She and John left the ball early and went back to Chiswick that night. She slept by herself, using her impending courses as an excuse. He seemed to accept it, and she was glad because she did not want him to see her when she laid down in bed and wept. She did it silently into the pillow so he would not hear.
She was pulling away. He could feel it. John laid in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, and tried to tell himself it was her courses—he knew such things had an affect on a woman’s disposition. He’d learned long ago that steering clear was the best move a man could make in such circumstances.
He tried to tell himself her monthly illness was the reason she’d been so strange about Emma’s letters, but he knew that wasn’t it. She was pulling away from him.
The ball tonight hadn’t helped matters. Damn Lady Deane’s malicious nature. But even as he damned her, he knew his own culpability there.
John rubbed his hands over his face and asked himself the same question he’d asked himself countless times over the years. What did Viola want from him? What could he do or say that would make things right? There had to be a way.
The years ran across his mind like the pages of a storybook, but the things that he kept coming back to were those early days, especially Hammond Park. He thought of riding on the downs and making Viola laugh. She’d been happy at Hammond Park. He knew that much.
With sudden clarity, he knew what he had to do. He had to take her home—to their home, where she belonged. Sleeping in that big mahogany bed with him, getting trounced by him at chess in their library there, riding that spirited mare he’d bought her. He imagined her racing ahead of him, tossing off her hat and laughing, and that was when he was finally able to fall asleep.
Viola made no objection to leaving London, but during the trip to Northumberland, she said little. Though he got an occasional smile or laugh out of her, she was restrained and distant. He knew she probably had some discomfort from her courses, and the six-day journey could not have helped ease that. But he remembered full well how long her monthly lasted, yet by the time they reached Hammond Park on the seventh day, her restrained manner still enveloped her like a shield to keep him away.
Nonetheless, John had no intention of allowing any closed bedroom doors this time around. That night, when he went to the master bedchamber, he had every intention of making it clear that they would be sharing one bed.
She was there when he came in, sitting at the dressing table in her nightgown, brushing her hair. She stopped a moment as he entered the room, then resumed her task.
He went into the dressing room and saw the cot had been made up, but he had no intention of using it. Not tonight, not any night, not ever again. He stripped off his clothes, walked out of the dressing room, and moved to stand behind her chair.
She stopped, the brush poised against her long hair. She looked at his reflection in the mirror, her face framed against the backdrop of his naked chest.
He leaned down and slid his arms around her. He kissed her neck. She set down the brush, wrapped her hands around his wrists and pushed his arms away.
He straightened, and knew he had to know what he was dealing with. “Are we going to have a fight tonight?” he asked quietly.
“Why do you ask? Because I am not in a mood to make love with you?”
These were the moments when women were truly baffling. “Well, something is wrong, and I do not know what it is.”
“It’s just—” She broke off and turned around, looking up at him in the lamplight with an odd sadness in her face that twisted something in his guts.
“Are you still angry about Emma’s letters?” he asked.
“I’m not angry, John. I was never angry.”
“What is this strange mood, then? Are you still—” He broke off, making a vague motion toward her abdomen, hoping it was as simple and temporary as that, knowing full well it wasn’t.
Her cheeks got pink. “No.”
He made another guess. “Are you upset that we left London before the season was over?”
“Heavens, no.”
John gave up. “Then what is it?”
She lifted a hand helplessly. “I feel so sorry for that woman.”
“What woman? Emma?” He was too amazed not to ask the next question. “Why?”
“Oh, John, really!” Exasperation came into her face and she turned her back to him. “She has feelings for you,” she said over her shoulder. “Desperate feelings. She must, or she would not be sending you stacks of letters and humiliating herself in that way.”
He’d asked a stupid question, he should have known he wouldn’t like the answer. He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed his forehead to the top of her head with a sigh. “What would you suggest I do about that?”
“I don’t know.” she admitted. She shrugged as if she wanted him to remove his hands.
He didn’t. He straightened and met her eyes in the mirror. “I may be dense, Viola, but I still do not understand the problem.”
“I know how she feels, John,” she whispered. “There. Now you know the problem.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “It isn’t the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same. Do men really think that mistresses do not have feelings? That they do not fall in love? Yes,” she said when he made an exclamation of impatience, “love. I tried to tell you this before, after we saw Peggy Darwin in the draper’s shop. She was in love with you once, too. I always knew that. Why do you think it hurt so much to see her looking at you?”
“I was never in love with Peggy Darwin.”
“I am not talking about your feelings. I am talking about hers. And Emma Rawlins’s. And mine. Oh, John, do you not see? Women fall in love with you. It’s in the way you smile and the things you say. It’s in everything you do.”
That was absurd. He looked away. “I cannot believe that women would think that a few smiles are worth falling in love with.”
“You are an unbelievably handsome man, and you have so much magnetism, so much charm. You flirt with women, you remember things, you pay attention. Women are putty in your hands.” She paused, then said softly, “I was.”
