The Misfit Marquess (18 page)

To Gideon's horror, he began to wonder if what he was doing could even be labeled "charity." He did not freely give to one and all. He had expectations. He was like one of those moneylenders in the temple whom Jesus had condemned. He was the rich man who loudly cried out his prayers instead of humbly begging God's forgiveness, a man made of bluff and blow, all artificial goodness, a fraud.

He had searched their faces, this motley staff of his, and he had seen their contentment, but it was too late to delude himself any longer. If he had somehow managed to bring some happiness to these poor, benighted people, then he had bought it at the cost of his own soul. They did not know they had been "rescued" by a scoundrel, but their lack of knowledge did not mitigate Gideon's sin, his pride, his folly.

His father had been a shallow, unkind man, who had tortured his wife with critical words and unkind looks because she could not be the helpmeet he desired her to be. He had never tried to see into her confused eyes, never forgave her for being imperfect. He had been harsh with his sons as well, although Gideon had never been able to figure exactly why, except perhaps they'd had the gall to not be exactly like Papa.

Gideon had desired to be entirely unlike him. But, despite his best intentions, he had only managed to shadow his father's path. The soured Greyleigh blood had run true. Gideon had become a monster cloaked in fine clothes, no better than his father, picking and choosing those who could change in such a way as to make Gideon feel superior to his dead parent. He may not have shouted, he may not have struck out with his hands and a sharp tongue, but he had learned to manipulate others. Gideon's manner of manipulation was simply more subtle, even allowing Gideon to fool himself for a long time.

The irony was, the charity charade continued to play on. Gideon still did his good deeds, still found employment for the weak and the wounded—but within he was hollow—hollow and deranged, surely. He did not know how else to act, and so even though each new face that sought his help, his support, dragged him deeper into the quagmire of empty charity, still he went doggedly on.

He could just be a landowner, like a thousand other men. He could order the aldermen of Severn's Well never to send another charity case his way. He could build fences around his property, could refuse to see the needy just outside that fence. . . . But his only hope, his only redemption, was that even if his heart was empty, perhaps the acts themselves were not. Perhaps God or fate or that something otherworldly that surely looked into men's souls, would think acts were enough, even without faith, or truth, or love.

Only now . . . now he had touched this woman's face, and an old, old emotion had laced through him, had pierced that hollow organ he called his heart.

She was still a burden. She was still a stranger. But somehow this unconscious, fever-racked, helpless creature in his arms had moved past Gideon's rigid sense of duty, into something that could only be called caring. Something in her, in the smiles she had given him, or the promise to one day be completely honest with him, something had caused her touch to reach down to his very soul.

He sat, cradling Elizabeth, feeling shattered, but, too, feeling suddenly and keenly alive.

"My lord?" A voice penetrated the seething fog of his thoughts. He looked up at the maid, dimly aware she had been repeating the words several times.

"Yes?" he said, his voice a croak, as though he held back tears.

"The bed is ready, my lord."

Gideon stood, surprised to find his legs would hold him even though he trembled all over. He took several deep breaths, regaining a measure of control, and crossed to the bed. He and the maid tucked Elizabeth in, then he sat once more in the chair as the maid changed the dressing on Elizabeth's foot. Elizabeth grimaced as the maid worked, but did not truly rise to a conscious state.

When she was done, the maid offered to stay with Elizabeth. "Someone should return from the dance in the next few hours, my lord. I can stay with her until then."

Gideon nodded, but he did not rise to leave.

"My lord?"

"I will stay, too," he said, and there must have been determination in his voice, for the maid gave him a curious look, then retreated to a chair of her own.

He stayed where he was, all night, all through the worst of Elizabeth's fever, even though by midnight there were other females who could have taken his place. He allowed them to change Elizabeth's clothing and bedding while he waited in the hall, but then he returned to the bedside, to watch and to wait.

