Silk And Seduction Bundle 2

Chapter Eleven

Midge was breathless by the time she emerged from the belt of woodland that bordered the road, but pleased with herself for coming out not a quarter of a mile from Shevington Village. Even if she was a failure at everything else, there was no denying she had a good sense of direction!

It did not take long to find the inn, either, since Shevington was barely more than a handful of buildings clustered around the crossroads.

She grimaced at the inn sign, depicting a woman in Tudor dress, her severed head laying at her feet, then walked through an archway broad enough to admit mail coaches, into its bustling stable yard. From the crowd standing outside the office, and the two floors suggesting an abundance of rooms for hire, she deduced it held a strategic position on the routes between Dover and London.

She sidestepped the queue, and went directly to the man presiding behind the bar in the public coffee room.

‘Excuse me, but I believe you have a man staying here by the name of Stephen Hebden?’

The landlord gave her a withering look, which reminded her she was not wearing either a coat or bonnet. Her long-sleeved, high-necked gown had looked perfectly respectable when she had put it on that morning. But since then, she had torn open the top buttons, wiped her nose on the sleeve, soaked the hem dashing through long grass, and scooped up a considerable amount of foliage on her headlong flight through dense woodland.

‘Nobody by that name here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’ll do instead, darling.’ He leered, leaning over the bar, his beery breath gusting into her face.

Midge drew herself up to her full height, knowing her only defence would be her attitude.

‘How dare you speak to me like that,’ she snapped, imitating her aunt at her most frosty. ‘The man I am looking for is my brother. He sent word that he needed to see me urgently.’ She made a brief movement to indicate that very urgency accounted for the state of her clothes.

The landlord’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t s’pose by any chance this brother of yours has long, black hair and wears an earring? Looks like he could be a Gypsy?’

‘Yes! That’s him!’ she cried. All that mud and leaves stuck to her skirts had done some good after all. She obviously looked like the kind of person who lived outdoors.

‘Room four,’ the barman said, ‘up them stairs—’ he jerked his head to a narrow staircase that rose from a corner of the bar ‘—and along the corridor to the end. And I hope you’re going to be able to settle his shot,’ he added sourly, ‘if he sticks his spoon in the wall.’

She had not imagined Stephen could be that ill! Thank heaven she had come to him so soon after the twins had alerted her to his distress. Not, she admitted to herself guiltily, as she scurried across the bar and up the stairs, that it had been concern for him that had driven her here. But for whatever reason, she was here now, and she would do whatever she could to help.

She knocked gently on the last door at the end of the corridor, and when she got no reply, lifted the latch and tiptoed inside.

The curtains were drawn, making the chamber gloomy, but from the glimmer of light that spilled in over her shoulder from the passage, she could make out the form of a man sprawled out on top of the bed.

He was only wearing his breeches. And holding his crumpled shirt over his face.

‘Stephen,’ she whispered, shutting the door softly behind her and making her way across to the bed. From a new tension that seized his body, she could tell he knew she was there, but he made no sound. She reached out her hand to check for fever. But before she could touch him, his hand shot out and he grabbed her wrist.

‘What do you want with me?’ he snarled through clenched teeth, as though even the act of speaking caused him pain.

‘To help you if I can,’ she replied. He moaned, and let her go, pressing the shirt more firmly over his eyes. ‘I know you probably only came here to cause me trouble…’

A ragged laugh escaped his pale lips. ‘I am already paying for what I planned to do to you. You can leave now.’

Instead of leaving, Midge went to the bell pull and tugged hard. She did not care what he thought of her. She would not abandon a chance acquaintance in an inn where nobody cared for anything but how his bill was to be paid, let alone her only true blood brother.

‘Tell me what you need,’ she insisted, pulling a chair up to the side of the bed.

‘Nothing,’ he spat, his eyes still fast shut. ‘Nobody.’

Tentatively, she laid her hand on his shoulder. His body was warm, but not burning as though he had a fever.

