by Liz Carlyle
Damn him, she thought. Damn him straight to hell.
It was as if what little security she possessed had shattered. She felt hot, urgent tears well up behind her eyes. What a fool she was! This had been inevitable. Bentley Rutledge was pathologically incapable of fidelity. Had she not known it from the start?
She knew the servant, too. She was loud, and not the least bit attractive, unless one counted her mop of blond ringlets or her overripe figure. And she was forever cooing over Bentley, calling him ‘ducks.’ Queenie, her name was. A saucy piece, Jennie had said. That, apparently, had been an understatement.
His footsteps were closing in. “Freddie!” The word was sharp with warning.
Frederica did not heed it. She threw open the door just as Bentley reached the top of the stairs. Without looking back, she slammed the door and twisted the key. Violently, he wrenched at the doorknob. When it would not yield, his fist came crashing down. “Open the damned door, Frederica!” he barked, beating on it. “Open it this instant!”
Frederica had thrown herself across the bed. “Go to the devil, Bentley Rutledge!” she shouted, loud enough to be heard through the heavy oak.
This time, he kicked the door so hard she saw the bottom give. “Open it, Frederica!” he roared. “Open it, or I swear to God, I’ll start a row that’ll have Cam and Helene and half the house up here!”
That frightened her. Temper was one thing, but the English did not approve of vulgar displays of emotion. That much she knew. In a panic, she fisted her hands in the bedcovers.
“Freddie!” Bentley pummeled at the wood until the hinges rattled. “Damn you, Freddie, don’t make me break down this door!”
Dashing the backs of her hands beneath her eyes, she dragged herself off the bed and went to the door. He came in as soon as she turned the key, shoving the door so hard it swung round and struck the wall behind it. He slammed it shut again, then stared at her through eyes which were aggrieved yet grim. “By God, woman, don’t you ever do that again.” His voice was low and fierce. “Don’t you dare lock my own bedroom door on me. Do you hear?”
She watched him stalk across the room with his lean, predatory grace. But Frederica turned her back on him, refusing to be cowed. His hand touched her shoulder, gentle but resolute. She wheeled around at once and caught him hard across the face with her open palm.
“Don’t you touch me!” she hissed.
She saw the sting in his eyes. A terrible, dark look passed over his face. His fingers dug into her shoulder. “Why, you black-eyed Portuguese witch,” he rasped. “You don’t give a man much of a chance, do you?”
For that, she tried to strike him again. But this time, Bentley snared her hand. Frederica barely restrained the urge to spit in his face. “If you mean to suggest I am no milk-and-water English miss, you’re right!” she snapped as he dragged her body hard against his. “And if you expect me to stand by whilst my husband fondles the servants and makes a fool of me, you’re wrong!”
Bentley’s lips thinned in frustration. He looked mean and cold-hearted, his face made more grim by a blue-back shadow of beard. “By God, Freddie, it isn’t like that.”
“The hell it isn’t,” she retorted. “It is exactly like that. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”
Bentley shook his head, and for an instant, she thought she saw fear in his eyes. “I don’t,” he said quietly. “Freddie, if you would just let me explain—”
She jerked her face away. “There is no explanation,” she whispered. “None which I care to hear. Now, if there is anything of the gentleman left in you, Bentley Rutledge, get out. Get out, and leave me in peace. I feel ill. I do not need you, and I do not want you here. I never have, and I said so from the very first.”
She felt his hand go limp, then slide away. “Aye, so you did,” he said softly.
The next sound she heard was the door clicking softly shut. And with it, an awful sense of hopelessness settled over her. She threw herself back across the bed and sobbed as though her heart was breaking. And it was, she finally realized. It was. She had stupidly given it to Bentley Rutledge, and he had trod all over it.
Chapter Thirteen
In which Lord Treyhern’s matutinal Respite is Ruined.
The Earl of Treyhern was a man of deep-seated habits, and it had long been his custom to breakfast alone in the dining room every morning at six o’clock sharp. And every day, he partook of the same repast: black coffee and two slices of bread, lightly buttered. He did not encourage—and did not enjoy—any alteration to this routine. So he felt vaguely put upon when his younger brother stalked into the dining room at five minutes past the hour, wearing a grim expression and yesterday’s clothes.
