Grace (23 page)

“Quite a fetching picture, my dear,” drawled Trevor sarcastically at the motionless figure on the bed.

“My lord,” Aunt Cleo began, then gasped in alarmed outrage
as Trevor snatched back the coverlet and unceremoniously jerked Grace to a sitting position. The horrified look on his face when he felt the shocking heat emanating from the limp form he held did nothing to appease Cleo Egerton’s righteous fury. She drew herself up indignantly and, without warning, smartly whacked him on the head with the shining silver knob at the end of her cane. She marched around the bed, brandishing the ebony stick like a weapon. “Who do you think you are, young man, to come bursting into this room abusing my niece, who has done nothing to deserve it, save for the fact that she may have somehow inconvenienced you with her illness? Just what gives you the right—”

“I have every right where Grace is concerned, my lady,” Trevor cut in tautly, forgetting for the moment that none of the occupants of this room knew of the secret betrothal between Grace and himself.

“Pah!” Cleo thumped the floor with her cane for emphasis. “Because of some silly, ill-advised wager you made with her? I don’t think so.”

“No,” said Trevor, his jaw clenched. “It is much more complicated than that.” At a small rustling sound, his eyes snapped back to the bed where Grace was thrashing fitfully. He turned his back on Cleo and bent with growing concern and sudden fear over the bed. Grace looked so frighteningly pale. The unnamed gentleman had moved to her side and tried to coax her into drinking something from a spoon.

“Who are you?” Trevor asked in a tone bristling with animosity. An unwanted surge of jealousy coursed from nowhere through his veins.

The stranger looked up for a moment at the tall, ominous-looking earl. Unconcerned, he returned his attention to Grace. “I am Dr. Wyatt,” he said. He added a belated, “my lord,” after a sizable pause.

Trevor looked as though he intended to say something else, but Lady Egerton chose that moment to remind him of her presence by poking him sharply in the side with her cane. “Have you had an edifying look at my niece, young man?” Cleo barked at him. Trevor raised his eyebrows.

“Good,” she continued, as if he had answered. She swept her cane toward the door in blatant command. “Now get out!” When Trevor did not move, she swung the cane at his shoulder, intending to batter him out the door if necessary. He caught the end firmly and held on, staring down its shining length at the furious older lady. When Cleo raised her chin and stared fiercely back in a way that poignantly reminded him of some of his more fiery encounters with Grace, the sheer absurdity of the situation struck him. Despite the dire circumstances, a rueful smile lit his features as he contemplated how ridiculous he must look, locked in battle with a woman twice his age and half his size. He released Cleo’s cane and gave her a mocking bow of exaggerated gallantry.

“As you wish, my lady,” he said, and bestowed upon her the lazy smile that never failed to charm women of all ages.

Cleo slowly lowered her cane. Against her will, she felt herself soften with the warmth of his gaze. She beckoned to Faith, who stood quietly near the door. “Take Lord Caldwell down to the yellow salon, dear. He can wait there for news of Grace’s condition.” With a nod of regal dismissal, she walked back around the bed to take up her former position, her remaining anger dissolving into renewed concern as she reached out and took Grace’s small, hot hand between hers.

The earl gave the motionless figure on the bed a final, lingering look. “Will she be all right?” he asked Dr. Wyatt in a gruff voice, pinning the young physician with his eyes.

“We’ll know more in a few hours, if her fever breaks.” The worry he saw on Trevor’s aristocratic face tugged at him,
and he added gently, “There’s nothing you can do here, my lord.” Trevor slowly nodded and reluctantly left, followed immediately by Faith.

“What happened?” he asked quietly when they reached the hall, his face sober as he recalled the way Grace’s hot, limp body had felt in his arms. A shudder went through him at the thought of the possible outcome of this sudden illness.

