Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (Felmont Brides Series Book 1)

by Maggie Jagger

  * * *

  Lizzie’s head ached from the bustle of the city, after so long in seclusion at Felmont’s Folly. She had shopped all morning with Gladys, visiting her mother’s modiste, the haberdashers and the milliners on Regent Street.

  She had sent Gladys in to rest while she strolled in the park. The duke was rehearsing his orchestra in the ballroom with the windows open. People brought chairs to the park to listen to the free concert. If she was going to live at the Folly, she must try to entice her musicians back from Uncle Tempest’s employ or hire more. She loved to hear music every day.

  She strolled around the crescent to clear her head before she went in search of her missing husband, who she didn’t trust to deny himself the pleasures of London. Look how London had seduced her—a dozen new day dresses, a riding habit, and five evening gowns. She felt exhausted, elated, and determined to indulge herself again tomorrow. How could she think he’d feel any different?

  Lizzie walked to the viscount’s house. As she got nearer, she heard a man moaning through the open window. The unmistakable sounds of a man in the throws of unspeakable lechery.

  The man made the same sounds her husband had made the night he persuaded her to accompany him to London. Half-muffled words drifted towards her, halting her, as she heard beneath them a slow, repetitive thud.

  “Quiet!” hissed a woman. “You are going to frighten the horses in the street.” She warned in a louder voice, “If you keep moving like that you’ll fall off the bed.”

  A woman’s hand closed the window.

  Molly’s voice and Molly’s hand.

  Who was moaning? Was it her husband? She couldn’t be sure. Had he been in the throws of passion with Molly? Is that what it sounded like when one had wits enough to hear?

  Surely the Beast could not have set up James’s sister as a whore? Not next door.

  Why not? Men were odd, deceitful, wicked monsters.

  But Lizzie had only to catch him in the act, not that she intended to look, only long enough to prove he was unfaithful. Then, she could leave him.

  Lizzie slipped through the gate to try the front door. It opened. She stepped inside the house. The moans became louder, the knocking more insistent. The door to the room where the disgusting acts were taking place stood ajar. Lizzie pushed it all the way open.

  A man, unmistakably a Felmont, judging by his nose, banged his head on the ornate headboard of his huge bed. He wept from half-closed eyes and bit down on a knotted handkerchief. His nightshirt, what she could see of it, was stuck to his shoulders and torso with perspiration. The blankets bunched about his hips.

  He was alone.

  The shock of her sudden appearance in his bedroom silenced him. He ceased all movement, frozen in pain as he fought for control.

  “Forgive my intruding.” Lizzie couldn’t think of anything else to say. She could hardly say she hoped to catch her husband in an act of illicit congress with Molly. The resemblance between the two men was remarkable. Not only the Felmont nose, the very shape of his face with its angles and high cheekbones made him look as if he were a twin to her husband.

  The man who must be Angel Anston spat the material from his mouth. He lay as one afraid to move with his hands twisted in the bed sheets.

  “Come here,” he whispered in the same gentle, angelic voice she had heard before. Lizzie found herself obeying his command.

  “Sit, please.” He gestured carefully with one movement of his wrist to a plain wooden chair placed close to his pillow.

  Lizzie sat. “Forgive my intrusion, but I am looking for my husband.” For some reason she did not want to mention his name.

  When he made no answer, Lizzie continued, “You must be Mr. Anston.”

  He had lain quite still staring away from her, looking towards the closed window. At her mention of his name, he turned his head to look at her. One of his eyes shone Felmont blue, the other was a deep brown.

  “I am Edward Anston, ma’am.”

  She couldn’t help staring at his odd-colored eyes.

  He turned on his side to face her, expelling his breath in relief when the movement was completed. “No doubt you wish to mention you have a cat with eyes like mine. Is he called Tibbet or Puss?”

  His words made her smile.

  “His name has escaped me, I am so awed by the size of your nose.” She glanced at it with mock horror, feeling perfectly at ease with him.

  “No,” he whispered, “Do not, no.” Angel Anston rebuked her. “Don’t make me laugh ... God help me,” he sobbed. Pain savaged him.

  Lizzie could do nothing but weep with him. It was like watching a soul in torment. Hell could not hold horrors worse than this. Moans began, his head reared and banged against the headboard. Lizzie went quickly to push a pillow so he did not hurt himself further.

