Page 8 of Master of Games
The marquess cocked his head in consideration. “I can see that. But before you go to my daughter, there is something else you should know.”
He’d paused, one eyebrow lifting as he waited.
“There are…scars.”
He’d seen them, peeking out of the neckline of her gown and the sleeve of her dress. “How extensive?”
“Much of her right arm and the right side of her torso. One of her…” Her father gestured toward his chest. “A bit of her right leg. It’s a miracle her face wasn’t touched.”
He’d been tempted to ask her father how it had happened. But he didn’t. He’d wait and ask Tabbie herself. It seemed appropriate for Tabbie to tell him her own story. “Forgive me, but you don’t seem like a man eager to have his daughter married. In fact, I do believe you might be trying to frighten me away.”
The marquess dipped his head, hiding a grimace. “I am, indeed. My daughter is strong, witty, beautiful beyond measure, with a heart of pure gold. If her strength or her scars are likely to turn your courtship elsewhere, best it happen before she ever knew you considered her hand. She doesn’t need another rejection or more pain.”
Those words had bounced about his head for the whole of the journey. Had someone hurt her? Because of her scars?
He’d like to murder the person who’d done so. Tabbie had the sort of worth that would make weak men afraid, he knew that.
But to try to destroy such a beautiful spirit…
Perhaps he’d been so deep in thought, he’d missed the fact that he was being followed.
By the time he’d realized, it was too late. Three men had jumped him, making it clear they were Whitehouse’s assassins, sent to remove the scourge of the Duke Fraternity from England and the world.
He could confess that the club, the Duke Fraternity, was not a moral endeavor. The men joined to live their most debaucherous lives. But somehow, they always seemed to find that it was an empty pursuit and settled themselves into domestic lives.
The men who hunted them, however, considered themselves pillars of the moral community while they used their ideals to justify theft and murder.
And Lord Whitehouse had been caught committing nothing less than treason. There was a price on his head, put on him by Ironheart.
He should have known the other man would retaliate quickly and with a great deal of zest.
“Your Grace,” the doctor called his attention back. How long had he gone without speaking. “Why has it taken you so long to seek aid?”
“I…” He looked over at Tabbie and realized that her face looked blurred and a bit stretched. “Are you feeling all right, luv?”
“I’m not your love,” she huffed back. Which meant Tabbie was fine. Maybe it was him…
He blinked his eyes a few times and then…
The world went black.
CHAPTER THREE
Tabbie held Ironheart’s hand as the doctor washed his face with a cool cloth. “A fever is to be expected.”
“Will he survive it?”
She noted the doctor’s grimace as he kept wiping. “I am hopeful.”
Which meant, he made no promises. Why would the man wait two days to seek care? She knew Ironheart to be reckless with his health, but this was just… “He can’t die. He doesn’t even have an heir.”
The doctor began muttering something about being cursed as he dropped the cloth and crossed the room to stoke the fire. Even in the summer a room like this would grow cool at night.
Tabbie knew Doctor Merigold was likely worried for his own reputation. It was one thing to lose a villager, quite another to be at the deathbed of the only duke he’d ever treated.
She sat down on the side of the mattress, wrapping Ironheart’s hand in her own. She knew he’d given her permission to call him Caden, but the name Ironheart made it seem as though he’d have the fortitude to make it through this.
His eyes opened, cloudy and unfocused. “Tabbie.”
