Dauntless (The Shaws)

by Lynne Connolly

  “I can tell you nothing about that.”

  “Can you not?” His tone turned wheedling. “We are family now, Drusilla. Surely you have no secrets from your family. I would like to hear of your brother, too. I stay here in this room, and others like it, wondering what is going on in the world.”

  Before she could stop herself she asked, “Why don’t you go outside? People would welcome you. I am sure.”

  A stony silence fell. Belatedly, she remembered the fit she’d witnessed. How could he fall into one of those in company? True, she had seen appalling examples of grown men throwing tantrums and ignoring polite behavior, but she had never seen anything half as terrifying as what she’d witnessed in this room a short time ago. “I’m sorry.” Heat rushed to her face. “I should not have said that.”

  “No, you should not have,” Charles said.

  To her surprise, Oliver joined in. “I have asked you to attend a few small, intimate gatherings. I know how much you enjoy music. I can take you to concerts. Perhaps a booth at Ranelagh?” Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens was famed for its music, along with a few other, less respectable things. “The booths are dim, and you can extinguish the lights completely if you wish.”

  Charles sighed. “I cannot take the risk. You know that, Oliver. You, of all people, to go against me!”

  Dru glanced at Oliver. He nodded, a small sign of approval. Something in the region of her heart eased.

  “We could look into the matter for you,” she told Charles. “People would love to meet you. My parents can help.”

  She saw the shutters come down. Charles shook his head. “It is impossible. Please go now.”

  Oliver got to his feet. “We can look into it. We shall have to see.” He sighed, his powerful chest rising, sending the cut-steel buttons on his waistcoat glittering. “But I know we cannot force you. You are tired, and you should rest. I will send Burnett into you.”

  Charles turned his head, refusing to look at them, rather like a child ignoring its nurse when refused a treat. Except he was doing the refusing. When Oliver offered his arm to Dru, she took it gladly. Was he thawing toward her? She had experienced his fierce temper before, but it had passed quickly. Her transgression was far more serious than anything she’d seen rile him before, though. Was his temper proportionate?

  She felt bewildered, at sea. Lost, with nobody to talk to, nobody to share her fears with. She could not scuttle back to her mother at the first sign of trouble, but oh, how she wished she could! Her mother would remind her of her fault, but she would hold her while she did it. Oliver’s coldness hurt her so badly. She had never been so alone in her life before.

  He took her downstairs. She thought perhaps for a late supper, but he stopped and opened a set of double doors. “Your bedroom, ma’am.”

  Dru gaped. She had seen beautiful rooms before, but this space awed her. Probably because he’d just said this was hers. The canopied bed was upholstered in white hangings embroidered with flowers and vines. The headboard had a carving of the family coat of arms, overlaid and padded with the same white fabric, but not embroidered. Underfoot, rich Aubusson carpet cushioned her feet. Matching cabinets of Chinese lacquer, black and gold, stood either side of the room.

  “It’s lovely.”

  “I’m gratified that you think so. You have a dressing room, a powder room, and a private boudoir next door. Anything you wish for, you need only ask.” He nodded at a silver-gilt hand bell standing on a bonheur-du-jour. “I have assigned you two footmen to run any errands you require.”

  Inside the magnificent space, Forde waited. She dropped a deep curtsy. “Your graces.”

  Was that right? Dru had no idea, which surprised her. She presumed Forde had done proper research, since her maid was always meticulous about protocol. “Forde,” she said stupidly. Her maid had a perfectly clear idea of who she was. She didn’t need anyone else to identify her.

  “I will leave you, my dear,” Oliver said. “I have a number of urgent matters to deal with.”

  “I thought—” What had she thought? That he would stay with her? That— Yes, she had one question. “Your other room—”

  “Is still my room,” he assured her. “This is yours, to do with as you will. If you dislike the decorations, please order them changed.”

  “How could I dislike anything so lovely?” Dropping his arm, she turned to face him. “But you won’t be here?”

  “That would not be proper. I will have a supper served for you in the boudoir.” Thus leaving her alone.

  He bowed his head, turned, and left the room, closing the doors quietly behind him. They sounded like the clang of the doors of hell to Dru.

  * * * *

  When a gentle tap came on the door of her pretty sitting room, Dru smiled and called out, “Come!” Had Oliver changed his mind and come to her?

  But no. It was her mother-in-law. Arrayed in fetching pink and white, Lady Bixby entered. “I saw Oliver upstairs, so I knew you were alone. Do you mind if I come in?”

  “Of course not.” Dru made haste to get to her feet and make her curtsy. Her ladyship settled herself on the gold brocade sofa while Dru poured her a dish of tea. She took it over herself. “This has only just been served.”

  “Thank you, my dear. I wanted to drop in, because Lord Bixby and I are planning to return to the country tomorrow. We will leave early, so I’m unlikely to see you for a while, though I do want you to visit us. My dearest Bix isn’t comfortable in town. I will stay, if you think you need me.” She took a sip of her tea, looking at Dru over the gilded rim of the dish. She replaced it in the saucer without a sound.

