A crazily calm corner of Spencer’s mind remarked how like Victoria that voice sounded. In the same instant, the dog’s solid body collided with Spencer, knocking the gun out of his hand as they went hurtling through space and even more mosquito netting—only to land hard on the floor and roll over and over. When they stopped, Spencer found himself cocooned with Neville and on the bottom, on his back, with the dog atop him … and viciously snapping at him. Luckily, the two of them, now thoroughly tangled in the mosquito netting, were not really able to effectively hurt the other, he realized.
Spencer’s concern, though, was that Neville didn’t know this. Suddenly, he became aware that a third person, or entity, had, at some point, joined the fray. Straddling Spencer’s legs, this newcomer to the battle tugged at the entangled dog and shouted: “Neville, stop it! Get off, boy! Off! Do you hear me? Stop it!”
It was Victoria—again. But where exactly was the intruder? Had he seen his chance and run off? Just as Victoria seemed to be making some headway with the dog, as she furiously tried to unravel the hound from Spencer, the door to the bedroom burst open and disgorged an evident crowd of people all speaking at once.
“What’s going on in here?” “I’ve got a gun on you!” “Good Lord, Isaac, be careful with that thing!” “Look at the bed—it’s torn apart!” “Quiet, Mr. Milton. Hello, over there, whoever you are, don’t you move. Someone light the blasted lamp.” “What did you hear, Jefferson? What woke you up?” “I heard a big thump and then Victoria crying out.” “I say, Mr. Redmond, can I get by you to go see what is wrong?” “No, hold up, Edward. We can’t see a blasted thing and don’t know what’s going on yet. Could be dangerous.” “I daresay it is, but fair enough, sir. Hornsby, old soul, what on earth do you intend doing with that chamber pot?”
“Daddy, help me!” Victoria cried, sounding peeved and desperate. “It’s Neville—he’s attacked Spencer!”
A moment of stunned silence followed this. “Neville?” Mr. Redmond called out, clearly puzzled. Neville responded with a yowl of appeal.
“Victoria,” Spencer hissed, “please leave the dog be. Try to calm him. Right now, you’re making him struggle and his toenails are gouging and scratching me. Remember, too, madam, I sleep in the nude. Need I say more?”
Victoria gasped and sat back, blessedly leaving the dog alone. “Oh, my word.”
“Would someone please light a lamp? Can’t see a blamed thing. Y’all wait here until we can see. Don’t want you falling all over them and making matters worse. Victoria, are you injured?”
“No, Daddy. I’m fine. But Spencer and Neville aren’t.”
Several gasps and murmurs greeted this, but her father called out: “What’s wrong with Spencer and Neville?”
Spencer raised an eyebrow at Victoria, defying her to describe this. “You just have to see it, Daddy.”
“Go light that lamp,” Isaac Redmond directed someone in one breath, and in the next, addressed his daughter: “Why did Neville attack Spencer? That doesn’t seem like him.”
“He thought Spencer meant to hurt me.”
“Hurt you? Why, I’ll shoot the man who harms my daughter.”
“Oh, I say, Mr. Redmond, I hardly think my cousin would harm—”
“Unhand me, sir! I’ve every right to blast him to kingdom come, should he even think about it.”
“No one’s trying to hurt me,” Victoria shrieked, provoking the dog into struggling again, which in turn made Spencer bellow and Victoria cry out, even louder. “If you don’t get over here this instant and untangle Neville from Spencer, then he just might tear my husband’s throat out and leave our baby without a father! Now, hurry!”
“Baby?”
“Father?”
“I don’t think my cousin wanted that known just yet.”
“Why not?”
“What baby?”
“Sister is going to have a baby? Why, I can hardly realize it.”
“Oh, my word, my baby is going to have a baby.” Mrs. Redmond started sobbing. “I knew it, Isaac. I told you she was expecting.”
“Now, now, my dear, don’t cry, it’s all right.” Then, more stridently: “Why has no one lit that lamp?”
“Isaac, we have to send for Dr. Hollis. She could be hurt. Where’s Virgil? Virgil, are you in here?”
