A Wicked Pursuit (10 page)

“If you please, my lord, no smiling,” Tewkes said sternly, drawing back. “I cannot answer for what may happen with a razor in my hand.”

“So you’ve been telling me for as long as I’ve had whiskers,” Harry said mildly. He reached up to feel his now-bare jaw. “It feels as if you’re done anyway.”

“Nearly, my lord.” His face screwed up with concentration, Tewkes leaned forward to flick the last bits of soap and whisker from Harry’s cheek. “Forgive me for speaking plainly, my lord, but I have never before had to scrape such a growth of beard from your face.”

“That’s because I’ve never let it reach such an ungentlemanly state,” Harry said, scarcely moving his lips, in the Tewkes-approved method. “There must be savages in the wilderness with less of a beard than I possess.”

“There is no shame in your beard, my lord,” Tewkes said, almost scolding. “It is a mark of your royal lineage, displaying your Italianate blood from the De’Medicis.”

“It’s a mark of me being furry as a bear,” Harry said. “Apparently an Italian bear, too, not even an English one.”

Tewkes was far prouder of his master’s royal antecedents than Harry was himself. To him, there wasn’t much romance in having had his family’s fortunes and titles given as a reward to the French mistress of an English king a hundred or so years before. It was all dependent on how skilled his great-great-grandmother had been at pleasing the king, and at how she’d conveniently produced a royal bastard who’d required legitimizing and ennobling, unsavory facts that Tewkes—and most everyone else—preferred to forget. Still, it was better to be the oldest son of a duke than not, and since he’d inherited a share of his royal ancestor’s legendary prowess with women along with his thick black hair, Harry wasn’t about to complain.

Nor was Tewkes so indelicate as to offer an opinion on his master’s likeness to an Italian bear. Instead he gently swabbed Harry’s face clean with a warm, damp linen cloth, and then, in the final step of the ritual, he presented Harry with a large silver-framed hand mirror.

Usually Harry gave his reflection only the most cursory glance. He knew what he looked like, and he wasn’t some vain macaroni beguiled by his own appearance. But this morning he not only looked: He stared, shocked.

This was not the usual face he saw in the looking glass. He was pale, without his customary ruddy tan from being out-of-doors. His cheeks were hollowed and lean, and exhaustion and illness had stolen the life from his eyes. Although he’d known he’d lost flesh and muscle, lying here in bed without eating anything of substance, he hadn’t been prepared for this.

“Did I miss a spot, my lord?” asked Tewkes, misinterpreting Harry’s silence.

“No, Tewkes, it’s fine,” Harry said. He was stunned by the change in himself, and if he’d met this new version on a London street, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize himself. “But tell me, and for once don’t lie. Did I look worse than this when they pouring the laudanum down my throat?”

“Oh, yes, my lord,” Tewkes said, packing the shaving things away in Harry’s dressing case. “You’re much improved over how you were.”

“Was it that bad?” Harry asked uneasily, wondering how it was possible to look worse than he did now.

“Yes, my lord,” Tewkes said, so quickly that he left no doubt. “You had the very look of death itself.”

Shaken, Harry took one last look at his face and thrust the mirror back at Tewkes. He’d thought he might finally be ready to see Julia again, but he couldn’t, not unless he wished to terrify her.

“In your ramblings around this house, have you seen Miss Wetherby these last days?” he asked, not quite sure if he hoped the manservant had, or hadn’t.

Tewkes took the mirror and tucked it away, too. “No, my lord. But since I have only gone up and down the back stairs to the kitchen, I would not have necessarily seen the lady.”

“True, true.” Ordinarily Harry didn’t believe in using servants as spies, particularly when visiting, but he was so desperate for any news of Julia that he pressed Tewkes a bit further. “Do they speak of her belowstairs?”

“Of Miss Wetherby, my lord?” Tewkes paused and tipped his head to one side, thinking. “I don’t believe I’ve heard a single word of Miss Wetherby. She might not even be in residence for all I’ve heard of her.”

“Then Miss Augusta is doing exactly as she promised,” Harry said, relieved. “As a favor, I asked her to keep her sister away until I was, ah, more fit for company.”

