The Captive (20 page)

He knelt up, the better to get at the tangled roots and leaves, and started working back against the old stone wall surrounding the family plots. The roots erupted from the ground, a twisted, gnarled puzzle that seemed to him in want of a few good swats with the sharp side of a shovel.

“You have to be patient,” she said. “Think of them as ailing, in need of tender care.”

He sat back, rows and rows of stretchers in his mind’s eye, the groaning of the dying in his ears alongside the silence of the dead and nearly dead. And the stench…

Why
today?
Why the hell did these ghosts have to walk today?

“Was Helene truly prostrate with grief?” The question was out, a means of keeping his morbid imagination from dwelling on battle horrors.

“I was here,” the countess said, setting a dirty white root aside and using her gloved fingers to pry at another. “She’d brought herself nearly to exhaustion fretting over Evan. Easterbrook was very concerned for her.”

“She nursed Evan herself?”

While Christian battled an ache in his fingers, Gilly tugged the root from the choke hold of its neighbors. “She hadn’t the patience, but she fretted nonetheless, looked in on him constantly, spent a great deal of time trying to write to you and ask you to come home.”

“I would have come.” He would have, had he not already been taken captive. Odd, how life could time tragedies for the most exquisite complement of sorrow.

“You would have,” the countess said, setting the second root aside. “Even Greendale didn’t grouse when I told him I was going to her. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to cope.”

“Life hadn’t asked much of Helene to that point,” he said, seeing for the first time that Helene had been closer to childhood than adulthood when he’d married her. Not a woman with a great deal of personal fortitude, certainly not prepared to be a duchess.

And it wasn’t her fault, any more than captivity had been his.

“Helene excelled at being pampered and indulged, a disservice often inflicted on a young woman with abundant beauty.” The countess bent over the flower bed to get a better angle with her hand spade. “But when Evan didn’t rally, Helene blamed herself. In her mind, if she hadn’t sent you away, God would not have punished her by taking her child.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it, how we manufacture guilt to fit most any occasion? Everybody dies.”

She peered up at him over her shoulder. “You blame yourself.” She sat up and took off her gloves. “Oh, Christian…”

He stared straight ahead, seeing the dank, dark walls of the dungeon where he’d been held all those months.

“Girard explained my situation as a choice.” His own voice sounded far away, detached. “I could spare the lives of countless men by keeping my silence, but he promised assassins would see to the death of my wife and my heir did I keep my peace. He could describe the English countryside as if he’d ridden it himself, as if…” Christian frowned down at the tool in his hand. What was he supposed to do with it?

“And if you had told him what he wanted to know?”

“My men would die, and many others with them. Thousands.”

She made a sound of muted horror and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“My family was innocent,” he said. “I did not kill them. Girard’s threats were merely an obscene coincidence, and he stopped making them early in my captivity—they were simply one taunt among his arsenal of torments. I know that, but I should have been here. If I’d been here, Evan would not have taken a chill, or fallen ill, and Helene would not have done what she did.”

He recited his conclusion woodenly. He’d fashioned it in his mind weeks ago, when Easterbrook had first explained that both the duchess and the heir had died, and in Christian’s mind, the
mea
culpa
had sounded smooth, like a catechism. Spoken aloud on a pretty summer day, the words had no sense, but were still somehow compelling.

“Helene was liberal in her use of laudanum,” Gilly said. “You know this. Think back, Your Grace. She threatened to use it on her wedding night.”

He regarded the unearthed irises in a growing pile on the countess’s blanket. Helene
had
used a little of the poppy on their wedding night, and been a relaxed bride as a result. He’d wondered why all nervous brides didn’t use the same trick.

“But if I had been here, I would have watched over the boy,” he said, and this was the demon that plagued him the worst. An adult woman could be trusted to look after her own interests, her own health, not so a toddling infant.

“You said yourself you were banished from the nursery.” Gilly rubbed the center of his back, where a cold tightness dwelled regardless of the pretty day. “The weather was not bitter, or even particularly damp. Evan was a healthy child, and his illness started with a simple sniffle.”

