Lord of Secrets (14 page)

He drew the gown off over her head, tossing it aside, and she cooperated with a kind of limp acquiescence that unsettled him every bit as much as the feverish heat radiating from her skin. Her petticoat followed, a column of pintucked cotton, revealing long slim legs under her chemise. He sat behind her on the bed, making quick work of unlacing her stays.

He wouldn’t be consummating their marriage tonight, wouldn’t have to make his confession, and now that he knew as much, a disconcerting wash of emotions—relief, tenderness, even unbidden desire—crowded in amid the worry he felt for Rosalie. How soft and slender she was, and how smooth and white her skin looked in the candlelight. She smelled sweet, and when he stripped her down to her chemise he could see the rosy outlines of her nipples through the thin linen, glimpse the curve of her small waist and the flare of her hips.

He did his best to ignore the sight and get on with undressing her. Her corset gone, she settled against him, her back to his chest. There had to be something wrong with him, enjoying the feel of her in his arms this much when she was clearly weak with fever. He concentrated on removing the pins from her hair, one by one, until her curls spilled over his hands in a silken tumble.

Slipping out from behind her, he stood and eased her back against her pillow, tucking her in between the sheets. She closed her eyes as he drew the coverlet up to her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said in an exhausted whisper, her teeth chattering.

If he leaned in just a little closer, he could kiss her throat. Or perhaps not her throat—no, he’d choose the hollow just above her collarbone. He’d start there, trailing upward, finding the place where the pulse beat in the slender column of her neck, tracing the delicate curve of her jaw, ending in a slow, deep kiss on the mouth in which his tongue would—

A scratch on the door announced the arrival of her abigail.

He gave a guilty start. Good Lord, had he really been imagining seducing Rosalie? She was shivering with ague.

To cover his confusion, he turned a look of impatience on her abigail. “Bridger, is it? Stay with your mistress while I send for the apothecary.”

The girl’s eyes went wide, though she answered in the same whisper the servants at Lyningthorp had been using for as long as he could remember. “She’s ill, my lord? Is it the mumps?”

“I don’t believe so, but I’ll know more once Mr. Cousins has examined her.”

He left Rosalie to the girl’s care and hurried downstairs to his study. Dispatching a footman for the apothecary, he paced the carpet for several seconds, then sat at his desk with a frown.

He’d promised Rosalie he would send their regrets to the Meltons. The chore was as welcome as a hangnail, but putting it off would only make the job more awkward. Reluctantly, he drew a sheet of writing paper from his top drawer.

How to begin? He didn’t want to sound too conciliatory, not after the way Melton and his ilk had snubbed him for the past twenty years. On the other hand, he was acting on Rosalie’s behalf, and they
were
canceling a dinner engagement with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. Devil take it, how did one strike a fitting compromise between lofty condescension and basic civility?

He dipped his pen in the inkwell and wrote,

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Melton,

Though I regret the necessity of canceling our dinner engagement, Lady Deal is unwell and I must tender our apologies.

Frowning, David read what he’d written. It accomplished all he wished to say, yet the single line looked so brief and unadorned as to seem almost disrespectful. After lengthy deliberation, he added another sentence before scrawling his signature.

I look forward to renewing our acquaintance at some future date.

Your most humble and obedient servant,

Deal

He reread the finished effort, wondering if his addition had only made the tone worse. There was something insultingly vague about
some
future
date
.

He tossed down his pen in frustration. Damn it, why should he care? If he offended the Meltons, so be it. It wasn’t as if the insult was intentional, and none of his neighbors had ever shown the least compunction about the way they’d treated him.

He was mildly surprised, therefore, when a footman from Radcombe Priory delivered Melton’s reply at nearly eleven o’clock that same night.

My dear Lord Deal,

I trust Lady Deal’s indisposition is not serious. Naturally we should be happy to reschedule. Shall we make it Saturday instead?

Yours etc.,

Robert Melton

David read the note with a furrowed brow. What the devil did
happy
to
reschedule
mean—that Melton was eager to set a new date, or that it delighted him they wouldn’t be keeping the original engagement? For that matter, was
Yours
etc
. mere shorthand or studied insolence?

