The Nude (full-length historical romance) (32 page)

“I daresay she put that shoddy maid up to it,” Lady Dashborough’s voice carried across the room. “Her first husband left her penniless. She must be determined to have this one off before he can fritter away his fortune.”

Nigel shifted Elsbeth in his arms. His expression tightened and his gaze narrowed. She feared his control teetered on a sharp edge. But unlike Lord Mercer, he didn’t explode into a fit of rage. Instead, he cleared his throat as he forged into the drawing room.

“Lady Edgeware, though not well,” he said, a tremor of anger in his voice, “insisted on joining in the discussion.” He lowered Elsbeth to the sofa closest to the fire and piled several blankets on top of her. She welcomed the heat of the fire and the comfort of the blankets.

“Pardon me a moment, dove,” he said, and kissed the top of her head. “I need to speak to a servant right outside the door. I won’t be far or gone long.” Without even a nod to his uncle, he left the room.

Olivia and Lauretta, both wearing their wrappers and frilly nightcaps rushed over to Elsbeth.

“What is going on?” Lauretta asked. Tears had brightened her eyes. “When we went to bed you were fast asleep. What were you doing in Lord Edgeware’s room? Why is your hair wet? And what had happened to your nightgown?”

Olivia gave Lauretta a hard stare and shook her head. But it was Lord Ames who jumped up and guided Lauretta away. “Lord and Lady Edgeware are married now,” he said softly. “A young unmarried lady such as yourself shouldn’t be asking such questions.”

“But I don’t understand what is going on,” Lauretta persisted.

Lord Ames blushed deeply. “Ask your mama,” he choked out.

“Has Molly gone mad?” Olivia whispered.

“I don’t know.” She dearly wished Molly hadn’t charged into the room with a pistol. What would she do without her trusted maid? Who would serve as her buffer and her confidant in
this
marriage?

Her gaze strayed to the large painting over the sofa on the other side of the room. The deep purples appeared much lonelier and the crimsons more sinister in the dim light. Lightening flashed. The isolated man in the painting, the man standing on the rock outcropping looking out over into an endless abyss, appeared to flinch. Elsbeth shivered.

“We can talk about the rest later, Elly.” Olivia smoothed a hand over Elsbeth’s brow, pushing a damp tendril of hair from her face. “You don’t need to be afraid.”

Nigel returned then with Charlie not more than a pace behind, his young friends curiously absent.

“I’d thought Mr. Purbeck had returned to London,” Olivia whispered. Her nose wrinkled as she watched the young man with a look of undisguised distaste.

“Don’t delay any longer, boy,” Lord Charles Purbeck shouted from an overstuffed chair. He had raised his leg onto an embroidered ottoman and appeared to be in some considerable pain. “Tell us what in blazes is going on.” He slammed his fists against the arms of the chairs. “A servant tried to kill you, what? What?”

“Please don’t get yourself riled up, Uncle.”

“Not get riled up? You haven’t presented our family with an heir. You’ve married yourself to a barren woman.” The guests in the room gasped. “And, now, you’re toying around with dangers that will get you killed. What should I be feeling, boy? What? Pride?”

Nigel closed his eyes. Elsbeth couldn’t help but hold her breath. Even she was on the verge of jumping off the sofa to defend Nigel against Lord Purbeck. He’d embarrassed
her
husband in front of a room filled with guests. An explosion of wills was inevitable.

“Uncle,” Nigel said, his voice unnaturally sedate. “You will not speak against my wife. Nor should you worry yourself over the future of the family title or family name. I am the head of this household and have all these matters well in hand.”

“Bah! You are a fool and a damned dreamer. Just like your father.”

Nigel’s fingers tightened into fists.

“I had to raise you, provide for you because my fool brother went and got himself killed. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Everyone in the room was as still as death, waiting. Not even Lady Dashborough said a thing.

Charlie had taken a step back and appeared mortified.

This was it
, Elsbeth thought. Her husband was about to explode. The muscles in her shoulders wrenched into painful knots.

“There were smugglers using my beach,” he announced to the room, turning his back on his uncle. “I believe the bullet that injured Lady Edgeware the other day was fired by one of them.” He paused and turned to give his uncle another meaningful stare. “I believe I was the intended victim. I had planned to entrap the criminals tonight.”

“Well?” Charlie spoke up. “Well? Did you capture
him
?”

“No. Every single man on the beach has escaped.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Charlie countered.

Nigel nodded in agreement. He then crouched down beside Elsbeth. “A servant has located Guthrie, the footman who’d been guarding your door tonight. He’d been knocked over the head and stuffed into a closet.” He took a moment then to explain to everyone else how Elsbeth had been drugged and left out in the middle of the storm.

His onyx gaze was sharp, assessing, and there was something sparkling in them that made her heart race and her cheeks warm.

“I’ve also sent Joshua for Doctor Pryor.” His voice was as gentle as a caress. “There is no need to worry. I’ll make sure you remain safe, dove.”

She wanted to reach out to him and brush away the tension straining his jaw. But old fears were hard to forget. Despite how she was growing fond Nigel, the thought of marriage
to anyone
still chilled her. Her hands in her lap, she let her gaze wander again to the lonely man standing at the edge of a precipice in Dionysus’s painting hanging on the wall. Perhaps the painting wasn’t a self-portrait, as she’d originally thought, but a portrait of Nigel. He kept himself apart. Even at this house party, he seemed to keep a wall around him, not fully including himself in any of the activities, not truly enjoying himself . . . except when the activity involved her.

