The Beloved One Read online

  "Yes — just give me a moment." He took a few deep breaths to steady himself. She remained very still beside him, just holding his hand, letting him get used to the feel of being on his feet once more.

  "I am ready now," he said.

  She squeezed his hand and took a step. He, in his stockinged feet, followed. How very strange it felt to move through this impenetrable blackness. How very strange it felt to entrust your steps, and more importantly, your direction, to another. And how strange it was to put such confidence in this small, albeit strong, little hand. She did not try to hurry him, but merely stayed with him, holding his hand and reassuring him by her very presence that he was not alone. He kept moving. His head swam with dizziness and his skin prickled with apprehension that he would bump into something and fall, that he would trip over something and bring them both crashing to the floor. But no. He tripped over nothing, and she stayed right beside him.

  "We're at the door to the study now, Lord Charles. It's open. If you shuffle your feet, you'll find the doorjamb and it won't trip you up."

  He did, and there it was, just as she'd warned. He lifted his foot, walked over the tiny obstacle that, in his infirm state, would have been enough to send him sprawling, and began to move a little more confidently. The girl kept pace beside him. He felt like a big, blundering fool for clutching her tiny hand as though it was the only thing in the world worth hanging onto, but he couldn't help it.

  It was.

  "We're here," she said. "If you turn to your right and back up a bit, you'll find yourself against Sylvanus's favorite chair. It'd be a good place for you to sit and dictate to me, I think."

  He did as she suggested, and there it was, the stuffed edge of a chair, pressing against the back of his legs. Suddenly weary, he put out one hand, found the arm, positioned his body, and very carefully lowered himself down. It was amazing how much thought was needed for acts to which he wouldn't have given the merest consideration, before. But the chair was deep, the stuffing soft and lumpy with age and use, and it swallowed him up like a mother's arms might a babe. Charles sighed and leaned his aching head back, and it was only then that he rather reluctantly released the girl's hand.

  "Are you all right, Lord Charles?"

  "My head," he murmured. "It's killing me."

  There was a slight hesitation; then he caught her scent as she leaned toward him, felt the warmth that surrounded her body a second before her fingertips moved gently over his brow, his temples. Instinctively, he leaned his head into that cool, soothing touch, but caught himself just as his cheek met the palm of her hand. Stiffening, he pulled back — to throbbing pain and a desperate wish to feel that caring touch once more.

  A desperate wish that he didn't want to acknowledge.

  He heard the sound of a chair being pulled out, a drawer opening, an ink bottle being uncapped, papers being slid about.

  "I'm ready," she said. "Are you?"

  "Yes." He sighed and let his cheek rest against the threadbare back of the chair. It smelled of old man. Old fabric. Old horsehair. He could fall asleep here, and when this was done, he probably would. "The first is to my commanding officer in Boston," he said wearily. "The second, to my brother Lucien in England. And the third —" Shame sliced through him. Juliet had trusted him to take care of her and her unborn baby, but with that one stupid move in a rocky field near Concord, he had let her down, just as he had let down his family, his men, and everyone else who depended on him. He couldn't take care of her and a baby, now. He couldn't even take care of himself.

  Somewhat hoarsely, he finished, "The third is to my fiancée, Juliet."

  He closed his eyes and in a detached, resigned voice that revealed none of his anguish and grief, began to dictate.

  She proved to be a wonderful letter-taker. Better, even, than Billingshurst. She didn't need him to spell the difficult words. She didn't ask him to repeat himself. And she didn't beg him to slow down, her pen only moving faster and faster to keep up with him. And as he heard his voice droning lifelessly on, and her pen dutifully scratching away, a sense of release, of calm, finally began to overtake him. He was finally setting things in motion. Tomorrow, the letters would be on their way, and his life would begin to look up. Lieutenant Colonel Maddison would send someone to bring him immediately back to Boston. Juliet would be there waiting to care for him. And when Lucien got his letter, neither hell nor high water, rebels nor revolution would keep the duke of Blackheath from coming straight to America to bring him back to England.

