The Falcon's Bride (23 page)

The countess entered first. “Well, miss,” she said to Thea. “You’ve run us a merry chase. What have you to say for yourself?” She took Drumcondra’s measure, her steely eyes raking him suspiciously. “And who is this, if you please?”

“Mr. Drummond, may I present Countess Ridgewood,” James spoke up. Nigel and the viscount had come into the room. Drumcondra’s eyes were riveted to Nigel. The Gypsy warrior’s scalp had drawn back, his eyes, come open wider than Thea had ever seen them, were riveted to the man and his unsightly eye patch, which didn’t cover the jagged scar that spread above and below it.

“Your ladyship, Father . . . this is Mr. Drummond,” James went on quickly. “It is he we have to thank for Thea’s return, and he has been wounded in the process. Might the surgeon be summoned to attend him?”

“Father,” Thea said, going into the viscount’s outstretched arms. He seemed thinner than he had when she saw him last, and his face showed evidence of strain. Still handsome, he possessed the same violet eyes as she and her brother, though his dark hair was tinged with gray. Aside from that and a healthy paunch, he could have passed for a man ten years younger.

Drumcondra’s eyes were still fixed on Nigel. Thea knew the uncanny family resemblance to Cian Cosgrove was what had stunned him—that and the patch. Now, there was no question. If he had harbored even the slightest shadow of a doubt, it existed no more. When Nigel spoke, Ros stiffened as though he’d been shot.

“It seems that I am in your debt, sir,” he said, “for returning my betrothed. What is the nature of your injury? You look sound enough to me.”

“He was stabbed in the thigh,” James put in before Drumcondra could speak. “He has fever.”

“Mmm,” Nigel grunted. “You might let the man speak for himself, Barrington.” He crossed the room and yanked the bell rope. Everyone began speaking at once. Thea’s eyes were riveted to Drumcondra. She tried not to make it appear obvious, but that look in his eyes was one she had never seen. It terrified her. Her father was speaking to her. She had no idea what he was saying. James had noticed Drumcondra’s expression as well, and he went at once to his side. In Thea’s opinion, when Regis appeared on the threshold, it wasn’t a minute too soon.

“Have someone go round to the stables and see that Beadle sends one of the lads after Dr. McBain,” Nigel said.
“Our gentleman guest has been injured. Oh, and Regis, see that the south wing turret room is made ready for him, and send Boon up to valet him when he’s not tending me.”

“Very good, sir,” said the butler, disappearing.

“My, how forceful you’ve become, Nigel,” the countess said. “How free you make with my house. One might think you had already swept me into my grave.”

“We can hardly deny the man hospitality, Mother,” Nigel said, his jaw muscles ticking. “He’s brought our Theodosia home.”

“The last occasion upon which we offered our hospitality to a stranger began this nightmare as I recall,” the countess said.

That she was right didn’t signify. Thea wanted to throttle her. Nigel had slipped into his condescending mode where his mother was concerned. While it used to infuriate her when he became the marionette in her presence, she was grateful now. Perhaps if he was occupied at that, he wouldn’t look too closely at their little charade.

“Your ladyship,” the viscount spoke up. “Credit it that Mr. Drummond is my guest. I am in his debt for returning my daughter to me safely, and of course, as my guest, he must remain to share in the festivities when Thea and Nigel are wed. You are far too generous a lady to deny me the indulgence, hmm?”

“Of course,” the countess spat, as if the words were a dose of foul-tasting oil of castor.

By now the chattering had revealed the basics of their story, and thus far it was well received, except for the countess, whose sharp-eyed scrutiny had homed in upon Drumcondra with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Thea could not believe the harridan’s rudeness, but then she had always displayed such an attitude. Drumcondra seemed not to notice her at all. He had eyes for no one but Nigel Cosgrove.

When at last the butler returned to escort him to the turret room, Thea nearly breathed an audible sigh of relief. James followed, which earned him a scathing glance from the warrior. It was clear to Thea that Drumcondra didn’t want her left unsupervised in Nigel’s company for a minute. It was also clear that James wanted a word alone with her enigmatic Gypsy husband. In the interest of preserving their well-drafted plan, after a tense moment, James won out, and elected their father to see Thea to her chamber in his place. There was to be a lecture; she could feel it in her bones.

