A Much Compromised Lady

by Shannon Donnelly

  She did so. Her hands chilling and her nerves taut.

  Ah, but this seemed almost as much a risk as the one Christo sought in confronting their uncle. She clung, however, to the memory of the kindness in her cousin’s voice from when they had met in the churchyard. And though he had chattered on like a fool, she could not help but feel he had meant what he said when he had offered aid. And he had said the world weighed heavily on him.

  She knew that feeling too well of late.

  The door opened. Pulse quickening, she rose from the settee beside the unlit fire. And she realized she had seen him only as a shadow by moonlight.

  Tall with wavy brown hair cut short, he would have been a handsome man if not for the pox marks scaring his cheeks, leaving them rough and cratered. Lean and long-limbed, he dressed with casual disregard in a baggy, dark brown coat, buff breeches, and unpolished riding boots. He wore a purple handkerchief knotted around his throat and his white shirt points drooped over it. His buff waistcoat also looked too large for him, as if perhaps he had been ill of late and had lost weight.

  As he came toward her, his hands outstretched, eyes the color of polished maple warmed and she found herself thinking she had not been wrong to trust him.

  But his smile faded and his step faltered as his glance caught on the damaged box in her hands.

  He frowned, and looked at her, his dark eyebrows tilting up in the center and slanting downwards at the edges.

  “I ought to have a quote for this, but all I can seem to think of are questions and more questions. Come, but you must sit down. There is a story here, and you had best start talking before I talk too much. Do sit, please. And thank you for coming to me. If I had known you were this beautiful, I would not have been so bold. But I am glad you are and that you did.”

  She did not sit down, but thrust the box at him. “I see you recognize this.”

  He nodded and took it from her. “It was whole last I saw it, but, yes, I know it. Only how does it come to you, and in pieces. Oh, dear, here is the pheasant feather I tucked away. It was my pet, but father had it killed for dinner. I still cannot eat wild bird, but you do not care about such things. You have your own story to go with this, I expect. ‘Thou messenger of sympathies...’ That is Shelley, but you probably know him as little as you do Keats.”

  She scowled at him. “You are not making this easier!”

  He smiled, and a rare warmth stole into his eyes and almost made her forget those marks upon his cheeks. “I know. I do beg your pardon. I am striving to. My mother used words to sooth, and I inherited that from her. It drives my father wild as well.”

  He gestured to the settee. “Do sit, please, and tell me everything, and I promise to stop my infernal chattering and do nothing but listen.”

  She did so.

  He sat in the chair next to the settee, the box on his lap. And he listened.

  At first, she hesitated over her words, uncertain how much to say, but no judgment flashed in his eyes. His face remained passive, and his body leaning slightly toward her. It was as if he listened with every part of his being. And so the words began to flow.

  In the end, she told him everything.

  His jaw tightened once when she mentioned her father’s death. And some fleeting emotion passed through his eyes when she spoke of the attack that left her mother blind. But he said nothing. Not a word of denial or outrage. Almost as if he had somehow expected to hear this.

  He kept one hand—narrow, with tapering fingers—over the box as she spoke.

  When she finished, he sat very still a moment.

  Glancing down at the box, he shook his head. “I never knew. ‘While yet a boy I sought for ghosts...’ And if I had known...”

  Rising suddenly, he left the box upon his chair and went to the bookcase. He hefted out a book bound in black leather, rifling its pages as he spoke.

  “I was ten when my father showed me the Dawes Dragonbox, saying it would come to me as his heir. I found it endlessly fascinating. It did not hurt, of course, that father seemed obsessed with it as well—it is a badge of title, you see. And then I found the mechanism and opened it—rather more delicately than you—and I found this.”

  The book had fallen open, and he came back to her, holding out a folded paper.

  Glynis took it and unfolded the thick paper. Fine copperplate writing stood out sharply, black ink on vellum. Her glance traveled down to the signatures at the bottom of the marriage license. She let out a deep breath.

