Barbara Metzger (10 page)

“Well, a faithful husband is much to be desired, although a rarity these days, I understand. So that is something, I suppose.”

“Something, but not enough?”

Oh, how Delia wished it were. Major Lord Tyverne seemed a decent sort. Stiff and reserved, and a prime example of a domineering male, but the glimpse of a smile she’d caught earlier proved the man could unbend occasionally. And he was devilishly handsome, smiling or serious. Marrying him would solve so many of her problems, and Aunt Eliza’s, and her other dependents’. But then she, and all of them, would belong to this man who commanded armies. Delia would be another bit of what the Roman legions called
impedimenta,
the stuff they toted around with them. Or left behind when circumstances and the tides of war changed. Drat him, she thought. Drat the noble gentleman and his nobler offer, for tempting her to give up her dreams. She angrily shook her head, ignoring the hair that had come out of her braided coil. So what if she looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backward? That was how she felt, by all that was holy! “No, I am sorry, my lord. It is not enough. It is not nearly enough.”

Ty got up and poured himself another glass of wine. What he wanted to do was swill down the entire contents of the decanter, but he was not raised in the barracks, not entirely anyway. He refilled Miss Croft’s glass, too, as she passed nearby in her pacing. She needed him, dash it! Why could she not see that? He could vanquish a hundred enemies, win a score of battles, wield an arsenal of weapons, yet he could not make one slim female yield to his reason and logic. “Devil take it,” he cursed, forgetting he was not alone in his tent somewhere, “I don’t know how to talk to a woman!”

Delia tilted her head to the side. “Excuse me?”

Flushing at his latest blunder, Ty decided he might as well explain. He sighed and said, “I knew I’d make a mull of things. You must have guessed by now I am not familiar with the gentler sex. I simply do not know the words you want to hear.”

Unfamiliar with females, this blue-eyed Adonis? Delia would believe that when she saw pigs fly. Why, whenever he entered a room, women must throw themselves at his feet. His bare feet. She tore her eyes away from those naked digits, but her gaze unfortunately alighted on the vee at his neck, where neither his uniform coat nor his nightshirt was tightly fastened. She could see bronzed skin and the beginnings of golden chest hairs and— She walked back to the window, away from the hearth and its heat, to cool her cheeks.

“You want to know what I wish to hear?” she asked, and he nodded. “From the man I would marry, I want to hear words of love.”

Ty was afraid of that. He shook his head. “I do not know them.”

“Of course not,” she explained, as if to a child. “You do not feel them.”

“How could I feel them? That is, I do not know you. I do find you attractive and
...
and full of pluck.”

“Thank you, I think. But you do not love me.”

Ty wished he could undo another button. Lud, he had not had such an uncomfortable conversation since the colonel’s wife wandered into his tent by mistake. He’d always hoped it was a mistake, at any rate. “I, ah, just met you yesterday” was all he could think to say.

“Exactly!” Delia was relieved she’d finally made this doggedly determined dolt see reason.

“You mean, in time ... ?”

She stomped her foot—not even close to his lordship’s toes, unfortunately—and said, “I mean, once and for all, that I want to marry a man who loves me. Me, not his own sense of honor. I want a man who wants me for myself, not because he feels duty-bound to wed, to fulfill his debts or obligations.”

He started to speak, most likely to chide her for her childish imaginings, for believing in a happily ever after. She held up her hand. “Nay, let me finish, my lord. Your proposal was well-intended and well-spoken, and for that I do thank you. But even if I were willing to make an advantageous match without affection, which I am not, I would not wed a soldier.”

“A rough breed, true, for a lady such as yourself, but—”

“But nothing. A soldier’s code is God, King, and Country. Well, I wish to be first with my husband, not so far down the list as to be an afterthought! God, King, and Country,” she repeated, making the words sound like a curse. “But what about family, I want to know? What about those depending on you to be here when needed?”

“The homeland needs to be defended.”

“Of course,” she bitterly replied. “That is what George said, that he was leaving home in order to protect it. There will always be that conflict between love and duty, and duty comes first, does it not?”

“Would you ask a man to forsake his honor?”

