“How regal.”
He laughed for the first time since Charlie’s accident. He’d almost forgotten how good Arabella Hampton was for his soul. He’d been drowning in the months leading up to the house party. During the gathering, he’d enjoyed a reprieve from that loneliness and lack of direction. Though he’d found purpose in his home and joy in Charlie’s company, losing Arabella’s companionship had taken more of a toll than he’d yet admitted.
“I should go make certain the dowager’s bedchamber is prepared for when she is ready to rest.” Arabella offered an apologetic smile. “I have very specific instructions from Lord Lampton to see that she does not overtax herself.”
“Her sons are very careful of her, aren’t they?” If his mother were yet alive, he would be every bit as protective.
“They have a great deal of their father in them,” she said. “He treated people with such kindness.”
“The Jonquil approach?”
Her expression softened further. “His approach. But one his sons inherited.”
“I wish I could have known him,” Linus said.
“So do I.” After a moment, she shook off her abstraction. “If you could point me in the direction of the bedchamber assigned to the dowager, I would be most grateful.”
He indicated his and Evander’s childhood quarters.
He remained behind as she left, thinking on what she’d said. Kindness was important to her, no doubt owing in large part to her own family’s unkindness. A caring heart. Loyalty. Compassion.
He valued those things as well. And he saw them in her.
Did she see them in him?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You have strict orders from Mater to drink all of this.” Arabella carefully placed the cup of pungent liquid on the table beside Charlie’s bed. “I have permission to plug your nose and pour it down your throat, if necessary.”
He smiled weakly. “That won’t be necessary. I will take my medicine like a big boy.”
Arabella sat in the nearby chair. Mater was getting a bit of much-needed rest.
Charlie grimaced as he obediently drank the concoction. “What is this meant to do?” He eyed what remained in the cup.
“According to Mr. Lancaster’s sister, it will help alleviate some of your pain.”
“His sister?” Charlie very nearly rolled his eyes, she was certain of it. “Are you sure it isn’t poison? She doesn’t like me very much.”
“I got the impression that the feeling is mutual.”
One sip at a time, Charlie finished the last of his cup, then made a noise of displeasure. “That definitely tastes like something Miss Artemis would concoct.”
“I beg your pardon.” Artemis stood in the doorway, fists on her hips.
“I drank the foul liquid,” Charlie said. “You don’t have to yell at me as well.”
“I had nothing to do with the tisane.” Artemis stepped inside. “And I am not yelling at you.”
“Bothering me, then.”
She glared at him. Arabella likely should have intervened, but seeing so much life in Charlie was reassuring.
Artemis shook her head. “I told Adam we shouldn’t have come here. You are always so sour.”
“I’m allowed to be sour,” Charlie said. “I’m dying.”
Artemis folded her arms across her chest. “I interrogated that surgeon for thirty minutes yesterday, and I know perfectly well that you are not dying.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you.”
Artemis threw her hands in the air. “Why is it everyone thinks I would be happy to hear you had one foot in the grave? I am not a terrible person, Charles Jonquil.”
“I am too tired to argue with you.” Charlie lowered himself from his seated position to lie back on the pillows. For a person with as many broken bones as he had, he’d grown quite adept at moving about within the confines of his bed. He sighed, the sound full of weariness and pain. “Arabella?”
“Yes, Charlie?”
“If Miss Artemis’s concoction proves fatal, ask my brothers to avenge me.”
“And what am I to tell Mr. Lancaster?”
Charlie’s eyelids had grown heavy and his speech slower. “Tell him it couldn’t be helped; his sister brought it on herself.” He fell asleep before he could say more.
Artemis watched him, brow pulled, lips downturned. “I don’t understand why he dislikes me so much.” She turned to Arabella. The young lady looked genuinely hurt. “Do you know why?”
She shook her head no. “I don’t.”
Artemis brushed a loose curl away from her face. “Perhaps it has something to do with this room. It was my father’s. He didn’t like me either.” Emotion broke her words, and the air of indifference she attempted to strike as she left did not ring true.
How well Arabella knew the pain of longing for a father’s affection. Her father had died when she was tiny. Her uncle had offered no paternal kindness. The man she’d come to think of as a father, whom she’d loved deeply, hadn’t truly belonged to her, nor she to him.
“Please don’t make me go back to my uncle’s house,” she’d begged him when she was all of seven or eight years old. “Please let me stay with you.”
“It is not as simple as that,” he’d said. “Family lives with family.”
Though she’d known the truth of his words, hearing from his own mouth that she wasn’t family had shattered her, and the cracks hurt still.
She rubbed at her face, forcing away her heavy thoughts.
Only a moment passed before Linus stepped inside the room. Her heart had positively fluttered when she’d seen him in the entryway the day before, something she hadn’t been at all expecting. Seeing him now, her heart raced again. Her affection for him had been quite real during the house party. The intervening two weeks had convinced her that she would do best to let go of those fledgling feelings.
