Royal Regard (44 page)

“I will—” Slam. “Damn well—” Slam. “Kill
you—” Slam.

One of the soldiers had pushed his way to the
front of the crowd. “Your Grace!” he called out, trying to inject a
sense of law and order, but Nick’s murderous glare was all it took
for him
to
hold up his gloved hands in
front of his immaculate uniform and step away. In a haze of fury,
Nick went back to work on the semiconscious Frenchman, banging his
head against the floor in time with his screaming.

“Thrice-damned—” Slam. “Murderous—” Slam.
“Whoreson!” Slam.

At the last solid strike of skull against
floor, Malbourne stopped moving, but Nick could not bring himself
to end the beating.

“Wellbridge! Wellbridge! You’ve done your
worst. Stop.” At the risk of his own safety, Firthley had thrown
his arm across Nick’s chest, hauling his fists away from the
senseless man. “Let the king’s men take him,” he shouted next to
Nick’s ear. Everyone nearby stepped back, assuming they were about
to see a peer of the realm commit a second murder in as many
minutes.

Nick, still straddling Malbourne’s
motionless, breathless frame, and without quite understanding why
he shouldn’t also cause injury to Firthley, somehow knew he should
allow himself to be drawn away. Four more soldiers appeared at the
top of the stairs and the crowd reluctantly parted to let them
through. With one last hard strike of his boot against Malbourne’s
unmoving head, he finally saw the crowd of vulturous peasants
exchanging coin won or lost on how many minutes it would take Nick
to dispatch him.

Under the noise of men dragging Malbourne’s
carcass away, Nick was all but catatonic: he could force no sound
from his lips, no spark from his eye; every sound fell on deaf
ears. His shoulders slumped, bruised, bloody hands dropped like
anvils to his sides. He could barely bring himself to move, knowing
he would now be forced to live without his Bella.

While the soldiers cleared the final
onlookers from the room and hall and shut the door, Nick’s eyes
remained locked on the bloodstained bedcover and pillows. Firthley
snapped his fingers in front of Nick’s face, but he just stared,
not quite comprehending why the marquess needed his attention.

“Wellbridge!” Firthley was nothing more than
a buzz in his ear. “The Devil, Wellbridge, wake up!”
The blood.
By the Gods, the blood
. “She’s alive. He drugged her with
something, but she’s alive. Wellbridge!”

Nick’s head snapped up, eyes suddenly cleared
of the red haze, but vision jagged, afraid Firthley was a
hallucination, blood the only real thing in the room. “Alive?”

“Alive,” Firthley confirmed, searching Nick’s
face with apparent concern, probably for Nick’s faculties. With a
steadying hand, he continued, “Unconscious, but breathing. A split
on the side of her head. A great deal of bleeding, but it’s stopped
now, and obviously, she was sick at some point. Copious bruises,
but nothing broken I could see. He didn’t have time to—”

Nick tried to rip his sleeve from Firthley’s
hand, not sure why he wanted to be let loose, nor where he would go
if he could but clear his head enough to walk. When his knees
bobbled, Firthley placed his hand at Nick’s elbow to keep him on
his feet.

“Take a deep breath, Wellbridge. Breathe.”
Nick went along with this plan.
Breathe
. “Good. Keep
breathing. You butchered the Frog, so no use going after him again,
and the king’s men can wrap it up all right and tight without
you.”

No argument from Nick.
Keep breathing
,
he thought.
Keep breathing
.

“Prinny sent his guards and his own
physician, and he is looking at her now to decide if we can take
her home.”

“Home.”
Keep breathing
. “She’s
alive.”

“Yes, Wellbridge, she’s alive, which is more
than I can say for Malbourne. Let me take you to her.”

Nick allowed himself to be led downstairs and
through the taproom. The front door stood open, so many people
coming in and out that finally, someone had blocked it with a heavy
stone. Just outside, a town coach waited with six horses, six
outriders, and a royal crest. If Bella needed transport to London,
this was the transport he wanted her to have.
Breathe
.

