The Bad Baron's Daughter (18 page)

Linden returned his stare with annoyance and said, “Don’t stand there gawking like an underfootman, Fawnmore. Find a groom for Ciaffa. Where’s Lady Brixton?”

“Here’s Lady Brixton,” came a strong female voice from the vestibule. “Linden, is that you? You have deigned to answer my summons at last? Come in!”

Linden drew the shrinking Katie beside him through the massive stone threshold to stand before Lady Brixton, the Perfect Duchess. She was a ramrod straight woman with an air that was almost martial. Her three score and ten years had added wrinkles and an uncrossable dignity to what once had been great beauty; her skin was translucent white as though to hint at the blue blood which ran beneath, and her hair was the palest mix of silver and gold. When she saw the red-haired sylph at Linden’s side, her expression became one of incredulous consternation.

“Grandson! Have you taken leave of your senses?” demanded Lady Brixton, nearly shouting.

Katie huddled closer to Linden.

“Don’t be a fool,
Grandmère
,” snapped Linden. “She’s an unplowed field. Do you think I’d ask you to play pimp to one of my pigeons?”

“Linden! Would you try to cultivate a less ribald tongue? And lower your voice,” said Lady Brixton in a furious tone. “This has got to be the most far-fetched stunt you’ve deeded yet. Pigeon, canary, or game pullet, she’s not going to be plunked under my roof! Get her out before I have her thrown out!”

“Do,” invited Linden with a snarl, “and she’ll die. Look.” He loosened Katie’s cloak and let it slide to the floor, revealing her trembling, blood-drenched frame. Lady Brixton slapped her palm to her forehead, clenching her teeth.

“Of all the stupid, overdramatic… Am I to suppose it was beyond the scope of your imagination to walk into the house and say, see here, Grandmother, I have a wounded girl, could you render me assistance? Someday, Lesley,” said Lady Brixton with conviction, “you’re going to give me an apoplexy. Fawnmore, for God’s sake, send for the doctor. Well, Linden, pick your victim up and follow me upstairs. Unless it would amuse you to watch her bleed to death in my foyer?”

When Linden lifted her, Katie made no move to resist him. The slender reserves of strength that had held her on her feet had fled, leaving her alone to face this spinning world. Linden felt her nerveless fingers pluck spasmodically at the collar of his riding coat as he mounted the colossal stairway.

“In here, Linden, it’s the closest,” said Lady Brixton, leading him into a lovely blue bedchamber. Linden eased Katie onto the japanned four-poster, noting with concern that the frost-blue tinge in her lips had deepened and all pigment had faded from her skin.

Light footfalls sounded on the carpeted hall outside, and Lady Suzanne McDonald fluttered into the room. She was a diminutive lady in sober black, the plainest, least clever, and sweetest natured of all the Brixton grandchildren, a group of cousins noted for their intelligence and good looks. Her own parents had been staid and provincial; in the worldly, sophisticated Brixton household she’d always felt like the cricket who came inside for the winter. She looked at her grandmother, at the tall, rather frightening cousin she’d always secretly admired, and then at the injured girl on the bed. Her eyes grew wide as dinner plates, and she clasped her hands over her round cheeks.

“Linden!” she said. “You’ve shot someone!” She stumbled back against the door frame with whitened cheeks. “My smelling salts! Hartshorn!”

Linden swore and grabbed her upper arm with a grip that would leave her bruised for a week. “A crack in the mouth would work faster than smelling salts,” he hissed. “Do you still feel faint?”

“N-not at all,” she replied limply. “Please, my arm.”

He released her. “Sorry,” he said shortly. “But, Jesus, it’s outside of enough for you to pull vapors on me right now, especially since I need you. This child’s got a bullet in her shoulder.”

“Oh, the poor, poor little girl,” said Suzanne, pulling herself together. She hurried across the room to lay a hand on Katie’s brow. “How terrible! Has Dr. Carr been summoned? I’ll call for Nurse. We’ll have her put to bed and made ready for the doctor.” She pulled the bell rope and looked toward her cousin. “Never fear, Lesley, I shall take the greatest care of her, I promise. And, of course, Nurse will know just what ought to be done. You must take yourself below, however, so she can be undressed and made comfortable before the doctor comes.”

Katie had slipped behind a spinning screen of fatigue, but Suzanne’s words swung her back into reality.

“No,” cried Katie, nearly flinging herself from the bed in alarm. She clung to Linden’s arm in a sick, childlike plea. “Don’t leave me. I need you, I need you.” She stopped then, horrified that those frantic, mewling words were her own. She raised a dazed hand to her lips and whispered, “Help me. What’s happening?”

