“Oh, won’t I? What on earth is wrong with you?” She slipped out from beneath the bracket of his arm, sidestepping deeper into the room. “First you propose separate households, then you disappear for two days, and now you fly into a jealous rage when I propose to meet a man? Your own cousin, no less! If you think you can dictate my doings, you’ve run mad, Lockwood.”
Their eyes locked. A muscle ticked in his square jaw; he raked his hand through his brown hair, leaving the bleached ends mussed. And then, on an audible exhalation, he dropped his hand and said, “Forgive me.” Now came the other smile in his arsenal, wide and lopsided and charming and—all at once—as unconvincing as the other one. “We can certainly invite him to dinner, if you like. It would be . . . delightful.”
His moods were more mercurial than a Scottish spring day. What was his real face? She felt certain that she had not seen it since her arrival. None of his smiles were genuine.
But his dark mood, a moment ago . . . his bizarre, leashed rage . . . that had felt real.
He seemed to catch the flavor of her uneasy regard, for his effort to persuade her intensified. All cheerful ease, he fell into a nearby chair, adding a generous wave to indicate its partner. “Sit,” he said. “Tell me of your day.”
She did not want to sit. A new possibility seized her brain: mercurial moods. False faces. These abrupt shifts in personality. The sudden disappearance.
Madness could account for all of it. Had his mind somehow snapped on their wedding day?
He’d seemed quite sane when he’d left the cabin—furious, but in full possession of his faculties. But perhaps, on deck, something had happened. He had hit his head, or . . .
“What is it?” he asked. No doubt her face made a strange picture.
“Why did you go that night?”
He sat back, his smile fading. “Which night?”
“You know which night.”
“Ah.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Must we retread old ground? It’s rather tedious.”
“We never tread it in the first place.” Her voice sounded shaky. She cleared her throat. Why this was so difficult to ask, she could not say, but she felt as though she were flaying off pieces of her own skin as she forced herself to speak of it. “You left me. Without a note. Without a word. In the middle of the night.”
“Yes,” he said after a pause. “Dramatic timing.”
Here was why it hurt. His flippancy, his casual mockery of a matter that had caused her more hurt than any wrong ever done to her before or since—
No. She took a deep breath. She would not let him hurt her. He didn’t deserve that power. “Yes,” she said flatly, “dramatic timing. But tell me: what prompted it? We quarreled, I know—”
His laughter rasped. “That is one way to put it.”
“But to leave as you did—” She swallowed. “Do you know, I thought you had gone overboard. I—” Did he truly deserve to know this? “I ordered the captain not to leave the harbor. He tried to refuse, but I made such a scene—I screamed, I railed . . .”
He was staring at her fixedly, his face impassive. “Most impressive, I imagine.”
This knot in her throat would not be swallowed. She recognized it. In the weeks after his disappearance, it had nearly choked her to death. First it had been grief. Then it had turned into humiliation, then rage.
She finally sat. Her legs trembled. She looked at her hands, knotted together in her lap. Her knuckles were white. She’d thought she had gotten over this bit. This . . . sense of betrayal.
And shame.
“What a fool they must have thought me,” she said, making her voice hard and bright. “Making them circle the harbor for hours. We finally docked again—the other passengers were complaining. And then we got the news. You were spotted leaving the ship before we ever sailed.” She made herself look up at him.
A queer surprise thumped through her. His eyes glittered as though—as though—
But no, it was only her imagination. For he gave her a smile, cool and sharp, and she realized that she was still, in some small way, that stupid foolish naïve little girl who had imagined this man capable of warmth, of real laughter, of the possibility of love, or at the least, human feeling, perhaps even tears.
But the man before her had dry eyes, and malice in his smile.
“What a fuss,” he said. “I am sorry to have caused it. A boy’s pride, you know. In retrospect, I should not have left the ship.”
These regrets should have meant more to her. They bordered on the apology she had so desperately, furiously wanted.
