The Wyndham Legacy (27 page)

S
HE LAY THERE
staring into the darkness, waiting for him. She'd heard him come up just minutes ago. He'd been playing whist with Trevor, and his hired Celeste, who was really Hannah. The evening had been delightful, Marcus introducing Miss Crenshaw as a distant cousin, more distant even than his cousins from America, more distant perhaps than even China, and all had laughed and enjoyed themselves and Badger's cooking except Aunt Wilhelmina, who was in top form, even going so far at one point over gooseberry fool, one of Marcus's favorite desserts, to observe, “This is all quite inappropriate, this jollity. It is her fault. She was a bastard and thus doesn't know how one is to behave properly.”

Marcus had choked on his gooseberry fool, managed to get himself back in control, and said, “I quite agree, Aunt Wilhelmina. Consider Miss Crenshaw a hopeful for my hand once I have gotten rid of the Duchess here. Do you approve of Miss Crenshaw?”

“She has breeding, that is obvious. I shall consider her for marriage with Trevor or James. Miss Crenshaw, have you a dowry that is worthy of my consideration?”

The laughter had burst forth, but Aunt Wilhelmina had seemed oblivious. Thank goodness the Twins and Ursula weren't at the dinner table.

But that was then and now it was dark, and she was still carrying a child he didn't want.

When the adjoining door finally opened, she felt empty and dull, all the evening's laughter sucked out of her.

“Well,” he said after a moment as he sat on the edge of her bed, “I was hoping for a carolling hello and winsome smile. I get neither?”

She swallowed the silly tears. “I have a winsome smile. You just can't see it.”

He lit a candle.

She turned her head away, but he was fast. He gently cupped her chin in his fingers and turned her to face him. He gave her a look more brooding than a hero in a Gothic novel. “Don't cry, Duchess. I would rather you shoot me than see you cry.”

“I would rather shoot you too. It's nothing, Marcus, nothing at all.” He snorted at that and she knew, of course, that because he was Marcus, he would dig and dig, and thus, she sat up and threw herself in his arms. “Please, Marcus, please forget that you never wanted me. Forget I made you marry me. Please forget I carry a child you don't want. Kiss me and love me.”

He went very still, but not for long. When he was deep inside her and she was trembling from the aftershocks of the pleasure he'd given her, he dipped his head down and kissed her. His breath was warm and sweet in her mouth. “You were made just for me, do you know that, Duchess? Just for me. Feel, just feel how we are together. I never would have believed such a joining possible, but it's true. Feel us, Duchess.”

She did. She'd believed herself beyond sated, so exhausted with pleasure that she surely couldn't want more, but his words and the touch of his fingers on her flesh, made her suck in her breath. It was she who brought his head down again and kissed him with all her heart, all the feeling that was within her, feeling that was older than the Duchess was surely, deep and full, all that feeling, and it was all for him and it always had been and it would be until she died.

He fell asleep with her gathered against him, her face in the crook of his neck. She wanted to sleep, but it eluded her. She wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time since she'd
found out she was carrying his child, what she was going to do. Her arm was over his chest. Slowly, she caressed his warm flesh, feeling the strength of him, the power. She rested her hand finally on his hip, aware that her belly was pressed against his side and she was hot from the touch of his flesh.

Would she still be here at Chase Park when her belly would be rounded? If she was, would he still want to hold her like this, the child he didn't want between them?

He felt the wet of her tears against his neck. “No,” he whispered against her ear, “no, Duchess, don't cry. Scream for me instead.” He came over her, coming into her, and when she did find her release, she didn't scream, just moaned softly into his mouth.

 

The day, Marcus thought, was one of those few days in high summer when the sky was so clear, the air so fresh, it nearly sent one into tears, that or poetic raptures, that or a good fast gallop. He decided on the gallop. He and the Duchess had seen Hannah Crenshaw off early that morning. She'd had the impertinence to say to him quietly as he'd handed her into the carriage he'd hired to return her to London, “She's very special, my lord. I hope you see that. She's also unhappy. She shouldn't be. I trust you will see to it, and not become like so many husbands I have seen and known and none of them worth a pig's snout.”