Oh, good Lord. Why was he wasting his time, fretting over Melton’s meaning when it mattered not one whit to him what his neighbors thought? He’d got along this far without them. He was better off without their prying gazes and judgmental scowls anyway.

And still there was no sign of Mr. Cousins, the apothecary. Casting Melton’s message aside, David went to the window and peered out into the darkness, searching for carriage lamps or a lone horse and rider. Nothing.

Restless, David went back upstairs—but not to his own room to change for bed and retire for the night. Instead, he went to check on Rosalie again. He told himself he was returning to have another look at her because he was worried about her welfare, and not because of the stir of lust he’d felt, undressing her for bed. He trusted that was the real reason. He
hoped
it was.

Her abigail was sitting in a chair beside the bed. The girl had been nodding off as he entered, but she shot to her feet with a look of wide-eyed apprehension as soon as she saw him. Why did all the lower servants stare at him in that frightened fashion? It wasn’t as if they knew his every secret. He’d lived soberly enough at Lyningthorp since his majority, confining his womanizing to London, where he’d done his best to be discreet. He kept to himself, to be sure, but was he really accounted such an ogre?

Rosalie was asleep, though her head stirred restlessly on the pillow. David crossed to the bed and set a hand on her forehead. She was still burning up with fever.

He glanced at her nervous abigail. “Is there something we should be doing? Some physic we should be giving her or remedy we should be trying, to bring her fever down?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know, my lord.”

He supposed it was too much to expect a servant girl of nineteen or twenty to have all the answers. He’d only hoped for more because Rosalie herself had seemed so capable, nursing the young woman in the estate village. “Find Mrs. Epperson and tell her she’s needed here.” Recalling the girl’s cowed look when he’d entered, he added on a gentler note, “After that, you’re free to retire for the night.”

“Yes, my lord. Thank you.” She gave a quick, respectful bob and scurried out the door.

David glanced helplessly at Rosalie, then took the chair the abigail had drawn up beside the bed. He was growing more concerned by the minute. A hectic flush stained Rosalie’s cheeks. Awake, she was full of earnest energy, but lying alone in bed, she looked frail and slight.

At last Mrs. Epperson arrived in answer to his summons, and to David’s relief, Mr. Cousins came bustling in alongside her, medical bag in hand. The apothecary quickly set about examining his patient.

David stood back, watching as Cousins pressed two fingers to Rosalie’s wrist to check her pulse. The apothecary frowned and set an ear to her chest. Rosalie stirred, though she seemed no more than half-awake.

“She was in the estate village today, tending a cottager who has the mumps,” David said. “But she insists she’s already had them herself.”

Mr. Cousins straightened. He ran his hands along the sides of Rosalie’s neck. “It’s not the mumps. This came on suddenly?”

“It seemed so to me.” Too suddenly. He and Rosalie had shared only a single night together before she fell ill, and how had he spent it? Certainly not in being any kind of husband to her. He could have told her the truth about himself, he could have made a clean breast of his past, but he’d been too cowardly. If something were to happen to her now...

“I believe it’s the grippe,” Mr. Cousins said. “I’ll bleed her, my lord, and leave some squill extract and camphorated oil. Have her maid apply cool cloths to help bring down the fever, and don’t be surprised if her ladyship develops a cough before the night is out.”

It all sounded simple enough, but David didn’t like the gloomy look on the apothecary’s face.

Fortunately Mrs. Epperson nodded as if she had the situation well in hand. “I’ll see to it.” She looked to David. “I’ve dealt with many a case of grippe in my day, my lord. There’s no need for you to linger here if you’ve a mind to retire.”

David breathed a sigh of relief. He was worrying for nothing. Just because he couldn’t bring himself to confess his past transgressions didn’t mean he’d called some ruinous cosmic curse down on their heads. Rosalie had an ordinary case of the grippe.

Leaving the apothecary and Mrs. Epperson to tend to their patient, he headed to bed, expecting to find his bride more comfortable in the morning.

* * *

She had the grippe, or so Mrs. Epperson informed her during one of her more lucid moments. Rosalie nodded, mildly reassured. She’d nursed more than one shipmate through the same ailment, and the condition had not been especially serious.

