Devil in My Bed (12 page)

She spotted another door, at the end near Aidan’s room. It was concealed in the paneling like the entrance to the servant stairway. She doubted that Melody would have noticed it, but she was learning that there was little she could put past that clever little monkey.

The catch worked the same way as the servant stair, revealing another stair leading upward. Aidan’s room was on the top floor. Therefore, this must lead to the attic.

It looked dark and dusty, and she wasn’t fond of that creeping, hair-rising-on-the-back-of-her-neck feeling that attics and cellars always gave her, but she ought to check nonetheless.

Carefully leaving the door wide, she put one hand on the railing and went up the steps far enough for her eyes to clear the next floor. Yes, it was an attic—a very neglected attic, in fact. A few trunks and chests and a single bent coat tree loomed in the dimness, but the space was mostly bare. With all those empty rooms in the club, she supposed there was no shortage of storage. Why carry something all the way up here when one could dispose of it much closer?

Well, it was clear from the unblemished layer of dust on the floor that no little boots had scurried across it recently. Melody was not here.

Relieved, Madeleine descended the stairs quickly and pressed the concealed door shut behind her.

Gazing down the long hall to the draped window at the end, she saw no little feet poking out beneath the velvet.

But there were a few draped tables along the length, holding vases that no one bothered to fill any longer. With a sigh, Madeleine got on her knees before the first one and poked her head beneath the cloth. If someone were to come upon her now, they would see nothing but her rear end!

* * *

Aidan poked his head beneath the last tablecloth, aware that he presented a ridiculous picture of nothing but a perfectly tailored but rather dusty arse.

“Well, now. One doesn’t see this every day.”

Colin. Of course. Aidan closed his eyes in resignation. Crawling backward, for Melody was nowhere to be seen, he emerged from his search to see Colin standing next to him in the entrance hall.

Colin carried a cloth bag heavy and bumpy with the supplies he’d been sent for and wore an expression of dry amusement, his eyebrows high and his eyes glinting as he munched on a bun he’d purchased.

I’m never going to hear the end of this.

“You realized that you’re never going to hear the end of this, don’t you?”

Aidan straightened and took his time dusting off his knees, elbows, and rear. His panic warred with his pride. Admit to Colin that he couldn’t be left alone with a child for an afternoon? Or come up with some brilliant excuse for his bizarre behavior and retain a modicum of self-respect?

There was another possibility. He could run screaming from this place and this situation, board a ship to the Far East and become a bearded hermit who lived on rice and insects.

Tempting . . .

In the upper hallway, Madeleine stood frozen, her back to the wall, the large blue and white Chinese vase she’d just been peering into clutched to her bosom in panic. A bent and wobbly creature who could only be old Lord Aldrich slowly shuffled down the hall toward her.

She held her breath and prayed, however uncharitably, that the gnomish Aldrich was every bit as blind as Aidan had claimed. As he drew closer, he turned to peer closely at her, his rheumy eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles. Unmoving, her heart pounding in her ears, Madeleine waited for the outcry. A woman! A woman in the club!

Surely he wasn’t going to be willing to overlook her presence. Her throat dry, she tried to swallow, tried to form the words to beg his tolerance. He looked her up and down, his lips twisted in displeasure.

Oh, blast. Here it came.

“Hmph!” He sneered at her, speaking a bit too loudly, in the manner of those with loss of hearing. “Tatty bit of modern rubbish!”

I beg your pardon?

Aldrich winked.

Impossible. It must have been a twitch, a tic surely. Never a wink!

He grimaced and turned away, muttering. “Philistines. No one appreciates classical artistry any longer.”

He shuffled on, his cracked voice rising as he ranted to himself. “The Greeks—now that was sculpture!

The Romans, not bad, not bad . . . but the Byzantine era, lovely stuff, truly lovely stuff . . .”

Her breath leaving her in a long, painful wheeze, Madeleine let her frozen knees go. She slid down the wall, clutching her wonderful sculptural vase and giggling helplessly to herself. Sitting tailor fashion on the carpet, she leaned her head back against the wall and laughed until the tears she wasn’t prepared to admit to leaked from her eyes.

