Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02] (23 page)

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Authors: The Duke Next Door

BOOK: Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02]
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Baskin strolled jauntily, if a bit stiffly, up to the familiar door of the house on Primrose Square. For the first time in what seemed like forever, the gray skies that followed him had been parted by a ray of golden light. His beloved had left her husband behind!
His new friend—the fellow had told him his name, he was sure, but he could never seem to remember it—had come to his rooms last night where he’d been nursing his wounds and weeping for worry for his Deirdre and informed him that she had moved out of Brook House, trunks and all!
That knowledge had soothed the aches and healed the pains, making it possible for Baskin to eventually rise this morning and make his way here, to where she had taken refuge from the monster she’d married.
Now he tapped the knocker, desperate to see her, eager to plan their future, dying to touch her hand with all the right in the world!
He nodded archly at the disgruntled butler who answered the door. “Good morning. I am here to see Miss—er. Lady Brookhaven.”
Instead of opening the door wider and giving
welcome, the fellow only soured further. “Her ladyship is Not At Home.”
Baskin scowled. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you haven’t told her it’s me!”
The doorway narrowed visibly. “Her ladyship is Not At Home.”
Something snapped in Baskin, something too long held down, too long kept in check, too often failed and too readily ridiculed. With a snarl, he shoved at the door with both hands, knocking the sour-faced servant backward. Striding past the stumbling man, Baskin entered the house. “Deirdre!
Deirdre!
”
At his shout, she appeared at the top of the stair. “Mr. Baskin! You—you should go.”
She was looking around nervously. Why? No one could stop their love now. He started up the stair, but he’d not made one step before she pulled back, her eyes wide and … frightened?
“Deirdre? What is it, my darling?”
The other girl, Sophie, came up behind Deirdre and put a hand on her arm, then she glared down at him. “Get out, Baskin.”
He’d never liked the scrawny Sophie. Her plainness was an affront to Deirdre’s golden beauty. In addition, she was terribly arrogant for someone so lowly and unattractive. He hated the way she looked at him, the same way his father looked at him, as if he were too stupid to draw breath on his own.
He ignored the red-haired girl in favor of his golden goddess. He smiled up at her. “Deirdre, what is wrong? You need not be afraid of the Beast any longer. We can be together now!”
Deirdre stared at him as if she didn’t know him. “Mr. Baskin, don’t you remember yesterday?”
Sheepishly he fingered the bruises on his face. “He got the drop on me, darling. I’ll make better show of myself next time, I swear it.”
Sophie snarled, “She means when you brutally assaulted her, you cretin.”
Baskin blinked. “No, no, it was magical, our first kiss—”
“Magical?” Sophie held out Deirdre’s arm and pushed up the loose lace sleeve. “Do you find this magical, you rotter?”
Baskin recoiled from the black bruises he saw there—right where he’d taken her into his arms—where his hands had touched her—denied her—
“No!” The word was a gasp, a shout, a plea. He ascended two steps, desperate to make her see. “I would never—I could never
hurt
you! I love you, Deirdre! You’re my angel, my savior, you’re the light in the dark—”
“You’re a rapist,” snarled Sophie. “Do not return here or I’ll send for the law myself!”
Baskin had eyes only for his love. “Dee—”
She flinched from him. “Do not call me so,” she said, her voice low and hard. “Baskin, you have misunderstood every—” She halted and swallowed. “
Everything
. I’m not your love. I’m not your light. I am Lady Brookhaven and I will be for as long as my husband walks the earth. I do not want you to return, do you understand me?” She gazed at him, her stunning eyes without light or laughter.
“Ever.”
His heart shrank within his chest, leaving only a great emptiness that threatened his very breathing. He gazed at her pleadingly, but there was no relenting in her
stare. Defeated, broken and empty, he numbly stumbled back down the stairs to where the butler stood, the front door still open. When he passed the man, the servant snickered vengefully as he rubbed at the mark on his forehead from the door.
Out in the day again, though it seemed the blackest, soulless night, Baskin staggered to the walk as the door slammed firmly shut behind him.
Bruises. Loathing. What had he done? How could he have done such a thing? His eyes burned and he wiped at them, then winced as his fist encountered his sore cheekbone.
Bruises. He blinked. His bruises, caused by that brute Brookhaven. Her bruises …
He clung to the thought, the hope, until it became truth in his desperate mind. For some reason, out of fear for his safety, probably—oh, my lovely brave darling!—she’d decided to drive him away. She didn’t want Brookhaven to kill him, of course!
