Page 11 of When the Marquess Was Mine
Kitty glanced sharply at Adam. “Are you certain he wasn’t one of the villains?”
The groom hesitated, but the figure hanging limply over the saddle began to slide. With an exclamation, Adam lunged forward and caught the wounded man before he could fall headfirst onto the gravel, though only enough to break his fall.
The poor fellow landed on his back, his arms flopping wide and his head resting at a drunken tilt to his shoulders. Some of the blood must have been wiped off by the saddle or the horse’s side, and this time Georgiana could make out his features, despite the swelling beginning in earnest on one side of his face.
She took one look at his face and gave a strangled scream.
Kitty, who had bent down to look at him, jerked upright. “What?” she cried. “What is it?”
Georgiana could only look at her, speechless. Oh God.
Kitty, she remembered out of the blue, had a ruthless streak in her. At school once, when another girl had mocked and snubbed her for her background, Kitty had taken the abuse calmly, then somehow managed to slit the soles of that girl’s dancing shoes, causing her to slip and fall during dance lessons in a horribly embarrassing way. The girl had sprawled on the floor, howling that she’d turned her ankle, and Kitty had sat quietly at the side of the room plying her fan with the faintest of smiles on her lips. To her friends she was unwaveringly loyal and generous, but to anyone who crossed her...
Kitty stepped over the unconscious form and seized Georgiana’s arms. “Are you going to faint? What is wrong?”
“I—I know who he is,” she whispered numbly.
Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “Do you? Who is he?”
He would die without their help. He might already be beyond saving, with all that blood dripping slowly out of him, but any chance of survival he had rested in their hands. Inherhands. Georgiana’s chest felt tight and she wavered on her feet. She wet her lips and squeezed handfuls of her skirt so tightly, her fingers cramped.
“It’s Sterling,” she choked out. “My fiancé.”
Kitty’s eyes went wide as the name registered. “Good heavens! Oh my dear—no wonder you’re overwrought! Do not despair, we shall do everything we can for him.” She gave Georgiana a brief, fierce hug before whirling to her servants. “Adam, fly to the doctor at once!” The groom vaulted back into his saddle and tore off. Kitty ran to the open door of the house. “We must get him inside! John, Angus, come at once!” she cried inside, and her two footmen came running. “Gently now,” Kitty commanded. “Mrs. Hill! Turn back the bed in the green bedroom! Send Lucy to heat a large pot of water, and fetch some bandages—a great many bandages, Mrs. Hill! And my sewing kit—at once!”
The footmen carried the unconscious man by his shoulders and legs into the house. Kitty hurried before them, calling out instructions to her housekeeper and answering the anxious queries of her mother-in-law and Geneva as the drama reached the rest of the household.
Outside, alone for the moment, Georgiana started to put her face in her hands, only to recoil at the sight of her bloodstained fingers. There was so much blood—on him, on her, in a dark puddle out on the sunken road where they’d found him, now on the gravel drive of Osbourne House. With jerky motions she wiped her hands on her skirt, trying not to think of what she had just done.
It was to save a life, she told herself. She was right to have done that.
But the man she’d saved was not Viscount Sterling, her charming and beloved fiancé.
It was the Marquess of Westmorland, who had come to turn Kitty out of her house and home.
Chapter 5
The trail of blood led through the hall and up the stairs, seeping into the carpet. Georgiana gripped the banister and slowly climbed the stairs, avoiding each splatter of red.
In the corridor outside the sickroom she stopped. The door was open, giving her a view of Kitty and her servants, scrambling over themselves to help the man who had come to destroy their lives.
A second letter from Charles had arrived just yesterday. Kitty hadn’t shared this letter with Geneva or Mother Winston, but she’d showed it to Georgiana. More despondent than in the first, Charles had confessed to Kitty that he had been duped into putting up Osbourne House as collateral in a dispute with the marquess. The marquess subsequently demanded the deed, and Mr. Willis, the family solicitor in London, had foolishly handed it over before Charles could warn him not to do so. He assured his wife he meant to fight Westmorland’s claim, based as it was on nothing but deceptions and fraud, but he reiterated that they must not admit or speak to the marquess if he should present himself in Derbyshire. In a dire aside, Charles added that the marquess had spoken of turning the house into a den of vice.
He assured Kitty this would never happen, but Kitty had been deadly, calmly furious. She vowed to defend her home and family with every means at her disposal. Georgiana hadn’t repeated her joke about driving off the marquess by insulting his tailor; it was no longer as amusing. She saw the thick letters Kitty posted later in the day to Charles and to Mr. Jackson, her own solicitor, and she also saw the gleaming row of guns on the wall in the small back parlor.
There was no question Charles had done something stupid. Georgiana didn’t know if the Malicious Marquess could legally claim the house, but it wouldn’t matter if he showed up, deed in hand, and demanded that they vacate the premises, only to be shot by a vengeful Kitty.
Whatever idiocy Charles had committed, however, would be compounded by Georgiana’s own.
She swallowed the lump of anxiety in her throat. She hated being put on the spot, especially a very stressful spot, and she had panicked when the injured man rolled over onto his back. Until then she’d felt it imperative to do everything possible to help the poor soul, beaten within an inch of his life and left for dead. But when she recognized the Marquess of Westmorland, her first instinct had been horror.
She hated him. Everyone at Osbourne House hated him—and rightly so, in her opinion. But if she told Kitty who he was, she feared her friend would refuse to help him. Beaten as he was, it would take very little to allow Westmorland to quietly bleed to death.
No one, not even the Malicious Marquess, deserved to be left in the dirt to bleed to death.
And as a result, she said he was someone Kitty would unquestionably help, someone who would unquestionablydeserveher help.
When he woke up and revealed his real name, Kitty would be enraged. She would accuse Georgiana—rightly—of bringing a viper into her nest. She would almost surely throw her out, and never speak to her again. Georgiana’s stomach twisted painfully at the thought.
