Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Amelia barely heard Nicholas’s question when it came, asking for the identity of the intruder waiting in front of them. Her mind was spinning, half convincing herself that she had imagined her brother standing there.
But it was him.
He had aged in the last two years. Her heart panged with guilt at his tired, nervous countenance. His cheeks were ruddy from traveling in early winter. His clothes travel-worn and modest.
Had she forgotten that he was coming home? That seemed plausible. But no, this was something else. He had returned of his own accord.
“Oh, Freddy!” she cried, running into her brother’s arms. “It really is you.”
Freddy’s body was cold and stiff as he took Amelia into a brotherly embrace, holding her against his chest as tears streamed down her face. He stroked her hair and pressed a kiss onto her crown, smelling of home and foreign places at the same time.
“Darling sister,” he whispered. The sound of his voice took her back to a place before he had left, before she had ever met Nicholas. He took her gently by the shoulders to inspect her. “How time has changed you.”
“How time has changed us both!” she replied, running her fingers over Freddy’s beard. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think? I have come back for you.” He paused, then looked somewhere behind them.
At Nicholas.
Her husband stood rigidly behind them, wearing an unreadable expression. He looked so tall and serious compared to Freddy, staring at her brother with eyes that bore indirectly into her soul.
Somewhere in the distance, rainclouds approached, and the entrance hall darkened in response.
Disentangling herself, Amelia gestured meekly toward her husband. “This is—”
“I know who this is,” Freddy cut in, scowling. “I came directly from Uncle’s home. He told me I would find you here. Though I should have remembered Riverside Court as the Avon lair. My mistake, and my surprise. How do you do, Your Grace?”
His question was laced with barely concealed disdain. Nicholas visibly bristled, nostrils flaring.
“You are the vagabond brother, Viscount Frederick Tate,” Nicholas said coolly. “Returned here now to what end?”
“Vagabond? Mine was a necessary trip. One from which I have returned above all to ensure my sister’s safety. That has always been my primary concern in this life. When she wrote me that she had married…”
Freddy’s hand flexed at his side, startling her.
“I hoped she had written wrong,” he continued. “But this is true, all of it. You have taken my sister as your wife without even asking her brother for his blessing.”
Nicholas smiled politely, keeping his composure in the face of Freddy’s visible anger. “That blessing was not yours to give but Baron Spencer’s. What followed was legal and moral. Your sister is the Duchess of Avon, and I am her husband.”
“Nothing may be moral insofar as you are concerned.” Freddy shook his head. “Your father may have been an honorable man, but the title has been stained by your rakish history. That my sister should bear your name is a crime unto itself.”
The duke took a step forward, standing beside Amelia. She looked at him nervously, knowing that his past had been far from spotless, but surprised that Freddy seemed to know so much about him.
“So long as you stand in these halls,” Nicholas intoned, clearly as surprised as she was, “we will speak with manners befitting gentlemen of your station and mine. Or you will leave.”
Amelia glanced, panicked, between her husband and her brother. Why was Freddy behaving like this? He stepped forward, and Amelia held him back, placing a hand on his chest.
She searched her brother’s blue eyes.
I have never seen him look so angry. Before he left, Freddy would never have spoken so rudely to a man of Nicholas’s rank. Something has changed within him, but I do not know what or why. Unless he feels he has been slighted by this marriage? Is what he heard about Nicholas really so terrible?
“Please,” she murmured. “There is no need for this. Allow me to introduce you to His Grace properly. Come, we will have tea together. Please, Freddy…”
Reluctantly, her brother agreed to sit with them for a while, guided by hand to the nearest drawing room. He waited quietly as the maids entered shortly thereafter with a tea service and apple cake, glowering at Nicholas from his armchair by the fire, the flames casting his silhouette in shadow.
Nicholas stood protectively behind Amelia’s chair. The air in the drawing room was thick with tension as she leaned forward to serve her brother tea, hands trembling around the teapot.
A stream of dark amber liquid rippled quietly into his china cup. Amelia focused her attention on the sound of the cup filling rather than on Freddy, knowing what questions needed to be asked but not wanting to ask them.
Not in front of Nicholas. Not while they are trained on one another like two men looking to gain advantage over the other on a battlefield.
“Shall I begin? It seems I must.” Nicholas’s voice cut through the silence.
“You were in France for two years, Viscount Tate. This sudden return of yours seems highly unnecessary if you have come only to ensure Amelia’s safety as my wife.
There must be more, something you have learned.
For as you can see with your own eyes, the duchess is fine. ”
“To the naked eye, yes. As has ever been the case.” He pursed his lips. “Any brother would have done the same.”
“Returning? Why?”
“You and I may not have mingled in the same circles, Your Grace. But I know of your past—yours and your brother’s. Birds of a feather, almost.”
Did he mean their half-shared parentage? Amelia could not bear to look up and find out.
Her brother continued, “Why Amelia? It does not make a lick of sense to me. There is only one thing this marriage of yours can be.”
“And what is that?”
“A perverse joke. Some sort of cruel prank you are playing on her. My only other hypothesis is that you are a sadist taking joy in having Amelia near to you, making the most of her supposedly vulnerable state for your own amusement. By now, you should have realized she is perfectly sane. So why continue this charade?”
