Lisbon: Richard and Rose, Book 8 (11 page)

I was wrong about the servants’ quarters then. Those steep roofs in the wing probably held more rooms.

I listened numbly to Lizzie’s faltering explanation. Richard’s reaction had shocked me, and pain held me in its thrall. I should be used to it by now, but I feared I’d never accustom myself to his reaction when forced close to me. In the old days he might have laughed and agreed with Lizzie. Not stiffened into the great lord, as he was doing now. His eyes, so full of life and love, had turned icy and dead, and he lifted his chin slightly so he could look down his nose at us, a pose based on defence.

As I watched, appalled, he took a deep breath. The bees and vines embroidered on his waistcoat changed shape, seemed to move as he inhaled, then returned to their original pattern when he breathed out. He smiled, and a little of the warmth returned. His hand clenched on the side of the chaise. “Of course. What a kind thought.” He glanced down at the chaise. He would sleep there. My heart sank.

The servants would know, and since we weren’t at home, where access to our private chambers was restricted, we could be fairly sure the household would discover it. While servants were always enjoined not to gossip, it was almost impossible to prevent them. Even the best of servants could let information drop, information that could be very useful in the right hands. We should know, we had maintained a company on it.

We had Thompson’s men with us, as many as we could carry, but we had no network here as we had at home and in some other countries in Europe. I wondered if Richard had taken that into account.

Of course he had. With our principal enemies either dead or given up, or on the other side of the world, we could relax at last. The Drurys and John Kneller, Richard’s estranged son, the one he hadn’t known the existence of until a couple of years ago, weren’t our only enemies, but they had been the most persistent. Gone now, or put out of action. I should feel safer, but somehow I didn’t. My instincts were returning with my health, and I still felt on guard, wary.

We announced our intention of visiting the children in an hour, but Richard said he wanted to ensure that I rested. “After that,” he told Lizzie, with his most charming smile, “we would love to see all of this delightful house. I can understand your enchantment with this country, Lizzie.”

He set himself to please her so that she left the room with her husband more content. For an instant she had sensed the sizzling tension between Richard and myself, but he had dissipated it with a few words and the simulation of his normal self. He could do that so well, but I knew the difference.

Richard closed the door with extreme gentleness and turned to face me, but didn’t come any nearer. “Did you tell her?”

Tears filled my eyes, and appalled at my weakness, I blinked them away. I wouldn’t allow any more to fall. “Not all of it. She guessed some.” I couldn’t lie to him. I wouldn’t give him the lack of respect that implied. “I’m sorry. But I hadn’t seen her in so long, and she was always my best friend. Writing letters isn’t the same thing.”

He strode forwards and took my hands in his. “I’ve put you under so much strain. It only occurred to me lately that my reticence may have retarded your recovery. Has it, do you think?”

“You’ve taken the greatest care of me. I’ve never wanted for anything.”

“You were right.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile of acknowledgement. “I have swaddled you. We didn’t allow it for our children. Too restrictive, we said. And yet I did it with you, didn’t I?”

I nodded and kept my head down, staring at the pattern on his waistcoat, tracing the twining vines with my gaze. I would not cry. “I was more ill than I allowed. I would try to do something perfectly ordinary and fail miserably. I had to concentrate on recovering for some time, much more than I’d imagined I would. I’ve always been well, you see. Apart from an attack of cowpox when I was a child, and winter colds, I’ve been disgustingly robust. The smallpox that took my father and stepmother affected me but mildly. Being an invalid is new to me.” I lifted my gaze to his face. I saw nothing but tenderness and concern.

I loved that he knew when to listen, and I had so much to tell him. I had stopped sharing my feelings with him when I became aware that he wasn’t really listening, that he had decided what he would do and set about doing it. Now he listened. “At first I welcomed your concern. I hurt, Richard, hurt all over. Every time Nichols bathed me, she was so gentle, but I wanted it to be you. It wouldn’t have hurt as much. I couldn’t manage my new weakness, and it terrified me. What if I never recovered, what if I stayed that way?”