“Nothing,
chérie
, it doesn’t matter. Here, softly now, easy. It’s only shock from the wound,” said Linden, pushing her gently down. “I won’t leave you. I’ll only be downstairs, I promise.”

“Stay,” begged Katie. She gave Linden a tiny, sweet smile. “It won’t be anything you haven’t seen a thousand times before, my lord.”

“Oh, dear,” said Suzanne, seeing Lady Brixton puff like a steaming teapot.

“My lord,” said Lady Brixton, “ought to be ashamed of himself.” She draped an arm around her grandson’s taut shoulders and said dulcetly, “If it’s a thousand times, then I’m afraid the field’s been plowed, mulched, cultivated and very likely seeded as well. You might as well stay.”

He did stay. And neither Lady Brixton nor Suzanne, or even Nurse, who had known Linden since his cradle, could recognize the harsh, cynical rake in this tender man who sat beside the ailing child, teasing, distracting, and talking inventive nonsense to her while they bathed her in warm water, laid her under smooth sheets, and tucked heated bricks at her cold feet.

He stayed, too, while Dr. Carr made his careful examination of Katie’s wound and announced with finality that the bullet must come out. Katie’s eyes dilated as Carr laid out the shiny surgical implements.

“No, Katie, look at me,” said Linden, taking her cheeks inside his palms.

Dr. Carr regarded Katie with a frown. “I’ve given the child all the laudanum I can. I think we might proceed. It’s taken what hold it will.”

Which is not a great deal, thought Suzanne worriedly. Katie was certainly confused, both from blood loss and the judiciously administered drugs, but she was still very much awake. Suzanne watched Lord Linden’s face spark with feeling as Dr. Carr began to probe the injured shoulder. She sensed rather than saw Linden’s anguished pity, and thought that never had she seen the warm sable eyes so vulnerable.

“
Doucement
, little one,” he was saying, stroking the wisps of hair from Katie’s cool, sweaty brow, “breathe deeply. Poor butterfly. Hold me. Katie. Katie.”

Katie saw him through a shimmering net of chiffon. “Would you… like,” she gasped, “to hear the Declaration of Ind… Independence?”

“Yes, say it,” said Linden. Dear God, he thought, why doesn’t she faint?

“When in the course… of human events… my lord?”

“I’m here, little star. What comes next?”

“Next. It becomes… it becomes necessary for one people… one people…” Katie could hear her lips repeating the words after she could no longer understand them. It was as though her mind had sent one final meaningless message before dropping a heavy film between herself and all outside. Four giant eclipsing suns covered the corners of Katie’s vision; in a single, concise, mercy-serving explosion they bloated until merging. She jerked one hand over her eyes and fainted.

It was sometime later that Lady Suzanne made her way into the evening room where she found her cousin Andrew, still wearing his evening formals. He had been sitting in one of the elegant Hepplewhite armchairs, his head thrown against its concave oval back panel while he made an absentminded study of the ornate plaster ceiling.

She blinked with suppressed agitation. “Oh, Drew, is it you, back from Almack’s?”

“Of course it’s me,” he said with some impatience. “Who did you think it was?”

“Why… you, of course,” she said, blinking her eyes again, with surprise.

Drew looked pained. “Stupid. And there’s no need to act like you’re guarding the Secret of Life. I’ve had the whole story of Linden’s precipitous arrival this quarter hour from Fawnmore. But you look like you’ve swallowed a grapefruit. Come.” He drew his cousin down beside him on a cream and floral settee, laying an arm across its serpentine back. “Was it dreadful when the sawbones came?”

“Yes,” she said, shuddering with remembrance. “Poor girl. The laudanum hardly helped and she suffered and suffered and finally blacked out as Dr. Carr was removing the bullet. Horrible. And the girl bore it like an Amazon. Why, she’s valiant to the heart.”

Drew frowned. “Do you know how she came to be shot? Did Lesley tell you?”

“Not a word. His attention was only for the girl. When the surgeon was done, Nurse shooed us out, Lesley and me, that is, so the poor child could sleep. She’ll recover safely with proper nursing, Dr. Carr says.” She looked sideways at her handsome young cousin and said, rather shyly, “Nurse thinks Katie (I believe that’s her name) can’t be a day over eighteen. Such a baby. She’s… she’s not in Linden’s usual style, is she?”

“Ho,” said Drew, with a censoriousness reserved for young female relatives. “And what do you know of Linden’s usual style, may I ask?”

