The Wyndham Legacy (Legacy 1)

“Of course not. He’s dour and brooding and surely he would hate this glorious day we’re enjoying. He prefers menacing heaths liberally strewn with rocks and gullies. He’s a man of moods and silences. He’s dangerous and looks it. I quite like him.”

She laughed and took his hand. He said easily, “Just don’t let the Duchess see you holding my hand. She’s very possessive, you know, quite jealous really. I would expect her to slit my throat if she saw this. I’m by far too young to croak it yet, don’t you think?”

“Oh! You’re dreadful, Marcus. The Duchess is more a lady than the queen.”

“Given that our dear queen is the farthest thing from a lady I’ve ever seen, I’ll give you that one. About the Duchess, Ursula, she’s already tried to do me in with a bridle, a riding crop, and her left boot. Yes, that sod brother of yours was right, she did get in several good wallops with her riding boot. She sat down on the drive, pulled off her boot, and ran at me like a banshee. I think a pistol is next on her list of weapons. Thank God she never carries one with her, else I might be underground with a tombstone over my head.”

She laughed and laughed, then skipped away, calling over her shoulder, “You probably deserved all of it. I’m going to the small brook just yon. Please don’t tell my mother you’ve seen me.”

Had he ever been so young? Laughter bubbling out freely, without restraint? Yes, he had, but then Mark and Charlie had drowned that summer, and he’d lost his youth.

He remounted Stanley and rode back to the stables. He was met in the entrance hall with pandemonium.

His friend, North Nightingale, stood on the bottom of the wide staircase inside the house. In his arms he held the Duchess. She was unconscious or dead. Marcus yelled like a wild man.

Marcus, frantic with worry, knew she was in pain, knew she was weak and afraid, and thus said in a voice as soft as a lone raindrop pattering against a window, “Tell me all you can remember, Duchess. Try to remember what you were doing before you reached the stairs.”

“I was going to have breakfast, nothing more, Marcus. I was at the top of the stairs. I remember thinking I saw something from the corner of my eye and I turned. That’s all I remember. When I woke up this strange man was holding me and his face was whiter than the paint on the wall.”

“That white-faced gentleman was Lord Chilton. I forgot to tell you he just might pay me a visit. You didn’t meet him in Paris, but he was there. I will tell him you described him as strange, it serves him right. That should elicit at least a noncommittal grunt from him.”

He’d spoken lightly, but inside, his belly was cramping with the fear he’d felt when he saw her. He remembered yelling, beyond himself in those few moments before he knew that she wasn’t dead. He didn’t realize he was squeezing her hand so very hard until she groaned.

“Damnation,” he said, and began to massage her fingers. “I’ve had Trevor fetch the physician from Darlington. This one isn’t a butcher like that wretched Tivit. He’s young and he knows all the newest things.” He frowned. “Perhaps he’s too young. I don’t want a young man looking at you or touching you. He might simply pretend to be objective, but I can’t imagine such a thing, not with a young man and you being so damned beautiful and vulnerable.

“What a bloody coil, and it’s all your fault. I don’t want to worry about you either. I have it, I’ll simply stay and watch every move he makes. If he succumbs to you, I’ll thump him into the floor.”

“Thank you, Marcus, for wanting to protect me from a young man’s possible lustful advances, but I’m all right, truly. I wish you hadn’t sent for him. Now he’ll poke and prod about and make me drink vile potions. It’s only my head that aches so abominably.”

“You fell down the stairs. You hit other parts of yourself than just your head, which is so hard I really don’t have too much worry about that. Do you forget you’re pregnant? You could have harmed yourself. You could have done some sort of damage to yourself. You will obey me in this.”

“Why would you care?”

“You ask me a question like that again, and I’ll strangle you. I’ll take my own riding boot to you. I don’t want you hurt, is that so difficult for you to comprehend?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Yes, it is,” she said, then turned her face away. He wanted to blister her ears, but held himself silent. He wanted to see what the physician—the young, quite good physician—had to say before he said anything more on the subject. He began to gently rub her temples the way Badger had shown him a while before.

She concentrated on ignoring the searing pain in her head. She concentrated on Marcus’s fingers, gentle and strong, easing the pain more each moment. She remembered Lord Chilton’s name from their days in Paris. He was a man both Badger and Spears very much wanted to avoid during all their machinations. He was, they said, very much Marcus’s friend since they’d heard that Marcus had saved his life and he wouldn’t take kindly to anyone coercing Marcus into doing anything. He was also dangerous, they’d said, and silent and very threatening.

She’d certainly given him a diverting welcome.

25

DOCTOR RAVEN, SURELY an overly romantic name for a man who was as short as the Duchess had been at twelve, was thin as one of the stair railings, and had the most beautiful head of blond hair. He didn’t appear to be unduly influenced by the Duchess’s overwhelming beauty. His voice was soft, his manner matter-of-fact. He even gave Maggie only a cursory look upon entering the Duchess’s bedchamber, and that brought a grunt of surprise from her and a rude gesture. Marcus dismissed her, then immediately closed the door after her.

Marcus watched Doctor Raven closely, ready to smash him into rubble if he offended.

Doctor Raven said calmly, as he lightly touched his fingertips to her head, “Your husband tells me that you struck your head before, my lady. Yes, I can still feel a slight rising there just behind your ear. There is no swelling from this fall. I think you will have headaches for perhaps several more days, but nothing more. You will take some laudanum. It will help.”

“She’s pregnant,” Marcus said. “She fell down the stairs and she’s pregnant. There’s more here than just her head.”

Doctor Raven merely nodded and smiled easily at her. “Just lie still then and let me feel your belly.”

Marcus moved closer to the bed. Doctor Raven merely eased his hands beneath the covers and felt her stomach without pulling up her nightgown.

“Do you have any pain or cramping?”

“No, nothing.”