The rumpled attire was of little consequence. Bentley’s days and nights had always tended to meld rather haphazardly. But today, Bentley did not appear to be plagued by the effects of a miserable morning after, as one might have expected. He looked more as if he were dreading what might lie ahead. Indeed, his brother looked so wretched the earl had not the heart to send him away. And that was saying something.
“Morning,” he grunted by way of greeting. “Coffee?”
With a terse nod, Bentley went to the sideboard. He set a cup on a saucer with a violence and seized the coffeepot in what looked like a death grip. After filling the cup, he set it down on the table, yanked out a chair, and hurled himself into it. “Just tell me one bloody thing, Cam,” he demanded, staring sullenly at the black brew. “What the devil do women want?”
Treyhern made a little tsking sound from the side of his mouth. “It’s a mystery,” he confessed, buttering another bit of bread. “And an ever-changing one, at that.”
Bentley lifted his eyes from his coffee and held his brother’s gaze with a gravity Treyhern had never seen before. “I mean, do they want a fellow to slice open a vein and bleed for them?” he asked. “Is there no latitude? No explaining one’s self? Not one inch of slack in their reins or one ounce of mercy in their hearts?”
“Oh, God.” Treyhern had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. “What have you done now?”
For an instant, Bentley hesitated. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Treyhern arched one brow. “Do you wish my advice or not?”
Bentley bristled at once. “I don’t want a damned thing from you.”
The earl lifted his coffee cup and stared across the rim at his brother. “Well, pardon the hell out of me, Bentley,” he answered. “I could have sworn I just heard you asking my opinion.”
His brother’s eyes seemed unable to focus clearly. “Sometimes, Cam, I am not sure I can trust you to have my best interests at heart when it comes to my wife,” he whispered. “Sometimes I am afraid…that you should like to see me fail at this.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Treyhern, his voice sharp with pain. “How can you say such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” Bentley shook his head as if to clear his vision.
“Bentley,” said Treyhern more kindly. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
His brother had the grace to drop his gaze. “I just gave Queenie a good squeeze on the arse, that was all,” he quietly confessed. “And—well, I tried to kiss her. Sort of.”
The earl put his cup back down with a clatter. “Christ Almighty, Bentley!” He shoved away his plate in disgust. “Not the staff again! And especially not Queenie. It was your idea to bring her here so that she might escape just that sort of thing!”
“Blister it, Cam, it wasn’t like that!” he said stridently. “It was a peck! Just a little peck! And a bit of a grope. It cheers the old gal up to have a fellow make over her a bit and try to steal a little pinch now and again.”
Treyhern was a little mollified. “Cheered your new bride up, too, hmm?” he muttered. “Did she catch you red-handed?”
“More or less,” Bentley admitted, propping his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “Don’t know how the devil I’m to explain myself, either, when
she won’t let me back in my own bloody bedchamber.”
Treyhern pondered his brother’s predicament with more than a little satisfaction. It looked as though Frederica might succeed where he had failed. At least one of Bentley’s bad habits was about to be shed. “Well, old boy,” he said very gravely. “There is nothing else for it. I am afraid you’ll have to go to Cheltenham and buy some jewelry.”
“Jewelry?” said Bentley querulously. “I generally save that until they are crying.”
“Oh, she’s crying,” said Treyhern quite certainly. “Depend upon it. She is facedown on the bed, sobbing her heart out even as we speak.”
Gingerly, Bentley rubbed his jaw. “Well, she wasn’t sobbing when she backhanded me,” he said. “She was spitting like a hellcat, and cursing, too. That Iberian temper of hers is going to be the death of me. I’ll tell you, Cam, it sometimes seems this marriage business is nothing but a damned misery.”
“Oh, it can be,” the earl agreed, laying aside his butter knife. “It most assuredly can be.” And Treyhern could not think when he had enjoyed another man’s misery so much.
“Ahem!” said a voice from the door.
Treyhern looked up to see his wife standing there, her arms crossed in recalcitrance and one shoulder propped against the doorframe. She looked stunning, too, in his favorite amethyst-colored gown, with her heavy black hair twisted up in a simple style. But her left eyebrow was arched halfway up her forehead, which meant she’d been there awhile. Oh, hell.
