Читать книгу Saved By Scandal's Heir - Janice Preston, Janice Preston - Страница 9

Chapter Two

Benedict Poole had returned to the library after escorting Harriet to the bedchamber where the last remaining member of his family, other than himself, lay wasting away. He poured himself another measure of brandy and settled by the fire, broodingly contemplating the woman he had never thought to see again. He gulped a mouthful of the spirit and grimaced. She’d driven him to drink already and she’d been here, what? Half an hour?

A bustle of movement in the Great Hall some time later interrupted his thoughts—the unmistakable sounds of departure. He would not say goodbye. She had not afforded him that courtesy, all those years ago.

One last look. That’s all.

He crossed to the window and positioned himself to one side, shielded by the curtain, in order that a casual glance would not reveal him. Snow drove horizontally across the front of the house and he was all at once aware of the howl of the wind. He had been so lost in his thoughts he had not even noticed the deterioration in the weather. Three figures, well wrapped against the cold, appeared at the top of the steps, the smallest two clinging on to the arms of the taller central figure, presumably one of the footmen. That was Harriet, huddled in a hooded cloak of deep, rich blue, trimmed with fur. As he watched them gingerly descend the steps, the second woman—Harriet’s maid—suddenly let go of the footman’s arm and appeared to hurry ahead. Benedict jerked forward, ready to shout a warning even though there was no chance she would hear him, but, before he could utter a sound, the maid’s feet shot from under her and she fell.

He didn’t stop to think but ran to the door, through the hall and straight out of the front door. The cold air blasted icy spikes against his face as he hurried down the steps, almost slipping in his haste. The maid’s leg—it could be broken. She mustn’t be moved. Maybe he could straighten it... He had helped more than one ship’s surgeon set broken bones during his travels. He thrust aside any nerves, any doubts.

Harriet was crouching by the maid, who was shaking her head, her tearful voice begging no one to touch her. He reached for Harriet, who seemed about to try to pull her maid upright.

‘Allow me,’ he said.

Harriet turned and gazed up at him, her expression inscrutable, those eyes of hers, once so expressive, guarded. Her nose and cheeks were bright red but her lips, when she spoke, had a bluish tinge. ‘Thank you.’

‘Go inside and wait,’ he said. ‘Get yourself warm and dry. We’ll deal with your maid.’

‘Janet,’ she said. ‘Her name is Janet. It’s her back, as well as her leg. You...you won’t hurt her?’

‘I can’t promise that. We must move her but we must first straighten her leg. Ask Crabtree to bring some brandy and something to bind her leg. He’s the butler,’ he added as she raised her brows. ‘But be careful how you—’

She speared him with a scathing look. ‘I am not likely to risk falling, having seen what happened to Janet,’ she said.

The panic had melted from her voice, which now dripped contempt. Benedict mentally shrugged. Her moods were none of his concern. Harriet stripped off her cloak and laid it over her stricken maid before picking her way back up the steps.

Benedict glanced at the footman—Cooper, it was, he now saw. ‘That leg could be broken. Have you ever helped set a leg before?’ he asked.

‘I have,’ a new voice interposed. One of the post boys had dismounted and had joined Benedict standing over Janet, who was shivering violently. ‘I’m used to it,’ he added with a grin. ‘Always someone breaking somethin’ when horses are involved.’

‘Tell your mate to take the horses back to the yard and bed them down for the night,’ Benedict said. ‘The ladies will be going nowhere.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ the post boy said, signalling to his partner, who waved an acknowledgement before kicking his horse into motion.

Benedict crouched beside the stricken maid.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s my back! I can’t stand it!’

‘Hush, now,’ Benedict said as the maid subsided into sobs. ‘We must find out if your leg is broken. It will have to be straightened before we can move you.’

The butler appeared at the top of the steps and gingerly made his way to where Janet lay.

‘Ah, Crabtree. Thank you.’ Benedict took the glass and held it to Janet’s lips. ‘Drink.’

Janet shook her head. ‘I never touch—’

‘Drink. It will help dull the pain when we straighten your leg. You need to be moved.’

Benedict tipped the glass up, pinching her chin to force her mouth open. This was no time for niceties. The cold had seeped through his clothes, chilling his flesh already. Janet must be in an even worse case, lying on the snow-blanketed stone steps.

‘What are you doing? How is she?’

His head jerked round. Harriet was back, peering over his shoulder at her maid.

‘I thought I told you to stay inside.’

‘Janet is my responsibility. I can help.’

‘If you want to help, go back inside.’

Her stare might have frozen him had he not already been chilled to his core.

‘Don’t leave me, my lady. Pleeeease.’

Harriet crouched by Benedict’s side and gripped Janet’s hands. The length of her thigh pressed briefly against his and he was aware she shifted away at the exact same time he did, so they no longer touched. Another footman appeared, carrying lengths of cloth and a wooden board, with the information that the doctor had been sent for.