He tossed his head back and laughed aloud at the relief flooding him. Then he remembered his mission, his true and rightful purpose on this earth. He was Deirdre’s chosen champion. He must free her from Brookhaven’s cruel domination forever!
The night receded, the bleakness faded. Life was once again worth living.
THAT EVENING AT dinner, Calder sat across from his daughter at the silent table and tried very hard not to take it personally that she appeared grubby and tattered, her hair a tangled mass, a purposeful streak of soot across her nose.
And she relentlessly kicked at her chair legs the entire meal.
He made no comment, for he had no idea what to say to the child now that he’d driven off yet another mother.
Eventually, she flung her fork down on her untasted plate with a clatter and glared at him. “You buggered it, didn’t you?”
Calder put down his own fork, for everything tasted like sawdust anyway, and leaned back in his chair. “I’m not sure. I might have.”
Meggie folded her arms. “I heard you, you know. I know you made her bawl.”
“Mm.” He really must reinforce the walls of this house. Then again, what was the point?
“You made her run away, just like Mama. Maybe I’ll run away from you, too. She didn’t even say good-bye to you. She hates you.”
Another noncommittal grunt.
Meggie lifted her chin. “She said good-bye to me. She said I could visit her and Sophie, at least when the wicked witch isn’t home.” Then her gaze narrowed. “I saw the bruises, too.”
God, had Deirdre stripped naked and posed for the entire household? He wasn’t sure where he’d bruised her, but he was fairly certain it was somewhere rather private.
Meggie continued. “Her arms looked like you beat her with a stick!”
Her arms? He’d not grabbed Deirdre’s arms, had he? No, he’d taken her hand, he’d filled his palms with her full breasts and he’d definitely squeezed her buttocks—but he could honestly say he had no memory of touching her arms!
Meggie gazed at him with a new hesitance in her eyes. “Did you beat her with a stick, Papa?”
He pushed back his chair. “Excuse me for a moment, Lady Margaret.”
He found Fortescue on his way back into the dining room. “Fortescue, where was her ladyship bruised?”
Fortescue gazed somewhere over Calder’s shoulder, cold disapproval faint but definite in his lack of expression. “I saw only her arms, my lord, as I helped her into her spencer.”
Had it been Baskin, after all? Had the fellow nearly raped his wife in his own bloody house?
Had Deirdre fought him off, but been helpless against him when no one came to her aid? And then he, Calder, had accused her, had misused her—
Passing a hand over his face, Calder blindly made his way back into the dining room and into his chair. Meggie still sat, her little face crumpled with anger. She’d asked him a question, hadn’t she? He couldn’t remember.
Automatically he took a bite of his food, only to discover that somehow it had become covered in a crust of salt. Meggie glared at him, waiting for him to shout, to punish. A test? Fortescue appeared at his elbow. “Shall I take that, my lord?”
Calder waved him off, never taking his eyes off his daughter’s. “No, thank you. It’s just how I like it.” He forced himself to chew and swallow, then take another bite, watching as Meggie’s confusion grew. He didn’t know what to say to her—how could a man fix losing the woman she’d come to love as a mother?—but he wanted someone, anyone by God, to trust him!
Besides, he deserved worse.
Meggie roamed in the gardens, refusing to enjoy them. There were blooms everywhere, but she had no interest in them. All sorts of creatures rustled and slithered aside at this rare passage of anyone but the gardener, but she ignored them as well.
There was Something Going On. It was one of the times that the adults had decided it was better that she not know anything. Even Deirdre had been closemouthed as she’d packed her things.
“I must go, at least for a while, Meggie. I can’t say why right now. It isn’t because of you, truly it isn’t. I’m glad I came here and met you, sweeting.” She came to sit in a chair and gazed into Meggie’s eyes. “I think I’m doing the right thing, for us all. I hope—” She’d shaken off the thought with the first false smile she’d ever given Meggie. “Well, you and Mr. Livery will keep each other company for a time, won’t you?”
The kitten’s name changed every time Deirdre said it. Sometimes it was Little Fortescue—when Large Fortescue wasn’t in the room, of course—and sometimes it was Foppish McMaster or once the Violent Valet when Dee had discovered teeth marks on her shoes. Meggie tried to think of something clever to call
the little cat chasing at her feet, but it was Dee who always came up with the best names.
She went to the place by the garden wall where she could sometimes hear the neighbor’s servants gossiping. There was a little bench there next to a statue of a man with goat legs that she liked to climb on to listen better.
There was a piece of paper fluttering from the goatman’s wrist. Meggie pulled at it, only to discover her name on the outside. “Lady M.”
