Chapter 37
While it is flattering to have a man fight for your honor, it is quite another thing to have a man fight for your life.
To have him then face one’s brother with such composure...!
I know Harry said he would risk his life for me, but this is a gesture so much more profound than that.
––––––––
Hobbes closed the door, shutting in Aylesbury with her brother. Effectively locking Harry in to meet his fate. Fiona bit her lip indecisively, wondering if she should go back in and defend him further or leave them to it. Harry was a perfectly capable man after all, but Francis was...
Well, when Francis was wronged, it was better to just get far, far away.
“I heard it all, my lady,” Hobbes said from behind her. “May I say I am ever so glad you’ve come out of it unharmed and at home?”
Fiona smiled at the starchy old curmudgeon.
“That is about the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say to me, Hobbes.
” Stepping close before he might step aside, she wrapped her arms around his stiff, straight shoulders and hugged him tightly.
“I knew you liked me,” she whispered, dropping a quick peck on his taut cheek.
To her surprise, the butler patted her back and squeezed her shoulder before easing her away. He cleared his throat and met her gaze ever so briefly before his gaze shifted over her shoulder.
“I do, in fact, like you a great deal...Lady Fiona.” He cleared his throat again. “You’ll want a bath drawn, I imagine. And a warm fire as well. I’ll see it done immediately, my lady.”
That was how he showed his care, she realized. By caring for her needs. She’d never understood that before. It just went to show that love in its many forms was more often demonstrated by more than mere words.
This realization could also be applied to the motives of others: Glenrothes, who thought to shield her from the world at large, and Harry, who protected her from danger. It was a notion that deserved some deeper consideration.
But not just now.
She was bone weary and ready to relax, forget and regroup.
“Thank you, Hobbes.”
“I will give instructions for your meal to be brought to your room,” he continued, practically babbling for him. “Shall I...shall I have a maid to escort you as well?”
“I shall do it, Hobbes.” Ilona had been lingering with Eve at the head of the stairs, waiting for Fiona. She glanced at Eve, who might have meant to protest. “I haven’t been hungry anyhow; you know how it can be? Perhaps I might be able to take a bite or two...if another tray is sent up?”
“Of course, ma’am,” Hobbes bowed, the proper butler once again but still he met Fiona’s gaze briefly once again and almost—almost smiled before leaving.
* * *
Ilona hooked her arm through Fiona’s as they went up another flight of stairs together. “I nearly thought he was going to hug you or something equally shocking,” her sister-in-law whispered conspiratorially as they climbed.
“The day has had too many surprises already,” Fiona answered with a grin. “That might have been more than my poor sensibilities could handle.”
They laughed together as they made their way to Fiona’s chamber, where Ilona fussed over her, drawing her bath and adding chamomile salts to help soothe away her troubles. All the while, she chatted about the kidnapping and Ramsay’s suspected involvement in it all.
As she helped Fiona undress, her no-nonsense conversation calmed Fiona’s nerves in the way a dozen expressions of sympathy could not.
It was just the facts as they were. The facts Fiona could handle.
The emotion of it all was useless and even debilitating, better pushed aside to deal with at a later time.
Sliding into the steaming bath, Fiona let the water wash over her and whisk away the troubles of the day. The heat relaxed her muscles, and she sank deeper with a contented sigh.
But as straightforward as Ilona was with one subject, it was a simple thing for her to work her way to other topics. Other matters Fiona had already rejected as beyond immediate consideration. Things she didn’t want to think about. Leave it to Ilona to make the entire issue impossible to ignore.
“And Aylesbury!”
Fiona opened one eye, watching her sister-in-law warily. “What about him?”
“Imagine him coming to your rescue so precipitately! I gather his timing couldn’t have been better. If he hadn’t been there...” Ilona trailed off, letting the possibilities weigh significantly in the silence before adding the question no one had thought to ask. “Why was he there, I wonder?”
“He wanted to speak to me, I suppose.” Fiona took a washing cloth and soap from the tray next to the tub and began to lather the cloth with undue focus.
“And all the other times as well?”
It wasn’t a question. Nor was she ready to provide much of an answer. “I suppose,” she repeated evasively as she continued to lather the already sudsy cloth. “I mean, who can say?”
Ilona studied her for a long moment. Her warm brown eyes burrowed effortlessly into Fiona’s soul.
She didn’t say anything, though. Instead, she took the soap and began to wash Fiona’s hair much as her nanny had done when she was but a wee lass.
Her fingers worked through Fiona’s long hair, massaging her scalp and relaxing her almost to the point of unconsciousness.
