The Deception

by Joan Wolf

  He said reluctantly, “We are embracing in the middle of a public road.”

  I loosened my grip on him. “I know.” I kissed his jawbone once more and moved away. His hands opened slowly to let me go. We looked into each other’s eyes.

  “I adore you,” I said.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, “let’s finish this discussion later. Preferably in bed.”

  “To do that, we have to get home first,” I pointed out.

  “True.” He picked up the reins and started the horses moving forward again.

  * * * *

  I went upstairs as soon as we reached Greystone, but Adrian had to cope with the doctor and my uncle as well as give explanations to Harry and Louisa. Shamelessly, I let him do it alone. I had some supper sent to my room, and then I soaked for a half an hour in a deliciously hot tub.

  Jeanette was scandalized when she saw my bruises. They were not a pretty sight. The worst was the bruise on the side of my face where my uncle had hit me.

  “Someone tried to kidnap me,” I told Jeanette, “but Lord Greystone came to my rescue.”

  Her eyes grew starry. “Mon dieu,” she said. “Monseigneur is all right?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed.

  “Where is my dressing gown, Jeanette? I am ready to come out of the tub.”

  She emerged from dreams of her hero and went to collect my robe.

  It was another hour before I heard Adrian come into the room next door. I sat up against the pillows, looked at the door through which he would come, and felt such excitement inside that I could scarcely contain it. The door finally opened and his tall, familiar figure came into the bedroom. My heart did a very satisfactory flip-flop.

  “Did the doctor see Uncle Martin?” I asked.

  “Yes. He didn’t have to dig for the bullet, Kate, it passed through his shoulder. Matthews says there is no reason why he shouldn’t make a full recovery.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He had reached the bed, and now he touched the bruised side of my face with fingers so gentle that I scarcely felt them. His face did not look gentle at all when he asked, “Did Charlwood do this?”

  I nodded.

  “You should have let me kill him.”

  “Adrian,” I said, “at the moment I am not terribly interested in Uncle Martin.”

  He grinned.

  “I love you,” I said.

  He got into bed and gathered me close. “I was furious with you when I left you at Lambourn,” he said. “And then, when I was in France, I couldn’t stop thinking of you.”

  It was so blissful to be lying here with him like this, to be hearing such wonderful things. “That kiss,” I said wisely.

  “It packed a pretty potent punch,” he agreed.

  “I didn’t really love you until you came home,” I offered. “It was seeing you with Elsa that did it. You were so gentle. And she nickered for you.”

  I could feel the laughter rumbling in his chest. “I should have known a horse would figure in this somehow,” he said.

  “Of course you should,” I replied.

  He turned me over onto my back and looked down into my face. “Are you feeling too bruised and battered for this right now, sweetheart?” he said softly.

  “No,” I said.

  He gave me another flash of that irresistible grin, and my heart lit like an explosion of candles. “I love you,” I said. “I love you I love you I love you ....”

  I didn’t stop saying it until his mouth stopped words altogether.

  * * * *

  We talked before we went to sleep, and the talking was as precious to me as the lovemaking had been. I told him how extraneous I had felt to his life in London, and he told me how he had felt left out of mine.

  “You were always so busy, always being taken away from me,” I said tentatively. “We could never go anywhere without someone wanting to talk to you.”

  “I know,” he said wearily.

  I lay quietly beside him, trying to find the words that would make him understand how I felt about what had happened in London. How could I explain that it wasn’t just that I felt personally neglected. Yes, I had bitterly resented all those midget men who grabbed at him at every party and every dinner, but I resented them because they were trying to diminish him by making him a participant in their petty-minded policies.

  I leaned up on my elbow and looked down at him. His tumbled hair framed his face and the eyes that looked back at me were dark and troubled.

  I said, “Everyone seems to want a piece of you.”

  He looked surprised. “That is exactly how it feels sometimes, Kate. As if everyone wants a piece of me.”

