He stiffened but did not turn from the window to greet her. Instead he said in a voice she hardly recognized as his, “Shut the door.”
Always before when she had come in like this, he had moved instantly to take her in his arms and welcome her with a kiss. Apprehension bubbled in her as she closed the door.
Only then did he turn to her, and her heart blanched at the sight of his face, He made no move to come to her.
“You are going to Royal Elms,” he said in that awful voice. “You will leave in a quarter hour. I am remaining in London.”
Rachel gasped in shock. “Why are you sending me to Royal Elms alone?”
“You are not as clever a deceiver as you thought.” The look he gave her was such a corrosive mixture of hatred and disillusionment that she knew it would be etched in her memory forever. “I know the truth, Rachel.”
She felt as though she was caught in some hideous nightmare. Swallowing hard, she started toward him. “What—”
“Do not dare come a step closer to me,” he rasped. “Or I may do violence to you.”
Shocked and dismayed, she stopped abruptly. “Darling, what on earth is wrong?”
The fury in his eyes seemed to scorch her with its heat. “Damn you, do not ever call me that again. I am not your darling, and you damn well know it, you lying jade. Now get the hell out of here before I throttle you.”
The fury in his eyes and his voice frightened her, but she gamely stood her ground.
“I will not go anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”
“You know what it is about! We will discuss it when I can trust myself not to strangle you. Now, you have two choices, you faithless witch. You may walk out of this room now and go to Royal Elms, or I will have you forcibly removed there.”
She gasped. “You would not dare!”
“Try me,”
The icy hatred radiating from Jerome paralyzed Rachel. Her loving husband had vanished, replaced by this hard, intractable stranger who, she knew, would do exactly as he threatened. Better to go to Royal Elms voluntarily rather than suffer the humiliation of being taken there like a prisoner in chains.
Defeated, she turned and left the library.
Jerome stood at the window of the small anteroom off the entrance of Westleigh House, watching his travelling coach as it waited for his duchess to come down so that it could depart for Bedfordshire.
He was torn between an eagerness to be rid of her and an irrational desire to cancel this journey he had ordered for her. She had looked so innocent and vulnerable when he had confronted her in the library. Idiot that he was, it had been all he could do to keep from taking her in his arms and kissing her.
If it had not been for her letters to Denton, written in her own damning hand, he would never have been able to believe she had been unfaithful to him.
He marvelled at what a magnificent actress she was, looking at him with those wide, seemingly guileless violet eyes and pretending to have no idea what he was talking about.
Then she made the mistake of calling him darling in that caressing voice of hers. It ignited his temper like a torch tossed into dry straw, and he knew that he had to get her out of his sight before he did something he would regret. He was too angry even to confront her with her letters.
Ferris appeared at the door. “You wished to see me.”
Jerome turned. He stifled an urge to lash out at Ferris and demand to know why he had failed him by letting his wife rendezvous with her lover. But he knew that was unfair. Ferris’s charge had been to protect her and to deliver her safely to the destinations she specified. Once she was inside, he had no way of knowing whom she might meet there.
Jerome held out a sealed letter. “Deliver this to Morgan.”
As Ferris took the document, he said with a troubled frown, “I don’t understand why you are ordering her grace to Royal Elms. Do you not think it is more dangerous there for her?”
Unfortunately, Jerome did. At least in London, there had been no attempt to harm her. He saw again in his mind the musket barrel pointed at her and the bodies of the poisoned kittens.
The thought of her lying dead sent a cold shudder through him. And in that moment he knew that, despite everything, she still meant far more to him than she ought. He cursed himself for his weakness and stupidity. But that did not stop him from saying, “Guard her well, Ferris. I would not have anything happen to her.”
Chapter 28
Rachel, dressed for riding in a green habit, came .down the broad marble staircase at Royal Elms. She had arrived from London late last night so exhausted that she had slept until nearly noon today.
Depressed and confused over her husband’s inexplicable fury toward her, she had lingered listlessly over the breakfast tray that had been brought to her room. How right her premonition had been that her trip to London would end unhappily.
She tried to tell herself that, under the circumstances, she was better off at Royal Elms than in London where she would have had to attend endless, vacuous social affairs while pretending nothing was wrong between herself and her husband.
Rachel had never been one to pine when she was unhappy, and she was determined not to do so now. The antidote to grief and depression was to keep herself too busy with worthwhile tasks to mope. She would begin by calling on the tenants to see how they were faring. At least at Royal Elms, she would have useful work that would keep her mind off the state of her marriage.
As she finished her toilet, she glanced out the window and saw Ferris gallop up to Morgan, who was walking toward the house from the stables. Ferris was clearly agitated, and whatever he told her brother-in-law disturbed him for he slammed his fist angrily into his open hand.
When she had arrived at Royal Elms last night, Morgan had greeted her with surprise and affection, but then he read the letter that Jerome had sent with Ferris, and his demeanour toward her changed from warmth to cool politeness.
Rachel left her bedchamber and went down the broad marble staircase. As she reached the bottom, Morgan came into the hall.
“I am going riding,” she told him.
He frowned, “I am sorry Rachel, but I must insist that you remain in the house.”
“What?” she asked in disbelief. “I am going to visit the Taggarts.”
His lifted his eyebrow quizzically, as though he were sceptical that was her destination, “Are you now? I am afraid you will have to postpone it.”