“Viola, you have never been putty in my hands,” he assured her. “If that were true,” he said, trying to make light of it, “I’d have half a dozen sons by now.”
She slid off the seat, stepped away from him and climbed into bed. “I want to go to sleep.”
He looked back over his shoulder at the cot that had been made up for him in the dressing room. He leaned against the carved footboard of the bed, gripping its edge in his hands, and looked at her again.
“Tell me one thing,” he said, and took a deep breath, feeling as if he were about to jump over a cliff. The carving on the footboard was pressing so hard into his hands that it hurt. “Do you want me to sleep in the dressing room?”
She looked away. “I—” She broke off and bit her lip.
“Yes or no.”
“I don’t want to make love, John. I’m not saying that because I’m angry at you,” she added. “Truly. It’s just that I am not…I am not inclined to it tonight.”
Just holding and touching her for those few brief moments a short time ago had been enough to arouse him. It was going to be torture to just lie in bed with her and hold her, but if that was how it had to be, he’d endure it. However many nights he had to, with every intention of persuading her differently every chance he got.
He looked into her eyes and did something he swore he would never do with Viola again. He lied. “If you don’t want to make love, then I don’t, either.”
She lowered her gaze, and looked so damn lovely in that huge bed, his bed, with her pristine white nightgown and her angelic hair. If he could only hear her lusty laugh, he’d think he had died and gone—unbelievable as it might be—to heaven.
“Where am I sleeping, Viola?”
She looked at him, and it seemed an eternity before she pulled back the bedclothes. Relief flo
oded through him, relief so great it took all he had not to show it. He slid into the bed beside her, and when she turned away, he wrapped his arms around her, held her fast, buried his face against her hair.
“John,” she reproved, but she did not shove his arms away this time. He went still and laid there in the dark, holding her body pressed to his. He was deliberately torturing himself, he knew, but he did it anyway.
He’d brought Viola to Hammond Park thinking that would solve everything. He deserved this agony for such a cocky assumption. When it came to his wife, nothing was ever as easy as that.
He was gone when she woke up. Viola sat up in bed, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Sunlight peeped between the drapery panels at the windows, and she looked around her.
So strange to be here again. Strange, and yet familiar. She leaned back against the headboard, smiling a little at the maroon-red walls. John had reminded her not long ago how they had argued about that so long ago. She had forgotten, but he had remembered.
There was a scratch on the door, and a maid came in with a tray. “Morning, my lady,” the girl said, smiling shyly. “I’m Hill. Second housemaid. Mrs. Miller had me bring your breakfast up. She said you always like to have your breakfast in bed.”
“Miller is still here?”
“Oh, yes. Will be until she’s too old to stir the puddings, she says.”
Viola laughed. “I remember Miller’s Christmas pudding. She prepared it in September and she made everyone in the house come to the kitchens and give it a stir before she put it away in the buttery.”
“She still does that, my lady. Every year. Even the master has to come stir the Christmas pudding. He never minds, though.”
“Where is my husband this morning?”
“He’s with Mr. Whitmore, the steward.”
“I see.” Viola felt a hint of disappointment as the maid placed the tray across her lap, but she knew he had an estate to run, and she understood from having managed things at Enderby that it was a great deal of work, especially since he had been away for the season. She knew she couldn’t expect John to have breakfast up here with her every morning. Even back in the early days he hadn’t always been able to do that.
“Mind if I draw the curtains, my lady?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
Bright sunlight flooded the room as Hill pulled back the draperies. Viola set the tray aside and got up, then walked to the windows. “What a lovely day.”
“Yes. Not raining for a change. The master said to tell you that if you decide to go walking before he gets back, you can’t go near the stables. He wants to show those to you himself.”
Viola smiled, her disappointment about breakfast vanishing in an instant. He wanted to show her the horses. “Thank you, Hill. Send my maid in, would you? And tell Miss Tate that I’ll want to see her in an hour down in the drawing room.”
“I will.” The girl smiled back at her, gave a curtsy and started for the door. “It’s good to have you here, my lady. Everyone’s glad you’ve come home.”
“I’m glad, too,” she said, and meant it.
It was a mare, the prettiest chestnut mare she’d seen in a long time. “John!” she cried, laughing with delight as the groom brought the horse to her. “Where did you get her? Tattersall’s?”
“About a month ago. Like her?”
“Like her?” She rubbed the mare’s nose with her palm. “She’s a beauty!” She turned and flung her arms around her husband’s neck and kissed him. “Thank you!” she cried, and returned her attention to the mare. “Come on, let’s take her out!”
She grasped the reins, John lifted her up, and she swung onto the sidesaddle. When he had mounted his gelding, they set out together. He took her around the estate and the farms, showing her some of the improvements he had made to the estate over the years, and there were many. After that they headed for the downs, their favorite place—the rolling hills of open pastureland that stretched for miles on Hammond property.
