Guilty Series

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  She hit him with a pillow.

  During dinner, Viola tried not to stare at her husband, but her gaze kept straying to him seated at the other end of the long dining table. It was still strange to see him there, but it felt good, somehow. It felt right.

  He looked up and caught her gaze. His brows drew together in puzzlement. “You are staring at me quite intently,” he said, smiling. “Why?”

  “I am trying to get used to seeing you in that chair.”

  John took a sip of wine. “Is it a good sight, Viola?” he asked. “Or not so good?”

  He wasn’t teasing. “Good,” she admitted. “Strange, but good. Although,” she added, her voice taking on a hint of mock severity, “you really need to appreciate the schedule of things here at Enderby and not come down so late to dinner.”

  “I am terribly sorry.” He smiled, and she caught her breath. He could still make her heart race when he smiled. “I was unavoidably detained.”

  “Dessert, my lord.” Hawthorne placed a glass bowl in front of him, and a footmen did the same for her. Viola picked up her spoon and took a bite of trifle.

  “Take it away.”

  John’s voice, the emotionless words, had her looking up. His face was as expressionless as his voice, and the very flatness of it was so startling, she set down her spoon. It was as if she were looking not at her husband’s face, but at a mask of it.

  Hawthorne removed the dessert he had just placed on the table. “Would you like something else, my lord?”

  “Just the port.”

  The butler stepped back and set John’s dessert on the sideboard. He brought a flagon of port and a glass, poured out the wine, and once again withdrew.

  As if sensing her scrutiny, he shifted uneasily in his chair. “I don’t eat trifle,” he said without looking at her.

  “I had forgotten how much you dislike it.”

  “Odd, what? Jam, sponge cake, custard. What is there about it to dislike? It must be that I have an absurd desire to be different from everyone else in Britain.”

  He smiled again, that brilliant, heart-stopping smile, but this time it did not reach his eyes. This was more than just dislike. There was something oddly painful in that smile that hurt her, too. An emptiness. Viola set her serviette beside her plate. “Hawthorne,” she said, signaling the butler forward again. “Take mine away as well, please. I don’t want it. And bring me a glass of madeira.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” John said as the servant stepped back with her uneaten dessert.

  “I think I did. It bothers you to even look at it.”

  He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. She knew it bothered him a great deal. “Why?” she asked.

  He turned his face away.

  “Would it be so hard, John?” she asked. “To tell me?”

  When he still said nothing, she shoved aside her disappointment and rose to her feet. “The sun is setting,” she said. “You always liked to walk at sunset. I may have forgotten about the trifle, but I remember that.” She took her glass of madeira from where Hawthorne had just placed it on the table. “Shall we take our wine and go for a walk in the garden?”

  He picked up his port and they went outside into the cool air of the May evening. By unspoken agreement they started down a graveled path flanked by herbaceous borders, toward the folly that overlooked the river. As they walked, she inhaled the sweet scent of stocks and half-opened roses, and memories rose up, bittersweet, of their courting days, when John would have her and her brother to dine here at Enderby, how he would try to hold her hand if Anthony wasn’t looking. She was in residence here most of the year, but she hadn’t walked this path since those days. Without John it hadn’t been the same.

  “Remember when you used to have dinner parties here?” she asked. “Before we were married? We always took this walk afterward.”

  He reached for her hand, holding it fast when she tried to pull away. He laced their fingers together. “I remember, Viola.”

  They walked up the steps of the folly, a round, open structure of limestone columns, capped by a copper dome long ago turned to verdigris. They climbed over the three-foot stone wall at the back of the folly and sat down on it like they used to do. Hand in hand, they stared out over Kew Gardens on the opposite side of the Thames and watched as the boats pulled into docks along the river, their work done for the day.

  Neither of them spoke as twilight settled in. He did not seem inclined to talk. She didn’t know why he found it so hard to reveal himself. She didn’t understand what held him back.

