The Misfit Marquess (3 page)

"Of course," Lord Greyleigh replied, his jaw tight.

Talbot started to remind Lord Greyleigh that the council did not wish his lordship to take in any more strays, as people were wont to call the strangers and itinerants who seemed to gravitate to Greyleigh Manor. But the look on Greyleigh's stony visage forced Talbot to choke back the comment,

"Very good, sir. I'll have Mr. Clifton come to the manor immediately, to see to the woman," he said instead, naming the local surgeon.

Greyleigh replied merely with one firm nod, then turned in the direction of his home, calling loudly for a servant to run at once and fetch a horse.

Talbot stood and stared after Lord Greyleigh for a long moment. He watched as Greyleigh seemed to effortlessly carry the woman toward where several servants hurried to assist him. Talbot watched as another servant broke away, no doubt sent after a horse, up the long, graveled lane that inclined to where Greyleigh Manor resided upon a rise overlooking the village.

Greyleigh Manor was a rambling pile of an edifice that might more appropriately be named a castle by those who took a fanciful view of the world. It was built of bricks that had once been red, but now with age had taken on the color of an old bloodstain. Talbot looked to the large manor that Lord Greyleigh called home, and shivered, and wondered if to live in such a place was to be affected by its somber appearance. Certainly it was whispered by more than a few of the locals that Lord Greyleigh was not in his right head.

And there was no denying that Greyleigh's mama had been mad. Besides her time in the asylum, there were plenty of other village tales about the now deceased Lady Greyleigh's bizarre behavior. It would be easy to believe that Greyleigh Manor and its inhabitants were all cursed—even by a modern, moderately educated man like Talbot Wallace.

"God bless you," Talbot whispered toward the woman Lord Greyleigh carried away in his arms, and meant the words literally. Then he hurried to fetch the surgeon, the better to treat the injured woman ... and by the surgeon's attendance keep her as safe as possible within the walls of Greyleigh Manor.

Pain rippled through Elizabeth, and she tried to stir, only to find she could not move as she wished. Her right arm was pinned against something solid, and her legs were held as though in a vise. She felt a sense of motion, and she was only belatedly able to put all her impressions together and realize she was being carried in a pair of arms, by someone riding a horse.

She opened her eyes, and was for a moment too dizzy to make sense of anything. Then her befuddled sight was caught by the sight of a lock of pale hair. Grandfather? But Grandfather was dead these five years and more.

She blinked, and moaned, and then the face above her own turned downward to glance at her briefly. In that moment she recognized the man carrying her, even though the sight of him was as unexpected as would be Grandpapa. She did not know this man except by sight, having never been introduced to him, but it was impossible not to recognize Lord Greyleigh. It was a strand of his peculiarly light hair, far too long for fashion and escaping from a queue, that had puzzled her.

"A surgeon is coming to see to your injuries," Lord Greyleigh told her, not bothering to look down at her again. His words were clipped, no doubt from the effort of supporting her.

How had she come to be in his arms? Where did they ride to? Was she ill? Fevered? Her foot ached abominably with every stride the horse took.

The pale sunlight disappeared, and Elizabeth opened her eyes to find the newly rising sun had been blocked by a large, looming brick edifice, the imposing fagade of a weather-aged manor house.

"What is . .. this place?" she managed to whisper.

Lord Greyleigh glanced down at her again. "Greyleigh Manor."

She tilted her head to glance upward at the man who spoke, amazed that Greyleigh was not part of some dream she had been having, but real and warm and holding her steady between his arms.

"Not your house!" she said, the words pathetically small and thin.

"What? Afraid to enter the madman's house? I cannot say I blame you, my dear lady." His voice did not sound annoyed, as she might have expected—if anything, he sounded amused. Darkly amused, no doubt, even if she judged from only half of the rumors attached to his name—rumors that circulated every parlor, even so far away as London.

Even though Lord Greyleigh spent little time in London— preferring his rural estate near Bristol—rumors about him traveled into the City all the same. The kinder gossipmongers called him eccentric, and the less kind dubbed him lunatic.

