The Old Maids' Club 02 - Pariah

by Catherine Gayle

  And that was out of the question.

  Roman had never failed at anything he’d been tasked with in his life. Now was certainly not the ideal time to begin such a thing.

  No, he’d have to sort out the job he’d taken on before Father could arrive. Still, he didn’t want to risk greater censure for Miss Shelton than she apparently already had in spades. Somehow, he’d have to find a way to aid the ladies at the cottage without risking further notice of Talbot and the townsfolk.

  Damnation, how had he gotten so entangled with them in such a short amount of time?

  “Leave this place,” Roman muttered to Talbot. “And stop believing the vitriol uttered by a man who is upset that he’s been sacked and merely wishes to cause trouble.”

  The greengrocer lifted a brow. “Or else?”

  “I don’t think you want me to answer that question.”

  The man huffed, but then he marched from the house in a snit.

  “Well done, my lord,” Milner said smoothly, with the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  At least the butler was on his side.

  After all the lights at the main house had been long extinguished and silence fell heavily over the land, Roman was still out pacing the grounds, searching for something with which to occupy his mind through those dangerous hours before dawn.

  He had walked to the lake and watched the fish jump over the surface in the moonlight.

  Then he’d strolled through the stalls of the stables, talking to the horses and petting them for lack of anything more pressing to do.

  Next, he’d visited the far west field, in which he and the head grounds man intended to plant barley crops come the spring, pacing the lay of it to get a better feel for how many acres could be used thus.

  Finally, he had even gone back to the wood cutter’s cottage to chop more wood, but there was no more to be chopped until such time as he took down more trees—not something he ought to do alone in the middle of the night.

  He’d done all of that, and still the moon was high in the sky and the stars were twinkling overhead. Dawn, and the safety from his nightmares it would provide, was hours away yet.

  It shouldn’t have been all that surprising, then, when he found himself standing just outside the gate of the Cottage at Round Hill. Nor should it have surprised him that he was watching the windows for signs of movement.

  Yet somehow, it did.

  It surprised him even more when, all of a sudden, the glow of candlelight lit twin windows above stairs, as though someone had been waiting for his arrival.

  That was a ludicrous thought, however fleeting it might have been.

  Within moments, those twin lights left their windows. Not long after that, the lights arrived in the window he’d replaced only that afternoon. Lady Rosaline’s chamber.

  She must be having another of her nighttime episodes. He’d known her lucidity would likely only be a temporary thing, fleeting at best. He’d hoped, however, that it would last longer than this.

  Without thinking better of it, Roman unlatched the gate and let himself inside, racing up the steps and bursting through the front door.

  He really needed to put a lock on that door. Tomorrow, though.

  Right now, he needed to help Miss Shelton and her servants with Lady Rosaline.

  The door to the lady’s chamber was open wide, so he didn’t bother with knocking. He burst inside to find a scene eerily similar to that of the previous night.

  Lady Rosaline was standing on her bed in a mess of tears, pointing with her bandaged hands toward the closed door of her dressing room. “Savages!”

  “Please, Aunt, come down before you hurt yourself again.” Miss Shelton stood on one side of the bed, her arms outstretched as though to catch the older lady should she fall. The cook had taken up a similar position on the opposite side.

  Lady Rosaline’s frantic eyes darted about the room in a crazed manner. “I won’t be hurting myself. They will. They’ll kill us. All of us.”

  Mrs. Temple raced into the room behind him, nearly running into Roman’s back in the process. “Oh, I’m so sorry, my lord.” She moved around him to the side, trying to get closer to the bed.

  There would be no reasoning with Lady Rosaline by providing her with the truth, however. Not while she was in one of these episodes. Roman had learned that much, at least, in his visits to the cottage.

  Instead, one needed to play along with her visions.

  “Savages?” he called out, startling Miss Shelton so much that she jumped. Perhaps he ought to have made her aware of his presence before stepping in like that. Too late for that now. “Where are these savages, Lady Rosaline?”

