Chapter Twenty-Nine

Frantic pounding on the front door had Oliver emerging from his study to see what all the commotion was about as a footman hurried to the door and opened it.

Philip tumbled in, red-faced and gasping for air.

“What the hell.” Oliver grabbed the boy by the shoulders before he fell over. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, drawing in deep breaths.

“Mother…”

“What’s happened? Did you run all the way here?” Oliver asked.

Philip nodded and pushed himself up. “Mother. Needs. Help.”

“What happened?” Oliver and the footman shared a worried look. He could barely make out what Philip was saying.

“Is something wrong with Ellen?” he asked.

Philip nodded. “William.” Another gasp. “Come.”

A sick, cold feeling swept through Oliver, and he barked orders to ready his horse. Ellen didn’t live too far away but it would still be faster to ready the horse and ride over there. He would throw Philip on the back with him.

The horse was ready in minutes and they were racing down the street to the horror and intrigue of pedestrians out for an evening stroll.

Oliver’s mind raced with all possibilities. What had William done to her? What would cause Philip to run all this way to find Oliver and beg for help?

Oliver pulled the horse up sharp at Ellen’s door and they both jumped off. The door was already open, her butler waving them in frantically.

“He told us to leave her,” he said as Oliver raced through the entryway to the back of the house. “But we couldn’t do that. We’ve locked all the doors so he can’t get back in. The servants are terrified.” They stopped in front of the closed door to the dining room. The butler hesitated and looked at Oliver gravely. “It’s bad.”

He opened the door and at first Oliver didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The room appeared empty. Then he saw a shattered plate and food congealing on the wallpaper. A chair had been tipped over, and he heard a moan from the other side of the table.

He stepped around it and what he saw nearly brought him to his knees. Beside him, Philip gasped and made a strangled sound.

“Good God.” Oliver hurried over and dropped to his knees, spreading his arms wide, not knowing where to touch. So much blood.

There was so much blood everywhere. On the carpet, the chair legs, the table leg. Her hair glistened with it, and her face was unrecognizable. He knew it was Ellen because he would recognize her in any situation. But never had he thought to see this.

Her face was so severely battered that her eyes were mere slits. Her lips were bleeding. She had a deep cut on her cheek.

The housekeeper was on the other side of her, trying to clean her up. “I think her fingers are broken,” she said, her voice wavering.

“All of them?” He looked up at her and saw his own horror reflected in her eyes.

“All on one hand. I haven’t been able to roll her over to check the rest. I’m afraid to.”

“I’ve sent for the physician,” the butler said. “We didn’t know if we should move her.”

“No. I don’t know.” Oliver stared down at her, unable to think, barely able to breathe. “Good God. What happened?”

“Needham,” Philip said flatly. “He said he wanted to talk to her, and she made me leave them. I heard a commotion and then she screamed. I ran to get you. I should have…” His voice broke. “I should have stayed to save her.”

“There is nothing you could have done against a monster like Needham,” Oliver said. But right then, as Ellen’s blood smeared his hand, he swore revenge on the bastard.

Ellen moaned, and Oliver leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I’m here. You will be fine, and I will protect you from now on.”

Her lips moved, but no words came out, and then she went still. Oliver’s gaze flew to her chest, willing it to rise and fall. It did, but shallowly.

“Where’s the physician, damn it!”

“On his way, my lord.”

Oliver looked at her hand, at the misshapen fingers and the blood-caked fingernails. He couldn’t believe that this was his Ellen.

The physician arrived, forcing Oliver to step to the side and watch as the man poked and prodded, testing for broken bones while Oliver felt as helpless as he’d ever felt before. A slow rage burned through him. He would get Needham for this. The man would regret ever laying a hand on her.

But first he would see her well again, and this time he wouldn’t allow her to push him away. He was here for good, and she would just have to accept it.

With the help of the butler and two other footmen, they rolled Ellen onto a bedsheet provided by the housekeeper then carried her to her room on the makeshift gurney.

They gently placed her on the bed and, even though they were as careful as they could be, she still moaned, and the sound cut through Oliver like a knife.

They were asked to leave as the housekeeper and the physician tended to her. Oliver paced the length of the hallway, unable to stand still, while Philip slid down the wall and put his head in his hands.

“I should have stayed,” he said.

“Do you think you would have stopped him?” Oliver stood in front of Philip, looking down on his blond head. Just like his own had been at that age.

There was no denying that he’d felt a connection to Philip the moment he’d first seen him. It wasn’t love, for he didn’t know the boy well enough, but it was something. A knowing, if you will. Ellen had never admitted it to him, but he was beginning to believe that they’d conceived Philip their night together in the gazebo.

