Lynne Connolly (19 page)

“I told you before. I don’t fight with boys. That hasn’t changed.”

I let out my breath in a silent sigh of relief.

Richard let his gaze linger on John. “I don’t fight with someone so vastly my inferior either.” John could take that as he would, but I knew Richard didn’t mean social differences. A clever remark, because people would take it according to their own beliefs and knowledge of my husband.

John slipped his hand into his breeches pocket and drew out a gleaming knife. I recognised it immediately. One of the knives my husband owned, made especially for him, the slim blade strong but flexible, the heft perfectly balanced for throwing or stabbing. And I knew where that knife had been. John opened the palm of his other hand, displaying the livid scar. He didn’t need to say anything.

Richard regarded the hand. “Very clean. You were lucky not to lose the use of the hand.” He’d thrown with precision, but to pin the hand to the table, not to preserve its use.

“I was. No thanks to you.”

Richard shrugged and took his attention from John, back to Julia. “I will ruin you for this.”

Her mouth twisted in a sneer. If she’d seen the way it appeared in a mirror, she’d probably stop doing it. Julia had a blonde, angelic beauty, dissipated by the signs of disease and overindulgence, signs that would increase in the future. “You can try. While I don’t have your title, I have the same money as you, and more.”

“I doubt that, unless you mean ready cash. But I tire of you and your spineless husband. You’ve done enough, and now, Julia, you’ll stop.”

She stepped forward, her hand raised to strike him as she had before with me. Richard let her think she would do it until the last moment, when in a blur of motion he lifted his hand and caught her wrist, the sound of flesh meeting flesh loud in the unnaturally quiet room. At the same time he moved to one side to avoid the knee she raised to catch him in the privates. He released her, pushing her away with the same movement, and dusted his hands off as if he’d touched something dirty.

Julia turned on Steven, and Richard laughed, mockingly. “Don’t look for support there. You’ve done your best to emasculate him, so you have the creature you made.”

Steven shrugged. “He’s right, in a way. I can’t think you’re worth damaging myself for, Julia. I don’t really care what you do, I’m leaving this club tonight for the last time.”

Richard smiled. “It’s growing far too serious, isn’t it? And serious can be so tedious.”

I heard the murmur behind him and I knew that particular
bon mot
would spread over the ballrooms of London. He’d killed Julia’s enterprise with a single sentence.

Not that she realised it, not yet. She sauntered back to the sofa, stood over me again. I chose not to flinch away. “She has the makings of a very fine muff-diver.” She positioned her muff very close to my face, and I had to concentrate to combat my rising nausea. “Would you like to demonstrate for your husband? I’m sure he’d enjoy it.”

“For God’s sake, Julia, the woman is ill. Leave her alone.” I wouldn’t have expected Steven to say that, but thinking back to his days as a curate in Devonshire, I imagined he might have found at least that amount of sympathy for his fellow man—or woman.

Richard’s attention immediately went to me. Without taking his eyes off me he said to one of the bullies behind him, “Find a cloak to cover her ladyship. I’ve had enough of this hellhole, and I’m taking her home.”

The man left.

John saw this as his chance. The blur of shining metal drew my notice as it caught the light of the lamp but not as quickly as it caught Richard’s. With a flash of steel, he threw the knife in his hand. He hardly seemed to move, but the knife embedded in John’s arm proved that he had.

Sound and movement erupted, as if everyone had let out a pent-up breath at the same time. Shocked exclamations blended with a smattering of ill-considered applause as word spread. Richard shrugged as if easing stiffness and walked away from the door as Julia screamed and headed towards the bed.

Richard knelt by the sofa. “We’ll leave as soon as I can get that cloak around you.”

I forced a smile but lost it when I saw his face turn murderous. I lay on my side facing him, concealing the bruise on my temple until I leaned back to look up at him. “No,” I said. “It was the ruffian who abducted me. Nobody here intended that.”

