Without that, how long would his love survive?
Chapter 27
The women’s voices swirled around Rachel in the elegant London drawing room with its damask-covered settees and chairs, delicate French marquetry tables trimmed with ormolu, and ornate plasterwork on walls and ceiling.
To her left, three aristocratic ladies were discussing, as though it were one of the year’s most momentous topics, who had not been invited to the Duke of Devonshire’s ball that night.
To her right, four others, led by the malicious Lady Oldfield, were speculating with the venom of vipers on suspected love affairs between lords of the realm and ladies not their wives.
Both conversations bored Rachel, and she begrudged the wasted hours she had spent since her arrival in London nearly four weeks ago on these required social calls upon ladies who had nothing to occupy them but the latest fashions, their cherished social status, and spiteful gossip.
The nights were as bad, as she went from one soiree or ball to another. The beautifully appointed rooms were generally hot, stuffy and crowded. She was inevitably surrounded by rakes all eager to be the first to engage the beautiful new duchess in an illicit liaison. Rachel felt like a doe being stalked by hunters, and she loathed it.
Most of all, she hated not having Jerome at her side. Although she had learned since her arrival in London that society considered it bad form at evening entertainments for a husband to dance attendance on his own wife instead of someone else’s, she did not understand why this should be so.
Rachel longed to go back to Royal Elms. She had been so much happier there. She would gladly trade all the entertainments London had to offer for the quiet nights she had spent with Jerome at his country estate. Yet he showed no inclination to leave the city
He was so busy with his extensive financial affairs that she saw less of him than she would have liked. She had taken to leaving him notes, telling him how much she loved him.
Rachel no longer had any worry that he reciprocated it. She had to smile when she thought of how protective he was of her. Ever since that shot had been fired while she was wading in the stream, Jerome worried constantly about her. She was still convinced it was accidental for no one had any reason to kill her, but her husband would let her go nowhere in London without Ferris and four armed riders surrounding her equipage.
“Even the king is not so well-guarded,” she grumbled to her husband.
Her happiest moments came in the early hours of the morning after their social rounds had ended. Then her husband would take her to bed and make passionate, ecstatic love to her. In his arms, Rachel forgot her persistent, disturbing premonition that this London visit would end unhappily.
Now, sitting in the ornate drawing room only half hearing the women’s chatter around her, Rachel wondered how her brother Stephen could have loved London so much. And she longed to go home to Royal Elms, where her life had purpose.
Rachel smothered a yawn. She was so sleepy lately. It was totally unlike her. Usually she was full of energy. And the past two or three mornings, her stomach had been unsettled. She was beginning to suspect that she might be pregnant. The thought filled her with joy, but she wanted to be more certain of her suspicions before she confided them to Jerome.
One of the women said, “I hear Emily Hextable leaves London in three days for Bedfordshire to prepare for her wedding to Sir Henry Lockman.”
Emily’s surprise betrothal to Sir Henry had been announced two days after Rachel and Jerome had arrived in London.
Lady Oldfield said cattily, “What a comedown for poor Emily to have to marry a mere baronet when she thought she would be a duchess. Once she lost her duke though, she wasted no time in accepting another offer.” She snickered unpleasantly. “But then at her age she had no time to waste.”
Rachel might not like Emily, but she liked Lady Oldfield and her rancorous tongue even less.
The ladyship turned to Rachel with a nasty glint in her eye. “Your Grace, that charming Anthony Denton has been paying you such close attention. Everyone is remarking upon it.”
Yes, he had been. Far too close, and nothing Rachel said discouraged him. If Tony was lavishing her with his unwanted attention to inflame Jerome, he was succeeding.
“Tony is such a handsome devil,” Lady Oldfield was saying with an insinuating smirk, “and such an accomplished lover.”
Rachel was incensed by this slanderous innuendo from a woman reputed to have once been Denton’s lover herself, and she could not resist giving the vicious-tongued harpy a taste of her own medicine. Raising her eyebrows sceptically, Rachel asked, “Is he really? You obviously know and appreciate his accomplishments much better than I.”
Lady Oldfield gasped, and her face turned a red. Several of the other women hid their smiles behind their bejewelled hands. For once, her ladyship’s tongue failed her, but the furious glint in her eye told Rachel that she had made a dangerous enemy.
Jerome looked around the Duke of Devonshire’s ballroom, packed with the cream of English society He would have no trouble finding his wife in it, he thought sardonically. He had only to look for the largest throng of men, and he would be certain to find her in the centre of it.
During the nearly four weeks they had been in London now, it had been thus at every entertainment she had attended. Rachel’s incomparable beauty and charm had made her the belle of London. Every man in the city seemed dazzled by her.
She clearly did not return their interest but, as Jerome had feared, that only caused the more determined of the rakes to redouble their efforts to conquer her. Jerome still was not entirely certain that they would fail. He and Rachel would stay in London for however long it took to convince himself that his wife would not betray him. He had to acknowledge that the fault lay not with Rachel, but with himself and his memories of Cleo and of other wanton beauties.