But he did not say that aloud. Instead, he smiled and came at once to his feet. “Good morning, my dear,” he said. “Will you take coffee?”
Bentley was already circling around the table to pull out Helene’s chair. “Thank you, I will,” she murmured, tossing Bentley a chary glance over one shoulder as he scooted her forward.
Bentley returned to his seat and resumed his sulky posture. Cam put down her cup and pressed a light kiss to the top of Helene’s hair. “You’re up early, my love.”
“How could one help but be, given all that racket upstairs?” she answered, her dark gaze sliding back to her brother-in-law. “Bentley, what was going on?”
His words terse, Bentley told her, and, to his credit, he did not whitewash one word. “It was stupid,” he admitted when he’d finished his story. “But it was just an accident.”
Helene looked at him very oddly. “Things like that are never accidents, Bentley,” she said quietly. “You did it, and you did it quite deliberately. What you should ask yourself is why.”
“What the devil do you mean, why?” Bentley’s voice was arch. “I did not set out to antagonize my wife, if that is what you mean.”
“Really?” asked Helene softly. “Are you quite sure? It sounds like deliberate sabotage to me. No man in his right mind goes about kissing and fondling the servants, convinced that his wife won’t eventually take notice.”
Bentley gave a snort of laughter. “Sabotage?” he said. “Really, Helene, I begin to think Cam is right. You have been reading too many of those…those psycho—psychie—aw, hell, those big black books of yours.”
Helene’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Perhaps, Bentley, your purpose might be better served by asking yourself why you feel unworthy of your wife’s devotion.” It was the harshest tone Treyhern had ever heard his wife take with his brother. “Frederica has been looking at you with utter adoration in her eyes for weeks now, and yet you spare her scarcely a moment of your time.”
At that, Bentley really did laugh. “Oh, my wife is not neglected, Helene. Of that you may be sure.”
Helene pushed herself a little away from the table. “Let me tell you something, Bentley,” she said in a warning tone. “There is a little more to marriage than tossing up a woman’s skirts and giving her a good poke two or three times a day.”
“A poke!” sneered Bentley. “My dear Helene, I can hardly speak for my brother here, but I do assure you that I can do a vast deal better than po—”
The earl jerked from his seat. “By God, that’s enough!” he said, hurling down his napkin in disgust. “Bentley, you’ve long been beyond shocking me, but Helene, I am appalled. We are not having this discussion in mixed company.”
“Fine,” snapped his wife, shoving back her chair. “Then I shall leave, and you may explain it to him, Cam. It is assuredly more your duty than mine, though why you’ve waited nearly three decades to get the job done, I’m sure I don’t know. And let me suggest that perhaps your advice ought to contain something just a tad more substantive than ‘Buy her some jewelry’!” And on that, Helene whirled about in a flash of purple silk and stalked back out of the dining room, leaving the two men to stare at her untouched coffee.
A grim silence hung over the room. Bentley broke it by smacking his palms together briskly. “Well!” he said. “Just what is it, brother, that you are supposed to explain to me? Something to do with how to keep harmony in one’s marriage?”
The earl slumped back into his chair. “I’m damned if I know,” he confessed. “All I’m sure of is that my wife is infuriated, my breakfast has been ruined, and the rest of this bloody day is certain to go right to hell.”
Bentley nodded. “Shall we take the curricle to Cheltenham, then?” he suggested. “Because, frankly, Cam, I think Helene is going to look quite dashing in some new sapphire ear bobs—and you’re going to need them. Especially if all you’ve been doing is poking her.”
Propped up on a heap of pillows, Frederica was still trying to hold back her tears and her temper when she heard the door crack open again. Foolishly, her heart leapt in the hope that it was Bentley returning to fling himself at her feet and beg her forgiveness. But it was not. It was worse, even, than that. It was the woman called Queenie, and she carried a tray containing a little plate of dry biscuits and a steaming cup of tea. Frederica was so taken aback words failed her.
