Shipwrecked with a Suitor (Ravishing Regencies Book 3) Read online

  The gale had dissipated long before Helena opened her eyes again, but it was yet another loud crash that awoke her.

  She sat up bolt upright, and listened eagerly for a continuation of the noise, but all was silent. Bright sunlight was pouring through the gaps in her curtains, and there was an unnatural stillness in the air.

  Then, “Merde. Why cannot they keep this place in better order?”

  Helena’s eyes widened. For a brief moment, she had almost forgotten the adventures of the night before: the hunger that had driven her outside, the unexpected bounty the sea had offered, the struggle to get him home, the knife wound, the rum –

  The criminal.

  “Why can’t I walk, stupide!”

  Another cry echoed through the house, and Helena sighed. There was no use in her staying her, in her warm comfortable bed, even if the clock had not just struck six.

  Throwing off her bed covers and grabbing a dressing gown to cover her nightdress, Helena pattered down the well-worn stairs, and almost screamed at the sight that met her eyes at the bottom.

  Pierre d'Épiluçon, wearing no shirt and barely keeping his britches up, was covered in what looked like blood, and was staggering around the room with a dazed look on his face, mumbling under his breath.

  “Pierre!” She breathed, staring at him with concerned eyes. “Monsieur, are you hurt?”

  The stumbling figure stopped, and turned to face her. It smiled vaguely.

  “Bonjour,” he muttered quietly, not quite looking at her but at the mantlepiece to her right. “Et qu’elle beau jour il était!”

  Helena took a step forward. He did not seem to be in a violent mood, just a strange one: he could certainly not be overly hot for it was cold in this room now that the fire had died down in the night – and yet perspiration seemed to pour from every inch of his body.

  “Monsieur, why do not you sit down?” Helena said quietly as she took another step into the room. “You must be tired after your ordeal, after all, and you should rest and gather your strength.”

  Pierre smiled at her. “Giselle?”

  It was difficult not to feel a slight irritation here, but Helena took another step forward, and peered at the gentleman closely.

  It was not blood. It was rum. Somehow, the stupid man had managed to pour rum all down himself, and when it met the dark brown coarse britches of her father that she had lent him, it had crusted and dried, and looked remarkably like his wound had opened up again.

  “Giselle, why so quiet?”

  Helena tried desperately not to roll her eyes. Well then, he was drunk: though how he managed to be so intoxicated at this early hour was anyone’s guess. Was this typical for a Frenchman? Did they have rum for breakfast?

  Something touched her arm, and she jumped, looking wildly into Pierre’s face. There were beads of sweat on his brow, and his eyes looked mazed.

  “I think I am dreaming,” he whispered darkly. “For I know that I am in France, and yet this does not feel like France, n'est-ce pas?”

  His hand was burned around her wrist, and yet it was not the fervent heat of love, but the toxic heat of fever. Helena placed her other hand on his forehead: yes, he was burning up, and almost certainly delirious from the fever.

  It still did not explain the rum, but it was a start.

  “Come now, monsieur,” she said gently, taking his hand from her arm and retaining it as a sort of rudder, attempting to steer him. “Let us take you back to the sofa, and you can lie down.”

  “But the butler is waiting for me,” complained Pierre in dazed tones. “I am required to approve the latest shoot, and without me nothing can begin.”

  Helena almost tripped over the small table as she tried to move him forward, and he took two jaggedy steps, and then stopped.

  “Giselle, is this a dream?” Pierre stared at her with confused and hurting eyes, but there was a glaze across them that told Helena she had been right: it was a fever. “It feels so real, and yet, tu sais, you cannot be here. So what is it?”

  “It is a dream,” said Helena firmly as she gently forced him to sit on the sofa. First things first. Poor soul, it was impossible to know just how long he had spent in that boat trying to find the shore: dehydration, exposure, and fever all whirled through her mind. “But in this dream, you have to wear a shirt. Where is yours?”

  Pierre gazed up at her with a content expression on his face. Apparently, being told that you were in a dream was rather comforting.