Once past the front entry, Firthley explained
she was under guard in the owner’s quarters, being seen by the
physician and attended by the innkeeper’s wife. Their two rooms
were more comfortable than any of the guest rooms, the least of
which Malbourne had rented.

Nick pushed past Firthley, entering the room
without knocking, just in time to see the doctor shear Bella’s hair
away from a bloody three-inch gash on the side of her head. Nick
fell to his knees. “Dear God. Dear God, she can’t live.” Grasping
at her hand, Nick cared not a whit the doctor was trying to push
around him, until Firthley finally dragged Nick out of the way.

The doctor said, quietly, “We’ll keep her
here for now and see how she does.” He added, “It will be better
for me to do my work without the countess’s… ahem… family in the
room.” The man nudged Firthley and Nick into the hallway. “And
someone should fetch a vicar.” He shut them firmly outside the
door.

Nick’s legs buckled again at the thought of
Extreme Unction, but he managed to keep one hand on the wall as the
floor folded underneath him. With Firthley supporting one side, a
wall the other, and no one to observe him, Nick was able to right
himself without a complete loss of self-possession.

“I need to be seated, Firthley.”
Breathe
.

“You do.” Firthley agreed. He helped Nick to
a rough, wooden bench along the wall. “When you can walk again, the
innkeeper’s sitting room is about six steps away. We can shut the
door there and speak freely.”

As Firthley bent to ensure Nick’s balance,
one of the soldiers strode up, silently begging their attention.
The marquess straightened, taking up a defensive position
protecting Nick’s shaken dignity.
Breathe
. Nick rubbed at
the splotches of blood staining his hands, shirt, coat, and
trousers.
Breathe
.

“Your Lordship, Your Grace. Captain Darby. I
wished to report the death of the prisoner.” For the first time
since Bella had left his home, Nick felt himself smile.

“I see,” Firthley intoned, glancing sideways
at Nick.

“’Twas the butt of a gun, my lord. Trying to
escape a British officer is an exercise in poor judgment.” Being
killed in custody was all but legal. “The men concerned wished to
express their appreciation to Your Lordship and Your Grace for
voting last month to increase military pay.”

The bark of laughter from Nick’s throat felt
incongruous, but also like it might, with the least provocation,
continue indefinitely. He had traded that vote for one removing a
fair number of soldiers from Ireland, and his bill had failed in
the end.

Nick’s budding hysteria hung in the air until
Firthley answered, “Very good, Darby. I’ll let the king know what a
help you’ve been.”
Breathe, Wellbridge. Keep bloody
breathing
. “The duke and I need to discuss what he would like
to do next, but send for the vicar, and someone report to my wife
that the countess has been found. I’ll speak to you outside in ten
minutes.”

“It has been six days. Will she
never wake?” Nick begged rhetorically, turning away from Charlotte
to hide incipient tears. His head fell, listless, onto Bella’s
motionless shoulder, hoping against hope if he jostled her even
slightly, she would regain consciousness.

He needed no mirror to know his face was
creased and unshaven, eyes red-rimmed, broad frame missing half its
bulk, as though the flesh had followed his half-dead will to live,
leaving his dirty shirt to hang off his shoulders like a ship’s
flag in a ghost wind.

Once the doctor had settled her unresponsive
form at the Firthley’s townhouse and allowed visitors, Nick had
barely left the room but to use the chamber pot. The cheerful,
yellow, floral wallpaper mocked him every time his eyes focused
enough to take it in. His hand was always entwined with Bella’s; at
the moment, both hands, holding on like she was his life preserver.
Or rather, he was hers.

Charlotte tried to soothe Nick, her hand
patting his back. “She’ll be fine, Wellbridge. The doctor said
there was every reason to hope, and she’s so very strong.”

Firthley knocked lightly on the open door,
inviting himself in and sitting across the bed from them, the
candlewick spread as white as Bella’s face. He motioned to
Charlotte’s maid to adjust the curtains, as the afternoon sun would
soon be blinding.

