“I won’t take you back. If you leave me tonight, we are done with each other.”
Her gaze pierced him as a sword would on a battlefield.
“I understand.”
Angelique did not speak again. Anthony did not move to touch her, not even to press her hand in parting, because he knew he had lost the right.
He walked away from her. He looked back only once. Angelique kept her back to him, her shoulders straight, her eyes turned to a candle that burned on a low table beside her.
Anthony missed the midnight supper. The footmen were serving the fruit when he came back, and a sweet wine from Germany. Pembroke gave up his place beside Caroline as the women of the ton raised their eyebrows in reproach and as the gentlemen shook their heads to see Anthony brought so low as to play court to his wife. Anthony saw none of them, and neither did Caroline. He ignored his own seat farther down the table and sat down beside her. He took hold of her hand as if he had lost her and she had just now been found.
“What is wrong, Anthony? Where have you been?”
He spoke low, his lips against her ear, caressing her with the warmth of his breath. Caroline shivered.
“Later, love. I will tell you later.”
Caroline did not ask again but drew out a tiny, gold-rimmed plate holding a broiled quail. She had hidden it under her napkin and had waved the footman away when he tried to take it from her. Anthony laughed, the low sound making her insides quake. She wondered how much longer they would have to stay in this place, surrounded by these people. She did not ask, for she had agreed to come, had even wanted to see his world and the people he honored. After only a few hours, Caroline could see very little to value among the Carlton House set, save perhaps the Prince Regent himself.
Anthony ate the quail with a gold knife and fork. Caroline took pleasure in watching him eat, as if she had cooked the bird herself.
The meal ended soon enough. The Prince Regent rose first and announced that the gentlemen would return with the ladies, forgoing port and cigars. He led the company back into the ballroom. Caroline moved forward in the press, confident her husband was behind her, but when she turned, she did not find him. Anthony had been stopped by a friend of his from the House of Lords, Baron Fitzgibbons, who no doubt wanted to discuss something endlessly tedious. Caroline did not wait for Anthony but stepped into the ballroom.
As she passed through the doors, she saw Viscount Carlyle. He smiled and bowed, his blue eyes full of mischief as always. Besides Pembroke, she was certain Victor was the only man present who possessed a sense of humor.
He was still surrounded by women, but by different women than she had seen with him earlier in the evening. No doubt he was popular with the fairer sex, and for more than just his money. He tossed a blond lock of his hair back from his forehead and adjusted his red and gold waistcoat. The black superfine of his jacket seem to absorb the light all around him, leaving him in shadow.
Caroline blinked, certain this must be a trick of the light. Most of the gentlemen wore black that evening, but no other man seemed shadowed. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. She had been too long among the ton, surrounded by people she did not like. Her dislike had started to become fanciful, making her imagine things that were not there.
Viscount Carlyle, while not overly friendly with the truth, seemed relatively harmless, especially when taken in the same dose as the rest of the company that evening. But even as she turned away from Victor to look for her husband, a chill of foreboding ran along her skin. Victor smiled and stepped away from the women who flocked around him. He crossed the distance between them without a backward glance at the ladies he left in midsentence.
“Good evening, Countess Ravensbrook.”
“Good evening, my lord.”
“You have forgotten my name, I see.”
Caroline laughed. Surely she was wrong to feel uncomfortable in this man’s presence. It must be the glare of the beau monde, their brittle laughter and their contempt for her that made this man suddenly appear sinister.
“Don’t be absurd, my lord Carlyle.”
“I am always absurd, my lady. One of my great failings, I fear.”
Caroline laughed again, beginning to relax. She noticed then a strange silence in the ballroom. Music still played from the dais, but for one long moment, no one spoke. There were a few whispered conversations near the edges of the room, but beyond that, there was no sound. The musicians played harder, the swell of violins rising to cover the quiet. As Caroline looked across the ballroom, she saw all eyes on her.
