A Most Unsuitable Man

by Mara

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  He frowned slightly. “Was there anything suspicious about that fall in Pickmanwell, Damaris?”

  “I’d been thinking about that. Someone did bump me, but the street was busy. Then when I was lying on the ground, the moon disappeared. I thought I’d half fainted, but it might have been someone hovering over me....”

  “I wish you’d told me. I might have guessed what was afoot sooner. A fine bodyguard I’ve turned out to be.”

  Before she could respond to that, Ashart knocked and was admitted. “This is infuriating—that someone should shoot at a guest here! And how are we to take Damaris to London in safety?”

  Fitz was calm again. “We’ll give no hint of our plans until the last moment and travel with six outriders. I don’t think our man will make a direct attack on a well-guarded party. If we don’t stop for more than a change of horses along the way, we should be able to make it in under four hours.”

  “And I was never in danger after all,” Ashart said.

  “The threat was and still is real. Rothgar would not take action without being sure of that. Those who want you dead are simply less desperate.”

  “Desperate?” Damaris asked.

  He turned to her. “The attacker acted rashly. He was almost caught by one of the people patrolling the estate. The guard wasn’t yet aware that you’d been shot, so he didn’t pursue what looked like a furtive poacher, just made sure he left the estate.”

  “But why desperate?” Damaris demanded. “If the killer is my heir, he must have been so for years. Why take such risks now?”

  “We’ll find out when we catch him....”

  Lady Thalia came in, bundled in furs. “I hear Damaris has taken a fall. Are you all right, dear?”

  Genova led her to the empty chair and told the truth.

  Lady Thalia put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, such wickedness in the world! And over money. You must sleep in my room tonight, dear. Ashart’s room, I mean. I’m sure it’s much more secure.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Damaris said.

  “In fact,” Fitz said, “this wing is more easily guarded. The only access is from the service stairs and the arch from the Royal Salon. I’ll secure both with alarm wires.”

  “Alarm wires?” Ashart asked, looking astonished.

  “Tricks of the trade. If disturbed they trigger a small explosion. The mechanism’s the same as the firing pan of a pistol.”

  “ ‘Struth,” Ashart said. “No sleepwalking tonight, Damaris.”

  “No, I promise.”

  Darkness had fallen, crushing the last traces of glorious red. No one mentioned danger from outside, but Fitz closed the shutters and let down the curtains. Somewhere outside a man might still lurk, intent on killing her for her fortune.

  As if she’d spoken, Fitz said, “I have the house under close supervision. You’re safe.”

  She believed him, but fear still beat like a drum in her pulse, and she had to keep stopping herself from touching the tender spot in the center of her chest. She could so easily be dead.

  When Lady Thalia suggested a move to the grand bedchamber and a lighthearted game of loo, Damaris was first to agree. She needed distraction. She let Fitz carry her, however.

  He was hers, though he didn’t know it yet, and she delighted in his touch.

  Ashart ordered extra candles, and rum punch to brighten their spirits. Damaris perhaps drank more than she should, for it did push back fear—fear of more than the assassin.

  Fitz seemed abstracted.

  She knew he was planning for tomorrow, trying to anticipate every danger and prevent it. She worried that he was also making other plans—about how to leave her, leave England, as soon as possible.

  Chapter 16

  Fitz struggled to keep his mind on the game, but a frantic beat in his head pounded out, She could have died, she could have died....

  He could argue that even by Damaris’s side he’d not have been able to block the dart, but the thought was no comfort.

  She could have died.

  The game stopped at ten, as if the chiming clock commanded an end to play and the beginning of their last night at Cheynings. He reviewed security again. There could be no more mistakes. He’d already posted guards around the house, but with so many doors and windows it couldn’t be made into a fortress. Therefore Damaris’s bedchamber must be impregnable.

  He and Ashart escorted her across the dark, chilly house. He would have carried her, but she refused.

