“Come on, then! Quickly now!”
They left the inn and went into the night, an army of the unwashed exhorted to speed by the curses of a little girl who was very nearly a princess of the realm.
The unlucky innkeeper and the half-wit were left on the floor to sleep off their misfortune.
When Graham, Sophie, Stickey and Patricia reached Hampstead Heath, they found it alive with men and torches. Before they could ask for Lord Brookhaven, Sophie and Graham were captured—a sister and a toff, right?—and dragged before Calder.
He turned from his torchlit search to blink at them both, then at Stickley and Patricia, who had warily followed behind. “What—”
“Bodicea’s Barrow,” Sophie blurted, smacking away the hands that held her. Surrounded by rough men, her worst nightmare come to life, she didn’t know whether to scream or laugh hysterically. The only thing that mattered was to find Deirdre, but she could scarcely make her mouth form words!
She felt Graham take her hand in his, a warm link to someone safe. Her heartbeat steadied. “Baskin’s taken her to Bodicea’s Barrow—his sacred place! It’s in all his poetry!”
Calder’s eyes lit with hope. “Yes, of course! Everyone, to the Barrow!”
“Oy,” the man holding her protested. “I’m not goin’ there!”
Other protests came from all around them. “It’s a
grave, ain’t it? We orn’t goin’ to step on no grave at midnight!”
Calder had no time for such nonsense. With a quick look of gratitude toward Sophie—beautiful, brilliant Sophie!—he grabbed the spindly, swaybacked mount of the man nearest him and swung astride it. He kicked the protesting man aside with one boot.
“Stealing your horse. My apologies.” This crime thing was becoming a habit.
The barrow was a mound in the southeast portion of the heath. Whether Queen Bodicea of old was truly buried there or not, legend had her bones lying there for hundreds of years. The mound was large, with a copse of full-grown trees on top. Calder knew that the superstitious believed that Bodicea walked the earth at night, bemoaning her betrayal and the betrayal of her daughters.
At that moment, he didn’t bloody care.
The night was complete and moonless. Calder finally had to pull his mount to a fast walk, for the poor beast had no stamina and the path was not easy.
At last he found the barrow—and at the top, he saw the faintest gleam of a light, like a lantern nearly out of oil.
Calder flung himself from the horse, hitting the ground and scrambling on all fours to reach her. She lay a few feet away from a body—Baskin’s—but Calder only had eyes for her still white form.
Just as he was about to pull her roughly into his arms, Graham ran up with a fresh lantern in hand. The sight of so much blood soaking through her gown froze Calder in mid-reach.
“Oh, Papa, she’s bleeding so!”
That small horrified exclamation rang through the sudden silence of all those gathered around the still pale body on the ground.
Calder reached a trembling hand to brush the fallen golden hair away from that lovely, marble face. Her skin chilled his fingers.
Deirdre wasn’t hurt. Deirdre was dead.
Calder’s breath left him.
Lost
. All that fierce pride and vulnerability, all that shimmering beauty and defiant loyalty, gone forever—because of
him
.
Slowly, carefully, as if she would shatter in his hands, he drew her into his arms. “Oh, my beautiful darling … don’t leave me, I beg of you. Don’t leave me … alone.”
“Papa … are you crying?”
Tucking Deirdre’s cool face into his neck, he pulled her onto his lap, sprawling awkwardly in the dirt and dead leaves. In the circle of watchers who stood in the lantern light, no one moved a muscle as they watched the great proud man heave rasping sobs of heartbreak into his wife’s flaxen hair.
Deirdre opened her eyes to find herself in a creamy satin heaven. That is, if heaven contained slightly grubby, dark-haired urchins who glared at her from the foot of the bed.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
Deirdre blinked and very carefully laid her palm to the wound in her belly. The pain radiated outward, pulsating through her until she wondered faintly why she wasn’t screaming. “I think I wish I were,” she rasped.
Meggie narrowed her dark eyes and folded her arms. She looked bloody annoyed. Knowing from whose loins the child sprang, Deirdre guessed that the little girl was actually desperately worried.
She tried to smile. “I’m all right.” She didn’t feel all right. She felt shaky and chilled and weak—and the hole in her body seemed to be larger than it once was. “They took the bullet out?”
Meggie scowled. “I wanted to keep it, but Papa made me leave the room.”
“That’s too bad,” Deirdre said faintly. “How terrible for you.”
Meggie dropped her pose and picked at the coverlet with her well-chewed nails. “The physician did it.”
“Better he than Fortescue, I suppose.”
Meggie didn’t look up. “He said you might die anyway.”
Suddenly Deirdre no longer wished an end to her pain anytime soon. “I showed him, then.”
Meggie continued her fascination with the stitching on the coverlet. “I could be your little girl … if you wanted.”
Deirdre tried to smile. “Meggie, I’m happy to hear that, but I’m really very tired—”
“Since you can’t have any babies now.”
Ah. It seemed she’d only thought she knew pain before. Now the real agony seared through her. She closed her eyes against it, but she was too weak to fight the small aching sound that escaped her lips. No children of her own.