As soon as the door closed behind them, the viscount gripped her hands at arm’s length and took her measure. There was no escaping those penetrating eyes of his. He saw more with them than the average father, perhaps because he was such a worldly man.

“Are you really all right, my dear?” he asked. “You wouldn’t try to flummox your father now, would you?”

“I am quite well, Father,” she said. Why was he looking at her like that?

“Hmmm,” he said. “Something untoward is afoot. You may have hoodwinked that lot downstairs—deuced boors—but you cannot hoodwink me. I’ve lived too long and seen too much to have become jaded in my dotage—”

“You’re hardly in your dotage, Father.”

“Kindly do not interrupt me, Thea, and do not presume to slather on the sauce. It won’t do. Are you going to tell me what is really going on, or must I drag it out of your brother? Do not doubt that he’ll tell me. The lad’s nononsense—always has been once I’ve gotten him out from under your spell. Do not doubt that I shall, daughter. I mean to have some answers.”

“I do not have the faintest idea what you mean,” Thea said, hoping for indifference, but certain her rapid heart-beat
was showing through the new dove gray muslin frock James had brought back from Oldbridge for her.

“Come, come, girl. Kindly do not insult my intelligence. I’m hardly blind. Captured by thieves? Surely you could do better than that? You hardly paid any notice to your betrothed during your reunion down there just now, but you scarcely took your eyes off that Drummond chap. What? Do you think your old father is blind? You are positively glowing. Don’t tell me that colossal boor Cosgrove lit up that face, those eyes. I’ll never believe it.”

Thea took her hands back, and sank down on the rolled-arm lounge. This was the last thing she needed. She’d forgotten how she had never been able to keep anything from her father. She couldn’t very well tell him the truth, but what on earth would satisfy him? She hardly knew. She abhorred lying—especially to him—but . . .

“Father, you know I do not love Nigel,” she said. “If you want the absolute truth, if I hadn’t been abducted, I would have run from this impossible marriage. The man is insufferable.” It was half-truth, but close enough to evoke the emotion that made it believable. Tears welled in her eyes; she couldn’t prevent them.

Nathaniel Barrington let his breath out on a long nasal sigh. “This distresses me,” he said. “I had hoped . . .”

“Is this match all that important to you financially, Father?” she asked. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” he interrupted. “I shan’t trouble you with the particulars since they do not concern you, but I was hoping to stabilize our financial situation, yes. We’re hardly in Dun territory, you understand, not nearly rolled up. Just swimming a bit at low tide at the moment, and I would stand to gain much should our families align.”

“And . . . if they do not?”

“So that’s how it is, is it? You’ve already made up your mind, then?”

“I have only gone along with this because I knew you were in financial difficulty,” Thea said. “If it were in any respect a palatable prospect, I would hold my peace, but there is nothing to recommend it. The countess is a scheming termagant determined to restore her son’s reputation by eliminating the stigma of the recent accusations against him through this marriage. I see it now. I’ve come to believe that perhaps the accusations against him were true . . . that he did murder the Covent Garden doxy. They found her dumped in a gutter, Father, with her throat cut. She’d been raped and brutally savaged, beaten nearly beyond recognition. Surely you remember? There was little talk of anything else in Town. The Cosgrove fortune got him out of it, saw him acquitted—enough blunt will buy anything these days, you know that. We were made to order. Don’t you see? They mean to whitewash it all with this betrothal; I’d stake my life upon it.”

Her father clouded, his violet eyes drawn deep under the ledge of his brow as he studied her. Thea couldn’t meet those eyes. They had always been able to see right through her. That would be dangerous now.

“Has Cosgrove . . . misused you?” he asked.

“Let us just say that I can see how his vile temper could have led to something . . . unpleasant.”

“Let us leave that for a bit,” the viscount said. “What is between you and Drummond?”

“Mr. Drummond is a fine man, Father.”

“Mr. Drummond is a Gypsy if ever I set eyes upon one. He no more fits the togs he’s gotten up in than they fit him.”

“I hardly thought it necessary to question him in regard to his lineage while he was rescuing me, Father,” she said.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through.” That was the truth, and she delivered it with soul-wrenching passion.

