by Jane Feather
“What do you do here, Nan?” Meredith made no attempt to defend herself, needing what energy she had for enterprises that might hold out hope for success.
“I am here to look after you, of course. Although, to be sure, I don’t know why I should take the trouble. I’ll fetch you some tea. That nice Sergeant Walter just brought up a tray.”
Meredith began to wonder if she were going quite mad. How could she and Nan take up residence in Rutherford’s bedchamber, needing tea and food and hot water, without the Perrys knowing about it? And if they knew ... The opening door interrupted this confusing chain of thought.
“How is she, Nan?” It was Rutherford’s voice, light and charming, addressing the elderly woman as if he had known her all his life.
“Take a look for yourself, my lord. She’s awake at least,” Nan replied with easy familiarity.
Damian came over to the bed, smiling. “Good morning, my little adventuress.” He laid a hand on her brow, then looked anxiously at Nan. The skin beneath his fingers was hot.
“Don’t you put yourself in a pucker, my lord,” Nan reassured. “It’s only to be expected. A quiet day in bed and it’ll be down by this evening, you mark my words.”
“But I cannot stay here in bed all day!” Merrie wailed, pushing the covers away impatiently. “I must go home at once—”
Damian caught her hards in a hard grip, silencing with a stern look the voice that was beginning to rise alarmingly. “I told you last night that I hold the reins,” he said evenly. “If you attempt to take the bit between your teeth, Merrie Trelawney, you will answer to me.”
Meredith, to her own disgust and Damian’s consternation, burst into tears.
“Let her cry it out,” Nan advised placidly. “Overwrought she is, and more than a little weak, I’ll be bound. But that doesn’t mean you’re to give in to her, my lord. She’s a deal too hot to hand, and who’d know better than me, nursing her from her cradle?”
Damian seriously doubted the wisdom of talking in this fashion in front of the subject, whose head at the moment was clasped to his chest.
“But I do not understand what is happening.” Merrie snuffled plaintively. “Why is Nan here and how did she come? Everyone at Pendennis will be wondering where I am, and the Perrys—”
“The Perrys, my love, have not the slightest idea that you are here.” Rutherford broke into the catalogue of dismay. “They have no interest in anything that is not directly related to their own well-being. Now, sit up and drink your tea. See, Nan has it here.” He coaxed her back against the pillows and held the cup to her lips.
“I am not a baby,” Meredith sniffed, taking the cup for herself, “although I could not blame you for thinking it. Neither am I in the way of enacting Cheltenham tragedies.”
Damian laughed. “I do not doubt it. You are weak and overwrought as Nan said.” Had he been tempted to repeat the third item in Nan’s description, a certain glint in Merrie’s eye would have warned him to be silent. “Now, Nan is going to help you with your bath, then you may put on your own nightgown, which I am sure you will find more comfortable than the one you wear now.” His eyes twinkled. “When you have had some breakfast and are back in bed, there are some things we must talk about, I will then answer all your questions.”
The invalid offered no further protests, having the strong conviction that they would be of little use. With as good a grace as she could muster, she submitted to Nan’s ministrations. The bath was an awkward process since she must keep the bandaged leg dry, and nothing was helped by Nan’s dire mutterings.
It was as plain to Nan as the nose on her face that her nursling was engaged in a degree of intimacy with Lord Rutherford that transgressed all the rules. She did not scruple to say as much, all the while scrubbing, soaping, and rinsing. Meredith, however, was aware that this scandalous aspect of her behavior concerned Nan much less than did last night’s narrow escape. Nan was a country woman with feet firmly planted on the ground. Young girls, widowed when they stood on the threshold of life, should not be doomed to chastity for their remaining years. Those same young girls, however, had no right to risk life and limb to satisfy an unnatural urge for adventure. It was one thing to join discreetly with the Gentlemen in the interests of repairing the damage done by her late husband, quite another to court danger as if there were no one in the world to be affected by it. She hadn’t given a thought to those boys, of course. What would have happened to them, the brothers of a hanged smuggler?
