She’d hoped for at least a day to settle in and get her bearings, but they were in the act of removing their cloaks and hats when Magnus’s parents came down the sweeping marble stairs into the stately foyer.
“Darling!” Lady Darlington said, running toward her son with an undignified haste that Mel found endearing.
While mother and son clung to each other in greeting Lord Darlington smiled down at Melissa, his expression cautious, but not unfriendly.
“And you must be my son’s mysterious bride.” He took Melissa’s hand and bowed over it. “Welcome to Darlington House.”
Magnus came toward Melissa, his mother’s hand in his. “How rude I am, darling. Mama, this is my wife, Melissa. Melissa, my mother, Lady Darlington.”
The marchioness hesitated only a moment before drawing Melissa into a soft, lavender-scented embrace. “Welcome, my dear, welcome.” She put Melissa at arm’s length and studied her, her expression far more difficult to read than her husband’s. “You have brought home a beautiful wife, son.”
Magnus beamed at her, his hands clasped behind his back, rocking on his heels like a pleased young boy.
“Come,” the marquess said, one hand on his wife’s waist, the other gesturing toward the stairs. “Let us show you to your chambers. Maybe once you’ve had a chance to freshen up you’ll join us for tea?”
“That sounds lovely,” Mel said, feeling tired, disoriented, and almost dreamlike as she followed her faux mother and father-in-law up the stairs.
“Did Cecil come with you?” Magnus asked. Melissa could hear the hope in his voice.
“No, he will be here the evening before the wedding,” his mother said, heaving a sigh before cutting Melissa a look of maternal asperity. “Our eldest son is rather difficult to pry from our country house,” she explained.
Magnus laughed. “Cecil should have been born a horse and then he’d never have to leave the stable.”
His mother gave him a playful swat. “Hush.”
“I should tell you that Mel and I were already here, Father. We came to stay a few nights after our wedding.”
“Ah,” the marquess said in a noncommittal tone, gesturing to Melissa to proceed him once they reached the landing.
“This is your home, darling. You must come and stay whenever you wish, you know that,” the marchioness said, leading the way, the gorgeous georgette of her gown billowing behind her like a mauve specter. “I’m so happy we were engaged to dine out this evening with Lord and Lady Phelan. You know they are our dear friends so they did not take umbrage when I told them we were begging off to spend the evening with our son, the cleric.”
“Oh, Mama, you didn’t need to—”
“Yes, son, she did,” the marquess stopped, his expression serious as he regarded his youngest son before opening the door in front of his wife.
“I put you in the grandest guest suite—I do hope this is where my son put you on your last stay, Lady Magnus?”
Hearing the title only added to the unreality. Before she could answer, Magnus spoke.
“Please, Mama. She is Melissa.”
For a heartbeat, the other woman’s elegant composed features flickered, but she had herself back in hand so quickly Melissa did not believe she’d seen what she’d thought she saw.
“I do hope you will call me Elizabeth.”
“And you may call me David,” the marquess said, giving Melissa a smile that looked a bit strained.
They all laughed, even though it wasn’t funny, and stood staring rather awkwardly at each other.
Magnus took the initiative and leaned down to kiss his mother’s cheek. “Perhaps we might take a half hour and meet you downstairs?”
“Yes,” the marchioness said, “That is perfect. Dinner isn’t until nine but we knew you’d be famished so we’ll have something to ease your hunger. We’ll be in the Rose Salon, it is so much cozier than any other room at this time of year.”
Once they’d gone, Melissa turned to the man who thought he was her husband.
Magnus held her by the shoulders for a moment before pulling her into a crushing embrace. He’d not touched her since the day before and the feeling of his body was almost her undoing. She was teetering on the edge of sinking to her knees and telling him the entire truth and begging his forgiveness—pledging her word to marry him for real this time and embrace their future in earnest. Before she could speak, he did, his words bringing her hurtling back to the reality of their situation.
“I’m sorry about this, old thing. I know they look frighteningly conservative, but they’ll get over your past and love you just as much as I do. I promise you.”
Melissa laughed, and it wasn’t untinged with hysteria. Could he really be this naïve? But she didn’t ask him that. Instead she said, with mock severity, “What did I tell you about calling me that, Magnus?
She asked the question because she knew he expected it and because it was easier to jest than to talk about how misguided he was about what his parents, his family, the ton, or anyone would think once they found out about her past.
“I’m sorry darling, you can punish me later,” he promised.
“You know I will.”
They chuckled softly together. Never had she felt less like jesting in her entire life but she felt some of the tension ease from her husband’s body, so it was worth the effort.
When he put her at arm’s length he leaned down and kissed her forehead. “All will be well, Melissa. I know it will.”
Thankfully the urge to throw herself at his feet had fled. Instead, her attention now focused on the gravity and urgency of her situation. She needed time—at least a day—to make plans. She couldn’t stay in London. She knew Magnus would leave no stone unturned to find her. No, she would need to be gone when he finally learned the truth.
“Darling?” he asked, a notch of concern between his beautiful blue eyes. “Are you not feeling well? Would you like to simply go to bed and perhaps have this conversation in the morning, when you are—”
Melissa did what she always did when she wanted to manipulate a man.
