“You were lately in France,” her ladyship said.
“Before my recent marriage I was the Duchesse de Clermont-Ferand,” Virginie answered, and watched the other woman’s face closely. Most of the gentry were Tories, and many Tories resented or distrusted the French. Or just plain hated them.
Lady Simpson showed none of those tendencies. “I would have enjoyed a visit to France. But I fear I am too set in my ways and London is the furthest I will go. I had planned, you know, but my poor mother’s last illness prevented our visit. Perhaps next year.”
They left the house and took the path to a charming garden, set out with straight paths in a vaguely geometric pattern. A formal garden. The passion for nature had not yet reached this far then, with its contrived wildernesses. Or perhaps the Simpsons did not approve.
“I am sorry to hear of your mother.”
“She lived here and towards the end she became very fretful,” Lady Simpson said. “I spent nearly all my time with her. That was why—but never mind,” she concluded hastily.
“But I do.” Virginie spoke softly, understanding. “I am not yet a mother, but now that I have married again, I hope to be. My late husband was an old man, you understand.”
Lady Simpson nodded. Here in the garden she appeared more relaxed, more eager to talk. Her voice had lowered, become less formal, less clipped, and a trace of a local accent touched her tones. “Indeed, my lady. But it is for the best. Rhea’s disgrace could have tainted her brothers and sisters. John hopes for a career in the church. I feel for her, truly, but we cannot—” She swallowed. “The babies—are they well?”
“Perfectly, and well cared for. Their putative father is taking care of them. The Duke of Lyndhurst.” Would the title sway her? She must know.
She showed no shock at the name, so she did know. “I fear that the duke is not their parent. The timing is wrong.”
“Do you know who their father is?”
Lady Simpson shook her head. “Is that why you are here?”
“No,” Virginie said mendaciously. “We truly wished to meet our tenants and to convey our regrets. To see if there was anything we could do to ease your burden.”
“I do thank you for that.” Lady Simpson gave her a shy smile. “Although you understand, we cannot do anything for her or the children. Even to send support to the babies would admit more than we can afford to do.”
“I understand.” She truly did. With six other children to provide for, the reputation of a fallen daughter could prove disastrous. But Virginie would have found a way, even if she had been a mortal in Lady Simpson’s position. She would have done something for the babies, spirited the daughter away somehow.
“When Rhea left home, it was too late,” her ladyship continued. Then her story started to come out. “She met the duke in the spring. He was travelling from Scotland back down to England, I believe. It was a brief encounter, but she admitted it, once she had no other course.”
Lady Simpson turned a corner. Virginie accompanied her along a high hedge that obscured their view from the room upstairs where Harry was engaging Sir Samuel in business talk. Halfway down the path, Lady Simpson stopped and faced Virginie. Her eyes were haggard, her mouth flat and her face pale. “I will tell you, ma’am.”
Virginie nodded. “Please. I will do whatever you wish, and I swear I won’t betray your confidence to your husband.” But she might to hers.
Lady Simpson nodded. “Thank you. But I must tell someone.” At the sharp snap, Virginie glanced down. She’d thought Lady Simpson had stepped on a twig or something of that nature, but it was not that. She’d been clutching her fan so tightly that she’d broken the sticks. Gently, Virginie removed the ruined object from the lady’s convulsive grasp and shoved it in her pocket.
“I have remained quiet because I had to. The neighbours think Rhea died in Wales, on a visit to her grandmother.”
“They will hear no different. In London, the death was ruled a suicide. Her name was not discussed in the newspapers.”
“Thank you!” Lady Simpson wrung Virginie’s hand, and Virginie was hard put not to wince. “I am so grateful that my child’s end will not become a scandal, as her life was. Rhea was a mischievous child, and not a wise one. I do not know if she spent the time with the duke or not, as she claimed, but he was not the father of her children. She was already expecting, although nobody knew it at the time. A month after the duke’s visit,” Lady Simpson continued, “she told me she was expecting a child. She swore it was the duke, but I don’t think it could have been. No, I’m sure of it.”
Relief swept through Virginie. Although her affair with Marcus was in the past, and their enchantment broken, that did not mean that she didn’t still regard him as a friend. Perhaps one day they could resume that friendship. Rhea had deceived him. Let him think she was a maidservant and ripe for the taking, as a subterfuge. “Do you know who the father might be?”
“Yes.” Lady Simpson glanced down and sighed. “I must explain that we had a domestic who Rhea was over-friendly with. An older woman, and the best housekeeper I ever had. But consequently Rhea spent too much time with the servants. We had a footman, one she became too fond of. We had tried to break Rhea’s unhealthy devotion to him, but we failed.”
Virginie pieced the story together. The footman had impregnated Rhea, and then Rhea had tried to blame Marcus. After she was already pregnant. If she had succeeded, she could have become a duchess, able to cuckold Marcus whenever she wished. She had pursued him to London with that aim.
“What happened to the footman?”
“We turned him off. He left, cursing us, but they found him dead a week later. Poisoned himself in a country inn. His note said he could not live without our daughter.”
“Does the housekeeper still work for you?”