  But in her bed that night, in the hot sweet dark, there was nothing held back. There was nothing baffling about the way he touched her and kissed her. The way he made love to her. Viola savored it with all the hunger of the eight years she had been without him, but as much as he could pleasure her, it wasn’t enough.

  There were things that stood between them now as much as they ever had. Without love, what did she have to hold him? She was afraid that whatever she had, whatever she did, would never be enough to make him tell her why he didn’t like trifle and why his boyhood was a nightmare. She was afraid that she would never find the key to his heart. Most of all, she was afraid he would never save all his smiles, all his kisses, all his caresses, and all his poetry for her and her alone.

  Viola loved making love in the morning, but when John woke up, any notion he had of pleasing his wife in that respect was banished almost at once. He managed to get one, only one, kiss before the first interruption.

  A scratch on the door was the only warning before the door opened and Tate came marching in with a bundle of letters in her hand. “The morning post, my lady,” she said, and looked up. When she saw the mistress of the house sitting on top of her husband, naked, with the sheets only partly covering them, she flushed a deep scarlet. “Oh!” she gasped, and promptly dropped the letters on the floor. “I’m so terribly sorry!”

  She fumbled for the doorknob and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Did you see her face?” Viola whispered. “Good heavens. What a shock we’ve given her. I’m sure she thinks we’re most improper to be making love in daylight. And me without my nightgown on.”

  John rolled on top of her, feeling the cool air of the room on his back and the warmth of her body beneath him. “Forget about Tate. Where were we?”

  “Hmm, let me think.” Her eyes half closed, she tilted her head back. “I think you were kissing me.”

  “Ah, that was it.” He bent his head and tasted her mouth. “I wish I had some blackberry jam.”

  As if in answer to this request, another scratch was heard on the door and a maid came in, rattling dishes. “Early tea, my lady. Oh!”

  “Lord, have mercy,” John muttered, and the maid hastily deposited the tray on a table, then vanished, pulling the door shut.

  He heard some voices murmuring in the corridor and a few shocked giggles, no doubt commenting on the fact that no man ever slept all night in his wife’s room. John waited until the sounds died away just to be sure another maid wasn’t about to come in with coal for the grate, then resumed his pleasurable explorations of his wife’s luscious body.

  “Don’t you want any tea?” she asked, pushing him back to give him a smile that was downright wicked.

  “Unless it’s something I can kiss off of you, forget it,” he said, and slid his leg between both of hers.

  The door from the corridor into his bedchamber opened. “My lord?” Stephens called as if looking for him. “Mr. Stone is downstairs, waiting to see you.”

  “Stephens,” he shouted through the open doorway to his room, “get out of here!”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  John heard the door close, but his valet proved to be one interruption too many. The moment was lost.

  “Remind me to have a little talk with our staff about the morning routine,” John muttered, and rolled onto his back, giving it up.

  Viola laughed and got out of bed
. Swinging her loose hair back over her shoulders, she picked up her nightdress and robe and put them on. “Maybe you are just too greedy,” she said as she tied the sash of her robe.

  “Greedy, am I?” He jumped up and came after her. She gave a shriek of laughter and dodged out of reach, but he caught her around the waist and hauled her back. “You are the one who almost starved me last night, you couldn’t get enough of me.”

  “What? Oh, how outrageous!” She pushed at him.

  He kissed her neck. “Admit it.”

  “I shan’t! You are too conceited as it is.” She pulled out of his hold and tugged the bell pull for her maid. “Besides, your secretary is waiting for you, and I have to go back to town today, so we’d best stop lazing our day away and get on with things.”

  “Why do we have to go to London?”

  “I have a ball to attend. My charity ball for the hospitals.”

  He groaned. “Do we have to go? I hate these Fancy Dress affairs.”

