‘What is it?’ he urged, clasping her trembling form to his heart. She was damp with sweat, and the warm womanly scent of her filled his nostrils with every breath he took. He gritted his teeth. Nothing separated them but two flimsy articles of cotton nightwear.
‘What happened?’
‘N…nightmare.’
‘Is that all?’ He sighed with relief. The bed was stripped bare, the sheets and blankets scattered about the floor as though a fight had taken place.
‘All?’ She went rigid in his arms. For a terrible moment he thought it might be because she had noticed how rigid a certain part of his own anatomy had become.
‘It t…took all my resolve to undress and lie in that b…bed,’ she hiccupped, tears streaming down her face. ‘And every time I closed my eyes I remembered what he said he was going t…to do to me once he got me into b…bed, and I kept telling myself it was not that inn, b…but I kept hearing v…voices drifting up from the t…tap room and smell…I could smell…’ She stamped her bare foot in exasperation. ‘All inns smell the same,’ she wailed.
‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.’ He pulled her as close as he dared and rocked her. ‘I understand, but you’re safe now. I will never permit anyone to hurt you or frighten you again.’
She wriggled closer, till every inch of her was plastered against every inch of him. Oh, Lord, how long would it be before she registered what their closeness was doing to his body?
‘When I’m awake I know that,’ she sniffed into his chest. ‘But when I go to sleep, it all looms up and I can’t push it away. I try, I really do, to fight him, but he’s always too strong…too strong.’ She began to sob quietly.
Behind him, he heard a delicate cough.
‘Um, Lord Lensborough? Do you really think you should be in here like this?’ Em’s voice dripped acid.
‘Hester had a nightmare. I am comforting her.’
‘A nightmare.’ A nightmare, the echo rolled down the corridor, the explanation satisfying the curiosity of the other wakened guests.
‘Must we always have an audience every time we stop at an inn?’ Lord Lensborough strode to the door, shutting it firmly on Em and anyone else who might still be lingering. Hester trotted after him, her hands scrabbling at his nightshirt.
‘Don’t go,’ she begged. ‘Don’t leave me alone.’
He turned, gripped her shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘Hush, now,’ he murmured, dropping a kiss on the crown of her tousled head. ‘You know I cannot stay for more than a few more minutes. It is quite scandalous of me to be in here at all.’
‘I don’t care.’ Hester wrapped her arms tightly round his waist. ‘I won’t be able to sleep again unless you hold me.’
He reached behind his back and grasped her wrists, peeling her off him with grim determination. ‘You don’t know what you are saying. I know you were frightened, but believe me, this is not the answer.’
He pushed her away from him before he lost his resolve. The invitation to stay, innocent though it was, was well nigh irresistible to a man in his condition. But if he did stay, she would soon discover he was little better than Snelgrove.
‘Go, then.’ She wrapped her arms about herself, and looked down at her bare toes.
‘Hester,’ he groaned. ‘I—’
‘Just get out,’ she screamed.
She stalked to the door and opened it for him, her eyes still glued to her feet. Lord Lensborough went cold. She had finally realised what was going on under his nightshirt. She was disgusted with him. He’d said she could trust him, but his body had betrayed her. There was nothing he could say in his defence. When she most needed him to be kind and protective, he’d reacted to her with unbridled lust.
Defeated, he turned and left her room, flinching as he heard the sound of her dragging something heavy across the floor to wedge against the door she had slammed on him.
* * *
She emerged for breakfast the next morning with dark shadows under her eyes. She could not look him in the face. She accepted his hand into and out of the carriage, but withdrew it as swiftly as she could.
Lensborough cursed himself. In one unguarded moment he had undone all the progress he had made with her. She no longer trusted him.
She grew more withdrawn and brittle looking the nearer they drew to London, and he did not know how to undo the damage he had done. There was never an opportunity to speak frankly. She made absolutely certain they were never alone.
