Lady Notorious (Royal Rewards #4)

by Theresa Romain

  He turned his head to stare at it, unbelieving. Yet it was real. Someone had shot at his back, and now he had an arrow in his shoulder blade.

  “So they were trying to hit me,” he finally said. “Damnation.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The world was dark. George was floating, alone. Everything hurt, but it hurt far away and almost didn’t bother him.

  He blinked.

  Oh. That was why the world had been dark. His eyes had been closed. Now they were open—no, they’d closed again—ah, they were back to being open. He’d try to keep them this way, but this floating feeling was strange.

  With an effort, he propped his eyes open, and he saw that he was in the library of Ardmore House. A small and luxurious room, with a nice collection of books that no one read much. It wasn’t often used, the duke having more fondness for cards than reading, and the duchess having more fondness for laudanum than—

  “Laudanum,” he murmured. “That’s what this strange feeling is. I’ve been given laudanum.” And then he said a word that he’d learned only recently, from the fishwives at Billingsgate.

  The act of cursing helped to clear his head. Lifting it, beginning to sit up on the long padded bench upon which he’d been laid facedown, not only cleared his head but also brought the distant, hovering pain rolling back toward him and slamming into his body.

  “Ow. Ow Ow.”

  “Lie back down,” said the voice of Cass Benton, “and I shall pretend I didn’t hear those ungentlemanly words you just said.”

  “The bit about the ow? Ow—I’m fine.” He let himself sink back onto the padded bench, turning his head so he could see her. The world was sideways, but even so, the expression of strain on Cass’s face was unmistakable.

  “You’re wearing one of your old dresses again,” he said, recognizing as he did that this was an irrelevant statement.

  Sideways Cass dragged a chair toward the bench, then dropped into it. “That’s true. And you are not fine. You were shot in the shoulder with an arrow. Rest and quit trying to be a demigod.”

  His eyes snapped open. “What sort of demigod gets shot in the shoulder by his own arrow?”

  “That’s a very demigod sort of thing to have happen. Along with—”

  Falling for your false cousin who’s meant to be helping you solve possible murders, he thought, as she spoke words he didn’t hear and fixed the bandage about his shoulder.

  “How did I get into the library?” he interrupted. “I never come in here.”

  “You came in from the yard—”

  “I remember that part. Bleeding all over and looking like a hero.”

  “Probably not how the maids will remember it.” She smoothed his hair back from his brow. “A physician came and wanted you bled. A surgeon came and took out the arrow. The bone of your shoulder blade is broken and you’ll probably have a terrible scar where the arrow pierced your skin.”

  “From my own arrow,” George said. “Unbelievable. I think I remember that part. I’m to wear a sling, correct?”

  “Yes, until the pain is better. Then you can begin to leave the sling off sometimes and try to move the shoulder.”

  “Is that the sling?” George nodded toward a contraption of cloth hanging over the back of the chair Sideways Cass was sitting in. When she agreed, he heaved himself upright—using only his uninjured arm this time, though he still had to grit his teeth against the pain of movement—and Sideways Cass became Regular Cass, and the sight of her made the pain ebb a bit and the world slow its nauseating spin.

  She handed him the sling, then showed him how to settle his arm within its cradle. The process of getting it on was unpleasant and required a few more fishwife words, but once it was on, the relief was noticeable. His injured shoulder blade was practically a pillow of poultices and dressings, and the sling kept his arm tight against his body so none of the medical drama would shift about.

  “Much better,” he decided. “I won’t be able to embrace you properly, but I’m confident I can get the job done with one arm.”

  She didn’t smile. She didn’t even look at him. Instead, she retreated to her chair, but didn’t sit. She trailed her fingers over its back as if she wanted to draw it away.

  “What? What’s wrong?” he asked. His mouth was so dry. Was it the laudanum? He coughed, then asked for water.

  “Sorry,” he said after draining the glass Cass handed him. “I’m still shaking off the laudanum. One of the servants ought to have told the surgeon not to give it to me. They all know I hate the stuff.”

  Cass shuffled behind the chair, her fingers gripping its back tightly. “That’s what’s wrong. One of the things.” She bit her bottom lip. “I gave you the laudanum. In a cup of tea after the surgeon left.”

  His eyes flew open. “You?”

  “I didn’t want you to be in pain.”

  “You know how I feel about laudanum.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I thought . . . just this once. While you were hurting so much.”

  A pulse beat in his temple. He could feel it, so strange. His body was not quite his own, and he was struggling to slip back into its familiar confines.

  She looked so wan, her finger joints white from the force with which she was grasping the back of the chair. “It’s all right,” he decided. “I wish you hadn’t, and I want you never to do it again. But I don’t suppose this once will be a problem.”

  He wouldn’t let it be a problem. He’d never let it sweep him away as it had his mother.

  She still looked miserable, so he added, “I know you did it to be kind. Come now, what’s this? You’re meant to be comforting me.”

  “I didn’t,” Cass whispered. “I can’t. I—I did it for myself.”

  George tried to find a more comfortable way to sit, holding his sling still as he leaned back. “I don’t understand.”

