The Redemption of a Rogue (Dark Regency Book 2) (22 page)

“He won't forgive this easily. He will see it as a betrayal... more so by me than by you.”

She knew that. His friendship with Lord Wolverston was precarious at best. “I am sorry. I wouldn't ask it of you if I felt there was another way.”

“I will leave after dark. There's no need to show our hand just yet.”

The relief she felt was instant. “Thank you. You are a better friend to him than he realizes.”

“That is my own fault,” he replied ruefully. “The moon is close to full. I can ride though the night and be at Wilhaven by late tomorrow night. I'll have to forge his signature for the steard to give me access.”

“His seal is in the top drawer of the desk in the library. It will be worth it, if they will just leave us alone once they have it.”

He shook his head. “You won't give it to them. I will crush it beneath my boot before it falls into their hands...But it is a wise move to let them know we have it, to let them know that we're aware of their desire for it. That shifts the balance of power to us, at least temporarily.”

Abbi nodded. “We need an advantage...however we can get it.”

Spencer gave a curt nod before leaving the room.

Abbi leaned over the bed and whispered to Michael. “You won't like this, and I pray that you recover enough to yell at me for it...and that I survive to yell back.”

~*~*~

“What have you done?”

Rupert looked up from the book he'd been studying. He'd accumulated texts about the ancient rituals by the dozens. It had taken months of research but he finally had the formula he needed. The only remaining obstacle was locating the appropriate ingredients. He had the blade for the blood letting, the masks of Bacchus. All that was left was the chalice and the sacrifice—and the bloody map.

Meeting Lavinia's angry gaze, he sighed wearily. “What is it, darling?”

“Someone from the village told one of our servants that Lord Ellersleigh had been shot today! Did you? Did you have it done?”

He settled back in his chair. “What if I did? You forget yourself, Lavinia. I am your husband and it is my will to which you bend!”

“We need him to obtain the chalice!” she protested.

“No, we do not. When he is dead and gone, we will obtain that item from his widow. There are many ways in which to compel Abigail's cooperation!” The statement was robbed of its power by the coughing spasm that wracked him in its wake.

Lavinia rushed forward, grabbing a bottle of his brandy and adding a few drops of the opium mixture to it. Not too much, but enough that it would ease the pain and the cough. He sighed. She was good to him, and she did love him beyond reason. But her obsession with Ellersleigh was a threat he couldn't afford. No man had ever made him doubt Lavinia's devotion to him, regardless of how many times she'd bedded them. With Ellersleigh, he wasn't so sure.

“Why do you want him so desperately, my love? What is it about that man that draws you so?”

She stroked his brow as he sipped from the glass she'd handed him. “He prefers her to me, and I cannot allow that to stand. I am the beautiful one. I am the one who incites such powerful desire in men... not her!”

Rupert felt vindicated in that moment. It wasn't about Ellersleigh at all. It was her hatred and jealousy of Abigail that fueled her desire. “He is a fool, Lavinia. Any man would be blessed to have you, to share your passion.”

“But you want Abigail, also. You crave her... and I've seen the way Blevins looks at her. He wants her also,” she said bitterly. “I'm growing older, Rupert. My beauty is fading and soon no one will desire me above all others!”

“When we have the chalice, and the map—and your stepsister has served her purpose as a worthy sacrifice, I will be restored... health, vigor and all the things this wretched disease have stripped from me will be returned,” he vowed. “And I will show you precisely how desirable you are.”

She pouted, her lower lip turning out charmingly. “Rupert, do you have to kill him?”

“Trust me, my love. It is the best way,” he said.

She sighed. “Very well. But no more sneaking to do it in the woods, like that. If we kill him, I want her to see it... I want her to suffer every minute of it and watch her weep for him.”

He smiled, though the drugs were taking effect. Everything seemed indistinct and distant. “Why do you hate her so?”

