“Yes,” she replied, gauging the redhead’s reaction, “but you didn’t know him like I did. He didn’t treat me like he did the others.”
“It’s not just that. The age difference alone—”
“I know. He was much older, especially when we met, and married, but he never loved his wife. He had been pressured into marrying her. You wouldn’t understand. It’s never happened to you.”
“But you would know? Surely you and Argus…?”
Leona shook her head, a few loose black curls breaking from her coiffure. “You must understand, Lady Dorset, Argus is a sweet, kind man, but we have nothing in common. He has no ambition or drive. Randall wasn’t like that. He returned to Folkesbury when I was barely seventeen. I went to him because I heard he had gone to Cambridge and I wanted to learn Latin and Greek, so I could read the classics like Nadir. My parents wouldn’t pay for a tutor to teach me. When I asked him, he tossed me out, yelling that he wasn’t the schoolmaster, but I kept coming back, poorly reciting the phrases I had taught myself, and he relented.
“At first, he really did teach me Latin and Greek, but things progressed until it was beyond our control. I knew they wouldn’t approve of him teaching me, so I would tell my parents I was visiting my friend for tea. We met at the dower house when his wife was at her meeting, but as we became closer, he started bringing me to Brasshurst Hall. The house had been boarded up since his grandfather’s death, so we would go through the old aqueducts as not to draw attention. He loved that house. We spent many a happy day there.” She let out a dry chuckle. “It must sound foolish to you, a young woman ruining herself with a married man twice her age.”
Keeping her voice level despite the knot growing in her chest, Hadley said softly, “He seduced you. He should have known better.”
“There was no seduction. His wife was a shrew, and my parents’ control and heritage ensured that I had no suitors. I was never so foolish as to expect him to leave his wife or that we would ever be anything more than lovers, but he made me feel pretty and smart, which was all I ever wanted.” She smiled. “He made me feel like I was worth something.”
Leona’s eyes softened as she pictured Nash’s face fifteen years younger when they would lay across the orangery’s mosaic floor among the cut-glass crustaceans and cephalopods. The cool damp of the tiles soaked into her bare back as she gazed up at the leafy palms soaring high above them, the sun’s rays warm across her cheeks and arms. Without looking, she knew Randall would be no more than an arm’s length away watching her. Those sharp, grey eyes drank her in, and she willingly gave herself over to them.
“And Nadir didn’t know?”
She shook her head, pacing back to the door to listen for any signs of her husband on the other side. “He was long gone by then at boarding school. When he did return, I made sure to cover my tracks better. We went on like that for years. Every few days I would visit ‘my friend.’ Then, my parents found out. I don’t know how they knew, but I think Rubella finally had enough and decided to get her husband back once and for all. Later, I found out I wasn’t the first of his trysts, but I was the last.”
“What happened?”
“My parents reacted as you would expect. I was practically banished from society. They hated me. They hated Nash. Even if they never caught us in the act, I was soiled. If he had been some young cad, they would have simply forced him to marry me, but they couldn’t. Instead, they found the next best thing: a young naive man with an inheritance who would never notice that his bride was soiled.” Leona bit her lip and sucked in a sharp breath. “When Argus arrived in town, they found their solution. He knew nothing of my history or of Nash’s. By then, rumors had begun to circulate. My father spoke to Argus, and suddenly, we were courting and engaged. Please make no mistake, Lady Dorset, Argus is the best person I could have married under the circumstances and he is a good man, but it’s not what I wanted.”
Hadley sat rooted at Argus’s desk. Her heart echoed through her chest, and when she went to speak, she found the moisture had evaporated from her mouth. “What did Nash do?”
“After we were discovered, he left to escape the scandal and lived in France with his wife. I didn’t see him for nearly five years. I thought I would never see him again, but then, last year he turned up out of the blue.”
