“I say! Imagine my relief, Spence, old man.”
Spence, old man, never lost eye contact with his wife. “Shut up, Edward, before you make a liar out of me.”
Victoria’s bottom lip poked out mutinously. “Or hit him. You’re not to kill him or to hit him.”
“Why all this sudden concern for Edward? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t soundly thrash him.”
When Victoria offered nothing, only frowned as if in thought, Edward cleared his throat and said, “Uh, Victoria? Dear?”
Spencer spared his cousin a triumphant smirk, but it was short-lived in the face of Victoria’s blurted response.
“Because I like him and he’s a nice man and he’s not as big as you are, so that would be unfair, and he is my friend.”
“Aha, Spencer. There you have it.”
Again, Edward was ignored as Spencer released his wife and soberly informed her: “That was as many as four. I asked only for one.”
She pursed her lips and looked up at him from under the cover of her dark dusting of eyelashes. Spencer’s breath caught. She made the most enchanting of pictures. The ways in which he yearned to express himself to her, the words he wanted to use to describe her, were normally so sickeningly romantic to him that it further surprised him to realize he now, and finally, understood the Romantic poets and why they chose such sugary wording. He couldn’t help himself. The frothy descriptions flowed into his consciousness … her porcelain skin; that little upturned nose; those wide and striking blue eyes; the pink Cupid’s bow of a mouth; and the veritable riot of shining mahogany hair—
Why was she staring at him like that? Spencer snapped out of his reverie, only to realize he had forgotten what he’d been about to say. “I’m sorry. What was I saying?”
“You weren’t saying anything. I was.”
She was so exquisitely alive. And dressed like this in her nightclothes—alarm stiffened Spencer’s knees. “Good Lord, Edward, my wife is in her nightclothes and here you are, practically in the bedroom with us, man.”
Again, Victoria grabbed his arm and pulled his attention down to her. “It’s all right, Spencer, he’s seen me like this before.”
The most incredible and stunned silence filled the sitting room and seemed to thicken with each passing second.
“Oh, I say, Victoria,” Edward said, sounding droll and like death itself. “We could have done without that.”
As usual, Spencer ignored Edward and stood there, offended, his jaw firmed, his pulse beating a threatening tattoo. “You will have to explain your remark, madam.”
Looking very guilty, she said: “It’s all very innocent, Spencer.”
“I will be the judge of that. Proceed.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Very well. On those nights when you were unconscious, and when I couldn’t sleep for worrying, I would go sit by your bed. And Edward would sometimes come in to check on you, too, when I was there. He would sit with me and reassure me. He was a great comfort.”
She’d sat by his bed on those nights when he’d been unconscious. Spencer forgot everything else she’d said. How … heartwarming, really. Half afraid his heart was in his eyes, he admitted he was losing badly. He never seemed to remember, until she stood right next to him or in front of him, that the top of her head came barely to his shoulder. Somehow, she always seemed more formidable than her height warranted.
“Spencer?”
He gave himself a mental shake and said, rather too loudly, “Yes. I’m sure he was. A great comfort to you.”
He then arrowed a not-quite-jealous-because-he-really-did-trust-him glare his cousin’s way, only to see the insolent young man had leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. He stood there, in his nonchalant pose, grinning and waggling his eyebrows.
The incorrigible cad said, “So you see, Spencer, I am a great comfort to your wife in your times of, uh, incapacity, which by the looks of you, are occurring with ever greater frequency. By the by, you really must tell me, at some point, what happened to you to warrant that bandage—”
“I ran into a door.”
Edward arched an eyebrow in disbelief. “If you say so, old man. However, and more to the point, you are not to hit or to kill me. Those are your wife’s very words. And I heartily second them. Don’t I, Neville?”
Spencer ignored both the dog’s answering woof and Edward as he addressed his wife. “I find I cannot promise, madam, that at some point in the very near future I will not have to hit Edward.”
