The Madness of Lord Westfall

by Mia Marlowe

  He ached for Nora to trust him with this.

  The words blurted out of his mouth before he thought them through. “You should marry me.”

  “I should what?”

  “Marry me,” he said firmly. “I’ll hire the right solicitor, and he’ll arrange to void whatever agreement your man of business made with the Hobarths. I have a country estate. Emilia could come to live with us. Fresh air, sunshine, everything a growing child needs. She could even have a pony.”

  She sat up straight and met his gaze, a bit of wonderment in her expression as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time. Then a tremulous smile lifted her lips, and she palmed his cheeks. “You dear man, if only it were that simple.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because while it would be wonderful for me to have her, it wouldn’t be the best thing for my daughter. My reputation would taint her. Besides, after seeing Emilia with the Hobarths, I couldn’t take her from them. She loves them and they love her. Being torn from the only home she’s ever known would be devastating. I may be many things, but I hope I’m not that selfish.”

  Nora knew what it was to be exiled from home, and it was something to consider before totally upending a child’s world. But it pricked his feelings that she focused exclusively on how his proposal would affect Emilia. Didn’t it mean anything to her that he wanted to marry her?

  Perhaps if he solved this problem, she’d come round to the idea of marrying him. He could hire the Hobarths to work on his country estate in some capacity. If they all came to live there, Nora could watch her daughter grow to adulthood and become part of her world without disrupting her attachment to the Hobarths. He was about to suggest this alternate proposal, when Nora rose to her feet.

  “Besides, I can’t marry you, Pierce. What would happen to Benedick if I did?”

  A heavy weight lodged in his chest. She cared more about her patron than she did him. “Albemarle would simply find a new mistress to hide behind.”

  “That’s just it. He’d be taking a terrible risk by sharing his secret with yet another person.” She began to pace along the riverbank. “He frequently has to deal with rumors over this issue, but gossip and sworn testimony are two different things. Participating in unnatural acts is a capital offense, you know. If the rumors were proved true, they’d hang him, for sure.”

  Pierce frowned at that. It didn’t seem fair. Why were some loves sanctioned and others labeled unnatural? Wasn’t love the same emotion no matter who was involved? And wasn’t it rare enough for two souls to find each other that it ought to be celebrated each time it happened?

  As if they’d conjured him by speaking his name, Lord Albemarle appeared farther down the river. His Grace walked by his side.

  “Ah, I see Benedick is touting his plans to the duke.” Nora stopped pacing.

  “What plans?”

  “This river changes too much with the seasons to be navigable year around. Benedick means to see a canal dug through this area and needs His Grace to support the effort in the House of Lords.”

  “That sounds like a good scheme,” Pierce said woodenly. It irked him to say anything positive about Albemarle since the baron’s needs seemed to be instrumental in keeping Nora from agreeing to marry him. “A canal would certainly benefit the village.”

  “True, though it will benefit Albemarle and his friends more. They’ve already formed a consortium and bought up the land along the proposed route.”

  How like a politician. Doing good on one hand while making good with the other. Pierce decided to take another tack and at least accomplish something positive for the Order.

  “You fear he’ll hang if his secret passions are unmasked, but just as surely, Lord Albemarle is risking hanging if he uses the Fides Pulvis on the Prince Regent. If you care about Albemarle as much as you claim, you’d steal that powder and replace it with something less virulent.”

  “I could never betray Albemarle’s trust like that.” She sank down beside him again. “You don’t understand how much he’s done for me.”

  “Yes, yes, he makes it possible for you to provide for your daughter. I know.”

  “That’s only part of it,” she said. “He also saved me from having to sell myself again and again. Before him, I couldn’t seem to keep a patron for longer than six months.”

  “Because your heart wasn’t in it,” Pierce said.

  “Well, that’s part of the whole arrangement, isn’t it? Heaven help the courtesan who falls in love,” she said defensively. “At any rate, when I hit a rough patch between patrons, my mentor in the business decided an auction would be the best way to relaunch me in demimonde society.”