  “I see no reason to exert myself any further,” he remarked lazily, in almost a complete return to his old self. He lay back on the sofa, and slowly raised his legs, stiff as his injured one was, onto the sofa. “After all, this is a dream, n’est pas? So nothing I do here has any real consequence. Therefore, I can do nothing.”

  Helena rolled her eyes. How incredibly like a wealthy man to assume such things.

  “Fine,” she said, irritably, remembering that she had not eaten in almost fifteen hours. “I will find it myself – and then it is breakfast for me, and cold water for you.”

  He began to murmur something on the lines that surely in a dream, his butler could send over a brace of partridges, but Helena had already departed to the kitchen.

  She had almost completely buttered a thin slice of bread, not a truly arduous task, when a shout rent the air.

  “What is it – what has happened?” She gasped as she ran through into the parlour, dressing gown flapping open in her haste.

  Pierre was huddled at one end of the sofa, pointing at nothing at all, and shouting wildly, “L'anglais! Quick, men, to your pistols, the enemy is upon us!”

  Helena rushed forwards, and he started, eyes wide.

  “Giselle? Mon Dieu, what are you doing here, this is no place for a lady?”

  She stared at him helplessly. When a fever took over a mind, she knew, it could take it to the strangest of places, but usually it drank all strength from the person too, so their delirious wanderings were quiet, still, unobtrusive.

  Not so with Pierre d'Épiluçon, obviously. His strength had remained, had fought back from the muddles of the mind, leaving her with a man unsure of where he was, but still strong enough to knock her down, if he chose.

  Helene had not looked in on her father’s bedroom when she had rushed down to attend to the first noise that had awoken her, because she did not need to. She knew the moods that her father talked himself into, and besides, if he had come home last night, he would probably have discovered Pierre asleep on the sofa. Even if he had been missed, the shouting of this morning would have been enough to wake up.

  So then, she was alone. Alone with a Frenchman who seemed convinced that he was about to be attacked by the English.

  Well, he was not wrong.

  “Sit down soldier!” She barked, glaring at him with the best military look that she could muster, and probably approximating something more like constipated. It did not matter, however: it was what Pierre thought that mattered. “I have never seen such a raggedy man in all my life. Where is your shirt, soldier?”

  For a moment, Helena was unsure whether it had worked. There was so much confusion in his eyes, his poor overheated mind telling him so much, that she was not sure exactly whether her words would even reach him.

  And then he sat up straight on the sofa, and tried to salute. His hand went flying behind his head, but it was evidently clear what it was supposed to be.

  “Shirt – shirt lost, monsieur,” he said smartly, eyes not quite focused on her.

  Helena grabbed at one of her father’s old shirts, sat in the corner on the mending pile. “Then place this over your head, monsieur, and lie down. You are injured.”

  It took twenty minutes to get Pierre to lie down calmly, and a further ten to sit with him quietly to send him into the land of sleep. She watched his eyes flutter madly underneath their lids, even when his breathing had slowed to a gentle pace.

  It was only now, in the light of the new day, that she was able to take a prop
er look at him. Last night she had only gained impressions, ideas of what he looked like, but now that she could examine him with leisure, she could see that most of her ideas had been correct.

  Strong. Strength was almost chiselled into every piece of him, and if she had not been sure of that, all she had to do was take her memory back half an hour, when he was wandering the house without a shirt on.

  Hair cropped short, shorter than any English style. Perhaps it was the French one. A jawline that was strong, but a mouth that seemed kind.

  Helena blushed. She may not have said a word, but the thoughts were enough.

  She sat with him for another five minutes, and saw with relief that his breathing did seem to have slowed to a gentle sleep.

  Her stomach rumbled. It was time for food, but no sooner has she risen from the chair that she had pulled to the sofa, did he stir.

  “Giselle? Do not leave me, mon petit…”

  Helena sighed, and dropped to the seat once more. It appeared that she was going to go without food for the present; the longer that he slept, the quicker the fever would break, and she could not be sure that she would be quite able to restrain him with words next time he was convinced of falsehoods again.

