Page 22 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“It’smyresponsibility—”
“I know it is,” he interjected. “But I know this boy. Or, rather, I know his father. He’s the owner of the bookshop on North Street, and he’s the worst sort of misogynist. While he’ll gladly take your money, he won’t thank you for taking his son to task. Nor is he likely to heed a word you say.” Ian heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingertips. “Elias is twenty, or thereabouts, and still beholden to his father for his living. Your best bet would be to appeal to his father for assistance, have the man hold the threat of disownment over his head.”
“And he’s unlikely to render such assistance to me?” Felicity inquired sulkily.
“To a woman?Anywoman?” Ian snorted. “Not damned likely. Let mehandle him,” he said, and this time it had the tone of a request for her permission rather than a demand. “I’ve been champing at the bit for an opportunity to rake him over the coals.”
Felicity blinked, nonplussed. “Why?”
“Because he’s one of the merchants who has been fleecing your school. For a few years now, as far as I can tell. Probably he thought no one would notice.”
ButIanhad noticed. Noticed—and now bore a grudge against the man for it. On her behalf? “What will you say to him?” she asked.
“What I usually say to people who have offended me,” he said. “That a man of any intelligence would not wish to make an enemy of me. That if he fails to keep his son away from Dorothea, that is precisely what I will become. And I will ruin him.”
“Can you…can you truly do that?”
“I can do that and worse. It would be a matter of a few signatures to wrest his shop from him, and a few words to the right people to ensure that no other becomes available tohim. He’ll be ruined for business in Brighton.”
It might have been only a remnant leftover from her earlier chills, but the bite of frost in Ian’s voice sent a shiver sliding down Felicity’s spine and lifted the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. She had married a dangerous man. She supposed she had known it before now, in an abstract sort of way. He was beyond wealthy, and that conferred a great deal of power. But she suspected it hadn’t been onlyfinancialruin of which he had been speaking.
The flex of his hands at his sides suggested a sort of violence she’d thought he’d left years in the past, back in those days when he’d boxed some evenings for a little extra ready coin. And he would wield it on her behalf—only because Mr. Marchant the elder had cheated her school, and by extension,her.
In the moment, something sad and very nearly wistful tugged at the corner of her heart. A sort of ache for a past that she had buried years ago. A certain melancholic sorrow that he could evince such fierce loyaltynow—but that he hadn’t when it had mattered most.
Chapter Eight
Budge up,” Ian said as he nudged Felicity’s hip, urging her once more toward her side of the bed. She’d slept most of the day—or at least, she had been sleeping on those occasions that he’d peeked in on her—but with her tendency to thrash restlessly, she’d somehow migrated to the very center of the bed. And while there was still plenty of room for him, he felt like sprawling just now.Christ,he ached.
Felicity made a sleepy noise, stirring just enough to pitch herself over onto her stomach, planting her face in her own pillow. Ian sank onto the bed with a groan. The headache had hit in early afternoon, followed swiftly by the fever. By early evening, he’d divested himself of everything but his smallclothes in a desperate attempt to cool his overheated flesh. He’d gulped down at least a full pot of willow bark tea, which hadn’t aided the fever, but had at least mitigated the worst of the headache. Probably the chills would start up soon enough.
“What time is it?” Felicity asked in a drowsy mumble.
“Midnight, or close enough to it,” Ian muttered into his pillow.
Felicity curled in on herself, burrowing beneath the blankets. “Have you got my letters?” she asked.
Shit. The letters. They were all that she had requested to have delivered from the school. He’d tucked them into his coat pocket and forgotten about them, and now the coat—damnation, the coat was draped over the back of a chair some fifteen feet away from the bed. It would take at most ten strides to reach it, but at the moment it felt a journey of a thousand miles. Nonetheless he dragged himself out of bed and stumbled toward it.
“I sent a letter to Mr. Marchant earlier,” he said as he shoved his hand into his coat pocket and withdrew a fistful of letters. “I would have let you read it first, but you slept the day away.”
“I was tired,” she said through the chattering of her teeth, her voice half-muffled beneath the counterpane.
Ian winced. The damned fire was ebbing, just as it always did at thishour of the evening. He tottered toward the coal scuttle, but his arm was weak and clumsy, his joints aching and his muscles burning as he lifted it and poured a fresh layer of coal upon the banking fire. The racket he’d made had Felicity poking her head out from beneath the covers, a scowl of confusion scrawled across her face.
“What in the world was that?” she asked.
“Fresh coal.” Ian let the coal scuttle fall from his fingers some inches above the floor, and the shrill, metallic sound of the bottom striking against the stone of the hearth could have woken the dead. “The fire is usually dying by the time I retire,” he said as he strode back toward the bed. “I put down a fresh heap of coal when I come to bed.”
Her dark hair, frizzy and tangled from a day spent in bed, slid over her shoulder as she canted her head to the right. “How often?” she asked, a pleat between her brows.
“Every night,” he said as he collapsed once more onto the bed, letting the stack of letters fall in a jumble between them. “You ball yourself up when your toes get cold.”
The counterpane fell to her waist as she eased her arms out, and she scraped the letters into a tidy stack once more. “You look wretched,” she said as she began to thumb through the letters.
“You look whatever is worse than wretched,” Ian said, flopping onto his back. His back, slicked with sweat already, stuck to the sheet beneath him.
“Do your joints ache?” she asked, sniffling through obvious congestion.
