by Mary Balogh
But she had only a moment. She answered from instinct—the instinct for self-preservation.
“You are always good to me.” She smiled at him.
“And there is nothing—?”
“Nothing,” she said firmly, holding on to her smile.
He nodded. “I have to go to London on some business,” he said more briskly. “It should take a week or so.”
Her heart leapt with gladness, though of course any idea of escape was merely illusory. “We will go together?” she asked. “Soon?”
“No.” He reached out with his free hand to brush his fingers across her cheek. “I will go alone, Anna. ’Twill be easier than packing up Joy and her nurse and taking you all with me. I will come home as soon as ’tis possible.”
“Oh,” she said.
“You have no . . . fear of staying here alone?” he asked her, his eyes keen on hers.
Fear? Terror, perhaps, was a better word. “No, of course not.” She smiled at him. “But we will miss you, Joy and I. I shall count the hours until your return.”
“Anna,” he said. “Ah, Anna.”
He was in a strangely pensive mood. His eyes were unusually wide and defenseless. But he returned suddenly to his more normal self and rose to his feet.
“I must have a word with Fox,” he said. “And with my valet.”
She smiled at him, resisting the urge to grab for him, to cling to him, to beg him not to leave her alone. But she stayed where she was as he left her room. Perhaps being alone, without the semblance of safety to hide behind, was what she needed more than anything. Perhaps when she was alone she would find the courage to do something in her own defense.
Perhaps—the thought came unbidden again—she would find the courage to kill him.
24
AN hour or so later Luke was in the office of his new steward, Howard Fox, listening with some satisfaction to the man’s praises at how well ordered the ledgers and records were and giving him some instructions on what was to be done during Luke’s absence from Bowden. But they were interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by the appearance of Anna. She looked worried.
“Emmy has disappeared,” she said with an apologetic glance at Fox.
Luke nodded at his steward and left the room with her. “’Tis but early in the afternoon,” he said. “She is in the habit of wandering, Anna. Is there need to worry?”
“But she has been gone since early this morning,” she said. “Her nurse has only just reported her absence, foolish woman. She has been gone a long time, Luke. Ashley left early. I suppose she saw him leave and went off somewhere to grieve alone. I blame myself for not giving her my company this morning. I should have known how ’twould be. Goodness knows where she has gone.”
“Poor Emily,” he said. “She will come home when she is ready.” But he looked into his wife’s face and saw agitation there. “You want me to look for her?”
“I have to feed Joy,” she said. “It will be half an hour or more before I will be free to go.”
“I will find her and bring her home safely to you,” he said. “Was she at least wise enough to take a cloak with her? ’Tis a raw day.”
“Her red cloak is missing,” she said.
“Ah, then she should be easy to spot,” he said. But he would wager a bundle that the child had gone running off to the falls. It appeared to be one of her favorite places.
He found her there, lying facedown on the flat rock that jutted out over the water, her cloak fanning over her.
“Emily?” he said softly as he scrambled up the other rocks toward her. Poor child. He had been so wrapped up in his own powerful emotions this morning that he had not spared her a thought. “Emily?” He touched a hand to her shoulder and kept it there.
He had not frightened her as he had feared he would. She turned her head to look up at him with dull, reddened eyes, and then hid her face on her arms again.
He sat down beside her and patted her shoulder for a while. She was not crying any longer. She was utterly passive. Poor child. She had loved Ash more devotedly, more singlemindedly than any of them. And she was fifteen years old already, was she not? It was probable that she loved Ash not as a sister loves a brother or a child loves a hero, but as a woman loves a man. It was so easy because of her affliction to think of Emily as a child rather than as a girl budding into early womanhood.
What would happen to her? he wondered. Would he and Anna be able to find her a husband who would be kind to her when the time came? But she would be quite unable at this moment to look forward to a possibly contented future. She was too absorbed in the agony of the present.
He turned her over eventually, scooped her up in his arms, and set her on his lap. He cradled her as she huddled against him, crooning comforting words to her even though he realized that she could not hear them.
“You saw him leave?” he asked her when she looked up at him at last with wide and unhappy eyes.
She nodded.
“Did you speak with him?” he asked. “He said good-bye to you?”
She nodded again.
He wondered if Ashley realized that the child loved him. “I am sorry,” he said. “I am sorry for your pain, Emily.”
She rested her head on his shoulder again and lay against him for a few minutes longer before getting to her feet and arranging her cloak carefully about her, eyes lowered. He offered his arm and she took it.
“Emily.” He bent his head to her as they walked until she looked at him. “Anna and I love you very dearly. I know that knowledge will not help ease the pain, but ’tis true, my dear.”
She smiled wanly at him.
It was when they were halfway across the lawn to the house that he had an idea. He slowed his pace and bent his head toward her again.
