Never Romance a Rake (40 page)

She shook her head. “
Non,
” she whispered. “This cannot be. It must be something else. Or…or it might just go away, if you are careful. Doctors are often wrong.”

Rothewell squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted, suddenly and desperately, to believe her. He wished to God he'd changed his ways the moment he'd left Redding's office. But he had not bothered. This was the fate he had long expected. Awaited, really.

It was as if Camille read his mind. “You…you just accepted it,
n'est-ce pas
?” she said weakly. “You thought it was God's will. What you deserved.”

At last, he tore his gaze from hers. “It crossed my mind, Camille,” he acknowledged. “I never expected to live this long, truth to tell. And when he told me…I thought, well, this is it. I've done it to myself. And now I'll finally see Luke again, somewhere out there. I shall have my chance at last.”

Camille frowned and turned his face back to hers. “
Oui?
Your chance for what?”

Lamely, he lifted one shoulder. “I—I hardly know,” he whispered. “To beg his forgiveness, I suppose.”

“Perhaps,
mon cœur,
he should beg yours?” she suggested. “He took the woman you loved.”

Rothewell set his head to one side and studied her. “He felt I had wronged her.”

“
Oui,
perhaps,” she acknowledged. “But his solution was to
marry
her. He did not even give you the chance to make things right.”

He shook his head. “What do you mean,
make things right
?”

She shrugged. “He could have told you to marry her, or he would do so,” she suggested. “Would that not have been the gentlemanly thing to do?”

He dropped his gaze. “I wonder if I would have done,” he said softly. “Even then, I think I knew the difference between a dangerous obsession and true love. If I did not know it then, I surely—well…I just know it.”

Camille dipped her head to better see his face. “So you grieve for…for the
affaire
which came after,” she remarked. “It was wrong,
oui,
very wrong. Yet he married her knowing she cared for you.”

Rothewell laughed harshly. “Yes, that story about my having slept with my brother's wife would haunt anyone, wouldn't it?” he muttered. “But that wasn't enough for me. To put a properly tragic twist on the tale, they both came to a sad end. An end for which I was responsible.”

She held motionless for an instant, waiting for him to continue. When he did not, she shook her head. “
Non
,” she said quietly. “You did not kill anyone.”

His gaze caught hers, but it was flat. Hard. “No, they were burned to death in a slave revolt,” he said. “But I caused it. I caused it as surely as if I had lit the fire myself.”

She searched his face as if looking for the truth. “And why do you think this?” she finally asked. “
Oui,
it sounds terrible. But you cannot have been the cause.”

He couldn't bear it. He looked away again. “I was to attend a dinner the night they died,” he murmured. “It was Easter Sunday, and the parish planters were meeting to discuss rumors of slave unrest. But I was drunk—too drunk to be fit company for anyone. I had learnt, you see, that the nastier I was and the drunker I was, the less I would see of Annemarie.”

“
Oui?
” Camille was watching him, her gaze steady. “Go on.”

Rothewell hesitated. Having given words to it, the truth was suddenly easier to see. The darkness in him, the temper and the irascibility—it had served him as both sword and shield. It had kept people away. Indeed, it had almost kept Camille away, and might still do so. His rage had been a lethal weapon indeed—perhaps literally.

He drew a deep breath, and went on. “When Luke came round and saw I was deep in my cups, he was enraged,” he said. “He said…he said that one of us had to go, so he would, since I was incapable. He ordered Annemarie to dress and go with him. But in the middle of dinner, someone rushed in and said the slaves in St. Philip's were in revolt.”

Camille made a soft sound of anguish, one hand going to her mouth.

“Houses and fields were set afire,” Rothewell whispered. “Luke set out for home, but on the way back, someone set our cane fields afire. Both sides of the road. The winding lane back to the house was so bloody narrow. No place to turn. No way to go backward. They were trapped. Just…hopelessly trapped.”

“Mon Dieu.”
Camille's eyes swam with pity.

Rothewell swallowed hard. Since the inquest, he had spoken aloud of the tragedy but once—to Martinique, in some pathetic, ill-thought-out attempt to explain himself to her. And speaking of it now left him feeling the same as he had felt then. Dead. Cold. As if hope was lost all over again.

“They came to fetch me near midnight,” he finally managed to continue. “Luke—he was still alive. But Annemarie…it was too late. The horses…dear God. Someone had to shoot them. But Luke…we couldn't shoot him, could we?” His voice cracked, and he realized in some shock that tears had sprung to his eyes. “At first, when you're burned that badly, you—you can't feel it. But soon enough he was begging us. Begging
me
. He…he didn't last long, thank God.”

