Chapter 2
Two
Baron Buried After Eloping with a Blair By-blow
Dearest Reader,
Not one, nor two, but three sources have confirmed the nuptials of the first Baron of B to one of the scandalous sisters.
It is said that Miss C is the first of the by-blows to trap a lord.
All sources further revealed the marriage trap was set by the young miss, however, this author has it on good authority the opposite is true.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck during the couple’s return to London when they were beset upon by brigands of the worst order.
To the ton’s horror, the baron did not survive the attack as he attempted to protect his young bride.
The Earl of A came upon the scene in time to rescue the newly widowed baroness, who is reportedly convalescing at his country estate with the Countess of A and her exotic brood. One can only guess what the earl was doing on the road to Gretna Green.
—The Whispers of the Ton, London, March 5th, 1812
March 1813
He was dying. Simon Alexander Clark, Earl of Astley didn’t just feel it in his bones, he felt it in his gut, his fingers and his toes.
His death was imminent. Days, hours, he wasn’t certain he could mark the time.
He just knew death was kicking down his door and ready to seize his broken body and soul.
He should send word to his mother and siblings, but he didn’t want them to see him like this.
Or rather, he didn’t think he could bear their grief.
Watching others grieve was worse than experiencing it himself.
He thought of Caillen, broken and battered.
He’d attempted to save her, only to arrive moments too late to do anything but pick up the shattered pieces and force her to live, when she wanted nothing more than to slip into oblivion.
He hadn’t understood her desire to die, until now.
“Rise and Shine.”
Simon groaned and rubbed the expanse of his aching chest. His left arm was the one appendage on his entire body that seemed whole and hearty despite the wrappings around his wrists.
The raw skin, tattered and exposed from months of manacles, seemed to no longer plague him.
The rest of him bloody well hurt. He looked out his one good eye at the lavishly appointed bedchamber decorated in soft hues of blue and yellow.
It was not his. It did not belong to his mistress…
he’d let her go some time ago. Damn. He closed his eye.
“Rise and shine.”
If the most disagreeable female in his life was present, he was at least still breathing.
“There will be no rising or shining in the foreseeable future, Charlotte,” he whispered through cracked lips.
At least he thought he responded to her, his voice was so wobbly and frail, it may have belonged to a ghost.
“Bloody Nightingale,” Charlotte squawked loud enough to wake the damned dead.
“Go to bloody hell, Charlotte. I can’t even get out of this bed to piss.” Nor did he want to. It hurt too much.
“Then you should have rung the bell, and I would have helped you,” a different, more melodic female voice replied.
If he didn’t hurt so much, he would have begged her pardon.
He had no idea who the voice belonged to; a maid, a nurse, a bloody courtesan?
Now that was a manner in which a man could go to the afterlife with no regrets.
Ross would do that for him. A moment of clarity made him realize there had been a time when his best friend, The Duke of Ross, would have known exactly how Simon would want to enter the afterlife, with a woman on top of him, but the Duke of Ross was now married and devoted to his duchess.
Something so base as to hire a woman to ease Simon’s passing, however, would not be tolerated by the new duchess.
He sighed. Dying was proving to be a mundane process. As it was, he didn’t have the energy to express his regret or give a damn about the bloody shame of that admission. Instead, he asked in a weak whisper, “There’s a bell?”
“Next to your right hip so you don’t have to reach for it, remember?”
He felt, rather than saw, something being lifted from the bedding and then the softest touch he’d ever experienced picked up his injured hand that lay across his rather sunken abdomen and placed a cold, hard object in his palm.
He flinched at the chill of metal. The smooth sleekness triggering memories of manacles and chains.
He flung it across the room. Or at least he’d meant to throw the damned thing as far away from him as possible.
It landed at his opposite hip. The side on which he couldn’t move his arm.
“Bloody hell. Get it away from me,” he croaked.
“It’s all right,” she soothed, gently grasping his hand once more, her bare hand skimming his own with a light touch that was barely perceptible. “If you don’t care for the feel of metal, it’s completely understandable.”
To women of society, it wouldn’t be. She was obviously baser born, familiar with the haunting effects manacles could have on a man.
“Grasp hold of the bell’s handle.”
“Give it a tug, Sweet,” Charlotte interjected.
“A tug is not required, Charlotte,” he replied. As much as he wouldn’t mind this woman sending him off to the beyond with her smooth, gentle hands wrapped around his shaft, his body didn’t have the stamina. Blast his damned luck, that.
Her gentle grasp of another appendage, his arm, however, was difficult to accept because, despite her compassionate nature, he found touch to be too dangerous, too intimate, just too much everything.
He was glad death was coming. He didn’t think he could live without touch for years upon years.
He hadn’t grown up in the typical ton family.
His family was loud and boisterous and demonstrative with their affections. And he would never be that again.
“Who are you?” he asked. “A man should know the last person he speaks to on this earth. Charlotte doesn’t count.”
“You don’t recognize me?”
“I can’t seem to focus on anything. My eyes…they aren’t working properly.”
“Yes, that might be due to the swelling of your right eye and the broken blood vessels in your left. The doctor said we should put a compress on them from time to time.”
She moved away toward the wash basin and returned with a cold, wet cloth she laid over his eyes. Damn, but if that didn’t stir an upheaval in his nerve while feeling fabulous at the same time.
“My last nursemaid wasn’t quite so gentle,” he confessed.
“He was a brute of a man who had reveled in my pain.” He willed his mind not to drift back to that holy hell hole.
Yet still he flinched as she wiped his brow with a second cool, wet cloth.
“God, that feels wonderful. I’m so hot I feel like I’m on fire. ”
“I understand what it’s like to suffer at the hands of a cruel nursemaid. Can you take a sip of broth?”