Tewkes nodded. “Miss Augusta is a very reliable and capable lady, my lord,” he said with obvious approval, and just as obviously more approval than when he’d spoken of Julia. “As young as she is, she acts as the mistress of this house, and is much liked by the entire staff for her kindness.”

Harry sighed, leaning back against the pillows as he thought of Gus. He understood why the staff would like her, for he liked her, too, very much. She
was
kind, and generous, and reliable, exactly as Tewkes had said, all good reasons for why Gus was the sister he remembered through the pain and fever.

He didn’t need to hide himself away from her, either, because she had been with him through the worst of it, and she’d comforted him in a way that was difficult to explain. He looked forward to the time she spent here with him, and missed her when she was gone. She wasn’t beautiful, not like Julia, and she was such an unassuming little wren that she’d be lost entirely in a crowded assembly or ball. Yet there was a certain beguiling charm to her wide gray eyes and the freckles on her nose, and the delightful way she tried to turn serious and stern whenever he teased her.

It was so delightful, in fact, and he was in such need of amusement to stave off his boredom and frustration, that he teased her nearly every time she came to his room. Not hard, and with no mean intention, but he couldn’t help it.

He smiled, thinking of that, and thinking of Gus in general. If asking Julia to be his wife was the best thing that came from this disastrous visit, then meeting her sister would have to be a close second. Having only brothers himself, he liked the prospect of gaining Gus as his little sister through marriage, knowing she’d always be part of his life, too.

“The surgeons say Miss Augusta saved your life, my lord,” Tewkes continued, breaking into Harry’s reverie. “They say that if she hadn’t acted as she did when she found you, you would have died, or at least lost your leg.”

“She didn’t find me on her own,” Harry said. “Her sister brought her to the place where I’d fallen.”

“As you say, my lord,” Tewkes said with a small nod of concession. “But as I’ve heard it told in the kitchen, Miss Wetherby was too distraught by your accident to offer any assistance. It was Miss Augusta who guessed where you must have fallen and, with several men from the stables, followed the horses’ tracks to find you where you lay. She kept you calm and warm, and made certain the men used the greatest care in transporting you.”

“She did?” Harry asked uneasily. He did not want to give up the pretty picture of Julia loyally returning to bring help to him in the woods. Yet it was only Gus that he remembered being there, holding his hand and telling him how brave he was. “You are certain this is true?”

“It is what was said by several individuals, my lord,” Tewkes said. “All I can say for myself is that Miss Wetherby was not a member of the party that brought you back to the house.”

Tewkes was not a man given to inventions. If he said Julia had not been there, then Harry had no choice but to believe it.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked.

Tewkes bowed his head, just a fraction. “You did not ask me, my lord.”

Harry sighed impatiently. “Are there any other great secrets I should know, Tewkes?”

“No, my lord,” he said, hesitating a moment to choose his words. “It was not my intention to fault Miss Wetherby in any fashion. I only wished Miss Augusta to receive the credit that she deserved.”

“They are different ladies, Tewkes,” Harry said, carefully choosing his own words as well. “Miss Wetherby is a lady of great delicacy, while Miss Augusta is not.”

As soon as he’d spoken, he realized how disparaging to Gus it must have sounded. “That is, Miss Augusta is delicate, too, the way a lady should be, but she’s more practical about it.”

“Yes, my lord,” Tewkes said, deliberately, blandly noncommittal as he gathered up the dressing case. “Will that be all, my lord?”

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door, and Gus’s voice on the other side. Hurriedly Harry raked his fingers back through his hair and pushed himself up against the pillows as he motioned for Tewkes to open the door.

“Good day, my lord,” Gus said, entering with her usual brisk purpose. She wore a gown of currant-colored calico, dotted with tiny green leaves, with lacy white sleeve ruffles, a sheer kerchief and ruffled cap, and a snowy white apron around her waist with her household keys clipped to a plain silver chatelaine at her waist. Harry liked her waist; she wasn’t as curvaceous as Julia, but her waist was small and neat, much like the rest of her, and exactly the kind of waist that a man liked to settle his arm around. She made a quick curtsey and came to stand beside the bed, a well-read magazine or journal in her hand.

“Good day to you, too, Miss Augusta,” he said. She looked crisp and fresh, her hair sleeked back beneath her small white ruffled cap, but he wished she were smiling. “What have you brought me?”