  Dru was overwhelmed. Nobody had shown her kindness until then. Her husband was cold as ice, her mother sorrowful, her father deeply troubled. Her brothers had laughed, called the book a fribble, but she hadn’t allowed them to see her distress.

  When the first tears trickled down her cheeks, her ladyship abandoned her tea and her sofa. She came across to hold Dru in her arms, rocking her as she wept, and talking to the top of her head.

  “Hush, my dear. It will work itself out, you see. You wrote that book, did you not?”

  Dru nodded, sobbing all the more. What was the point of denying it?

  “Oh, dear, but society does not know.”

  “But Oliver, he is so…so angry!”

  “That will pass too. He cares for you, Dru. He really does. He needs someone to help him with Charles, to share his burden. I pleaded with him to start his nursery because I thought having someone else to care for would be good for him. But the way he wrote to me and used terms so fondly. I had to meet you, dear.”

  “What happened?” She needed to know more than ever before. “I know so little.” Only what everyone knew, and the snippets of what Oliver had told her. Enough for her to realize how guilty he felt about the carriage accident that had crippled his brother. Gulping down her tears, she blew her nose. But the tears still came.

  Her mother-in-law held her in silence for a moment. “Charles and Oliver were driving their carriage in the parklands of our country home. They often did that. Being so close in age, they were always devoted to one another, and since I could have no more children, they knew they were the only ones. They went out that day in high spirits. I received a message an hour later.” She stroked Dru’s hair absently. “I raced out to where the servants were headed and discovered the carriage overturned, smashed and useless. They had found Charles lying under the wheels, barely alive. Oliver was conscious but frantic, out of his mind. Despite the servants holding him back, he got to his feet and staggered to Charles. He watched as they brought a door out from the house and carried him back on it.” She sighed.

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t wish to bring the memories back. I’m so selfish!” Dru wailed into her capacious maternal bosom.

  “I do not speak of it often, but you need to know. From the start,
Oliver took all the blame. He would not leave Charles’s bedside. We called a physician, who dressed Charles’s legs, but at the time all our concerns were for his poor head. Part of his skull had been crushed in the fall, you see, and he was in a deep coma. Nobody thought he would live. We put the house into mourning and prepared the notices for his funeral.

  “But ten days after the accident, he opened his eyes. We were overjoyed.” Her voice warmed. “Especially Oliver and I.”

  “And your husband.” She had mostly stopped crying now, but she remained in Lady Bixby’s arms. She had needed comforting so much over the last few days.

  She paused. “No, he was resigned and, well, frustrated. He was not a warm man. When we married, I was sixteen and he was forty, so we never had too much in common. But he was a well-set-up man, and he was kind.”

  Kind! What a terrible thing to say about your husband!

  “At least at first, until it became obvious that the complications of Charles’s birth meant I would have no more children. But I had done my duty, so he tolerated me.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Hush,” she murmured, stroking Dru’s hair in a way that made her sigh as tension seeped away. “I have found love with Bix, and my first marriage gave me two fine sons. She moved, and reluctantly, Dru sat up. Lady Bixby held her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “I feel I don’t know Charles well any more, but I think that’s because he prefers to keep people at a distance. He is close with his servant. They are like brothers. Closer, since Burnett sees to all Charles’s needs. They say that a person changes after such a severe knock on the head. Certainly it has given him the terrible fits. He changes his moods frequently, often in the course of an hour. He does not remember everything he says, at least that is what he claims. He keeps the household on its toes, despite insisting that he is only seen by his personal servants and his closest family. I have seen him once since I arrived in town, and only for a quarter of an hour. He has sent messages that he is not feeling well enough, or he is asleep, which might well be so. But I cannot deny I am a little hurt that he cannot spare time for me.”

  Dru gazed at this woman who had suffered so much. She deserved all the happiness she could find now. “I found Charles astonishingly well-informed. I do not understand why he refuses to enter society, at least in a small capacity, but he does. He is not the only person who cannot walk or who has fits.”

  Her ladyship nodded. “However, that is his choice, and we have to respect it.”

  Dru agreed. But she would try to help Charles. Considering all the trouble she’d brought to the family, she could do nothing else. “A wheel came off his carriage in Hyde Park. Oliver was very distressed, as if the fault lay with him, but the cause was a fault to the wheel. Nothing else.”

  “My oldest son takes the troubles of the world on his shoulders,” she said, smiling now. “Come, my dear. Wash your face and drink your tea. You are a duchess, after all.”

  The twinkle in her eyes showed what she thought of that.

  Chapter 12

  Dru did not see Oliver for the rest of the day. Would he come to her tonight?

  Dru always found having her hair brushed soothing, but today the maid had to wash the powder out first. The tugging and pulling irritated her already sensitive scalp, but she didn’t complain. Well into martyr mode now, she suffered in silence.

  Once Forde had stripped Dru and helped her wash, she’d arrayed her mistress in a sheer lawn night rail that made Dru blush to think of anyone seeing her in it. Where had her maid found something like that? She couldn’t remember ordering it. The fabric was as sheer as the gauze she used to veil her bosom, but this garment veiled nothing. However, Forde also had a new robe ready, one Dru did recall choosing. The green fabric added a touch of spice to the white and dark blue room. At least something had life to it.