She had rounded the corner with a basket of groceries hanging on her arm when she looked up and saw him standing in front of the post office. He was older, the lines of his face deeper and the color had finally leeched from his hair, but his eyes were the same. They pinned her where she stood. For a long moment, they simply stared until inch by inch the crowd carried them closer and the questions and lost history poured out. In an instant, it was as if no time had passed.
“I didn’t intend for it to happen again. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him, how alone I really was, and apparently his feelings never changed. My parents had left for Alexandria, though they stopped speaking to me long before that, and Nadir was in London. I had my chance, and I took it.” A faint smile crossed her lips as she stared into the empty hearth. When she turned back to the countess, her eyes burned with waiting tears. “Now, he’s gone.”
“The child was his, wasn’t it? That’s why you needed the silphium.”
Leona nodded.
“But if you loved him, why did you get rid of it?”
“I panicked. We had gotten away with it for so many years only to have that happen.” For a second, she locked eyes with her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace, barely recognizing the woman before her. Refocusing, she looked past herself to Lady Dorset. “When I realized what had happened, I went to him. I knew it could only be his and that he still wouldn’t leave Rubella. He said he wouldn’t do it, that it would create a scandal. I didn’t expect him to, but I wanted for him to either help me leave Argus or take care of his child. Despite all of the money he extorted from others, he wouldn’t help me. He wouldn’t even give me the silphium, so I stopped seeing him.
“You were right though, I loved him, but he forced my hand. For all these years, he had used me. Why else would he refuse to help me and his child? When I ignored him, he started sending notes with his maid begging me to meet him. He even tried to blackmail me. What could he have taken? I mean, just look at this place,” she said gesturing toward the cracks in the ceiling and the faded wallpaper. “We already had to sell the steamer and fire the cook and maids. If he exposed me, he exposed himself, and he had much more to lose than I did. I told him so, but he wouldn’t relent. All I had left to use was his precious silphium. He had to have known what it did, and he still wouldn’t give it to me.”
“He wanted you to have his child,” Hadley replied, the words rushing out the moment they formed in her mind.
“I realized that after a while, but don’t you see? I couldn’t do that and still live here. I would have loved our child, but I couldn’t let Argus go on thinking it was his. That’s why I wanted Randall’s help. He could have put me up in a little house or apartment somewhere that I could be anonymous. I could raise the baby, and he could come visit once in a while. As long as I had his support, I could have done it.” She closed her eyes, banishing the thought with a scoff. “Foolish fantasies. In the end, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I had to pretend Argus was the father, that we were a happy family.”
“Would he have known the difference?”
“No, but I would. I would be constantly reminded of my missteps. What if the child had his eyes? Everyone would know. There was no other way for me to have some semblance of a normal life except to rid myself of all traces of Randall once and for all. That’s how it was with him. All or nothing.”
“Did you tell him what you were planning to do?”
She shook her head. “Not about the silphium. He knew I wanted it and still did nothing. After what he did to me, he didn’t deserve to have it.”
“I saw the look on his face when you collapsed at the party. He knew w
hat you had done.”
“Good, I wanted him to. I wanted him to feel the sting of loss, to have him understand that his actions had consequences and that for once he shouldn’t have only thought of his own well-being. Unfortunately, Nadir saw him, too. I still don’t think he’s put it all together, but he realized Randall and I were involved somehow. While I was recovering, Randall came to visit me and Nadir scared him off. I never got to speak to him again.”
Hadley’s eyes brightened with clarity. “Nadir said he snuck into the orangery because he received a letter from Nash. It was yours.”
“Yes, but I don’t know how he got it. When Dr. Sturgis brought him back to us bandaged and drugged with morphine, I knew what Nadir had done. The letter was right on his desk.” She drew in a wet breath and squeezed her eyes and lips shut. “I burned it. I was so afraid he had killed him. I still don’t know how he knew where to go; Randall never said. If it hadn’t been for the wound, I would have thought my own cousin guilty. Who else would want to kill him?”
