Chapter Eight
Simon was thoroughly inebriated. Sauced. In his cups. Whatever the words one preferred to use, he was claiming them all. He took a healthy swig of whiskey, enjoying the burn down his throat. He’d been unable to sleep, so he’d spent the night in his study, drinking and wondering what in the hell he was going to do next. He’d never been more bloody confused in his life, torn between the past and a possible future with Maggie. Damn it all, why had Eleanor returned? It would have been so much simpler had she not.
He didn’t know if he was ready to say goodbye to her forever. He had loved her for too long, and her transgressions couldn’t entirely erase the way he had felt for her before he knew them. But there was Maggie, his passionate poet who never failed to surprise him. Did he love her? The truth of it was that he had begun to believe love was more fiction than fact, that it was an impossible state invented by fools and romantics. He was drawn to her, to her responsive body and kind heart. She had shown him more generosity than he deserved, and he would always admire her for that.
“Christ,” he muttered, taking another drag of spirits. Libations were not the solution to his problems either, but they did a fine job of distracting him. His mind was lighter even if his heart was not.
A discreet tap at the door interrupted his solitude. “Enter,” he called out, assuming it was the butler with a breakfast tray.
Maggie swished into the room, looking formidably lovely in a day gown of aquamarine silk. Her flaming locks were styled simply, with curls cascading down over her shoulders. The bodice of her dress flattered her slim waist and full bosom to perfection. Damned if he didn’t get hard just looking at her, whiskey and all. A series of bows bedecked her skirts and sleeves, and he itched to untie them all, then peel her out of her dress, spread her over his secretaire and slide his cock deep inside her.
“My lord,” she greeted him formally, her tone as stiff as baleen corset stays.
Hell. The chill emanating from her luscious body was enough to dampen his ardor. Something was wrong. He belatedly realized her ordinarily full pink lips were pinched into an unhappy line. “Maggie,” he returned, standing as he recalled his manners. “Good morning.”
She stopped halfway across the room, hands clasped at her waist. She was a fiercely unique beauty, all fire to Eleanor’s ice. “I don’t find it to be a good morning at all, I’m afraid.”
He raised a brow, trying to fend off a looming sense of trepidation. “Indeed? And why would that be, my dear?”
“My slumber is frightful at best, easily interrupted.” She stared at him in that knowing way she had. It quite stripped his soul bare. And he hadn’t even thought he possessed a soul any longer.
“Out with it, Maggie,” he commanded, doing his best to sort out what was amiss even with his whiskey-soaked brain. “What have you to say to me?”
She caught her luscious lower lip between her teeth before venturing into the dangerous waters before them. “I heard voices last night.”
The weight of dread settled down upon his shoulders. How much had she heard? “Indeed?” Oh damn it all, he’d said that twice now. Now he was a cad and a twit in addition, of course, to being a drunkard.
“Indeed.” Her expression was pensive, slightly wounded. She had never appeared more beautiful to him, and the realization startled him. “I believe you were conversing with Lady Billingsley. In your chamber.”
Bloody, bloody hell. He wanted to lie, but he could not. “She availed herself of my chamber whilst I was sleeping.”
“And you did not see fit to summarily dismiss her?”
Of course he should have done. Not as a husband, for God knew that husbands and wives alike strayed when and where they would, but as her lover. He’d sworn to be true to her for an entire month. Although he had not made love to Eleanor, he had certainly not been true to Maggie. His emotions were too conflicted. He knew this in his black heart. “I did not,” he admitted, knowing as he said the words that they very well could cost him more than he was willing to pay—everything he’d managed to find over the last fortnight, the tentative happiness he’d only begun to believe could be possible.
Everything was too dear a price to pay, damn it. He wanted Maggie in his bed, but the devil of it was that he wasn’t entirely certain that Eleanor was gone from his heart. And the whiskey rattling about in his troubled mind wasn’t giving him a bit of clarity.