Camille stroked her hands down his arms, then caught her fingers in his. “It was a terrible tragedy,” she said. “And you know in your mind, Kieran, that you did not cause this. But in your heart—
oui,
in your heart, you still hurt. I understand that.”

Rothewell gave a bitter bark of laughter and let his head fall back against the headboard. “Ironic, isn't it?” he said softly. “Luke was everyone's white knight. He saved people. That was what he was good at. I thanked him by bedding his wife and drinking myself into a stupor. Annemarie, she admired Luke—as everyone did. But she was drawn to me. Drawn like a moth to flame. And in the end, she was burned to death in it.”

“Kieran,” said Camille softly. “That is not what happened.”

Slowly, he shook his head. “No?” he said quietly. “Then why does it feel that way? Why wasn't I in that carriage? I should have been. Perhaps they wished to kill me? God knows I had enemies. Perhaps they did not even know it was Luke?”

“Or perhaps it was just an angry mob running mad,” she whispered, touching him lightly on the cheek. “Perhaps there was no rhyme or reason to it. And you will not make it right by allowing yourself to die.”

It was the best answer Camille had. She shifted closer, curled her legs beneath her skirts, and reclined fully against him. “Kieran,
mon cœur,
” she said, settling her head onto his shoulder. “You have carried your pain too long. And I cannot make you stop. But perhaps I can try with all my heart to make you look beyond it? There can be a future for you—for
us
. I have to believe that.”

He set his hand between Camille's slender shoulders and began to make small, soothing circles. She did not seem disgusted, or even particularly shocked by what he'd said. And she was right—it had been a mob run mad. Still, it should have been he trapped inside that burning carriage.
It should have been
. And he had spent more than a decade trying to right that old wrong.

But now, perhaps, there were others to think about? Or perhaps it was too late. But he had never been a coward, and he would not start now. A journey to Surrey in the pouring rain whilst bent double with pain was easy. What Camille was asking was harder. She was not simply asking him to try to get well, she was asking him to hope. For the future. For them. For
himself
.

Rothewell tilted his head to kiss his wife's temple. “Send for your doctor in the morning, Camille,” he said again. “Send for him then, if that is still your wish. And if Redding says there is anything to be done, I…I will do it.”

S
hortly after dawn the next morning, Camille sent Trammel off in Rothewell's gig to personally fetch Dr. Redding from his office in Harley Street. Kieran was pacing the floor again in his dressing gown, the pain having returned in the night. But when Trammel reappeared at the bedchamber door well over an hour later, he was alone.

Camille set down the porridge she'd been more or less forcing upon her husband and went out into the passageway to speak with the butler.

“I'm afraid the doctor was away, ma'am,” he said uncertainly. “He's been with a patient in Marylebone the whole night.”

Camille's heart sank. “
Zut!
” she muttered. “I think, Trammel, we must find someone else whilst his lordship is amenable.”

“I did bring someone, ma'am,” said Trammel, looking doubtful. “A fellow down the street. Dr. Hislop is his name—an army man, he says, formerly attached to the physician-general in India. A bit rough around the edges, but I thought…well, I thought he'd be better than no one?”

“
Oui, certainement,
Trammel,” said Camille, relieved. “Show him up at once.”

Dr. Hislop took his time in climbing the stairs, huffing and puffing, but at last he arrived, a bedraggled, voluminous satchel in hand. Camille at once understood Trammel's apprehension. The physician was a stout, stooped man of indeterminate years who looked as if he had slept in his coat. His white hair was disorderly, with a cowlick the size of Camille's hand up the back, and his trouser hems appeared to have been nibbled upon by rats.

Upon introduction, the doctor cocked his head and looked at Camille with a squint. “Well, now, where's our patient?” he said cheerfully. “Best get to 'em before the undertaker, I always say.”

Disconcerted, Camille showed him in with some reluctance. Chin-Chin leapt from the bed and waddled over to give the man a thorough sniffing. Ignoring the dog, Dr. Hislop set down his tattered satchel, shook Rothewell's hand, then bade him remove his dressing gown and sit on the edge of the bed.

“Trouble in the gut, eh?” he said, throwing back the buckles of his bag, one of which was broken. “Nothing more annoying, I always say. Pain's a sharp one, is it?”

“Yes, at times,” said Kieran, wincing.

Humming to himself, Hislop began to extract a number of legitimate-looking and reasonably clean medical tools from within. Once or twice, he glanced at Camille as if expecting her to excuse herself. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and stood her ground, Chin-Chin at her feet. The spaniel was making a low, wary rumble in his chest.