  Her mother’s dream had not been wrong—her mother had not been wrong. Her father had married her mother. It was all as she’d been told.

  Smiling, Bryn sat next to her on the settee. “Welcome to the family, cousin. You look very like your father. I can see it now. His portrait hangs in the great hall, rather hidden away, I am afraid, but perhaps I shall be able to show you someday.”

  She looked at him, frowning. “Why? Why would you give this to me?”

  His eyebrows tilted up in the center again and he regarded her, his expression take aback. “How can I not? It was another matter when I thought this an issue without issue. I almost gave this, in fact, to my father, but he was in one of his tempers—as was I about my poor pheasant when I first came across this. So, as my petty act of revenge, I tucked my own treasures into the box, but I could not very well destroy family papers, so I put them where they would not be found someday by someone other than my father.”

  Glynis glanced at the book he held.

  Bryn smiled, but his eyes did not warm. “Shakespeare. My father thinks the only verse anyone needs read is the Old Testament. Poetry is for the weak-minded.”

  She looked up at him. “My brother has gone to see him.”

  Bryn’s smile left his face. “That I would not recommend. I think—I pray—your father’s death was an accident. But, in any case, my father will not welcome either of you. He is a proud man—’burning pride and high disdain’—and at the least he will make your lives miserable if he can. He is rather good at that.”

  She heard the mix of regret and resentment in his voice, but her worry for Christo overrode all other concern.

  She lifted the marriage lines. “There is no need for my brother to have to face your father anywhere but in a court of law once this is in Christo’s hands. But I must get it to him before he goes to Nevin House.”

  Frowning, Bryn nodded. “When did they leave? Hours ago? It is not likely that we shall arrive beforehand, but the toll roads will slow them, and if we travel faster and lighter—but are you certain you will not allow me to take these to him?”

  She shook her head and her hands closed around the paper. She ought to allow him to take them. She knew it. But she could not bear the thought of letting this proof out of her sight, or out of her grasp. Now she had proof of her true heritage, she would not wiling part with it.

  Bryn nodded and stood. “Very well, but it will be a hard ride.”

  Shocked, she looked up at him. “Ride?”

  “Yes. It’s our only chance to gain some speed. You do ride, do you not?”

  Glynis stood. “I can do whatever I must.” And she prayed that was true.

  In a matter of minutes, Bryn had set the household into a bustle with orders for horses, his hat and the pound notes from his desk, and saddlebags with cheese and bread packed for them.

  “We can eat as we ride—it will save time,” he told her.

  All of it seemed to happen in an instant, and yet Glynis fretted, too aware that Christo had left with St. Albans hours ago.

  Her cousin found her a cloak—in case night, or rainfall, caught them on the road—and he led her to the stables. She stared at two enormous hunters as they were led from the stable, and thought how high up they were, and what a long way from their backs to the ground. She pushed up her chin. For Christo, she could ride anything.

  She allowed her cousin to toss her into the side saddle. And after an uncertain and uncomfortable few miles, with her clinging to her gelding
’s mane, she decided that her cousin had as good an eye as Christo for a comfortable mount.

  They changed horses at Ross, after crossing the Wye. And changed again at Highnam, well before crossing the Severn. To Glynis the pounding of hooves on the dry, hard road became an urgent drumming. Faster. Faster. Faster. But Bryn kept the pace to a steady canter, with rests to walk between, saying it served far better than blowing their mounts with laming gallops.

  At Burford, bone-weary, Glynis decided she would give anything for the comfort of St. Albans’s coach. And for its speed. She mounted a restive chestnut, far too tired now to worry about her weak skills with a horse, or how high she sat, or anything else other than to reach London and have this trip finished.

  Her horse followed Bryn’s. They kept mostly to roads now. The wooded paths that Bryn had taken in Herfordshire and Glocestershire were left behind. At last, the green of Ealing Common came into view, and she could glimpse the smoke of London’s sky in the gathering twilight.

