The beauty of her husband’s mistress seemed to have followed her into that velvet room. Even now, she could smell the woman’s orchid perfume and hear Angelique’s voice—low, sultry music that promised much. Caroline thought of the way that woman’s hair would fall across a silken pillow. She thought of her husband rising over that woman and entering her. She wondered if he made the same sounds with his mistress as he made with her. She wondered if in his release he called out that woman’s name.
Caroline took a deep, cleansing breath so she would not be sick. Victor put his hands on her arms and drew her back from the fire. “You will take in too much smoke,” he said.
She leaned against that marble mantel once more, this time pressing her hand to the cool stone. Empty of all but pain, she fought the rising need to weep. Then she heard Victor move close behind her.
She had forgotten for a moment the man who had rescued her from detection, the man her husband seemed to hate so much, and for no apparent reason. When she turned, she saw Victor looking at her, standing only a few feet away. She did not feel he was taking a liberty, only that he wanted to be close in case she collapsed. Though he had always greeted her with a smile before, he was not smiling now.
He did not ask foolish questions or offer idiotic platitudes when he saw the tears on her cheeks. He simply handed her his handkerchief, his family’s crest embroidered on it, and his initials, VGC. She took the soft linen and wiped her eyes with it.
“I will have it laundered, my lord, and sent back to you.”
“No need. I am pleased to offer it in service of a beautiful lady. Take it with my compliments.”
She turned from him then, for she had no strength to make polite conversation. No matter how deeply she breathed in the scent of coal smoke, Caroline could not get the perfume of her husband’s mistress out of her nose. She feared she might be haunted by that scent for the rest of her life.
“It is hard, the first time you are betrayed. You will find it gets easier.”
Caroline’s anger replaced her tears. “What do you know about it?”
“I know your husband has shamed you before the London ton. I know that even now people speculate as to whether you are too young and too countrified in your ways to accept that, in this city, men take mistresses and do not ask their wives’ leave. They say you are weak and too much of a child to have married into so noble a house.”
Caroline’s rage washed over her, a rising tide she could not fight. She did not fight but swam, keeping her head above the water of her fury. Finally, it receded, and she was left alone on an empty shore.
“These people do not know me,” she said.
Victor stepped forward, and she noticed for the first time that he was handsome. Not like her husband was, not like a hawk who had lit on her as his prey. This man had a friendly, open face and clear blue eyes that seemed to hide nothing.
“No,” he said. “They are fools, and they are beneath you.”
She felt cold without her anger, empty, like a wine cask that had long since been drained. She knew she would have to go back into the corridor. She would have to pass through the entrance hall and call for a hackney carriage to take her home.
But as she thought of Anthony’s mistress with her sapphire eyes, Caroline knew she could not do it.
“Have you a carriage?” she asked.
Victor smiled, and for the first time in their acquaintance she saw lust behind his eyes before he masked it. She wondered if he would try to seduce her somewhere between St. James’s Park and Grosvenor Square. As she stood looking at him, the warmth of the fire seeping past the silk of her gown, she found she did not care. If he only got her away from that place, she would take her chances.
He did not lead her back toward the corridor but pressed a panel in the wall beside the fireplace. A door opened into a chasm of darkness.
“This way, Lady Ravensbrook.”
She did not touch him but followed him through the hidden door. The narrow passage led down a set of wooden stairs. Caroline wondered where they were going. She was grateful not to have to face the ballroom again, to feel those eyes on her, measuring, judging, condemning, even as they laughed at her behind their hands.
The dark passageway opened directly onto a hidden courtyard. There was no crush of carriages as there always was at the main entrance to Carlton House. Only one barouche waited, the one that belonged to Viscount Carlyle.
“I always take a different route from the masses,” Victor said. “One never knows when one might need to flee a place, even Carlton House.”
Caroline did not comment on the intimacy Victor seemed to have with the palace of the Prince Regent. Clearly, this man was enmeshed deeper in court politics than she had thought. She did not care for politics one way or another. She wanted only to go home and pretend this night had never happened.
Victor handed off a coin to a royal footman who had been standing guard by the outer door. No entrance to the palace could be left unlocked and unattended, no matter how hidden. With a bow, the Prince Regent’s servant disappeared into the palace, closing the door behind him. The hidden entrance vanished once more into the white walls, the building’s façade unbroken save for a faint line between the bricks.
Caroline took the hand Victor offered and allowed him to help her into his barouche. She arranged her gown against the cushions of his well-sprung coach. The night air was cold, and she shivered in spite of the lap blankets and the warm bricks at her feet. She had left her sable in the palace. One more gift from her husband that now meant nothing. Perhaps the prince would give it to his latest mistress. The unknown woman could have the fur, and welcome.
Victor smiled, his blond hair falling over one blue eye. He cast it back in a way she once might have found charming. Now she could only look at him and wonder when she would ever be able to feel anything other than pain again.
“Thank you for getting me out of that place.”
