The Madness of Miss Grey

by Julia Bennet

  “You’ve met the duke. If you don’t believe I wish to help you, perhaps you’ll believe I want to defy him.”

  She found the words persuasive, but this new brother was such a slippery customer. “Not very dutiful of you. Especially when he’s placed his trust in you.”

  He frowned, and for a moment, he looked like the duke. A younger version, of course. “It only counts as trust when it’s freely given, not as a last resort.”

  “I see.” Yes, he disliked his father, but a world of pain lurked behind his words. He was still the duke’s son and might reconcile with him at any moment. Then what became of his defiance?

  “Of the two of us,” he said, “I’ve no doubt you drew the short straw, but please know that actually being raised by His Grace… It wasn’t an easy thing.”

  Now that she believed.

  Somerton’s dark eyes watched her steadily. “You know what Dr. Carter will do next, don’t you? There’s only one possibility, only one way he could hope to be of service to you without throwing away everything he’s worked for.”

  “Marriage, you mean?”

  “If he asks you, will you say yes?”

  There. Just when she’d begun to think Somerton’s powers of deduction infallible. This far into what had been a painful discussion, how liberating to know something he didn’t. “I’ve been angling for a proposal for months.”

  He drew a quick breath and sat back. “Spoken like a true member of the family.”

  Beyond this mild expression of surprise, she still couldn’t read his feelings. Whatever he thought, whether he was impressed or disapproving, he kept it to himself. She waited for him to say more.

  “Are you using him?” he asked.

  “What do you think?”

  His eyes searched her face. “I honestly don’t know. Earlier you accused me of coming here to get Carter dismissed, of trying to ruin him. You saved the accusation of what I might do to you for last, and I found that interesting. You seemed to care for him, but I reserve judgment.” He shrugged, on him a curiously informal gesture. “I’m suspicious by nature. You could say it’s my stock-in-trade.”

  “I never imagined the heir to a dukedom would need one. A trade, I mean.”

  “Ordinarily, perhaps. But I have a certain reputation as an…exposer of frauds.”

  This gets worse and worse. “And is that what you expect to find here?”

  “Miss Grey, that’s what I expect to find everywhere.”

  A creeping sense of affinity caught her off guard; Somerton used his knowledge of human nature to uncover frauds while she used hers to perpetrate them. They were on a collision course, but she couldn’t help but respect him.

  “It seems we’re at an impasse,” she said.

  “Not at all. If you and Dr. Carter are willing to talk frankly with me, I believe we can come to terms.”

  “Hypothetically?”

  “Of course.” He took another sip of tea. “Shall we call him back?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll need time.”

  “I’ll be here tomorrow.” He stood, leaving his teacup still almost full on the arm of his chair. “But don’t waste too much time, Miss Grey.”

  Helen had never lain side by side in bed with a man and not made love, but despite a roaring fire, the cold had driven them under the covers early. The wind whistled round the tower, rattling the windows, but Helen’s place in the crook of Will’s arm might well have been the coziest place in the entire north of England. Yes, to her it was a strange brand of intimacy, but decidedly pleasant.

  The thought of ever returning to that horrible attic room, or worse, the black hole in the basement, filled her with anxiety. She kept waiting for Sterling to send his thugs to fetch her, but perhaps no one had told him where she’d been sleeping. Or perhaps he knew, and the knowledge added more fire to his determination to rid himself of Will and lock her up for good.

  “We need to decide what we’re going to do about Somerton,” she said. They’d talked the matter over in snatches whenever Will had a moment to spare from his work, but time was running out.

  “You spent longer in his company than I did. The material point for me is whether you trust him.”

  Will’s words did queer things to her heart. Had anyone before ever put so much faith in her judgment?

  “I want to trust him, but I honestly have no idea what he intends. The thought I keep coming back to is that there’s no need for him to bother playing games. If he wants to stop us, he can.”

