A Daring Liaison

by Gail Ranstrom

  Clara went to a side door and threw it open. “And your dressing room adjoins Mr. Hunter’s. But look! That other door in between? ’Tis a bathing room.” She threw the door in question open and gestured proudly. “Have you ever seen such a thing, missus? A whole private room for bathing just for the mister and missus. And just look at that tub. Why, it’s big enough for two people. And there’s even a coal stove to keep the room warm and to heat the water.”

  The high-backed tub stood on four sturdy legs and was longer and wider than any Georgiana had ever seen. But this one wouldn’t have to be carried up the stairs and filled from the kitchen below. Clean towels were draped over the side, ready at a moment’s notice. She trailed her fingers along the smooth side, longing for a bath even though she’d bathed only a few hours ago. A washstand with a large mirror above stood along one wall and she noted a shaving mug and razor on the surface by the washbowl.

  The familiar scent of Charles’s soap evoked the memory of his kisses, and the mug and razor were a very personal reminder that now she would have no secrets from him. They would share all the most intimate details of their lives. She swallowed to clear the constriction that tightened her throat. She turned away and went back to her bedroom to find that Clara had draped her best nightgown across the bed. Heavens! Her wedding night.

  Clara giggled. “You blush like a schoolgirl again, madam. A certain kind of man can take you that way, I hear. And don’t you worry. I warrant our Mr. Hunter will last.”

  Last? Longer than her previous husbands? A cold so deep it chilled her clear through settled in her stomach. Had she condemned Charles to an early grave? Had she married him because doing so was easier than telling him the truth of her birth? Because she could not even tell him who her father was? Because she had been frightened by Mr. Foxworthy? Because she felt so safe in his arms? As if no one could hurt her now?

  Desperate to be alone, she gave her maid the bouquet she still carried. “Find a vase for these, will you, Clara?”

  “Aye, madam. Then I’ll come back and make you ready to receive your husband.” Another giggle and her maid was gone.

  She went to a bureau and opened the drawers one at a time to find her belongings, arranged just as they’d always been at her town house and at the estate in Kent. The simple sameness gave her comfort that not everything had changed.

  A corner of the little trunk holding her mother’s journals peeked from under the foot of her bed. She knelt and opened the lid. The journal she’d been reading when Mr. Foxworthy arrived lay atop the others and she took it, along with another, to her bedside table and put them in the small drawer. Sooner or later, she’d find something she could share with Lord Carlington.

  She gazed down at the wedding ring on her finger. The golden circle embedded with emeralds and twinkling diamonds in a pattern of a never-ending vine suited her more than her others. Gower Huffington’s ostentatious inky sapphire and Allenby’s plain golden band rested at the bottom of her jewelry box and would remain there forever. This was the one she would wear until the day she died. She slipped it off and looked at the inside surface to see if he’d had it engraved. Always and Only You, it said in a faint script.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. Always and only her—until he learned the truth of her parentage. Until he faced the reality of his ill-advised marriage.

  Until he was killed?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Charles went to the library sideboard and glanced over his shoulder. “Brandy?” A quick drink and he’d send them on their way. He was rather anxious to join Georgiana upstairs.

  Richardson closed the library door and turned the lock. “Whiskey, if you have it. I need something strong.”

  “You, Wycliffe?”

  “Make mine a whiskey, too.”

  Charles turned up three glasses and poured. “I gather you are fresh back from Cornwall and have come to tell me what you’ve learned, but it could have waited until tomorrow.”

  “Crosley said you were getting married,” Richardson said as he took his glass and went to look out the front window. “Say it isn’t so, Hunter. Who will I carouse with?”

  “Sorry. ’Tis done. Mrs. Huffington is now Mrs. Hunter.”

  Richardson looked back at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’re a walking target, Hunter.”

  “I’ve been a walking target since Gibbons decided he wanted me dead. Mrs. Huffington has nothing to do with that.”

  Wycliffe took his glass and sat in a chair in front of the fireplace. He stretched his legs toward the fire and sighed. “We will get to Gibbons next. But let Harry give his report so he can get some much deserved sleep.”

  “Aye. I’m looking for my bed. Something that does not move when I close my eyes.”

  Charles gave Richardson a long look. The man did look exhausted. He steered them back to the subject at hand. “Did you learn anything new?”

  Richardson looked down at his scuffed boots and sighed. “I did. And a few more questions, too. You’re not going to like it, Hunter. Especially now.”

  “Now?”

  “Now that you’ve married the girl.”

  Charles took a deep breath followed by a swallow of whiskey. “Out with it, then.”

  “Mousehole is a closemouthed village. They sure as hell do not trust strangers. Took a bit of convincing to get anyone to talk, but I eventually put the pieces together after visiting the parish pastor, a washerwoman, the foundling home and the local banker in Penzance.”

  Charles gave in to restless pacing. “You’ve been busy.”

  Richardson laughed. “Somewhat of an understatement, that. Everyone remembered Georgiana—they called her Jane then. Her circumstances were quite different from the usual. She was not local, but arrived by private coach at the church attended by a wet nurse and a servant. According to the pastor, she was not a toddler. She was barely more than a few days old. A small parcel was delivered with her, which included a letter, a few items of clothing for the child and twenty pounds to pay for her keep for the coming year—an unheard of amount in those parts.”