It was a most downcast and subdued Meredith, neat and clean in a demure white nightgown, hair freshly washed, that Damian found half an hour later. She gave him a speaking look and put out her tongue at Nan’s averted back. Rutherford grinned. “Would you mind leaving us for a while, Nan?” he asked politely. “You will find the next-door chamber quite comfortable, I believe. Walter has made some preparations.”
“I can do my mending there as easily as here.” Placidly, Nan gathered up a sewing box.
Meredith heaved a sigh of relief as the door closed behind her nurse. “It was most unkind in you to leave me alone with Nan, my lord. I have been so scolded and scrubbed that I swear my spirit is scraped as raw as my skin.”
“I confess that I had rather hoped to find you sufficiently chastened to hear me out without interruption.” Frowning, he touched the tip of her nose with a long forefinger. “It has to stop now, Merrie. You know that, do you not?”
“If the run was successful last night, then there will be a delivery to be made,” she objected.
“You are deliberately trying to anger me! You know this smuggling must stop—at least until Lieutenant Oliver loses his enthusiasm for a lost cause. You cannot expose your partners to further danger even if you will not take common-sense precautions for yourself.” He stood up abruptly. “Do not force me to lose all patience with you, Meredith. I am well aware that you are not stupid, for all that you are reckless and obstinate. Will you now admit the truth?”
Merrie sighed, plucking restlessly at the coverlet. “It is so hard to give it up. I am so close, Damian. You cannot understand what torment it will be to have the means within my grasp and be unable to use them. Another six months—a year at the outside—and I shall have redeemed all the mortgages, paid off the last debt.” When he said nothing and simply looked at her in weary patience, Merrie finally gave in. The nod of her head was barely perceptible, but it was enough to flood Rutherford with relief.
“I do not know how I shall pass the time, though,” she said somewhat pettishly. “I shall die of ennui.”
“I have a solution for that,” he responded quietly. “Marry me, and I will promise you all the excitement you could wish for.”
“Yes, I can imagine,” she countered swiftly. “Learning to force myself into the mold of a duchess would be monstrous exciting, I am sure—much enlivened by running the gauntlet of your family. And only think how exciting it will be when you discover that a wayward Cornishwoman is an impossible wife for a Keighley.”
“A wayward Cornishwoman is the only wife I want,” he said in level tones that belied the hurt frustration in the gray eyes.
Meredith looked at him with a sudden speculative gleam. “I have always wished to visit London,” she mused, pushing back the cuticles of her left hand with a frown of concentration. “The boys will return to school at the beginning of September. Time will hang heavy on my hands for three months without Rob and Theo to plague me and with no other diversions.”
“What is it that you are suggesting?” Something about the sudden tension in her body, the mischief lurking behind the innocent-seeming voice, the way she kept her eyes fixed on her fingernails sent ripples of unease down his back.
“Why, sir, only that if you were to offer me a carte blanche until—Christmas, shall we say?—I might well be induced to accept your protection.”
He kept his hands off her with the exercise of supreme self-control. She dared to suggest that he set her up in London as his mistress so that she could
while away the idle autumn months! She would not be his wife, but she would agree to be his mistress! Then, through his anger a thought glimmered. Maybe he could play it her way and beat her at her own game. She was such a duplicitous little wretch, she should not complain if her own weapons were used against her.
“What say you, my lord?” He thought he could detect just the hint of laughter behind the demure accents. “Or perhaps you already have a mistress in London?”
“No, as it happens, I do not,” he said drily. “Your suggestion has some merit, I think.” He was amply rewarded when her head shot up and the sloe eyes stared, wide with amazement. “I have but one stipulation.”
Meredith moistened her lips, recognizing how adroitly he had turned the tables. Wicked impulse had prompted her suggestion, that and the desire to end all further talk of marriage. Not for one minute had she expected agreement. “What is that, sir?” she bravely asked.