But they were not enough. She felt parched inside, bruised and dry. “So where did you go,” she asked dully, “when you left?”
He took a long breath. “To the tavern on the quay. I was angry. I thought a whisky would soothe my temper.”
“And then?”
He scratched at the knee of his trousers. “And then, what?”
She ground her teeth together. He was not as dull witted as he was playing. “Then, was it the first whisky or the second that made you think, ‘Why, I shan’t go back. I will leave my newlywed bride on that ship, and go on a separate adventure of my own.’ ”
He flattened his hand on his knee, the movement abrupt and somehow violent. “Do you care?”
“What do you mean?” She sat forward, all but hissing. “You deserted me. How could I not care? Was I meant to go on, by myself? To sail without you, to not wonder what had happened, to simply say, ‘Oh dear, I seem to have lost my husband somewhere. Tra-la-la, Paris will be lovely!’ ”
He did not move a muscle. “Is that not what you did?”
“No! Are you not listening? I did not go to Paris! I did not sail with the ship! How could you imagine—”
“Then where did you go?”
She caught her breath. “Where else? To the island.”
“To the island,” he said quietly. “Not, say, to the authorities. Not to the police. You went to Rawsey. Yes, I see how heartbroken you were.”
Why, he was accusing her. How dare he! “Oh yes,” she said. “I did think of going to the authorities. Imagine it: me at the police station. ‘I seem to have misplaced my husband.’ And the inspector: ‘Why, where was he last seen?’ And my reply: ‘Storming off the ship, in a temper, with a letter of credit giving him access to my accounts, which he had used not hours before to withdraw five hundred pounds sterling!’ ”
He smirked. “Quite a speech.”
“Isn’t it? What a pity I didn’t share it. They could have laughed me out of the station, and then run to the newspapers, where some cartoonist might have drawn a picture of a cow carted to slaughter, the bucket of milk having already been drawn!”
“God save your pride,” he murmured.
“You are a beast! Do not try to paint me the villain. You were the one who left. You were the one who took a quarrel and turned it into a feud. I won’t apologize for not having prostrated myself. Your estates are in the black now: you should be on your knees thanking me for not having razed and salted the lands, to show you how much I care.”
A silence fell, in which her loud breathing, and his utter stillness, seemed painfully vivid counterpoints. At last he looked away from her, to his hand on his knee, which tapped out some silent rhythm, ragged and quick.
“All right,” he said. “I think that’s enough.”
“No. You were going to tell me why you ran like a coward. I am still waiting.”
His gaze sliced up, glittering. “Very well. What would you prefer to hear?”
“The truth.”
He sighed. “The truth is never satisfying. The truth is either too plain to make sense, or too bizarre to be believed.”
“What does that mean? Just tell me why you left!”
He stared at her a long moment, in which she saw the pulse ticking in his throat. His eyes, those eyes that had caught her attention across a crowded room in Fort William one night, were lambent gold, like honey held to the ligh
t, darkly and thickly lashed, beautiful, a liar’s eyes: they could seem fevered and fierce even when behind them lay only falsity, shallowness, and cheap calculation.
“I was attacked,” he drawled. “Ambushed. Bundled off the quay. Taken south. And placed on another ship, bound for New South Wales.”
For a moment, the ticking of a nearby clock filled her ears as his words played and replayed in her head. With each pass, the tone of his voice—indifferent, casual, somehow bored—became more significant.
Even he was tired of his lies.
She rose. “Well. Yes. That would be pleasant to believe.”
He laughed. “Pleasant? Why not say amusing?”
She crossed her arms. “You had a better sense of humor once. Or do I misremember? But I should pity you for—”
“No,” he spat, startling her—but then, when he stood, he was smiling again, and she decided she had mistaken his tone. “Pity, darling, is the very last thing I look for. I can assure you of that.”
“Contempt, then? May I offer that, in exchange for your gammon?”
