AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do that,” she said, pushing the curtain aside and preparing to depart.
“Oh, and Miss Harpy,” he called after her.
She glanced back, eyebrows raised in question.
“I’m most definitely not a child. ”
He hadn’t told her his name. In the week he stayed at the hospital under Mother Mary Clement’s watchful eye he stubbornly insisted his memory was gone, even as his body grew stronger. When she came in she would go straight to him, to reassure herself that he was getting better, and then she would do her rounds, leaving him for last. He was her reward for the onerous work she did. He looked at her as if she were a mixture of the Madonna and the harpy he’d likened her to, and she chivvied him like he was her younger brother. No, that wasn’t true, because she’d been uncomfortably aware of the niggling pinch of longing he brought out in her.
All would have been well if he hadn’t developed another fever, this one stronger and more virulent than the first. She’d seen it happen in other patients, seemingly strong and recovering. The hospital was a dangerous place, full of illness and disease, and the patients were already in a weakened condition from whatever had brought them there in the first place. It came over him swiftly, and by nightfall, when she was scheduled to leave, he was delirious.
Mother Mary Clement had looked in, clucking beneath her breath. “It’s a sad case, Emma,” the old woman said. “I had hoped he would make
it. ”
Emma hadn’t looked away from him. “I’ll stay here for a bit if you don’t mind,” she said in a quiet voice. “Do what I can for him. ”
“Wake him up if possible. I assign the dying to you, simply so they can see what’s worth living for. Remind him of why he wants to be alive. ”
She did look up at her then. The nun knew everything she needed to know about Emma’s history, and she didn’t judge her. Mother Mary Clement nodded briskly. “I’ll leave him to you. Call me if you need anything. Otherwise there’s naught we can do. Either he’ll make it through or he won’t. ”
And she’d left them there, together in the gathering darkness, the moans of the sick and dying around them, her young soldier still and silent in his narrow bed.
It was around midnight when she crawled onto the cot with him. He’d begun to shiver, and she put her arms around him, cradling him against her breast like the baby she knew she would never have. He clung to her like a drowning man, and she closed her eyes and slept, knowing that when she awoke he’d be dead, but that at least he would die in her arms, loved, when she never thought she would love any man.
And indeed he was gone the next morning. But not to his heavenly reward, Mother Mary Clement informed her. His family had been putting out inquiries, and they’d finally managed to track him down. They’d only just removed him to his family home while she’d slept on, blissfully unaware. She’d been so exhausted she hadn’t even felt him being taken from her arms, and Mother Mary Clement had let her sleep on.
There was always the chance that he was the scion of an industrialist, or perhaps a highborn bastard. Someone not completely beyond her touch, who looked at her and understood what she had been and hadn’t cared.
But no, life couldn’t be that generous. He was Captain Brandon Rohan. Lord Brandon Rohan, no less, brother to a viscount, son to a marquess. Someone so far out of reach that it would have been better for her if he’d died that night. Then, at least, he would have stayed hers.
Author: Anne Stuart
And now the vagaries of fate had brought this family back into her life. Her darling boy was no longer a wounded soldier, but from what Melisande had discovered it appeared that his sickness had gone far deeper, burrowing into his soul. It broke her heart, when she thought she was invulnerable.
22
Benedick couldn’t rid himself of a strange feeling of melancholy as he dressed that evening for the Worthingham’s ball, one he ascribed simply to the unsettling effect of having such a whirlwind as Melisande Carstairs thrust herself into his life. He was rid of her now, well rid of her, and her twisted ankle had been a blessing. He had been growing closer and closer to seducing her, and that would have been a very bad idea, indeed, for both of them.
He pondered that as Richmond helped him into his perfectly tailored coat. A widow was considered fair game, and sooner or later someone would break through the wall of cheerful unconcern she’d built around herself. He’d done a great deal to shatter the foundations of that fortress—all it needed was an enterprising man to breach it.
He frowned. Not, for God’s sake, a useless fribble like Wilfred Hunnicut. She ought to have better taste than that. He cast his mind through his acquaintances, trying to envision the perfect man for her. She was someone who needed marriage, and a firm hand to control her more extravagant starts. Someone who understood and sympathized with her charitable work, not someone who’d take advantage of the more willing members of the gaggle behind her back.
“Your lordship?” Richmond’s voice was anxious. “Is there something wrong?”
Benedick stepped away from him, picking up his neckcloth. “Why should something be wrong?” he said irritably, turning toward the mirror to tie it. And then he caught sight of his face. He looked positively thunderous.
He could remember his father looking just that way, when confronted with some injustice or wrong. He’d looked that way when they’d all travelled to the Lake District to see Miranda’s firstborn and to prove they could tolerate the villain she’d fallen in love with and chosen to marry.
He was feeling the same way toward any of the men he pictured marrying Charity Carstairs, which was absurd. She could hardly match his sister’s wretched choice in the Scorpion. Lucien de Malheur wasn’t your ordinary scoundrel, and there was no one imaginable who could reach his depths of depravity.
Except, of course, the mysterious members of the Heavenly Host, and whoever among them was guiding them into such treacherous waters.
He composed his face into his usual saturnine calm, tying his neckcloth deftly. At least the interfering, disturbing Lady Carstairs was out of the way for the next fortnight, and he could concentrate on the Host without worrying about her. Without being forced to endure her proximity. Without being tempted.
Worthingham House took up a good half a block on Grosvenor Square, a massive edifice built at the end of the last century to demonstrate the Worthinghams’ consequence in society and political power, a consequence that was still in order. He doubted the duke or duchess had anything to do with the Host, but the guest list for their annual ball was massive, and no one dared ignore it, lest they be considered disrespectful and find themselves on a decidedly lower rung of the social order as punishment. Which meant most or all members of the Host would be in attendance, and perhaps growing giddy, and reckless with the night of the full moon fast approaching. He’d even done a bit of research that afternoon in the massive library his parents had acquired. In the Old Religion they were nearing the festival of Imbolc, festival of the maiden, though he was relatively certain his pagan ancestors hadn’t performed rape and blood sacrifice as part of their celebration. He knew from his years at Oxford that men could twist anything to their own meaning, and he’d even remembered a class studying myth and folklore, including the Old Religion. There’d been several of his acquaintance taking that class, though for the life of him he couldn’t remember which ones. It had been more than twenty years ago and while it had fascinated him at the time, he hadn’t thought of it since. Was the leader of the Heavenly Host one of his erstwhile classmates?
Maybe seeing his schoolmates tonight would jog his memory. Though in fact that same class would have been held other years, and younger students, older students would have learned of the same ritual, been able to take and pervert them to their own use.
