Never a Gentleman (38 page)

Grace, though, felt unaccountably shy. It was a discussion she’d never thought to have, news she didn’t know how to deliver.
She was relieved of at least that by the simple expedient of being bent over the chamber pot when Olivia slipped into her
room.

“Grace?” she heard from the other side of the dressing room door. “Is that you I hear?”

Grace was in no position to answer. She must have made
enough noise to locate her, because suddenly Olivia was on her knees next to her with a damp rag in the cramped little room.

“Oh, my stars,” Olivia said, “what’s going on here?”

A silly question, Grace thought. She was on her hands and knees over a chamber pot. She nodded all the same. “I think… I think…”

She simply couldn’t say the words out loud, as if they alone had the power to burst the delicate soap bubble that was her
hope. It was something too great and too ephemeral at once, as fragile and wondrous and mysterious as the babe itself.

Amazingly, her friend understood. Reaching over to wipe at Grace’s forehead, Olivia began to chuckle. “Oh, I remember this
all too well. I thought I would end up seeing my liver in a bucket, I was so sick. But it passed. It always does.”

“I hope so,” Grace managed, eyes closed as she commanded her stomach to settle. “I feel like one giant cramp. Even my fingers
hurt.”

Olivia was still smiling. “You have simply been clutching too many chamber pots, my girl. Surely you’ve tried ginger.”

She nodded. “I believe I’ve consumed every grain in London. I pity the housewife who yearns for spice cake this week.”

Chuckling, Olivia handed her the rag and exchanged pots. “Well, then, we’ll have to think of something else. Have you seen
someone?”

Grace merely shook her head, grateful for Olivia’s brisk common sense.

“Well, that won’t do,” Olivia said. “We’ll call my own
physician, a wonderful man. Trained in Edinburgh. Once you see him, I think you’ll feel better about things.”

“I feel so overwhelmed,” Grace admitted, sitting back, the damp rag to her forehead. “What did you feel?”

Olivia plopped herself right down on the floor next to her. “Oh, Heavens. Excited and amazed and terrified and certain that
this had never happened to another woman in history.”

Grace nodded, hearing her own jumbled emotions put into words. “I can’t imagine going through this alone, as you did, Olivia.
You are the strongest woman I know.”

“Fiddle. You spent your life in the army. You know I’m not the only one who had a less than ideal time of it.”

To call Olivia’s ordeal “a less than ideal time of it” was the pinnacle of understatement. Olivia had been four months gone
when she’d been cast out of her home and forced to wander the back roads looking for work to support herself, although she
was a countess. There were times Grace still wondered that Olivia could forgive Jack for being party to it.

“Have you told Diccan yet?” Olivia asked.

“Not yet. I wanted to be sure, and… well, I wanted to speak with you, and we all needed to know what was going on with the
Lions.”

Abruptly Olivia climbed to her feet and held out a hand. “Well, about that, I know precious little more than you, except that
there are men patrolling the estate, and Jack won’t let me leave the grounds alone. But we can discuss that later. Right now,
we need to speak about you.” Helping Grace to her feet, Olivia steered her for the bedroom. “We’ll get Dr. Spence over first
thing tomorrow. After that, you need to tell Diccan, and we can go from there.”

Grace sighed. “That’s if Diccan comes. He wasn’t certain.”

Olivia sat her on a chaise by the window and draped a rug across Grace’s knees. “Which is, I’m sure, another subject we’ll
need to address. I’ll also want the whole story on how you ended up married to Diccan Hilliard. I imagine it’s a pip.”

“Yes.” Grace sighed. “I believe it is.”

Feeling wobbly as a three-day-old colt, she submitted to Olivia’s cosseting, for once too miserable to object. She completely
forgot her objections when Olivia arranged for a pot of tea and biscuits and settled into a nearby chair for a comfortable
coze. They talked for almost an hour about what was really important: how lucky Grace was, no matter how perilous her stomach
was.

Grace had hoped that her talk with Olivia would help settle her feelings. Instead it made them worse, sharpening her hope
and strengthening her fear. It was all becoming too much, a balloon of possibility that swelled to bursting inside her. She
didn’t know how to contain this much emotion.