“Was he bled?”

“Helene said you disapproved of the practice, so no.”

That was something. Helene had respected his wishes and spared the child at least that horror. “And he was gone in a week?”

“One week, and Helene was wild in her grief, or perhaps her guilt, then she got word you’d been reported missing.”

“Only missing, not dead?” This mattered, though to a grieving mother, the distinction had likely been lost.

“Only missing. Marcus had leave to tell her in person, and he assured her every effort was being made to find you.”

“Then why in the bloody hell would she be so careless with her sleeping draughts? Why cast her life away like that?”

“You aren’t indifferent.”

She said it so solemnly, he had to turn his head and risk looking at her.

“Good
God
, of course I’m not indifferent! She was my wife, I loved her in my fashion, and while her death was ruled accidental, she herself committed the accidental misuse of the drug that took her life. That is nigh suicide, Gilly, recorded as accident only out of deference to her title, or perhaps to her daughter’s memory of her, and had I been here,
it
would
not
have
happened
.”

“Don’t do this.” She leaned into him, pressed her face to his arm, even as she kept her hand on his back. “Helene blamed herself for the child’s death, blamed herself for sending you away when there was no spare in the nursery. She howled with the anguish of it like a wounded animal, and it was no more her fault than it is yours. You said it yourself: everyone dies. Everyone. Instead of cursing yourself for being taken captive, you must celebrate that you yet live.”

She shook him by his arm; then she rose to her knees and wrapped both arms around his shoulders.

“Helene had choices,” she went on, “and if she chose to take her life, there is nothing anybody can do about it. You have a daughter, you will have more children, you will laugh and love and live. You will.”

“Do you think she killed herself?”

The countess sat back down on her heels, and Christian was both relieved to be free of her embrace and disoriented, like those irises, dug up, cut loose, all their tender parts exposed to the sunlight.

“Only Helene knows what her intentions were, but she said nothing to me about wanting to die. It’s easy, with one dose taken, to become confused about how much was consumed and when. By low light, many drops can look like a few, days blend, memories blend. Laudanum deaths are legion among the ill.”

“If she did…take her own life…” Christian set his hand spade down. “I was missing, soon to be presumed dead, her son was gone… If she did, I cannot blame her.”

Dirt was everywhere—on his gloves, his breeches, on Gilly’s blanket, and the same dirt that grew flowers provided a final resting place for the mortal remains of people who had been loved while they’d walked the earth.

“You must not blame yourself, either, Christian. Never once did Helene express any sentiment reproaching you for being taken captive. Never.”

They sat in silence for long minutes before the countess yanked up one more root, tossed it on the pile, and sat back again. “I owe you an apology,” she said.

“For?”

“Thinking you were indifferent to your losses.”

“You have your own guilt to manage in that regard,” he said, but he felt too hollow to explain what he meant. Hollow and curiously light. “We all grieve differently.”

She nodded and passed him the little spade, and it seemed to Christian the roots came up more easily after that.

***

Gilly forced herself to focus on the gardening, but her insides were in an angry, disbelieving uproar.

What kind of mind would make a man choose between his family on the one hand and his comrades in arms on the other? Between home and hearth, and the men under his command?

And it was no credit to this Girard person that he’d ceased his taunts early in Christian’s captivity. The seed of self-castigation had been planted in fertile soil and allowed to flourish at the expense of Christian’s sanity.

Watching Christian tear at the hapless irises, Gilly realized the duke had tried to take his own life, or at least contemplated it. She’d had her concerns, particularly when she’d walked in on him with a razor in his hand, a wild look in his blue eyes.

God.

God.

Or the devil. She’d long ago given up trying to comprehend how the Deity could command loyalty when so many of His creations were left in abject, blameless misery. Only a cruel God could strike down small children with wasting diseases, or make the elderly suffer lonely years waiting for death after the passing of a mate.

She silently gave thanks—again—for her widowed state.

