How To School Your Scoundrel (14 page)

A vulgar curse passed above her aching head.

“I shall take the cost of the waistcoat out of your wages, Markham,” said the voice, and Luisa closed her eyes in profound relief.

A
woman sat next to her bed.

Luisa blinked her heavy eyelids to dispel the unfamiliar silhouette, but it persisted, unmoving, a dark-colored feminine blur against a darker background.

“Go away,” Luisa croaked. Her tongue was sticky and tasted sour.

The woman moved, and Luisa realized she was looking at her bowed head, topped by a tiny white cap.

“Oh! You’re awake,” the woman said.

“Yes, I am bloody well awake,” Luisa said, though the words didn’t quite sound the way she expected. They were low and raspy and slurred together, as if coming from a drunkard.

“Now, now,” the woman said. “Don’t try to speak.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Pamela, his lordship’s maid. He’ll be that happy you’re waking up at last.” The woman rose and placed her hand on Luisa’s forehead. She was wearing a plain dove gray uniform under a white apron, crisply ironed. The edge of her starched cuff brushed Luisa’s cheek. “The fever broke yesterday, thank the Lord.”

Something warm and wet was touching her hand. She moved her head and saw Quincy, licking her skin, his large ears pointing hopefully toward her.

Pamela gasped and waved her hands at the dog. “Oh! Shoo, now. Down you go. Haven’t I told you?”

“No, let him stay,” Luisa tried to say, but Quincy, apparently familiar with this particular interaction, had already jumped from the bed and retired somewhere in the room. His claws rattled on the floor nearby, and he heaved a canine sigh of some deep emotion, either relief or resignation.

“I’m thirsty,” she whispered.

“Of course you are, poor lamb.” The woman stretched her arm outside the boundary of Luisa’s vision. When it appeared again, she held a glass of water, which she pressed to Luisa’s lips. “Try this.”

Luisa sipped. The sweet taste made her want to cry with relief. She pushed forward desperately, until the liquid sloshed over her mouth and chin and dripped onto her chest.

“There, now.”

The glass of water disappeared and a linen cloth pressed against her skin. Anxiety replaced the momentary relief of the water, anxiety and confusion: Where was she? Who was she? What was she doing, what had happened?

She was Luisa. There was . . . something bad. Her sisters.

“My sisters.” She tried to raise her head, but her neck couldn’t take the strain.

“I don’t know anything about your sisters, dearie,” said Pamela. “His lordship might be able to tell you.”

“His lordship.”

“Lord Somerton.”

At the word
Somerton
, a dam cracked in Luisa’s brain. The study. The jewel box. Her disguise.

Olympia, Dingleby. Her sisters. Peter and her father.

Good God. Her
disguise
.

“Now you just lie there and rest,” Pamela said, rising from her seat, “and I’ll send word to his lordship that you’ve awakened at last.”

“No! No, I—”

The door opened, allowing a painful beam of daylight into the room. Luisa turned her head to the wall and its thick drapery.

“He’ll be right pleased, he will,” said Pamela. “He’s sat by your bed enough himself, watching you fight it off, delirium and all.”

“F-fight? Fight what?”

“Why, the typhoid, miss. A terrible case. We thought you was done for, all excepting his lordship.”

The door closed with a gentle click.

•   •   •

A
s a solitary boy—his sister and brother had both succumbed at early ages to the usual host of childhood diseases—the Earl of Somerton had learned every hill and stream of the family’s ancient Northamptonshire seat, every grove and pathway, every cottage and commons. In the meadow by the millpond he had run down his first fox (or rather, the hounds had) and been duly blooded by the master in the gory aftermath; in that fragrant hayrick in the shelter of Jacobs Hill he had carried on all summer with Bess, the young wife of Billy Sikes, who had farmed the Jacobs Hill land for forty years and who was as pleased as Punch with the strapping son born under his roof the following April. Somerton had been seventeen years old, and stunned to view the squalling black-haired consequence of his dalliance.
Isn’t he a fine strong lad?
Billy said proudly.
He’ll be taking on the farm after me, your lordship, you’ll see.

