Ardeth’s will being right there with his life span on the list of topics Genie did not wish to discuss. “Then you do not think he was taking revenge for his banishment?”
“No, I had him watched. He had no chance. Besides, he was going to have to flee London soon anyway, with the money he owed the usurers. He thought I did not know about those debts. I just saw no reason to pay the bloodsuckers. Oh, and I did numb his hand, mentioning that as a symptom of heart failure.”
He was exhausting himself, Genie saw, and making no sense, so she said, “If not from Willeford, then the shot must have come from a poacher in the woods. That means there is nothing to worry about.”
“No! The wheel.”
“The carriage wheel that broke loose?”
“Tampered with. Hire guards.”
Genie almost spilled the lemonade. “You mean this was neither Willeford nor a stray shot?” She’d known at heart the shooting was no accident, not in a clearing, not from the back. But to think that someone else was trying to injure her husband was more horrific, even, than the idea of Willeford acting so despicably. Who should she guard him against? Which direction would trouble come from next? “Good grief, who else have you offended, Coryn?”
He tried to smile again. “As many as I could. There are men who do not wish the poor educated, who do not want to see the government spend money on serving the needs of the downtrodden. Why, the owners of some wool mills and mines see their profits diminished if the reforms pass, protecting the workers. They despise me.”
“Enough to kill you?”
“Keep your pistol on hand, Genie. Who knows what they might do to keep me from speaking? I did not mean to put you in danger.”
“Me?” she squawked like Olive.
“My wife.”
“I know that, silly. I just never thought I mattered to anyone.”
“You… matter to me.”
She kissed his cheek, but he winced, so she turned serious again, not sentimental. “Well, you will not be speaking anytime soon. Not until you regain your strength. And you better hurry, for I cannot protect us all from the rest of the world. If you slept instead of fretting, you would do better, I know you would. At least the surgeon would not have to keep coming back to stitch you up again.”
“You will take precautions? You will stay indoors? I need to know you are safe.”
“I will be fine. Campbell sits outside the door with a loaded rifle. The innkeeper’s son has declared himself your savior, so he will look out for strangers. And Olive can cry a warning of any intruders. All right? Can you sleep now?”
“One kiss good night.”
He fell into a deep slumber halfway through the kiss.
The surgeon worried he had fallen into a fatal coma, and the innkeeper was near to panic, that a would-be murderer was on the loose, and a would-be-dead nobleman was on his best bed. Genie reassured them both. Ardeth was resting, she said, healing.
She took advantage of his deep sleep to get him back to London. No matter how carefully Campbell drove the coach, Ardeth would have been jostled unmercifully if he were awake. This way he did not suffer for the short journey, and scores of menservants were waiting at home to help him to bed. Others were stationed outside, armed with enough guns and swords and sticks to guard the crown jewels. Ardeth had been looking for ways to employ former soldiers. Genie found it.
She had to take Lorraine and her husband into her confidence, to make up some story about the earl’s injury, since they had no proof and no suspects. Rumors flew about town, saying a duel had taken place after all, although no one knew the other combatant. Or Willeford had shot Ardeth before fleeing bankruptcy. Or worse.
Luckily Ardeth still slept, so he could not be troubled by gossip about jealous husbands, errant wives, or, thanks to Willeford’s rumors, sorcery gone awry.
Genie decided they would leave for the country as soon as Ardeth was able to travel. They would be safer there, and safer from scandalmongering. He did not develop fevers or chills, and the skin around the wounds looked clean. They could hire extra servants to attend him, and extra guards to ride alongside the carriage.
Genie thought about leaving him asleep during the move to save him pain, but the journey was a long one. Besides, she worried he was not getting enough nourishment in his torpid state. Mostly she worried that he might forget to wake up at all. Wasn’t Merlin supposed to be in a deep trance inside some dark cave? Who knew how Ardeth’s mind worked? Surely not his wife.