After a long, relieving moment, she wiped her cheeks, let out a breath, and regarded the vase fondly.

“Tatty modern rubbish, my hat!”

At that moment, she heard a giggle and looked up. There was someone tiny and clever hiding behind the drapery after all. She stood, returned the vase to its place on the hall table, and then peered behind the slightly balding blue velvet.

There was a window seat there—which was the first place she would have looked had she realized there was a deep embrasure!—and sitting quite comfortably upon it was Melody.

“There you are! You were supposed to be seeking, you imp! Have you been watching me all this time?”

Melody nodded, giggling. “You’re funny.”

Relief aside, now Madeleine remembered their need for secrecy. “Let’s get you back before someone sees you.” She swept Melody into her arms, sneaking a glance through the window at the street below.

Was it evening already?

People, men mostly, strolled by singly and in groups. This was St. James Street after all. None of them seemed inclined to look higher than themselves, and likely wouldn’t have been interested in the odd girl child hiding in a club window anyway. Relieved anew, Madeleine turned away.

Just as she did so, a movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She ducked to one side before peering out the window again. What she had thought was mere shadow within a doorway across the street had taken shape. Was that a man, gazing up at them? She blinked and peered closer but now could only see the slanting shadow of a doorway in the deepening dusk.

Her imagination was running wild again, just like a few moments ago when she’d thought it worthwhile to search inside a Chinese vase! At any rate, the shadow she had seen was tall and thin, not short and round like Critchley.

Now she must find a way to let Aidan know the search was over. Smiling, she thought she knew just the thing.

Colin was enjoying himself a little too much. “You can’t explain yourself at all, can you?”

Aidan fumed. Even so, he was ready to confess if it meant help finding Melody. He opened his mouth to tell all, but a sound distracted him.

Thump-thump-thump.

A shiny green apple leisurely bounced down the stairs and rolled to bump gently against Aidan’s boot.

Both men watched it spin slowly for a long moment.

Colin tilted his head. “And yet another sight one doesn’t see every day.”

Somehow it seems to make everything alright.

Melody was safely found. Clever Madeleine!

“Ah!” Aidan bent, snatched up the apple. “I wondered where that got to!” He rubbed it on his weskit and took a big bite. He raised a brow at Colin and swallowed. “Shall we retire?”

Colin eyed him narrowly. “Are you sure you want to eat that?”

“What do you mean?”

Colin gazed nonchalantly at the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know. It just occurred to me that you might want to resist temptation for a bit longer. Have you eased your doubts about Mrs. Chandler?”

Right. As Aidan followed Colin up the stairs, he chucked the apple into the nearest Chinese vase. The very last thing he needed was more temptation!

Back in Aidan’s rooms, while Colin displayed his trophies, Melody began tucking into the bread and cheese with the appetite that only being truly naughty could supply. Aidan waited impatiently for Colin to leave again so that he could speak to Madeleine about what had “never happened.”

Colin, however, was stubbornly refusing to take the hint.

“So tell me, Mrs. Chandler, about this woman you hired to nurse for Melody—did it not occur to you to wonder what would become of your child when you stopped sending her pay?”

Since this was a very good question and one that he himself had not remembered to ask, Aidan remained quiet.

After a quick glance at Melody to see that she was engrossed in her supper, Madeleine gazed evenly back at Colin for a long moment.

“When there is no more money, there is, undeniably, no more money,” she said, keeping her voice low.

Aidan had to admit she had a point. Madeleine had not been living high while her daughter stood neglected. They were both of them in need.

“But you were leaving,” Aidan felt compelled to say. “You said you were leaving London.”

Madeleine seemed to realize that she was not going to be able to avoid the questions and raised her chin nervously. “I hope—had hoped to find a better situation elsewhere.”

“Alone.” Colin’s flat tone showed what he thought of that.

Madeleine stared him down. “Do you think it would have been easier to do with a child to care for?”

Colin’s gaze narrowed. “You’re evasive.”

“Of course I am.” Madeleine’s gaze matched his. “You’re prying.”

Astonishing, to Aidan’s eyes, Colin was the first to look away. Madeleine might be many things, but weak wasn’t one of them.

