The Chadwick Ring (12 page)

“I know it hurts,” she said in soothing tones, trembling with the effort to hold him down. Beneath her she could feel the heat of his tensed body radiating through his thin nightshirt, and she did not know how long she would be able to confine his movements if somehow she could not calm him. “Settle down, Bysshe,” she pleaded. “Help is on the way, I promise you. I’ve sent for a doctor.”

He jerked convulsively beneath her. “Not him!” he cried, his words blurred. “He looked ... he looked like the gravedigger when ... when Tom—”

“No,” she said quickly to hide her anguish, “not him. I’ve sent for a fine London doctor, someone who’ll know how to take away the pain. I asked your father to find one.”

Bysshe’s eyelids flew open yet again, only inches from hers, and he stared up wildly, his brown irises murky with delirium. He blinked hard, and momentarily his eyes cleared. “Don’t let him touch you,” he said.

Startled, Ginevra asked in confusion, “What? Why should the doctor want to—”

“Not the doctor!” Bysshe cried, shaking his head fiercely. “Him—the marquess! Don’t let him touch you.”

Ginevra gasped, stunned. When she could find her voice, she said breathlessly, “Bysshe, I don’t understand.” His expression troubled her. Suddenly she was aware of the hardness of his body beneath hers, the provocative intimacy of that sexless embrace. With great care she released his arms and eased her weight off him. Before she could slide from the bed, his fingers captured her wrists, preventing her escape. She tried to tug her hands out of his grasp, but he would not let her go. He was sweating with pain, but he held her gaze as he begged, “Ginnie, listen to me! Stay away from him. You and I—we’ll run away together.”

“Oh, Bysshe, no!” she protested.

He said, “Yes, Ginnie. Please. Don’t you know? I love you. Ever since we were children. I’ve always loved you!”

Ginevra paled. “Don’t say that,” she rasped. “You’re sick. You’re delirious. You ... you mustn’t say things like that.”

“I quite agree,” a deep voice interjected harshly, and Ginevra jerked her head around in the direction of the door, where her eyes met the burning blue gaze of her husband.

6

“My lord!” she cried, her voice shaking with astonishment and relief. Bysshe’s bruising grip loosened, and she jerked her wrists out of his fingers and flung herself across the room at the marquess. “Thank God you’ve come!” she sobbed, throwing her arms around his waist and clinging to him so hard that the chased brass buttons of his long waistcoat left their imprint on her smooth cheek. She could hear his heart thudding under her ear, and she waited for the reassuring pressure of his arms to wrap about her thin shoulders. He did not move. His hands remained resolutely at his sides, and with a sickening sense of rejection Ginevra released him and backed away, her face crimson with embarrassment. How could she have so forgotten herself? He had come because his son needed him, not her. “F-forgive me,” she stammered lamely, not hazarding to look at him. “It’s ... it’s just that I dared not hope ... did not expect you to accompany the physician. You ... you
did
bring a doctor?”

“Yes, of course. He is belowstairs supervising the unloading of the supplies he brought with him. He’ll be here forthwith.” Ginevra schooled herself to lift her gold lashes, and she saw that her husband was gazing not at her but at the youth who stared back ashen-visaged from the bed. With two long strides the marquess crossed the room to Bysshe’s side, and the boy shrank against the pillows, brown eyes wide and defiant in his colorless face, as if he expected the man to strike him. Chadwick picked up his limp hand and felt for the pulse; it was weak and rapid. He said smoothly, “Well, my boy, I was right amazed to learn that you were here, rather than at Harrow, where I expected you to be.”

Bysshe gaped at him, disconcerted by the mildness of his attack. He made a grimace of resentment and muttered sullenly, “I didn’t want to be quarantined there all summer.”

“Of course not. School is seldom the most salubrious of environments; during a quarantine I expect it would be well-nigh unbearable. Naturally, however, I should have preferred you to obey my wishes, but if you felt you could not endure staying there, you ought to have gone home, rather than troubling the Dowerwood caretaker and putting her family at risk.”

Bysshe’s glance shot furtively toward Ginevra; then he met the marquess’s gaze squarely. “I had no wish to intrude upon your honeymoon, sir,” he said, and he turned his head away. The instant his sore ear touched the linen pillow cover, he groaned, and at once Ginevra flew to him. She forgot her husband’s presence while she tried to soothe the boy’s pain as she had done for days now. Lord Chadwick leaned against the bedpost and watched enigmatically, arms crossed over his chest to prevent them from reaching out to her. He noted the intense, set expression in her amber eyes, their glimmer the only color in a bloodless face bruised with fatigue. She blinked hard several times, shaking her head as if to clear it, and when she reached for the napkin that lay in the basin on the table, he could see that her slim fingers trembled. She moved like an automaton. She was on the point of collapse, her inadequate reserves of energy long since spent—yet he knew if he tried to stay her hand before she delivered Bysshe’s care over to the physician, she would lash out at him with all the unsubstantial fury of a spitting kitten.