“But what about that bloody crazed maid? It was
her
maid, was it not?” Lord Purbeck shook a crooked finger at Elsbeth. “I don’t trust the situation, boy. I don’t trust
her
.”

“I have already told you, Uncle Charles, that topic is not open for discussion.” Nigel took Elsbeth’s hand in his warm, strong grasp in an obvious show of affection. Elsbeth welcomed it. “Besides, we have a murderer to find.”

“You already know who he is,” Charlie said.

“Perhaps . . .” Nigel appeared uncertain. Was Charlie thinking of George Waver?

Mr. Waver had seemed genuinely afraid for his life at Nigel’s hands. And he’d mentioned that Nigel was already growing suspicious of his actions. But Mr. Waver had appeared truly surprised when she’d insisted that she didn’t know Dionysus’s identity. And if
he
wasn’t Dionysus, he wasn’t the killer. Thanks to her recent investigations, she was beginning to know something about the smuggling going on at the estate . . . and the murder attempts.

“Guthrie, your footman,” she said. Mr. Waver had suspected Guthrie was an accomplice. And it did make sense. He had been the one guarding her door. It would be easy for him to slip in sometime during the night and carry her away. “I wish to speak with him.”

“What? Speak to—? No, Elsbeth, I don’t want you involved any more than you already have been. This affair has nothing to do with you.” Nigel paused. “Not really. The men who attacked you did it in an attempt to hurt me. I won’t allow you to get further involved. I cannot.”

“My lord,” she said, her voice sharp enough to slice glass, “perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I am sure the confusion is entirely my fault.” She drew a long breath. “I wasn’t asking for your permission. I was asking for you to arrange for me to speak with Guthrie. If you don’t, I will arrange it myself.”

The room fell into a shocked silence. Olivia’s jaw dropped open. So had Lord Purbeck’s. Lady Dashborogh was sputtering. Elsbeth was feeling fairly surprised herself. Never, not in all the years she’d been married to Lord Mercer, had she stood up to her husband quite so forcefully. Doing so should have left her quaking in her slippers. But Nigel had promised that he would never hurt her. And, despite all her efforts not to, she was learning to trust him.

However, confronting him in such a public manner probably wasn’t going to help their relationship. Hoping to soften the blow, she flashed Nigel a quick smile, one filled with challenge and a touch of an apology. She felt slightly lightheaded by her boldness, and by her body’s reaction to him. More often than not, when they verbally sparred, he usually ended up kissing her. She leaned forward, her lips more than a little hungry for his touch.

“I am but your servant, my lady wife,” he said. He rose from his crouched position beside the sofa. He didn’t look happy. No, he looked as if he was on the verge of strangling someone. Surprisingly, she refused to back down or let his dark mood cow her. She tilted her chin up and matched his hard glare. Again, her cheeks felt flushed and butterflies danced happily in her belly as she thought about kissing him.

After a long, heart-pounding moment, he sketched a stiff bow and left the room for a second time to speak with the servant stationed outside the door. He returned in short order with Guthrie. The burly footman was grumbling, moaning, and holding his head as he stumbled toward the sofa a few steps behind Nigel.

“Guthrie,” Elsbeth said sternly. She’d been trained to manage servants from a very young age and had honed those skills during her marriage. Lord Mercer had rarely taken the time to deal with such matters himself. “What has happened to your head?”

“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Purbeck barked.

The footman growled and turned a pleading eye to Nigel who only said, “Answer Lady Edgeware.”

“I got knocked but good on me noggin, m’lady.”

“You did?” While most servants were honest almost to a fault, there were always a few who could spin a yarn so tangled the truth never had even a flicker of a chance of seeing the light of day. She suspected that Guthrie, with his intense interest in gold sovereigns, fell short of being trustworthy.

She struggled to sit up straight on the sofa. Her side burned as if hot coals had been pressed there. The exertions that evening must have put a terrible strain on the wound, not that she would have changed anything that had happened with Nigel in the master suite. That was a memory, she suspected, she’d remember for a lifetime . . . even if their sham of a marriage ended in the next couple of days.

“Come over here, Guthrie.”

The footman hesitated until Nigel gave him a none too gentle shove.

“Bend down and let me take a look. Head wounds can be tricky, you see. They should never be left unattended.” All of which was true. If he were telling the truth, Dr. Pryor would be tending two patients instead of just one.

“M’lady, this is not—”

“Guthrie.” Her voice was sharp, though not quite sharp enough to cut through glass this time. “Do as I say.”

With Nigel’s hand pressing on the footman’s shoulder, Guthrie had no choice but to kneel down in front of her and lower his head.

She pushed aside his greasy hair and felt his scalp for bumps and tender areas. At first she was exceedingly gentle. Guthrie moaned and groaned and cried with pain even before she’d touched him.

“Where were you struck?” she asked him.

“Outside your chamber’s door, m’lady” he drawled.

“No, Guthrie, where on your head?”

He pointed to the top of his skull. She skimmed her fingers over the spot he’d indicated. Guthrie yelped at the lightest touch.

Elsbeth frowned. In her experience, head injuries swelled up rather quickly. Considering the amount of pain he purported to be feeling, she should be able to find at least the beginnings of a bump or a knot. She was beginning to believe that she was examining an exceptionally healthy skull.

“You may stand now.” She wiped her hands on the blanket and took a moment to consider what she should do next. She glanced at Nigel. He shrugged.