Faith stole a glance at him, noting the expressionless mask hiding his tortured thoughts. “We don’t know,” she said haltingly, her beautiful face haunted. “I heard a strange thud from Grace’s room last night, only moments after we had returned home. Since I didn’t think that you had brought her home yet, I went into her room to investigate and found her lying unconscious on the floor by the window. By the time Dr. Wyatt arrived, she was burning with fever and mumbling incoherently.”

“Has she regained consciousness at all?” Trevor asked. His alarm escalated.

Faith wrung her hands in an uncharacteristic outward show of emotion, emphasizing to Trevor the seriousness of the illness. “For a while after Dr. Wyatt arrived, she was talking strangely, mostly about things she did when we were children. Dr. Wyatt said the fever was making her delirious.”

They had descended the staircase and walked across the foyer while they talked. Trevor fell silent as they entered the salon. O’Reilly appeared. “Can I get you some refreshment, my lord?” The footman hovered nervously, hoping to undo whatever damage he had done earlier with his bungled answers to Trevor’s questions.

Trevor started to shake his head in the negative, then abruptly changed his mind. Something to drink might help dull the deep dread that had begun to quake through him. “Brandy, please,” he told the footman. He crossed the room and stood gazing out the window to the busy street below,
his thoughts returning to the previous evening. Grace had seemed fine, as cheerful as ever, almost shy in the glow of her new feelings for him. He saw her standing on the Corwins’ terrace, her beautiful face aglow when she realized he had come looking for her. In retrospect, he thought that her eyes might have looked a little overbright, her smile a bit forced, facts he had noticed and attributed to an awakening awareness of what they had begun to mean to each other.

Faith stood silently aside, watching the emotions play across his handsome face. He cleared his throat in the stillness. “Did she ask for me?” he asked without turning, his profile impassive.

Although he asked the question quietly and without emotion, Faith sensed how very much her answer meant to Trevor. She looked at his ramrod-straight back, then at the muscle working in his jaw, betraying the growing fear he tried so valiantly to hide. Her tender young heart went out to him as she realized that he cared about the answer a great deal more than he wanted to admit. Knowing the proud man standing with his back to her would prefer simple truth over conjecture as to why Grace had not asked for him, Faith said, “No, my lord. She didn’t ask for anybody.”

“Thank you,” he replied quietly after a moment’s pause; then he resolutely turned and faced her. “You’ll send immediate word if there’s any change.” It was a command, not a question. Faith nodded, then silently disappeared, leaving Trevor to wait alone in tense resignation.

He sat, at first, with apparent patience and outward composure, as the endless minutes dragged by. Before long he was drumming his fingers on the marble-topped table beside the gold damask-covered chair upon which he sat. When he caught himself doing so, he forced his hand to still, then sat quietly for a few minutes more. Inevitably, though, his mind returned to Grace, his heart lurching
again in remembered shock at the way her limp, hot body had felt.

With a muffled curse at his once-again-drumming fingers, Trevor stood and began pacing the room, no longer caring if someone walked in and witnessed his growing agitation. He jumped at each noise he heard in the hall, turning to receive news, good or bad, with an underlying sense of dread. Each time, the noise he heard had a perfectly plausible explanation: a servant in the hall, going about his daily duties, or the rattle of a conveyance going by on the street.

After waiting for nearly two hours without word, Trevor finally lost patience. He strode to the closed doors of the salon and jerked them open, sending them crashing back against the fabric-covered walls. Servants materialized from everywhere as the resounding noise echoed in the tomblike silence of the worried household. “O’Reilly!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

The stout little footman magically appeared, running down the hall as quickly as his short, bowed legs would carry him. He skidded to a halt in front of the earl, trying to bow and keep his balance at the same time. “Yes, my lord?” he inquired breathlessly.

Trevor glared down at the small man. “I’ve heard nothing of Miss Grace’s condition.”

“I’m sorry, my lord. Word has not yet been sent.”

Trevor clenched his teeth in an effort to control his angry frustration. “I want someone sent up immediately to inquire as to how she is doing.” O’Reilly nodded, turning at once to go up himself.