She wanted to say any other circumstances would suit: a farmer's holding, or the local squire's home might provide her a temporary shelter, perhaps—anyplace other than the home of Lord Greyleigh the madman. She wanted to insist he release her, that she was well enough, that she did not wish to be any bother to him. ... But the shadows grew darker, and were inviting and far less horrible than reality, and Elizabeth gave in to their gentle summoning, until she knew nothing more of being cradled in Lord Greyleigh's arms.

Chapter 3

Elizabeth's heel ached dully, but in the end it was her inability to flex it that finally dragged her out of an already fitful slumber. She blinked her eyes open, finding the room inadequately lit by a single branch of candles. She was absolutely at a loss to explain how it had become night again, for the last moment she remembered was the faint grey of early morning showing just beyond the shoulder of a crazed man ... a man who struck her, who presumably took her horse.

Still, it was now clearly night again, as if time had been wound backward. How she could be so sure it was evening, she did not know, but there was a stillness around her that spoke of nighttime.

She was alive, and she was in an unfamiliar, white damask-covered bed with its curtains tied back. Her own bed at home sported neither posts nor white damask. Her next thought was to ponder how she'd come to this bed, one wholly foreign to her, and into a night rail she knew was not her own. She could not imagine how she had come to be here.

The mystery was beyond the cloudy reasoning that seemed to have taken the place of rational thought, and so she allowed her attention to shift entirely to the condition of her right foot. She struggled up to a sitting position, and a flick of the light coverlet revealed a heavy bandage encasing her heel. It was secured by a length of torn linen cloth that looped several times over the bandage and around her ankle.

She knew at once that the damage her foot had suffered was not trivial, although a twinge in her shoulder revealed a less severe injury. There were other parts of her that stung, and then she remembered a horse coming at her. She recalled she had received cuts to her jawline, her arm, and where the horse's hoof had struck her head. She reached to feel for a sticking plaster on her forehead, and was not disappointed.

The clouds in her head dissipated rapidly, as though to keep pace with the return of sharp and painful sensation to her body. Feeling faint, she almost wished she had not looked at her foot, had not reminded herself of her injuries.

"My heel!" she said aloud, hearing the amazement in her own croaky words as she remembered the wound that had left her gasping in the premorning dark.

She was answered by nothing more than a nod, but the nod was enough movement to catch Elizabeth's eye. The hair stood up on her nape, although she had no reason to think why it should, other than the lateness of the hour. Her gaze slowly lifted from her injured foot to the space beyond the bed. Despite knowing someone was there, she was still a little shocked to discover the viewer was Lord Greyleigh, not a maid as one might have supposed. Unmoving and unblinking, he sat in a chair opposite the bed, watching her every movement.

Ah. Yes, she thought. Lord Greyleigh. There had been a horse, other than the one taken from her.... Lord Greyleigh's horse. This man had held her as he had ridden. He must have found her, must have brought her here. ... It all came flooding back at once, and she understood that she had to be within Greyleigh Manor.

Their gazes locked, and the moment grew long. Elizabeth felt slow heat fill her cheeks—not embarrassment, not anger, but something wholly new, outside her previous experience. It was a kind of self-awareness, she thought, or perhaps it was a shared awareness of one another. This was the look that two tigers surely exchanged upon meeting in the jungle, a wary acknowledgment of the other's existence, a fiery curiosity only just banked by primal caution.

She shook her head once, as though to cast off such fanciful notions, and the moment was broken. Lord Greyleigh blinked, Elizabeth's flush grew deeper, and she felt social order replace uncivilized stares.

"Why are you in my room?" She spoke in a soft, confused tone, less croaky this time.

"Not your room," he answered, his words coolly polite if not cordial. "The room belongs to me. I am Lord Greyleigh. Your . .. home has been destroyed by fire. We are searching for records, but are afraid they are destroyed. Do you know your name?"

What a curious question. And what did he mean, her home had been destroyed by fire? And why that hesitation when he said the word "home"?

"Come, surely you know your own name," he pressed.

"Elizabeth."

