Good God, what had he drunk to leave him so ill?
He hadn’t been this stale drunk since his university days. Well, aside from perhaps that one evening with the bottle of absinthe, after a French import had been impounded on the coast of Africa.
“Thomas...” The valet’s name came out in a slur.
Regardless, Thomas appeared beside the bed. “How are you feeling, Your Grace?”
“Like I’ve gone for a jaunt on the Thames and then been stampeded by a herd of elephants.”
Thomas tsked to himself and helped Charles sit upright.
The room spun and the sun streaming in through one window seared into Charles’s eyes.
Thomas pushed a glass of something murky and foul-smelling toward him. “Drink this. It’ll help.”
Charles grunted. “Isn’t it drinking which has got me to where I am presently?”
Thomas smirked in that obnoxiously optimistic, affable way of his. “One would assume so...though I find it odd that only one drink would cause you such misery.”
“Only one drink?” Charles slugged the bitter mixture down. It was thicker than he had expected and stuck in the back of his throat, no matter how many times he swallowed.
Thomas, angel that he was, passed Charles a cup of tea. He gave his servant a grateful look and let the hot liquid scald away the remnants of the foul concoction. His tongue prickled with the effects of a righteous burn, but it was a far cry better than that awful unpleasantness.
“You had a glass once you returned from the Countess of Westix, Your Grace.” Thomas took the empty tea cup. “More?”
Eleanor’s mother.
Charles’s mind snagged on a troubling thought. Why had he gone to see that devil of a woman?
The single thought tugged and the rest came tumbling back in a great rush. He had finally agreed to wed Eleanor. He would have her and the journals. Their engagement was to be announced that night.
“Reply to Lady Canterbury, if you will, Thomas.” Charles sagged back against his bed. “Inform her that I will be attending the ball tonight.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but the ball was yesterday.”
Charles jerked upright. “Yesterday?”
Thomas nodded. “You fell asleep in your study after having called upon the Countess of Westix. I left you sleeping as I found you for two hours, then finally brought you to your bed. You slept on through the night.” Thomas frowned. “I don’t understand it. The bottle only appeared to have one measure taken from it.”
The blood drained from Charles’s face and left him cold. They were not yet married and already he had left her abandoned.
“Eleanor. The ball. I have to go to her.”
Charles swung his legs over the bed. When he rose his legs did not seem steady enough to support him, and he had to catch himself on the mattress to keep from falling.
“Not like this.” Thomas shook his head. “Whatever was in that bottle did not agree with you.”
“Damn it—what bottle?” Charles growled.
“In your study. The one you received as a gift. I thought you knew who had sent it?”
The memory swam up in Charles’s mind now. The fine bottle of brandy...the note welcoming him home and signed with the stamped gold Adventure Club insignia of a compass. He’d thought it a lark—a jest from Eleanor.
Unease blared through the fog in his mind.
Something wasn’t right.
In fact, something was very, very wrong.
He staggered to the edge of the bed and held onto the bedpost for support.
“Please, Your Grace.” Thomas rushed to his side. “You are not well.”
“I daresay I was drugged, Thomas.” Charles staggered to the door and burst through it. “I have to go to my study.”
Thomas was immediately beside him and he slid Charles’s arm over his steady shoulders. They made their way thus to the study, where everything appeared as Charles had left it. He pulled his arm from Thomas, steadier now that the valet’s brew had begun to take effect. The liquid had been dreadful, but it apparently worked miracles.
His study was perfect. Too neat. Especially his desk, which all the servants knew better than to touch, even for cleaning.
The five journals strewn haphazardly over Charles’s desk were missing. Only the bottle Thomas had mentioned remained.
Charles’s stomach plunged to his toes, for the journals were not the only items missing. So too was the key.
Charles gave a groan of despair and sank to the floor.
“Your Grace...” Thomas tried to pull him from where he’d fallen to his knees.
“The journals...the key. All of it.” Charles stared dismally at the desk. “Gone.”
Thomas regarded the expanse of empty desk. “The key... You don’t mean that bit of metal with holes in it, do you?”
Charles dropped his head to his chest. “Yes. It is the only way I’ll ever know where the location of the stone might be.” Thomas snorted a choked laugh and Charles glared up at him. “What’s so damnably funny?”
The valet’s face immediately smoothed. “Forgive me. Only it was stuck to your face when I pulled you up to stand. I tried to peel it off and had quite a time extracting it from where it was plastered to your cheek.” His mouth twitched and went straight, then twitched again. “You had dots all about your face where the holes had settled for so long they’d left marks.”
His face contorted into an exaggerated frown before curling up into a smile, and he covered a laugh with a very unconvincing cough. As he described it, the scene did sound rather humorous. But the most important fact of all from the story was that the key was still in Thomas’s possession.
“Do you have it?” Charles asked. “Were the journals gone when you found me?”
Thomas helped him to his feet. “The journals were not there, but I do have the key.” He pulled open one of the drawers and withdrew the flat bit of metal. “Here it is, Your Grace.”
