A Stolen Heart (35 page)

She pushed the thought away. It was too terrible to contemplate. For if someone had drugged their food or drink with the intent to keep her and Willa asleep, then that meant that it had been done by someone inside the house, a bribed servant or…Her eyes went to Aunt Hortense, then to her mother, lying in her bed. But, no, she was thinking crazily, more crazily than her mother at her worst. They were her family, the people who loved her most in the world!

Aunt Hortense would never harm her. It didn’t matter whether Alexandra was a Ward or not. And her mother’s oddness would never have risen to such extremes.

“There is no need to keep going over this,” Sebastian said peremptorily. “Miss Ward, Miss Everhart, I suggest that you bring in another cot, and both of you spend the night here with Mrs. Ward. I shall post Murdock outside your door the rest of the night. That way you will be here to tend to Mrs. Ward if she needs you, and I can be assured that the three of you are well-protected. Alexandra, you are coming with me.”

“Sebastian!” Alexandra protested as he put his hand under her elbow and more or less propelled her from the room. “What are you doing? Where are we going? I want to stay with my mother.”

“Nonsense. You’re dead on your feet. What you need to do is get some rest. Let Aunt Hortense, who has
not
almost been killed tonight—for, let me see, the fourth time, or is it the fifth?—let her take care of your mother. You may sit up with Mrs. Ward tomorrow.”

“I shall. And whenever else I wish.”

“Murdock!” Sebastian led Alexandra toward her room. Sebastian’s valet stood in the doorway, surveying the damage.

Sebastian and Alexandra came up beside him and looked into the room. Two footmen were poking about, making sure every possible stray spark was extinguished. Alexandra drew in her breath sharply. “Oh, no!”

Her room was a wreck. The bed was blackened, the charred bed curtains trailing from the bedposts, and the tester had collapsed onto the mattress. There was a stinging scent of burned feathers hovering in the air. The chair on one side of the bed and the small table on the other had been singed, as had the drapes on the window. The wall behind the bed was blistered. All the burned mess, as well as the rest of the floor, was sodden with water.

“At least it didn’t reach your wardrobe, miss, or the dresser,” Murdock said encouragingly. “All your clothes should be all right, once they’re washed and aired out, of course.”

“Mm,” Alexandra responded noncommittally. Looking at the wreckage, she found it a trifle hard to look on the bright side.

“I want you outside the door of Mrs. Ward’s room tonight,” Sebastian told Murdock. “I don’t want anyone going in there.”

The short, muscled man nodded his agreement. “Won’t nobody get in, sir.”

Grabbing a straight-backed chair from Alexandra’s room, he carried it down the hall and planted it squarely in front of Rhea’s door and sat in it, arms folded, obviously prepared to wait out the night.

Alexandra looked at her room. “Where am I going to sleep? Aunt Hortense’s, I suppose, if she is going to be sleeping in Mother’s room.”

“You will be sleeping with me,” Sebastian replied.

“What?” Alexandra looked at him in shock. “You can’t be serious!”

“Can’t I?” He hooked his hand under her elbow and steered her down the hall toward his room.

“Sebastian, no! We cannot—the servants—it would be scandalous.”

“I’ve told you before—I am impervious to scandal. Anyway, if the servants are foolish enough to talk, it will be only a tempest in a teapot, since you and I are engaged to be married.”

“We are not.”

He stopped and looked at her sternly. “Do you intend to play fast and loose with my affections?”

“Sebastian! Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What else would you call it?” he asked, starting toward his room again. “Did you or did you not admit to me only a few minutes ago that you love me?”

A blush stained Alexandra’s cheeks. “Well, yes, but…”

“No buts.” He raised a finger to her lips for silence. “You say you love me yet refuse to marry me. What else can you call it except toying with me?”

Alexandra had to smile. “Don’t be an idiot. You know why we cannot marry.”

“I know the foolish reasons that you have put forth, and none of them are persuasive.”