But her own case must have been worse than she’d supposed, for the hours that followed were a blur—sleeping and waking, being rubbed with camphorated oil or spoon-fed squill extract and honey, alternately sweating or chilled to the bone. She developed a cough that grew so persistent it exhausted her and left the muscles of her abdomen sore. Lying in a fog, drifting in and out of awareness, she was too weak to do anything but let the hours slip by. Mrs. Epperson sat with her, and then Bridger.

And David. She could remember him watching over Bridger’s shoulder as the abigail offered her a sip of beef broth. “Eat something, Rosalie,” he urged. “Just a taste.”

She’d swallowed dutifully, but she had so little energy, and sitting up made the cough so much worse, she couldn’t manage more than a spoonful or two.

Time passed. Her room grew dark and then light again. The apothecary returned, pressing an ear to her back and ordering her to breathe deeply. She tried, only to burst into a fresh fit of coughing. He bled her a second time, leaving her even dizzier than before. David was present then, too, for on his way out Mr. Cousins pulled him aside, and the two men spoke together in low, grave voices. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, though she caught the words
lung
fever
.

Could she really be a new bride? She didn’t feel like one, and David certainly didn’t look like a happy bridegroom. He looked more like a man who wasn’t getting enough sleep, tired and worn. During her spells of wakefulness, he was at her bedside more often than not. Or was she simply confused, and her impressions of his worried face part of some fever dream?

She’d never been quite so sick before. She didn’t imagine her life was ever despaired of, but at one point she opened her eyes to find Mrs. Epperson wearing a look so solemn, Rosalie feared surely
someone
must have died.

Chapter Twelve

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

—
William Shakespeare

David spent the third day of Rosalie’s illness at her bedside. While she slept, he tried to read Cooper’s
Grammatica
, but he had difficulty focusing on the page in front of him. He couldn’t believe how rapidly her health had taken a turn for the worse. One day she’d been glowing and happy, and the next...

He was no doctor, but he’d lay odds she’d taken a chill in that wretched cottage in the estate village. It had been cold, dark and cramped. He’d congratulated himself that by marrying Rosalie he’d rescued her, saving her from her dissolute uncle. Instead, he’d brought her to Lyningthorp only to expose her to some pestilential influence.

Yes, he’d thought he was doing a good deed, offering her his name and his home, but now—now he didn’t know how he felt about their marriage. How noble could it be to wait until he’d told Rosalie about his past before consummating their marriage, if he was so selfishly determined to hang on to her regard that he refused to confess? One minute he was wishing for her sake that they’d never gone through with the wedding, and the next he wanted nothing more than a chance to start over.

This was all his fault. He shouldn’t have married her, shouldn’t have brought her here, shouldn’t have neglected her long enough for her to venture out to that miserable cottage.

And just why had that place been so miserable, anyway? He’d believed he took better care of his estate workers than that.

There was little David could do to help Rosalie, but he thought about the inhospitable atmosphere in the village, brooded on it, until at last he couldn’t sit and brood any more. When Mrs. Epperson returned with the camphor bottle, he slipped down to his study and began asking questions.

By the next morning, the fourth day of Rosalie’s illness, he had the answers he needed. The apothecary returned at nine o’clock, and while Mr. Cousins performed his examination, David sent for his steward.

Edward Corrigan had been one of his uncle Frederick’s hires, but even after his uncle’s departure, David had kept Corrigan on as steward. The man had seemed too capable to dismiss. Rents remained high, and David had only to look about him at the condition of the land, the tenant farms and the estate village to know his faith in Corrigan had been well placed—or at least, he’d believed as much until he’d seen the inside of the Bridgers’ cottage.

“You wished to see me, Lord Deal?” Corrigan had never wasted much time on social niceties, but David was hardly hypocritical enough to hold that against him.

“I did.” Sitting at his desk, David leaned back and regarded his steward. Corrigan was a thin, ascetic man with a pointed nose and thinning brown hair. He dressed neatly but unobtrusively, as befitted a good manager. “Were you aware Lady Deal and I recently called on one of the cottagers in the estate village?”

The man looked decidedly ill at ease. “No, did you?”

“Yes. You keep the cottages in good repair—on the outside. Inside, they’re not half so inviting.”

