An Earl's Wager: Regency Romance (Gentlemen and Brides)

by Joyce Alec

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling as if she was so exhausted that she could sleep for days, but also so anxious that she might not sleep for a week.

  The knocking at the door nearly caused her to fall off the bed, but she recovered quickly.

  “Come in,” she said, rubbing her hands over her arms to try and warm herself.

  Though she knew that the cold was coming from inside of herself, not from the room.

  Jane, her beautiful older sister, appeared. Her blonde hair was tied up in a pretty knot at the back of her head, and she wore a thick shawl around her shoulders to keep out the chill that the night had brought.

  “May I join you?” she asked, stepping inside, and closing the door behind her.

  Beatrice relaxed slightly. “Yes, of course.”

  She moved over a little, and Jane came and sat down on the end of the bed beside her.

  The two women smiled at each other, and Beatrice turned and looked back into the fire.

  “How are you doing?” Jane asked, rather placidly.

  Beatrice flinched. Apparently she had not been as convincing as she had hoped.

  She looked sideways at Jane, who was staring at her intently.

  “I'm fine,” Beatrice said, with perhaps a bit too much insistence. “Why would I not be?”

  Jane pursed her lips. “I do not know. You just seemed…tense at dinner. That is all.”

  Beatrice rolled her shoulders like a bird ruffling its wings. “I am fine,” she repeated.

  Jane’s gaze lingered for another moment or so. “Well, I just wanted you to know that if something was going on, maybe something that you did not want to share with everyone else, you can talk to me.”

  Beatrice did not reply, and for one wild moment, she considered telling Jane everything. What a relief it would be to talk about all the pain that had built up inside of her.

  No, she scolded herself. No, she was one of the ones that you thought had made such a poor decision about her own life. You thought she had been so foolish by questioning things so much, and now here you are, not having questioned a thing, and you are a miserable mess.

  She smiled at her sister. “I appreciate you telling me that,” and she made the decision to keep it all to herself. “But everything truly is fine.”

  I have made my own bed, and now I must lie in it. I shall not give them any reason to ridicule me or make me second guess myself.

  Jane searched her face, obviously in disbelief. But there was no way to pry the information from her, and Beatrice looked back at her just as intently.

  I must handle this on my own.

  “All right,” Jane said, and she patted Beatrice’s hand, which lay on her lap. She was glad that her hands were relaxed, and not clenched tightly on the folds of her dress. “I should let you rest. Tomorrow we can talk more?”

  “Of course,” Beatrice said.

  Jane smiled and rose, walking quietly across the room. She turned and looked back at Beatrice over her shoulder. “You have grown much, little sister. I am quite proud of the woman that you are becoming.”

  Beatrice almost laughed out loud, and the look on her face must have looked more like a grimace. “Thank you, Jane.”

  Jane nodded, her face more relaxed, and she closed the door gently behind her.

  Beatrice leaned back on the bed, her arms outstretched over the quilt. She gazed up at the ceiling, and saw the painting that she had done when she was only twelve. It was of the sky above, with swirling clouds and the very tops of trees. When she painted it, she wanted it to look as if she were lying in the middle of a forest clearing. The image brought her a slight amount of comfort, and she realized, with a sudden pang, that she missed it dearly in her own room at her new house.

  You could always paint another, she told herself.

  She felt some tears well up in her eyes, feeling more alone than she ever had before in her life. She balled her hands into fists.

  Your pride will be your ruin, she told herself.

  She had never been at war with herself as much as she was in that moment. She felt angry and defensive. Why would Jane press her like that? Why had she not been able to compose herself well enough? Why was she here in the first place?

  You have to decide if you made the right decision… Although, what will you do if you realize you made a mistake?

  The tears ran down her cheeks, tangling with her hair.

  If you did, then you must return home and face William, and the fact that everything is not as easy as you thought it would be.

  The thought frightened her. How was she supposed to work with him through this when she was so angry with him? When she felt as if he left her out of everything, even if he did not mean any harm? She felt lonely there, and she did not know how to fix it.

  If you made the wrong choice, then you will have to admit it to not only yourself, but to him, and to your entire family. They will know that you are just as much of a hypocrite as your siblings, and that your assessment of them and of their relationships was entirely wrong.

  She groaned. The unsettling state of her mind plagued her well into the night, when the stars twinkled outside, and she felt as if she was a prisoner of her own mind, longing to do nothing but stare at the sky outside with a free heart and mind. But she was constrained to her room, to her own torment that she felt she would never be free from. She could see no way out, and she felt as if she would be trapped in that state of mind for the rest of her life.

  I cannot live like this, she realized. Something has to change before I absolutely lose my mind.

  In the last hours of darkness, just as the first gray light of dawn appeared between the black trees of the forest, Beatrice fell into a fitful sleep, and all she could see was William’s amber eyes, like a burning fire of condemnation and sorrow.

  6

  Tribulation

  A frantic knocking on her door, that seemed to come only moments after she had fallen asleep, startled Beatrice from her slumber.

