by Cheryl Bolen
“ ‘Tis because you’re so delicate and sensitive,” George murmured.
Her little brother was really besotted, Felicity decided. And he couldn’t have found a nicer girl.
The coach tore around the final corner to Charles Street. It had barely pulled to a stop in front of her house before the coachman, in a jumble of concern for his employer, leaped from the box and threw open the door.
Thomas stepped down from the coach with no assistance. “I assure you, I’m fine,” he told the coachman. Then he turned back to offer assistance to Felicity and the others.
From that point on, Felicity took over. She sped through the front door barking orders to the servants.
“We’ll put you in George’s room,” she called over her shoulder to Thomas as she mounted the stairs.
“Really, it’s not necessary,” he protested.
“I think you’d better, old chap,” George said, setting a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Please, Thomas,” Dianna pleaded, her palm against his arm, her eyes watery. “I’d feel ever so much better if you would allow Mrs. Harrison to dress your wound and determine the extent of your injury.”
Felicity looked down at them from the top of the stairs. “And I’d feel ever so much better if you two ladies would stay in Glee’s room or in the drawing room.”
The girls nodded.
Thomas shrugged, then started up the stairs. “I can see I’m seriously outnumbered.”
Felicity awaited him in George’s chamber, where she had already thrown back the bedcovers. “If you will just sit here, Mr. Moreland,” she said, pointing to the bed.
“In these bloody clothes?”
“Yes,” she answered sternly. “The linens can easily be washed.”
“I feel most foolish allowing you to trouble yourself over so trifling an injury.”
“Let me judge if your wound is trifling,” Felicity said and turned to George. “Please assist Mr. Moreland in removing his coat and shirt.”
George moved to the bedside and bent over Thomas, helping him take off the bloodstained coat, then the bloody shirt.
A maid bearing a pitcher of water and basin entered the room and set the water on the table next to the bed. Bubbling with excitement over the robbery, the maid watched Thomas for a long moment before taking her leave when George gave her Thomas’s ruined shirt to dispose of.
Felicity hurried to the bed, not removing her eyes from the wound. “You’re still bleeding.” She winced with concern. “I think you’d best lie back.”
Her chest tightening, she watched as he reclined. Except for that which was stained by his blood, the skin on his upper torso was pale like Dianna’s, not dark like his face. Yet the hair that curled on his great barreled chest was black. Her eyes traveled over his rock-hard chest, which sloped toward a slender waist.
Felicity noted that blood discolored the gray breeches he still wore. George could help remove those later.
She dipped a clean cloth into the water basin, took a deep breath, and began to clean away the blood. The cut that sliced between his chest muscles was no more than an inch from top to bottom. Now she had to determine how deeply the knife had entered.
Except for the open wound, his chest was clean. She used a dry cloth to blot the fresh blood. Then, when the flow slowed to a trickle, she took another piece of clean cloth, pressed it into the wound, and held it there.
“Let’s see if this will stop the flow of blood and allow the wound to close,” she told Thomas. “If it does, then your wound is not deep.” Smiling, she added, “But it is certainly not a mere scratch.”
Her eyes examined him for scars from previous wounds, such as a stabbing to the chest. Her stomach plummeted when she saw the mangled flesh, now healed, on his left side. He had been the injured man on the dark road to London that night! She could not think on that now. Not while he was suffering from still another wound—this one received while defending her and her loved ones.
She and George made small talk with Thomas while Felicity continued to press the cloth over the injured area.
“Tell me,” Thomas asked, “why did you faint at the sight of blood, when your sister tells me you assisted the surgeons on battlefields in Portugal.”
She shrugged. “ ‘Twas the unexpectedness, I suppose.”
“I expect, too,” George added, “it’s a shock when it’s someone you care about.”
Thomas’s black eyes held hers.
She briefly met his gaze, felt her cheeks blaze, then quickly looked away.
After a few minutes, she removed the sodden cloth and watched the injured area. No more blood oozed from it. “Good, it’s not a deep wound” she said. “We can bandage it now.”
She proceeded to wrap his chest in strips of clean linen, with a thick square of linen directly over the site of the gash.
“Now,” she said when she’d finished, “you must lie still on your back tonight. If there’s no more bleeding by morning, I will allow you to go home—but only in a carriage. No horseback riding until the cut has completely healed.”
Thomas watched her with amused eyes, barely capable of holding back his teasing smile. “Whatever you say, Doctor Harrison.”
“What’s he supposed to do now?” George asked. “It’s too bloody early to go to sleep, and playing a game would require him to move his upper body.”
Felicity thought on this a moment, then her eyes brightened. “I believe I’ll lull Mr. Moreland to sleep with Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
“You mean you’re going to be alone in here with a gentleman?” George asked in surprise. “Don’t know if I can allow that, Sis.”
Felicity put her hands to her hips and tossed her brother an impatient glance. “I am not a maiden, George. I’ve been a married woman, you know.”
Her eyes unexpectedly lit on Thomas’s somber ones and, with tremors rocking her insides, she wondered if he was thinking of what it would be like to take her into his bed.