Corrigan frowned. “Yes, Lord Deal, but normally you don’t have to look at the inside.”

David was so appalled, so
angry
, that for a moment he couldn’t even formulate a response. Did Corrigan really think he cared nothing if his estate workers suffered, so long as he had fresh paint and flower boxes to admire? Most of the village families had lived and worked on Linney land for generations. And now Rosalie was burning up with fever, quite possibly as a result of conditions he’d created.

He silently counted to ten.

When he was certain he had his temper in check, he pinned Corrigan with a look. “I’ve been making enquiries. Those cottages were built to house individual families, but at present some have two and even three families crowded under one roof, each confined to a single room. How long has that been going on?”

Corrigan’s brows rose. “I don’t know. Since before I came. I believe it was your uncle’s idea, to avoid unnecessary building expenditures.”

“
Unnecessary
building expenditures.”

The steward flushed. “You’ve never objected before, my lord. I didn’t think it mattered to you. You never visit the estate village.”

He was right about that much. David had never before bothered to get a firsthand look at the cottages, never called on a single worker. He hadn’t thought it necessary, when he employed a steward to handle such awkward interactions for him. He’d imagined he could keep his distance and still be a model landlord, a detached but generous fount of largesse.

Now he knew better. On her first full day at Lyningthorp, Rosalie had shown more goodwill to the people around him than he’d shown in the ten years since he’d reached his majority. “The coal allowance we provide for each cottage...”

“Yes?”

“I’d been led to believe it was adequate for the families’ needs. I believed it justified my paying a lower wage than the other landowners of the county, because I was furnishing a costly necessity. But now I discover I’ve been paying my workers subsistence wages with next to nothing to compensate them for such miserly treatment.”

“They do get some coal, my lord.”

Yes, and Corrigan had
some
compassion. “Not nearly enough. I want the allotment for each family doubled.”

Corrigan goggled at him. “Doubled?”

“The estate can afford it. Furthermore, I want an accounting of exactly how many families are crowded together in the village and how many additional cottages will be required to house them properly, along with an estimate for the cost of construction. A
fair
estimate, not a penny-pinching projection that cuts every corner. And I want it on my desk by the end of the day tomorrow.”

Corrigan gulped. “Yes, Lord Deal.”

David leaned one arm casually on his desk. “I plan to make it my practice to tour the estate village at least twice a year, winter and summer, inside and out. I’ve been a bit remiss about it thus far—” it was a wonder he didn’t choke on such a massive understatement, “—but now that I’ve married, it seems a good time to reevaluate old routines.”

Corrigan gave an abject nod. “Will that be all, my lord?”

“For now.” David gestured with a tilt of his head to the door. “You’d best get to work at once. You’re going to be particularly busy for the next few weeks.”

The steward bowed and made his exit.

One unwelcome duty out of the way, another yet to go. David opened the top drawer of his desk. It was clear enough Rosalie wouldn’t be able to attend a dinner at Radcombe Priory that evening. He’d have to write to Robert Melton again.

This time, he hoped for Rosalie’s sake that he was only postponing the engagement until she recovered, not on a path toward canceling it altogether.

* * *

When Rosalie awoke, cool and completely clearheaded for the first time in days, her room was dark. She’d slept through another day and into the night, then.

The sound of soft, steady breathing told her someone was sitting in the chair beside her bed. She hoped it was Bridger, or perhaps Mrs. Epperson. Not David. Anyone but David.

“What time is it?” she said into the blackness. The words came out in a thin croak.

The figure beside the bed stirred. “Just after one o’clock in the morning.”

The voice was low, calm, resonant—David’s voice. Her heart sank. “You shouldn’t be sitting up with me.”

“And why is that?”

She couldn’t even say how long she’d been ill, or how many times he’d kept vigil. “Because it’s the middle of the night.”

“Yes, I believe that’s why they call it sitting up.” There was a note of amusement in his voice, though it was clearly tempered by worry. The chair creaked, and he set a hand on her forehead. “Thank God. Your fever’s broken. Do you think you could eat something? I’ll ring for a servant.”

Rosalie could hardly bear the flood of discouragement washing over her. She didn’t want to be a worry to David, didn’t want to be keeping him from his bed at one o’clock in the morning. He was supposed to need her, not the other way around. “No, don’t. Please.”