  Cass straightened her fingers. Tucked back a strand of red hair. When she spoke again, her wonderful voice was colorless. “I’ve failed you again, George. This is the second failure, after Lord Deverell. I could hardly bear that one, and I wanted to leave. Now it’s clear I should have done so then.”

  She lifted her chin, though her eyes didn’t quite meet his. “You were hurt. Our ruse didn’t help you. Nothing made a difference. And so . . . your cousin has to go back home.”

  Reaching into the pocket of her gown, she pulled out a handful of gold. George could only stare as she sorted it: the gold case that he now knew held her grandmother’s miniature, and the emerald ring he’d once placed on her finger.

  She held the ring out to him. And what did a man do when a woman held something out to him? He took it, wondering how gold could be so cold.

  “It cannot be over like this. You have one more day, my father allowed. And even after that, we have our wonderful and elaborate plan, with Angelus and the Jenkses and—you’re not even listening, are you?”

  “All cases come to an end, whether they’re solved or not.” Her smile was tight and false. “You remember, I wanted to quit when Lord Deverell was hurt.”

  “And you remember that I remember that you cared, and that was why I wanted you to stay with the case.” He tried to think of a joke, to tease her into a real smile. He’d told her once that he was never serious, but that he always meant what he said. A different man had said that, surely, because all humor now seemed drained away. “Do you care now, Cass? Is that why you want to leave me?”

  “I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving the case.”

  “So it was always the case. It was never me at all.”

  She turned away as if making for the door. Done with him, with it all.

  “Cass,” he ventured. “It wasn’t only the case for me. It was you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she mumbled.

  For God’s sake. “Don’t be a coward,” he snapped. This was the right strategy, for she spun back to face him. Her gold-brown eyes all but shot sparks at him.

  “Thank you,�
�� he said. “And what I mean is, at first I really did want help with the case. And after Lord Deverell was hurt, I really did think you were the best person to continue, because you truly cared he’d been hurt. You felt responsible.”

  “I always feel responsible.” She cast a glance at his wounded arm, then looked away. With a sigh, she sank onto the end of the bench. Where his feet had been when he was prone and insensible.

  “You’re not always responsible. You weren’t responsible for shooting me in the arm with one of my own arrows, which I still cannot believe—” He lifted his good hand, cutting himself off. “But let neither of us distract me. After you came to Ardmore House, and we spent more time together, and the case ground to a halt, I probably didn’t need you anymore.” Drawing a deep breath, he plunged. “I wanted you. I wanted you to stay, and to be with me, and—did you say something?”

  She was looking at her hands. “No,” she said. “No.”

  “Are you angry because you think you haven’t helped with this case? You have. By being here, you dissuaded people from acting again.”

  “Not enough.”

  “Ah, well, maybe you’re not a demigod either.”

  No, he still couldn’t make her smile. And it was worrying him that this plan, of all plans that had ever mattered, might not go his way.

  “Don’t you see?” she exclaimed. “I can’t be with you every second, and so I might as well not be with you at all. It’s no better. You’re still vulnerable.”

  “You speak as if I’m unable to look out for myself,” he snapped. “Do you really think you’re responsible for my safety? You alone? I never meant for you to bear this burden alone. Yet you would never take anything from me except what you had earned.”

  Warm brown eyes looked at him coldly. “I earned a place in your bed?”

  “God, no. If anything, I earned a place in yours. But I’d as soon not think of that as a transaction. To me, it wasn’t.”

  “It was an experience,” she said faintly. “And its time is past.”

  The gorge rose in his throat. The world wanted to spin again. With an effort, he forced both reactions away. “That’s me put into my place, then. If you ever let me out of it. You’d never allow anyone to help you; you might have to get off your high horse if you did.”

  Her mouth dropped open. Then, quick and low, she rattled back, “If I don’t allow anyone to help me, it’s because of experience. The only person I can count on is myself. Except . . . clearly I can’t, because I didn’t protect you.”

  “The world has disappointed you,” he said. “But you are arrogant to reject it.”

  She sparked at this. “I’m arrogant, says the marquess who keeps a whole extra room for playing about with paper and light.”

  “Yes.” He hated saying these things, feeling these things. But it had to be done. “It is a very great arrogance to think you can go through life alone. A duke knows that’s not true; his money comes from the land and the tenants who farm it. I know that’s not true, though my betrothed died and my mother is dependent on laudanum and my father cares for nothing but cards.”

  He sighed. “I’d hoped to convince you otherwise, to show you that other people can contribute to your life and your happiness, but I see I haven’t. You don’t need me. And you won’t let yourself want me, will you?”

  “I can’t afford to.”

  That wasn’t no. But it was far too far from yes. In his hand, the ring was warm now, and he tucked it away in his pocket.

  * * *

  Cass was having that feeling again. The feeling that something was wrong, something was not as it should be.

  And she finally understood: it was coming from within herself.

  George had thought she would fix his problems, just as Charles had always thought, too. And she was damned tired of it, of these men being disappointed in her because she hadn’t sorted out all their difficulties.

  She was damned tired of being disappointed in herself, too. Because she cared; she truly did. She cared for Charles, and she cared about solving problems. She cared about fulfilling the trust placed upon her.