“What’s the point?”
“You don’t wish to live?”
“I’m dying.” And he was damned tired of fighting it.
“So, you’re just going to let them win?” The damp cloth caressed his neck and then moved to his chest.
Whoever she was, she had far exceeded anyone else’s familiarity with his person.
Others who had attempted to soothe his fevered fits had sent him into embarrassing outbursts of shaking and lashing out at the barest of touches.
Despite his delirium, he remembered bits and pieces of his body’s reflexive response to touch and prayed it had all been part of the nightmare that had consumed too many days to count.
God forbid he had lashed out at his mother, his siblings—his youngest sister, who couldn’t hurt a bug.
He vaguely recalled swinging at someone like a two-year-old having a tantrum.
It had been unseemly, even if it was a dream.
Charlotte interrupted his musing. “Toss up her skirts.”
“Bloody hell, Charlotte. Shut up.” He remembered her. “Charlotte was an endless source of amusement once upon a time.”
“Would you like me to remove her from your chambers?” The woman asked in a hushed tone. At any other time, he would have jumped on Charlotte’s lewd suggestion. If the woman’s face was half as comely as her voice, he would gladly remove Charlotte himself.
“No.” How could he possibly explain to this angel standing over him and pulling his bedding down past his waist, that Charlotte gave him a type of comfort no one else could, despite her short and rather vulgar speech?
Besides, the doctor had been in to see him, and he’d heard his prognosis.
If the fever doesn’t break soon, we will lose him.
Hell, he felt the grave creeping up on him like a specter pulling on his ankle and refusing to let go. Yet, he had a mission to complete, and he’d be damned if the information would go with him to the grave. “I need to see…” What the hell was his name? “I need to speak with…”
“Once you are well you may have all the visitors you like.”
“No, damn you.” His voice sounded about as strong as an octogenarian on his death bed. He sure as hell felt like one. “You don’t understand. I must speak with…”
“All in due time. Take a sip of broth.”
He knocked the spoon away and was somewhat mollified when he heard it clatter on the floor. Hoorah for Astley! He can knock a spoon out of the hand of a bloody angel hell-bent on saving his sorry arse.
“Astley, you must eat,” she scolded in a gentle tone that wouldn’t sway any of the gentlemen in his debauched set to take the path of righteousness. His crowd would need to be scared out of their wits and tortured half to death. Like him.
“Fine. I’ll take a spoonful,” he rested a moment before he continued. “If you write a missive for me and deliver it in person.”
“Ten spoonfuls of broth and I’ll write the letter and have it delivered.”
“Five,” he breathed, “and you deliver the letter.”
“Five and I’ll have the letter delivered. I must stay and take care of you.” She brought the spoon to his cracked lips, but he compressed them together as the tip of the spoon nudged at the crease of his mouth. He would not relent. She had to be the one to ensure the letter was delivered.
He heard her release a sigh moments before he was about to lose his strength in their battle of wills. “Fine, I will write the letter and deliver it tomorrow.”
“Today.”
She moaned and he thought he rather liked the sound. “Fine, today. Do we have an agreement?”
“Ye—” Before he could finish his response, a spoon was shoved in his mouth, and warm tasteless broth went down his throat.
“That’s it, take it, Sweet,” Charlotte crowed, then nearly cackled with laughter.
“I don’t believe she’s quoting Wordsworth.”
“No. She’s quoting m—” Another spoonful was shoved in his mouth before he could finish.
“I don’t need to know about your private affairs, Astley.”
“You don’t want to hear the stories of my exploits?
” It wasn’t just Charlotte who ate up his legendary tales as if they were the nectar of life.
Everyone wanted to hear about his debauchery from the first seductive glance to the climax of the century.
Footmen leaned forward from their posts, maids dusted items three times over, lords and ladies openly flirted and brushed and petted for the chance to join in the depravity.
They all wanted a piece of the exotic Astley with his naturally sun-kissed golden skin and his bold, expression-filled dark eyes with the type of long lashes all the women craved.
He’d even had a few ladies request he kiss their quims with the blink of his eyelashes.
That had drawn several eyerolls from his former partner in crime, the Duke of Ross.
“No. I don’t.”
The clank of the spoon warned him of an imminent spoonful. He took it before replying, “You’re the first.”
“And probably the last.”
Yes, she probably was. He wondered about the stories that would be told at his funeral. Dear God, they wouldn’t subject his mother to the tales, would they?
“Stroke it hard, Sweet,” Charlotte mocked.
“Charlotte, shut—”
Another spoonful shut him up. By the speed in which it had descended upon him, he was quite certain the woman was punishing him for Charlotte’s filthy mouth. He supposed he deserved that.
“Before you shove that last bite in my mouth, I must insist you obtain pen and paper.” And give him a chance to digest the disgusting broth before he gave it back to her in a display of abysmal proportions.
“Take the broth first.”
He sealed his lips and shook his head.
“You look like a two-year-old refusing to take his medicine.”
He shrugged. There were six children whose futures depended on him delivering this message.
She huffed, her warm breath on his cheek making him realize she’d been closer than he’d imagined.
“Please, it’s important.” His plea was met by silence. He suspected she was gauging the sincerity and the lucidity of his claim.
“Very well.” He heard her move across the room and set his dishes upon the sideboard. The next thing he became aware of was the scrape of a chair and her skirts swishing at his side. He hadn’t been aware of falling asleep until the crinkle of paper made him realize she had pen and paper.
“Are you ready?” He asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Harder, my lord,” his parrot squawked.
“Shut up, Charlotte,” they said in unison and for the first time in months, he smiled.