“Emily,” he said when she looked up, “do you know Colonel Lomax?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Our new neighbor,” he said. “The man who is living at Wycherly.”
He saw awareness come into her eyes. And something else. Definitely something else.
“Do you know him?” he asked. “Had you seen him before he appeared here?”
She nodded, her eyes huge with a message he could not read.
“Where?” he asked.
She pointed in a vague, wide gesture and then shrugged helplessly.
“At home?” he asked. “At Elm Court?”
She nodded vigorously.
“But his name was not Lomax?” he said.
She shook her head.
He had known, of course. But there was a certain stab of bleakness about the heart to have his suspicions finally confirmed.
“Did you like him?” he asked.
She shook her head and her eyes told him that her feelings for Lomax were just the opposite of liking. But why? And did Anna like him? But he would not ask the question of Emily. It would not be fair. Though what fairness had to do with anything he did not know.
He squeezed her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I will find out the truth for myself, my dear. Do you believe I should?”
She nodded and there were tears in her eyes. He squeezed her hand once more as he led her toward the house. Yes, he would find out for himself. It was time. And he had the feeling that the whole future of his marriage depended on his finding out the truth.
A marriage that had gradually—so gradually that he had hardly noticed its happening—become very dear indeed to him.
• • •
If only one could go back, Henrietta thought as she rode alone up the driveway to Bowden Abbey, and order one’s life differently. If only she had stayed with Luke—dull, unfashionable, bookish Luke with his dream of a career in the church. She might have been a bishop’s wife now. Or perhaps the reigning Duchess of Harndon, though George might still be alive if . . . He might
be married with sons.
She had just come from Wycherly, where she had been thanked for the news she had brought of Luke’s intended journey. Thanked in the usual way. It had become more and more insulting. Never in a bed, as he had once half promised. It had been in a stall in the stables this afternoon, the door closed but not locked, grooms clearly audible just beyond the thin wooden barrier. He had laughed at her protests.
And yet she could not seem to live without it.
If only he took Anna away—she had stopped wishing he would take her instead—she would be free again. She would have her pride back. She would have Bowden to rule again. And Luke. She had never had Luke. But if half the stories about him that had come from Paris were true . . .
And there was a look in Anna’s eyes some mornings . . .
Henrietta clamped her teeth together as she strode from the stable block to the house. Cotes met her in the hall, bowed, and told her that his grace wished to have a word with her.
Henrietta raised her eyebrows in some surprise but followed the butler across the hall to the study and swept past him when he had knocked and opened the door for her.
Luke was seated behind his desk. He got to his feet but stayed where he was. He motioned to a chair on the other side. “Henrietta?” he said. “Have a seat.”
She smiled at him when they were both seated. He looked steadily and silently back at her for several moments. How different he was, she thought. How much more handsome and commanding. How much more attractive.
“What has happened?” She leaned forward in her chair and set one delicate hand on the far side of the desk. “Has Anna—?”
“Henrietta,” he said, “we are going to have to make arrangements for you to live somewhere else. Permanently.”
She stared at him blankly for a moment, while what remained of her world began to fall about her ears. But perhaps she had misunderstood. Her eyes softened and saddened. “Poor Luke,” she said. “You feel it too? The constant tension? The constant temptation? You cannot bear it any more than I can?”
“You have done your best,” he said coldly, “to ruin my marriage, madam. I will have no more of it. My marriage is very precious to me.”
Her lips compressed suddenly and her eyes sparked. “What has Anna been saying?” she asked. “What lies has she been telling about me? She is naught but a slut, Luke, and you—”
“Silence!” Luke said, not loudly, but so coldly that she instantly obeyed and stared at him.
“I have to be away from Bowden for a week or so,” Luke said, “as I announced at luncheon. I will be leaving tomorrow. By the time I return, madam, you will be prepared to leave. I will send you to Harndon House until we can make more permanent arrangements. You will decide whether you would like your own establishment in town or whether you would prefer a house in the country somewhere. Somewhere that is not close to Bowden. I will honor your wishes in the matter.”
She realized then the extent of her loss, the extent of her foolishness. There were tears in her eyes. “Luke,” she whispered, “is this what has come of our love?”
“I loved you once,” he said. “But I doubt you know the meaning of the word, Henrietta. Frankly I have no wish to debate the matter with you. But you have been a force of destruction in my family for too long. You are my sister-in-law, my brother George’s widow, and as such you are entitled to be housed in some luxury for the rest of your life and to be generously supported by the estate. But once you have left here, you will not return under any circumstances, madam. At least not during my lifetime.”
