He studied her face as she stilled. She was very pale, terrifyingly so, but Badger had sworn to him that she would be fine. Just a bit more time, he’d said.
Her breathing evened into sleep. Slowly, he rose from the bed and stretched. He wanted a bath and clothes. He rang for Maggie and she came, her glorious hair becomingly tousled, for it was still early, barely eight o’clock in the morning. At least she was dressed now. Before she’d dashed in wearing a peignoir that a London mistress would be proud to own, a feathered silk affair of pale peach. Just who, he wondered, had bought that for her? Her taste was flamboyant, but really quite good. The peignoir was something a man would buy, expensive, but gaudy and screaming sex.
He sent her to search out Badger, who just happened to be with Spears in his own bedchamber, just beyond the adjoining door.
Damned meddlers, he thought.
* * *
She was sitting up in bed, still weak, but now she felt in control again. She hated being sniveling and helpless.
“You still look pale as death,” Maggie said as she gently braided her hair. “But since you looked like death itself just this morning, what you look like now is an improvement.”
“Thank you, Maggie.”
“You must eat some more of the barley soup Mr. Badger made for you. It should taste quite delicious to someone who nearly stuck her spoon in the wall but didn’t, and thus should be grateful to be able to eat anything at all. I took a sip but it didn’t suit me. I’m well, you see, not sickly like you, Duchess. I don’t feel like I’m going to puke up my innards, not like you do.”
“I don’t think I’ll be sick now, Maggie. The nausea is gone.”
“Well, that’s a blessing. I don’t fancy cleaning up that kind of sickness, mind you.”
Marcus overheard the last of this and was hard-pressed not to smile. He lost the desire when he saw her face. She looked utterly defenseless. The aloof reserve was gone and in its place was a damned vulnerable look that made him flinch. He’d never seen her this way before and he realized that it scared him witless. He realized with a start that he would prefer her yelling at him, calling him a bastard and a sod, even sticking that chin of hers in the air again, anything but staring silently at him as if he weren’t worth the words to say to curse him with, as if, somehow, s
he were afraid of him. No, she couldn’t be afraid of him. Soon, she’d be as she had been and he knew it would take some getting used to, that passion of hers, that very loud violent anger of hers, but he wanted to see it again, he wanted to see her face turn red, watch her change from the aloof, bloodless creature into a woman as passionate out of bed as in it. She’d gotten in a quite good blow with that damned bridle.
And someone had struck her down. Someone in this household. And that someone had to be one of the damned Colonists. Aunt Wilhelmina was his prime candidate, the miserable old besom.
“Hello,” he said, walking to her bed. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. He searched her eyes, saw that they were clear and that pleased him. “You will appreciate that Badger and Spears together took Mr. Tivit beneath his arms and bodily assisted him from this room.”
“I vaguely remember a fat little man with a red face and a loud voice. His black coat was dirty, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, filthy. I’m glad you didn’t see his hands. That’s Mr. Tivit, and he’s the local doctor, and a miserable one at that. Anyway, when he pulled out his bleeding instruments and brought over a basin to the bed, Badger told him to take his torture devices out of here and never show his face again. He appealed to me and I told him you were so weak now that if he took any blood from you, you would turn into a beautiful leaf and float away. He huffed, lamenting his wounded dignity all the way to the stables.”
He lifted her hand, enclosing it in his large one. He felt warm, solid. “He is an old fool. I wouldn’t have let him near you but Trevor sent for him, not realizing that he was an ancient relic and even as a young man he was a half-wit.”
“Has anyone said anything about what happened?”
“Do you mean has Aunt Wilhelmina broken into tears and confessed all? I’m sorry, Duchess, no such luck. It turns out that James was downstairs on his way out the door to the stables. He had it in his mind that he would visit the ruins just at dawn, and search for the treasure. A romantic notion but one that would have probably just given him an inflammation of the lungs, given our damp mornings.
“Perhaps James struck you down and took the book and then raised the alarm. Perhaps he was afraid he’d killed you or that you would die without help. I don’t know, Duchess.” He paused a moment, then looked directly into her eyes. “Why did you leave your bedchamber?”
“I didn’t want to stay. I was afraid you would come.”
“I see,” he said, his hackles rising, but he managed to keep both his voice and his expression calm. He’d been stupid to ask her that question given her current condition. No, he would ask it again when she was once more fit and he could yell at her and then toss up her skirts and drive her wild with pleasure. Just maybe she’d yell back at him and . . .
“Why are you smiling, Marcus?”
“Huh? Oh, I was just thinking about the obnoxious barley concoction Badger is right now mixing up for you. Esmee, my cat, even removed herself at the smell. That or it was Badger’s singing whilst he stirred the mess that made her run yowling from the kitchen.”
He was lying but he was good at it, and she didn’t really mind. She’d lied to him herself once or twice in the past five minutes.
“Now, tell me about the book and those final pages.”
She did, describing in detail that gnarled ancient oak tree and those stones that were piled up, not just in piles but constructed with a purpose in mind. And the well, with that leather-bound old wooden bucket, surely it was very, very old. And there were men and women there and they looked Medieval, if she remembered correctly.
He looked abstracted. He rose.
“Where are you going?”