“You can’t prove that,” Anna said. But more than fatigue, what she felt was the weight of the earl’s withdrawal.
He walked over to her, hesitated then reached up to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear. “You are tired, your life is in turmoil, and while I could importune you now, it would hardly be gentlemanly. I have trespassed against you badly enough as it is and would not compound my errors now.”
“And would it be ungentlemanly,” Anna said, turning her back to him, “to simply hold me?”
He walked around to the front of her, his eyes unreadable.
“Get into your nightclothes,” he said. “I’m going to fetch you some chamomile tea, and then we’ll get you settled.”
Anna just stood in the middle of her room for long minutes after he’d left, her heart breaking with the certain knowledge she was being humored by a man who no longer desired her. She desired him, to be sure, but desire and willingness to destroy a good man’s future were two different things.
Still, it hurt terribly that while she missed him, missed him with a throbbing, bodily ache, he was not similarly afflicted. She had disappointed him then refused his very gentlemanly offers and now he was done with her, all but the wrapping up and slaying her dragons part.
“You are ready for bed,” the earl said, carrying a tray with him when he rejoined her. “Your hair is still up. Shall I braid it for you?”
She let him, let him soothe her with his kindness and his familiar touch and his beautiful, mellow baritone describing his conversation with his father and the various details of his day. He lay down beside her on the bed, rubbing her back as she lay on her side. She drifted off to sleep, the feel of his hand on her back and his breath on her neck reassuring her in ways she could not name.
When she woke the next morning, it was later than she’d ever slept before, and there was no trace of the earl’s late-night visit.
Anna slept a great deal in the days that followed. Her appetite was off, and she cried easily, something that put three grown men on particularly good behavior. She cried at Val’s music, at notes Morgan sent her, at the way the odd-colored cat would sit in the window of the music room and listen to Beethoven. She cried when her flower arrangements wouldn’t work out, and she cried when Westhaven held her at night.
She cried so much Westhaven remarked upon it to his father.
“Probably breeding.” The duke shrugged. “If she wasn’t one to cry before but she’s crying buckets now, best beware. Does she toss up her accounts?”
“She doesn’t,” the earl said, “but she doesn’t eat much, at least not at meals.”
“Is she sore to the touch?” The duke waved a hand at his chest. “Using the chamber pot every five minutes?”
“I wouldn’t know.” The earl felt himself blushing, but he could easily find out.
“Your dear mother was a crier. Not a particularly sentimental woman, for all her softheartedness, but I knew we were in anticipation of another happy event when she took to napping and crying.”
“I see.” The earl smiled. There were depths to his parents’ intimacy he’d not yet glimpsed, he realized. Sweet depths, rich in caring and humor.
“Mayhap you do.” The duke’s answering smile faded. “And your mother was most affectionate when breeding, as well, not that she isn’t always, but she was particularly in need of cuddling and cosseting, much to my delight. If this woman is carrying your child, Westhaven, it puts matters in a different light.”
“It does.”
“I’m not proud to have sired two bastards”—the duke frowned—“though in my day, these things were considered part of the ordinary course. Times aren’t so tolerant now.”
“They aren’t,” Westhaven agreed, sitting down as the weight of possible fatherhood began to sink in. “I would not wish bastardy on any child of mine.”
“Good of you.” The duke smiled thinly. “The child’s mother is the one you’ll have to convince. Best not fret about it now, though. Things sometimes work themselves out despite our efforts.”
The earl barely heard him, so taken was he with the idea of creating a child with Anna. It felt right: in his bones it felt right and good. She would be a wonderful mother, and she would make him an at least tolerable father.
Papa.
The word took on rich significance, and the earl turned to regard his own sire.
“Weren’t you ever afraid?” he asked. “Ten children, three different women, and you a duke?”