  His hands gripped her dress as she leaned over him. She had the distinct impression he intended to push her away before the pain claimed him. But he held her captive, unable to release his hold on her.

  A rending sound came as her skirt detached from the bodice.

  Like an angel in torment, he whispered a searing, “Forgive me!” as each wave of pain receded enough for him to unclench his jaw.

  “It is nothing. You are forgiven.” Lizzie stroked her fingers through his sweat sodden locks. It had helped her stepfather in his delirium. She had stroked him as her musicians played him to sleep.

  The motion of her gloved fingertips on Mr. Anston’s scalp distracted him. He stopped moving. They waited in silence for the pain to go, only his breath rasped on the way out. His tears stopped.

  Lizzie rested her hip against the side of his bed, raking his hair until he let go of her torn dress.

  When Molly entered the room, she gave an exclamation of surprise and hustled Lizzie away to an upstairs bedroom to help her remove her dress amid dire warnings about the viscount’s rules concerning his friend.

  Lizzie ignored it all silently, with dignity, something difficult to achieve while being undressed.

  Molly paused for breath and began again. “I can sew it for you, Lady Felmont. It’d look right strange to send for another for you to wear. Whatever were you thinking? You can’t visit, you just can’t.”

  “If you get me needle and thread, I’ll do it myself.” Lizzie had no wish to hear another word from Molly about her not being allowed to visit Mr. Anston without the viscount.

  Just exactly where was her missing husband?

  A thud came from the room below. Molly stopped searching in a painted dresser to listen. The sound of something scraping along the floorboards reached them. “He’s gone and fallen out of bed!” the maid cried. “It’ll be the death of him.”

  Lizzie put her shoes back on. Clad in chemise and petticoat, she followed as Molly rushed down the stairs.

  Anston crawled on his side, trying to rise using the tipped over chair for support.

  “What are you doing?” cried Molly. “Lie still.”

  “Where is Felmont?” Anston asked in his gentle voice, while he made sure he was modestly covered by his nightshirt. Lizzie suddenly had an urge to giggle like the Rackham girls. It seemed so ridiculous that this tall warrior should carefully make sure his knees were covered.

  He seemed no worse for his tumble.

  “Never you mind where he is,” snapped Molly. “You can’t go making trouble just because he’s too kind to stop you.”

  “Where is Felmont? The wages of sin are death.” Moans suddenly racked him. Lizzie thought it odd, for his body didn’t tense as it had before when the pain gripped him.

  Molly picked up the chair to set it beside the bed. “You haven’t been telling Mr. Anston anything about your marriage have you, Lady Felmont?” accused Molly.

  Lizzie didn’t deign to answer. She couldn’t see why that should have any bearing on what needed to be done. “We can’t lift him by ourselves. Is Mr. Rackham here?”

  “No.” Molly seemed unwilling to say more.

  “Then we
must send for the doctor and for some footmen to lift him back into bed.” Lizzie took charge. “I’ll stay with him. Off you go, Molly.”

  But Molly was reluctant to leave. “You can’t stay with him, my lady. It’s not right. What will the viscount say when he returns?”

  “You’ll only be gone for a minute. Ask for help at the duke’s house.” Lizzie pushed Molly towards the door.

  The maid left with a final warning. “Just don’t tell him anything. He takes everything the wrong way, he does.” She tapped her temple and whispered, “He’s not right in the head.”

  Anston started to bang his head against the floorboards. Insanity held no fears for Lizzie, she was used to dealing with people in varied states of sense and nonsense.

  She knelt beside the invalid. His great head reared up to land on her lap. She grabbed him by the hair to stop him from moving. “Lay still. You are only making it worse.”

  She stroked her fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. “There, that is better, no need to move.”

  Aston pleaded. “No surgeon, promise me.”

  “As you wish,” Lizzie assured him. “Molly will fetch some men to lift you back into bed.”

  The sound of the maid leaving by the front door brought Anston to his knees.

  He rose and slammed his bedroom door closed, staggering from the effort to keep his feet under him. He turned the key in the lock, removed it and grasped it in his huge hand.

  “Dace has to kill me now,” he said in his angelic voice. “Only man who’d dare do it. Has to kill me. Swords at dusk.”