Page 28 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bess was going out of her mind.

The carriage couldn’t get anywhere near the Haymarket. Evening traffic had clogged the streets all around The Nemesis, a standstill of coachmen and hack drivers shouting themselves hoarse and no one moving an inch.

Jittery with impatience after traveling at breakneck speeds for a day and a half, hours of enforced inactivity with nothing to do but think about how much she needed to get to Nathaniel as quickly as possible, Bess stuck her head out the carriage window to yell up at the driver. “What on earth is the matter?”

Before Gemma’s driver, Thomas, could do more than shrug, the sound of clanging bells answered Bess’s question.

Her blood ran cold.

Everyone knew the dangers of fire in London. The Great Fire had raged through the riverfront slums more than a hundred years previously. These days there were ten fire brigades across the city that would come to put out the blaze—assuming the owner of the building had prepaid their fee—but the sound of the bells still struck terror into the heart of everyone in the city.

Fire was unpredictable. It spread too fast and too well between the tightly packed buildings, and a line of people with buckets stretched from the nearest well to the blaze could only do so much.

“I’m getting out here,” she called up to Thomas, tense fingers fumbling with the door latch. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

Over Thomas’s protests that she shouldn’t be on foot in this neighborhood after dark, Bess wrestled her way free of the carriage and landed on legs wobbly after hours of sitting and attempting to sleep on a bench seat.

She ignored the pins and needles prickling at her calves, breaking into as quick a trot as she could manage while weaving in between the darting pedestrians, stuck carts and coaches, and whinnying horses.

The closer she got to The Nemesis, the more panicked and frenetic and crowded the streets became. The flow of people was almost all in one direction—away from The Nemesis—and a nameless dread welled up in her guts, chilling her from the inside out.

Bess began to feel like a trout swimming against the current, fighting and shoving not to be pushed back, out of the Haymarket, and away from her goal.

But she was determined. She had to get to the tavern, she had to know, she had to see…and suddenly, she rounded a corner, bumping shoulders with a fleeing pair of ladies coated in soot and sweat, their hair bedraggled and white rings round their eyes that Bess suddenly realized were the only parts of their faces not streaked with ash. Because they had been wearing masks.

She didn’t even need to ask. They’d been at The Nemesis.

The fire…was at The Nemesis.

The bucket brigade was hard at work, she saw, a line of people passing pails of water hand over hand, to combat the flames. Thank the Lord, there was a fire engine there too, dispensing water in a huge jet from a tank mounted on their horse-drawn wagon.

The Nemesis was on fire.

Bess stopped in the lane, shocked into stillness at the sight of the flames leaping from the upper-story windows, the smoke billowing from the roof in an immense cloud.

She knew at a glance there would be no saving the building—the best the brigade could do at this point would be to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring structures.

People in those buildings were already in motion, handing their belongings down out of second-floor windows, streaming from their homes in droves, hoping to save themselves and their most precious possessions if the fire should spread.

The scene on the ground was not any less chaotic, a welter of people crying, screaming, calling for help or running to join the bucket line.

Where is he?

Bess felt her lips moving without conscious thought, sending up a prayer that Nathaniel wasn’t here, that he’d gone home to Ashbourn House, that her worst fear would not come true.

If he was here, no doubt he was helping with the endless, backbreaking work of the bucket brigade or ferrying injured strangers to his surgeon for medical aid, but as she frantically searched the darkness for his familiar, tall, broad form, listening out for his deep voice booming directions, taking charge of the rescue effort, despair and hope clawed equally deep lines in her chest.

Face after face, bathed in the orange glow of the flames—but not his face. Shout after yell after cry, hoarse and commanding and pleading—but not his voice.

So many people who needed help, and even more who had come running with no aim other than to offer aid—but she didn’t see Nathaniel anywhere.

Just as her heart began to unclench and Bess thought she might be able to allow herself to believe she’d find Nathaniel asleep in his bed at Ashbourn House, whole and healthy and hopefully glad to see her, she stumbled upon someone she knew.

