She didn’t bother telling him that Harold never wanted to be shackled to her, that it was his father’s idea. He merely wanted to bed her and then ruin her. He wanted a plaything he could blackmail into fulfilling his every sordid, depraved fantasy. He made no secret of it. She had been sickened and felt sorry for Harold’s future wife.
“I can guess who spread those rumours,” Darius mused.
“Father wouldn’t look at me after that. He began to spend all of his time in London with Wickham, leaving us at the house on our own. Any time we were alone together, Father would tell me that I was no good for any man. I told him I didn’t care.”
“Did you though? Did you care, Eliza?”
She shook her head. “Not once. I still don’t. What would have happened to Gabriella, Grace, Ethan and Nathanial if I’d given in? They weren’t old enough to look after themselves and Father had sent away the servants. The same fate that awaited me with Harold would have awaited my sisters. They would have been sold off like prized pigs to repay the highest of Father’s debts.”
“That still might happen.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Darius rose and started to pace. She wanted to tell him to stand still and talk to her but she felt so powerless in the situation. What else did he know? Surely not… “Please, just tell me.” Had he already promised the girls to others?
“Your guardians are not your aunt and uncle. English law would have severely frowned upon it since your uncle is next in the line of succession after Nathanial.”
“Then who is? We don’t know anyone else. My father had very few friends or acquaintances.”
“He named the Earl of Wickham in his will. I believe he meant the old earl, Harold Senior, but the documents state no names, only the title.”
“Oh, dear God.”
“Indeed,” Darius said as he came closer. She held a hand out to ward him off, to keep him at bay. She didn’t need his comfort, only the truth and some distance to think.
But then she couldn’t breathe. What had she done? She was supposed to be saving them all, not helping them faster to their doom. The room tilted as she placed an arm against her roiling stomach, his voice grew distant and the colours faded to grey around her. She was now officially stuck in a tug of war between a monster and a stranger who could yet turn out to be a monster.
When she thought things couldn’t get any worse than the smoking pistol at her slippered feet beside her father’s cooling corpse, she’d been so, so wrong.
Chapter Ten
The little amount of colour Eliza had taken at their frank discussion quickly drained from her cheeks and Darius only just caught her as she fainted. Again. He wondered if she made a habit of passing out or if it was only when he was around to disrupt her equilibrium.
Though she weighed little more than a feather, her dead weight was just enough to overbalance him and they both fell rather inelegantly to the settee.
Just as the children entered. Along with Marcus.
Damn it all to hell.
Nathanial recovered first. Pulling the pistol Darius had given him from the band of his trousers, he marched forward five steps and held the gun alarmingly close to Darius’s temple. “You are a blackguard. I knew we couldn’t trust you. Unhand my sister.”
Marcus cleared his throat. “Perhaps this is one of those times we should ask questions first and draw weapons second?” His eyebrows rose but Darius couldn’t miss the look of admonishment on his friend’s weathered face.
With a snort of contempt for them, and for the situation, Darius gently released Eliza and made sure she wasn’t going to fall to the carpets and then turned to face the four children. Marcus didn’t require his explanations. Darius was captain and didn’t have to justify his actions to his crew member.
The children were a different matter. “She fainted. Again. I caught her so she wouldn’t hit her head on the edge of the table.”
Gabriella spoke up. “She has been feeling poorly a lot lately. Perhaps the pressure of our situation is too much for her?”
As Darius looked down on the sleeping beauty, her dress askew over her shoulder and collarbone, the bones too clear to see, he wondered if there might be another, much more feasible, explanation. Eliza was no wilting rose; she had backbone enough to hold a weapon on a peer of the realm. “When was the last time you saw your sister eat something? More than a few bites?”
Nathanial lowered his gun but the scowl didn’t fall from his face. “She broke her fast with us this morning. Granted, it wasn’t an enjoyable meal, tasted like decades-old coal if truth be told, but filling all the same. She ate it too.”
“Hey!” little Grace called out indignantly. “There was nothing wrong with that porridge.”
Ethan giggled and Darius nearly rolled his eyes. Is this how it was with young siblings? They seemed to argue a lot about the mundane. It made his ears ring a little. “Did you actually see her raise the spoon to her lips and take a bite?”
The four looked to each other, three shoulders shrugged and a future duke groaned and knocked his forehead with the barrel of the pistol, twice.
“Shall I take that as a no, then? When was the last time any of you recall her actually eating?”
Ethan appeared to be putting a great deal of
