Читать книгу Once Dishonored - Mary Jo Putney - Страница 10

CHAPTER 4

Lucas felt surprisingly invigorated as he walked back to Duval House, where he was living with Simon and Suzanne while they helped him rebuild a life in the society he’d been born to. He owed his family that after all the grief he’d brought them, and it wasn’t as if there was some other place he’d rather be.

Only now, as he felt himself becoming focused, did he realize how long he’d been drifting. Ever since he was captured by the French, in fact. He’d drifted through the years as a prisoner of war when his life was about survival and a desperate hope that someday he would be free again.

Then there were the penance years of traveling the Belgian countryside as apprentice and servant to Frère Emmanuel. He had lived the simple life of a Franciscan friar and helped many people in pain, but never felt that he truly belonged where he was. Though he’d been mildly content, he’d neither seen nor wanted a future beyond the life he was living.

Then Simon had found him. Lucas’s first reaction to their meeting had been a fearful withdrawal into his familiar routine. But in the days that followed, he’d recognized that it was time to return to the life he’d lost.

His first wary steps had taken him to Brussels. Though he was not a trained surgeon, his bonesetting and bandaging skills had helped save lives among the flood of wounded after Waterloo. He’d set bones and even used the strange, unreliable gift of healing that sometimes flowed through his hands.

After the battle, he’d accepted Simon’s invitation to come home to England, first to Simon’s Berkshire estate and now to the house on the street ahead of him. Simon owned the comfortable town house, but Lucas had grown up there after he was orphaned and taken in by his aunt and uncle. He’d been raised as Simon’s brother and now occupied the same room he’d had as a boy. They’d been constant companions for years, studying and riding and cheerfully arguing the merits of the army versus the navy.

He let himself in with his key and collected the quietly burning lamp that had been left for him before he climbed the stairs. His room was at the front of the house, but he saw a crack of light showing under the door of the small sitting room that connected the bedchambers of the master and mistress of the house.

Thinking Simon might be awake, he tapped lightly on the door, then entered when Simon called permission. The scene that met Lucas’s gaze was so warmly domestic that his whole body eased. Simon was relaxing on the sofa, his crossed legs stretched out toward the fire and his arm around his wife. Suzanne curled against him as she nursed their infant daughter. Mother and child were wrapped in a soft wool shawl so that only the top of the baby’s small dark head was visible.

Lucas said in a quiet voice, “Suzanne, you and Madeline make the most perfect Madonna and child image I’ve ever seen.”

“Indeed,” Simon said fondly as he stroked a hand down his wife’s arm. “Since Suzanne is doing the work of feeding Madeline, I thought it only fair that I keep her company. How was your first solo venture to a ball?”

“It went reasonably well.” Lucas settled in a chair set at right angles to the sofa, careful not to disturb the pile of intertwined fur that was Suzanne’s gray tabby cat, Leo, and Rupert, Simon’s amiable dog of uncertain ancestry. “My status as a prosperous and eligible bachelor protected me from open disdain and cuts direct, and I had several pleasant dances with women I’d met here in your house. Then things became . . . interesting.”

Suzanne looked at him with a sleepy smile. “How interesting?”

“In mid-evening, a woman in black swept into the ballroom and everyone drew back as if she were a plague carrier. Outraged whispers pronounced that she was recently divorced and a contemptible slut who was beyond redemption.”

Simon’s brows arched. “Was that Lady Denshire? I’ve heard of the scandal but don’t know any of the people involved. I’m guessing you didn’t shrink back in horror.”

Simon knew him well. “No, since we were in similar straits, I asked her to dance and realized that I had met her years ago, just before I joined my first ship. She was Kendra Douglas then and as straightforward a young woman as I’ve ever met.”

Looking interested, Suzanne said, “Did she tell you her side of the story?”

“Yes, and I’ve promised to help her.” Succinctly Lucas outlined Kendra’s situation, ending with, “I hope you don’t mind that I invited her to dine here tomorrow night. I thought you might help develop a strategy to win her justice.”

Suzanne came awake as Lucas spoke. By the time he finished, she was sitting upright, her green eyes flashing even as she continued nursing her baby. “Do you believe this woman, Lucas?”

“I do,” he said. “My opinion is based more on intuition than facts, but I do think Kendra Douglas is telling the truth.”

Suzanne’s gaze turned to her husband. “Then we must help her. Women are too often the victims of predatory men.” Her tone said that the decision had been made and was inarguable. Given her past, Lucas wasn’t surprised to learn that Suzanne would fight for any woman who had been mistreated by a man.

Simon knew this as well, so he just nodded. “Tomorrow at dinner we can hear her story and discuss what is to be done.”

A thought struck Lucas as he got to his feet. “Years ago, before I was captured by the French, I left a chest of personal belongings here in the house. Is it still here, or was it discarded after my supposed death?”

Simon became very still. “Of course I didn’t get rid of the chest. It’s in the back corner of my dressing room. You can collect it now if you like.”

“Why there and not in the attic?” Lucas asked, surprised.

“I suppose it was a way of keeping you near,” his cousin said softly. “I never opened it, but I liked knowing it was there.”

Lucas felt a deep stab of guilt for what his years of self-exile had meant to Simon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t deserve such loyalty.”

“Of course you did, my almost-brother. Who else did I have to worry about?” Simon grinned with the openness he’d had as a young boy. “I’ve been proved right, haven’t I? You didn’t die.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Lucas said dryly.

His cousins laughed, lightening the mood. Suzanne said, “What do you hope to retrieve from your long-abandoned chest? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“You shouldn’t ask,” Simon said tartly.

“I don’t remember everything I left in the chest. Some official papers and books, some small wood carvings, and a Royal Navy dirk, which is what I’m interested in,” Lucas explained. “Thorsay House, where Kendra Douglas is living, has masses of Scottish weapons displayed on the walls, including Highland dirks. I think the design is a little different from the naval version, so I wanted to compare.”

“Of course,” Suzanne said warmly. “What man wouldn’t be desperate to know which is longer?”

Lucas laughed. “I suspect you’re implying that no sane woman would care. I’m sure you’re right. Is it all right if I retrieve the chest now, Simon?”

His cousin waved a hand toward the master’s bedroom. “You know where the dressing room is.”

Lucas nodded and bid them both good night before he collected his lamp and entered Simon’s bedchamber. It didn’t look much occupied because Simon and Suzanne always shared the bed in the lady’s chamber at the other end of the suite. Lucas envied their unfashionable fondness for each other.

The chest was where Simon had said, in the back corner of the dressing room with several folded blankets resting on top. He moved the blankets and picked up the chest by the leather handle on one end, leaving one hand free for his lamp. The chest had seemed large when he first took it off to school, but he could lift it easily with one hand now.

He left the dressing room through the back door, which opened on a corridor. Once in his own room, he set the chest on the bed and examined the scuffs and other signs of wear it had accumulated since his aunt and uncle Duval had given it to him when he first went off to Harrow. Simon had received a similar one, his covered with dark red leather because of his interest in the army, while Lucas’s was navy blue. Their initials were picked out with small brass-headed nails on the lids.

He ran a fingertip over the initials. Aunt and Uncle Duval had welcomed him warmly after the death of his parents and always treated both boys with scrupulous fairness. He’d been very lucky, but he wondered why he’d thought of the chest on this particular night.

Because it was a doorway to an earlier life. He hadn’t been ready to look at that life until now. Expression set, he turned the key in the lock and opened the door to his past.