Even without her mask, Madame Leda was impossible to mistake. The proprietress of the Nemesis stood at the head of the bucket line, directing the efforts of the volunteers with sharp, steely determination and unbowed shoulders. She was a beacon of calm in the chaos, and Bess stumbled up to her, clutching at her hand.

“Madame Leda,” Bess gasped out, abruptly on the verge of tears. “You’re alright!”

Recognition flared in Leda’s dark brown eyes an instant before she wrapped Bess in a tight hug. “Oh, lamb.”

Ice poured through Bess’s veins at the tight clasp of Leda’s arms. She went rigid with mingled dread and urgency. “Was he here tonight? Did you see him?”

“Lamb.” Leda set Bess away from her at arms’ length. The look in her eyes was unbearably soft with something Bess didn’t want to understand as pity.

“No,” Bess protested through numb lips.

Please don’t say it.

Leda’s fingers tightened on her upper arms. “Lamb, you’re going to need to be brave now.”

If Leda hadn’t been holding her up, Bess would have collapsed to the ground. Her heart ripped down the middle, a violent and bloody rending.

“No. No!”

He can’t be gone.

He can’t have died thinking I didn’t love him enough to give him forever.

He can’t, he can’t, I can’t do this, don’t make me live through this again…

Grief took her like a sickness, like a fever, sudden and obliterating, blotting out everything but the litany of disbelief and denial that felt at once terrifyingly familiar and agonizingly fresh. A new jagged wound carving into decades-old scar tissue.

A sharp shake brought her gasping back to the surface of her mind. Madame Leda shook again, as if making sure, then spoke directly into Bess’s shocked, horrified face.

“Listen to me!” Leda’s voice cracked. “You need to be brave—because he needs you now.”

“Wha—…wait, what?” Bess’s broken heart gave an almighty painful thump. “He’s alive?”

“Your man is alive,” Leda confirmed. “Despite his best efforts over the last few weeks, and tonight. He went back into the burning building to save the stragglers, I don’t know how many times, until he finally collapsed. They got him out and took him across the road?—”

Bess was already running. Gasping, terrified, she crashed into the little bookshop that had been converted into a makeshift surgery to help the wounded from the fire.

The owner of the bookshop was a woman, a fact that might have surprised Bess under other circumstances, but which hardly penetrated her mind as she ran her gaze over each and every person sitting or lying propped up against the bookshelves. The shopkeeper moved between the patients with the calm competence of a trained nurse, conferring quietly with the doctor as he examined people and dispensed medicine and directions, and pausing only to inquire what help Bess needed.

“I’m looking for a very tall, well-muscled man who was brought in unconscious,” Bess said, her gaze searching the dimly lit recesses of the bookshop.

“The gentleman who saved all those people,” the bookseller exclaimed, her tired face lighting up. She’d seemed older than Bess, at first glance, but when she smiled like that, her face suddenly appeared years younger. “I could tell he was Quality by the shine on his boots, but I didn’t know who to send for so I put him in the back. Seemed strange to have him out here, and the doctor says there’s nothing wrong with him—no head trauma or any wound he can find. No reason for him not to wake up.”

“But he hasn’t?” Bess’s mouth was dry.

The bookseller shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll take you to him. Maybe all he needs is to hear a friendly voice.”

“Thank you. You’ve already done so much, but when you have a moment, could you send for Doctor Perry in Harley Street?” Bess begged. “That’s his personal physician.”

“As you like. Here he is.” The bookseller swept aside a curtain at the rear of the shop, revealing a tiny office that was more of a closet, barely large enough to hold a small desk and chair, and a chaise along the opposite wall that was currently occupied by the too-still figure of Nathaniel Lively, the Duke of Ashbourn.

Bess fell to her knees beside him, barely registering the bookseller’s departure. Her heart beat so fast and so hard, it was like it wanted to batter its way out of her chest to get to him.

