Barely a Lady (6 page)

“She’ll never bubble to it, ma’am,” Finney said, opening the front door for them.

Smiling brilliantly for him, she turned to slip her arm through a thoughtful Lady Bea’s. “I wonder if she’ll have the courage to tell us the truth before we have to confront her with it.”

“Perilous,” Lady Bea answered with a frown.

“Yes it is,” Kate assured her, suddenly very serious. “Perilous indeed.”

Chapter 5

O
livia had been waiting for three days for the chance to speak to Lady Kate. She was beginning to think the duchess was going out of her way to avoid her. It wasn’t that the duchess wasn’t busy. They all were. They hadn’t even had time to bury Grace’s father. His body lay in the cool cellar on a plank, with candles at each end and a staff member to sit with him.

Grace spent most of her hours out at the tents, where the wounded poured in without relief. Lady Kate divided her time between the tents and the homes of British visitors, where she mercilessly bullied them into donating supplies. Olivia supervised the care of the men recuperating in the house. Considering the fact that she’d seen Gervaise loitering outside a few times, she was only too glad to stay in.

Olivia hadn’t had much of a chance to sit with Jack. There were too many others who also needed care. But every free minute she had, she spent in his hot, stifling room, waiting for him to wake, fighting the surges of hope when he opened his eyes, even briefly. Surviving the dread and disquiet when he closed them again, never really waking.

She was beginning to feel stretched to the point of breaking. Her hands shook constantly, her stomach roiled, and her heart stuttered at odd sounds and surprises. She had so many secrets to hide. So few options. So little time before Lady Kate would be forced to show her the door.

Every time she tried to rest, she was followed to sleep by dreams of all that she feared, all she’d survived and seen these last days. The wounded, the dying, the mutilated, hundreds of them, all looking to her for help she couldn’t give.

And then, always, Jack. Jack reflected in her little Jamie’s eyes. In the memories of those last terrible days of her marriage. In the dreadful puzzle he now brought to her door.

He wasn’t a traitor. Olivia would swear to it. But she didn’t know how to defend him against the evidence. If she claimed that Jack had been found with an Allied regiment, it would take only a matter of hours for the lie to be exposed. Society was simply too closed, all related by blood or school or club. They would know to the day when Jack had enlisted and under whose command.

She had his dispatch bag, but she hadn’t had the courage to open it. She knew she was putting everyone in more danger, but shouldn’t Jack have the chance to explain first? The battle had been won. The city was still in turmoil, trying to deal with the dead and wounded. Would Jack’s secret really make a difference?

She knew it very possibly could. Even so, she waited.

By the third morning, Olivia wondered if he would ever wake. Coming up from her morning rounds among the wounded, she opened the door into his room to find that he still slept, watched over by Sergeant Harper’s redoubtable wife. “How are things in here?”

“Ah, mornin’ to ya, missus,” the broad, platter-faced woman said with a smile as she hefted her considerable self from the frail chair. “The men are all fed and ready f’r the day, then?”

Olivia couldn’t quite take her eyes from where Jack slept, his features so curiously still. “They are, and all improving.”

“Good on ’em,” the woman said, rolling up the socks she’d been darning. “Now, if we can only get this poor
créatúr
here to wake so we know what name to give him, I’d be happy.”

Olivia looked up. “Has he woken at all?”

“Not so much woken,” Mrs. Harper said, considering Jack a moment. “Mumblin’, like. Callin’ f’r his lady.”

Olivia found herself holding her breath. “Pardon?”

Slanting Olivia a sly smile, Mrs. Harper leaned close. “His fancy piece, I’m thinkin’. Named Mimi. Wasn’t he after speakin’ French to her an’ all? Fair turns a girl’s head.”

Olivia looked up sharply, but Mrs. Harper didn’t appear suspicious. She just looked fierce, as she always did.

“Indeed,” Olivia agreed vaguely. “Mimi.”

Amazing how one word could send a shaft of pain right through a person.

Mrs. Harper didn’t seem to notice. Gathering her things, she turned for the door. “Well, then, now you’re here, I’ll be off to harass that prissy excuse f’r a cook into makin’ some nice potato soup for the lads. Sure and if I don’t think himself here is a few pounds shy of fighting weight.” She shot Olivia a close look. “You shouldn’t turn down some soup y’rself, missus. Won’t do to fade away now that all the excitement’s over.”