  They had ridden for so long Glynis had lost count of the hours. Lightheaded from fatigue, she took strength from the litany: Not long. Not long to Winters House. And she could not help but think of the bath St. Albans had offered her when she had first arrived, and how she ached for one now.

  But soon Christo would have the papers in his hands and would feel no need to confront their uncle. If only they were not too late.

  Night had claimed London’s dark streets as they set a brisk trot through the city outskirts, and Bryn slowed their pace. As they neared Mayfair, lamp boys dodged out to offer to light their path with lanterns, and flambeaus burned before the great houses.

  Gratitude warmed her that her cousin could lead the way through the maze of streets, but when he drew rein before an unfamiliar mansion, she frowned at him.

  “This is not Winters House.”

  Bryn swung off his horse and came around to her mount’s side. “No, I thought it might be best if—”

  A crack like thunder echoed dully from the house, interrupting Bryn, startling the horses and Glynis. Bryn swung around. With a muffled oath, he dashed up the steps to the house, leaving his horse standing in the street, its reins dangling.

  Struggling with her skirts and the reins, it took Glynis precious moments to be free of the side saddle’s pommel. She slid off her mount to find a footman hurrying from the house.

  “Mr. Dawes said I was—”

  “Here, hold them,” she said, thrusting the reins at the footman. Lifting her skirts, she ran up the steps to the house.

  She did not have to ask for directions. Servants stood in the hall, voices hushed with speculation and gazes locked on the broad, circular staircase. Glynis ran up the steps.

  She knew the sound of a pistol firing.

  In the upper hall, she paused. She heard the muffled thud of Bryn’s booted feet and ran after him. Off to her right a door stood opened and light poured into the corridor. Glynis stopped, her hand going to her tight, tight throat.

  Please, let it not be Christo, she thought, pulse racing. And if it was St. Albans who lay bleeding on the floor, she would kick that wretched gaujo, she thought, almost sick with fear for him.

  Only it was neither man who lay on the floor.

  Shock froze her in the doorway. Bryn stood there, and his arms came around her, as if to block her view, but she had already glimpsed what he tried to shield her from seeing.

  Francis Dawes, Lord Nevin lay on his back on a rose-patterned carpet, his face mottled by purple splotches and his sightless eyes open, bulging and dulled by the lack of any spirit to light them.

  Glynis swallowed convulsively, and her stomach clenched. Her hand came up of its own to grip her cousin’s arm. Taking a deep breath, she forced her gaze away from the man who had been her uncle—the man who had wanted her and her family gone from this world, but who now lay dead before her.

  Looking up, she realized the gentleman in formal evening attire—the one that she had not recognized at first and who now bent over the late Francis Dawes, his hand over the dead man’s heart—was her brother.

  Clean shaven, hair cut, immaculate in black coat, pantaloons and white shirt, cravat and waistcoat, he looked...he looked like a gaujo lord himself.

  Her stare was drawn to the other man in the room. Casually, as if he were at a shooting range, St. Albans stood near a desk, his back to the door, with a smoking pistol in his hand.

  “You shot him,” Glynis said, her voice dull. She did not know if it was relief that weakened her arms and legs, or terror that not even an earl could escape hanging for murder.

  At the sound of her voice, St. Albans turned. He glanced at Dawes, irritated. Bad enough to have Dawes bursting in on this scene, but he had brought Glynis with him. Well, what was done, was done. He glanced back down at Nevin’s body.

  “Well, Gypsy?” St. Albans asked, turning to the troublesome brother.

  Christo rocked back on his heels, and shook his head.

  St. Albans nodded. “I thought as much.” He turned to Bryn Dawes. “My condolences, and my congratulations, Lord Nevin. The shot will take some explaining, but you may leave that to me. However, a physician of some sorts must be called upon for an official verdict of death.”

  Grim faced, Bryn nodded. He glanced at Glynis. “You had best come with me.”

  “No. My place is here. With my brother.”

  He glanced at her, worried, but he left without looking back into the room.

  Glynis also did not look at the body on the floor as she stepped into the room. “Now I want to hear the truth. Why did you shoot him?”