“Have you anything to drink in that basket, Lady Greendale?”

She wanted him to call her Gilly, never that other name.

“Cold tea. Help yourself. You’ve made fine progress.” Far more than she had, but then, he was far stronger.

“I probably traumatized the ones in the ground as much as the ones in your basket.” He sat back on his heels and drew his forearm over his brow. At some point, he’d turned back his cuffs and opened the throat of his shirt.

“These are not cuts,” she said, running a finger over the skin in the bend of his elbow. He set the jug of cold tea aside, allowing her to trace a series of round, red scars that looked all too familiar.

“Cheroot burns. They hurt like hell but heal fairly quickly.”

“That…that…Girard was his name?” She covered the scars with her palm. “He was a devil. You’re right to want him dead, but better to make him live with the memory of the crimes he perpetrated.”

“Interesting theory, though those particular scars were courtesy of his ever-helpful superior. Girard considered burns messy, crude, and prone to infection—infection is particularly noisome, according to Girard.”

“One hopes he drew that conclusion on the basis of firsthand experience, for burns are also painful, and Girard of all people deserves to suffer.”

His Grace looked at her oddly, as if he wanted to smile but didn’t dare. “You’re very fierce, Countess. Are you also thirsty?”

“No, thank you. How can you explain torture to me in one breath and offer me a drink with the next?”

“Because you might be thirsty. I’m nearly grateful for the scars.”

Gilly swiped at her temple with her glove, and succeeded in sprinkling dirt on her bodice. “You talk nonsense, Your Grace.”

“I’ve been demoted to Your Grace again.” He sat on his rump, extending one leg and drawing up the other knee. “The scars reassure me I was indeed taken prisoner. I didn’t make it all up. When you’re the only one to vouch for your memories, they become…suspect.”

He was in the strangest mood, and Gilly was so angry at this Girard person, she could nearly countenance a violent end for him. Nearly. Thank God the duke had been able to move beyond such petty reactions.

“Take your shirt off, Mercia.”

“I beg your pardon.” But he didn’t sit up, didn’t poker up. “It’s a pretty day, why would you want to see me unclothed, Countess?”

As
if
the
weather
were
deserving
of
consideration?

“You shall tell me,” she said as he lay back and closed his eyes. “You shall tell me about each damned scar and what you recall of it.”

“No.”

She crawled over to him and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Yes.”

“Gilly…” He put a hand over hers. “It’s my cross to bear.”

As if she’d steal his memories of torment? “And you will bear it, whether you show me this or not. I’ve seen you. It’s just flesh.”

She unbuttoned his shirt, expecting him to get to his feet and stride off at any moment. She pushed the shirt aside and frankly stared at the expanse of disfigured flesh before her. Studying it had seemed gauche and thoughtless before.

It felt necessary now.

“Here,” she said, tracing her finger over his sternum, which sported a thick welt along its length. “Tell me about this one.”

A sigh, which made his chest rise and fall, but still he didn’t get up.

“Girard said he’d cut out my heart. He was losing patience that day. It’s easy to forget the war went badly for France, too.”

Gilly kept moving her fingers over the scar. “What else did he say?”

“He said…” The duke raised his head and met her eyes, his expression disgruntled, or resigned. “He said he’d cut out my heart and feed it to the officers guarding me, my heart being as tough as the meager rations they’d been reduced to. They all had a good laugh over that, while I silently delighted to think Girard had let slip that his garrison was nearly starving.”

Gilly did not laugh, nor did His Grace. He paused, stilled her hand over his heart, and then resumed the tale. When the sun was low and the shadows were long, and the duke had swilled most of the cold tea, Gilly helped him get his shirt back on. They folded up the blanket but left the basket for the footmen to bring in, and walked back to the house hand in hand.

Christian’s sleep was so routinely unsettled that he took a good while to realize he wasn’t having the sort of waking nightmare that seemed more real than a dream.

He was
sick
. Heaving-his-guts-up, head-poundingly, bone-achingly sick.

