The Next Best Bride (29 page)

"You cannot keep fighting this battle alone."

"I’m not." He would not bring Helena into it. "I have you beside me and I am grateful for all the years you stood between me and the monster. I hope you will do the same for my child."

"I am too old —"

His head ached. Why would she not just agree so that he could leave this accursed place? "Who else can I trust? Who else would believe the truth?"

"Your wife. She has a child to protect. You must give her the chance to do so. The chance your poor mother never had."

His mother. He fought the frustration that threatened to boil over inside him at her stubborn insistence. He wanted to end this discussion. Leave for London. "My mother knew, and it did not protect her. I could not protect her."

She blew out a breath of frustration and gave him a look he had not seen since his puppy Silky had been drowned by his grandfather. Sad and purposeful at the same time. "Then I may give her the tea. To protect her from your grandfather's folly — and yours."

Pain exploded behind his eyeballs as his anger flared. She wouldn't dare. He grasped her arm tightly. "If you do, I will see you in Hell."

He heard a gasp behind him. Sharp as glass, Helena commanded, "Rand. Let Nanny Bea go. Now." He turned his head. To his chagrin, her pale face was lit with righteous anger. His reforming angel was in full winged glory.

"I'm sorry." Sorry that he had not left for London yet. Sorry that he had given her one more reason to doubt his sanity. "I let my concern for you overcome my good sense."

His good sense? He had been a moment away from doing Nanny Bea bodily harm. Helena stood stunned by the violence she had so narrowly averted. "Perhaps you should show your concern for me to my face, rather than behind my back."

One minute anger blazed from his eyes, radiated from his tensed body. The next he stood calmly. Smiling. Reasonable. "I do not want to overtax your health."

"Speaking more than three words at a time to me will prevent me from providing you with a healthy heir?" She allowed her scorn to show. "Nanny Bea says it is not unwise—"

His expression darkened, with concern, not anger. He glanced at his old nanny in apology. "I was simply concerned for my wife's health. I should not have grown angry at you."

Nanny Bea nodded. "That is common enough, for fathers. Perhaps you will ease your own mind, and hers, if you tell her what you fear most."

He nodded, and took Helena's arm to lead her to her room. He spoke low, as if he wanted no one to hear the words. "If something should go wrong... If you should lose the child..."

Was that it then? Did he fear she would have a miscarriage? Did he think her sister's barren state a bad omen for the fate of his own child? "Do you believe me incapable of bearing a healthy child? Are you afraid I will lose your foolish wager for you?"

"How can you ask me that?"

"How can I not?" She laughed. "You coerced me to the altar, made love to me every night for a month, abandoned me for two months and now don't speak to me for fear you will ruin your prospect for a healthy son and heir."

He touched her cheek gently, but there was a restless ferocity in his gaze. "I am going back to London. I am not meant for this life. I just want to make certain that you are safe when I am gone."

Safe? She was not the one in danger, he was. "If you were to stay, to stop drinking, to show that you are responsible at last, your grandfather might give you the control you desire so badly in anticipation of the child. Is that not worth changing your ways just a little?"

"Change my ways? To be what? My grandfather's puppet on a string?" His anger scalded over her and then again, abruptly, he calmed. "And if I like my ways?"

She tried to match his calm. "You don't have to change everything about yourself." She waited for him to erupt again in anger.

He only laughed. "How fortunate."

She sighed. "If you showed him that now you are a husband, now you are to be a father, that you understand you must put aside your reckless ways and become the responsible heir he has wished for all these years..."

There was a sheen of panic in his eyes. "Responsible? How tedious. I have told you before not to try to reform me, Wife."

"I don't speak of reform. Just — maturity."

"Maturity?" His laughter sounded tired and forced. "Surely you do not think that simply because I was able to get you with child quickly that my heart and soul have been polluted with a need for my grandfather's approval — or yours?"

Polluted? Was that how he saw the need for love? A poisoning of the soul? "I don’t understand you. You want an heir. And when I tell you that you will have one, you seem to hate me for it. What do you fear?"

