Page 46 of Unmasked by the Marquess
Once Louisa was asleep, she went downstairs to find Gilbert. “Miss Church,” Gilbert said, rising to his feet. His handsome face was creased with strain and fatigue, he held his arm awkwardly, but still he executed a gentlemanly bow.
“About that,” she started. After all, if he were to marry Louisa he’d have to be let in on the secret. “You’re quite right that I’m Miss Church, but I’m afraid you also know me as Robert Selby.”
His hesitation lasted only the barest instant. “Is that so? Well, that explains a good deal, I dare say. A dashed good deal, in fact. Well, any friend of Louisa is a friend of mine.”
Perhaps it was his open mind that had drawn Louisa to him. Charity had known there had to be more to the man than a pretty face and a dash of charm. “I hardly need to tell you this is a secret of some importance to both Louisa and myself, do I?”
Tapping the side of his nose, he said, “Quite right. Your secret is safe with me.” And then he went back to poking the fire with his good arm.
Well, that had gone better than she could have expected.
The doctor, a gaunt man of about forty, arrived at dusk. He examined Louisa’s head, looked at her eyes, and made her tell him what month and year it was.
“She has no fractures, but she needs close care and plenty of rest for the next few weeks,” he pronounced, snapping his bag shut. “I don’t want her out of this bed.” He eyed Charity critically. “She might become feverish. Do you have any experience nursing the ill? If not, there’s a woman in the village who’s reasonably trustworthy.”
Over Charity’s dead body would Louisa be entrusted to a yokel whose only recommendation was being reasonably trustworthy. “I nursed Miss Selby and her brother through all the usual illnesses and injuries.”
“Suit yourself.” He gathered his bag and made for the door. “I’ll check on the lady tomorrow. You may bandage her wound now.”
Charity did so; that accomplished, she sat in the hard chair by Louisa’s bed and made herself as comfortable as she could, given the unaccustomed clothes and the fact that every muscle in her body ached. She was bone-tired but knew she wouldn’t sleep. She had to look after Louisa.
She had to look after Louisa.That was why she had been sent to live with the Selbys in the first place, to take care of a sad, motherless girl. Not that Charity had been anything other than a sad, motherless girl herself, but she had adopted Louisa’s welfare as her purpose in life, and old habits were hard to break. She stood, intending to open the windows and let in some fresh air, but got her skirts caught under the chair leg.
How on earth did women get anything done when encumbered by acres of fabric? Stranger still was how all that fabric somehow left her so exposed. The gown had a high neckline—Mrs. Trout was a farmer’s wife, not a debutante—but Charity’s throat felt oddly naked without a cravat, her legs indecently free under the short chemise. And there were no drawers at all. Perhaps farmers’ wives didn’t wear drawers in Biggleswade, or wherever they were. But to be naked under the gown when she was used to wearing breeches made her feel even stranger.
She heard a clock chime ten o’clock. It felt like four in the morning, she was so tired.
The door creaked open, and she automatically turned her head.
There, standing in the doorway, was Alistair, soaking wet and wearing an expression of thunderous rage.
Chapter Fifteen
It had taken an hour to get these rustic loobies to tell him anything useful.
“You’ll be meaning the injured gentlefolk,” said the innkeeper, in answer to Alistair’s inquiry about the overturned carriage.
Alistair pushed a coin towards the man. It was a shilling, which was likely a good deal over the going rate for this sort of thing, but he didn’t care. “Where have they been taken?”
One of the other patrons chimed in with a cheerful description of the quantities of blood that had been involved. The consensus among the fine fellows at the Duck and Dragon was that the chief victim in today’s entertainments was a lady of uncommon beauty—that wasn’t precisely the language the peasants used, but Alistair was able to make the inference. The other victim was a gentleman the barmaid pronounced as handsome as a prince in a fairy story, which was a nauseating way to hear one’s brother described. But evidently Gilbert had walked away from the accident, which was promising. There was also a coachman and the lady’s companion, who Alistair assumed to be the ancient aunt, and who ought to be thrown into the sea for lending her countenance to an elopement.
He asked whether there had been another gentleman present, but nobody knew anything. Robin had left London ahead of Alistair, so she ought to have caught up with the pair of absconding fools already. The entire journey from London, he had been certain every clap of thunder would be the one that would cause Mab to startle and toss her rider. He had driven with an eye for loose horses and broken bodies.
The sight of Gilbert’s overturned carriage had nearly made his heart stop.
“But where have they been taken?” he asked again, pointedly holding out another shilling.
“It depends who’s asking, don’t it?”
Alistair didn’t really see that it did, but in this case his answer ought to be sufficient. “I’m the Marquess of Pembroke.”
Five minutes later he was on the innkeeper’s own horse—the roads in this corner of hell evidently not being suitable for anything with wheels—and headed in the direction of a place with the inauspicious name of Trout Farm. But when he arrived, it was only to discover that Gilbert was no longer there.
“He went home with the doctor,” said the woman who answered the door. “But the young lady is still upstairs.”
“She’ll do.” Alistair didn’t wait for an invitation; he climbed the stairs two at a time and entered the room without knocking. Tonight was not a night for civilities. For all he knew, Robin was lying in a ditch someplace. Alistair wasn’t going to leave until he discovered whatever that hen-witted Selby girl knew about Robin’s whereabouts.
Miss Selby lay on a narrow bed, her eyes shut and her head bandaged. At the bedside sat a woman wearing an ill-fitting dress and a monstrous cap, likely a village woman who had been pressed into service as a nurse.
