Chapter Twenty-two #2
“It’s more important than your own children?
” As he rode and talked with his friends, Aubrey scanned every nook and cranny on every street they traversed, eyes peeled for the distinctive color of his wife’s hair.
Liquid fire. Recalling her telling him that her mother had called it that made him ache for her.
“At times,” Simon said. “My own father would’ve gladly traded me for the opportunity to be the duke. He would’ve done it without hesitation.”
“Your father has no idea what he missed out on by disregarding you all of your life,” Derek said emphatically.
“That is kind of you to say, dear cousin.”
“I mean it. You know I do. I’d be lost without you, so you can’t ever let his opinion matter more than mine does.”
“I would never make that mistake,” Simon said, grinning at Derek.
The conversation helped to keep Aubrey from going mad as he prayed for Maeve’s safety.
She could be anywhere by now, a thought that had his heart sinking.
How could she have let his mother convince her to run?
Did she have so little faith in him, in what they’d shared, that she’d think he’d choose the business over her?
“What’re you thinking, Aubrey?” Derek asked.
“That I can’t believe she’d run rather than come to me.”
“Don’t fault her for that. She was probably frightened after her encounter with your mother and acted before she thought it through.”
“Perhaps, but still . . . I wish she’d put more faith in me.” Another thought occurred to him, stealing the breath from his lungs. “What if I never see her again?”
“Don’t think that way,” Simon said.
“We won’t give up until we find her,” Derek added.
“Thank you for being such good friends. I’ve never had better friends than you two and Justin.”
“Likewise,” Derek said as Simon nodded in agreement.
They rode for hours, traversing every street in Newport. Dawn was breaking when they reached the waterfront, which bustled with early-morning activity.
Aubrey asked everyone they encountered if they had seen Maeve. He described her down to the last detail, including the plum-colored gown she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her.
“Plum, you say?” The filthy man had yellowy eyes and three rotten teeth.
Aubrey’s stomach plummeted at the thought of Maeve encountering such a character. “Have you seen her?”
“Possibly.”
“Tell me what you know. Immediately.”
Derek tempered Aubrey’s harsh words with a softer approach. “Please, sir. My friend’s wife is missing, and we are very eager to find her.”
The man took in Derek’s fine clothing and regal bearing. “How eager are you?”
Derek reached into his pocket, removed some bills and pressed them into the man’s hand.
His rheumy eyes lit up with unfettered glee. “Scroogey took her home with him.”
A sharp pain lanced Aubrey’s chest, making him fear he was having a heart episode. “She . . . went home with a strange man?”
“Scroogey ain’t strange. He’s good people. Lives with his sister on Grafton Street.”
Aubrey touched the spurs to the horse’s side and took off toward Grafton, which was off Lower Thames. The pounding of hooves let him know Derek and Simon were behind him. If this Scroogey character had done anything to hurt Maeve, Aubrey wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.
Upon reaching Grafton Street, Aubrey dismounted, tied his horse to an iron rail at the bottom of the street and began knocking on doors with no concern whatsoever for the early hour. “Where is Scroogey’s house?” he asked the first sleep-rumpled woman who answered the door.
“Second house from the top. Left side.”
Aubrey took off running, charging up the hill, his arms pumping and his gaze fixed on the white clapboard house the woman had identified.
He ran up the stone steps and pounded on the door with a closed fist. When no one answered, he pounded some more and was about to bust down the door when it finally opened.
The man’s hair stood on end as his blue eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Whatya want?”
“I’m looking for my wife. I was told you brought her home with you.”
“Who’s your wife?”
Aubrey forced himself to remain calm when he wanted to beat the man to a pulp to get him out of the way. “Maeve Nelson. She was wearing a plum ball gown.”
“Your Maeve was quite upset when I came upon her last night. Was that your doing?”
“No.” Aubrey gestured to his friends. “Ask them. They can attest it was most definitely not my doing.”