Kieran surveyed them good-naturedly. “I collect my wife and the dog mean to stay, Hislop,” he said. “The butler, too, I do not doubt.”

Trammel sniffed and backed out, drawing shut the door.

The doctor drew a long wooden tube from his bag. In response, Chin-Chin leapt up on the bed beside Kieran and gave the physician a territorial growl, baring his sharp white teeth. He had clearly appointed himself Kieran's protector.

The doctor looked at him and chuckled. “A mighty small dog, your lordship, for such a large job as me,” he said. “Has he a name?”

“Jim,” said Kieran.

“Chin-Chin,” said Camille at once.

The doctor looked between them and smiled. “Ah, newlyweds!”

Kieran's black brows went up. “Why do you say so?”

“If you'd been married any time a'tall, my lord,” said the doctor, extracting a set of lancets, “you would
know
his name is Chin-Chin. The wife, you will soon learn, is always right. Now, kindly remove your nightshirt and lie down, if you please.”

His point made, Chin-Chin retreated to the middle of the bed, observing the doctor with a dubious eye. Camille shared the sentiment, but she was desperate.

Rothewell was already regretting his promise to Camille, and he was not at all sure of Dr. Hislop. But he
had
promised, so, with one last withering look at the doctor, he stripped off the shirt, loosened the tie of his drawers, and lay down.

Hislop spent the next quarter hour quizzing him on all manner of intimate and highly personal things—things which men simply did not discuss—whilst probing and poking him from his neck to his nether regions. It was damned humiliating, particularly in front of Camille. And beneath his ribs, it hurt like the devil.

“Ouch, damn you!” Finally, Rothewell tried to rise up and push away the doctor. Chin-Chin leapt up, and began to snarl, his feathery black ears atremble.

“Chin-Chin,
chut
!” Camille scolded, plucking him from the bed.

The cool hand bore Rothewell back down onto the bed, and the doctor resumed his interrogation. “Does it hurt when I do this? No? And what about this?”

Another searing pain shot from Rothewell's belly to his backbone. This time he did sit up. “The examination is finished,” he said roughly.

With a muted smile, Hislop turned round and motioned between Camille and the dog. “Well? Which one of you is going to bite him?”

Camille stepped forward. “I shall,” she said, glaring.

Cursing beneath his breath, Rothewell lay back down.

Hislop took up the wooden tube, pressed it to Rothewell's chest, then set his ear to the other end. “Ah, a good, strong heart!” he announced, listening. He straightened up and put the tube away. “You may put your shirt and robe back on, my lord.”

In an instant, Rothewell was up and dragging his shirt over his head.

Camille set the dog down and came forward. For the first time, her motions looked tentative. “What do you think it is, Dr. Hislop?” she asked. “Is it…is it a cancer as Dr. Redding believes? Could it be fatal?”

“Oh, cancer is always fatal,” he said almost cheerfully. “No cure for that! But is it cancer? Hard to say. Certainly the symptoms are there.”

Camille's shoulders fell. Rothewell resisted the urge to go to her; to tell her it would all be well. It mightn't be, and he knew it. Hislop knew it, too, for despite his outward nonchalance, Rothewell could feel the tension. He motioned them all to chairs by the hearth. Dr. Hislop sat down with a sigh, both knees cracking ominously.

“As you already know, my husband is losing blood,” said Camille when they were settled. “I understand,
bien sûr,
that this is grave. But please tell us what else it might be.”

“Good Lord!” said the doctor. “It
might be
a hundred things. It might be that your butler is slipping broken glass into his morning coffee, or that he swallowed a fish fork and forgot to tell me about it, or that—”

“Point taken,” Rothewell interjected. He managed a grim smile. “Well, I daresay we are finished here. I thank you for your honesty, doctor.”

But the doctor remained silent in his chair. “Or it might be, my lord,” he finally said, “that you are a man on the verge of killing yourself with drink.”

“With drink?” Rothewell lifted his brows, and scrubbed a hand round his unshaved jaw. “I somehow doubt it. I have been trying to kill myself with drink for years to no avail.”

Dr. Hislop simply shrugged. “Men who drink to excess, my lord, tend not to mind their health until it is too late,” he said. “A bad habit, that. How long has it been since you went a full day from your brandy?”

Rothewell considered it. “A few weeks past,” he answered honestly. “I just…well, I just needed to clear my head for a day or two.”

The truth was, a fortnight before Xanthia's wedding, he had stopped drinking altogether. He had wanted to be sure he was judging her future husband with the utmost care, and he had wished to be stone-cold sober to do it. And he had stopped again two days before Xanthia's fateful dinner party—again, because he'd wanted his wits about him.

