The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  “You will spend an hour and a half each day in here,” he said, “by my express order. I shall explain to her grace.”

  She could not continue to sit there all day with him standing behind her. She drew a steadying breath, got to her feet, and turned to face him. He was standing quite close, so that for a moment she felt again that terror at his largeness.

  “You have had access to a pianoforte for most of your life,” he said. It was not a question.

  She said nothing.

  “You told Houghton that your father died recently in debt,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he?”

  She looked up into his eyes.

  “Did he die in debt?”

  “Yes.” She was not sure that any volume had come out with the word.

  “And your mother?” he asked.

  “She died,” she said, “a long time ago.”

  “And you have no other family?”

  She had never been good at lying, though she had done enough of it in the past few months, heaven knew. She thought of Cousin Caroline and Amelia and Matthew and shook her head quickly.

  “What are you frightened of?” he asked. “Just of me?”

  “I should be with Lady Pamela,” she said, raising her chin, firming her voice.

  “No, you should not,” he said. “My orders take precedence over yours, Miss Hamilton. Pamela is a difficult pupil?”

  “She is not used to doing what she does not wish to do, your grace,” she said.

  “You have my permission to insist,” he said. “Provided you do not make of her life a dreary business.”

  “She is a child,” she said. “My greatest delight is in seeing her smile and hearing her laugh.”

  “Are those skills you can teach, Miss Hamilton?” he asked. “I have never seen or heard you do either.”

  “I can give her my full attention,” she said, “and praise where it is due and encouragement when praise would be inappropriate. And I can give her enough freedom so that she will feel like a child.”

  He searched her eyes with his so that she felt breathless, and resisted the temptation to panic. She wished she had taken a step back from him when she had first risen from the stool and it would have seemed more natural to do so than to do it now. She felt strangely that she could be scorched by the heat from his body, even though he stood several feet away. His face was too close, as close as it was in all her nightmares, bent over her naked body.

  “Your working day is at an end, ma’am,” he said. His voice had changed in tone. It was cold, cynical. “You are dismissed. I shall go and join my daughter in the stables.”

  “Yes, your grace.” She turned to leave.

  “Miss Hamilton?”

  She half-turned her head.

  “I am pleased with what I have seen of your work this afternoon,” he said.

  She stood still for a moment before leaving the room and closing the door behind her. She drew in deep lungfuls of air before proceeding on her way up to her room.

  LORD BROCKLEHURST SENT HIS card up to one of the rooms at the Pulteney Hotel and paced the lobby impatiently.

  It was a stroke of raw luck, he knew, despite the fact that the Bow Street Runner had reported the detail to him the day before with puffed chest and important air, as if he had manufactured the whole thing with his superior police skills.

  The list of guests for Willoughby Hall had been disappointing. Only two of them he knew even vaguely. There would have been no realistic chance of striking up a close enough friendship with either of them that he could have invited himself along to the house. Besides, all except one couple, with whom he had no acquaintance at all, had left London already.

  He would have had to do things the way he did not want to do them. He would have had to go down to Dorsetshire in his capacity as a justice of the peace to arrest Isabella and bring her home for trial. He did not want his hand to be so forced. He did not want all his options to be cut.

  Dammit, he did not want to see that lovely neck ringed by a noose.

  But only one day after delivering the list and declaring that Lord Thomas Kent was nowhere in Britain, and after having had his bill paid, Snedburg had come bustling back, puffed with importance, to announce that his lordship had that morning set foot on English soil from the deck of an East India Company ship.

  “Of course, sir,” he had said, “I know from experience that when the nobility disappear from our shores, it is often to take employment with one of the companies. It was a simple, though time-consuming matter, you will understand, to make inquiries. What could have been more fortunate than to discover not only that his lordship had indeed taken himself to India but also that he was bringing himself back again?” He had coughed with self-satisfaction.

  Lord Brocklehurst had paid the man more generously than he ought, he felt. Living in town was deuced expensive.

  An employee of the hotel bowed in front of him and informed him that Lord Thomas Kent would receive him in his suite. Lord Brocklehurst turned to the staircase.

  Lord Thomas Kent was a few years younger than he. The two men had never been very close friends, merely friendly acquaintances who had frequented the same gaming hells and taverns many years before.

  Lord Thomas was in his sitting room, dressed in a long brocade dressing gown, when Lord Brocklehurst was admitted by a servant. He had grown more handsome with the passing of early youth, the latter noticed: bronzed, dark-haired, slim, a man of a little above average height.

  “Bradshaw,” he said, extending his right hand, his teeth very white against his sun-browned face. “I hardly recognized you from the title on your card. Your father passed on, did he?”

  “Five years ago,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “You are looking well, Kent.”

  “I’ve never felt better,” the other said. “I thought not a soul knew of my return. I thought I would have to do the rounds of all the clubs today and leave my card at every door in Mayfair. This is a pleasant surprise.”

  “I heard in passing,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “Been gone long, have you, Kent?”

  “For well over five years,” the other said. “Ever since that debacle over the dukedom. I went running with my tail between my legs. Doubtless you heard.”

  “Yes.” Lord Brocklehurst coughed delicately. “A nasty business, Kent. You have my sympathy.”

