The Lady Who Loved Him

by Christi Caldwell

  Chloe wet her lips. “It’s why you set aside your studies… and Lady Daphne?” she ventured, far more clever than could ever be safe.

  “The agency had reason to believe I was compromised. I went off to meet with her and break it off…”

  “It wasn’t disapproving parents,” she breathed, sliding the puzzle pieces he’d handed her into place. “It was—”

  He again nodded. “After we’d made love, I discovered we’d been followed.” And so he’d ended it in the cruelest way possible. “None of that matters. Your silence,” and your safety, “is essential.” Leo grabbed the missive she’d received. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, focusing on the one thing he’d always been able to control—his work.

  “I came to the library, and it was resting on the sofa.”

  His home had been infiltrated. Impossible. That would have to mean there was someone on his staff, in his midst… nay, worse, within the Brethren who wanted him to abandon his efforts. Something stirred at the back of his mind. The thought proved a dark, unpleasant niggling. An impossibility… and yet… not.

  How many men had betrayed the Crown in the past, and how many would in the future?

  But why… Why?

  Leo struggled to think.

  “What is the mission they seek to steer you away from?”

  For a moment, he weighed silence. But Chloe knew too much. And with her familial connection to Waterson, she might prove valuable in ways he hadn’t considered. “I had reason to believe the Cato Street Conspiracy, the plan to—”

  “I’m familiar with it,” Chloe interrupted.

  Despite the horror of all that had unfolded, admiration for this woman rose to the surface. Leo went on to provide the details about his investigation… and her role involved in it.

  “So you wed me to be closer to Gabriel’s closest friend,” she murmured.

  “It was a mutually beneficial goal,” he said gruffly. “My superiors had expressed displeasure with my recklessness.” He cracked his knuckles. “There were rumors that I’d bedded my immediate supervisor’s wife.”

  “Rumors.” Chloe ran her eyes over his face. “You did not, then, make her your lover.”

  He shook his head. “Any further scandals would have seen me removed from my post.”

  Understanding dawned in her eyes. “It is because we were discovered. We were the scandal.”

  “My superior was gleeful with the prospect of my being cast out.”

  A resentment he’d attributed to the other man’s viper of a wife… and now something more sinister had reared at the back of his mind.

  “Another lady would dissolve into a fit of tears at that betrayal,” he noted.

  “Ours was a business arrangement from the beginning, Leo. I had my own desires and expectations of a union between us. It would be unfair to resent you for your reasons.”

  Did that still hold true? Or had she come to care for him, as he had her?

  His palms moistened with his aching need for an answer.

  Chloe drifted closer. “You gave your life to the Crown, you gave up the woman you loved. And yet, the men you serve had so little faith in your loyalty,” she murmured, stroking a palm over his cheek. “They wronged you.”

  His heart hammered. How did she see feelings he carried? Resentment he’d shared with none?

  He shoved her hand back, and his always fearless wife shrank once more from him. “You make presumptions you shouldn’t,” he hissed.

  From the corner of his eyes, he caught her inching toward the door.

  He stepped into her path, wringing a gasp from her.

  Leo caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tipping her gaze to meet his.

  She winced.

  “You think you just get to walk away, madam?” Leo placed his lips along her ear. The hint of jasmine flooded his senses. God, she was a siren, and he was helpless where she was concerned. Held in the grip of frustration, he seethed. “Your life is no longer your own.” And how he hated that for her and loathed himself for stripping that anonymity from her. Nonetheless, he needed to open her eyes to the peril she would forever face. “When you walk outside, an enemy wishing to get to me knows you are there.” Just as they had with the carriage accident. “When you attend a dinner party, the safety of your repast is no longer assured.” With every possible threat he dangled, the color seeped more and more from her cheeks until her eyes stood out, stark, vivid pools of terror within her porcelain-white visage. “Rides in Hyde Park or outings to the modiste… no place is safe.”

  I’m going to be ill.

  Leo’s stomach roiled, vomit stinging his throat. He abruptly released her, and she tripped over him in her haste to put distance between them. Leo dusted his palms together. “I trust I needn’t stress the importance of your keeping this information to yourself.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Do you think me an empty-headed miss who’d bandy about your role and jeopardize your work?”

  “You expect confidence in the lady who sought out my former lover to bring us both peace?” He smiled coldly. “Oh, with your tender heart, one couldn’t say what you’d share, and with whom, to alter people’s opinions of me.”

  Say something. Lash out at me. Defend yourself and send me to the devil as I deserve.

  Instead, Chloe remained stoically silent.

  Leo caressed a palm down her right shoulder, drifting it along her modest décolletage. He wrapped her in a loose embrace. “I expect you to play the role of perfect hostess tomorrow at our soiree, madam. You’ll smile, because I need you smiling. You’ll arrange discussions between me and Waterson and anyone else I require. Are we clear?”

  “I don’t break my word,” she retorted with a faint quiver to her voice.

  “Get out.” The command whistled past clenched teeth.

  And she did what she should have done at their first meeting—she fled.

  After she’d gone, Leo stormed over to the door and kicked it closed with the bottom of his boot. The violent force set the frame to shaking.

