“My wife is refusing to join me.”
“That is a problem,” Tomlinson murmured, his expression deadpan. “An apology after your temper last evening?”
Leo’s ears went hot, and he felt himself blushing. Egads, blushing? “The staff is aware of that?”
Unapologetic, Tomlinson adjusted his already immaculate jacket. “I took the liberty of stationing myself outside your doorway.”
A modicum of relief filled him, along with frustration at his own carelessness. Even as the other man had verified no one else would overhear all that was said, Leo’s absolute lack of control had made him incautious.
“Afterwards, I had the maids tidy your office.”
The broken glass, his false ledger. Christ.
Heat burned up Leo’s neck. What was it about Chloe that made him lose control? What made him forget the Brethren and his responsibilities to that organization and worry only about her well-being? His mind shied away from a truth he could not… nay, would never confront.
“My lord?”
“How long until the guests begin arriving?”
“I couldn’t say,” Tomlinson said regretfully.
“Guess,” he snapped.
“I would expect your and her ladyship’s guests might begin to arrive any moment.”
Leo cursed roundly. His uncle, his superiors, most important, Rowley and Waterson, and all the damned suspects for the Cato Street Conspiracy were to assemble in his household. His wife had picked the absolute worst time to pitch a temper. “And what in the blazes am I to do if they arrive with no host or hostess?” he demanded, yanking a hand through his hair.
“Again, I’m afraid I—”
“Don’t know,” Leo finished for him. “You’re useless, Tomlinson,” he muttered, taking the stairs two at a time. As soon as he reached Chloe’s rooms, he pressed the handle.
The door refused to give.
Bloody hell.
She’d locked him out.
Leo curved his hands around his mouth and called through the panel. “I trust this is a jest, dear wife.”
There was a lengthy pause.
“Go away.”
Gnashing his teeth with frustration, he raised a fist to pound on her door. He stopped himself.
Regardless of the fear and worry that had assailed him yesterday, he’d been a miserable bear. It hadn’t been Chloe’s fault that she’d been embroiled in Leo’s work for the Brethren and his current assignment. Rather, it was his for having married her without consideration of the peril he’d place her in. He lowered his arm back to his side.
“I apologize for…” He glanced about. He’d reassigned his assistant to shadowing his wife’s movements. Though he trusted the man with his life, he’d still rather not bandy the details of his fight yesterday. “I am sorry for our last meeting, Chloe.” He settled for vagueness.
Another pause and then, “It’s fine, Leo,” she said tiredly.
He waited for the click of the lock as she allowed him entry—that did not come.
“Do you wish for me to grovel, madam?” he bit out.
Because, damn it, he would. He had no other choice. He needed her. He needed them to present a united front of respectability and begin laying a trap for the real traitor of the Cato Event.
“I wish for you to go away.”
The confession drifted through the panel, muffled and so faint he might as well have imagined it. And yet—
“You’re accompanying me,” he boomed. “I—”
A tortured moan slashed across his fury.
All his senses heightened, Leo grabbed the handle. “Chloe?” he asked, his alarm creeping up.
“G-go away.”
The tremor there notched up his unease.
Leo shot a hand up. An instant later, Holman trotted over. “My lord?”
“When was the last time you saw my wife?” he demanded gruffly. His always steady, unaffected heart thundered an erratic, unfamiliar beat. When was the last time you saw her? a derisive voice jeered at the back of his mind.
“She’s not left her chambers, my lord. Turned away meals.”
Not left her chambers? Leo grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him so hard he dislodged the smaller man’s spectacles. “And you didn’t think to report to me that she’s been shut away?” he whispered.
“The maids saw her ladyship fleeing through the halls last evening,” Holman squeaked. “Upset,” he tacked on.
In other words, the entire household knew there had been a row.
Releasing his assistant so abruptly the boy stumbled back, Leo returned his attentions to his wife’s door.
A groan wreathed in agony met his ears.
