Till Next We Meet Read online

  “From Harry?”

  Glynneth sounded surprised. A last thought before sleep claimed Catherine again.

  Chapter 3

  “It’s a pretty little place, sir,” Peter said, as he and Moncrief approached Colstin Hall the next afternoon.

  Moncrief nodded. Today there was no fog, and the winds were gentle, swaying the branches with their burden of dying leaves. Regardless of the pastoral beauty, he wanted to be gone from here as fast as possible. The afternoon was well advanced, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the delay of their arrival was due more to his own reluctance than to the fact that the small wagon holding their trunks had lost a wheel.

  A decision could have been made to allow the wagon driver to follow him to Balidonough at a more leisurely pace. But he’d delayed as well, and now, staring down at Colstin Hall, Moncrief realized why.

  He didn’t want to see Catherine Dunnan again.

  “I’ll stay here if you don’t mind, sir. Your Grace.” Peter took the reins of Moncrief’s horse as he dismounted.

  Moncrief smiled his agreement and made his way down the path to the front door, the letter in his pocket seeming to burn its way through the cloth to his very skin.

  He’d returned to the inn thinking that this letter would be a good opportunity for a little truth. Perhaps Harry should say something of his life in this last missive to his wife, speak of all the women he’d bedded in America. Or mention his gambling habit, and the fact that he would have used Colstin Hall as a stake until Moncrief had stepped in and refused to allow any of his men to accept the property.

  Catherine had, in her grief, made Harry a hero, while the truth was something else entirely.

  Moncrief hadn’t, after all, written a letter of that type. He wasn’t certain that Catherine Dunnan was mentally stable enough to read it or accept the truth of it. Instead, he’d used the disappointment of the meeting with her, his fatigue, and his own feelings of uncertainty about the future as fuel for the words he wrote under Harry’s name. He told her of his irritation with his post, hiding his emotions for his father and his brother but allowing them to emerge in the very real tale of men who had died in their last battle.

  In the end, the letter revealed a man who cared for his men and for his wife, who longed for the life she promised. Moncrief sealed the document, feeling as if it were also a glorious monument to his ability to lie without compunction.

  Perhaps he was Harry’s match in lack of character.

  Moncrief knocked on the door just as he had the day before, but this visit found him attired not in his regimentals but in a plain black suit of clothes, the richness of the fabric and the silk of his stock the only concessions to his newly inherited wealth and title.

  The same young maid answered the door, but her greeting was anything but what he expected.

  “Oh, please come, sir, we can’t rouse the mistress!” Tears were streaming down her face. She pulled Moncrief into the house by the sleeve of his coat, then pointed up the stairs. “She won’t wake up!”

  He took the stairs two at a time.

  At the end of the hall three women were standing, all of them gripping their aprons and sobbing. He pushed past them, and into the room.

  A woman standing beside the bed turned and looked at him.

  “Can you help her?”

  She was a creature of loveliness, a vision of blond beauty, an angel standing there.

  “Quickly. She’s still breathing, but I fear the worst.”

  His glance caught the small brown bottle beside the bed. He strode to the table, pulled out the cork, and sniffed the contents. Laudanum, a tincture of opium, mixed with alcohol and other ingredients, one of which smelled like ginger. “How much of this has she taken?”

  The angel shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Catherine’s complexion was ashen, her lips nearly blue. He pressed his fingers against her neck to find a faint and thready pulse.

  “My aide is in the lane,” he told one of the women in the door. “Go and get him.”

  One disappeared to do his bidding, and he turned to the other two. “Fetch her bathtub and fill it with cold water. As cold as you can make it.”

  “Cold water, sir?” one of the women said.

  “Yes, and now.”

  “Miss Glynneth?” The other woman waited until the angel nodded before doing his bidding.