“I’m Derek Eagan, the Duke of Westwood, and I can assure you that my friend is telling you the truth. He is not to blame for his wife’s distress.”
“She is unwell,” Scroogey said.
Aubrey gasped. “Please let me see her. I love her with all my heart.”
Scroogey took a long measuring look at Aubrey before stepping aside. “Upstairs. First door on the right.”
Aubrey rushed past the man and took the stairs three at a time, bursting into the room to find Maeve being tended to by another woman, who startled at Aubrey’s sudden appearance. “I’m her husband. What is wrong?” The first thing he noticed was how ghostly pale Maeve’s face was.
“I believe she lost the babe she was carrying.”
A knife through the chest wouldn’t have hurt more than that news did. He would never forgive his mother for this.
Aubrey fell to his knees at Maeve’s bedside and reached out to stroke her sweet face. He was alarmed by the heat radiating from her. “Maeve, sweetheart. It’s me, Aubrey. I’m here. I’m right here, and I love you.”
Her low moan went straight to his broken heart.
“She lost a lot of blood,” the other woman said. “It went on most of the night.”
Aubrey noted the crumpled plum gown on the floor and plain cotton nightgown Maeve wore that must belong to the woman who’d tended to her.
He would see that the siblings were well compensated for the aid they’d rendered.
“Is she . . . Will she . . .” He couldn’t get the words past the pervasive panic that gripped him.
“She needs a doctor,” Scroogey said from the hallway. “Wouldn’t let us get him last night.”
Aubrey glanced at Derek and Simon in the doorway.
“We’ll find him,” Derek said.
“He’s on Spring Street,” Scroogey said, rattling off the address.
“Hurry.” Aubrey returned his attention to the woman who had changed his life in every possible way. “Please hurry.”
Their pounding footsteps on the stairs echoed through the small house.
While he waited for them to return, Aubrey bathed her face with cool cloths that Scroogey’s sister handed him and prayed for Maeve to open her eyes and talk to him.
He would give anything to hear her lovely voice.
Every minute he had spent with her raced through his mind, beginning with the day he’d found her in the midst of a nightmare with a giant feather duster in hand.
He recalled their first picnic at the shore, catching her when she fell off the ladder, their wedding day, the first time they made love and every beautiful, joyful moment that had made up the best weeks of his life.
If he lost her now, he would never survive.
A sob erupted from the deepest part of him. He rested his head on her chest. “Please come back to me, Maeve. Please don’t leave me. I need you more than anything.” He would give up everything he had for one more day with her.
He had no idea how long Derek and Simon had been gone when they returned with a doctor in tow, a white-haired man with wise brown eyes that provided immediate comfort to a distraught Aubrey.
“You have to help her,” he told the doctor. “She’s my whole world.”
“I’ll do everything I can. Please give me a few minutes to examine her.”
Derek took Aubrey by the arm and gave a gentle tug. “Come on, Aubrey. Let the doctor help her.”
Aubrey feared that if he left her, even for a minute, she would leave him and never return.
Only Derek’s insistence got him to move into the hallway.
While Aubrey waited, he felt like a caged animal with no room to pace or rage against the fates that had brought him to the precipice of disaster.
“She’s young and strong and endlessly capable,” Simon said. “It’ll take more than a little blood loss to get the better of our indefatigable Maeve.”
Comforted by his friend’s kind words, Aubrey glommed on to the reminder that his Maeve was indeed indefatigable.
She had escaped certain death with Farthington to run for her life to America.
She’d survived terrible illness after her journey and found her way to Newport where she’d single-handedly confronted the disaster she found at the Nelson home, proving nothing could defeat her.
He only hoped their luck would hold a little while longer to get her through this latest catastrophe.
“What is taking so long?” Aubrey asked after what seemed like hours.
“It’s only been fifteen minutes,” Derek said.