Lady Simpson sighed. “No. Deirdre Bramwell left us shortly after. She didn’t require a character reference, which was just as well because, despite her excellent work, we could not have given her one. It was about a week after we heard Rhea’s news and two weeks before she left for London. We had no idea where she’d gone. We planned to send her to Wales, where my mother had acquired a house. She would live there quietly as a widow until the child was born, and then return home alone. We would tell people that she had gone to care for her sick grandmother.”
Shock arced through Virginie. How many housekeepers were there whose name was Deirdre?
With a shaking voice, she asked, “What did the housekeeper look like?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Harry was worried. Virginie had behaved as normal in saying farewell to the Simpsons, and travelled back to the house talking about the weather and the garden. Harry wished he had not requested the open carriage.
As soon as they arrived back, he took her upstairs to the drawing room and ordered tea. When the maid delivered it, he dismissed her. The tea tray remained by Virginie’s side, untouched as she gripped his hands and met his gaze.
“It’s my mother,” she said. “She did this.”
The story came out haltingly. While Harry listened, barely interrupting, he was trying to make sense of the story.
The footman, the unfortunate father of Rhea’s children, had been poisoned. Rhea had been poisoned. Someone other than Eros had enchanted him and Virginie.
It made awful sense. He ran through the possibilities of these incidents being unconnected. That the footman had poisoned himself, that he and Virginie had been bespelled by someone else, that—no. He didn’t believe in coincidences.
Virginie was right. But before they took action, he wanted to be sure.
“A housekeeper would have access to a stillroom, and the skills necessary—” He broke off.
“Yes, she would. And she knew me, all of me. Who I am.” Virginie spoke by rote, her voice dead.
If he didn’t act, he would lose her. Sitting on the sofa holding hands wouldn’t help her, so he drew her into his arms, heedless of the fine silk he was crushing. Equally heedless, she cam
e, resting her head on his shoulder. He kissed her, softly and undemandingly. “We need to be sure.”
“Yes,” she said tonelessly. “But it seems likely.” She swallowed. “She may have enchanted the duc. I always wondered why he married me. He said he was in love with me.” She frowned.
“No.” He stopped her mouth with another kiss. “I was not enchanted when I married you and I’m not enchanted now. I know it. But I will enchant her.”
“What?” She would have sat up, but he held her firmly.
After he’d told her what he meant, then he’d let her go. “I can ensnare her. When we return home I will spend some time in my smithy. You understand?”
The god of iron-working could snare magic. Iron was an ancient weapon and Harry was its master.
“What will you do?”
“Make a trap. She has to tell the truth once I do that. Tonight I’ll send a messenger to d’Argento. I want him present as witness. And, perhaps, Stretton.”
From her wide eyes and the way she swallowed he didn’t have to tell her why. Stretton could send her mother into herself.
Privately Harry wondered what they were taking on. To enchant them, surely Deirdre had to be more than a mortal. Even if her skills with potions and such was more than they had supposed, she couldn’t have enchanted her daughter and himself by that alone. Surely she could not!
They set out for their home the next day.
It took a day to reach the house, and when they did, they had a fraught interview to face and lies to tell. Harry had held Virginie all night, but they had not made love. For the first time he’d learned the pleasure of simply sleeping with his wife in his arms. She’d cried, broken at the thought that her mother could be responsible for the devastation that had been wreaked on the Simpson family, and he’d soothed her. Even in that he found pleasure, through the piercing sorrow that a parent was responsible. He’d considered his mother as a suspect. She had killed his father. But she had done that for him. She had no reason to kill Rhea Simpson.
It was not certain. They only had a name. But they both knew they could discover more. Had Deirdre done more elsewhere that they didn’t know about? In the years of Virginie’s first marriage, had she moved around Britain for a reason other than to elude the Duke of Boscobel?
The sooner they found out, the better. But it would take him time to build his trap. He planned it as she slept, knew exactly what he’d do with the iron and how he’d trap her. Mortal or immortal she would have to tell the truth, once he had her. But she must suspect nothing until he had completed his task. It would take at least three days, he calculated. Three hard days’ work, putting his power into it.
“What will you make?” she whispered in the dead of night. He’d thought her asleep.
“A net. A trap she won’t escape. She will tell the truth and then we’ll know.” To soothe her, he kissed her, and made her a promise. “I will make one for you, if you like. A different kind of net.”
“What kind?”
“One you can break whenever you wish.” He would. In the times when he couldn’t work on the deadly trap, he’d fashion something else. He’d planned it some time ago, but now he would make his dream real. “Virginie, I swear I will love you and care for you all the days of my life. You know that, don’t you?”
She turned, her eyes gleaming in the near dark. “I want to know. Now, I know what they mean when people speak of shifting sands.”
“Don’t think of it. Please sleep.”
“Only if you do too.”
After that they did sleep, and they didn’t get underway until eight the next morning, when they’d planned to start at six.
They decided to break their journey this time. Or rather, Harry did. He didn’t want Virginie as exhausted as she’d been when they arrived in the north. Although not due entirely to travel, he sensed her weariness. Even though they were only twenty miles from home, he called a halt at a good coaching inn and spent the night there, to ensure Virginie had all the rest she needed.