  The hours drifted by. Helena seemed to move beyond hunger and out the other side, and the few times that she attempted to rise and get herself a drink, a hand would shoot out and try to keep her there.

  Whether he was asleep or not, she concluded, her presence was clearly felt, and she could do no more than remain with him.

  Around one o’clock, feelings of quiet resentment started to grow in her heart, ignore them though she might. It was all very well, she thought, for Pierre to wish her to stay, but she must eat at sometime! It was nigh on an entire day that she had been without sustenance, and –

  “Mama?”

  It was more of a breath than a word, and Helena started to hear such softness from the hulk of a man lying on her sofa. She leaned forward, but said nothing.

  Pierre’s eyes were closed, but he was frowning as though slightly displeased with what he saw. “Mama, where are you going?”

  His voice was not pleading, or whining, but concerned. The frown deepened.

  “No, Mama, I told you not to go there, ‘tis dangereux,” he whispered, the frown tugging at his eyebrows and a crease appearing on his forehead.

  “What do you mean, Papa is dead?”

  Helena’s jaw dropped open, and she stared in horror at the man who seemed to be reliving some of the most desperate moments of his life. His jaw was tight, as though refusing to believe what the apparition before him was saying.

  “Non, I do not believe it,” he whispered. “Papa escaped, did not we receive his letter? Why are you saying such things – c'est des mensonges, all lies!”

  His hand was moving frantically in her direction, and she grasped at it, holding it tightly.

  The frown disappeared, and a sad smile instead covered his cheeks. “Ah, Giselle. We are the only ones left. We must run, hide – there is nowhere in France they will not find it, tu comprends?”

  Understanding was now beginning to dawn in Helena’s mind, but it was not happy knowledge. She, like all others in Europe, had heard about the terrible events in France over the last few years, but they had always been something far off: something that was happening to other people, nothing for her to be concerned with.

  And yet now, here before her lay a very real victim of la révolution. A man who apparently lost his parents; lost them to madame guillotine.

  And what of this Giselle? Was she a sister, a friend, a lover? Clearly she was someone that Pierre cared about, someone he wanted to be safe.

  Where was she now?

  “Ah, Giselle, I do not know,” Pierre replied fretfully to an unasked question. “I cannot find their bodies, and so the burial must wait. Ah, I am so alone!”

  Helena’s heart, perhaps icy due to the lack of food, thawed instantly to hear some bereaved tones. The horror of that time could not be taken in, but she had to know more.

  “Pierre,” she whispered in a low voice. “Who is Giselle? Where is she?”

  At the name, his eyes moved towards her, though still closed. “Giselle?”

  Helena nodded, and then realising the stupidity of that action, whispered, “Yes.”

  For a moment, he made no sound or movement. Then, “Giselle, we must run – we must flee France! But where to go; Italy is too far, and Spain its own disaster. Perhaps to England? Oui? Non?”

  “Was she,” and here Helena had to swallow down the horror of the question, but she had to know. “Was she in the boat with you, Pierre?”

  “A boat, a boat, mais oui, we shall require a boat,” muttered Pierre under his breath, and he turned in whatever kind of sleep he was in to face the back of the sofa. “And how much will you sell yours for, gentils messieurs?”

  “Where are you from?” Helena asked urgently. “Where were you trying to get to – do you have friends in England?”

  “No friends, just subjects,” Pierre replied with a little giggle. “I am from nowhere, and yet everywhere. No cage can hold me, c’est vrai, but I am a little tied up right now…”

  His giggles dissolved into snores, and he fell into what sounded like a genuine restful sleep.

  Helena leaned back in her chair, and shook her head. There was no use trying to get any sense out of him at this moment. She would have to be patient, and hope that the delirium would dissipate soon.