‘I can tell your head hurts,’ she said. He could not bear to open his eyes, though he had deliberately darkened the room, nor speak above a hoarse whisper. ‘I am going to order some coffee,’ she said briskly. She did not usually have much sympathy for men who drank themselves into such a state. But he had nobody else to take care of him.

And there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

Nobody else who needed her.

When the chambermaid arrived, she ordered coffee and some oil of lavender so that she could bathe Stephen’s temples with it. The maid looked past her at Stephen’s prone body.

‘How you plan paying for it?’

Midge took a breath, and counted to three before answering. ‘I am Viscountess Mildenhall. I am certain that, should my brother not have the money on his person, a bill presented to the estate will be settled without question!’

The maid pursed her lips. ‘Starting up again is it? Only ‘twas the countess herself used to meet her fancy men here before.’ She smirked, then lowered her voice, leaning in as though sharing a confidence. ‘If’n you don’t want this getting about, dearie, you need to bring the readies next time.’ She sauntered off down the corridor, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

Midge shut the door, appalled by the chambermaid’s assumption she was here to embark on a clandestine affair, and to learn that the twins’ mother had, indeed, taken lovers. In this very inn! When it was so close to Shevington Court. And so very busy. She must have been determined to inflict as much pain and humiliation upon the earl as she possibly could.

Though, having endured that unwarranted attack this morning, Midge grudgingly admitted she could actually understand what had driven her to take such a drastic form of revenge.

‘You have ruined your reputation in this locale by coming to me,’ grated Stephen from the bed. She turned round, to see him staring at her, an unfathomable expression on his face.

She shrugged. The locals would have seen Monty’s carriage passing by this inn on his way to London. They might very well assume she had taken the first opportunity after her husband’s departure to fly to the bed of her lover.

The earl, she grimaced, most certainly would!

‘I do not care,’ she said defiantly. The earl had already decided she was wanton, without a shred of evidence. Accused her of crimes she would never have dreamed of committing, judging her on hearsay about her parents and condemning her to solitary confinement in her room.

What was one more crime, to add to all the other charges? She knew she was completely innocent!

‘You are my brother. And that is all that matters to me.’

He stared up at her, his eyes dark with suspicion and hostility. But presently, he shut them, and said, ‘Sometimes, I get some relief if my sister runs her fingers through my hair.’

Midge crept back to the bed, her heart bounding with hope. She stood quite still for a few seconds, gazing down at the proud, shuttered face, and then, taking all her courage in her hands, set her fingers to his temples, and swept them firmly across his scalp to the crown of his head. He heaved a sigh that was almost a groan. But he did not push her hands away this time. Again and again she ran her fingers through his dark, luxuriant hair, until she saw his great scarred shoulders sag into the pillows, as though he was letting go of some oppressive weight. It was only then that the import of his words struck her. He had another sister. One with whom he was on intimate terms. One that he went to, when he was ill.

‘My sister,’ he had said. Not ‘my other sister.’

She stopped working on his scalp, imagining a girl who looked just like him. For somehow, she knew this other sister of whom he spoke came from his mother’s people. The people he felt he belonged to. Else why would he take such pains to emphasize his origins? He could easily have cut his hair fashionably short. Nor was there any need to sport such a large, showy gold hoop in his left ear. Or wear clothes that were so colourful and cut in such an exotic style.

Stephen carried on breathing steadily, and she saw that the furrow between his brows was gone. He was asleep. She pulled his shirt from his slackened grasp, shook it out and draped it over the back of a chair, wondering if there had been anyone to do as much for Gerry in his last days.

The thought of Gerry sent an immense wave of grief crashing over her. And now that there was nothing more for her to do and nowhere else to run, she found the urge to break down and weep impossible to withstand any longer. She clenched her fists, and went over to the window which had a broad sill, upon which several frayed and rather greasy cushions were scattered. She took one and sat down, drew up her knees and buried her face in it. If she could no longer contain herself, the least she could do was muffle the sound of her sobs, so that she did not disturb Stephen. From time to time, she raised her head long enough to glance across at him. But nothing roused him. Not even the return of the chambermaid with the coffee, though not the lavender oil. Midge shrugged fatalistically. Sleep was probably the best remedy for whatever ailed him anyway.