  I lowered my head and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Let’s not go back to London, Adrian. Let’s stay here at Greystone. You haven’t had any respite from the war and its aftermath, and you need one.”

  He shook his head in disagreement. “I’m not the only one,” he said. “Look at Wellington. He’s still in France trying to administer the peace.”

  “The Duke of Wellington’s wife can look after her husband,” I said, “and I will look after mine. I think you need a period of peace and quiet.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “They want you as a trophy, Adrian,” I said. “They want your honor, your reputation, your stature. But they don’t want your ideas.”

  He looked up into my eyes. “You’re right,” he said. He reached up to draw me back down beside him. “I think we both could use some peace and quiet, sweetheart. We’ll stay here at Greystone until the baby is born.”

  He had listened to me. I felt boneless and warm with contentment. He settled me in the curve of his body and said softly, “Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

  It took me perhaps one and a half minutes to obey.

  * * * *

  It was late in the morning when I finally awoke. My shoulder hurt, my wrist hurt, and the side of my face hurt as well. Adrian was gone.

  Jeanette gave me a disapproving look when she came in response to my bell.

  “Where is his lordship?” I asked her. Jeanette could usually be relied on to know Adrian’s whereabouts.

  “He send for his attorney,” she informed me condescendingly. “He said for me to tell you when you wake up that they are in the library, my lady.”

  His attorney?

  “Do you wish tea in your room, my lady?” Jeanette asked.

  In fact, I was starving—my morning sickness had quite disappeared this last week—but I was too anxious to find out what Adrian was doing with an attorney to waste time with food.

  “No,” I said. “Help me to dress, Jeanette, and be quick.”

  When I entered the library twenty minutes later, I found Adrian and his attorney from Newbury, Mr. Marley, with their heads bent over a piece of paper that was reposing on Adrian’s desk. They both looked up when they heard the door open.

  “Kate.” Adrian smiled at me and my insides melted.

  “I’ve confided our problem to Marley here, and he has come up with a confession for Charlwood to sign.”

  “A confession?” I crossed the room to my husband’s side. “I thought we had agreed to keep this affair quiet.”

  Adrian nodded at Mr. Marley, who was a man of about thirty-five with a sharp, intelligent-looking face. “It will be kept quiet, Lady Greystone, for as long as Charlwood agrees to remain out of the country,” the lawyer said.

  Understanding began to dawn. “Ah ...” I said.

  “Read it, Kate, and tell us what you think.” Adrian put the paper into my hands.

  It was as he had said, a complete confession, not only of Charlwood’s designs upon me, but of his desire for revenge against Adrian. It was comprehensive, couched in all sorts of legal terminology, and it was utterly damning.

  I looked up and found Adrian’s eyes waiting for me. I nodded my agreement.

  “Is Lord Charlwood in good enough condition to sign this document?” Mr. Marley asked.

  �
��We can pay him a visit and see,” Adrian replied. “Matthews dressed his wound last night, and when I looked in on him this morning he didn’t seem to be feverish.”

  I frowned, remembering how ill his wound had made Harry. “You haven’t left him alone, have you, Adrian?”

  He shook his head. “I left one of the footmen sitting with him.” He turned to the lawyer. “Come along, Marley, and we’ll see what sort of state he’s in,” Adrian said.

  “I am coming, too.”

  Mr. Marley looked at Adrian, obviously expecting him to forbid me to accompany them.

  Adrian said, “Come if you want to.”

  Mr. Marley picked up the unsigned confession, held it carefully so the ink wouldn’t smudge, and the three of us left the library together. We walked through the Roman splendor of the anteroom and went up the magnificent staircase to the cozier ambience of the bedroom floor.

  “He’s in the yellow room,” Adrian murmured to me, and I nodded and accompanied the two men to the door at the very end of the passageway.