“Did you bed her?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“Christ no,” he assured her. At least he had possessed a shred of honor, rarity though it was. “I may be an utter bastard, but even I have morals when I need them.”
“You wanted to, didn’t you?”
Her blunt question shocked him, as much because she had dared to ask it as because it shook him. The plain truth of it was that if he’d wanted Eleanor, he would have taken her. At least, he would have in the past. His unfettered time with Maggie had changed him, he thought, and for the better.
“You still love her,” Maggie said then without waiting for his response, her voice devoid of inflection save a slight tremor that he knew meant she was on the verge of tears.
Did he? Christ, he didn’t know any longer, and the alcohol was muddling his already confused mind. All he knew was that he was hopelessly ensnared in Maggie’s violet eyes, their light filled with an accusatory glow. He had disappointed her. And that hurt him, smote him more than any other blow in his life. He was an utter failure. There it was, laid out before him. He had lived almost thirty years and yet this young scrap of American idealism had brought him low.
He was not worthy of her. He wasn’t worthy to kiss her hem.
“I have not made a secret of my feelings for Eleanor,” he forced himself to say. But the truth was that the love he’d sought, the family he’d been missing, now seemed more elusive than ever. Eleanor loved him. She wanted him. But he no longer knew who he loved or what he wanted. Life was a cruel, deuced beast.
“I will not stand in your way,” Maggie murmured. Her beauty took on a fragile quality for the first time, her pale complexion fading into an ashen tinge. Her lips thinned. Even her elaborate upswept curls seemed to sag in defeat. “You must live your life as you see fit.”
She was giving him freedom, he realized, the sort of freedom he’d once dreamt of owning. Even during his days of being her husband, long before he’d come to know her, the guilt had been at the edge of his conscience. Nagging him. Eating him alive. And now, she was telling him to pursue the woman he had loved. He should be thrilled. Overjoyed. Overcome with elation.
Instead, he felt only hollow. Was Eleanor the woman he wanted? What of Maggie, the sweet wife he’d grown to care for over the last few weeks? She had inspired him, shown him new facets of life, brought him passion and joy. She had been giving and wonderful to him when he had only ever been cruel and oppressive to her. The truth of it was that she deserved so much better than a bollixed-up horse’s arse like him.
“What of you?” he asked, hoping that she would not release him so easily.
He dared to think she might fight for him with that fierce American spirit of hers. That she might want him despite all his flaws and peculiarities. But she turned her back, taking a deep breath that bespoke emotions too raw to let loose.
“I expect I will find my way. I always have.” She exhaled and turned to face him, her expression bearing a false cheeriness. “Perhaps I will write again. You’ve made me see that perhaps I ought not to have given up my dreams, and for that I will be forever grateful.”
She spoke as if she expected never to see him again, and the very thought of her disappearing from his life assailed him with a foreign sense of fear. “What do you mean, find your way?”
“Oh, it is merely a figure of speech,” she hastened to assure him. “You needn’t fear that I will be underfoot. I can always go to London or to stay with friends.”
“No,” he bit out, perhaps faster than he ought to have. “You must stay here at Denver Hall. Wh
y would you leave?”
He wanted her to stay. At least, he thought he did. He’d never felt so adrift in his life. He was a boat, bobbing upon the sea, no land in sight. Jesus, he didn’t even have a compass to tell him which direction he ought to take.
“Of course,” she said with equal brightness. “I would never leave if you didn’t wish it of me. Surely you must know that, Simon.”
Feeling relieved, he nodded. “Very good, my dear.” But when he would have closed the distance between them and taken her in his arms, she was already fleeing the room. He watched her go, helpless to stop her.
* * * * *
Maggie was reading in the comfort of the drawing room, trying to distract herself from the awful knot growing inside her stomach. She had sought out Simon in the hopes that he would tell her something that would give her reason to stay. She had hoped he would tell her that he didn’t give a damn for Lady Billingsley, unlikely though she knew it was. But he had been conflicted as ever, his eyes bloodshot and his hair mussed. That he appeared to be in as much turmoil as she was left her little comfort. Even if he did care for her, he still had feelings for his old lover.
