TWENTY

The thin cracks of sunlight at the edges of the curtain made his head throb.

He closed his eyes again. Much better.

“Would somebody please shut the bloody curtains,” he said, to no one in particular. The air was still and cool around him, smelling of roses. The bowl by his bedside, he remembered. He could picture the flowers quite clearly: yellows touched with pink at the tips, as if they’d been dipped in . . . dipped in . . . something pink. Or red. Something . . .

A hand touched his forehead. “They’re already shut,” said a gentle voice. Markham’s voice, only softer and kinder than usual.

“They are not shut. There are . . . cracks. Blistering cracks.”

“I can’t do anything about that, I’m afraid. You’ve had a nasty blow to the head, and the light will hurt your eyes for a few days yet.”

A blow to the head. He remembered now. The riverbank. Elizabeth, Penhallow, his son. Olympia.

A sense of crashing loss came down upon him. He was drowning in it. He couldn’t breathe.

Markham.

“Where am I?” he whispered.

“We’re still at the Villa Angelini, until you’re well enough to travel.”

Of course. He knew that. His aching head, the vague feeling of nausea and vertigo. Someone waking him, giving him a sip of water, letting him sleep. Then waking him again, far too soon.

A concussion. That was what the doctors called it. His brain had been bruised.

He moved his hand against the sheets. A few slender fingers curled around it.

“How long have you been here?” he said.

“I haven’t left,” she said.

•   •   •

Some untold time later, he opened his eyes again, and this time the cracks of light didn’t pierce his skull with quite the same white-hot fury. His thoughts fell obediently into line, or most of them. He was at the Villa Angelini. He had lost the fight. His brain was bruised. There were roses next to his bed. Markham was here.

He closed his eyes again.

“Markham,” he said.

“Sir.”

There was a rustle of clothing, and her hand touched his. He wrapped his fingers around her, testing their strength.

“You should call me Luisa now,” she said.

“You’ll always be Markham to me.”

She said nothing. He opened his eyes. In the dusky light, he could make out her outline, quite close, soft and blurred. A gentle glow of light shone on her cheekbone.

“Well, Markham . . .”

“Luisa.”

“Luisa. Am I going to recover my senses?”

“I believe so. I hope so. In another week we should be able to move you out of here.”

A week. He’d be damned if he lay in this bed for another week. “Where is my son?” he asked. At the word son, the black weight fell down upon him again, the thick, oily substance of his grief. Failure, and loss, and the knowledge of his sins.

“Philip is with his mother and Lord Roland, not far away. I believe they’re waiting for the decree absolute to be issued by the judge in London, so they can marry.”

“She is with child.”

A slight hesitation. “So I understand.”

“It’s his, of course. I suppose that’s a relief, though I thought, for an instant . . . there was a small chance . . .” He turned his head away from her. “I behaved badly, I think. When I saw that she was expecting, when she told me it was Penhallow’s child . . . I wouldn’t have hurt her, never that, I just wanted to . . . take that knife and run somewhere . . . killed myself, probably . . .”

“You have a habit of behaving badly, my lord. But I hope this matter is now behind you.”

He closed his eyes again. “Yes. She can have whatever she wants. Only let me see him, from time to time. My son. To see how he’s doing.”

A glass nudged at his lips. He drank the water obediently and went back to sleep.

•   •   •

A small hand lay inside his own.

It was the first detail he noticed, when he opened his eyes. He turned his aching head and looked down at his son’s anxious black eyes, and for an instant he thought he was looking in his own childhood mirror.

“Philip.”

“Are you awake, Father?”

“Yes. Why are you here?”

A rustle of silk, a woman’s voice. “I brought him, my lord. He wanted to see you.”

Somerton rolled back and closed his eyes. “Elizabeth.”

“Father, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Philip’s voice began to crack. “I didn’t mean to push you in. I only wanted you to drop the knife, before you hurt Uncle Roland.”

Somerton whispered, “You did the right thing, Philip. Brave boy.”

“Does your head hurt very much, Father?”

His head was going to split apart. “Not at all, son. I’m just resting, that’s all.”

God, a pair of small, damp lips. Right there on the knuckle of his thumb. He opened his eyes again and looked down at his son’s bowed head.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“Don’t be sorry, Philip.” He lifted his hand and touched Philip’s soft hair.

Elizabeth spoke softly. “Philip, my dear. May I speak to your father for a moment?”

“Yes, Mama.”

Philip kissed his thumb again and disappeared, and an instant later Elizabeth’s body appeared in his place, on the chair next to the bed, rounded with her lover’s child, the face above her white collar blooming with health and love and happiness.

“You’re looking well,” he said.

“Thank you. You look a little better than last I saw you.”

“I’ll heal. I suppose you want my blessing,” he said. “To assure yourself of my compliance.”

She hesitated. “I am sorry about what’s happened. You must believe that. I was wrong to run away, but you . . . but we . . .”

“We were never suited.”

“No.” She looked at her hands.

He turned his face back to the canopy above his bed and brought his hand, the one Philip had kissed, across his chest. “I behaved badly, Markham says.”