Her heart apparently had not listened to her head.
“How is our patient?” Linus asked.
“Not enamored of your sister,” she said. “I thought they were going to come to blows right here in the sickroom.”
He smiled. Heavens, that smile. His twinkling green eyes. The one golden curl that was forever falling down across his forehead. The gentleman was handsome; there was no denying that. “Artemis does find him exasperating.”
She glanced at the sleeping young man. “And he suspects she might be a murderer.”
“He what?” Linus’s laugh startled Charlie enough to wake him a little but not so much that he became at all sensible. Linus tiptoed to the chair in the corner and pulled it up beside hers. “I had intended to ask how the remainder of the house party went. Did my fearsome brother-in-law behave himself?”
“He did, more’s the pity.”
Linus grinned unrepentantly. “He is a great deal of fun when he is at his most irritable.”
“I was a little afraid of him when he first arrived at Lampton Park,” she admitted.
“And I was a little afraid of him when I first met him at his formidable fortress of a castle.” But he smiled at the memory.
“How old were you?” she asked.
“I was thirteen.”
“Thirteen? And you faced down the infamous Duke of Kielder?”
“I was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and he had just married my sister.” He spoke with utter firmness. “I intended to make absolutely certain he was good enough for her and that she was happy.”
“If you had discovered he wasn’t good enough and she wasn’t happy, what would you have done then?”
“I would have made every attempt to beat the tar out of him,” Linus said. “And I would likely have been thoroughly flattened, tossed in his gibbet, and left for dead.”
Linus was wonderfully humorous. She loved that. “I, for one, am
grateful that you did not meet your demise all those years ago.”
He looked over at her, his expression more than a little flirtatious. “Is that so?”
His tone set her pulse to simmering. Afraid he would see her reaction, she moved quickly to a jest. “If you had died in that gibbet, you wouldn’t have been here to push Charlie off a roof.”
“I’m certain he is deeply grateful for that as well,” Linus said drily.
She recognized the guilt still hovering in his words. It had been there the day before as well. “His injuries were not your fault.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure it matters.”
“Would talking about it help?”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “In the moment before he fell, he looked terrified. That expression . . . I know it so well. It is eternally burned in my memory.”
“Charlie is like a brother to me,” she said. “I have been trying not to think on what happened to him. I can only imagine how awful it was for you, watching it happen.”
“I don’t mean the look on Charlie’s face,” he said. “My brother’s. At Trafalgar, when he was—when he was shot. I was looking at him when it happened. The same horror crossed his face then that I saw in Charlie’s on that roof: the realization that something terrible had just happened.” Linus swallowed. “It was the look of someone who is realizing he’s about to die.”
Arabella had never heard him speak at length about his brother. It was a subject he never dwelled on, never discussed.
“I climbed off the roof and rushed to where Charlie lay. His face was twisted in agony. His limbs were bent in ways they should not have been.” The recollection brought fresh pain to his voice and heaviness to his posture. “I was absolutely certain for a horrifying moment that he was dead.”
Emotion clogged Arabella’s throat. She reached for Linus’s hand, as much for her own comfort as any she might offer him. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. Without looking back at her, he threaded his fingers through hers.
Linus took an audible breath and pushed forward. “While the vicarage housekeeper ran for help, I held on to Charlie, just as I held Evander on the deck of the Triumphant.” He clung more tightly to her hand. “Sitting there with Charlie, I could hear my thirteen-year-old self begging my brother not to die. I could see his face again, the life draining from it.”
He didn’t speak for a long, drawn-out moment. This was a difficult subject for him. She didn’t know if he would change the topic as he so often did or press onward. Was she offering him any degree of comfort?
“He died,” Linus said after a time.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered.
“He died in my arms.” The pain in his voice pierced her heart. “I lost him. Like everyone in my family, everyone I care about. I lose them all.”
“You didn’t lose Charlie,” she reminded him.
“That is true.” A little hope had reentered his tone.
“And your sisters are here,” she added. “The duchess and the murderer.”
He allowed the briefest of laughs. “Does Charlie truly believe she’s a murderer?”
“I suspect he doesn’t know what to think of her, or she of him.”
He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “The ladies who make a man wonder are often the ones most worth knowing.”
She could scarcely think for the pounding in her head and the fluttering in her chest. “What kind of things does a lady worth knowing make a man wonder about?”
“Quite a lot.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t turn at all in his chair, but neither did he release her hand. “He wishes to know what catches her eye when she’s out in the world. Where she would choose to go if she could go anywhere.” His thumb continued tracing its slow, gentle circles. Good heavens, she could hardly breathe. “He wonders what makes her happy.” He looked at her once more. His emerald gaze held hers. “He wonders what she dreams about.”
Her pounding pulse nearly drowned out his words. “Why?”
The question clearly surprised him, but she didn’t wish it unasked. She understood so little of these things. Her past didn’t give her confidence. She’d been wrong too many times.
