Anita Mills (12 page)

“Wilkins says you are not usually a sot.”

With an effort, he lifted his brow at that. “Don’t know me—not anymore.”

“I’m trying to tell you that your mother may not die, Mr. Deveraux. She may, of course, but then, she may not—’tis too soon to know.”

“Rand—”

“Dr. Rand appears a trifle pessimistic to me.”

He appeared to consider that, then shook his head. “Doeshn’t matter. She doeshn’t want me here. Wants to die without me.”

“I cannot think anyone would wish to die alone.”

“Mush you know about it, Mish Morland. Hates me.” He blinked again and moved his head, trying to focus on her. “You know why? Wanna know why?” he demanded truculently. “ ’Cause I’m alive! Good, hanshome Cassh is dead, and I’m alive!”

She sat quietly, not knowing what to say, hoping Wilkins would return quickly with the coffee. Across from her, Dominick rambled almost incoherently, and she did not try to stop him. It was hard to follow him, and often she didn’t know to whom he referred. For a time it was as though she were not there.

“I look like him, you know—not like her and Cassh. Devil take him. Devil take her too. Don’t care anymore.” With that pronouncement, he slumped down and closed his eyes.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Wilkins carrying in the tray. She rose quickly to intercept him and took it.

“He all right, miss?” the footman asked.

“He’s just in his cups.”

“I dunno, maybe you ought not—”

“I am all right,” she assured him. “He is overset because the doctor has given him to believe Mrs. Deveraux will not survive.”

“Humph! He ain’t going to miss her, if you was to ask me.”

“Wilkins, I hardly think—”

“I know it ain’t right to speak wrong of the dying, miss, but she ain’t exactly been right to him neither.” He turned to leave. “Call me when he’d go up to bed.”

“Mr. Wilkins, who is Nicholas?” she could not help asking.

“His father.”

“Cass was his older brother?”

He nodded. “Died in Boney’s war. Right at the beginning.

She let him go, and she carried the tray to set it upon the reading table. Moving matter-of-factly, she poured steaming coffee into one of the cups, broke off a lump of sugar from the block, and stirred it in. “Cream, Mr. Deveraux?” she asked loudly.

One eye opened briefly, and there was no mistaking the hostility there. “No.”

She held out the cup, and for a moment she thought he’d knock it from her hand. “I put just a bit of sugar into it,” she coaxed. “Here—’twill clear your head.”

“Don’t know many sots, do you?” he muttered. “Still drunk—jusht awake.”

“Please.”

“Who made you my guar … my keeper? Go to Nottingham … go to London … go on.”

“In the morning,” she promised. “But for now, I’d talk with you.”

“Nothing to say,” he mumbled. Nonetheless, he took the cup unsteadily, spilling some of the hot liquid on his expensive breeches. He did not seem to notice. Taking a sip, he burned his mouth and winced. “Satishfied? Go on … leave.”

“Not yet.” She moved to pour her tea, adding sugar and cream to it; then she sat again opposite him.

“Too foxed to talk,” he grumbled.

Sipping the hot sweet liquid, Anne tried to discover the means to reason with him. But he was staring sullenly into the fire, and the prospects for civilized discourse did not look at all good. Somewhat daunted, she nonetheless said quietly, “I could stay, I suppose.” Even as the words came out, she felt quite foolish and forward. “That is, I am not without experience in the care of a sick person. There was Mrs. Cokeham, and before that my own mother, Mr. Deveraux. And I cannot think Mrs. Philbrook means to welcome me anyway.” She felt like a rattle, for there was no indication he even attended her. “Mr. Deveraux, I should like to help you,” she added lamely. “I think you need me.”

His head turned slowly, and the expression on his face told her she’d been wrong. Instead of gratitude, there was anger. He lurched to his feet, reeling drunkenly over her. “Don’t need your pity!” he flung at her. His lip curving into a bitter sneer, he demanded, “You think I need anything, Mish Morland? Dom Deveraux doeshn’t need anybody! Go on to London and leave me to my cups! I don’t need another managing female!”

Turning back, he swept the coffee cup onto the floor, where the brown liquid pooled across a rose woven into the woolen rug. He stared down briefly, then staggered from the room, leaving her. She sat motionless, the blood rising in her cheeks, feeling quite humiliated.