  Lord Thomas shrugged. “I am not sure the sedentary life would have suited me after all,” he said. “Or the married life. Too confining by half. Are the ladies as lovely as they used to be, Bradshaw? And as willing? I must say I am starved for an English beauty or two—or twenty.”

  “And just as expensive as they ever were,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “if not more so. You are going home?”

  “To Willoughby?” The other laughed aloud. “I think that would be the unwisest move of my life, considering some of the things that were said when I left. It can’t be a comfortable thing to have someone who once wore your title breathing down your neck, I suppose—and someone who was once betrothed to your wife. Though it might be worth everything just to see the look on Ridgeway’s face.”

  “Old wounds heal fast,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “especially within families. He would probably be delighted to see you.”

  “The prodigal’s return and the fatted calf?” Lord Thomas said. “I think not. I’m deuced hungry and hate eating at hotels. Is White’s still standing where it used to stand?”

  “I’ll be delighted to buy you luncheon there,” Lord Brocklehurst said.

  “Will you?” Lord Thomas laughed again. “The Heron property is good to you, Bradshaw? I can remember the time when neither one of us had a feather to fly with. Luncheon it is, then, and perhaps tonight we can go in search of wine, women, and cards together, though I might be persuaded to dispense with the cards. Let my man pour you a drink while I dress.”

  Lord Brocklehurst sipped on his drink a few minutes later and stared thoughtfully at the door through which Lor
d Thomas had disappeared.

  SIXTEEN GUESTS ARRIVED TO STAY at Willoughby Hall, all on the same day. The Duke of Ridgeway stood beside his wife in the great hall to receive them and circulated among them during tea in the saloon late in the afternoon.

  They were not quite the crowd he would have chosen to consort with, given the choice, he reflected, but Sybil was happy and looking quite glowingly lovely, and he supposed she was entitled to some happiness. Indeed, he was glad to see her enjoying herself. It seemed to have been beyond his power to give her any enjoyment since their marriage.

  And he was getting mortally tired of sharing a dining table with her, one at the head, the other at the foot, making labored conversation across its empty length.

  “Good hunting do you have here, Ridgeway?” Sir Ambrose Marvell asked him as they sipped on their tea.

  “My gamekeeper tells me that the deer are increasing at an interesting rate,” he replied.

  “And the fishing?” Mr. Morley Treadwell asked.

  It was easy to see already whom Sybil had invited as her cher ami—there would have to be someone, of course, as there always was on such occasions. Sir Philip Shaw, he had heard, scarcely needed to keep a home of his own, spending all his time moving about among the homes of his numerous flirts and mistresses. And the current joke had it that one need not assign a guest bedchamber to Shaw—he would cheerfully share with one of the ladies, usually his hostess.

  His indolent, almost effeminate manner and graceful person and permanently sleepy eyes were apparently irresistible to the ladies. And Sybil was already sparkling up at him, one slim white hand on his arm. Where the devil had she met him? But of course she sometimes took herself off on visits without him—she never asked, and he never resented not being asked. Most recently she had spent two weeks at her sister’s, apparently in company with other select guests.

  The duke sighed inwardly. He hoped he was not going to have to go through that ridiculous farce again of playing the icy husband guarding his conjugal rights. It was so very tedious—and not a little humiliating. And of course it forever enhanced her image of him as humorless tyrant. Perhaps he was just that. He was coming almost to believe it himself.

  When could he decently escape? he wondered. And where could he escape to? The lessons abovestairs were doubtless finished for the day. He was glad at least that Miss Hamilton had done her practicing early that morning, when he had been able to listen to her at his leisure. He had opened the door between the library and the music room and sat at his desk and listened. But he had made sure that she saw him. He did not wish to give the impression that he was spying on her.

  She really did have talent. Music that he had only ever been able to produce with competence she brought alive and warm and flowing. The hour he had spent listening to her had soothed him far more than the ride he had planned.

  He had not entered the room at all, or stood in the doorway to watch her. He would have had to be blind not to have noticed the deep revulsion in her eyes whenever she looked at him. But it did not matter. He was not looking for any sort of relationship with her. He merely hoped she would be good for Pamela. And he liked her music.

  “Adam, my dear man.” The voice was low, the perfume seductive. Lady Victoria Underwood, widow, who had decided during the Season the year before that they were close enough friends that they could drop the cumbersome formality of using titles, smiled up at him from beneath artfully darkened eyelashes. “What a very splendid home you have. Why have you not invited me here before?”

  She was leaning slightly toward him. For some reason she had never found his scar repulsive.

  “It makes you quite the most attractive man of my acquaintance,” she said to him the year before on one of the many nights when she had failed to entice him into her bed.

  He often wondered why he had never given in. She was not beautiful, but there was a seductive sexuality about her. Coupling with her would have been a somewhat more sensual experience than the one he had had with Fleur Hamilton.

  But he wished he had not had that thought. He had been unconsciously trying to divorce in his mind the Miss Hamilton who wanted to teach and care for Pamela and who made of Mozart and Beethoven haunting experiences of the soul from the thin and pale and lusterless prostitute he had taken with such quick lust in a cheap tavern room a month before.