Hadley could think of a few and the countless others who had been victims of his extortion. There had been times when she was tempted to draw her gun.
Pushing away from the desk, Hadley stood at Leona’s side as she covered her face. Hadley gently patted the dark-haired woman’s shoulder. Everything was so much clearer. Nash’s pallor when she hemorrhaged at the party, Nadir sneaking into the orangery, her strange behavior at the funeral. No one else had been so overcome with emotion, not even Mrs. Nash.
“First, I lost Randall. Now, I’m going to lose Nadir, too.”
“No, you won’t. Not if I have any say in the matter. As soon as I hear from my cousin, I will go back to the police.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that. After hearing my sordid story, I’m amazed you even want to associate with me. Anyone else would think me a whore or worse. What do you think of me?”
What did she think? What if she had met Eilian after he had become engaged or married to a woman of his parents’ choosing? She would have liked to imagine that she would have been virtuous, that she would have ignored any feelings she had for him and gone back to her lonely life. When she first realized Eilian had feelings for her, she had braced herself for the possibility that he might not want to marry her, but under different circumstances, could she have been his mistress? Knowing him and what being a mistress entailed, she couldn’t imagine it, but if he had been a different man with different needs, would she have allowed herself to be drawn into that role?
“I can’t say. I have never been in your situation, Mrs. Rhodes. If I loved someone very much and they happened to be married, I don’t know what I would have done. It’s possible that I would have done the same, especially if they were in a loveless marriage. It isn’t right, but it happens. Men do it all the time with little guilt.” Hadley watched Leona dab at her eyes and steady her breathing. When she seemed to finally compose herself, she asked, “Do you regret what you did?”
“Which part?”
“Any of it.”
“No,” she replied, keeping her face lax despite the well of pain rising behind her eyes, “I loved Randall. I will never get that back, and I doubt I will ever love another the way I loved him. Without experiencing that, I don’t know where I would be now or who I would be.” Leona looked up to see the countess watching her with a puzzled look. “You must think it strange to hear me say that after all you have heard. You must understand that Randall and I had a long history together. The tumult of two months can’t erase the decades of my life I love the most. My time spent with Randall Nash was some of the best, no matter how brief or covert. I like to think that if circumstances had been different, we could have had a good life together.”
The two women stood in silence. Hadley didn’t want to leave and have Mrs. Rhodes believe she was fleeing her sins. Even if she wanted to, the shock and guilt from forcing her to reveal what she had done weighed heavily on Hadley’s conscience. It was not her secret to know. She knew how easy it could be to fall into the trap of mistresshood. If Leona hadn’t been married to Argus, she could have had more freedom than most married or widowed women. She could have worked, had a lover, and possibly even a marriage, if she chose. It was what men had done for centuries with little retribution.
“I’m very sorry this had to happen to you and to Mr. Nash. I didn’t know him the way you did, but he seemed to have cared a great deal for you. You must have other things to attend to, Mrs. Rhodes, so I will be on my way. I’m sorry if I caused you any pain; that wasn’t my intention.”
“I know,” Leona replied softly as she reached for the door.
The door swung back to reveal Argus’s broad face. He stared at the women within with pleading eyes, his head shaking in time with his mutely working mouth.
“Is it true?” he finally wheezed.
The air squeezed from Hadley’s lungs as Leona held his gaze, unable to speak but free of pain or remorse. With a final nod of her head, he slowly turned and retreated down the hall. Hadley took a step forward, but Leona’s hand locked around her arm.
“Let him go. It’s what I deserve.”
Chapter Thirty
His Eyes
It was dark by the time Hadley arrived back at Brasshurst. The warm spring rain lapped against the panes of the great hall, casting the room in curious shadows and creating a steady din within the ancient walls. Water dripped from her hair and ran down her neck where it was wicked up by her sodden dress. She had lingered on the beach too long. Sitting against the rocks, she had stared out at the boats tossed by the angry waves rolling in with the storm. They clawed at the sand, tearing shells and bits of sea glass from the shore. Wind whipped her hat until she pulled it off and let the sea spray tear the pins from her hair.