He had mixed emotions about Ellen keeping such important information from him, among them a dull anger of all that he had missed of Philip’s life. But anger had been such a prevalent emotion of late that he couldn’t hold on to it. Especially not when Ellen was fighting for her life. Mostly he was just tired. Tired of the anger, of the missed chances, and now of the fear of losing her again, this time to death.

“I could have tried to stop him,” Philip said. “Instead I ran away.”

Oliver lowered himself to sit next to Philip, and he put his head back against the wall. “You didn’t run away. You ran for help. No one can fault you for that.”

“But he nearly killed her.” Philip lifted his head, and Oliver saw that the boy had been trying to hide the fact that he’d been crying. His face was red and wet with the many tears that had run down his cheeks. “What if she doesn’t survive?” he whispered.

“Don’t talk like that.” Oliver sounded much sharper than he’d intended, but the words produced a fear that nearly paralyzed him. She would not die. He would not live without Ellen in his life. Not any longer.

Philip put his head down, and his body shook with silent sobs. Oliver could only put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and sit in silence while he cried.

Cracked ribs, four broken fingers on one hand, a broken orbital bone, and so many cuts and bruises that you couldn’t count them all. That’s what the doctor told them. He was optimistic that she would heal fully, although her fingers might pain her for the rest of her life.

She was resting uncomfortably when Oliver and Philip were finally allowed to see her. The housekeeper had dressed her in a white, frilly nightdress and pulled the covers up to her bosom. Her arms were crossed outside the blankets. Her hair hung in a thick braid over her shoulder, and the blood had been cleaned from her.

Her eyes were swollen shut, and a slice on her cheekbone was seeping. The physician said that she’d been punched with so much force it had caused the orbital bone to break.

Her lips were cut and puffy and her hand was bandaged, the broken fingers splinted. That had caused the worst pain, according to the physician. She had moaned when he’d set the fingers. His hope was that they would heal straight, but he wasn’t positive they would.

He had bound her ribs but didn’t think they had to worry too much about her moving around. He thought she would be unconscious for quite some time.

“It’s the body’s way of healing,” he said. “In sleep it will repair itself.”

Philip had hung back by the door, unable to look at her until Oliver coaxed him forward. He didn’t know how he was going to convince the boy that this wasn’t his fault. Philip felt quite a bit of guilt.

Finally Philip had stepped up to the bed and looked down on his mother. She was nearly unrecognizable, only the color of her hair and the arch of her brows gave her away.

Philip stuck close to his side.

“Who did this?” the physician asked as he was packing up his supplies.

“William Needham,” Oliver said, his voice flat.

The physician paused and glanced at Oliver. “Needham the surgeon?”

“Yes.”

The physician’s gaze went to Ellen. “Are you sure?”

“Very,” said Philip in almost the same tone that Oliver had adopted. “I saw him myself.”

“But—”

“It was him,” Oliver said.

The physician shook his head. “You just never know about some people,” he muttered. “I’ll be back in a few hours to check on her, then again tomorrow morning. I truly don’t think she’ll wake up before then, but if she does I’ve left laudanum to help with the pain.” He tipped his head to a brown bottle on the bedside table.

When the doctor left and the housekeeper stopped fidgeting with Ellen’s blanket, there was a suffocating silence that descended on the three of them, punctuated by Ellen’s shallow breathing.

Oliver felt as if the walls were closing in on him, like he couldn’t breathe, and his skin itched all over.

Philip pulled a chair close to the bed and slumped down in it, chin on his chest.

Oliver paced until he thought he would go mad.

“I’ll be back,” he said into the stillness.

Philip’s head jerked up. “You’re leaving?”

“For a little bit. I’ll be back.”

“What if something happens?”

“You heard the doctor. She’ll sleep the rest of the night.”

Philip sat up straight. “But you don’t know that. What if she wakes up?”

Oliver sighed. “Philip, it will be fine. Nothing will happen. I have something I need to do.”

“Something more important than this?” He swept his arm toward the bed. Oliver didn’t look in that direction, because seeing Ellen like that nearly buckled his knees, and he couldn’t spend one more moment in this room without doing something to avenge this brutal beating she’d endured.

It would not go unanswered, and he was afraid if he waited too long Needham would make some move to block him.

“I won’t be gone long. If something happens fetch the physician.”

“I can’t believe you’re leaving us.” Philip’s voice wavered, and Oliver was afraid the boy was going to start crying again.

“Philip, I’m not abandoning you. On my honor, I will return.”

He sidled out the door as Philip glared at him. Ellen did not move. She didn’t even know he was there, let alone that he was gone.

At least that was what he told himself to allay the crushing guilt of leaving her.

