Lord Harry's Folly, Catherine Coulter [paper ebook reader .TXT] 📗

corners, afraid his grace will catch him with a bottle in his hand.”

Hetty pulled away from the hairbrush. “Millie, listen to me. It seems you’ve begun to think his grace is a virtuous, kind man. You know what he did. He’s cruel and ruthless. If his behavior now belies that, well, it’s because he doesn’t want a scandal, he told me so himself. His nobility is only word deep. He’s a sham, Millie, he’s”

“Is arrogant or evil next on your list of compliments, Miss Rolland?”

She looked up quickly to see him standing in the doorway. “Very probably,” she said, her voice as cold as the ice storm of the previous week. “I also should say devil. Oh damn you, you’ve made my side hurt.” She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself, not in front of him.

The marquess said calmly to Millie, “The fifteen minutes are gone. You can see your mistress again perhaps later this evening when it is likely that she will prefer your services again to mine. I’m sorry, but we mustn’t risk giving you more time with her.”

“I quite understand, your grace,” Millie said. “It will be as you wish.”

Hetty watched Millie curtsy to such an obsequious depth that she would have liked to kick her.

“And now, Hetty,” the marquess said after Millie had closed herself out of the bedchamber, “we have, I believe, much to talk about. I find Miss Rolland as viciously insulting as the indomitable Lord Harry. Would you now care to inform me exactly why I am a vile, cruel, and arrogant”

“Don’t forget devil.”

“Yes, naturally I’m a devil, and evil to boot. Do you hurt or do you want to talk to me now?”

He pulled a winged-back chair close to her bed and sat down. He leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest.

“It doesn’t stop hurting but that doesn’t matter.”

“Very well. What do you have to say to me?”

She stared at him. For so very long she’d planned on telling him why she’d killed him. He was to have been mortally wounded, lying at her feet. But not this, not her lying here, hurting, with him saving her life, taking care of her. God, she wished she had a gun so she could shoot him, but she didn’t, even a cane so she could strike him over the head.

At her continued silence, he said, “You know, Hetty, while you were in a high fever, you were delirious. You spoke of many things. You thought, for instance, that I was your brother, Damien, and screamed at me that you couldn’t do it that you couldn’t kill me.”

“So you admit your guilt?”

“Guilt? What wretched guilt? I just wanted to know what Damien has to do with any of this.” He tapped his fingers together. “You seem to think that I was or am involved in some way with Damien. Come, Hetty, you’ve never been at a loss for words in any guise I’ve known you.”

“You killed my brother. Damn you to hell, you killed Damien!”

He stopped tapping his fingers and stared at her. “What did you say? You think I killed Damien? What arrant nonsense is this? Your brother was killed at Waterloo, in a very ill-advised cavalry charge, at least that’s what Jack told me.”

“Yes, he was killed at Waterloo. And you’re right, of course, about that charge. At the last moment before the battle, he was assigned to lead a cavalry charge that meant certain death. You killed him, your grace. You sent him to lead that suicide charge.”

She fell back, gasping as a sudden jab of pain ripped through her side. As the waves of pain wouldn’t subside, she hugged her arms about her waist and gritted her teeth. To her shame, she felt tears swimming in her eyes and tightly closed her eyelids. She couldn’t be weak now, not now.

When she felt his hand upon her forehead, she didn’t have the strength to draw away.

“Drink this,” he said. She didn’t want to, but she opened her mouth. He held her head in the crook of his arm and held the glass to her mouth until she’d drunk all of it. It was barley water. She hated barley water.

It was several minutes before the laudanum began to take effect and dull the pain. She concentrated all her energies on not moaning aloud. She was only vaguely aware that he was clasping her limp fingers in his hand. At a particularly sharp wave of pain, she realized that she was clutching his hand, in some way seeking comfort from him. She heard him say something to her about sleep, and when the laudanum dulled her mind and her body, she willingly obliged.

When she again awoke, it was night. She had no idea how late it was. She turned her head carefully and saw the marquess standing in front of the fireplace, staring down into the crackling embers, a thoughtful expression on his face.

She queried her body, received no painful reply, at least for the moment, and slowly began to pull herself back up in a sitting position.

Her movement caught his eye, and he smiled as he strode over to her.

She held herself in stiff silence as he put his arms about her and eased her up. He straightened over her. “If you promise not to yell at me, I’ll feed you.”

“You changed my nightshirt.”

“Well, yes. The soup you spilled was very sticky.”

She felt beyond embarrassment. She felt strangely out of time, as if this man wasn’t the same man she’d hated and sought to kill for the past nearly five months. Everything had gone awry and she felt herself floundering. She didn’t know what to do, so she said, “I’m very hungry.”

It was near to midnight before Hetty had finished another ration of soup, more bread, and Millie had left after her fifteen-minute allotment.

The marquess closed the door, locked it, and walked to the bedside. He eyed her intently. “The fact of the matter, Hetty, is that you didn’t kill