He stepped to the side to go around her to the door, and she mirrored his movement.
“Go home!” she hissed. “You’re making a frightful ass out of yourself.”
“Brought it on yourself, miss,” Putley crowed somewhere behind Lord Hope.
“Do shut up, Putley!” Beatrice cried, and then squeaked because Lord Hope had eliminated her barrier by simply picking her up and moving her to the side. “Oh, don’t!”
But it was too late. He’d opened the door, barged into the room, and then stopped dead, blocking her view.
She heard a breathless laugh from Jeremy. “Lord Hope, I presume?”
“Goddamn,” the viscount said.
“Oh, get out of the way!” Beatrice shoved hard at his great big stupid back.
He moved obligingly to the side.
She hurried past him. “Jeremy, are you all right?”
“Quite all right,” he said, his color high and hectic. “Haven’t had this much excitement in years.”
“And it isn’t good for you.” She took his hand and turned to glare at Lord Hope, still standing by the door. The man didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
“I told you”—he casually kicked the door closed behind him—“discovering you in a lover’s nest. It seems I might be mistaken.”
“Might be?” She balled her free hand and set it on her hip. “You’ve been a complete and utter idiot and have insulted both me and Jeremy. Obviously we aren’t lovers—”
“There’s nothing obvious about it,” he growled, eyeing the remains of Jeremy’s legs beneath the covers. “I’ve known men who’ve lost their legs but not their—”
“Don’t be disgusting!” She was shouting now, but it was completely out of her control. How dare he? What kind of woman did he think her? He’d humiliated her!
Behind her, Jeremy was making choking sounds, and she turned swiftly, alarmed.
He was trying to hold back big belly laughs and not succeeding very well.
“Oh, not you, too,” she said, thoroughly exasperated, even as she poured him a glass of water.
“Thank you, dear,” Jeremy said. “And I’m sorry. At this moment, I feel that I should apologize for my entire sex.”
“You should,” she grumbled. “You’re rotten to the core, all of you.”
“Yes, I know,” he said humbly. “You’re simply a saint to put up with us at all. But I have a boon to ask of you, dearest.”
“What is it?” she asked, not very graciously.
“Would you mind terribly going and seeing to Putley’s ruffled feathers? I know it’s a tiresome chore, but I’d rather not have him tattling to my parents about this matter.”
“Oh, all right.” She glared at Lord Hope. “But I’ll have to leave you here with him.”
“I know.” Jeremy adopted an angelic expression that didn’t fool her for a moment. “I’d rather hoped to have a chat with the viscount.”
“Humph,” she said. She stepped up to Lord Hope until they were nearly chin to chin—although she had to tilt hers quite far up—and poked him in the chest with her forefinger.
“Ow,” said Lord Hope.
“If you lay a single finger on him,” she hissed into his face, “or overexcite him in any way, I’ll tear that silly earring right out of your ear.”
Behind her, Jeremy went into peals of laughter, but she didn’t bother glancing at him again. She slammed the door behind her and stomped off in search of Putley.
Men!
REYNAUD RUBBED THE spot where Miss Corning had attempted to drill her forefinger through his breastbone. “I apologize.”
“’Tisn’t me who needs the apology,” the man in the bed said, still laughing. “I’ll give you a hint—her favorite flowers are lily of the valley.”
“Are they?” Reynaud eyed the door speculatively. He hadn’t brought a woman flowers in eons, but the situation might very well call for the formal English method of suing for peace from a lady. At the moment, though, he had other matters to settle. He turned back to the man in the bed. “Battle wounds?”
“Blown off by cannon fire at Emsdorf on the Continent,” Oates said. His color was unnaturally high, as if he was feverish. “Back in sixty.”
Reynaud nodded. He strolled to the table littered with medicine bottles of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t a medicine in the world that could put a man’s legs back on once lost. “Did she tell you I was with the Twenty-eighth Regiment of Foot in the Colonies?”
“She did.” He laid his head back against the pillow as if exhausted. “I was in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons. Much more dashing than a foot soldier—until, of course, one gets shot off one’s horse.”
“Battle is never as romantic as one thinks,” Reynaud said.
He remembered well his boyish romanticism of the army. It had died fast on the reality of rotten food, incompetent officers, and boredom. His first skirmish had destroyed what little illusion still survived.
“Our regiment was newly formed,” Oates said, “and we hadn’t yet seen action. Many of the men were London tailors who’d been on strike and had to join. We never stood a chance.”
“You were defeated there?”
Oates smiled bitterly. “Oh, no. We won the day. One hundred and twenty-five men killed in my regiment alone, over a hundred horses dead, but we won the battle. I went down in our second charge.”
“I’m sorry.”
Oates shrugged. “You know as well as I the wages of war—perhaps more so than I.”
“I won’t debate the matter. I came for something else entirely.” Reynaud sat in the chair that was beside the bed. “What are you to her?”