  “Oh, thank goodness you’re here!” She dropped to her knees on the bed then sat, drawing her knees up to her chest in a posture he’d seen far more frequently with small girls than grown women. “Over there. I can hear them behind the door, sir.”

  “Stay here,” he commanded, his tone gruff and terse, as though there were a true danger lurking on the other side of the door.

  Then he was off, bounding into her dressing chamber in the dark. He shut the door and waited a moment, then scuffled around on the floor some, making sure his noises were loud enough to get through into the other chamber, yet not so loud as to wake the boy down the hall. He flopped down onto the floor for a moment for good measure, kicking his Hessians against the hardwood a couple of times. Then, before opening the door and coming back through, he ripped his cravat from about his neck and loosened his shirt, so it would look as though he’d truly been in a skirmish, short of blood, cuts, and bruises.

  When he came back through, Lady Rosaline’s eyes were fit to burst free from her head. “Oh, dear. Was it awful?” She clutched her bandaged hand to her chest and shook.

  “It’s been handled, my lady. You have no more reason to fear savages tonight.” He made a show of straightening his coat.

  She sighed and slumped back against the headboard, her head lolling to the side. The adrenaline from her fear must have worked through her fully. Hopefully she’d sleep well after this, once she finally got to sleep again.

  Now that she’d calmed somewhat, he looked at the other ladies in the room. Mrs. Temple held his gaze and winked, then gave him a shy smile. Joyce merely nodded. Finally, he turned to Miss Shelton.

  She looked on him, and a tidal wave of emotions passed through her eyes, her chest rapidly rising and falling beneath her nightrail. The play of emotions didn’t come to a stop for quite some time, and he couldn’t determine what she was thinking or feeling. And then, after a long moment of them just staring at each other, she turned her head away.

  It was difficult to be certain in the dim light of a few candles, but he could almost swear he saw the faint hint of a blush staining her cheeks again. Damn, if that didn’t make him want…want…

  It made him want all manner of things he had no right to want.

  “Will you…” came the faint voice of Lady Rosaline after a few moments. “Will you stay with us, sir? To protect us? My Christopher would protect me, but he’s been delayed.”

  Roman had to swallow the bile that rose in his throat at the thought of endangering these women by staying with them through the darkest hours before dawn. He couldn’t possibly do something like that. He wouldn’t.

  Miss Shelton’s eyes flickered up to meet his again. Was that hope he saw there? Or perhaps simply the wish that he’d know what she wanted.

  Surely, what she wanted was for him to leave.

  “I’m afraid I cannot, Lady Rosaline.”

  She whimpered, her fear real and abundantly evident, manifesting itself like in a small girl. “Damn!” she burst out. “They’ll kill us all, and you’ll just leave us here?”

  The unnamed emotion in Miss Shelton’s gaze was gone in an instant. She turned to her aunt. “Nothing will come to harm you tonight, Aunt Rosaline. Lord Roman has made certain of that.”

  “I promise you,” he reiterated. �
��The savages can’t hurt you now.”

  The lady’s lower lip quivered. “You swear it?” Her eyes were wide and round as teacups with her fear.

  If only she knew she had much more to fear—something much more substantial and threatening—should he do as she asked and stay.

  “I swear it,” Roman said solemnly. “I won’t allow any harm to come to any of you.”

  A niggling sensation poked and prodded at him that perhaps he meant that more fully and in more ways than any of them realized.

  “But how can you be sure?” she wailed.

  A sound question, were the savages not simply a figment of her imagination. He worked his jaw, searching for an answer. “I’ll come by more frequently,” he promised, though he needed to do the opposite. “I’ll spend more time with you. No one will harm you while I’m here.”

  Lady Rosaline nodded in acquiescence, and before Miss Shelton or any of her servants could stop him, Roman inclined his head to them all and escaped out the door the same way he’d come.

  As he pulled the front door to a close behind him, he made a mental note to fix the lock on the door when he returned later in the morning. He’d need something with which to occupy himself before tea, after all.

