White Regency 03 - White Knight

by Jaclyn Reding

  To make matters worse, the room was markedly silent. Supper parties were made for sparkling conversation, the reporting of news, the sharing of opinions and ideas. With the exception of the occasional request for salt or more wine, no one in the room was saying much of anything. Instead they stared at one another across the table, occasionally looking her way. Finally, blessedly, Catriona spoke up.

  “Robert,” she said to her husband, “why do you not tell everyone about the fish little James caught when you took him trouting for the first time last month.”

  As the duke began to relate the tale of their young son, Grace leaned toward Augusta, who sat at her left, and whispered, “Why aren’t any of the others talking to one another?”

  Augusta took a sip from her glass—a concoction of milk touched with cinnamon, a treat she found she craved now that she was with child, and which the cook had been all too happy to prepare for her. “I’m not an expert on things pertaining to society—that was always my stepmother’s forte—but I would guess they are not talking because before now, they have never been made to spend this much time in each other’s company.”

  “But I don’t understand. I made certain to seat all the husbands and wives together.”

  “That is precisely the problem.” Augusta nodded her head toward the other end of the table. “You see Lord Faneshaw there? He will not give his wife even the slightest nod of his attention, but he certainly has been throwing glances in Lady Rennington’s direction three seats down and across from him. It is because typically at such events, the two of them are seated together.”

  “They are?”

  Augusta set down her spoon and said quite matter-of-factly, “Of course, dear. She is his mistress.”

  Grace covered her mouth with her napkin just quickly enough to stifle her gasp.

  Augusta nodded. “And Lady Faneshaw is usually seated with Viscount Chilburn whose new wife, Lady Chilburn, is usually seated with Lord Sykes for much the same reason. Among the society set, a good many hostesses do not think it fashionable to seat a husband and wife together, which is why Catriona and I don’t normally attend such functions. We actually enjoy conversing with our husbands, but we are never seated together and thus are stuck with either a boor like Rennington, or a lecher like Chilburn.”

  Grace could but shake her head in disbelief. “I had no idea. How stupid everyone must think me.”

  “Not at all, dear. I rather like your order to things. I am usually so very occupied in my observatory. I am awake in the evenings and rest during the day so I don’t have the opportunity to see Noah as often as I’d like. Lately I seem to be sleeping more and more, most likely because of the babe. We have spent most of tonight catching up on what typically should be discussed over breakfast. It has been nice to have this time where neither of us has to be off doing other things. Don’t trouble over the others. Leave the situation to Catriona. By the time she gets through, you will have set a new trend in seating arrangements.”

  As if in answer to her cue, the duchess spoke up again. “Lady Rennington, did you not tell me the night of our ball that your grandson, Charles, is quite the poet? I should love to read something he has written; I am such an admirer of verse. I wonder who he inherited the talent from—you, perhaps?”

  “Oh, no, Your Grace, I was never one who did very well at poetry, but Lord Rennington, at one time, wrote wonderful verse. It has been so long since he last wrote any, I had nearly forgotten.”

  “Now, don’t discredit yourself, dear. When we were younger, you were quite the poet yourself.”

  The countess looked on her husband for the first time all evening. A flicker of long-forgotten tenderness passed between them that seemed almost to warm the room around them.

  Lady Talbot chimed in, “You know Lord Talbot was also quite the artist at one time. He would send me the drawings he had made while on the Peninsula.”

  “I was a young fool who was homesick,” said her husband, obviously uncomfortable with the soft subject matter.

  “The letters you wrote were just as endearing. That is why I married you, Henry.”

  Soon they were all comparing memories of times and tendernesses gone by. It was astounding. With the mention of one small thing—a grandmother’s boast about her grandchild—Catriona had somehow reminded these people of what they had first been attracted to in one another. From then on, conversation was never lacking.

  Later, after dinner, they retired to the parlor to play cards. Grace won two rounds, having been taught well by Nonny, who had been quite a cardsharp in her day. Eleanor then delighted them all with her flute playing, accompanied by Grace on the pianoforte. Eleanor’s talent was astounding. Grace had never heard the instrument played with such emotion and texture, much less by a lady; women were customarily relegated to the harp or pianoforte.

  It was well past midnight when they stood at the door, bidding their guests farewell. Despite its worrisome beginning, the evening had ended up a success.

  Grace hugged Catriona as they made to leave. “I cannot thank you enough for all your help this evening. I would hate to think of the disaster it would have been without you.”

  “Nonsense, Grace, you don’t give yourself enough credit. It was you who made the evening so pleasant for everyone. Some of them just needed their eyes opened to it, that’s all.”

  Grace watched them walk to their carriage, then turned to her last guest. The butler Forbes was just helping the old duke on with his coat. Christian, she noticed, had vanished.

  “I thank you for coming, Your Grace,” she said as he reached for her hand. “I hope your visit was pleasant.”

  “If only to see that I had been right about you from the start. I was a bit rough on you at first, but it is as I thought. You will make a fine duchess some day.”

  Grace smiled at him as he leaned forward to whisper to her, “A bit of advice, though, my girl. Don’t waste your time trying to repair something when you don’t know how deep goes the break. Some things were just never meant to be.”