Except that after they’d climbed into bed she turned to him and kissed him, and after that he was lost. How could he resist? Although he tried to be gentle, she pulled at his nightshirt that he’d donned in a vain attempt to urge her to sleep. He dragged it off, then helped her off with her own.
“They’ll hear us,” he warned her. “You scream.”
“I can be quieter.”
“Don’t.” He loved her scream when she came, the abandonment of the sound. He didn’t care who heard, he had only thought of her.
But she urged him on top of her, her hands caressing him, her legs spread as wide as she could manage as if she wanted to encompass him completely. Happy to oblige, he slid over her, settling between her thighs. She lifted her knees, hugging his abdomen. His cock nudged her folds, gathering her juices, bathing in them. “You’re ready for me.”
She laughed. “Obviously I can hide nothing from you, husband.”
“Least of all that you love me.”
“Least of all that.”
He kissed her as he entered her, pushing his shaft steadily into her. The restraint he used sent him wild, but he remained ruthlessly in control, forcing himself to go slowly. She tasted divine, sweet and seductive, slightly different every time so he always hungered for a taste of her. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her nipples hard, even though he hadn’t taken the time to caress them.
Lifting away as he withdrew, he remedied that oversight. While he used one arm to support his upper body, he put the other to even better purpose and caressed her. He could bend and lick her nipples, which he proceeded to do at length, while he drove in and out of her, keeping his strokes regular and steady. She sighed, her breath stirring his hair.
If he could help her to forget their troubles no other way, he had this. Not that this was why he wanted to love her, to demonstrate the emotions burgeoning in his heart. He sometimes found difficulty expressing himself in words, but in this he could show her his love again and again.
He watched her, but didn’t insist she watch him in return. Sure of her love, he spent his time savouring her beautiful body, caressing and kissing her. When he kissed her mouth she responded with all the passion he could ever wish for. She thrust her tongue into his mouth, accepting his, letting him taste her, while he continued to drive them both steadily higher.
As they moved closer to each other, understanding one another a little better each day, their lovemaking improved. She knew how he liked to take her, and he knew the exact position of the spot inside her that drove her wild. He teased her, just touching it, then moving past it, until she squirmed and he laughed before giving her what she wanted.
She grew wetter, easing his way. His balls hit her soft flesh every time he thrust into her, until they lost time. The night flew past in a welter of stars, dark clouds and thick, black intimacy.
Until they came, this time together. He gave her his soul when she tightened around him, and he jetted into her, the pulses draining him of more than his seed. He would give her everything. Except her freedom.
When they’d done, he rolled off her, curling an arm around her so she rolled with him. Almost automatically she lifted her leg to lay it across his and nestle her body as close as it could get.
“You screamed,” he said, before he kissed her. “I love you.”
She stifled a yawn. “I know. To both. You are incorrigible, my lord.”
“Then you’ll have to keep incorriging me.”
She poked him for his appalling joke. “How can you, after such a wonderful experience, jest so dreadfully?”
“Maybe I’m happy.”
And he was.
They had agreed to pretend to be in the throes of the enchantment. That way Deirdre would not be suspicious of them or try to set the spell again. Since love had overtaken them, that did not prove difficult once they’d returned home. However, the need to touch, take, and the way they used to excuse themselves early to couple frantically in
any available place had gone for good. They both recognised their actions had become more risky recently and would have led to social disaster sooner or later.
Not now. Feigning that led to unexpected laughter, as they held each other in a small closet that held old linens destined for the ragbag. Virginie made Harry admit that he had discovered some unusual nooks and crannies in his house that he would never had dreamed existed before. Then he tickled her and forced her to remain silent, except for the moans and sighs the servants would hear and report back to her mother. If they could trust one thing, it was that servants gossiped.
They heard from d’Argento—by pigeon, naturally. He was on his way and would arrive the next day. How he travelled so fast remained a mystery, but he duly arrived.
The dowager received d’Argento graciously. Especially when he brought a sizable retinue with him and arrived dressed in a perfectly designed green riding coat and breeches, with white embroidered waistcoat.
“I wish my Harry would wear something more suited to his station sometimes,” she confided with a sigh. “He is so very plain!”
D’Argento shot an amused glance at Harry. “Indeed he dresses plainly, although I know many people who would consider him far from plain.” He addressed Harry, “Since you were kind enough to invite the Marquis of Stretton, he has sent a message. He will be here directly, probably in a day or two.”
Harry was working in his forge most of the time. The forge stood about half a mile from the main house. A sensible precaution because of the fire risk. The path between the two was broad and easily walked. Consequently, two days after d’Argento’s arrival, when he was busy escorting their mothers in the garden for a gentle walk that he promised Virginie would last at least an hour, she set out to view Harry’s progress. She had a surprise for him.
The forge was hot, so she’d worn the fewest clothes she could get away with and still appear respectable, and kept them to dark colours. Her fine dark blue silk would not pass muster in London, since she was wearing it without hoops. She had no intention of displaying huge skirts that would waft the flames and catch any stray spark.
Forged by Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 4 Page 23