by Jen YatesNZ
The epitome of the suave, urbane host, Lord Baxendene showed yet another side of his character Jane had never seen. For the briefest of moments she wished he could be—or do—something she could truly dislike.
Ever solicitous of his Mama, he didn’t allow them to linger over the meal. As soon as the ladies rose to leave the gentlemen to their port, he offered his mother his arm and escorted her back to her rooms, after she’d bid everyone goodnight.
Later, when both Selena and Lady Marianne had played for them, Bax asked, ‘Isn’t there a lute in the music room here, Holly?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Then if Lady Rotherby would agree to sing for us, I promise you all a treat.’
‘Only if you agree to sing with me, Lord Baxendene,’ Jane smiled sweetly. ‘I do believe our voices complement each other.’
He smiled enigmatically across the room at her and called Garnet to send for the instrument. A footman returned bearing a fine example of an antique Bavarian seven course lute, which made Jane’s fingers itch, dispelling any reluctance to perform. She didn’t usually mind, but tonight, with Hades bathing her in his warm regard, she felt nervous. Demanding he sing with her had felt a little like turning the tables on him, but in reality it would only make her more aware of his tantalizing presence.
The moment the footman placed the instrument in her hands, the rest came naturally. After a few moments to tune it, they sang a brace of beautiful old Celtic ballads.
When she began to lay the instrument aside, he said, ‘We haven’t sung the Lament, Jane.’
‘Rather morbid for this gathering, don’t you think?’
‘Few Celtic ballads are any less so,’ he contended. ‘And since we share an ancestral connection to Rosen Keep it’s appropriate we sing it together.’
‘Please sing it, Jane!’ Holly pleaded. ‘It’s years since I heard it.—Do you remember how Granny Shierann used to sing it, Hades?’
‘Och, aye, she did! An’ ye ken yon words! Ye c’n sing it wi’ us, lass!’ he grinned at his sister.
Holly collapsed in laughter, as did the rest of the guests, at his easy adoption of the Scottish accent of their Granny.
Knowing herself defeated, Jane struck the first chord and began singing, Holly and Hades immediately joining her. Had that deep base voice placed more emphasis on the first two lines?
‘The Lion came prowlin’
Roamin’ doon the glen
Bidin’ fir yon time o’ passin’
O’ the last great Laird
O’ the true Blair blood
And yon end o’ a line everlastin’.
The hills will greet and the rivers run deep
Till the Lion brings the Lamb back to Rosen Keep.
Aye, the hills will greet and the rivers run deep
Ere the Lion brings the Lamb back to Rosen Keep.’
‘Enough,’ she said quietly as the last notes faded in the general applause, and placed the instrument carefully on a side table.
When the Briscos rose to leave, so did the Burgates, leaving Bax, Selena and Jane alone in the drawing room.
Selena threw her arms around her uncle.
‘Thank you, Uncle Bax. I’m having the best time,’ she declared. ‘Lord Henry was such fun!’
‘Totally unsuitable, minx! He has no expectations whatsoever!’
‘I know,’ Selena pouted. ‘But I just want to have some fun—and his brother was a stuffed shirt!’
A prodigious yawn followed this pronouncement.
‘Best away to your bed,’ her uncle advised gently, ‘if you want to look your sparkling best tomorrow night.’
She rolled her eyes, but complied.
Jane rose to follow, but Bax said, ‘Will you stay awhile?’
And there it was, her heart leaping into her chest and starting to thud with—what? Excitement? Anticipation?
She meant to refuse, to use his argument she needed to be fresh for tomorrow night.
‘Please stay, Jane. Sing for me. I loved listening when you used to visit at The Dene. I never tired of your voice then—and I couldn’t really listen tonight since you insisted I sing!’
As she stared up at him, afraid to stay and yet loathe to forego this quiet time in his company, she noted lines of tiredness about his eyes and mouth, and a general air of weariness in the slump of his shoulders.
