A gentleman had arrived on the landing, and now stood directly under the mistletoe. His blue eyes locked with hers and his smile slowly faded to shock and then something like dismay, or perhaps even horror.
Her stomach made a great leaping somersault and air whooshed from her as she remembered: resting her cheek against his bare shoulder, raking her fingers through the thick tousled hair, and the touch of his lips, so soft yet commanding…
But he wasn’t happy to see her. Of course, he wasn’t. No more so than she was to see him. Fitz had frozen in place under the mistletoe, paralyzed, shocked, utterly devoid of his usual charm. Or perhaps the charm had been a drawing room façade.
A bedroom façade as well.
She swallowed again. Very well, she would break the silence. “Mr. Love, er, I suppose it is Lord Loughton now.” She took a step closer.
Not too close. He was, after all, standing under the mistletoe. Though she had little to worry about. She’d rendered him speechless; any closer and he might actually recoil.
Anger sparked in her. “You are surprised to see me. I am surprised to be here, as well.”
“Not…not at all, I—”
“No.” She shook her head. “Don’t pretend you’re not surprised. You didn’t know either that your mother invited my cousin to visit on our way to…”
A wave of nausea swelled in her and she gulped it back. And in fact, he didn’t need to know her destination. The future they’d planned had been no more than a passing whim on his part and wishful thinking on hers.
“I’m sorry to have intruded. I’ve informed your mother already.” The tea bubbled inside her. She tasted the biscuit she’d nibbled. “I release you from any promises made. From our so-called engagement.” Her cheeks flamed. Oh, Hades, she must make quick work of this. “You are free to marry… oh.” Hand pressed to her mouth, she hurried to the door the housekeeper had pointed to, rushing around the servant, desperately seeking a basin of some sort.
She found her way to the screened washstand and its china basin and bent over, retching, hands braced on the table.
Strong arms came around her and the air filled with the scent of horses and a man’s soap.
She squeezed her eyes shut and quietly cursed a stream of whispered, unladylike oaths. As a girl who’d been raised by a soldier had a right to do. And she didn’t give a fig what Fitzhenry Lovelace thought of her. Not anymore.
“I said, I release you. Go away.” And once she was alone, she would cast herself on the big bed she’d spotted in the middle of this room, gown, stays, boots and all, until she was composed enough to leave for the inn.
Instead of complying, he tugged her closer. “Mrs. Turner.” His breath feathered her ear, his deep voice thrumming. “Send the kitchen maid up with some dry toast and some ginger tea.” A calloused finger lifted a lock of hair from her face. “No, strike that, the tea will take too long. Bring good clear drinking water, and be quick, please.”
Eyes firmly shut, she waited for the housekeeper, or some other female, his mother perhaps, to come to her rescue.
Or perhaps, they wouldn’t. He was the master of this house.
“Go away.” She huffed out the words, another spasm unsettling her.
“You are ill.”
“I don’t travel well. Go away. We are finished.”
“Mel.” Warm lips touched the back of her neck. “Dear Mel.”
A shiver went through her. One hand slipped from around her waist, and she felt a tug at her back. Good heavens. He meant to undress her.
“No,” she said. “Mrs. Turner will—”
“She’s gone off to the kitchens.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” Nor should I, blast it all. “This is my bedchamber.”
“You’re very ill. And I recall that I’ve been in your bedchamber before.”
The other arm slipped away, and cool air touched her back. Opening her eyes, she glanced into the mirror over the washstand and found him watching her.
“You’re paler than you ought to be, Mel,” he said, real concern on his face. “Are you certain it’s not the influenza?”
His father had been struck down by the influenza, quite suddenly and dramatically. Fitz’s ensuing rush to the sickbed, the death watch, the burial, the settling of the estate, the visits to solicitors and government officials, and of course the grief… Having watched her own father die, she didn’t have to imagine. Fitz had been through much, and with time and distance, he’d had an opportunity to reconsider his hasty commitment to a spinster whose only attraction was the dangling possibility that her very, very, very rich grandfather might relent and leave her a fortune.
Mr. Love—Lord Loughton knew that, aside from a small bequest to her, Grandfather was holding fast to his choice to disinherit two generations of offspring. He knew because he’d heard the words himself from Grandfather’s own mouth.
“Traveling sickness is not contagious.” She swallowed hard against a surge of moisture.
The hand came around again holding her, this time a bit lower around her middle, and the other went back to work on her hooks. All the while, his gaze remained on her face in the mirror. He was skilled at removing a lady’s gown was Fitzhenry Lovelace.
Heat chased the chill from her, memories flooding her, along with another spasm. She squeezed her eyes shut and retched again.
Fitz’s fingers fumbled a tight hook, and while she heaved unproductively, he paused and held her. Mother’s secretive smile that morning made sense now. She and Mel’s cousin, Lady Hermione, had conspired to bring the two lovers together.
He was happy to have been spared the trip to Hampshire, but not at the risk of Mel’s health.
She rattled with one last heave and straightened. Over the top of her head, he could see that her eyes were still tightly shut, her face in a grimace. Ill as she was, she was just herself, comfortable enough to curse like… like an infantryman. At ease with him enough to tell him to go to the devil, but never with malice. He’d loved that about her. He still did.
Hope rose in him as he set both hands to the last of the hooks, struggling to unleash them. The gown was too tight, and probably the stays as well. No wonder she was suffering.