  “Phen,” Christo said, rising to his feet. “No one was shot.”

  Frowning, Glynis glanced at her brother. “But I heard...”

  “You heard a pistol report,” St. Albans said. “I presume we are all interested in getting through this as easily as possible. So it had best be a bet to shoot the wick off a candle—that will explain the shot and the hole in the wall. The rest is honest enough for most—the late Francis Dawes’s heart seized and failed, and he died.”

  St. Albans glanced over to find his Gypsy frowning at him. “What, disappointed that I did not murder him, after all?”

  Glynis shook her head. She put a hand up to rub her temple. Nothing seemed to be what it appeared. A shot fired, but no one had been hit. Francis Dawes dead, but of natural causes. Christo came over to St. Albans, and she watched, her head spinning now, her brother put out his hand.

  St. Albans glanced down at it, moved the pistol to the other hand and took Christo’s grip.

  “I never forget a life debt, gaujo.”

  “Life debt?” Glynis repeated, then glanced from St. Albans and back to her brother again. “What is not being said here?”

  St. Albans dropped her brother’s hand and turned to her. “Nothing you need bother about. You heard the story that you must repeat if you have any interest in ever claiming any respectability for your family and—”

  “Claiming! Christo, I almost forgot.” Glynis reached up her sleeve to untuck the paper she had hidden there. She thrust it at her brother, and glanced at St. Albans. “Our cousin, Bryn, found it years ago—hidden in the box.”

  She had the satisfaction of seeing surprise flicker in St. Albans’s eyes for an instant, before his expression blanked. “Well, it seems I have congratulated the wrong Lord Nevin.”

  Christo glanced up, his expression dazed. “Is it real, phen?”

  She nodded.

  Before she could say more, their cousin came back with servants and a physician, bringing chaos with him. Glynis found herself swept aside at first, with servants leading her first one place and then the next, and finally she was led outside to a carriage and bundled in next to St. Albans.

  Numbness weighted her arms and legs as if she had been swimming against a river’s current and could swim no longer, but this day was not over. Leaning back against the velvet cushions, she stared at St. Albans through half-closed eyes.

 
“He tried to shoot Christo,” she said, her voice sounding flat to herself and as hollow as she felt. It was not a question. She knew the answer. Just as she knew St. Albans did not care for her brother—but he had saved her brother’s life. He had taken the gun from Francis Dawes—it had been the struggle over that pistol that had made the man’s heart fail. She knew it, just as she knew she owned this man who sat beside her far too much.

  The horses trotted past the great houses of Mayfair with their burning lights, so that she saw St. Albans in brief glimmers. She could see his profile, and that he lazed against the coach seat as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  He lifted a pale hand. “Your brother has an uncanny ability to inspire the desires in others to bring out pistols, so it was not an unexpected reaction.”

  She frowned at him. “You knew this would happen?”

  “Let us say, rather, that I anticipated the possibilities.”

  She thought about this a moment, her feelings tangled. Without St. Albans, it would have taken Christo much longer to reach London. But he would have gone. She had no doubt he had intended a confrontation with Francis Dawes--Christo had planned it from the moment he had seen that the box lay empty of any marriage lines. And if St. Albans had not taken Christo to London, would she have gone to her cousin for aid? Would she have found the marriage lines?

  St. Albans’s actions had saved more than Christo’s life. He had given her what she wanted. But still she wanted more. She wanted to why he had done what he did. His reasons were important.

  “You knew Christo would be in danger if he went on his own, and so you went with him. Even though you do not like him, you went. Why?”

  His voice sounded clipped and irritated as he answered, “Because I rather thought it would upset you to have your brother dead, and that was not part of my design.”

  “So you admit it? You actually considered someone else’s feelings?”

  “No, I considered your feelings. I do not intend to make this a habit with every person of my acquaintance, but I seem to have made it a habit with you.”

  In the darkness, she glared at him. “You do not sound very happy about that.”