“In a moment, my lord,” she said sternly. “First I must have a word with you.”

Damnation, he hoped she hadn’t overheard that last bit about her being practical. He tried to look innocent.

“Any word from you is welcome,” he said as winningly as he could.

She’d have none of it. “Is it true that you’ve dismissed Mrs. Patton?”

He frowned, feeling defensive. “I did,” he said. “Earlier this morning. She did not please me.”

“Pleasing you was not her purpose,” she said warmly. “She was employed to nurse you to health, not to be your mistress.”

He wrinkled his nose at the thought. “She was disagreeable. With that face, she made me feel worse, not better.”

“Mrs. Patton was an excellent nurse, and highly recommended by Dr. Leslie,” she said. “I do not know how I shall replace her.”

“Don’t,” he said. “There, that’s easily solved.”

“No, it is not,” she said, her cheeks flushed with indignation. “You are barely a fortnight removed from your accident. You are still weeks away from being able to leave this bed. You need a nurse to—”

“To do exactly what?” he asked. He wasn’t teasing any longer. He was serious, or he wouldn’t have sent Mrs. Patton away. “Leslie comes every other day to unwrap my leg and peer at it, then swaddle it up again. That is the extent of my care. My bones will rejoin together in their own time, at their own pace. Until then, there’s nothing more that a score of Mrs. Pattons could do to urge the process along.”

“But who will change your bedding, and wash you, and—and tend to your personal affairs for you?” Her cheeks were pink now, not with an angry flush but with an embarrassed one, no doubt brought on by thinking of his Personal Affairs.

“Tewkes can manage,” he said. “And there’s always you as well. You said you would, you know.”

“I, my lord?” She stared at him, her eyes round with surprise, and probably also from misgivings regarding those same Personal Affairs of his. “I am not your servant, my lord, and I am not your nurse, and I will not—”

“But you act as the mistress of this house,” he interrupted, “and you did promise you’d look after me as your guest. I do not require much, really. You and Tewkes together should have no trouble accommodating me.”

“But that was when you were in such a dire situation!” she exclaimed. “Now that you are so much improved, there is not the same urgency.”

“You mean there is no longer a need to oblige your father’s guest.” He was not accustomed to being refused like this. She had offered; he had accepted. It was perfectly logical to him, and he couldn’t understand why she was balking now.

“I mean that it’s not proper for me to spend so much time in your company when I’ve other things—”

“Other things more important than I?” Glowering, he folded his arms over his chest. He hadn’t intended to be so overbearing, not with her, but he didn’t want her to replace her own charming self with another wretched Mrs. Patton. “You’re being willful in this matter, Miss Augusta. Willful and stubborn.”

“‘Willful and stubborn’?” she repeated, incredulous. “Oh, my lord, I cannot agree with that, not after all I have done for you!”

“Then where is the harm in doing more?” he demanded, turning as imperious as if he were in his own house, not a guest in hers. “Especially since I am the one asking?”

“You are misconstruing my objections, my lord,” she said furiously, clipping every syllable. She was so agitated now that the keys dangling from her chatelaine were all trembling and jingling against her skirts. “I meant that now that you are no longer in peril, I cannot devote as much time to you as a hired nurse would. I have many other responsibilities in this house, and I cannot neglect them.”

“Other, grander responsibilities than I, no doubt,” he said, allowing a certain amount of contempt to creep into his tone. He waved a hand grandly through the air, as if to dismiss every possible objection.

“And what could those responsibilities possibly be?” he continued. “Gathering up old candle stubs? Marking the linen? Checking the padlock on the meat safe against servants’ temptation? Making sure the broken victuals are collected to make broth for the deserving poor?”

“I see that this house is well run and managed, my lord,” she said stiffly, “exactly as my father desires.”

He hadn’t really thought that any of those gibes were that close to the mark—after all, she was a lady and a daughter of the house, not a housekeeper—but he realized from the stricken expression in her eyes that her vaunted responsibilities must indeed include at least one of those mundane tasks. That expression made him uneasy and uncomfortable, and made him fear he might have pushed her too far, which of course only made him belligerently defensive.

“I never said I’d want to counter your father,” he said. “Not in his own house. Don’t put your words in my mouth.”