Royal Regard (6 page)

Even while considering how to make amends to
the king for a passing thought to which he would never be privy,
she revived the conversation. “I am certain the card room was not
nearly so awful as the ballroom.”

“Which is why I can nearly always be found
playing whist.”

She snorted, and he gave her the mischievous
smile of a ten-year-old boy, without the least bit of chagrin. He
grasped her fingertips and rubbed them between his. “And I know you
can be counted on to manage the ballroom much better than I.”

“Not in London,” she muttered, rolling a one
and a three, but spoke more clearly when she followed with, “I am
so sorry about the—”

He held her hand tighter and did not allow
her to finish. “Is it a surprise your nerves might compel you to a
slip of the tongue?”

She tugged her hand back, though only to more
easily move one of her tiles to yet another open point, sighing at
the sheer number of pips open to his solidly made points, most
stacked with three or more draughts.

“But—”

He pushed her pip back to its original
position and moved another three spaces instead, closing a point.
“I do hope your unwarranted guilt won’t force poor judgment on the
backgammon board.” His next roll allowed him to knock one of her
stones out of play. She passed a hairpin across the table, adding
to his pile, already twice as large as hers. It was lucky for her
he only gambled for money if it were obligatory.

“Charlotte is right,” she mumbled. “No one in
London is going to buy anything from you now.”

“Really, dearest,” Myron guffawed, “you give
the upper classes far too much credit for moral certitude. You
could appear at St. James’s in the buff, drunk as David’s sow,
trailing a string of gypsy lovers, and as long as Seventh Sea
issues ample dividends, my business won’t fall off a whit.” His
chuckle and brief touch of her hand was intimate in a most
unromantic way, but the familiar tenderness filled a much deeper
need. “Not that I condone such things, you understand. I’m sure Our
Lord would be scandalized by drunkenness and gypsy lovers, even if
His Majesty would not.”

Her double sixes brought her tile back into,
then out of, his home board and into hers, pulling ahead by
numbers, if not by hairpins. Luckily, she only had to win by
numbers.

“If you say ‘gypsy lovers’ anywhere in
public, they will be added to the list of men with whom I must have
fornicated.” She sighed as he shook his dice cup and pulled her
shawl tighter, looking up to assure herself the curtains were
tightly shut against the chill.

“God and your husband both know you to be
virtuous, and ours the only judgment with which you need concern
yourself.”

She raised an eyebrow. “If only God were the
arbiter of proper behavior in London.”

“England would be the better for it,” Myron
agreed.

A few turns later, sending hairpins across
the table in both directions, she said, “If you are so concerned
for proper behavior, you might do well not to insult a duke in the
middle of Almack’s. He was only being polite, asking me to
dance.”

His face darkened and his voice went cold.
“Malbourne is a scourge, and his advances are not to be tolerated.
You are to refuse his company in no uncertain terms, or I shall do
it for you.”

Her eyes were wide as she stared across the
expanse of the card table. “What is so wrong with the Duke of
Malbourne?”

She knew exactly what was wrong with him. The
man was forward, and although that was to be expected of any
Frenchman, he was also exceedingly handsome. So striking, she was
ashamed to admit, that the thought of him already sent tingles into
parts of her body entirely unaccustomed to titillation. She had
been wondering all night what it might be like if his hand had
followed the same course as his eyes, but with every passing
notion, she was reminded how unworthy she was of the attentions of
such a venerable gentleman.

“What I know of him is not to be repeated in
the hearing of my wife,” Myron snapped, drumming his fingers on the
tabletop, “nor any gently bred woman.”

“But—”

His voice softened and grew conciliatory.
“Please, my dear, do as I say in this. I have only your best
interest in mind.”

“Of course, but I wish you would—”

“Now then, I think it wise we should discuss
your plans for the rest of the Season. You will have need of a new
husband soon enough, and while I understand why you find London so
disconcerting, it will not do for your fear of British aristocrats
to keep you from exploring the field of eligibles.”

Her shoulders straightened and she scowled at
him. “I will not need a new husband, and I am not afraid.”

“No?” He rolled a two and a three, closing
three consecutive points. Had she not escaped the bar and his home
board on the last turn, she would probably now be trapped. “Then
why is it you hid behind Charlotte and declined to dance with Lord
Pinnester, who wishes only to advance your good name?”

As she shook the dice in the cup, he chided,
“Come now, my dear. You would never have insulted those ridiculous
women but for nerves.”

She stared down at the board, shaking the
dice much longer than necessary, in no hurry to take her turn. Her
shoulders slumped away from her indignation. “Heaven help me if
anyone flirts.” Heaven help her when Myron found out Malbourne
already had.

He patted her hand, then pulled her eyes up
with a crooked fingertip under her chin. “If someone flirts, you
will engage your considerable charm to keep him both content in his
manhood and in his place, as you always have.”

“This is London,” she whispered. “If anyone
flirts, I will panic and faint dead away.”

Before he could respond to her cynicism, she
saw his face screw up in pain, so she set down the dice and moved
to reposition the heavily padded gout stool and help him pull up
his leg to lie across it. As she did so, she removed his shoe,
setting the gold buckle on the black Chinoiserie card table he had
insisted on bringing from his cabin on the Arabella, the raised
edges reminding her of every backgammon game ever interrupted by a
sudden gale.