“I don’t recall Aidan mentioning you when I knew him before, Sir Colin,” Madeleine said suddenly.

“When did you and Aidan become friends?”

Never, Aidan almost blurted, but that would have been rude. True, but rude.

Colin didn’t seem to mind being rude. “We aren’t,” he said tersely. “We simply have a friend in common.”

Madeleine smiled. “Jack.” She glanced at Aidan. “You spoke of him so often, I feel as though I know him.”

“You wouldn’t know him now,” Aidan said quietly from his place near Melody. “He has changed a great deal.” He stood abruptly and turned away to gaze out the window at the dark garden.

Madeleine made a low sound of dismay. “What did I say?”

Colin murmured a denial. “Jack has not been the same—”

Aidan interrupted without turning around. “Not since I abandoned him, left him to go to war alone.”

Colin raised his voice slightly. “You did not abandon him. You have an obligation to your estates and your dependents. It would have been irresponsible for you to leave them. Jack should not have followed that fool cousin of his when the idiot abandoned his responsibilities to go play soldier!”

Aidan closed his eyes against his own reflection in the window glass. “We had talked of becoming soldiers together someday, officers in our own regiment, but I knew I could never go to war. I knew it and Colin knew it as well, but Blakely was army mad and Jack was always at Blakely’s back, come hell or high water.”

Hell had come quickly enough. Two young aristocrats with forged commissions. What chance had they?

“Blakely never made it home from the bloodbath, and Jack came back a shadow of himself.” A gray, brooding, Jack-shaped reflection that never laughed again.

“Which is not your fault,” Colin repeated.

“So staunch,” murmured Aidan, “for someone who is not a friend.” He turned to see that Madeleine had left the room with Melody. Fixing Colin with his gaze, it occurred to him for the first time that Colin might blame himself for not being able to talk sense into Jack. “It wasn’t your fault, either, you know.”

Colin’s face was hard. “Wasn’t it?”

“It was Blakely’s fault for being a self-indulgent cretin.”

“I could have convinced him when you failed. I was too busy gloating over your failure and missed my last opportunity to speak to him.”

Aidan blinked. “You’ve been carrying that for three years? Colin, he wouldn’t have heard you. Blakely was going and there was no way to stop Jack from protecting Blakely.”

Colin scowled. “We ought to have shot Blakely in the foot.”

Aidan barked a short laugh. “Now you think of it.”

Colin gave an answering grim smile. “If he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him myself for forcing Jack over there and then dying in his arms, thus leaving the world to congratulate Jack for his ‘good fortune’ in inheriting Blakely’s entailment and estates. How is a fellow supposed to come back from that?”

Aidan had no answer. They both gazed into the fire but there were no answers there either.

In the bedchamber, after they’d both changed for bed, Madeleine tucked Melody into the center of the big mattress and snuggled Gordy Ann into the crook of her little arm. “Would you like Uncle Colin to buy you a real doll tomorrow?”

Melody tucked Gordy Ann beneath the coverlet, smoothing the crimson silk gently in imitation of what Madeleine had just done. “I don’t want a real doll.” Then she seemed to reconsider such a swift refusal.

“I want a kitten!”

Madeleine smiled. Best not to make promises she wouldn’t be here to keep. “I adore kittens. What is your favorite kind?”

“White,” Melody said decisively. “Black. Orange.”

“Do you know what I like?” Madeleine whispered. She leaned closer. “My favorite kind of kitten are the odd-looking ones. You know, the ones with big ears and crossed eyes and rather too much tail?”

Melody giggled. “I want one of those.”

Madeleine smiled. “That’s right, mousie. Don’t ever give up.” She leaned down to give the tiny girl a kiss.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world, but when she straightened, Melody was frowning at her.

“Maddie, are you really my mama?”

Madeleine pressed a palm over the twist of shame in her belly. Would the lies never end? “I . . .” She swallowed and smiled. “Today I was yours. May I be yours tomorrow as well?”

Melody thought about it for a moment. “Uncle Aidan is my papa.”

Madeleine smoothed back a curl from the pale little face. “I believe so, yes.” She wondered why Aidan hadn’t told Melody to call him “Papa”? Perhaps he was still afraid to let anyone in, even his own child.