Over the years, she had nurtured her own small dreams like a garden; tilling, planting, weeding, so that each dream had a
bit of room to grow. But this dream had been dropped full-blown into their midst, like a rock among fledgling plants, crushing
many, disrupting their orderly arrangement. She didn’t know if she could adapt the rest of her garden to it. Too many of her
little dreams were solitary ones. But maybe, she thought, she could save a few of those old, small dreams to support her in
this unknown venture.

Venture.

A baby.

Just the word took her breath away.

By the next morning, she thought she would explode if she didn’t work off some of her anxiety. She felt even sicker than the
day before, but she thought maybe it was the dreadful anticipation of seeing both the doctor and Diccan. She felt achy and
ill and so tired she wanted to lie back down for a week, her fingers cramping again. She swore her skin had taken on a slightly
green hue.

Surely not. She just felt green. She loathed feeling like that. So, just as she always had, she countered it with activity.
She wished she’d thought to have Epona brought to Sussex. A good ride might put her in a better frame of mind to face the
next few days. And even if she was… well, she’d never known a healthy woman to suffer from an easy canter. So she limped down
to the stable, collected George, and headed off on trails the stable lads pointed out. And ran smack into Mr. Carver.

She had been enjoying her ride. The morning air was unseasonably warm, and thick, boiling clouds had begun to collect above
the hills. There was weather coming, and it sent a bracing wind sweeping before it that whirled among the first falling leaves
and cooled her overwarm cheeks. Harps would have taken one look at the sky and warned of Wellington weather, those drenching
storms that seemed to accompany Wellington’s actions. The turbulent weather matched Grace’s mood.

“Rain’ll hold off,” George had said when he’d given her a leg up. “This’ll be an afternoon rain.”

She liked George. He was calm and quiet and watchful, and he had a smile like a child’s. Even better, he never insisted on
knowing what she was thinking. She wasn’t thinking anything. That was the point of a good ride.

Grace had just turned back at the River Arun, which
formed the eastern border of the estate, when her horse shied. She quickly compensated, figuring the skittish mare had been
spooked by flying leaves. But she saw what the horse had sensed. Another horse was tucked in a stand of alder trees.

George immediately urged his horse up next to her. The rider sat unmoving in the shadows.

“Mr. Carver?” she asked, slowing. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t seem at all perturbed that she’d seen him. “Watching.”

She gave George a quick look, to see him frowning. She knew how he felt. There was something very wrong about seeing Mr. Carver
here.

“You’re on private property, sir,” she said. “I’ll have to report this to Lord Gracechurch.”

“Do and I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a Crown investigation,” Mr. Carver said, sounding no less amiable. It
sent an odd shiver of loathing down her spine.

“Why? Because I won’t let you break the law of the land?”

“Because I need to watch your husband without interference.”

She turned, as if expecting to see the house from here. “Diccan’s here?”

“This half hour. Didn’t he tell you he was coming?”

Facing Mr. Carver, she straightened, which put her almost a head taller than he. “Oddly enough, Mr. Carver, I don’t believe
part of my wedding vows included sharing marital conversations with bureaucrats. But if that should change, I’ll be sure to
alert you right away.” And touching her riding crop to her shako, she wheeled her horse around and headed off.

Diccan had indeed arrived. She could tell the minute she walked into the house. It wasn’t simply the increased level of activity
that announced more guests; she could
feel
him, a snatch of lightning that flickered along her nerve endings. She swore if she sniffed the air, she could scent him.

It was Biddle she saw first, crossing the hall with a stack of shirts in hand.

“Biddle,” she greeted him with a smile. “It is good to see you. How have you been?”

Biddle turned distressed eyes on her. “I have been well, madame,” he said, sounding mournful. “Busy, of course.” He tilted
his head, just a bit. “I seem to be having quite a bit of trouble with Master’s neckcloths. They insist on becoming scorched.”

Grace wasn’t certain whether she wanted to smile or frown. How sweet. He was objecting to Diccan’s behavior in the only small
way a servant could. If only she wasn’t beginning to feel very unwell again, she would stay and share ideas for revenge. But
she thought that she had dealt with one too many traumas today, so she briefly laid her hand on the little valet’s arm.

