The Duke’s Perfect Wife (MacKenzies & McBrides #4)(58)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Eleanor slept. She dreamed dark dreams that slipped away when she swam to wakefulness and pain. Then she was restless, the injury keeping her from slumbering again. When Beth offered her more laudanum in water, Eleanor was hurting enough to readily drink it.

She slept through her wedding night, all the next day, and well into the next night. She awoke, hungry, able to eat the bread and butter Maigdlin brought her. Eleanor felt well after that, and decided to get up, only to find herself on the floor, her friends lifting her back into bed.

Fever came, and she saw the faces of Beth, Ainsley, and Isabella come and go. And Hart’s. She wanted to cling to him and ask him a thousand questions—what had happened to Darragh? Were there any other assassins lurking? Had Inspector Fellows arrested Darragh’s friends? But she had no strength to speak.

After what seemed a long time, Eleanor woke again, in quiet darkness. Her arm was sore, but the worst of the pain had receded, thank heavens. Eleanor stretched and yawned. Her body was damp with sweat, but she felt rested, relieved.

She was not alone, she discovered—Maigdlin lay back in a chair, snoring, an oil lamp glowing next to her. Feeling fusty, she woke Maigdlin and asked the startled maid to run a bath. Maigdlin protested, fearing Eleanor’s fever would return, but Eleanor wanted to find Hart, and she did not want to go to her husband after sweating in bed for… who knew how long.

Maigdlin helped her bathe, being careful of her bandages. Three days she’d been asleep, Maigdlin told her, and so sick they feared they’d lose her.

Nonsense. Eleanor always threw off her fevers. She was strong as an ox.

Feeling much better after the bath, Eleanor wrapped herself in a thick dressing gown, put on warm slippers, and headed for Hart’s bedchamber, three doors down from hers.

The hall was silent, the rest of the house asleep. The doors in between her chamber and his led to Hart’s private library and study. Eleanor supposed she should be grateful that she had to walk only twenty feet to reach his bedroom. When she’d stayed at Kilmorgan as his fiancée, long ago, she’d been put in the guest wing, which was on the other side of the house.

Eleanor did not bother to knock on the immense double doors. She’d come prepared with a key, which she’d procured the day she’d arrived at Kilmorgan. But there was no need for it, because the door was unlocked. She saw why when she entered the enormous chamber. Hart wasn’t in it.

Hart’s bed, empty and neatly made, was colossal, with brocade hangings flowing to it from an oval canopy ten feet above it. The rest of the room was taken up with formal tables and chairs, a bookcase, a padded bench, and a console table holding brandy and a humidor.

In spite of the elegant furnishings, this was a cold room, even with the coal fire burning brightly on the hearth. Eleanor shivered.

Hart’s windows faced the front of the house and the east side of the grounds. The curtains had not been drawn, and Eleanor walked to the east window and peered out.

“He’s gone out to the mausoleum, Your Grace.”

Eleanor stifled a shriek and turned to find Hart’s French valet in the doorway. Marcel stood ramrod straight, looking not at all tired. The perfect servant, awake and alert to serve his master, even at three o’clock in the morning. Poor Maigdlin had succumbed to slumber.

“The mausoleum?” Eleanor asked when her breath returned. “In the middle of the night?”

“His Grace will go there sometimes when he can’t sleep,” Marcel said. “Is there anything I can fetch for you, Your Grace?”

“No, no. That’s fine, Marcel. Thank you.”

Marcel stood aside to let Eleanor leave the room, then he hastened down the hall ahead of her to open her bedchamber door. Eleanor thanked him politely and bade him go to bed. Hart would be fine without him, she said, and Marcel needed sleep. Marcel looked puzzled, but he went.

Eleanor bade Maigdlin, who was changing her bedsheets, to help her dress and to fix her arm in the sling. Maigdlin didn’t want to, of course, but Eleanor was firm. She then sent Maigdlin up to her bed, hurried downstairs, and let herself out of the house through a back door.

She sped across the damp grass toward the squat, dark building on the edge of the grounds, her breath catching when she saw the wink of a lantern inside.

The Mackenzie family mausoleum was always cold. Hart’s breath fogged inside it, even though the April night was almost balmy.

His grandfather had built this place in the 1840s, a Greek-looking mock temple with plenty of marble and granite. Hart’s grandfather and grandmother reposed here, as did Hart’s father and mother. Cameron’s first wife did not, because Hart’s father wouldn’t hear of it. She was a bitch, a whore, and Cameron’s disgrace, the duke had said. She can make do with the churchyard, though I’ll be surprised if the vicar lets her in.

Hart’s wife Sarah did have a tomb here, as did his son, Graham.

The marble of Sarah’s tomb was black and gray, cold to the touch. The plaque on the front of the tomb was filled with flowery phrases that Hart never remembered asking for.

The smaller plaque next to Sarah’s said, Lord Hart Graham Mackenzie, Beloved Son, June 7, 1876.

Hart traced the lettering of his son’s name with gloved fingertips. Graham would have turned eight this year.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am so sorry.”

Silence and darkness filled the space. But Hart felt comfort from the cool marble, from the presence of the boy he’d held—only once.

If Hart had done everything right in his life, he and Eleanor would have been married long ago, and Kilmorgan would be overrun with children by now. The bodies of Sarah and Graham would not be in this cold place, with nothing but chisel marks on marble left to honor them.

But Hart had done everything wrong. This time, at least, this time, he’d gotten Eleanor to the altar. And then she’d pushed him out of the way of the pistol, trying to save him.

These last three days, while Eleanor lay in a fevered stupor, had been absolute hell. Tonight, the doctor had announced that the fever had turned, that Eleanor was resting. Hart in his relief hadn’t known what to do. He’d shaken off his brothers’ well-meaning offers of all the whiskey he could down and retreated here.

To assure himself that Eleanor wasn’t out here, cold and alone? He didn’t know.

All he knew was that he’d made a mess of his life, and he was still doing it. Hart, the arrogant, self-assured Mackenzie, could get nothing right, and these tombs were tangible evidence.