“How is that possible?” Aubrey ran his hands through his hair again and again until it probably stood on end, not that he cared in the least. He would start pulling it out of his head if he didn’t get word of her condition soon.
“What can we do for you, Aubrey?” Simon asked.
He thought about that for a long moment before he knew exactly what he needed.
“I want you to go back to the house and instruct my sisters to remove my mother from the premises. If she puts up any sort of fuss, let her know that you’ll call in the authorities, who will see to it that she’s charged with a crime for what she has done to Maeve.
Tell her I’ll stop at nothing to see her ruined if she does not depart immediately.
As soon as she is gone, bring the carriage so we can transport Maeve home where she belongs to recover.
And if you would, take my horse with you. I’ll ride home with her.”
“Consider it done.” The two men took off to see to his wishes.
When all of this was over, he would owe them a debt of gratitude he would never be able to repay.
With his father so gravely ill, Aubrey refused to be pushed out of the house.
No, his mother was the one who needed to go, and his only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to see her ejected from the property.
She would be enraged. He hoped she would know she had only herself to blame.
With his arms propped over his head, he clung to the door frame outside his wife’s room, whispering prayers for her recovery and offering anything and everything God chose to take from him to ensure her survival.
He could live without anything except her.
By the time the door opened, he was on the verge of a complete breakdown. “Is she all right?”
“She will be,” the doctor said. “In time.”
Aubrey was so relieved, his legs refused to support him. He fell to his knees and dropped his head into his hands as sobs wracked his body.
“Aubrey.”
One word from her was all it took to send his heart soaring. He raised his head, saw her looking at him and crawled around the doctor to join her on the bed, taking her into his arms even as his body continued to shake with uncontrollable sobs.
“Shhh.”
She was comforting him? That would never do.
“I’m so sorry, Maeve. You’ll never have to see her again.
Whatever she said to you, it doesn’t matter.
There’s nothing in this world I want more than you and a life with you.
Please don’t ever leave me again. I wouldn’t survive without you.
” He kissed the tears that slid down her pale face.
“I love you more than life itself. You must believe me when I tell you that.”
“I do.” Though her voice was barely a whisper, the music of Ireland he heard in her words buoyed his battered heart.
As he clung to her, he didn’t care that they were surrounded by strangers. He didn't care about anything but her and making sure she had everything she needed to regain her health.
He held her while she slept, soothed her when she moaned and later, when Derek and Simon arrived with the carriage, he carried her downstairs after expressing their heartfelt thanks to Scroogey and his sister, Eileen.
Aubrey snuggled Maeve into his arms for the ride up the hill to Paradis Trouvé where the entire staff rushed out to greet them.
He refused to hand her over to anyone, preferring to carry her into the house and up the stairs himself. Only when she was settled in their bed, where she belonged, did he release the deep breath he’d been holding for hours by then.
Derek and Simon came to the door, along with Catherine and Madeleine.
“How is she?” Catherine asked, her eyes red from lack of sleep and tears on behalf of her friend.
“She is exhausted and in need of a long rest to regain her strength,” Aubrey told them. “But the doctor assured me she will make a full recovery.”
“And will she be able to have other children?” Madeleine asked.
“He said there was no reason to believe otherwise.”
“Thank God,” Derek said for all of them.
“And my mother . . .”
“You needn’t concern yourself with her again,” Derek said.
“We made it very clear that we would ruin her on this side of the Atlantic and on our side if she ever bothered you or Maeve again. Your sisters were so upset by what she did to Maeve that they encouraged her to leave before she made things worse.”
“Thank you,” Aubrey said. “I can never thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me and for Maeve.”
“You both are family to us,” Derek said. “And family takes care of family.”
“We’ll leave you to get some rest,” Catherine said, squeezing Aubrey’s arm. “Everything is all right now.”
Aubrey glanced back at Maeve, asleep in their bed. As long as he had her, he had everything. “Yes, it is.”