The Reluctant Suitor (65 page)

“You mean Edmund Elston is a murderer?” Felicity asked, much agog.

“If you have a care for our lives, girl, you will never repeat what I’ve just told you, not even to Roger. He may shush you up by similar methods if you jeopardize his chances to wrangle some lucre from his father, though surely he’s the one to be pitied, considering there’s a strong likelihood that nothing will be left once his father expires or vanishes mysteriously into the dark of night.”

“Papa, why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“I didn’t know you’d marry the bloody beggar,” Jarvis shot back. “The last I heard you had attracted Lord Harcourt’s attentions.”

Felicity waved a hand to make light of that particular story, which had been much of her own making. “I was mistaken.”

Jarvis was curious. “Where are you and Roger going to live now?”

“In his father’s house, of course.”

“And what if Edmund decides to murder you like he murdered his two wives?”

Felicity shivered at the very idea. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“You’d better start tucking away some funds for yourself, girl. I’d rather not have to support Roger’s whelp in my old age.”

Felicity lifted her chin and dared to point out a recent fact. “

Seems to me after Grandpa and Mama caught you laying off workers and pocketing their wages that Mama’s the only one doing the supporting now. The mill is thriving again after they hired back everyone you had laid off.”

“How do you know that?”

“I came downstairs late one night to get a book that I had left in the parlor, and I overheard you arguing with Mama. I assumed that’s why you’ve been sleeping down here ever since.”

“Your mother thinks she knows better than I. . . .”

Felicity wouldn’t let him go very far with that claim. “I believe I overheard her pleading with you to reconsider what you had done, and to return the money to Grandpa’s coffers. You refused.”

“He’s old and rich,” Jarvis shot back. “ ‘Twouldn’t hurt him none to share some of that wealth with his offspring.”

“Papa, you’re not his offspring, Mama is, and she’s very careful to return every farthing or tuppence to his purse after she pays Lucy and the other servants. From what I understand, you deliberately went out of your way to pilfer funds that were not yours. Mama taught me well enough as a child that that is thievery. So if you know what’s good for you, you’d better make amends. I’ve come to realize that she and Grandpa have a nasty way of paying out retribution. You could just find yourself back in London at the same old counting house you left if you try to outsmart the pair of them. In fact, I’ve heard stories from Grandpa’s friends and foes alike that he has a special way of serving up justice on a large platter to those who deserve it. He calls it, appropriately enough, dispensing a bit of wisdom to those in dire need.”

“Bah, he’s doddering and senile.”

“Not nearly as much as I once thought or even as much as you’d like to imagine, Papa. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever met a more perceptive man. You’d do well to heed my advice or you may be forced to suffer the consequences, because you’re not nearly as clever as you think. The pair of them have it over you by a wide margin.”

“You dare instruct me, girl?”

Felicity managed a bleak smile. “Better a gentle urging, Papa, than a harsh recompense, would you not agree? Or as Grandpa would say, a bit of wisdom dispensed to one in dire need?”

Without waiting for his response, Felicity took her leave through the front door. After all, now that her father knew she was married, there was no further need for pretense. But then, she wasn’t so dense that she hadn’t known he’d be waiting up for her after Roger kept delaying their departure from the inn. It seemed her groom had a sadistic fetish for forcing what was unnatural upon a woman and, even after his brutalizing rape of her, had refused to leave their room until she had yielded to some of his demands. It had either been that or stay there with him forever. The whole experience had been a horrible nightmare wherein she had found herself the victim of a monster posing in the innocent facade of a handsome lad.

F
elicity quietly approached the bed wherein Edmund Elston had been confined since his first seizure some months ago. This was the first chance she had had to visit her father-in-law’s room with some measure of privacy since her marriage five weeks earlier. There was always someone around, precluding that possibility, if not Roger, then the servant who had been hired to tend the elder. Staring down at the man, she couldn’t imagine how her father had ever arrived at the far-fetched notion that Edmund had somehow been able to deceive Roger. Before his health had collapsed, she had only seen Edmund in passing, but she vividly recalled him as having been a robust, rather handsome, if ill-bred, individual who had seemed impressed by his own importance. His tasteless and flamboyant attire had ofttimes made her thankful her own mother had cautioned her against overt showiness. Still, his attire had seemed to go right in line with the personality of the man.

