The Defiant One (30 page)

At length the drizzle began to taper off, and overhead, low, fast-moving clouds heralded a temporary break in the weather.  The wet had done nothing to deter afternoon traffic; horses trotted past, clopping through puddles and splashing unwary pedestrians.  Mud-spattered carriages filled the streets, and here and there sedan chairs darted as ladies paid social calls on each other, catching up on the latest gossip and scandal.  Andrew seemed oblivious to them all.  He remained mute beside her and eventually they ended up at Charing Cross, where they found a tiny coffeehouse and went inside to warm up.

"You had the right idea, getting me out of the house," he finally said, as he seated her at a little table and took the chair opposite.  He wrapped his hands around a mug of strong black coffee and looked down into the steaming brew.  "I no longer feel as though I'm walking in a fog."

She reached across the table and laid her fingers atop one of his wrists.  He looked down at them, his face expressionless.  Then he reached out and covered her hand with his own.

"I'm sorry," he said, not meeting her eyes.  "You deserve better than what you got."

She only squeezed his hand.  He squeezed hers back.  Neither looked at the other, he staring into his hot coffee, she at their clasped hands.

"I trust Sheik behaved for you?" she asked, resorting to small talk in the hopes of breaking the ice between them.

"He's a fine little horse."

"I nearly collapsed when I heard that you'd taken him and hadn't returned."

"I should have asked."

"No, no, it wasn't that," she said, her thumb roving up and down his hand.  "He has nearly killed every man that's ever gone near him.  He was abused, you know.  He hates men."

"He didn't hate me."

"No. "  Her glance lifted briefly, to his.  "You must have charmed him, then."

He shrugged.  "We de Montfortes have always had a way with horses.  His liking me had nothing to do with any charm I may or may not possess."

He sipped his coffee, a damp wave of mahogany hair falling into his eyes as he gazed down into the mug.  He blinked, and a few strands of the hair caught in his eyelashes.  He didn't bother clearing them away, and Celsie suddenly wished she felt comfortable enough to just reach out and brush the hair away for him, but no . . . not yet.

Go easy, go slow, and maybe you can win his trust such that he'll let you do a lot more than just touch his hair . . .

She took a sip of her own coffee, though she didn't release his hand.  "So . . . why haven't you been sleeping?"  She smiled, trying to put him at ease, trying to get him talking.  "Are you so wrapped up in some fabulous new discovery, some incredible new invention, that you haven't had time to go to bed?"

"No."  He looked up then, and his gaze — so direct, so intense, beneath sleepy brown lashes — met hers.  "It wasn't that at all."

"I see."

"You don't see."

"Very well, I don't see."

He bent his head to his hand, kneading his brow.  "I'm sorry.  I'm irritable.  I'm tired.  I'm not good company."

"Then let's go back home, Andrew.  I was wrong to drag you outside when you really ought to be catching up on days of missed sleep."

"Don't apologize, the fresh air did me good. 
You
do me good, though most of the time I don't seem to realize, let alone show it."  He finished his coffee and, plunking some coins on the table, got to his feet.  "Come, let's go.  I promise to try and be in a better mood."

He offered his elbow, nodded to an acquaintance who sat at a nearby table reading a newspaper, and escorted her outside.

"Bloody hell," he muttered.

Celsie groaned.  "It's Lady Brookhampton."

"Why, hello, Andrew!  Celsie!"  The countess, her feet in iron pattens to protect her shoes from the mud, lifted her skirts and hurried across the street toward them.  "I was wondering how married life was treating you . . .  You're looking a bit peaked there, Andrew!"  She smiled slyly.  "Your new bride tiring you out?"

Andrew's eyes went strangely flat, the way they always did when he was reining in his anger.  "If you will excuse us, madam —"

"I still think it was perfectly heinous, the way the duke tricked the two of you into marriage!  Why, all of London is talking about it.  Oh, it must be dreadful, pretending civility toward one another when you have anything but a love match."

Celsie smiled and moved closer to Andrew, impulsively slipping her arm around his waist.  "What makes you think we don't?" she asked with false sweetness.

