Andrew; Lord Of Despair Read online

  When he would have turned to go, Andrew stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Doctor. Do you believe the viscountess was administered a deadly poison?”

  For a moment, there was little sound, except the ticking of the clock in the nearby parlor and the jingle of a passing harness.

  “Yes, and no,” the doctor said, his hand on the door latch. “Not a deadly poison, but a deadly combination of poisons. An opiate was involved, probably to render her unconscious, to deaden the ability to retch, and possibly to deaden the worst of the pain. In addition to that, her ladyship ingested a toxin of some sort, though there’s no way to determine which one. If you hadn’t been here and reacted as quickly as you did, we would be summoning the watch.”

  Andrew swore in Italian and German both—the doctor would likely know French—his worst fears confirmed. “And have you seen the viscountess behave in any way that suggests she would do harm to herself or her child?”

  The doctor shook his head, and was gone before Andrew could ask the next question.

  “He thinks you were poisoned,” Andrew said when he returned to Astrid’s room, “and he won’t be able, in all honesty, to assure Douglas you did not administer it to yourself.”

  “Dear God.” Astrid sank back against her pillows and turned her head, when such an accusation should have had her charging about the room and ranting.

  “Astrid, listen to me. Douglas has already asked the doctor if your recent tumble down the steps could be an effort to hurt, or even lose, the baby. The doctor told him you would have to be crazy to attempt such a thing. Douglas could be laying a trap, creating a wealth of evidence to prove you unfit, if not insane, prior to the child’s birth—if he doesn’t succeed in killing you altogether.”

  She plucked at the coverlet, which was embroidered with ducks and daisies. The design was not a married woman’s choice, much less a widow’s, but it reassured Andrew to see it.

  “Had you not come calling today, I doubt I would have survived.”

  “The doctor confirmed as much.” And how Andrew hated to see Astrid pale and fearful. “I want you to write a note to Lady Amery. Tell her you have gone off to pay a call on your brother, and tell me which of your things you want me to gather up.”

  She put a hand over her belly, a hand that sported no wedding ring. “My stationery is in the escritoire, and there’s a small valise under this bed.”

  As Astrid wrote a note to Lady Amery, her penmanship less than exemplary, Andrew wrote a different note to David, Viscount Fairly. Astrid sat on the bed and allowed Andrew to dress her—he did not want her even standing if he could preserve her from the effort. He tossed some clothing and personal items into her valise, and then made up the bed while Astrid sat in the rocking chair and stared at the carpet.

  “You’d best heed nature’s call,” he reminded her, “and I’ll get the carriage.”

  Andrew soon had her up in his phaeton, his tiger tearing off with the note for Fairly. Minutes later, Andrew drew his vehicle to a halt in Lady Heathgate’s mews. As he escorted Astrid up the back walk, he bellowed for a running footman to retrieve Mr. Brenner from Gareth’s town house, and sent another messenger on a fast horse to head for Willowdale. Both were off in their respective directions before Andrew and Astrid had gained the back entrance of the house.

  With those measures taken, a bit of the anxiety riding Andrew eased.

  He ushered Astrid into the house, gave orders for tea and scones to be served in the family parlor, then escorted her there, hoping to give her a chance to catch her breath.

  And then he would tell her what she absolutely did not want to hear.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked, taking a chair at a right angle to the couch. If he sat beside her, he would touch her, and if he touched her, he would not be able to say what must be said.

  “I have a sense of unreality, of being anxious, and knowing my situation is perilous, but also feeling too tired and disoriented to do anything about it. Even thinking seems an effort, and that scares me most of all.”

  Astrid frightened and unsafe in her own home was insupportable, and motivation enough for what Andrew must do.

  “You were given an opiate.” And a toxin—a bloody, goddamned poison. “That might account for the disorientation. But you are also, no doubt, in shock.” When she would have interrupted him, he held up a hand. “Please, hear me out.” Before he lost his nerve.

  Now she stared at his mother’s antique Axminster carpets.