The hayrick was empty now, and the apple tree next to the door was just beginning to blossom. Somerton nudged his horse into a canter, as if he could outrun the memory. Little Billy had indeed taken over the farm on his eighteenth birthday, and his pink new wife was already expecting a baby of her own. Bess Sikes had written a letter to tell him the news; it had arrived two weeks before his fortieth birthday, when a man ought to be surrounded by his loving wife and children and a pair of slobbering hounds. Somerton had dictated a reply to Markham and told him to enclose a fifty-pound note as a present for the expectant parents. Markham had raised his eyebrows and done as he was told.

Her
eyebrows. As
she
was told.

The rush of blood began, as it always did when Markham returned to the forefront of his thoughts. He urged the horse faster, until the chimney peaks of Somerton Hall appeared over the rise of Jacobs Hill, and the old red bricks glowed like fire in the brash April sunshine. In the southeastern corner, the windows of Markham’s room flashed back the morning light. He would speak to the housekeeper and make certain the curtains were shut tight. The light hurt her eyes. They would open the windows for a bit in the late afternoon, when the sun had dropped on the other side of the house, so the air in the room could be freshened. He hated the smell of sickrooms, that scent of death and decay. Outside, the spring air was laden with new grass and clean rain, with life. That was what Markham needed.

He focused on these orderly details, as he had every day since he had brought her here over a month ago, shivering and burning with fever, muttering in delirium. He had left London because he couldn’t stay a moment longer, and Markham had paid the price: on the rattling train, on the rattling carriage, growing worse and worse every hour. He had carried her into her room himself, and called out for a doctor, and undressed her with his own hands . . .

Somerton’s hands clenched the reins, making the horse throw his head in annoyance. The remembered sight of her body still jolted his gut, the horror and wonder of her white breasts and the delicate flare of her hips, the snug drawstring of her plain linen drawers limp against her flat belly. The rage and pity at her deception, the beautiful and elegant mystery of her.

The stable yard lay to the left. He was off Byron’s back almost before the chestnut had stopped, and tossed the reins to the waiting groom. “Cool him down properly, mind you,” he said over his shoulder, and he strode to the broad white marble steps of Somerton Hall as fast as another man might run.

Would the fever return? It was often reduced in the morning, raising his hopes, only to rush back again at noon in an uncontrolled tide of shivering and delirium that no amount of heightened fire and added blankets could abate. Once, when no one else was nearby, he had climbed into the bed and held her hot body against his, until she stopped shaking and the only movement in the bed came from her chattering lips, the string of nonsensical words that streamed from her stricken brain.

But no. The fever had been gone for two days, and the doctor had assured him that Miss Markham had turned the corner, had passed the crisis. That she would be waking soon, that the period of convalescence had now begun. Somerton had stared at her motionless body, cradled by white sheets, her shaved head fragile against the pillow, and could not believe it. Could not quite trust that the corruption would not return to claim her again. Could not quite trust that this precious and necessary scrap of life had somehow prevailed.

His boots crashed against the step. He flung the door open before the footman could reach it first and hurried across the old stones to the grand staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

“Your lordship! Sir!” Pamela’s voice, high with animation.

Panic rushed through his veins. He stopped and spun around. “What is it?” he barked. “Is the fever returned?”

But Pamela was smiling at him, her plain face stretched to its utmost expression of delight. “No, sir! She’s awake! Just a moment ago, and I was off to find you—”

He was already bounding down the hallway, already crashing to a halt outside the familiar six-paneled door. His hand reached for the knob, cold and smooth beneath his skin. He closed his eyes and collected himself.

This would not do. This high pitch of emotion, he had to quell it.