She loved to sing, for she knew it soothed, healed, as her medicines did, though on a different level. But, sing for Hades? As she used to sing for James? It would probably be the complete opposite of soothing and healing for her; make her ache for things Hades would never offer.
‘Sing ‘Red is the Rose’ for me.’
Avoiding his gaze and tamping down the sudden wild leap of her heart, she crossed the room and retrieved the lute from the table where she’d placed it earlier. Settling herself on the piano stool she began to sing.
‘Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling—’
She looked up in time to catch a crooked smile slant across his lips as he dropped onto a nearby chair to watch her, his mouth straight again, but his eyes gently laughing.
Then she found herself struggling to keep singing when his rich base voice joined hers.
‘You have a beautiful voice,’ she couldn’t help blurting as the last notes faded to silence. He gave her that quirky half smile again, twisting her stomach in knots. It should be outlawed, she thought as her breath hitched in her throat.
‘We sing well together. As we’d—do other things well—’
‘Don’t,’ Jane begged. ‘Otherwise I shall have to go up.’
‘But, Jane,’ he began again, the smile making his eyes dance like distant stars in an indigo sky. Damn the man—and her susceptible heart! She rose to her feet.
‘Don’t go,’ he said huskily, the smile fading to reveal once again the tired lines and shadows of his face.
Rising, he crossed to the sideboard and poured himself a snifter of brandy.
‘Do you fancy a nightcap? There’s sherry.’
‘No, thank you.’
Dropping to the piano stool again, she knew herself for a fool as she watched the tendons and muscles of his throat contract as he swallowed the liquor. Parts of her body tightened and heated. Such things had never happened to her before—and only did now around Hades Delacourte.
Then he strode across and sat next to her on the stool, taking up all available space, his thigh fitting snugly against hers.
‘Stay,’ he growled, the husky note back in his voice, when she popped up again like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Have you ever done any healing work with mentally disturbed patients?’
The question was so far from what she’d been expecting she collapsed back onto the seat at his side like a deflated balloon.
‘Not really. Though Aunt Bea did. She was the nearest thing Baxter village had to a doctor and I used to go with her everywhere. She probably would’ve been dubbed the local witch if she hadn’t lived at the vicarage. She told me once my father promised her a home for life, but she had to leave her witchery at the door. A matter of survival, was how she excused her compliance, and five small girls who should never be left to the cheerless upbringing of her younger brother. And she didn’t call it witchery. It was more that she was a clear channel for God’s healing power.—Why?’
‘Tell me about the mentally ill person she helped,’ Hades murmured.
‘He wasn’t mentally ill. He fell out of a tree and was unconscious for several days. When he awoke he was—damaged.’
‘Like a soldier might be after a battle?’
‘Perhaps. Tommy Baker was nine years old, but after that fall he behaved more like a two year old. Aunt Bea said there had to be swelling or trapped blood pressing on the brain. She made up poultices to put on his head while he slept, and each day she’d visit and sit with her hands on his head for about an hour. He became naughty and intractable after the accident, but when Aunt Bea touched him he calmed down and relaxed for as long as sh
e kept her hands on him. It took months, but he did eventually heal and became almost normal again.
‘Can you do that kind of healing? What do you call it?’
‘Sacred energy healing. Aunt Bea taught me. Anyone can do it. You could do it. It’s a matter of focusing your thought power, seeing yourself as a channel for God’s energy flowing through the crown of your head and out through the palms of your hands.—It helps if you’ve developed some sort of relationship with a divine being!’ she added a little tartly.
He cocked a challenging eyebrow at her for a minute then stared down at his boots.
‘Why do you ask?’ she prodded.
‘I have a—friend,’ he said, keeping his face averted. ‘Came back from Waterloo apparently physically unhurt, but mentally damaged. Totally withdrawn. Spends his days drawing horses—in exquisite detail. He’s an Earl with estates and the future of the title dependent on him. He also has a fiancée.’
