The Wicked One (38 page)
He leaned his cheek against the inside of her wrist.
Kissed it, tenderly.
"Are you ready, my love?"
"Yes," he said, turning his head so that he gazed up at her. "Work your magic, dearest, and work it well. I have said I won't move."
"And you won't," she assured him.
He gazed up into her beautifully mysterious eyes, wanting to hold on to the image for as long as he could. He could feel the gentle pressure of her hand against his neck now, the loving control of her fingers as she began to ease him down toward a place where there was no pain, no awareness. In a moment, he would be there. In a moment, the surgeon would be cutting into his flesh, digging beneath his rib, and he would not move.
The darkness gathered. He did not fight it. With a sigh of defeat, he gave in to it, relaxing beneath her skillful touch, sinking down into the depths of nothingness, his fingers twitching once, twice, before he lay as still as death beneath his duchess' hand.
Raising her head, Eva met the doctor's gaze. "His Grace is ready for you, now," she said.
The scalpel went in. And true to his word, Lucien never moved.
~~~~
Late that afternoon a war-torn
Arundel
, with
Magic
keeping station just off her rear quarter, beat her way past vessels of every sort, and dropped anchor at Spithead.
The sun was setting off to the west, blazing a trail, it seemed, all the way to America. Its light bathed the captain's cabin where Lucien lay propped up on pillows in a serene orange glow. Beside the bed Eva, her hand in his, sat in a chair drawn as close to the bed as she could get it.
She checked his bandage for the fifth time in ten minutes then, lifting her gaze to the salt-smeared stern windows, the setting sun, smiled.
"A penny for your thoughts," he said.
"I was just thinking of America . . . and how in the end, we both wanted the same thing for it, but were too stubborn to see it."
"Peace?"
"Yes. I wanted it through war, hoping that France's intervention would put a quick end to things. You wanted it through diplomacy, hoping that negotiations and meeting my country's demands for fair treatment would satisfy its need for freedom. I only wish I'd realized we were both working toward the same end . . . just taking different routes to get there."
"Would you go back, Eva, given the chance?"
He was referring to that terrible night when she'd learned the terms of his will, his desire to keep her chained in England for the sake of his heir. A family responsibility that she now understood. And forgave. She smiled, and gazed up into his eyes. "No," she murmured, shaking her head. "My home is here in England, now. With you. With your brothers, whom I am coming to adore. With my new family."
"I love you." Her hand still in his, he pulled her close and kissed her. "I am the most fortunate man in this world."
"And I love you, Lucien. I only wish I'd had the courage to tell you before."
"We have a lifetime to make up for our past wrongs to each other."
"Do we?"
He smiled, the gesture lighting up his whole face, transforming it into something boyish, eager, and charming. "I haven't had the nightmare for weeks now. I think it's gone."
"Ah." The corners of her eyes crinkled with joy. "That proves me right, then."
"Proves you right?"
"I suspected all along that the dream might be an analogy for something else. Think about it, Lucien. Every time you had it, you were impaled through the heart with a sword, mastered by something beyond your control. Do you not realize, now, what that sword really was? What it implied?"
"Love," he murmured, touching his fingers to her lips. "And the death I saw was the end of my lonely bachelorhood. My obsessive need for control."
"All ends lead to new beginnings."
"Indeed."
"And do you want to hear of yet another beginning?"
He raised a brow in silent question.
"I spoke with Perry a short time ago. He says he's had such a bellyful of adventure, that the first thing he's going to do when he gets ashore is offer marriage to Nerissa." She grinned. "Oh, Lucien — it seems as if your last grand machination will bear fruit, after all!"
"Yes —" he smiled. "My last grand machination. Imagine that."
There was a presence at the door. "I can't imagine it for one minute," said Andrew, standing there with his two brothers. "Can you, Gareth? Charles?"
"Hell, no."
The three younger de Montfortes came into the sunlit room, smiling, relieved, happy, looking fresh and windblown from standing topside and watching the shores of England moving ever closer.
"We have something to tell you, Luce," said Gareth.
"Something important," Andrew added gravely.
"Something that should have been said long before now," added Charles.
Lucien raised a brow. Eva looked up, puzzled, as all three brothers pulled up chairs and gathered close around the bed.
"All this time, all these years . . . we never expressed our gratitude to you for what those machinations of yours brought us. The happiness we've found with our own wives. Our children. The blessed lives we all now enjoy —"
"Thanks to you, Luce."
"And only you."
"Yes, we were so busy being angry with you for manipulating us, that we never really sat down and thanked you."
"So thank you, big brother." Gareth took Lucien's other hand. "Thank you for all you've done for me. For giving me Juliet. My family. If it weren't for you, I'd still be running the downs, wreaking havoc and refusing to grow up."