“I wasn’t much of a duke.” The old man snorted. “Not at first. But children have a way of putting a fellow on the right path rather sooner than he’d find it himself. Children and their mothers. But to answer your question, I was fairly oblivious, at first, but then Devlin was born, and Maggie, and I began to sense my own childhood was coming to a close. I was not sanguine at this prospect, Westhaven. Many of our class regard perpetual childhood as our God-given right. Fortunately, I met your mother, and she showed me just how much I had to be fearful of.”
“But you kept having children. Fatherhood couldn’t have been all that daunting if you embraced it so frequently.”
“Silly boy.” The duke beamed. “It was your mother I was embracing. Still do, though it probably horrifies you to hear of it.”
“No.” Westhaven smiled. “It rather doesn’t.”
The duke’s smile faded. “More to the point, you don’t have a choice with children, Westhaven. You bring them into this world, and you are honor bound to do the best you can. If you are fortunate, they have another parent on hand to help out when you are inclined to be an ass, but if not, you muddle on anyway. Look at Gwen Hollister—or Allen, I suppose. She muddled on, and Rose is a wonderful child.”
“She is. Very. You might consider telling her mother that sometime.”
He shifted the conversation, to regale his father with an account of his time spent with Rose. It seemed like ages ago that His Grace had come thundering into the sick room at Welbourne, but listening to his father recount more stories of Victor and his brothers, Westhaven had the strong sense the duke was healing from more than just his heart seizure.
Westhaven took his leave of his father, so lost in thought he had little recollection of his journey home. Pericles knew the way, of course, but ambling along in the heat, the earl was preoccupied with the prospect of fatherhood. When he gained his library, he sat down with a calendar and began counting days.
He’d retrieved Nanny Fran from the duke’s household, and he wasn’t above putting the old woman up to some discreet monitoring of Anna’s health. By his calculations, he had not been intimate with Anna when she should have been fertile, but women were mysterious, and he’d taken no precautions to prevent conception.
It hit him like a freight wagon that in that single act, he’d probably taken away as many of Anna’s options as her brother and Stull combined, and he’d never once considered behaving any differently. He sat alone in his library for a long time, thinking about Anna and what it meant to love her were she carrying his child.
At the same time, Anna was sitting on the little bed in the room she’d used when she held the title housekeeper, thinking what an odd loss it was to not be even that anymore to the earl. She had found it heartening that she could earn her own keep. Looking after the earl and his brothers had been particularly pleasurable, as they took well to being tended to.
She, however, did not take well to being tended to. Not lately. For the past several nights, the earl had served as her lady’s maid, taking down her hair, bringing her a cup of tea, and spending the end of the day in quiet conversation with her. All the while, even on those nights when he rubbed her back and cuddled her close on the bed, she felt him withdrawing to a greater and greater emotional distance.
He wasn’t physically skittish with her, but rather very careful. Anna wanted to think he was almost cherishing, but there was no evidence of desire in his touch. And she bundled into him closely enough the evidence would have been impo
ssible to hide. She clung to him for those times when he offered her comfort but felt all too keenly the comfort he was no longer interested in offering, as well.
She was losing him, which proved to her once and for all that her decision to leave—her many, many decisions to leave—were the better course for them both.
Better, perhaps, but by no means easier.
“I am being followed,” Helmsley said, taking a long swallow of ale. Ale, for God’s sake, the peasant drink.
“You are a well-dressed gentleman on the streets when few are about,” Stull said. “No doubt you attract attention, as I do myself. I want to know why you’re back in dear old London town, where you don’t fit in and you do depend on my coin.”
Helmsley rolled his eyes. “Because I am being followed. Big, dark chap, rough-looking, like a drover returning north without his flock.”
“And what would a drover be doing staying at the better inns, when they have their own establishments for that purpose?” Stull replied, draining his own tankard.
“You take my point.” Helmsley nodded, glad he didn’t have to explain everything. “I thought you should know.”
“You thought I should know.” Stull frowned. “But you’ve been gone nigh a week, which means you probably made it halfway to York before turning about and deciding to tell me.”