When at last the doctor appeared at the doorway, accompanied by Emma, Ginevra lifted her head, her eyes alight with hope for the first time in days. As soon as she met the man’s kindly and intelligent gaze, her apprehension began to abate. She set down the damp napkin and rose from the stool, extending her hand in welcome. “I am most grateful you’ve come, Dr.—Dr. ..
.”

As she hesitated over his name, the man approached her, and she noticed that he limped slightly. Yet when he caught her thin fingers in his own, he bent his head over them with all the grace of a practiced courtier. “Jules Perrin,
a votre service, madame
,” he murmured.

Ginevra’s startled eyes flew to her husband’s face, and he smiled ironically. “The doctor is one of my mother’s French cronies,” he explained in an undertone. “He was kind enough to accompany her when she returned from the Continent two years ago.”

Ginevra looked again at the man. He appeared to be about the same age as the marquess, of no more than medium height, with one of those handsome-ugly faces so difficult to describe. Despite his elegance of manner, he was dressed soberly and modestly, as befitted one of his profession, and he seemed an unlikely companion for the formidable dowager. Ginevra nodded uncertainly. “As a ... a friend of my husband’s mother, then you are doubly welcome, sir. I hope you will be comfortable here. All that we have is at your disposal.”

“
Merci, madame
,” he replied smoothly. When he switched to English his accent was almost unnoticeable. He said, “My first duty, my lady, is to ensure that that young man there is made comfortable.” He inclined his head toward Bysshe, who had drifted into a delirium where he seemed unaware of what was going on around him. His hands were at his ear again, and Ginevra saw with dismay the red weals forming on his livid flesh. She wanted to reach for him, but the doctor said, “I shall attend him, madame.” He looked at Ginevra critically. “In the meantime,” he continued in a voice that brooked no opposition, “I would suggest that you retire to your own room and get some rest.”

Ginevra shook her head fiercely. “No,” she insisted. “You will require someone to assist you, to explain what treatment has already—”

“Madame, you are in no condition to assist anyone,” he interrupted bluntly. “Your devotion does you credit, but I have only to look at you to know that if you do not cater to your own needs at once, you will fall ill yourself.” He glanced sharply at Emma, who waited in silence at the door, her face its usual impenetrable mask. “This young woman will help me, will you not, mademoiselle?” he said. Something flickered in Emma’s green eyes, but after a moment she nodded impassively. The doctor addressed Ginevra again, punctuating his words with a Gallic shrug. “You see, my lady, everything marches. Now, please retire, you are no longer needed here.”

The girl, who had been functioning by sheer force of will for days, was stunned and bewildered to find control wrested from her small hands so easily. She appealed frantically to her husband. “My lord, I beg you—”

He caught her by her thin shoulders. “Ginevra,” he said sternly, “even a marchioness must bow to the dictates of her physician. You heard Perrin. You must rest.”

Ginevra swayed slightly, and suddenly from the doorway Emma snapped, with a bitterness she made no effort to disguise, “It’s been too much for her, she never should have been left alone. She has neither eaten nor slept in days!”

Ginevra cried out at this betrayal, but as she uttered Emma’s name, the word faded to an incoherent moan. Her knees gave way, and she slipped out of Chadwick’s hands and crumpled to the floor.

Chadwick swooped down and caught her before her head could strike the oak planking. When he swung her into his arms and held her high against his chest, he could feel her pathetically light body twitch with exhaustion. Her head lolled weakly against his shoulder, and her bright hair tumbled down the front of his coat like military braid. His blue gaze took in Emma, whose resentment and defiance for once showed clearly on her face. His eyes swept to the doctor standing beside Bysshe, who stirred restlessly on his bed, and he addressed his friend in deep, hard tones. “Perrin, I leave the boy in your capable hands. Emma will assist you however you may wish. In the meantime I shall attend my wife.” And he carried Ginevra from the room.

Richard Glover tugged the collar stud loose from his shirt and dropped it onto the untidy heap of coat, waistcoat, and cravat already piled on the chair next to him. He was glad he had decided to send Hobbs on to Queenshaven with the rest of his luggage, while he himself journeyed to Dowerwood with no more than a change of linen in his valise. Although it was true that he would probably have to summon his long-suffering valet in a day or two—by all indications the stay at Dowerwood would be lengthy—for the moment he was grateful not to have the man shadowing him, casting silent, reproachful glances his way each time he mussed the starched perfection of his neckcloth or creased the tail of one of his elegantly cut coats. “No man is a hero to his valet,” the Due de Conde observed once, and Chadwick’s hard mouth quirked in a wry smile as he admired once again that rare French aptitude for the epigram. To Hobbs he was certainly no hero, nor hardly a man; he was still the bewildered, resentful little boy who would hide in the cupboard in the butler’s pantry after being flogged for disobeying one of his father’s more arbitrary edicts, sniffling in the musty darkness until the then second footman would bribe him out with a piece of marchpane or a ginger comfit.