She could hear his bootsteps on the stairs, his voice bellowing in the hall above, and her chagrin turned to anger also. He’d made it abundantly clear that her offer meant nothing to him, and hell could freeze ere she repeated it. Let Lord Trent, Miss Mitford, and Dominick Deveraux take care of his mother. She was going to London and forget she’d ever met the boor.

A door banged somewhere above her, followed by the sound of muffled voices. But she no longer cared. Whatever Dominick Deveraux did was none of her affair. She laid the book on the tea tray and carried the whole up with her.

In the dimly lit upstairs hallway, several people stood uneasily watching Mrs. Deveraux’s door. Bertie Bascombe, his slight body encompassed in a nightshirt, his head covered in a sleeping cap, complained, “Fellow can’t sleep here— place is a deuced Bedlam! Damme if I know what’s going on!”

Miss Mitford, her pale hair streaming about her shoulders, emerged, her hands gripping her wrapper tightly over her gown. “Whatever … ?”

“Damnable commotion!” Bertie told her with feeling. “That’s what it is! Bedlam,” he repeated. “Bedlam.”

“Came in like the devil was with him,” Betty insisted, “and I wasn’t stay in’.”

“What happened?” Anne managed to ask.

“Mr. Deveraux’s in there,” the maid answered. “Told me to get out, he did.” She looked up to where Trent had come to stand behind Anne. “My lord, I couldn’t—”

“You going in, my lord?” Wilkins wondered.

There was no sound coming from the bedchamber now, and as Trent stared speculatively at the door, the rest strained to hear his answer. “Go on to bed, all of you,” he said finally. “Apparently Mr. Deveraux wishes to be private with his mother.”

“But—”

But the marquess had already turned on his heel and headed back down the hall, making dispute difficult. One by one, the others shrugged and started returning to bed. As Margaret Mitford passed Anne, she shuddered. “I told you he was possessed of a volatile temper, Miss Morland. I shall be quite glad when ’tis all over. How Papa could ever think—”

“Get the door for you, Miss Morland,” Bertie offered when he noticed the tray. Waiting until she was nearly into her bedchamber, he leaned to tell her, “I ain’t going to miss this place. Be glad to get out of here in the morning. Daresay the Frenchies ain’t any more havey-cavey than the Deveraux.”

“Good night, Mr. Bascombe.”

“You going to be ready early?”

“Yes.”

Although a fire had been laid in the ornately faced fireplace, Anne undressed hastily, drew on her borrowed night-rail, buttoned it to her chin, propped up her pillows, and climbed into bed. Still seething, she poured another cup of the tea and tried to calm herself. Sipping the tepid beverage, she opened Blake’s volume and forced herself to read.

Rain sprayed the paned window like sand hitting the glass. On the morrow she would be gone from this miserable place. And the day after, she would be in London. Her anger faded, replaced by a sinking feeling. In London she would turn herself in, and after that… well, she did not want to think about it.

She turned the pages, looking for the familiar poem, and found it.

She paused and stared toward the fire, seeing the images of beauty and of destruction. A metaphysical interpretation of man’s condition. Whether it was what the poet intended, Anne saw in it not a tiger, but rather human suffering.
And what shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart?
’Twas the pain one gave another. Like Dominick Deveraux and his mother.

She sipped absently, thinking of him. He called himself a rogue, but in truth he was more of an enigma. While possessed of wit, looks, wealth, and occasional charm, he was also arrogant, cold, intemperate and bitter—and it was difficult to tell whether he loved or hated his mother.

But from what Trent, Betty, Wilkins, and Miss Mitford had intimated, ’twas possible that Charlotte Deveraux did not deserve his love. Still, whenever she thought of the old woman, she saw only the fear, the terror in her eyes. Charlotte Deveraux was afraid to die.

It was odd that she was so old, old enough to have been painted by Gainsborough, while her younger son was but twenty-seven. He must have been born after she was well into her thirties, perhaps even forty. Or else she had been one of those females who did not age well. Because she had been ill, ’twas difficult to tell.