“Unbutton yourself, Magnus.”
His eyes widened. “Now?” he asked, a visible struggle taking place inside his head: propriety versus desire.
She opened the catches and began unbuttoning him.
“But what about tea? My parents?”
“This won’t take long, unless you dither.”
He stared at her and she could almost see his resolve melting away.
Melissa sank to her knees and brought his pantaloons down with her. “I’m tired of talking, Magnus. Aren’t you?” She lowered her mouth over the tented muslin of his drawers, sucking him hard through the fabric and making him shudder and groan before pulling the tape and yanking them down. “I want you to take me. Hard.”
She swallowed him deep and then deeper still, opening herself to him until the hot hardness of his cock bumped the back of her throat.
He gave a low, guttural grunt of pleasure and then thrust his fingers into her hair.
There was no more talking
***
Magnus owed his wife the biggest and most heartfelt apology of his life.
“What have you done?” his mother repeated for the third time.
His father, on the other hand, hadn’t said a word. He’d also not stopped staring at Melissa as if she were a poisonous insect that had somehow found its way into his sitting room
Beside him, Melissa sat with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the flames dancing and crackling in the hearth.
He reached for her hand and she let him take it. It was limp and cold, a contrast to his own hands which were hot and sweaty—as was his entire body as the enormity of the situation crashed down on him.
“You will have to leave the Church.” His father’s expression was no longer aghast. Instead, he appeared detached—just as he looked when dealing with a tradesman or servant. It was not an expression his father had ever directed at
Magnus before, and it was like glass in his stomach.
He nodded. He couldn’t bear to tell them of the debacle in New Bickford. Not now.
“What will you do?”
“We shall live at Briar House.”
The marquess nodded, his eyes distant, as if his attention was somewhere else, anywhere else.
“But you can’t think to live here?” his mother demanded in a voice dripping with horror. “Surely you should go to the Continent?”
Magnus bristled at her tone. “Yes, in fact we do plan to live here.”
“But you—”
“Elizabeth.”
Magnus had never heard his father speak to his mother in that tone of voice. In fact, he couldn’t recall his father using such a coldly commanding tone ever.
It seemed to send a shockwave through his mother’s slender body—like a bolt of lightning—and when it was over, his mother had the identical expression to his father: cool, aloof, like someone other than his beloved mother inhabited her body.
Before she could open her mouth, the door opened and tea arrived.
“Thank you, Dawks,” his mother said in a voice so normal Magnus could only stare. “Would you mind serving, er, Melissa?” she asked, the slight flush on her cheeks the only sign of what it took for her to force the word between her lips.
“Of course,” Melissa said, her own expression as cool as his parents. Magnus felt like he was in a dream.
The feeling heightened after Dawks and the maid left and his mother chattered on about inconsequential gossip while his wife prepared their tea.
His father demurred when she asked his preference, going to the sideboard and pouring a half glass of whiskey, which he consumed while standing, and then poured another.
Nobody drank tea or consumed any of the delicacies on the tray. His mother continued to fill the silence although she was beginning to sound a bit harried.
She lunged to her feet at a soft knock on the door and was half-way across the room when it opened. “Yes, Dawks? What is it?” she asked in a breathy, high-pitched tone.
Before the butler could answer a man appeared behind him.
“Hallo, Lizzy, David.” His eyes lighted on Magnus and his face broke into a grin. “Why Magnus, I didn’t know you were in town.”
“Oh, John!” his mother wailed before Magnus could answer. Everyone watched in shock as the Marchioness of Darlington flew across the room and launched herself into his Uncle John’s arms and commenced to sob.
Magnus briefly closed his eyes and turned to Melissa, who was staring down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap, the knuckles so white they looked like snow.
“Melissa?”
She didn’t answer, nor would she look up.
“Mel, is—”
“You’ll have to excuse Lady Darlington,” his father’s cool voice cut through the sound of his mother’s crying. “She’s not seen her brother for quite some time.”
Mel’s head whipped up. “Brother?” The word was barely a whisper.
The marquess nodded, his eyes the color of crushed ice. “Yes, her elder brother—the Earl of Vanstone.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Melissa shook her head at the footman who hovered beside her with yet another bottle of wine. She was, she saw, the only one refusing him. Indeed, the wine was flowing rather freely all around this evening. She was the only one abstaining. It was all she could do to even put a morsel of food in her mouth and swallow it without vomiting.
Luckily nobody was paying her too much attention. Even Magnus had only asked her once if aught was amiss before leaving her to her own devices. He, like the other three, was too busy behaving as if everything were normal.
After the marchioness had told her brother that she was just feeling rather emotional about the upcoming wedding they’d all sat down around the tea tray and discussed the latest town gossip. If such an activity appeared more than a little ironic to Magnus’s family, they were too well-bred to let on.
For her part, Melissa had not been able to look away from Lord Vanstone’s face long enough to know what her other three dinner companions were thinking. Although she could certainly guess given the tense silences that fell every few moments.