He focused his mind on the size of the metal knob in his hand, on the unsatisfactory beat of his heart, far too quick. He gathered into himself the recollection of her deception, months long, and the games she had played with him. The various possibilities—Who had sent her? What was her purpose? How much harm had she done him?—all of which had served, in the many moments of stark fear that had overcome him in the past five weeks, to turn back the tide. To return him to reason. To place the cold hand of caution on his thumping heart.

He had felt this way before, he remembered. And he had married her.

This is your weakness. This is your peculiar susceptibility.

When he was sober once more, he pushed open the door. His hand tingled only a little.

Ah, then. He was not sober enough, apparently, to quell the surge of disappointment that engulfed his throat.

Pamela was wrong. Markham lay asleep, her exhausted head forming a deep hollow in the center of the pillow, at such an angle that he could see her pulse flicker in her neck. Her quick breath moved the sheets up and down, up and down. The room was still dark, still smelling of sickness.

He stepped closer, and the floorboard creaked beneath his heavy booted foot.

Markham’s eyelids fluttered, those impossibly thick eyelashes. How had he not seen through her disguise? He, of all people. He watched those eyes open, large and brown in her emaciated face, and he could not imagine her as a man.

He had been a fool, a fool, a fool.

“Sir?” she whispered.

The single word set off an instant chemical reaction inside him: joy and confusion and profound relief. It was true. She was alive.

She had deceived him.

She had redeemed him.

She was full of wiles. She was full of grace.

Who was she?

He rolled his thumb along the knob of his riding crop, which he still held in his right hand. “Well, well, Markham. It seems you have escaped death with your usual nimbleness. What have you to say for yourself?”

She wet her lips and considered him. “Where am I?”

“At Somerton Hall, of course.”

“You brought me here?”

“I did not have you sent in a box by parcel post,” he said. “It is now the beginning of April, Markham. You have, in the manner of the woodland beasts, slept right through the end of winter.”

She turned her head to the ceiling and squeezed her eyelids shut. A tiny dot of a tear tracked down the corner of her jaw, narrowly missing her ear. “I have failed,” she said, so softly he wasn’t quite certain he’d heard her properly.

He laid his crop atop the soft rolled arms of the chair in the corner, the chair in which he’d nodded asleep more than once in the past month. “You can thank me later, of course, for having saved your life and nursed you back to health, entirely at my own trouble and expense.”

“Thank you.”

“Ah, that’s better. Brimming over with the usual Markham gratefulness. Which reminds me.” He held up a finger, as if an idea had just occurred to him. “What the devil am I to call you now?
Mister
Markham being so singularly unsuited to your present state.”

“My present state?”

“My dear girl,” he said dryly, “I undressed you with my own hands.”

She rolled her head to look at him, and he could have sworn that she was blushing, had she any additional blood to spare for those pale cheeks. Her mouth formed a silent O of horror.

“I am devastated to perceive that you don’t remember,” he said. “Never mind. You were, I’m afraid, hardly in an aspect to inspire admiration.”

“Be quiet, for God’s sake,” she snapped, and turned away. Her hair was only half an inch long, a slightly darker auburn than it had been before, or perhaps it was only the dimness of the room these past five weeks.

“Ah! That’s the old Markham spirit. I’m glad to see it’s returned so quickly. Do you mind if I crack open the curtains a trifle? I find the sickroom air a bit oppressive.” He moved to the window, unable to bear the pathetic sight of her.

“Louisa,” she said. “My name is Louisa.”

He paused with one hand on the green damask drapery. “Louisa,” he repeated.

Louisa.
Her name. A common enough name. He had said it a thousand times before, never knowing it was hers. That she was the one true Louisa, the woman for whom the word was created.

He pushed back the curtain and looped the tasseled cord around it. The window was shut tight, with traces of condensation at the corners of the panes. He turned the latch with his thumb and thrust the bottom sash upward a few inches. A gust of fresh spring breeze invaded the room. A yip reached his ears; he looked down and saw Markham’s corgi at his feet, ears cocked, eyeing him with a certain air of smugness. “Have you a surname, Louisa?” he asked.