Captivating the Countess Page 11

  “The evening was over-stimulating,” she protested. “We were tired and worried and a spirit intervened.”

  “I will remained tired, worried, and overstimulated until I heal my father and have you in my bed. It is not a state conducive to reason.” The elegant lord in his casual, but tailored, country tweed almost growled his displeasure. “Do you have your list?”

  “I could not determine what pros and cons I was to list. But creating a child is probably high on my reasons not to marry.”

  “Especially with a Norwegian hag threatening us,” he added ruefully. “There are ways to protect against conception. Although an heir is important in the scheme of things. Marriage only delays the necessity of handing over the trust. It doesn’t remove the stipulation that I must produce an heir.”

  They were both Malcolms. She needn’t remind him about Malcolms being unlikely to carry sons. “Another argument against the hag inhabiting me, then. She’s not male.”

  He chuckled as he rapped on the duke’s door.

  No one answered.

  Twelve

  Rain knew the duke was supposed to have a servant with him at all times. He also knew his father was capable of scheming to send them away. But not answering his door if he was in there. . .

  Perhaps he fell asleep. He pushed open the unlocked panel and peered in. The bed was unmade but empty. Dead men didn’t walk. Still, he had to suppress panic as he gestured for Bell to remain in the hall while he entered.

  He found his father in the parlor of his suite, sitting beside a crackling fire, wrapped in blankets, and perusing books. The duke appeared a little lost when Rain entered, but gestured for him to take the chair on the other side of the hearth.

  “Where’s your valet?” Rain demanded, not taking a seat. He wasn’t a man given to strong emotions, so he had little experience in stifling the fear that had swept over him when his father hadn’t answered the knock. And now he battled an unreasonable anger that he’d had to suffer panic because His Damned Grace hadn’t felt like speaking.

  “He’s off preparing potions. Poor man needs company besides mine occasionally. Estelle tells me your new steward was seeing visions in the ballroom last night. Did she learn anything?”

  His father’s curiosity was as strong as his own. Rainford suppressed his anger before speaking. “Lady Craigmore is waiting outside now. She wants to know more about your mother.” He saw the surprise on his father’s lined visage but the wily old man simply gestured for him to bring in his guest.

  With a degree of trepidation, Rain returned for Bell. “Perhaps the midwife’s recipes are helping. He seems to be feeling better. Estelle has told him about your vision in the ballroom and he’s curious. Are you prepared to explain?”

  “That I hallucinate?” she asked with wary humor. “Or do I play normal?”

  “Be yourself,” he ordered. “If we’re doing this, we have to be honest with each other.”

  He hadn’t realized how important that was until now. For most people, Rain played a part, just as she did. Society expected them to be stiff and formal to the extent that he was expected to call a wife Lady Rainford.

  But he was a physician and couldn’t tolerate society’s hypocrisy in pretending men and women didn’t have mentionable body parts. He despised the notion of someday losing all identity to become just His Grace or Duke. He couldn’t treat patients like that. His family had never required that level of formality, but they were known eccentrics.

  So he’d always dreaded marrying a lady he barely knew who would expect that formality. But now that he’d met Bell, he realized it didn’t have to be that way. Only he didn’t have time for searching for another improper female outside his exalted circles.

  Despite her obvious trepidation, the quiet countess nodded, gripped his arm, and didn’t hesitate to follow him through the bedchamber to his father’s private parlor. Others might dismiss her as a vaporish female, but she had courage.

  She dipped a curtsy and waited for his father to speak first.

  “You have Norse blood as well, don’t you?” The duke surprised them both.

  “My family is from Inverness. One assumes through the ages of Nordic occupation, they mixed with the locals.” A hint of humor laced her voice. “You think that is why your mother speaks to me? We have some common denominator?”

  “I know nothing of spirits.” He waved a frail hand dismissively. “Sit. Rain, quit hovering. Find a chair.”