Fiona should have known Ilona was waiting until her guard was down to add something more. When it was brought up, the subject was even more shocking than the bucket of water Ilona dumped over her head.
“Two years ago? What happened between the two of you that night?”
It was a softly spoken entreaty followed by forbearing silence. Ilona didn’t press nor prompt but allowed Fiona time to wipe the water from her eyes as if she understood the struggle Fiona was fighting internally.
The need to speak of what happened aloud for the very first time.
The desire to forget it ever happened at all.
After all, it was far more humiliating than when Harry had found her in his bedchamber, something far more devastating. Unlike that incident, Fiona was pretty sure Harry wouldn’t be able to offer a different point of view that might make it any less upsetting.
“I think I fell in love with Harry the first time I ever saw him,” she began almost inaudibly as she lifted the soapy cloth and began to wash her arms and shoulders.
“It was right after Francis and Eve wed. I was staying with Richard and Abby for a few months. You might not remember, as you and Colin were off on your honeymoon by then. Richard brought Harry home for dinner...You have to understand, Ilona. He was...”
Ilona smiled kindly when Fiona trailed off. Taking the washing cloth, she soaped it up once more and began washing Fiona’s back in soothing strokes.
“He is very charming, isn’t he?” she whispered with a smile. “It is difficult not to be taken by him. Even a married woman in love, such as I, might have sighed over him a time or two.”
“It was a crush, of course. I was just seventeen and was very susceptible to that practiced charisma. But I might have gotten over him easily enough.”
“If he hadn’t come back.”
“Yes.” She leaned forward with a sigh, allowing Ilona greater access to her back. “If he just hadn’t come back.”
“But he did.”
“Yes, he did.”
Lost in thought, Fiona didn’t even know how long the silence reigned before Ilona prompted, “The next fall, wasn’t it?”
“Winter,” Fiona corrected. “Just before Vin returned.”
Ilona nodded as she rose, moved to the end of the tub, and motioned for Fiona to lift a leg. With yet another sigh, Fiona leaned back against the tub again but obeyed, resting a foot against the porcelain tub for Ilona to wash.
“He came to court Moira,” Fiona said at last. “Dinners, the theater, riding every day...Red roses. He was quite serious in his intent. Red roses, Ilona. A dozen of them. He intended to marry her. He wanted to marry her.”
“Did he?” Ilona asked unexpectedly. “I always thought that those roses were given as they were to prompt Vin’s jealousy.”
She frowned at her sister-in-law. “What do you mean? Red roses are practically an unspoken proposal. I was there.”
“As was I,” Ilona countered. “When Aylesbury gave the roses to Moira, he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Vin with that devilish grin as if he dared Vin to make something of it. I believe he was purposefully trying to make Vin jealous.”
“Hmm,” Fiona closed her eyes, remembering what Harry had told her. He did say that he knew Moira wished to marry Vin, but perhaps he hadn’t shared all his motivations with her. “Do you truly believe he did it all on purpose?”
“Perhaps not all of it,” Ilona allowed reluctantly. “I think he might have married her if Vin hadn’t come home. They might have been content.”
Content.
There was that word again.
And as Vin had said, even the warmest bath could grow cold.
Finishing hers, Fiona stepped into the towel Ilona held out for her and then into the warm nightrail and robe that followed.
Returning to her bedchamber, she sat at her vanity.
She began to brush the tangles from her hair absently, her eyes on the mirror but seeing nothing but the memories of those days long past.
“But when Moira and Vin wed,” Ilona did press then. “What happened then?”
“I saw my chance, as it were,” Fiona told her, her eyes shifting in the mirror to Ilona’s reflection where she sat perched on the edge of Fiona’s bed.
“I flirted madly with him. Even more madly than I had been before Moira and Vin wed. At first, he flirted back. He danced with me...once, at any rate. We walked, rode, talked. I thought he was beginning to like me, but then he began to avoid me. Studiously.”
“I’m sure the marquis would never be so rude.”
He might be if he had good reason, she thought.
And she had given him good reason. Fiona’s eyes closed as if to block out the memory of her invasion of his room that morning.
The humiliation would have killed her to mention it if it hadn’t been for Harry’s contrary recounting of the events the previous night.
“I did go to his room once.”
“Fiona Blossom!”
Fiona only shook her head with a blush. “Don’t worry, Ilona, nothing happened. He practically patted me on the head and told me to run along back to the nursery.”
Well, not quite.
“I was always quite safe with him because all I was to him was a child and an annoying one at that.”
That was true enough.
“So that night in Haddington’s garden, what happened then?”