  “I’d feel like a fraud after enjoying the game. My chest doesn’t even hurt much anymore. I’ve always healed well.”

  She was putting on a merry face, but as they crossed the cold, gloomy house, he knew her fear was returning.

  Ashart left once Damaris was safe in her room. Fitz explained the alarms to her and her fretful maid.

  “They’ll ensure your safety, but don’t try to go downstairs until I’m up tomorrow.”

  The maid dropped a curtsy. “That I won’t, sir.”

  He wished Damaris a good night, and closed the door on candlelight, a merry fire, and her lace-frilled white nightgown that hung over a rack in front of it. It was the same as or similar to the one she’d worn when she’d invaded his room.

  He cleared his mind and stretched thin wires across the two openings to this corridor—the arch out into the Royal Salon, and the entrance to the service stairs. He set them shin high, where they’d catch a man but not a rodent. Then he attached the trigger mechanism and cocked each. He was quixotically tempted to lie down at Damaris’s threshold, but was stopped not just because he would appear ridiculous if caught, but because he, too, needed sleep if he was to have his wits about him the next day.

  He went to his room, undressed, and washed, but he was too keyed up to sleep. He extinguished the candles, but sat by the fire in his banyan robe, sipping brandy, making himself think about the enemy, not the woman next door.

  If Damaris’s heir wanted to kill her, why not strike years ago? Presumably it would have been laughably easy when she’d been living in Worksop.

  What had changed?

  Damaris’s mother had died a year ago last November, and Damaris had come of age in October. If that was important, why not act then? Had she been so closely guarded at Thornfield Hall that it had been impossible? He wished he’d thought to ask her.

  There’d been no attack at Rothgar Abbey, but security there, though discreet, was tight. A villain wouldn’t have risked it.

  The attack on the way here suggested that the killer had followed them, had perhaps been watching Rothgar Abbey for a chance. Patient and cautious.

  Why, then, the attack today?

  The door gave the slightest squeak to warn of its opening. He stilled, regretting that his knife was already under his pillow and his pistol out of reach, though he already knew with despair who it was.

  “Fitz?” It was the slightest whisper, but even so, every part of his body instantly sizzled.

  He rose and went to her. “What’s amiss?”

  She slipped in and closed the door behind her. “I had an idea.”

  “Damaris—”

  “Shush. It’s important.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  She looked around. “Here?”

  He let silence speak for him, and she cocked her head. “I don’t think I’m going to be driven mad by lust—even though you do look splendid in that pale robe with your pale hair. Like a ghostly knight.”

  She walked over and sat in the chair opposite his. She was in her dark robe again, but it showed the high neck of her nightgown with its lacy frill, and the wider frill at her wrists. Her hair was not in a plait, but simply tied back with a ribbon that was already sliding loose. Silky hair, he thought breathlessly.

  The chair put her back to him, and she turned, looking like a wide-eyed kitten. But she was much more dangerous than that.

  “You don’t seem to have considered that I might be driven mad with lu
st.”

  “I don’t think you could be driven mad by anything.”

  “How little you know men,” he remarked, but he crossed the room to her. “Brandy?”

  “Yes, please. I’ve developed a taste for it.”

  “Lord save us all.” But he poured some into a glass and passed it to her, then topped up his own before sitting.

  She’d pulled her hair to the front, and the dark river of it flowed down, seeming to emphasize the breast it covered.

  “I know I shouldn’t be here, but after all,” she added, mischief in her eyes, “your trip wires ensure that no one will interrupt us, don’t they?”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “Someone truly should throttle you. And I suppose your maid is deep in sleep. Very well. Your urgent idea?”

  “My will. And fear. I couldn’t sleep. I know you have me safe, but every creak of the house, every scuttle of mice...”

  He absolutely mustn’t take her in his arms. “What about your will?” he prompted.

  “What? Oh”—her eyes steadied—“I don’t have one. Once I make one, it will override my father’s and there’ll be no point in anyone killing me, will there?”

