His voice was weaker than the last time she’d visited. She took a deep breath and pasted on a wide smile before turning back around. The bed dominated the area, surrounded by the debris of a sickroom. Two tables stood within reach of the bed, their surfaces covered with small bottles, boxes of ointment, books, pens and ink, bandages, and glasses. An old wooden chair was to one side, a silk cord wound around the back, the ends tossed on the seat. Sometimes Jeremy found it easier for the footmen to tie him to the chair when they moved him before the fireplace.
“After all,” Jeremy said, “Putley must have some confidence in my ability to ravish you if he disapproves so much of your visits.”
“Or perhaps he’s simply an idiot,” Beatrice said as she pulled a stuffed chair closer to the bed.
There was an acrid smell; this near the bed—a combination of urine and other noxious bodily emissions—but she took care to keep her face pleasant. When Jeremy had first come home from the war on the Continent five years ago, he’d been horrified at the sickroom smells. She wasn’t sure now if he’d become used to the odors and ignored them or if he simply no longer smelled them, but in any case, she wouldn’t hurt his feelings by drawing attention to them.
“I’ve brought you the news sheets and some pamphlets my footman procured for me,” Beatrice began as she drew the papers from a soft bag.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Jeremy said. His voice was teasing, even in his weakened state.
She looked up to meet his clear blue eyes. Jeremy had the most beautiful eyes of anyone she knew, either woman or man. They were a true light blue, the color of the sky in spring. No other color muddied their depths. He was—or had been—a very handsome man. His hair was a golden brown, his face open and cheerful, but the ravages of his illness had incised lines of pain around his mouth and eyes.
Jeremy’s mother had been a lifelong friend of Beatrice’s aunt Mary, so Beatrice and Jeremy had practically grown up in each other’s pockets. He knew her as no one else did—not even Lottie. When she looked into Jeremy’s eyes, sometimes she felt that those blue orbs saw right past the cheerful mask she put on in his presence, straight to the well of sorrow for him at her middle.
She glanced away, down at the coverlet of his bed. To the place, in fact, where his legs should’ve been. “What—?”
“Don’t pretend innocence with me, Beatrice Corning,” he said with the same grin he’d had at eight years of age. “I may be an invalid, but I still have my sources of gossip, and they are abuzz with the news of your viscount’s return.”
Beatrice wrinkled her nose. “He’s not my viscount.”
Jeremy cocked his head against the pillows. Usually he was sitting erect by this time in the afternoon, but today he was lying on his back. Beatrice felt a frisson of fear bolt through her vitals. Was he worse?
“I can’t think who else’s viscount he might be if not yours,” he teased. “Isn’t this the same man as the pretty youth in that portrait in your sitting room? I’ve watched you moon over that thing for years.”
Beatrice twisted her fingers guiltily. “Was I so obvious as all that?”
“Only to me, darling,” Jeremy replied fondly. “Only to me.”
“Oh, Jeremy, I’m such a wigeon!”
“Well, yes, but an adorable one, you must admit.”
Beatrice sighed forlornly. “It’s just that he’s not at all what I thought he’d be like. Well, if I thought about him still being alive, which of course I didn’t, because we all thought him dead.”
“What? He’s ugly?” Jeremy contorted his features into a grotesque scowl.
“Nooo, although he has a beard and terribly long hair at the moment.”
“Beards are disgusting.”
“Not on ship captains,” Beatrice objected.
“Especially on ship captains,” Jeremy said sternly. “There’s no point in trying to make exceptions. One must be firm on the subject.”
“Granted.” Beatrice waved a hand. “But believe me, the beard is the least of it in Viscount Hope’s case. He’s been tattooed.”
“Scandalous,” Jeremy breathed in delight. Flags of high color were flaming on his cheeks.
“I’m overexciting you.” Beatrice frowned.
“Not at all,” he replied. “But even if you were, I’d beg you to go on. I’m here every day, all day and night, Bea, dear. I need the excitement. So, tell me. What is the real problem with Lord Hope? He may have a bushy beard and tattooed himself with anchors and snakes, but I don’t think that’s what’s troubling you.”
“Triangular birds,” Beatrice said absently.
“What?”
“The tattoos are strange little birds, three of them, around his right eye. What could’ve possessed him to have them placed there?”
“I haven’t the faintest.”
“It’s just that he’s so bitter, Jeremy!” she burst out. “He’s… he’s positively hateful sometimes, as if whatever happened to him seared his very soul.”
Jeremy was silent a moment; then he said, “I’m sorry. He was in the war, wasn’t he? In the Colonies?”
Beatrice nodded.
He sighed and said slowly, “It’s hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it, but war and the things that happen in war, the things one is forced to do and see sometimes… well, they change a man. Make him harsher, if he has any sensitivity at all.”
“You’re right, of course,” she said, twisting her hands. “But it seems more than that somehow. Oh, I wish I knew what he’s been doing for the last seven years!”
Jeremy half smiled. “Whatever it was, I doubt your knowing his history will change anything about him now.”
Beatrice looked at him, into his dear, much too perceptive eyes. “I’m an idiot, aren’t I? Expecting a romantic prince, from a man I knew only from a portrait.”
“Perhaps,” he conceded. “But if it were not for romantic dreams, life would be terribly dull, don’t you think?”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You always know exactly what to say, Jeremy, dear.”
“Yes, I know,” he said complacently. “Now, tell me. Will he take your uncle’s title from him?”
“I think he must.” Beatrice frowned down at her clasped hands, feeling her chest tighten. “Just this morning, Viscount Vale came to visit him, and although they argued, I don’t think there can be any more doubt that he is, indeed, Viscount Hope.”