“I fear your husband will be angry that you have come away with me,” he said, watching her, some calculation lurking behind his blue eyes that had nothing to do with lust.
Caroline thought of how her husband had shamed her in front of all those people, as if she had done something unforgivable by dancing with another man. All the while, his mistress and all who knew of her, laughed at Caroline behind her back.
“It is my own anger I’m afraid of.”
“You are passionate.”
Victor caught her chin in his hand so she could not look away from him. He searched her eyes for something he could not find.
He let her go, but not before his fingers lingered on her cheek. He had never taken such a liberty before. Caroline knew she should chastise him, but she felt too tired to fight a man for whom she cared nothing. She leaned as far away from him as she could and loosened the ties of her reticule.
“It must be your Yorkshire blood,” Victor said. “The women of our city are insipid compared to you.”
Caroline knew this to be a lie as she thought of her husband’s mistress. Angelique was anything but insipid. Caroline saw before her eyes the black pearl nestled between that woman’s magnificent breasts, set there like a prize of war. It was a war Caroline had lost before she had ever come to London, a war she could not fight, because it was not her place to do so. Men took mistresses, and women accepted it. Husbands bedded whom they pleased, and wives looked the other way. She had been raised on this truth.
But now that she was faced with it, she found she could not accept it. No matter how Anthony plagued her, even at the worst times of their marriage, he never gave her any indication he had been unfaithful. He had always been ardent for her body, always ready to take her, no matter how badly they had been fighting or what the cause had been.
Caroline knew she had been a fool, and she looked back on the months of her marriage with new eyes. She heard every soft word her husband had given her again in her mind, every look of warmth, every touch of his hands and lips. She felt th
em all again, as if they were happening for the first time, only now she knew them to be tainted with that lie.
For every kiss he had given her, he had given Angelique a thousand more. For every sweet word murmured in the dark of the night, in the shadows of their bed, all the while Anthony had been giving words like that, along with his body, to the woman who wore his crest so proudly on her midnight damask gown.
Caroline leaned against the side of the carriage. As she stared out of the window, they drew up in front of Ravensbrook House. It was a short journey from Carlton House to Grosvenor Square, from one world to another.
She turned to Victor. “I will bid you good evening, Lord Carlyle. Thank you for your kindness.”
“My lady, I live to serve.”
Victor had barely touched her for the entire journey. He had helped her escape, asking for no price. But now he reached for her, as if to draw her against him. She smelled the wine on his breath and saw by the gleam in his eye he was in earnest. For the first time since she had known him, he moved close to kiss her.
She dodged his lips, reaching for the carriage door. She managed to open it, but Victor caught her in his arms, drawing her back.
“Release me, my lord.”
“One kiss is all I ask.”
“You ask too much.”
She pushed her elbow into his side, to no effect. He simply held her tighter.
She gave up on politeness. Her hand slipped into her reticule, and her knife was in her palm in the next moment. The edge of the blade gleamed in the lamps lit outside her husband’s house as she raised it in one swift arc to Victor’s throat.
His eyes widened in surprise, but he made no move against her. Admiration for her soon took the place of his shock, and he laughed, his warm voice filling the carriage and spilling out into the night. He released her and raised his arms in surrender, the gleam of his eyes turning from lust to mirth.
“Touché, Lady Ravensbrook. I see that your time working with my man was not wasted.”
Victor would have said more, but Caroline backed away, stepping carefully out of the carriage, her eyes and her knife still trained on Carlyle. He did not move to follow her but leaned back against the velvet squabs.
In the next moment, she felt herself propelled from behind, drawn onto the stairs of Ravensbrook House. Anthony’s hand closed over hers and took the knife from her.
She let her husband disarm her, her grip suddenly nerveless. She watched as he slid her blade into an interior pocket of his coat, heedless of the damage it might do to the dark, expensive cloth.
“Do not come near my wife again.”
Victor smiled, his contempt clear. “If I had such a wife, I would not let her stray so far.”
Chapter 28
Caroline said nothing to her husband as he pulled her into the house. But she struggled in his grasp, trying to get away. For the first time, his touch was cold, indifferent, like the hands of a stranger. Anthony would not look at her, and he would not let her go. He simply dragged her up the formal staircase. Jarvis, the butler, closed the front door behind them, a look of horror on his face.
He slammed the door to their bedroom. He said nothing but tossed Caroline away from him as if he could not bear her close to him for a moment longer. She caught herself on the marble-topped table where they so often shared their evening meals.
“How long have you been deceiving me with him?”
She looked into his eyes and saw how deadly his fury was, his hand raised as if to strike her.
Caroline swallowed her guilt. She had done nothing to be ashamed of.
“I have not been meeting him in secret. Carlyle helped me find a teacher to practice my knife work.”
“Viscount Carlyle helped you. The one man I told you never to speak to. The man I loathe above all others. Where did you meet him?”
“I met him by chance at the Wick and Candle. I worked with Ralph Higgins, my instructor, in a rented house.”