  “Except whomever you leave your money to,” he pointed out, but by Zeus, she was right. How dull his mind had become.

  She dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand. “I can leave it to someone safe. Rothgar. You.”

  “Not me,” he said sharply. “I might crumble under the temptation.”

  He might crumble under the temptation she presented now, lit with purpose and excitement, half schoolgirl, half siren, half fellow adventurer. It was in keeping with his insanity that the halves didn’t add up.

  He rose to pace the room, to think, to escape the necessity of looking at her. “It’s a good plan, but with one weakness. The murderer, if it is your heir, won’t know that things have changed.”

  “We can let it be known.”

  “How?” He had to face her again. He couldn’t conduct a conversation with his back turned. “Throw handbills out of the coach all the way to London?”

  She frowned in a way that made him want to kiss each furrow. “There has to be a way. Ah! We arrive in London, I summon my trustees, find out who my heir is, then I send a note informing him of his altered expectations.”

  “Or I kill him. But that assumes he’s easy to find. What if it’s one of your father’s colleagues from abroad?”

  She sipped her brandy. “That is likely, isn’t it? It even explains why I wasn’t threatened sooner. It might have taken time for him to get here. I’ll put a notice in the papers, then.”

  “That would work.” He put aside his glass. “Time for you to return to your room.”

  “No, wait. If I write my will, will it hold?”

  “If witnessed, I believe so.”

  “Then I can write it now and you can witness it.”

  “I believe it needs two witnesses. Leave it until morning. In fact, leave it until we reach London and have it done in proper form.”

  He must get her out of here. He took the risk of pulling her up out of her chair. “Come on.”

  She didn’t resist, but said, “No, it must be done before we leave. Don’t you see? If anything goes wrong tomorrow, I refuse to let this villain gain by it. I refuse. ”

  Her spirit and resolution dazzled him. “Ah, but you’re magnificent.”

  “Am I?”

  She was looking up at him, bright-eyed, and he knew he should deny his words, but he said, “You know you are.”

  “And so are you.”

  He shook his head. “I’m a low creature. By all means, write your will before we leave. But I promise you—if this miscreant manages to kill you, Damaris, I will hunt him down, and before he dies he’ll wish he’d been caught, tried, and hanged by the legal system.”

  A shiver went through Damaris, but it wasn’t fear. She stepped close to him, words coming to her tongue without thought and without hope of control. “I want you, Octavius Fitzroger.”

  He didn’t move a muscle. “It’s the punch. Let’s get you back to bed.”

  He tried to steer her there, but she evaded him and blocked the door. “I can’t sleep.”

  His stillness was frightening, but she would not be denied. This was their last night, her last chance.

  “Hardly surprising when you’re not in bed,” he pointed out.

  “Even in my bed I won’t be able to sleep. Truly, Fitz. Can’t I stay here until I tire?” She wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted except to be with him. “I feel safe here with you,” she said. “Perhaps we could talk.”

  “Talk.” She heard a breath. It might have been a laugh. But then he said, “Of course.”

  Chapter 17

  He put extra wood on the fire, every movement speaking to her of his wonderful body.

  Temptation put her wickedness into words. If we make love here tonight, he will never leave me. His honor will forbid it.

  Flames licked, then flared, brightening the room.

  She returned to one chair; he took the other, leaning back, pale gold and burnished in the fire’s light.

  “Tell me about your life in Worksop,” he said.

  Damaris hid a smile at the skillful move. She’d meant that they should talk about him. All the same, she did talk about life at Birch House, dull though it was.

  “My mother was a strange woman, an only child of elderly parents, and her mother died when she was three. She was raised by my grandfather, who was a distant man. He was a physician, but also a gentleman scholar. He died when I was ten, but I’d already realized that he’d have been happier if all his patients were statues. I mean without demanding emotions.”