He sighed quietly, but seemed to take her refusal as ordinary lack of appetite. He resumed his spot in the chair.

A sudden thought struck her, bringing a jolting sense of shirked responsibility. She struggled up onto one elbow. “Oh! The Meltons—our dinner engagement—”

“I’ve already written to postpone it a second time. We’ve put it off until this coming Wednesday.”

She sank back against the pillow. Another inconvenience she’d caused David, another way she’d fallen short. “I wish you would go to bed, David, please. You said yourself my fever’s broken. You needn’t stay.”

“Your abigail should be here in another hour to take the next shift.”

“But I don’t need anyone watching over me.” Especially not David. She was the one who enjoyed looking after people. She’d felt needed and loved, tending her dying mother—but once her mother was gone, she’d been banished to Miss Stark’s. When her father had sent for her again, she’d gladly cared for him through the discomforts of gout and encroaching age. Even Mrs. Howard had complimented her on her nursing skills. What possible use could she be to a man like David—why should he want her in his life at all—if
he
had to look after
her
?

If she couldn’t talk him into returning to his own room, perhaps she could persuade him to go by pretending to fall back asleep. Now that her fever had broken, surely he wouldn’t stay just to watch her doze, would he?

But despite her best imitation of sleep—slow, steady breathing and a motionlessness that had her itching to move her legs again after only a few minutes had passed—he remained stubbornly at her bedside.

She was so frustrated, she wanted to weep. Why did he insist on staying? He must be bored beyond belief. Mrs. Howard was right—he was bound to regret having married her. And Rosalie couldn’t even say something to entertain him or thank him for looking after her, since she’d foolishly decided to feign sleep.

At last her abigail arrived, bringing a candle. David gave Bridger a report on Rosalie’s condition and quietly let himself out. Rosalie could breathe easy again.

She waited until she was sure David couldn’t hear, and then, with a theatrical stir and a yawn, pretended to wake up.

“Your fever’s broken, my lady?” Bridger asked in the barely audible undertone employed by all the servants at Lyningthorp.

“Yes, I think so. How long have I been ill?”

“Five days, my lady.”

Five days. She’d had one good day of marriage, and five times as many of being useless. “How is your sister? Is she over the mumps?”

“Oh, she’s much better, my lady. It was ever so kind of you to call on her the way you did. It was the talk of the village, what with you being so newly wed at the time.”

Rosalie smiled weakly. “I’m glad she’s doing well.”

“And his lordship calling that day, too!” Bridger said, her whisper a jarring mismatch for her enthusiasm. “The village is still all of a twitter. He seemed so pleasant in his manner, we were that confounded. Everyone says it was your doing, my lady. We were right worried when you fell ill yourself, and so relieved when we heard it wasn’t the mumps.”

“How often did Lord Deal sit with me while I was ill?” Rosalie asked, hoping Bridger would answer
Not
often
or perhaps even
Barely
at
all
,
my
lady
.

But with an odd note of pride in her voice, the girl said, “Two watches a day, my lady, and his lordship looking as worried as I never saw.”

Rosalie closed her eyes.
Oh
,
no
. What must David think of her now? She’d worried she was useless to him, but it was even worse than that. She was an added burden, a millstone around his neck.

Eventually, sunrise arrived, and the first rays of dawn filtered through the window hangings. Bridger drew the drapes, illuminating the room in a brilliant wash of morning light. “Are you hungry, my lady? Shall I fetch you breakfast?”

Rosalie squinted against the brightness. “Yes, that’s a good idea, Bridger. Thank you.”

The abigail bobbed a curtsey and withdrew. As soon as the door closed behind her, Rosalie slipped out of bed.

A wave of dizziness blindsided her. She steadied herself with a hand on the mantelpiece until the feeling passed, then continued unsteadily to her wardrobe.

She wasn’t going to stay in bed another minute, being tended like a helpless invalid. That visit to the estate village had been the only thing she’d accomplished since coming to Lyningthorp. Rummaging through the shelves, she chose short stays and a front-fastening gown. It wasn’t her most becoming dress, but at least she could struggle into it unassisted.