Leslie Lafoy (17 page)

Charlotte appeared to at least be giving the idea some thought. Perhaps there was hope of reason finally prevailing. Although it might be difficult for her to admit that. Well, he noted, his optimism withering, she didn’t appear to have any difficulty in wheeling that chair around to glare at him.

“You wouldn’t let me die,” she declared, her eyes sparking with angry defiance.

He was tempted to maintain that he would indeed, but quickly decided that flippancy wouldn’t help resolve the problem. Instead, he opted for a general truth. “Doctors aren’t God, Charlotte,” he said in a tone that he hoped matched Fiona’s for calm. “We can’t save people from themselves. If you want to destroy yourself, you’ll eventually succeed no matter how often I try to intervene or to convince you to do otherwise.”

He took a deep breath and added, “I think it’s only fair to point out to you that there comes a time when a sane person stops beating their head against a wall and accepts the necessity of letting matters run their inevitable course.”

Her brows knit, her mouth puckered into a tiny, bloodless knot, Charlotte whirled the chair so that she faced neither of them. Ian glanced over at Fiona, hoping she’d give him a sign as to what he was supposed to say or do next. All he got was a brief smile of reassurance before her gaze shifted to Charlotte’s back.

“Would you like to have some hot water brought in for a bath?” she kindly asked his ward. “We’ll be glad to wait breakfast while you clean and dress yourself.”

“No.”

“It’s your decision. And ours to allow it,” she replied, unlacing her fingers and easing off the bureau’s edge. Gliding smoothly across the room, she added, “If you should change your mind between now and luncheon, the bell cord is over here by the door. Please understand that the staff will be instructed to bring you only bath water.”

“I want the floor cleaned!”

“I’m sure you do,” Fiona cheerfully replied without so much as a backward glance. She reached his side and stopped to smile up at him. “Shall we go to breakfast? I’m famished.”

“So am I,” he lied. He gestured toward the open door. “After you, my lady.” He waited until Fiona was in the hall before he bowed slightly and said, “I hope you’ll choose to bathe and then join us, Charlotte.”

His ward said nothing and remained still as a post. Feeling defeated, he stepped into the hall and pulled the door quietly closed.

Fiona stood waiting for him, her normally bright eyes clouded with obvious concern. “I hope you don’t think I was too brutal.”

His every instinct wanted to wrap his arms around her slender shoulders and draw her close, to tip her face up and gently, slowly, thoroughly kiss away all her worries. “I think you handled the situation perfectly,” he assured her, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Far better than I have to this point. She needed to hear the things you said and—”

The crash was loud. And followed, in a mere flash of a second, by another. And another. Ian turned to study the door, his teeth clenched as he listened to the angry shrieking and sounds of destruction coming from the other side.

“Well,” Fiona said softly as she, too, studied the door, “the good news is that she had to roll her chair over to the washbasin to get her hands on it. It’s progress.”

“Only a born and bred optimist,” he groused, “would see a violent temper tantrum as a positive sign.”

“When there’s nothing left for her to destroy,” Fiona offered him in consolation, “and she realizes that no one’s going to come in to either clean it up or provide her with new things to throw and break, she might actually have a revelation in the midst of the rubble.”

Or not
. He expelled a long, slow breath. “Assuming that there really are such things as miracles, how long do you think it might take?”

“I have no idea, Ian. It rather depends on how stubborn she is and how used she is to getting her way by behaving badly. Were her parents in the habit of granting her every whim?”

“Charlotte’s parents were in the habit of largely ignoring her,” he provided, offering his arm. She took it without hesitation, stepping to his side and placing her hand on his forearm. How such an innocent gesture could be so stunningly inviting, such a small and delicately structured appendage could produce such instant and compelling heat … His heart racing and his blood warming, he guided her down the hall.

“Dr. Masters was a distant, cold man who had his medical practice and his mistresses,” he went on, more to distract himself than to enlighten Fiona. “Amanda hid in her social whirl and sought revenge in having her own affairs. Charlotte was an inconvenient object left to the servants to manage. And servants being there only to serve…”

“Then Charlotte’s reformation could take a while.”