“Thank you,” Olivia said, settling onto the chair. “It sounds wonderful.”

Mrs. Harper shrugged and was turning to leave when the door slammed open. Olivia jumped. A skinny boy with oversized ears, nose, and chin stood in the doorway, wearing a ludicrous powdered wig and spanking-new crimson and gold livery.

“Whatcher think o’ this?” he demanded with an engaging grin, arms held wide. “Don’t I look the proper tiger?”

“Hush, now!” Mrs. Harper snapped. “Y’r a proper jailbait!”

“ ’Course I is,” he assured her brightly. “You think a name like Thrasher comes from some fancy gentry mort? Me mam was a ’ore, and me dad rode the three-legged mare for being a bridle cull. And afore ’Er Graceship took me up f’r ’er tiger, I were the best cutpurse in the Rookeries.”

Olivia had spent enough time in Thrasher’s old neighborhood to be able to interpret his cant. His mother had been a whore and his father hanged for a highwayman. She also knew that Lady Kate had hired him when he’d tried to slice her reticule from her arm one night in Covent Garden.

Olivia shook her head. Leave it to Lady Kate. “You look quite distinguished,” she told Thrasher gravely.

He grinned down at his sartorial splendor. “ ’Course, I’ll ’ave to ditch the duds when I’m scopin’ out the lay f’r her ladyship, won’t I? Nobody’d talk to a cove looks like this.”

“Have you some scopin’ for us now, ya little heathen?” Mrs. Harper demanded. “Or are you just here to harass the ill?”

“Oh, no.” He strove to look serious. “Y’r needed in the kitchen, Miz ’Arper. Cook ’as taken y’r curse on him bad and won’t come out o’ the larder. Says he needs to surround ’isself in chickens to keep his ’air.”

Mrs. Harper huffed with visible satisfaction. “Little skint wouldn’t let me make a proper broth. Well, he will now, or won’t I be forced to put the curse o’ the Dubhlainn Sidhe on him.”

“Good Lord,” Olivia said. “What’s that?”

Mrs. Harper grinned, which was more frightening than her scowls. “Nothin’ at all. Made it up. But
he
don’t know it.”

With a full laugh, Thrasher galloped back downstairs. Still smiling, Olivia turned back to a still-silent Jack.

“I’ve heard that sometimes it helps if you talk to them,” Mrs. Harper said suddenly from behind her.

Olivia jumped again. She’d thought Mrs. Harper had already gone. The woman still stood in the doorway, and for the first time appeared less than sanguine. She was looking down at Olivia’s hand, which was when Olivia realized she was holding Jack’s.

She let go. “Talk?” she asked, her heart thudding.

Mrs. Harper motioned toward Jack. “Them’s as is in a sleep like that. When me ole da fell off the roof, sure didn’t me mam yell at him all day and all night to get his lazy sorry bones off the bed and see to the cows? And didn’t he wake up, sure as Oisín, two days later, sayin’ he’d heard the angel of God tormentin’ him over his duties.” She shrugged. “Might work.”

Olivia turned to look at Jack. Talk to him? And just what would she say? She couldn’t talk about the two of them. She couldn’t speak of Wyndham Abbey and his family as if she still belonged there. It had been five years. She could barely even think of his family without feeling sick.

Except the twins, who had wept for her, and Neddy, who’d tried so hard to help, even if it meant admitting that his older brother was not quite as heroic as he’d thought.

And Georgie. But she would not speak of Georgie. Not here. Not now.

She could not talk to Jack. She
would
not.

She did. For minutes, then hours. Leaning close so only Jack could hear, she spoke of the Abbey she’d known, the nearby town of Little Wyndham, the small Norman church her father had served, where she’d sung in the choir and chaired the fete committee. Where they’d been married that rainy May morning.

She peered at Jack’s hand in hers, once so elegant and now scratched and callused. “The lambs and calves are growing,” she whispered, rubbing his fingers. “The wheat will be getting high. And the hops for your special ale. Brewer John will be walking the edge of the field to judge it. And Ned will be waiting for you to come home to help him pick a new pair for his curricle. Maude and Maddie will want you to take them to the local assembly so they can show you off, and your father”—she choked a moment, took a breath—“he’ll have that new Manton to show off. It’s time to go home, Jack. They miss you.”