Sensing there was much he wasn’t telling her, Jane waited. Suddenly he was on his feet striding the length of the huge room like a restless caged animal. Then he crossed to the fireplace and leant an arm on the mantel, one of his favorite stances, and kicked at the cold grate with one large boot.
‘I have two properties somewhat east of Bell Barr. They’re sanctuaries for officers returned from Napoleon’s bloody years, no longer able to function in the real world—or whose families prefer to pretend they no longer exist.—And if you breathe one word of this to anyone, Jane, I’ll—’
He looked up at her, a slash of color across the harsh blades of his cheekbones. The color darkened as he saw her frown. He was unbearably transparent, to her anyway. These philanthropic ventures were in total opposition to his careless, rakish image, which she began to think he’d carefully manufactured and went to great pains to maintain.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you if I didn’t trust you. But—no one knows those places have anything to do with me. And I prefer to keep it that way.’
He turned back to kicking at the grate with his boot.
‘Why tell me about your friend then? I gather he lives at one of these facilities?’
‘The Chase. Bancombe Park is for those too physically damaged to manage without help. Some of the men at The Chase can become violent. Captain Dorset can if someone tries to change his routine or get him to do something other than paint those bloody horses! Always saddled or ready to ride into battle—or after. Always minus their riders. Often splattered in blood.
‘His fiancée, Lady Barbara, comes to visit several times a year, always hoping things will change, that he will change. He sits and stares at her the whole time she’s there. He loved her once. Quite desperately, she says, and she loves him still. Refuses to give up. Is wasting her damn life waiting for a miracle I haven’t a prayer of delivering. Hoping we can return to her the man he once was, who’s—simply a shell.
‘And yet—I can’t help feeling that man is still in there behind those eyes. They blaze with a fierce intelligence while he has a canvas before him, a brush in his hand. Take those things away and he becomes vacant, shut down, uncommunicative—violent.
‘I’ve wondered if we could get him to a point where he could be moved to a private part of The Chase. The Gatehouse or one of several cottages on the place, where Lady Barbara could come and stay with him—with supervision, of course.—I feel certain if they could be together for long enough, he could heal.’
His shoulders were slumped and he continued to gaze unseeing at the floor.
Jane loved nothing better than such a situation her knowledge and healing energy might help.
‘There’re herbs you could try. Hawthorne, rosemary, skullcap, St. John’s Wort. Or—’
‘What?’ he asked, fixing her with his eager gaze.
Jane’s chest swelled with apprehension. Could she trust Hades? He’d trusted her.
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve thought of something. I’ll try anything. The others at The Chase are hopeless cases, but I can’t help feeling with John we’re missing something. You can’t hold out on me now!’
Letting her breath out in a rush, she said, ‘Aunt Bea had some special healing crystals. I saw her use them a few times—although she was surreptitious about it. Some folk are terribly superstitious and believe in the evil eye and such. They had to be kept secret from Papa for he thought such things plain evil. Lord knows why. They come from the earth God created! But whenever I saw her use them they turned the tide of a sickness that would respond to naught else.’
‘How do they work? Do you have them with you?’
‘No. I keep them locked away at Rotherby. I used them a couple of times with James, to good effect. But when one’s time is up or one’s condition is part of the Divine purpose for whatever reason, not even they can make a difference.’
‘Could they be fetched? Would you come with me to The Chase?’
Jane stared at him, horror blossoming at the unimaginable scandal of such behavior. Worse, a crazy, desperate part of her leapt and danced in her chest to be heard, that part of her hungering to declare she’d go anywhere, do anything so long as he was by her side!
‘No!’ she cried, leaping agitatedly to her feet. That would be totally inappropriate!’
In the blink of an eye the caring, empathetic man who’d been pleading his friend’s case, vanished and in his place, leaning nonchalantly against the mantel and surveying her with one eyebrow rakishly cocked, was the devil-may-care, Hell-bent Hades, the Great Bax of London renown.
‘You could pretend to be my lover for the trip.’