He spread his hands, a conciliatory gesture. “Come up with a better story, and I’ll gladly sign my name to it.”
She nodded tightly. “This is impossible. I see it now.”
“What is impossible?”
“Attempting to find some way to get on with you.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers, rocking slightly on his feet. “As I said, separate households can be arranged.”
“No.” She took another deep breath. “There are two reasons I came to London, the first being business. The second—well, I would not call it pleasure. Another piece of business, then, but one that involves you.” She had tried to put it out of her mind, hoping that they would find some way to rub along together first, some more pleasant foundation on which to proceed.
But clearly that would not happen. So, like no doubt many of her female ancestors, she would suffer through the task with teeth gritted.
“And what might that be?” asked her husband, his head tipping slightly, allowing a boyish lock of blondish-brown hair to slip across his brow.
She hesitated.
His properties could go to the Devil from now on. But her own she would not bequeath to her nearest cousin. Gerald Wallace was a naïve and citified clergyman, who would entrust the estates entirely to paid stewards, who might plunder them and leave the tenants starving.
As the Countess of Forth, what she needed was an heir of her own body, whom she could raise and train in the proper care of the family’s legacy.
As a woman, she wanted a child. She wanted a child more than anything; someone of her own, who would always be hers.
Alas, the rub: her marriage had been conducted according to English law, which had recently made divorce far easier. No longer did a man require parliamentary dispensation to cast off his wife. All he required was proof of her adultery and a judge’s approval.
Lockwood would not have her properties in a divorce, for they were entailed to the earldom of Forth. But it seemed to her that the courts might grant him a good chunk of her fortune. After all, every judge in the world was a man.
Indeed, only one way clearly existed to get an heir, and to ensure that she retained the moneys to provide for a child, and her properties, and the tenants thereon.
“A separate household won’t suit,” she said. “Not until you’ve given me an heir.”
He blinked. “An heir.”
She felt her face flame. “It’s like talking to a parrot! Yes, a child, Lockwood! Must I remind you of the specifics of our union? I did not marry you simply to get hold of Isle Rawsey. I require an heir, and alas that I cannot get my own self with babe—a man is sadly necessary!”
A peculiar look came over his face. His lips twitched, and he reached up to touch his mouth, as if to confirm that yes, he was trying not to laugh. “Still blunt,” he said, but she barely heard him through the sudden roar in her ears. Amuse him, did she?
She grabbed the back of her chair, because she needed something to throttle and it would serve in lieu of his throat. “Listen to me!” She pounded the chair legs in time to each syllable: “You—are—useless. I would do better to advertise in a public tavern for a sire!”
His smile faded. For a moment, she thought she had gotten through to him.
But then, with a shrug, he said: “As you wish.”
She goggled, truly shocked. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it!” If only the divorce laws had not changed, she would have gladly gotten herself bellyful, long ago! Not every man proved as eager to run from her as this one.
But she would not explain his advantage to him. “I could never bring an illegitimate child into the world.” His smirk made her narrow her eyes. “It is your duty, Lockwood.”
He laughed, an incredulous sound, and raked his hand through his hair. “Never in the history of womanhood—”
He fell abruptly silent as she stepped around the chair and grabbed his wrist. Beneath his undone shirt cuff, a dark inky pattern encircled his wrist.
“What is this?” she asked.
He was tremendously tense. She could feel the fine tremors racing through his body, the fierce flexed force of his resistance to them. Deeply puzzled, she peered up into his face.
His expression was full of some terrible intensity, instantly veiled as his lashes lowered. “It’s a tattoo,” he said. “What else?”
A tattoo! “Where on earth did you get it?”
He pulled free of her. “Elsewhere.”
He no longer wore cologne. But this close, she recognized the smell of his skin. It made her heart trip.
God above. This was the second time now that proximity to him had caused her belly to stir. Her standards should have been higher. But the old attraction yet lived.
