by Lucy Ashford
She broke off. She’d suddenly noticed the bruise on his temple and it smote her. Edward had done that. Her own brother. But it might just as well have been her.
His hand was on the door again. His eyes were like narrowed chips of flint. ‘Whether you wish it or not,’ he said, ‘I’ll make it clear to Lord Jarvis that you’re under my protection wherever you are.’
Then he was gone. Belle felt as if every part of her—every fibre, every nerve ending—was hurting with the kind of pain she hadn’t known existed. She sank into a chair by the window and put her head in her hands.
She wanted to lie on the bed where she’d slept in his arms and remember the warmth of those arms. She so desperately wanted to confess to him about Edward stupidly causing his accident and how she’d told Matt to delay his coach. But it was too late. She’d lied too much for him ever to forgive her now.
* * *
Adam paced the parlour downstairs. The landlord had served coffee, which was bitter and scalded his throat but also brought a measure of sense back to his tumultuous thoughts. Ensuring the safety of those who worked for him was Adam’s first priority now. There’d been sabotage on the railway excavations and his neighbours had been threatened; he should have been there already.
Belle Marchmain wanted nothing more to do with him, that was plain. Every time they made love, she must feel she was betraying her beloved husband all over again. As for the bargain that Adam had made with Jarvis—Belle was right, it was unforgivable, whatever he’d tried to do to make up for it afterwards.
Time, for God’s sake, to stop thinking about her. Time to prepare for the last stage of this journey. But at that moment he heard a chaise rattling into the front courtyard, then the voice of a young man talking in some agitation to the landlord outside. There were hurried footsteps and the door burst open. It was Edward Hathersleigh.
Chapter Sixteen
‘Mr Davenant,’ Belle’s brother began. ‘I’ve come to make a confession. I’m very sorry, sir, but it was me who caused your accident yesterday.’ Edward’s hand was nervously pushing back his dark hair and Adam found his eyes fastened on the puckered childhood scar at his temple.
‘I only wanted to stop you,’ Edward blurted on, ‘because I thought that you were making off with my sister. At first I felt it best to keep quiet about—the accident on the road. But I can’t do it, you see, because what I did just wasn’t right, though I didn’t mean to actually knock you senseless!’
Adam listened to him in stupefaction. Then he heard light footsteps on the staircase. Belle. She stood there frozen. Her brother, with his back to the stairs, had not seen her.
‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry I misjudged you so, sir,’ Edward went on. ‘Thinking that you were after Belle and so forth. She told me yesterday—after the accident, I mean—that you’ve actually been more than good to her, setting her up in a fine shop in London, with no evil intentions to her whatsoever. And she told me I was quite wrong to stop you as if I was one of the High Toby; in fact, she tore a strip off me, I’ve never seen her so upset...’
Adam said, ‘Your sister’s behind you, Hathersleigh.’
And indeed, Belle stood there, looking as though her world was falling apart around her.
Edward let out a gasp of dismay. ‘Belle. Belle, I just had to tell him...’
Adam said softly to Belle, ‘So you knew all along that it was your brother who overturned my curricle.’
Her face was chalk-white. ‘Yes.’
Edward stepped forwards again. ‘I know I was wrong, sir. But I was only trying to protect my sister’s honour!’
‘A pity,’ said Adam, ‘that you didn’t consider your sister’s honour when you made her prey to every man in town thanks to your gambling debts.’ He turned from Edward to Belle. ‘We need to talk, you and I. We need to get a few things straight...’
But Belle was already hurrying upstairs. Adam looked at his watch. Damn it. Damn it, he had to get to his meeting today...
Edward was still protesting his apologies. ‘Hathersleigh,’ Adam said, ‘do me a favour and stow it, will you, while I go and sort things with your sister?’
‘But sir, my debts! Belle told me that you bought them up. Why haven’t you called them in?’
Adam cast him a withering glance. ‘If I’ve shown any clemency at all, Hathersleigh, it’s been for your sister’s sake, not yours. She’s far, far better than you damned well deserve.’