Judging by her easy tone, the possibility of repeated frustrations didn’t seem to distress Fiona in the least. She really was the most surprising woman, possessing so much more strength than anyone would reasonably expect by just looking at her. There was a surprising depth, a kind of quiet passion, to her, as well. He’d known a few women in his life whom he characterized as quietly passionate. If Fiona proved to be even half as exciting as they’d been in— Ian pushed the thought away, disgusted by his baser instincts.

“Is something wrong? Your muscles are suddenly tense.”

He looked down into compassionate, searching green eyes. To lean down … She’d close her eyes as his lips brushed over hers. She’d murmur in consent and then melt against him, her murmurs becoming soft moans of pleasure as he explored—

Ian cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “I feel sorry for Charlotte,” he said, offering up the first plausible explanation that stumbled past his awareness. “For the kind of childhood she’s had to endure. For having to go through all the rest of her life crippled.”

Mercifully, they reached the stairs and he withdrew his arm so that Fiona could manage her skirts. “She’ll only be as crippled, Ian,” she replied, making her way down, “as she’s willing to let an unhappy childhood overshadow all of the hope in her todays. As willing as she is to go through life letting her damaged legs determine what she wants to do.”

“In other words, she’ll only be as crippled as I allow her to be.”

“And as she makes excuses for herself.”

He followed her, marveling at how he could still feel the place on his arm where her hand had rested, could still feel the quickened beat of his heart. Cad that he was, he resented having the space suddenly between them. Ramming his hands back into his trouser pockets, he scowled at the carpeted steps as he made his way down into the foyer. What a cad he was. Fiona was expressing her concerns over the quality of another person’s life while he was thinking about the way she’d feel in his arms, the luscious sounds she’d make as he made slow love to her.

Jesus. Physically mangled and personally humiliated didn’t appear to make a damn bit of difference to him. Neither did his pledge to prove himself a decent, honorable man worthy of marriage to a good and sexually innocent woman. One touch, one look and he was teetering on the edge of completely ruining any chance of redemption he had left. God, the only real hope he had of resisting the temptation of his green-eyed beauty was to keep as much distance between them as possible. If he didn’t … He didn’t even want to think about how low her opinion of him would go.

“By the way, Beeps is able to jump up and down from the bed as he wants already,” Fiona said cheerily from a circumspect distance as together they crossed the foyer and moved toward the dining room. “I removed his bandages last night. He had them half undone anyway.”

“Doesn’t anything ever discourage you?” he wondered aloud as they reached the table and he again helped her into a chair, as he again inhaled the heady scent of wicked fairy flowers.

“Not for very long. And you? Do you ever get discouraged, Ian?”

“Every now and then,” he admitted, picking the bell up from the table and giving it a quick shake.

“Over what?”

“Any number of things,” he supplied with a shrug as he took his own seat.

“Such as?”

Well, he’d been the one to open the conversational box; he couldn’t very well refuse to answer her question. And, besides, thinking about other frustrations would distract him from the one of not being able to reach out and slowly open the little pearl buttons of her perfectly prim and proper bodice.

“Well, let’s see,” he began, gazing up at the ceiling. “There’s the state of health among England’s poor. My mother. Charlotte. The petty social expectations of being a duke. My mother. The starving children in India. In China. In Whitechapel. My mother. The incredible amount of paper one must file and the permissions one must beg for in order to do something not only charitable, but right and desperately necessary. And then there’s my mother.”

She chuckled. “I detect a reoccurring subject.”

“Yes, my dear mother, the ever present cloud of gloom and disapproval waiting to drift over my life.”

The footman arrived in the doorway with a bow. Ian acknowledged him with a dip of his chin and then said, “We’re ready to be served breakfast. And please advise Mrs. Pittman and Cook that if Miss Charlotte pulls the bell cord, they’re to take her only water for a bath. Nothing else. They’re to fill the tub and leave. Under no circumstances are they to clean up the shambles she’s made of her room or assist her in bathing or dressing.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Ian picked up the coffee pot. “More coffee, Fiona?”