  Rain assisted the countess to the chair by the fire and carried over a desk chair to place between them. “Can you tell us more about my grandmother? Did she have. . . What is it that Lady Phoebe calls us? Psychic? It sounds better than weird. Other abilities?”

  “Psychic—from the Greek? Of the soul, spirit, and mind?” The duke nodded. “Good word. You’ll understand that my mother died when Teddy’s father was born, when I was only twelve. She wasn’t a Malcolm, didn’t have our traditions, and left no journal.”

  “You must have some memory of her.” Rain tried not to sound frustrated.

  “She occasionally helped my father in the clinic. She spent more time in the nursery with my younger sisters than most mothers do, I believe. But I was sent off to school when I was eight. My impressions are from holidays at home. Earlier than that—those are hazy.” The duke puckered up his forehead in thought. “She did not strike me as a particularly spiritual woman. She tended to be blunt and pragmatic.”

  Bell laughed a little, glanced at Rain for permission to speak, and added her piece. “If it is your mother speaking to me, she is extremely blunt and pragmatic. Conversation is not simple with someone who has been dead for fifty years or so, and asking questions does not seem to be possible. But if I’m understanding, she may have had some healing ability of her own?”

  “Huh, hadn’t thought of that.” The duke looked from Bell to Rain. “What is it you’re thinking?”

  Bell stepped in before Rain had to explain the impossible. “If you wish to believe I am possessed by the spirit of your mother—and I can certainly understand your doubts—she seems to be saying I must help Lord Rainford in healing you. It is the only interpretation I can make.”

  “My interpretation is that the spirit knows how it is done and wishes to occupy Bell to do so. I do not wholly approve.” There, he’d said it. He could almost feel Bell bristle with objection.

  “Hmph.” The duke studied them. “I have tried to train you in how to do the things I learned from my father. He never mentioned a need for assistance.”

  “Did he sometimes hold your hand as you did with me—to show how the energy feels?” Rain kept his voice neutral. He’d never felt a healing heat, with or without his father’s aid.

  The duke puzzled over that a moment. “I suppose he did, when I was younger. We were seldom in the same place at the same time, mind you. I was in school and training. It was just a natural part of the examination to use our hands. The few times we worked together, he’d show me how to feel a tumor or close a wound or help a bone knit.”

  “But it could be that he knew how to use your healing energy as he had his wife’s,” Bell said with excitement.

  Rain wasn’t as enthused. “But I exhibit no healing ability and neither do you,” he reminded her.

  “But I may have Iona’s enhancing ability. Perhaps I should work with the duke first, since he does have a gift?” She sounded as confused as he felt.

  “Physician, heal thyself?” His father chuckled. “And you think I haven’t tried? Rain is simply trying to avoid marriage.”

  Ha, here’s where he thwarted the old man. “Not so. I have asked the countess, but she has some notion that she’s useless. If we can prove that she can, indeed, aid in healing, then I may talk her into it.”

  “Well played, both of you.” His father gestured his approval. “So, how much better must I be before you’ll both accept you’re good together?”

  “Oh, we’re not good together,” Bell assured him. “Your son is too determined
to have his own way. His way isn’t my way, so we argue. As an employee, I can obey his orders or leave. I do have my own estate, after all. Marriage would reduce me to his subject and ruin that freedom. But I do wish to help, if I can. I would do anything to have my own mother back, so I understand.”

  Rain would argue, but that would only prove her point, so he waited for his father’s reaction. The old man was capable of feigning illness or health, depending on whether it got him what he wanted or not.

  He began to understand Bell’s complaint about his manipulative family. They came by it naturally.

  The duke finally nodded. “Fine then. If I can delay dying, Rain will have more time to court you. What would you like me to do?”

  “Be a patient and not my father and do as you’re told,” Rain said dryly. “And because there seems to be some question of a bond between the healer and the enhancer, I’d rather participate than watch the experiment.”

