Chapter 12
Twelve
Elizabeth gave up any pretense of trying to sleep.
It was very early, but she rang for her maid and dressed.
Then tried to keep busy. She read, but after her eyes slid past the same paragraph four times, she put the book aside.
She thought she might write a letter, but didn’t know to whom.
She’d received a note from Arabella Norcroft’s mother, requesting that she “cease importuning” her daughter.
The cool formality of the words had taken her breath away.
She wished Arabella were here now, with her warm brown eyes and her teasing good humor.
They might have found some way to laugh over this whole hideous situation.
Though there wasn’t anything remotely funny about her brother dueling with the man she…
Elizabeth paused, uncertain exactly how to complete her thought.
Her chest felt suddenly tight.
She couldn’t breathe.
She needed to walk somewhere. She needed to talk to someone.
She ventured down the stairs into the parlor. Alix was sitting alone, methodically tearing linen into strips and laying them in a basket at her feet. From the size of the pile, she’d made enough to bandage the entire household twice over. Nevertheless, Elizabeth offered to help.
“It is not necessary,” Alix said, her gaze making Elizabeth feel as if she were an ogre, too large and clumsy for the room.
“I am disturbing you?” she asked, her voice rising in a question.
“Not at all,” Alix replied. She turned her eyes toward the window that overlooked the front steps of Moreham House.
“They haven’t returned…” Elizabeth ventured.
“Your brother is still out,” Alix said stiffly.
Elizabeth cursed herself silently for being so insensitive. “I think perhaps I shall return to my room.”
Alix nodded, her eyes still fixed on the glass.
They both have to return safe and unharmed, Elizabeth told herself as she mounted the stairs. Each footstep seemed to echo: Rafe, James, Rafe, James. Where are they now? What are they doing at this precise moment? Are they hurt? And why, oh why, did she have to feel so hideously helpless?
As she reached the top of the stairs she heard the front door open, footsteps, and men’s voices.
She heard Alix crying out Rafe’s name, the sound hopeful and yet terrified.
Elizabeth started down the stairs two at a time.
When she reached the final landing she stopped, staring at the sight below.
Rafe’s bloodied arms were wrapped tightly around Alix.
Her hands were on his face. She seemed to be laughing and crying and kissing him all at once.
Immediately footmen and maids surrounded the couple, expressing concern and anxious to help.
Louisa was there, too, with the pug worrying the hem of her gown. Elizabeth didn’t know where to look; she didn’t know what to say. Her brother was alive, and despite the blood he didn’t seem to be seriously hurt.
James. What of James? Was the blood his?
Was he hurt? Was he even alive? She wanted to scream the questions, but she didn’t dare.
She pressed her lips together and hurried back up the stairs to her room.
She crawled under the bed and pulled her limbs together tightly as if she might somehow vanish completely.
“You are hurt.” Alix kissed Rafe again, her lips salty with her tears and his sweat and blood.
Not ready to ask how close she might have come to losing him, she said between kisses, “I have a bath waiting upstairs, warm water, fresh soap, and bandages.” A weak laugh escaped her.
“Enough bandages to wrap you from head to toe.”
He loosened his embrace. “Did you think me such a poor swordsman, my love?”
“I did not know what else to do…”
“You did the right thing.” His hazel eyes were warm.
“There is nothing I would welcome more than to shed these ragged clothes and step into a warm bath. And while I do not think I need quite so much bandaging as you suggest, there are some rather nasty cuts on my hands and arms which need to be tended to.”
Jervis, who had elbowed his way through the clustered servants, held out a handful of gray fluff. “I’ve got a good bit of lint to pack them gashes with.”
“Thank you, Jervis, but I think I shall surrender myself to my wife’s more tender ministrations.”
“If you say so.” Jervis’s mouth quirked skeptically. “But I’ve some salve with bear grease. Works wonders, won’t hardly leave a scar…”
“Sell them to James Dinsmore, his need is the greater.”
Jervis made as if to spit, then caught himself, muttering, “Sooner use ’em on a pig.”
“He’s alive, then?” Alix asked. “You didn’t kill him?”
Rafe shook his head.
“That’s good,” she said. “Elizabeth will be relieved to hear it.”
He glanced around, looking for his sister. “Where is she?”