  “My charities are very important to me. Besides, I missed it last year. I cannot miss it twice. And I don’t know why you’re complaining anyway,” she added. “You can’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  She grinned, sure she had the upper hand for once. “I never sent you an invitation.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, and grinned right back at her. “I finagled one from Lady Deane ages ago.” He kissed her and started for his own room. “No wonder you’re so bad at chess,” he said, shaking his head.

  He closed the door, and from the other side he heard her say, “I can’t believe I married such an impossible man!”

  His secretary was waiting for him in the study.

  “Glad to see you’ve recovered from the measles, Stone,” he said, and circled the desk. A long time, he thought, since he had used this desk. It felt good to stand behind it.

  “Thank you, my lord.” The secretary opened his dispatch case. “You have quite a bit of correspondence to answer.”

  “I’m sure I do with you lazing away in Clapham for the past week and a half at my expense.”

  Stone had worked for him long enough to recognize that he was teasing, but the poor fellow, alas, had no sense of humor. He did not change expression. “My apologies, my lord.”

  John sighed and gave it up. “Anything important?”

  Instead of replying, Stone turned the opened case around so John could see the contents. It was full. Completely full of small, folded, sealed sheets of pink paper. Emma.

  John stared at the letters and all his amusement faded. A mild irritation took its place. “Good God,” he muttered, “How many are there?”

  “Fifty-nine, sir. All addressed from Calais.”

  “All in the past ten days?” He picked up a handful, wondering what manner of woman did something like this. He strove to think back to the woman who had been his mistress through the autumn and winter, and he could remember only vague things, unimportant things. Red hair. Green eyes. A sweet sort of charm easily enjoyed and quickly forgotten. “What does she hope to gain by such a barrage of correspondence? More money?”

  Stone did not answer, since he knew the question was rhetorical. He simply waited for instructions.

  “Stone, I want you to—”

  The opening of the door interrupted him. “John, when do you want to leave for town?” Viola stopped in the doorway, her gaze fixed on the bundle of pink letters in his hand. Her face went pale and her eyes went wide, and John could read her thoughts at that moment as if they were written above her head.

  “Viola—” he began.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to interrupt you. Forgive me.” She pressed a hand to her mouth, turned around and walked away.

  “Viola!” he called after her.

  She stopped, then continued on without a backward glance until she turned and disappeared from view.

  John dropped the handful of letters back into the case. “Burn these damn things,” he said, loud enough for Viola to hear him as she walked away. “Better yet, send them all back to Mrs. Rawlins with a letter telling her I’m not paying her a farthing more and never to contact me again. Understood?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he went after Viola. He found her on the terrace, staring out at the river that curved and glittered in the distance. She must have heard the tap of his boot heels on the flagstones, but she did not turn around and look at him as he approached her.

  “Those are love letters, aren’t they?” she said, then made a chiding sound. “What am I saying? Of course they are. Pink paper, and I could smell the perfume on them from the doorway.”

  “The woman writes to me,” he told her. “I do not write to her.”

  “I see.” She nodded, but continued to stare out at the river without turning around.

  The very fact that she was so calm impelled him to speak. “I am not with Emma. I ended it months ago.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “Damned right I don’t. There’s nothing to explain. It is over.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and turned her head slightly in his direction. “From the amount of correspondence she sends you, it seems Mrs. Rawlins does not realize that fact.”

  “She should. I made it clear. I paid off her contract. I set her aside months before Percy died. You are the only woman I have been with since then.”

  She turned and looked at him. “I believe you,” she said, but there was a cool, polished hardness in her face that hurt him.

  Don’t, he thought. Don’t do this.

  “Is Emma Rawlins in love with you?”

  “Love?” His voice was harsh, contemptuous of such a notion. She winced, and he gentled his voice at once. “She was a mistress, Viola. She was paid. Love has nothing to do with such arrangements. Don’t you see that?”

  “I think it is Mrs. Rawlins who does not see that,” Viola said, and turned again to look out at the view. John stared at his wife’s rigid back for a long moment, but he did not know what she wanted him to say. He did not know what she wanted him to do. With an oath, he turned and walked away.