“Oh, I say,” Edward the Interrupter sang out from his position by the open door. “I won’t stand for it. It’s not fair. I’ve only just arrived, at great peril to my person, given the damnable conditions of the road, if one can call it that just now, and have yet to have my supper. As I don’t fancy having the stuffing knocked out of me on an empty stomach, I must ask you why you feel you must thrash me. What offense could I have possibly committed in my absence?”
Victoria surged forward. Her voice rang with apology. “I’m so sorry, Edward. It’s my fault. I didn’t mean to say anything.”
Edward studied her. “Say? About what, exactly, my dear?”
“You were so kind to me and warmed my heart with your declaration when you said you would whisk me off to your castle, should Spencer be so … stupid as to set me aside once the baby is born, if it’s not a Whitfield.”
“O-oh, lovely.” The sickly gray pallor that leached the color from Edward’s face did Spencer’s heart a world of good. “Now, how—in the name of God—did that little gem happen to come up, pray tell?”
Crossing his arms over his chest and relaxing a knee, Spencer spoke before his wife could. “Very naturally, I would say, in our conversation. You see, Victoria’s asked me for a divorce, Edward—”
“Surely not! Has it really come to that, then?” Edward’s troubled gaze darted between him and Victoria.
“Apparently it has.”
“I do not believe the pair of you.” Suddenly, Edward was the scolding parent. Spencer exchanged a look of surprise with Victoria. “Stop that and pay attention to me. The two of you—nay, the three of us—don’t have enough problems right now and right under our very noses that you two can’t even have a civil meal together—a meal I have not yet had, I remind you—without threatening divorce? Good God, you could be having a child together.”
“We are fully aware of that, Edward. But Victoria has a solution for that, as well. She has decided she will reside somewhere in England. But she doesn’t know where. Perhaps you would like to offer her a room in that castle of yours?”
“I will do no such thing. For one thing, I haven’t got a castle. And for another, you would literally die, Spencer, before you would allow this woman to get away from you. And you—” Visibly angry now, Edward indicated Victoria, who Spencer saw was nervously kneading her skirts’ fabric with her white-knuckled fists. “Don’t you have any idea at all how much this man”—he indicated Spencer—“loves you?”
* * *
That night, covered only by a thin cotton bedsheet, Victoria lay alone in the big bed in the guest bedroom intended for her and Spencer. After the exhausting day she’d had, she knew she ought to be fast asleep. And she had been, for hours, it seemed. But now she was awake. She didn’t remember actually waking up. Instead, only slowly had she realized her eyes were open and she was awake. She didn’t think anything sinister was afoot to have pulled her out of sleep because, earlier, Neville had curled up on the rug beside the bed, announcing his intention to sleep here tonight. So, if anything at all were amiss, Victoria knew Neville would not only alert but would also defend her.
Victoria’s confident smile suddenly abandoned her. Neville was still here with her, wasn’t he? On her stomach, and feeling the hard little mound in her belly that was her growing baby, Victoria crabbed across the bed until she could see over the mattress’s edge. Confounding her efforts were her own hair, which cascaded over her shoulders to obscur
e her view, and the veil-like mosquito netting, which she had become tangled in. Making fussy sounds, she tossed her head to swing her hair over one shoulder, fought the netting into submission and, with the moonlight streaming in through the open windows to bathe the room in silvery shadows, she looked for Neville.
And there he was. Victoria exhaled her relief. The bloodhound lay stretched out on his side. He raised his head; his glittering eyes stared back at her. Grinning, Victoria snapped her fingers and patted the mattress. “Come here, boy,” she whispered, wanting to rub the dog’s silky ears and smooth his head. “Did I wake you?”
Neville thumped his tail against the floor but laid his head back down, ignoring her. Victoria chuckled, calling herself notoriously ineffective with males of any breed.
Sighing, righting herself on the bed and fluffing her pillows, she lay down, turned on her side and curled up into a little ball. Her head lay on one pillow, but the other one—the one Spencer should have his head on—she held tightly in her arms. Wide awake now, blinking to adjust her vision because of the gauzy film of the mosquito netting that completely surrounded the bed, she stared absently across the room at the partially raised windows.
