Twice Tempted (25 page)

Before they could say more, they were shoved aside by a very small negro man carrying a large portmanteau, his own anxious gaze on the disappearing Sir Joseph.

“I’m not certain you met Sweet when you were at our home before, Fiona,” Alex said. “May I introduce him now?”

The man turned to show a careworn, elderly, chocolate-colored face with eyes of uncanny green. “Oh, my,” he sighed, seeing Fiona and then Mairead following in. “A surfeit of beauty heah, no question, Mr. Alex.”

“No question at all, Sweet.”

Fiona smiled. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sweet. I am certain you would rather be upstairs than conversing here.”

The little man bowed and trotted up the steps. Alex was turning to follow him, when Fiona squeezed his hand. “What can we do to help?”

Alex shoved a hand that trembled just a bit through his hair. “I have a doctor coming. I would appreciate it if no one shot him before he can get in the door. Father also said he was thirsty.”

She nodded. “A cup of tea never hurt anyone. I’ll see to it.”

“Any chance you were followed?” Chuffy asked.

Alex shook his head, his attention up the steps. “We took as much time as we could. But I needed to get father here. He, uh, might be caught up in our business, and I didn’t want to leave him behind. It’s a good thought, though, Chuffy.” He turned to the butler. “Chilton, will you send a few men out to scout the area, just to make sure?”

The butler bowed and disappeared into the back of the house with the rest of the men. Lennie stood perched in the doorway, her face unnaturally pale, her battered hat clutched in her hands, as if not sure where she belonged in all of this.

“Lennie, why don’t you help me,” Fiona offered. “Alex, I’m sure you’ll want to go upstairs.”

“Need me?” Chuffy asked.

Alex looked at him, as if weighing something in his head. “If you don’t mind.”

Chuffy grinned. “Long as he don’t chuck books at me.”

Alex grinned back. “He didn’t bring any. Come on, then.”

Fiona was about to usher Lennie back into the kitchen when Mairead stopped her. “What do I do?” she asked.

Fiona looked up the stairs to where Alex and Chuffy were talking in low voices. She thought of the chaos in the kitchen and Mairead’s unease around too many people or too much noise.

“Would you tell Lady Bea that the gentlemen are here?” Fiona asked.

Halfway up the stairs, Alex stopped. “Bea,” he mused. “Lady Mairead, would you ask if she would sing? Sir Joseph loves her voice.”

Fiona blinked in surprise. “Really?” With his nod, she turned back to her sister. “Why don’t you ask if you can accompany her.”

Mairead bounced a bit on her feet. “It will be dark soon.”

“The stars will be up all night, sweetings. And I doubt it will be long before Sir Joseph seeks his sleep.”

For a moment Mairead didn’t move, as if testing Fiona’s word. Fiona never blinked. She didn’t want to think that she was getting rid of her sister so she could get back to Alex. But she couldn’t deny the relief she felt when Mairead nodded and trotted off toward the lilac salon.

“How did you get along today, Lennie?” she asked as she led the girl through the green baize door.

Lennie looked over her shoulder, as if she could still see Alex. “Oh…tolerable well, I guess. Milord’s father’s a pretty important toff, isn’t he?”

“I would say so, yes.”

Lennie just nodded. “Nice bloke, though.”

“Very.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t want anythin’ to happen to him, would we?”

Fiona looked down at the girl. “I imagine we wouldn’t. What are you working out, Lennie?”

Lennie looked up with suspiciously innocent blue eyes. “Nuthin’. Just nuthin’.”

Which meant that Fiona wouldn’t get any answers from the child any time soon.

So she turned her attention back to securing some tea and one of Mrs. Chilton’s tisanes for Sir Joseph and getting them back up to the room.

In the end, the ciphers were forgotten for the evening. Fiona walked into Sir Joseph’s room and knew she wouldn’t leave until Alex did. The older gentleman was sitting straight up, his mouth open to breathe, his forehead damp and pale. Sweet was already squeezing a rag out in the bedside basin to wipe away the perspiration. Alex had his own jacket off and was sitting by the bed holding his father’s hand. Fiona walked over to open the door back up. As she did, like a soft breeze lifting through the window, she heard the opening notes of Mozart’s “Mein Holdes Leben,” a sweet, soaring piece she knew Mae particularly loved.

