A Wicked Pursuit

by Isabella Bradford

  He didn’t need to hide himself away from her, either, because she had been with him through the worst of it, and she’d comforted him in a way that was difficult to explain. He looked forward to the time she spent here with him, and missed her when she was gone. She wasn’t beautiful, not like Julia, and she was such an unassuming little wren that she’d be lost entirely in a crowded assembly or ball. Yet there was a certain beguiling charm to her wide gray eyes and the freckles on her nose, and the delightful way she tried to turn serious and stern whenever he teased her.

  It was so delightful, in fact, and he was in such need of amusement to stave off his boredom and frustration, that he teased her nearly every time she came to his room. Not hard, and with no mean intention, but he couldn’t help it.

  He smiled, thinking of that, and thinking of Gus in general. If asking Julia to be his wife was the best thing that came from this disastrous visit, then meeting her sister would have to be a close second. Having only brothers himself, he liked the prospect of gaining Gus as his little sister through marriage, knowing she’d always be part of his life, too.

  “The surgeons say Miss Augusta saved your life, my lord,” Tewkes continued, breaking into Harry’s reverie. “They say that if she hadn’t acted as she did when she found you, you would have died, or at least lost your leg.”

  “She didn’t find me on her own,” Harry said. “Her sister brought her to the place where I’d fallen.”

  “As you say, my lord,” Tewkes said with a small nod of concession. “But as I’ve heard it told in the kitchen, Miss Wetherby was too distraught by your accident to offer any assistance. It was Miss Augusta who guessed where you must have fallen and, with several men from the stables, followed the horses’ tracks to find you where you lay. She kept you calm and warm, and made certain the men used the greatest care in transporting you.”

  “She did?” Harry asked uneasily. He did not want to give up the pretty picture of Julia loyally returning to bring help to him in the woods. Yet it was only Gus that he remembered being there, holding his hand and telling him how brave he was. “You are certain this is true?”

  “It is what was said by several individuals, my lord,” Tewkes said. “All I can say for myself is that Miss Wetherby was not a member of the party that brought you back to the house.”

  Tewkes was not a man given to inventions. If he said Julia had not been there, then Harry had no choice but to believe it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked.

  Tewkes bowed his head, just a fraction. “You did not ask me, my lord.”

  Harry sighed impatiently. “Are there any other great secrets I should know, Tewkes?”

  “No, my lord,” he said, hesitating a moment to choose his words. “It was not my intention to fault Miss Wetherby in any fashion. I only wished Miss Augusta to receive the credit that she deserved.”

  “They are different ladies, Tewkes,” Harry said, carefully choosing his own words as well. “Miss Wetherby is a lady of great delicacy, while Miss Augusta is not.”

  As soon as he’d spoken, he realized how disparaging to Gus it must have sounded. “That is, Miss Augusta is delicate, too, the way a lady should be, but she’s more practical about it.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Tewkes said, deliberately, blandly noncommittal as he gathered up the dressing case. “Will that be all, my lord?”

  As if on cue, there was a knock at the door, and Gus’s voice on the other side. Hurriedly Harry raked his fingers back through his hair and pushed himself up against the pillows as he motioned for Tewkes to open the door.

  “Good day, my lord,” Gus said, entering with her usual brisk purpose. She wore a gown of currant-colored calico, dotted with tiny green leaves, with lacy white sleeve ruffles, a sheer kerchief and ruffled cap, and a snowy white apron around her waist with her household keys clipped to a plain silver chatelaine at her waist. Harry liked her waist; she wasn’t as curvaceous as Julia, but her waist was small and neat, much like the rest of her, and exactly the kind of waist that a man liked to settle his arm around. She made a quick curtsey and came to stand beside the bed, a well-read magazine or journal in her hand.

  “Good day to you, too, Miss Augusta,” he said. She looked crisp and fresh, her hair sleeked back beneath her small white ruffled cap, but he wished she were smiling. “What have you brought me?”