“Because they loved her more... our parents. The servants. Abigail could do not wrong, but I was always frowned upon for being too fast, too wild, for not being kind—Kind! As if that ever got a body anywhere!”

“I don't want you to be kind, my love. I want you to be greedy and cruel, to revel in your wickedness with me.”

She kissed his forehead, gently petting him. “I do love you, Rupert. More than anything.”

He fell into the drugged sleep then, dreaming of a time when his body hadn't been ravaged by disease, when he hadn't depended on other men to satisfy his wife. His last conscious thought was that it was time to wage war.

Chapter Eighteen

It was the thirst that woke him. His throat felt as it were on fire, and his mouth filled with sand. He slowly became aware of his surroundings, of the cool cloth moving over his skin, of the burning pain in his thigh. Memory returned more slowly of the events that had precipitated his injury. The stone circle, the shots that had rang out. He remembered how freely the blood had flowed from his wound.

Forcing his eyes open, he saw Mrs. Wolcot leaning over him. “And this is my hell,” he muttered.

The old woman grimaced at him, or perhaps that was simply her natural expression.

“Mouthy as ever, I see. You'll be fine,” she mumbled.

“How long have I been unconscious?” he asked.

“Four days... put my dear Miss Abigail through all manner of misery, you did!” she said accusingly.

“In the future, that will be my very best reason to avoid being shot,” he replied caustically.

When she didn't respond, just continued to glare at him. He decided he'd find a more sympathetic ear. “I need to get out of this bed.”

“Not bloody likely,” the old woman answered.

Michael ignored her and attempted to sit up. He managed it, but only barely and with her assistance. By the time he'd achieved a somewhat vertical position with multiple pillows propped behind him, he was sweating profusely and the room was spinning. “This is lowering,” he groused.

She cackled. “Oh, I'm sure 'tis. The strapping lord is as weak as a kitten.”

“Mrs. Wolcot!”

The mild scold had come from his wife who stood in the doorway. Turning toward her, Michael's frown deepened. She looked awful. Dark hollows had formed beneath her eyes and it appeared she'd lost a considerable amount of weight in the four days she'd been caring for him. “Go to bed,” he said.

“Pardon me, my lord, but if you're going to give orders you should be able to enforce them,” she fired back. “I'll go to bed when I'm ready. At the moment, you've been receiving round the clock care from myself, Sarah and Mrs. Wolcot. It appears to be my turn again.”

Mrs. Wolcot was still cackling as she exited the room.

“That old woman despises me,” he said, trying valiantly not to sound like a whining child. He succeeded marginally.

“She doesn't despise you,” Abbi said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Considering that you're male, she's actually quite chipper with you.”

“If that's chipper, I'd hate to see her in a foul mood.”

She smiled at him, her lips lifting. It eased the tension in her face, but did nothing to alleviate the look of exhaustion that clung to her. “I'm sorry to have worried you so,” he offered. “You should sleep, Abigail. You don't look well.”

“You're a fine one to talk. You're whiter than the sheets you're laying upon and we'll need your razor sharpened twice just to shave you once.”

Michael reached up and rubbed the whiskers on his cheeks. It was a far cry from his usually well groomed appearance. “Maybe I'll grow a beard. I'd look rather fearsome, don't you think?”

“Ask me again how fearsome you look when you can stand up.”

He noted that Abbi was  fidgeting and ,more tellingly, refusing to make eye contact with him. “Where is Spencer?” he asked.

Immediately, her gaze snapped toward him, before she looked away again quickly. Whatever had happened during his convalescence, he wasn't going to like it. “Tell me, Abigail! Where is he?”

“I sent him to Wilhaven to get some things that we need,” she replied, her tone vague and somewhat defensive.

“What things?” he asked, a frown furrowing his brow. He very much feared that he knew the answer to that already. 

She shrugged, as if it was of little importance. “This thing that Lavinia and Rupert want—we need to strike a bargain with them and for that to happen we must have something to bargain with.