  Adrian was in front of me, and I watched as he put his hand on the knob and pushed open the door. Then, before I had a chance to receive anything more than a fleeting glimpse of the bedroom, he spun around and pulled me into his arms, pressing my face hard into his shoulder. I could feel the bandage he wore under the blue superfine. Still pressing my face to him, he moved me a few feet down the passageway. I heard Mr. Marley’s steps as he ran into my uncle’s room.

  “Don’t look, Kate,” Adrian said. “Go on back to your bedroom and wait for me there.”

  But I had received a shadowy impression of what was in that room. “Adrian?” I faltered. “Is Uncle Martin ....”

  “He’s dead, Kate,” Adrian said. “He’s hanged himself.”

  Epilogue

  I stood in the middle of the riding ring at Greystone and watched Adrian and Euclide perform the passage. This is a light, elevated trot in which the horse swings himself from one diagonal pair of legs to the other, hovering in the air for a moment without touching the ground. It is a beautiful movement, proud and solemn, and Euclide was performing it with wonderful energy and softness.

  “It’s perfect,” I said to Adrian. “Come down the center line and see how he holds it away from the fence.”

  They made the turn.

  “Think soft,” I said. “Use your back, Adrian, not your legs.”

  Down the center line they came, full of impulsion, Euclide’s strides seeming to float in the air.

  “And halt,” I said.

  They did. Beautifully. I was grinning like a fool, and Adrian’s smile was no less wide than mine. We had been working on this passage for a month, and today it had been perfect.

  Adrian patted Euclide and praised him, then he dismounted and gave him a piece of sugar. “He’s so light!” he said to me. “I never knew a horse could be this light.”

  “Papa used to become enraged when he saw riders constantly pushing their horses into the bit with their legs,” I said. “The contact should always be soft and generous. That is the only way to have a light horse.”

  We began to walk out of the ring. ‘The show is finished for today, lads,” Adrian said to the grooms who were lined up along the fence, watching him ride and keeping the dogs from getting underfoot. “Time to get back to work.”

  Charlie came to take Euclide from Adrian. “That horse fair dances, my lord,” he said as Adrian handed him the stallion’s reins. “You put on a better show than anything we saw at Astley’s in London.”

  “Thank you, Charlie,” Adrian said with amusement.

  Charlie shot him an impudent look. “If you work real hard, my lord, p’raps in a hundred years you’ll ride as good as her ladyship.”

  Adrian turned to me. “Do I have to put up with this cheekiness just because he rescued you from a fate worse than death?” he complained.

  “Yes,” I said. “You do.”

  “Take the horse back to the stable, Charlie,” Adrian said.

  Charlie grinned. “Aye, my lord.”

  We walked together up the path to the house, Adrian shortening his steps to match mine, the dogs sniffing the ground in front of us. We were talking about our favorite project, which was to go to Portugal after the baby was born to try to persuade the Portuguese to sell us a Lusitano mare to breed to Euclide, when Adrian suddenly stopped dead and turned to me.

  I gave him an inquiring look.

  “I have just had the most wonderful idea,” he said. And fell silent.

  “I can’t raise my eyebrows any higher, Adrian,” I complained. “Speak!”

  “I’ve just thought of something for you to do while you’re waiting for the baby to be born,” he said. “You must write a book on equitation.”

  I stared at him. “Write a book!”

  His face was very serious. “What could be a more fitting tribute to your father? You always quote him to me, and everything you say is so wise, so revealing. What better way to keep his name alive than to pass that wisdom along to future generations of riders?”

  “Oh, Adrian,” I said softly. “What a wonderful idea. It will make Papa live again.”

  He nodded. “Make the book good enough, and he will live for as long as horses are ridden, Kate. Think of that.”

  “There hasn’t been a decent equitation book in English since the Duke of Newcastle’s,” I said.

  He nodded, and we talked seriously about what kind of book I could write all the way back to the house.

  The nuns’ parlor on the ground floor was filled with baggage waiting to be loaded into the coach. We were leaving for London the following day so that Adrian could participate in the official opening of London’s new Waterloo Bridge. It was to be a state occasion, and the Duke of Wellington was to be present as well as the Regent and his brother, the Duke of York.