She did what he remembered. As they galloped across the downs, she tugged at her riding hat, pulled it off and tossed it into the air, shaking back her loose hair and letting it fly behind her.
Beside her, John began to laugh. “I love that,” he called to her.
She smiled back at him. “I know.”
They stopped at one of the cliffs at the edge of the downs to rest the horses, and sat on the turf, looking out over the tenant farms that stretched out below them.
“It looks much improved, John. I remember that it was a bit shabby when I came here the first time.”
“It was in far better condition by the time I brought you here than it was before we got married. Before we were wed, it was a horror.”
Viola frowned, thinking it out. “Was that why we stayed in Scotland for so long?”
“Yes. I used your dowry to make things halfway decent for your arrival. I also borrowed a huge sum from your brother to pay off other debts and fix the drains here. Only after that was done did I bring you here.”
“You’ve done an excellent job, then. Everything seems very prosperous now.”
“It is, and that is because of your money as well as the income from the rents.” He looked over at her and reached out to take her hand in his. “I wanted you to see what I’ve done with your income, Viola.”
She lifted their joined hands to her lips, kissing his. “Thank you.”
He looked down over the valley below and gave a short laugh. “The odd thing is, before I came into the title, I hated this place. I never came here.”
She stared at him, not sure she’d heard him right. “But it’s your home. It’s what you’ve spent the last nine years salvaging. You hate it?”
“I don’t hate it now. I did when I was a boy. It was the coldest house you can imagine. Especially after…” He paused, then shook his head and spoke again. “I saw my mother only half a dozen times a year, whenever she could be bothered to come home from whichever lover she was living with. I barely remember her. My father didn’t care. He had plenty of lovers of his own, unless he was too drunk to visit them. Whenever Father was in residence, watching him pass out before the dessert was a common occurrence at our table. When I was a boy, the only thing bearable about this place was leaving it. I always went to Percy’s home during the summer holidays.”
Viola didn’t speak. It was rare for John to speak of things like this, and she didn’t want to spoil the moment by interrupting. She just held his hand and listened.
“Getting sent off to school was the best thing that happened to me,” he told her. “Percy and I went to Harrow, and I seldom saw either of my parents after that. When my mother died, I came down from Cambridge for the funeral, stayed two hours, and left again. I had no desire to be here, and until my father died, I did not come back.”
He turned his head and looked at her. “You’ve said you didn’t know me, and you wanted to. I’ve never told you things about me because I didn’t want you to know what an irresponsible scapegrace I truly was. Your brother was dead right about me, and I thought—” He coughed, looking a little embarrassed. “I knew you disagreed with him and thought I was quite a wonderful fellow. I didn’t want you to ever know how untrue that really was.”
He squeezed her hand hard. “When I was at Cambridge, I was so damnably wild. I almost got sent down half a dozen times. I spent every shilling of my quarterly allowance and then some. I got into debt. I gambled, deep stakes. I drank.”
He lifted her hand, kissed it, let it go. “And then there were the women,” he said. “I had mistresses from the time I was fifteen, and I gave them the most lavish gifts you can imagine. What did I care? I’d be a viscount one day. I spent so much money, and I never gave a thought to where it came from. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. In other words, I was just like my father, a man I despised.”
It pained her that he talked so disparagingly about himself, and yet she knew there was a great deal of truth in it. If she was ever going to
understand him, she had to accept that.
“Because I’d been away from here for so long,” he went on, “I had no idea what sorry shape Hammond Park had gotten into, and to be honest, it never occurred to me to inquire. After Cambridge, I lived at Enderby. Then I went on a Grand Tour. Wherever I was, my father still sent me my quarterly allowance, and I still spent every shilling of it. Then he died of typhoid and I came back to England.”
He reached out, sweeping his arm across the view of the tenant farms in the valley below. “All of that was mine, and what a pathetic legacy it was. Until I got here, I didn’t know that if drains don’t get repaired, the standing water can cause typhoid outbreaks. My father was not the only one who died. There were dozens of others. As I toured the place, I was shocked by the state of things. Not only the drains, but everything else. My father had bankrupted it. The tenants were in misery, the animals were sick, the fields were un-planted, and the creditors were about to take everything that wasn’t entailed.”
Anthony had tried to tell her the state of Hammond’s finances and what she was getting, but she had refused to listen to her brother’s warnings. She listened now. “That must have been quite a shock to you,” she said gently.
He pointed down to one of the thatched cottages below. “There was a girl of twelve who lived there. Nan was her name. Her mother had just died, I was told. I was looking over the place, and she stood there in the doorway of that cottage—so ramshackle it was in those days—and she had her baby sister on her hip. She was dirty and thin, and she had on this ragged dress. She asked if I was the new lord, and when I said yes, she gave me this look. She ran her gaze up and down my elegant suit and white linen, then she looked into my eyes, and I saw such contempt in hers that I was shocked. I shall never forget that look in her eyes as long as I live. And what she said. To this day, it haunts me.”
Guilty Series Page 78