“Dee!” Meggie plunked down on the bench to read it, sounding out the florid script with difficulty. Oh. It was from that man, the one Dee liked to visit with, the one who had told her about the chipped mantel.
“Lady Margaret, if you’ll come to feed the swans with me in Hyde Park today, I’ll tell you all about your dear mother and why your father is to blame for what happened to her—and to our dearest D. Your friend in secret, Baskin.”
D. Dee. Meggie thought about the black and blue marks on Dee’s arms and how her father had never answered her question at dinner and how the mantel in her mother’s—Dee’s—room was chipped, just like the man had said.
Hyde Park was nice. Patricia had taken her there just the other day and they’d had ices and fed bread to the swans in the long skinny lake. It wasn’t far at all.
She folded the note into a tiny square and shoved it deep into her pocket. No one was watching her, for Patricia had gone with Deirdre.
She looked up at the cloudy sky, but she couldn’t tell if it was early or late. One could never see a proper sky in London. She’d already had dinner, so it must not be
very early. If she didn’t hurry, Mr. Baskin might not wait for her.
She looked down at where Silly Cat—it was the best she could do—rolled belly up in something damp. Moments later, the kitten wandered into the kitchen alone, mewing for the milk he knew the cook would give him.
In the meantime, Meggie was nothing but a fluttering coat and short legs moving fast in the distance.
“MEGGIE! MEGGIE, COME out this instant!” Calder knelt to peer beneath Deirdre’s bed. No skinny legs, no fierce scowl. Worry began to clutch at his gut. The servants were tossing the house upside down, attic to cellar, front gate to privy, but so far there was no sign of his child.
Meggie was angry with him—furious, to be exact. She missed Deirdre and she was simply too young to understand. Not that he understood all that well himself.
She would go to Deirdre. Yet it was a long, treacherous way to that neighborhood, with plenty of opportunity for danger both accidental and more sinister. The cart traffic alone was deadly to the uninitiated! He wasn’t even sure if Meggie knew the way, for she’d never been to Primrose Square in her life.
Knowing his stubborn child, that might not be enough to stop her from trying. He strode from the room. “Fortescue!”
Fortescue popped up, breathing heavily and dustsmudged, but prompt as always. “Yes, my lord?”
“Have my carriage readied.” Would it be faster to simply send a groom? No, for he’d want to keep an eye out on the way. “I’m going to check at Lady Tessa’s.”
Fortescue’s eyebrow rose. “Indeed. Good thinking, my lord.”
“In the meantime, have the staff search the garden.”
“They already have, my lord. Twice.”
“Then make it thrice, Fortescue. She must be somewhere!”
It was only moments before his carriage came around, but still he chafed at the delay. The night was gathering quickly and the thought of his child alone in the lawless city at night brought his fear to a place he never knew existed.
Damn him, if he had been less worried about his own heart and more worried about his daughter’s, less bound by his own stupid standards of honor, he would have done anything to bring back the stepmother she loved so much.
If he lost Meggie now as well …
Though he searched the streets carefully on the way, he saw nothing of her. Once at Primrose Square, he bounded down from the driver’s seat of the phaeton and was pounding on the door in an instant.
Lady Tessa’s incompetent butler answered at last. “You’re fired,” growled Calder as he pushed past the man. “Meggie!
Meggie!
”
“You can’t fire me, I don’t work for you!” The man faded before the glare Calder turned on him and stepped back, muttering, “Blighters pushin’ in the door, bellowin’ for ladies … Oy, we don’t have no Meggie here!”
Calder ignored him. “Meggie!”
Deirdre came running, her skirts in her hands, Sophie close behind. “Calder? What is it? What’s happened to Meggie?”
He could see on her face that his daughter had never
made it to this house. Icy terror stole his breath. “Oh God, Deirdre … she’s gone!”
As her arms opened, he fell into them, their difficulties forgotten as she held his trembling body close to hers.
It was Sophie, ever practical, who disturbed the moment. “Lord Brookhaven, you must widen your search perimeter. If we gather everyone at Brook House, we can begin a systematic search.”
Sophie spoke his language. The solid, practical words pulled him from the pit of terror and gave him something real to do. He straightened, though he did not give up his grip on Deirdre. “Right. Sophie, gather the staff here and get them over to Brook House. Deirdre, get a warm cape. We’ll take another route back and look for her as we go.”
“Oy, milord … am I still fired?”
Calder didn’t spare the humbled man a glance as he passed him. “Not if you find my daughter.”

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