“What is wrong, my lord? Why do they stare?”
“You are too beautiful for their peace,” Victor said. Caroline smiled wryly at his foolish flattery, and he laughed.
“There is nothing for it,” Victor said, “but that we dance.”
Caroline felt the silence of the hall like a weight on her back, but she lifted her chin and did not falter. She took the hand Victor extended and stepped with him into the set that was forming.
***
Anthony watched his wife move onto the dance floor with the man he hated most in the world.
For one mad moment, Anthony wondered if they had been meeting behind his back all during their marriage, ever since he had last seen Carlyle at Pembroke’s house in Derbyshire. Perhaps Victor had taken Caroline in some dark corner, or worse, had made love to her at Ravensbrook House while Anthony was out on business.
He felt the bile rise in his throat, and he swallowed it. Anthony knew he was mad with jealousy, that his reason had been broken by Victor’s presence, as it always was. Caroline had never made love to his enemy, but Anthony found himself as angry as if she had.
The Carlton House set, the crème de la crème of the ton, all stood with their heads together, murmuring poison into one another’s ears, casting their eyes on him to see what he might do. He felt the weight of the Prince Regent’s stare.
As he watched his wife dance, her hand in Carlyle’s grip, Anthony knew he should do nothing, say nothing, and pretend as if it did not matter to him. But as always with Victor, fury overrode his reason. All Anthony knew was he could not endure the sight of that man’s hands on his wife for one moment longer.
Chapter 26
“I thank you, lady, for the favor of your company.”
The music had ended, and Victor bowed low to her. For a moment, Caroline thought he was going to leave her alone on the dance floor. But then she saw her husband bearing down on them, his face black with anger.
Victor melted into the crowd, leaving Caroline to face her husband alone. Anthony took her arm, his grip bruising. He drew her forcibly out of the path of the dancers, for a new quadrille had begun.
“Come away from here.”
“Anthony, what is wrong with you?”
His eyes were so dark she could not see anything in their depths but a hatred she knew was not directed at her.
“Come with me now.”
She lowered her voice, mindful of the others standing by. Though the dancing continued, everyone was watching them. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Have you?”
Anthony did not speak again but dragged her by the arm behind a screen set up to keep the draft from the door away from the dancers.
“How dare you dance with him.”
“With whom, my lord? Lord Carlyle? Why would I not dance with him? He asked me.”
She watched as Anthony worked to keep his temper. He breathed deeply, his grip flexing on her arm.
“I told you in Pembroke’s house never to speak to him, much less dance with him. How dare you disobey me.”
“Anthony, this is the prince’s ball, and Viscount Carlyle is his guest, as we are. I do not understand you.”
“I do not ask you to understand. I ask you to do as I say.”
“You ask nothing. You give orders with no explanation. How many times must I tell you I am not a hound to come to heel.”
“You are my wife, Caroline. You
will obey me.”
“Round we go again, and we go nowhere, Anthony.”
Anthony did not answer, but his grip tightened on her arm.
“You are hurting me,” she said.
“Caroline, never dance with a stranger. Never. Not even in the Prince Regent’s house.”
“I met Viscount Carlyle twice before with you standing by. I know your city ways are different, but it was only one dance.”
He raised his voice in spite of himself, and she heard pain as well as anger in it. “You do not know who he is to me.”
“Tell me then. Why do you hate him so much?”
They stared each other, opponents once more on their old battlefield, his face a mask of fury. She could not see beyond that mask to find the man she had begun to know. That man was gone. Anthony did not speak but stared at her as if she had killed his last hope.
“I cannot look at you. Pembroke will take you home.”
“I will not go. You must talk to me.” Caroline tried to pull away, but Anthony caught her arm once more in his grip. She winced, her arm bruised, but he did not release her.
“You will do as you are told. You are my wife.”
“I am not your whore, to be ordered about as you please.”
“You are my wife, and you will obey me.”