The other man arched his brows as if amused. “I’m Jeremy Oates, by the way.”
There was nothing for it but to stick out his hand. “Reynaud St. Aubyn.”
Oates took his hand and shook it, looking in his eyes as if searching for something. His fingers were as thin as twigs. “Pleased to meet you.” The odd thing was he sounded sincere.
Reynaud took back his hand. “My question?”
Oates half smiled, his eyes closing as he lay against the pillows. “Childhood friends. I played hide-and-seek with her in my family’s sitting room, helped her with her geography lessons, escorted her to her first ball.”
Reynaud felt a jolt somewhere in the region of his breastbone at the other man’s words. Perhaps it was the lingering aftereffects of that sharp poke, but he rather thought it might be jealousy instead.
Jealousy. He’d never felt the emotion before.
True, he’d been enraged this morning to learn that Miss Corning had already left to visit her mysterious beau. He’d come here at once with the intent to confront them and thrash the other man if necessary, but he hadn’t stopped to examine his emotions. Mine, his instinct had said, and so he’d acted on it without thought. The realization now that his reaction was emotional was an unwelcome shock.
“Do you love her?” he asked.
“Yes,” Oates said simply. “With all my heart. But not, I believe, in the way you mean.”
Reynaud shifted in the chair, uncomfortable with his need to know exactly what the other man meant. “Explain.”
Oates smiled and Reynaud saw that he’d once been a handsome man before illness had carved lines of suffering into his face. “Beatrice is dearer than any blood sister could ever be to me.”
Reynaud narrowed his eyes. The man might say his relationship with Miss Corning was fraternal, but she wasn’t in fact related. How, then, could their friendship be as innocent as he claimed?
“So you wouldn’t have married her even if that hadn’t happened.” He jerked his chin at the other man’s missing legs.
Most would have taken offense, but Oates merely grinned. “No. Although Beatrice has brought up the idea of marriage to me more than once.”
That was an unpleasant jolt. Reynaud straightened. “What?”
And Oates’s grin widened, making him realize he’d risen to the bait.
“What game are you playing?” Reynaud growled.
“A game of life and death and love and hate,” Oates replied softly.
“You’re babbling.”
“No.” The grin abruptly vanished. “I’m completely serious. You’ll take care of her.”
“What?” Reynaud frowned. Sometimes invalids became confused from the pain and the drugs they took to mask it. Was Oates floating in some drug-induced haze?
“Promise you’ll take care of her,” the other man said, and although his voice was weak, his tone held the ghost of a good officer’s command. “Beatrice is a special woman, someone to be cherished for herself. She wears a mask of practicality, but underneath she’s a romantic and prone to heartbreak. Don’t break her heart. I won’t ask if you love her—I doubt you know yourself—but promise me you’ll take care of her. See to it she’s happy every day of her life. Lay down your own life for her if need be. Promise.”
And suddenly Reynaud understood. His emotions had blinded him to the reality that lay in front of him. He’d seen this look in other men’s eyes before, and he knew damned well what it meant.
So he said simply and sincerely, “I swear on everything I hold dear that I’ll take care of her, keep her safe, and do my damnedest to make her happy.”
Oates nodded. “I can ask for nothing more. Thank you.”
HOW DARE HE?
Beatrice opened the front door of Jeremy’s town house and went outside for a badly needed breath of fresh air. She’d already browbeaten Putley into keeping quiet about Lord Hope’s violent invasion of the house, but she was still dealing with her own reaction to his suspicions. And what terrible suspicions they were! Insulting both to Jeremy and herself. When had she ever given him cause to think her a wanton? And how he thought he could just barge in and dictate to her, she did not know.
Beatrice stamped her feet, both to keep warm and to emphasize her own anger.
There were three men loitering in the street below—two scrawny fellows in ragged brown coats and a taller man in black. The taller man turned to look at the sound of her stamping. His right eye rolled to the corner of the socket, revealing rather horribly the white membrane of the eyeball. She glanced quickly away from the poor man. She should go back inside, but she was still angry. She wanted to be composed when next she saw Lord Hope—the better to tell him exactly what she thought of him.
A brewer’s cart went by, rattling on the cobblestones, and one of the loitering men shouted something to the driver.
Behind her, the door opened so quickly she almost fell back in the house. Instead, strong hands caught her.
“I’ve been looking all over the house for you,” Lord Hope said. “What are you doing out here?”
She tried to pull away, but he held fast to her upper arms. “I wanted some air.”
He looked down at her disbelievingly, and she couldn’t help but notice how thickly his eyelashes rimmed his black eyes.
“In the cold?”
“I find it very refreshing,” she said, pulling at her arms again. “Might I have my person back?”
“No,” he muttered, turning to guide her down the steps, his hand still gripping one of her arms.
“What?” she demanded.
“I’m not letting you go,” he said. “Ever.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s not meant to be,” he said maddeningly as they came to the street. “Where’s the damned carriage?”