“She’s right.” Steven had joined us rather than attend to his wife and her lover. “I will seek him out and ensure he’s punished.”

“If I don’t mistake Julia, she’ll want to do that herself.” Richard spared Steven a glance. “You think to ingratiate yourself with me now? It won’t do any good, Drury. Leave.”

The final word damned him, and Steven accepted the order and went to the door, returning with a fine garment of black wool lined in red satin. A touch dramatic for my taste, but clean, warm and untainted by this room. Richard tucked it carefully around me. “Are you quite well enough for me to lift you?”

I didn’t nod, it would have hurt, but Richard placed a cool hand on my forehead. “You’re too warm. I’ll give you into Carier’s care when we return.”

He turned around, the skirts of his coat shielding me from view. I closed my eyes and opened them hurriedly when the world swam and I feared nausea again. Staring at the brilliants and seed pearls incorporated in the design of twining ivy on his coat helped my head settle.

“You’ve spoken to me,” he said to John. I listened, relieved to hear his voice more steady than before. “Never try to speak to me again. If I want to communicate with you, I will send for you. What you do from now on does not concern me. Touch my wife again, or have her touched, and I’ll kill you. Believe me, I don’t have to be alive to do that, so don’t consider killing me, either. My orders will be obeyed, whether I’m here to see them or not.” He’d progressed from not caring if he lived or died, to caring, because of me. I’d achieved something, then.

“If I want to speak to you, I’ll approach you. If I want to hurt you, I will. Your vaunted position can’t stop that.” I’d expected nothing less of John. Defiance seemed to be his basic nature. He’d die shrieking “No!” to heaven.

Richard didn’t bother to reply. He addressed Julia instead, blanking John as efficiently as if he’d already left the room, making his reply seem as petulant as a child stamping his foot.

“Julia, this must stop, you know that. This club will close, and while I’d rather you stopped wasting your father’s money in this way, I know you’ll want to continue. So I intend to have something done about the matter. You’ll be hearing from me.”

“I’m honoured.” Julia’s voice dripped acid.

Richard turned and faced me. I caught a glimpse of his face, frighteningly icy, rigid with tension until a spark of warmth entered his eyes and he became less the man I met in Hareton Abbey and more the man I knew now.

He bent and lifted me, and I tried very hard not to retch. Cradled next to his chest, I was tempted to close my eyes again, but I knew it would make my head spin, so I kept them open. The room was as still as a tableau, all eyes fixed on us. Several men I recognised from ballrooms and social events peered at me, but I stared back. They wanted a spectacle, they could have one.

I leaned back just enough to allow my hair to fall away from the bruise, and more than one pair of eyes flicked to look at it, then at Richard’s set face, then back again, with horror. Most knew what this meant. A declaration of war couldn’t be more blatant.

Chapter Twelve

The journey back to the house became torture. Even held on Richard’s lap, with his body cradling me from the jolts and ruts in the road that seemed magnified by our usually comfortable carriage, I moaned and retched my way back. Richard didn’t put me down once, and when he glanced away to look out of the window, I thought I caught the glimmer of a tear in his eye. Not for John, though. He had no one to weep for him, unless his sister chose to, and from his recent treatment of her, I doubted that.

Richard waited until the footman let the steps down. My husband carried me out of the carriage and into the house, straight up to my room. Nichols had already lowered the covers and Richard laid me on the clean sheets. I felt bereft when he let go of me, but I held back my whimper of protest. He stripped off his beautiful coat, flung it on to the nearest chair and stepped back to allow Carier to examine me.

I appreciated the gentle way those work-worn hands touched me. Carier had long since lost the rough skin of the military man—he handled too many fine fabrics to allow that—but he had scars and a strength a valet didn’t usually possess. He demonstrated it now. Strong and sure, he probed my wound but didn’t linger over the process. Then he pronounced what I already knew. “Concussion, ma’am. You must rest for a few days, and I think it best for someone to stay with you tonight and wake you at regular intervals.”

