Maggie turned very slowly and gave the earl a deep curtsy. “My lord, who the hell is she?”
“Don’t you twit my nose, girl, or I’ll—”
“That is quite enough, Marcus. Actually, I am here, but for just the next moment, then Maggie and I are away from Chase Park.”
“You aren’t going anywhere, damn you.”
“But you were quite clear in your wishes. You wanted me gone immediately, but were afraid your consequence would suffer if it became known that you kicked out your pregnant wife in the middle of the night.”
“It wasn’t the bloody middle of the night. Now—”
“Thus, in the spirit of bonhomie, I waited until this morning. Good-bye, Marcus.”
She turned on her heel, her chin in the air, as regal as the damned duchess he’d named her so long ago. Then, she tripped on one of the valises and went crashing down on her side.
He reached her in an instant, hauling her into his arms. “Are you all right? Say something, you damned scourge.”
“I’m all right. How very embarrassing to be felled in the midst of such an excellent exit.”
“Yes, that’s what happens when your chin is in the air. However, I won’t laugh, at least not just yet. Now heed me, Duchess. You aren’t going anywhere. This is your home and here you’ll stay.” He shook her. “Do you understand me?”
“I’m not certain, Marcus. Perhaps you’d best shake me again. It makes me think more clearly.”
He hauled her to her feet and stared down at her, his look as black and brooding as one of the quixotic Lord Byron’s heroes.
“Why is Chase Park now my home? Why are you singing a different tune this morning? Truly, I don’t understand you, my lord.”
“It is your home until I tell you it is not, and even then perhaps it will still be your home, as arguments follow from the night unto the morning and things change in the hours in between. Do you now understand?”
“I will never understand you.”
“I am a man. Men are not easily fathomed. Our feelings aren’t sitting in the middle of a plate for all to comment upon and taste, not like you bloody women.”
Maggie snorted behind him.
“Oh dear,” the Duchess said in that tone of voice he now recognized very well, and he let her go without any hesitation whatsoever.
She ran out the door, down the deep wide marble steps, past a startled gardener who dropped his spade, fell to her knees, and vomited in the rosebushes.
Maggie looked him up and down. “You shook her on purpose to make her sick. I spent a good twenty minutes brushing her cloak from all her trips to that wretched abbey where she grubbed around on her knees looking for that wretched treasure, and now just look. Black dirt, worms, and God knows what else.”
“I did not shake her for that purpose. However, the result just might be a dollop of common sense in that woman’s brain of hers. Sampson! Ah, there you are, just behind me. You’re becoming a lurker, just like Spears and Badger. Have her ladyship’s valises removed back to her room. Do not delay. Once she is on her feet again, her brain just might be swayed again to perversity.”
Maggie snorted.
Marcus went outside into a beautiful summer morning. The sky was a light blue with white clouds dotted here and there, the smell of cut grass heavy in the air, and his wife was retching on her knees in the rosebushes.
He waited until she was done, then picked her up in his arms and carried her back upstairs, not pausing to say anything at all to any of her cohorts. He passed Aunt Wilhelmina, who raised a brow and said, “Perhaps she has finally cocked it?”
“No, she hasn’t. Good day to you too, Aunt Wilhelmina.”
“Mama!” he heard Ursula say. “Really, you shouldn’t say such awful things. She’s the duchess and she’s the mistress here.”
“I? I said nothing at all untoward. I merely wondered if she had merely knocked herself up with all her activity.”
“I could do better than that,” Marcus said under his breath. She wanted to smile at that but she felt too wretched. “I don’t like this, Marcus.”