“O’Reilly!” The servant halted at the sharply barked command, obediently turning to face the glowering earl once more. Trevor strode across the floor to tower over the quaking footman. “I also want a report on her condition, changed or unchanged, every fifteen minutes,” he added. “I want to
know if she improves or if she does not. If she so much as coughs, I want to know about it. Furthermore—”

“Furthermore, young man, if you feel you simply
must
exert your authority, I’ll thank you to do it elsewhere. There is no need to bully
my
servants when you have perfectly good ones of your own.”

Trevor spun at the sound of the outrageous harridan’s voice. Cleo stood regally on the landing with Faith, one hand resting on her niece’s arm, the other clutching the silver-topped walking stick she had used so effectively on Trevor’s head two hours earlier. He looked up at her, his eyes anxious.

Faith looked at Trevor’s grim, set face and took pity on him. “The fever has broken, my lord,” she said in her calm, low-pitched voice. “Grace is resting quietly now, and Dr. Wyatt hopes she will improve from here.”

Trevor hesitated for a split second, staring up at the ladies in momentary disbelief, then vaulted up the stairs. He pushed past Aunt Cleo and Faith and ran up the second flight of stairs, disappearing down the hall in the direction of Grace’s bedchamber. Faith turned, moving immediately to follow him, but her aunt’s firm pressure on her arm forestalled her. “Let him go,” Cleo said quietly.

“But it’s hardly proper for him to be alone with her in her chamber,” protested the ever-correct Faith, already envisioning the sort of gossip that could arise from this situation.

“Dr. Wyatt is with her. Besides, he’ll do nothing to harm Grace or to hurt her reputation,” Cleo pointed out with a satisfied smile. “He’s in love with her, you know.”

Faith smiled too. “Well that’s just as well,” she remarked, helping her exhausted aunt down the last few steps to the foyer, “for she loves him, too, although I doubt you’ll ever get either of them to be the first to admit it to the other.”

Cleo patted Faith’s smooth white hand with assurance. “But when they do . . .” She smiled with remembered joy at
the deep love she had felt for her husband for the many years they had shared before he died. She knew she would look forward to watching such a love unfold once more in Trevor and Grace.

G
race blinked rapidly. The bright afternoon sunlight slanting in the west window bathed the room in a golden glow that hurt her eyes and set a dull ache throbbing in her head. A tall, dark figure stood quietly beside her bed, frustratingly blurred beyond recognition. Her efforts to try to focus upon his face created a sharp, agonizing pain that felt as though it would split her forehead in two. She closed her eyes for a moment of blessed darkness, waiting for the horrible pain to subside. When it finally did, she slowly and timorously reopened her eyes, cautiously allowing them to adjust to the daylight before trying to use them again.

Slowly the room swam into focus. Gingerly she turned her head on the pillow toward the person she had seen moments before. Although she could now see him clearly, she still did not recognize him. He smiled down at her, and she automatically began to smile back before she realized, with horror, that she was in her bed, clad only in her night-clothes, and that a perfect stranger—an unknown
man,
for that matter—was the only other occupant of the room.

Uncharacteristic terror filled her enormous blue eyes as she tried to push herself into a sitting position. She found, to her dismay, that she was weak as a kitten, unable to do more than raise her throbbing head a fraction of an inch
from the pillow. She looked a little frantically toward the bellpull that seemed miles away across the room, wishing she could somehow reach it to summon someone to come help her.

The strange man followed her frightened gaze, realized the reason for her trepidation, and hastened over to pull the golden rope himself. “Please don’t be frightened, Miss Ackerly. I’m your physician, Dr. Wyatt. You’ve been quite a sick young lady, I’m afraid.”

His quiet voice was kind and reassuring, but still Grace kept a wary eye on him until Faith came hurtling into the room a moment later. At the sight, Grace’s eyes widened yet again. In all her life she could never remember Faith hurtling anywhere. When she saw Grace watching her alertly, her sister calmed down and approached a bit more sedately. She perched gingerly on the edge of the bed and took Grace’s hand in hers with a gentle smile.