"Come now, Celsie, everyone at your doggie ball saw the way you two were glaring at each other.  But oh, never mind that, I have just heard the most incredible rumor concerning your brother!  Why, everyone's talking about how he's taken a sudden fancy to Miss Sarah Madden, whose papa — frightfully
bourgeois
, I'm afraid — is desperate to buy into the aristocracy."  She leaned closer, her eyes gleaming, her voice dropping to a conspiring, excited whisper.  "She's an heiress, you know.  A very
significant
heiress with a dowry the size of London.  More wedding bells in the future, if I'm allowed any predictions!  I say, is your husband all right?"

Celsie turned.

"Andrew?"

He was staring at something across the street.  Puzzled, Celsie followed his fixed gaze.  There was nothing over there but endless buildings and a few people walking the pavement, going in and out of the shops and about their business.  She tugged at his arm.  He remained rigid and unmoving.

Lady Brookhampton took a step backward.  "I say, I think you'd better get him to a doctor," she advised, frowning.  "He's as white as the snow in Scotland."

"Andrew?" Celsie said again, her voice rising with dread.

He was still staring across the street, totally oblivious to the fact that she had spoken, to the fact that Lady Brookhampton was staring at him, to the fact that a group of well-dressed gentlemen, their laughing, twittering ladies on their arms, had also paused and were now eyeing him most peculiarly.  Around them, people were beginning to whisper.

He didn't hear them.  "Dear God . . . Indians.  Do you see them, Celsie?  Coming out of the shop there — look."  He seized her arm and pulled her close to him.  "
Look
!"

Celsie looked.  She saw only a very ordinary looking old lady, stooped and frail, leaving a pawnshop and clutching a canvas bag in one gnarled hand.  The woman was not even in the line of Andrew's fixed gaze.  A kind of sick panic seized her. 
Oh no.  Not again.  Not here
—

"Andrew," she said nervously, pulling at his arm as she tried to get him to move.  "There is nobody there.  You're only suffering from lack of sleep.  Come, let's go home."

But Andrew knew he was suffering from far more than just lack of sleep.  Just as a sleeper may realize he's dreaming, but still be caught up in the reality of the dream, Andrew knew he was having one of his episodes . . . though what he saw was terrifyingly real to him.

And what he saw were Indians.  Mohawks, probably, from the New World, their heads shaved and leaving only a wedge of purple hair sticking straight up like the helmets of Roman soldiers, silver rings in their noses and eyebrows, their bare arms thrust through strange waistcoats of black leather bristling with little cones of steel.

From far away he heard his own voice, felt Celsie tugging at his shoulder.

"Andrew.  Andrew, let's go —"

"But don't you
see
them?"  He stared at her.  Stared through her.  "Bloody hell, they've spotted us; get behind me, Celsie, they may be dangerous!"

"Andrew, let's go home,
now
—"

"Damn it, Celsie, don't just stand there,
get behind me
!"

He grabbed his sword, yanked her behind him, and charged forward to protect her, but his foot slipped off the edge of the pavement and he went sprawling into the muddy street, the wheels of a passing carriage just missing his outflung arm.  A lady screamed.  The group of gentlemen came running.  Alarmed shopkeepers came charging outside, Lady Brookhampton stood staring down at him in horror, and all around, people began to murmur in shocked, speculative whispers.

Andrew raised himself up from the mud on one elbow, and blinking, looked dazedly, uncomprehendingly, around him.

"Celsie?" he whispered.

But Celsie was already there.  Positioning herself so that her body shielded him from the gathered onlookers, she had knelt beside him and now pulled him up against her, uncaring that he was filthy with mud.  He was trembling violently, his skin waxy and cold beneath a film of sweat.  She held him close, talking gently to him as excited whispers darted back and forth above their heads.

"Why, it's Lord Andrew de Montforte!  I say, what ails him?"

"Got an opium habit, I'd guess . . . what a waste. . . ."

"Genius ain't without its price, eh, Smithson?"

"Aye, he's done so much thinking he's melted his own brain."

Celsie raised her head and glared fiercely up at them all.  "I can assure you that my husband does not suffer from a drug habit, madness, or shortcomings of any kind, he is merely exhausted from three days without sleep!  Had any of
you
gone three days without sleep, you'd be seeing strange things, too!  Now go on, all of you, and give us some space and privacy!"

