The Earl's Untouched Bride (14 page)

'Stop right there!' he heard Robert bellow, just as he emerged from the study. Heloise, the back of her powder-blue riding habit liberally stained with mud, was fleeing up the stairs.

She did not even pause, but ran along the corridor to her rooms, from whence echoed the sound of yet another slamming door.

Robert, red-faced, had stopped at the foot of the staircase, clutching the newel post.

'Problems?' Charles drawled softly.

Robert spun round so swiftly the heel of his false leg slipped on the marble floor and he nearly lost his balance.

'Go on, then
—
order me to leave your house!' he panted.

Charles leaned against the doorjamb, folding his arms across his chest. 'Why do you suppose I should wish to do that?'

'Because I have insulted your bride,' Robert flung at him. 'I swore at her. Comprehensively and at length! You must have seen that she was crying when she fled up the stairs!'

Frowning, Charles pushed himself from the doorframe and advanced on his brother. 'If you have insulted her, it is for you to put right. This is your home. I shall not evict you from it.'

Glowering, Robert spat, 'And just how do you propose I make the apology? Crawl up all those stairs?'

Charles regarded the false leg his brother had, for the first time to his knowledge, strapped onto his mangled knee joint. Heloise was amazing. She had only been here a matter of days, and already she'd cajoled Robert out of his rooms, into his false leg, and onto the back of a horse.

'No,' he mused. 'Until she calms down, I dare say all that will happen is that she will inform you she hates you. Far better to wait until she has had time to reflect on her own part in your quarrel. I suggest you join us for dinner tonight, and make your apologies then.'

'Dinner?' Robert blustered. 'I had as well crawl to her suite now as to attempt ascending to any other rooms on the upper floors!'

'Then I will order dinner for the three of us in the little salon,' he replied, indicating a room across the hall. His heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity, he waited for Robert to protest that nothing would make him sit down and eat with the man who had been instrumental in causing his mother's death. Instead, he only glared mutinously before hobbling back to his own rooms and slamming the door behind him.

Upstairs, Heloise was blowing her nose vigorously. It was no good feeling sorry for herself. That her first riding lesson had been such a fiasco was not what upset her the most, though that had been bad enough. What really hurt was her failure to gain any ground with Robert at all. Charles would be so disappointed with her.

Startled by a tap on the door, she blew her nose again, annoyed to find her eyes were watering afresh.

'May I come in?'

Charles stood in the doorway, ruefully regarding his wife's crestfallen appearance. 'Was it the horse, or my brother?'

Waving admittance to the footman who hovered behind him, bearing a tray of what looked like His Lordship's finest brandy, Charles advanced into the room.

'I thought you might feel in need of a little restorative,' he explained, as the young man placed the silver salver on an elegant little table beside the sofa she had flung herself on when first she had come to her room. 'And, since I know of your aversion to tea, I thought I would supply something more to your liking.'

'You are m...most k...kind,' Heloise half sobbed, as Charles stooped to pick her riding hat up from the floor, where she had flung it not five minutes before. The feather that adorned the crown had snapped. He ran his fingers over it with a frown.

'Why is your hat on the floor? Is your dresser not in attendance?'

'I have not rung for her. I don't want her!' she snapped. Since he was already disappointed in her, she had nothing to lose by admitting she could not live up to his exacting standards. 'If I wish to throw my hat on the floor and.. .and stamp on it, then I have no wish to have her tutting at me as though I am a naughty child. It is my hat, after all, and I can do with it as I see fit!'

Instead of reprimanding her for her childish outburst, he merely smiled and remarked, 'I'll buy you another one,' tossing the crumpled headgear to the footman as he exited the rooms.

'I don't want another one,' Heloise said, perversely irritated by his magnanimity in the face of her tantrum. 'I am never getting on another horse again as long as I live.'

'I thought you scoffed at people who disliked falling from horses. I seem to remember you saying
—
'

'Yes, I remember very well what I said. If the horse had been trotting, or even walking, it might not have been so humiliating. But the horrid creature was standing perfectly still when I fell off. If I can fall off a stationary horse, which is being held at the head by a groom, I cannot think how much worse it will be should the brute try to move.'

'Are you badly hurt?' Charles frowned, suddenly wondering whether her tears and her evident discomfort might stem from more than wounded pride. 'Should I send for a doctor?'

So, after a perfunctory check, he was going to palm her off on another person? If they had the relationship a husband and wife ought to have, he would be running his hands over her bruises right now, assuring himself that nothing important was damaged. Instead of which he had handed her a drink, with a mocking smile twisting his lips.

'I don't need a doctor.' She sighed. I need a husband. A husband who would put his arms round me and tell me everything is all right, that he is not ashamed of his stupid little wife, or disappointed in her failure to help poor Robert.

Mutinously, she went to the bellrope and tugged on it viciously. 'I wish to change out of these clothes now,' she informed him. 'And take a bath. Unless there is anything else you wish to say to me?'

Charles bowed politely, remarking, 'Only that I hope, when your temper has cooled a little, you will endeavour to mend fences with Robert. I have invited him to dine with us this evening. It is the first time that he has agreed to do so. I would not wish it to be his last.'

Heloise glared at the door through which he departed. Not a word of thanks for her efforts, abortive though they had been. Only a stem warning to watch her behaviour at dinner this evening, so as not to offend his precious brother any further. He had not even bothered to find out what the boor had said to upset her!

Nothing she ever did would please him.