  He stroked her hair, then singled out one curl and began coiling it around one of his fingers. “Don’t underestimate us. We’d give him a run for his money.”

  “One word from him and we would be spending this evening differently. I’d be locked up, and you’d be on your way to London to see the lunacy commissioners again.”

  “But as your husband this time.”

  She closed her eyes and stretched against him, languorous and content despite the topic of conversation. “Even so, the commissioners would want to know how the marriage came about. Between them and Harcastle, I don’t see how your career will survive. Somerton hinted that with his help, there might be a way to get what we want without doing irreparable damage to your reputation.”

  “Very tempting. I suppose the question is, do we have anything to lose by telling him our situation?”

  She loved the way he distilled things down into simple problems. “We were going to tell everyone anyway, but I dislike the idea of leaving so much in his hands.” As Will traced a circle on her back with his free hand, she shivered. “Yet, if it meant you could still practice medicine…”

  With his fingertips, he traced the underside of her breast. She adored his confidence when he touched her now. Moments like this when he wasn’t even thinking about what he did. As if she belonged to him. Still, he wasn’t getting much of a bargain. His career in exchange for a woman so crooked she could hardly tell fact from fiction.

  “Do you ever think it’s not worth the trouble?”

  “What?” He peered down at her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She tried to speak but, to her surprise, found that her throat was choked with tears. Where had they come from? She’d been fine a moment ago.

  “Helen?” For a moment he looked concerned, then he shook his head. “You know very well I could never regret a moment I spent with you. You know exactly how I feel about you.”

  “Yes, I do. Currently, you’re out of your mind with carnal bliss after a long period of abstinence.”

  “Is that what it is? And yet I’ve felt this way for quite some time.”

  “Because I’ve been flirting with you. By the time I finally got you into bed, you were like a pistol, cocked and ready to fire.”

  He shook with laughter. “Oh, so I’ve fallen helpless into your web? A victim of your wiles, is that it?”

  “Well, now you’re being rude.” Trying not to smile, she edged away.

  “Helen,” he said, tugging her back into place, “you may think my feelings amount to no more than lust and a bit of infatuation, but please believe that if I ever lost you…” His arms tightened around her, and his breath hitched. “If I lost you it would devastate me.”

  She rolled over so that she could see his face properly. He gazed back, eyes shining, and she knew he was fighting to keep a tight rein on his emotions. They both were. These last few days had brought overwhelming change, and with Somerton’s arrival, they’d had no respite.

  “Why would a man as wonderful as you fall for a woman like me? I’m the villainess of your story, not the heroine.” Maybe she overstated the case, but she had turned his life upside down. The constant turmoil of her life had spread to his like a contagion—a contagion with which she’d knowingly infected him.

  Will gazed at her. “You don’t know, do you?”

  She shrugged, the casual gesture belying her yearning to know what he found in her that was worthy of his affection. If he saw something good in her
, perhaps she truly wasn’t all bad.

  “If I try to pinpoint when I began to care for you,” he said, “I keep thinking back to our first walk to the gazebo. You stood on the wall, hair whipped by the wind, deliberately heartbreaking—”

  Helen gasped. She’d thought she was being so subtle that day. How did he always know? “You must have thought I was such a schemer.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I did, but you were so brave and determined, and I adored you for it.”

  What was she to do with him? Even her faults he turned into virtues. Her luck had changed the day he came to Blackwell. As long as she lived, she would never forget how fortunate she was to know him.

  “I’ll make you a promise,” she said. “And I may be a lying baggage, but I don’t make promises lightly. The truth is, I don’t know how to be a wife or what feelings I’m supposed to have. Perhaps they’re there. How would I recognize them even if I felt them?” She met his gaze so that he would know she spoke the truth. “I promise you I will never leave you. Never. They’d have to tear me out of your arms.”

  Something in him broke. He pulled her hard against him, his grip almost painful, but she held on just as fiercely.

  “I love you, Helen.”