* * *
At least, he thought as they finally drew up outside his mother’s Brook Street mansion, she had not broken off the engagement. He had a few weeks’ grace before the wedding in which he could try to win back some of the trust his lust had so brutally shattered.
And she did look shattered. There was a blankness in her eyes when he presented her to his mother that made him uneasy. She did not even seem to register the coolness of his mother’s reception. Swaying on her feet, she just mumbled, ‘I wish to go to my room.’
‘Yes, I think you better had,’ Lady Augusta snapped. ‘Clothilde!’ A maid, who had clearly been expecting the summons, appeared and whisked her away.
Lady Augusta rounded on her son.
‘Have you completely lost your senses? When you wrote and told me you had chosen Lady Hester Cuerden above her cousins, I assumed she must have improved since my last sight of her. But she has not. She is hopeless. Completely hopeless. You will be a laughing stock.’
‘She is just tired after the journey, that is all. When she has recovered, you will see.’
‘Tired? A lady of quality may look tired. That…that creature you brought in looked bedraggled.’ She flung herself into an overstuffed chair. ‘And how can she have got into such a state after a journey of only four days in a well sprung coach? May I remind you, you went into Yorkshire in search of healthy breeding stock? She looks as if a puff of wind would knock her over.’
Lord Lensborough was tight lipped as he replied, ‘She has only recently recovered from an illness. She is not usually invalidish. The journey was…’ The journey must have been torture for her. Why had he not considered how she might react to staying in one inn after another, little more than a week after Lionel’s attempt to carry her off to one? He had planned his journey with more thought to his horses than he had to her. He had teams sent ahead to hostelries where he knew they would be well stabled, when he could as easily have arranged for them to stay at the houses of acquaintances on the way. Too late to think of that now. The damage was done.
‘She always did have die-away airs,’ his mother continued. ‘And she blushes. She has no address whatever. I’ve even seen her run out of a ballroom in floods of tears, with everyone laughing at her.’
His frown deepened, but his mother went right on cataloguing Hester’s deficiencies. ‘And as for her complexion!’
‘I like her freckles. And I do not care if she is not a social success.’ He had promised he would not divulge anything about Lionel’s attempted abduction. All he could do now was throw his mother off the scent. ‘Wasn’t the whole point of the exercise to choose a woman who would be the most offensive to all the other aspirants?’
His mother looked at him keenly. ‘That’s all very well, but this will be the mother of your children.’
‘Hester adores children, and they respond to her admirably. I have observed her within her family circle, which you have not. She is, besides, an excellent housekeeper and an outstanding horsewoman. We shall do very well in our private life.’ He bowed stiffly, then made for the door. ‘I will be calling tomorrow to take her for a drive in the park. Good day.’
* * *
But the following day, when Lord Lensborough returned, he found the entire household in an uproar. In spite, his mother complained, of being shown to the very best guest room, at some time during the night Hester had left the comfort of her bed and disappeared.
‘The servants searched the house from top to bottom. And where do you think we found her?’
>
Lord Lensborough had a pretty good idea.
‘The upstairs maid found her curled up in the upstairs linen closet.’
‘Not in the attics?’ he ventured with a wry smile.
His mother frowned. ‘The linen closet is part of the attics, yes. I just said so. As if that makes a difference.’
‘And where is she now?’
‘We put her in the nursery and locked the door. The doctor is with her now.’
‘You put her in the nursery?’ There were bars on the nursery window. His voice was dangerously quiet as he pointed out, ‘She does not like doctors, Mother.’
‘Doctor Fothergill has an excellent reputation for dealing with nervous complaints.’
‘Are you trying to imply that Hester is some kind of lunatic?’
‘Well, what else am I to think? She turns up on the doorstep in a daze, wanders about the house in the dead of night, frightening the servants by hiding in linen closets.’