Benedict pushed Janet’s cloak aside and raised her skirt, Harriet’s soothing murmur punctuating Janet’s whimpers. A close look at the bent leg raised Benedict’s hopes. The foot looked twisted, making a broken ankle a distinct possibility, but the leg itself appeared intact. A pink stain in the snow, however, suggested it was cut.

Benedict spoke to Cooper and the post boy. ‘If her back is damaged, we must move her carefully.’ He directed the men on how to tip Janet sideways, keeping her back as straight as possible whilst he moved her leg from under her, silently blessing the time he had spent with Josiah Buckley, the ship’s surgeon, on his recent voyage back to England from India. He might not know how to help Janet, but he did know how not to make things worse.

The next few minutes were hellish. Benedict gritted his teeth and forced himself to continue, gently straightening Janet’s leg and then, using a knife proffered by the post boy, cutting off her boot. Another snippet of knowledge gleaned from Buckley—that an injured foot or ankle will swell, making boots hard to remove. Not that the sailors wore footwear aboard the ship, but their discussions had been wide-ranging. Benedict distracted his thoughts from Janet’s screams by thinking of that voyage but then the shrieking wind recalled the storm that had almost foundered the ship, and he found his heart racing and hands shaking with the memory. He hesitated, squeezing his eyes shut as he gulped down his fear—It isn’t real. I’m here at Tenterfield, not on board—then jerked back to full awareness as a gloved hand covered his. He glanced round into familiar violet eyes.

‘You’re doing well,’ she murmured. He focused on her lips: too close...sweetly full...so tempting. ‘Do not lose your nerve now.’

Benedict dragged in a jagged breath and the icy air swept other memories into focus with a vicious stab in his temples. Not life-threatening memories such as that storm, but soul-destroying nonetheless. Memories of Harriet and her betrayal. His hand steadied and he continued to cut Janet’s boot until it fell apart.

They slid the maid onto the board then and, between them, Benedict and the post boy used lengths of linen to bind her to the plank and keep her still whilst they moved her to a bedchamber. Benedict rose stiffly to his feet as the two footmen lifted the board and carried Janet up the steps and back into the house. Benedict clasped Harriet’s elbow, resisting her attempt to tug free, and supported her up the steps and into the hall.

‘Why have you dismissed the chaise?’ she demanded as soon as the front door closed behind them, shutting out the swirling snowstorm. ‘I have accommodation bespoken at the Rose Inn.’

‘You will stay here tonight.’

‘I most certainly will not!’ Her voice rang with outrage. ‘Stay overnight at Tenterfield Court, with no chaperone?’ Harriet marched over to Crabtree, about to mount the stairs in the wake of the footmen carrying Janet. ‘Send a man to the stables, if you please, with a message to bring the chaise back round.’

‘Your maid cannot travel.’

Harriet pivoted on the spot and glared at Benedict. ‘I am well aware Janet must remain here,’ she spat. ‘I, however, am perfectly fit and well, and I will not stay where I am not welcome.’

‘I thought you were concerned for your reputation?’ Benedict drawled, the drive to thwart her overriding his eagerness to see her gone. ‘Yet you would stay in a public inn without even a maid to lend you countenance? My, my, Lady Brierley. I have to wonder if your reluctance to remain here at Tenterfield owes less to concern over your reputation and more to fear of your own lack of self-control.’

‘Oh!’ Harriet’s eyes flashed and her lips thinned. ‘How dare you?’ She spoke again to Crabtree, waiting patiently at the foot of the staircase, staring discreetly into space, the epitome of an experienced butler. ‘Is there a maid who might accompany me to the inn?’

Crabtree’s gaze slid past Harriet to mutely question Benedict, who moved his head in a small negative motion.

‘I am sorry, my lady,’ Crabtree said, ‘but with Sir Malcolm so ill and now your maid to care for, I am unable to spare any of my staff. And I am persuaded it would be unwise to venture on even such a short journey in this weather.’

The satisfaction Benedict experienced at frustrating Harriet’s plans glowed for only a brief few seconds. Her presence could only reopen old wounds. Why had he been so insistent that she stay?

‘Inform me when the doctor arrives,’ he bit out over his shoulder as he took the stairs two at a time, silently cursing himself for a fool.

In his bedchamber, he stripped off his wet clothes and shrugged into his banyan, then paced the vast room, his thoughts filled with Harriet.

The announcement of her arrival had nearly floored him. His heart had drummed against his ribs as his palms grew damp. She could not have known—could she?—that he was here, attending his dying cousin. That leap of hope, swiftly banished, had angered and unsettled him. Whatever her reason for visiting Malcolm, he didn’t want to know. He was only here himself from a sense of duty to his erstwhile guardian. He had no affection for Sir Malcolm but he was indebted to him for supporting him financially ever since the death of Benedict’s parents. Malcolm had ensured Benedict attended the best schools, followed by Cambridge University, and, for that, Benedict owed him some consideration.