His pulse skittering out of control, he stepped back and, raising his leg for a high kick, slammed his foot into the unrelenting oak.
“No,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t.”
“Chloe,” he shouted hoarsely, kicking the panel over and over. Oh, God. Sweat beaded on his brow. Was it terror? His exertions? Desperation? In this instant, Leo couldn’t sort through the cacophonic tumult of his mind. He gave another mighty kick.
The panel splintered. Leo continued battering at it until the wood gave way enough for him to squeeze a hand through. Shards of broken wood stabbed at his gloved palm as he pressed the handle, letting himself in.
Fishing a pistol from his boot, he frantically searched the chambers, pitched in black.
Chloe’s sheets stood out, a stark tangle of snowy white in the otherwise dark space, without even the glow of a fire for light.
What in the hell?
“Chloe?” he shouted, raising his gun close to his chest.
Then he heard it.
A faint, animalistic moan.
Charging over, Leo skidded to a stop, and the earth fell out from under his feet.
He recoiled at the scent of sweat and vomit.
His heart skipped several erratic beats and then ceased to throb altogether. “Chloe,” he whispered. The gun fell from his hand, clattering noisily on the floor. The sound pulled another moan from his wife.
Chloe lay in the same nightclothes she’d worn last evening. Her hair hung in a tangle of knotted golden curls about her hunched shoulders.
Prone on the floor, she clung to a porcelain chamber pot with a death grip that had drained the blood from her knuckles.
With a seeming Herculean effort, she lifted her head a fraction. Her bloodshot eyes, brimming with agony, met his.
All the air stuck sharply in his chest, trapping the gasp in his throat. “My God,” he whispered, stumbling back. “Poisoned,” he choked out, his speech dissolving into fragments of incomplete, panicked thoughts. Thundering for Holman, he raced to the door.
His wife’s piteous moans punctuated the thump of his footfalls, and then a violent retching commenced at his back.
Holman stormed the doorway, his gun at the ready.
“A doctor,” Leo boomed.
Those two words sent the man into flight.
“Noo,” Chloe entreated, spitting into the bowl. “No doctor. Please, please,” she begged.
Leo raced over and collapsed to his knees at her side. So this was fear, this mindless, numbing, soul-rending hopelessness that robbed a man of logical thought, action, and words. With hands that shook, he reached for her shoulders, hovering above them, afraid to touch her, afraid she’d splinter and break apart.
“It’s not poison,” she rasped, resting her head upon the porcelain bowl. “Though I wish it was.” She spoke to the bottom of the chamber pot, her weakened voice pinging off the glass.
“Do not say that,” he said harshly. Oh, God. Why had he married her? Why had he subjected her to every peril that went with being connected to him? “I’ve seen this before.” Both men and women, who’d been sapped of their strength and who’d wasted away to emaciated corpses within hours.
His breath came fast in his ears. He yanked both hands through his hair, wanting to tilt back his head and rage at the merci
less heavens. Even as all blame belonged squarely at Leo’s feet.
“It’s not poison,” she insisted, her voice weak. So weak. His eyes slid closed. “Please don’t send for a doctor. I get migraines. I don’t want anyone to see. Please,” she begged. As if that effort cost her everything, Chloe vomited. Her narrow shoulders shook. Her entire body trembled like a slender reed about to buckle under the slightest pressure.
“No doctor,” he vowed. At this moment, he’d carve out his heart and hand it to her on his outstretched palm if it would stop her suffering. “Migraines?” he echoed. She’d not been poisoned. The relief of that assailed him, weighting his eyes closed and filling every corner of him. She would not die. And yet, the relief was short-lived.
Chloe heaved again. The groan that stole from her shredded his soul. The need to take away someone else’s pain and make it his own was so foreign, so unfamiliar to him, a man who’d never given a jot about anyone’s comforts but his own.
Leo only knew, in this moment, that he wanted to take away this woman’s suffering. He would have sold his soul, assets, and role with the Brethren if it meant she was spared from the pain that gripped her.