He paled. “That worried me too. I lay awake at night, my arms empty, and decided that I wanted you alive, even if it meant I could never share your bed again. After a while it became easier. I could block out the memories if I reminded myself of your appearance in your bed, so pale, so thin, so helpless.” He closed his eyes. “Crying my name in your fever, pleading with me to make you better, and I couldn’t.” He opened his eyes again. “But I still wanted you. It shamed me.”

I frowned. “Shamed you?”

“How could I want you under me when you were so frail? How could I even think it?” He released one of my hands and clenched his fist. “I was some kind of beast, I told myself. I deserved to be shot.”

I shook my head and tightened my grip on his hand. If that was all he would give me, I would keep it. “I thought of it too. Even at my weakest. I thought that if I died, I’d ask you to hold me as I went, then I realised that was too much. I couldn’t ask that of you. But I’d have liked that. I shouldn’t have been so maudlin—”

I didn’t finish my sentence. He dragged me closer and folded me in his arms. “Like this?” His head descended, but instead of the hard, punishing kiss like he’d given me on the yacht when I’d provoked him so, he kissed me gently, as if I were made of spun sugar.

While that approach had irritated and infuriated me before, now I welcomed it because he wasn’t kissing me like a friend, but like a lover. I tasted his longing for me before he pulled away. “I still can’t promise everything. I need to take it gently. But I’ll share the bed tonight. I won’t use the daybed. It was good of your sister to think of it, to give me the option, even if it meant I had to stay in the same room as you, listening to you breathing. I didn’t like the thought of someone else knowing, other than our body servants, but I should have known you couldn’t hide anything from her.”

I rested my head on his chest and revelled in his warmth.

“I could have said that you needed the space, that you were a restless sleeper these days. Nobody would have thought anything of it. I guard my privacy—our privacy—closely. Carier will interview the servants who have access here. Did you think my careful guarding of our private quarters was all because of our enemies?” The Drurys had tried to strike at us in our home, at the heart of our intimacy, by employing servants to spy on us. I knew that had alarmed Richard as much as it had angered him. “It’s not just that,” he told me now. “It’s the thought of anyone sharing what we have. Carier knows, Nichols knows, and other people know a little of it. Your sister has seen more than she should.”

I remembered Lizzie’s shock. I hoped she wouldn’t be as startled now that she had a man of her own to love. The thought of her reaction made me smile, although I knew it should not.

Richard smiled too. “She knows better now, I’ll be bound. Her husband looks after her well, I’m thinking.”

“He’s very handsome.”

He gave a growl and tugged me close. “No looking in his direction, sweetheart. No looking in anyone else’s direction. Just me.”

He wouldn’t have teased me in that way a month ago. We were both recovering.

Chapter Eight

A day later, I was sure this was one of the most charming houses I’d ever visited, and I knew I’d be happy staying here. While I remained to be convinced that I needed this treatment, I was content, or as content as I could be.

I chose one of my most frivolous gowns for dinner that night but took care not to make it too extravagant with lace and jewellery. I never felt comfortable dressed inappropriately, although Richard often did. He had the arrogance to carry it off, to make everyone else appear underdressed rather than appearing overdressed himself. So I chose the palest pink, with triple lace ruffles at my elbows and a lace overskirt to the petticoat. My favourite pearls, Richard’s first gift to me of jewellery outside my betrothal ring, looked perfect. I put a set of pearl drops in my ears, and I was ready.

Richard rewarded me by pausing in the door to our room and looking at me slowly, up and down and back again. “When we first met, I told you that you’d learn to play the great lady in time. I indulgently thought that I’d teach you. But what I actually did was show you the way. You did the rest yourself.”

I swallowed down my tears. My weakness overcame me sometimes. That had to stop. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with salt water coursing down my cheeks at every emotional moment. So I dipped a curtsey and blinked hard. “Thank you.”