  “You might have fallen down the stairs, quite by accident, my dear, but if you think back carefully, can you assure me you weren’t shoved?”

  “The housemaids were about,” Astrid said slowly, as if the words were eluding capture by her mind. “They would have had to bring the tea tray up to Lady Amery if Henry were paying his regular call on her. I have a vague recollection of starting to faint, but not quite being teetery yet when I pitched down the stairs.”

  That was not a denial. He’d been hoping to God she’d be able to give him a confident denial.

  “And today,” Andrew went on, “something you consumed at breakfast damn near killed you, under circumstances when it was likely you would have been in the house alone.” Rather than watch her face, he focused on her hands, pale and still in her lap. “We have reached a point where any reasonable person would conclude you are in need of protection.”

  She did not launch into a lecture about him overreacting or overstepping. She didn’t dismiss his fears with assurances that she’d be more careful. As Astrid sat motionless and pale in the smallest parlor of his mother’s house, Andrew battled the need to do violence to whoever had rendered her so lifeless.

  “What do you propose, Andrew?”

  “Marriage.”

  ***

  Andrew greeted Lord Fairly and Michael Brenner when they arrived fifteen minutes before the appointed hour, both in proper morning finery. Brenner brought the special license, and Fairly a bouquet of white roses.

  “The bishop will be here on the hour,” Andrew told them. Should the right reverend lord bishop fail to show, Andrew would hunt the man down on foot. “May I offer you each a drink?”

  “The Bishop of London?” Fairly rejoined. “Any particular reason?”

  “The haste is because Astrid was slipped a potentially fatal dose of poison today, in her own home.” Andrew’s hand shook as he poured drinks for his guests. “If I hadn’t stopped by, completely unplanned I might add, she would have died a very uncomfortable death, alone, on her bedroom floor. The doctor confirmed that much.”

  He poured himself a drink and addressed the rest of his remarks to a small porcelain statute of the winged goddess Nike on the mantel.

  “The bishop is because I want this wedding to be so damned official, despite its haste, Douglas will not be able to attack it from any angle.”

  Fairly turned his back, as if studying a portrait of three small boys and a mastiff that hung over the sideboard, though his grip on his glass looked ferocious.

  “Prudent,” Fairly said, sipping his brandy. “When you talk to Douglas, I would like to be present.”

  “As would I,” said a voice from the hallway.

  Gareth sauntered in, looking windblown and smelling of exertion and horse, despite the nippy day. Andrew put down his drink and reached for the decanter as Gareth knocked his hand aside and enveloped him in a hug. “To hell with the drink.”

  “You came.”

  “I am not a foolish man,” Gareth said, drawing back. “Besotted, yes. Foolish, not often. Felicity saw I wanted to be here, ordered my hardiest mount saddled, then summoned me for argument. I fear I am not appropriately attired.”

  When a man had only one adult male relative left on earth, that fellow’s presence was a bracing tonic. “You could have arrived in your dressing gown for all I care,” Andrew replied. “You are here, and for that, you and Felicity have my thanks.”

  “N
ow that Heathgate has made his entrance,” Fairly said, pouring Gareth a drink, “perhaps you’d care to start your tale again. You had just explained that Astrid ingested a potentially fatal dose of poison while enjoying a solitary breakfast this morning.”

  “Sweet, suffering angels,” Gareth expostulated, scowling thunderously. “If there’s more, I don’t need to hear it. Marry her and move the hell out of England until the child is of age—at least until then.”

  Andrew felt a nudge of relief, because his brother had anticipated the next worry: How to keep Astrid and her child safe once Andrew had guaranteed himself the legal entitlement to do so.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Fairly said. “What haven’t you told us?”

  Andrew glanced at the clock again—he was, after all, a bridegroom—and set his drink aside. Whether it was wedding-day nerves, lingering upset over Astrid’s brush with death, or sympathy for his intended’s tentative digestion, Andrew could not countenance swilling spirits.