"Your surname, girl. I need your surname."

Elizabeth put her head on one side, as much from vexation as from a curious exhaustion, the latter no doubt owing to having been dosed with laudanum, at least to judge from a spreading headache and queasy sensation that had begun to grow in the pit of her belly.

Despite any lingering fuzziness, however, she realized in a flash that she could not tell him her name. If he had no notion of her identity, better that she remain anonymous. But how not to answer his question?

He sighed, a soft sound that was somehow still ripe with meaning—frustration perhaps. But why frustration? That emotion seemed disproportionate to the circumstances.

He reached with a small show of irritation to the queue that was no longer quite securing his hair, and pulled it free. The pale strands of his hair fell to his shoulders. While she had never talked to this man the few times she had seen him in London, she'd had eyes to see that in a well-lit room his hair was palest spun gold. In this dim candlelight, it was a ghostly white, not too dissimilar from his eyes, dark pupils surrounded by a nearly colorless sheen that made her think of a highly polished silver tray.

What a curious fellow this Lord Greyleigh was, as peculiar to meet in person as she had ever thought he must be. Not for the first time, she wondered why he wore his hair long, so un-fashionably. If he had meant the style to be off-putting, he had been correct in that, for it was one of the things about him that had kept Elizabeth from seeking out a mutual acquaintance to introduce them. It was rumored he was mad as a March hare, and his lack of fashion sense certainly did nothing to gainsay the tale. He had no wife to request an improvement in his mode of dress and style. He was rich, and so might be called eccentric, but it was the disparity between his words and his actions that unnerved her and made her think of darker, less kind words to describe this man.

"You have nothing to fear, my girl," he said, almost as if he could read her thoughts. "You have been rescued from the fire. We brought you here to tend to your needs. A surgeon has seen to your heel and your cuts. He tells me the cut to your foot runs very deep, but fortunately does not involve any tendons. Once healed, you should be able to walk normally."

He paused, as if assessing her responses. Whatever he saw, he chose to go on. "What you must understand is this—there is no place for you here, not beyond a day or two it takes to find your people. We must return you to your family. So you must see that I require your surname, and the direction of your people, that I may tell them to come and fetch you home." He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if she were a child.

Again, what a curious choice of words: "There is no place for you here." Had she, in delirium, been asking for employment, for sanctuary?

He rose from the chair, as deliberate in movement as he had been in speech, and she thought perhaps he was at some pains not to startle her. He was tall, taller than most men. That hair, those eyes, that height—he was intimidating despite his cool and level tone.

"Why is there no maid in this room?" she asked, because the lack disturbed her. "Why are we alone together?"

If he had meant to pace, he instead abruptly came to a halt. "I never thought it should prove a difficulty." He scowled. "I am used to sickrooms—to females in sickrooms." His scowl grew deeper, giving him a rather fearsome appearance. "I suppose I should have considered otherwise."

"Indeed."

He stared at her, then gave a very brief, reluctant snort, not a laugh. "My butler was not sure you came from the asylum." He pointed at her. "Your clothes ... your soft hands. Were you newly arrived there?"

She understood everything all at once. Asylum. Fire. The building that had burned had indeed been no inn, but instead an asylum. To judge by the curious questions he asked and the guarded looks he threw her way, it had been an asylum for the impaired and deranged rather than the merely lame or ill. He thought she was one of its inhabitants, that she was so lost to reality or so deluded that she could not even recall her own name.

He had given her a perfect cloak, a perfect way to hide her name from him, from all of Society. That was all she had left, the ability to keep her name out of the news sheets, to keep from tainting her family's hopes for the future any further. All she need do was tell a lie, a very small lie—that she could not recall her surname—and she could keep her sister's dream of happiness alive. She could even tell herself it was a noble lie, used toward a righteous purpose ... no matter that it stuck in her throat and would not be uttered.

He stared at her, as though willing her to speak.

She tried. She shaped her lips to the task, but this lie did not feel so small at all, but more like a sin, a serious sin, to tell a lie to a man who had rescued her from . . . from what?