  “In a moment, my lord,” she said sternly. “First I must have a word with you.”

  Damnation, he hoped she hadn’t overheard that last bit about her being practical. He tried to look innocent.

  “Any word from you is welcome,” he said as winningly as he could.

  She’d have none of it. “Is it true that you’ve dismissed Mrs. Patton?”

  He frowned, feeling defensive. “I did,” he said. “Earlier this morning. She did not please me.”

  “Pleasing you was not her purpose,” she said warmly. “She was employed to nurse you to health, not to be your mistress.”

  He wrinkled his nose at the thought. “She was disagreeable. With that face, she made me feel worse, not better.”

  “Mrs. Patton was an excellent nurse, and highly recommended by Dr. Leslie,” she said. “I do not know how I shall replace her.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “There, that’s easily solved.”

  “No, it is not,” she said, her cheeks flushed with indignation. “You are barely a fortnight removed from your accident. You are still weeks away from being able to leave this bed. You need a nurse to—”

  “To do exactly what?” he asked. He wasn’t teasing any longer. He was serious, or he wouldn’t have sent Mrs. Patton away. “Leslie comes every other day to unwrap my leg and peer at it, then swaddle it up again. That is the extent of my care. My bones will rejoin together in their own time, at their own pace. Until then, there’s nothing more that a score of Mrs. Pattons could do to urge the process along.”

  “But who will change your bedding, and wash you, and—and tend to your personal affairs for you?” Her cheeks were pink now, not with an angry flush but with an embarrassed one, no doubt brought on by thinking of his Personal Affairs.

  “Tewkes can manage,” he said. “And there’s always you as well. You said you would, you know.”

  “I, my lord?” She stared at him, her eyes round with surprise, and probably also from misgivings regarding those same Personal Affairs of his. “I am not your servant, my lord, and I am not your nurse, and I will not—”

  “But you act as the mistress of this house,” he interrupted, “and you did promise you’d look after me as your guest. I do not require much, really. You and Tewkes together should have no trouble accommodating me.”

  “But that was when you were in such a dire situation!” she exclaimed. “Now that you are so much improved, there is not the same urgency.”

  “You mean there is no longer a need to oblige your father’s guest.” He was not accustomed to being refused like this. She had offered; he had accepted. It was perfectly logical to him, and he couldn’t understand why she was balking now.

  “I mean that it’s not proper for me to spend so much time in your company when I’ve other things—”

  “Other things more important than I?” Glowering, he folded his arms over his chest. He hadn’t intended to be so overbearing, not with her, but he didn’t want her to replace her own charming self with another wretched Mrs. Patton. “You’re being willful in this matter, Miss Augusta. Willful and stubborn.”

  “‘Willful and stubborn’?” she repeated, incredulous. “Oh, my lord, I cannot agree with that, not after all I have done for you!”

  “Then where is the harm in doing more?” he demanded, turning as imperious as if he were in his own house, not a guest in hers. “Especially since I am the one asking?”

  “You are misconstruing my objections, my lord,” she said furiously, clipping every syllable. She was so agitated now that the keys dangling from her chatelaine were all trembling and jingling against her sk
irts. “I meant that now that you are no longer in peril, I cannot devote as much time to you as a hired nurse would. I have many other responsibilities in this house, and I cannot neglect them.”

  “Other, grander responsibilities than I, no doubt,” he said, allowing a certain amount of contempt to creep into his tone. He waved a hand grandly through the air, as if to dismiss every possible objection.

  “And what could those responsibilities possibly be?” he continued. “Gathering up old candle stubs? Marking the linen? Checking the padlock on the meat safe against servants’ temptation? Making sure the broken victuals are collected to make broth for the deserving poor?”

  “I see that this house is well run and managed, my lord,” she said stiffly, “exactly as my father desires.”