  Quite unheard of, Charles thought. He glanced at Wycliffe and detected a hint of surprise. The suspicion that had been growing in him for the last few days was taking on an ominous form.

  “The only woman in the village who had enough milk to spare was a washerwoman. The pastor handed the baby off to her for the next two years. And each year another twenty pounds arrived.

  “When Jane was two and a half, the washerwoman took her to a foundling home in St. Ives. They refused her. Said they were full. So she took Jane back to the parson. He admits that he only paid the washerwoman five pounds a year for the child’s care and kept the rest for the ‘poor.’”

  “The poor parson, most likely,” Wycliffe muttered.

  Richardson snorted in agreement. “This time the parson left Jane with an impoverished family who could benefit from the five pounds. They already had six children, so Jane was just one of a neglected brood. She was bright, the woman says, quiet and withdrawn most of the time, and she learned quickly to stay out of her husband’s way.”

  “No one recalls a story about a captain and his heartbroken wife?” Charles knew the answer, but he needed confirmation.

  “Quite bewildered when I asked them about it. Pure fabrication, I’d say. Or the best kept secret in Mousehole.”

  “How long did she stay with that family?”

  “Something less than a year, I gather. The woman said that the following summer, a coach arrived and, after asking around, came to their squalid little cottage and a servant got out and asked for Jane. She said her husband did not want to give the girl up because of the money that came with her. After consulting someone within the coach, Jane was purchased for thirty pounds. She was taken into the coach as she was, and they drove away. The woman says she never saw Jane again.”

  Wycliffe stood and poured himself another whiskey. “Is there anything to confirm that this little Jane is Georgiana?”

/>   Richardson squirmed and glanced at Charles for one telling moment, then back at Wycliffe. “There was a coat of arms on the coach, and a woman within who wore a black veil. Both of those things were unprecedented in Mousehole. By description, the child was fair, had dark green eyes and had arrived with more cash than most of them had seen altogether at one time.”

  Charles knew the logical conclusion. And from their uncomfortable silence, so did Richardson and Wycliffe. “Jane was very likely Georgiana,” he said. “And Caroline was most likely her mother.”

  “Do you think she had second thoughts about giving the child up?”

  “The trip to bring her back from Mousehole would have happened after Lord Betman’s death. Lady Caroline may not have wanted to give Georgiana up, but her father would have insisted because of the scandal it would cause.”

  Richardson glanced out the window again. “You do not looked surprised, Hunter.”

  “Not much. It is not unheard of for a peeress to be caught in an indiscretion and have to ‘visit the continent’ for a while. Nor is it particularly unusual for her to maintain an interest in that child afterward. When we dined with Lord Carlington, he showed us a miniature of Lady Caroline. Georgiana’s hair and eyes are remarkably similar.”

  “Then Georgiana is a—”

  “Don’t say it, Richardson. Not if you are my friend.”

  Harry nodded, all trace of his usual mockery gone.

  “Blast it all! None of this helps us at all,” Wycliffe concluded. “Georgiana’s past, while tragic, cannot have a bearing on what has happened to her husbands. Considering her circumstances, her marriages were...quite good.”

  Above her? And her marriage to him would be considered the same. “I’ve learned that Lady Caroline arranged those marriages. I have been trying to think what her criteria were. What did Arthur Allenby and Gower Huffington have in common?”

  Richardson scratched his head. “Allenby was young, and Huffington was mature. Both had quite comfortable fortunes. Both had little family. Neither were titled. But there is nothing so remarkable in those things.”

  “Both had country estates and neither was often in town,” Wycliffe added.

  “Seems as if Lady Caroline wanted Georgiana settled comfortably in the countryside.”

  “And she achieved that. Twice. But why should that matter to her? She’d done all she could to hide Georgiana’s past. We’ve only discovered it because we were looking for something else and found this instead.” Charles thought of Georgiana waiting for him upstairs and wondered how much of the truth she knew.

  He swallowed the remainder of his whiskey and poured more. A change of subject was in order.

  “About Gibbons?” he asked.

  Richardson turned from his position near the window. “Wycliffe filled me in while we were waiting for you. I am asleep on my feet, gentlemen. I’m going home. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

  Charles opened the library door for him and nodded to a discreetly waiting Crosley to see him out. Turning back to Wycliffe, he said, “Hope it’s better news than Richardson’s.”

  “Gibbons has been seen loitering around the Crown and Bear. I find that odd considering he knows you frequent the place and your brother-in-law owns it.”

  “Odd? Not if he’s looking to kill me. Good Lord. I’ve searched seven months with nary a glimpse of him, and now that my attention is elsewhere, he’s everywhere I turn.”

  “Gibbons must be desperate,” Wycliffe said.

  Charles stopped his pacing to look down into the fire. “No more so than I.”

  “What would you say if Gibbons offered a truce, Hunter? Would you agree?”

  He shook his head. “He killed Adam Booth and shot me. Those are hard things to ignore. Aside from that, I have no faith he’d keep a truce. Gibbons never honored an agreement in his life.”

