Miss Goldsleigh's Secret (6 page)

Situated in the seat, the duke expertly drove his matching blacks at a fast pace, weaving through the traffic. Henry tried to ignore the guilt that settled in the pit of his stomach. Olivia’d kept her brother alive for months in the city with no money and no prospects, and he’d nearly killed him in one afternoon. Damn. Damn. Damn.

Chapter Eight

Olivia raced down the hall, her hair, unbound from her nap, streaming behind her. She was barefoot and most likely had a crease on her face from the pillow, but she didn’t care. She slowed to round a corner, grabbed the wall for support then picked up her pace as she counted off the rooms. She need not have done so as it was obvious which room was his. Lord Dalton paced in front of the door, his back to her, his head bowed and his hands running through his ruffled hair.

She slowed to a trot, a walk and then stopped several paces away from Dalton, her heart in her stomach. “My lord?” she asked, her voice little more than a terrified breath.

Henry turned on his heel, his expression stricken, and Olivia knew it must be the worst. Her hand flew to her mouth, but a squeaky sob escaped nonetheless.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Goldsleigh,” she heard him say, his voice a distant sound behind the roaring in her ears.

“Oh, Warren.” Olivia sobbed, her eyes shut against the truth that shown so clearly on Lord Dalton’s face.
It can’t be true. It can’t be true. Oh God, no, it can’t be true.
Strong hands settled on her shoulders, easing her down as she sank to the floor.

“Miss Goldsleigh.” Lord Dalton shook her gently. The low timbre of his voice eased its way past her mounting hysteria and slipped into her ear. “Miss Goldsleigh.”

Olivia gripped his arms with both hands, her fingers wrapped around his biceps, and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. She clung to him like an oak in a flood, desperate, while the grief poured over her. This was nothing like when her parents died. They had been ill, and though she didn’t want to admit it at the time, towards the end, she knew their deaths were imminent. Warren was so young and the last of her family. Now she was all alone. Really and truly alone.

“Miss Goldsleigh.” Lord Dalton said her name more firmly.

“How did he die?” she whispered, her words so thin they could scarcely be heard.

He shook his head. She didn’t understand. “Die? He’s not dead.”

“Henry, what have you done?” Lady Dalton strode out of Warren’s open doorway.

Olivia glanced between Lord Dalton and his mother. Lord Dalton ignored his parent and placed a finger under her chin to bring her gaze back to him. “Warren’s not dead, Miss Goldsleigh. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“But the maid who woke me said he was in a horrible accident.”

Lady Dalton clucked her tongue in frustration. “Stupid girl. Who sends a tweeny to give news like that? Olivia, sweetheart, stand up. Your brother has a broken arm. That is all.” The lady handed Olivia a scented handkerchief.

“I don’t understand.” That was an understatement. Olivia was feeling distinctly lightheaded. She looked to Lord Dalton for further explanation and realized she was still clutching his arm. She willed her fingers to release him, to lessen their grip on the fine wool of his jacket. “She said he was in a horrible accident, then Lord Dalton looked so…”

“I apologize, Miss Goldsleigh. I truly didn’t mean to frighten you.” Lord Dalton’s voice rumbled and soothed across her nerves. He smiled gently, drawing her attention from the strength in his arm to his smile, and she was momentarily distracted.

She stared at him and blinked several times, trying to grasp what the two of them were telling her. “Are you saying Warren is not dead?”

Lord Dalton nodded, but it was his mother who answered her question. “Oh, heavens, no!” The marchioness moved to the side so Olivia could see into her brother’s room. The bump of feet under the coverlet was still, but there was a doctor in the room speaking to whomever lay in the bed, which implied the bump was alive or else the doctor was even more confused than she. “He has a broken arm,” Lady Dalton repeated. “Come see for yourself.” The marchioness swept back into the room clearly expecting Olivia to be right behind her.

“We’ll speak more later,” Lord Dalton promised her. He gave her hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. “And again, I sincerely apologize for causing you undue distress. It was not my intention, I assure you. It is my hope you will still feel welcome in my home.”

Olivia longed to say something eloquent back to the man who had done so much for them in so little time. Something that would guarantee he would understand how grateful she was for everything, but words were not forthcoming. It didn’t matter what Lord Dalton thought he’d done. Short of actually killing her brother, Olivia couldn’t imagine what the man could do that would cause her to be so annoyed with him that she’d storm out of his house.