“Biddle,” she said, so very tired of being pitied, “I would be sorely distressed if I learned that there had been a dimming
of your reputation as the finest valet in the British Isles. I would be even more distressed if I thought I bore any responsibility
for it.”

For a moment, she was actually afraid the stiff-rumped little man might weep. After everything she had tolerated over her
life, she stood in fear that this one thing could undo her. “Please, Biddle.”

His bow would have been worth of a royal introduction. “You are everything kind, madame.”

“Yes, Biddle,” she sighed, running the riding crop through her fingers, “I believe I must be. Or I would have given you suggestions
on how easy it would be to make starch into a penance.”

She smiled. He smiled. He didn’t mention the fact that Grace’s riding crop had Diccan’s initials stamped into the leather.
She didn’t ask after Diccan’s health. Maybe later, she thought, turning for her room. When she felt better. For now, it was
all she could do to make it to the chamber pot. She meant to climb into bed, but it seemed too far, and she was too tired.
She’d just rest on the floor for a moment.

Diccan wasn’t certain he could feel worse. He was exhausted, he was frustrated, and he was in sore need of counsel. On top
of that, his valet had turned on him, which meant that he couldn’t appear in anything that would require a neckcloth. And
he loathed Belcher neckerchiefs.

Not that he didn’t understand. Not that he didn’t sympathize. Biddle doted on Grace. In fact, the entire staff doted on her.
Hell,
he
was beginning to dote on her. But he hadn’t found the bedamned verse yet.

He couldn’t imagine one other item of Minette’s that he could possibly search. He couldn’t think of another way to get her
to betray just where the verse was. And he was getting damned tired of trying.

“Well,
there
you are,” he heard from the doorway to the study he’d slunk into.

Of course it was Kate, and she wasn’t looking pleased. He couldn’t even raise the energy to be cautious. “How nice to see
you, Kate. You look magnificent as ever.”

She swept up, glowing in a salmon frock that sported
more feathers than his mattress. “I look furious, and you know it. Where the bloody hell have you been? Don’t you know what
you’re doing?”

He was on his feet so fast she took a surprised step backwards. “Don’t,” he commanded, a finger in her face. “Just… don’t.”

Anyone else might have listened. Kate snorted like an overheated horse. “I kept my mouth shut when you started catting around
with that whore,” she said. “I didn’t even say anything to you when Grace gave up everything she loved just for you.”

“Everything she loved? What are you talking about?”

She tilted her head, obviously disbelieving. “You mean you didn’t know that she quit her volunteer work at the Army Hospital?
Or that she’s been yearning for the country?”

“I told her she could live in the country.”

She looked disgusted. “I’m sure you told her you’d be happy to accompany her.”

He didn’t have an answer to that, and she knew it.

“I do know you found out about Epona. Why bother bringing her horse when you deserted her so fast she couldn’t ride her? You
don’t see her having to face down the
ton
tabbies every time you don’t accompany her. She has to pretend that her husband isn’t publicly humiliating her by being seen
with a two-penny whore.”

“Kate,” he objected, turning away. “I’m much too tired to be berated for something I can do nothing about right now.”

He hadn’t known. Not really. He’d been trying to pretend it wasn’t so bad, because if it was, he wouldn’t be able to continue
being such a bastard. He would be consumed by the pain he was causing her. He’d grab Grace and run, just
like she wanted, far into the country where no one could follow, and he’d make it up to her.

Kate sighed. “I don’t suppose you could just tell us what’s going on.”

“Nothing,” he ground out, “is going on.”

“Causing more trouble, Katie?” a dust-dry voice asked beyond Kate.

She spun around as if the devil himself had spoken. “Why, Harry,” she greeted him, venom dripping from her voice. “How did
I know you’d be mixed up in this mess?”

Lidge stepped forward, his hands tucked into his pockets, a hacking jacket replacing his Rifleman’s uniform. His glare was
only degrees cooler than Kate’s. “Mixed up?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting skyward. “The only thing I’m mixed up in,
Your Grace
, is seeing a friend married.”

Kate waved him off like a pesky fly. “Oh, bollocks. If you’re here, you are, whether officially or not, a member of Drake’s
Rakes. Just when do all the men casually drift off to Jack’s office so you can plot in peace over whisky and those vile cigars
you brought back from the Peninsula?”