“Virgil’s not here, Mother,” Jefferson said. “Now, leave poor Dr. Hollis alone. He was here only a matter of hours ago and looked at her—twice. I’m sure Sister is fine. You’re going to kill the old man if you keep him running out here at all hours.”
While all of this transpired on one side of the bed, on the other side and during the same concurrent seconds, Spencer gave up the struggle. He slumped in defeat and from exhaustion. Fortunately, Neville was of a like mind. The net-wrapped dog lay on his belly atop Spencer’s chest, panting and whining.
For her part, and perhaps realizing, despite her best efforts to untangle them, that Spencer and Neville were too mummified in the netting to separate without the aid of an experienced Egyptologist, Victoria sagged to the floor and sat, in profile, next to Spencer’s head. Given that she faced the same way he did and they were on the side of the bed closest to the windows and the moonlight, he could see how dejected she looked.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered urgently, under cover of the noisy but ineffective commotion of the others present in the room. “What a complication, Spencer. I’ve put us in an awful position.”
Spencer stared at her. He felt the hard floor under him, the weight of the dog atop him, and the pressure of the twisted yards upon yards of mosquito netting holding him in place. “Some of us already are in an awful position, Victoria.”
She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You poor man. I meant my silly blurting about the baby, of course. Now they know, and my mother will make a big to-do about it at the barbecue. And then, later on, when this child doesn’t have the birthmark—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
This stopped her. With her head cocked at a puzzled angle, she stared intently at him—but then suddenly carried on. “You are very forgiving. Thank you. But of course it matters, Spencer. I hadn’t meant to tell them until you and I … knew the truth. But now, my hasty words change everything. This is so awful. I wasn’t prepared to have to admit to them right now that I don’t know who—”
“No, Victoria. You misunderstand me.” Every instinct born of being a peer screamed at Spencer not to correct her misunderstanding, to allow it to stand. But he held Victoria’s gaze … and a sudden calm came over him, a lifting of his spirits, a certainty that what he was about to say was the right thing to do. But it would also be the most wrong thing he had ever done. And he didn’t care. He simply did not care. How simple it all really was, in the end.
Evident bafflement brought mercurial changes to Victoria’s expression as her gaze searched his face. “How did I misunderstand? What do you mean?”
All he had to do was say nothing … and nothing would change. If he remained silent, he would uphold his responsibility to all those blue-blooded Whitfields and to society. But if he spoke, if he proceeded with this madness of the heart, then his entire life would change and everything he had ever believed would be a lie. But if he said nothing now, then the remainder of his life would be a lie. He was at a crossroads. Spencer inhaled, opened his mouth to speak … and then closed it.
“Spencer?” Victoria cocked her head at a questioning angle. When she did, a long lustrous lock of her hair fell forward over her shoulder, entrancing Spencer. “Are you all right?”
He chuckled. “I have never been more all right or worse off, Victoria, than I am at this very moment. And I don’t even mean physically, tangled up here with this dog.”
As though she weren’t even aware of her own actions, Victoria slowly and purposefully smoothed her hair back from her face. She behaved as though he were a madman she didn’t dare look away from because he would suddenly attack her if she did. “I have no idea anymore w
hat you mean, Spencer.”
“I mean, Victoria, that I—” Sudden irritation seized him. “Could you please move this bit of netting from my face? Yes, that one. Over the sutures. Carefully. Thank you.” She did … and waited. Spencer screwed up his courage and rushed the words out. If he didn’t say them now, he never would. “I said it doesn’t matter that they know because I suddenly realize I love you, and I will not live without you. So, who the baby’s father is doesn’t matter. You see, you are my wife, the baby is ours, and I will dare anyone to say differently. There. I’ve said it.”
CHAPTER 17
Spencer didn’t know what he expected her to say or do, but he certainly hadn’t factored in the possibility that she would stare at him with owl-rounded eyes and a general air of disbelief. “No, I’m sorry, but you do not get to just say that. You don’t. You’ve, you’ve”—she waved a hand around and over him as she talked—“taken too many hits to your head. You don’t know what you’re saying. Spencer, you have a responsibility to your duchy, to six hundred years of Whitfields—”
“Darling, shut up.” He’d said it with the utmost affection and respect for her. “I just said I love you, woman, and the baby is mine. I am the present duke, so what I say goes in this generation. I daresay this baby won’t be the first questionable Whitfield to inherit, but that is neither here nor there. I have said it doesn’t matter, and that is what matters.”