Michael sighed heavily, leaning back into the pillows propping him up. It was a disastrous move on their part. “If it were that simple, I would have simply given them the bloody thing myself, Abigail! They don't just want the item... Rupert wants you. Whatever ritual it is that he feels compelled to complete, he means for you to be a part of it! And if not you, then some other young, unsuspecting woman! They must be stopped before they hurt anyone else!”

She rose from the bed, pacing the room nervously. “Does that include you? Because this is the second time they've tried to kill you! I couldn't bear it—.”

The abruptness of her silence alerted him more than anything else to the fact that she'd already said things she hadn't intended to. Abigail, he had learned, kept her emotions quite guarded. It was something he understood all too well as he'd been guarding his own just as closely for decades.

“You couldn't bear it if what?” he prompted. He needed her to say it, to give him some inkling of what was going on inside her head, or heaven help him, in her heart.

She lifted her chin and spoke in a falsely dulcet tone. “If your arrogance and conceit were to continue their unfettered growth!”

He laughed in spite of himself, the sound fading on a wince. How the bloody hell could a bullet in his thigh make him hurt everywhere? “That isn't what you wanted to say... I know what you intended to say. You couldn't stand it if something were to happen  to me.”

A noncommittal shrug preceded her response. “It doesn't matter.”

Michael held his hand out to her. “Come sit beside me. I can't chase after you and the closer you get to the door the more inclined I am to believe you mean to bolt.”

“Perhaps I do... For four days you were unconscious and now I can't get you to stop talking.” In spite of her grousing, she once again seated herself on the edge of the narrow bed, but this time she faced him.

When he'd been shot, before the blackness had claimed him, he'd thought of her, of things he should have said to her. His regret in that moment, when he'd thought death imminent, had not been for all the things he had done, but for the things he had yet to do, and for the life he would not have with her. She was his prickly and thorny rose, never allowing him to sway her with charm, but always demanding more of him, probing into the very recesses of his soul. It was something he'd resisted his entire life, and yet with her, it only seemed right.

“I've been saving up my words.” Hoping to prod her into opening up more, he added, “I understand how you feel, Abigail. I couldn't bear it if something happened to you either.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes. We've had that discussion. I'm your wife, your responsibility as my husband is to see to my safety—.”

Seeing no other way to do it, Michael shut her up by kissing her. It was chaste enough as kisses went. He certainly wasn't capable of following through on anything more than that at the moment. Pulling back from her, he said firmly, “No.”

“No?”

“Well, in part, yes. But, tt isn't simply because you're my wife, Abigail... From the moment I first laid eyes on you, I could think of nothing else. You invaded my mind, tugged at my conscience and my consciousness in a way that no woman ever has.”

“I make you feel guilty?”

He laughed again, though it ended with another pained wince. “Not precisely. You make me want to be better... You make me want to be worthy of you, and that isn't something I've felt in a very long time.”

~*~*~

Abbi knew that it was probably a mistake, but she couldn't not ask the question. “Not since Melisande?”

Immediately his gaze shuttered and he pulled back. “I see Spencer has been very informative.”

Abbi skewered him with a glance. “Yes, he was... Because when he brought you here, half-dead and bleeding everywhere, the name you uttered was not mine... but hers.”

He still held her hand, his fingers laced with hers and his thumb tracing distracting circles of her the back of her hand. “It isn't like that. I was a child, and I loved her... With all the innocence and with the wholeheartedness that only a child can.”

It was lowering to be jealous of a long dead girl, and yet she was. That child who had suffered so still held a part of him that she never would. “And if she'd lived, you would have married her... and you would have been very happy with her.”

He didn't speak for the longest time, a pensive expression on his face. Finally, after those interminable minutes, he said, “Perhaps... That's something I cannot say. That future died with her, Abbi. Whether it would have fully matched the idyllic vision we all harbor is beyond my ability to guess.”

