Duty Before Desire (3 page)

“Pray, do not fret, Deborah,” he said, gently squeezing her hand to reassure her of his vitality. “Tyrrel missed my heart by a mile. I may lose my leg yet,” he joked, “but you can be sure I'll have the most fashionable peg leg in London. Something silver-plated and gold-tipped, I imagine, engraved with scrollwork, possibly set with rubies and sapphires. Or maybe I'll allow some promising artist to paint it with a masterpiece that follows me wherever I go. It would be the latest sensation—wearable art for amputees. I predict wounded soldiers will soon be clamoring to have their wooden limbs frescoed with depictions of their battlefield heroics. What do you think?”

In a tense, silent moment, Deborah's lower lip quivered while the water level in her eyes rose to alarming heights before the flood finally spilled over the dam of her lids. She emitted only a small, plaintive whimper, worse by far than a loud show of distress. She did nothing to stem the flow of tears down her face, only stood there and quietly cried, her eyes still locked on Sheri's.

Lothgard wrapped his wife in his arms and drew her away from his brother, glaring accusingly at Sheri over her head while making soothing sounds.

A hot coil of guilt twisted in Sheri's gut. “Forgive me, Deborah. I was simply making light of the situation, which, obviously, was the incorrect course.” He raised a hand, then let it fall uselessly to his side.

Deborah lifted her face and wiped her nose on a handkerchief Elijah had provided. “I can take no more, Sheridan,” she said in a watery voice. “Anyone else, I'd know they were funning, but you very well might go out and have some gaudy false leg made and parade it all around Town, flaunting the fact that you'd lost your leg in a duel with your lover's husband.

“Do you never think of your nephews, Sheridan? What kind of example are you setting for them?”

His ass throbbed, and that hot coil twisted tighter, pinching his innards. He dropped onto the ottoman, sucking a breath through his teeth at the flare of pain. His discomfort was making him cross. “It was a jest,” he ground out. “What would the twins know about it, anyway?” Sheri demanded. “I don't make a habit of discussing my private affairs with your offspring, my lady; do you?”

His eleven-year-old nephews were called Crispin and Webb. Sheri had thus far refrained from telling Eli and Deborah that he'd always thought the boys' monikers sounded like the name of a legal partnership. He could very nearly see the engraved brass plate now:
Crispin & Webb, Solicitors at Law
. In his current state, he very nearly let loose out of spite.

The marchioness swayed on her feet. Eli helped her to a chair. Never possessed of a strong constitution to begin, the twins' birth had very nearly killed Deborah, and she'd never quite recovered from the ordeal. She passed her days navigating from one resting spot to another. Pain was her constant companion; any activity more strenuous than a sedate stroll was beyond her, but she put on her sweet smile and did her best to move about in Society. Sheri was glad he'd kept his spiteful remark between his teeth and was sorry he'd ever thought to lash out at her.

Husband and wife exchanged a look. “Things have not gone well, I take it?” Deborah asked.

Hands clasped behind his back, Lothgard once more looked the formidable nobleman. His nose sliced a negative through the air. “Sheridan won't hear a word I say.”

“He's always gone his own way.”

Lothgard blew out a snort. “Down the devil's highway, more like.”

“I worry about your mother, too—what must she make of all this?”

There they went again, treating Sheridan like a recalcitrant child, speaking as though he were not in the same room.

“Our mother,” he interjected, “is too busy kicking up her heels in Bath to pay any heed to London gossip. If I have in any way discombobulated her, you can be sure she'll let me know.”

“Yes, you can be sure she will.” Eli stood behind Deborah's chair and rested his hand on her shoulder. “Both of us wrote to her today.”

“What, both of you? One missive wasn't enough?”

Deborah parted her hands in her lap. “We wished to assure your lady mother that we were aware of the situation.”

“And that we would handle it,” Eli pronounced down the length of his aristocratic nose.

“Handle?” Sheri echoed. “How must I be handled?”

In her soft, soft voice, Deborah said, “You must marry, Sheridan.”

For a while, no one spoke. In the silence, the aroma of flowers became oppressive. Sheri's head began aching in earnest, his skull beating in sympathy with the angry pulse of his wound. He wanted that laudanum, after all.