“One hears things, Drew. Now that I’ve been a married lady, people don’t scruple to repeat the most scandalous things to me,” she said, intimidated by his tone. “ ‘Twas Lady Jersey, you see, when I rode in the park with her and
Grandmère
a few weeks ago. We passed Linden in his phaeton, looking, oh, dashing, as he does, and he tipped his hat to us.”

Drew resumed his study of the ceiling. “Such adventures you have, Suzanne,” he drawled.

“You don’t need to sneer, because I
was
coming to the point, which was that Linden was accompanied by… by a lady, though
Grandmère
would only call her a creature, with the most lustrous long blonde hair which she wore right down her back, not styled. Lady Jersey said that Linden favors ladies who are quite up to snuff, which I don’t think Katie is at all.
Grandmère
says that he should never have acknowledged us when he’s accompanied by one of his, I believe you’d call them, Lights of Love?”

“What I’d call ‘em ain’t in the least germane, Suzanne,” he said with youthfully pompous disapproval. “You can’t call ‘em that. Can’t call ‘em anything, not even supposed to know about ‘em. I think you’ve gotten devilish loose at the aft.”

They were interrupted by Linden, who let himself into the room and dropped into a heart-backed armchair.

“Has she?” he said with a sarcastic assumption of interest. “I was wondering when she was going to drop to the standard of the rest of the family.”

Drew strolled to the demilune sideboard. “You’ve had a difficult day, Lesley. Please,” he said, “don’t bother to maintain that benign facade on our account.”

“Go to hell. But first, give me the brandy. Not in that damned glass, either. I want the bottle.”

Drew handed it to him. “Guzzle to your heart’s content, my dear.”

Lord Linden had just lifted the slender bottle to his lips when Fawnmore appeared at the door to announce Her Grace, Lady Brixton. Her Grace wasted not a glance on Drew or Suzanne, but crossed directly to her least tamed grandson. It was a pity, in Drew’s opinion, that the duchess had entered in time to see Linden drinking straight from the bottle.

“His Grace, my late husband,” the duchess majestically informed her erring grandson, “had a prize boar who used to swill at the trough looking exactly like you, Lesley.”

“You do me too much honor,
Grandmère
, I don’t aspire to such heights,” said Linden, rising to place a frugal kiss on his grandmother’s blue-veined wrist.

“Sarcasm,” said Her Grace, “is a moron’s lance. Do you know what we did with prostitutes in your grandfather’s time?”

Lesley fell back into the chair and took another swig of the brandy. “Whipped them behind cart tails?”

“On the contrary! No vulgar public displays. We kept them removed from the sight of decent citizens! I have never objected to a gentleman’s discreet amusements, but I cannot countenance my own grandson flashing his strumpets in the face of polite society—and you ought to be sick with shame to have brought your mistress under the same roof as Lady Suzanne! As for the wench pursuing you naked into this house during my
soiree
, I will say nothing.”

“So I see,” said Lesley, drily. “She wasn’t naked.”

“What was she then?” demanded the duchess.

“She was… oh, damn, she was wearing a nightdress.”

“And today,” said the duchess, continuing her list of incidents in which Linden’s moral shortcomings were brought to the fore, “you remained in the bedroom with her while poor Suzanne undressed her for Dr. Carr.”

Linden’s eyes held flame. “Yes, I did. I thought, Jesus, why not initiate a little bacchanale? Why should a petty thing like a bullet wound interfere with my pleasures? And it would be more piquant with Suzanne looking on…”

“Lesley, pity me,” cried Suzanne, hands over her ears. “I cannot bear it when you are so nasty.”

Before Suzanne knew what was happening, Linden had hauled her from the sofa and pinned her against the wall. “You have no idea,” he said, his voice slow and soft, “just how nasty I can be. But Katie does. And do you know, she faced me with less fear than you show when I tell you ‘good morning.’”

“Hotter than a penny pepper tonight, aren’t you?” observed the duchess. “Let your cousin go before you give her the sobs. It isn’t Suzanne’s fault that someone’s shot your
chère amie
.”

Drew watched this family quarrel with the air of one accustomed. He plucked Suzanne from his brother’s grasp, patted her shoulder reassuringly, and pushed her down on the settee. “Well, Suzanne, you might have known how it would be; you ought to know better than to draw Linden’s attention to you when he’s in one of his moods.” He turned to Lady Brixton. “
Grandmère
, I think you ought to know that I’ve met Katie before, last week when she was riding in the park with Linden. And she’s not his mistress. Believe me,
Grandmère
, Linden’s behaved to Katie like a dashed saint, damme if he hasn’t. After hearing her story, I can tell you that Linden used a hell of a lot more restraint than I would have. You can see he’s half out of his mind worrying about her. This is no time for you to be raking him over the coals.”