For hours, she turned Leona Rhodes’s story over in her mind. She and Nash had been lovers. Part of her was appalled that she had betrayed the docile man she married on so many fronts. Maybe if Argus had been cruel and Nash had been a handsome young suitor, things would have ended differently. The other part of her understood that it was impossible to control attraction. Leona didn’t have to act on her feelings, but she did. Knowing that what happened with Nash hadn’t been a transient infatuation somehow made it easier to stomach yet harder to imagine. Now, the man Mrs. Rhodes loved was dead along with what could have been their child, and her husband had left when he learned the truth. That had been Hadley’s fault. What would Leona do now, especially if Nadir was convicted?
By the time she had given up on sorting through her thoughts, the air had grown heavy with rain and her teeth were coated in salt. Walking through the cobbled streets that soon dissolved into white gravel, Hadley wondered if she had made the right decision in pressing Mrs. Rhodes to tell her more. The woman had been right when she said it wouldn’t help Nadir. Hadley’s curiosity had ruined a marriage and left her with only the hollowness of shame.
“You’re home!” Eilian called behind her as she pushed open the door.
When she turned to see Eilian approaching with his arms wide, her eyes lit up despite herself. Her husband’s arms closed around her, pulling her to his chest. He planted a kiss on her forehead as his arms cinched around her. Hadley shut her eyes, burying her face deep into the folds of his shirt and jacket. The warmth of his body against hers and the pressure of his arms against her back were what she needed most.
“Had, you’re soaked to the bone,” he said, pulling back and gently wiping her cheeks with his sleeve. “What happened? I thought you took the steamer, but then, I came home to find Pat setting up for dinner without you.”
“I did, but I stayed too long at the beach. I needed a bit of time to myself, so I sent Patrick home. You understand.”
As Eilian stepped back, still holding her by the arms, he finally saw her face. In his excitement, he hadn’t noticed the tired sag of her eyes or the heaviness in her countenance. “What happened?”
I botched it.
Hadley smoothed her
hair and dress as she bit her lip. Before she could continue, Eilian wrapped his arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the great hall’s stairs. Passing Pilcrow where she leaned into the shadows between the tapestries and woodwork, he motioned for her to follow them. She silently padded ten feet behind them, the countess none the wiser of her husband’s new hire. At the bedroom door, the wisp of a maid slipped into the dressing room out of sight.
“Here, let me help you, Had.”
It took little coaxing to get her into the cushioned chair in front of the vanity. Her eyes darted from her reflection when it fell across the dark circles rimming her eyes and her bedraggled hair, which hung in limp, soggy locks. She couldn’t bear to look at herself. When she finally raised her eyes, she caught her husband smiling behind her as he carefully pulled out the pins that had once held her hat. Putting them aside, he removed her hair pins, dropping them in her palm beside the others.
“So how was your day?” she replied when he began unhooking the buttons running the length of her neck. Closing her eyes, she savored the sensation of his fingertips skimming her neck and the hitch of her breath when the cold pearls brushed her skin. “I hope it was better than mine.”
“I went to the dower house. I was able to find the journals that were—”
A soft knock sounded on the other side of the bedroom door. Thinking it was Patrick, Hadley called for the visitor to come in. Upon noticing the countess at the vanity, the maid’s colorless face brightened with a wide grin.
“I’ll have your dress ready in a few minutes, m’lady. I just wanted to see if you needed anything.”
Hadley’s eyes flicked between her husband and Pilcrow. “No, thank you.”
When the door clicked shut behind her, Hadley turned to Eilian with a questioning look.
He shifted uncomfortably, resting his hands on her shoulders. “I was about to get to that. I found the journals… and Pilcrow at the dower house.”
The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Box Set Page 79