After the last few weeks, she had been lulled into complacency. Surely they had come to understand each other better. Surely with the time they had spent talking of their past and of their loved ones, they knew each other better than they had on their wedding day. But now he was ordering her about as if she were his valet, as if those weeks had never happened.
Caroline was so angry she could not see a foot beyond her. She tore her arm from his grip, this time moving fast enough that he could not catch her.
She left him behind the screen, striding back into the glare of the ballroom. She stopped in her tracks not five feet into the room, for she could feel the eyes of everyone on her. Sinuous whispers swelled like a hiss over the music as those few who had not heard her argument with Anthony had the couple’s angry words repeated to them.
Caroline raised her head and straightened her back as her mother had taught her. She walked slowly toward the grand door that led to the staircase beyond, not knowing where she would go, thinking only that she must escape the weight of those eyes.
Before she reached her goal, a woman moved to stand beside her.
It was the mysterious woman who had captivated Anthony’s attention earlier. This close, Caroline could see the silver trim on her dress looked much like the silver on Anthony’s waistcoat.
She was the most beautiful woman Caroline had ever seen. She had ignored convention, ignored fashion, and had left her long midnight hair to curl past her shoulders. Her blue eyes were as dark as fine sapphires.
This woman knew how her husband had shamed her in front of the ton. And from the look on her face, Caroline could see the woman thought Anthony was right. Her own pain seemed to fade as she stood before that woman’s censure.
Why dancing with one man would offend an entire ballroom full of people, Caroline could not fathom. There was some essential point that was eluding her, but as her pain faded, her temper began to rise. These southerners with their dissolute ways had a great deal of nerve to look down on her. She held her temper, barely, as she waited for the woman to speak.
“Good evening, Countess Ravensbrook.”
“Good evening.”
“Allow me to introduce myself, since Anthony was too rude to do so. I am Angelique Beauchamp, Countess of Devonshire.”
Caroline kept her voice even as her mother had taught her to do. This was the woman Viscount Carlyle had mentioned, the woman who employed Ralph Higgins in Shropshire. “It is my pleasure to meet you, Lady Devonshire.”
Angelique smiled. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Caroline noticed for the first time silver gleaming at the woman’s left shoulder, a knight’s helm flanked by two plumes, worked in diamonds. The jewels caught the light and winked slyly at Caroline. Her mouth went dry, and the air in her lungs dissolved in her chest like fire.
She gasped for breath but could not draw one, almost as if her stays were too tight and she had tried to run in them. This woman wore Anthony’s family crest as if it belonged to her.
Angelique saw Caroline’s gaze fall on the jeweled crest. She smiled, the indigo beauty of her eyes mocking. “Ah, yes. Anthony’s crest. I often wear it to affairs such as these.”
The woman with the midnight hair gestured with one elegant gloved hand, the motion of her arm graceful as it took in the ballroom and the beau monde. Caroline watched her as a snake might watch its charmer.
“I see he gave you a pearl to match mine,” Angelique said.
Caroline’s hand moved reflexively to her alabaster pearl, her fingers covering it protectively. Angelique drew a black pearl on a silver chain from the hollow between her breasts.
“I beg your pardon?” Caroline’s voice was tinny in her ears, distant, as if she were hearing someone else speak.
“Your husband. My lover. Anthony Carrington, the Earl of Ravensbrook. I see he gave you a pearl as well. I wonder if he bought them on the same day.”
Caroline stood blinking in the false light of those candles, the romantic strains of the music rising as if to mock her.
She remembered the times Anthony had gone to the city without her during the fall. She remembered the day he had brought her the pearl she wore around her neck. Though it had been the most important gift of her life, in her memory it seemed as if he had handed it to her almost as an afterthought.
As she looked into Angelique’s eyes, she knew with unwavering certainty Anthony had given his beautiful mistress that black pearl first, less than a month after they had been wed.
