Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

C urled up in the armchair, hurtling toward the end of Moll Flanders at last, Amelia could not concentrate on the words. She must have read the same sentence at least five times, her mind wandering to the dining room. It had not been as bad as she had anticipated, not at first, but by the end, it had left a sour taste in her mouth.

Sighing, she closed her book and slipped down off the armchair to sit cross-legged in front of the warm fire.

Do his family not think our marriage is important either? Her thoughts were torn and tangled, for the staff had insisted that there was very little that could have kept the Dowager away from her grandson’s wedding. Yet, she had not been there. Nor had his sister, whom the staff described with the same affection they used for the Dowager.

“Will they avoid me too?” she murmured, praying it would not be true.

She drew her knees to her chest and stared into the flames, letting her mind empty. It would not serve her well to worry so much that she could not sleep, and she would find out soon enough what the Dowager and Lady Rebecca thought of her.

After a few minutes bathing in the heat from the fire, Amelia slowly got to her feet, intending to retire. On the mantelpiece, the carriage clock chimed out a single stroke, drawing her attention.

She smiled sadly, transported back to Lionel’s townhouse on the night she had done everything within her power to change her fate. I did, I suppose. I must not forget that. In truth, she had lost count of the amount of times she had told herself, “Things could be worse.” It had become something of a mantra, of late.

Just then, another sound pierced the night-thick silence.

She froze, a chill shivering down her spine. It sounded like someone shouting, but not in anger—in sorrow. A terrible cry of pain, howling down the hallways of the manor.

A wolf? She laughed awkwardly at herself. There were no wolves in Britain anymore. But perhaps it was a dog; she had seen the gamekeeper walking with two mastiffs, so maybe he was patrolling the grounds with his hounds, and they had spotted something.

Shaking off her unease, she padded toward the bed… and heard it again: the sound of a wounded animal, lowing in agony.

Turning around, she hurried to the window and squinted out into the partially moonlit night. Nothing stirred in the wintry gardens, the frost-tipped lawns beyond resembling a perfectly still ocean. She could not see any gamekeeper or any dogs, and when the sound came a third time, it was unmistakably human—a name, shouted in desperation.

Amelia could not be certain what the name was, but it was something similar to ‘Freddie’ or maybe the word ‘ready.’

Not known for her bravery, she surprised herself when her feet started leading her toward the door. She grabbed her housecoat on the way, slipping out into the hallway.

The contrast from the warmth of her bedchamber was a shock, her teeth chattering with the cold and her own fear as she hurried along, listening out for the sound. It came again in a mournful wail, then again in a crushing bellow of sorrow.

Is someone injured? She quickened her pace, racing across the landing and down the stairs, running toward the kitchens. The cook, Mrs. Bishop, would still be awake, baking bread for the morning; she would know where that sound was coming from.

“My Lady!” The cook clasped a hand to her chest, drawing in a sharp breath. “You startled me.”

Amelia slowed, ears still pricked for that noise. “Did you hear that?”

“What, My Lady?”

Amelia willed the sound to come again, but there was only the crackle of the stove and the hoot of an owl somewhere in the distance. “You did not hear that keening? I was worried someone might be injured.”

“I didn’t hear anything, My Lady.” The cook returned to what she had been doing, shaping rolls. “You should go back to bed and pay it no mind. It’ll be the dogs or some foxes causing mischief.”

Amelia shook her head. “It was human, Mrs. Bishop.”

“Those mastiffs can sound very human when they want to,” the cook replied, refusing to look at Amelia. “Why don’t I make you some warm milk, and you can take it back to bed with you?”

Furrowing her brow, worried that she had let her imagination get the better of her, Amelia nodded reluctantly. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

On the rare occasions that she had been permitted to drink wine before, it had always made her feel peculiar, giving her strange dreams. Perhaps, it was little more than that: an effect of the wine she had imbibed at dinner, transforming the sound into more than it was.

She did not hear the sound again throughout her brief time in the kitchen. Soon enough she was on her way back to her chambers with the warm milk in hand, convinced that she had made a mistake.

But as she put her foot on the bottom step of the staircase, it came again—a terrible howl that held her rigid. Her imagination might have been unreliable, but her ears were not; that noise was coming from inside the manor. And as far as she knew, the mastiffs were not allowed in the house.

She retreated from the staircase, moving out into the center of the entrance hall, waiting with her breath held. A softer cry drifted through to her keen ears, coming from somewhere down the hallway on the right.

Against all of her common sense, Amelia followed the sound, stopping here and there to wait for another guiding noise.

At length, she arrived outside the library and pressed her ear to the door. From within came soft, sad sounds, like someone struggling through great pain or straining through the dreams of delirium. She had not been mistaken; there was someone in trouble, so why had the cook told her to pay it no mind?

Carefully, she opened the door and peered inside.

A figure lay on the rug by the fireplace, a rolled-up blanket beneath his head. Another blanket had twisted around him, as he thrashed and twitched in his sleep. The sounds were quieter, but his face was a mask of agony; his jaw clenched, flashing gritted teeth, his brow furrowed into deep creases, his eyes scrunched, while the cords bulged out of his neck.