  “Plenty of men would pay handsomely to use the daughter of an earl.”

  She looked at him sharply. “I wasn’t going to put it that bluntly, but you’re right. And plenty did bid high. If Benedick hadn’t outbid them all, who knows how many lovers I’d have had by now?” She covered one of his hands with hers. “I may have the reputation of being a high flyer, but my protectors have actually been few and, until I met you, I’ve taken no man to my bed without a signed contract since my husband died.”

  So, she hadn’t known so many men, after all. Pierce had decided that he could lay her livelihood aside, that it didn’t matter to him, but the knowledge that she’d given herself willingly to him, and only him, pleased him out of all knowing. “I suppose I must be grateful to Lord Albemarle too, then.”

  “Yes, you must. Besides, it’s not as if he wants to use the Fides Pulvis on the Prince Regent. He hasn’t much choice as long as his enemies are in possession of some incriminating letters he wrote to an old lover.”

  So Albemarle was being blackmailed. “Have you any idea who has the letters?”

  She nodded. “His Italian lover. And to make matters worse, the man is actually on English soil. His name is Falco.”

  A waterlogged memory nudged Pierce’s brain. “Dr. Falco?”

  “Yes,” she said, eyeing him quizzically. “When they parted, Benedick left him with enough money to learn a trade, and he became a doctor. You see why I can’t turn my back on him? Benedick is unfailingly generous. I don’t know what I’d do without his patronage.”

  Marry me, Pierce thought desperately. He could be generous, too. If she wouldn’t accept his love, why wouldn’t she at least accept his help?

  Maybe she could, he decided. If she didn’t know he was giving it.

  Pierce asked me to marry him today. No, that’s not strictly correct. He said I should marry him, as if a man’s bald order is likely to move a woman to accept his proposal. But that’s not why I turned him down. When Lewis proposed, I took no thought for the problems that might rear up to meet us. With Pierce, they are all I can see.

  Yet the real objection is not one I voiced to him. You see, with my first love, my heart was boundless. I gave freely out of a well which I thought would never run dry.

  Now I’m a desert. It’s not that I don’t have feelings for Pierce. I assuredly do. But my heart is so shriveled, so desiccated, I can’t offer it to him.

  He deserves so much more.

  ~from the secret journal of Lady Nora Claremont

  Chapter Seventeen

  Albion Abbey started as a refuge for a group of Franciscan monks who had invaded England with the gospel and a vow of poverty in the thirteenth century. Known as the Greyfriars, they had settled in London and then quickly spread out into the countryside. In keeping with the Order’s commitment to austerity, the abbey had been designed simply, a square around a central cloister with the little jewel of a Gothic chapel in the middle of its northern arm.

  When Lord Albemarle had acquired the abbey, he had removed all suggestion of poverty. The cells which had served as guest rooms were decorated with rich fabrics and elegant furnishings, with no expense spared to make them into oases of comfort for his lordship’s guests.

  However, Pierce could not get comfortable in his.

  His problem was no
t one that would be solved by a thick feather tick. His difficulty was caused by architecture.

  His room was too far from where he needed to be.

  All the men’s guest rooms were on the west side of the structure, while the ladies were housed on the eastern arm. They were separated by the large formal dining room and opulent parlors on the south and the imposing chapel on the north. Pierce knotted his banyan at his waist, decided to abandon the interior of the abbey, and slipped into the cloister so he could move along the covered porticos that ringed the open-to-the-sky courtyard in the center of the square structure.

  His Grace and Lord Albemarle were still sipping sherry in one of the lighted rooms to the south, so Pierce opted for a northerly route, past the nail-studded door of the chapel. When he reached the door that should have let him enter the women’s section of the abbey, he found it locked.