“Frederick,” Amelia interrupted, stunned. She set down the teapot, grateful Nicholas had sent the staff away so they would not witness this. “What on earth are you saying?”
“I am saying the truth.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Nicholas.
“The Duke of Avon learned the rumor of your condition and sought to take advantage.
When I called on Uncle before coming here, in search of you, he assured me that I was wrong.
Said that your betrothal arose out of some sort of misunderstanding and that His Grace is good and proper now.
I do not believe that. I say that out of purest devotion to you, sister, and with all due respect to His Grace.
“This must all be a lie you are too gentle to understand.”
Her chair creaked as Nicholas’s hands tightened around the headrest.
“Your devotion has blinded you,” Nicholas muttered. “Yes, there was a misunderstanding, but I took Her Grace to be my wife out of much more than duty.”
Amelia glanced up at him, frowning. He almost sounded sincere. The thought made her heart leap painfully.
Painfully, because it was not true.
“I know of your sister’s malady. You are right in what pertains to her sanity.”
“Then something more is afoot. It must be.” Frederick leaned forward. “What the devil is in this for you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You must release my sister immediately, and—”
“Freddy, stop this interrogation at once!”
The resolve in Amelia’s voice turned the room quiet. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. She balled her trembling hands in her lap, confused and betrayed by her brother’s demeanor. Her body shook, and she felt both men tense.
I will not fall now.
She needed answers from her brother.
Answers she would not get while Nicholas was nearby.
Looking up at her husband, he seemed to understand what she wanted before she had the chance to ask.
“You cannot ask me to leave you with him,” Nicholas grated. “He will bind and gag you and drag you out of the nearest open window.”
“Please, Your Grace. Nothing will be resolved until I am allowed to speak with my brother alone.”
“I shall not be cast out.”
Amelia’s heart clenched with guilt. She wanted him to stay, and yet…
“I am sorry, she whispered. “But this will be for the best. A few minutes of privacy is all I require.”
It took a moment for Nicholas to make up his mind before he left her side. He lingered a second in the doorway, looking hurt, before he closed it behind him. Amelia missed him immediately and glared at her brother.
In the moments that followed, Freddy crossed the room. He sat on the armrest of her chair and took her hands. His palms were rough with calluses. Far removed from the genteel lord who lived in her memory.
“He is right,” Freddy declared. “I do not know what Avon has said to convince you to remain here, but I must free you from him at once.”
“You have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I know you better than anyone.”
“You have been gone two years.”
Freddy’s mouth fell open in shock. “For your sake!”
He squeezed her hands, trying to shake some sense into her.
“Amelia, please. You must listen to me—”
“No, you must listen to me. His Grace is not the monster you want to believe him to be. He has been good and kind to me. I chose to become his wife of my own volition.”
“We both know you are not capable of making that choice for yourself.”
“How can you say that in one breath while claiming I was perfectly sane not a moment ago?”
“Because while I may know the truth of your condition, I refuse to believe that there is anyone in the world who would consider your case with equal reason. We have never met anyone—not even in the days of our mother and father—who saw you for what you really are. Just a woman, not a madwoman. Forgive me for believing that a man with a reputation as dark as night would be the one to change that.”
A terrible thought passed through Amelia’s mind.
Freddy’s return would be the perfect catalyst for their annulment. He would force the issue, pretend to bear witness to Amelia’s madness just to get her away from Nicholas. Within days, Amelia and Nicholas would be free of each other. Exactly as they had planned all along.
Except Amelia did not want to leave Nicholas.
That realization terrified her.
For years, she had dreamt about her brother’s return to England. Now that he was back, sitting so close to her she could see the specks of gold in his eyes, things were different. All she wanted was for this farce of a marriage to Nicholas to become something real.
Whatever she felt for Nicholas was real.
“Amelia, look at me,” Freddy said gently, stirring her.
“Yes, I began my journey back to England the moment I received the letter informing me of your marriage. But that is not the only reason why I have returned. These years have not been without fruit. I have found someone who may be able to help you.”
Amelia shook her head, returning her attention to her brother.
“That cannot be,” she murmured.
“It is true. I swear it. In Paris, there is a female doctor—perhaps the first of her kind. In her early youth, she was a midwife, and she has spent the intervening years studying the female condition. She has studied women like you who are subject to fits, diagnosed with this hysteria, but who are completely whole in spirit.”
“Except that I am not completely whole. My memory…”
“May very well be another symptom of whatever is causing these fits of yours.”
He licked his lips, looking through the window at the grounds beyond. She wondered what he was imagining.
“I am not equipped to explain her research properly. She speaks of a wearing out… The fits causing a fatigue that would…” He rubbed his brow.
“You must hear it from her. My account is inaccurate, useless. But I have seen the proof with my own eyes. And I believe in my heart of hearts that she can cure you.”
Amelia nodded, even as bile rose inexplicably in her throat.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I am saying, Amelia, that you must leave Oxford at once and come with me to Paris. Only there will we find the solution to your problem.”
“It will not be possible…”
“For there to be a cure?” Freddy smiled reassuringly. “It will be. I know it.”
That was not what Amelia had meant.
Perhaps there truly was a woman in France who could help her. She did not doubt the ability of the female doctor.
What she doubted was her ability to leave Nicholas.
How could she, when she had fallen in love with him?