And Adam turned, to take the stairs two at a time.
* * *
Edward went dejectedly out to his chaise, his head bowed so it took him a moment or two to realise that Belle was sitting inside it, with her valise.
‘Belle!’ he cried. ‘How did you get here? What the...?’
‘Take me to Bath, Edward. Please.’
‘But what about Davenant?’
‘I think it best,’ she said in a voice that was taut with strain, ‘if I never see him again. Oh, he’s done me no harm, Edward, far from it. And as for you—he could enforce that debt and ruin you, any time. He could put you in prison for waylaying his carriage. Do you realise that?’
Edward was white-faced. ‘Do you think he will?’
‘I rather think that he’s more honourable than either of us deserve.’ Her voice shook a little. ‘Take me to Bath.’ Away, from him.
If hearts could break, hers was well and truly shattered.
* * *
Adam discovered too late that there was a back staircase. By the time he’d got downstairs again he’d realised she’d evaded him and gone off with her blasted brother. Should he go after her? He was pretty damned certain she wouldn’t want him to, but he was furious and worried: furious with her, and furious with himself for driving her away from the shelter of his protection, when that protection was the one thing he could offer her now.
He hoped she would be safe at her brother’s house, but her brother had the common sense of a flea.
The meeting at the Sawle Down quarry later that day didn’t improve Adam’s spirits. Shipley had ordered his workmen to press on with the excavations and none could have worked harder, but the weather had turned against them and, since mid-morning, it had been raining steadily.
Adam, on site again at dawn the next morning, found the excavations had been turned overnight into a quagmire. At least the attacks on the neighbouring villages had stopped, thanks to the night guards Adam had ordered Shipley to hire.
But there had been another accident—sabotage, his men suspected. One of the timber supports had given way and a man’s leg had been broken in two places. It looked as if Jarvis was seeking other ways to destroy the railway.
Grimly, in spite of the rain that poured down, Adam threw himself into helping his men to clear away rock and soil from the site with an energy and strength that awed all of them. Now that a compromise with Jarvis looked impossible, Adam knew he would soon have to tell his men they would need to take the long and difficult diversion around Jarvis’s land.
But then George Shipley came up to him with the news that Lord Jarvis had arrived in Bath that morning.
‘His lordship’s been heard muttering something about getting even, sir,’ said Shipley worriedly. ‘You, me and all of us had best be on our guard.’
Swiftly Adam dragged on his coat and flung himself astride his horse, apprehension tightening every sinew. ‘I’ll be back later, George,’ he called. ‘There’s something—someone—I’ve got to see.’
For too long now he’d been trying to hide from himself the fact that Belle Marchmain had somehow found a place in the heart he’d believed to be cold as ice. Dear heaven, he missed her more every hour that went by. She’d become a vital part of his life, with her clothes and her teasing. He couldn’t forget the passionate hours they’d spent in bed together. He couldn’t even bear a grudge for the trickery over his journey here—who could blame her for thinking he really might be about to throw her into Jarvis’s ugly hands?
She loved her dead husband,
he knew; she could never love him, especially after the bargain he’d made with Jarvis. But damn it, he had still sworn to protect her. She’d gone with Edward and Adam had assumed she would be safe—but things had changed.
Did Jarvis know that Belle was nearby? And that her foolish brother was now her only protector?
* * *
A butler had opened the big door to Hathersleigh Manor two miles outside Bath, but almost immediately Edward himself was there.
‘Mr Davenant!’ Edward turned to his butler. ‘Thank you, Turner, that will be all.’ He turned nervously back to Adam once they were alone. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’
‘I came for your sister,’ Adam began, ‘not you...’
Just then another door into the hallway opened and a soft voice said, ‘Edward?’
Adam saw a wraith—a young woman with pale hair and pale eyes—who whispered, ‘Edward. Is it the doctor?’
She went to her husband and clung to his arm, her black gown hanging shapelessly from her thin frame. ‘Has he come to tell us our baby is well again? Edward, has he?’