“He’s quite right. But I was not without fault, either. We have both made the most dreadful mistakes, and I hope . . . I hope . . .” Her voice groped and fell away.

“I apologize,” Somerton said stiffly. “If you want my blessing, take it. Marry him. I have no doubt he’ll make you happy at last.”

“I hope you’ll be happy, too, one day.”

Something stung the backs of his eyes. He gathered himself. “Take care of my son. Both of you.”

“We shall.” She pressed her cool fingers on his forehead, for the briefest instant, and rose to her feet. “For what it’s worth, Somerton, he never heard a word against you. Either from me, or from Roland. And he never will. But the rest is up to you.”

Somerton pressed his thumb against his heart. “If I can be of any assistance in the future, madam, you have only to ask.”

She didn’t reply. He heard her murmuring to Philip, rustling her ladylike silks again.

“Good-bye, Father!” his son called cheerfully from the door.

“Good-bye, Philip.”

When the door closed, he turned his head and studied the painted wood, the dark shadows cast there from the meager light, until he fell back asleep.

•   •   •

When you said move you out of here, Markham, what precisely the devil did you mean?”

It was the next day, or possibly the one after; he had lost track of sunrise and sunset in this dark cave of a bloody bedroom. He was now sitting up in bed, unable to read, unable to stand up without wavering, unable to do anything interesting, and his temper had begun to fray.

“It’s Luisa, my lord. Have a little broth.”

“I am not an invalid! Luisa.” He mumbled the last word.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but you are. You are unable to stand unassisted, and your temper is very much of the invalid sort.” She sighed and set the broth aside. “Not that I expected anything else from you.”

“You stray from the point, Luisa. I have a number of affairs requiring my attention. Misdeeds, you understand, which only I can execute properly.”

“My lord, I have a proposition for you.” She knotted her fingers in her lap.

He peered at her. The room was still dark, though a little more sunlight had been allowed in today, and she appeared to him in grays and browns, not quite precise. He could see that she no longer pomaded her hair, so its scanty inches fell about her face; she was wearing a loose white shirt and no waistcoat. She wanted him to call her Luisa.

These were all clues, he knew.

“What is this proposition?” he asked suspiciously.

She took in a little breath and straightened her shoulders. “I have been giving our respective circumstances a great deal of thought for the past few days.”

“No doubt you have, Markham.”

“The decree absolute will be formally issued in London court in three or four weeks, ending your marriage to her ladyship.”

“Yes.”

“Would it then be possible . . . would you be willing to consider . . .”

“Markham . . .”

She met his gaze with her haughtiest Markham eyes. “Marrying me.”

The Earl of Somerton was a man accustomed to shocks. They had occurred with regularity in the ordinary course of his life; they arrived even more frequently in the course of his chosen profession. He had once arrived for a hazardous rendezvous in Copenhagen with his most trusted associate, the one man above all he had thought incorruptible, and found himself in the center of an ambush at the end of a blind alley, surrounded by enemy agents. He had barely escaped with his life.

His associate, on the other hand, had not. Of that, he had made certain.

He was accustomed to shocks. He prided himself on his ability to take in the new information, to make the necessary adjustments, to act.

Now, as the words marrying me revolved lazily in his bruised brain, bounding and rebounding off the tender walls of his skull, he found he had only one thing to say.

“Marry you? Are you mad?”

“You needn’t look so appalled,” she said, a little indignant. “Marriages of state are a matter of business, a . . . a thing of convenience.”

“Convenience?”

“For the advantages conferred.”

“Advantages?”

She leaned forward. “Listen to me. It isn’t just a matter of defeating these damned anarchists who have taken over my government. I had only just ascended the throne when I left; they had never had a female ruler before. My father had to change the articles of succession to allow it. My support among the populace was hardly strong, which I suppose is why the Revolutionary Brigade picked that moment to act.”

He nodded, scowling.

“Alone as I am, having been away from my country for nine months, I stand little chance of rallying people to my cause. I understand that. I remember the looks on their faces, that last day in Holstein Cathedral, at my father’s funeral. They were not going to accept me, a female, as their ruler.”

“If any one of them dares to say a word against you . . .”

“But if I return with a consort, a man of strength and resolve, an English nobleman . . .” She drew in another deep breath, and her cheeks seemed to take on a touch of color in the dimness. “If I return already increasing with a young prince . . .”

Somerton felt a little dizzy.

“. . . I may just be able to sway their hearts.”

“I beg your pardon, Markham. Did you say already increasing?”

She looked at her lap. “Peter and I . . . we tried faithfully, every week, but I was never so fortunate as to conceive. You, on the other hand, are an expert. You are a proven sire of a strong and healthy son . . .”

She had to be stopped. Now.

“In fact, I have three,” he said.

Luisa’s head shot up. “What’s that?”

“Three sons, that I know of. Philip, you have seen. I got a child on a tenant’s wife when I was seventeen—I rather believe she was using me for the purpose—and another from a mistress of mine at Oxford, a careless mistake. She was several years older than I, and had some ambitious notion that she could manipulate my young will into making her the Countess of Somerton for her trouble. She left for America shortly after the birth; I haven’t seen them since.”