He opened his mouth to formulate an argument, but the marquess cut him dead with a look. “Your days of indulging your every base desire are at an end, Sheridan. If it were just myself, I'd cut you loose and let you fornicate your way through all of England.” At his wife's gasp, he winced. “Sorry, my dear,” he hastily apologized. “But it's not just me,” he went on, addressing his brother once more. “It's Mother, and Deborah, and the boys. You're ruining our family's name and causing them embarrassment. Deborah has persuaded me to grant you one last chance: if you wish to remain an acknowledged member of this family, you will do your duty and wed.”

Damn Elijah!

Knowing there would be no winning with his brother, Sheridan turned to his sister-in-law. “Sister,” he began, his tone conciliatory, “please forgive me for causing you any shred of humiliation. You know I'd never willingly do you harm.”

The woman's lower lip trembled. She made a little, muffled sound.

Sheri went to where she sat and, repressing his own whimper, knelt before her like a penitent seeking absolution. He took her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Her nose reddened. “I see now that things have gotten out of hand. I'd no idea Lady Tyrrel would make such a to-do this morning, and I recognized at once that there would be scandal. I see now, though, that this is not the first time my behavior has brought you grief, is it?”

Sniffling, Deborah shook her head. “Oh, Sheridan, if you'd heard what the ladies all say. Half of them think you're the Lord's gift to womankind, while the other half think you're the devil incarnate. No matter which side they fall on, every one of them loves nothing better than swapping tales about you:
Where will Chère Zouche be tonight? Who is he wooing now? Have you seen his new coat? Can you credit the way he looked at Lady Whistleton at the ball? Do you suppose he's taken her to bed?
It never ends!” She cast a hurt look at the flowers arrayed around the room, stand-ins for the women who'd subjected her to their tattle.

“Well, it ends now,” he vowed, squeezing her hand and gazing earnestly into her eyes. “There's no need to bring marriage into things; I will be a reformed man without all that, I swear.”

Deborah shook her head. “I pity you, Sheridan—truly, I do. You're missing out on the good things in life, and you don't even realize it. Goodness knows you love women and they love you right back, but we're nothing more to you than …” A fierce blush flooded her face. “Bed partners,” she finished in a whisper.

“That isn't so,” he protested. The pain in his flank drove him to hands and knees, his face almost to the rug, so that now he was practically groveling at Deborah's feet. “I live to make women happy—not just
that
way, either. Don't look at me like that,” he yelled. “Your pity is insufferable.”

His affairs had been for the pleasure of the women he bedded—his own, too, naturally—but he'd never once touched a woman selfishly. A woman's pleasure was Sheridan's greatest joy. To think that all the time he'd been pleasuring women in his bed, he'd been hurting Deborah every bit as much.

A guttural moan vibrated in his throat. Perspiration damped his hairline.

“Perhaps we should take our leave, my dear,” said Eli.

Yes,
Sheridan cried to himself.
Begone, and take your witch of guilt with you.
It was just the pain that had his mind in such a muddle, he assumed. Once he felt better, his mind would set itself to rights.

“Sheridan?” Deborah's hand touched his chest. Sheri's eyes opened; he found he was laying on the floor, his sister-in-law crouched beside him.

“Deborah,” he rasped. “I'm so sorry. Every bit of unhappiness I caused you, I wish I could take it for myself.”

She smiled sadly. “I think you shall.” She took his hand. “Don't you love me, Sheridan?”

“You're the sister I always wanted,” he replied in a rough voice. Grace was never far from his thoughts. “I couldn't have picked a better sister for myself. I'm grateful every day that Elijah chose you.”

Her angelic smile was a blessing. His eyes started to drift closed.
I really must summon French with that medicine.

“Do you acknowledge that you have caused me a great deal of social embarrassment with your indiscreet behavior?”

“Of course, darling, I already did.”

“And would you like to make it up to me?”

“If I can, certainly.” There were several jewelers Sheri patronized when he needed to make amends with a woman. Through the haze of pain, he wondered whether Deborah would prefer a new fan or a pearl bracelet.

