Eloisa's Adventure (22 page)

Eloisa
felt physically sick at the depths of depravity to which Renwick
had sunk. While on the one hand she could understand anyone being
horrified at the thought of being marched to their death, stealing
someone else’s name, at the expense of their family, was
sickening.

Renwick
seemed to realise just how hopeless his situation was because he
suddenly turned pleading eyes on Simeon.

“If you
call the army, the whole story will hit the broadsheets and the
Calversham name will be brought into disrepute.” He flicked a
dismissive glance at Eloisa. “Do you think that anyone is going to
want to be aligned to a Calversham, even the godly Simeon, if you
have a deserter in your midst?” He shrugged unconcernedly, and his
voice turned cold and calculating. “After all, I will tell them
that you have known all along and been harbouring me here. I can
tell them all sorts of things, and it is just your word against
mine. I will make sure that I bring you down with me,
Simeon.”

Eloisa
glared balefully at him. “God, you will stop at nothing, will you?”
she whispered in horror. “How could you do that to your own
family?”

“I said
shut up!”
Renwick snarled. “This is family business, and
nothing to do with you.”

When
Eloisa tried to stand, Simeon tightened his hold on her fingers,
silently warning her to remain where she was.

“Leave
Eloisa alone,” he sighed darkly. “She is nothing to do with
you.”

“She is
your doxy.”

“I am no
such thing,” she protested, her eyes wide with
indignation.

“Eloisa
is not a doxy. She was thrown from a carriage and walked here
rather than die out in the storm.” Simeon looked his cousin
straight in the eye. “She is nothing but a mere spectator who has
been drawn here by circumstances that put her life at risk. She
didn’t ask to be scared witless by an unknown spectre standing over
her bed, or nearly killed by falling gargoyles. You have dragged
her into this by your actions, Renwick, so leave her the hell
alone.”

Eloisa’s
head swivelled back to Renwick. She leaned back in her chair when
she found him staring thoughtfully at her, and swallowed nervously.
It left her feeling somewhat bereft when Simeon released his hold
on her hand. She had no choice but to clasp her hands in her lap to
quell their shaking and wait to see what was decided. She knew that
she should leave. After all, Renwick was partly right in that this
was family business, but Simeon had made it clear that he wanted
her to remain where she was. Should she leave anyway?

Given
that Simeon had finally managed to get Renwick talking, she didn’t
want to do, or say, anything that would disturb them.

“I have
to report you to the army. My conscience won’t allow me to ignore
what you have done. The soldier whose identity you stole may have
family somewhere who are still waiting to hear news of him. It is
only right and proper that his demise should be reported, and that
unfortunately means that your treachery will be revealed. The
consequences are yours and yours alone. Whatever disrepute the
Calversham name is brought into because of your endeavours will
have to be endured, but at least our consciences will be clear. The
gossips will move on to new fodder eventually, and you will be
relegated to the annals of history as one of the family’s
descendants who nearly brought the family to ruination.”

When
Renwick opened his mouth to speak, Simeon threw him a warning look.
“There is no alternative given that you have broken into the castle
and tried to steal from me. I would have been prepared to ignore
all of that if you hadn’t tried to kill us with those
gargoyles.”

He threw
a considering glance at Eloisa before he turned back to his cousin.
“I want to live my life knowing that you are no longer a threat to
me, or my family. Given your penchant for turning up unannounced
and expecting people to give you money to pave your way in life, I
am going to put a stop to your endeavours here and now, Renwick. I
am not your father. I am going to live my life free of you and your
sordid little schemes.”

He stood
and stared dispassionately at the man who used to be his cousin. “I
hereby cast you out of the family, and will report you to the
authorities. Given that I have an innocent member of the public
with me, who has come to the castle to seek sanctuary, I am going
to keep you bound until you can be arrested. Until then, I think
that we have nothing else to say.”

“You
will not just hand me over to them,” Renwick declared
pompously.

He
glared at Eloisa with such hatred that she suddenly wanted to run
away. She had to remind herself that he was tied to the chair and
couldn’t hurt her. However, the urge to flee was so strong that she
suddenly wished that she had left at the very beginning of this
conversation, and not stayed to listen to their
conversation.

“I will
do as I damned well please,” Simeon countered flatly. “You are
certainly in no position to challenge me, now are you?”

He
turned toward Eloisa somewhat officiously and held his hand out.
“Please, my dear, it is time we went to find something to
eat.”

“You
can’t just leave me here like this,” Renwick protested as he
watched them make their way toward the door.

“I can,
and I will,” Simeon challenged. “Come on Eloisa, it looks like this
rain has started to die down now. It won’t be long before we can
get you home.”

The words ‘
where you belong’
hovered in the air between them but remained
unspoken. Eloisa glanced at Simeon as he led her out of the room
but, for the first time since the moment she first met him, his
face was closed to her. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, sad or
stunned. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to him
either.

“Where
did you leave the basket?” she asked quietly when they reached the
study. It was a relief to get to the other side of the house, and
Renwick’s repeated shouts for Simeon had been reduced to a dull
roar. Her head was starting to ache from the tumultuous events the
day had presented to her, but she knew that it was far from over
yet.

“It’s
going to thunder again,” she whispered when a flash of lightning
lashed across the sky.

Simeon
turned to look at the weather with total disinterest. He didn’t
really care what the weather was doing. He was too busy trying to
think of a way to get Eloisa as far away from Renwick as possible
while his cousin was restrained.

“I will
go and find the food. You stay here. I will be back in a moment,”
he murmured quietly before he let himself out.