Of the three in the room, Firthley was the
only one whose person was in any kind of order. As the functions of
government hadn’t ceased without Nick’s acknowledgement of them,
Firthley planned to attend The House of Lords in the afternoon, so
was flawlessly attired in a day suit of dark grey broadcloth with
black kid gloves, hair powdered in the fashion of the old men
Firthley aligned with in Parliament.

Charlotte, by contrast, may as well have been
dressed as a servant. Her faded cotton gown might have started
orange or yellow, now worn to the color of hay, the print blurred
and indistinct beneath a floor-length linen apron, stained and
spotted with the residue of a sickbed.

When he heard the choking sound in Nick’s
throat, Firthley stood. “Wellbridge, it’s time for a brandy. Past
time, in fact. You should be half-dead from drink by now.”

Nick looked up at him, confused and forlorn.
“A drink?”

“Yes, old man, a drink,” Firthley countered.
“You’ve spent almost a week alarmingly sober, and it’s time you act
like a proper Englishman, not a woman. Crying at her bedside. It’s
disgraceful. Bella needs a man, not a milksop.”

Nick’s shoulders straightened. “I am not a
milksop, Sir.”

“I have pistols in my study if you have the
bollocks to prove it—please excuse the indelicate language, my
dear.”

“Given the circumstance, husband, I think
it—”

“Come along, Your Grace.”

Charlotte objected, “Alexander, he is
only—”

“I’ll have no argument from you, Lady
Firthley. You’ve done more than enough, encouraging him in this
unseemly display. You may send a footman if there is a change.
Wellbridge?”

Charlotte merely huffed her strenuous
objection.

Nick stood, took a deep breath, and followed
Firthley out of the room, looking back over his shoulder. The
sunlight that had been about to light up Bella’s face was now
muted, leaving her in shadow. When he saw her shoulders twitch and
head loll to the side, he started to turn back, but Charlotte was
only adjusting the pillows. Firthley waited, tapping his toe.

Once he had closed the door, and as soon as
they were out of earshot, Firthley mumbled, “Apologies for the
slur, Wellbridge. Charlotte would never follow two men on the verge
of fisticuffs.” Nick nodded to acknowledge Firthley’s thin ruse,
but narrowed his eyes when the marquess followed with, “Though you
have been acting rather too womanish.”

Ignoring the insult, Nick asked, almost in a
whisper, “The burial is done, then?”

Firthley’s brow furrowed as he led Nick down
the hall, thick carpet muffling their steps. “It is, though I do
not look forward to Bella’s reaction when she hears. If the doctor
had any idea how long… well… I would have waited. It is an awful
betrayal of them both.” His stride hitched and he inhaled, then
exhaled, deeply. “If we only knew how long it will be until she
wakes.”

“If she does,” Nick mumbled.

Firthley straightened his shoulders and jaw.
“No need to be maudlin. She is yet breathing. It isn’t as though we
could keep her husband on ice much longer, and I had to consider
His Majesty’s schedule. He was quite insistent he attend before he
leaves for Brighton.”

“It pained me not to make the effort,
but—”

“But you were exactly where you should be:
tending to the living.” Firthley looked him up and down. “Not to
mention Charlotte would never let you leave the house,” he flicked
his hand toward Nick, “in that condition.” He coughed and sniffed
with his head turned studiously toward the wall, wrinkling his nose
against the days on end Nick hadn’t bathed.

When they reached Firthley’s study, the
butler, Corbel, poured two brandies while the two men sat, Firthley
behind his immaculate desk, Nick in front. Simply the placement of
the chair implied his status as visitor and would have made him
feel like a schoolboy, had Firthley’s expression not held so much
compassion. Nick eyed the more comfortable armchairs and tea table
across the room, nearer the hearth, but Firthley was obviously more
comfortable in the erstwhile position of power. Combined with the
censure over Nick’s “womanish” emotional display, this did not bode
particularly well.