He approached the desk, lifted the bottle and sniffed.
He scowled. “Laudanum.”
“Are you sure?” Charles asked.
“My mother was stuck to the stuff when I was a boy. I’d know the smell of it anywhere.” He grimaced toward the bottle. “This was no accident.”
Accident or not, Charles had failed Eleanor when it was most important that he be at her side. His heart slithered into his roiling stomach.
“An investigation will have to wait for later,” Charles said grimly. “Get me dressed—and quickly. I must go to Lady Eleanor.”
“Your Grace, you need rest.”
But Charles would not listen to protests. Not when Eleanor no doubt assumed he’d thoroughly failed her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
By the time Charles made his way to Westix Place it was long past an acceptable hour for morning calls. In fact the ladies were most likely readying themselves for their constitutional in Hyde Park. He could recall Eleanor so vividly from those times they’d walked together, with the outdoors making her green eyes sparkle and her cheeks rosy...
He waited in the foyer for the butler to announce him, despite the servant’s discernible disapproval. After a worrisome length of time had passed the butler reappeared.
“Forgive me, Your Grace. I have been told to advise you that Lady Eleanor will not be taking callers.”
Charles’s stomach knotted. She was home, then. “I understand,” he said at last.
But, damn it, he did not. He couldn’t bear the idea of Eleanor being there and his being unable to see her. He had abandoned her, and now he was without the opportunity to offer an explanation.
By God, he would not let this be the end of everything they’d pursued together.
The butler held open the door for Charles to leave. But Charles did not leave. Instead he dashed through t
he foyer to where the stairs arced up to the second level.
The butler was amazingly fast for his age, and sprinted ahead of Charles to block the stairs.
“I don’t wish to fight you,” Charles said between gritted teeth.
“And I won’t have you harming the ladies of this house.” The butler did not move.
Charles tried to force his way around the older man—to no avail. Damn. But there was another way around the older man.
“Forgive me.” Charles pushed the servant to the right, careful not to hurt him. The butler staggered through an open door, which Charles swung closed, twisting the key and pulling it free. The butler began banging on the door, but Charles did not wait to see if it drew attention and instead quickly dashed up the stairs.
“Eleanor?”
He shoved through the first door to find a water closet. Empty, thank God, for that might truly have been an unforgivable offense. He tried a second door and found a room filled with trunks strewn about, bursting with colorful gowns and simple day dresses.
Eleanor’s maid appeared, screamed, and threw the slipper she was holding at him. The red satin dancing slipper bounced ineffectually off his chest and landed soundlessly on the carpet.
“Please,” he begged, ignoring the inept assault. “Lady Eleanor. Where can I find her?”
The woman gaped at him. “Your Grace, you most certainly—”
“I have to see her. Please.”
Desperation scrabbled over him. For all he knew the Watch had been notified of his forcible entry. He might have only minutes to plead his case.
“I was drugged last night. Robbed. I couldn’t come. I only woke up an hour ago. I fear... I fear I have let her down.”
The maid’s face lost its harsh resentment and she pressed her palms to her heart.
“I have most certainly let her down,” Charles muttered, more to himself than the woman.
“You have indeed disappointed me.”
Eleanor spoke from behind him. He whirled around to find her standing in the doorway of what seemed to be her dressing room. The mass of her gorgeous red hair was bound in a simple knot atop her head, with several loose ringlets spilling over her shoulders like fine silk.
“Your presence here is unwelcome and highly inappropriate.” She pointed to the open door to her chamber. “I’m asking you to leave.”
Charles didn’t bother to move. He wouldn’t—at least not until he’d said his piece. “I had to see you, Eleanor. I was drugged last night.” He shook his head. “Yesterday afternoon. Before I was to prepare for the ball. For seeing you.”
Eleanor folded her arms over her chest, her stubborn chin set decisively.
“I thought you’d sent me the brandy,” he rushed on. He looked toward the door, expecting a small army of footmen to appear and haul him away. “It was a gift and it had the Adventure Club’s compass on the card. I thought... I thought it was from you.” He grimaced, knowing his story made him sound mad. “When I awoke only an hour ago the journals were gone.”
She straightened. “Gone?”
“Stolen,” he amended grimly. “And I’ve the devil of a headache. Apparently the brandy was laced with a heavy dose of laudanum. I don’t remember much after arriving home from here yesterday afternoon. It’s all hazy.”
Her shoulders relaxed somewhat. “What about the key?”
“It was hidden, and thus was not taken.” Hidden under his face, that was, but he was not about to share as much. “They most likely didn’t know to look for it.”
He drew the stiff metal key from his jacket pocket and looked around the room once more, really noticing its state of disarray for the first time. The drawers of her dressing table were pulled out and the trunk beside it half full of various bottles and pots. Gowns and shoes were laid out over the blue silk coverlet on the bed, arranged in neat order beside yet another trunk.
