Wild Passions of a Mischievous Duchess

by Violet Hamers

  Rosaline’s eyes were wild, filled with angry tears that streamed down her face as she tightened her grip around Elizabeth’s neck. Elizabeth remembered this feeling, the weakness, the stars that danced around her vision. This time, Rosaline will have learned that losing consciousness was not a guarantee that she was dead. She would not take off as quickly this time.

  “Rosaline—” Elizabeth struggled to form the word. The strangled whisper came out more of an incomprehensible gurgle than an actual word.

  Rosaline smiled, a terrifying, wolfish grin. “It’s Hester. My name is Hester.”

  Elizabeth’s vision went dark. Her mind could no longer hold on to thoughts. Everything seemed purple and blue and she felt herself falling to her knees. She was barely cognizant of when she was thrown onto the ground. She inhaled sharply, and again that searing pain went to her head and she curled onto her side, groaning.

  But this time Rosaline had not left. She stood over Elizabeth, staring down at her with an awful emptiness in her eyes. She crossed silently back to the tea tray as Elizabeth struggled to get up but only managed to writhe uselessly in pain and disorientation.

  In another moment, Rosaline—no, Hester—was over her, straddling Elizabeth’s middle as she held her down. As a knife was raised into the air, it caught the sunlight that streamed into the room and the flash of light pierced Elizabeth’s eyes. She was sure that it was the last sight she would see, and she tried to scream.

  * * *

  Gerard and Bridget were silent as the carriage flew down the road. The coachman had been told in emphatic language to push the horses as fast as they could go, and both brother and sister gripped onto the seats as the carriage lurched dangerously around the corners. The coachman did not slow down.

  Detective Collins was with them. When Gerard and Bridget had informed him that Gerard and Elizabeth were leaving to be married that very night, and that they had told Rosaline to go to Elizabeth alone and keep her company, the color had drained from the detective’s face.

  “We must go there immediately. Miss Peaton is in grave danger,” he had said, though Gerard and Bridget had already leapt up from their seats and were hurrying out.

  “How long ago did she leave?” Gerard asked, panic leaking into his voice.

  “I don’t remember,” Bridget answered, pressing her body against the side of the carriage as they took another corner. “I had time to make that list. And you had begun packing. And then I kept stupidly interrupting Detective Collins. Oh, this is my fault!”

  “It’s not your fault, Bridget.” Gerard assured her. “It’s no one’s fault. We couldn’t have known any sooner.” His voice was tight and he felt lightheaded, as though he could not take a satisfying breath. He watched out the window, seeing the landscape fly by.

  When they pulled in front of the inn, the three of them tumbled out of the carriage and bolted up to Elizabeth’s room. Gerard knocked loudly, but when the only answer was a garbled scream, he heaved his shoulder against the locked door with all of his strength. The doorframe quaked, and he did it again. On the second time, the door gave way and he fumbled forward, catching himself before falling into the room.

  The sight that met him was one that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Elizabeth was on the ground, her face splotchy and blood pooling under her shoulder. The lady he’d known as Rosaline was on top of Elizabeth, a thin knife in her hand that was raised above her head as though she were about to bring it down on Elizabeth again.

  Hester did not seem to even be aware that they had broken into the room, and her hand began to strike down again. Gerard lunged forward, catching her fiercely by the wrist and tackling her to the ground next to Elizabeth.

  “What have you done?” he yelled, his voice roaring through the room. He struggled with the crazed lady as she thrashed beneath him.

  “Elizabeth!” he heard Bridget cry, falling to the ground next to her.

  Hester, seeming to come somewhat to her senses upon realizing who it was that was pinning her to the ground, went oddly still. Her eyes were wide as saucers, with pupils dilated so far they almost completely obscured the blue of her eyes.

  “Elizabeth, are you all right? Say something,” Gerard heard Bridget’s voice behind him and, looking over his shoulder, he saw her lifting Elizabeth’s head. Elizabeth was limp, but her lips were moving. She was whispering something, but he couldn’t make it out over the sound of Detective Collins bellowing down the stairs of the inn for men to come and help and for someone to send for a physician.

  In an instant, several men pounded up the steps and barreled into the room.

  “Restrain this one,” Gerard called. Hester was soon hauled to her feet, with her arms held behind her by one of the stronger patrons of the inn.

  Gerard went immediately to Elizabeth, cradling her in his arms. Blood trickled from a wound in her shoulder, just under her clavicle bone, but there didn’t seem to be any other sources for the blood that streaked across the carpet.

  “Rosaline,” Elizabeth was whispering. “Hester. Her name is Hester. She stabbed me. Gerard, she killed Christine.”

  “I know, darling. Shh…” He held her to him and shushed her. “Don’t try to speak. You’re all right now.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Hester sat placidly on a chair, though no one took her quiet hands for granted, as she had her wrists bound together and she was surrounded by three constables. The inn room was fuller than it was ever meant to be, with the physician arriving just after the constables.