  “Beatrice? Beatrice, wake up!”

  The voice was urgent and frightened. It cleared her foggy mind of thoughts of frustration almost immediately. She wiped the sleep from her eyes as she crossed the floor to the door.

  She found Jane standing behind it, her face pale and her eyes wide. She looked as if she had just seen a ghost.

  “Jane?” Beatrice asked her. “What has happened?”

  Jane looked almost green, and she snatched Beatrice’s hand and began dragging her down the hallway.

  “It is too hard to explain. I…” Her voice cracked as she spoke. “I will just show you.”

  Beatrice felt her heart begin to thump painfully against her chest. She had never seen Jane in such a state. Her sister, always poised and graceful, was shaky and skittish like a mouse trapped in a corner. Her long blonde hair was untied and flowed down her shoulders in long, thick locks.

  She never leaves her hair down like this…

  And that was when she realized that Jane was also still in her nightgown, her thick wool robe tied over it.

  Beatrice was vaguely aware of the fact that she herself was still in her bare feet, as well as in her own sleeping clothes, but there was little room for embarrassment with the high tension that hung in the air.

  Jane dragged her into one of the guest rooms on the second floor, a room where she had known family to stay when visiting from out of town. It was a small room, with a tall, thick mattress on a four-poster bed frame in the center of the room.

  There were several people in the room: Jane’s husband, John, and her parents all huddled around the bed.

  Beatrice felt her heart sink all the way to her feet.

  Who is in the bed?

  She looked frantically around for Margaret or Agnes, neither of whom she saw. She squeezed Jane’s hand more tightly as Jane drew her into the room.

  “Oh, Beatrice, there you are,” her mother crooned, coming around the bed to meet her. There were tear stains on her cheeks, and he
r eyes were puffy from crying.

  “Mother, what has happened?”

  Her mother gestured to the bed, and Beatrice took a step toward it.

  It felt as if her entire life had just come to a complete standstill. There, lying in the bed, as pale as snow, was…

  “William?”

  Her voice came out in barely a whisper, and she could go no closer to the bed. His dark hair was slightly disheveled, and there was a red streak across his cheek.

  Agnes stood near the head of the bed, a wet cloth that was also stained red in her hand, dabbing his forehead gently with it.

  His breathing sounded labored, and his eyes were not open.

  “What…” This cannot be happening. “How…?”

  She felt the room tilt, and soon, she was being ushered to a chair in the corner of the room, beside a small table with several candles of varying sizes, all lit. Jane was still holding her hand.

  “He was found early this morning by his footman along the side of the road, who had dropped you off yesterday afternoon. He left for home just as it was getting dark, insisting that he get back. He recognized William’s jacket immediately, and the footman assumed that he was on his way here. William’s horse was nearby. The footman immediately brought him and the horse back here so we could help,” her mother explained.

  Jane’s great blue eyes reflected the flickering light from the candles. “They just arrived, not even an hour ago. There was a ruckus and I went to see what was happening and then came to get you as soon as I saw who they brought into the house.”

  Beatrice could not find her voice to reply, or even words to respond.

  “He has been badly injured, though we are not sure how much so. Your father sent for the doctor as soon as they arrived, and we have been trying to keep him warm,” her mother added. “He has a very high fever, and I think one of his legs is broken. His chest is bruised, so perhaps some broken ribs.”

  A still numbness overcame Beatrice like a frost, and it was almost as if none of this was actually happening to her.

  This has to be a dream… there is no way that this is actually happening to me. That cannot be my husband in that bed over there, looking as pale as a corpse.

  Her chest heaved with a sob, and she clenched her nightgown beneath her fingers, her knuckles growing white.

  There was no feeling, no pain, no anger. Just an utter disbelief, and an unacceptance that settled over her heart as she stared at the man in the bed.

  “Beatrice?”

  She slowly shifted her eyes to Jane, who was kneeling in front of her. At some point, Jane had let go of her hand.

  “Are you all right?”

  Beatrice looked away and looked back at her husband.

  The one question that she was too afraid to ask, but knew that she needed to know the answer to, danced across her mind, filling it with both hope and despair.

  Is he going to survive?

  But the words that came out of her mouth were much different. “What… what happened to him?”

  Jane and her mother exchanged glances. “We do not know, dear. The footman did not see anyone around.”

  “Apparently he was just lying on the side of the road, wet to the bone from the rain, and the footman kept saying how he was so afraid that he was…”

  Jane’s voice cut off from a scalding look from their mother. She dropped her head.

  Dead. Jane finished her sentence for her in her mind, and a chill ran up her spine and all the way down to her fingertips.

  “But he was not, and still is not,” her mother went on more firmly, still glaring at Jane. “When the doctor arrives, we shall have more answers; I am sure of it.”

  They did not have to wait long before the doctor arrived. He lived close, and came as soon as he was called.