He lay on his back on the chaise, motionless but for his massive chest rising and falling slowly with his breaths. Someone had cleaned his face, though there were still ashes in his hair. They’d arranged him with his hands folded flat on his stomach.

Bess hated the way it looked, like he was in his coffin.

Trembling, she picked up one of those lax hands and held it in both of hers, as carefully as she’d hold a baby chick.

His fingers were rough with calluses and slippery with some sort of balm that smelled medicinal. Looking closer, she could see the burns and blisters beginning to form where he’d wrecked his beautiful hands running into a burning building.

Her stomach rolled over. She stared at his still face. She wished she could believe he was only sleeping, but Bess had watched this man sleep many times.

Most people relaxed in slumber, worries and cares melting from their faces and restoring them to innocence.

Not Nathaniel. He slept the way he did everything, with a fierce concentration and intensity that meant he looked a little angry, even in sleep. God only knew what it said about Bess that she found it as endearing as she did.

She’d give anything to see that pinched frown between his brows now, she thought. The tiny line she’d smoothed away, night after night at The Nemesis, feeling warm and fond and achingly tender for it.

There was no frown creasing Nathaniel’s handsome features now. There was no life at all—only the pure, cold marble of a statue.

If she hadn’t been touching him to feel the warmth of his flesh, if she couldn’t rest her hands at the center of his chest to feel it rise and fall, she would have thought the worst.

She would’ve thought he’d already gone.

Looking at him now, Bess forced herself to confront the reality that he might yet.

“Don’t go,” she whispered over their clasped hands. “I’m here. Can you hear me? I came back, Nathaniel. For you. So you must come back to me. Don’t go .”

Her voice broke along with the lump in her throat. Her eyes were wet and burning, but she didn’t dare close them. If she took her gaze off him for even a moment?—

“I need you with me,” she went on, uncaring of the rough rasp of the words tearing out of her aching throat. “I was wrong to let you leave, I was wrong to tell you I wouldn’t marry you. I was wrong, so wrong, to say that love doesn’t matter. It’s the only thing that matters.”

She was crying now in earnest, her upper body leaned over his on the chaise, her wrenching sobs shaking them both as she wept into his chest.

“I was wrong,” Bess choked, “but at least I realized it and followed after you. I would follow you anywhere, Nathaniel.”

She pressed a damp, imploring kiss to the back of his hand. “Please, please, don’t go where I can’t follow.”

For a moment, she thought she’d imagined it—but no, there it was again. The hand she held twitched, then flexed. She sat up with a gasp, her gaze flying to Nathaniel’s face, but his eyes were still closed.

His hand, though. It turned in her grasp until she cradled it, palm up, between her hands. Fresh sobs welled up and she pressed his palm to her cheek, shaking and praying and hoping for all she was worth.

“Don’t…cry.”

His lips barely moved, but Bess heard him. “Nathaniel? My love, my heart, wake up. Come back to me.”

“No more tears,” he commanded, low and halting. “Hurt worse than…fire.”

His beautiful eyes blinked slowly open. Bess had never seen anything better in her life. She threw herself across him, laughing and crying at once. “I make no promises. If you insist on running into burning buildings, you must suffer the consequences of the woman who loves you having feelings about it.”

“Love,” he whispered, the word as raw as his poor throat probably was, after breathing in all that nasty smoke. Bess could still smell it when she leaned up to press her lips to his.

“Don’t talk, my heart. I’m here,” she told him once more. “And I’m never leaving your side again.”

His strange, light eyes were fixed on her, unblinking and adoring. Bess couldn’t believe she’d thought she could live a whole life outside the glow of Nathaniel’s regard.

“Promise?” he rasped, his hand smoothing at her tear-stained cheek.

“You are my heart,” she told him fiercely. “I will be whatever I must be to stay with you, and the rest of the world be damned. I will not lose you again.”

“Wife.” He stared at her, the full force of his indomitable will behind that single word, and Bess turned her head just far enough to kiss his palm without taking her gaze from his.