“We won’t be staying in London.” Eleanor’s tone was solemn. “Charles, we’re ruined.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lord Ledsey saw me going into Lottie’s and warned the Earl of Devonington away from me during the ball. Everyone heard, of course.” A pained look creased her face. “We were asked to leave.”
Charles winced. He had not been there to protect her from what had to be the worst night of her life.
She strode to the bed and let her fingertips sweep over the delicate beadwork along the sleeves of one of the gowns. “We’re going to Westix Manor, where we will most likely remain. This was to be my last Season anyway. Most likely this is my last day in London.”
She was leaving? Everything in Charles went on high alert. Damn it, he had not come all this way to see her slip through his fingers.
“Eleanor, this does not change anything for me.”
“I am a pariah, Charles. There will be no grand wedding at St. George’s, nor banns read.” She shook her head. “This was all just...ridiculous.”
Her voice caught and she turned away from him.
This was all his fault. If he had been there he could have protected her somehow. He had to make it right.
He gritted his teeth. “It was not all ridiculous, Eleanor. Not to me.” Charles closed the distance between them and drew her toward him. “We can leave on our own. Now. We can go to Gretna Green. No one there will give a fig about Lady Canterbury’s ball or the damned gossip.” He stroked a hand over her face and reveled in how her green eyes softened when they met his. “You need not be ruined.”
Eleanor cast him a chagrined expression. A lock of red hair had slipped from the loose knot and now fell becomingly over her forehead. “Gretna Green... Of course. Because it is near the castle.”
“The castle?”
“Comlongon Castle.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Where the journals are. The entire reason you even came here. They’re the only thing you ever think of.”
Yes. Of course. The journals. Though the thought came as a surprise, for it suddenly struck him that in all his panic over having abandoned Eleanor he had not once thought of those journals in Scotland. Yet again, he had thought only of her.
* * *
Was Eleanor mad? Was she truly trying to dissuade the Duke from continuing with their agreement? Marrying Charles was the only option she had, aside from being ruined.
Charles watched her with a curious expression, one set somewhere between concern and—dared she think it?—tenderness.
“I was not there to protect you,” he said. “Let me make this right.”
“It’s not your responsibility to make it right, Your Grace.”
Though even as she said the words her voice faltered. What was it about this man that drew out her emotions? They rushed through her veins unbidden and left her thoughts scattered. This man who had promised so much and made her experience life with more color, more vivacity than she had known possible.
She put a hand to her brow to still the chaos churning within. “Charles. Please...”
He stepped toward her and tentatively reached for her hand. She looked up at him, reminded again of how very tall he was. And how terribly appealing, with his brilliantly blue eyes. The tenderness there was unmistakable now, far outweighing the concern, and it threatened to undo her.
If she were a smart woman she would offer to sell him the journals at an exorbitant price. And yet here, held in his gaze, she found she could not properly speak. Nor did she pull her hand away when his fingers met hers, gloveless and naked. His touch sent a tingle of warmth up her arm where it radiated outward.
“Marry me, Eleanor. Not to save yourself from ruin but for our mutual compatibility.” He slid a side glance at where Amelia stood, clutching her hands over her chest in rapt attention. “In all things,” he added with discreet intimacy.
Eleanor’s breath quickened. How could she deny the passion between them, and the candor th
ey’d shared? And yet could she live with the riot of feelings he set loose within her? He would leave often, as her father had done. She would have to expect it and ward off any swaying toward love. To protect herself. She had previously assumed love to be something of stories. She knew now its existence as well as its danger.
“Yes, Charles,” she answered in a quiet voice.
Amelia gave a little squeak.
Charles glanced to the side once more, this time with mild irritation at their spectator, who was now fanning her glossy eyes.
“But we will have to leave now,” Eleanor said. “Before Mother learns of it. Amelia, please pack a bag for me.”
“And quickly,” Charles added. “I believe your butler may have sent the Watch for me, if he does not appear himself, armed with a pistol.”
Eleanor turned from where she was pointing to several garments for Amelia to pack. “What happened with Edmonds?”
“I locked him a room,” Charles answered. “The library, I believe. It was not my intention, but the man fought like the devil to keep me from entering.”
Eleanor held up one hand and pinched the bridge of her nose with the other, belatedly realizing it was an action her father had done many times. “You locked Edmonds in the library?”
Charles grimaced. “To see you. I will compensate him for his troubles and beg his forgiveness.”
The very thought of Edmonds battling Charles to protect her endeared her to the overly formal servant. It had been valiant. She would be personally thanking him as well. Once they returned.
A giddy bubble of excitement tickled up within her, despite her attempts to tamp it down. For when next she returned to London she would be a duchess.
“I expect no less.” She only hoped Charles’s efforts would be enough for Edmonds after what he’d been through, the poor man. “It was quite brave of him. Please ensure you provide restitution.”
The doorway remained thankfully clear during the short time it took to get a simple trunk packed and compose a hasty note to her mother. Within several minutes Eleanor and Charles were racing down the servants’ stairs to avoid being seen.
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