  “Dr. DuPont told me Douglas had already interrogated him about whether Astrid might have thrown herself down the steps to harm or lose the baby. Astrid did indeed tumble the length of the Allens’ front stairway, but her best recollection is that she may have been pushed.”

  “Pushed?” Gareth began. “Then why the hell would Douglas—?”

  Andrew held up a hand and continued speaking. “The doctor was careful this morning to question Astrid regarding anything she might have taken, intentionally or otherwise, to induce a miscarriage. When Douglas interrogated DuPont earlier, DuPont told Douglas a woman would have to be crazy to try to lose a child by causing herself serious bodily harm.”

  “And there we have it,” Fairly said, running a finger around the rim of his glass. “The contingency plan. If Astrid isn’t killed outright, she is made to look as if she has homicidal intentions toward her unborn child. I would not put it past Douglas to raise suspicions regarding the miscarriage she had last year.”

  The slight uneasiness in Andrew’s guts rose higher, like seasickness as the sight of dry land receded. “I’d forgotten about that.”

  Gareth sat and used a handkerchief to swat dust from his boots. “And not to cheer anybody up, Douglas will have a motive for Astrid’s resentment of the pregnancy when he can demonstrate the late viscount stole from his own wife.”

  “And did so,” Andrew added bleakly, “to maintain his well-compensated mistress.” In the ensuing silence, Brenner topped off everyone’s glass, then put the stopper—a damned cherub—back in the decanter.

  “Was there ever such a cheerful wedding party?” Brenner asked, his brogue slightly in evidence. His comment restored Andrew’s balance a bit, which was fortunate, because the bishop soon joined them, eyeing their drinks with a knowing smile.

  “Are we fortifying ourselves, gentlemen?” he asked genially. “I believe many a wedding is thus celebrated in advance, and wouldn’t mind a tot m’self.” He had no sooner downed his “tot” in a single swallow than Astrid joined them, her attire plain lavender and her complexion pale.

  But, oh, she did smile when she spied her brother standing across the room. That smile helped settle something in Andrew’s mind, helped him breathe more easily.

  “You came,” she said, hugging Fairly fiercely.

  “Odd,” Gareth said from his place behind her, “my sibling greeted me the same way.”

  “Gareth!” If anything, Gareth’s hug was more fierce than Fairly’s had been, fierce enough to convey both his love and Felicity’s. Gareth kissed Astrid’s cheek and kept an arm around her shoulders. “Felicity sends her best wishes, but she no longer hugs anyone, she docks alongside them, so great are her dimensions.”

  “That’s quite enough!” Astrid chided, but his humor had succeeded in bringing the roses to her cheeks and the light back in her eye.

  Within moments, Astrid and Andrew were poised before the bishop, and Fairly was responding to the question regarding who gives the bride in marriage. With Gareth and Fairly on either side of them, they spoke their vows, Astrid quietly, and Andrew in the tones of a man who knew this wedding was right, even if the marriage itself would suffer a world of problems.

  They were pronounced man and wife together, the ring one chosen by Felicity from several owned by Astrid’s mother. Documents were signed, and the bishop was sent on his way with a celebratory bottle of Gareth’s finest.

  “If you two can manage from here,” Gareth said, “then I will return to Willowdale and report every detail of the ceremony to my lady wife. I should make it home before dark if I start now.”

  “I will be on my way as well,” Fairly said, “though we should plan a rendezvous at Willowdale soon. Astrid, if you like, I’d be happy to pay a call on Douglas on my way home. I will deliver a letter in your hand, informing him of the nuptials.”

  God bless Fairly, and a mind that tended so effortlessly to strategy.

  Andrew kept an arm around his wife—his wife—who still looked miserably pale. “We might want to create the impression we’ve taken a short wedding journey to my Sussex estate. I will also send a note to Douglas, explaining to him that Astrid is now in my keeping, and he needn’t trouble further over her welfare.”

  “Fine then,” Gareth said, calling for his hat, gloves, and riding crop. “I will expect you all to join me at Willowdale by week’s end, and do not disappoint me, or Felicity will be unhappy. Brenner, if you could walk with me to the stables?”