‘I entrusted her to your care.’ Lord Lensborough spoke to his mother in a tone she had never heard before. The fury that blazed from his eyes blasted Lady Augusta’s self-assurance to ashes. Pale and trembling, she dropped into the nearest chair. ‘Be damned to propriety,’ he swore as he stalked from the room. ‘I’m taking her back with me to Challinor House.’
She jumped as the door slammed behind him, wondering if she had ever really known her son.
Chapter Fourteen
Lord Lensborough took the stairs to the nursery two at a time and went straight in without knocking.
Though the door he’d flung open bounced back off the nursery wall with a crash, the figure laid out upon the cot remained ominously still.
‘What the hell have you done to her?’
Lord Lensborough stalked across the room, his eyes boring into the tall, frock-coated man who was hovering over Hester’s prone body like a vulture.
‘You must be the unfortunate fiancé, Lord Lensborough?’ The doctor’s smile of sympathy made his lordship want to smash his fist right into his mouth. A movement to one side made him aware for the first time that Hester had not been left utterly at the doctor’s mercy. Em advanced on him, her fists clenched.
‘I will never let you put her away in an asylum, you…you…monster!’ Her eyes snapped with a fury as intense as his own. ‘I will fight this injustice to the last breath in my body.’
He rounded on the doctor. ‘Asylum? You have the audacity to suggest Lady Hester should be locked away?’
The doctor assumed an expression of oily condescension. ‘In matters of this nature, a period of quiet, away from the hurly burly, can often effect a marked improvement.’
‘Miss Dean,’ Lensborough growled without removing his eyes from the doctor, ‘kindly remove yourself from this room. What I am about to say to this quack will not be fit for your ears.’
Hearing the doctor referred to in terms she believed he fully deserved cooled Em’s antagonism towards Lord Lensborough by several degrees. ‘You will not let him sway your judgement?’
‘This fool? As if I could take anything he said seriously.’
‘I fully endorse your decision to remove the young lady from the room, my lord,’ Doctor Fothergill remarked calmly as Em stalked from the room. ‘Our discussion will touch on matters that are not fit for innocent ears.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I have not reached my decision to recommend complete isolation for the patient lightly, my lord. Her mind is deeply agitated. Lady Challinor, your good lady mother, informed me that she has always been highly strung. Possibly the excitement of the impending nuptials with such an august person as yourself—’
‘You are both making a lot of fuss over nothing.’ There was no way he was going to betray Hester’s confidence by relating what had happened to her to an oily specimen like this. ‘She had a nightmare, went to fetch a glass of water, and, in a half-waking state, lost her way in a strange house. She had a suite of rooms at the very top of the house where she grew up.’
The doctor raised a hand and, in a condescending tone, said, ‘Alas, if that were only all there was to the case. But you see, I had a lengthy chat with the patient. Although she was reluctant to confide in me at first.’
Lord Lensborough clenched his fists. Hester hated doctors, yet this man had clearly been foisted on her, then badgered her into saying heaven knew what.
‘I have a way with ailments of this type.’ The doctor gave a deprecating little laugh. ‘It was not long before she came to regard me as a confidant. It is rather the same with Catholic persons, who unload their guilt on a father confessor.’
‘Hester is not guilty of anything.’
‘No, no, absolutely not. Given the nature of her sickness, I deemed it vital to establish that she is…’ he lowered his tone, as if to prevent anyone else from overhearing ‘…virgo intacta.’
Lord Lensborough was not conscious of crossing the room. The next thing he knew, he had the doctor by the throat.
‘My lord. Calm yourself.’ Dr. Fothergill wheezed as his face turned slowly purple. ‘The examination was all above board, after she was sedated…maid in attendance…entirely professional…’
He flung the doctor’s body from him as though his very touch was a contaminant. ‘Professional? You subject my betrothed to an intimate examination without my permission and you call that professional? I will see you ruined for this.’