  She closed her eyes against the sweet agony of hearing those words for the first time. “Promise me,” she said. “Promise me you’ll never give up on me.”

  “I promise.”

  After that, the world shrank to their little room with its little bed, the blankets tented over them, as they lost themselves in each other all over again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “This house is a relic,” Somerton said the next morning as he took a seat in Will’s office. “I’ve never been so cold in my whole life as I was last night. Are all the rooms like that?”

  Will took the poker from its stand and prodded the fire. The snow had almost melted completely away now, but it was still damned cold. “Most of them are worse. Dr. Sterling gave you the best available.”

  “No wonder Miss Grey hates this place.”

  “I assure you, the draft is the least of her concerns,” Will said, lowering himself into the other chair.

  “Where is she anyway?” Somerton looked around as if he expected to find Helen hiding somewhere. Instead, he caught sight of Hector asleep under the desk. “Good Lord, what a brute.”

  “You sound like Miss Grey. Do you dislike dogs?”

  “I prefer cats. They’re more…aloof.”

  “She’s coming soon,” Will said in answer to Somerton’s earlier question. “I wanted a few minutes with you first.”

  “Perhaps that’s best. As a matter of fact, there’s something I’d like to discuss before I mention it to Miss Grey.” He drew a crumpled strip of paper from his pocket. “I received a telegram from the duke. It seems he’s sending a doctor to replace you. The new man should be here this afternoon.”

  Will took the blow without flinching. He’d been waiting for this far longer than anyone else knew. Now that the worst had happened, he felt only renewed determination to get Helen away from Blackwell before it was too late.

  “Frankly,” Somerton went on, “I think we’ve a surfeit of medical men here already, but I’ll bully Sterling into allowing you to remain for a few days more. Be prepared for the fact that the new doctor will want access to Helen. Vaughn’s his name.”

  Vaughn? Will couldn’t hear that name without thinking of Helen’s former doctor. This couldn’t be the same man. Why would the duke throw Helen together with the man who’d seduced her?

  All the time, Somerton had been watching. “Do you know him?”

  “I don’t think so, but it’s a common name. We must warn Miss Grey. She feels as you do about the surfeit of doctors.” Will leaned forward. “She tells me you want to help her.”

  “Yes, though I don’t think she believed me.”

  “Do you blame her?”

  Somerton appeared to consider the question. “Is it so hard to believe? She is my sister.”

  “She’s also the duke’s daughter, yet he’s the one who put her here.”

  “I take your point, but if I’d wanted to do either of you harm, I could have done so by now. I’m the reason you weren’t dismissed yesterday, remember?”

  “Even so, if you hurt Helen—”

  “Is she really so fragile? I confess, she didn’t seem so to me.”

  Will didn’t know how to answer. Not fragile. Not at all. Perhaps a little bruised. “Everyone has their breaking point.”

  “You seem a decent man, Carter. Tell me, did you really grab Sterling by the throat? I’d give anything to have seen that.” When Will didn’t answer, Somerton went on. “As I say, you seem a decent man, but you can’t stand against the duke. Not alone, at any rate. If I stand with you, if I give your marriage to my sister my blessing, it changes everything.”

  “If there’s an inquisition—”

  “There won’t be. The only thing my father cares about—the only thing he’s ever cared about—is his reputation. Until a few days ago, I’d have said it was impossible that he’d ever fathered a bastard. I always knew he wasn’t the paragon he pretended to be. He made speeches in the House of Lords about family values, but he was always a cold, bloody-minded tyrant at home. But keep a mistress?” Somerton shook his head. “My God, never. It’s so human of him, but what he did to Miss Grey, locking her up here to serve his own ends, that sounds exactly like the father I know.”

  Somerton’s eyes had turned hard as he spoke, his contempt for his father eclipsing every other emotion, but now he focused his gaze on Will. “Trust me when I tell you that His Grace doesn’t want a scandal, and that’s what he’ll get if you have my money and resources behind you. If it’s his word against a housekeeper’s son, people may wonder. If it’s his word against mine, people will say the old man’s lost his mind.”