This was so frustrating. Why was she so wide awake? When she’d been a little girl, she’d slept her deepest on nights like this … with the wind soughing through the oaks’ branches, causing them to creak like a comfortable old rocking chair; with the leaves rustling and the cicadas buzzing steadily. Sometimes she would hear other comforting sounds. A horse’s neigh. An owl in a tree somewhere far off, faintly asking whoo-whoo. Even the sounds of the swamp … bullfrogs or alligators bellowing, the gentle lapping of the water against the dock … could lull her to sweet oblivion.
But not tonight. Tonight the natural music of River’s End carried no charm for her. No sooner had Edward blurted that about Spencer loving her—which he most certainly did not—Spencer had, without a word, stalked right by her and Edward and Neville and stomped down the stairs to ask to be put into another bedroom. He’d cited his injury and her … illness as reasons they should sleep separately. So much for his saying she should not be alone day or night because of the danger she faced. But, of course she wasn’t really alone, not with Neville here.
At any rate, the whole thing had upset her mother and, the next thing Victoria had known, here she had come upstairs again with poor Dr. Hollis in tow. The man wanted no part of Victoria’s lies to her family regarding her delicate condition, but he’d reluctantly gone along, calling her fainting spells a case of the vapors. Her mother had not been reassured. She had fussed and fluttered around Victoria until she’d thought she’d cry or scream or jump out the very window she now faced, had her father not intervened and dragged his wife away.
It was all just so silly, Victoria decided. It really was. Especially after the way Spencer had gone down on one knee in front of her in Savannah and begged her forgiveness for acting like such an ass toward her. A pompous ass, she believed he’d said. And here he was, on the very same day, again acting like one. But Victoria’s conscience would not let her off so easily, reminding her she had asked the man for a divorce—a man with fresh stitches in his forehead and two lumps on the back of his head, all having something to do with her. What had her father always told Jefferson? You never hit a man when he’s down? Yes, that was it. She had hit a man when he was down. She ought to be ashamed of herself.
Victoria sat up. She ought to go apologize to her husband right now, oughtn’t she? She furiously kicked her legs until the bedsheet lay discarded at the end of the big bed. She sat there a moment, testing her will for this act … in the middle of the night. Could this wait until morning? No. Mama had told her, upon her marriage, that a couple should never go to bed angry at each other. She and Spencer had done exactly that. Maybe she still had time to set the situation to rights if she got up now and went to him.
Oh, I don’t think he’ll appreciate being awakened, not after the day he’s had. Victoria absently stared at a mantel clock across the room and above the fireplace. She chewed on her bottom lip as she procrastinated. What time is it? She couldn’t see the clock’s hands from where she sat but, slowly, a sly-fox feminine smile claimed her lips … I could see it if I got out of bed and went over there and looked, couldn’t I? And if she did that, well, she would already be out of bed and could easily be on her way to Spencer’s room. She knew which one it was. Much earlier, she’d sent the discreet and ever-reliable Rosanna to see.
So, why was she still sitting here? Victoria asked herself. What more did she need to know? Her decision made, she excitedly wriggled over to the side of the mattress, gathered the mosquito netting up and slipped under it as she slid off the bed. By the time her feet touched the floor, Neville had again raised his head. The dog studied her with unnerving intelligence. “Well?” Victoria asked him. “Are you going with me, boy?”
Neville exhaled a breath that, to Victoria’s ears, sounded like resignation. She smiled. Looking hugely sad, as he always did, the bloodhound pulled himself to his feet and, with a slow wag of his tail, like a clock’s pendulum marking time, narrowed his eyes at her. “Good. But we must be quiet. Shhh.”
As if protesting this we, Neville perked up his long floppy ears as much as was possible for him to do. Victoria tsked. “Oh, all right, I’m the one who’s noisy. Go on now, take me to Spencer.” The dog didn’t move; he just stared up at her. “For heaven’s sake, you may as well go. You’re already awake. And what else do you have to do? Now, come on, help me find my slippers and wrapper.”