"Fear?" He said the word as if it were a curse. "Perhaps I fear the child you carry is not truly mine."

She felt as if a fire had been lit in her veins. And then she felt impossibly cold. Through numb lips she said, "Perhaps it is best if you leave, then."

"As you wish." His words were formal, without a hint of humor. He bowed as if she were someone he had just been introduced to at some formal event and then disappeared into his room.

From her window, Helena watched him stride out of the dower house without saying goodbye. She felt numb. She had tried to reach him, to make him see sense. And all she had managed was to send him away. "What have I done?"

Nanny Bea came into the room with a tea tray as she spoke, and answered as if she thought Helena had asked her the question. "Nothing you shouldn't. He needs to be shaken up a bit. He's gotten too used to thinking he's alone in this world." Nanny Bea patted her shoulder. "Go after him, child."

"How can I? He does not want me." His words still echoed in her ears. She still saw his anger. Saw the pain in his eyes. The retreat. The fear. Fear of what? She searched for an answer in the nanny's calm features. "He treated you horribly — after you raised him. Why should I expect more?"

"He had his reasons." Nanny Bea nodded enigmatically.

"There is no excuse."

Nanny Bea nodded in agreement. "Not an excuse. But a reason all the same." She sighed. "But you'd have to ask him for it."

Helena turned away in frustration. Nanny Bea's words echoed in her head. Perhaps she should go after him and ask him all the questions she hadn't yet dared ask? A sudden, crushing fear squeezed her lungs. She couldn't let him leave like this. She might never see him again.

She ordered a horse saddled for her and followed him swiftly. Elated, she saw him after only a few minutes hard ride. She called after him, hoping that he would not take her pursuit as an excuse to spur his mount away from her.

He turned and reined in. His frown was thunderous. "What are you doing."

She pulled up next to him, suddenly uncertain of what to say to him. That she loved him? He didn't want to hear that. " I should not have sent you away."

He did not soften. "Indeed you should have."

She shook her head and dared to meet his forbidding gaze head on. "Nanny Bea says that I must ask you what devils haunt your sleep. And I agree with her."

"You are the only devil in my life right now. Go home," he said impatiently, slapping her horse's withers.

The horse rose in protest at being treated so poorly. Helena felt herself lurch the wrong way and begin to slide. And then her girth snapped with a sharp sound and she felt of rush of air. She braced for the impact of hitting the ground, and instead was crushed around the ribs by strong arms and held dangling safely a few inches off the ground in her husband's arms.

Rand held her against him, reeling with the thought of what might have happened if he had not caught her. Her girth had snapped. It was only luck that had let him hear the snap clearly before she had catapulted from her saddle.

He lowered her to the ground and dismounted. Seeing that she stood shaken and pale, but unharmed, he moved to examine the failed saddle. The girth had not been worn through. It had been cut nearly clean through. His heart seized as he remembered turning at the sound of her voice to see her riding hell bent for him. If the girth had broken then...

She came up beside him. Her fingers reached out to trace the straight sharp cut of the leather. She let out a gasp. There was not much room for doubt. The girth had been cut. She had been meant to fall. A fall that would likely have been bad enough to cause her to miscarry. To be badly injured. Perhaps to die.

She asked quietly, firmly. "Who would do this? I am the only one who rides Sophie. This can only have been meant to cause me to fall." She looked up into his face, fiercely. "Am I your devil? Do you truly believe I am not carrying your child?"

"Devil, angel, wife, you are all those things to me." He tried to smile, as if he did not care what she thought of him. But all he could think of was the frozen surprise on her face as she had begun to fall.

She said nothing, waiting patiently for the answer she sought, her gaze fastened on his.

Nanny Bea was right. She needed the truth. She deserved the truth. "I know the child is mine. I spoke in anger, to drive you away." He dropped the cut girth. "To keep you safe, or so I thought."

She nodded, as if she understood his angry impulse all too well. "Even when we made our bargain, I did not believe you would not care whether I carried your child or that of some other man. But I would never lie to you about such a matter."

