When He Was Wicked

“Thank you for taking me out,” she said, after a few minutes of companionable silence. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I was going mad with the rain.”

“You didn’t say that,” he said, immediately giving himself a mental kick. She’d said that she’d been feeling a bit odd, not that she’d been going mad, but only an idiot savant or a lovesick fool would have noticed the difference.

“Didn’t I?” She scrunched her brow together. “Well, I was certainly thinking it. I’ve been rather sluggish, if you must know. The fresh air did me a great deal of good.”

“Then I’m happy to have helped,” he said gallantly.

She smiled as they ascended the front steps to Kil-martin House. The door opened as their feet touched the top stair-the butler must have been watching for them- and then Michael waited as Francesca was divested of her cloak in the front hall.

“Will you stay for another drink, or must you leave immediately for your appointment?” she inquired, her eyes glinting with the devil.

He glanced at the clock at the end of the hall. It was half eight, and while he had no place to be-there was no lady waiting for him, although he could certainly find one at the drop of a hat, and he rather thought he would-he didn’t much feel like remaining here at Kilmartin House.

“I must go,” he said. “I’ve much to do.”

“You’ve nothing to do, and you know it,” she said. “You just wish to be wicked.”

“It’s an admirable pastime,” he murmured.

She opened her mouth to offer a retort, but just then Simons, John’s recently hired valet, came down the stairs.

“My lady?” he inquired.

Francesca turned to him and inclined her head, indicating that he should proceed.

“I’ve rapped on his lordship’s door and called his name-twice-but he seems to be sleeping quite soundly. Do you still wish me to wake him?”

Francesca nodded. “Yes. I’d love to let him sleep. He’s been working so hard lately”-she directed this last bit at Michael-“but I know that this meeting with Lord Liverpool is very important. You should-No, wait, I’ll rouse him myself. It will be better that way.”

She turned to Michael. “I shall see you tomorrow?”

“Actually, if John hasn’t yet left, I’ll wait,” he replied. “I came on foot, so I might as well avail myself of his carriage once he’s done with it.”

She nodded and hurried up the stairs, leaving Michael with nothing to do but hum under his breath as he idly examined the paintings in the hall.

And then she screamed.

Michael had no recollection of running up the stairs, but somehow there he was, in John’s and Francesca’s bedchamber, the one room in the house he never invaded. “Francesca?” he gasped. “Frannie, Frannie, what is-” She was sitting next to the bed, clutching John’s forearm, which was dangling over the side. “Wake him up,

Michael,“ she cried. ”Wake him up. Do it for me. Wake him up!“

Michael felt his world slip away. The bed was across the room, a good twelve feet away, but he knew.

No one knew John as well as he did. No one.

And John wasn’t there in the room. He was gone. What was on the bed-

It wasn’t John.

“Francesca,” he whispered, moving slowly toward her. His limbs felt strange and funny and gruesomely sluggish. “Francesca.”

She looked up at him with huge, stricken eyes. “Wake him up, Michael.”

“Francesca, I-”

“Now!” she screamed, launching herself at him. “Wake him up! You can do it. Wake him up! Wake him up!”

And all he could do was stand there as she beat her fists against his chest, stand there as she grabbed his cravat and shook and yanked until he was gasping for breath. He couldn’t even embrace her, couldn’t offer her comfort, because he was every bit as devastated and confused.

And then suddenly the fire left her, and she collapsed in his arms, her tears soaking his shirt. “He had a headache,” she whimpered. “That’s all. He just had a headache. It was just a headache.” She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face, looking for answers he’d never be able to give her. “It was just a headache,” she said again.

And she looked broken.

“I know,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t enough.

“Oh, Michael,” she sobbed. “What am I to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said, because he didn’t. Between Eton, Cambridge, and the army, he’d been trained for everything that the life of an English gentleman was supposed to offer. But he hadn’t been trained for this.

“I don’t understand,” she was saying, and he supposed she was saying a lot of things, but none of it made any sense to his ears. He didn’t even have the strength to stand, and together the two of them sank to the carpet, leaning against the side of the bed.

He stared sightlessly at the far wall, wondering why he wasn’t crying. He was numb, and his body felt heavy, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that his very soul had been ripped from his body.

Not John.

Why?

Why?

And as he sat there, dimly aware of the servants gathering just outside the open door, it occurred to him that Francesca was whimpering those very same words.

“Not John.

“Why?

“Why?”

“Do you think she might be with child?”

Michael stared at Lord Winston, a new and apparently overeager appointee to the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords, trying to make sense of his words. John had been dead barely a day. It was still hard to make sense of anything. And now here was this puffy little man, demanding an audience, prattling on about some sacred duty to the crown.

“Her ladyship,” Lord Winston said. “If she’s carrying, it will complicate everything.”

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “I didn’t ask her.”

“You need to. I’m sure you’re eager to assume control of your new holdings, but we really must determine if she’s carrying. Furthermore, if she is pregnant, a member of our committee will need to be present at the birth.”

Michael felt his face go slack. I beg your pardon? he somehow managed to say.

“Baby switching,” Lord Winston said grimly. “There have been instances-”

“For God’s sake-”

“It’s for your protection as much as anyone’s,” Lord Winston cut in. “If her ladyship gives birth to a girl, and there is no one present to witness it, what is to stop her from switching the babe with a boy?”

Michael couldn’t even bring himself to dignify this with an answer.

“You need to find out if she is carrying,” Lord Winston pressed. “Arrangements will need to be made.”

“She was widowed yesterday,” Michael said sharply. “I will not burden her with such intrusive questions.”

“There is more at stake here than her ladyship’s feelings,” Lord Winston returned. “We cannot properly transfer the earldom while there is doubt as to the succession.”

“The devil take the earldom,” Michael snapped.

Lord Winston gasped, drawing back in visible horror. “You forget yourself, my lord.”

“I’m not your lord,” Michael bit off. “I’m not anyone’s-” He halted his words, sinking into a chair, trying very hard to get past the fact that he was perilously close to tears. Right here, in John’s study, with this damnable little