George shot an apologetic glance at Thomas. “I’d read to you myself, but I daresay Felicity’s much better at it than I am.”
“I shall look forward to her reading, then,” Thomas said.
George fetched one of Felicity’s volumes of Shakespeare, and Felicity settled in a chair a foot from the bed, close to the bedside candle. She began to turn the pages. “Is there a particular sonnet you’d like to hear?”
“ ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ ”
It took her a moment to realize he was reciting the first line of a sonnet. She had the oddest feeling Thomas was speaking to her, not requesting a poem. She flipped through the pages until she came to the verse he requested, then she settled back and began to read, “ ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer day?’ ”
Midway through the poem, Thomas said the words with her. “ ‘But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st’ ”
It was as if Thomas were saying the words especially to her.
When she finished, she met his gaze. “Is there another sonnet you would particularly like to hear?”
“I feel like an idiot,” Thomas snapped. “You know I’m perfectly all right.”
“I know. It’s just that moving your arms could cause the cut to open, and we don’t want that to happen. I’ve seen all the blood I care to tonight.”
“ ‘Those lips that love’s own hand did make,’ ” he said.
Color rising to her cheeks, Felicity settled back once more and thumbed through the pages until she found the sonnet about a lover’s lips; then she began to read.
Again, she felt embarrassed as she read because she was sure Thomas meant the poem for her.
“Now I shall select one,” she said, narrowing her eyes in mock displeasure. Soon she began to read “ ‘Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art.’ ” She finished that and read another, then another still. She would not allow him to select one again, for it was far too embarrassing.
Sh
e could see that her voice was lulling Thomas into sleepiness. After the last sonnet, she got to her feet. “I’ll leave you to sleep now, Mr. Moreland. Should you like your candle out?”
“Only if you promise me one kiss in the dark.” His voice was low and manly, and she could almost forget that he was infirm.
“Only if you promise not to put your arms around me.” Now why had she gone and answered him like that? It would have been just as easy to tell him no. Or did she want the kiss as he did?
“ ‘Twill be a most difficult promise to keep,” he said.
“Give me your word.”
“You have my word.”
She blew out the candle and leaned toward him in the darkness. She thought to kiss him as one would kiss a brother, but Thomas had other ideas.
He met her lips with gentle passion that would not be doused. She was powerless to pull away from the wet, swirling openness of the kiss for she wanted it as much as he did. She tasted the ratafia he had drunk and convulsed at the sound and feel of his labored breathing.
Then she remembered something, and she broke away. She waited for her breath to slow. “You must sleep now, Mr. Moreland.”
“A pity the kiss had to end,” he said with levity. “I was enjoying it a great deal.”
He did not have to tell her. She knew from his breathlessness. “It wouldn’t do to get so excited your wound reopens.” In the darkness she found the door and hurried to her chamber, embarrassed over the boldness of her words, if not her actions.
Lettie, who wanted all the details of the robbery, helped Felicity get ready for bed. When she left, Felicity crawled beneath her covers, thankful Lettie had run a hot brick between the sheets. Then she blew out her candle.
Now Felicity was free to ponder what she had learned tonight about Thomas Moreland. There was no doubt about it. He was the young man highwaymen had left for dead on the road to London six years ago. The man had been going to India to make his fortune.
The young man’s size and coloring matched Thomas’s, and the scar on Thomas’s chest gave her convincing proof. Also, there was the fact he had gone to India. She remembered asking Michael to arrange transport to that subcontinent for the injured man.
All of this added up to deliver her a most crushing blow. Thomas Moreland had not sought her out merely to secure her help in presenting his sister to society. He had sought her out to repay her for saving his life.
The paying of her father’s and George’s debts was Thomas’s way of showing appreciation for what she had done for him. Knowing of her family’s long and proud lineage, Thomas must have realized how reluctant Felicity would have been to accept his charity.
So much was explained by this discovery. She had thought it odd that Thomas, who eschewed the idle rich, would want to embrace them. Never had he expressed an interest in assimilating into the higher classes. Nor had he attempted to hide his own heritage.
She remembered the day she had first met him downstairs and had felt there was something vaguely familiar about him. When she had asked him if they had met before, he had told her they had never before been introduced. Now she understood why he had answered her the way he did. That long-ago night, they had not been introduced. She had never known his name.
Now she knew how so honest a man—for she knew him to be honest—had skirted the truth without truly telling a lie, though to deceive was the same as telling a lie. The beast.
At last it hit her that his only interest in her had been to repay a debt. The realization left her sick inside. She had thought he cared for her as a man cares for a woman, when he only wanted to repay her for the kindness she had done him many years before.
Just as she had learned to be comfortable with him, to care for him as more than a mere acquaintance, she had discovered his deceit And she grieved.
She cursed her own naiveté and the pride that allowed her to be flattered by his attentions. She condemned the man who likely sneered at how easy a conquest was this daughter of a viscount. And she vowed revenge.
Chapter Seventeen
The St. George was a nice hotel, even luxurious, Colonel Gordon observed as he informed the clerk that he desired that Lady Catherine Bullin should meet him in the plushly furnished lobby. But still what a tremendous descent it was to have moved from Winston Hall to quarters in a Bath hotel. The blue-blooded woman must keenly feel her reduced circumstances.