  Then he made the journey back to the dower house and locked himself inside to await his own nightmares.

  Finn’s screaming would be her undoing if he didn’t stop sometime in the next half-second or so. Bethanne picked him up, ignoring his kicking and flailing legs as she did so, and carried him to a chair by the window.

  “Noooo!” he squealed, yet again, almost immediately trying to climb down from the chair she’d placed him upon.

  She put a hand firmly on his leg and held him in place, then looked him straight in the eye. “Stay put. And stop screaming, for the love of God, or I’ll…”

  Or she’d what? Good Lord, what was she preparing to threaten him with? She’d never issued Finn threats before.

  His eyes filled with tears, and his lower lip quivered in the manner it always did when he was about to unleash a massive temper tantrum, and he sucked in a breath. “I. Want. Biscuit!” His words were sharp, punctuated screams that would put a soprano to shame. “Now!”

  “Well you can’t have a biscuit now, so you’re going to have to accept that.”

  Today, of all days, she shouldn’t have been a coward. Bethanne had sent Joyce and Mrs. Wyatt together into town to fetch their supplies, too weary from Aunt Rosaline’s three bouts of night terrors from last night to attempt such a thing herself. She didn’t have it in her to face the men who would treat her so poorly today and, perhaps foolishly, thought that staying at home with Finn and Aunt Rosaline would be the easier task.

  Never again would she take the wide berth required to skirt around her fears. It only served to give her a megrim.

  But at least Mrs. Temple was still here, sitting with Aunt Rosaline in the drawing room. When Aunt Rosaline had come to breakfast in her red velvet, Bethanne should have recognized the day she was setting herself up for. But, addlepate that she was, she’d ignored all of the warning signs and sealed her own torturous fate.

  “No-oooooo!” Finn screamed, the second part of it coming out an octave higher than anything Bethanne had ever heard in all her life. It went on as long as he had breath in his lungs, and started up again as soon as he’d refilled them. He flung his arms about, hitting everything in sight, and kicked his feet up and down, up and down, up and down—keeping a perfect rhythm like a soldier’s drumstick beating against her scalp.

  Why had no one warned her that life with a two-year-old might be more akin to life spent being stretched on the rack? Perhaps Mrs. Temple and Mrs. Wyatt ought to have at least made the suggestion before Bethanne had envisioned her brilliant plan to aid Miranda.

  Finn took a breath and opened his mouth again, letting out a bone-melting scream that set the vein in her temple throbbing in time with his kicks. Joint tears of pain and frustration pressed against her eyes, but she would not give in to them. She couldn’t.

  “Finn Isaac Shelton, you will stop this right this instant, do you hear me?”

  But clearly, he couldn’t. How could he possibly hear her when she couldn’t hear herself over his howls?

  She turned and pressed a hand over her eyes, praying, as ever, for patience.

  Instead of patience, Aunt Rosaline burst through the door. “He’s coming!” She grasped Bethanne’s hand and pressed it to her chest, squeezing to the point of causing pain. “Oh, he’s here. My Christopher is here. He promised, and I’ve been waiting so very long for him and worrying so about him, and now he’s at the door, and I look horrid!”

  Finn took another breath and took his scream, miraculously, up another octave.

  It was too much. It was all too much.

  And where on earth was Mrs. Temple?

  Bethanne snapped her hand back from her aunt. “He’s not coming, Aunt Rosaline. Christopher Jackson is dead.” She ignored the tears that flooded to her aunt’s eyes and the way she jumped back, as though Bethanne had struck her. “He died more than thirty years ago, so he’s not coming to you. He will never, ever come for you.”

  Aunt Rosaline fell to her knees upon the floor, sobbing. “Dead? No. He can’t be dead. Not my Christopher.” She pulled at Bethanne’s skirts, clawing almost, even with her hands still bandaged. “Please, no.”

  The pain emanating through Aunt Rosaline’s voice sent bile rising in Bethanne’s throat.