  Elizabeth was sitting upright on the couch. The stab wound bled frightfully but was not as serious as it appeared. The physician applied a cloth of alcohol to clean the wound, which caused Elizabeth to hiss through her teeth at the sudden intensification of the pain. Gerard, who was standing in front of Hester, looked back over his shoulder at her with concern in his furrowed brow.

  Hester started to cry. Her wails filled the room as Elizabeth watched her slump into the chair. “I’m sorry! I’m terribly sorry! I don’t know what came over me.”

  Despite everything, Elizabeth’s heart clenched at the agony in the other woman’s cries.

  “You’ve done this before, Hester,” Gerard said, his voice carefully gentle as he lowered onto a knee to look into her face more clearly.

  Hester sobbed, nodding so furiously that her hair fell in front of her face. “I have! I have!”

  “Hester Harlow,” Detective Collins intoned. “You will be returned to the asylum from which you escaped all those years ago.”

  Hester grew panicked. “No, no, please don’t send me back there. Don’t abandon me, Gerard. I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry.” She strained against her bounds, trying to fling herself against Gerard.

  His face was pale, his lips drawn into a tight line. Even from where she was seated, Elizabeth could see the trembling tension he held in his body as he shushed the other woman.

  “I know you’re sorry,” he said. “But you just aren’t safe out here. You’re a danger to others, and to yourself as well.”

  “Don’t abandon me again…” Hester sobbed, hanging her head down low and weeping.

  “No one is abandoning you.” He rose back up to his feet.

  “Miss Harlow will be afforded the highest standard of care,” he said, raising his voice to the constables. Elizabeth was sure that she could hear a strange waver in his voice, a tremor of emotion that seemed to come from the deepest corner of his heart. “If the Raychesters will not pay for it, then it will be billed to the Hadminster estate. The highest standard of care, do you understand me?”

  “Understood, Your Grace.” Detective Collins said.

  Hester was limp and did not fight back as she was lifted from the seat and set onto her feet. She did not look up at anyone as she was led out of the room.

  “Gerard…” Elizabeth said. Her throat still felt terribly hoarse, though it was not as sore at the first time she had been strangled. Mirthlessly, she wondered if she had merely gotte
n used to it.

  Gerard strode back towards her, falling to his knees before her as he clasped her hands. The physician was finishing wrapping the wound in her shoulder and he stood back once he was satisfied with the work. Bridget, who had been standing anxiously behind Elizabeth, stooped forward to gently help Elizabeth to ease her arm back into her sleeve of her gown, lacing it back up loosely and comfortably.

  Gerard, after receiving basic instructions on how to care for Elizabeth and assurances that she would heal fine with plenty of care and rest, thanked the physician, who then left.

  “I still don’t understand,” Elizabeth said when it was only she, Gerard, and Bridget in the room. “Who is Hester?”

  “Hester is Rosaline. Or, Rosaline is Hester…” Gerard said, his words jumbled.

  “I’d known for years that Rosaline was adopted by the Raychesters,” Bridget said, coming around to sit next to Elizabeth. “But Detective Collins turned up the fact that she had actually escaped from an asylum as a girl. There’s something…something wrong with her. Something she can’t control.”

  Elizabeth looked at Bridget and found that the Duchess was crying, silent tears that rolled down her face.

  “She hid it all these years,” Gerard continued, giving his sister a chance to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief. “It seems that her father had taken up with another woman after Rosaline’s mother died, and Rosaline, terrified of abandonment, attacked her stepmother. Then, making matters even worse, her father left her at the asylum and never came to see her again. She escaped and…I suppose…over the years she came to see me as…well, the thought of me marrying triggered her lunacy.”

  Elizabeth licked her lips, which were dry and cracked. “I see,” she said, though it was not quite true. It all seemed too incredible. She followed it with a statement that rang with a great deal more truth. “These have been the strangest hours of my entire life.”

  Gerard sighed, almost smiling as he pulled her against him tenderly, being careful not to disturb her injured shoulder. Elizabeth’s nose and extremities were cold from the loss of blood, and she tucked her face against his warm neck. She felt Bridget’s hands on her back as the Duchess joined in their embrace.

  Bridget was still weeping gently, her shoulder trembling as they held each other. Elizabeth was comforted somewhat in the knowledge that she was not the only one in shock. The three of them held onto each other for what felt like a long time, saying nothing, each of them attempting in their own silent way to piece together the events of the day.

  “But, don’t you see?” Bridget said at least, straightening up and wiping at her cheeks with her fingers, forgetting the handkerchief that lay abandoned on the floor. “It’s over now, Gerard. Christine…the mystery. It’s finished.”

  “Yes,” he said somberly. “And we’ve lost a dear friend in the solving.”