  He hadn’t really thought that any of those gibes were that close to the mark—after all, she was a lady and a daughter of the house, not a housekeeper—but he realized from the stricken expression in her eyes that her vaunted responsibilities must indeed include at least one of those mundane tasks. That expression made him uneasy and uncomfortable, and made him fear he might have pushed her too far, which of course only made him belligerently defensive.

  “I never said I’d want to counter your father,” he said. “Not in his own house. Don’t put your words in my mouth.”

  “I didn’t do anything of the sort,” she said, rolling the magazine into a tight tube in her hands. “My words are my own, thank you, and I intend to keep them far, far from your mouth.”

  Realizing that this would not be a profitable path for discussion—and fearing she might strike him with the rolled-up magazine if he pursued it—he returned to the safer topic of her father.

  “Where is your father, anyway?” he demanded. “I have not seen him since I awoke. I told you I wasn’t ready to see your sister yet, but not your father. Why don’t we send for him now, and ask his opinion on your responsibilities? Tewkes, tell the footman in the hall to summon the viscount.”

  She caught her breath with obvious dismay, replacing anything that might have been stubbornness.

  “Please, my lord, you cannot,” she said quickly. “That is, he is not here, but has—has gone to Norwich on business, but if he were here, I know he would agree with you in this, and so I—I will defer to you, my lord. Yes. That is what we shall do.”

  The speed of her capitulation surprised him, and he frowned, studying her closely. He knew an untruth when he heard one, though this particular untruth was so badly told that any child would have perceived it for what it was. Worse yet, she appeared almost on the verge of tears, her wide gray eyes so unhappy that he felt small and mean and very, very sorry.

  But why should she not wish her father involved? Had they already had words about him?

  “Very well, Miss Augusta,” he said gruffly. He didn’t want to disturb her any further, whatever the reason, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to apologize when he wasn’t sure what he’d done. “I am glad we are in agreement.”

  She sniffed, and patted blindly at her nose with her handkerchief.

  “Yes, we are,” he said hastily, supplying the answer when she didn’t. “Now, why don’t we begin with you sharing that magazine in your hand?”

  She took a deep breath to recover herself, and looked down at the magazine as if seeing it for the first time.

  “You said you were bored, my lord, and wished diversion,” she said, her voice wavering a fraction as she held the cover up so he could see the title for himself. “I fear my father is not much of a reader, but I did find this in his library, and thought it might be sufficiently amusing to you.”

  He was oddly touched that she would take his earlier grumblings about boredom and ennui so seriously, even if it meant her finding a dog-eared copy of The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, six months out of date and dry reading even when it was new. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that he’d already addressed his lack of reading material by sending to his London bookseller for a selection of the newest books, journals, and newspapers.

  He also wouldn’t tell her just yet that this morning he’d sent for a few other things, as well as people, to help him pass the time. It didn’t seem right, given her present humor, and besides, she’d learn of it soon enough when the arrivals and deliveries from London began.

  But right now she was staring at him.

  “You’re shaven, my lord,” she said. “Your beard is quite gone. How did I not notice that?”

  “It had overstayed its welcome,” he said, rubbing his hand along his clean-shaven jaw for emphasis. “Do you regret that it is gone?”

  “I do not,” she said primly. “Your visage is much improved, my lord. You no longer resemble a pirate.”

  Thank God she’d stopped looking like she was going to blubber and weep. From relief, he laughed, something he had done far too little of lately. “What do you know of pirates, Miss Augusta?”

  “Enough to know that you looked like one, my lord,” she said succinctly. “Would you like to read now?”

  “I want you to read to me,” he said, settling back against the pillows. “I find I am still too weak to hold a page before me.”

  Skeptically she glanced at his forearms, which, though diminished by illness, were still impressive. “Are you certain of that, my lord?”

  “I am,” he said, folding his supposedly weak arms comfortably over the coverlet. “Reading aloud will be an important part of your new duties. The Patton woman couldn’t read worth a tinker’s damn. You’re bound to surpass her. Now sit there, in the armchair, so I’ll have no trouble hearing you.”