She’d been so vain and stupid, thinking of saving her figure and her social ambitions, determined to put off the dreariness of childbearing until the last possible moment.
A vicious punishment indeed, but perhaps not entirely undeserved. After all, she’d been careless with Meggie, hadn’t she? She’d let Baskin in this house, endangering Meggie and destroying her own never-born children simply so she could sop up his puppyish devotion.
The scar across her belly would be large and ugly, she could tell. Her body was marred forever now, the perfection upon which she’d based her entire existence now erased. She didn’t care one whit. She’d willingly bear scars all over her body if she could only be whole within.
She was barely aware of Meggie quietly slipping down from the mattress. She ought to stop the girl, reassure her, be what mother she was capable of being—but the weakness made her too slow and Meggie was gone by the time she opened her eyes.
The bed was a lonely cold sea about her, the richness of the satin and silk chilly against her heated skin. She had a fever, she realized dully. It seemed she might die after all, as the doctor had said.
She gave it a try, just for a moment. She tried letting go, willing herself to fade away, willing her heart to stop pumping the blood that still seeped from her wound. The silence grew until she could hear that rebellious heart, still beating loud in her sensitized hearing. It was no good. She’d spent her life in the fight. She hadn’t a clue how to give up.
So, then—if she couldn’t give up, how was she to go on?
Calder … oh, God, Calder must know by now. The physician would surely have let the marquis know that his hopes for an heir were dashed. She’d failed him again, it seemed.
Poor Calder. It was really too bad that she’d not died. Now he was saddled with a scarred, damaged, barren woman whom he didn’t actually like very much. If he had it to do all over again, she wouldn’t be his second choice, she’d be his last one!
Tears leaked from the outside corners of her eyes, running down to trickle into her ears. She preferred to cry into a pillow, but she was too sore and weak to roll over! That pathetic thought tipped the scales until the tears swelled to a torrent, until she had to press her
palms over her mouth to mask her raw sobs. They never seemed to end, racking her aching body and sapping her inadequate strength. She didn’t even realize the moment when crying became sleeping once more.
CALDER ENTERED THE grand chamber of the marchioness and walked silently across the thick carpet to gaze down at the slender, frail treasure he’d placed so carefully in the center of the huge bed. She slept still, but when he stroked his fingertips down her cheek he wanted to believe that the fever was less.
A chair awaited him at the bedside. He sank into it without needing to look, for he’d spent many hours there already.
His fingers were damp from her face. Had the fever broken? Did she weep in her unconscious state?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t. He’d made sure that it hadn’t been spoken of outside his study. The physician had whispered it to him as if imparting a shameful indiscretion.
“There’s damage, my lord. More from removing the bullet, though it had to be done. Women are delicate beings. Even a bad blow to that area could make her barren … but a bullet? I fear there’s little hope she’ll ever be able to conceive.”
Calder had listened and nodded in automatic response to the man’s solemnity, but all he could think was “She’s alive!”
He didn’t give a damn if she didn’t give him an heir. He was too bloody busy not howling with joy that he was sitting here beside her, not standing by her grave!
She mustn’t know. Oh, he might have to tell her someday, if she fretted at their lack of children, but for now and the years to come, he intended to make sure she was too happy to care overmuch. They had Meggie and he’d be perfectly willing to raid the nearest orphanage to fill the house with children if she wished. He fancied he had a knack for crime.
Anything she wished. Anything at all, if she would only open her blue eyes and speak to him again.
She slept on, her hand small and limp in his.
The next time Deirdre woke, feverish and fretful, it was to find Sophie sitting next to the bed, ready with a soothing word and a practical touch.
Her thoughts still fogged, Deirdre struggled to remember something very important. She’d been shot. She remembered the fiery brand of the impact. That was bad. Meggie was safe. That was better. Baskin was dead. That was best not thought about yet.
Then she remembered the worst. With a gasp, she reached for Sophie’s hand. “The doctor said—oh, Sophie! No children!”
Sophie unwrapped her hysterical grip and then patted her hand soothingly. “I heard that Patricia heard that Meggie heard the physician tell Calder that.” She took up a cloth from the nightstand and smoothed away the fever sweat from Deirdre’s brow. “Physicians, you know, are just as fallible as anyone else.” She snorted. “Or more so.”
Deirdre blinked, not willing to hope so easily. “Wouldn’t he know if I’m damaged or not? Do you think he could be mistaken?”
“Why not?” Sophie shrugged. “I’ve never put much stock in physicians. Cook’s herbal concoctions seem
every bit as helpful as anything the doctors ever give m … my mother. They’ve been dosing her for years and it hasn’t done her a bit of good. Neither the leeches nor the dosing, come to think of it. Yet I’ve seen farm hands heal from the most terrible wounds, when all they’ve had are poultices and teas.” She put the cloth back in the lavender-scented water. “I don’t think anyone knows the future. Who is to say what is possible or not?”
Deirdre lay back on her pillows, her thoughts circling that single statement.
Why not?
Then she turned her face away. “Where is Calder?”