  Bloody hell.

  It had been as he’d feared. A risk he’d realized too late—that Chloe would forever be in peril because of his work for the Brethren. He’d sent Daphne Smith away long, long ago. So many years had passed that he’d believed himself sufficiently deadened to feeling anything.

  Only to be proven so wholly wrong—with Chloe at risk for that mistake.

  He began to pace. All right. So he’d revealed the truth to her. This needn’t be a bad thing. In fact, it had been wrong to keep her in the dark. Not knowing about the work he did and the enemies he had as a result would only see her an unwitting target.

  Yes, at least she knew… and could be on alert.

  But it did not erase the fact that when this was all said and done, he needed to send her away.

  Leo rubbed uselessly at the ache in his chest. He’d believed himself heartless, only to find out that he very much did possess that dangerous organ and that it beat for his wife.

  Chapter 27

  As a child, Chloe had pitied her mother and all that went into the planning of balls and soirees. Aside from the lists and invitations that consumed her time leading up to the grand events, there were the floral arrangements and orchestra to be arranged, servants to be directed, and refreshments seen to and properly situated.

  That was why the morning following a sleepless night, Chloe’s inability to move, breathe, or think had come at the utmost worst time.

  But then, she’d learned early on that her megrims were not discriminating. They didn’t care whether it was a cheerful, summer day in the country or, say, one’s presentation before the queen. They came when they would, dictating her every action. Or rather… her inaction.

  Her maid moved about the room in a chipper manner, humming a discordant tune as she dragged the curtains open.

  Sunlight flooded Chloe’s chambers.

  Groaning, Chloe placed her palms lightly over her eyes. Even that
faintest pressure sent nausea churning in her stomach. “Stop,” she entreated when Doris reached for another one of the gold tassels. The plea echoed around her brain like the hammering upon an anvil.

  The maid stopped. “But you indicated I should wake you. ’Tis the day of the soiree and—”

  God hated Chloe. There was no other accounting for her inability to so much as quell a rambling maid in her employ and spare herself the throbbing, vicious ache. She blindly fished around for one of the pillows until her fingers made purchase with the linen fabric. She dragged it over her face. The cool, feather-soft fabric blotted out all light and muted her garrulous maid.

  When the misery came, one took any relief as a monumental triumph.

  Chloe drew in slow, steady breaths.

  She needed to make her maid stop. Needed her to go. Weighing the torture of speaking against that of the whine of Doris’ speech, Chloe shifted the pillow slightly over her mouth.

  “Go,” she ordered.

  The maid paused midsentence. “My lady?”

  “I said go,” she repeated, too loudly, and her eyes clenched reflexively at the excruciating sound of her own voice. Nay, everything was magnified under the onslaught of her megrims, the press of the door handle, the click of the panel shutting.

  As soon as silence fell, Chloe removed the pillow and promptly wished she hadn’t.

  Her eyesight tunneled, canceling out her peripheral view as blinding, bright spots dotted her vision. Heart thudding in her ears, like the incessant beat of a drum, Chloe bit down hard on her lip.

  The metallic tinge of blood filled her nostrils, flooding her senses. No. No. No. No.

  Since she’d wed Leo, she’d allowed herself the illusion of forgetting the hell that would always be with her. She had been happy and focused only on them, together. She’d not given thought to this. A piteous moan escaped her, ratcheting up the pain that wrapped around the base of her skull.

  Chloe forced herself upright. She held her hands up uselessly, fighting to steady the spinning room, and stumbled step by laborious step to the curtains.

  After an endless journey, she collapsed against the wall. She borrowed support from the wall as, with her left hand, she searched for and found the gold tie.

  Such a small task.

  She tugged.

  One her maid had so easily seen to.

  Chloe tried again.

  Flitting from curtain to curtain, unleashing the torture of the morning light on Chloe’s hellish world.

  At last, Chloe freed the tassel, and the heavy velvet fluttered back into place. Each whoosh and whir of fabric produced a magnified clamor in her ears. Hunching her shoulders, Chloe cradled her head in one hand. She moved from window to window until the room was doused in darkness once more.

  Panting, she limped over to the four-poster bed at the center of her chambers and collapsed onto the mattress. That Herculean effort drained all life from her limbs as she lay with her cheek against the rumpled linen sheets.

  Time ceased to matter or mean anything. It could have been marching on into eternity or standing still altogether, for when her headaches came, she dwelled only in a hell created by her mind.

  A single tear popped out the corner of her eye.

  Never before had she missed her family and staff who knew about the secret she carried. They had been there to tug the curtains, casting the rooms in darkness, forbidding noise, and offering absolute silence and still.

  It had been inevitable.

  The debilitating migraines that had haunted Chloe since she was a girl would always be there. They were the demons left behind by her father, torturing her still, lingering until she, one day, would draw her last breath.

  And when her headaches struck, death was the most appealing of options. For then, there would be no suffering or pain… but the bliss of emptiness.

  But death came only when it was ready, and Chloe was left to suffer through the misery that was life.

  Drawing in a shaky breath, she pulled herself all the way onto the bed until she lay facedown in the center—and then she slept.