  Adrian had tried to persuade me to remain in the country while he went in for the bridge opening, promising that he would be home within the week. But I had chosen to accompany him.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him to return quickly; it was that our happiness was so new that I didn’t want to be parted from him for even so short a period as a week. And Caroline was coming to London for the opening, and I wanted to see her very much.

  Harry had been visiting Caroline for the last two weeks—he would be coming to London with her and would return to Greystone with us—and Paddy and Louisa had been married just before Harry left, so Adrian and I dined alone. We spent the remainder of the evening in the library, discussing an outline for my projected book. Then we went upstairs to bed.

  All day long I waited for this moment, the moment when Adrian put his hands on me, and I felt the flood tide of desire surge through my body.

  We would join together in the big bed, impelled by passion and by another need that went even deeper: the need to affirm our unity, our oneness, our marriage. When he was buried deep inside of me, powerful and potent, driving me, lifting me toward the heights of an almost unendurable ecstasy, then we were one. As we were one afterwards, when we lay quietly together, his arm cradling my body, my head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder.

  It was then that I knew I had truly come home.

  * * * *

  Caroline, Harry, and I waited in the first row of spectators on the city side of the magnificent new bridge that had been designed by John Rennie and named after the battle that had ended Napoleon’s rule forever. The bridge was hung with Allied flags, and the guns had been shooting for almost a full minute, firing a 202-shot salute.

  Most of the aristocratic spectators were watching the show from wherries on the river, but I had balked at the idea of getting on a boat. I was not a good sailor under the best of circumstances, and the memory of my recent morning sickness was all too vivid. Adrian had tried to convince me that the crowds that were bound to be at the bridge opening would make it no place for a pregnant lady, but I had insisted that I wanted to come. He had given in and arranged for my phaeton
to be parked in a place of honor, and Caroline and Harry had come with me.

  It was a glorious June day. The colors of the flags on the bridge shone brilliantly, and the barge carrying a full contingent of Waterloo heroes bobbed up and down on the sparkling water that, from where I sat, looked almost clean. A fair was being held all along the riverside, and the bright colors of the tents and the people’s clothing added to the air of festivity that surrounded the day.

  The last shot boomed out across the water.

  Harry stood in his stirrups to get a better view. “They’re starting to move,” he said.

  A moment later, Caroline and I saw the beginning marchers in the short but eminent parade that was taking the first walk across Waterloo Bridge.

  First in the procession were the Prince Regent and his brother, the Duke of York, who had been the titular commander-in-chief of the army. After the royal contingent came the Duke of Wellington, the real commander-in-chief, and the Marquis of Anglesey, who had commanded all the cavalry at Waterloo. Anglesey had left a leg behind in Belgium, and he walked with a noticeable limp. Behind Wellington and Anglesey came Adrian.

  He was not alone, of course; men—all heroes of the battle—walked on either side of him. But it was at Adrian that I looked.

  He had refused to wear his uniform. He had not even wanted to come, had only agreed to it on the personal request of Lord Anglesey. In the midst of a sea of smiling faces, his was sober. His head was uncovered and his hair, bared to the sun, shone like a Viking’s in the brilliant afternoon light.

  It wasn’t just his beauty that drew the eye like a magnet, I thought. There was something else about him, a quality of ... I will say nobleness for lack of a better word. Perhaps in medieval times there had been knights like Adrian; in today’s age he had no peers.

  Caroline’s voice said in my ear, “Isn’t Adrian magnificent?”

  I nodded.

  The crowd behind us, Londoners who had flocked to see the show, set up a roar. No one shouted for the Regent. A few called hurrahs for the Duke of York, who was more popular than his brother. Wellington, of course, was loudly applauded, and sympathy was expressed for Anglesey. But it was Adrian who got the longest and most enthusiastic round of cheers.