The colonel limped to a leather chair and lowered himself into it, then propped up his cane on the chair’s arm. A glance around the room told him they would have privacy. Which is what he needed for the proposal he was going to make. He was in luck. The French desk at which patrons could sit and write letters was empty. He commended himself on his cunning. Most of the elderly patrons of the hotel were sure to be taking their morning water at the Pump Room.
The note he had sent around last night had ensured that Lady Catherine would not be at the Pump Room. He had written that he had urgent business to discuss with her this morning, business that could be highly profitable for the titled lady.
The colonel fancied himself a keen observer of humanity. Such observations had convinced him he was losing Felicity to the rugged-looking—though very wealthy—commoner who now inhabited Winston Hall. Lady Catherine also could not tolerate the same commoner who now owned the house and lands that had been in her family for centuries. Together, he and Lady Catherine could destroy the Usurper.
Gordon impatiently tapped his cane while he studied the patterned carpet under his feet. He noted how its greens blended with the silken draperies that hung from a golden cornice at the room’s tall windows.
The smell of rose water hit him, and he looked up to face Lady Catherine. A pity her family’s fortune was as wasted as yesterday’s wine, for there was no longer any hope of her attracting a husband as highly born as she. And Lady Catherine was a consummate snob who could accept no less.
She ran a tentative hand through her nondescript brown hair and smiled at him, revealing somewhat crooked teeth. “Good morning, Colonel Gordon. I see that, as are most military men, you are prompt.”
He stood and bowed. “How good it is of you, my lady, to meet with me this morning.” He eyed the desk and decided that since it hugged the window wall, it was in the part of the room that was farthest from passersby.
Also, since the lobby was chiefly used for writing letters, he must move to the desk in order to prevent anyone from disturbing their privacy. He had to be assured no others would be using the lobby during their sensitive discussion. “Please, my lady, take a seat at the desk.”
Her brows elevated at the proposal, but she complied, sitting in the wooden chair and draping her muslin skirts beside her.
The colonel pulled up an upholstered armchair and sat across from her. “You must be wondering why I wanted to meet with you today.”
“You have to admit, Colonel, your missive was rather unusual. Especially the part about your proposal being profitable to me.”
He looked around to assure himself no one was listening, then he leaned toward her. Now he would play into her hands. “I must tell you it grieves me to see a man so lowly born the new owner of Winston Hall. Has the Usurper no sense of honor? Does he not realize the Bullins have resided at Winston Hall for generations? How your ancestors must be turning in their graves to know a Usurper has stolen the family home from its true heir.”
“I cannot bear to think what the big oaf has done to our lovely furnishings,” she said, “for the man must be coarse beyond reason.”
“To be sure.” He leaned toward her again. “As you know, I am a wealthy man, though, of course, not nearly as rich as the Usurper.”
She nodded, and he watched the meaty flesh beneath her chin jiggle.
“But I am prepared to pay you handsomely if you will help me expose the man for the evil person he is.”
Her green eyes narrowed. “How handsomely?”
He smiled. “Let us say that if my plan meets with success, you may
very well be able to regain possession of your Winston Hall.”
Her lips curved into a smile. “Pray, tell me what I must do.”
Leaning even closer, he began to whisper. “I propose that you ask the Usurper to meet you here at the hotel. ”You can say you wish to discuss some family portraits that have been left behind at Winston Hall.“
She nodded.
“When he arrives, ask him if he will sell you the portrait of your dear grandmama. Once the matter is settled, you will say you’re going to dash up to your room for a cloak in order that you can take a stroll about town. . . .” He paused. “Then . . .”
“What?” she asked.
“You will stand up and pretend to twist your ankle. The Usurper will attempt to act like the gentleman we know he is not, and you will beg him to go up to your rooms to fetch the cloak for you. You will give him the number to your room.”
“Then?”
A wicked smile stretched across his face. “Then you will sneak up the stairs to your floor, surprise him in your rooms, and begin screaming.”
She looked puzzled.
Still whispering, he continued. “You will say the man tried to force himself on you.”
Her eyes brightened. “What a deliciously wicked plan, my dear Colonel.”
He sat back in his chair and smiled broadly. “Yes, isn’t it?”
Then a serious look came over her face. “But I don’t understand where my money will come from.”
“Don’t you see,” he said, “the man will be jailed, possibly hung. He will lose Winston Hall. At which time I am prepared to bestow upon you ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand pounds!” she exclaimed.
He put his index finger to his lips. “We must be discreet, Lady Catherine.”
A look of complete satisfaction settled on her face. “I had no idea, Colonel, that you were that wealthy a man. I daresay with that much money I could live in the manner to which I have been accustomed.”
“Then it is agreed?”
“Indeed, it is.”
Clasping his cane and putting his weight on it, the colonel rose. “I will send word to you what day our plan is to take place.” Then he bid her good morning and left the St. George, pleased with his day’s mischief. This plan was really far better than killing the Upstart, though not nearly as much fun.