He was so quiet. It was all she could think of as she sat next to him, talking in the dimness of the waning sun. She could never remember him ever being so still. He’d had such energy, such delight in everything he did, be it riding or boxing or fencing, or even, when the mood struck him, stripping off his jacket and helping bring in the crops.

One of Olivia’s sweetest memories was of coming upon him in the farthest fields of the home farm, his bare throat golden and gleaming with the sun, his eyes that eerie green of early spring, his shoulders shaking with laughter as he scythed the wheat with two of his childhood friends.

He’d looked like a young god, and so his people had thought him. He hadn’t simply been the marquess’s son. He’d been “their Master Jack.” Every milkmaid within a ten-mile radius had timed her route to his daily rides. Not one farmer’s wife could resist filling him with warm meat pies and cool ale. He’d never passed the local inns without stopping to trade outrageous tales with the denizens. He’d been a force of nature, and all the people he’d touched had gloried in him.

Even her.
Especially
her. He’d been like nothing she’d ever encountered in her small, staid life. As a vicar’s daughter, she’d been used to moving parishes at the whims of the church and defining her world by her chores. She’d liked the life, for she enjoyed being active too. But she’d been a small brown trout in a slow-moving stream, until Jack Wyndham had seen her and yanked her out into his bright morning sun.

“Oh, Jack,” she sighed. “Where have you gone?”

“Right here.”

Olivia swore her heart stopped. She rocketed off her chair, certain she’d imagined the raspy sound of Jack’s voice.

But she hadn’t. His eyes were open. Mesmerizing, mythical sea-green, all but glowing against the stark pallor of his face.

“Sweet Jesus, Jack,” she cried, her hand pressed to her chest, where her heart thundered beneath her locket.

He was awake, looking around the room as if he’d misplaced something. “Where is it?” he asked, fidgeting with the covers. “I can’t lose it. I
wouldn’t,
I swear.”

Olivia instinctively sank back onto the chair. “What, Jack?” she asked, reaching for his hand. “What have you lost?”

He closed his eyes as if in despair. “I have to find her.”

Olivia leaned closer. She touched Jack’s poor, battered face. “Jack? Talk to me. Tell me what you’ve lost.”

He shook his head and flinched. He frowned, closing his hand around hers. “I don’t know… I don’t…”

It was Olivia’s turn to close her eyes. He wasn’t awake at all, just caught in that vague netherworld of dreaming. Looking for something he’d misplaced. Something that might be hidden in the dispatch bag she’d buried in her portmanteau beneath her cot in Lady Kate’s boudoir.

“Christ,” she heard, and opened her eyes again.

And suddenly, his eyes weren’t just open. They were alert. He was staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost. She held her breath.

“Dear God,” he rasped, clutching her hand. “You’re here. Oh, sweetheart, I’ve missed you so much.”

He smiled, and Olivia lost the strength in her knees. “You missed me?” she dared to ask as she settled onto the side of the bed, closing her other hand around his.

He ran a thumb down her cheek.
“J’étais désolé. Je ne peux pas vivre sans vous.”

Olivia felt herself go cold. He’d told her before that he couldn’t live without her. But not in French. Not spoken like a native. Jack’s French had always been execrable.

Then another thought pushed forward, and she found herself pulling her hands away.

“Jack,” she said, steeling herself for his answer. “Who am I?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You suffered an injury to your head. Who am I?”

Don’t say Mimi.

“Don’t be absurd,” he rasped, taking her hand back. “Who else could you be but my Livvie?”

And suddenly it was all too much. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move her hand from where he held it against his chest.

“Oh, my God, Liv,” he groaned, pulling her down to him. “I thought I’d lost you.”

And then his arms were around her, and of course her body knew him. She ignited like fireworks, from fingers to toes to the deepest recesses of her soul, too long hungry, too long alone. Too long without Jack, who had missed her.

She rubbed her face against the bristle of his cheek. “Oh, Jack, I thought we’d lost
you
. Where have you been?”