“There, there, daughter, do not put yourself in a taking.” He slipped his arm around her shoulder, gave it a rough squeeze, then let it go, commencing to pace before the hearth. “Well, regardless, there’s no getting around the fact that you’ve been compromised,” he said.

“
Compromised?
” Thea blurted. “Father, where I have just come from ‘compromised’ doesn’t signify.”

He spun around to face her, setting his indigo superfine coattails atremble. “What is it that you want to do, daughter?” he asked, facing her down.

“Father, I would never have come back here if it weren’t for you having come. If it weren’t to put your mind at ease.”

“How badly is that Drummond chap injured?”

“ ’Tis serious,” she replied.

“How serious?”

“H-he was stabbed in the thigh with a dirk during the confrontation. There was no surgeon at the keep where it occurred, and a stable master stitched it together, but the stitches didn’t hold and . . . and the wound had to be cauterized. Now he has fever.”

Her father grumbled. “I shall have a word with your Mr. Drummond, I think, once the surgeon has come and gone. Perhaps he will be able to shed some light upon this odd business, since you are unwilling to do so—can’t think why. Have I ever caused you grief, daughter? Have I turned a hard hand toward you in all your life, or even rendered you a severe reproof?”

“No, Father,” she demurred, her eyes lowered. Her tears had left black spots on her soft gray muslin bodice. “I have always prided myself upon the point that you have never had to. It is just . . . there is really nothing to tell.”

“Mmm, of all you haven’t said, m’dear, that is the most
revealing. There is much to tell, I think. It is just a matter of whom to tell it. Yes, I shall have a little chat with Mr. Drummond before we go further with this, Theodosia. Then we shall see.”

He left her then, and Thea threw herself across the bed, no longer able to hold back her unhappiness. She knew she was lost the minute he called her Theodosia. He never addressed her thus, except when he was extremely displeased. That such a thing had occurred so rarely she couldn’t even remember the last occasion, was little consolation. Oh, why had she come back? She never should have. All she could do now was pray Drumcondra would be about the business of collecting his gold before her father pried the truth out of him—or James—and had them all shut up in the madhouse.

Only one thing was certain then, and it hit her like cannon fire. Her virile Black Irish Gypsy husband was as ill equipped to exist in the year 1811 as she was to exist in 1695.

Chapter Eighteen

Ros Drumcondra finally succumbed to the laudanum doses Dr. McBain administered in the process of repairing the crude doctoring done to his wound. Barking all the while that he’d just witnessed treatment more exemplary of medieval practices than nineteenth-century surgery, McBain cleaned and rebandaged the wound, and had the Cosgroves’ cook prepare herbal draughts of black currant, balm, and bilberry to address the fever.

The turret chamber that had been assigned to him evoked strange dreams. Once it had been the nursery where his children slept, and where they had died. He stared at the drab gray walls through his opiate haze, but saw them instead running with blood, saw pools of it on the bare floor all around him. Though no trace of the carnage remained, the memory was torture, and he welcomed sleep to chase the visions though they bled into his dreams and remained when his eyes struggled to open between doses.

It was all too bizarre. Nothing made any sense. Was it the drug or the situation itself? He couldn’t be certain. Only one thing was: He had to retrieve the gold and escape the keep with Thea before something happened to her. He didn’t know what that something was, only that a physical threat existed. Premonitions were part of his Gypsy heritage. He could feel it—he could smell and taste it in the very air that hung heavy with must and decay and the stench of death throughout the old keep. That, too, was tangible, made more so when Viscount Nathaniel Barrington crossed his threshold several days later.

Ros was seated on the edge of the bed. His fever was gone and his wound was mending. Boon, Cosgrove’s valet, had just dressed him, complaining the while about the ill-fitting garments. Now he was alone. When the knock came and the door creaked open, he attempted to rise, but the viscount waved him off with a hand gesture as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

“It seems that I am in your debt, sir,” the viscount said, extending his hand.

Drumcondra rose, despite having been exempted, and shook. “Your servant, sir,” he said, executing a heel-clicking bow, despite the stiff leg. It didn’t go over all that well in the wide-top boots. Would he ever become accustomed to nineteenth-century protocols? Did he even want to?