Never Romance a Rake

by Liz Carlyle

  “Just kiss me again,” she whispered. “Vraiment, Kieran, we think too much, you and I.”

  He obliged her, kissing her languidly and thoroughly, then rolled a little away. Camille turned onto her back, still watching him. His gaze drifted down to the slight swell of her belly. His hand settled over it, heavy and warm.

  “What do you think, my dear?” he whispered. “Is there…any chance?”

  Camille hesitated. “It is too soon, chéri.”

  He must have caught the uncertainty in her tone. His gaze jerked up, catching hers. “How much too soon?”

  Camille caught her lip between her teeth. “I…I do not know,” she finally said. “I have no experience in such things.”

  His hands caught hers, squeezing them urgently. “But there is a chance?” he said. “You have a reason to hope?”

  Slowly, she exhaled. “Oui, a reason to hope,” she agreed. “But a very tenuous one.”

  He settled back onto the bed, and slid an arm beneath his head. “Nine months,” he whispered. “It seems an eternity.”

  But to any normal man, it was not an eternity. It was a very short while indeed—and in terms of raising one’s child, it was a mere twinkling of an eye. But to Kieran, perhaps it really would be an eternity.

  Vowing not to think of it—refusing to let a moment of uncertainty cloud her pure and certain joy—Camille drew up the covers, tucked herself against her husband, and fell into a restless sleep.

  Camille passed a night fraught with snatches of half-formed dreams, then awoke to find herself alone when Emily came in to draw the curtains and pour her hot water. The door to Kieran’s room was closed, and though she had not felt him leave her bed, Camille knew he had risen and left the house sometime in the early hours before dawn. In the short weeks since their marriage, she had developed an innate sense of his presence.

  After putting on her best walking dress, a deep burgundy redingote of wool ottoman, which she hoped flattered her coloring, Camille went down to breakfast. Once there, however, mild nausea overcame her, and she left after a slice of dry toast and half a cup of tea. She glanced at the longcase clock as she ascended the steps. Half past eight. Far too early for her purpose this morning.

  She returned to her room to hear Chin-Chin scratching at the connecting door. She opened it to see the butler at Kieran’s washstand, a deeply troubled look upon his face.

  “Good morning, Trammel,” said Camille, scooping up the wiggling dog and settling him across her shoulder. “His lordship left early, I see.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Swiftly, Trammel snatched a towel from the floor, and picked up the basin. Camille watched him suspiciously as Chin-Chin dashed her cheek with a kiss.

  “Have you any idea where he went?”

  “I couldn’t say, ma’am,” said the butler. “He called for his phaeton well before dawn.”

  “His phaeton?” Camille echoed. “Ça alors. Was he in some sort of rush?”

  “I daresay,” said the butler. “His lordship keeps his own counsel, ma’am.”

  “Oui, I noticed,” said Camille dryly.

  Trammel hesitated, then relented. “He did have a pair under the pole, ma’am,” he remarked. “And he had me put up his kit—just in case, he said.”

  “He might be away the night, then.” Camille frowned.

  Trammel smiled wanly. “Well, if you will excuse me, ma’am, I shall—”

  “Wait, s’il vous plaît.” Camille stepped into the room, and looked pointedly at the towel. “How ill was he this morning, Trammel? And please do not pretend. I am, after all, his wife.”

  Something like sympathy sketched across Trammel’s dark face. “Just a touch of nausea, ma’am,” he said. “We must hope that it is nothing.”

  Camille set her shoulder to the door frame and regarded him pensively. “But I think we are both beyond hoping it is nothing,” she softly challenged. “It is—how do you say it?—un maladie du foie?”

  “His liver?’ A little unsteadily, Trammel set the basin down, and this time Camille saw the bright red bloodstain on the towel. “I simply cannot say, ma’am. His lordship does not confide in me. Indeed, he confides in no one—not even Lady Nash.”

  “But he knows what it is, oui?” Camille pressed.

  Trammel lifted one shoulder. “I believe he suspects, ma’am,” he answered. “But his…his habits are unchanged, and one would think—”

  “You mean his drinking?” Camille interjected. “Not to mention the fact that he rarely sleeps? Scarcely eats?”