‘No, Charlotte.’ Adam saw Edward clutch his wife’s hands to his in a kind of fierce despair. ‘It’s not the doctor. It’s a man I need to see about some business, my love.’
‘My baby,’ whispered Charlotte. ‘My...’
‘Yes, I know, dearest—you’ll excuse me a moment, Mr Davenant?’ Gently Edward led his wife to another room, leaving Adam dripping water into the hallway. Adam remembered from his last visit how the place wore all the signs of genteel poverty. Everything—the floor tiles, the oak stairway, the plasterwork—had seen far better days. On the wall hung an old map showing the Hathersleigh estate as it had been fifty years ago; Adam turned from it as Edward came back into the hallway.
‘I’m sorry,’ Edward said. There was utter despair in his eyes ‘My wife has not been well since our baby died. Will you come into my study, Mr Davenant?’
Adam indicated his soaking clothes and boots.
‘No matter.’ Edward opened a door quickly and ushered him into his study, where the desk was strewn with files and sheets of paper.
A mess. The whole estate, a mess. But all Adam wanted was to know that Belle was safe. To tell her—God, what could he tell her?—that he was here if she needed him.
Edward was looking at him squarely. ‘Have you come to tell me that you’re going to prosecute me for causing the accident to your curricle?’
What? ‘Good God, no, I just came to... Has your wife had good medical care, Hathersleigh?’
Edward ran his hand through his hair. ‘As soon as we realised she was pregnant again we hired an expensive doctor, who promised her that this child would live. She was desperate, Mr Davenant. I—I didn’t have enough money to pay him, so I tried the gaming
tables and at first it went well...’ He gazed at Adam in despair. ‘Those debts at White’s that you bought up—you’ll no doubt want me to repay you.’
‘I’ll give you time,’ said Adam.
Edward looked overcome. ‘This is good of you, Mr Davenant; in fact, more than I deserve.’
‘I’m not doing this for you, Hathersleigh. I’m thinking of your sister.’
Edward drew a deep breath. ‘Yes. Belle told me how you helped her so much with her shop.’ He braced his shoulders. ‘You’ll have to forgive me for saying this, sir. But it’s occurred to me that if anyone at all deserves my sister, you do.’
Those words of praise tore at Adam’s gut. He shook his head bitterly. ‘You must know as well as I, Hathersleigh, that she adored her husband and would never look at anyone else.’ Devil take it, a man would have to practically force her into his bed. Just as he, Adam, had done. ‘I’ve come because I’d actually like to speak to your sister about something rather urgent.’
‘But Belle’s not here!’
Adam felt the ground shift under his feet. ‘Not here?’
‘No! She absolutely insisted that I took her to Bath, that day we left you at the inn. She’s staying at a small hotel in Trinity Street.’
In Bath. Where Jarvis was heading. Adam started to the door, but stopped because Edward was blocking his way.
‘One last thing, Mr Davenant,’ Edward said resolutely. ‘Something you said just now. Do you really imagine that my sister loved that husband of hers?’
Emotion roiled in Adam’s gut. ‘Didn’t she?’
‘No, sir. No, she damned well did not!’
And Edward Hathersleigh began to tell Adam—everything.
* * *
Once in Bath, Belle had lost no time in looking for a suitable shop for rent and on the fourth day she found one, in a cobbled lane near the river. In anguish she forced herself to stop thinking about Adam and the wrecking of all her impossible dreams.
She would recover, she told herself, as the rain poured down and turned Bath’s elegant streets into streams of mud. She might even stop some day imagining every moment that she could hear the husky voice of the man she loved. Might stop imagining that if she turned she would see his impossibly handsome face smiling down at her, in the way that he used to.
She would sell her share of the Piccadilly shop to Adam and Adam would keep Gabby and the rest of the staff on, if he had any sense. Then she would move here quietly and alone. Raw pain clawed at her heart. Yes—alone. Adam would be glad to forget her, after the tangled mess she’d made of everything.