He hadn’t needed to meet with Harriet at all—he could have relegated the task to one of the servants. He should have relegated it but, dammit, that would be tantamount to admitting he still cared. Besides—and he might as well be honest with himself—curiosity had got the better of him. He’d wanted to see what she had become, this jade who had so thoughtlessly betrayed him and his heart: who had pledged her love for him and then coldheartedly wed another man for the sake of a title and wealth.

Before facing her, he’d gone to the library to fortify himself with a glass of brandy from the decanter there. She hadn’t appeared to need any such additional support. He walked into the drawing room to find her—cool and elegant, an utterly gorgeous woman, with the same abundance of lustrous moon-pale hair he remembered only too well. His fingers had twitched with the desire to take out her pins and see her tresses tumble over her shoulders again. She was more voluptuous than he remembered, but then she had still been a girl when they had fallen in love. Correction, he thought, with a self-deprecating sneer, when he had fallen in love. And those eyes—huge, violet blue, thickly lashed; they were as arresting as ever. He had always thought of them as windows to her soul. He snorted a bitter laugh at his youthful naivety. Now, with the benefit of eleven more years’ experience, he could see that those eyes had lied as easily as that soft, sensual mouth with its full pink lips.

Such a pity so perfect an exterior disguised such a mercenary bitch.

* * *

Later, before dinner, Benedict visited Malcolm in his bedchamber, as had become his habit in the seven days since his arrival at Tenterfield Court. Malcolm’s breathing had grown noticeably harsher in the past week and Benedict was conscious that the air now wheezed in and out of his cousin’s lungs faster than ever, as if each breath failed to satisfy the demand for oxygen. He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. Malcolm’s eyes were closed, the thin skin almost translucent. A glance at Fletcher elicited a shake of the valet’s head.

Benedict placed his hand over the paper-dry skin of Malcolm’s hand where it lay on the coverlet. The flesh was cool to his touch, despite the suffocating heat of the room. Sweat sprung to Benedict’s forehead and upper lip, and he felt his neck grow damp beneath the neckcloth he had tied around his neck in deference to his dinner guest.

Damn her! Why did she have to come? And now she would be here all night, a siren song calling to his blood as surely as if she lay in his bed beside him. He forced his thoughts away from Harriet as Malcolm stirred, his lids slitting open as though even that movement was too great an effort for his feeble energy.

‘Water.’

Fletcher brought a glass and held it to his master’s lips, supporting his head as he sucked in the liquid. As Fletcher lowered his head back to the pillow, Malcolm’s eyes fixed on Benedict.

‘Going out?’

Benedict fingered his neckcloth self-consciously. Malcolm still had the ability to reduce him to a callow youth with just a single comment. He had been a careless guardian with little interest in Benedict, who had been a mere eight years old when he was orphaned. As Benedict had matured and developed more understanding of the world, Malcolm’s behaviour and reputation had caused him nothing but shame. Now, although he found it hard to feel any sorrow at Malcolm’s imminent death, he could not help but pity the man his suffering.

‘I dressed for dinner before visiting you tonight.’ The lie slid smoothly off Benedict’s tongue. He kept forgetting that, although Malcolm’s body had betrayed him, his mind was a sharp as ever.

‘Has that harlot gone?’

‘Harlot?’

‘The Brierley woman. She’s no business here... I told her... Fletcher? Has she gone?’

Fletcher glanced at Benedict, who gave a slight nod of his head. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘She left the house straight after she saw you.’

‘Good. Good riddance. Have nothing to do with her, you hear, boy?’

Benedict bit back his irritation at being addressed in such a way. He was a successful businessman. Yes, he was Sir Malcolm’s heir and would inherit both the baronetcy and Tenterfield, but he had no need of the man’s support or wealth. Not any longer. He was his own man.

It was strange to think he would soon be master of Tenterfield. When he had arrived a week ago, he had gazed up at the red-brick Jacobean manor house with a sense of disbelief that, soon, this place of so many memories would be his. He already felt the pride of ownership and had vowed to restore both its reputation and that of the Poole family name after the years of damage caused by Sir Malcolm’s disgrace.

‘I have no intention of having anything to do with her, you can rest assured on that,’ Benedict said. Then, curious, he asked, ‘What do you have against her? I thought Brierley was a friend of yours.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I saw what her fickle behaviour did to you. She’s not to be trusted.’

Benedict felt his eyes narrow. Now Malcolm cared about his feelings? Or perhaps he knew more about Brierley’s marriage than he was saying. Had Harriet played Brierley false, too? He shoved his chair back and stood up.

‘You should rest,’ he said. ‘I will see you in the morning.’

He went downstairs, Harriet and the evening to come playing on his mind and churning his gut.