How a Lady Weds a Rogue (15 page)

“Now, miss. You’ll find her and make it all right again.”

“You will have time to recuperate entirely from your chill, I think. We will be here longer than anticipated. And if the villagers begin to suspect where their sugar and chickens have gone, or if someone comes for the cow or recognized the gig we took to the village this morning, we will probably be arrested.”

“It’ll be no more than that man deserves.”

“Perhaps. And me. But not you.” Diantha took her companion’s thick little hands into her own, flour dust swirling about. “I don’t wish for you to come to grief because of me. But I cannot leave here without Mr. Yale. I fear, however, that he will not be able to leave for some days yet. He is quite unwell and I am terribly worried about him.”

Mrs. Polley pulled her hands away and set them to the pin again. “Elizabeth Polley isn’t one to desert her mistress at the drop of a hat.”

Diantha looked toward the doorway that went to the foyer and stairs that could take her to wherever in the house he now was. She curled her fingers around the edges of the bench, holding herself in place.

“I’m afraid it may come to be a great deal more uncomfortable than a hat dropping.”

Chapter 15

“S
he’s wanting to be milked, miss.”

“I seems so.” Diantha stood beside Owen, elbows propped on the stall’s half door, the cow’s mournful lowing filling the stable with misery. The poor creature’s udder certainly
looked
heavy. But Diantha didn’t know anything about cows. The situation might not be truly dire. “I don’t suppose you know how to milk a cow?”

“No, miss. Know a thing or two about tending sheep, though.”

“Not, I suppose, how to milk one?”

He cast her a peculiar look.

She folded her arms. The stable was heavy with moisture, the poor weather persisting as though it meant to rain and rain forever. Diantha’s gown and undergarments were soggy, her hair a horrid tangle of damp curls, and her slippers a travesty. Likewise, she had only the gown she’d worn when they traveled to the abbey and this one, and after only three nights she was tired of sleeping without a pillow or proper fire. Her entire world felt like it was in a bog.

“I suppose it is beyond hoping that Mrs. Polley knows how to milk a cow,” she mumbled.

“I’d suppose that too, miss.”

“Though she made those scrumptious biscuits yesterday, and with so few ingredients at hand, so we should be happy enough.”

“Should be, miss.”

“And the tasty porridge with the dried fruit this morning, even without milk.”

“Surely was a fine porridge, miss.”

“She says we will have greens for dinner today. Despite her cough, she went foraging and found them in the garden.”

“I do like a fine boiled green, miss.”

The cow groaned. The horses chomped at their hay. Diantha chewed on the edge of her lips. “Who will milk the cow, Owen?”

He set his hand on his chin like a man of great dignity and stroked as though stroking a beard. Diantha suppressed a giggle. But it felt good to want to giggle. She hadn’t seen Mr. Yale all day, though Owen said he’d taken Galahad riding just after dawn and she knew he had returned to the house. But if he wished for her company, he would surely seek it out.

“Miss,” the boy said, “we might ask the master.”

She chuckled. “Oh, Owen, he is a gentleman. With a London address, no less. Gentlemen with London addresses know how to waltz and play cards shockingly well.” And stand perfectly still pointing a pistol at another man, apparently. “They do not know how to do things like milk cows.”

Owen shrugged. “Like as not. But someone’s got to do it or she’ll sicken, and we’ll have to haul her into the village and the rig’ll be up.”

She slapped her hands against her skirts. “She
will
sicken. Though it is perhaps the silliest thing I’ve ever done, I will go ask him.” And see him. She wanted an excuse.

She went to the house and up the winding stairway to the parlor, eager as she hadn’t been since breakfast. He was not there. She went to the next door along the corridor. Much larger than the parlor, the drawing room seemed too grand to disturb and she hadn’t been in it since the first day. But she knocked and opened the door a crack.

Ramses’ shaggy nose appeared sniffing at the aperture. She pulled the panel wide.

Gray light filtered into the chamber, casting the white linens that covered furniture and paintings in a ghostly glow, everything except the man standing in silhouette at a dust-smeared window with his back to her.

“I really must ask Owen to wash these windows,” she said into the silence. “Or do it myself, I suppose. It is the least I can do for these people who don’t even—”

He turned to her. Diantha’s throat closed. Light glinted off the weapon dangling from his fingers.

“Wh-Wha—” she tried, but her words died again as he came toward her, her heartbeats filling her throat now, her gaze locked on the pistol.