  A frantic beating sliced across her uneasy slumber.

  Where was she? What was that infernal banging?

  Her eyes heavy, Chloe forced the lashes open.

  She winced as an aura of white light danced before her vision. That light was made even more acute by the pitch black of her rooms.

  “My lady,” a muffled voice was saying, “…come to ready you for…”

  Ready Chloe for what?

  And then she remembered: her marriage, Leo’s volatile explosion, the soiree.

  Oh, bloody, bloody hell.

  The soiree.

  RapRapRap

  “My lady?”

  The words muffled by the oak panel became all the more distorted by the high-pitched whine in her ears.

  No.

  Chloe turned her head toward the revolving clock, trying to make sense of time in her darkened quarters, the cherubs holding the crystal glass more like Satan’s spawns as they shoved the cylinder in a dizzying circular movement. The numbers, as they pulled into focus, were obscured by the dancing ball of light behind her eyes.

  Tears stole the remainder of her vision.

  “My lady?” Doris called again, her voice shifting in and out of focus.

  I cannot do this…

  And yet, she had to. She couldn’t very well renege on the agreement she’d struck with Leo. Furthermore, there would be a ballroom full of lords and ladies—her family included—and deafening noise and blindingly bright chandeliers, and—

  Gritting her teeth, she swung her legs over the bed. Chloe’s stomach turned over at the suddenness of her movements. “Just a moment,” she forced herself to call out.

  It was only one night. A handful of hours. Surely she could put on a show for everyone’s benefit.

  And then nausea assailed her. Bile climbed her throat, and she swallowed rhythmically, over and over. She could not do this. “T-tell his lordship I will not be coming,” she rasped, praying her threadbare voice carried, praying Leo would leave her alone, praying for death.

  Chloe knew the latter two were useless prayers that would never be answered. Leo had expectations and wouldn’t—nay, couldn’t—accept her refusal to attend.

  “My lady?” Confusion wreathed her maid’s question.

  “I’m not attending,” she managed to call. “Tell him I’m not feeling well enough to,” she sucked in a breath, fighting to continue, “join him.”

  Oh, God.

  A moment later, with the frantic footfalls of her maid rushing off, Chloe grabbed the empty chamber pot at her bedside and heaved the contents of her stomach into the porcelain bowl.

  *

  Where in the blazes was she?

  Standing in the foyer, Leo consulted his timepiece for a third time.

  The lady was furious with him.

  As she should be… for any host of reasons. One, she deserved a respectable, honorable gent who’d offer her a staid but safe life. Two, he’d lied to her at every turn. All for valuable reasons related to his work, but lies nonetheless. The list really could go on and on.

  Even with all that, he’d never considered that she might ever renege on—

  Footsteps sounded overhead. At last. Tucking his timepiece into his jacket, Leo glanced at the landing. “I’d begun to think you weren’t coming, l—”

  Chloe’s maid appeared at the top of the sweeping staircase. “Her ladyship sent me. She indicated that I should tell you… tell you…”

  “Yes?” he barked, his already thinly held patience snapping.

  “Her ladyship is not coming,” the maid squeaked and scurried off.

  Leo puzzled his brow. Her ladyship was not coming? “Halt.” His command boomed around the sweeping foyer, freezing the trembling young maid in her spot.

  The girl faced him. Even with the space between them, her audible swallow reached his ears. “I-is there something you wish, my lord?”
/>
  Yes. His wife. “What do you mean, she is not coming?” he called up.

  Darting her nervous eyes about, the servant studiously avoided looking at Leo. As the one who oversaw all the hiring of Leo’s very small staff, how in the blazes had the man seen to the hiring of this meek miss? There wasn’t a scrap of Brethren boldness or fire in her. “I asked—”

  “Her ladyship simply said she’s not coming and ordered me to leave,” she cried, fisting the front of her skirts. “Her ladyship claimed she isn’t feeling well enough to attend.”

  He snorted. “My wife doesn’t have a weak constitution.” Which only meant… she was making a statement with her refusal. Leo cursed. He had been a bloody bastard last evening. Out of frustration and fear, he’d lashed out, ordering Chloe about… when not even the king himself would have the wherewithal to do so.

  “Do you wish for me t-to deliver a m-message?” the maid ventured.

  The girl sounded about ready to dissolve into a blubbering mess if he accepted that offer.

  “I’ll gather her myself,” he gritted out. He’d not even finished his thought before the servant bolted.

  “Is there a problem, my lord?”

  Leo started at the unexpected appearance of his butler at his side. “Bloody hell, announce yourself, man.”

  Tomlinson grinned and then promptly hid his amusement. “As you wish,” he demurred.

  “And yes, there is a problem.” Leo had had a scarcity of friends over the years and no real confidantes, and Tomlinson had played that de facto role. At least, he’d come as close as Leo could manage to—he grimaced—friendship. Or, that had been the case until his spitfire wife.

  The same clever minx who’d invaded his office and gathered that all of Leo’s life had been nothing more than a lie. The same minx who’d locked herself in her rooms. At the worst possible time.