  The butler’s gaze fell. “Yes, those things,” he agreed. “I find it strange he wouldn’t do—but then, it really isn’t my place, is it? And his lordship is…well, difficult, at best.”

  Camille surveyed him levelly. “Ah, difficult!” she echoed softly. “Perhaps, Trammel, it is time that came to an end?”

  Trammel cast her one last glance—one which seemed to say good luck!—then picked up the basin and hastened from the room.

  Forcing away her grief and fear, Camille spent the morning going over the household accounts, and meeting with Miss Obelienne to sort out the linen press, but she went through the process like an automaton. Her crates had finally arrived from Limousin, sent at Camille’s request by the elderly housekeeper, and together with Emily, Camille busied herself with unpacking them.

  The landscapes she hung in the withdrawing room, assisted by Trammel and one of the footmen. The needlepoint pillows she arranged on Kieran’s bed to give his room some much-needed color. But the rest of the crates could not hold her interest, and by midafternoon, she had sequestered herself in the upstairs parlor to sit by the fire with Chin-Chin in her lap.

  What on earth had prompted Kieran to leave at such a frightful hour this morning? He had not gone merely to one of his low clubs or gaming hells, she was sure. Not in his phaeton—a vehicle made for speed—drawn by two horses. And he had asked Trammel to pack his things—after yet another spate of illness.

  She remembered the urgency of Kieran’s questions last night and absently set a hand over her belly, mimicking the gesture she had so often seen from Lady Nash. Fleetingly, she closed her eyes. It was too soon. It simply was.

  She had hated to disappoint him, given the emotionally wrought day they had shared, and the yearning in his eyes. But however desperately either of them might wish otherwise, a week late—or even a fortnight—meant nothing.

  Except that she had never, ever been so much as a day late. Moreover, she just knew. God help her if she was wrong, but she was simply certain. She was with child—in a world where she knew almost no one. A world where her husband was gravely ill, if not dying.

  It had seemed such a simple thing in the abstract to raise a child with no father, and almost no family. It was the way in which she had been raised, and Kieran, too.

  Well. Perhaps she had just answered her own question. Perhaps that was why it seemed such a horrific fate.

  Camille opened her eyes, and stared at the world beyond her window—the fine brick town houses and glossy, crested coaches which went flying past, their liveried footmen clinging to the rear. That was the world in which her child would live; the world of aristocratic England. Not some far-flung colonial outpost like the West Indies, or the anonymity of rural France.

  With or without two parents, her child would need to be a part of a society in which neither she nor Kieran was entirely comfortable. Which made her errand this morning all the more critical—and Kieran’s absence, perhaps, all the more convenient.

  Camille rose and walked to the window, considering that moment in Hyde Park when she’d first glimpsed Lord Halburne. What was he like, this man her mother had once wed? He had worn a sweeping gray cloak, she recalled, but no hat, having removed it in order to greet two young ladies by the Serpentine Pond. His hair had been snowy white, and at first glance, he’d appeared remarkably tall and thin, but then he had leaned forward to address a little black poodle which one of the ladies held on a leash.

 
Camille wished she could have heard Halburne’s words—or at least his voice. Had he been sincere? Kind? Surely an unkind man would not have wasted his time cooing at a mere dog? It wasn’t much comfort to seize upon, but it was all Camille had. So when she heard the clock strike four, Camille gathered her courage and went back downstairs. As she pulled on her gloves and cloak, she informed Trammel she was going for a long walk. She declined the escort of a footman. This was a deeply personal errand, and one which did not need an audience.

  By noon, rain had swept in from the Channel, drowning all which lay in its path as it made its way toward London. Confined to the house, the Duke of Warneham was in his butler’s office by the great hall at Selsdon Court when a racket arose in the carriage drive beyond.

  “What the devil?” he said, looking up from the papers they had been reviewing.

  Coggins rose. “I shall have a look, Your Grace,” he said, going to the window. He turned almost at once. “It is a phaeton, sir, coming in fast. Looks like he’s taken out the upper gatepost.”