  The room was evidently the refuge of a wealthy woman. The bed itself was large, four heavily carved posts sitting at each corner. A vanity with curved legs and claw and ball feet sat on one wall. Next to it was a mahogany-and-marble table topped with a ewer and basin richly patterned with trailing pink roses. A wing back chair and ottoman, both upholstered in a deep burgundy, sat adjacent to the fire.

  He sat on the edge of the mattress, and pulled Catherine to a sitting position. Her head lolled, but she didn’t otherwise respond.

  “We might be too late,” he said.

  “I pray not,” the woman beside him said.

  “Too much opium, and a patient simply doesn’t wake up. One of my sergeants had a brother who was an opium eater. He simply slept to his death.” Moncrief stood, removed his coat, and hung it on the back of the chair before returning to the bed.

  “Sir?” He turned to see Peter enter the room, followed by two young men bearing a large copper bath.

  They set it down before the fireplace, and began to fill it with the buckets of water being brought up by the three women.

  “What can I do to help, Colonel?” Peter asked, after taking in the sight of the unconscious woman and the activity around the bath.

  “Clear the room, Peter.”

  His aide nodded and proceeded to do just that.

  Moncrief picked up Catherine and held her in his arms, watching as Peter herded the unwilling servants from the room.

  “And me? I won’t leave.”

  He turned to face Glynneth, realizing that he’d forgotten the other woman. Now her perfect face was marred by a scowl.

  “I won’t leave her.”

  “Then help me save her life,” he said. Moncrief glanced at Peter, and blessed the younger man’s perception. His former aide stepped out the door and closed it solidly behind him. He would stand guard until told otherwise.

  Moncrief strode to the bath and dropped Catherine into the cold water.

  She sank like a stone.

  He bent down and pulled her up by her shoulders. She sucked in her breath sharply. Her eyelids fluttered but otherwise, she didn’t respond.

  He dropped her again.

  “Are you trying to drown her?”

  Ignoring the woman behind him, he pulled Catherine out of the water. This time, her lips trembled, and her hands made weak splashing movements in the water.

  “Leave her alone!”

  He felt a slap on his shoulder, but didn’t turn. “I’m trying to wake her. Or do you want her to sleep to her death?”

  “But she’s not properly attired.”

  The woman might be blessed with beauty, but she was evidently devoid of sense. “You would have her die for the sake of propriety, madam?”

  She didn’t answer him, and his concentration returned to the woman he was trying to save. The water was icy, turning his own hands numb. The fire, while burning brightly, was not sufficient to warm the area where the bath was located. If the water and the cold didn’t wake her, Moncrief wasn’t certain anything would.

  The third time he pulled her out of the water, her eyelids fluttered open.

  “Cold.”

  A single word, it nevertheless induced a smile from him. “So is the grave, madam.”

  Once more she went under, and this time when he pulled her up, she slapped at him with her hands.

  “Fight me, then,” he said, pleased that she was showing some reaction.

  She frowned, more expression that she’d shown since he’d found her.

  “Let me up,” she said, the words faint and barely audible above the splash of wa
ter. She was beginning to tremble, a good sign that her body was finally beginning to respond to the icy water.

  “Bring me a towel,” he said to the woman at his side. She rushed to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and returned to his side with a length of folded toweling.

  He helped Catherine stand and wrapped the toweling around her. She sank against him as he pulled her from the tub, her forehead leaning against his chest. Although the water was frigid, she was colder.

  “Next time you try to die, madam, you might try a faster method. Laudanum kills by inches.”

  She shook her head weakly from side to side. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the fireplace, standing her as close to the fire as he dared.

  “Will she be all right?”

  “I think so. She is waking.” He turned to look at the woman who’d addressed him. “No thanks to you, madam. Or to anyone in this house. Has no one thought to discourage her use of laudanum? Or feed her? Or have you only allowed her to wallow in her grief?”

  She frowned at him. “You judge easily that which you don’t know, sir.”