“Please.” She held out her cup and let him pour as she offered, “Surely there’s something about you that your mother finds acceptable.”

He couldn’t think of what it might be so he simply shook his head, smiled and changed the subject. “What do you plan to do with the day if Charlotte decides not to come out of her room?”

“Plot the decorating changes to the sun room around her, chatting amiably and soliciting her opinion on colors and fabrics and such. She’ll either be compelled to participate by my enthusiasm or by her horrified reaction to my suggestions.”

Yes, a dyed in the wool, to the marrow optimist. “She could just decide to sit there and glower at you, you know.”

“Yes, she could,” Fiona allowed with an impish smile and a sparkle in her eyes. “But then she’d have to live in the middle of a tribute to British naval history.”

“Naval history?” he asked warily.

“It’s the most unfeminine thing I can think of. Yards and yards of Union Jack bunting, the bits and pieces of ships scattered here and there and tacked to the walls, all of it surrounding a portrait of Lord Nelson.”

“Of course.”

“Absolutely,” she assured him, grinning. “
And
a huge painting depicting the Battle of Trafalgar, too.”

God, he could just see it. And it was awful. Chuckling, he admonished, “Don’t roll a real cannon in there, please. Not unless you plan to permanently spike it. She’s done sufficient damage already.”

“A cannon,” Fiona whispered, delight dancing in her eyes. “That’s positively inspired, Ian. Would you happen to know where I can get one?”

“No,” he lied, enjoying their game. “But, if pressed, I could probably come up with a bilge rat or two.”

She sat up a bit straighter and tilted her slightly to the side. “Properly bathed and—”

“I was joking! No one is going to bring rats into this house.”

“We’d keep them in a cage.”

“No rats!”

The corners of her eyes crinkled as her smile went bright and wide. Then she tipped her head back and laughed. The sound rippled through him, delighting his heart and buoying his spirit high. To have her laugh with that much joy as he swept her into his arms and carried her up the …

Oh, he was a man in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.

Chapter Ten

“Do you think we should thin out these flower beds?” Charlotte asked, using a light rake to brush an errant leaf from the newly greening shoots. “Perhaps we could transplant them to a new bed on the south side of the house.”

Fiona smiled and walked over to where Charlotte had parked her chair, marveling at how much Ian’s ward had changed in just the last few days. Admittedly the first week had been difficult for everyone, but eventually Charlotte had accepted that she really would be allowed to go to bed hungry and that she was going to have to roll herself out of the sun room if she wanted more than the companionship of her solitary thoughts. Once those two hurdles had been crossed …

“Don’t you think so, Fiona?”

She stared down at what she thought might be irises. “Truth be told, I don’t know a thing about when plants should be thinned, much less how to do it or where they should go next.”

“Then why are you gardening?”

“Because I’m hoping you’ll teach me what you know,” she replied.

For a second Charlotte beamed up at her, and then her gaze abruptly darted toward the rear yard. Fiona didn’t need to turn and look; she could hear the hoofbeats.

On the first full day of their plan for Charlotte’s reformation, Ian had been here to greet her when she’d arrived. He’d spent most of the morning with her, growing ever more quiet and distant, and then, right after lunch, left to oversee the work on his hospital.

After that, she’d arrived every morning to find him leaving for a ride. And the rest of the day had become just as patterned. He rode for a couple of hours, returning home to bathe and change his clothes and then lock himself in his study with his medical books until lunch was served. He smiled tightly through the course of the meal, pretending to be interested in the things they’d done in his absence, and then, the very second that good manners permitted, he got up from the table and left the house. She went home before he returned in the evening.

This morning had gone slightly differently, though. His cousin Harry had sauntered into the dining room just as Ian was going through the ritual of wishing her and Charlotte a pleasant day. It had obviously chafed Ian’s patience to go through the introductions, but his irritation had deepened to the point of outright glowering when Harry had settled himself at the table and, chatting happily away, reached for a slice of toast. Two minutes later, Harry, a piece of toast clutched in each hand, was heading out the door for a ride he didn’t want to take.