  “The devil!” said Warneham again, striding out and round the corner into the great hall.

  Here, the roar of the storm was louder. Two footmen had already thrown open the door and gone down the steps before him, bearing great black umbrellas with which to greet the guest and protect whatever luggage there might be from the now-torrential rain.

  Warneham glowered down at the familiar, solid black carriage drawing up at the steps, and at the pair of lathered black horses still prancing in the downpour.

  “You!” he shouted irascibly. “You and my damned gateposts! It’s constant carnage, I tell you!”

  The duke was already choosing the words with which he might further lash his friend when Lord Rothewell awkwardly gripped the edge of the phaeton’s calash and attempted to descend—attempted being the operative word, for the baron did not so much leap from the high-perched conveyance as fall forward, almost tumbling onto the graveled drive.

  “Good God!” The duke was out and down the steps in a trice.

  The footmen had tossed down their umbrellas and were hitching Lord Rothewell up by both arms by the time the duke reached him. “Good God,” he said again, shouting over the rain. “What has happened?”

  Despite the calash, Rothewell’s clothes were drenched by the rain, his hat sodden, his heavy black hair plastered. His expression when he looked at his old friend was bleak. “Get me inside,” he rasped. “I need to speak with you.”

  “What were you thinking to ride south into the face of a storm?” the duke demanded when he had the baron ensconced in his private study and was more certain Rothewell was not apt to die. The baron had at first appeared to be in some pain, but was steadier—and a little dryer—now.

  “I didn’t know a storm was brewing.” Rothewell was wrapped in a dry robe by a roaring fire, his expression pensive. “I have some papers in my coat—something I must discuss with you.”

  “And it could not wait?” Warneham had gone to the sideboard and was pouring two tots of brandy. “And never mind the papers, Rothewell. You look ill. Too dashed ill to ride hell-for-leather from London into a drenching rainstorm.”

  The baron looked up and held his gaze as Warneham pressed the brandy into his hand. For an instant, their fingers wrapped round one another’s, and a long, expectant moment passed.

  “Yes, I am ill,” Rothewell finally agreed. “And no. I very much fear, my friend, that this is something which cannot wait.”

  Outside Berkeley Square, the air was cold and heavy with the tang of smoke and fresh horse dung. Camille could feel a strong rain blowing up from the south, tossing the last of the dead leaves along the near-silent streets. An umbrella hooked over her wrist, she set off at a brisk clip, ducking her head against the wind and pulling her long, sweeping cloak close about her.

  In Grosvenor Square, Halburne’s imposing town house seemed to loom up from the incipient autumn mist, daunting as a citadel. And in looking at it, Camille’s heart gave a strange little lurch. This was the house in which her mother had briefly lived. Here, she had begun her life as the Countess of Halburne. A respectable life of wealth and privilege. Could it have been as dreary and loveless as Maman had made it out?

  Her mother’s tragedy aside, the house appeared to be quite the nicest in Mayfair, so it was unlikely Halburne had moved elsewhere in the years since her mother’s leaving. Camille paused on the steps to extract her card, which unfortunately still bore her maiden name, then rang the bell and stiffened her spine. Perhaps Halburne would think better of her for having paid this call and discourage whatever gossip and questions came his way. Or perhaps not. But she would have the satisfaction of having attempted to make peace, and of having taken a little wind out of the sails of society’s gossips.

  The servant who answered the door was old and frail to an almost startling degree, and attired in ill-fitting butler’s garb. He opened his mouth to speak then, to her horror, staggered backward with a strange, guttural sound, barely clinging to the doorknob.

  “Monsieur?” said Camille uncertainly. “Might I help—”

  To her shock, the butler’s eyes rolled back in his head. As if in slow motion, he collapsed in a heap on the rug. The last to go was his hand, which slithered limply off the brass doorknob to the sound of Camille’s short, sharp scream. Her umbrella clattered to the marble floor.

  Camille had no recollection of stepping inside the house, but by the time a footman came rushing down the stairs, she already knelt in the foyer, her cloak puddled about her as she loosened the butler’s starched stock.