  “And if he asked for a meeting? Would you want to know what he had to say?”

  What could Gibbons possibly have to say to him? Now, that was tempting. “Perhaps. Let’s go. We can fetch Devlin along the way.”

  Wycliffe stood and clapped Charles on the back. “Not tonight, Hunter. It’s your wedding night. Go upstairs. Make love to your wife. Forget your pride. It will not keep you warm.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” he admitted.

  “Then you are a bigger fool than I’d ever thought possible.”

  * * *

  Georgiana’s hair spread across her pillow and her lashes lay in dark spikes against her pale cheeks, almost as if they’d been formed by tears. Regrets, sweet Georgiana? Her lips—those soft petals that beckoned him—were slightly parted. He longed to kiss her awake but he merely stood there, studying the woman he had married. In the flicker of dim candlelight she looked almost ethereal.

  In the face of better judgment, of past rejections, of vague suspicions, he’d married her. Knowing she was keeping secrets from him, he’d married her. He could not distinguish what he was feeling—the odd misgivings. Was it anger? Or something darker?

  She’d fallen asleep waiting for him, and he could not regret it. He’d have welcomed any delay in talking to her because he did not know what to say. Would she be shocked to learn that her ‘aunt’ Caroline had been her mother? Or had she known and kept it from him?

  Tomorrow. They’d sort it out tomorrow.

  A black leather-bound journal lay facedown against her chest, her hand curled over it. She must have fallen asleep reading. Carefully, he slipped the slender volume from under her hand and smiled at her soft sigh.

  He glanced at the writing, wondering if it were hers, and wondering if he would learn more about her from these pages than he had in the past week of conversations and confessions. But the date of the entry was from years before, and the handwriting was not Georgiana’s.

  June 7, 1816

  Thank heaven the unpleasantness is past. I have spoken with Mr. Hunter, and I believe I have successfully misdirected him by telling him Georgiana is embarrassed by his attentions. My conscience troubles me little over the lie, though I was distressed to see the depth of his attachment. Had I known how close they were growing, I would have ended it sooner. After Georgiana’s encouragement, he had every right to expect a different outcome.

  As for Georgiana, I have warned her against fast behavior and told her that Mr. Hunter has lost interest in her. She is crushed, but it is for the best. I simply cannot have her marry into such a family as the Hunters. Despite their country seat, they are city dwellers. Some London busybody would snoop into Georgiana’s past to everyone’s ruin. ’Twill be better by far to have her settled in the country with no one to ask questions. Mr. Allenby seems a good prospect, as he is so smitten that he will believe she is exactly what she appears to be. His parents will not object, owing to the size of her dowry.

  If only she would not cry into her pillow every night....

  So, after all these years, he finally knew what had happened that long-ago spring. Lady Caroline had betrayed them both. No wonder, then, that Georgiana had been so cool and distant when they’d been reintroduced. No wonder she’d been confused by his thinly veiled anger. She must have thought him quite a bounder. Lady Caroline had driven a wedge between them that would have lasted a lifetime had Wycliffe not coerced him into investigating her husbands’ deaths.

  He flipped the pages to the end and read how Georgiana had begged Caroline to recant her engagement to Allenby, and how Caroline had remained firm, nearly pushing her down the aisle. Enlightening, to say the least. Georgiana had not loved Allenby. All the easier for her to kill him?

  He shivered. Where had that thought come from? They were married now. And he knew now that she had never deceived him. The time for doubts was past.

  He closed the volume, wondering, how much more might he learn from Caroline’s other journals? And where were they? After tonight, he would most especially like to read the account of Caroline’s “accident” and Georgiana’s birth. Though he was fairly certain he k
new it, would the name of her father be mentioned?

  He glanced at Georgiana again. His earlier suspicion had likely been right. Her spiked lashes were due to tears. He could not imagine the pain of learning that the person she’d trusted most in the world had betrayed her. Had forced her into two marriages she hadn’t wanted.

  He opened her bed-table drawer to put the book away, vowing to discuss the matter with Georgiana tomorrow. As he slipped the book into the drawer, his fingers brushed a thick vial. He pulled it out and read the label in the guttering candlelight.

  Laudanum. A vague suspicion began to nag at him. Wycliffe had warned him to look for it, and here it was.

  Damn. This was not how he’d thought he’d spend his wedding night.

  * * *

  Georgiana woke and stretched. She sat up in bed and looked around, disoriented. The last she could remember was waiting for Charles. And she’d been reading her... Caroline’s journal. Good heavens! It was gone!

  She threw her covers back and dropped to her knees to look under the bed. Had it fallen from her hand?

  “It is in the drawer, Georgiana.”

  Her pulse pounded and she sat back on her heels, searching the shadows. Something stirred in the chair in the far corner. A dark figure unfolded and rose like a specter. She could only see his form, but it was enough to reveal that it was Charles. Relief washed through her.

  “Oh! You frightened me half to death. What were you doing in the corner?”

  “Waiting for you to wake.”

  She glanced toward the draperies to see a thin line of daylight where they met. “Have you been there all night?”

  “Yes.” He came toward her.