  She cared about George, with a breadth and depth that hurt her heart. She had to stop caring or it would rip her to bits.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket, but the slight heft of the gold miniature case provided no comfort. You’re on your own, Cassie, she could almost imagine Grandmama saying.

  She was always on her own.

  “You should know by now,” she told George, “that I’m not brave. I don’t love danger and adventure. I only care for the security of an income, and for rented rooms to hold the things I need to live. I don’t want the responsibility you placed on me. I never wanted to be a person on whom life and death depend.”

  Above the whiteness of his sling, George’s face was hard and dark. “So you’re as lazy as you once called me. You think keeping your wants simple is noble, but you’re a woman of great intelligence and strength. Isn’t it wrong for you to spend your gifts on such ordinary causes as food and shelter? Shouldn’t you make a difference where you can—and isn’t that why you began working with your brother in the first place?”

  “You’re not listening to me,” she hissed. “If you’d ever worried about not being able to pay for food and shelter, you wouldn’t dismiss their importance. You’re trying to shame me into doing what you want. To stay and . . . I don’t know.”

  “I am,” George admitted. “But that’s because it’s what I think is right. I’ve never met anyone so capable as you, and if you don’t do amazing things . . . God, Cass, who will?”

  She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look away. “You. The marquess who will one day be a duke. Who lives within his means and has a curious mind. You will, George.”

  He looked disappointed in her. “What do you dream of, Cass?”

  “Helping Charles with his work so we earn money enough for a safe bed and a good meal.”

  “That’s not a dream. That’s a routine.”

  Fine talk. Luxurious talk. She had to get away from here before she started to ask questions not even an investigator ought to be posing. “Dream what you want to, George, and leave me to live my life as I must.”

  He shrugged, then grimaced at the pain to his injury. “As you wish.”

  No, it wasn’t as she wished. But then she realized he was agreeing with her, saying “As you wish” as if he were granting her a favor, allowing that she knew her own mind.

  The temptation to smooth things over with him, to promise to fix everything that was wrong, was almost irresistible. But she couldn’t do it. She’d been Charles’s conscience, Charles’s hands, Charles’s clerk and purse. If she always jumped in to fix what was wrong, it would be far too easy to try to become those things for George.

  And if she couldn’t become those things for George—since she couldn’t even keep him from getting shot in his own home—then what the devil did she have to offer him? To offer anyone?

  She stood, shaking out her skirts. Her own skirts, familiar and plain. “I must be going. You will be all right, because you’re the sort of person for whom everything turns out all right.”

  He didn’t try to stand, just slouched against the long bench. “Am I? Mother in a laudanum doze, Father under threat?”

  “You’re talking about other people, not yourself. Those things are true. But, George, you’re all right.”

  She did not point out that he’d said nothing of her. It would have been just as irrelevant as his other examples, yet she would have liked knowing she was at the forefront of his thoughts. One of his top examples of a troubling creature that didn’t fit neatly into the life to which he thought he was entitled.

  To which he was entitled, by law and birth.

  He tipped up his chin, fixing her with a cool gaze. “Someone shot an arrow at me, my arm is in a sling, and I’m all right?”

  “Your arm is not you.”

  She’d once thought that if loss was the price
of love, it was well worth the cost. But that was love for one’s family; bedrock, inescapable love that one built each day of one’s life upon. This feeling she had for George was soaring and stabbing, like a spire built on that foundation. It hurt. It trembled.

  It wasn’t worth the building of it, beautiful though it seemed. A topple was inevitable. And who would be the one cleaning up the mess? Who would be crushed?

  It would be Cass, of course. That was what she did: she helped, she solved, she tidied, she fixed.

  She’d told him once that injustice didn’t trouble her, because it was too prevalent. If she once started being bothered by it, she’d never stop.

  She had lied. It did bother her, a rankling like an itch. Not on her skin, but within: a feeling of wrongness that could never be eased. Injustice bothered her, and she was steeped in it, and just now she felt it would swamp her. How unjust, that she had tried her best and it had all come to nothing. How unfair that she had so little and he so much, and that she would be leaving her heart with him nonetheless.

  She had been selfish, giving him the laudanum. She hadn’t wanted to see him in pain—not because he couldn’t bear it, because she couldn’t.

  And that had scared her as much as the sight of his blood.

  “If my arm is not me,” George replied, “this case is not you.” He looked at her with those blue eyes of his. Light eyes, sky-clear and so often wicked. Eyes that held the truth, even as his mouth joked.

  Not even his mouth was joking now. He was serious as she’d never seen him before.

  Her hands were fists. Where had she left her gloves? “I gave it my best. You are welcome. It was not good enough. I am sorry.”

  “I’m not thanking you. I’m telling you how selfish you are, to think that you are the only person worthy of trust. You lock your heart and your ideas up tightly. What have I really had of you, Cass?”

  His eyes were heavy, appearing soft and sad. But it was only an illusion from injury and laudanum. A man such as George Godwin, the courtesy marquess Lord Northbrook from birth, would never need to shed a tear over what he couldn’t have.