The difference between her initial impression and what she saw before her now was as sharply dissimilar as midnight from noon. Only a thin layer of wrinkled flesh seemed to cover Edmund’s skull. His hair was gone, and his hollowed cheeks bore a strange, whitish hue. Beneath parchment-thin lids, his eyes gave every appearance of having retreated back into his head. Or perhaps the dark shadows encircling them was partly to blame for that perception. His mouth hung agape, and his gauntness made the previously narrow space between his badly stained teeth far more pronounced. Dried saliva had left a whitish trail

where it had earlier drooled from a corner of his lips and trickled down the side of a badly emaciated cheek.

“Papa Edmund . . . are you awake?” she inquired diffidently, not knowing what to expect. If her father’s warnings were justified, she was probably endangering her life, yet the debility of the man could not be denied. If he weren’t already at death’s door, then he was close enough to smell the netherworld.

A flicker of movement behind an eyelid assured her that her inquiry had at least been heard, but whether it had actually penetrated the invalid’s awareness, she could not determine.

“Do you want anything? Perhaps some cider or even a little tea?”

“Wa . . . ter,” he rasped in a whisper so faint she could barely make it out.

Turning to the bedside table, she poured a small amount of liquid into a glass from a carafe a servant had left there. “Here, I’ll help you,” she offered, slipping an arm beneath the man’s frail shoulders as he tried to lift his head. His breath was foul, and in sharp repugnance she averted her face. Still, she had recently discovered there was within her a sizable measure of her mother’s fortitude. She was a married woman now, and she had come to realize in that brief, month-long marital hell she had been forced to endure that she would have to look to the security of her future . . . and to that of her offspring. Although Roger was the father, she considered the growing entity within her womb entirely hers. She wanted the child; her husband did not. In fact, there were times when he was so rough in his lovemaking that she could believe he was trying to make her miscarry. If that ever happened, she had already promised herself that she would leave him and plead with her family to shelter her until she could find a haven far from his vindictive revenge.

Edmund’s condition was far more serious
and
repulsive than her grandfather’s. That was clearly evident.

Yet there were things she had to find out for herself, and to get to the truth of the matter while there was still time, she had to go to the only likely source who had that knowledge. If the man expired, her chances of obtaining the truth would be sharply reduced, if not altogether negated.

Edmund revived ever so slightly after taking a deep sip and, upon collapsing back into his pillows, stared up at her in bemusement. “ ‘Oo are yu? From what I can recollect, I’ve ne’er seen yu ’ere afore.”

“I’m your new daughter-in-law, Felicity. I’m here to help you get well, Papa Edmund.”

His ashen lips quirked upward in a frail smile. “ ‘Tis a cer . . . tain . . . ity yu’re not Mar . . . tha Grim . . .

bald.”

“No, Papa Edmund, I don’t even know who she is.”

“Just . . . as . . . well. Ye . . . would . . . na . . . be . . . impressed.”

“Was she someone Roger was supposed to marry?”

“I’ll leave . . . ‘at . . . for ‘im . . . ta be . . . sayin’, girl. Just . . . know . . . yu’re . . . a . . . damned . . .

sight . . . prettier.”

“How are you feeling? Is there anything I can get for you? Some food perhaps? A little port?”

“Don’t . . . agree . . . wit’ . . . me. I’ve ‘ad too many spirits in me life, an’ they’re eatin’ away at me innards.”

“What about some food? Perhaps some medicinal herbs from the apothecary.”

A thin finger fluttered upward weakly, drawing Felicity’s attention to the fact that the nail was strangely streaked. The hand itself seemed scaly, as if the skin were actually in the process of drying . . . or dying.