“Do you have a headache, Spencer?” She pressed her palm to his forehead. “You could be feverish—”
“No, no, no.” He shook his head to dislodge her hand. “I am fine. Of sound mind and body, discounting the attached canine, of course. Victoria, did you not hear what I said? I said I love you and—”
“You are a pompous ass, do you know that?” Her voice, too, was tinged with affection and respect.
“I do. But under these insanely ridiculous circumstances, I think I am entitled, madam. After all, I have just determined the course of my duchy, the rest of my life and yours, hopefully, all while wrapped like a sausage with a panting dog who has been eating, I do believe, and if you will excuse me, excrement.”
Victoria sniffed, and her voice sounded emotional. “Do you know something, Spencer?” She leaned over him, angling away from the dog, and tenderly kissed his mouth, very lightly. “I love you, too. I do. And I will probably never love you more than I do at this moment. What you just said was an amazing thing. Simply amazing.”
Now Spencer didn’t trust himself to speak. Not lost on him, either, was the irony that it had taken being hit over the head three times, attacked by a foul-breathed dog, and tied up like a mummy to hold him in place long enough to make him admit what his heart had known all along … he loved his wife. He shuddered to think what could have happened to him in the next few days had he not admitted it now. He might have been lynched or beheaded, the way it was going.
But still, the realization was too new … too raw, somehow. He needed more time with it, time to grow into his understanding of what he’d just said. And so, he resorted to a more immediate concern. “I take it you were the intruder in the room, Victoria. Did I hurt you? I tossed you around quite a bit.”
“I’m not hurt. But you did scare me.”
“I am certain I did. Why did you come in here?”
She looked everywhere but at him. “Well, it hardly seems important now, given what you’ve just said, and what I’ve said, but I told myself I wanted to apologize to you.”
“Apologize? For what?”
She worried her fingers and stared at them. “It’s not important. And it wasn’t really my true reason for coming in here, anyway.”
Spencer arched an eyebrow. “I see. Then what was?”
The moonshine backlit her mahogany hair, giving her a halo of vulnerability. “I wanted to sleep with you.”
Though Spencer’s heart gave a happy leap at her unexpected words, he could only stare at her, which was just as well given that he remained trussed up with the dog. “You wanted to sleep with me?”
“Yes. Just sleep.” Her words tumbled out of her as though she feared her courage would fail her. “I know you have a headache, so I wasn’t going to ask for more—”
“Victoria—”
“No, let me finish. I … I miss your body next to mine. You used to sleep with me sometimes in England after we”—her voice dropped to an embarrassed whisper—“made love. I liked that. The sleeping together. And the … other, of course. But I didn’t want you to be angry with me because of what Edward said about your loving me. I didn’t expect it. I certainly had no right to—”
“Victoria.” Spencer’s heart swelled with love for her. She’d missed him. She’d wanted his nearness. She’d come in here simply to be with him. So moved was Spencer that at first he could say nothing more than what he already had. Then, he gathered his courage. Why was saying he loved his wife the hardest thing of all for him to say? Why was admitting he needed her so difficult? And yet, it was. He didn’t trust easily and this love was the most awful and intense sort of trust to extend to another person. But even knowing that, he still wanted to do exactly that.
And so, he said: “When this debacle between Neville and me is over, I would like very much to sleep with you, too, for the remainder of the night. And every night thereafter. Forever. That is, if I do not die first from this dog’s breath. Good Lord.”
Victoria’s solution was to pet the animal. “Poor Neville. He didn’t mean any real harm.”
“Oh, poor Neville meant great harm, Victoria. But I don’t blame him. If I believed someone meant you harm, I would react in exactly the same way he did. Although I would hope I would do so with better breath. And armed with more than my teeth.”
