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“He did,” Lizzy nodded. “The lady’s father is to join his Grace here in London, where they will take up the cause in unison.”
Caroline could not help but allow hope to swell in her breast. Her father was coming here? She could not speak with the joy of it. Her heart seemed to fill her throat. At last, she asked if the baron was to reside in this house, holding her breath while she awaited the response. Please, she prayed, please let her father come to the duke’s home. All he would need do was lay eyes upon her and she would be saved.
“Of course not!” Lizzy giggled, dashing Caroline’s hopes. “He has his own townhome that they will be using as their base of operations. I overheard his Grace telling Mrs. Reilly that any summons from the baron that comes to the house must be given to him immediately, no matter the hour. They have no idea when they might have word, if there is any to be had at all.”
Caroline pondered her friend’s words in silence. This must mean that the thugs would be offering her up before long. It had to. She could almost taste the freedom that now lay only just out of reach.
“Do you think that the duchess is alive?” Lizzy asked out of the blue.
“I think so,” Caroline nodded but gave no reason as to why.
“I do too,” Lizzy said with a yawn. “Although I cannot imagine how. They’d stand to make a small fortune for her return if she was taken. If she is alive,” Lizzy’s voice was a mere whisper on the wind. “She must have had a frightful last few months.”
Caroline rolled toward the wall as she heard Lizzy drift off into her slumber.
She did not know what to make of the news.
Was the duke really searching for her out of the goodness of his own heart? If so, then that would mean that he did not know who she was. Did not know that she was truly alive and beneath his own roof. Why then would he not have sent her letter? His reasoning escaped her and infuriated her at the same time. If he were naïve to the corruption then why would he have lied? Or, perhaps he knew to thwart her from a criminal sense, something entirely unrelated, but did not know her exact identity. Perhaps he was not aware that the untoward goings on in his own home were somehow related to the death of his father. Or, perhaps they weren’t related at all except for the fact that the players involved had the misfortune of being one and the same. It was all so muddled in her mind that she could make neither head nor tail of it.
Or, she allowed the suspicious part of her mind to take over her thoughts as the darkness settled around her, perhaps he did know who she was and was using this offer as a ploy to keep the baron close and to head him off the trail. That would explain why they had chosen to base their search from her father’s townhome. That would explain why he had lied about sending her letter. He was a smart enough man to wrest covert control of the situation from whatever angle, if he wished it. And to think that she had trusted him.
Her mind ached as it threw the reverse back into her thoughts, spinning and twisting and confusing herself as she still could not decide if the man was evil. Even if it did make sense that her father would want all communication to pass through his own hands, even if the duke was attempting to play a supportive role out of honor and duty, even if he thought that the quiet of the baron’s house was safer than his own, a household that he professed not to trust, she still felt that every excuse in the world did not repair her anger against him. He had told her that he would send the letter and he had not. He had lied and fooled her under the guise of trust. He had prolonged her suffering, and her father’s misery, when it all could have been sorted long ago.
Caroline had thought that Lord Edward’s declaration to Lady Blackwell would have meant that he would leave her be, but she had been wrong. True, he was more discrete in his efforts, but he had not relented. Now, instead of making a show of seeking her out, he merely waited for the natural crossing of their paths to whisper compliments into her ear or to brush a hand over her feminine form. She had wanted to tell him that she knew about his affair with Lady Lydia, had overheard his promises, but had been too afraid to enrage him. If she had any hope that the threat would quell his desire then she might have. Instead, she could only hope that he revealed all to his brother in a timely fashion but the opportunity had yet to present itself. The elder had been out of the house more often than not and the brothers had had no reason to cross paths, let alone have a deep and life-altering discussion about who commanded the heart of one beautiful lady. Once Lord Edward was fully committed to Lady Blackwell, Caroline thought he might pull back on some of his dalliances. Until that time she was to bear the full brunt of his misplaced attentions.
She wanted to throttle him. She wanted to lash out and lay him bare for all to see what a despicable creature was hidden beneath his angelic features. Never in her life had she been treated thus by a male, and she was resolute that once the protection of her title was reinstated, she would break any man who behaved with such depravity.
“Come, come,” he would whisper. “You cannot mean to say that you prefer my brother’s company to mine.” Yes, he had heard that she had been spending time in the study, but no longer. “How you could stomach his company for so long is beyond my comprehension. I am glad that you have seen reason and given up the shield. Yes, I know you were hiding from me, you minx.” He would laugh as if her actions had merely increased his desire for her. He had taken the move as if she had wanted to play at the chase, as if she enjoyed it. “All of the Ton thinks Robert such an honorable and reasonable man, but he is odious… grotesque. He was merely bland before. Now… none of the gentler sex could ever bear that for more than a short while.” He gave a repulsed shiver and gestured at his own swoon-worthy features. “Honestly, there is nothing to compare. I could filch any miss of any station from his company if I desired. All you have to do is take one long look at him and you will come running into my arms.” He had winked and implied that her falling out with the duke must indicate that she was warming to him. Caroline assured him that it did not but he would not be swayed. A gentle pat to her backside told her that he had staked his claim whether she willed it or no.