“Simply that you agree to accept without question the arrangements I shall make and the conditions I lay down for conducting this matter. I shall make every effort to ensure your comfort as is customary in these affairs.” His accompanying smile carried the worldly wisdom of one well up to snuff in such a business.
Meredith bit her lip. “I would not wish to be a charge upon you, Rutherford.”
“Oh, come now,” he said dismissively. “It was a carte blanche you suggested, my dear girl. And it is a carte blanche that I will agree to, subject to that single stipulation.”
Merrie was out of her depth and had only herself to blame. There had been no need to jump into such deep waters, but then she was always doing so. Accepting a carte blanche meant, by definition, that she accept Rutherford’s protection and that included his paying all her expenditures. She would not, though, need to be expensive. Some little house in an unfashionable part of town would be quite appropriate and surely very cheap. She could take Nan, and they could manage perfectly well with one servant girl and a man for the heavy work. Entertainment would not be costly; she would be quite happy with simple things like exploring the town that she had always had an ambition to see. Besides, if she were to fulfill her obligations of the carte blanche, most of her entertainment would be at home. That thought brought a saucy gleam to her eye. Three months with Damian and no distractions. No need to hide from prying eyes, to creep around by secret passages, making love in caves. There had been much pleasure and excitement in their clandestine assignations and the hoodwinking of her neighbors, but it would be wonderful to love openly. No one would know who she was in London, and she could use an assumed name to be doubly certain. Taking her as his mistress would do Damian no social harm, unlike marriage.
She had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Merrie was under no illusions as to what her long-term future held—marriage to some local squire once the smuggling had achieved its purpose and she could again become a law-abiding citizen; or a reclusive widowhood where she must live on her memories. What was there to prevent her taking three months and living them illicitly but to the full? She loved Damian, Lord Rutherford, as she knew she would never love again. Since she could not, for his sake, be his wife, then she would be his mistress for as long as the opportunity was there.
Damian watched her closely during the long moments of cogitation. He could make a fairly accurate guess at the trend of her thoughts and could not help an internal smile at the thought of how she would react to his plans. But by then she would be committed to a promise to which he would hold her as ruthlessly as necessary.
“Well, Lady Blake,” he prompted. “How do you answer me?”
She raised her eyes and he saw then the roguish gleam. “Why, sir, most gratefully. I will accept both your protection and your stipulation. I can only hope that I prove worthy of such an honor.”
“I wonder if we shall manage three months without my committing murder,” Damian said in a considered serious tone. “My hand in marriage you reject, yet you doubt your worthiness to accept my protection.”
“Ah, but one is a business contract with clear obligations on both sides,” she informed him. “The other confers upon you the honor of giving while allowing me only to accept.”
“I do not think I shall manage one month, let alone three,” Damian observed equably. “But it would perhaps be a fitting irony if it were I who swung from the hangman’s rope for the untimely demise of a smuggler.”
Meredith’s peal of laughter was hastily suppressed at the thought of the Perrys, but she rocked with bitten-back giggles as he wrapped her in his arms, sealing their bargain with a kiss that made her regret her wounded leg more than anything had done so far.
When he released her, she reverted to her earlier anxieties. “How am I to remain here all day without everyone at Pendennis sounding the alarm? And how is Nan here? In London I may do as I please, I will be known to no one, but can you begin to imagine what my presence in your house—?”
“Yes, I can,” he interrupted. “And I should be glad if you would give me credit for some ingenuity. You are not the only one with a fertile imagination and a certain talent for developing and implementing strategies.”
Rebuked, Merrie kept silent, rearranging herself against the pillows and fixing meekly trusting eyes on his face. “Wretch!” His lips quivered. “You are not at all penitent.”
“I am trying,” she protested. “Only do tell me.”