  Chapter 17

  Once again the charity ball for London hospitals proved to be a raging success. Thousands of pounds were raised, for over the past few years the ball had become one of the most popular events of the season, and anyone who attended had to pay the exorbitant subscription fee.

  Viola was gratified by the success, for London hospitals were among her favorite charities, but the event itself proved to be a difficult, exhausting business. John attended with her, something that had never happened before, and speculation about their presence together began to circulate the ballroom within minutes of their arrival.

  The general conclusion would probably be that Lord and Lady Hammond had, indeed, reconciled. This morning they might have been right about that, but this evening, Viola was not so sure.

  The carriage ride from Chiswick had been silent. John had made no attempts at conversation, and neither had she. The letters from Emma Rawlins were probably on their way back to France by now, but they stood between John and herself as if they had been piled up on the carriage floor. John did not understand why, she knew. He didn’t understand that even a mistress who was paid could fall desperately in love.

  At the ball, they danced one quadrille together, then separated to mingle with other guests. After a few hours of circulating through the crowd with a smile pasted on her face as she encountered some of the women from Lady Deane’s guest list, Viola’s head began to ache and she sought out a quiet corner of the ballroom.

  She leaned back against the wall, sipping her glass of punch as her gaze roamed over the crowd. She remembered that day over a month ago when she had been going over her guest list for the ball with Tate and how John had warned her about the spitefulness of Lady Deane. Not presenting her guest list to the baroness in person had been a social snub that Viola knew she was paying for now, because among the knights and nobles, the
princesses and jesters, the bewigged judges and Greek muses, were all of John’s former mistresses, except Emma Rawlins. Lady Deane had been very busy. And very spiteful, indeed.

  Viola sought out their faces. Anne Pomeroy, so polished and elegant. Peggy Darwin, laughing and pretty. Jane Morrow, blond and hazel-eyed like herself, a demirep on the fringes of society, still a good enough courtesan to afford the subscription fee for this ball. Dark-haired and doe-eyed Maria Allen. Her reconciliation with her husband had not succeeded, and she was Lord Dewhurst’s mistress now. Maybe she thought her husband fighting in a duel was romantic. Elizabeth Blunt, another beautiful and promiscuous countess with whom Viola had been forced to drink tea and play cards over the years. Even Elsie Gallant was here, and the years had not been kind to her, for the vivacious, lovely face that had made her a popular demirep now marked what she was—an aging courtesan.

  Viola studied them one by one and was surprised to find that she felt no rage of jealousy. She felt strangely distant, oddly detached, with a hint of pity for these women.

  He hadn’t loved any of them, but how had they felt? She remembered the brief hint of tenderness in Peggy Darwin’s face that day in the draper’s shop when she had looked at John, confirming what she had known for years, what John refused to see. The countess had been in love with him once. Wasn’t now, perhaps, but she had been. Viola thought of the pile of pink letters in Mr. Stone’s dispatch case. Poor Emma Rawlins.

  And what of herself? She was his wife. Yet, if she’d had no dowry, if she hadn’t been born a lady, if she hadn’t married him, she would still have fallen in love with John Hammond, for he made falling in love with him so easy. Without even realizing it. It was in his smile and his charm and his ability to make a woman laugh. It was because he remembered what food a woman liked and what activities she enjoyed and how she liked to be touched. But his heart was never engaged. How could she ever hold his heart if he never gave it away?

  Viola pressed a hand to her forehead. Her head ached. Her heart ached. Her monthly was coming, she could feel it, but she knew that wasn’t why she felt tired, lonely, and so terribly depressed. She could not stop thinking about how desperate and hurting a woman had to be to send a man stacks of letters when he hadn’t ever cared tuppence for her. She understood Emma Rawlins’s desperate love for a man who did not love her back. How odd to feel empathy for your husband’s former mistress, she thought.