“Where is the honor in dying in some Godforsaken country, I ask you? You say you are not a gambler, yet a soldier gambles with his life in every battle. War is for fools, brave and proud fools—and their widows. I will never marry a soldier.”

Now Ty understood why the generals did not accept married officers: their wives wrote letters. He thought of telling Miss Croft that he would most likely sell out, now that he could not serve in the field, but he would not lie. If his country called him, he would go, half-useless arm or not. It was as simple as that.

Nothing was as simple as that. “What about your child?”

“My child? What child?”

“The one you wrote George about, the one you were sewing tiny garments for, the one Nanny keeps praying for, and old Mags frets over. That child.”

“You believe it is my child?” She sat down now, staggered. “And that is why you came? You offered for me, thinking I had a ... a ...”

“A love child,” Ty supplied, although he doubted it was any such thing. The father was a soldier, he’d wager, to cause Miss Croft to despise the calling, some dastard who’d led her down the garden path, then abandoned her when his leave was over.

“You believed me a lightskirt?” Delia looked daggers at him. “How dare you!” Then she had another thought: “And you would take me as your wife anyway? You are an even bigger fool than I imagined.”

Ty was beginning to see the magnitude of his idiocy himself. He wished he had not given her that letter from her brother, so he could reread it. There was no time to ask to borrow the blasted thing, for Miss Croft was on her feet again and pulling him to his, toward a connecting door.

“Well, perhaps we can all be satisfied after all, my lord major,” she said as they reached the door. “You are so eager to wed, and so anxious to repay your debt to my brother at any cost, while Lud knows poor Belinda desperately needs rescuing. It is a perfect match, I’d say. You might even call it a match made in Heaven.”

She choked back a sob and threw open the door. “Here, sir, here is the legacy my brave and honorable brother George left us when he went to play at soldier. Here is the woman you meant to marry—and the child you offered to accept.”

Chapter 12

The room was dark, the windows covered. At first, all Ty could discern was the old woman, Nanny, reading her Bible by the light of a candle. Then he saw a white cat on the heaped bedclothes. No, it was a small, scruffy dog, growling at the intruders, and the heap was not a pile of blankets and sheets at all. It was an immensely pregnant woman. He recognized the moaning now as she made a low keening sound without looking up.

“This, my lord, is Miss Belinda Gannon, my brother’s betrothed,” Delia whispered next to him, in the doorway.

My word, Ty thought. A proposal was bad enough, a marriage worse, but a lying-in? For all his heroism in battle, he would have fled this bedroom, but Miss Croft was blocking the doorway. “Is she ... is she in labor?”

“She is in a comatose state, the physicians say. Sometimes she wakes and recognizes us. Most of the time, not. They have given up.”

Delia stepped closer, petting the dog to quiet it, and then lit another candle. She beckoned Tyverne nearer the bed. With leaden feet, he inched forward. Belinda had been a beauty, he could see, with a heart-shaped face and long golden hair. To say she was deathly pale, however, was to overstate the case. Ty had seen that near-bloodless waxiness too many times not to recognize how tenuous a thread connected Miss Gannon to this earth. As he looked closer, he could see that her hands by her side were swollen, the fingers bloated and tinged with blue. He shook his head.

Delia was gently smoothing a lock of hair back from Belinda’s cheek. “Wake up, dearest, and see who has come to visit. Lord Tyverne is a friend of George’s from the army.”

Perhaps it was the sound of her beloved’s name, but Belinda did open her eyes. She saw a scarlet coat and let out a glad cry. “George, you came back.” She struggled to raise her arm from the top of the covers, holding it out to him.

Ty had to take her cold hand in his. Once he had it, he did not know what to do with the chill, limp burden. He awkwardly patted it. “No, I am sorry. I am Tyverne, but
...
but George sent me to ... to look after you.”

The girl moved her head from side to side, no longer looking at him, or at anything of the real world. “Not George. George is not coming home.” She began that low moaning again.

“I am so sorry, Miss Gannon.” He carefully placed her cold hand back at her side, atop the covers. “So very sorry.”

Nanny came to the other side of the bed and held a glass to Belinda’s mouth. The liquid dribbled out, onto the girl’s chin. “I doubt she can hear you anymore, milord, nor wants to, you not being Master George and all.”