  With the old man’s compliance, Rain arranged the stage. He had very little confidence that they would accomplish much, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try everything. He’d broken an arm as a youth. He knew how the healing energy felt when his father applied it. Unable to use his arm for sports or any other activity, he’d tried everything to heal himself faster, but he’d been forced to let nature take its course.

  Perhaps he should advertise for a woman wise in the healing arts—and have every would-be witch in the kingdom on his doorstep.

  “The assumption is that there is a blockage in the digestive system,” Rain explained to Bell once they had the duke settled in his bed, on his back, still wearing his robe. “He is down to eating only foods suitable for infants. I have no evidence of tumors, cancerous or otherwise, although there may be one buried too deep to feel.”

  “I could feel them if they were there.” The duke was starting to sound querulous. “Food simply makes me ill.”

  “I’ll sedate you if you can’t be quiet. I need Bell to concentrate on me while I focus on you.”

  As he’d been taught, Rain pressed his palm over the duke’s abdomen, starting at the top, where the blockage would be more likely, if his understanding of the potential problem was correct.

  Bell pressed one of her hands to his. They waited. Rain felt nothing. She added her other hand. Nothing.

  They worked their way back and forth, slowly. All the organs appeared to be in their proper places and their proper sizes. Nothing felt different from his prior examination. No heat happened.

  Even his father added his own healing hand. Nothing.

  They’d failed.

  The spirit remained silent.

  Rather than lingering to dine with the duke and his son, Bell took her supper in her room. Drowning in her own disappointment, she nearly cried for Rainford, who had to feel worse. The marquess wasn’t a man accustomed to being denied what he wanted. But the one thing he wanted more than anything else—he couldn’t have. He couldn’t control or manipulate death.

  She tried not to think too hard about his suggestion that the spirit had to enter her for the healing to work. The spirit hadn’t been anywhere around when they’d visited the duke.

  She didn’t know how to summon a spirit and didn’t want to. And she didn’t want it inhabiting an unborn child, even if her mind wandered a little too far down the path of fornication with the marquess. Rainford’s was not a warm and comforting personality, so it was only her animal lust appealing to her.

  Being alone didn’t help. She felt as if the spirit hovered like a malignant being, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

  So she tried to keep her mind occupied by writing to Malcolm libraries for any information they could find on spirits inhabiting people. Then she took the medical tomes back to the library. She now knew more than she had about the causes of fainting, without finding any solution. Medical science simply hadn’t advanced far enough. Perhaps she could experiment with some of the herbs in Winifred’s tome.

  Rainford was already in the library, working his way through more medical texts at the table where she usually left the books she’d finished.

  They did their best to ignore each other—until doors started slamming in the distance.

  Bell closed her eyes in despair. “I think that’s how she means to catch our attention.”

  “Or Teddy has insulted another of his inamorata. I believe he’s installed a new one in his studio.” Carrying the book he’d been perusing, the marquess offered his arm. “Shall we see what we can do?”

  “How?” she asked in exasperation, taking his arm anyway. “Do I stand on the stairs and yell at the nag? At Teddy? Is she using his emotional outbursts as a means of reaching through the veil?”

  “I have no answers. For all I know, my father has figured out how to slam doors with his mind. Once you accept weird abilities, you have to believe anything.”

  Rainford’s glance at her reminded her of the previous night, and she shivered. They had to believe she had somehow visited him in his bath while she dreamed, then spoke in the voice of his grandmother. That took a lot of faith and open-mindedness.

  “For now, I’m believing in drafts a good carpenter can cure.” He led the way down the long corridor and into the main part of the house.

  From here, the sound of fisticuffs could be heard.

  “What the. . . ?” Rain walked faster.

  Bell lifted her simple office skirt and petticoat and hurried to keep up with him. The cries of women and shouts of men joined the grunts and punches of a brawl. The slamming doors slowed, as if the ghost had what she wanted by catching their attention. Bell wrinkled her nose at that prospect.