  “I thought you did not like to leave London, Lady Underwood,” he said, smiling.

  “Victoria,” she said, looking down to his lips. “I believe I would accept an invitation to the Hebrides, my dear Adam, if I knew you were to be there.”

  “I never would be,” he said. “It sounds too cold for me.”

  “But what a delicious excuse,” she said, “to huddle under a blanket for warmth—with the right company, of course.”

  He laughed and used the excuse of a plate of cakes passing at that moment to draw the Mayberrys into the group.

  He could stomach the flirtations and the empty chatter when in London. He could even derive some amusement from them, though he preferred evenings of serious and stimulating conversation with his closer friends. But there he could always withdraw to the quiet of his own home when he had had enough. Here he was in his own home.

  That was always the trouble with Sybil’s confounded parties.

  Fortunately the guests did not linger. Almost all of them had had long journeys and welcomed the chance of some time to rest and refresh themselves in the privacy of their own rooms. The duchess, too, flushed and bright-eyed, retired to her own apartments until dinnertime.

  The duke wandered out onto the terrace. He wondered if Pamela was visiting her puppy and heard a distant shriek of laughter even as he did so. He turned and strolled in the direction of the stables, wondering idly if Fleur Hamilton would be there too or if Pamela had brought a footman with her as she had the day before. He did not imagine that Nanny would consider a visit to the stables and a puppy consistent with her dignity.

  Pamela was sitting on top of the fence around the paddock beside the stables, her legs swinging, while Fleur, inside the paddock, tickled the puppy’s stomach with her slippered foot. She was laughing, a look of such carefree beauty on her face that his grace hung back, reluctant to be seen.

  A groom—Ned Driscoll—was also laughing, one foot resting on a lower rung of the fence, his arms draped over the top, his cap pulled low over his eyes.

  “I think the puppy likes it,” Fleur said.

  “But then, who wouldn’t, miss,” Ned said boldly a moment before spotting his master standing quietly behind him. He straightened up hastily, pulled at the brim of his cap, and scuttled off in the direction of the stables.

  Fleur did not look up, and continued to tickle the dog with her toes. But the laughter in her face faded. His grace knew with an inward sigh that his presence had been noted.

  “Papa.” Pamela looked at him petulantly, her laughter of moments before forgotten. “Mama promised that she would call me down for tea. Nanny got me all dressed up, but Mama did not send, and Miss Hamilton would not let me go down unless she did.”

  The duke looked at Fleur, who was watching the puppy try to eat the grass.

  “She was not sent for,” she said. “I explained to her that all the guests must be tired and that her grace must have decided to wait for another day. I brought her out here, hoping she would forget her disappointment.”

  “But she promised, Papa,” the child said. “And Miss Hamilton would not let me go. Nanny would have let me.”

  “I think not,” he said. “And doubtless Miss Hamilton is right. Mama must have decided that some other day will be better, Pamela. I will remind her.”

  “You are horrid,” the child shrieked. “You are both horrid. Mama said I could. I am going to tell Mama.”

  She jumped from the top of the fence to the outside of the paddock, gathered up her skirt, and raced around the corner of the stable block and out of sight.

  “I’ll catch up to her,” Fleur said. />
  “Let her go,” he said. “She will come to no harm, and sometimes it is best to be alone when in the middle of a temper tantrum.”

  The gate into the paddock was chained shut. Fleur must have entered it over the fence. He saw her flush as she glanced toward the gate. She arranged her skirt carefully as she set a foot on the lower rung of the fence and swung the other leg over. He kept his hands behind him. He knew she would not welcome his help.

  But her skirt caught on the rough wood of the rung below and behind her, and she was stuck. He strode toward her, leaned over to release the fabric, took her by the waist, and lifted her to the ground.

  He did not remember her sweet fragrance from that first time. But then, of course, she would have had only water with which to wash herself and her hair at that time. The sun made a shining burnished-gold halo of her hair now. And there was soft warm flesh at her small waist.

  She shuddered convulsively and pulled blindly away from him. She made a guttural noise in her throat, similar to the one he remembered her making when he had penetrated her body. She lifted a trembling hand across her mouth and kept it there. She closed her eyes.

  He could think of nothing to say and could not move.

  She opened her eyes and removed the hand. She opened her mouth as if to speak, bit down on her lower lip, and turned her head aside. And she stooped hastily down to scoop up the puppy, which had come scampering through the bottom of the fence.

  “I must take her back to her pen,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  He stood aside and watched her go, her golden head bent to the puppy, her walk hasty and self-conscious. And he felt a great weight of depression on his spirits.

  But why? A governess—a whore turned governess—shuddered and almost vomited at his touch. There was a lady guest at the house—a baronet’s widow—who would welcome his touch and even his presence in her bed, a woman who found his disfigurement arousing and who would perhaps not even blanch if he came to her naked and she saw the other, far worse scars.

  What was there to be depressed about? Perhaps he should encourage Lady Underwood. Perhaps she would be a balm to his wounded self-esteem. Perhaps he should make her his mistress for the duration of her stay, have his fill of a woman who wanted him.