” came through the keyhole. But it barely stopped her. She had completed five relays before she gained enough courage to go back to the dressing table and sit down. She pulled the small vial of henbane out of her bodice and rolled it round in her fingers.

If she opened one of these books then she might find out who had been stalking her. But if she did open the book and find out, what would she do? She gazed at the bottle of henbane. All she had thought about until now was how to poison the Viper. But she knew now, now that she was coming so close to revealing his identity, that it was useless. She was a life giver, not someone who wanted to take it away. She had only ever wanted to help with her apothecary work, even if sometimes the patients had been ungrateful and complaining.

She pushed the small glass bottle onto the table and up against the mirror. She had been stupid to carry it so close to her body. What if the vial had cracked? She would have been done for. Although in the past death had seemed like a welcome alternative, now, strangely she passionately wanted to live.

The title of the first book in the parcel she had pulled from the saddle bag was ‘Birds of the Pyrenees” edited by Mr. L Trump. It was the sister book to those edited and created by her father downstairs. It was one of the books that she had used to weigh down her old flower press. How on earth had Hades got hold of them and why? Why on earth had he taken them all the way down to Brambridge with him?

With trembling hands, she forced open the spine and started to read. She read for an hour. Another two.

The candle started to sputter as she held it close to the end of the book. There was nothing there. She now knew more about the birds in the mountains than she had ever wanted to know, their Latin names, their bird calls, their plumage. And there had been
not a trace
of a diary.

Belatedly she remembered the dinner outside of her room. With a heavy heart she trudged to her bedroom door and opened it. The tray sat in front of the door, a monogrammed tureen upturned over the plate to keep it warm. She almost laughed. That had Mr. Hobbs’ hand all over it. She pulled the tureen off and gazed at the congealed gravy that had covered a nicely roasted pigeon breast with a potato dauphinoise. Melissa sniffed. There hadn’t been one good thing that had happened to her that day. In fact she would almost have welcomed another visit by Hades’ mother at that point.

“Can we get you something else, love?”

Melissa hadn’t noticed Mrs. Hobbs sitting a way down the hall, knitting quietly, Arturo’s small body lying at her feet. The spaniel got to his paws and wagged his tail as Melissa looked up. The sound of Mrs. Hobbs’ needles paused.

“Carter said that you looked a little peaky when the earl left.”

Melissa grabbed at her throat. “I think perhaps I haven’t been feeling very well.” She coughed unconvincingly. Arturo yipped and padded towards her.

Mrs. Hobbs made a ‘pshaw’ noise at the back of her throat and went back to clacking her needles. “You know I was just the same when I met Albert, Mr. Hobbs,” she said unexpectedly, stopping the needles and peering over towards Melissa. “I couldn’t work out if I wanted to throttle him or kiss him. And he
never
did what I wanted him to do.”

“Sounds like all the men I have ever known,” Melissa said defeatedly, patting Arturo as he leaned against her skirts.

“Ah, but you haven’t loved all those men like you love this one.”

“Pardon?” There were two more books in Melissa’s room that she needed to examine and Mrs. Hobbs wanted to talk about love? “Mrs. Hobbs, I would really appreciate some more dinner…”

But Mrs. Hobbs was acting as if she wasn’t listening. “And you must remember that you can’t force them to realize that they love you in return. It’s got to happen organeckly.”