  Bridget sniffed, her forehead crinkling as though she would start weeping again. Elizabeth squeezed her hand. Although she had come to consider Rosaline a friend in the past weeks, she could only make a meagre attempt to imagine how it would feel to discover these things about someone she’d known and loved since childhood.

  “Not lost, Gerard. Now we can help her in the way she has needed all along.”

  Gerard sighed. “You are right.” He glanced around the room, his eyes landing on the dark smudge of blood across the carpet. “Let’s go home. Let’s leave this place,” he said without looking up.

  Elizabeth and Bridget agreed.

  “Can you walk?” Bridget asked, helping Elizabeth to her feet.

  “Yes, I’m all right, really. My legs are unscathed,” she made an attempt to smile but felt that it was unnatural and stopped.

  The three of them walked arm in arm, carefully down the stairs and to the carriage. Gerard, at least, had the presence of mind to tell the coachman to fetch Elizabeth’s trunk from the room and bring it down. Before long, Elizabeth was under a thick flannel blanket as the carriage rolled along. She leaned against Gerard, her head on his shoulder, and shut her eyes. Her shock had begun to wear off and her entire arm and into her neck throbbed from the stab wound. She reminded herself that the physician had assured her that it was not as deep as it looked, and tried not to think of the pain.

  She had cheated death once again.

  “I’m beginning to think that I might be able to survive anything,” she whispered into the darkening carriage.

  She heard Bridget’s quiet chuckle and felt a tremor of the same in Gerard’s chest.

  “I’m certain you can,” he said, the words rumbling low in his chest as he turned his head to kiss the top of her hair.

  Elizabeth never remembered arriving back at Stonehill. Gerard must have carried her to bed, because the next thing she remembered was the sound of bluebirds outside the window and waking up to the familiar sight of the ceiling of her own little room at Stonehill. She could almost have fooled herself that it had all been a dream.

  She stirred slightly and the pain in her shoulder radiated out like a lightning bolt down her arm.

  It wasn’t a dream…

  She gritted her teeth, hissing as she sucked in a breath at the sudden pain. The sound she made prompted another sound, a soft rustling of fabric and then a weight she hadn’t noticed at the edge of her bed lifted and Gerard’s groggy head came into her line of sight. He was hunched in a chair that was pushed up to the side of the bed and had apparently fallen forward and fallen asleep with his upper body on the edge of her bed.

  “Are you’n pain?” he slurred, wiping sleep from his eyes. His black hair stuck up on one side.

  “Yes,” she answered honestly, though the sight of him so bedraggled and concerned was doing wonders to ease her discomfort.

  “The physician came last night with a tonic you can take,” he said, rising awkwardly to his feet and reaching for a crystal bottle on the table.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No, I don’t want that. I feel foggy in the head as it is. It’s not too bad, really. Will you help me sit up?”

  “Of course,” he said, replacing the bottle where it had been before and coming to her bedside, extending his arm. Elizabeth grasped it and pulled herself slowly upwards as he adjusted her pillows and helped her settle back against them.

  “My throat feels like I’ve been ill.”

  “The bruises actually aren’t quite as bad this time,” he replied lightly. “You look almost normal, aside from the bandages. Which I should change now that you’re awake…”

  Elizabeth kept very still, calmly watching as Gerard methodically arranged the gauze and scissors on the nightstand. He was so gentle as he removed the wrapping from her arm, and although he glanced up at her to gauge her discomfort, he did not wince at the sight of her injury. His fingers flittered delicately across her skin and, despite the pain, Elizabeth’s heart skipped at his soft touch.

  “This will sting,” he warned, dampening a cloth with clear alcohol.

  Elizabeth nodded, squeezing her eyes shut and gripping onto his pant leg as he cleaned the wound. The pain was blinding, but she held still as the alcohol killed any threat of infection.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, as he hurried to do what he needed to do while still being cautious and thorough. “There.”

  He took the cloth away and Elizabeth exhaled the breath she’d been holding. He brushed a strand of hair from her face and kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. “Now just let me wrap it back up and you can relax.”

  Slowly and tenderly, he wrapped the bandaging over her shoulder and underneath her arm. He was so much more caring than the physician had been, so much sweeter, and more loving. Her gaze softened as she watched him, his brow serious with concentration as he let his fingertips drag softly against her skin. Cascading tingles of pleasure washed over her as he touched her, washing away the pain.

  “There we are,” he whispered, tucking the edge of the bandage underneath to secure it. “All finished.”

  She leaned back
against the plump pillows, sinking into their comfort.

  “How did you learn to wrap bandages so efficiently?” she asked.

  Gerard smiled, leaning forward. “Oh, I could regale you with tales of boyhood mayhem for days.”

  “Oh dear,” Elizabeth giggled.

  “There will be time for it, too. When you’re healed up and we are married. A lifetime.” He placed his hand over hers, stroking his thumb across her knuckles.

  “You still want to marry me?” she asked. “After everything that happened?”