  “Stay here.” Rain dropped her hand and loped ahead to the grand marble entryway.

  A ring of billowing skirts and black coats prevented Bell from seeing what was happening, but she could figure it out for herself. She’d grown up around men who didn’t know how to express themselves except with fists. And then there had been her drunken stepfather. . .

  Alicia stood to one side, fingers clenched and looking furious. Her sisters were trying to draw her from the fray. At Bell’s approach, Alicia grabbed her hand. “Stop them, will you? Rain doesn’t need to be breaking his hands on the curs.”

  No, he didn’t, and yes, she could, but in front of all their guests? She had some experience with simple rural folk. Rain wouldn’t appreciate her methods in his elegant home. Neither would the gentlemen apparently beating each other into pulps.

  She hesitated long enough to see the marquess collar one of the young men and fling him backward. The combatant leapt back up and swung at Rain. The other tried to get through Rain to reach his opponent.

  Bell gave them a few more moments to settle this without broken bones, but at the same time, she made her way to the large pot of exotic greenery cut from the conservatory. Alicia followed.

  She was more accustomed to unbreakable pails of water. She risked fainting and smashing the pot on the stairs, but since she would probably break the ceramic for the cause, what difference did it make?

  “Are you sure you want me to do this?” Bell asked as she hefted the vase.

  Catching on quickly, Alicia helped her. It was really quite heavy. “I don’t know what got into them. They were bickering over a card game, the doors started slamming, and they ran to find out why. And then there was pushing and shoving. . . I’ll never marry. Men are quite ridiculous.”

  “I’m fairly certain your brother can crack both their heads, but I suppose their families might object.” Carrying the pot up to the landing, Bell studied the action below. Rain was definitely holding his own, but he was trying not to damage the guests—while they were definitely trying to damage him.

  “Percy already has a broken nose. It won’t get any prettier.” Alicia helped her lift the pot to the railing. “Estelle, move the ladies back!”

  That was all the warning they gave. Rain glanced up in time to step away in a manner that left the two combatants to dive
at each other—directly in the path of the water and greenery that spilled in a cascade from the upturned pot.

  Upturned palm fronds and gardenia branches slid down soaked frock coats and wilted collars.

  With Alicia’s aid, Bell didn’t have to drop the pot. They gently set it on the floor.

  The drenched gentleman glared upward. Alicia waved at them.

  Rain grabbed their collars and shoved the soggy warriors into the hands of other male guests. “Take them down to the boxing ring. Let them kill each other out of sight of the ladies.”

  “Boxing ring?” Bell inquired in surprise.

  Alicia shrugged. “Rain can’t always escape his duties to ride, so he installed a gymnasium in the cellar. I think we frustrate him often.”

  So that was how he managed to look like a Greek god. “I cannot think encouraging them to fight is a wise idea.”

  “One can assume we’ve cooled them off, and they’ll use gloves.” Alicia made a moue of distaste. “I should look for men who prefer the library, I suppose.”

  “Your brother apparently likes both. I don’t think that’s a qualifying factor. Do you think we can discover why they were fighting?” The fight and the now silent doors seemed a little too coincidental but Bell couldn’t determine cause or effect.

  They descended to where the ladies were drifting back to the drawing room to hush the squawking parrot and screeching monkey, while the maids cleaned up the mess. Bell wanted to apologize for creating the extra work, but the maids were laughing as if it were all a jest.

  Rain had left with the gentlemen. The doors had stopped slamming. Bell touched Alicia’s arm and kept her from joining the others. “I want to check on your father. Find out what precipitated the brawl and let me know, please? I don’t know if it’s important, but I feel as if your haunts are trying to tell us something.”

  “You should let us hold a séance,” Alicia insisted.

  As Bell trailed up the stairs, she wondered if Rain’s sister wasn’t right.