He halted before her, so close she could see the dark circles beneath his eyes.

“What are you going to do with that?” she whispered.

He grasped her hand, pressed the pistol against her palm, and curled her fingers around it. The metal was heavy and cold, his large hand around hers scalding.

“Hide this.” His voice was very low, laced with tension.

She nodded, little jerks of her head. He reached into his coat pocket and upturned her other hand. Bullets jingled into her cupped palm.

“And these. But not together.” He released her. “And do remember where you have hidden them, Miss Lucas. I shall be needing them again.”

“Do you think,” she said shakily, “that given all, you might call me Diantha?”

“Remember where you have hidden them, Diantha. Now . . .” He drew a hard breath, fever glinting in his darkened eyes. “Leave me. And if by chance I should come for you and am not entirely myself . . . run.”

Her heart stopped. “I won’t.”

His hand flexed into a fist at his side. “Diantha, I pray you.”

She left, but she sent Owen to him. Then she went to the stable where the cow lowed a sad soliloquy. Stroking Galahad’s ebony and white nose, she leaned into him and allowed all the fear and confusion and strange, pressing need to ripple through her. Then she returned to the house and Mrs. Polley in the kitchen, where she might be of use.

D
ay was torment, an endless search for activities that would engage his mind sufficient to distract him from the craving and dysfunction of his body. Day offered him light by which to read. Day gave him Owen’s prattling company when the boy was not busy elsewhere. Day allowed him to imagine Diantha moving about the house, making it home just as she made every fallen log a throne and every cast-off soul a bosom bow.

Day lasted for many more hours than the sun was high, it seemed, sending him searching through cupboards in the library and drawing room in desperation to find cards, a chessboard, anything that he could pore over, sweating blood with every labored breath, knowing in the frenzied fog that only by keeping his mind engaged would he see this through. As he had conquered pain inflicted by others so many years ago, his mind could conquer this as well.

Day was torture.

But night was hell.

Night never ended. Night came on claws, tearing at his insides and whispering that he could end it, until he was deaf with it. Night persisted, hour after hour of darkness. He went to the stable, but even Galahad’s presence did not calm the panic. So he went again into the rain that teased with its scent and natural ease, climbed to the sheepcote and upon a ridge slept. But sleeping was merely another variety of torturous waking, his body shaking and bones burning and the agony in his head making him blind. But worse were the visions of people he had long since abandoned and places he had left behind years ago. In the dark he went to his knees and drank water from the stream, arising with a thirst he could not slake.

At moments he recognized that he was in a fever. Delirium. When Owen came and Wyn forced himself to speak, tried to restrain the trembling of his limbs, he saw himself as though at a distance. But he did not allow the boy to remain long, and the darkness descended again eagerly.

Yet the darkness was not alone. Deep beyond it, in a place he could see only at moments, relief dwelled.

Relief, kind and sweet like the touch of a lady’s berry smile.

Relief that—finally—it was over.

B
y the end of the third day Diantha could bear it no longer.

“I am going up.” She wiped her hands on a towel tied around her waist and pulled it off.

Mrs. Polley frowned as she scrubbed a pan. “He told you not to. Seeing as it’s the most gentlemanlike thing he’s done yet, you should listen to him.”

“That is not true, Mrs. Polley.” Diantha arranged a tray with a cup, saucer, and pot beside a plate of oat biscuits. She reached for the kettle. “Owen said he ate nothing today.”

Mrs. Polley shook her head. “I’ll go up with you.”

“No. Finish cleaning up then go to bed. Your cough persists and you need the sleep.” She poured boiling water into the pot and affixed the lid.

“And you, a fine miss running about dusting and sweeping.”

“I need the activity.” Rather,
distraction
. But it was perfectly silly that she was even trying to distract herself from thinking of him. “Now I will take this up and then I will turn in too. Good night, Mrs. Polley.”

She climbed the stairs with the stub of a candle on the tray to guide her steps. Dust rose as she went. The house was so large that it would take her weeks to clean it completely. Weeks she did not have. Her fortnight was slipping away and she was no closer to Calais, lost in the wilds of Wales.

At the door to his bedchamber she knocked. No response came. She knocked again, louder.

The door opened and her heart fell over. In shirtsleeves that clung to his arms with sweat, he was drawn, cheekbones prominent, the black centers of his eyes overcoming the gray.

“I told you to stay away.”