  Will couldn’t deny the logic of Somerton’s assessment, but his ability to help wasn’t in question; his trustworthiness was.

  A soft tapping at the door announced Helen’s arrival. When she entered, Somerton rose to greet her as civilly as though she were a grand lady at a ball. Moments like that made it impossible for Will to dislike him.

  “Good morning, my lord,” she said. “Are you still determined to disappoint the duke’s hopes?”

  “I will if you will,” he said, which made her laugh. “But first we need to have a wedding. If that’s what you want.”

  She glanced at Will, then sat down. Both gentlemen followed suit. What would Sterling say if he saw the three of them closeted together this way? Will smiled at the thought.

  “Please go on, my lord,” Helen said.

  “Despite everything that’s happened, you are the daughter of a duke, and one day you’ll be sister to one.”

  “Bastard sister to one.”

  “Even so, once this is all over and successfully hushed up, don’t you think you might look slightly higher than a housekeeper’s son?”

  Had Will thought he liked Somerton? Now he stifled a powerful urge to punch him in the face and waited to hear what Helen would say.

  “Thank you, but even if I were legitimate, even if I were not a former actress who’d spent the last ten years incarcerated in an insane asylum, I’d still want to marry Dr. Carter.”

  Could she mean it? Her voice rang with sincerity, but she could make it do that even when she lied.

  “Good,” Somerton said, to Will’s surprise. “If one must run, it’s best to run toward something.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” Helen said. “Because I married Dr. Carter the day before yesterday.”

  Somerton stood and turned on Will, the hauteur in his expression more exaggerated than ever. “You married my sister? You married her in secret without my permission?”

  Will stood, too, and crossed his arms. The situation would’ve been laughable if Somerton hadn’t looked in such deadly earnest. “At the time, I had no idea you existed,” Will reminded him.
>
  Helen sighed. “It’s a little late for this discussion, my lord. You’ve already given your approval to the match. What comes next?”

  Somerton stepped back. On another man, the gesture might have looked sheepish, but he retreated without a trace of self-consciousness. “You’re right, of course. Forgive me, Carter. I never had a sister before, and I don’t know quite how to behave.”

  “Could we move on, do you think?” Helen asked as they resumed their seats.

  “It all depends.” Somerton addressed Will. “I take it you’ve given some thought to what you’d like to do next. In your career, I mean.”

  “Actually, I have. I’m in the middle of writing a paper about the sorry state of lunacy laws and asylum care.”

  Helen’s eyes widened. “You never told me.”

  “I can’t rescue Mrs. Fairly or Miss Stanton-Jones, but I won’t abandon them completely.”

  Helen smiled, and the way she looked at him in that moment made him feel like a prince. He longed to be alone with her so that he could sink down on his knees by her chair and bury his face in her lap. Normal couples went on wedding journeys after they married. Difficult to imagine a time when they’d be at leisure to do the same.

  “Good for you,” Somerton said. “That sounds like an extremely worthwhile undertaking. But what will you do for money while you’re working on it?”

  “I have savings. Not much, but enough.”

  “Have you ever thought about general practice?”

  “From time to time.” Whenever he lost hope of making a difference in places like Blackwell. More and more frequently of late.

  “I have a small estate in Hertfordshire. The village is in dire need of a good doctor. The man they have is on his last legs. He could use the help, and eventually, you’d inherit his patients.”

  It sounded ideal. Could it really be this easy?

  “In the meantime,” Somerton said, his eyes lighting, “you two bide your time while I deliver the good news to the duke.”

  Will caught Helen’s look, and like him, she wasn’t smiling. Once the duke knew everything, Somerton’s true loyalties would be revealed. If he betrayed them through weakness or mendacity, they’d find themselves isolated and at Harcastle’s mercy.