Hours later, Gideon glanced at the maid on the other side of Elizabeth's bed. What was this girl's name? Janet? Meg had long since been replaced. Whatever this girl's name, she had finally succumbed to the lateness of the early morning hour and fallen asleep in her chair. Let the girl sleep, especially since Gideon could not. He had passed beyond exhaustion into that wakeful state that makes for either terribly muddled or else terribly clear thoughts.

He remembered her, the laundry maid, if not her name. She had been starving on the streets of Bristol until he had seen her plight and brought her back here to his home.

Daughter to a cruel man, a farmer on a small holding who beat her most days of her life, this young woman had run away, seeking some kindness in the world. She had found only more cruelty and indifference, and with no references, also no chances for employment. She had finally taken to prostitution to feed herself, but the horror of her new, degraded station in life had been too much.

She had tried to cut her wrists with a stolen barber's knife, but had not realized how deep and terrible such a wound must be to accomplish its goal. Gideon had found her on the High Street in Bristol, where dozens of other passersby had already stepped gingerly around the prone figure and its small pool of blood. He had calmly told her she was not dying, or at least not physically, but he had known her soul was in terrible jeopardy of expiring upon that street in Bristol.

He had listened to her story and had found what he always looked for in a waif or a drunkard or a pauper's eyes—vestiges of hope. Gideon had searched for the same in his own reflection and not found it, but he knew what hope looked like. He had brought the girl to Greyleigh Manor and had given her the decent employment she had sought. As usually happened, there had not been a murmur of trouble about or from her since.

Looking at the girl now, Gideon saw rosy cheeks and meat on bones that had been stick-thin only this past winter. He flattered himself the girl was content enough, that he had done some small good in this grim world. Surely that counted for something, even if his heart was empty of true compassion— even if he longed with every fiber of his being to leave Janet and all her ilk behind, tending only to his own needs?

He could not save the world, Gideon knew that. One man could only do so much. Until last night, he'd had a far deeper fear: that he could not save himself.

From Janet, Gideon's attention drifted to the figure on the bed. At last, about an hour before, Elizabeth's fever had broken. Now she slept a true sleep, not the terrible stupor of fever. Gideon did not need the surgeon to tell him the infection had run the worst of its course, that its quick and sharp strike was far less dangerous than the long, slow onset of gangrene. Barring further complications, such as pneumonia, Elizabeth would live. He knew more of her now, for she had cried out in her delirium.

He knew she was afraid, fearing the future—just as he did. However, her future sounded more directly devastating; whereas he feared the starvation of his soul, she feared the more immediate starvation of the body. In that, she was not unlike Janet the laundry maid.

And, like Janet, apparently Elizabeth had known a reason to fear pregnancy.

"Baby? How will I. . . ? Go home!" Elizabeth had cried out disjointed phrases, her imploring hand on Gideon's arm and her gaze fixed on his, but her mind lost to the realm of fever. And later she had said, with tears streaking down her flushed cheeks, "Papa. . . ! No baby! God, thank you, God. God... baby ..."

Now, how could it be that a young woman feared having a child since she had sworn she was not married? The "wedding ring" she had worn on her left hand was now on her right, moved, presumably, by her. A woman did not move a ring from the left hand to the right if she wished to appear married, so Elizabeth's claim she had no husband seemed borne out by her own actions.

The answers were all obvious enough, especially to a man who took in members of downtrodden humanity as a regular course: Elizabeth had been with a man, had lain in his bed. She feared she was ruined. She may have eloped with him. or otherwise secretly or quietly wed. She may have run off without benefit of clergy. This man of hers may have died, or he may have abandoned her. He may have belatedly discovered his new wife was of an infirm mind. This last seemed likely, as someone had surely placed Elizabeth in the asylum.

The specifics did not matter so much as the news that she had plainly left the protection of her family to be with her lover. Whoever he had been, her family would not have approved, that much was clear from the rambling comments she had made from her sickbed.

The only pan Gideon did not understand was why. Elizabeth hated this man, whose name she never uttered in her delirium. What she did mumble were words of contempt and rejection, laid firmly upon this unnamed man's shoulders. It was near impossible to believe she had ever cared for the man's company, let alone could have loved him.