She whispered to him. She pulled on his sleeve and squeezed his hand. She spoke louder. “It is time to wake up, Coryn. The wounds are healing well.” She cleared her throat, clapped her hands, and then she set a cup down hard in its saucer. “Wake up, my lord. We have plans to make.”
If not for the steady rise and fall of his chest, she would fear he was gone. He was not even snoring. She told Olive to make some noise.
“Meow.” That would have woken the crow in a flash.
“Not a cat noise, peagoose.”
Olive tried again. “Cockanoodle?”
“Well, that was almost a rooster’s sound, so you are doing better. Try something louder, to get him up.”
“Naked pretty. Naked pretty.”
“Naughty bird,” Genie said, glad Ardeth could not see her blushes as she hastily retied the sash of her dressing gown, and glad the bedroom door was closed.
Ardeth slept on.
Genie stroked his cheek, then his chin, knowing he would hate the dark stubble there. She thought it made him look like a pirate or a highwayman, but supposed her sister would adore the untamed, Gypsy look—in a book, not in her bed. “Perhaps I should shave you,” Genie threatened, thinking that if anything was going to wake Ardeth up, the notion of a woman with a razor should, “instead of letting your valet do it in the morning. Of course I have never shaved a man in my life, but if you are asleep, you’ll never feel the nicks.”
She waited, but he did not stir. She thought she saw his eyelashes flutter, although he did not open his eyes, not even when she tugged on the growing beard and told him he looked like a beast.
Then his lips twitched.
Aha! She bent over the bed and kissed his lips. It worked for Sleeping Beauty, so why not for a sleeping beast?
He kissed her back, and reached with the arm of his uninjured side to pull her closer. “Hmm. What a nice way to greet the morning, wife.”
Hmm, indeed. Genie was tempted to climb into the bed next to him, now that he was awake, but he was too weak. “Well, it is nice, husband, but the morning is hours away. You have slept for days.”
He released her and tested his shoulder, feeling sore and stiff, but without the intense pain. He did not feel good, but at least he did not feel as if he’d been killed again, either. He was even hungry, and not for the thin gruel Genie offered him. “You expect a man to recover his strength on that pap?”
“I expect you to do what the doctor ordered, and listen. We need to discuss some ideas I have had.”
Instead of asking his opinions or intentions, however, Genie told him what she had decided, how she would go about it, and what precautions she was going to take. Since the simple act of swallowing—the gruel, blast it—exhausted him, Ardeth knew he was not ready to take back the reins. He could not help teasing her, though. “My, what a bossy woman you have become, my dear. Not at all the little mouse I wed.”
“Did you want a mouse?” she asked, not quite accidentally spilling some gruel down his chin.
He tried to reach her hair, to feel it through his fingers, but his arm fell back onto the bed. “I did not know what I wanted. You had not shown me yet.”
—
They left London two days later, going north. They would travel with Lord and Lady Cormack as far as Nottingham, they told everyone, on their way to Ardsley Keep. Lorraine and Roger were ready to leave town, and Peter was healthy enough for the trip, excited that he might get to ride a short ways in the coach with his fascinating uncle,
but not the crow.
Lorraine had demurred at first. If someone was trying to injure the earl, she did not want her son caught in the cross fire. Roger had reminded her of how much they owed Ardeth, and declared they were going, and were going to make certain he arrived safely. Roger rode alongside the coach, his pistol close to hand.
Miss Hadley, it turned out, had much in common with Lorraine, including acquaintances and lurid novels, so they helped pass the time together, leaving Genie to entertain Peter when his nanny and nursemaid needed a rest, which was often. Now that Peter was feeling better, he had all the energy of a puppy, and the attention span to match. Ardeth helped some, with stories of knights and dragons, but he slept a great deal, too.
James Vinross was to follow in a few weeks, when he had more reports from the Bow Street men Genie had hired, and when more of Ardeth’s building plans were finalized. Genie thought a short separation from Miss Hadley was good for both of them, to learn their own minds, now that they were learning each other’s.