  She went and sat in solitary splendor in her sitting room, asking Forde to find her the newssheets, since she hadn’t had time to read them.

  “They’d taken them down to the kitchen, ma’am.” The reversion to the simple “ma’am” had relieved Dru mightily. “Your grace” still didn’t feel right.

  That reminded Dru of the question she meant to ask her maid. “That day I asked you to take my papers to the kitchen. What happened?”

  The corner of the maid’s mouth twitched, and she busied herself tidying the pots of creams and powders on the dressing table. “I did what you said, ma’am. But they never let the kitchen fire go out, so they don’t need much kindling. I put them in the stack of papers the housekeeper collected. In the winter, the maids take a few and use them to start fires upstairs. However, although we’ve had a lot of rain recently, the weather has not been cold enough for regular fires. Her ladyship gave orders that fires were only to be lit on request.”

  “So the papers could have remained in that pile for some time?” Why hadn’t Dru made absolutely sure they were destroyed? Why hadn’t she gone down and burned them herself?

  The cook might not have been happy, and the maids shocked to see her downstairs, but what of that? And if she’d told her mother the reason for her unusual actions, the marchioness would have agreed. If Dru had told her in advance, her mother would have helped her, because she’d always told Dru to leave her scribblings alone.

  There was no point repining now. She had done it, and that was that.

  She sighed. Someone—anyone in the staff, anyone delivering goods to the kitchen—could have stolen the papers. Not Forde, who had the opportunity more than anyone, because she had nothing to gain and everything to lose from doing so. What Dru had bought from Wilkins was definitely her own work. And she should not have written it in the first place.

  Oh, God, what a mess.

  She would write a miserable wedding day for the Prince of Tirolly. No, of course she would not. But the picture floated into her mind anyway. Of her heroine standing miserably next to the prince, and her hero rushing into the cathedral to rescue his loved one. So dramatic, she would love every word. But she would have to write it in her head now.

  A plot twist shot into her mind. What if the prince was the hero? What if he had been protecting Drusetta all along? Oh, she was a fool, even for thinking about it.

  Resisting the temptation would prove hard, but she did it, rose as gracefully as she could, and followed her maid into the boudoir. A meal was laid out for her, the plates covered with silver domes. And only one place set. Despite her solitude, hunger rolled in her stomach, especially when she received the full power of the delectable scents awaiting her.

  Refusing to repine, she dismissed Forde and helped herself to the delicious meal. Where was he? Had he eaten? Here she was, worrying like a real wife, when she wasn’t even sure her husband would want anything to do with her.

  Fear gripped her, but she refused to live that way. He must do what he thought was right, and she would do so too.

  Lifting a lid, she found a lemon cream. Her favorite. Come to think of it, most of the dishes were her favorites. Had someone asked her maid? She wasn’t even aware that Forde knew what she liked. Forde’s job was to look after her jewels and clothes, nothing else. “She must have asked someone,” she murmured, barely aware she was speaking aloud.

  “She did not. I did.”

  With a gasp she turned around. Her husband stood there, leaning against the door, his arms folded. He wore a loose robe, fastened by a couple of elaborate fastenings at the neck that came to his thigh. Beneath, he still wore breeches and stockings.

  “Thank you.” She scraped her chair back.

  He unfolded his arms and held up his hand. “May I join you?”

  At her nod, he crossed the room, making a detour to collect a chair. He sat at the table, and found a spare plate. “I’ll take some of that. I’m fond of that dish, too.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I ate at the wedding brea
kfast. You did not.” His lips quirked up in a smile. “Yes, I noticed.” He took the plate she handed to him. “Thank you.”

  They ate in silence. While she wouldn’t call it companionable, at least he’d come to her, and he cared enough to ensure she ate. Touched, hardly daring to speculate about what he’d done, she found herself almost afraid to speak, something that had never affected her before.

  Replete, at least in food, she pushed her plate away. “Thank you.”

  “I can’t have my wife starving to death.” The quiet clink when he put his spoon on the plate echoed around the eerily silent room.

  “I—”

  “I—” He started to speak at the same time, but stopped, and gestured to her. “Go on.”

  Dru swallowed away her hesitancy. “I want to explain to you…”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Not tonight.” He got to his feet. “This is our wedding night.” He held out his hand to her.

  She had no option but to take it.

  “Madam, a request. I want to take this night as if nothing untoward had happened between us. We leave everything outside the bedroom door. If you allow me in, what we do there is not constrained by anything that goes on outside it.”

  “Oh.” Yes, of course. If he did not join her tonight, the whole of society would know via the maids who cleaned the room, changed the sheets, and brought her hot water in the morning. That was how most of the juiciest gossip traveled. Through the domestic staff. He would spare her that, and to do so he needed to treat the bedroom as a place apart. Tomorrow he might hate her again, but at least she would have tonight.

  She would make the most of it. With the insouciance of her sister Claudia, she went to him willingly. Who knew what would happen tomorrow?