  “Very well, my lord,” she said, unrolling the magazine. “Might I turn the chair toward the window, my lord, to improve the light for reading?”

  Did he detect a slight whiff of mockery in her obedience, a hint of obsequious sarcasm in the way she tipped her head?

  “You may move the chair however you please, of course,” he said warily. “Forgive me for not assisting you myself.”

  She smiled sweetly. “I had no such expectations from you, my lord.”

  He smiled uneasily, wondering if she was now the one teasing him. With Julia, he always knew where he stood; she was charmingly uncomplicated, her thoughts and moods writ clear across her lovely face. But Gus was much more of a challenge to decipher, and he was quickly coming to realize that he needed to pay close attention to what she said when he was with her.

  He watched her as she first pulled the window’s curtain more fully open, and then arranged the chair so the sunlight would fall over her shoulder. Although he hated being restricted to a single room, he’d grudgingly come to realize that the bedchamber had its merits here on the corner of the house, with tall windows that let in the sun throughout most of the day. Hungry for the outside world, he’d had Tewkes leave the curtains drawn day and night so he could see the trees and fields, the sky and changing skies.

  Now the dark wood of the nearest window’s sash framed Gus as well as the landscape behind her. While Julia had a classically styled profile, her sister’s cheeks were full and her freckled nose snubbed. But her brows were delicate and elegantly arched, and the sweep of her long lashes over those rounded cheeks as she looked down at the magazine in her lap was pleasing indeed.

  He’d dismissed her hair as ordinary, a pale brown of no distinction, but here the sunlight discovered a fascinating variety of light copper and gold strands mingled together. Little wisping curls had slipped free from beneath the ruffled cap, swaying around her face in the breeze through the open window. As she spread the magazine on her lap, she licked her lips in preparation for reading, a delicious little flick of her tongue that intrigued him no end.

  “There certainly are a great many articles in this issue,” she said, frowning a bit as she surveyed the contents. “What would you like me to read to you?”

  “Read me the titles that interest you,” he suggested, “and I’ll choose one.”

  “Very well, my lor
d,” she said, and cleared her throat. “‘A description of the emblematical design on the gold box in which the freedom of the city of London was presented to His Royal Highness the Prince of Brunswick.’ Goodness, I wouldn’t think he’d need to be given the freedom. Being a royal prince, I’d rather assume he could go wherever he pleased in London.”

  “He’s not an English prince,” Harry said. “He’s a German-Prussian one, and a soldier, too, responsible for heroic feats in the last war. Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfen-something. I expect he’s been given the freedom of the city because he’s some distant Hanoverian cousin of our own king. His Majesty does like to keep his family about.”

  She looked up, curious. “Have you been presented to His Majesty?”

  “Of course.” Being a duke and one with royal blood as well, his father was often at court, serving as one of the king’s Gentlemen of the Bedchamber. “That is, I don’t recall being formally presented to His Majesty. My father spends much time at court, and frequently took me with him when I was a boy. The palace is much like any other London town house, only larger and grander, and filled with odd folk.”

  “Truly?” she asked, her eyes wide. “Julia said it was a very grand place, the grandest she’d ever seen. She said being presented was the most magnificent moment of her life.”

  “It can also be the most tedious moment, given the size of the crowd,” he said from the experience of one who generally avoided the royal drawing rooms. “But I expect one day they’ll stick white feathers on your head and make you curtsey low, just like all the other noble daughters.”

  “I suppose so,” she said faintly. “Do you wish to hear about the prince’s gold box or not?”

  “Not particularly,” he said. “What else is there?”

  She cleared her throat, and returned to reading. “‘A Description of the Duke of Bridgewater’s navigable canal.’”

  “I’ve seen the canal for myself,” he said, “and a modern marvel it is. But why should I now wish to hear of some scribe’s impressions? The next article, if you please.”