The Randolphs were staying on in London to care for the house and oversee the repairs and renovations to Willeford’s place. They were also now in charge of returning hourglasses to their hopeful senders, or shipping likely ones north to the Keep.
Marie and scores of servants traveled with the caravan, which was surrounded at all times by armed riders, in addition to Lord Cormack. The guards and grooms were mostly veterans, handpicked by Campbell and Vinross, and sworn to protect the man who had saved their fellow soldiers. The carriages were inspected at every stop and scouts were sent ahead to inspect the terrain and the accommodations. Genie had traveled with the army long enough to know defensive tactics. She was leaving nothing to chance.
They traveled slowly, for the comfort of the injured, the infant, and the increasing Genie. Ardeth dozed a great deal, recouping his strength, but insisted on walking into the inns at night under his own power. Genie knew he was in pain, but he never complained, not unless the rooms were cold. She slept in adjoining rooms when possible, her pistol under the pillow, while his valet had a trundle bed next to Ardeth’s.
After five days, they were all sick of the coaches, the roads, the inns, and one another. “We will be leaving you at the next stage,” Genie told her sister and brother-in-law, loudly enough for any interested listener to hear. “To go on to Ardsley.”
When they reached the turning for Cormack Woods, the earl’s carriage continued north, as planned.
Also as planned, the earl was not in the crested coach. He was riding in a less luxurious carriage that had carried Peter and his nanny, who were now riding with Lorraine, to her discomfort. The elegant Ardeth equipage was filled this time with armed veterans on the lookout for an ambush. Genie was still taking no chances, plotting their route with the care of a general, or an intelligence officer.
What did a woman do when her husband was too weak to defend himself, when she was over four months pregnant and feeling ill herself, when she did not know the enemy, or even if their ultimate destination was safe and defensible? Genie did not know what His Grace of Wellington would do, but she went home, to her parents.
Chapter 22
A countess could count on a welcome almost anywhere. An earl made an enviable guest. Usually.
The Hopewells’ invitation, it seemed, was not to a notorious nobleman and his expectant wife. Gossip traveled faster than a summer rainstorm, even this far from Lonon, and the city’s scandal sheets still made good reading, only a day or two late.
Despite having sent a note ahead, Genie found her parents’ manor house unprepared for any company except the ladies’ sewing circle her mother was entertaining. She had not quite expected the fatted calf, but stale toast and tepid tea among coldhearted crones was not the homecoming Genie had imagined.
Her mother’s guests were the same sanctimonious females who had heaped coals on the fire of Genie’s disgrace, forcing her to marry Elgin and him to join the army. In the days leading to her first wedding, the local gentry women had shown their disapproval by leaving the room when Genie entered, lest they be contaminated with her filth. Those same biddy hens who demanded proper, punctilious behavior in others now showed the utmost discourtesy by staying on in her mother’s parlor.
The vicar’s spinster sister, a viscount’s pensioned aunts, the banker’s cousin, and two wives of major landholders all needed to finish their tea and pack up their needlework, a long, slow, careful procedure to keep the threads from tangling. Every one of them wanted a good look at the enigmatic earl to take back to their own neighbors, Genie knew. Before they went home, they were going to tell the linendraper and the butcher and their cooks that Lord Ardeth was too thin, too pale, and not much for conversation. His manners were shabby, too, when he sat down before taking each woman’s hand in introduction. Either that or the delicious rumors of his being shot were true.
They were also going to pass around the news that little Imogene Hopewell had grown plump, so the rumors about her must be true, also. My, my.
My foot, Genie thought, removing her shawl. If the ladies wanted an eyeful, let them see the huge diamond ring Ardeth had bought for her, the rare black pearls at her neck, and the fine black silk gown from London’s best modiste. Let them see she wore mourning for Elgin, but adored her new husband. She brought him his tea just the way he liked it, and a plate of the remaining biscuits. Then she stood behind his chair, her hand resting on his shoulder next to Olive. Oh, they would chatter about Olive for days.