“And just as I told you, you have an innate elegance. It only needed someone to believe in you.” He glanced at Nichols, and I nodded, dismissing her.

That was it, what I’d felt the lack of all these months. He hadn’t believed in me. I told him I wouldn’t leave him—I promised before I birthed the babies, and I always kept my promises. I smiled up at his dear face. “You believe me now?”

His lip twitched. “Nearly. Give me time, sweetheart.”

I remembered that tone. I’d missed it. Warm, intimate, with a hint of desire. Desire held firmly in check, I guessed. Carier showed us the way to the dining room and dismissed the footman Lizzie had sent. I supposed he had something to tell us. One way of retaining privacy in an unfamiliar, large house full of servants was to keep moving, so we did so while Carier addressed us in a low voice. “The boy who was hurt on board the yacht, Crantock, is dead.”

I blinked but took care not to tighten my grip on Richard’s sleeve or give him any indication of my reaction. I wanted to hear this, and I wouldn’t let them keep me out because of my weakness. “The fever?” I asked, taking care to keep my voice steady.

Carier shook his head glumly. “I fear not, although care was taken to make it appear that way. The unfortunate boy was strangled. Someone had tied a cloth loosely around his neck to conceal the marks of strangulation. Very neat. His friend Barber came to tell us immediately. He is still here. I took the liberty of offering him a bed for the night. You may question him if you wish, my lord.”

Richard nodded. “I shall most certainly do so. He is a friend of Gervase’s, but we cannot assume he is completely honest.” He glanced at me. “I added a note in a letter I sent to Mrs. Thompson about the man. We should have more confirmation about him with her returning mail, but I fear that won’t come for some time.” He turned back to Carier. “Tell us more.”

“Barber told me that Crantock had a visitor, a comely youth of maybe the same age as the boy, dark-haired with a smooth smile, not over tall. He spoke rough English, as if he were from the docks of London, and said he was a member of our crew. Barber had to go on an errand to pursue his business, but when he returned, he went upstairs and found Crantock dead. He thought it was because of the fever, but the landlady, in readying the body for the morgue, discovered ligature marks. They have informed the authorities.”

There was something wrong there. Ah, I had it. The dark hair. The boy had said his attacker was dark-haired when I’d clearly seen blond, and now Barber made a point of describing the dark hair. Almost as if he wanted to put us off the scent.

“I think we should search the lodgings of both Barber and Crantock,” I said. “The man who attacked Crantock had fair hair, not dark. Of course there might be more than one, but…” I shrugged. “It’s best to make sure.”

Carier gave me an approving smile and a nod. “It will be done, ma’am. I will send one of our footmen first thing in the morning.”

One of our special footmen who had both discretion and intelligence. We had no reason to distrust the merchant, and every reason to trust him since he carried a letter from Gervase.

We had reached the bottom of the grand stairway and entered the hallway. A maid walked past us, not glancing at us, but maids had ears. Very big ones, and the servants here spoke our language. Carier waited until she’d passed, her sensible shoes beating a tattoo on the marble hallway, slowly fading into the distance. “The merchant noted some signs of struggle, he said. Bruises on the boy’s forearms, for instance. He only searched for those after the landlady had informed him of the strangulation.”

“A perspicacious merchant,” Richard noted.

“We could have taken Barber into our confidence. He’d have watched the boy closer if he’d known there was any danger.”

“We weren’t sure ourselves,” Richard said, “and it shows a thoroughness of approach that not many villains would have used. Most would have merely made themselves scarce. His killer didn’t want Crantock to identify him, which presumes that he is the same person who tossed Crantock from the rigging.” He frowned. “What we don’t know is why he wanted the boy dead. What had Crantock done that had meant he had to die? Or was it revenge because the man was sent to kill us and Crantock foiled the attack?” He made a small sound of distaste. “Ensure the boy receives a decent burial, and make sure his face is sketched before he is interred. We can at least inform his relatives and assure them of his identity.”