Then why run off with him? Gideon wondered. This question required a higher level of conjecture, but it was easy enough to imagine. Perhaps, again like Janet, Elizabeth's home life had been unbearable. Marriage could have been used as an escape.

Or perhaps Elizabeth was older than she appeared, and had begun to fear the status of old maid? Gideon looked at her now calmly sleeping face and rejected that thought. Elizabeth did not seem like the type of woman who feared such labels.

It was possible she had no dowry, and had leaped at the first man who did not care about the lack. That was a reasonable explanation. Or perhaps she had acted with a complete deficiency of forethought, as was to be expected in someone who was addlepated.

Her reasons were still her own, however, for she had said nothing to answer this part of the riddle, nothing beyond calling for someone named "Lorraine," of whom it was patently obvious she was fond.

She had not called for a man, other than to heap coals on the head of the deceiver, the one who had left her with naught but a ring with a B on it. Gideon knew a moment's satisfaction that no other man's name had come from Elizabeth's fevered lips, willing to believe his satisfaction came from supposing this meant she had not given herself to a series of men. There was something in the way she carried herself, or perhaps in the depths of her brown eyes, that stated she could not have prostituted herself. He guessed she would rather choose the asylum than she would the bordello.

Perhaps she had chosen to go there, to the asylum.. . perhaps he now knew the reason why she had been of a "nervous disposition." She would not be the first female whose stability of mind had been overturned by a miscalculated love affair.

There had been a dozen times she'd seemed so aware, so present in the moment, so sane. Those moments far overshadowed the few that had given Gideon pause. Perhaps she really had been helped by her stay in the asylum, and the trauma of the fire that night had caused her to slip back into old ways temporarily?

In her lucid moments—and he knew she had many—she no doubt intended to use the ring on her hand as a shield, most probably as a symbol of a past marriage, no matter if real or imagined. With the war with France still waging, many an abruptly appearing "widow" had a tale that was easily believed in some far, tiny corner of the nation, or at least accepted without too many questions. It was the way of war to disrupt lives, and the way of the world to swallow a plausibly told tale.

Gideon sighed, saddened at the thought that Elizabeth was yet another wounded soul, wounded by a man's deed as well as her own unfortunate constitution. She did not look fragile, but looks had nothing to do with the unrest of the mind. If he knew nothing else from his mother's illness, he knew that mental instability was never invited, never welcomed. Elizabeth could not help if she was "nervous" or given to "womanly vapors," as some doctors so kindly phrased it.

Mostly Gideon sighed because now she was no longer a nameless, faceless problem—she was Elizabeth. This woman, who had touched him, who had a certain charm and, in her rational moments, an undeniable intelligence. She was not a nobody, as she had once called herself. She had become visible to his world-weary heart as well as his eyes.

Elizabeth. Never mind her surname. Some rare occasions took virtual strangers rapidly beyond surnames, and this was one of them. Despite all his prior intentions, he knew he must do something to help her.

That was when Gideon decided she must have some new gowns before she left his home. The gowns would be his parting gift to her, even if he could not think of any good reason why she should accept a gift of any kind from him, other than the intimate connection she had made while lying in his arms, a connection he could hardly explain to her.

He would ask her if she wished the gowns to be made up in half-mourning colors, to help her perpetuate whatever tale she needed to be supported. A dead husband, a father lost at sea— whatever tale she told would surely be better believed if she could wear somberly cut dresses in mourning colors. So, she would have dresses, howsoever she wished them, because it was all he could do for her, the only way he could extend a circle of protection around her once she was quit of his home.

The idea of her leaving made him flinch, but the truth was only the truth and could not be denied. Of course she would leave. What else was there for her to do? Stay and marry him? That was not even laughable. Elizabeth could not marry a hollow man; it would be a crime against all that was good in this world. And only ponder, he thought with his mouth crooking sarcastically to one side, what manner of mooncalf children would such a union produce? No, marriage was beyond impossible.