  He’d been a commander of men for enough years that he was familiar with excuses. He didn’t want to hear a litany of them now. Setting Catherine down in front of the fire, he peeled the damp towel from her.

  “We need another towel.”

  “You should leave now. I can care for her.”

  “No. She would no doubt expire of consumption if I left her to your care.”

  He ignored her soft reply, concentrating on Catherine instead. She was shaking in earnest, standing with her arms at her sides, her head down. Her hair was long, hanging in sodden ropes to her waist. Her nightgown was rendered almost transparent by the water, but he removed it nonetheless, peeling it from her as if it were a second skin.

  A female hand clamped on his wrist as he grabbed the towel again.

  “Your behavior is shocking, sir,” Glynneth said. “She is naked, and you are a stranger.”

  “Then leave the room if my presence so distresses you.”

  “Mrs. Dunnan is not your responsibility.”

  Yes, she is. The words didn’t stun him as much as the fact they came instantly to his mind. She had become his responsibility the moment he’d put pen to paper, from the second he’d answered the letter that had begun—My dearest.

  “Do you want to destroy her reputation?”

  The accusation was not without merit. The world did not know of their tenuous bond or his guilt. To this woman, to all of Catherine’s servants, he was only a stranger, now engaged in behavior that would be scandalous under any circumstances.

  But he could not let her die.

  He shook his wrist free and began to rub Catherine dry with the towel, turning her closer to the fire when he’d finished with her back.

  The Greeks believed that the epitome of beauty was the entire female figure. The sweep of the back, the arch of the neck, the curve of the hips, the long, sleek stretch of leg were as important as high conical breasts and rounded arms. A goddess could not have been as perfect as Catherine Dunnan. No statue could have been so gloriously carved. But she was nearly as cold as marble, and pale enough to mimic stone.

  He concentrated on the droplets of water that followed the curves from her shoulders to her waist, then focused on her trembling, on the very sound of her breathing, ragged and rough.

  The task of drying her front done, he began rubbing Catherine’s hair. There were tangles in it, but he would deal with those later. For now, he was content that she was still shivering, and that the color of her face had gone from waxy pale to pink.

  “Get her a dry nightgown,” he said to the other woman. Instead of obeying him, however, she made a sound of disgust and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Irritated, Moncrief went to the bureau and began opening drawers, finding what he sought in the middle one. He unfolded the gown and returned to where Catherine stood, docile and silent, in front of the fire.

  A few minutes later he wondered how mothers ever dressed their children. There were too many limbs, and they were not as easily arranged as he thought. Then, again, he’d had more experience undressing a woman than dressing one. Finally, he was done, Catherine attired in a pale green gown adorned with embroidery at the neck. He wondered if she’d done the needlework herself.

  Moncrief placed his hand on her cheek, feeling how cold she still was to the touch.

  “We need to get you fed, Catherine. Soup, I think. Or a stew. Something hot, and something hot to drink as well.”

  Catherine shook her head from side to side.

  “Laudanum takes away the appetite. You’ll find that you feel better once you stop taking that poison.”

  “I don’t,” she said faintly.

  “I shall not argue the point with you now. Instead, I suggest we begin walking.”

  He slid his arm around her back, draped her arm over his shoulder, and began to walk. “You can’t sleep yet. If you do, I’m not altogether certain you’ll wake.”

  Her only response was slowly to place one foot in front of the other in an exaggerated attempt at walking. He kept their pace measured, but he was determined that she would survive.

  “I…didn’t…try…to…die,” she said a half hour later.

  “I would beg to differ, madam,” he said. “You nearly succeeded.”

  She shook her head from side to side.

  An hour later she spoke again, her voice a little stronger.

  “How much longer?” she asked, allowing him to support her as they turned.

  He stood in front of her and gently tilted her chin up until he could see her eyes. Patches of color dotted her cheeks, and the bluish tinge had left her lips. His knuckles brushed against her throat, measuring the warmth of her skin. Her eyes looked clearer, more lucid.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Alive. Tired.”