At last, Jerome located Rachel in the crowded ballroom. She was, as he had expected, surrounded by eager admirers including Anthony Denton. It enraged Jerome the way Tony hung around her.
Clenching his jaw, Jerome fiercely told himself that Rachel would not succumb to Tony’s lures as the faithless Cleo had. Rachel loved her husband. He smiled at the thought of the notes that she had taken to writing him since they had been in London. She would tuck them in odd places for him to discover, and it delighted him to find these loving missives.
As Jerome pushed his way through the crowd, he saw Sir Henry Lockman, Emily Hextable’s stolid betrothed, ahead of him. Jerome had been startled by how quickly Emily had accepted an offer of marriage, but then he was hardly in a position to cast stones.
Watching Lockman, Jerome realized how much he envied the man. Not because he was marrying Emily, but because he would never have to worry about her being unfaithful to him.
A man who looked a little like Neville Griffin brushed past Jerome, reminding him that he must tell Rachel about the investigator’s latest finding. The former captain of The Betsy had returned to England and had confirmed what his men had said. Stephen had sailed from Calais to Dover on that vessel. The captain emphatically denied writing the letter that the Wingates received.
Jerome had asked Griffin, “Do you think he was involved in Stephen’s disappearance and is lying now to protect himself?”
“Your Grace,” the investigator had replied, “I do not know what to think.”
The orchestra resumed playing, and Lord Rufus Oldfield sidled up to Jerome. Rufus had only one rival for the title of London’s most malicious gossip, and that was his own wife. What a disgusting pair they made, Jerome thought contemptuously.
“Has Your Grace heard about Lord Birkhall’s latest wager?”
Birkhall was both an incorrigible gambler and a rich reprobate who delighted in robbing young innocents of their virtue. He was always eager to bet vast sums on anything that amused him. Generally what amused him was cruel or salacious.
“No, I have not,” Jerome answered. Nor did he care, but he knew that Oldfie
ld would insist upon telling him.
“Birkhall has wagered Anthony Denton twenty thousand pounds that he cannot seduce a certain lady of quality”
“What lady?” Jerome asked before he could stop himself.
“Ah, that is the rub.” Oldfield gave him a mocking smile. “Neither Birkhall nor Denton will tell who she is, but given the attention Tony has been paying your duchess, there is considerable speculation that the mysterious lady is your wife.”
Jerome longed to smash his fist into Oldfield’s smirking face.
“I own I am surprised you had not heard about it,” Oldfield said, his smirk widening. “Every man in London is talking about it.”
Now Jerome understood why, when he had approached groups of men the past two days, they had suddenly stopped talking. They had been discussing the wager—and his wife.
“Denton needs the blunt,” Oldfield said. “When Birkhall proposed the wager, Tony is reputed to have said he would seduce Medusa and each snake upon her head for that sum. Oh, there is Marlborough. I must speak to him.” Oldfield hastened away, no doubt to spread his poison farther.
In the dim light cast by the carriage lamp, Rachel stared at the hard set of her husband’s profile, wishing she understood why he was so upset. He had marched up to her as she was talking to Tony Denton and announced in a voice that brooked no opposition that they were leaving Devonshire’s ball.
She had dutifully gone with him, hoping he would tell her why he wanted to leave so hastily. But now that they were alone inside their carriage as it sped toward Westleigh House, he still had not seen fit to enlighten her.
Finally, she asked, “What is wrong?”
“Rachel, I must insist you stay away from Anthony Denton. People are beginning to talk about you and him.”
“Surely, you do not believe them!”
“It does not matter whether I do or not.”
“It does matter. It is all that matters to me! Do you think that I would—”
He cut her off. “Rachel, I will not have my wife the scandal of London.”
Jerome had evaded answering whether he thought she would betray him. Clearly, he still did not entirely trust yet. This realization hurt Rachel as much as if he had slapped her across the face.
“I have done nothing wrong, Jerome.” In her distress, her voice rose. “You say you love me, but if you truly did you would trust me. Love is trust. Your inability to trust me will eventually undermine our marriage.”
Her husband’s eyes narrowed. “If you want to earn my trust, then refuse to acknowledge Denton. Give him the cut direct.”
Rachel’s hurt and dismay turned to anger. She did not deserve Jerome’s distrust of her with Denton or any other man. Her chin rose defiantly. “No, I will not do that.”
A muscle in Jerome’s cheek twitched. “So Denton means that much to you?”
“He means nothing to me! But he will only be the beginning. Next week it will be some other rake you want me to cut. Oh, Jerome, why can you not have more faith in me? I love you. I am not Cleo Macklin. I beg of you, do not treat me as though I were.”
“Listen to me, Rachel. Tony has more at stake in this than you understand.” Jerome told her about the wager between Birkhall and Tony, and the latter’s desperate financial condition.
Rachel felt only contempt for two men who would make such a wager. She pointed out, “They have not identified me as the woman.”
“No, but everyone knows it is you.”
“If it is, Tony will lose!”
“For God’s sake, Rachel, why will you not listen to me? Tony is desperate. That is why you must avoid him. He is not above using trickery—perhaps even force to win.”