“Yes,” she said, and it felt like a vow, here in the back room of this tiny London bookshop. “I’ll marry you. I’ll be your wife, and you will be my husband, and we will have a life. Together.”

He made a sound deep in his chest, and before she knew what was happening, he had used the hand she still held to haul her up and over him to blanket his body. Bess squeaked in surprise but settled almost at once, the feel of his strong, hard frame under her so comforting, so perfect, so longed for.

Urging her up, he wrapped that broad hand securely around the back of her neck and drew her to him for a kiss that sent a spill of shivers down her spine. He groaned as she mapped out his mouth with her tongue, tasting and delving and stroking and reminding both of them that they were alive and together.

A thought occurred to her, and she pulled out of the kiss to stare down at him seriously, her hands tightening in his sooty hair. “Promise me you will never, ever risk yourself like this again. I survived losing everyone I loved once before, though it nearly broke me. But you are my heart —and that means, you must take care of yourself, for me. Because a person can’t live without a heart, Nathaniel.”

She had never seen his face blown wide open with emotion like this. She could read every expression, every feeling in the flicker of his eyes and the twist of his lips.

Bess saw her words land. She saw the way his throat worked as he swallowed. She looked into his green-gray-blue eyes and saw the last three weeks—the last three decades—of using his body to mask his unhappiness. Of punishing himself for the sin of feeling too much. Of pushing himself past his limits in the search for ever-elusive peace.

But all that had to end now. They would find a new way, together.

Nathaniel nodded once, and that felt like a vow, too.

“I should never have left you in Little Kissington,” he said, his voice a painful whisper. Bess wanted to shush him, to save his poor ravaged throat, but he was determined. “I should have made sure you understood—Bess, you are everything. I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t welcome you with open arms. I will do everything in my power to give you the life you want, and damn anyone who doesn’t like it. That is the legacy I will leave behind, the highest honor I could imagine: to spend my life trying to make you happy.”

In his strained words, Bess heard the echo of the awful thing she’d said to end the conversation in the Five Mile House kitchen.

I could not be happy as your wife.

Shuddering with regret and relief and the raw, scraped-open feeling of having come within a hairsbreadth of losing everything, Bess dropped her forehead to his shoulder. He smelled of smoke.

“I’m sorry I sent you away,” she gasped out, clutching at him. “I was afraid that marrying me would ruin your life.”

“I’m afraid, too. Losing you nearly destroyed me.” He pressed the words into her hair. His hands were heavy on her back, holding her so closely their heartbeats seemed to merge. “But marrying you? Ah, Bess, that will be the making of me.”

She smiled helplessly into his chest. “I may always struggle to conquer my instinct to sacrifice my own happiness for others. The way I was raised, the world I come from—even just being a woman, all of those things embedded that instinct in me. To make peace instead of causing trouble. But maybe you can teach me to fight it.”

His hands flexed against her. “The way I taught you to throw a punch.”

“The way you taught me to see myself.” She lifted her head and met his eyes, the deep oceanic blue-green of hope. They flared when she said, “I love you, Nathaniel Lively, Duke of Ashbourn. Berserker.”

Bending down to kiss him tenderly, she murmured, “Husband.”

He groaned into her mouth and kissed her with a tender, possessive drive that made her feel claimed from her head to her toes.

This wasn’t a fairy tale, Bess knew. It wouldn’t always be easy, or pretty, or nice. Sometimes it would be messy. But she knew that this man would love her through all of it.

He would never waver or falter, because it was his mother who’d been right about him—Nathaniel felt…everything. He felt too much.

Except it could never be too much for Bess. She’d lived alone, untouched, unloved, for so many years; she eagerly soaked up every drop of Nathaniel’s intense, all-consuming love, and looked for more.

They were a perfect match.

The duke and the serving girl. Bess kissed him again, reveling in the hungry way he deepened the kiss, the way they fell into it together.

Maybe it was a bit of a fairy tale after all, she mused, smiling against his lips and feeling him smile in return.

Because Bess had every intention of living happily ever after.