The doctor set his hands over his ample belly and drummed his fingers for a moment. “And when you stop, do you suffer any side effects, my lord? Shaking? Hallucination?”

Rothewell gaped at him. “Good God, man! The rum fits?”

“The delirium tremens,” the doctor corrected. “Frightful things! Do you?”

“Certainly not.” Rothewell was affronted. To his way of thinking, delirium was for sots and for weaklings—men who had no business drinking to begin with.

The doctor was nodding jovially. “And how long before that?”

Rothewell managed a wry smile. “Occasionally, doctor, a man of my ilk must surrender one vice in order to better indulge in another—or I did do, before my marriage,” he belatedly added. “It was not unusual for me to go a day or two without a drink if I found something willing enough and pretty enough to distract me.”

“Ha-ha!” The doctor slapped his thighs, and winked at Camille. “And other than your carnal appetites, my lord, can anything else dissuade you?”

“Not often,” said Rothewell. “I do recall that on my crossing from Barbados last year, several of us aboard ship took ill. For nearly a fortnight, I'd no wish to drink, or even eat or breathe, frankly. The cook died of it, whatever it was.”

“On a ship? God only knows!” The doctor scratched his head. “In any case, it would appear you are not dependent on drink.”

“Brandy is a fine servant, sir,” said Rothewell. “But it must never be a man's master.”

“A remarkable philosophy,” said Hislop dryly. “Nonetheless, my lord, you
do
drink too much—particularly spirits. And it must come to halt, at least for a time.”

“Will that fix it?” asked Rothewell hopefully. Brandy seemed suddenly a small sacrifice.

“Hard to say,” answered Hislop. “But in any case, my lord, a man of your age can no longer afford to drink as if he means to kill himself—particularly one with so lovely a young bride, and perhaps a wee one on the way? So far as a diagnosis, however, I know only what I can guess from a cursory examination.”

“
Accursed
examination, you mean,” Rothewell complained. “Very well then, hazard a guess.”

The physician shrugged. “Certainly you have a case of acute gastritis,” he said. “Beyond that, it could be an ulceration of the duodenum. That is the point at which your stomach connects to your bowels.”

Rothewell winced. “Is that fatal?”

“Oh, Lord yes! Quite often.” Hislop had apparently decided Rothewell was not a man with whom one minced words. “Particularly if it eats through to your entrails. However, since you are not putrid, feverish, or dead, I fancy that isn't the case. Nonetheless, it is possible something has begun to eat holes in your gut.”

The beast.
He had always sensed it. Rothewell considered his odds.

“What causes this—this ulcering,
monsieur
?” asked Camille.

“Drink, worry, and tobacco are prime suspects, my lady—and it is not a problem easily healed.”

“
Alors,
there's no hope it is ordinary dyspepsia, then?” Camille pressed.

The doctor smiled grimly. “No, no,” he said. “Not a chance in the world.”

“Very well.” Rothewell gave a terse nod. “If not ulceration, what else?”

Hislop waggled his head from side to side equivocally. “Well, as Dr. Redding suggested, a cancer of the liver—or perhaps a cancer of the stomach which has spread to the liver—both are still quite likely.”

“A cancer,” Rothewell echoed.

Well. There it was again. Brutal honestly. He felt that strange, almost numb-inducing chill settling over him once more, wrapping round his heart, weighing down his limbs, and leaving a faint roar in his ears. Good God. He was in the prime—or what ought to have been the prime—of his life. And for the first time ever, he was in love. He had everything, he now realized, to live for. A wife and a home. A sister and a family. Hell, even a silly little fluff of a dog to which he'd become strangely attached. Rothewell wanted to live. To love his wife. To care for the child he hoped she carried. Such seemingly simple things.

For a time, he had actually wished to die, though he had never consciously admitted it until today. Perhaps that was why he sat here with that steel-cold certainty spreading like lead over his chest, but without panic or denial. That would come later, he did not doubt, if the worst were to happen. Men were always afraid to meet their Maker. God knew he was.

Ah, but this would not do! A man must die as he had lived. He had already faced his own worst nightmare in the cane field that fateful April night. The other side of the grave could hold no worse than that. Somehow, he cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was perfectly steady. “Thank you for your candor, doctor. Is there anything else it might be?”

Dr. Hislop threw up his hands. “Oh, what the devil!” he said. “I think you've got a bleeding ulceration. I'd stake my best pair of carriage horses on it, for I've been at this for forty-odd years. You drink too much. You smoke too much. You get no sleep—and God only knows what you've been eating—or what's eating
you
. Something you need to get a choke hold on, I can tell you that much.”