It didn’t make any difference, Anne reminded herself. She had no place there, no business even being there, and Dominick Deveraux was ready to wash his hands of her. For her attempt at kindness, she’d received a total rebuff, and she was not the sort of woman to stay where she was not wanted.

Sighing, she returned to the poem, scanning it the rest of the way through, seeing it end as it had begun.

Downstairs, someone pounded on the outer door. And once again there was movement in the hall, the shuffling of feet on the stairs, the creak of the door opening below. As it was now quite late, Anne thrust back the covers and padded to peer out the window. The light from a hastily lit lamp on the porch reflected off ice like a candle on crystal. It had not been rain she’d heard—it had been sleet.

There was a murmur of voices below, more feet coming back up the stairs, a great deal of shuffling and whispering in the hallway. A door opened, shut, and opened again. And finally there was a soft rapping at her door. Thinking perhaps that Mrs. Deveraux had taken a turn for the worse, that the doctor had been summoned, she threw on her borrowed wrapper and went to answer.

The marquess was scarce half-dressed, with his shirt not yet tucked into his breeches. The print of his bedclothes was still clearly visible on his cheek. Behind him, his valet cried his boots and his coat.

“What … ? Oh, dear, is aught the matter, my lord?”

“Have you seen Dom? No … no, of course you have not. Did not mean that as it sounded.” He looked haggard, harried, and worried. “I have to return home. Word has come that Ellie—my wife—is brought to bed early.”

“I’m sorry. I wish her a safe delivery.”

“As do I,” he said fervently. “I’ve not the time to find Dom, but tell him if he has need of me, he has but to send to the Meadows. Once I know Ellie is all right, I can return.” Grasping her hand, he pressed several banknotes into it. “I don’t know what Dom was able to bring with him, and you may need this.” He did not wait for her to respond. “Ready, Crawfurd?” he addressed his valet.

“Really, my lord, but I cannot—”

He was already halfway down the hallway. Knowing that he was terribly hurried, she closed her hand over the money and said nothing more. Later, before she left, she would give it to Wilkins to return. She started to shut her door again, but Bertie had come out.

“What the deuce
now?”
he demanded querulously. “Place is like a demned inn! Worse, in fact. Don’t know how—”

“Trent is leaving.”

“Eh? Trent is leaving?” he repeated.
“Now?”

“His wife is in childbed, and I expect he cannot wait for the storm to pass.”

“Can’t say as I am not glad he’s going,” he admitted, turning back to his own room. He froze suddenly. “What storm?” he asked hollowly.

“ ’Tis sleeting, Bertie.”

His slender shoulders settled, conveying the impression that the unwelcome storm was all of a piece. “Don’t care if it comes a foot of ice, I ain’t staying,” he declared. “It ain’t right to intrude on a dying woman—and I’ll be hanged if I’m going to try to talk to Miss Mitford anymore.” He looked back. “You’re going with me, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. If it wasn’t for m’father, I’d take you back to London myself. You ain’t like the rest of ’em, Annie.”

“Bertie, have you seen Mr. Deveraux?” she could not help asking.

“Been trying to sleep,” he reminded her. “Hopeless,” he added glumly, “but I go to try. Demned long way to France.”

Once back in the warmth of her bed, Anne still could not sleep. She lay there wondering about Dominick Deveraux, wondering why he’d not come out. Surely with all the noise, he ought to have known something was afoot. Well, it was not her affair, she reminded herself. He didn’t seem to want any sympathy or aid from anyone. Yet as she thought of him, she realized that her earlier anger had faded, and she could not help feeling sorry for him. For all his faults, there was something about Dominick Deveraux that drew her to him, and she did not seem able to help that either.

The room was dark save for the fire that blazed warmly in the hearth. He half-stumbled, half-reeled to stand over the bed. His mother lay as still as death, her face as pale as the bank of pillows behind her. For a long time he stood there staring down, trying to feel, but whether ’twas an excess of wine or a dearth of soul, he could summon nothing.

He told himself there ought to be something. The frail woman lying there had borne him more than twenty-seven years before. But she hadn’t wanted to—she’d made that so plain in the intervening years. Maybe that was the difference between them.

Finally, unable to stand it, he reached to touch her hand where it lay against the folded coverlet. It was bony and cold, and for a moment he thought he’d been cheated again, that she’d already died.