  Home.

  Charles heard himself dictating the final address; then the sound of her rapidly moving pen blurred into nothingness, and nothingness claimed his exhausted brain.

  He slept.

  And Amy, feeling a heavy sense of wistfulness as she finished the last letter, thinking what a lucky, lucky girl this Juliet Paige was to be affianced to such a worthy man as this, looked at the figure sleeping in her father's chair, his unkempt blond hair falling haphazardly over his brow, his neck at a most uncomfortable angle, and felt something catch in her throat.

  He defended me as though I was a real lady. He stood up for me at risk to his own situation. He is brave and selfless and kind, and he actually made me forget who I really am.

  Very quietly, she tiptoed across the room, picked up the blanket that lay across the back of the sofa, and returning to the captain, placed it gently over his sleeping body.

  And then she left the room, taking care to close the door behind her.

  Chapter 5

  Captain de Montforte slept through supper. He slept through the Bible reading that followed it. He slept through a squabble between Mildred and Ophelia, through Amy quietly putting a final log on the fire that danced and smoked a few feet away from his stockinged toes, and finally, through a silent procession of family members creeping past him on their way up to bed.

  As she passed her father's desk Ophelia, carrying the cat, spied the captain's three letters propped against a candlestick. Swiftly, and when Amy's back was turned, she swept them up and hurried upstairs.

  She had them opened and read before she even reached the landing.

  Mildred was stripped down to her stays when Ophelia entered the room. The two sisters unlaced each other. Grumbling about how Amy had always used to come in with the bed warmer before Lord Charles's arrival, Mildred slipped beneath the quilts of the bed they both shared and gasped at the feel of the icy sheets against her skin. Ophelia quickly followed her in, and the two snuggled together for warmth, the cat under the covers with them. Downstairs, they could hear the squeak of the floorboards as Amy moved about. And they could envision her gazing dreamily at Lord Charles, and fancying him as she had no right to do.

  The thought made them both angry and nauseated.

  "Listen to her down there," Ophelia said hatefully. "Fussing over him, making him cozy, digging her way under his skin like a tick. I nearly strangled myself on that stupid string she's rigged up so he can find his way around. Next thing you know, she'll be sleeping on his pallet to keep him warm!"

  "It makes me furious to see how nice he is to her. Can you believe the way he defended her this afternoon? I nearly fainted with shock and disgust. He treats her like she's some well-bred lady, whereas us —"

  "Whereas us, he won't even speak to."

  Mildred jerked the covers up to her chin. "If only he knew what she really was, he wouldn't even suffer her to talk to him, let alone take care of him."

  "Not that it's going to matter one way or another."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Our resident aristocrat already has himself a fiancée."

  "What, some snob of a noblewoman over in England?"

  "No, some hussy down in Boston named Juliet Paige." Ophelia leaned over and retrieved the letters she'd put on the night table. "Here, read these. They're the letters he had Amy write for him that we're supposed to post."

  The chilly air outside the covers forgotten, Mildred sat up, pulled the candl
e close, and read each letter. She skimmed through the one to Lord Charles's commanding officer, showed markedly more interest in the one to the duke, and narrowed her eyes as she read the one to his fiancée. By the time she finished it, her face was twisted with spite and jealousy.

  She hurled the letters across the room. "I wonder what she looks like, the little twit!"

  "The tail end of a donkey, probably."

  "I bet she's no better than we are . . . yet she's the one who'll get to be called lady . . ."

  "And live in a grand house."

  "And have clothes that cost the earth."

  "And servants she can order about like an army."

  "And a husband that looks like Lord Charles . . ."

  A charged, resentful silence stretched between them.

  "Know something, Millie?"

  "What?"

  "I hate her."

  "So do I."

  "And I don't think we ought to post those letters."

  "We have to. How else are we going to make him like us, if not by doing favors for him? Don't be a dolt, Ophelia, we have to post them."