Instead she blinked at him again, her brain fuzzy with all the realizations in the last several minutes. The concentrated attention of the gorgeous man in front of her did not help her gain her intellectual footing. “F-f-fine. I’m fine.” She stammered out the words. “Thank you, Lord Dalton.”

Blue eyes. She couldn’t see anything in the hallway but the intense blue of his eyes smiling back at her. She had no idea how long she stood there like a gaping ninny, mesmerized by him, before Lady Dalton called from the bedroom roused her from her stupor.

“Go in and see your brother.”

Warren.

She released Lord Dalton’s hand and rushed into her brother’s room, leaving the Apollo with the compelling blue eyes in the hallway.

Olivia spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in her brother’s room trying to assuage her own guilt over his accident. Intellectually, there wasn’t one single thing she should be feeling guilty about, but her sense of responsibility ran too deep. If she’d handled things differently at home, differently with her cousin, none of this would have happened.

The boy had napped fitfully off and on, but for now he was awake and telling her about his day spent with the marquess before the accident.

“First we went to his tailor, and the funny little man measured me at least a hundred times. Dalton told me—”

Olivia interrupted, “You mean the marquess? You didn’t call him Dalton, did you?”

“Yes I did,” he declared. Olivia threw her head back and looked at the ceiling in exasperation. “He told me to. He really did. Anyway, he said I was too big now for little boy clothes, so the tailor fitted me for trousers and stuff. That wasn’t especially fun, sort of boring actually, but after that we went to his club for lunch.”

“You went to his club? Which one? What was it like?”

“It smelled like Father’s study but even more so,” he explained. “There were lots of gentlemen there.” He grinned. “There was roast for lunch. But they didn’t have any strawberries.”

“You were gone all day though. What else did you do?”

“After Henry had his meeting, that’s when we went to Tattersall’s.” Warren’s eyes shone with the delight of the memory of going to the famous horse auctions. “The horses were beautiful. And Dalton and the duke taught me all about them. I had the best day.”

“It sounds like you did.” She laughed, forced into a lighter mood by virtue of his excitement.

“What about you?” he inquired. “Didn’t you have any fun today?”

“Yes. It was a bit much is all. I don’t want to complain. We’ve been so very fortunate.”

“Are you afraid it’s going to end?”

Olivia sighed. “Well, it will have to at some point. We can’t stay here forever.”

“Dalton told me this could be my room as long as I want.”

“I don’t mean we’ll have to leave straightaway.” She didn’t want to leave any more than her brother did. There was a lot to be said for clean sheets and a dearth of pimps stalking her in the hallway. “I’ll come up with a plan. For now, Lady Evelyn wishes to sponsor me for the season. She seems to think she can find me a husband.”

Warren’s pensive reaction to
the plan
wasn’t what she expected. “You’ll need to be careful, Livvy. Make sure you don’t pick someone like Reginald.”

“I should hope not.”

“Pick someone like Lord Dalton,” Warren suggested.

“I’ll do my best. But I’ll be happy to find a nice quiet gentleman who also loves my younger brother.”

She didn’t think it was possible, but her brother’s expression grew even more thoughtful. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean, ‘I’ll be fine?’ You don’t honestly think I would marry a man who wouldn’t have you with us?” All this grown-up behavior was more than a little disconcerting. “We haven’t been through all this together for me to run off and leave you now.” Olivia was heartened to see him grin with relief. “Besides, I don’t really expect things will work out in the miraculous way Lady Evelyn seems to think they will. Hopefully I’ll be able to think of a plan in the meantime.”

A plan.

The requirements for the plan were getting more complicated by the minute. There was the huge tally of clothes in her room to reimburse the marquess for. She would have to remember when she searched for the bills from the modistes and such that she would also have to find the ones from the tailor. She’d failed to consider all the clothes and other necessary items purchased for Warren as well. The hole she was standing in was now at least chest-high. If she wasn’t very, very careful, she was going to be buried alive in Mayfair. At least she’d be well dressed in her coffin.

Her brother, so small in the giant guest bed, sobered her up.