“You’ve been meeting not just one man, but two?”
“For God’s sake, Anthony, I did nothing wrong. Ralph Higgins was my hired man, and Lord Carlyle introduced us. That is all. I never went unarmed to any of these lessons, and I always brought Jonathan with me.”
“I will question him when I return to Shropshire. If Jonathan says you were ever alone, even for the space of a minute, with either man, I will lock you away in the country. You’ll never see London again.”
“And will you go to your mistress, then? That woman you’ve been flaunting in front of your friends all evening behind my back? Why didn’t you just marry her to begin with and leave me in peace?”
Anthony was on her before she could take her next breath. He did not strike her, though she expected him to. Caroline did not retreat but pressed close to him, reaching into his coat.
“I want my knife back. She can have you, she can have the diamonds in my hair, but I’ll be damned if either of you keep my favorite knife.”
Her fingers touched on the handle, and she drew the blade out of his pocket.
Anthony wrested the dagger from her grip and threw it down. She listened as its steel blade rang against wainscoting of the far wall.
He clutched her close, but his touch lacked all tenderness. He no longer moved as if to do her violence, but the coldness in his eyes made her shake with fury.
“Angelique Beauchamp is not your concern. What I do when I am away from you is none of your business. You cannot sit in judgment on me. You’ve been meeting Carlyle in secret,” Anthony said. “Did he have you?”
“Would you care?”
Caroline watched as his jaw clenched.
“Answer my question.”
“You answer mine.”
His eyes were black with fury that had begun to heat. He pushed her back until she felt the cold of the marble table behind her. He bent her over that table, her arms above her head, one of his hands holding her wrists fast in his grip.
For one moment, his ire was so complete she was sure he would wring her neck. Instead, his grip only tightened painfully on her wrist and arm. The marble tabletop was cold on her back. He had made love to her there only a few nights before. The marble had been cold then, too. She felt tears rise, but she held firm. She would not let him see her weep.
“If you let him have you, then any child you may be carrying could be his. I would divorce you, and I would marry again.”
The knife of her humiliation twisted in her heart. She held her tongue and glared up at him, defiant.
Anthony raised her up, gripping her shoulders in both hands. He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the shadows until he pressed her hard against the far wall in the alcove next to their bed. She could smell the rosemary the housemaids pressed into the bedclothes and feel the cold plaster of the wall behind her back. She thought for half a moment he would take her there against that wall as he had on the day after their wedding, as he had in the stables, but that night all she saw in his eyes was contempt.
“Did he have you?”
Each word was pronounced clearly, with a loathing she had never thought to hear in his voice. Caroline’s sorrow choked her as her own fury drained away. In a moment of strange clarity, she wondered how they had come to this, when just hours before they had both been so happy.
Then she remembered. She had been alone in that, too.
“No, my lord. I say again, I did not arrange to meet Carlyle, but I paid his hired man to give me lessons in fighting with a knife. Viscount Carlyle did not have me.”
Anthony walked away from her, pacing the room like a tiger in a cage. Still, he did not leave her and lock her in her room alone.
“Can you believe me, my lord? Or do you think me a liar as well as a whore?”
When he flinched and turned to face her, she saw enough pain in his eyes to mirror her own, and she felt a bolt of triumph. If she could wound him even a little, it was more than she had hoped for.
“You are no liar.”
&nb
sp; “I spent years working with my father’s veterans to be able to defend myself with a knife. I did not want to give up those skills. I wanted to keep them. But those lessons are over now. I stopped my practice before we came to London.”
Caroline faced him, walking toward him, her anger mounting her again. Her pain stayed behind its wall of stone.
“I do not know what lies between you and Viscount Carlyle, and I no longer care. But I am not a coward. I gave my word before a man of God to be your wife, and I will keep it. I am bound to you for the rest of my life. I will bear your children. But I will never wear your gifts again.”
Caroline ripped the pearl and its chain from her throat and tossed it onto the marble table in front of her. It lay there, glinting in the candlelight, alabaster against cream, a fragment of her lost hope.
“Give it to your mistress, for I will have none of it.”
The look on his face drove a stake into her heart. As angry as she was at his betrayal, she wished her words back.
Anthony blinked, staring down at the pearl he had given her with its broken chain, the pearl she had not taken off since she had received it from his hands.
Caroline watched as her husband breathed deeply, trying to gain control of himself. Her words had hurt him, as she had meant them to. But instead of feeling triumph, Caroline felt only shame. His pain did not assuage hers but compounded it.
She wanted to go to him; she wanted to hold him whether he loved her or not. In spite of the bleeding wound in her own chest, she wanted to comfort him. But she knew she could not.
Anthony walked toward her. In the first moment, hope filled her breast to vie with her pain. She thought he would touch her. He would make love to her to clear away the hurt between them, as he always had before. But this time, with Viscount Carlyle and the Countess of Devonshire standing between them, she was not sure she would even be able to feel desire for him anymore.
How to Tame a Willful Wife Page 20