Sophie didn’t reply. When Deirdre rolled to face her, the tall girl glanced away. “Lord Brookhaven has many duties.”
Well, that was hardly a surprise … and yet, she was surprised. Did her sickbed not require his presence, at least for a short visit?
Apparently not.
Sophie stirred. “Deirdre, perhaps I should tell you. Calder is—”
Deirdre lifted a hand to stop her. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
Shaking her head, Sophie tried again. “Deirdre—”
“I’m quite serious. Do not speak of him.”
Sighing, Sophie admitted defeat. “You’re tired. Do you want me to leave?”
Deirdre closed her eyes, feeling the overpowering pull of dark, evasive sleep. “Stay,” she murmured. Then she forced her eyes open to lock gazes with Sophie. “Don’t tell him I asked for him.” She gripped her hand. “Promise.”
Sophie shook her head. “I promise.”
Just as Deirdre gave in and darkness came to claim her, she could have sworn she heard one last word from Sophie.
“
Idiot.
”
WHEN CALDER RETURNED from the ordeal and sideshow that was poor Baskin’s funeral, Fortescue awaited him in the entrance hall with a dry surcoat and a piece of toweling.
“I didn’t suppose you’d want to take time to change before you checked on her ladyship, my lord.”
Calder pressed his wet face into the towel and let out a harsh breath.
“Was it very bad, my lord?”
Bad? It had been dreadful. The world had come out to see the tragedy in three acts that was the life and death of one stupid, unbalanced boy in love. Baskin himself had fired the bullet that had caused his death, but Calder knew that the tale being told all over the city had at least three versions where he had pulled the trigger, several where Deirdre had done it, and a few circulating that held Meggie as the murderer. To stand beside the white-faced and rigidly mournful Baskin family and withstand the scrutiny and whispers while the poor lad was lowered into the ground …
“It was not a good day, Fortescue.” He rubbed the towel over his dripping hair. “Why does it always rain at funerals?” It had rained when he’d buried each of his parents, and Melinda as well, come to think of it.
One wife buried, one fiancée fled, one bride nearly killed. The only constant in all that was him. He shook his head.
“I have no talent for marriage.”
Fortescue raised a brow. “On the contrary, my lord. You very carefully and decisively chose your brides for all the wrong reasons. From the first it was clear that you and the previous Lady Brookhaven weren’t going to get on well. I ought to have warned you, but it wasn’t my place to do so.”
Calder grunted. “Warned me that my sweet, demure fiancée was a whore? I don’t suppose I would have listened.”
Fortescue gazed at him pityingly. “Lady Melinda wasn’t a whore, my lord. She was merely a young woman who loved a man and was thrust into marriage with another man.”
Something inside Calder cleared, like silt running away to leave a stream sparkling and pure. He lifted his gaze to meet his butler’s. “Like Phoebe.”
Fortescue nodded. “Indeed, my lord. You do have a talent for choosing women whose hearts have already been stolen. Perhaps because you yourself have no desire to possess those hearts?”
Possess those hearts? No. Not Melinda’s. Not even Phoebe’s.
Deirdre’s.
His hands slowly tightened to fists. Not in rage, but in longing. Deirdre’s heart was what he desired, more than he’d ever desired anything—Deirdre’s proud, stubborn, fiercely independent heart, which she’d offered to him like a gilded treasure and which he’d spurned like a soiled rag.
Oh
,
my darling. What have I done?
Sophie had the answer to that question, when he passed her on the stair.
“Essentially, my lord, you fulfilled her worst nightmare of a husband. I don’t really think you meant ill by it. You must have worried that she was like Tessa—and one can certainly see why—but have you truly thought about what it must have been like to be raised by a woman like Tessa? A woman who cared nothing for her, a manipulative bully who only saw her as a means to an end?”
“Like me, you mean.” He ran both hands over his face. “Oh, damn.”
Sophie put one tentative hand on his arm. “I think—I think it must have been quite awful, really. She doesn’t talk about it, but I’ve seen bruises—” She shrugged. “Deirdre seems very strong, I know. I once despised her for it, thinking her hard. It is an armor, really, against Tessa, against the world that left her in the hands of a woman like that. Underneath, I think she is very vulnerable and perhaps a bit lost as well.”
Calder let out a breath and gazed at Sophie for a long moment. “I think all the Pickering granddaughters are a bit of a surprise beneath the surface.”
Sophie blushed and glanced away. “I don’t suppose I can bribe you to keep that quiet?”
Calder grunted. “Who would I tell?” The only person he longed to speak to was Deirdre, but what could he say to atone for his suspicions?
Sophie folded her arms, one eyebrow raised at his morose tone. “I don’t feel terribly sorry for you, you know. You are entirely too intelligent not to realize that having brought this on yourself, you must be the one to make it right.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know how, but I have a suggestion as to
‘when’.” She tilted her head and quirked a smile. “Deirdre is finally properly awake, with no fever. It broke less than an hour ago.”
Calder’s fists tightened on a surge of overwhelming relief.
Thank God.
Beset by the desire to be near his wife, he turned his back on Sophie’s knowing chuckle and took the stairs two at a time.