“Good God.”

“I have also a daughter,” he said softly. The words hurt his throat as he said them. “I entered into an adulterous affair with an officer’s wife, while he was stationed in India. He returned hopelessly disfigured, and she . . . she threatened to get rid of the child if I didn’t leave with her for the Continent. So I did as she asked. A great mistake. She was not the sort of woman . . .” He caught his breath. How to describe the Duchess of Ashland, God rest her troubled soul, now dead these two or three years? When Luisa’s own sister had since married the widowed duke. A rather awkward detail, to be sure, and one he lacked the energy to deal with, at the moment. “In any case, I left her eventually, though not without insisting that she place the girl in London with a relative, instead of exposing her to the damned dissipated existence she was then living in Rome. I sent money. I didn’t try to see the girl; I thought it was better for all concerned if I didn’t. But she exists. Four children, at least that I’m aware of. I have, since then, exercised a great deal more caution in my private affairs.”

“I see,” she whispered.

“I have never told another soul about all this,” he said.

“I don’t doubt it. Such a shameful history is hardly a matter of pride, though at least it leaves your ability to sire children without doubt.”

“You should be appalled.”

“Appalled? My own father was notorious for siring bastards right and left. If you had mentioned the notion of exercising caution, he would have looked at you in amazement. He considered himself the father of his people in a very literal sense.”

For a moment, Somerton stared at her.

Then he threw back his head and laughed. The action made his head hurt, but he went on anyway, because it felt so good to laugh like this, from his belly upward into his heart. “But you loved him anyway,” he said at last, wiping his eyes.

“I loved him anyway.” She was smiling, too, watching him with indulgent eyes. “The trouble, of course, was that he couldn’t get any children on his wives, after we three girls were born. Each time one of my stepmothers became with child, she would miscarry, often quite late in her confinement.”

“How many stepmothers did you have?”

“Two. When the last one died, my father gave up. He altered the old rules of succession so that a firstborn daughter could inherit the throne, and I was married to poor Peter shortly after. Having a husband and—we hoped—a thriving heir would rally the people behind the idea of a female ruler.”

Somerton frowned. “I see.”

A silence stretched between them, raw and tender in the aftermath of these unexpected revelations, this new intimacy of mutual knowledge. Somerton wanted to pull the blankets up his chest, to hide himself again. But it was too late.

Perhaps, with Markham, it had always been too late.

Luisa gathered herself. “Will you consider it, then? I realize it’s a great deal to ask, but you did promise to assist me in regaining my throne. Your strength and cunning would prove the utmost help, I’m sure, and the entire project a welcome distraction for you, given your recent reverses.”

“How kind. And what makes you think I have any desire to experience the bonds of matrimony again?”

She cleared her throat. “The position is not without its compensations . . .”

“Indeed.” He let his gaze wander downward to the buttons of her shirt.

She rose from her chair and walked to the window. “You needn’t answer now, of course. I’ve sprung it all suddenly, because there isn’t much time. You may take a few days to decide. But I really must know by the end of the week, so I can begin to plan.”

“Plan?”

“Olympia hopes to strike by the end of August.” She lifted the curtain a few inches to the side and looked down at the garden.

The end of August.

“You’re a fool,” he said. “You know what I am.”

“I do. That’s exactly why I want you for the job,” she said coldly. “Besides, I haven’t any time to interview other candidates.”

He watched her where she stood, at the opposite wall, her back turned to him. She was wearing her tweed trousers, the ones that cupped her bottom in a manner altogether too distracting for a man confined to his bed with a bruised brain, and the shaft of afternoon sunlight turned her white shirt nearly transparent.

Damn it all. His prick was rising, right there beneath the sheet, just when he needed to think rationally.

Had he even heard her correctly? Marry her. Become the consort to a princess, protect her from all threats. Get her with child as a matter of sacred duty, a child who would one day rule a minor German principality under principles of absolute power.

His thoughts reeled. Good God, he wasn’t even properly divorced yet.

On other hand, had he ever really been married, except as a legal formality? Certainly his wife, his former wife, would lose no time in marrying his rival.

Marriage. Marriage to Markham, to an extraordinary woman with no other man in her heart. What might that be like? At the very least, he would have her in his bed at last, willing and open, warm and soft skinned, perhaps even passionate. Yes. He would have, at the very least, the blessed oblivion of sexual congress, as often as he needed it. With her, with Markham. His Markham, his own Markham, offering now to bind herself to him for life.

By his side. In his bed. Never to leave him.

His prick surged against the linen, eager to complete the formalities of consummation.

The sick despair inside him, the sense of black loss, receded by a fraction of an inch.

He was accustomed to shocks, he reminded himself. And the faster a man adjusted himself to his new circumstances, the greater his chance of survival.

“Your Highness?”

She turned from the window in a startled jump.

“I shall take the matter under the gravest consideration. Now close that damned curtain before my eyeballs combust.”