Lord Vanstone, after his initial moment of stunned surprise, behaved with all the ease of a man assured of his place in the world—at this table, in this household, with these people.
He was her husband’s uncle.
That thought was primarily what circled her brain, around and around like a raven circling carrion.
If there had been even a scintilla of doubt about her decision to leave Magnus it was now gone, eradicated by the very man who’d put her on this road in life to begin with.
Melissa took morbid pleasure in watching John Mixon, the Earl of Vanstone, interacting in an environment other than the one they’d shared for over three years. Looking at him from this perspective she had to admit that he was a handsome man—his dark hair had gone silver at his temples in the almost thirteen years since she’d last seen him. There were more lines on his narrow, handsome face and around his pale gray eyes.
“Isn’t that true, Melissa? Melissa?”
She wrenched her eyes away from the object of her fascination, who’d turned to meet her gaze for only the second time in the last few hours, his thin lips flexed into a smile but his gray eyes like daggers.
Everyone had stopped to stare at her, which made her realize her husband had asked her a question.
She turned to find Magnus’s concerned gaze on her.
“I beg your pardon, Magnus. I’m afraid my mind was wandering.”
Melissa would have sworn the entire table heaved a collective sigh of relief at her words. Magnus, his parents, and his uncle all spoke at once, each declaiming they’d not realized how late it was, how tired Melissa must be, what beasts they’d been to keep her up. Dinner broke up with such haste that the men did not even indulge in an after-dinner drink. Instead, his uncle begged off, claiming he’d ridden most of the day.
“You needn’t show me out, Lizzy.” He kissed his sister’s temple, his gaze on Melissa. “No need to stand on ceremony with your big brother.” His lips curved into a smug smile as he embraced Magnus, the two men thumping each other on the back and insisting they would ride together soon.
He took Melissa’s hand in a grasp so light it was almost not there and bowed over it. “It has been a pleasure, er, Melissa.”
Not to be outdone, she reached deep inside herself and found something beneath the anger and fear: her battered pride, which this man had done everything in his not inconsiderable power to eradicate.
“The pleasure is all mine—” She hesitated and forced herself to smile. “Should I call you Uncle John?”
The silence was so sharp you could have cut a diamond with it.
Magnus was the first to break it. He laughed, giving her a genuine smile, clearly pleased that she’d taken to his uncle, of whom he was so obviously fond. “You should, darling. Uncle John has always been a favorite in this house.” He slid a hand around her waist and pulled her to his side, apparently not caring how the action brought horror to his parents’ faces: their perfect son, embracing a whore.
Once Vanstone had gone, Lord and Lady Darlington made haste to retire to their own chambers. No doubt to discuss the horrific turn of events until dawn.
Mel could see the same idea was on Magnus’s mind as he opened the door to her chambers.
The moment he closed the door she turned to him. “I’m terribly sorry, but I have a horrid headache. I know you wish to discuss—”
“No, of course not, darling.”
Because she was weak, she allowed him to pull her into his arms and hold her. Why not? It might be the last time.
“I’m sorry about this evening, Melissa,” he murmured into the top of her head. “But now that we’ve told my mother and father, the worst is over.”
She closed her eyes, having to bite her lip to keep from la
ughing hysterically. Instead she nodded, kissed his neck, and then pulled away.
“I hope you don’t mind if I sleep alone tonight,” she said, dying a little inside when she saw the quickly covered up hurt in his eyes.
“Of course not. I understand. Is there anything I can get for you?”
She shook her head and he hesitated. After a long, painful moment he nodded, accepting his dismissal, and walked toward the connecting door. “I shall see you in the morning. Good night.”
Once the door closed behind him she headed directly to her writing table.
As she scribbled the first of a series of letters she thought not about tomorrow or all the gray days after that, but wondered how long she’d need to wait before Magnus would go to sleep and she could summon a footman to run her messages.
∞∞∞
Magnus had known it was a mistake to go to Brooks, but he must have been spoiling for a fight. Hell, he knew he was. Especially after Melissa had all but tossed him out of her bed tonight.
He was bloody furious. Oh, not at her—at his parents. How could they behave this way? He knew he was naïve when it came to such matters but it wasn’t as if members of the aristocracy hadn’t married women with scandalous backgrounds before. Everyone knew of Sir John Lade and the Gunning sisters before them. Hell, the Gunnings had married three bloody dukes all told. Magnus was not the heir; he was a son who hated society and would never come to London again as long as he lived.
He pulsed with fury—and violence. It seemed that violence, once you embraced it, became addictive.
So that was the real reason he’d gone to Brooks. After all, he could have merely walked his anger out. But that wasn’t good enough.
He’d known when he’d walked in—it was half-full, but deadly quiet—that something was out of the ordinary. He went to a table, waved over a waiter, and ordered a drink before picking up a paper and pretending to read.
They must have drawn straws over who would come ask him. It took them a while, three-quarters of an hour, by his reckoning. Not surprisingly, it was their ringleader Royce—the bastard from his last visit to Brooks—who came over
Melissa and The Vicar (The Seducers Book 1) Page 28