He'd said nothing to that, but he had wanted to box her ears for her damned effrontery. Instead, he'd just closed the carriage door and waved to the coachman. He had stood back, watching the carriage bowl down the wide drive.

The Duchess had said, “She was an experience, Marcus. You are a bounder, a perverse bounder, but your sense of humor pleases me. I suppose it is up to me now to outdo you.”

He'd recoiled in immediate alarm. “No, don't even think it. Promise me, Duchess, not until you're well again.”

“I am well again, Marcus. I'm pregnant and quite healthy.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice clipped, looking for just an instant at her belly, flat beneath her morning gown of pale blue muslin. He'd massaged her belly the night before, caressing her pelvic bones, oh yes, he'd felt with his hands how flat she was. It didn't seem possible his child could be there in her womb. He didn't look up when she sighed and left him.

He'd stood there, cursed quietly, then took himself to the stables.

As Lambkin saddled Stanley, he looked up again at that sky that deserved a poet's praises. The clouds were whiter than a saint's soul.

“Mr. Trevor took out Clancy,” Lambkin said as he picked up Stanley's left front leg, crooning to the stallion as he examined the hoof carefully.

“Riding my horse without a by-your-leave,” Marcus said, picking up his own saddle and hefting it over Stanley's broad back. “Damned encroacher.”

“Aye, an excellent rider Mr. Trevor is, just excellent. Like one of them 'orse men, you know, my lord, 'alf of 'im a 'orse and the other 'alf a man?”

“A centaur, curse his damned eyes. A centaur was never named Trevor.”

“Aye, that's it, and Mr. James was with him. He enjoys riding Alfie, a fine fellow old Alfie is, all spit and growl, but ever such a sweet goer. Mr. James is different from Mr. Trevor. He treats his 'orse like a man would a pretty lady. 'E's got magic in 'is 'ands, 'e does.”

“Ha,” Marcus said, gave Lambkin a sour look, and clicked Stanley from the stable yard.

On his ride he didn't see Trevor or James, even though he rode to the ruins of St. Swale's Abbey. Not a hair of him to be seen. Where was the damned bounder? Where was James? He found that he began searching for the dell and the oak tree and a well and something that could
resemble a nine. A bloody nine. A Janus-faced nine. What the devil was that? Two nines back-to-back? Why did folk insist on leaving clues that were so obfuscated that even a brainy fellow like himself didn't stand a chance of figuring them out?

He saw a lone female on the narrow country road close to the drive leading into the Park, saw that it was Ursula, and pulled up Stanley beside her. “Good morning, cousin. Why aren't you riding?”

“The day is too magnificent. When I ride I'm too afraid I'll fall off and I wanted to see everything today. Even the leaves on the trees look greener today, don't you think? This is a day to treasure. It rains a lot here, my lord, a lot more than back home, although Baltimore is nature's blight. That's what my papa used to say.”

He grinned at that. “You miss your home, Ursula?”

“Yes, but England is also my home since my papa was born here. Chase Park is the most incredible place. There are no houses like it in America. Oh, there are mansions, but they're new and shiny, not centuries-old with hidden passages and hidey-holes and clues for the Wyndham legacy if we could just find them.”

He dismounted, looped Stanley's reins over his hand, and walked beside his cousin.

“Legacy? Why do you call it that?”

“Mother says it isn't just a treasure but rather a legacy meant for the younger son since the elder son becomes the earl and gets the Park, the properties, and all the money. Thus, it's a legacy for her husband and since Papa died, it's now hers.”

“I see,” he said, wanting to applaud Aunt Wilhelmina's circuitous logic. “Well, I fear that if there is a treasure or a legacy, it must belong to me, the earl. Sorry, my dear, but I shan't hand it over to your mama. Now, James and Trevor are out somewhere but I haven't seen either of them.”