And all. Did Belinda know that George had died saving Ty’s life? Lud, could he feel more useless, more that he never should have survived at the cost of young Croft? Ty stared helplessly at the still form, knowing he would hear those moans in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

“Come,” Delia said, touching his arm.

She poured Lord Tyverne and herself brandies this time, from another decanter in the sitting room.

Ty stared out the window, reassuring himself that it was still day, although he felt as if hours had passed since he’d left this room. His skin was damp against his clothes, but his eyes and mouth felt dry and filled with grit, as if he’d ridden through a dust storm. He swirled the brandy around on his tongue, ignoring the stinging where he’d bitten his lip. He finally spoke: “She has such poor handwriting.”

Delia was incredulous. “The poor girl is near death, her child with her. She has been forced from her home, and the man she loved is dead—and you find fault with her penmanship?”

“No, not that,” Ty said, without turning from the window. He could not bear to see condemnation from yet another pair of eyes. “There was another letter in your brother’s saddlebags, you see. One I could not decipher. If I had been able to—”

“You would never have offered for an antidote like me,” Delia finished for him.

An antidote? Didn’t George’s sister know she had more beauty than twenty blond-haired, blue-eyed china shepherdesses? Now that he comprehended the difficulties she was facing, he understood her worried, ashen weariness. He admired her all the more for it, for shouldering such a burden. “No, I never would have importuned you with unwanted, unwarranted attentions. I would not have suspected you of—that is, I would have approached Miss Gannon, is it? To think, if her letter had been legible, I would have offered for her.”

“It is not too late. You can still repay your debt to George by marrying his lover, and giving his bastard your name.” Delia used the crude terms on purpose, not to sugarcoat the truth.

“Is she near to term, then?”

“She is nearer to death, by Mags’s calculations, barring a miracle. That is Nanny’s mission. Not trusting to Nanny’s prayers, I had physicians from London come, and an expensive accoucheur, too. They held out no hope. One said Belinda had lost her will to live when George left. Another told me the child was evil, because of George and Belinda’s immorality, and was poisoning her. A third claimed the infant was lying wrong, blocking Belinda’s vital humors.”

Ty clutched at that. “Can the infant be turned? Sometimes they can, when mares or cows are struggling.”

“He tried. Mags says he did more damage than good. I trust her judgment more than that of all the so-called learned men, for she’s birthed nearly every child for miles. She says Belinda is too weak to go through labor now anyway, from neither eating nor drinking.” Delia took a sip of the brandy and looked at the tall gentleman who was so noble he was actually considering her mad suggestion. “You would not long be burdened with an unwanted wife, therefore, nor have to claim the child as your own. But Belinda would not lie in a sinner’s grave.”

“Tell me,” Ty said. “Tell me the rest of it, why they never married.”

So Delia did. She spoke forever, it seemed to her, relieved to be placing more of her grief and anger and confusion on the viscount’s broad shoulders. His gallantry no longer seemed so quixotic, as he listened patiently to her tell a tale that could rival
Romeo and Juliet
for tragedy—and childish stupidity.

Belinda Gannon and George Croft had been childhood playmates, it seemed, then sweethearts. They had always intended to be married. Her father, the local squire and major landowner after Lord Dallsworth, had smiled indulgently on the young couple until, that is, Belinda turned seventeen. Suddenly Squire’s duckling was a swan. No longer an awkward, spotty girl, Belinda had turned into a beauty.

As she told the story, Delia tried to keep her own jealousy from coloring the narrative. She had always loved Belinda as a sister, expecting her to become one, in fact, eventually, but could never help feeling envious of the closeness the younger children shared. Then the squire’s lumpish daughter turned out to be a Diamond. Delia, who began life as a scrawny girl with unkempt, unfortunately red hair and freckles, turned into a scrawny young lady with freckles, who had learned to keep her hair tamed in braids. None of the local boys would look at Delia, not when Belinda was nearby. Luckily for their friendship, Belinda had eyes only for George.

Squire was no longer amused. He thought he could do better for his only child than a mere country baronet with modest income and minor holdings. With her beauty, and a distant cousin’s backing, Belinda could have a London Season next year, and reach as high as she wished on the matrimonial ladder.