She gulped down the coffee herself, between sobs, then drooped her way back to the window seat. She meant to keep watch over Stephen, but she could hardly keep her eyes open. Though that was not surprising considering she had hardly slept a wink the night before. And today, instead of taking her customary nap to make up for it, she had spent the afternoon smashing pottery, hiking across country and providing landlords and chambermaids food for gossip. And the bout of weeping had drained her of what little energy she’d had left.

She rearranged one or two of the cushions to pillow her head, and settled into a more comfortable position, feeling like a dish rag wrung out and hung limply over a line.

And woke with a start when Stephen reached over her, to yank the curtains open.

‘Good morning,’ he said dryly.

Midge rubbed her eyes, then winced at the pain that shot down her neck when she tried to move her head. The cushions she had so carefully arranged the night before were scattered all over the floor, and she had woken with her face wedged against the windowsill.

‘Morning?’ she repeated groggily. It seemed impossible, yet the sluggish grey light of a new day was definitely oozing through the grimy windows.

Stephen stalked to the washstand, poured water into a basin, and nonchalantly began to wash himself. Her shocked eyes roamed his naked torso, her heart welling up with pity. She had seen battle scars on her husband’s body, so she recognized the suffering that all those criss-crossed silvery lines represented. If she had not known better, she would have thought he had been a soldier. A bullet had most definitely caused the ragged wound on his shoulder. It was so very like the one that Monty bore.

‘Why did you come?’ said Stephen, his back still towards her as he reached for a silver-handled razor.

Midge did not pause to think about her answer. She had been bereft and alone, and he had sent for her. ‘I have nobody else.’

‘What of your wealthy husband?’ Stephen sneered, wielding the razor with frighteningly lethal speed.

‘Gone to London.’

He dipped the razor in the water, rinsing away the soap.

‘And what now?’

‘I suppose,’ she said hesitantly, ‘you wish me to leave now you are well again. Though…’ she pushed at one of the cushions with her toes ‘…you came down here to see me. Did you not? You must have had some reason for seeking me out.’

Oh, how she wished he would say he had regretted causing trouble for her at the wedding. And that, because he was her brother, he wanted them to be on good terms again!

But his face, as he turned to her, was harsh, not repentant.

‘I wanted to know about what was said at the wedding.’ When she frowned in confusion, he said impatiently, ‘About your mother. That she told your stepfather to search for me. That when she heard I had died in the fire…’ He turned abruptly, snatched up his shirt and dragged it over his head.

‘She made me think she cared for me,’ he snarled, jerkily doing up his shirt. ‘That she thought of me as her son. And then she tossed me out like a piece of rubbish as soon as my father died!’

Midge leapt to her feet. ‘She did not! When our father was murdered, she became very ill. Her father, my Grandpapa Herriard, came and took her back to his house to look after her. He was the one who sent you away. By the time she was well enough to come to the nursery to see us all, it was too late. You weren’t there any more.’

She sat back down abruptly, her head spinning alarmingly.

‘She begged him to tell her where you were,’ she said quietly, leaning back and drawing in deep breaths to try to stave off the faintness. ‘But he would not!’

‘You remember all that, do you?’ He sneered. ‘What were you, about four years old?’

She shook her head, closing her eyes. ‘I only remember flashes of things from back then. Being lifted out of my bed in the middle of the night, mother weeping, and then the misery of the nursery at Mount Street. Missing my mother, and—’ she opened her eyes and looked straight at him ‘—you.’ Stephen’s absence had left a great gap in her life. A gap that nobody else had really ever been able to fill ever since.