The doctor’s fingers were trembling as he straightened his cravat. ‘I think not, my lord. The delusions she suffers from were of such a vile and explicit nature that I had no option but to see if there could be any substance to them. You would not wish to marry a woman who had really undergone the kind of experiences she was raving about.’
‘Get out.’
‘I assure you…’
‘No! I assure you. If you do not remove your sorry carcass from this house immediately, I will throw you out. Through the window if necessary.’
The doctor walked calmly from the room. There was no point in arguing with clients as wealthy and influential as the marquis. If he wished to take a lunatic to wife, it was entirely his own business. He had been warned. He would just make sure the bill for this morning’s consultation was a hefty one.
Lord Lensborough stood looking down at Hester for a few minutes in silence as he wrestled with his conscience.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said as he went to the fireplace and tugged the bell pull to summon her maid. ‘I should not have left you here alone.’
He crouched down at her bedside, brushing a tendril of copper from her waxy forehead. ‘I will take you back to Challinor House and we will be married by special licence.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t.’ Em had crept back into the room unseen as soon as the doctor had vacated it. Like a lioness guarding her cub, she stalked across the floor.
‘Hester is not going anywhere unless she wants to. You are not going to bundle her up like a parcel while she is insensible and stash her away in your house.’
‘Miss Dean, I only wish to care for her.’
‘She might not want you to care for her after this. She may not wish to marry you at all, let alone in some private ceremony as if you are ashamed of her.’
He bowed his head. Em was only voicing the fear he had been harbouring since that night he had gone to her room in the inn.
‘You are right.’
‘What?’
‘I will wait until she wakes, and lay my case before her. I will abide by her decision. Whatever she decides.’
‘Oh.’ Deprived of fighting her corner, Em looked rather deflated.
A scratching at the door heralded the arrival of Clothilde, closely followed by his mother. He dismissed the maid. He had only intended to ask her to pack Hester’s belongings, and accompany her mistress to Challinor House to attend to her needs.
He sent Em to fetch some tea for his mother with whom, he said darkly, he wished to have a private word.
‘I en
trusted her to your care,’ he accused her as soon as they were alone. ‘And what happens? You found her in distress, in need of help, and you inflicted some bully of a doctor on her, who wrings a confession from her of an event so painful she swore me to secrecy. He then proceeds to drug her and submit her to the most intrusive and inappropriate of examinations.’ He got to his feet. ‘I should have known you would be incapable of showing compassion. You have never cared for anything except appearances. Did you even weep for Bertram?’
Lady Augusta gasped, and groped her way blindly into a chair.
‘What can you mean?’ She ignored the hurtful, personal remarks, homing in instead on something that had shaken her almost as much. ‘What event?’
He eyed her with distaste. ‘Hester was forcibly abducted by a fortune hunter who thought to subdue her into marriage with threats of rape. He drugged her, and carried her to an inn where he planned to commit the crime. By a fortunate coincidence I happened to be there when they arrived, and was able to rescue her. Can you wonder that she has suffered nightmares since then? That she found the journey here almost unbearable? I will never forget her screams that first night when she woke and found herself in an inn, with memories of his threats crowding in on her.’
His mother’s hand stole to her throat. ‘If you were there, then it must have only happened…’
‘Little more than a week ago. It is all still horribly fresh in her mind.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Do you think she wanted such a tale noised abroad?’
‘No.’ She straightened and looked her son full in the face. ‘No lady of quality would ever speak of it. No lady would recover her equilibrium all at once either. I accept that.’
His fury was replaced by a look of bitterness. ‘It is a great pity your attitude has made it necessary for me to break Hester’s confidence.’
She did not blink. ‘It will go no further.’
He sat on a chair beside the narrow cot and took hold of Hester’s limp hand. ‘I will stay with her until she wakes.’
His mother fidgeted.
‘I know it is improper, but after all she has gone through it is imperative I am the first person she sees when she wakes up. Do you understand?’
His Cinderella Bride Page 20