“Lionel?” Amelia whispered, alarmed.

A choking noise croaked from his throat.

She ran toward him, sinking to her knees at his side. Panicking that he had swallowed something or that he had something stuck in his throat, she grabbed him by his broad shoulders and shook him gently.

“Lionel, wake up!” she urged. “Lionel!”

His eyes flew open, his hand shooting out to grab her around the arm. His breaths came in ragged gasps, and the look in his eyes was so frightening, so terrifying, so filled with pain that Amelia, too, found herself struggling to breathe. It was like he did not recognize her at all, his eyes seeing a stranger.

“Lionel,” she said nervously. “I… think you were having a nightmare.”

He closed his eyes until his breathing settled, his hand still gripped around her arm. “You should not have come here.”

“To… the library or to… your manor?” she replied, braced for yet another blow to her hopes of developing some form of relationship with her husband.

He opened his eyes. “To the library. You should not have come here.” His voice darkened. “Why are you not in your chambers? The hour is late; you should not be wandering abroad in the middle of the night.”

For a moment, his gaze flitted to her nightgown, visible beneath the open sides of her housecoat. She had not thought to button the housecoat in her rush to seek out the peculiar sound, and guessed she was about to receive a scolding for her state of undress.

“It is winter, Amelia,” he said, turning his gaze away. “You will catch your death if you do not wear appropriate attire. I will see to it that a winter housecoat is purchased for you… though you still should not be wandering at night.”

Amelia blinked in confusion. Was that it?

As scoldings went, that might have been the mildest she had ever heard. Indeed, it almost sounded like it came from a place of concern, rather than shame or anger.

Encouraged by his tone, she sat back on her haunches. “And it is appropriate for the Lord of this house to sleep in a library? I imagine you have a perfectly acceptable bedchamber somewhere in this manor.”

As he sat up and the twisted blanket fell away from him, she nearly gasped out loud at the glimpse of bare, muscled skin: sun browned and sculpted, though scattered with the same silvery scars that covered his hands.

His shirt was open to the navel, allowing her to view more of him than she had ever thought she would. Most of the scars were small, but there was a particularly large one that began to the left of his abdomen and disappeared into the bunching of his shirt, where it was tucked into a pair of unusual trousers. She had read of these ‘mogul’s breeches,’ and knew they were some sort of foreign nightwear—loose and comfortable, but not too common.

“What happened to you?” she whispered, almost to herself, reaching out to touch the scars like a woman possessed. She could not stop herself; she was not even fully aware that she was doing it until Lionel’s hand caught hers, just before she could touch his skin.

“I am Lord of this manor, as you said,” he murmured, holding her gaze. “I can sleep where I please, and I do not sleep well in a bed. I do not know why.”

She tried to withdraw her hand out of sheer embarrassment, but he held onto it for a moment longer.

“Do you… have these nightmares often?” she asked, realizing how warm and rough his hand felt against hers. He had the sort of calloused palms that one did not tend to expect from Earls.

He let go of her hand and rose to his feet, retreating to the reading chair by the window. He sat down with a weary sigh, running his fingers through his dark brown hair.

“The nightmares are something I cannot avoid,” he replied vaguely. “But they should be no concern of yours. Please, return to your room. It appears you have warm milk to drink. You should finish it before it cools.”

In her hurry, she had forgotten about the warm milk, which now sat beside the makeshift bed that he had abandoned. Staring at the rolled-up blanket and the thin rug, she wondered how he could bear it. Was it not terribly uncomfortable?

She considered asking him, but before she could, he repeated his command. “Return to your room, Amelia. It is not a request.”

“Perhaps I wish to read something,” she protested, not yet ready to leave him alone again. What she had seen made her never want to leave him alone again.

“Perhaps you do,” he replied, gesturing to the door. “So, take a book and go back to your bedchamber with it. My sister and grandmother will be arriving tomorrow, so you will need your rest.”

She stared at him. “Tomorrow?”

“Indeed.”

If he had given any other excuse, she might have ignored it, but she was anxious to make a good impression upon his family members. She needed to prove to them that her new position, that her new marriage, was a thing of great importance, and she could not very well begin that endeavor properly if she was exhausted.

She chewed her lower lip in thought. “Very well, I will go, but I shall leave the warm milk for you. It seems to me that you need it more than I do.”

Turning, she got halfway across the room before she hesitated. But when she glanced back at him, he was sitting diagonally in the reading chair, in the same position he had used in the carriage upon their journey there, and his eyes were closed. She knew he was not sleeping, but she also knew that the conversation was finished.

As she left him alone in the library, questions began to whisper in her mind—two of them louder than the rest: What on earth happened to you, Lionel? What horrors do you see when you fall asleep?

She had a feeling that the two were connected, and perhaps Lady Rebecca and the Dowager would be the very people to enlighten her.