  "No, Millie, don't you be a dolt. Blind or not, Lord Charles is an aristocrat, and my sights are set a lot higher than the local fishermen, artisans and seafarers! Do you think I'm just going to sit here and let him slip through our fingers so some stupid cow down in Boston can have him?"

  Mildred shot a nervous glance toward the door. "What do you have in mind?"

  "A plan. A plan so good that she'll never have him. A plan that will keep him here long enough for one of us to get our claws into him and a ring on our finger. Now listen up, and listen good . . ."

  ~~~~

  At two o'clock in the morning Charles, still in the chair, finally woke to a house that had gone dead-quiet and the nearly unbearable weight of his own thoughts.

  Someone had covered him with a heavy wool blanket. His skin was sensitive to the fabric — it made him itch — and he wondered if it had been the blanket, or the vivid, disturbing dreams, that had finally roused him. They were still with him, those dreams. In them, his hand was once more plunging accidentally into Amy Leighton's breast . . . but this time her gasp was not one of surprise, but of desire. This time, she had responded by wantonly pressing herself into his hand, her nipple going pebble-hard against his stroking fingers, her flesh filling his palm, even as she'd slid her hand down his belly, her fingers touching, stroking, rubbing him until —

  Zounds, he was hard. Hard! Horrified at his body's betrayal, he shook his head, trying to clear it. What the devil was wrong with him?

  Disgusted by the dream, his reaction to it, and yes, his disloyalty to Juliet for even having it, Charles stirred in the chair, trying to ease the heaviness in his loins. It was only when he forced himself to contemplate the bleakness of his situation — and his future — that the unfulfilled ache finally eased, succumbing to the mental pain that annihilated everything else in its path.

  He rested his cheek against the back of the chair, thinking.

  Thinking, perhaps, too much.

  You've really gone and done it now, haven't you?

  He had always prided himself on the fact that he was a man who did not make mistakes, but in the last three months — starting with what he had done to Lady Katharine Farnsley — he had made a lifetime's worth of them.

  All his life he'd tried to be the best that he could be. He had won his mother's love and his father's admiration by constantly doing good, doing well, just plain doing. In his own mind, failure had not been allowed. After a while, failure was not expected. And he had known then, as he knew now, that failure was the one sure way to lose the respect and affection that others had for you.

  And you've failed splendidly, man.

  What would become of him now?

  His life as he'd known it was over. From now on, he'd be dependent upon others for his very existence. What would he do, where would he go?

  They were frightening thoughts, but Charles met them with complete calm. It would be difficult, maybe even impossible, but he had to accept what had happened to him and get on with things. It wouldn't be easy, but he knew that if he looked toward the future, and found and focused upon a goal to get himself past this sudden calamity that had been visited upon him, he might survive. He would never be "Major" de Montforte, but he could work on making himself as independent as possible with the least burden to others. That alone would be a challenge — and a worthy accomplishment.

  I will beat this thing, he vowed savagely. And he had plenty of people in his life to help him do it. He had Amy Leighton. He had Juliet.

  And he had his family.

  They would be there for him. They would help him get through this, to rebuild his life, to make him whole again.

  He couldn't help but wonder how each of his brothers would react if this had happened to them. It was hard to imagine Lucien as blind; Charles wryly doubted that neither God nor the devil would dare saddle the duke with such an infirmity. What about Andrew, his youngest brother? Andrew aspired to be an inventor. Andrew had a clever mind and a wonderfully active imagination — no doubt he would invent some contraption to help him get through life with the minimum of discomfort.

  And then Charles thought of Gareth, and a fond smile came over his face. Where Charles was serious and guided by ambition, Gareth, only a year his junior, had always shunned responsibility of any kind. He had run wild through childhood, through university, and now, through early adulthood, raising havoc from Lambourn to London as the leader of a group of equally dissolute friends calling themselves the Den of Debauchery. Gareth's carefree nature, his delight in daredevil pranks and reckless tomfoolery was something that Lucien railed about in every letter Charles received from him, but despite that, he was the brother that Charles loved most — and the one whose nature he wished he could emulate in this, his hour of darkest despair.