He opened the door of his room and ushered her inside. Alexandra could not seem to find the will to resist him. She let him guide her toward the bed and help her into it.

“Sebastian, we shouldn’t….” She made one last weak protest.

But he ignored her and climbed into the bed beside her, pulling her back to him, so that they lay curled together like spoons in a drawer.

“Your sheets,” she objected, yawning. “I’m filthy.”

“Sheets can be cleaned.” He kissed her on the cheek and curled his arm over her.

Alexandra closed her eyes, feeling blissfully safe and warm, and in an instant she was asleep.

W
HEN
A
LEXANDRA AWAKENED
the next morning, it was late, and the sun was streaming in through a crack in the curtains. Sebastian was gone. She rang for a maid and ordered a bath drawn for her. After washing away all the soot from the night before and dressing in a day dress the maid had been airing all morning and which smelled only faintly of smoke, she made her way downstairs to the dining room.

Aunt Hortense was the only occupant of the room, obviously at the end of her meal, and she looked up with a smile at her niece. “Alexandra! You are looking much more the thing this morning, I must say.”

“Thank you. I feel much more the thing.” She sat down, and one of the servants brought her a cup of coffee. “Where is Sebastian?”

“Bustling about arranging things.” Her aunt leaned closer, smiling warmly. “He says the sooner you are married, the safer you will be, but personally, I think the man is simply impatient.”

“But I didn’t—”

“I am so glad you finally agreed to marry him. Of course, there was little other choice, after all that’s happened.”

“I have not agreed to marry him,” Alexandra stated flatly.

“He seems to be of the opinion that you have,” Aunt Hortense remarked.

“That man takes entirely too much on himself,” Alexandra said darkly, grabbing a piece of toast and beginning to butter it.

“If you ask me, dearest, you might as well stop fighting it.”

“What? Are even you turning against me?”

“Not against
you,
my dear, just against your bullheadedness. Any fool can see you’re head over heels in love with the man.”

Alexandra drew a breath, about to flare up in denial, but the wry look her aunt sent her made her break into laughter instead. “Oh, Auntie, am I that obvious?”

“Mm. ‘Fraid so. ‘Tis no crime, you know, to fall in love or to want to marry a man.”

“I know. But I feel as if it would be wrong of me, not even knowing what my parentage is.”

“If Lord Thorpe doesn’t care, I don’t see why you should bother
your
head about it.” Aunt Hortense fixed her with a stern gaze. “Whether Rhea is your blood mother or not, you have never been the least like her, and I see no reason you should suddenly change now. It isn’t as if Rhea is someone who has to be locked up in the attic. She has behaved a trifle oddly at times, I’ll admit, but she isn’t
mad.
I mean, look at the way she tried to save you last night.”

Alexandra thought about her brief flash of fear last night as she had wondered if her mother had set the fire in her room purposely. Why, she had even for a moment thought that Aunt Hortense could have drugged her and Willa and set the fire! The notion seemed absurd in the light of day, especially looking at her aunt’s plain, honest face, warm with caring.

“No, of course not. She is not mad,” Alexandra agreed, and she felt suddenly lighter than she had in days. However strange all the things that were happening, she couldn’t help but be happy. Sebastian loved her, and she loved him. He wanted to marry her. Why was she putting him off? Why was she denying herself exactly what she wanted the most?

There was a noise behind her, and Alexandra turned to see Willa standing in the doorway. She smiled in her timid way. “Hello. I hope I’m not intruding. One of the maids was kind enough to sit with Mrs. Ward so that I could come down to eat. It gets a trifle boring sometimes eating one’s meals in the sickroom.”

“Of course. You must take off the morning, as well,” Alexandra added, smiling. “I shall sit with Mother this morning. I’m sure that you have many things that you have neglected, spending so much time with us. It has been wonderfully kind of you.”

“I have enjoyed it. I have so little to do at the Countess’s.” The small woman came around the table and sat beside Alexandra.