A thought niggled at him. The gown was too tight—this was the same blue carriage gown she’d worn in September. And she was terribly nauseated.
He was the eldest of ten, and he wasn’t a total idiot.
“You didn’t have traveling sickness on our trip to your grandfather’s.”
She shrugged. “Open phaeton. Fresh air.”
That was true. His sister Cassandra vomited in a closed carriage unless they kept all the windows open. And if Mel had plumped up a bit, so much the better. In fact, he’d like to have a look.
The last hook fell open and he tugged at her sleeves. “There now. Step out of the gown.”
“I will when you leave,” she said. “Go away.”
“You’re ill, Mel. We’re short of servants today. It’s not like you to be missish.”
“How would you know?” She grumbled, but allowed the heavy gown to fall at her feet, giving him a view of her stays, and chemise, and the outline of the shapely bottom he remembered so well. She lifted one foot and then the other, while he whisked the gown away and tossed it over a chair. It was a testament to her misery that she was tolerating this.
As he started unlacing the stays, he heard the turn of the door latch and felt the cold draft that followed. China clattered.
“Master Fitz,” Turner spluttered. “Lord Loughton. Sir.”
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the censure on Turner’s face.
A laugh bubbled up in him, a moment of lightness. Of pure joy. Turner had known him his whole life, was fond of saying in private moments that she’d changed his clouts.
“It’s not proper,” Turner said. “Let me—”
“It’s done.” The loosened stays slipped down to Mel’s hips. He pulled at the cord where it had caught and they fell all the way to the floor.
Again, Mel lifted one foot and then the other.
“A robe, Turner,” Fitz said as he scattered the pins holding together her drooping coiffure.
“I’ve not had a chance to unpack the lady’s…”
Long and lustrous, her dark and very straight hair fell to her waist. He combed his fingers through it, remembering their nights together, and how it had hung like a veil around her.
He took in a breath. Steady, Fitz. “Get one of my banyans.”
“Your mother—”
“My bedchamber is close.” He paused. Next door in fact. Mother knew that when she assigned this room to Miss Parker. He held in a chuckle and wrapped an arm around Mel. Under the thin chemise, she was all warm woman.
His woman, and soon to be his lady. He wouldn’t let her go. Especially not if she was…
He truly wasn’t an idiot, at least, not entirely. The Exchange often baffled him, but not these sorts of matters. What they’d started in early autumn might certainly be bearing fruit, and he wouldn’t abandon her.
Plus, there was the fact that even Mel Parker’s honest grumbling made his heart dance.
“I don’t need a robe,” she mumbled. “I just want to lie down.”
“Go on then, milord,” Turner said, watching him help her to the bed. “It’s not proper for you to—”
“Mel is my fiancée,” he said.
The lady in question spluttered and glared up at him. Turner still hovered.
He seated Mel on the bed, then crossed the room, steering the housekeeper into the corridor.
Turner’s mouth firmed and she faced him, hands propped on her hips. “I just heard her break off your engagement, Master Fitz.”
“She’s not feeling well.”
“Maybe it’d be for the best to break it off. For Miss Mary’s sake. Miss Parker is nothing like Lady Alice.”
Turner must have heard Mel’s infantry curses. His late wife, Alice, had been a proper lady, a true English rose. She’d been dead over a year now, she and her babe who’d arrived stillborn.
“Yes.” He squeezed the housekeeper’s chapped hands. “Miss Parker is nothing like my late wife at all. You don’t know her yet, but you’ll find that this lady is delightful. And this lady, I love.”
He closed the door on Turner’s shocked face and braced a hand on the door frame. Had he said that out loud?
Certainty flooded him. He’d bollocksed up a great deal in the past few years. The marriage to Alice had, outwardly, been perfect, a happy union of two stately families. So everyone had thought. It had taken months and months before Alice conceived Mary, and then more months of a difficult confinement. After watching nine squawking siblings arrive, one after the other, he’d never expected the wallop of sentiment that hit him the moment he held his newborn baby girl. He hadn’t cared that there wasn’t a baby every year to add to the nursery. He had five brothers. One of them would eventually breed an heir, it didn’t have to be him.
With a moan and a gagging noise, Mel was up again. He hurried back to her.
She was too ill to suffer teasing, and far too ill for him to make love to her. Her face had grown wan, dark circles starting under her eyes.
He held her through a series of spasms, and then helped her back to bed, tucked her under the covers, and handed her a towel.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
His heart lifted. Thank you, not go away. He slid a hand under her shoulders and held a glass to her parched lips. “Take a sip, my love.”
She complied without comment, a testament to how poorly she felt.
Setting the glass aside, he reached for the toast. “And the tiniest morsel of this.”
She again, complied, and then fell back with a glare that made him want to stretch next to her and hold her.
Perhaps a little teasing wouldn’t hurt. “Look how obedient you are.”
She flopped an arm over her eyes. “I’m miserable. My head hurts. I’m peckish, and parched, and everything that goes down comes up. Go away.”
That was more like his Mel. He set aside the glass and dish. “I would lie down with you, but that might push Turner into an apoplexy.”
“Don’t even think it,” she grumbled.
Perhaps later. “You’ll feel better after you rest a while, and then we’ll have dinner together.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. She was a trifle warm.
When he settled a damp cloth on her, she groaned. He moved an armchair to the side of the bed and sat, watching as her breathing slowed and she surrendered to sleep.