Queenie, too, looked acutely uncomfortable. “Now, just look ’ere, Mrs. Rutledge,” she began, setting down the tray. “No need ter go gettin’ yourself all sniveled up.”
Frederica stiffened her spine. “Sn-sniveled up!”
Queenie nodded knowingly. “Aye, you’re in a family way, that’s plain enough to anyone with eyes,” she said, pulling a little packet from her apron and dumping its contents into the tea. “Makes a gal peevish and sickly. So I’m going ter make you up this tonic—I learnt a trick ’er two during me game days—and it’s prexactly wot I make up special for ’er ladyship. Suffers the collywobbles somethin’ terrible when she’s breeding, the poor lovey does.”
Frederica crumpled her handkerchief in her fists, refusing to cry in front of this woman. “I beg your pardon?” she said stiffly.
The housemaid would not look her in the eye. Instead, she took up a teaspoon and began to stir the tea. “Now, I knows it ain’t my place ter mention it, ma’am, but wot you thought you saw in the parlor this mornin’—why, t’weren’t naught but Mr. B. trying to flatter an old woman’s vanity.” She shrugged and put down the spoon. “Thoughtless of ’im, o’ course, but there you ’ave it. Mr. B.’s a leap-first-and-look-later kind o’ fellow.”
For reasons she couldn’t begin to explain, Frederica found herself taking the proffered teacup. She wondered vaguely if the servant would try to poison her. The contents looked muddy now but oddly effervescent.
“Drink it!” said Queenie stubbornly. “All of it, quick-like.”
Strangely enough, Frederica did. It tasted dreadful but not deadly.
Queenie took the empty cup. “No, Mr. B. don’t want me, ma’am,” she continued a little sadly. “It’s just a little game we play. Done it for ages, we ’ave. But ’e’s a married man now, and that sort o’ foolishness ’as ter stop, aye? And ’e’ll realize it, too, and do wot’s proper. Arter ’e’s had time to puzzle over it, anyways.”
“Oh, he’d better puzzle over it,” said Frederica darkly.
The woman’s hard face broke out into a surprisingly lovely smile. “Just give ’im time to get used
to bein’ married, ma’am,” said Queenie. “’E’s a fine man, your husband. Better’n ’e likes to let on. And better’n Lord Treyhern knows, too, I sometimes suspicion. A proper favorite with the staff, Mr. B. is.”
“So I begin to see,” murmured Frederica. “But I still don’t understand that part about flattering your vanity.”
“Oh, on account o’ I used ter making me livin’ on me back,” she said lightly. “Afore Mr. B. and ’is lordship brought me to Chalcote. Right arter that wicked man made off with little Ariane and her ladyship, it was.”
“On your back?” said Frederica, still a step behind. “And what wicked man are you talking about?”
“Ooh.” A look of acute discomfort passed over Queenie’s face. “Let’s just say I once had me lots o’ gentleman admirers, an’ leave it at that, eh? And that wicked business—well, you’d best ask yer husband about that. I can’t be speaking out o’ turn. But I’ll tell you straight out, that fellow wanted killin’, and Mr. B. done the job proper. No one blamed ’im one whit.”
“W-wanted killing?” Freddie began to wonder if the woman was right in the head.
Queenie pursed her lips and passed her the plate. “Now, eat one or two o’ these sea-biscuits, ma’am, and lie back down. In five minutes, you’ll be fit to cut a jig.” The housemaid shot her a warning look. “Then I’m thinking you’ll want to dress and go down to the dining room, ’cause Mr. B. and his lordship are like to ’ave a regular set-to over this.”
“Will they?” Frederica murmured. “Yes, I daresay you’re right. They seem always to be circling round one another.”
Queenie had bustled over to the hearth and was shaking the ash out of the basket grate. “Oh, that’s just the sort o’ men they are, ma’am,” she said, her ample rump swaying back and forth in the air. “Like barnyard roosters—but wot man worth ’is salt ain’t, eh? Still, it did get worse, some do say, when ’is lordship snatched Miss Belmont out from under Mr. B.’s nose. I daresay Mr. B. was fair fond of the girl, her being a taking little thing, but Miss Belmont didn’t ’ave aught ter do with it, Naffles says, and who’d know better than she?”