  He walked her back to the side of her bed and helped her sit. She folded her hands together and placed them on her lap. Her head was bent, her gaze on the floor. Her lack of will disturbed him, but she might well be of that nature. The woman he’d known from her letters could be a mirage, a myth she’d constructed on paper, just as he had hidden behind her husband’s persona. Perhaps they were both frauds, after all.

  She lifted her head and regarded him with dazed eyes. “I’m very tired.”

  “The effect of the laudanum.”

  She turned away from him and drew her legs up on the mattress. He leaned down and covered her with the blanket. She closed her eyes, effectively dismissing him.

  “Are you still cold?”

  “Yes.”

  He went to the trunk at the end of her bed, startled to realize that it was Harry’s. He left it alone and went to the bureau and found another blanket. As he covered her with it, Catherine grabbed the edge and pulled it up to her neck, still not looking at him.

  “Are you a physician?”

  “I’ve saved a life or two,” he admitted. “But I’ve no training in it.”

  She nodded once, as if satisfied by his answer.

  He stood and watched her for a few moments, reassured when her breathing was more regular and even. Bending, he tested her pulse again, feeling it beat strongly beneath his fingertips.

  Did she grieve so desperately for Harry that she’d chosen to die rather than live without him? The Harry he’d known had not been worth such desperate emotion. He glanced at the trunk and wished she’d not placed it there, almost like a shrine.

  He wanted to bid this place farewell, return home to Balidonough, and take up his new role in life. But until he was certain of Catherine’s health, both in body and spirit, he was chained to Colstin Hall as surely as if he were actually Harry Dunnan.

  Raised voices interrupted Moncrief’s thoughts. He heard Peter shout, and the next instant the bedroom door was flung open so strongly that it bounced against the adjoining wall.

  “I’d not thought to believe m
y ears, but my eyes do not deceive me. I am witnessing sinners in the very act of sin.”

  Moncrief straightened and turned.

  The man who stood in the doorway was dressed in somber black, the only ornamentation to his attire being a plain white cravat. His cheeks were round and red like apples, his warm brown eyes owlish behind wire-rim spectacles. His lips were small, delicately pink, and pursed in a disapproving moue.

  “Have you no shame, sir, that you would bed a woman in full daylight? And with her servants listening? As vicar of these good people, I’d never thought to witness such a scene of vice and degradation.”

  “Nor have you now,” Moncrief said calmly. If he was to be found in a woman’s chamber for nefarious purposes, she damn well wouldn’t be sleeping, a fact that evidently escaped the vicar.

  He was a full head taller than the other man, a point that obviously disturbed the vicar, who drew himself up and stared at Moncrief. His spectacles slid down to the tip of his nose, somewhat lessening the impact of his imperious gaze.

  “You would debate a man of God, sir?” His round face quivered with indignation. “And who might you be? Other than a sinner and reprobate?”

  “The Duke of Lymond,” Moncrief said, using his title for full effect.

  He glanced around the room, at the milling people in the doorway. A small, humorless smile graced his lips as he inclined his head to the vicar.

  Astonishment altered the vicar’s face, turned his florid face pale. His lips nearly disappeared as he pursed them in dismay.

  “Your Grace?” His bow was half-done, as if he decided upon the gesture and changed his mind in the execution of it. He held his flat black hat with one pudgy hand, but the other fluttered in the air in front of him. His gaze abruptly focused on the floor, then to the left, then to the right, and back at Moncrief again.

  Twice he tried to speak, both times the sound emerging as a croak. The third time he cleared his throat and smiled weakly.

  “Then surely there’s a reason for your presence in Mrs. Dunnan’s chamber, Your Grace.”

  Moncrief had no intention of divulging to the vicar that Catherine had tried to end her life, so he fell back on the only other plausible excuse for his presence. “I knew her husband.”