No. She would not. She had not. "I am all too aware that you prefer the truth." He did grin unreservedly then. Until he remembered where his reckless declaration had led them. He hadn't considered the child as anything but a means to free himself from his grandfather's control. Just as he had his marriage to Helena, which now put her life in jeopardy.

"The truth is usually best, even when painful. Do you know who would have wanted me to suffer a fall?"

He braced himself and gave her the bad news. "My grandfather knows about your lover. He is not certain the child is his blood. He brought Nanny Bea here to give you a tea that would make you miscarry."

She gasped. "I—" Her hands flew to her midsection.

"No, Helena. I told her there was no doubt. She has not given you the tea."

"You told her…?" She threw herself into his arms and he held her shaking body close, his heart beating rapidly. His hand pressed tight against her back, feeling her heart beat in the same staccato rhythm as his against the palm of his hand. He had to do something. But what?

He left her at the dower house in the care of the maid and Nanny Bea and went directly to speak to his grandfather. He did not mince words. "Helena has had an accident."

Apparently, the old man had decided to pretend surprise. His grizzled brows rose. His jaw sagged. "Has she?"

Rand played along with the old man's game. He'd be caught out soon enough. "The girth of her saddle snapped."

The old man nodded wisely, as if he thought over what was said. Tried to make sense of what had happened to Helena. "I've seen that happen before."

Rand said bluntly. "She wasn't hurt."

His grandfather did not quite hide his disappointment. His surprise. "Good. Good."

"Yes." Rand leaned forward, knowing the old man understood him, whether he admitted it or not. "I don't want this to happen again."

"Do you care so much for her then?"

"She is my wife, grandfather," he answered warily. It was bad enough that his grandfather didn't believe she carried his child. If he thought Rand had fallen in love with Helena, she had no chance at all. "She carries my child."

His grandfather was not willing to make the concession. "Or she carries her lover's child."

Desperation made Rand more reckless than he had ever been in his life. "I'm willing to wager on it. Are you?"

His grandfather blinked twice. The offer had shocked him as much as it had Rand. "What will you wager?"

My soul, he thought but did not say. "I am willing to give up gambling entirely if I lose."

"You must be sure of yourself."

No. Sure of Helena. "I am. I will not lose. The child is mine."

The old man frowned, as if considering all the ramification of their wager. "There is no foolproof way to be certain of such a thing."

Reckless again, knowing he could be condemning an innocent child, but gambling for the time to protect them both. Helena and the child. "If he or she has green eyes like mine, or yours, surely you cannot doubt it."

"Agreed." His grandfather was not finished with him, though. "On one condition."

He checked his impulse to flee. To take Helena and run to the ends of the earth. His grandfather would find him. Would lecture him on duty and responsibility and strip him of all chance for love and affection. As always. "And your condition is?"

The old man leaned forward as if to enjoy every nuance of Rand's expression. "You are not to live with her again. I do not like her influence upon you. A wife should make her husband more sensible, not less."

He shrugged as if it would be no hardship to be apart from Helena. "I accept your terms."

He walked back to the dower house, wondering what he could tell her. That he had made a wager about the color of their yet unborn child's eyes. And on that wager hung her welfare, the child's welfare, and his own sanity. That he must go to London and leave her alone. Alone with the old man who thought she carried a bastard who would sully his impeccable lineage.

He stopped, staring down at the small stone house she had made so cozy and welcoming. She had almost banished the ghosts for him. Almost. He owed her for that. And more.

Could his grandfather be trusted to keep his word and not make any attempts to cause her to miscarry until after the child was born and the wager settled? Or was he, like Rand, using the wager as a blind to give himself time to achieve his true goal?

One thought drummed through his mind. She would have to go back to London. To the duke and duchess. They could protect her as he could not. She was not safe here, even with Nanny Bea to guard her food and drink. He could not protect his own wife when he was miles away from her. So she must be brought to London. Near enough that he might protect her, in case his grandfather did not mean to keep his word.