‘I see you don’t suggest I pretend to be your wife,’ she noted sourly, annoyed as much at herself for wishing he had, as at him for not.
Laughing easily, he said, ‘No one would take that for anything but a faradiddle.’
‘Good night,’ Jane muttered frostily and left him standing alone in the empty drawing room.
But the thought of the lonely—maybe desperate—Lady Barbara continued to haunt her thoughts along with the possibility the healing crystals above all else, might flip the important switch in Captain Dorset’s mind. She’d give not one thought to Hades’ wicked suggestion they ‘pretend’ to be lovers for the duration of the visit, or that there would be no ‘pretend’ about it if he had his way.
No, not a thought would she waste on such a wickedly enticing scheme.
Chapter 9
Radiant and simmering with excitement, Selena was impatient for the ball to start. Jane still had to dress. Watching from the shadows at the head of the stairs, she waited until the young woman had made it safely downstairs into the care of her uncle before returning to her room and putting herself in Dolly’s hands. Guests would be arriving any moment and she determined not to go down herself until she knew Hades would be deeply preoccupied with his Mama receiving guests to the ball and introducing Selena to the ton.
When she judged the moment right to descend, she paused briefly before the cheval glass to appreciate the stunning effect of the jewel green gown that Madame Callie had so cunningly lengthened with a swathe of gold lace studded with faux emeralds. Before doubts could prevail and she succumbed to the temptation to change into something less revealing, less—everything, she hurried down the back stairs and entered the ballroom through a side door. Slipping into a chair at Holly’s side, she leant forward and said, ‘It’s going to be a very satisfactory crush, I believe. Your Mama will be greatly relieved. I think she worried people wouldn’t come.’
Holly’s laughter was softly derisive.
‘Of course they’d come. And that’s why!’ she averred, nodding to where her brother was taking his place in the first set of the evening with Selena on his arm. ‘While he remains unattached every mooning chit and desperate Mama will throng to where they know he must be.’
Jane’s heart fluttered foolishly in her chest as she watched him lead Selena out for the first dance of the evening. They made a handsome pair, all dramatic B
eresford brilliance. She wasn’t jealous of any one of those afore-mentioned mooning chits who might be invited to dance with the great lug. She wasn’t!
Strive as she might, it was near impossible to keep her eyes on Selena or anyone else on the floor and forget the ripple of sinew, the dark dusting of hair on his massive forearms, the clear outline of broad muscled shoulders narrowing to a taut waist disappearing into his trousers as he’d worked with the servants decorating the ballroom yesterday. Stripped, the man would be phenomenal to behold.
Thankfully his mother and sister were too enraptured with her gown to notice her distraction and discover the cause of it. Selena’s too, was delighted over, and both Holly and Lady Baxendene voiced their gratitude for Jane introducing them to La Callista. Then they moved on to the unusual color of Lady Portsmouth’s elaborate turban and the wondrously adorned Lord Melton and his garishly garbed dandy friends, but it seemed Lady Baxendene was no more capable of keeping her attention from her son than was Jane.
‘He’s taking his duty to Selena more seriously than I would ever have dared hope. If only he’d take his duties to the title as seriously, take a wife—’
She broke off abruptly as he brought Selena back to them, immediately followed by a bevy of young gentlemen and ladies. Stepping back a little to watch indulgently, he informed them quietly her dance card was full.
She was literally bubbling with happiness, equally welcoming of the young ladies she’d met earlier in the week as the crowd of young eligibles jostling to get near enough to be noticed.
Edging between Jane and Holly, Hades skimmed one gloved hand lightly across the back of Jane’s neck.
‘Woman! How many men am I going to have to call out tonight? That gown is—incendiary!’
The shock of his touch made her gasp. Fortunately he was speaking, which effectively prevented Holly from noticing. Sitting forward a little, she reminded herself ‘at her feet’ was where she’d hoped the dress would put Hades Delacourte and she only had herself to blame for she knew his idea of ‘at her feet’ and hers would be vastly different.