“Why? Because he hopes, however silently, that he might have a place in those dreams.”
Arabella’s breath caught in her tense lungs. Each beat of her heart echoed in her head. Did he have any idea how often she’d let herself imagine that perhaps she was part of his dreams?
A voice interrupted the moment. The housekeeper stood in the doorway. “Miss Hampton,” she said. “You have a visitor.”
A visitor? “You must be mistaken.”
Mrs. Tuttle shook her head. “Dr. Scorseby was quite specific.”
“Dr. Scorseby has come?”
A nod.
Linus released her hand.
“The doctor wishes to see me?” Arabella asked.
“In particular,” Mrs. Tuttle said.
Arabella looked at Linus.
He motioned toward the door. “Go ahead. I’ll keep an eye on Charlie.”
I’ll keep an eye on Charlie? Was that all the more he meant to say in parting, especially after having spoken so tenderly and held her hand as he had? Surely she had not heard more in his words than he’d meant. Surely.
Did he have any idea how bewildering he was?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Linus paced the length of the room. Scorseby had come to further his cause with Arabella; Linus was certain of it. He seemed a decent enough person, yet Linus didn’t like the idea of his courting her. He didn’t like it at all.
Persephone’s voice floated in from the doorway. “From the look of things, I’d say you have been informed about your newest visitor.”
Linus was in no mood to match her laughing tone. “Scorseby knows we have a local physician. I said as much in my letter to the dowager.”
“I doubt he’s come for professional reasons.”
Linus doubted that as well, though he wasn’t ready to admit it. “I should go greet him.”
Persephone didn’t bother hiding her grin.
“You’re laughing at me,” he assessed out loud.
She nodded slowly and with emphasis.
Linus shook his head. “I’m only going to greet the new arrival.”
“And study your competition,” Persephone added under her breath.
“Greet a guest.” Linus’s firm insistence inspired a laugh from his sister.
“Well, then, make certain you ‘greet’ the dowager as well. She too has offered Miss Hampton a future and is in as much of a position to be accepted as Dr. Scorseby is.”
“Has his suit progressed as far as that?” Linus hadn’t heard as much.
Much of Persephone’s laughter dissipated. “Not as far as I have heard. I do, however, believe both Miss Hampton and the dowager countess are happy with their arrangement. The good doctor would have to offer enough happiness to pull his would-be bride away from a situation she is already perfectly content accepting. That is a significant obstacle when a lady has lived a life of uncertainty.”
Linus had not thought of things from that angle. “A doctor would have income enough to provide a wife with stability.”
Persephone shook her head. “Miss Hampton has stability, my dear. And before you lodge any further guesses, she also has kindness, respect, friendship, and purpose in a household. Any gentleman who harbors ambitions of pulling her from her current position must offer all of that and more.”
Linus knew perfectly well what his sister meant, but he was not ready to discuss the state of his heart nor offer conjecture on the state of Miss Hampton’s. “He must offer diamonds, no doubt.”
Persephone smiled a little and swatted at him. “You are impossible sometimes.”
“I do my b
est.”
“I will stay in here.” She took a seat. “You go ‘greet your guest.’”
Linus exited the bedchamber and reached the threshold of the drawing room, intending to do his duty as host. He didn’t get a single step inside though. Scorseby stood near Arabella. The two were deep in conversation. This was a far more personal arrangement than he’d expected to find.
Of course, Scorseby was not holding her hand, something she seemed to enjoy when Linus had done it only a few minutes earlier. Linus knew with certainty that Scorseby had an interest in Arabella, but his suit did not seem to have progressed over the past weeks.
He stepped back into the corridor unnoticed. His mind spun, and his heart thudded out a rhythm of uncertainty.
You are Lieutenant Lancaster, he silently reminded himself. Cowering before a battle is not in your nature.
He did not know the extent of her feelings for Scorseby, but he knew well enough his own hopes and wishes. He further knew Arabella’s character well enough to believe she would not have held his hand nor had so personal a conversation as they’d shared, veiled though it had been in pronouns and hypotheticals, if her heart belonged to another.
Adam had spoken of the strength to be found in the companionship of a lady who lifted one’s burdens, who brightened even the darkest corridors of one’s life. Linus had found that in Arabella. With her hand in his, he’d even managed to speak of Evander, something he could seldom endure.
If there was any chance of fully laying claim to her affection, if he could offer her the strength and comfort she offered him, if there was any chance she might learn to love him, then he did not intend to let Scorseby make his case unopposed. Here, away from the interference of her aunt and uncle and the potential entrapment of the eager gossip to be found at house parties, Linus resolved to see if there was any chance he might be granted a place in her heart.
* * *
Arabella stood with a blanket at the ready as the duke, butler, footman, and coachman carried Charlie, careful of his heavily splinted legs, into the drawing room. While the poor young man was still in a fair bit of pain, Mater had sensed in him an impatience to be included in the evening’s conversations and diversions.
Loving Lieutenant Lancaster Page 22