And then, from the soft piano base, like smoke from a flame, soared a voice so otherworldly that Fiona froze on the spot, not even sure if she was breathing. Not Mae. She knew Mae’s voice.

“Ah,” she heard from the bed behind her. “Bea…and…Mozart. She…remembered.…”

Fiona turned to Alex. “That is Lady
Bea
?”

He smiled. “Amazing, isn’t it? Doesn’t make sense when she talks, but can sing like a lark.”

No, not a lark. Larks weren’t that magnificent. Lady Bea’s voice sent chills racing down Fiona’s spine and made her want to close her eyes, the better to focus on it. She couldn’t remember ever hearing such a haunting, compelling sound. Mairead’s playing even softened and slowed with it, as if all she had needed to ease her rather martial playing was Lady Bea’s voice.

From that moment, Sir Joseph rested better as Mae and Lady Bea moved seamlessly from Mozart to Handel to Clementi, their music easing the darkness and lifting, at least for a while, the weight of Sir Joseph’s illness. Sir Joseph’s eyes closed. Sweet smiled, and Alex kept his father’s hand, his own head cocked, as magic swirled about the room. Even when Fiona walked downstairs to refurbish tea and provide nostrums, she found the house staff clustered at the doors, tears in their eyes, just listening.

And when Sir Joseph finally fell into a fitful sleep, Fiona walked into the music room to find Mae at the old pianoforte, Bea standing alongside her hand on the instrument, as if to inhale its very vibrations through her fingertips, not a page of music anywhere to be seen. And seated calmly on the rose silk settee as if he would be happy never to move again, Chuffy, his spectacles in his hand and tears in his soft brown eyes. Fiona smiled. There were tears in hers as well.

“You two were better than all the medication in the world,” she said, bending to give her sister a tight hug, and then Lady Bea, who blushed and stammered at the praise. “Lady Bea, I have never heard the like. And I am used to listening to my sister. Thank you.”

“Sir Joseph?” Chuffy asked, finally getting to his feet.

“Is asleep,” Fiona assured them. “I believe you are all excused now.” When Mae popped up, Fiona kissed her cheek. “Let me know how our stars are, dearest. I am going back upstairs.”

And she did, even if she could offer no more than witness to the rare affection the three men in that room had for each other, especially Sir Joseph and Alex, who sat, hour after hour, in silence, the only sounds in the room the crackle of the fire, the faint wheeze of Sir Joseph’s breath and the periodic report from the front hall clock.

Fiona, sharing the room and forcing what nutrition she could on Alex, watched the bond the two men shared and knew it was a thing she would always stand apart from. They spoke in a shorthand that revealed commonality, love, understanding, respect. Often, they communicated with simple silence, and she envied them unspeakably. This was not unnatural perfection; there were human foibles betrayed, little sins committed against the other that shaded smiles and gave weight to fears. But the support was mutual, instinctive, and reciprocal. The closest she had to this kind of relationship was with Mairead, and in truth, Fiona knew that there was no balance there. She was the mother. She had no one in turn to rely on.

For a while tears built behind her eyes and clogged her throat. She thought she might actually weep with the loneliness of her place there in the shadows watching real life. In the end, though, the pain of it was too great for tears or envy or regret. It was too great for anything but searing emptiness and silence.

Several times she thought of leaving, tiptoeing out while Alex murmured to his father, knowing he would probably never miss her. But she would only be lonelier, curled in her bed with nothing but an old pillow in her arms, her heart still sitting in the corner of this room. So she stayed, her head resting against the wall, watching. Counting the ticks of the clock as the shadows shifted and the horizon went gray. Wondering if Mairead had begun to teach Chuffy how to worship the sky. Wishing she knew how to break through the boundaries that separated her from people like Sir Joseph and his son. Waiting, because there was nothing else she was good for at the moment.

And then, as the sun began to blanch the horizon and a few birds woke, Alex climbed wearily to his feet. With a look to Sweet, who sat on the other side of the bed, he came around to offer a hand to Fiona.

“Need to stretch a bit?” she asked with a smile as she accepted it.

His hand was cool and dry, as if he were containing life as closely as he could. Standing on stiff legs, Fiona closed her fingers around his as tightly as she could, knowing that any more expression than that would be repelled. He stood behind his own walls now, where he could protect his father and see himself through whatever waited. Even so, Fiona led him out the bedroom door and into the dark, wood-paneled hallway.