“Good evening to you too, sir.” She pushed past him and he allowed it, falling back a step to lean against the door lintel. She went across the room and set the tray on the dressing table, bending to stroke Ramses’ brow. “You didn’t tell me to stay away. You told me to run if you approached me. But you don’t look well enough to chase a turtle.” Taking up the candle, she plucked a taper from the mantel and held it to the flame then bent and lit the peat block in the hearth. “Why is the window open?” She moved to shut it. “You will catch your death.”

He tilted his head against the wall and his eyes closed. “Entirely possible I’m already dead.”

“Not quite yet.”

“Fires of Purgatory and all that, with you, my Beatrice, beckoning from Paradise.”

“But you are certainly delirious and will probably be dead soon if you don’t eat.”

“Rather be at present.” The words were barely a whisper.

Diantha’s heart beat so hard she could hear it in the silence. “No doubt.” She crossed to him, every nerve in her body ridiculously aware that she was alone in a gentleman’s bedchamber with him. “I have brought tea and Mrs. Polley’s biscuits.”

His eyes opened, reflecting the firelight’s golden heat. “Leave.”

“No.”

His hands darted out and his fingers bit into her shoulders. He dragged her close. The planes of his face as he looked down at her were harsh, his eyes glittering with fever and the ravenous intent of the predator.

“Please.”
The sound came from so deep in his chest she barely understood the word.

She struggled for breath, squaring her shoulders in his hold. “Why did you make me hide the pistol when you were planning to starve yourself to death anyway?”

“You”—his voice grated—“are”—each word was forced—“a difficult girl.”

“I am not a girl, and I am trying to help. But you must allow me.”

For an instant something she recognized flickered in his eyes. Then, as though it cost him great effort, he released her. With deliberate steps he crossed the chamber and took up the teapot. It clinked against the cup, steam twining in the cold air.

“Take care. It will still be quite h—” Her warning died upon her tongue. He swallowed the scalding tea, then poured another cup and drank it as well.

“The biscuits too,” she said.

“Go.” He spoke with his back to her.

“No.”

“While I still allow you to.”

“I thought the remedies we purchased at the herbalist’s shop were intended to—”

“They require time to take effect.”

Her gaze darted to the brown bottle on the writing table. “You haven’t taken the laudanum yet, have you?”

His head bowed. “Makes a man insensible.”

“I should think insensibility and life preferable to sharp senses and death.”

“Six of one . . .” His fingertips pressed onto the surface of the dressing table, white with strain, and she realized he was holding himself up thus. She had the most powerful urge to go to him, wrap her arms about him and let him use her as a crutch.

“Wyn,” she whispered, “I think you should sit down before you topple over.”

“Not . . . in the . . . presence of a—”

“Don’t be silly.
Oh!
”

He wavered. She flew toward him and threw her arms around him as she’d imagined,
dreamed
, but not quickly enough and she was not strong enough. He went to his knees, and she with him.

“You are the foolish one,” she uttered against his shoulder, damp fabric against her cheek covering hard muscle. His body shook. He burned. “Quite a foolish man, Mr. Yale.”

His trembling hand clutched hers against his chest. She pressed her mouth to his shoulder, her fingers crushed within his grasp, her body wedged against his, and kissed him. Her lips brushed fine linen and his suffering became part of her.

“You will probably not remember this,” she whispered, and kissed his shoulder again. “That is a consolation.” She could not stop herself. Need she had never imagined beset her, need to be with him, to touch him and fill her senses with him.

And then she did stop, because it was not about what she needed now. He needed her. She did not have weeks for this delay, or even days now. But she would give him her days and weeks if necessary.

“You know,” she said, resting her cheek against his broad back, the quick, shallow beat of his heart beneath her hand, “you mustn’t die, or even continue in this state for much longer.”

“I will remember this, Diantha.” His words were not strong to the ear, but she felt them vibrate through his body, and hers. “I remember everything.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Not everything,” she whispered.

“Not everything.”

“There is a cow desperately needing to be milked. And I don’t know what to do about it. So you must get well quickly and solve that little problem so she won’t grow sick and die. You see? Now you have two lives for which you are responsible.”

She lifted his arm and it was remarkably heavy, but he must have aided her because she got her shoulder beneath his.

“Come now. We will take you to that chair. It is closer than the bed.”

“Slept on the ground before. Number of times.”

“You have?”

“Not so bad.”

“Still, I’ve an inkling you haven’t actually been sleeping at all since we came here. So if you’re not to sleep now, you may as well not sleep in a chair rather than on the floor.”