  Thunking his cane, he covered his head with his hat and shuffled off for his waiting carriage.

  When the duke’s coach had pulled away, Grace closed the door and turned. She started when she noticed Christian standing behind her, leaning against the doorway to his study. His arms were crossed over his chest and his expression was shadowed and dangerous.

  “Brava, my lady,” he said, his voice bitingly sharp. “You have succeeded in winning the approval of a man whom I had thought untouchable.” His eyes grew keen with anger. “Don’t make the mistake again of putting me in the position you did tonight.”

  And with that, he turned, closing the door firmly behind him. What followed a moment later was the uncompromising sound of the lock being turned.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Grace glanced at the small silver clock that was tucked in the late night shadows of her bedside table. In the single beam of moonlight coming through her chamber window, she could see that its small enameled face read three o’clock. Another hour had passed. A few hours more and it would be dawn—and still Christian had not come up to his bed.

  Grace had purposely opened the door between their chambers so that she would hear him when he came in. She’d even made certain to sit in the chair that faced onto his room so that she wouldn’t miss him. They needed to talk. She had angered him tonight by inviting Lord Herrick and the duke to supper. After Christian’s harsh words to her in the hall earlier that evening, she knew she wouldn’t find any comfort in sleep without first talking to him, explaining her reasons, no matter how impolitic they might now seem.

  For well over a month now, Grace had picked her way around Christian’s sullenness and she was no closer to figuring him out than she’d been that first morning when she’d met him at the marriage altar in Little Biddlington. They were husband and wife, yet he did everything to avoid being with her. Why? Did he disapprove of her, did he think her an incompetent wife? She had tried to do the thin
gs she thought a marchioness should do. She took care with what she wore, where she went, whom she saw. Though she sometimes erred, in the long run she felt she was succeeding, for in spite of his negligence, there were rare times when Christian would come to her and take her into his arms, filling her with kisses and touching her more deeply than she could ever have imagined. But then afterward, in the moments when they could be so close to one another, he would always pull away so abruptly and then she wouldn’t see him for days. She had tried and tried to figure why, but seemed only to end up asking the same question: What was it about her that continually made him turn away?

  The time had come for answers and since Christian was making no attempt to come to her, she would simply have to go to him. Grace slipped on her dressing robe, belting it at her waist. She blew out her candle and headed for the door.

  The hall outside her chamber was dark, quiet, the doors on Lady Frances’s and Eleanor’s chambers long closed for the night. As the tall case clock in the hall chimed the quarter hour, Grace padded her way slowly to the stairs in the faint light shining in through the hall window. When she reached the bottom step, she saw the barest flicker of firelight shining from under the door to Christian’s study. She hesitated outside, staring at the door, contemplating what she would say to him. He would be angry. He would resist her efforts to talk, but she told herself she would have to be firm. They simply couldn’t go on as they were.

  Taking a deep breath, Grace placed her hand upon the door handle, hoping it wasn’t still locked. Slowly she turned, and heard it click to open. She took the first step inside.

  Christian sat in one of the wing chairs in front of the fire in his study, his brandy cupped in his palm as he stared hopelessly into the sluggish flames. He’d removed his coat and had rolled the sleeves of his shirt over his forearms. His neckcloth was loose and hanging about his neck and he had loosened the first several buttons of his shirt. His hair was ruffled from the numerous times he had raked his fingers through it in the past few hours as he’d sat there, alone in the dark, unwilling to go upstairs lest he should make love to his wife.

  “Christian?”

  He jerked his head around at the sudden sound of the very woman who was tormenting him. The abruptness of the motion set some of the brandy in his glass to splashing over the side and onto his fingers. He hadn’t even heard her come in. For a moment, he wondered if he had completely lost his mind, conjuring up her image somehow in his thoughts.

  She moved then and he knew she was real.

  Grace stood in the low light from the ebbing fire, her hair curled in blond waves around her shoulders, looking damned decadent in her white virgin’s nightrail buttoned up to her chin. She came forward, her toes bare against the thick woolen carpet. She tucked the weight of her hair behind one ear and with just that one simple gesture, he felt the muscles in his stomach tighten as they did whenever he was about to lose all sense and reason and break his vow not to bed her. He had to do something. He had to stop himself from breaking his vow again. He fought to control his desire with the only weapon he had: anger.

  “Get out, Grace,” he said, almost a growl before he turned back to the fire, waiting for her to leave, vanish, go back by whatever means she had used to come there. He’d been thinking about her all night, thinking about the things that intrigued him about her, and about the danger her life was now in because of him and that damned note.

  “No, Christian, I will not leave this time.”

  He glared at her. “What did you say?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Her eyes had a light of determination in them that told she was not about to be daunted. But he was not in the mood for talking. What he was in the mood for was to haul her to the carpet and take her in front of the fire, lose himself in her goodness and hope and try to forget the misery that had been his life. And she would allow him to, because to her romantic thinking, it meant that he must care—and he knew very well that couldn’t be. Caring meant feeling. Feeling meant vulnerability. And vulnerability meant weakness, something he had learned long ago never to fall victim to.