“No, nor have I. Trevor is getting impatient to leave. He keeps giving Mother harassed looks. As for James, he wants
to find our legacy, but I don't think he wants to steal it from you, not like my mother does, if it truly is stealing, and as of yet, I'm not certain who it should belong to. I think I should like to have it though.”

“Your mother,” he said carefully, “is a very unusual person. Has she always been so very unusual?”

Ursula cocked her head to one side. “I think she has but she's become more unusual as I've gotten older, or as she's gotten older. It's difficult to know which when one is young. Do you think the Duchess is upset at what she says? She doesn't seem to be, though perhaps she should be, for mother is many times quite unaccountable. She does odd things, then forgets them. Or perhaps she doesn't forget, just pretends to.”

“The Duchess is far too intelligent to be cast down by insults, no matter how smoothly couched. As for your mother forgetting things, that's interesting.”

“It wasn't, until she mistakenly served some spoiled food to a neighbor and he nearly died.”

“Did she, ah, dislike this neighbor?”

“However did you know that?”

“Wild guess. Look over at that oak tree. By heaven, it's older than you are, surely.”

“Older than me, Marcus? More likely your age or my mother's age, but surely that's too old, even for a tree. Come now, it would be a mere sapling were it my age. Oh yes, Mr. Sampson said that a Major Lord Chilton was coming today.”

“Oh good lord, I clean forgot, what with all the excitement.”

“What excitement?”

“Er, Miss Crenshaw's brief visit.”

“I heard Trevor and James laughing about that. James said the Duchess pinned your ears back on that one. Trevor said you did try, which was a good thing for a man to do occasionally, and that you did have her going wild for just a little while. Then he said something about her beating you
with her boot, but that doesn't sound at all likely. What did he mean, Marcus?”

“I haven't a notion, the damned impertinent bastard. Excuse me, Ursula, for speaking so improperly within your hearing.”

“It's all right. My brothers always do. Who is this Major Lord Chilton?”

“Actually, his name is Frederic North Nightingale, Viscount Chilton, and one of my best friends, though I didn't know him well until two years ago when our small party was ambushed by the French. You want to know what he said when I shot the soldier whose sword was barely an inch from going through his back? He said, ‘Well, by God, saved by the man who has more sense than to touch Portuguese vodka.' I left him in Paris over a month ago in the care and keeping of Lord Brooks.”

“What's Portuguese vodka?”

“Well, er, you don't want to know. I suppose I shouldn't have told you that.” Oh Lord, thank God it was such an ambiguous idiom, for Portuguese vodka referred to the whores from southern Portugal.

“Oh no, how am I to learn if people don't tell things in front of me? Is he as nice as you are, Marcus?”

“Of course not. He's dour and brooding and surely he would hate this glorious day we're enjoying. He prefers menacing heaths liberally strewn with rocks and gullies. He's a man of moods and silences. He's dangerous and looks it. I quite like him.”

She laughed and took his hand. He said easily, “Just don't let the Duchess see you holding my hand. She's very possessive, you know, quite jealous really. I would expect her to slit my throat if she saw this. I'm by far too young to croak it yet, don't you think?”

“Oh! You're dreadful, Marcus. The Duchess is more a lady than the queen.”

“Given that our dear queen is the farthest thing from a lady I've ever seen, I'll give you that one. About the
Duchess, Ursula, she's already tried to do me in with a bridle, a riding crop, and her left boot. Yes, that sod brother of yours was right, she did get in several good wallops with her riding boot. She sat down on the drive, pulled off her boot, and ran at me like a banshee. I think a pistol is next on her list of weapons. Thank God she never carries one with her, else I might be underground with a tombstone over my head.”

She laughed and laughed, then skipped away, calling over her shoulder, “You probably deserved all of it. I'm going to the small brook just yon. Please don't tell my mother you've seen me.”