And behind at least one locked door.

The first order of business was to retch into the chamber pot, which was thankfully otherwise empty.

And the second, and the third, until he wasn’t bringing up the tea anymore, but suffering dry heaves.

He tried to gain his feet, only to feel the floor tilting. The clock over the mantel read about an hour shy of dark, which led him to recall coming up to change before dinner and succumbing to sleep.

How long had he been unconscious?

He tried again to stand and didn’t make it past his knees.

So he crawled.

He’d crawled out of the Château. He didn’t dwell on that memory, but he’d been weak and had been tied tightly to the cot. His extremities wouldn’t do as he’d bid them, and he’d been desperate to regain his liberty.

The door seemed to recede, but by slow degrees, he closed in on his quarry. The mechanism of the lock was devilishly stubborn, particularly because Christian’s hands sported eight and ten fingers apiece as he stared at them. He fell into his sitting room and lay on the floor, swallowing back more dry heaves.

When he could open his eyes, he saw the sitting-room door to the corridor was ajar by a few inches, and he determined he’d shout for help.

He croaked, and the sound of what passed for his voice both scared him and puzzled him. He was afflicted by the notion that because he’d chosen not to speak to another human soul for months, his voice would abandon him when he needed it most.

The fear and fancy in that thought had him mustering his resolve. He organized himself up onto all fours, sat back, and bellowed.

“Gillian!”

She slept across the hall from him—he’d become acutely aware of that lately—in the best of the family bedrooms. They’d argued about it, a room in the family wing as opposed to the guest wing.

“Gillian!”

He would crawl across the room, crawl across the hall…

And then his door flew open, and she pelted into the room in a black dressing gown sporting embroidery that seemed to dance along its hems.

“Your Grace?
Christian?
” She was beside him in a dizzying instant, the very scent of her easing Christian’s suffering. “What’s amiss?” Her hands ran over his face. “You’re ill. Let me fetch the footmen to get you…”

He shook his head. “No footmen.”

“But I can’t lift you.”

“Help…me.” He extended one arm but that destroyed his balance, so he almost fell off his knees.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “You’re vertiginous, which means perhaps your ears are ailing as well.”

With Gilly’s aid, he staggered to his feet, then across the bedroom.

“Steps up to the bed,” she warned. His arm was across her shoulders, but he was using her to remain upright, not simply to steady his balance. It took two tries, and he ended up falling facedown onto the bed, but he made it.

“You lost the tea you drank outside. This must be some sort of summer influenza.”

“Gillian, lock the door.”

She sat at his hip, for he’d managed to get himself onto his back.

“Lock the damned door.”

The stench of his own vomit was threatening to start him heaving again, and he knew a profound mortification that she should see him thus.

“You want me to lock the door?”

“Nobody else…” He swallowed and felt the room spinning even as he lay flat on his back in a bed that likely hadn’t moved for two hundred years. “Poison.”

All three of her faces registered the last word. Christian saw that she comprehended what he’d said, and then he promptly lost consciousness.

***

Gilly refused to let the duke die. For hours, she bathed every inch of him when he was fevered, wrapped him in blankets when he shivered, held the basin while he suffered dry heaves, and let him nigh break the bones of her hand while he cramped and groaned and shook and cursed.

In his lucid intervals, he made her swear not to open the door to anyone, not to allow another to see him in his weakened state. So she sent their excuses down to the kitchen for dinner, locked the door behind her, and prepared to lay siege to his illness.

“I’m not sick,” he rasped shortly after midnight. “This is poison, I tell you.”

“You aren’t fevered anymore,” she said, laying the back of one hand against his forehead. “You haven’t had the heaves for more than an hour. Whatever it is, it’s subsiding.”

“Pray God you speak the truth. And don’t you dare drink that water.”

“I’m thirsty, for feathers’ sake!” But she put the glass down without sipping. “What if I fetch the carafe from my room?”

“Did you drink from it earlier?”

“I did,” she said, thinking back. “Immediately before you fell ill, and I have no symptoms.”