Charles moved close, the brilliant orange sunset gilding his hair. "And I thank you too, Luce. If it weren't for you, I would never have rediscovered the courage I needed to be the man I had once been . . . to consider myself worthy of Amy's hand. I owe you more than just gratitude for my happiness. I owe you my life."
"You're the best brother a bloke could ever want," Andrew said, smiling. "Thank you, Luce, for everything you did for Celsie and me. We didn't know it at the time, and certainly would never have admitted it, but . . . well, you really
did
know what you were doing."
Lucien smiled, his heart as warm as the orange glow that bathed the room in its beautiful, ethereal light. He looked at each beloved face in turn. "You forgive me, then," he murmured, with a little smile.
"We not only forgive you — we love you," Charles said hoarsely. He leaned over, embraced Lucien and then stood up, adopting a look of mock severity. "Now get some rest. And that's an order."
He cocked a glance at Gareth and Andrew, and one by one, they left the cabin, leaving Lucien and his duchess alone once more.
A deep silence remained in their wake.
"Well," said Lucien.
"He is right," Eva said, pulling the blanket up and tucking it carefully beneath his arms. "Get some rest, my love. You need to heal."
He was eyeing her beautiful lips, the swell of her breast, and lifting his hand, he gently stroked her cheek, his eyes darkening with implication. "So that we might work on bearing fruit of our own?"
She sobered, her mouth turning sad. "You know what the doctors said . . . that I will never conceive another child."
"To hell with the doctors," he murmured. "I never did put much faith in their dire premonitions."
"I hope you are right, Lucien."
"Of course I am." His smile turned devilish. "Aren't I always?"
Epilogue
Christmas, 1778
There had been great parties to celebrate the season in the past, but this year, the magnificent ballroom at Blackheath Castle was quiet and still.
Outside, a few last leaves floated in the moat, and the copper beaches, long shed of their purplish leaves, stood bare and stark against the gray English sky. The air was damp and cold. Mist hung suspended in the valleys. Armageddon, his black hide covered in thick winter hair, grazed contendedly in his pasture, every so often pricking his ears at a pair of rabbits that dawdled nearby.
Above, the thick cloud cover shifted, and the ancient and noble landscape brightened as a weak shaft of winter sunlight managed to push its way through.
But not all was still and quiet in this most holy of seasons, on this most holy of days; not all was bleak and devoid of life. For upstairs, in the great tower bedroom, a precious Christmas gift had been given.
He was a miracle who was never supposed to have happened.
He was the heir who was never to be conceived.
He was a squalling, dark-haired little bundle who came into the world screaming and kicking and demanding with all the ferocity that his little lungs could muster, that his needs be met.
He was Augustus William Arthur de Montforte, the heir apparent to the vast Duchy of Blackheath — and he had been safely and quite uneventfully delivered in the ancient oak bed at Blackheath Castle, where every duke and every duchess before him had slept, and where someday he would bring his own beautiful wife.
"He looks like you," said his mother as she lay in the great medieval bed, her head pillowed on her arm as gazied lovingly down at the baby at her breast.
"He has your temper," said his father.
"He is destined for great things."
"He is great, already. Our little miracle."
"Our little miracle."
The baby suckled, the soft, contented sound the only one in the room, and Eva moved to cover his little body more carefully with a fold of the blanket. Eventually, he finished and lay in the warmth of her own body, drowsy, fighting sleep, his fragile breathing the most precious sound in the whole wide world. Lucien gently lowered himself down to sit on the bed beside them. As she and her proud husband gazed down at their newborn son, Eva couldn't help but feel an overwhelming wave of love and satisfaction and the purest sort of joy she had ever known. She had finally found what she had spent her life seeking. What she had believed could not exist. And she knew, with a certainty she didn't need to question, that she had been blessed in ways beyond her deepest imagining.
God was good.
She looked up into her husband's eyes.
He caught her gaze and smiled.
And as Lucien tenderly picked up the baby and took him to the window to look out over the timeless downs that fell away toward the horizon, to gaze upon the vast lands that he would someday own and care for and love, she smiled and thought, quite contentedly, that some things were constant . . . and would never change.
There would always be twenty four hours in the day. The sun would always rise in the east, and set in the west.
Their little miracle . . . who was never supposed to happen.
And Fate, it seemed, would always be at the mercy of the fifth duke of Blackheath's wishes.
###
~ the end ~
About the Author:
Bestselling, multi-award winning and critically acclaimed author Danelle Harmon is the author of ten books, previously published in print and distributed in many languages worldwide. Though a Massachusetts native, she has lived in Great Britain and is married to an Englishman; she and her husband make their home in Massachusetts with their daughter Emma and numerous animals including four dogs, an Egyptian Arabian horse, and numerous pet chickens. Danelle welcomes email from her readers and can be reached at [email protected] or through any of the means listed below:
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