“I think perhaps she is embarrassed, after all the trouble she’s caused.”
“Perhaps.” He looked as if the last bit of his energy had suddenly drained away.
“But I don’t want to talk of Elizabeth now.
I’m sorely in need of that bath you mentioned.
” His arm around her waist, he allowed her to guide him up the stairs.
But he paused as they reached the first landing and bent his lips to her ear.
“And after you’ve tended to my wounds, I can think of some other parts of my body that would appreciate your attention. ”
James’s blood splattered the inlaid marble floor of the entrance hall like obscene raindrops.
Lord Grenville and the surgeon held him upright.
Every item of clothing, every visible part of him, appeared covered in blood.
Anne screamed when she caught sight of him, a horrified wail that spiraled upward.
“Anne,” Grenville said sharply, “I know he looks alarming, but you must get hold of yourself. He needs your help.”
She nodded. Inhaled deeply. Gestured to a door to her left.
“Take him into the dining room… Put him on the table.” She turned to a footman.
“Tell the kitchen we need water, lots of hot water, bowls, and clean linen. We’ll need a sharp knife, too, to cut his clothes off.
And tell his valet to have his bedchamber ready. ”
The footman stood, waiting to see if her instructions were complete.
Anne scowled at him. “Are you waiting for my brother to bleed out on the floor? Off with you!”
She turned her attention back to James. “Is he conscious? Can he walk?”
“A little,” the surgeon said. “I’ve given him laudanum for the pain.”
Together they carried James into the dining room.
A maid hurried to remove the silver candelabras from the long mahogany table as they lifted him onto it.
More maids appeared carrying bowls of water and linen.
Anne worked with the surgeon to remove James’s clothes, her face tightening as each sword cut was exposed.
“Lord Moreham,” she hissed at Lord Grenville, “tell me he is dead.”
“He is not.”
“Then tell me he suffers as badly as my poor brother.”
Grenville did not answer. He turned to a footman, motioning the man to remove the pile of rags from the table that had been James’s waistcoat and shirt.
“Is the earl wounded?” she demanded.
“He is, but not so severely as James. He has had his satisfaction, Anne. The thing is done.”
She glanced up at him, her hands deep in a bowl of red-stained water. “Oh no, my lord, the thing is not done. I have not had my satisfaction.”
Frowning, Grenville opened his mouth to respond, but Anne’s attention was turned elsewhere.
“You clumsy fool!” she snapped at the surgeon, who had pinched the flesh of James’s lacerated cheek together and was preparing to stitch it with heavy black thread. “You will scar him forever!”
The surgeon shot a look at Lord Grenville, an expression that clearly sought His Lordship’s assistance with this grief-maddened woman.
Finding none, he turned back to Anne, his words respectful, but his tone condescending.
“Your Ladyship, the skin of the face is most delicate; there is no help for it—your brother will be scarred.” He pinched James’s swollen flesh more tightly together and bent with his needle.
“Stop! My brother is the most handsome man in London. I will not have you mar him.”
“There is nothing anyone can do, my lady. The wound must be closed or else it will fester. And then I must bleed him to make sure his blood is balanced and clean. Time is of the essence. I beg of you.” Still not releasing James’s cheek, the surgeon stabbed at the wound with his needle again. “Let me work.”
“I will close the wound,” Anne said coldly. “You will leave.” She turned to one of the maids, who was emptying a bowl of dirty water into a bucket on the floor. “Fetch my embroidery silk from my bedchamber and a packet of my sharpest needles.”
The surgeon stretched his hand as if to protest, but Anne was no longer looking at him. Nodding at footman who had stepped forward to remove the bucket, she said, “You may toss that out. But first, toss him.”
He stared up at her face, a study in pale concentration.
Which pain was worse? The cuts of the sword or his sister’s slow, careful stitching?
Pink thread on a silver needle. He wanted to tell her it was all right, she needn’t work so hard; but his lips were numb from the laudanum.
He slipped into unconsciousness dreaming of the scar, a blazing red line against the blackness of his eyelids…
In the weeks that followed, as he lay feverish in his bed, his hands would drift upward trying to touch the wound, but the linen swathing his face and hands made it impossible.
If he believed his laudanum dreams, half of his face had been ripped apart.