Helmsley studied his ale. “I had a delay on the way out of Town. Horse tossed a shoe, then it was too late to travel. He came up lame the next day, and rather than buy another horse, I had to wait for him to come right.”
“And you waited for how long before realizing you had company?”
“A few days,” the earl improvised. “I was traveling slowly to spare the horse.”
“Of course you were.” Stull scowled. “You’re up to something, Helmsley, and you’d best not be up to crossing me.”
“I am up to nothing.” Helmsley sighed dramatically. “Except imposing further on your hospitality. Now, why haven’t we collected my sisters yet?”
Stull banged his empty tankard in a demand for more ale and launched into a convoluted tale of arrests, accusations, and indignities. From his ramblings, the earl concluded Stull had yet to locate Morgan but tried at least once to abduct Anna almost literally from the Earl of Westhaven’s arms.
“So where does this leave us?” Helmsley asked.
He had been followed, but he’d also been struck with an idea: Dead, Anna was worth more to him than alive. The difficulty was, she had to die—or at least appear to die—before she wed Stull, or all her lovely money would fall into the hands of the baron. The thought that the baron might procure a special license and start his connubial bliss with Anna before Helmsley even saw her again had sent Helmsley right back down the road.
Of course, he should offer Anna the option of faking her own death and disappearing with a tidy sum, but working in concert with Stull for the past two years had left a bad taste in Helmsley’s mouth. Partners in crime were tedious and a liability.
Once Anna had been dealt with, Morgan could be used to appease Stull. It would then be easy to arrange an accident for Stull—ingested poison seemed the appropriate remedy—and then as Stull’s widow, Morgan would inherit a goodly portion of the baron’s wealth, as well.
A tidy, altogether pleasing plan, Helmsley congratulated himself, but one that would require his presence in London, where the gaming was better, criminals for hire abounded, and Stull could be closely monitored.
“So how do you propose we retrieve dear Anna?” Helmsley asked. “I gather snatching her from the market did not go as planned.”
“Hah,” Stull snorted then paused for a moment to leer at the young serving maid. “That damned Westhaven got to throwing his weight around and had me arrested for arson. The charges will be dropped, of course, and it gives me the perfect excuse to malinger in Town. The plan remains simply to snatch the girl. She’s helpless when it comes to her flowers, and I have it on good authority she’s out in the back gardens several times a day. We’ll just seize our moment and seize your sister.”
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that.” The baron nodded. “Trying to nab her in the market, I admit, was poorly thought out. Too many people around. This time, however, I’m prepared.”
“What does that mean?” Helmsley made his tone casual.
“If that damned earl makes a ruckus”—Stull wiped his lips on his handkerchief—“I’ll wave the betrothal contract at him. And for good measure, I’ll wave your guardianship papers, as well.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” Helmsley said slowly, though of course he had. “Why not simply send a solicitor ’round to the earl with the documents? If he’s a gentleman, as you say, he should send Anna along smartly, and Morgan with her, assuming she’s nearby?”
“You don’t understand your peers, Helmsley.” Stull leaned forward. “I’ll wave that document around, but I’m not turning the earl’s solicitors loose on it. The Quality don’t engage in trade, and anything that smacks of business befuddles ’em to the point where they must bring in the lawyers. That will take weeks, at least, and I am damned tired of waiting for my bride.”
“I’m sure you are,” Helmsley said, as he was damned tired of waiting for Stull to pay off his debts. He also silently allowed as how any solicitor of suitable talent to serve a future duke would likely find holes the size of bull elephants in the contracts. “Your plan sounds worthy to me, so what are we waiting for?”
The baron smiled, an ugly grimace of an expression. “We are waiting for Anna to go pick her bedamned flowers.”
Seventeen
“Why the frown?” Val asked, helping himself to the lemonade provided for the earl and Mr. Tolliver each morning.