  But then, she thought as she leaned back into the comforting embrace of the armchair, what if the fever had caught hold of him before he entered this house? What if Giselle does not even exist? What if his mention of being a criminal – so shocking to hear late last night – were also a part of that delirium?

  Helena rubbed her eyes, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling in her stomach. As she crossed her legs under her nightgown, her feet touched something strange. Peering down, she saw Pierre’s brocade embroidered jacket that had been unceremoniously thrown down earlier.

  She bit her lip. It was not wrong to look, after all. She was his guardian, and the more that she knew about him, surely, the better.

  It took less than three seconds to lift the jacket up and start to rifle through the pockets. She did so silently, glancing at the unmoving figure on the sofa to check that he was still asleep. Her fingers brushed against something cold, and she drew it out.

  Not for the first time that day, her jaw fell open. A long chain of pearls had dribbled out of the pocket, and tangled into one end, a diamond brooch.

  She checked more carefully now, and found sovereigns, francs, another necklace, this time made of gold with a ruby pendant, and a good number of cravats made of the softest silk she had ever touched.

  Helena pooled the treasure in her lap and stared at it. Well. No hint at an identity, but he was certainly rich.

  The temptation to awaken him and ask more serious questions threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed it away. Peering over him, Helena could clearly see that Pierre was, at last, relaxed and peaceful.

  It would be wrong to satisfy her own curiosity in that way. She would have to be patient, and wait for the fever to break.

  She sighed, and reached over to the little table where a letter she had received the day before was still resting. She had not time to read it yesterday, what with one thing and another, and now was the perfect opportunity to indulge in a little news from her sister.

  Dearest Helena,

  My pen has hardly known where to start, my dearest one, and yet I shall put it down to parchment at last to tell you the most incredible news – news that I have longed, one day, to write you with, but had never expected such an early occasion to be so merry.

  My sister: I am to be married.

  I know it will shock you, as you are unaware of my acquaintance in general here in London, and I have given you no cause for suspicion as no name has dropped into my letters frequently enough for you to suspect.

  Al
l has changed. My life is not what it is was, and I am now engaged to Alexander, the Duke of Caershire.

  Helena could not help but gasp at this point, and drop the letter down into her lap as she gazed through the window.

  Alexander, the Duke of Caershire. The Duke of Caershire! But that would mean – surely, there could be no other consequence than…

  Yes. I am to be the Duchess of Caershire. It hardly seems real, I will admit, but Caershire informs me that I must better get accustomed to answering to such a ridiculous title, and of course, I am sure that I will.

  It is difficult to remember, Helena, that but one week ago, I did not know him. Those who say that love only comes on in stages are liars, for I cannot tell you how rapidly he gained my affections.

  He makes me so happy, Lenny. If he were but a pauper, I think we could be happy, but I write in haste – and will tell the complete story in a thicker and less frantic letter, near drowning in the Thames and all – in tell you that we will be doing absolutely anything in our power to help you. Caershire is not currently aware of any vacant properties on the Loxwich estate, but as soon as one is found, you and Father will come and live in it. You shall want for nothing, and Father will no longer have to sink his sore and aging hands into the ocean to feed you.

  I must go – the wedding preparations are in earnest! I will write again soon with dates, and a carriage will be sent.

  For I am, until then, your dearest sister,

  Teresa

  Helena read the letter twice more through, once in haste, and the third time with careful study.

  So. She was to be the sister-in-law of a Duke! The weight that had forced her down was suddenly lifted, and it felt almost possible that she would rise off the chair and start to float to the ceiling!

  Could anyone have predicted such a turn of events? That Teresa Metcalfe, poor middle child of a ruined gentleman, forced to go to London and act as the courtesan to the nobility, will now become one herself?

  Helena’s smile faltered slightly. It was unseemly of her to admit, of course, the small yet sharp pang of jealousy that wrenched through her heart. Teresa had borne much, to be sure, to keep their family afloat in different times, but had not she, Helena, also suffered? Had she not been left alone with their father, forced to mend and cook and clean like a scullery maid, with little thanks and no praise?