“Then fetch it, but be quick and quiet.”

“Dawn is still several hours off, Christian. Who’s to see me?” She retied the sash of her night robe and did a tired version of flouncing out of the room, again locking the door behind her.

What if Christian were right, and he’d been poisoned? What if somebody resented the Lost Duke being found and had taken measures to return him to the land of the dead?

Or what if he’d caught some dread malady while in captivity, and it was only now manifesting?

She hurried across the hall, careful not to wake the footman dozing at his post at the end of the corridor. When she returned to the ducal suite, Christian was sitting up on his bed, wearing only his knee-length drawers.

“Either you’re feeling better, or you’re in want of a scolding.”

“Maybe both.” He pushed to his feet, keeping a hand on the bedpost. She remained silent while he doddered along the perimeter of the room to the privacy screen. “I feel like old Wellie marched his entire infantry through my mouth in the middle of high summer.”

“You’ll want some water.” She set the carafe on a vanity that held his shaving kit, hairbrush, comb, and a hand mirror, then left him to his own devices.

“I’ll want my tooth powder.” At a careful totter, he disappeared behind the screen, leaving Gilly to survey the bed.

“I’m changing your sheets.” Something garbled came back that sounded like assent, which was fortunate. The linens needed changing. She opened the French doors leading to his balcony to let in the night breeze, and set the covered chamber pot in the next room.

He emerged from his ablutions looking pale but tidier, his hair caught back in its queue, his face scrubbed. He grabbed one side of the sheet and helped her strip the bed, a skill any public-school boy—or soldier—would have acquired.

“You don’t think it was poison,” he said.

“I don’t know what to think. I was accused of poisoning my late spouse. I would hate to be accused of poisoning you.”

He balled up the rumpled sheets and tossed them over the screen while Gilly retrieved fresh ones from the chest at the foot of the bed.

“We eat most of our meals together,” she said, unfurling the sheet over the mattress. “You’re the only one with symptoms.”

“The only one in the entire household?” He caught a corner of the sheet and tucked it under the mattress while Gilly did likewise on the opposite side of the bed.

“Yes, in the entire house, and in the neighborhood, as far as George knew.”

“You trust George?”

“He’s one of the footmen you set to guarding me, so yes. Moreover, he’s a young man who hopes you’ll look on him favorably when your house steward retires this fall. I doubt George is trying to do you in.”

Across from her, the duke stared at the half-made-up bed as if it were a chessboard and the game well advanced. “Not me. They were trying to do you in.”

“Not this again. I’m in fine fettle.” And too tired to humor His Grace’s queer starts.

“Did we trade oranges today?” He sat and patted the mattress, but a cozy chat was not in the offing.

“I haven’t eaten any oranges today.” She settled beside him, trying to recall everything she’d eaten or drunk, everything he’d eaten or drunk.

“The tea.” They said it at the same time.

“That tea was intended for you,” he said. “I chased off the footmen at the last minute on impulse, because I was sick to death of ledgers and I’d missed you.”

She looked away, not sure that was a helpful admission under the circumstances.

Under
any
circumstances…

“I guzzled down most of your cold tea. Do you usually consume the whole of it during an afternoon’s gardening?”

“Yes, if it’s a hot day, like today,” Gilly said, feeling abruptly chilled as the plausibility of Christian’s conclusion sank in. “You didn’t drink it all.”

“But you had none, and I had half the jug. I’m nigh twice your weight, Gilly. Someone means for you to die.”

He put his arms around her, and she scooted as close to him as she could get.

***

Having an enemy under Christian’s own roof galvanized the military officer in him, and Christian rejoiced to have that part of himself back. For too long, he’d been nothing but a captive, and by God,
by
God
, he was ready to fight again.

Revenge was a fine notion to sustain a man while he regained his strength, but engaged battle was the surest sign of a full recovery.

“Whoever means you harm, Gilly, they’ll have to go through me to get to you, and I’m more trouble than they can possibly imagine.”