He
closed the door on the sight of her standing looking lost and
forlorn in front of the fireplace. The urge to go back inside and
hold her was so strong that he kept his hand on the latch for
several moments. He hated the fact that she had just witnessed the
family’s catastrophic fall from grace, but there was nothing he
could do about it now. The soft sympathy on her beautiful features
was something that galled him as well as touched him. Even after
having had her life thrown into turmoil, she still had empathy for
someone else’s plight. Her kindness and generosity nearly unmanned
him.

He
realised then that Eloisa had come to mean more to him than any
woman he had ever met in his entire life. Her beauty; her
compassion; her feisty logic, all of it was combined to create a
delicate creature who appeared to be fiercely proud and
extraordinary compassionate all at the same time.

“Damn
it,” he snarled when the cold reality of the latest news began to
sink in.

Given
Renwick’s revelations, the Calversham family were heading for
troubled times. Renwick was right in that the family name would be
cast into ill-repute because of what he had done. Not only that,
but there would be the scandal of George’s murder to contend with
as well.

What he
had to decide now was whether he could bring himself to sever all
contact with Eloisa until the trouble blew over so she wouldn’t be
dragged into it. Whatever he decided, he knew that when she left
Mitchelham, she was going to take a very large part of him with
her.

Later
that night, Simeon closed the door on the sound of Renwick’s
epithets and snorted in disgust. It was still hard to believe that
he was related to such a wastrel. His cousin had always been a
complete stranger to Simeon in many ways, but never more so than
now. It was going to be a relief when he could hand Renwick over
and turn his back on the whole sorry mess.

That
thought was quickly followed by the problem of what he should do
about Eloisa. While turning away from Renwick Calversham was no
loss, dropping Eloisa off at home never to see her again would not
be so easy. They had only known each other for a handful of days,
yet she had become an integral part of his life. He rather
suspected he would find difficult to live without her.

Could he
simply drop her off at home and forget all about her, even if it
was to protect her from the worst of the family scandal?

It still
irked him to think that she was so determined to go to a ball that
she was prepared to remain in the garden in order to dance to the
beautiful music. Eloisa deserved the very best that life could
offer. She deserved to be courted properly and wined and dined by
someone who could offer her a life free of scandal and censure. At
the moment, because of Renwick’s behaviour, Simeon was not that
man. Could he live with the thought that he had cheated Eloisa out
of the life she deserved if he continued to pursue her knowing he
was bringing her into a ruined family that would be shunned by
society?

They certainly wouldn’t be welcome at the balls of any of
Simeon’s acquaintances, that was for certain. He wouldn’t be sorry
to see the back of the
Ton
, but did that mean he should
deprive Eloisa of the chance to move amongst them? He had no doubt
that someone like Eloisa, even dancing outside, would not go
unnoticed. She was beautiful, and would attract many suitors. Could
he sit back and allow someone else to claim the woman he knew
should be his?

Weighed
down by the sheer volume of problems that battered him, Simeon put
the basket he carried onto the floor and sat on one of the steps on
the main staircase. Now that he was alone, he could allow his
thoughts to settle. To his disgust, it wasn’t as easy as he had
hoped.

After
several moments of quiet contemplation, he found it impossible to
think logically because his heart kept getting in the way. The urge
to stalk into the study and find Eloisa so he could plunder until
he could forget all of his troubles was so very tempting. However,
he just couldn’t bring himself to be that selfish.

The
gentle image of her standing so proudly, yet looking so lost and
alone in the room pushed him to his feet. He picked up the basket
and went in search of her. When he pushed the door open, his eyes
widened at the sight that met his gaze. He didn’t get the chance to
do, or say, anything before pain exploded in his head, and the
world went black.

He woke
some time later feeling incredibly warm. His first thought was for
the beads of sweat on his brow. He tried to grab the collar of his
shirt to haul it over his head only to find that his hands wouldn’t
work. When he tried to frown, the dull throbbing at the back of his
head increased with such ferocity that he suddenly felt
sick.

“Try to
keep still.”

His eyes
popped open at the sound of Eloisa’s melodic voice so close to his
ear. The fear in her eyes warned him that they were in danger even
before she said anything else. It was only when she cast a furtive
glance over his shoulder that he realised they both had their hands
tied behind their backs. They were lying facing each other in front
of the fire in the study.

The
sudden recollection of seeing Eloisa lying before the fire suddenly
flashed in his mind, and he realised then what had
happened.

“Renwick,” he breathed, but it wasn’t a question.

Eloisa’s
nod barely happened, but Simeon saw the minutest movement of her
head anyway.

They
stared at each other mutely. Eloisa tried to ignore the sight of
Renwick sitting behind the desk with his boots propped up on the
dusty surface. She didn’t want the horrible brute to know that
Simeon was now awake. Somehow she knew that Renwick would enjoy
Simeon being at his mercy. She couldn’t bear to think about what
brutality Simeon would have to endure at Renwick’s
hands.

“How
long have I been unconscious?”

“About
an hour,” Eloisa breathed. “He is behind the desk right now, eating
the contents of one of the baskets.”

Without
moving his head, Simeon looked over his shoulder at the narrow
crack in the secret door that sat mere feet from them. He judged it
was too far away for them to reach it before Renwick would get them
and mentally cursed their luck. They were well and truly
stuck.

Eloisa
had never been as terrified as she had been when Simeon had
collapsed onto the floor. She had watched him fall and felt as
though her heart had been ripped out of her chest. She wanted to
run to him to see for herself that he was still alive.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to move for the tight bindings
Renwick had callously put around her wrists. To be able to look
into Simeon’s eyes now and speak to him was a boon to her shattered
wits.