She had been glad to learn that he would be away in the coming days; lest she would have had to strangle him. She surely would not have succumbed, even though she knew a noblewoman had little recourse, as she had been shown with her marriage to the elder duke. A maid had even less. She shuddered and vowed to stay out of his way.
CHAPTER19
The duke had awoken on the morning following his return with a fever.
“I told his Grace that the ride to Heatherton Hall in that storm would catch him his death of cold,” Mrs. Reilly had grumbled as she thrust a tray of crusty bread and steaming soup into Caroline’s hands. “Make sure he eats this. He’ll need his strength with the chill nights we’ve been having. You hurry on up; I’ll have Matthew bring up another load of wood when he has returned from the butcher.”
“Why me?” Caroline had asked. She had not meant to be rude. It was only that she was still in the middle of mopping the trails of ice and mud that had been brought in through the servant’s entrance. The task was unending. As soon as she thought herself finished another delivery would be made or another servant would have returned from some errand and the floor would be ruined yet again. She had been mopping for days and still had a mountain of mending that awaited her nimble fingers. She did not have the time to spare to tend to the duke day and night.
“Why me?” Mrs. Reilly had mocked. “Your impertinence is astounding, Emily Baker. Did no one ever teach you not to question your betters?” Caroline had secretly thought that she had only few and far between encountered true superiors before, but that was not something that she could point out in this moment. “YOU will serve his Grace until he is removed from his sickbed. YOU will do nothing else until he has recovered. YOU will do everything I ask in silence and without question. You will do so because I have told you that is what you will do! Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Caroline dipped her head and turned to take the tray up to the third-floor bedroom.
“If you want to know why I chose you over the others,” Mrs. Reilly said to her retreating back, “it’s because you are more trouble than you are worth.” She ticked the following explanations off on her fingers. “James has gone with Lord Edward and cannot be called back to sit by a bedside when his time is better spent making use of his skills. You are well aware that he has been serving both of the gentlemen until we can procure another valet for his Grace and I haven’t a man to spare at the moment. What about the maids, you wonder? Well, the others don’t put salt in the sugar bowl. They know not to place the fish next to the soup at the dining table and they certainly don’t slop precious buckets of hot water on the stairs when drawing a bath! Honestly, sometimes I wonder if it were possible for you to be any more backward.”
Caroline merely turned, muttered her apology and continued up the stairs.
“If you can at the very least manage to feed his Grace and make him somewhat comfortable, I shall be forever in shock,” the voice wafted up the stairs behind her. “Lord in the heavens, even a child can serve a sickbed. All I am asking for is some peace,” the woman grunted to herself as she turned off at the second floor. “A few days without a catastrophe. Is that too much to ask?”
She was still complaining below when Caroline reached the third landing. It was true that she had done all of those things. They had been honest mistakes, and she did feel as if she had improved a significant amount since her arrival. Still, she had to admit that she made a terrible maid. If Mrs. Reilly had not been forced to take her on, or desperate to fill the position, then she would have been tossed out into the snow-covered streets weeks ago.
She arrived at the door to the duke’s bedchamber just as the physician was making his exit.
“His fever has broken for now but he will need rest,” she was informed. The older gentleman made a point to express that under no circumstances was his patient to leave the room until he was fully recovered. “I’ve cared for the family since the duke was a child,” he explained. “I know he is far too like to pretend that all is well far before he is recovered. He needs rest and I don’t care what else he claims needs to be done; it can wait.” He then informed Caroline that he would be away for several days attending to the delivery of his seventh grandchild. He would check in with the duke upon his return in a week’s time. Caroline listened carefully to his instructions as to the care that she was meant to provide. Mrs. Reilly had been right in the assumption that Caroline could manage a sickbed, not because it was so basic a task that even she could not make a mess of it, but because she had served at her mother’s bedside for all those weeks that the lady had clung on to the edge of life. As the physician seemed to have little concern that duke’s bout was to be treated by anything other than a few days of well-deserved rest, she did not fret over the matter. Instead, she took her tray within and was greeted by the sight of the duke peering out from a set of barely opened lids.
“I can see that you are awake,” she said with a laugh that could not be helped.
“I was meant to be sleeping,” he grumbled but sat up against the mound of pillows and wrinkled his nose at a vial that he had produced from beneath the covers. He placed it on the bedside table and pushed it as far away from his person as could be managed without it tumbling over the edge. “I was made to promise that I would take the tonic so that I would drift off before he could even exit the room.”