“But who would want me dead? I’m nobody. I’m nothing, a plain little impoverished widow whose best years are behind her.” She sounded so bewildered, as if she honestly believed that assessment.

“You are a titled lady, a member of this household, and the woman who wouldn’t let me die only hours ago. You also have to be exhausted.”

“How can I sleep when you tell me somebody wants me dead?” She rested her forehead against his shoulder, and his rage spiked. She was small, a quiet, diminutive woman who’d known enough grief and misery in her life. Only a fiend would prey on her.

And while Girard was a fiend, he’d had a Gallic gallantry where women were concerned, and no tolerance for soldiers who abused the whores and laundresses.

“You’re staying here with me, madam. We both need rest, and I won’t be able to close my eyes if you’re intent on sleeping elsewhere.”

She was apparently so rattled she didn’t protest, didn’t come at him with eleven reasons why he was wrong, misguided, and a fool. He hurt for her, that she should be so daunted.

“You were right,” she said miserably. “You were right about the coach wheel and Damsel’s girth. You’re right about the tea.”

He wished to God he’d been wrong. “There’s nothing to be done about it until morning.”

“And then?”

“We’ll make plans when I’m not recovering from poison, and you’re not exhausted from combating its effects on me.” And he’d find out where the hell Girard had gone to ground, for despite a backhanded chivalry toward the women at the garrison, who else would have the wits to cause Christian such diabolical mischief?

Gilly sat beside him, staring at her hands folded in her lap, and he wanted to howl. His countess at a loss was a daunting sight. Old Greendale hadn’t been able to blight her spirit, but someone else was certainly trying to.

They’d fail spectacularly. He’d make sure of it. “Come to bed.”

“I can’t.” She sat up straighter, a ghost of her spirit manifesting. “The staff will never stop gossiping.”

“They never do stop gossiping, but you’re a widow. If you want consolation from me in your grief, it’s your business, as you yourself reminded me.”

“Your tune has changed, Your Grace.”

“So has yours. If we’re to share a bed, you will please use my name.”

She squared her shoulders, a gesture that boded ill for a man who wanted a few hours sleep before joining battle in the morning.

Drastic measures were called for, or one of them would soon be in strong hysterics.

“Oh, fine, then,” he groused. “Get yourself killed and leave a man to grieve all over again when he’s hardly getting his bearings.” He sat back against the headboard and folded his arms behind his head. “Leave his only surviving child utterly bereft, cast adrift by a cousin too cavalier to accept the protection lying immediately to hand.”

He raised his gaze toward the shadows flickering on the ceiling. “Go ahead and thwart my authority as head of the family, head of the household,
and
the local magistrate.”

Gilly crawled across the mattress, which was roughly the dimensions of a foaling stall.

“Leave me to drown in guilt and helpless rage,” he went on. “To waste my remaining years in fervent prayer for your immortal and entirely too stubborn and misguided soul. Strong drink will be necessary in quantity, I’m sure, and given the bodily ordeals I’ve been subjected—”

“Hush.” She looped his arm across her shoulders and curled down against him. “I’ll stay here for now, but you must hush.”

He rolled up on his side, pulled the sheet up over them, kissed her shoulder, anchored his arm around her middle, and hauled her against his body.

And then did as she’d commanded.

***

Gilly woke to two sensations, the first easy to identify: warmth. She was half on her side, half prone, and Christian lay along her back, a ducal blanket, his leg snugged up to her bottom and insinuated between her calves. His naked, muscular, hairy male leg.

The second impression was harder to classify, and not strictly of the body: she was safe. He held her securely with an arm about her waist, and he’d put himself between her and the door. She faced the windows, faced the pure blackness of that hour between moonset and sunrise, and knew a sense of peace that surpassed anything she’d experienced since her wedding.

And then his hand, his damaged left hand, moved. He shaped her breast gently, and Gilly both felt and heard him sigh. His breath whispered over her nape, and she hoped he’d merely been moving in his sleep, reliving a minor marital pleasure.