  She hated herself. She hated that she had it within her to treat her aunt so coldly, so callously. She hated that she’d become this person, who threatened two-year-olds and reduced helpless old women to tears.

  Bethanne no longer recognized herself.

  Sharp, frantic breaths fought their way through, but it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t feel anything but hatred of herself and a blinding throb in her head. Couldn’t stay here any longer. Couldn’t do any of it anymore.

  “No-oooo-oooooo!” Finn screamed again. He leapt from the chair and plummeted to the floor, kicking his feet against the hardwood in time with the rapid pulsing of her heartbeat, and the last thread of Bethanne’s sanity snapped.

  “Enough!” she shouted, whirling around on him.

  Before she could take a step, before she could do anything else she would regret, Lord Roman burst into the room and stood between her and her son.

  Where in God’s name had he come from, and how did he keep doing that? It was almost as infuriating as everything else going on in her life at the moment. She opened her mouth to give him a good set-down for his constant interference, but he glared down at her and said, so softly she wasn’t sure she could hear him, “No.”

  No? Her anger and frustration and exhaustion all welled up inside her, flooding toward her head so fast she couldn’t stop it if she tried, and she burst into tears.

  Lord Roman pressed her redingote into her hands. “I’ll handle this. Go take a walk in the gardens. You need some air.”

  And with that, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, then pressed her in the direction of the back door, yet again summarily dismissing her.

  Clearly, Miss Shelton had been at her wits’ end. Not that Roman could fault her. Any man burdened with even half of her responsibilities would have long ago been begging for some other assignment. She was just a slip of a woman, yet she carried it all with no complaint.

  Still, everyone had a breaking point—the point at which one could take no more.

  He was impressed she’d lasted as long as she had.

  Roman watched her go, drawing on her redingote as she walked—or perhaps stumbled would be more accurate—toward the back door which led into the gardens. Once she was gone, he set to work creating order from chaos.

  Lady Rosaline would have to come first. The boy would never calm down if anyone else remained frantic.

  He bent to sit beside her sobbing, prone form, smoothing a hand cautiously over her back. “My lady,
can you sit up for me?”

  “My—my—my Christopher! She said he’s d—dead.” Her words were muffled against her bandaged hands and drowned within her tears. It was difficult to hear her at all over Finn’s screams, but Roman focused only on her.

  He loathed the idea of lying to a lady under normal circumstances…but Lady Rosaline’s circumstances were far from normal. “She’s wrong,” he said softly.

  Lady Rosaline sniffed and lifted her head slightly. “What?” She shook her head, her red-streaked eyes unseeing, even as they locked onto him.

  “She’s wrong,” he repeated firmly. “Lieutenant Jackson isn’t dead. He’s just been delayed.”

  “You know him,” she asked dubiously, then shook her head. “How do you know?”

  Roman smiled, knowing this part of his play-acting so well he could do it in his sleep—as long as he wasn’t otherwise occupied with his own nightmares, at least. “I’ve served with him, ma’am. He asked me to send word to you that he’s been sent on another mission, but will return to you as soon as he possibly can.”

  Her chin trembled, but she resolutely wiped the tears from her eyes and sat up straighter. “You’re certain? He’ll come for me?”

  “He’s made a promise, and the Lieutenant Christopher Jackson I know does not fail to deliver on his promises.”

  Lady Rosaline nodded. “Yes, that’s true. He’s never failed me before.” She grinned at him then, and he could once again see the young lady she must have been all those years ago when she’d so fervently and devotedly waited for Lieutenant Jackson’s return. “My Christopher won’t let me down.”

  “No, my lady, I’m sure he won’t.” With that, Roman stood and then helped her to her feet. Checking to be sure Finn hadn’t moved from where he was flopping about on the floor in the center of the room, he guided Lady Rosaline back out into the corridor, then took her to the blue parlor.

  Mrs. Temple, the poor, beleaguered housekeeper, was fast asleep in her chair with her sewing in a pile on her lap. The Shelton household must have had quite the ordeal last night…more than just the single episode of which he was aware. They were all exhausted.