“Me,” Richard said. Who else?

“Bed for a few days. May I touch your belly or would you prefer me to call a physician?”

“Please, no physician, not unless I need one.”

I was more than happy to allow Carier to open his hand over my shift-covered belly until the baby decided to move. It didn’t take long and the movement was small, but reassuring. “Any discharge, my lady?”

I’d already checked, by the simple expedient of putting my hand there. “Nothing unusual.”

Carier gently drew the sheet over me. “Then I think you’ll do, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll be well in the next day or two.”

I caught a trace of concern in the deep-set eyes, but only what I’d expect when discovering concussion. They’d have to watch me carefully for a while, but I didn’t feel anything but that pounding headache, and that had abated a little.

They left the room while Nichols washed me and helped me into a soft silk night rail. I didn’t always wear them, even in this condition. Richard kept me warm at night. In winter we indulged in a fire in our room rather than resort to heavy, constraining bedclothes. Our joy in each other had never diminished, although at my marriage I’d assumed it would do so, in time. Never had I felt more glad to be proved wrong.

Richard returned, like me, dressed for bed. He turned around for me, showing off his pure white nightshirt, and smiled when I laughed, although I stopped abruptly when my head pounded.

“Not a style you think I could promote, you think?”

“Oh I don’t know about that.” When he stood between me and the candle on the night table, I could see the outline of his body, always worth it.

He laughed and climbed into bed. Nichols had stacked pillows up behind me so I sat up. I’d managed some lemon-flavoured barley water but nothing else, so she’d taken the tray away. I didn’t want to lie down just yet, so Richard sat next to me and took my hand. “I’ve set my watch to chime every hour. You’ll have to wake up when I ask. I’m sorry, my love.”

I smiled and shook my head, wincing when my bruise contacted the soft pillow. Immediately he was there, arm around my shoulders, supporting me as he always did. I turned a little so my temple wouldn’t touch him and leaned gratefully into his arms.

“My turn,” I said. I told him what had happened and who had touched me, and who hadn’t. “I’m sure she would have done, had you not arrived. I think Julia wanted me to join in the revels so that she had witnesses of it. To destroy you. John would have enjoyed that as well. But every time I moved, I felt ill. I was ill.”

“You’ve used vomit as a weapon before.” He stroked a strand of hair away from my forehead, so gently I hardly felt it. “Remember?”

I’d never forget, but neither would I allow him to dwell on that time. Tonight I’d been ill and annoyed, not terrified out of my mind. “Steven wouldn’t have allowed anything to happen to me.”

“He’s your saviour now?” The bitterness in his tone wasn’t aimed at me.

“He might have been tonight. He regrets the lengths Julia has gone to. He wants to stop it.”

Richard grunted. “Then he should do it. He has the means.”

Something occurred to me. “If someone tells him how to do it. He doesn’t have that kind of sense. He’ll bluster and bully when it suits him, but he’s not good at thinking things through.”

“Probably why he’s trying to escape now.”

“He wants an easy life. He doesn’t care for power games and control—he never did.”

He stroked my temple, the unhurt one. The soothing gesture improved the pain. Nichols had wanted me to take something, but I refused. I couldn’t have laudanum, it would send me to sleep and they had to keep me awake. People suffering from a blow to the head had been known to slip into a deep sleep they never woke from. They wouldn’t risk that with me. I’d be lucky to get any sleep at all tonight.

“We can use Steven.”

He didn’t cease his gentle caresses. “I know. I’ll arrange to meet him somewhere discreet. It goes against my instincts to do this, but I need to keep you and Helen safe and I need to get rid of this menace. I can’t avoid dealing with Julia any longer.”

I said the word I knew we both thought. “John?”

Richard sighed. “He has to go. You know that, Rose.”

Fear rose in my throat and I grew concerned for my stomach again. Richard didn’t let me speak.

“I’ve decided to put him in the way of the Press Gang, my love.”