Very well, then, she would start pleasing herself. She tore at the silver buttons of her riding habit with trembling fingers. She would dismiss the horrible dresser who looked down her nose at her. As a pair of housemaids came in, carrying towels and cans of hot water, she eyed them speculatively. Her husband seemed to employ dozens of staff. If she could not find one amongst them with whom she could strike up a tolerable relationship, then she would advertise for an experienced lady's maid and begin to conduct interviews. If nothing else, it would give her something to fill the endless monotony of her days.

And as for tonight... Oh, Lord! She sank into the steaming fragrant water of her bath and bowed her head over her raised knees. Charles would be watching her like a hawk. Robert would resent her for being the catalyst that had forced the two men to eat at the same table. She would be like a raw steak being fought over by two butcher's dogs.

By the time she entered the little salon Robert and Charles were already there, sitting on either side of the fireplace, sipping their drinks in a silence fraught with tension. Both, to her surprise, looked relieved to see her.

'I believe I owe you an apology,' Robert said, struggling to his feet.

She merely raised one eyebrow as she perched on the edge of the third chair which had been set before the hearth.

'All right, dash it! I
know
I owe you an apology. I should never have used such language to a female...'

'Not even a French female?' she replied archly, accepting the drink the footman handed to her. 'Who is not even of noble birth, is an enemy of your country, and most probably a spy to boot?'

Flushing darkly, Robert muttered, 'If I said any of those things to you this morning...'

'If?'

'All right. I admit I said a lot more besides the swearing I have reason to apologise for! But don't you think it is pretty disgusting behaviour to laugh at a cripple?'

'Oh, I was not laughing at you, Robert.' Heloise reached a hand towards him impulsively, her eyes filling with tears. 'No wonder you got so cross, if that was what you thought. It would indeed have been the most unforgivable behaviour if that was so!'

'But you were laughing...'

'It was the horse! When you went to climb onto him from the right side it looked so surprised. I have never seen such an expression on an animal's face before.' A smile twitched her lips at the memory. 'And it turned to stare at you, and it tried to turn round to place you on what it thought was the correct side, and the groom was dodging about under its head, and you were clutching onto the saddle to stop from falling off the mounting block...'

'I suppose it must have looked pretty funny from where you were sitting,' Robert grudgingly admitted. 'Only you have no idea how I felt
—
too damned clumsy to mount a slug like that, when I've always been accounted a natural in the saddle.'

'I'm sorry, Robert. But you have to admit I received just punishment for my thoughtlessness.'

He barked out a harsh laugh. 'Aye. You should have seen her, Walton. Laughed herself right out of the saddle. Lost her balance and landed on the cobbles at my feet...'

'With you swearing down at me while I was struggling to untangle all those yards of riding habit from my legs...'

'And the grooms not knowing where to look, or how to keep their faces straight...'

'It sounds better than the pantomime,' Charles put in dryly. 'Ah, Giddings, it is good to see you back with us. I take it your presence indicates that our dinner is ready?'

Charles had tactfully arranged for the meal to be brought to a small round table set in the alcove formed by the bay windows, so that Robert had very little walking to do.

Linney took a position behind Robert's chair. When Charles' footman approached him with a tureen of soup, the man took it from him, ladling a portion into a bowl for his master himself. For the first time it occurred to Heloise just how difficult it must be to eat a meal with only one arm, and how demeaning it must be for a man in his prime to have to rely on someone else to cut up his food for him. How he must hate having others watching the proof of his disability.

Desperate to introduce some topic of conversation
—
anything to break the strained silence which reigned at the table
—
she asked Giddings, 'Did I not meet you in Paris?'

Although he was somewhat surprised to be addressed, the butler regally inclined his head in the affirmative.

'How was your trip back to England? I hope your crossing was smooth?'

'Indeed, once I was at sea I felt heartily relieved, my lady,' he unbent enough to admit.

'Did you dislike France so much?'

The butler looked to his lordship for a cue as to how he should answer. Instead, Charles answered for him.

'You have evidently not heard the news, my lady. Bonaparte has escaped from Elba. On the very eve of our marriage, he landed at Cannes with a thousand men and began his march on Paris.'

'Damn the fellow!' Robert put in. 'Has there been much fighting? King Louis must have sent troops to intercept him?'

Charles again gestured to Giddings, which the butler interpreted correctly as permission to tell his tale himself.

'The last I heard, every regiment sent for the purpose of arresting him joined him the minute they saw him in person.'

'It is no surprise, that,' Heloise said darkly. 'He has a way with the soldiers that makes them worship him.'

'By the time I reached Calais,' Giddings continued, 'fugitives from Paris were catching up with me, telling tales of the desperate measures they had taken to get themselves out of the city before he arrived. The price of any sort of conveyance had gone through the roof.'

'Thank heavens we married when we did,' Charles remarked. 'Else we might have been caught up in that undignified scramble.'

'Is all you can think of your precious dignity?' Robert retorted. 'And how can
you
—
' he rounded on Heloise '
—
be so bacon-brained as to worship that Corsican tyrant?'

'I did not say
I
worship him!' Heloise snapped. First Charles had made light of the convenience of their marriage, and now Robert had jumped to a completely false conclusion about her. 'Do you think I want to see my country back in a state of war? Do you think any woman in France is ready to see her brothers and sweethearts sacrificed to Bonaparte's ambition? It is only men who think it is a fine thing to go about shooting each other!'

'Now, steady on, there,' Robert said, completely taken aback by the vehemence of her reply, and the tears that had sprung to Heloise's eyes. 'There's no need to fly into such a pucker...'