  “Automatons, like those Rothgar so admires.”

  “Yes, exactly. Cogs and springs.”

  “It can’t have been a pleasant home,” he said.

  He seemed relaxed, or at least resigned. Perhaps talking like this would be enough, for it was sweet.

  But talking wouldn’t bind him, and she wanted him bound. Against all laws of friendship, honor, and society, she wanted Octavius Fitzroger shackled to her without hope of escape.

  “No,” she said, “but I lacked comparison. There weren’t even any close relatives. Grandfather had some family in the west country—Devon, I think—but he never traveled, and they didn’t come to us. If there’d been contact with my grandmother’s family, it ceased with her death before I was born. My father was estranged from his family.”

  “Did you have a governess?”

  “My mother taught me. Because she said there was no money to hire anyone.”

  “You must have attended church, at least.”

  “Diligently, but we never lingered. I think perhaps my mother found my father’s absence embarrassing. Even for a merchant engaged in foreign lands, it was strange.”

  “Did she love him, do you think?”

  “Perhaps to begin with, but if so he killed it. By the time I had any powers of analysis, I’d say she believed she owned him. Her attitude to him always seethed with anger. At some point she learned that he kept a mistress in London, and that infuriated her, but I don’t think she was hurt by it. Just furious. Because she thought she owned him. Because she’d bought him with her dowry.”

  Damaris realized that a similar rage of ownership had boiled in herself over Ashart. What a blessing it had come to nothing, for it had been no different except for the price.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that a mistress in London was much use to a man so much abroad,” he remarked.

  “True, but I doubt she was mistaken.” It was peculiar to be talking about such things with a man, but Damaris said, “I suppose he paid her to be available on the rare occasions he wanted her.”

  “Neatly efficient. Was she mentioned in his will?”

  “I don’t know. It’s exactly the sort of thing my trustees wouldn’t tell me.”

  His lips twitched. “I’m sure. But your mother was entitled to be bit
ter and angry if he took her money and left her in poverty, especially as he grew rich and squandered money on other women.”

  “But he didn’t. I discovered that after her death. He always sent money, and the amounts grew over the years. In that, at least, he was honest. We could have lived in luxury, but she used as little as she could and pretended that was all he sent.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “It was a type of madness. Did she think it would force him to return? To abandon Sarawak, Moluccas, and Java for Birch House, Worksop, because she was depriving herself and me?”

  “If she truly hated him, she could have hated his money.”

  “That’s as good an explanation as any. But what of your family and early life?” she asked.

  She intended to marry him despite the scandal, but she still hoped to find a way to erase it. Thus she needed to know more about his family. “You went into the army at fifteen?”

  “Yes.” He turned his head to look into the fire. “We weren’t isolated, as you were. The Fitzrogers of Cleeve hold an important place in the county, having been there since the Conquest. Not far from my home there’s a ruin of Carrisford Castle, built by one of my ancestors. Fitzroger of Cleeve was king’s champion to Henry the First and became one of the great barons. There’s a romantic story attached about his capture of an heiress....”

  He broke off then switched the subject. “So we weren’t isolated, but nor were we happy. My mother bore too many children, ten in all, and lost too many. My father blamed fate, not himself. My older sister, Sally, was simple from birth. She’s thirty-one but thinks and acts like a child.”

  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” she asked. “Living, I mean.”

  He faced her. “Hugh—he’s the oldest. Lord Leyden now. There was another Hugh before him, but he died. Sally, Libella, and me.”

  Four out of ten, and one was simple, another a brute. His poor mother.

  “Libella?” she asked.

  He smiled. “The last and smallest, but with the most spirit. Libella means a tenth, or a little bit, but we always called her Libby. She’s trapped there now, looking after Mother and Sally, and trying to prevent Hugh’s cruelties. I’d free her if I could, but I can’t.” Some trick of the fire put flames in his eyes. “I am completely powerless over my life.”