Alexandra truly was grateful to Willa; she had greatly eased the burden of caring for Rhea. But Alexandra also could not deny that the woman’s self-deprecating way of talking wore on her nerves, as did her rather dull chatter. Alexandra finished her breakfast as quickly as was reasonably polite and excused herself to check on her mother.

As she went up the stairs, she began to worry that Willa had left her mother in the care of one of the maids. If there had been no intruder last night, as seemed likely, and if the fire had been deliberately set, then the likeliest culprit would be a servant hired by the villain who had hired the other men to harm Alexandra and her mother. It would certainly fit his—or her, as Maisy had said the other day—method of operation. Alexandra’s steps quickened, and she was close to running when she reached her mother’s room and flung open the door.

Her mother was lying still in her bed, the maid Rose sitting in a chair a few feet from her, her eyes closed. At Alexandra’s abrupt entrance, Rose’s eyes flew open, and she shot out of her chair.

“Oh, miss! You gave me a fright!” She laid a hand over her heart.

“I’m sorry.” Alexandra felt faintly foolish for her fears, given the peaceful scene she had come in on. “Thank you for sitting with her. I take it she’s been quiet.”

“Yes, miss, not a sound.” The girl looked at Mrs. Ward and sighed. “Poor thing. Seems ‘orrible, don’t it, to come out of it like that and get knocked right back in?”

“Yes. We can only hope that her unconsciousness will be briefer this time.”

The maid bobbed a curtsey and went out, and Alexandra pulled the chair closer to the bed, where she could sit and look at her mother’s face. She touched her mother’s bandaged arm lightly, tears welling in her eyes as she thought of Rhea batting at the sparks on her bed. Rhea loved her and had done her utmost to save her. However much Alexandra might resent the fact that Rhea had kept the secrets of her past from her all these years, she knew that Rhea loved her.

The morning crept by slowly, and Alexandra picked up a piece of mending from her aunt’s sewing bag and began to work on it, to give herself something to do. Suddenly Rhea moaned, startling Alexandra into jabbing her finger with the needle.

She looked at her mother. Rhea’s eyes were still closed, but she was turning her head restlessly against the pillow. She raised one of her hands and moaned at the pain the movement caused.

“Mother?” Alexandra said, leaning forward and laying her hand lightly on Rhea’s shoulder. “Mother? It is I, Alexandra. Can you hear me?”

“Allie,” her mother breathed, using the name she had called Alexandra when she was a child.

Hope stirred in Alexandra’s chest. “Yes. It’s Allie. Can you wake up, Mother? Can you talk to me?”

Rhea let out another soft moan. Slowly her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at Alexandra. “Simone?”

Alexandra slumped, disappointment slicing through her.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tears pooled in Rhea’s eyes and spilled over. “I tried. It was so hard. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Mother.” Alexandra felt her eyes well with tears. “Why don’t you know me?”

She leaned against the bed, laying her head on the mattress, discouraged. “Won’t you ever recognize me again?”

Something touched her hair, and she realized, surprised, that it was her mother’s bandaged hand, clumsily stroking her.

“Of course I recognize you, Alexandra.” Her mother’s voice was hoarse from disuse.

Alexandra’s head snapped up. Rhea was looking at her, her expression infinitely sad.

“Why wouldn’t I know you?” she asked. “You are my daughter.”

“Mother!” Alexandra beamed, taking her mother’s bandaged hand gently in hers. “You’ve come back. I’m so happy to see you!”

“I’m happy to see you, too,” Rhea responded, smiling weakly. “Oh, Alexandra, I’ve been such a terrible mother to you.”

“Don’t say things like that. You haven’t.”

“I have.” Rhea shook her head, tears spilling out of her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “I have been a terrible person.”

“No.”

“You just don’t know,” Rhea wailed softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I really didn’t. But I know you would hate me if you knew the truth!”

Alexandra’s heart began to pound. She swallowed, trying to remain calm. “I wouldn’t. I swear. I could never hate you.’