Her slippers and wrapper were, of course, where she’d left them: the slippers beside the bed, the wrapper draped across the foot of the bed. Victoria wriggled her feet into the slippers as she also pulled on her wrapper, tugging her hair out from under it with a swift brushing motion of her arm. “There, Neville. We are as ready as we’ll ever be.” The dog drooped his ears to their lowest point. “Oh, stop that. You always see the bad in things.”
She softened her words by quickly hugging the big dog to her, laying her cheek atop his head, feeling his silky warmth and the strength in his body. Neville responded with happy wriggling and sloppy kisses—and a woof of pleasure. Victoria straightened up, putting a finger to her lips. “Shh, remember? We don’t want to wake anyone. Well, except Spencer, of course.”
With that, and with no other reasons presenting themselves to stop her, Victoria, with Neville by her side, padded softly across the room and over to the closed door that led out into the hallway. She eased the door open and poked her head out, looking both ways. Dark and empty. Thankfully, the window at the end of the hall was draped with thin sheers that allowed in available moonlight to keep her from having to grope about in the pitch-black of the house’s interior.
Satisfied she would not be detected, Victoria eased out of her bedroom, waited for Neville to clear the threshold, closed the door after them, and then quickly, giddily, skittered down the middle of the long runner of carpet that covered the red-pine wood flooring. Neville padded along at her side.
In no time at all, they were outside the closed door to Spencer’s bedroom. Her fisted hands pressed to her mouth, Victoria faced the door, took a breath for courage, and said a bolstering prayer. Then, with Neville all but pressed against her legs, she gripped the doorknob and slowly turned it until she met resistance. Holding the knob turned as far as it would go, she eased the door inward, thankful that its hinges were well oiled and noiseless, and entered the room. Again she waited for Neville and then closed this door behind them. Her back against the door, Victoria stood there, blinking, helping her eyes to adjust to the gray gloom.
Because she’d lived most of her life in this very house, she knew this bedroom was similar in design and furnishings to the one she’d just left. With every sense on alert, and shivering with excitement, Victoria sighted on the oversized mosquito-netted bed, which reposed in the middle of the room. The misshapen coverings told her that Spencer was there. Well, of course
he was. Where else would he be? Practically on tiptoes, Victoria set herself in motion, each cautious step taking her closer and closer to her sleeping husband. Neville took each step with her, staying by her side.
In only a moment, it seemed, she and her dog stood beside the bed. As she listened to Spencer’s deep and regular breathing, Victoria spared a glance for the bloodhound as he settled himself, Sphinx-like, on the oval rug beside the bed. Apparently, he felt his part in this mission was complete. Victoria stared at her sleeping husband, or at the back of his head, really, as he lay on his side, his face away from her. Poor man. He’d been through so much. Victoria made her way around to the other side of the four-poster bed, where she silently fumbled for the opening in the filmy netting, found it, tugged it aside, and leaned in toward her husband. She stopped, stared, and silently nagged. Just like a man. He’s taken the bandage from around his head. I swan, I don’t know why we even call doctors to these men.
But seeing his stitches melted her heart. She forgave him and, smiling indulgently, gently shook his shoulder. “Spencer? Are you awake?”
* * *
Feeling the touch on his shoulder, and because he’d been expecting trouble since they’d been here, Spencer exploded into wakefulness and acted on pure instinct. In less than a second, he had his loaded gun out from under his pillow with one hand and the intruder next to his bed with the other. The gasping interloper … small, lightweight … he hauled up tightly by the shirtfront onto the bed and rolled them both atop the mattress until he was astraddle the villain. He pressed his pistol’s bore tight against his victim’s forehead. “Don’t even move,” he warned—
But the snarling growl that met Spencer’s threat startled him into jerking his attention to his right—only to see the muscled and suddenly vicious bloodhound, Neville, coming seemingly out of nowhere and, covered in the mosquito netting though not hampered in the least by it, leaping onto the bed. The bloodhound’s bared teeth, slobbering jowls, and outraged snarls propelled the charging animal toward Spencer, who bellowed in fear and protest but still heard someone cry: “No, Neville! No!”
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