“Note from Hazlit.” The earl handed the missive to his brother, Tolliver having been excused for the day. “He began the journey north to track down Helmsley, and lo, the fellow was not more than a day’s ride from Town, supposedly waiting for his horse to come sound. He rode right back into Town and connected with Stull at the Pig.”
“So you have your miscreants reunited.” Val scanned the note. “I wonder what the foray north was about in the first place?”
“Who knows?” The earl sipped at his drink. “They don’t strike me as a particularly cunning pair.”
“Maybe not cunning,” Val conceded, “but ruthless. They were going to torch an entire property, for reasons we still don’t know. That’s a hanging offense, Westhaven, and so far, they’ve gotten away with it.”
“The charges are pending, and I suspect if we catch one of them, the other will be implicated in very short order.”
Val sat on the arm of the sofa. “Stull hasn’t implicated Helmsley yet.”
“The arson charges are not likely to stick,” the earl said, “though they do create leverage.”
“Or unpredictability,” Val suggested.
“Possibly.” The earl noted that Val was being contrary, which wasn’t like him. “How is Miss Morgan?”
“Thriving,” Val said glumly. “She’s blooming, Westhaven. When I call upon her, she is giggling, laughing, and carrying on at a great rate with our sisters, the duke, the duchess…”
“The footmen?” the earl guessed.
“The butler, the grooms, the gardeners,” Val went on, nodding. “She charms everybody.”
“It could be worse.” The earl got up and went to the window, from which he could see Anna taking cuttings for her bouquets. “You could have proposed to her, oh, say a half-dozen times and been turned down each time. Quite lowering, the third and fourth rejections. One gets used to it after that. Or tries to.”
“Gads.” Val’s eyebrows shot up. “I hadn’t realized it had reached that stage. What on earth is wrong with the woman?”
“Nothing. She simply believes we would not suit, so I leave her in relative peace.”
“Except you tuck her in each night?”
“I do.” The earl’s eyes stayed fixed on the garden. “She is
fond of me; she permits it. She is quite alone, Val, so I try not to take advantage of the liberties I’m granted. I comprehend, though, when a woman doesn’t even try to kiss me, that I have lost a substantial part of my allure in her eyes.”
“And have you talked to her about this?”
“I have.” The earl smiled faintly. “She confronted me quite clearly and asked how we were to go on. She wants comforting but nothing more. I can provide that.”
Comforting and cosseting and cuddling.
“You are a better man than I am.” Val smiled in sympathy.
“Not better.” The earl shook his head. “Just… What the hell is going on out there?!”
A pair of beefy-looking thugs had climbed over the garden wall and thrown a sack over Anna’s head. She was still struggling mightily when the earl, both brothers, and two footmen pounded onto the scene and wrestled Anna from her attackers.
“Oh, no you don’t,” St. Just snarled as he hauled the larger man off the wall. “You stay right here, my man, and await the King’s justice. You, too, Shorty.” He cocked a pistol and leveled a deadly look at the two intruders.
Baron Stull let himself in through the gate. “I say, none of that now. Westhaven, call off your man.”
“Stull.” Westhaven grimaced. “You are trespassing. Leave, unless you’d like the constable to take you up now rather than when these worthies implicate you in kidnapping.”
“I ain’t kidnapping,” Stull huffed. “You want proof this lady is my fiancée, well here it is.” He thrust a beribboned document at the earl, who merely lifted an eyebrow. On cue, Val stepped forward, retrieved the document, and handed it to a footman.
“Take it to His Grace,” the earl ordered. “Tell him I want the validity of the thing reviewed, and it’s urgent.”
“Now see here.” The Earl of Helmsley sauntered in through the gate, and Westhaven felt Anna go tense. “There will be no need for that. Anna, come along. Tell the man I’m your brother and the guardian appointed by our grandpapa to see to you and our sister. Grandmama has been missing you both.”
The Windham Series Boxed Set (Volumes 1-3) Page 32