“Shh,” he whispered. Yanking free his previously immaculate cravat, he stuck it between his teeth. Then, gathering the mass of curls hanging limp about her shoulders, he gently drew the damp strands back so they exposed her sweaty nape. He made quick work of tying her heavy curls with the strip of satin fabric.
Loath to leave her, Leo stalked to the door. Tomlinson lingered in the hall. Ashen-faced and worried, as Leo had never seen him, the butler wrung his hands together. “Her ladyship?”
“When the doctor arrives, do not send him in. Keep him for the night in the event I require his services. I need pitchers of cold water,” he spoke quietly. “Strips of cloth. Bring them yourself and leave them at the front of the room.” The commands came easily, a welcome diversion that gave him a small sense of purposefulness. Otherwise, he’d descend into madness. “I don’t want a single soul entering this room until I give the command.”
Tomlinson rushed off to do his bidding. Leo returned to Chloe.
She was so still. So very, achingly, painfully still that, for a torturous moment, he believed she was wrong and her suffering was not the product of a headache, but rather vengeance carried out by someone Leo had brought to justice.
Chloe groaned, and he fell to his knees beside her. “What can I do?” he entreated. This helplessness was worse than paralysis. It gutted him in ways no blade or pistol ball had ever managed.
“Nothing. Just go,” she begged. He’d sooner take off his own limbs with a dulled letter opener than abandon her. “The soiree.”
He forced his lips into a smile. The strain on his facial muscles made a mockery of his efforts. “Not attending my own soiree is what all of Polite Society has come to expect, anyway.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking under the effort it cost her to speak.
“Shh,” he murmured. And as she again emptied the contents of her stomach, he held her gently by the shoulders. She continued on that way, spitting bile into the chamber pot.
Where in the hell was Tomlinson? Leo shot frantic glances back at the slightly gaping door. Never, not when faced with the late marquess’ violent outbursts or on any assignment, had he felt this sense of helplessness. He, a man who, for the past twelve years, had been in control of his own fate and the fates of the people of the British Empire, could not help his own wife. This woman who mattered more to him than himself.
And mayhap later, he’d rail at himself for having lost so much of himself to Chloe. But in this, he could think only of her.
Tomlinson finally reappeared.
Jumping up, Leo rushed to meet him. With the butler standing as a barrier between the maids in the hall and Chloe, Leo accepted the offerings one at a time. “Have a hot bath readied in my chambers,” he instructed.
“The guests have begun to arrive, my lord. Her ladyship’s family is asking after the marchioness.”
“Turn them away. Turn everyone away.”
“As you wish.” Tomlinson turned to go.
“Tomlinson?”
His butler wheeled around.
“Inform Lady Waverly that I require an appointment.” Even as that meeting would usher in the end of the only happiness Leo had known… ever. For though there had been a fleeting time he’d shared with Daphne Smith, every moment had been cloaked in secrecy, with everything about him a secret. Chloe had slipped past his defenses and reminded him of who he had been. And who he wanted to be again… His throat convulsed.
“My lord?” Tomlinson prodded.
Leo gave his head a clearing shake. “I’ll send word for her ladyship.” Closing the badly broken door on that, Leo rejoined his wife, shedding his jacket and rolling his shirtsleeves as he went.
“Leo, go. You cannot miss your soiree.” She spoke on the faintest exhalation. “My sisters will help—” She cradled the back of her head and buried her head again in the pot, retching.
“Stop talking.” He issued the command in quiet, even tones. “We won’t talk. No noise.”
With that, not another word was spoken between them. Leo fetched a cloth. Dunking it in the bowl of cold water, he wrung it out and returned to Chloe. He placed the cool compress along her nape.
An appreciative moan spilled from her lips.
Fetching another cloth, Leo knelt in front of Chloe and ever so gently wiped her perspiring brow. He cleaned the corners of her mouth and then laid another compress over her eyes.