The only female in the room near to Genie’s age was her brother Brice’s wife, Mary, a plain girl very much under her mother-in-law’s thumb. She and Brice, the heir, were living at the manor, which was a far cry from the rooms Mary had lived in over her father’s haberdashery, so Mary could have few complaints. She had been one of the first of Genie’s friends to turn their backs on her. Genie turned her back now, letting her mother complete the introductions to the earl, after Genie had presented him and Miss Hadley.
When the sewing circle biddies finally took their reluctant leave, Genie’s mother just as reluctantly told Mary to call for a fresh pot of tea. Then she informed Genie that her father was out riding his acres, as usual. The first visit of a daughter in over three years was hardly usual, Genie thought, feeling the hurt of his rejection all over again.
Brice was out shooting, also as usual.
“Crows,” Mary added.
Genie tucked Olive in her shawl that she had placed around Ardeth’s shoulders. Now the bird could be warm, and no one could hear his curses. She’d forgotten how spiteful Mary could be, and how her father did not permit fires to be lit at Hopewell Manor until after the first frost.
Her other brother was studying law in Leeds, her mother reported. And calling on the daughter of an East India nabob recently settled there. Genie’s mother had hopes of a happy, rewarding outcome. Genie had hopes they would be shown to their rooms soon, because Ardeth was looking more peaked than usual and Miss Hadley appeared decidedly uncomfortable. The chill in the room was not due only to the lack of fires.
As for Ardeth, he was cold and weary from the trip, but this was his wife’s home, her family, and she needed to make peace with them. Genie also thought this was the best place for him to recover, so he sank back in an ugly chintz-covered chair and tried to find a comfortable position despite his doubts. Zeus knew, he was not ready to take on any battles. The bullet wound was healing far faster than a normal man’s would have, but at a terrible cost in mental energy. Simply staying asleep had drained what few powers remained to him. He needed to conserve what was left to protect Genie. But damned if he wouldn’t use some to start a fire in his bedchamber if he had to. If not for her hand on his shoulder, he’d get a good blaze going right here, starting with the ugly chintz chair. For now, he half closed his eyes and listened. This was her campaign, after all.
When her mother was done catching Genie up on all the news of the neighbors and the distant cousins, Genie recounted young Peter’s near-
fatal illness, then his recovery. Afterward, Miss Hadley’s ancestry was investigated and found to be far higher than either of the Mrs. Hopewells’. Silence fell.
“Well, here you are, Imogene,” her mother said at last. “A countess. Who would have thought you’d end up with a higher title than Lorraine?”
Who indeed? Genie thought. Certainly not Lorraine.
Genie’s mother looked at Ardeth, then at Miss Hadley, knowing she should not ask in public, but whispering, “And breeding?”
“Yes,” Genie whispered back.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear. You cannot seem to stay out of trouble, can you?”
Genie nodded toward her husband. “This last cannot be laid at my door.”
“Then it is not Elgin’s babe?”
Ardeth tensed and Miss Hadley gasped at the bluntness, but she was used to London’s more subtle prying.
Genie had no intention of answering her mother’s last question. “I meant the latest contretemps, Lord Ardeth being shot.”
“So you wrote in your message. Do you think it wise to drag a gravely wounded man so far from town? We have no good physicians in the neighborhood, you know. That is why Roger and Lorraine had to travel to London with the boy.”
“Ardeth no longer needs a physician, just rest.”
“In a carriage on a journey? You never did think, did you? Marrying so soon after Elgin… but we are not going to speak of that, are we?”
Mary sat forward, perfectly willing to speak about Genie’s outrageous conduct. A glare from her mother-in-law kept her quiet.
“I do not see why you had to hurry his lordship from his sickbed. He could have rested in his own home in town”—letting the gossip die down—”before you set out.”
“He was not safe in London.”
Her mother brushed crumbs from her gown. “Oh, dear. So those tales are true, too. Now you are bringing your troubles home to roost. I do not know what your father is going to say. I so wanted you two to come to terms, but this…”
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