  Fairly made his good-byes, and Astrid and Andrew were soon left alone, seated side by side on the big leather sofa.

  “I did not expect even to see you today, much less end up married to you,” Astrid said. She looked and sounded dazed, not at all like the confident, articulate woman who seized life by the lapels and lectured it into submission.

  “Nor I to you,” Andrew replied. “I am pleased, despite all.” Pleased and relieved, also furious on her behalf and rattled as hell.

  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I cannot think of all today, Andrew. I can barely form coherent thoughts, if you must know. But I am pleased as well.”

  Pleased was something. He took her hand, glad for the solitude that allowed him such familiarity, only to realize that as her husband, such familiarity was… permitted. “This has not been the quiet day the doctor ordered.”

  “Dr. DuPont? I do not want to see him again. He bore tales to Douglas, and suspected me of harming my own child. I went back to him because he attended me last year.” Astrid opened her eyes and focused on Andrew, looking more like herself—a little disgruntled and weary, her eyes not quite right, but like his Astrid. “I suppose, having dispensed with a wedding breakfast, this brings us to the wedding night?”

  Eleven

  “A pleasure, Fairly.” Douglas Allen, Viscount Amery, bowed correctly to his guest, though he managed to convey to David that an unexpected visitor was not a pleasure at all. His lordship’s sitting room was chilly, though comfortably appointed in green, brown, and cream—but then, it was public and visible from the street. The windowsills boasted no fresh bouquets; the walls were bare of domestic adornments. No paper cuttings, no watercolors from a talented cousin’s days in the schoolroom, no pressed flowers as a token of Lady Amery’s idle hours.

  Nothing to suggest the house was anything other than a bachelor encampment with walls.

  “Shall I ring for refreshment?”

  “Please,” David replied, relishing the thought of a hot, sweet cup of tea, but also wanting to preserve the fiction of civility.

  “I confess to some confusion,” Amery said, gesturing to the settee opposite the empty fireplace. “My mother stopped by only an hour or so ago and told me you were entertaining your sister Astrid. Did Astrid tire of your company?”

  “I fear there has been a misunderstanding, Lord Amery,” David began pleasantly. “Though I have in fact spent much of the afternoon with my sister. I left her in reasonably good health and in great good spirits.” Two exaggera
tions in the name of strategy. David flipped a sealed note onto the low table before the settee. “Perhaps this will explain.”

  He watched Amery’s features as his lordship read the brief missive, though Douglas’s expression did not change.

  Not in any detail.

  “My sister-in-law is due congratulations,” Amery said at length. “When may I call upon the happy couple to offer them in person?”

  “Lord Greymoor has written to you as well,” David said by way of answer. This missive he passed to Douglas, allowing their hands to brush. David had removed his driving gloves upon entering the house, and Douglas—called from his desk, if the ink on the heel of his right hand was any indication—was also bare handed. The man’s fingers were like ice, and he made no reaction to the unusual, if accidental, touch of another man’s hand on his.

  Amery read the note, looking up only when a servant entered with the tea tray.

  And again, not a flinch, not a flaring of the nostrils or a narrowing of the eyes. Over cards—or dueling pistols—Amery would be impossible to read.

  “Because we have no hostess, I propose we serve ourselves,” he said. “After you, Fairly, unless, of course, you are concerned I might be of a mind to poison you too?”

  Opening salvo, David thought, mentally saluting.

  “I am not a diminutive, pregnant, grieving widow,” David said, hefting the teapot, “home alone and completely without defenses, and”—he offered his host a smile—“because I am in desperate need of a cup of tea, I will treat that remark as facetious. I gather Dr. DuPont has already called upon you?”

  And there’s your answering fire.

  “He left a card while I was from home,” Amery replied. “Do try the cakes. Cook quite outdoes herself.”

  “You will be interested to know Dr. DuPont will no longer be attending the countess.”