Taking care to not jar her, Leo scooped her under the knees and carried her from the fetid chambers and into his own. A steaming bath had already been drawn and sat readied beside the hearth. The fire crackled noisily within the grate.
Cursing himself for not ordering it doused, he placed Chloe on his bed and stalked over to the windows. Making quick work of the lock, he tossed the crystal pane open. The unseasonably cool spring air spilled into the rooms, immediately stealing the warmth provided by the fire.
Leo stalked over to the mahogany four-poster bed that dominated the room. Carefully balancing a knee on the mattress, he reached for the hem of Chloe’s nightgown.
Her eyes flew open, and she immediately covered her face with her palms.
“A hot bath will help.”
“It won’t,” she mumbled into her hands.
“It—”
“I don’t want a bath, Leo,” she begged.
In this moment, she could have asked him to duel Satan and God himself for mastery of the world, and he would have committed himself to that battle. “Very well.”
Returning to her rooms, he fetched the strips of cloth and the bowl of water. Throughout the night, he placed cool cloth after cool cloth atop her brow, at her wrists, her neck, until the chill left the water and the fire faded in the hearth.
And when the faintest little snore escaped her, Leo pulled his carved walnut chair over to the side of the bed and sat. Settling into the olive-green leather folds, he stretched his legs out before him. Steepling his fingertips under his chin, he watched his wife until the fingers of dawn peeled back the night sky and ushered in a new day, and then he left.
Chapter 28
Chloe knew when a person was up to something. After all, she’d invariably been plotting, planning, or scheming… something since she was a girl.
That was why, the following afternoon, with her mother returned from a still expecting Imogen’s side, sister Philippa and sister-in-law Jane squeezed onto the double-peaked, camel-backed sofa wearing like unreadable expressions, Chloe knew this was no ordinary social visit.
Jane broke the silence. “You are… well?”
“Undoubtedly,” Chloe said with false cheer. She reached for the tray of pastries that had been delivered a short while ago by a maid. “Is Imogen well?” she countered.
“Very much so,” the dowager marchioness murmured. “Surely you did not believe I�
��d miss the first event hosted by you and your husband?”
There was an ill-concealed question about the event. “Refreshments?” Chloe offered quickly. She looked between the ladies assembled.
“Chloe,” Philippa began gently. “You canceled your soiree.”
“If one wishes to be truly precise, it was my husband,” she pointed out. To give her fingers something to do, she plucked an apple dappy from the silver tray. Breaking it in half, she popped a piece into her mouth. Errant buttery flakes sprinkled onto her skirts, and she dusted them off onto the floor.
Her mother stared at her painfully. “Chloe,” she said in agonized tones.
“My apologies,” Chloe mumbled around a mouthful of pastry. Lifting a finger, she finished her bite and grabbed a small dessert plate. “There.”
Her mother moved to the edge of her seat and, with an undowager marchionesslike grab, jerked the dish from Chloe’s lap. “Do you think I am scolding you about whether or not you have a blasted plate, Chloe?” she demanded, setting down the dish in question with such force it rocked back and forth before coming to a slow, clamoring halt.
“Your husband sent word last evening.”
“Did he?” she asked tightly. How she despised her impairment. How she yearned to be like any other woman, instead of living with a sense of dread of the inevitability that she would ultimately be brought low and crippled by pain and weakness. “I trust you’ll have quite a time smoothing over the scandal of a canceled soiree, Mother,” she said, fisting her skirts, wrinkling the ivory satin.
“Chloe,” Philippa chided.
“Do you think I care more about your manners or that damned soiree than I do your well-being?” Their mother spoke quickly over her eldest daughter.
Over the years, Chloe couldn’t have answered that very question with any real degree of confidence or certainty. Never once had her mother stepped between Chloe and the marquess’ blows. “There was a time I felt that way,” she said somberly. “When I was a girl…”
Tears formed a watery sheen over her mother’s eyes. Angling her head down, she discreetly dabbed at the corners. “I deserve that.”
The Lady Who Loved Him Page 32