In the next second, he realized the room had quieted and was suddenly lighter. Apparently, the accursed kerosene lamp had finally been lit by someone. He exchanged a look with Victoria and Neville, and then looked toward the foot of the bed with a degree of confidence for whom he would see. And he was right. There, clumped at the bed’s foot and apparently stunned into further inaction by the sight that greeted them were Edward, the elder Redmonds, Jefferson Redmond, Hornsby, and Mr. Milton. All in their nightclothes; Mr. Redmond armed with a shotgun; Hornsby with a chamber pot.
“Great Scott!” Mr. Redmond cried. “What the devil happened here?”
“Never mind that,” Mrs. Redmond fussed, rushing to her daughter’s side. “Pardon me, Your Grace.” She held up her trailing nightclothes as she stepped over him, cocooned there on the floor with the dog, to get to her daughter.
“Of course. Please. Don’t mind me.”
“Thank you.” Leaning over Victoria, Mrs. Redmond put an arm around Victoria’s shoulders. “Oh, honey, are you all right? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to have a baby, sweetheart?”
Victoria froze. She sat close enough to Spencer that he could feel her tension. He quickly answered for her. “Because she only found out this evening earlier when Dr. Hollis examined her.”
Mrs. Redmond and Victoria turned to him, both vying to be the first to say, “She did?” “I did?” Then, Victoria apparently caught on and turned her face up to her mother’s. “Yes, I did. I didn’t know until then. And Dr. Hollis said I was to rest, and then we didn’t see you the remainder of the evening.”
“But you did. I came back up with him, following supper.”
Victoria stared blankly at her mother and nudged Spencer, who chanted: “We were going to tell you at breakfast today. We asked Dr. Hollis not to tell you. We wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Oh, a surprise to announce at the barbecue, too. How nice,” Mrs. Redmond said, sounding mollified. “But how did Edward know? He just said you didn’t want it known.”
Everyone turned to Edward, whose gaze darted from one to the other of the crowd. “Because I came up to their sitting room last evening the moment I arrived here from Savannah, remember?”
Mrs. Redmond considered Edward and, apparently, his explanation
. She turned to her daughter. “You told him first and not me?”
“Oh, Mama, please—”
“I told my cousin, Mrs. Redmond,” Spencer cut in, “quite separately from Victoria. She didn’t know, until now, that Edward knew.”
That apparently satisfied his mother-in-law because, looking very pleased, Mrs. Redmond straightened up and turned to her husband. “Did you hear that, Isaac? We are going to be grandparents. Come hug your daughter and tell her how much you love her.”
“First, Mr. Redmond, if you would, please,” Spencer quickly called out, “put that gun down.” He had no wish to be blasted to kingdom come. And with him thus bound, it could hardly be sport for Mr. Redmond, at any rate.
Mr. Redmond dutifully handed the shotgun off to his son and came forward, speaking to his wife. “My love, don’t you think we should first see to disentangling our son-in-law from Neville? I can’t think either of them is enjoying their present arrangement.” The tall, elegant, and gray-haired man, a titan of industry, stopped next to Spencer and Neville and stood there, frowning down at them as he scratched his head, which resulted in his hair standing up in gray spikes. “We might have to cut y’all apart.”
Alarm screamed through Spencer. “Cut us apart … how?”
“What? Oh. I, of course, mean the netting … cut it apart. Not you and Neville. We’ll cut the netting away from you since I don’t think either of you would benefit from us rolling you over and over to unwind you. But, I swear, I never in all my life saw the likes of this pickle.”
“I assure you, Mr. Redmond,” Spencer said from the floor, “I have never in all my life been in the likes of such a pickle.”
And he meant everything that had happened to him since he’d married the man’s daughter.
* * *
Several hours later, on what turned out to be a pleasantly cool and sunny morning, Spencer stood slightly behind his cousin at the end of the rickety dock behind River’s End. Bathed, dressed, and breakfasted, they had been excused from the house because it was being taken apart, or so it seemed, from top to bottom as Mrs. Redmond supervised the maids’ cleaning and the cooks’ cooking for this afternoon’s infamous barbecue. The two Redmond men were on the far side of the large plantation home overseeing the roasting of the meat. And Victoria remained in bed, attended by Rosanna, and suffering from her morning sickness and resting up for the afternoon’s festivities.
To Make a Marriage Page 27