Jerome sat brooding at his massive walnut desk in the library of Westleigh House, paying no attention to the ledger in front of him. In the two days since Oldfield had told him of Birkhall’s wager with Denton, Jerome had not been able to force it from his mind.
And Rachel’s refusal to cut Denton had done nothing to ease her husband’s fears.
Jerome did not truly believe that Rachel would willingly cuckold him with Denton, but he was convinced that Tony was capable of almost anything to win the lucrative wager. Rachel had not believed Jerome when he had told her that, just as she had not believed someone was trying to kill her.
With a sigh, he opened the ledger and found a note tucked in it from Rachel to him. He unfolded it and read:
“My dearest husband, I love you more than words can tell. Please, seal our love with your trust. I will never betray it.
Rachel.
He stared down at the note. Her handwriting was as unique, beautiful, and graceful as she was. He had never seen an R rendered as artistically as the one in her signature.
His butler appeared at the door to tell him that he had a caller, a man who would say only that he had something that Jerome would want very much to see.
His curiosity piqued, Jerome agreed to see him. Anything to take his mind off his worries about his wife and Denton.
The caller was a strapping young man with reddish hair. He was quite handsome at initial glance until one noticed his shifty gray eyes. He looked vaguely familiar, something about the shape of his face and nose, yet Jerome could not recall having seen him before. “My name is Leonard Tarbock. I am Anthony Denton’s footman.”
A cold foreboding assailed Jerome. “Why are you here?”
“I have letters that Your Grace would find most interesting, and I will sell them to you for a price.”
“Whose letters?”
“Your wife’s to my master. They are yours for five hundred pounds.”
Jerome fought against the aching anguish that threatened to overwhelm him. “I do not believe you have any such thing.”
“But I do. I have ‘em right here.” Tarbock pulled two folded documents from his coat pocket and pointed at the handwriting on the top one, directing it to Anthony Denton at his Mount Street
address.
It was written in Rachel’s distinctive, graceful hand. There was no mistaking it.
The explosion of rage within Jerome was so intense that the world turned red before his eyes. Before he even realized what he was doing, he slammed his fist into Tarbock’s face, sending him staggering back.
As he fell against a green velvet settee and went crashing down, he tried to catch himself with his hands and the letters fell to the floor. Jerome seized them before the man could recover.
The door flew open and the butler and two footmen, drawn by the noise, ran in.
“Throw this man out,” Jerome said icily.
A sullen Tarbock let them lead him from the library. Not that he had much choice. Still Jerome was a little surprised that the man had not made more of an effort to collect something for the letters.
As soon as he was alone again, Jerome unfolded the letters and read their contents.
Phrases and sentences branded themselves searingly in his mind:
I live only for the moments that you and I can be together, my beloved Tony... Jerome suspects nothing... Nor does Ferris, Jerome’s watchdog… When Jerome touches me, I pretend it is you. Otherwise I could not bear his hands upon me.
Both letters were signed with his wife’s name in her own hand.
Jerome sank down in the chair at his desk, clutching the damning letters. He remembered Cleo’s betrayal of him, but the pain he had felt then was nothing compared to the agony and devastation he felt now.
Cleo had been his first love, but what he felt for her had been a pale shadow of what he felt for his wife. Rachel had become his life.
How could he have been such a fool as to let this happen to him a second time? He had known better than to trust such a beautiful woman, but he had let his insatiable desire for Rachel overrule his good sense. He felt as though he had just died—certainly his heart had—and gone to hell.
Jerome laid the two letters beside her note that had been hidden in the ledger. Only a blind man could doubt that they had
all been written by the same person.
He stared with rising hatred at her artistic R that he had found so pleasing only a minute earlier.
Please, seal our love with your trust. I will never betray it.
The damn, lying bitch!
Jerome nearly choked on the bile rising in his throat. He felt his love for her disintegrating and its fragments coalescing into a loathing stronger than he had ever felt in his life.
He was not certain he could trust himself to set eyes on the wanton, deceiving jade again. He feared the sight of that exquisite face and the sound of her honeyed lying voice would drive him to violence.
In his current rage, if she tried to deny she had written those letters, he might well throttle her. He had to regain control over his fury before he could chance confronting her with the full evidence of her perfidy against him.
As Rachel returned from another hated round of social calls, she contemplated how she should tell her husband of her increasing certainty that she was with child. She decided that tonight, when they were in bed and she lay in the warmth and protection of his arms, would be best.
And then she would beg him to take her back to Royal Elms. Everyone knew that pregnant wives must be indulged.
As her chariot pulled up in front of Westleigh House, she was startled to see her husband’s travelling coach in front of the door, and two footmen carrying baggage to it.
Hope rose within her. He had already decided that they would return to Royal Elms. She would wait until they were there to tell him about the baby. Knowing how Jerome worried over her, he might cancel the journey, thinking it too hard for her, and she would be stuck in London.
Delighted at the prospect of returning to the country, she ran to the library which was the most likely place to find her husband at this time of day, and burst in without bothering to knock.
Jerome was standing at the window looking out at the garden behind the house. His back was to her.
She cried, “Are we going home to Royal Elms?”
Midnight Bride Page 27