She feared she would have to leave Denver House. There was no earthly way she could remain, watching Simon fall back into Lady Billingsley’s arms. She could go to London, she supposed, or perhaps seek out her dear friend Victoria. The solitary life would be hers once more. She tried to tell herself it was for the best, but she couldn’t quite muster the strength.
It hardly seemed fair that she would have discovered her feelings for her husband only to have the one woman who had kept them apart reemerge, determined to raze the fragile truce they’d built. As if on cue, her unwanted guest sauntered into the room, disrupting her peace.
Dear heavens, was there never a time when she could avoid the dreadful woman? She was everywhere. At dinner, in the drawing room, giggling too loudly at Simon’s sallies, standing too near to him whenever she could, staring at him as if he were nude before her. She had only been at Denver House a day, and already it was one day too many. Maggie loathed her. With great reluctance, she looked up from the pages of Anthony Trollope into which she’d been attempting to escape.
Lady Billingsley was of course beautiful as ever, wearing an ethereal afternoon gown of rich navy that emphasized her tiny waist and lavish bosom. Maggie swore she was so heavily corseted it was a miracle she didn’t faint whenever she seated herself. Her blonde curls were artfully arranged, golden as any angel’s. But an angel she was not. She raised her nose ever so slightly as her gaze settled upon Maggie, as if to say Maggie’s mere presence was an affront to her sense of English nobility. Maggie’s brows snapped together into a frown. The feeling was mutual.
“Lady Billingsley, how lovely to see you,” she murmured, aware that she must at least uphold the pretense of being a happy hostess. It would never do for the woman to discover precisely how much she vexed her.
“My lady,” her foe acknowledged with a regally inclined head. “I’m delighted to find you here as it will save me the effort of seeking you out.”
Maggie was taken aback and more than a bit dismayed. It didn’t escape her that the woman had refused to refer to her as Lady Sandhurst. “Why should you need to seek me out?”
Her ladyship crossed the room, closing the distance between them, and reached into a pocket on her day gown, extracting a ribbon-bound stack of what appeared to be envelopes. “I have something I want to give you, something that I think will alter the way you must see me.”
Maggie shook her head, eyeing the packet dubiously. “I’m sure it cannot. I don’t want it, my lady.”
“You must take them. I want you to have these,” Lady Billingsley told her, thrusting the envelopes into her hands.
Maggie accepted them, but only because it was either close her fingers about them or allow them to drop to the carpet. She studied her adversary’s face, wishing it was not nearly so lovely. “I don’t want anything from you, Lady Billingsley, other than to never see you again.”
“I understand that you despise me, but I love your husband,” she said, startling Maggie with her candor. “And I know that he still very much loves me. I was wrong to leave him.”
“But you did leave him,” she pointed out, “and regardless of whether or not you accept that, it changed everything. Once, you had complete power over him. Now he no longer harbors even a hint of tender feelings for you.”
Of course, she was blustering. Even if she knew this was not a war she could win, her pride demanded she not allow the woman to see it. In truth, she was terrified that her husband was still in love with the woman before her. After all, he had never given her any reason to hope for more than their month of passion. He had never spoken words of love to her. The letters in her hand burned into her skin in an awful reminder.
Love letters. Maggie knew it without bothering to read them. What made their existence all the more humiliating was that he had never written her a line. Not even to inquire after her welfare. Not even to ascertain whether or not she still existed.
“He is attempting to make me jealous,” Lady Billingsley insisted. “You’re a distraction to him. Read the letters, I implore you. You shall see how deep our connection runs. It cannot be broken by a mere American girl who has shared his bed for a month.”
“I’m no mere American girl,” she countered, anger lending her pluck anew. “I am a woman of her own fortune, a poet, a wife. What are you other than the woman who clung to a man who could never truly be hers?”