He knew it wasn’t true, but in his darker hours, the poetry of the notion appealed to him. He pictured one side of his face hideous, one side beautiful, one side his past, the other his future, one side an image of who people thought he was, the other who he knew himself to be.
When at last the bandages were removed, his hands went to it immediately.
His fingers explored the ridge of skin that curved from the middle of his cheek to just below his eyebrow.
It felt like less than he’d imagined. Less than he deserved.
He would not look at it. He ordered the mirrors removed from his rooms. Anne interpreted this and his reluctance to leave the house as an act of wounded vanity.
“It’s not so bad, James,” she said one morning as they sat breakfasting in her chambers. “Truly it’s not. If you’d just look…”
“I’d rather not,” he replied, attempting to smile, but finding his mouth only crooked on one side.
She pressed her lips together, then tried another approach. “You look rather dashing, you know. A bit dangerous… The ladies will find you irresistible, I’m sure.”
He fingered the scar. “Ironic, when you consider that’s what earned me this pretty souvenir.”
“Moreham’s perfidy caused that scar—don’t ever forget that, James.”
He smiled his crooked smile. “You needn’t worry that I will forget my scars or how I came by them.”
“Precisely,” she said. “And this is why you should take a look. You’ll see; it’s not all that bad. And then you can begin to go out and about again.”
“Take up where I left off, as it were?”
“Exactly.”
James had no desire to take up where he’d left off.
But he knew if he explained, she’d misinterpret his meaning, and launch into another tirade against Moreham and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth. He resisted the urge to touch the scar.
A permanent reminder, Rafe had said, that she wasn’t for the likes of him.
“Is Elizabeth Harcrest still making the rounds?” The question slipped out before he realized he’d said it aloud.
“You cannot imagine how long I’ve been waiting for you to ask that question.
” Anne’s lips curved in a satisfied smile.
She slid her breakfast plate forward and leaned across the tea table.
“Elizabeth did venture out a few times after her brother made his ridiculous attempt to restore her honor, a few card parties here and there, the odd small assembly. Out of respect for Moreham, no one cut her directly, but it was clear that no one of any real standing would exchange more than pleasantries with her.”
She pointed to the coffeepot and James filled her cup.
“Of course, the Davenports rallied around her, and a few other unimportant people. Louisa even made several appearances with her, stayed the entire evening without pleading a headache, can you imagine? And Moreham’s appalling mother-in-law, of course.
” She made a noise of distaste. “You should have seen the woman’s gown the other night.
Exquisite fabrics. I would love to know where she gets them.
But the colors—tangerine and dark purple! —even the memory makes me shudder.”
“Elizabeth?” James prompted, offering her a porcelain pitcher of cream.
“Elizabeth,” she poured a dollop into her cup and stirred it with a silver spoon. “Well, of course, nothing Moreham can do will erase what people saw at our ball.”
“Or stop their talk.”
Anne pointedly ignored the sarcasm in his voice. “Elizabeth tried to hold her head up; I’ll give her credit for that. But the sparkle from that diamond is clearly gone. I vow, she looked nearly as drab as that wren-friend of hers, Arabella… I cannot remember her surname.”
“Norcroft,” he supplied, familiar with the girl who’d spent so much time at Elizabeth’s side. “She’s not so drab, not her conversation at least, and she’s got rather nice eyes.”
“If you say so.” She waved dismissively. “But her family is certainly nothing to speak of…”
“Elizabeth looked pale?”
“All the pink muslin in the world couldn’t create the illusion of roses in her cheeks now.
And her gowns just hang on her. You’d think with all their money, the Harcrests might have a modiste do something about that, tighten the waist, add a bit of flounce…
though I suppose that could accentuate how gaunt she’s become. ”
“Has she fallen ill?” James struggled to keep his voice as unconcerned as his sister’s.
“How should I know?” Anne leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee contentedly.
“Don’t be coy, Anne; it doesn’t become you. You know everything anyone of consequence does in London.”
“In London, yes.” She smiled over the rim of her cup. “But she is no longer in London.”
“Where has she gone?” he demanded.
“The countryside.” Anne lifted her cup from its flowered saucer. “I do believe Lady Elizabeth Harcrest’s season is officially over.”