She got to her feet and looked scornfully at him. “You always were a weakling,” she said. “Wanting to be a clergyman, running away to France and fearing to return, marrying a slut for whom you have no feelings at all so that you could hide behind her skirts when you returned to me, fearing now to admit to your continued attraction to me. You were always weak. I am glad I took George instead of you. Of course, he would probably still be living if I had not, and I would be sitting in a church pew every Sunday morning, pretending to gaze adoringly at you as you delivered the sermon.”
Luke took his snuffbox from a pocket and opened the lid with one thumbnail. “You are dismissed, madam,” he said, looking up with cold eyes.
Too late she realized what her flash of temper had accomplished. She had lost him forever, lost Bowden forever. But then he was going to lose too. She could scarcely wait. She snapped her teeth together, turned sharply away from him, and flounced to the door, head high. Then she turned and glared at him.
“He would not lie with me after our son was stillborn,” she hissed at him. “What was I to do but hate him? He deprived me of my rights. He would not risk having any more children by me. The dukedom had to be preserved for Luke. Always his precious Luke. And finally he gave it to you—on the end of a knife, so to speak. Did you know that? Did you know that your brother, my husband, took his own life? So that no son of mine would succeed him, but his precious Luke?”
• • •
Luke took snuff with a steady hand until she had turned again and left the room. And then he allowed the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place. All those years he had thought himself cruelly betrayed. Yet all those years he had been dearly, dearly loved.
Yes, Anna was right. George would not want him to suffer now from pangs of guilt. George had loved him and had done all in his power to make amends, finally—foolish, foolish man—giving his life in order to do so.
Greater love hath no man than this . . .
• • •
She did not want Luke to go. Even for a week. A week was seven days long. Seven endless days. A great deal could happen in seven days. He would surely find out soon enough that Luke was gone and would take full advantage of the fact. So far he had been content merely to seek out her company wherever they went. There had been no demands. But that would change. It would probably change this week.
She had this week, too, in which to do something about the situation herself. To put an end to the terror. Or perhaps to begin it . . .
She did not want Luke to go. If she begged him, would he take her and Joy? Or stay at home and send Mr. Fox on whatever business there was to do? But she would not beg him. Clearly he felt compelled to go himself and preferred to go alone. Anna tried not to feel hurt at the realization.
When he came to bed and took her into his arms, she tried not to cling. But she knew immediately and with some relief that it was one of the nights when he would make love to her. She tried not to appear overeager. But she was always excited when she knew he was going to love her.
He kissed her mouth warmly and lingeringly. She opened it wide and arched against him.
“Mmm,” he said. “What is it, Anna?”
He always knew. Sometimes she thought he knew her better than she knew herself. It was so hard to deceive him.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I am going to miss you, ’tis all.”
“Let us make the most of tonight, then, shall we?” he said, returning his mouth to hers.
“Mmm,” she said.
He loved her slowly. Very slowly, melting her into warm relaxation, stirring her by degrees to excitement, letting it subside into warmth again, building it once more, over and over again. His hands and fingers, his mouth and tongue and teeth, his legs, his body—he used them all with marvelous skill. After a year of marriage it might have seemed that there would be no new way of touching or arousing her. And yet always there was something new. And her own hands and mouth and body had learned to give pleasure in skilled and varying ways.
She lost her fears and anxieties and gave herself up to the moment, to the giving and receiving of pleasure. And when it came time for their bodies to join, she opened herself to him and lifted to him and sighed as he came deeply inside. She was panting with arousal, very close to the brink. Had he moved in her, even just once o
r twice, she would have gone shuddering over.
But he held still, and raw sensation subsided yet again. She lay still and relaxed beneath his weight, knowing that soon, in his own time, and at his own pace, he would move them both into the entwined dance of bodies that would take them to a shared ecstasy. She felt no anxiety as excitement waned. He would bring it back again with even greater intensity with one withdrawal and inward thrust.
“Anna.” He had lifted himself to his forearms and was gazing down into her face. With the curtains drawn back both from about the bed and from the windows, she could see his face almost clearly, though his hair hung about it and over his shoulders. There was a light in his eyes that made her heart lurch. “Anna.”
She lifted both hands and smoothed his hair back from his face and tucked it behind his shoulders. She cupped his face with gentle hands and gazed back at him. She loved him so tenderly at that moment that she was close to tears.
“I love you,” he whispered.
And then the tears did spring and trickle down her cheeks.
“I love you,” he said again, his lips light against hers.
There was a moment’s pause before he deepened the kiss, perhaps to give her the chance to return his words.
And then he loved her with his body, as he had loved her innumerable times before, with firm, deep inward strokes and gradually increasing rhythm until every nerve ending in her body was raw with need and she tumbled with him beyond need into that temporary heaven where all was fulfillment of needs and dreams.
As he had loved her innumerable times. As he had never loved her before. For there was a difference. Both her body and her heart recognized it. He had given her pleasure countless times before. He had never before given love with the pleasure. Conscious, tender love.