‘You were the one I always ran to,’ she said sadly. ‘I remember that.’ She also remembered trotting after Hugh Bredon’s sons in the same way she had used to follow after her adored Stephen. And being shocked to find her new big brothers did not automatically pick her up and cuddle her until she felt better. It had seemed like a long time before Rick had gradually begun to respond to her need for affection. Gerry had followed his oldest brother’s example, eventually. Though Nick…

She pushed those unfavourable comparisons away, returning to the matter at hand. ‘And then you were gone. And father was gone. And I was not allowed to go near mother—’

‘At least she kept you!’ he spat. ‘Have you any idea what it was like for me, being sent to that place for children nobody wants? They told me I should be grateful for being taken in and fed, since my parents and friends had deserted me. Grateful! And every time I ran away and tried to get home, somebody would drag me back, and they would whip me in front of all the other boys and make me wear a red letter R pinned to my jacket!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Midge whispered, horror struck. How could anyone have been so cruel to a child that clearly needed love and reassurance? A boy who had just been ripped from the place he had been taught to believe he belonged? The scars on his body were as nothing compared to the scars that experience must have seared into his soul.

‘There was a fire,’ he said. ‘You said, outside your fancy church, that you wondered if that had been a lie, too. Well, it was not! The chaos it caused gave me the chance I needed to escape.’ He held out his hands and looked at the open palms for a brief second, before clenching them into fists and raising his dark head to glare at her again.

‘Where did you go?’ She looked at the hoop in his ear and the silver bracelet that adorned his wrist, and thought she knew the answer. ‘You found your way back to your real mother’s people.’

Something flashed across his face. ‘Not immediately.’ The expression settled into one so bitter, Midge knew she was not going to like what he was going to tell her next. ‘I had to survive by begging and stealing for a long time before I found my way back to anyone who would offer me a home.’

‘I am sorry,’ was all she could think of to say. Though it was not enough. ‘So sorry,’ she said again, as a single tear slid silently down her cheek.

‘So, you maintain she married an old man because he said he would search for me?’ He laughed. The unexpectedness of the sound, harsh and cold, made her flinch. ‘But you and I both know he would not have given me a home. Had he found me. He would have taken one look at the wild thing I had become, and thrown me straight back in the gutter.’

Midge could not deny it was a possibility. Not now she had seen through Hugh’s facade to the coldness at his heart. He might well have said whatever he had deemed necessary to make Amanda marry him, so that he could have control of her fortune and his boys would have a loving mother. But he had not been much of a father to her.

‘What does it matter now, what he might or might not have done?’

‘What does it matter?’ he exploded, his rage a tangible force she could feel battering her. ‘I was torn from my home. Forced to live in a way you cannot possibly begin to imagine! And now, I—’ he pulled himself up short. Drawing himself up to his full height, he threw his shoulders back and declared, ‘I came to your wedding to spoil your day. Don’t you know that? Don’t you hate me for it?’

‘No.’ Midge looked him straight in the eye as she delivered that truth. ‘And you have no reason to hate me, either.’ She felt more tears sting her eyes. Stupid tears, that, since she had become pregnant, seemed to threaten at the least surge of emotion within her. ‘None of what happened to you was my fault, Stephen. I missed you. I have missed you all my life.’

Stephen’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you expect from me, Imo? That we can play at happy families again? As though these years, all the injustice of it, had never happened?’

Midge lowered her head, burying her face in her hands as she saw that that his life had been so harsh, he had been so convinced that everyone he had cared for had betrayed him, there might be no getting through to him. The embittered man who stood before her now was a complete stranger to her. The loving little boy she remembered was gone forever.

He was lost to her. As lost as Gerry.

‘I do not expect anything from you, Stephen,’ she sighed wearily. ‘But I would like to ask you a favour.’

His face took on a sardonic cast that was very discouraging, but Midge decided she might as well ask anyway. He could only say no. And then she could simply walk back to Shevington Court and face the music.

‘I came out yesterday in such a hurry, I forgot to bring any money. And I need to go to London.’