  The room was cleared at his request, and somehow, Beatrice found herself in the room across the hall, seated on the chair near the window, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  The rest of the family was speaking in hushed tones, not loud enough for her to hear, but it did not matter. She already knew what they were saying, and she did not think that they were foolish enough to not be aware of that. But she was thankful for their thoughtfulness.

  She would much rather be alone with her thoughts.

  The one emotion that kept welling up inside of her was guilt. Utter, crystal clear, unwavering guilt. She had left, and what other explanation could she come up with that he had come after her? And without a carriage, no less? She had had the carriage, of course, so he would have had no choice if he wished to get to her.

  So it was her fault that this horrible thing had happened to him. It was her fault that he was so pale and wounded and injured. And it made her sick to her stomach to even think of it. And no one knew why he had decided to follow the way he had. It was irresponsible and unwise, especially in the weather. What was so urgent that he had to come alone?

  She had heard all the whispers and all of the questions from her family in that small room as they waited. None of them had any idea how she had left home in such a rush and how he was coming, most likely, to make amends.

  Even though she should have been the one doing that. She had never even told him how she felt before that day. William seemed to care about her happiness. Why did she not give him more of an opportunity to make things right? She did not need to leave.

  There was too much to process all at once to cry, or even to feel afraid. She felt only a very silent, uneasy numbness that would not allow her to think very much. She felt as if her very mind might start pulling apart at the seams if she could.

  The doctor came in a short time later, and everyone rose to their feet.

  Beatrice did not.

  The doctor looked around at them all, and then his eyes fell on Beatrice. His bushy white moustache twitched, and a look of concern and pained kindness passed over his face.

  “Come along, my dear. I should speak to you privately.”

  The room became very still, and Beatrice was aware of every eye on her. She swallowed hard, her knees feeling like custard, and she staggered across the room to him.

  He gestured into the hall, and she stepped outside with him.

  He looked at her with concerned eyes behind his spectacles. The doctor sighed and set his jaw. “I am sorry to tell you that your husband is not doing well.”

  We already knew that much…

  “He has three broken ribs, a broken leg, several lacerations on his face and back, and he has lost a lot of blood. He has a very high fever, and if it does not break soon, it will mean an infection, and it may be too late for me to do anything to treat it.”

  She could only stare at him.

  “I have done what I can to brace his leg. I also wrapped his ribs tightly to prevent further damage. I have given him some medicinal herbs to help with the fever, as well as some salves on his wounds. Aside from that, only time will tell how well he will heal, if at all.”

  She felt her heart constrict.

  “What do you think happened?”

  The question had been one that she had been puzzling in her own mind since she had seen him, and she felt that the answer, even if simply an assumption or hypothesis, would give her some measure of peace. And she would take any measure of that in her current state.

  He seemed surprised by it, but not taken entirely off guard. “Well, given his current state, where his footman found him, and the nature of his injuries, I would guess that he was hit by a horse and carriage.”

  Beatrice gasped, her hands moving to her throat.

  The doctor held up his hands in protest. “Now, now, I do not know for sure. His injuries are severe, and a horse could easily trample a man if the person driving the carriage did not see him.”

  “How could someone do that?”

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “That I do not know. But I do know that it would have been difficult to see him in the dark. The weather was not very pleasant, and he was wearing a da
rk jacket, I’m told. It could have camouflaged him from whoever hit him.”

  “You don’t think…” she began, some of her new fears rising to the surface. “You do not think that someone did this on purpose, do you?”

  “Now, my dear, there is no point in wasting your energy worrying about the many possibilities of what happened. We may never know, but I do not think it is wise to assume the worst of people.”

  “But they just left him lying there, on the ground, bleeding to death!”

  Her voice had risen suddenly to a shrill volume, and her hands were shaking.

  “If it was not on purpose, then why leave a man to die out in the cold like that?”

  The doctor put his hands on her shoulder and attempted to steady her. “Easy now, my dear, take a deep breath.”

  Beatrice almost shoved the man off, but she knew that she was allowing herself to be swept away by her feelings.

  He encouraged her to take deep breaths to calm herself. She did so reluctantly, and eventually, she was able to breathe steadily again.

  “Now, there is no time to get angry at what has happened. We must deal with what is happening here and now, and focus on that. Do you understand?” he asked her calmly.

  She looked back into his face, and she nodded her head.

  “Good,” he replied as he glanced at the door behind himself, and as if he remembered why they were standing in that hall in the first place, he frowned.

  “My dear, I think it would be best if you went in the room and spent some time with him. I…” He trailed off. “I do not know how much time he has left.”

  The words hit her like a gale force wind, and yet she stayed firmly planted where she was.

  Her internal state was like a hurricane, a sudden force that was uncontrollable, a pain and anguish so acute that she felt as if she might pass out from it all. But her outside was calm and serene. She was vaguely aware that she had thanked the doctor and turned to the room where William resided.

  The doctor informed her that he would tell her family, and that they would all give them some space and time alone together.