Damian sighed. “It was not difficult for Walter to gain entrance to Pendennis by way of the secret passage or to locate your chamber by the light burning. You had told me that Nan waited up for you.” Meredith nodded. “Nan deemed it sensible and necessary to take Seecombe into her, or rather your, confidence.” Damian saw the flicker of uncertainty cross her expression and went on calmly. “I gather that Seecombe was not greatly surprised.”
“No, perhaps not,” Merrie agreed. “But I could wish it had not been necessary.”
“Consider who made it necessary.” The reminder was gentle but nonetheless uncomfortable. Satisfied that the point had been well taken, Rutherford continued. “Seecombe will have told the boys that you are not feeling at all the thing and wish to keep to your room, undisturbed for today. Nan will attend you.”
“But I never take to my bed,” Merrie objected. “The boys will never believe it.”
“And why not?” he inquired. “They have no reason to doubt Seecombe’s word. You will open your chamber door to them tomorrow, and, since you will be obliged to remain abed for several more days, they will accept your unusual indisposition as fact.”
Merrie sucked the tip of her thumb, examining the plan from every angle. It was simple but it would certainly work. Rob might be alarmed and puzzled, but he would not attempt to defy the interdiction, and if it were only for today . . . “How do I return to the house? ”
“I shall convey you and Nan home once your household, except for Seecombe, is asleep. Seecombe will open the side door.”
The plan worked like a charm. Meredith, dressed in her own gown and cloak, was carried by Lord Rutherford to the ancient barouche that had once belonged to Cousin Matthew. Nan accepted Walter’s assistance in taking her place beside Meredith. Damian drove the carriage down the deserted lanes, trying not to think of the possible reaction of his Four Horse Club cronies, could they see him with a dozy cart horse in hand. Seecombe was waiting for them, and the door opened to the crunch of hooves on gravel. Rutherford scooped Merrie off the seat, carried her into the house and up to her chamber, his booted feet making hardly a sound on the oak floors.
“I shall not see you for several days.” He laid her on the bed, smiling softly. “It would look most singular were I to visit your sickbed, and you may not leave it until Nan considers it wise.” Glancing over his shoulder, he received a short, affirmative nod of the gray head.
“You cannot know to what you condemn me,” Meredith murmured in mock horror. “I shall be a wreck after just a few hours’ imprisonment at the hands of such a jailer.”
“She st
ands in my stead.” He pinched the freckled nose. “Only remember that you will answer to me.”
“I tremble at the thought, my lord.”
“You could well have cause.”
Merrie reached for him, ignoring Nan’s presence as she pulled him down with a fierce hunger that expressed both her gratitude for what he had done in the last twenty-four hours and the aching promise of what was to come. Damian, guessing at this turmoil, controlled the passion of his own response even as he held her, thankful that she was now safe, that he had until Christmas, a veritable age in which to rid her of an obstinate pride, to draw from her, once and for all, the acknowledgment of the truth.
“Sleep now, my love,” he whispered against her mouth. “You must regain your strength for we have much to look forward to, and you will need your wits about you when you make your plans.”
“I have made them already.” She swallowed an involuntary yawn, saying wistfully, “I wish we could sleep as we did last night.”
“When next we do so, love, you will not be hampered by the exhaustion of the hunted or a wounded thigh.” He kissed her in brisk farewell, deciding that the moment for loving murmurs and tender kisses was past. Meredith needed sleep and it were incumbent upon him to make his departure with due speed and stealth.
“You will send for me, Nan, should your patient prove recalcitrant,” he teased, hand on the doorknob. Nan’s derisory sniff dismissed such a possibility out of hand. He blew Merrie a kiss and closed the door softly behind him.
“There is really nothing to fret about, loves.” Merrie looked at the three anxious faces crowding around her bedside. “I shall be up and about again before you know it.”
“But you are never ill,” Rob said. “When you would not let us visit you, yesterday, I though perhaps you were dying!”
“Well, as you can see, I am not,” she reassured him briskly. “Yesterday, I was tired and I wished to sleep. Today, I shall be very happy if you will bear me company.”