She spoke haltingly, the words bubbling up from her in fits and starts, and each one so agonizing to say. “I know shouldn't feel this way. Spencer told me what happened to her, and it's a horror that no one should have to endure. But, I feel like this—our marriage, if it can be called such a thing—will never be what you wanted, what you envisioned with her... and I know that this isn't a love match, regardless of what the gossips will say. I'm not a fool. But I had hoped that we would be happy with one another, eventually. Yet, I find myself wondering if you will ever be happy with anyone who isn't her.”

He tugged her closer, until they were eye to eye. “What I can say, unequivocally, is that I have no regrets about where I am now. I did love her, and we did not wed for the reasons others might guess at or gossip and I couldn't give a bloody damn what anyone says, regardless. I am here with you, because there is no place on this earth, or beyond, that I would rather be... Other than the murderous in-laws. But every couple has their struggles.”

At that, she laughed, but the sound gave way to a sob. “I'm so sorry for what they've done to you.”

He kissed her hands, each in turn.  “I've done far worse to myself over the years... Now, down to the business at hand. How long has Spencer been gone?”

“He left three days ago. He should return tonight, I hope.”

“Good. Once he's here, he can help get me upstairs and we can give Mrs. Wolcot back her room... She likes me little enough already.”

Abbi leaned forward, her head resting against his bare chest. Hearing his voice, the gentle teasing that was simply part of his innate charm, those were the things she'd thought she might never experience again. The relief was overwhelming. It was that which prompted her to finally let go and to utter a truth that she had feared so profoundly. “I shouldn't say it. It gives you too much sway over me, but I thought you were dying and it nearly broke me—I love you.”

He stiffened beneath her, his muscles tensing for just a moment. Then his arms closed about her. “You had to steal the thunder and say it first, didn't you? I love you, Abigail, and I'll do everything in my power to keep us both very much alive.”

She closed her eyes tightly, an effort to keep her tears of relief at bay. It was what she'd longed for but had feared to hope. It was not guarantee of a happy ending, however, but it certainly upped the stakes. “What do we do now?”

“I'm hardly recovered enough for the activities that would normally follow such an admission, but if we're creative enough—.”

“Be serious! I meant about Lavinia and Rupert!” she protested.

“Were you aware that Rupert has consumption?”

Abbi gasped. “No. He had a lung ailment a few years ago, but he went to Bath with Lavinia and they took the cure. They both claimed he was fully recovered!”

He shook his head. “They lied or were mistaken. I've seen signs of it, but until the night of the house party, I didn't know for certain. He has numerous medications and remedies on hand for it. Then there's his cough... And he's thin, Abbi. Painfully so. If you look at his face and hands, a good tailor can only camouflage so much,” Michael explained. “There is no man more dangerous than one staring death in the face. He has little enough to lose.”

“And Lavinia?”

Michael shrugged. “I've seen no signs of illness in her, but she's mad. Completely so, though, apparently she has been thus for some time.”

“There is certainly truth in that. I fear she's only grown worse over the years... Rupert has fostered that madness in her, cultivating it to degrees I'd never imagined.”

“We will wait for Spencer to return,” Michael suggested, “And when I am well enough, we will deal with this. In the meantime, we will stay to the house and not put ourselves or anyone else in harm's way. Agreed?”

Abbi nodded against his chest. “Yes. Agreed.”

“I do love you... And as soon I can, I mean to show you.”

“You've already shown me!” she protested with a blush.

He smiled and held her closer. “There is always more, love. Always. We've merely scratched the surface!”

~*~*~

It was another two days before Spencer returned, knocking heavily upon the doors of Blagdon Hall at nearly midnight. He looked worse for wear, road-weary and covered with dirt. Abbi met him in the great hall. “Thank goodness you've returned!”

Spencer sank down onto one of the hard chairs, clearly exhausted. “How is he?”

Abbi smiled. “More cooperative when he was feverish and bedridden. Now, he's up and making a nuisance of himself.”

Spencer dropped his head into his hands. “He'll bloody well kill me for this.”