“He was,” her nemesis hissed. “He has been mine and so he shall be again. Let him free. Can’t you see how he feels trapped between us? He pities you.”
Maggie looked from the insidious letters in her hand back to the woman’s face. She was intent, her expression as if it had been chiseled from marble. But there was an underlying emotion in her voice, an urgency, perhaps. Her words rattled Maggie. He pities you, she’d said. Could it be true? She wouldn’t allow herself to think it just now. “Let him free? I have no hold over him.”
“This month you’ve made him promise to give you,” she insisted. “He’s told me all about it, and his sense of honor won’t allow him to extricate himself. It is solely in your hands. That is why I give you these letters. You can never mean to him what I have meant to him. We have loved one another for years.”
“I have been his wife for a year,” she countered, even though she knew her protestation was a hollow one.
“In name only. You have been in his bed for a paltry three weeks.”
It shocked Maggie that Simon had apparently shared the secrets of their relationship with this woman, the very woman who had been an insidious barrier between them from the moment she’d met him. Perhaps there was something to what Lady Billingsley was telling her. She had long ago lost her naiveté, after all, and that largely thanks to Sandhurst.
“What we do together as husband and wife is none of your concern,” she forced herself to say through lips that had gone numb in her escalating fear. “You do not belong here, my lady. Indeed, you would do best to return to your husband.”
Her ladyship’s face transformed, her expression becoming smug. “I cannot. Sandy loves me, and I love him. I’ll not make the same mistake twice. I must have him in my life or it’s not worth living.”
Dear God. What hope did Maggie have of winning against this woman? She had not been able to win before. Now, she had nothing more than heated embraces and wicked lovemaking to hold Simon to her. He had never spoken words of love, nor written them. She stared down at the letters, her heart aching. Disappointment sank through her. She knew what she must do.
* * * * *
She was gone.
The realization was akin to a punch directly in his gut. Simon nearly doubled over, so violent was his reaction. He threw open the door to her chamber and stalked inside, confirming what his butler had already told him. His wife had left in a flurry of hooves and portmanteaus. Her chamber still smelled of
her perfume, but other than her scent and the handful of letters she’d left scattered over her bed, it was as if she had never been there at all.
Damn. He never should have allowed Eleanor to remain at Denver House, not even for a day. He scooped up a letter and scanned its contents, recognizing his youthful signature at the bottom of the page. Instantly, he knew precisely what Eleanor had done. These letters were old. He’d never been one for dating his correspondence as he ought to have done, and he cursed himself for it now. Christ, he’d been a lovesick milksop, he thought with disgust as he read a particularly flowery line.
She had given these letters to Maggie, knowing she would read them and assume the very worst. And then he found another letter, tucked into an envelope bearing his name. Maggie had left him a note, it would seem. He snatched it up far too quickly and tore it open.
She wrote that she was freeing him. She did not wish to see him ever again. She was going away, never to return. His fist tightened on the letter, crumpling it before he even finished reading.
Damn her. How dare she think she could leave him so easily, without warning, without a word? She couldn’t. He wouldn’t stand for it. He had to find her. But first, he needed to confront Eleanor. Tossing the entire sheaf of papers to the floor, he stalked from the chamber, his former lover’s name on his lips as if it were a war cry.
“Eleanor!” His vision had blackened with his rage as he realized the depths to which she’d sunk. She had been cruel, had hurt Maggie. “Eleanor, goddamn it, show yourself.”
She refused. He knew which chamber she’d been assigned, neatly solving the immediate problem of giving her a tongue-lashing. Without bothering to knock, he threw open the door. Eleanor was seated at a writing desk but she stood hastily at his entrance, her eyes wide.
“Sandy, whatever is the matter?”
“You can dispense with the pretense of your innocence,” he hissed, crossing the room to her and only stopping when he feared he may be capable of grabbing her arm and hauling her out the door. “I know what you’ve done.”
Her Lovestruck Lord: 2 (Wicked Husbands) Page 16