  He was philosophical about the setback. Whether he entered by the door that led to the corridor outside the women’s cells or by a window that opened to the courtyard, the lady would have to admit him in any case.

  He wished it was Honora’s room he sought. He ached to hold her. Ached to love her so well, she wouldn’t keep saying no to his proposal. But if he couldn’t prove his worth to her outside of her bed, he doubted he’d win a permanent place in it.

  So he was looking for Meg Anthony.

  Pierce lowered his shield and let the minds in the abbey flood into his. In the distant kitchen, the cook and the scullery maid were at odds with each other. Their argument about who let the white soup burn was over, but their thoughts were still hot enough to singe off each other’s eyebrows. In the opulent parlor, His Grace was weighing Lord Albemarle’s proposals and finding them a witch’s brew of benefit to others and self-serving schemes. He could hear nothing of Lady Easton and surmised that she must be asleep.

  From Nora, he felt barely contained frustration.

  He tried to push her thoughts away. She wouldn’t want him listening to them in any case, and if he sensed she needed him it would be that much harder not to go straight to her. Besides, she seemed to be at a greater distance from him than he expected.

  Meg Anthony’s mind was much nearer. Just on the other side of the nearest window, in fact. And she was desperately worried.

  He rapped on the pane softly. When she came to peer out, he stepped into the light of her candle. Meg quickly set it down and opened the sash.

  “Lord Westfall, what are you doing here?”

  “Coming to see you, Miss Anthony. With your permission, of course.”

  Her gaze darted down the long row of windows that opened onto the cloister. “If I let you into my chamber, Lady Easton will have my head.”

  “Whether or not you admit me, most likely the outcome will be the same. I’m told even the appearance of impropriety is as injurious as actual—”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, come in,” Meg whispered furiously as she motioned for him to enter. “If I’m going to get into trouble in any case, I may as well deserve it.”

  He climbed through the low window and thanked her as she closed it and drew the damask drapes behind him.

  “Now what do you want?” she demanded, arms crossed over her chest.

  “First, I’m most grateful to you for finding the child today. It took courage to go against the duke’s orders.”

  She waved away his thanks. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Then an impish smile turned her plain face almost pretty, and she indicated he should sit in one of the two frilly Sheridan chairs. “Besides, what the duke don’t know won’t hurt me.”

  “But you’re worried about something that will,” Pierce said as he took the seat she offered after she settled into the other one. “Perhaps someone, to be more precise.”

  She cast a slant-eyed gaze at him. “Have you been invading my mind?”

  “Only long enough to locate you. However, I couldn’t help but sense your dismay. How may I be of help?”

  “I don’t know that you can. You see, I saw someone today from my past and I didn’t relish the sight. It was the uncle and cousin I ran away from.”

  Pierce narrowly resisted smacking his forehead. In the panic of trying to find Emilia, he’d forgotten to tell Meg about the conversation he’d overheard by the Punchinello show. “Did you tell His Grace?”

  “No. I’m hoping Uncle Rowney didn’t see me. Or if he did, that he didn’t recognize me.”

  “I’m sorry to say that he must have,” Pierce said. “I overheard the puppeteers discussing you. They not only knew you, they marked the fact that you were in Lady Easton’s company.”

  “Then they’ll be able to find me without much trouble.”

  “Even so, you are safer than houses in His Grace’s care.”

  “That’s true. How did Uncle Rowney and Oswald ever recognize me?” She glanced toward the long mirror over her vanity. “Honestly, sometimes, I don’t know myself in the fancy things His Grace expects me to wear.”

  “The gown you wore today was very becoming,” he said, because he’d been told that women liked to hear that sort of thing. He was rewarded with another of Meg Anthony’s rare smiles.

  “You didn’t risk my reputation to come tell me that,” she said. “I know you fancy Lady Nora.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I may not be able to hear your thoughts, but I have eyes. And yours never leave her if she’s anywhere near. Now, why are you here, your lordship?”