Her face filled his vision as she leaned over him. Sheridan sensed the bulk of Elijah behind her, physically supporting his wife. “Then get married, Sheridan. You've made every woman in the
ton
happy, and now it's my turn. Find a wife. Tell me you will, Sheridan. You've never once broken your word to me. Tell me you'll marry and be a good husband and stop your wicked sinning.”

“Yes, Deborah, I shall marry.”

A moment later they were gone, and Sheri was on the floor, gutted and raw by the promise he'd made. He wouldn't go back on his word to Deborah—not ever. It would be the end of any relationship Sheri hoped to have with his brother and nephews in the future—not to mention with Deborah herself.

Even now, the flowers and letters filling his chamber, which had marked the happiest part of his life, were the funereal arrangements for that same time of life. It was over. Gone. Dead.

Sheri would marry.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a rallying thought: hadn't he always been prepared for this eventuality?
In Case of Crisis, Wed ...

Sheridan stiffened. Yes, he would have a happy bride in no time.

Quickly, he rose to his feet. And just as quickly collapsed on the ottoman. His leg felt like hot, liquid lead. “French,” he bellowed. “The laudanum. Now.”

He might not have a happy bride in
no time
. But soon, he thought, rubbing his hand over the battered rump. Soon.

Three weeks later

If this was Home, Arcadia wanted nothing to do with it.

This place, this England her mother had rhapsodized about, was all wrong.

To begin, it was cold. Arcadia had arrived yesterday morning and had been shivering ever since. She'd stepped off the boat on legs as wobbly as a newborn foal's—still weak from the fever and stomach illness that had plagued her since somewhere off the coast of Spain—and into a drizzly atmosphere possessed of the kind of cool dampness that seeped all the way down to her bones. Not even the carriage rug draped across her lap warded off her tremors.

From her seat in the landau, she gazed listlessly across Hyde Park, her hands pressing the comforting weight of her reticule to her tender stomach in an attempt to still its roiling.
This
was the park that had captured her mother's imagination, this alien place with its gloomy sky and acres of faded grass and balding trees? For this, the landscape equivalent of dirty dishwater, Arcadia had left India?

“Put your arms down, child,” fussed her aunt, Lady Delafield. “Clutching yourself so will make everyone think you're ill.” Her ladyship's pinch-mouthed disapproval was echoed by the black, beady-eyed stare of the stuffed partridge perched in her turban.

“I
am
ill,” Arcadia protested, “and cold.”

She didn't add it to her litany of complaints, but she was also dreadfully uncomfortable in her new, ill-fitting clothes. Papa never would have forced her into this suffocating costume. Back on the station in the
mofussil
, she'd worn saris suited to the Indian climate—unless they were visited by other members of the Raj, of course, in which case Arcadia had donned something approximating English dress. Now, however, she was encased in numerous layers of undergarments and even a corset. Before this morning, she had never even seen a corset. She'd thought Poorvaja, her
ayah
, was playing a trick on her when she showed Arcadia the contraption and said Lady Delafield expected her to wear it beneath her clothes. Arcadia had peered incredulously at the woman, but Poorvaja had simply shrugged.

Her aunt sniffed. “Nonsense. You're simply suffering seasickness-in-reverse from being on land for the first time in months. It will pass in a day or two. September is our warmest time of year! You couldn't possibly be cold.”

Behind her, Arcadia heard an indelicate snort. She didn't turn around, but could very well picture the look on the face of Poorvaja, who was riding beside a groom on the hard bench behind them. Arcadia might well attribute her chill to her persistent ailment, except Poorvaja had likewise relentlessly cursed the temperature—and she was as healthy as an ox.

Their open carriage stopped while Lady Delafield exchanged greetings with a gentleman on horseback.

“Niece, you are in luck!” Lady Delafield exclaimed. “Here is Sir Godwin Prickering, one of our foremost literary talents. Sir Godwin, allow me to present my niece, Miss Parks, lately of Hyderabad, India.”

The thin man wore a scarlet neckcloth. Against his snowy shirt, it looked like a gash across his throat. Arcadia fought to repress a shudder. From his saddle, the man made a slight bow. “Your servant, Miss Parks,” he said in a lazy drawl.