Caroline took a reflexive step back, away from Angelique, as if she might run from the truth, as if she might flee from the pain lodged above her heart. She thought of the last few weeks, when she and Anthony had seemed to reach a new place with each other, when the distance that divided them had seemed to be bridged, not just by lust, but by growing affection. Those shared moments looked different to her as she saw them through the prism of his mistress’s sardonic smile.
The ground opened up like a chasm at her feet, waiting for her to fall in. She saw her future stretching out before her, a worse future than she would have thought possible, even on her wedding day.
She would bear his children and keep his house in Shropshire while he sported with mistresses and doxies in town. Her marriage was what it had always been, what it had been intended to be. Anthony was a man who hoped to control her every move, their marriage a business arrangement for the getting of his heirs. That and nothing more.
Only as she felt the sharp pain squeezing her heart like a vise, taking her breath, did she realize the truth. She had begun to love her obstinate husband more than a little. Somewhere during the last few weeks, she had found a friend buried in the eyes of the man who had bought her from her father.
Anthony was an honorable man, and often kind. He was domineering and infuriating and mad with jealousy and the need for control, but she found, as she stood looking into the blue of his mistress’s eyes, she had loved him in spite of all that, because of it. Anthony was uniquely himself, a man of power, a man who stood up to her and faced her as no one else could.
A man who kept a mistress. A man who did not love her, and who never would.
Caroline took one more step back and stumbled. She almost faltered, but then she remembered herself and whose daughter she was. It was as if her mother stood beside her, her tiny hand on her arm, offering her strength. It was as if her father’s strength flowed into her all the way from the wilds of Yorkshire. Just as Caroline had not been raised to be a fool, she had not been raised to make a fool of herself. She would not disgrace herself before an enemy and before all her husband’s peers.
Caroline nodded to her husband’s mistress and walked away.
She could not bring herself to speak. Her breath came shallow, and her voice caught in her throat, like something she had choked on.
She could see her husband coming through the crowd to follow her, his friend Pembroke hurrying to her side. Caroline moved as swiftly as she ever had, grateful for all the exercise she had done that fall, for she was fast as well as strong. Lifting her silken skirts, she dodged through the crowded ballroom and managed to elude them both.
Caroline slipped through the grand entrance and stopped in her tracks. If she fled to the entrance hall below, to freedom, Anthony would catch her. She looked around frantically for someplace to hide, but she did not know where. She hoped never to lay eyes on Carlton House again. She knew she must get away, and quickly, but her mind was one large bruise.
Then she felt a hand on her arm.
Nearby, liveried footmen looked neither left nor right but stood impassive as stone.
Caroline met Viscount Carlyle’s eyes. He took her hand. “Come with me.”
Chapter 27
Victor drew her into an opulent room off the corridor done in blue velvet. She felt dwarfed by the grandeur of the soaring, gilded columns, and more alone than she had ever been in her life.
The door was half-open, and she peered into the hallway beyond, hidden behind the door hangings. Pembroke and Anthony burst from the ballroom, hurling themselves toward the grand staircase in pursuit of her. Neither man saw her in the shadows; neither so much as glanced in her direction. Caroline felt suddenly bereft, abandoned, even though it was she who had fled, she who had hidden from them.
There was a fire in the marble grate. Caroline crossed the great room to warm herself by it, stretching out her gloved hands. The fire did little to warm the room and little to comfort her. Now that she was away from the press of the overheated ballroom, the cold crept close, chilling her. She raised her hands and rubbed her upper arms. She did not know if she would ever feel warm again.
She pressed her forehead against the cool marble of the mantel, which was high enough for her to lean against. She knew she should not stand so close to the blaze, that she might easily singe her fine gown, the gown her husband loved so much and had longed to see her wear only for him. Her stomach roiled, the taste of the pheasant she had eaten at dinner rising in her mouth.
How to Tame a Willful Wife Page 19