…

Oliver felt bad about taking his father’s curricle, but he had every intention of returning it, and he couldn’t very well expect Ellen to ride all the way to Scotland on horseback. In time his father would understand.

It was his mother he feared the most. His marriage to Ellen would get the tongues wagging in London, and his mother hated when the Armbrusters were the topic of conversation. But Oliver was convinced that the gossip would blow over, replaced by something even more salacious the next day or the day after.

Like his father, his mother would forgive him in time.

But none of that mattered, because being with Ellen, marrying Ellen, was more important than anything else. They would figure the rest out later.

He pulled the curricle under the tree in Hyde Park where he’d first kissed her. Strangely, he was calm. He’d thought he would be nervous to be taking such a huge step in his life, but that wasn’t the case at all.

This was right. It felt right. And he couldn’t wait to start his life with Ellen.

He’d arrived early so he sat back in the curricle and looked out over the pond. Hyde Park was quiet at this time of night, which had been his hope. No use getting the tongues wagging before they even left London.

He wasn’t even that angry that it had come to this—running away in the middle of the night. He was disappointed that he’d been called away and hadn’t been able to speak to her father before the betrothal contract with Fieldhurst. And he wondered how Fieldhurst would take the news that his betrothed had run off. If it were Oliver, he would be furious.

He pulled out the pocket watch that his parents had given him for his sixteenth birthday. It was midnight exactly. Heart leaping, he straightened up and looked around. There were no shadows running toward him or lurking about, so he settled back down.

By fifteen after the hour he was becoming anxious.

By half after he was nervous.

By one o’clock he was scared.

What if something had happened to her? He decided to trace the route she would have used to get to him, but there were no bodies lying about and nothing out of the ordinary. He stopped in front of her darkened, quiet house and contemplated throwing stones at her window. But he didn’t know which window was hers.

He drove back to the tree and waited until the subtle rays of a new day lightened the sky. And still no Ellen.

As traffic increased in Hyde Park he took up the reins and drove home, confused.

Once in his bedroom he found a folded piece of paper on his pillow, and he picked it up. In elegant, feminine handwriting it said: I’m sorry.

…

The three sat in silence, O’Leary and Ashland trying to absorb the story that Oliver had told them.

“This is not right,” Ashland muttered, shaking his head. Ashland understood Oliver’s feelings the most. He seemed pale and angry.

O’Leary appeared contemplative. “We can have him picked up,” he said. “If you’re positive it was him.”

“Oh, I’m positive,” Oliver said. “I didn’t see him myself, but all of the staff did, as well as Philip.”

“A boy’s word and the word of servants.” O’Leary shook his head. “I wish we had more to go on.”

“People heard him beating her!” Oliver was becoming outraged, and he knew he shouldn’t take it out on O’Leary. It was incredibly difficult to convict someone with as high a standing as Needham. The court, if it even got that far, was always in favor of the person with the power. While Philip was an earl, Needham was older and respected. He was a physician to the royal family, and that was something special, indeed. And Philip had his own problems and a soiled reputation.

“He’s already slithered out of one scandal,” Oliver said.

“With no proof that he knew what his assistants were doing, there wasn’t much we could do.” O’Leary was beginning to sound defensive.

“I’m not blaming you,” Oliver said, although his frustration was directed at O’Leary and the judicial system that let a man like Needham walk free simply because the word of a gentleman meant more than the word of a servant.

“What are you going to do?” Ashland asked.

“Take matters into my own hands,” Oliver said grimly.

“I would advise against that,” O’Leary said.

“As would I,” added Ashland. “Although I understand why you feel the need to do so.”

“I can’t let this go unanswered. I won’t let this go unanswered.” He could not walk away from this if he tried, and damn he didn’t want to try, either.

“Will you confront him?” Ashland asked.

“Yes.” There was no doubt that he was going to confront Needham.

“I’d like to go with you. You can’t do this alone.”

“I can’t ask you to do that. You have a new standing in Society as well as a reputation as a fair and honest solicitor. I won’t let you jeopardize that.”

“But we can’t let you walk into this alone,” O’Leary said.

Oliver was surprised that O’Leary was backing him, considering that what he was thinking of doing was not quite legal.

“I definitely can’t ask that of you,” Oliver said to O’Leary. “It would ruin your career. Although I appreciate that you want to help.”

“We can have your back,” Ashland said. “We can be ready in case things go bad.”

Oliver hadn’t considered that something could go bad. He was so angry, and he had right on his side. The thought of it all going wrong hadn’t occurred to him.

“All right then,” he said. “I’m grateful that you have my back. Here is what I’m thinking of doing.”