The shop she’d found was a quaint little building with bow windows between a confectioner’s and a hat shop—empty and a trifle dusty, but it took Belle’s quick mind no time at all to mentally furnish it with shelves full of delicious fabric and knots of ribbons. ‘Bath is full of old maids and dowds,’ Adam had once said dismissively.
Well, she was weary of thinking about Adam. Of remembering his kisses and his tender yet powerful lovemaking. He doesn’t care, you fool. In fact, far from caring, Adam would be sick to the back teeth of her and Edward. Bad enough that he’d found out she’d covered up for Edward’s stupid trick with the curricle, but if he discovered that she, too, had laid her plans for Matt to stop him reaching his vital meeting, he would despise her with all his being.
Best, by far, that she simply remove herself from Adam’s life. But her heart seemed to split in two every time she faced up to the fact that she would never see him again.
* * *
One morning when a watery sun was trying to dry up the puddles, Belle walked briskly from her small hotel to the office of the lawyer who’d agreed to handle her purchase of the shop’s lease. She thought she had just enough money of her own for the deposit and the lawyer had assured her that he would be able to deal with the sale of her share in her London business.
‘You mean,’ she’d said, ‘that I won’t even have to meet Mr Davenant?’
‘Not at all, Mrs Marchmain,’ Mr Cherritt, the lawyer, had told her breezily. ‘There will be correspondence, of course—a document or two to sign—but I can handle it all, I assure you.’
* * *
So far, so good—but this morning, on her way once more to Mr Cherritt’s office in Monmouth Street, something made her stop.
Bath was busy with traffic and pedestrians as usual. But she thought she’d seen a hateful face she knew amongst the crowds. Her heart began to thump rather sickeningly.
She’d started to feel strange sensations these past few days. A little dizziness, if she got up from a chair too swiftly, an unwillingness to eat. It was simply fatigue, she told herself; just as her belief that she’d seen Lord Jarvis staring after her a moment ago simply must be a product of her tired imagination...
She turned this way and that, trying to find him again. But the familiar-looking figure had disappeared into the throng.
Impossible. Jarvis must still be in London. But she still felt afraid. She’d got so used to not being afraid, when Adam was with her. No good thinking of Adam. No good letting the pain of losing him claw at her stomach as it was now. Swallowing down the sudden tightness in her throat,
she pressed on and entered her lawyer’s office. But Mr Cherritt, normally so friendly, did not look pleased to see her.
‘Mrs Marchmain,’ he began, ‘I regret to say the landlord of the shop you are after has been given some adverse reports about your business history.’
What on earth...? ‘I run a successful shop in London’s Piccadilly!’
‘Maybe. But the landlord understands your previous business failed, due to your inability to pay the rent. He’s also been told that custom had dropped away badly after a number of complaints.’
‘How? How could anyone know all this?’ Belle’s voice trailed away as she remembered Adam’s warning that Jarvis had been determined to ruin her shop in the Strand. That hurrying figure she’d seen just now... Her heart raced then slowed. She said, ‘Do you—or this landlord—happen to know Lord Jarvis?’
The lawyer flushed a little. ‘That is neither here nor there. Mrs Marchmain, I regret the landlord has decided against letting you have the premises in Bridge Street. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other clients waiting.’
Cherritt had got up from his desk and was holding the door open. Belle didn’t move. ‘Lord Jarvis is in Bath, isn’t he?’ she said steadily. ‘Tell me. Tell me where he is staying.’
‘My dear madam, how should I know that?’
She wanted to hit him. Then it struck her. Jarvis would, of course, choose none other than the most expensive hotel in Bath. ‘Is he at the York House Hotel?’
Cherritt said nothing. Belle whirled from the room, banging the door hard behind her.
It was raining heavily now. Unfolding her umbrella, she hurried to the York House Hotel in George Street and entered the spacious reception area where a liveried footman approached her. ‘Can I be of assistance, ma’am?’
‘Yes,’ she began hurriedly, ‘I want to know if...’