Chiding the choice of evening wear that did
not take into account his body’s weaknesses, she clucked her tongue
at his insistence on proper attire every minute of the day. His
dress was always simple in design and color, lacking the excessive
adornment he considered vain, but perfectly tailored in the finest
fabrics to be had anywhere in the world. If she didn’t know better,
she might assume he had been born in a cravat and kidskin gloves.
Just as she might believe his immaculate Town manners were innate,
not drilled by his new wife in long hours aboard ship and during
his first diplomatic post in India.

After removing the low-heeled shoe, Bella
followed it with his fine wool stocking and the tight bandage
underneath. Although his twisted toes were not currently inflamed,
the red, swollen ankle and calf were fiery, veins running so close
to the surface, she was afraid they would burst; it was a wonder he
could walk at all. Without his obduracy, he might have been
bedridden years ago. As it was, she could barely keep him seated
most days, much less confined to his bedchamber.

“Before you say it, Bella, no, I will not
countenance another leeching. It makes no difference and the
revolting things make me want to vomit.” His face looked like he
might yet cast up his accounts as he sucked in a breath and let his
head fall back at the lightest touch to the exposed leg. She tried
to place her palm across his forehead, but he yanked away before
she could judge the heat.

“You will have a fever if we do nothing. I
should call the doctor.”

“I want nothing to do with that man,” Myron
declared, “no matter who has recommended him.”

“Dearest, the king has provided his own
physician. You must not refuse such a generous offer from our
sovereign.”

Myron grumbled, “If I do not summon that
charlatan, His Majesty will never know, and the man will not try to
bleed me and feed me cod liver oil by the barrelful. I forbid you
to send for him.” They both knew he could forbid her anything but
this. His health was one of the few—very few—reasons she would defy
him with no compunction.

She bustled around Myron, removing the shoe
and stocking from his good leg. She loosened the too-tight laces at
the knee of his breeches, untied his cravat, removed his jacket,
unfastened the buttons at his throat and wrists and folded his
sleeves up his forearms, plumped the pillow behind his back. Soon
enough, while he vociferously objected to being “unclothed” in the
library, she placed one hand behind his neck and the other on his
forehead, the lines between her brows furrowing at the temperature,
even as he tried to twist out of her implacable hold.

“You must allow me to bring the salts so you
can soak your foot, my love,” she insisted. After six years of
ever-more-frequent flare-ups, they both knew immersion in hot water
and the mineral salts she had found in Bolivia would bring better
relief faster than anything else, even additional cups of the
nettle and cherry-stone tea she forced on him three times
daily.

“I will soak the foot,” he pronounced, “but
will not subject myself to that miserable quacksalver.”

She crossed to the bell pull to summon a maid
to bring a bucket of hot water and the mineral salts. As she did
so, she said, tentatively, “I have heard the waters at Bath are
particularly good for gout. I’ve sent a courier for a few gallons,
but it might behoove us to—”

He banged his hand on the table, the
backgammon pips jumping at the blow. “I am not travelling to Bath!
Regardless of who has decided he thinks it best for me.”

“His Majesty is only trying to—”

“His Majesty and his plans for my sickroom
may go to the very Devil!”

Bella stepped back. Consigning someone to the
Devil was not in Myron’s nature, especially a monarch. He took the
concept of Hell quite literally, far more than Bella, who owned she
had lived there the first nineteen years of her life, so had little
to fear from Satan. She moved to the fireplace to add wood,
stirring the embers to warm the room, allowing her husband his
justifiable irritation, raising crackling sparks and tendrils of
smoke that smelled faintly of apple.

“I am not an invalid and will not be treated
as such! I have a place in Parliament and a business to
manage!”

The fire tended, she stepped behind Myron
with her hand on his shoulder. Twisting to look up at her, he
argued, “If my Lord and Savior has decreed I should suffer this
illness, then by the name of Heaven, I shall suffer it.”

She patted his shoulder and kissed the crown
of his head. “Of course, my darling.”

When Mrs. Jemison appeared, Bella gave the
order for a basin of hot water and the mineral salts, as well as
cold water and cloths to keep the incipient fever at bay, the
bottle of cod liver oil, and a cup of the nettle tea.

“Lady Holsworthy,” Mrs. Jemison said, looking
away from Myron, “The messenger returned this afternoon with the
waters you requested from the Pump Room in Bath.”

“Excellent. We will use it to brew the
tea.”

Myron snarled, “You would have me die
ingesting English water?”

As the housekeeper left, avoiding Myron’s
mutinous looks, Bella added, “Bring the angelica, elderberry, and
yarrow, too, please, and a teapot.”

“This will become a production, then?” he
griped.

Rather than answering, Bella took her seat
and shook the dice cup. “If you believe I will be distracted by
your querulous bleating or concede this game out of pity, you are
mistaken, Sir. I shall have my hairpins back within a quarter-hour
or double the dose of cod liver oil.”

“You were quite the success—”
Charlotte lied as she opened the bruise-colored velvet curtains,
then the casement window, in Bella’s sitting room. Bella took a
shawl from the arm of the sofa as she sat down, draping it over the
shoulders of her long-sleeved, high-necked
Directoire
frock.

“Hardly,” Bella interrupted.

“—in spite of yourself.” Charlotte shuddered,
“I hope you didn’t tell anyone you live in Russell Square. It’s as
though you
want
to be ruined.”

“You know perfectly well I was ruined as soon
as I said ‘damn.’ I could live in the king’s bedroom and not
survive that.”

“Your language!” Charlotte admonished. “And
best not discuss the king’s bedroom, or Lady Conyngham will scratch
out your eyes.”

Bella spoke up to be heard above the sounds
of construction reverberating intermittently through the house.

“Please close the window. We are overlooking
the point of entrance and egress, and it’s chilly this
morning.”