“Mayhap . . . a . . . bit . . . o’ porridge . . . or puddin’ . . . just ta . . . soothe the . . . misery in me . . .

gut. ‘Tis . . . so . . . unbearable . . . at times . . . I . . . yearn . . . ta die.”

Carefully avoiding contact with the man’s skin, Felicity laid a hand gently upon his arm where the nightshirt covered it. “I shall ask Cook to prepare you some porridge and pudding immediately. Is there anything else I can get for you in the meantime?”

“Where’s . . . Roger?”

She watched the man closely, wondering if she’d see anything in his reaction that would be indicative of his concern over the mill’s accounts as she led him on. “I believe he’s looking over the books. There seems to be a discrepancy somewhere. Just where, I can’t imagine. I can only repeat what I’ve heard, that there are apparently more coins going out than coming in.”

Edmund struggled to push himself up on his elbows, but quickly collapsed upon the mattress, too weak to leave it. Rolling his head on the pillow, he gulped as he sought to take a breath. “Roger’d . . . do better ta manage . . . the mill . . . an’ leave . . . the books ta me, girlie.”

“But, Papa Edmund, you’ve been too ill even to know what day it is, much less tally the mill’s accounts.”

“Tell ‘im . . . ta leave off . . . till I’m . . . on me feet . . . again.”

Leaning over the man, Felicity offered him a smile as she patted his arm in a motherly fashion. “I will tell him what you said, Papa Edmund. Now rest yourself. There’s certainly no need for you to get in such a dither about the accounts. ‘Twould seem like such a small matter for Roger to worry you about . . .

unless, of course, you happen to know why they can’t be balanced. If so, you should consider letting him know . . . to save him endless searching.”

“Just tell ‘im ta leave off, girlie. ’E has . . . no head . . . for tallyin’.”

Eighteen

C
olton Wyndham swept his bride into his residence overlooking Hyde Park in London, and promptly became mindful of the fact that Seward, the small, wiry, elderly butler, who had been elevated to the status of head steward of the house long before Sedgwick Wyndham had ever started having a family, was grinning like a wizened monkey. The thin man snapped his fingers and, amazingly, a flood of people, mostly garbed in black, others from the kitchen wearing only white, seemed to scurry from every nook and cranny to form a lengthy line for the new mistress’s inspection. Even Cook was there, having been hired a score of years earlier to round out the staff for the mansion. Now she reigned supreme over the kitchen and the preparations of the food. It seemed every one of the servants wore a smile as broad as the butler’s and was eager to greet the newly wedded Wyndhams immediately upon their return from their two-month honeymoon spent in warmer climes, which had indeed proven advantageous to the master’s recuperation. By the time the last smiling maid was introduced, Adriana’s head was nearly reeling with a blur of names. Imagining the difficulty she’d likely encounter remembering which name went with what face, she laughed and clasped her hands to her pinkened cheeks.

“In all my past visits here, I never realized there were so many servants on the premises. I shan’t be able to recall everyone’s name at first, so, please, please have pity on me.”

Laying an arm about her waist, Colton squeezed it affectionately as he drew her against his side. “Aye, they’ll do that for you, my dear. After all, they’ve no other choice since you’re the new mistress of the house. Yet, as much as they’ll be learning your preferences, I doubt they’ll be expecting to lose their hearts to you. Having experienced that very thing myself, I should warn them to be on their guard, or they

’ll be scampering around here, ignoring my demands while they’re eagerly doing all they can to please you.”

The amiable chortles evoked from the servants readily evinced the possibility of that occurrence. Of all the past visitors to the Wyndhams’ London manor, it had been Lady Adriana who had always evidenced a vivacious charm and caring thoughtfulness that had evoked their fondness. They couldn’t have been more delighted now that she was mistress of the manor.

“Dinner will be served at the usual hour, my lord,” Seward informed the marquess, unable to contain his own grin. “Considering your lengthy jaunt in the carriage today, I thought perhaps you and madam would enjoy having your meal served in the warmth and privacy of your chambers. No doubt, after your extensive travels these past two months, you’ll welcome an opportunity merely to relax.”