If only her father had not believed her. If only he had come in to her room and held her warm against the demons and the regrets and the guilt of everything that had happened with her mother. But he had not and she had got better and better at hiding what she wanted others not to see. Like Lucas tonight!
Settling the children on the pillows and excusing herself, she walked up the stairs to the second floor.
The door to his room was shut, a room she had discovered today on their search for materials to use for the decorations and she could hear nothing inside.
Deciding against knocking, she turned the handle and stepped in.
He lay on his bed fully dressed, one hand across his face, the wetness of the night staining the counterpane dark and he shivered violently.
‘I will be down soon, Lillian.’ He did not remove his hand, did not try to rise or sit or converse further. The skin she could see around his lips was blue.
Fright coursed through her. ‘You are ill?’
‘No, I am c-cold. If you could just leave…’
One golden eye became visible through the slit of his fingers when she did not go. ‘If you could hand me the b- blankets?’ Tiredness ringed his eyes, a crippling desperate tiredness that did not just come from lack of sleep, his speech slurred into a stutter. She noticed how his left arm lay limp by his side, the deeper stain of blood showing at his wrist.
Blood! Hurrying over, she took his fingers into her own. Freezing.
‘I will call a doctor.’
He shook his head and dry terror coated Lilly’s mouth. Not a simple accident, then, if he thought to hide it! Carefully she rolled back the sleeve and the long thin jagged wound took away her breath.
‘Who has done this?
Silence reigned and she had the impression that he was holding in his breath until he could cope with the pain. ‘It was my own fault,’ he finally said and she knew she would hear no more.
‘It looks deep.’
‘Are you very good at s-stitching?’
‘Tapestries. Embroideries. I can sew up the hem of a gown if I have to…’ Suddenly she saw where this was going and her voice petered out.
The side of his lips curled up. ‘I am certain then that th-this will give you no b-bother. But it will n-need to be cleaned first.’
‘With what?’ Lillian felt her teeth clench in worry. She had had no practice of this sort of thing ever. Oh, granted, she had dealt with headaches before and the occasional bruise, but a conserve of red roses and rotten apple in equal parts wrapped in thin cambric did not quite seem the answer here.
‘Alcohol. The more proof the better, and boiling water. If you fetch Mrs Poole, she will know what to do.’
Lillian suddenly felt sick to her stomach. ‘This has happened before?’
He turned away from her criticism, a man only just dealing with the agony of his arm and not up to telling any more of the truth. She jumped up in fright when his eyes turned back in his head and all that was left was the white in them. Quickly he shook himself and burning amber reappeared.
‘If you die, Lucas Clairmont, two days after I have married you, I swear that I will strangle you myself.’
Her words were no longer careful, the shout in them surprising them both.
It made no sense, but she was beyond caring, beyond even the measuring of right and wrong. If he had killed someone today, then the reckoning of his soul would come to him later. Right now she just had to get him better.
With the room warmed by a blazing fire and his sodden shirt removed, Lucas’s shivering finally stopped.
Mrs Poole brought steaming water and sharp scissors and all her movements gave the impression of a woman who had seen such things before.
‘I was with Wellington’s troops, my dear,’ she explained when Lillian asked her. ‘Marched with the drum, you see. It was how I met Mr Poole, for my first husband had been killed in Spain and widows did not stay that way for long.’
‘And you saw injuries such as this one?’
‘Many a time.’
‘And they lived…’ she whispered, ‘those who had this sort of injury?’
‘Of course they did. It’s only if they took the fever after I would worry, though it is a pity he will not allow himself a good swig of brandy, for the ache would be a lot lessened.’
She handed a needle and thread to Lillian. ‘Take little stitches and not too deep. Are you certain you would not like some brandy, my dear?’
Having already refused libation once, Lillian shook her head. She needed to be completely in control for the task in front of her and wished for the twentieth time that Mrs Poole’s eyesight had been better.
Still, with the long explanation as to what the housekeeper could and could not see behind them, Lillian thought it only right that it should be her doing the repair work.
‘I’ve had stitches before,’ Lucas said to her as she readied herself for the task, trying to put it off for as long as she could. ‘I don’t usually weep.’
The tilt of his lips told her that he was attempting to take some of the tension from the moment, though the sweat on his upper lip gave a different story again. Not quite as indifferent as he would have her think! Her heart beat so violently she could visibly see the rise and fall of her bodice and it accelerated markedly again as she learnt that skin was a lot harder than cloth to push a needle through.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered as he winced, the quick spring of red blood from the wound blotted by Mrs Poole as he looked away. Following his glance, she saw that the night outside was still heavy with rain and further afield the bright glow of lightning silhouetted the land.
‘A storm is coming this way,’ he said and Mrs Poole interjected.
‘There is talk of snow, sir. Perhaps it will be a white Christmas after all.’
The weather was a benign topic as the needle sliced through flesh again and again, the stitches neat and tidy and his skin once jagged and open pulled together into a single light red line.
When it was done, Lillian put down her needle and stood, the magnitude of all that had happened washing over her in a flood of shock.
‘Thank you.’ In the soft light of flame his amber eyes were grateful, bleached in fatigue and something else, too.
Embarrassment.
When Mrs Poole bustled out of the room in search of a salve that was missing, Lillian also felt…shy. Wiping her hands against her skirt, the enormity of everything overcame her.
‘If you are in trouble, perhaps I can help. My father has money and influence. If I talked to him and asked-’
‘No, Lillian.’ He winced as he shifted his position on the bed, the pale hue of his face alarming her.
His use of the fullness of her name surprised her as did the tone he used, as serious as she had ever heard him, his accent almost English.
‘When I left you in the Billinghurst ballroom in London, I walked into a trap.’
‘A trap?’ She could not understand at all what he was telling her.
‘Three men jumped me as I made my way home from the ball and the next thing I knew I was on a ship as a prisoner heading for Lisbon. I think Davenport money was used to make me…disappear.’
Lillian put her hand across her mouth to try to stop the horror that was building. ‘I would never…’
‘Not you.’ His smile was gentle, relief showing over tenderness.
‘My father?’ The horror of his confession was just beginning to be felt. Lord, if it were her father…
‘Not him either.’
‘Daniel, then?’
‘And his mother. A woman paid the money and the Davenport coach was waiting at the end of the alley.’
‘Aunt Jean?’ Horror tripped over her question. ‘I cannot believe that my aunt would pay for something so… wrong.’
A flicker of a smile crossed his face, though there was something he was not telling her, something that marked his eyes with carefulness even as he stayed silent.
‘When you did not come back, I thought perhaps you were in hiding, not wanting to be betrothed by force to