Well, it would make things easier.
She released him and strode to the door. But as she opened it, another thought occurred. “I will not have a drunkard for my child’s father,” she said as she turned back. “Nor will I risk disease. You will not bed another woman, or drink to excess, until the deed is accomplished. Do you agree?”
His lips parted. Why, she had astonished him into silence. Good!
“To that end,” she said crisply, “since I can hardly trust you not to run off again, much less to refrain from your natural deviancies, I mean to know your whereabouts at all hours of the day—starting now. Are we agreed?”
A smile started at the corner of his mouth—a dark smile that spread very slowly. “On one condition,” he murmured.
She would not let him see how that smile unnerved her. “What condition? Let me hear it.”
“In the bedroom,” he said, “I set the rules.”
Her grip tightened on the door handle, the brass carving cutting into her palm. “I—I require a child,” she said. “I will not tolerate any oddities that do not lead to that end.”
His laugh was soft. “Good, a challenge. I like that.”
CHAPTER SIX
His wife had taken her dinner in her apartment; so Hanks informed him, when Liam dismissed him for the evening. Liam himself had no appetite, even though Beauregard had produced a half-passable approximation of cordon bleu. Nor did he feel particularly inclined to humor the countess’s evident plan for him: to play the aggressor, and seek her out in order to grant her the bedding that she herself had demanded.
Oh, he had thought of nothing but it, for hours now.
But he would not give her an opportunity to imagine herself a martyr. If she wanted him, she would come find him.
And so, eventually, she did. At half eleven, the door to the salon opened. He did not look up from his book, though he had read the same page a dozen times, and still had no clear notion of what it entailed.
She stood silently for a full two or three minutes, a stubborn standoff that she lost when she finally said, “I was in the mood for tea. Is that still warm?”
He tilted his head towar
d the teapot. “Fresh as of eleven.”
She poured herself a cup, then sat down on a settee opposite his wing chair. He turned the page of his book, glancing up only once, long enough to discover that she was immersed in the serious business of stirring and restirring the contents of the cup, and that she still wore the high-necked mauve gown from this afternoon. She was scowling.
He bit his cheek to stop his smile, and turned another page. She had absolutely expected him to come to her rooms, at which point that gown would have sent the clear message of her reluctant compliance.
Her spoon rattled now against the rim of her teacup. He heard the creak of springs in the settee as she shifted. “This tastes like bohea,” she said stiffly. “But Mrs. Dawson’s ledgers show the purchases come from Twining’s. Somebody is switching out the tea, I think.”
No doubt. Beauregard was an entrepreneur. “I will speak to Cook in the morning.”
“No, that is the housekeeper’s place. I will speak to Mrs. Dawson.”
“Smashing.” He turned another page.
More squeaking, another clatter of her spoon. “You seem curiously resigned to the dishonesty of your staff. I still think you should sack the lot of them.”
“Oh?” Liam looked up and caught her biting her lip. She instantly released it, and sat straighter. She was gripping the teacup very tightly: the veins in her hands stood out.
She was nervous. How novel. Some old, rusted instinct instructed Liam to make an idle remark, something that would amuse her or put her at ease.
The larger part of him took a twisted pleasure in watching her strangle her cup. That part was not old; it belonged to the man he now was.
He could resist these dark urges, or castigate himself for them—but why bother? Reform was not his aim. Reform suggested some goal beyond it, a purpose for one’s rehabilitated life. But he could see no purpose for himself save the crushing of his cousin, and perhaps—if he managed to keep patient—some unknown bastard who had played the go-between for Marlowe.
But after that?
Nothing. He had no ideas. He would continue to collect art, perhaps. And, if the woman before him had her way, he would also play the paterfamilias: an icy figure in the distance, occasionally dispensing praise or censure, as need be. God knew he would not take a direct hand in raising his offspring, lest he accidentally shape them into something resembling himself.
The Sins of Lord Lockwood Page 8