She needed to see Nick. He was the one person on earth who must, surely, miss Gerry as much as she did. With whom she could mourn the loss of that laughing, carefree young man. Oh, she knew it was a forlorn hope, considering the coldness he had exhibited towards her after Hugh’s death, but any kind of hope for shared fellow-feeling was better than the certainty of the total isolation she would face on returning to Shevington Court. And she knew, too, that the earl would not permit her to travel anywhere for quite some time. If Stephen would not help her out…she choked back a sob, lifted her head and gazed up at him imploringly. Just a few days with Nick, that was all she was asking for. A few days away to come to terms with everything.

‘Will you take me there?’

‘Take you to London,’ he echoed. ‘After so short a time, you are ready to leave your husband? Or are you chasing after him?’

She flinched at the very notion she would demean herself by pursuing a man who had only ever feigned interest in her, and a chilling smile slashed across his face.

‘If you are so set on ruining yourself, who am I to stand in your way? I will settle up and order a carriage. It will be my pleasure to take you to London.’

‘Yes,’ she said, regarding him sadly. ‘I thought it would.’ For Stephen did not care a fig for her reputation. In fact, the blacker he could make things look for her, the better pleased he would probably be.

Midge dozed in the coach, nearly all the way to London, while Stephen rode alongside on his magnificent black stallion. It was only when they drew up outside a house in Bloomsbury Square that she realized she had not made her intentions plain.

‘I meant to ask you to take me to my stepbrother’s lodgings,’ she said as he opened the coach door.

His face closed. ‘So, all that talk about missing me, wanting me to be part of your family, was just words! I might have known you were just using me!’

‘No,’ she protested. ‘It is not like that…’

But he was striding away, shouting to the coachman to take her wherever she wanted to go. He mounted the steps of his house, and the door banged shut behind him.

Only then did she see that for all Stephen’s apparent hardness, something about what had passed between them at the inn must have touched him. Because he was furious that she had not intended to make her stay in London with him.

She sank back into the squabs, reeling at her capacity for doing the worst possible thing on any given occasion.

But late that same night, Midge was back at Stephen’s house, banging in desperation on the front door. If she had truly alienated him, she had no idea what she would do!

The dark-skinned servant who opened the door was garbed in green, though Midge had never seen the like of the cut of his coat before. And he wore a turban wound round his head.

While she gaped at him, he said impassively, ‘State your business.’

‘I need to see Stephen. Please.’ When he did not give a flicker of response, she added, ‘I am Imogen Hebden. His sister.’

The Indian servant stood back and waved her into the hall. When she had entered the house, he closed the front door behind her and led her into a small parlour, in which a fire crackled cheerfully in the grate.

‘I shall go and tell Stephen Sahib that you are here,’ he said before melting away.

Midge made straight for the fire and sat on the chair closest to it, toeing off her sodden shoes. When she had put the dainty satin slippers on the day before, she had assumed she would only be sitting on a sofa all day, or at most, going down the stairs to dine. She had not thought she would tramp through woodland, take a coach to London, and then spend hours walking the streets. The soles had worn through hours ago. And then it had come on to rain, and she had not known whether it was worse to have shoes full of holes, or no coat or bonnet to keep out the wet. She felt, and was sure she looked like, a half-drowned rat, with her hair plastered all round her face and down her neck. She was surprised the servant had let her in. None of the houses she had ever visited before employed servants who would have shown in a woman in her condition without question, and sat them down in front of a fire.

She heard the door to the hall open again, and when she looked round, Stephen stood in the doorway, jacketless, his waistcoat still unbuttoned. He had brushed his long hair neatly back off his face. And removed his earring. And the quality of the evening garments was so fine, the style of what he was wearing so conventional that all in all, she decided, once he had donned a jacket, he would not look out of place at Almack’s.

‘What is it now?’ he demanded brusquely as he stalked across the room towards her. ‘What do you want?’

‘I—’ she swallowed nervously, and got shakily to her feet ‘—I am sorry to be so bothersome, but I need a place to stay for the night. Nick said…Nick said…’ As her mind went back over the painful interview she had just had with her stepbrother, the room seemed to tilt around her. Just as the floor began to swim upwards towards her face, she felt Stephen’s strong arms catch her, and she found herself lying, not face down on the hearthrug, but rather more decorously, upon a sofa.