  “Mon Dieu, he collapsed!” she said as the servant knelt. “I am so sorry. When I rang the bell, he answered…then he just fell. Is he ill?”

  “No, just old, poor devil.” The footman smacked him lightly on the cheek. “Fothering? Fothering?”

  “Oh, mon Dieu!” Camille whispered again. She had killed Halburne’s butler! Could this ill-conceived visit get any worse?

  “I think he’s all right, miss,” said the footman uncertainly. “But he ought not be answering doors at all. Yank the bellpull, if you please. I’ll need help getting him up.”

  Camille did as he asked. “He’s frightfully pale,” she murmured, as the butler began to groan and flutter his eyes. “Monsieur, can you hear us?” She knelt again by the footman, praying. “I think we must send for a doctor.”

  Just then, a tall form came striding down the hall. “Fothering? Good God! What the devil happened here?”

  Camille looked up into the deep brown eyes of Lord Halburne. He had jerked to a halt halfway across the hall and was looking at her strangely. For the first time she noticed his left sleeve hung empty and was pinned to his coat.

  Swiftly, she rose, heat flooding her face. “I am so very sorry,” she managed. “When he opened the door, your butler collapsed. I do hope it is not his heart.”

  “Who the devil are you?” Lord Halburne barked.

  Something inside Camille withered at his tone. Hastily, she presented her card. A second footman had come to help, and the two of them were lifting the butler under his arms as he moaned.

  “I am Lady Rothewell,” she said, making a quick curtsy. “My card, I fear, is not current.”

  She passed it to him, and he glanced at it. His right hand, she noticed, shook as if palsied. “I see,” he said, his mouth twisting. “Well. My God.”

  He walked to his left and pushed open the door to a large, well-lit drawing room. He was not a pale man by any means, but his color seemed to have drained away. “Kindly take a seat. I will join you once I’ve seen to Fothering.”

  Camille curtsied again. “Merci, my lord.” Clearly he was worried for his servant, as well he should be. Just as clearly, he knew who she was—and he was not pleased to see her.

  Camille’s every nerve was on edge as she awaited Halburne’s return. Through the open door, she could hear Fothering grumbling at the footmen who were helping him up the last of the steps. He had recovered enough
to become querulous, thank God.

  In an attempt to ward off her anxiety, Camille let her gaze roam about the room. It was an elegant, high-ceilinged chamber hung with pale blue watered silk and adorned with a great deal of opulent molding and woodwork. The furniture, surprisingly, was French and heavily gilded, whilst the painted ceiling—a view of the heavens and the apostles—was the work of a near master.

  A matched set of massive full-length portraits flanked the fireplace; to the left a beautiful woman in a high Elizabethan collar carrying a terrier pup in the crook of one arm. In the other hand, a pearl rosary lay across her open palm, the small gold crucifix dangling from her fingers. The right portrait was of a distinguished-looking gentleman with a pointed black beard wearing the stiff, brocade doublet and paned hose of an earlier century. A golden globe and a brass sextant sat beside him on a carved desk. The Halburne dynasty was a long one, it would appear. And a wealthy one, too, given the opulence of the art and décor.

  As her gaze traveled from the paintings to a lovely rosewood pianoforte, Camille heard a noise behind her and whirled about to face the door. Lord Halburne stood upon the threshold, watching her warily. She had the strangest feeling he had been doing so for more than a moment.

  “Your butler,” she uttered. “How is he, my lord?”

  “He will doubtless recover,” said Halburne, coming fully into the room. “At the moment, he is merely bruised and embarrassed. Will you have a seat, Lady Rothewell?”

  “Alors, this has happened before?” asked Camille, taking the chair he indicated.

  Halburne sat down opposite, still holding her card in his hand. “Once, yes,” said the earl coolly. “Fothering has weak blood. He was pensioned, but insists upon working when the regular butler is off.”

  Camille felt a little relieved. “How admirable,” she replied. “I hope, monsieur, I did not give him a fright.”

  Halburne’s next words were blunt. “What do you want of me, Lady Rothewell?”

  Camille could not hold his gaze. “You know who I am, then?”

  “Oh, I rather think I do,” he said tightly. “But perhaps you should explain.”