“You should probably get some sleep,” he said down to her, his eyes completely shaded. “I think we’ll be here for a while.”

She fought an instinctive flare of pain at his words. She knew he didn’t mean to dispense with her. Still, she felt it.

Instead of letting go of his hand, instead of walking away, she stepped closer and smiled. “If I leave I’ll only go to the little observatory,” she said. “And I have a suspicion Chuffy would not thank me.”

Alex cocked an eyebrow. “You’re beginning to accept his attachment?”

Fiona shrugged. “I am willing to wait and see.”

He nodded, his eyes closing, his hand still caught in hers. She was glad he couldn’t see her because for just that moment, she knew she betrayed herself. He would never have missed the emotion in her eyes: the longing, the hunger, the pain. The real reason she would not rest.

“Fiona.”

She caught her breath. “Yes.”

His eyes opened, and she quailed at the searing pain there. The bleak tide of despair. “How do I tell my mother?” he whispered.

Fiona froze. She had never seen Alex Knight less than certain. Less than in command. She felt as if she were seeing a glimpse of something Alex guarded more jealously than she did her past.

She lifted his hand and wrapped her other around it. “I don’t see that there is anything to tell her yet,” she said, struggling for assurance in her voice.

He looked down at her, his expression all too clear.

She jabbed a finger at his chest. “Do not dare give up,” she challenged. “Did your father say he was ready to die?”

He didn’t answer.

Fiona gave a sharp nod. “If Pip were here,” she said, “she would box your ears so hard your head would ring. She would not give up simply because your father was exhausted from a ride.
He
would not give up. How dare you?”

There was more; she could see it. Something that colored his grief, that gave it added weight. Something he wasn’t telling her. She battled an instinctive feeling of hurt, as if she had a right to all his confidences. As if she deserved, somehow, to help him carry his pain.

Why? Because she loved him? Because she had hopelessly loved him for four years, following his life like a child reading fairy tales? Because from the moment he had kissed her back in that pasture in the rain, he had belonged to her?

“I will not allow you to give up, Alex Knight,” she said, as if it were her privilege. “I won’t let you consign that lovely man to his grave. Not until he says so. And I do not believe he is quite ready to do that.”

For the longest time he just looked down at her, his entire body perfectly still. She wasn’t even certain he was breathing. She had hoped to see that she had eased his distress, at least a little. A smile. A nod. Anything. But Alex squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clenched, his head bowed, and Fiona felt his move like a punch in the chest.

She recognized Alex’s state all too well. Rage, grief, fear, guilt. The burden of a man who cared. Had there ever been anyone to ease his fears, his furies? He had a wonderful family, she knew. But she had a feeling that like Sir Joseph, he made it his mission to care for all those around him.

If only she could hold him. If only she could wrap her arms around him, her cheek pressed against the hard wall of his chest, and soothe him. If only she could love him.

Suddenly Alex’s head came up. Fiona looked up, painfully hoping that he, too, wanted more. That she was the one he would go to for comfort. It was then she heard the approach of a gig up the drive.

The doctor.

Her heart stumbled and righted itself again, suddenly so heavy she thought it might simply fall away. Of course it was the doctor. Before she could react, Alex had let her go and was running for the stairs, leaving her cold and alone in the empty hallway, once again left behind.

She should have left; she knew that. Help had come, and Alex would no longer need her. But when Dr. O’Roarke followed Alex back up the steps, she was still standing there. And when the men walked into Sir Joseph’s room, she followed. She wasn’t sure why, except that there was nowhere else to go. So she stood in her corner as the doctor introduced himself to the patient and gave instructions to the other men to light lamps.

She was glad she had stayed when the doctor took one look at Sir Joseph and gave a brisk nod.

“Thought so,” he said, opening his leather bag and pulling out a hollow wooden tube. “As soon as I examine Sir Joseph, I’ll need someone to run down to the kitchen and brew me some tisanes.”

Fiona stepped forward. “I would be happy to.”

O’Roarke looked up. “Oh, hello,” he greeted her, his homely face lighting.

“Dr. O’Roarke,” Alex said, “This is Lady Fiona Ferguson Hawes. A guest.”