One arm still around her fallen husband, she made an angry, shoving motion with the other.

"I said, go!"

Mumbling, the crowd began to disperse, guffawing loudly as someone made a lewd remark about just why the newly wed Lord Andrew de Montforte hadn't got any sleep in three days.  Celsie's face flamed, but at least she had deflected attention away from the real question of what was wrong with her husband, and that was all that mattered.

And then she looked up to see Lady Brookhampton still hovering above.

Celsie opened her mouth to deliver a stinging command —

"Shall I hail a cab or a sedan chair for him?" the older woman asked, with unexpected kindness.

Celsie gave a weary sigh.  "Yes."  She rose to her feet, pulling Andrew up with her.  "Yes, that would be ideal."

Chapter 26

Andrew wanted to crawl beneath the wheels of the cab and command the driver to run him over.

He wanted to flee the reality of what had happened to him, what was happening to him, what would eventually happen to him.

He wanted to bury his face against his hands in shame.

Instead, he summoned every shred of his de Montforte pride, straightened to his full height, and like the gentleman he was, handed Celsie up into the cab before him.

Moments later, they were moving.

"So now you know," he muttered, gazing out the window and watching the traffic passing in the other direction.  He swallowed hard, refusing to look at her.  "We can get an annulment, you know.  You have grounds.  I would understand perfectly."

She said nothing, but he could feel her gaze upon him.  He gripped his hands together and clenched them between his knees, staring out the window as he waited for her to say something, to utter the damning words, to lash out at him with anger and hurt for withholding such a terrible secret.  But she didn't say anything.  She simply sat there, a presence whose silence said more than words.

"Well?" he said flatly, turning his head to glare at her.  "
Are
you going to get an annulment?"

She gazed calmly back.  "Most certainly not."

"You're insane if you don't, you know.  You managed to come up with a damned good excuse to satisfy the gawkers and gapers back there, but I can promise you that what happened to me then will only happen again, that sooner or later you won't find some convenient excuse to explain it.  Then I'll leave you humiliated and pitied, and you'll wish to God you'd got rid of me when you had the chance."

"I don't want to 'get rid of you'," she said firmly, her eyes beginning to glitter dangerously.  "You are my husband.  And I care about you very much."

"You can't care for someone you don't know.  You don't know me.  Oh, God, you don't know me —"

"That is because you won't
let
me know you."

"Celsie, I implore you, don't throw away your life, your dreams, your pride, on me . . . I'm a worthless oddball, damaged goods . . .  There are plenty of men out there who would make far better husbands, men whom you can bring out in public without fear of being humiliated."

"Stop it, Andrew.  I don't want to hear such rubbish."

"It isn't rubbish, it is the truth."

"You're pushing me away.  I can't let you do that anymore."  Her voice gentled, became pleading.  "I'm your wife."

He just raised a hand to his eyes, flung it away.

"I'm your friend."

He swallowed hard, fighting back the rising tide of emotion.

"And I'm the woman who's falling in love with you."

He turned to her in anguish.  Celsie could see the faint glisten of what looked like tears in his eyes, a bleak, panicky desperation that beseeched her to leave him alone even as it begged her not to.  She reached out and threaded her fingers through his.  "Andrew," she said quietly.  "I married you for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.  We took vows, pledging ourselves to one another.  We're in this for the rest of our
lives
, and if you think I'm going to abandon you to whatever it is that so affects and frightens you simply because I might otherwise find myself embarrassed about your behavior, then you don't know me very well, do you?"

He put his head in his hands and bent his body over them, fighting a battle with his will.

"You
are
ill, aren't you?"

He just made an inarticulate little noise and nodded his head.  A lump lodged in Celsie's throat, and she felt the sting of tears behind her eyelids as her heart went out to him.  How hard he tried to maintain his composure when it was obvious that he was coming apart at the seams.  How hard he tried to push her away with anger, when it was all too apparent that he needed her with a desperation he could never admit.  And how hard he had tried to pretend that whatever ailed him was no more than an embarrassing annoyance — when Celsie knew, deep in her heart, that it was something that filled him with dread.