  Now that they came to it, he hesitated. Meg took a horrible risk each time she exercised her gift. It seemed the height of selfishness for him to ask it of her—especially since not much time had elapsed since the last time he needed her help.

  “I need you to Find something for me,” he admitted.

  To his relief, Meg didn’t seem distressed. If anything, excitement prickled from her. He’d heard some folk enjoyed dancing close to the edge of a precipice. Miss Anthony must be one of those who needed the spice of danger to feel truly alive.

  “Is it something for the Order of the M.U.S.E.?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Does the duke know you’re asking me to Find it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a bit of stickiness then. I feel as if I dodged a bullet this afternoon with His Grace. Even though it was to find a lost child, I fear what he’d say if he knew I’d disobeyed him,” she said. “Do you think he’d agree to me doing a search for you if we lay the matter before him?”

  “No. He values you too much to risk you.”

  She shot him a wry grin. “And you don’t.”

  “That’s not true. I think very highly of you. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I could find the information any other way.” Then he explained what he sought and where she was likely to find it. After she pinpointed its location, the rest would be up to him. If he told His Grace his plans, the duke wouldn’t approve them either. It was a risk only Pierce could take.

  And he was determined to take it.

  …

  Meg Anthony had learned something about using her gift when she searched for Emilia that afternoon, she told Pierce. Instead of sitting apart from others while she slipped into her trance, having him hold her helped anchor her soul more firmly to her house of flesh.

  “It seemed to strengthen the spiritual tether I use to find my way home and made it easier than usual for me to zip back to my body,” she explained. “His Grace should be pleased about that.”

  Still, because the item Pierce asked her to locate was at a greater distance than the lost girl had been, he wasn’t comforted by her assurance, at first.

  “You don’t understand,” she explained. “Distance is not something that matters so much once I’m flying free. Everything happens quick as a thought in the realm of pure spirit. That’s how I can cover so much ground. And it may seem as if I’m gone for a long time to you, but to me, it’s like a blink.”

  “Therein lies your danger. You can’t sense how your spirit’s abse
nce is affecting your body. I wish there were a way I could warn you when you’ve been gone too long.

  “I don’t know how you could,” she said. “But let’s not fret about it now. The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back with your answers.”

  Pierce held his breath as she slumped in his arms, cursing himself for asking this of her. The place he’d asked her to search was so big, with so many nooks and crannies and hidey-holes. How would she ever find it quickly enough to stay safe?

  He let the air escape from his lungs slowly. Still, she didn’t return. He fought against the urge to inhale.

  Come back, Meg.

  He imagined himself in the water chair again, trying not to breathe lest his lungs fill with liquid. Panic crept along his spine on little spidery legs.

  If anything happened to Miss Anthony, the duke would never forgive him. He’d never forgive himself.

  Then, just as despair threatened to swamp him, she jerked to full awareness. Meg stared at him wide-eyed for about the space of ten heartbeats. Then her little face crumpled, and she wept uncontrollably for a good five minutes.

  “I’m so sorry, your lordship. I had no idea.” She blew her nose like a trumpet into a neatly embroidered handkerchief and swiped her eyes on the sleeve of her wrapper. “That place you had me search, it was… Well, I always figured there was a Hell. I just didn’t think it was here on earth.”

  Pierce nodded grimly. He should have warned her, but she wouldn’t have believed the horrors she’d encounter if she hadn’t seen them for herself. “Did you find it?”

  To his great relief, she nodded and launched into a detailed description of where the item was. He’d be able to retrieve it, if the rest of his plan bore fruit. He thanked her and headed for the window.

  “Are you thinking about going in there to get it?” she asked as he climbed out.

  He nodded. “More than thinking. I plan to do it. Don’t tell His Grace.”

  “I must.” She grasped his forearm to stop him.

  “Then I shall be forced to tell him that you ignored his explicit orders not to use your gift, not once, but twice.”