“Does it still hurt?” Olivia asked her brother while they scraped the pudding bowls with silver spoons. The tray with their dinner plates sat discarded on the ottoman. Warren half-reclined, propped up in bed, pillows behind him and underneath his arm to support it.

“Umhmmmmmm,” Warren hummed out his answer, his mouth full of banana pudding.

Olivia unfolded her legs from underneath her and rose from the chair next to his bed. “More or less than earlier?” She took his empty bowl and placed it with the rest of the dishes on the tray. It pained her to see her young brother wince. She helped him to lie comfortably on the mattress, removing the pillows from behind him and arranging them around his bandaged and splinted arm. Still the boy winced and inhaled sharply at the slight jostling her arrangement caused him. “You need not be so brave, Warren. I’m certain it pains you terribly.”

“I’m a man now.” The set of his jaw showed determination that at once made her proud and saddened her immensely. “If I’m to be a man, then I can’t cry at every little thing.”

“This is hardly any
little thing
.” Olivia gingerly sat next to him. far enough away to not cause him any more pain. “You fell from a very tall height and broke your arm – quite severely Lord Dalton’s physician tells me.”

“I didn’t fall!” Warren raised his voice, and then the tears started. “I didn’t fall.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Olivia brushed the bangs from his forehead, surprised by his sudden change in mood. “It was an accident and no one is upset with you.”

“Dalton will never want me to go anywhere with him. Now I’m a nuisance, and I’ll never get to go anywhere good ever.” Now that his tears got a foothold, the young-man façade slipped away and her brother was ten years old again, hurt and confused and sad.

“I don’t think that’s true.” Olivia stroked his leg over the blankets. “Lord Dalton was quite concerned about your fall. He actually thought
I’d
be angry at
him
for letting anything happen to you.”

Warren sniffed and wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his nightshirt. “Really? You’re not mad at him, are you? It wasn’t his fault, you know. Or His Grace’s fault either.”

“No, I’m not,” Olivia assured her brother with a pat on the knee.

Warren pursed his lips and creased his brow in thought. He appeared to be vacillating whether or not to tell her something. Olivia waited a moment for him to decide, watching his face while he contemplated whatever it was that disturbed him. It was a struggle, but she waited and was finally rewarded when Warren cleared his throat and made eye contact with her. She smiled in as encouraging a fashion as she was able.

“I didn’t fall.” When she didn’t respond, he continued, “I was pushed.”

Olivia eyed her brother with suspicion. “You’re not trying to say Lord Dalton pushed you?”

“No!”

“And His Grace didn’t push you either.” It was a statement not a question. The boy wasn’t usually prone to flights of fancy such as this. Maybe the pain was getting to him even more than she suspected.

Warren sighed heavily, allowing his annoyance with her to show. “Don’t be stupid. Of course the duke didn’t push me. Why would he push me?”

“I’m sure I don’t know why anyone would push you.” Olivia rose from the bed and adjusted the covers, smoothing out the wrinkles and folding the hem of the sheet over the blanket before pulling it up over Warren’s chest.

“Stop tucking me in like I’m a baby,” he insisted. Olivia withdrew her hands and straightened next to his bed, giving him her full attention. “I’m not trying to say Dalton or Lord Morewether pushed me. I’m saying
someone
pushed me.”

Pushed him?
“How can you be sure? Everything must have happened very fast. It was probably confusing with all the crowds and the noise.”

“I felt two hands on my back shove me.” His voice and expression matter-of-fact.

Who would have shoved him? Why?
“I don’t know what to say to that, honey. Mrs. Greene and Mr. Fennyman couldn’t know where we are, and they certainly wouldn’t be at Tattersall’s buying horses.”

Warren shrugged at her, his countenance grim. “I’m just saying I was pushed.”

“I believe you, but still, it must have been an accident.” It had to be. “Let’s not think about it any more tonight.” Olivia measured out a small amount of the laudanum the physician left to help Warren rest. “Whatever happened, honey, I’m glad you’re all right.” Warren eyed the glass and the liquid it held skeptically. “Come on. Mamma always said you heal best while you’re sleeping.” When he wrinkled his nose, she laughed at his boyish display. “I know your arm hurts, and you won’t get any sleep if you don’t drink this. Stop trying to be brave.”

After he drank it down, she tucked him in with a kiss and closed his door tight.

Pushed? Certainly not.
She couldn’t take any more complications right now.