  Gareth wouldn't be sitting here feeling sorry for himself. He'd find a way to laugh at his problems. And whereas the idea of dining with his hosts distressed and unnerved Charles, to whom the thought of spilling food all over himself was horribly embarrassing, he knew Gareth would probably make a joke out of it, and delight in making a spectacle of himself.

  Oh, if only he could be that way!

  Well, at least he'd be home with them all soon, for he had little choice but to resign his commission in the army and take Juliet and himself back to England. But was there anything there for him? He envisioned himself once again at Blackheath Castle, ferociously guarded by Lucien, shielded from society, and living out the rest of his days as a recluse in the ancient home where he'd grown up. At least Juliet would have a happy social life there, in company with his sister Nerissa. Though Charles himself could no longer take care of her — or a baby — Lucien and his two other brothers certainly could — and would.

  Gareth. Gareth would make life bearable.

  Buoyed by thoughts of his family, Charles stirred, stretched, and winced at the sudden pain that blazed through the his head. Blindness was bad enough; was he to have a damned headache for the rest of his life, as well?

  "I think," he muttered beneath his breath, "that if I had a gun I'd put myself out of my misery."

  "And I think," said a soft feminine voice, "that if you had something to eat, you'd feel a whole lot better."

  Amy Leighton. With a violent start, he remembered his dream. Dear God, had he said anything in his sleep? Had he called her name? And heaven help him, had she seen the jutting hardness of his erection?

  No. There was the blanket — thank God.

  "Hello, Miss Leighton." He gave a faint, almost rueful smile, and just as a precaution, pulled the blanket more securely over himself. "You weren't supposed to hear that."

  "And you weren't supposed to say it." There was a soft rustle of petticoats as she got up. "I saved some stew for you. . . it might be too much on your stomach right now, but the broth itself might be a start. Would you like me to fix you some?"

&nb
sp; "Later."

  "How about some hot water so that you can wash?"

  "Not right now."

  "Something to drink?"

  "Actually, I would like — that is to say, I —" he faltered, scowling. "I need some privacy."

  "Yes, of course," Amy said, in understanding. Unwilling to leave him alone so soon after his shocking discovery, she had been trying to pass the night in a nearby chair. Now, she went up to him, took his hand, and coaxed him to his feet. He was not yet able to judge his proximity to other people; as he straightened to his full height, his lips nearly brushed her temple and remained only inches away, fully within that unseen but deeply felt area of private space that surrounds every person — that surrounded Amy. Her face warmed. She stepped involuntarily back, assailed by memories of what that mouth had felt like against her own.

  Oh, what she wouldn't give to have him kiss her again!

  Amy! she scolded herself, shivering the thought away.

  "Are you cold, Miss Leighton?"

  "A little," she fibbed, not wanting him to know the effect he had on her. As it was, the mere warmth of his hand over her own was making jelly of her knees and butterflies of her heartbeat. She must ignore these — these feelings! Putting a safe distance between them, she led him back out to the keeping room, where she guided his hand toward the length of yarn she'd tied around a nail while he'd slept. She closed his fingers around it, and released his hand.

  "What is this?"

  "Yarn. I've strung it from here, to the door, and from there, to the privy outside. I thought you might . . . well, I thought you might appreciate it," she finished lamely, as an odd, cold look came over his face. She hoped she hadn't offended or embarrassed him. She was only trying to help. To give him confidence to find his way through his strange new world with more independence than fate had dealt him.

  "Thank you," he said tightly, and then, looking sleep-rumpled and faintly scandalous in his stockinged feet, worked his way down the rope and outside. Amy got out a bowl for the broth she hoped he would eat. She worried about him out there. Hoped he wouldn't trip over anything, or grow suddenly dizzy and fall. It was all she could do not to go to the door, but she knew she must not hover too much, nor be so helpful that she was stifling. Lord Charles did not need a nanny. What he needed was independence, and the realization that he wasn't as helpless — or useless — as he seemed to think he was.