  The results could be—murderous.

  “Perhaps another time, madam. I am occupied at the moment.”

  Again he waited for her to leave.

  Again she did not.

  “Christian, what have I done to displease you so? You are obviously annoyed with me. Is it because I invited your grandfather to supper tonight? You must know I only had good intentions in doing so.”

  “There are no good intentions where he is involved.”

  Grace took a step closer. “I do not know what it is that has caused you to hate him as you do. I wish I did. Perhaps then I could understand it. I only know it has something to do with the death of your father.”

  Christian’s vision went black. “What did he tell you?”

  He would kill the old bastard if he had dared to—

  “Your grandfather said nothing. It was Mrs. Stone who told me that your rift with the duke was struck when you lost your father.”

  He muttered to the fire, “Servants would do well to remember who pays their wages and hold their tongues accordingly.”

  “I asked her, Christian. She did not offer the information to me unsolicited. I only asked because I wanted to help you.”

  “Do not pry into matters that don’t concern you, Grace. I don’t need your help.”

  Grace came closer, to where she was standing just beside his chair. He could feel the warmth of her and she wasn’t even touching him. Already her scent seemed to fill the air.

  “I know what it is to lose a parent, Christian. I lost mine, too.”

  A strange feeling, like belonging, came upon him at her soft, compassionate words. Could he tell her? Did he dare? He felt himself beginning to yield and fought against it, unwilling to leave go of the painful secret he had kept safely locked within him so long now. If he told her, she would know the truth about him. She would know who she had really married, not the noble heir, but a murderer. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the look of horror, of loathing in her eyes, she who had worshipped him from the beginning. Instead, he said, “You can know nothing of how I feel.”

  “Christian, I am your wife. I care about you.”

  “How can you care about a mu—”

  Christian could only thank the benevolence of God for stopping him before he could finish saying that word. Murderer. He closed his eyes, fighting to gain control of the churning emotions that were threatening to choke him. You must not tell her. After a moment or two, his pulse began to calm and he was able to breathe more easily again. He said, his voice markedly quieter, “How can you care for a man you know nothing about? Who is my favorite artist, Grace? What is my favorite color? Do you know how I take my tea? Do you even know the date of my birth?”

  He looked and saw that Grace’s eyes were no longer pleading and soft. Instead she stared at him, utterly resolute, and said, “Milk, no sugar and September the twenty-third.”

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  “I took note of one and asked your sister the other and I might know the other two if you had but allowed me to. I didn’t expect to learn everything about you in the handful of weeks since we wed. We were married before we knew each other very well—”

  “Very well?” Christian scoffed. “Madam, we did not know each other at all.”

  “Other marriages have begun with just as little acquaintanceship and they somehow manage to succeed. I knew when I agreed to be your wife that we would need time to get to know one another. I had thought we would spend some time together in order to do just that. Did you not think the same?”

  In a perfect world, that might have been true. But Christian’s world was far from perfect and he couldn’t allow his misery to ruin another life. He had to keep Grace from getting close to him, because getting close would mean getting hurt. Perhaps even killed. She had to stop rhapsodizing on girlish whims of romance and love, marriage an
d devotion. She had to face the fact that he was not this beau ideal she’d made him out to be in her dreams. She needed a healthy dose of reality. The sooner she realized she had not married the perfect gentleman she believed she had, the White Knight, all the better it would be for her.

  “You are too much of a dreamer, Grace. Don’t you understand? I did not marry you because of some magical destiny that was written for us centuries ago. I did not read your name in the stars. You did not come to me through the prophetic ether of a dream. I married you because I had to. Not because I wanted to but because you were chosen for me by another.” He stared at her hard and finished, as coldly as he could, “Quite frankly, Grace, you could have been anyone.”

  Every single word struck Grace a telling blow and took a small part of the light from her eyes until all that remained were harsh and broken clouds. Grace blinked a few times as if hoping the clouds would clear. She was fighting back tears and her lip was trembling so hard she had to bite it. She stared at him for several moments, silent, stunned. Finally she said, her voice no louder than a whisper, “I am sorry for having taken your time.”

  She turned and walked slowly from the room, her step heavy, her arms hanging defeatedly at her sides. And as Christian watched her go, he could only think that his grandfather should be so proud, for Christian had become the very model of him, the man he’d spent a lifetime hating. He was now a heartless bastard, most worthy to hold the title of Duke of Westover.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Grace came from her bedchamber the following morning, it was later than her usual waking hour. Rather than breaking her fast in the parlor with the usual biscuits and toast and sometimes eggs, she had taken her morning tea in bed, lingering there, listening to the sounds of Christian moving about in his chamber. She heard his bootsteps on the hall passing her door and her breath caught as she stared at her door and waited to see if he would stop. Still she hoped even as she knew he wouldn’t. Instead, he continued past her chamber, down the stairs, stopping to talk to Forbes before leaving. Grace stood at the window and watched through the glass as he climbed into the Knighton coach, ordering Parrott to take him to his club, White’s. He never once looked up to see her.