Chadwick rarely thought of his father nowadays. He had put his memories of the stern and erratic eleventh marquess somewhere far behind him, somewhere where they could not hurt—the same place he had stowed his memories of his first wife. The two were forever intermingled in his mind. Since the age of sixteen he could not call to mind his father’s harsh admonition, “You
will
marry the Beecham chit, her old man’ll pay through the nose to make the little doxy a viscountess!” without also hearing his bride’s coarse, scornful laughter when, on their wedding night, before his trembling fingers could even pull her gown up over her parted thighs, his eager and untried member had spurted its seed into the virgin folds of his own nightshirt.

He clenched his fist in exasperation. God! what had ever possessed him to remember that? And to what purpose? Rare indeed was the man who, if truth were told—as it seldom was—had not begun his own novitiate in the temple of Lord Priapus in equally inept fashion. Why should he think of it now? Why should he remember Maria?

He knew why. The answer had been scorched into his brain ever since that instant when he flung open the door to the sickroom and found Maria’s son supine and half naked on the bed with his arms around the struggling Ginevra.

Chadwick stood up and moved quietly to the bedside, taking care not to disturb his wife’s repose. She lay fully clothed on the bed, her slight figure unnaturally still, drugged by her exhaustion as if by opium. Thinking she would rest more comfortably if she took some nourishment first, before she dozed off completely, he had tried to feed her, but she had resisted him, and he succeeded only in spilling her soup. After that he left her alone; there would be plenty of time for her to eat when she wakened.

When she wakened... Chadwick stared down at her, his blue eyes hotly intent as he surveyed her body outlined by the limp, soiled sarsenet of her dress. She had twisted restlessly before sinking into that profound slumber, and her dress was wrapped about her like a swaddling garment, delineating her burgeoning breasts, the sleek line of her thighs. Gently he reached down to tug her skirts out from under her, loosening the silk where it cut into her soft flesh. He brushed her burnished hair from her eyes. He had known her since she was a little girl, watched her blossom from a merely pretty child to a young woman of remarkable beauty. He had intended her for his son, would have welcomed her with all honor and respect as his daughter-in-law, but circumstance had decreed it otherwise. She was his wife now, a woman of courage and dedication and devotion, a woman in all ways but one. Like the princess of the fairy tale, she was still asleep to the promise of her own body. When he found her on the bed with Bysshe, it had been abundantly clear that she was only marginally aware of the effect she was having on the boy, that she had been stunned and dismayed by his declaration of love. She had run to the marquess as to a refuge, and even immobilized with shock he had in that moment been piqued to think that she considered him “safe,” somehow less of a threat than Bysshe. A fine blow to his pride, he thought with wry humor; a misapprehension he must clarify ere long. Chadwick’s fingers curled into the mouldering fabric of the bed curtain as he contemplated her inert form, his body already stiffening like his resolve at the thought of the moment when he would claim his young bride. Very, very soon he was going to awaken the sleeping princess.

He heard a gentle knock at the door, and he turned just as Emma glided silently into the room. Her face had donned its imperturbable mask again. At his terse nod she curtsied and said, “My lord, I came to ask whether her ladyship needed anything.”

Chadwick regarded her enigmatically. “I thought I instructed you to assist the doctor.”

“Yes, my lord, and so I did. Your son is resting comfortably now, and Dr. Perrin is taking supper downstairs while a footman keeps watch over the boy. I thought you might wish to consult with the physician, and I could...”

Chadwick noticed the way Emma’s green eyes flickered repeatedly toward the still figure on the bed. “Yes, yes, I understand,” he said abruptly, softening his tone with a smile of such charm that Emma quickly lowered her lashes. “You want to ensure that your chick has not suffered in the brutal clutches of the ravening wolf—am I not correct?” Emma would not look at him. He continued lightly, “You don’t like me very much, do you, Emma?”

He could see the astonishment in her eyes. She lifted her chin and met his gaze squarely. “No, my lord,” she said.

He shrugged. “I thought not, and truly I do regret your ill opinion of me. You appear to be a capable and sensible woman, and I think I would value your regard.”

“I’m flattered, my lord.”

He shook his dark head. “No, don’t be. I speak but the truth.” He paused before adding, “Think not that you must pretend to change your opinion of me. I do not require that you like me, only that you continue to serve your lady with all the care and affection you have bestowed on her in the past. Will you do that?”

Emma looked again at the sleeping girl. “Of course, my lord, for as long as she needs me. I am surprised that you ask. I have loved Miss Ginevra since she was a child.”

His fingers tightened on the folds of the draperies. Slubs of faded wool broke off in his hand. He concentrated on those shredded threads as he murmured, “Yes, haven’t we all?” After a pause he gestured to the half-eaten supper tray on the table. “I was able to make her swallow a few spoonfuls of Mrs. Harrison’s sustaining broth, but in the process her dress was irrevocably stained. I would have changed her garments myself, but I could not find a nightgown for her. The dressing room appears to be in disuse.”

Emma nodded uneasily. “The staff her ladyship summoned from Queenshaven were only able to make a start at restoring the house to some semblance of order, and Miss Ginevra told them not to worry with the dressing room now. However, behind that screen there you will find a linen press, if you...” She hesitated for the first time.