She could scarcely believe her ears. “Why?”
“I suspect you know why.”
It was too much. Rachel’s temper kindled. “Well, I do not know why! Nor do I know why Jerome bundled me off here. Will you please explain to me why he is so angry at me? And explain, too, why I cannot leave the house. Why am I a prisoner?”
“Your lover arrived at the Crown Inn a half hour ago. Ferris saw him.”
Rachel gaped at Morgan. “My lover? Sweet heaven, I have no lover. The only man I have ever lain with is my husband. Who on earth are you talking about?”
Morgan looked puzzled. “Anthony Denton.”
“You must be joking.” But she saw from Morgan’s troubled expression that he was not joking. “I despise the man.” And that was true. As far as she was concerned, any man who would make such a wager as he had with Birkhall was beyond contempt.
‘Jerome says he has proof of your infidelity with Denton.”
For a moment, Rachel was so stunned she could not speak. Then she cried furiously, “He cannot have proof of something that never happened.”
“Then explain to me why Denton, who has never before come to this neighbourhood, should suddenly arrive here today, one day after you?”
“I have no idea why he is here. You will have to ask him that.” Silently she cursed Denton for showing up at such an inopportune moment. She could not deny that it looked highly suspicious for him to do so.
Given Jerome’s recent actions, Rachel unhappily concluded that she had made a terrible mistake by not giving in t
o his demand that she cut Denton. She had done so because she wanted to force Jerome to trust her. She wondered miserably whether she had lost him instead.
What possible proof could he think he had of her infidelity? She considered the rumours surrounding Tony’s dreadful wager with Lord Birkhall. Was she the object of it as everyone believed? His arrival here on her heels argued strongly that she was.
An even more painful thought occurred to her. A man who would make such a wager as Tony had would not hesitate to do other despicable things. Could it be that in his eagerness to win the wager, he had falsely claimed she had slept with him? Would Jerome unequivocally accept his word for proof? The thought made her sick to her stomach.
In that instant, she hated Tony Denton more than she had ever hated anyone in her life.
The door knocker sounded, and the butler glided silently to answer it.
Rachel stared in shock at Denton standing there.
He said, “I wish to see the duchess.”
All Rachel’s pent up pain and anger and frustration exploded. “Well, I do not wish to see you, Anthony Denton, you unprincipled scoundrel, not now, not ever! What lies have you told my husband?”
Denton’s jaw dropped in shock, and he seemed to have been robbed of his voice.
Rachel, taking his silence as a sign of guilt, cried furiously, “I hate you. I hate the sight of you!”
He looked so stricken that for an instant Rachel almost felt sorry for him. Then she reminded herself that he was undoubtedly thinking of the wager she was costing him.
She turned on her heel and left the hall without a backward glance at him.
Morgan caught up with her by the door to the stillroom. “I doubt that was the reception Tony expected.”
She raised her tear-filled eyes to Morgan. His gaze was confused and troubled. “I think that Tony must have lied about me in an attempt to win that awful wager.” She told her brother-in-law about Birkhall’s bet, and her husband’s order that she cut Tony. “I refused because I wanted Jerome to learn to trust me.”
“I warned you once that it was very difficult for my brother to trust a beautiful woman. I am afraid that you expected too much of him.”
“But trust is the foundation of love. Without it. . Rachel’s choked voice faded into despairing silence.
It had been a week since Jerome had learned of Rachel’s perfidy, and it still hurt as much as it had the moment he had discovered it. Since he had exiled his wife to Royal Elms, Jerome had grown to hate his London house in general and his bedchamber in particular. It held too many memories of Rachel.
Especially the bed. Her lingering scent of lavender and roses had tormented him. Nor could he look at the bed without thinking of Rachel smiling up at him as though he were the only man in the world, of Rachel kissing him passionately, of Rachel writhing beneath him in uninhibited ecstasy.
He found himself staying out later and later each night, then drinking himself into oblivion in the library before he could face another night alone in the bed where he had once lain entwined in such joyous pleasure with his wife.
Tonight he was at his club, watching the faro table with unseeing eyes as he wondered what Rachel was doing at this moment at Royal Elms.
Lord Rufus Oldfield came up to him. “I hear your duchess has gone home to Royal Elms.” Oldfield’s sly smile widened. “And that Anthony Denton unexpectedly departed for Bedfordshire the day after she did.”
The unwelcome news that Denton had followed Rachel to Royal Elms caught Jerome by surprise.
Malice glinted in Oldfield’s gray eyes. “Such an odd coincidence, would you not agree?” With a little chuckle, he turned and strode away through the crowd.
Jerome swore viciously to himself, then turned, and left the club.
Jerome was in the saddle early the next morning. He would not allow his brazen, wanton wife to entertain her lover in his own home. He rode hard, and by evening he was approaching the Crown Inn at the junction of the main north-south and east-west roads, a mile south of Royal Elms.
If Denton were in the neighbourhood, he must be putting up at the Crown. It was the only inn worth staying at. Jerome decided to stop there and inquire. If Denton were there, maybe Jerome would call the bastard out now and get their inevitable confrontation over with.
The inn’s fat proprietor, almost as broad as he was tall, frowned when he was asked whether Denton was there.
“He has taken a room here, Your Grace, but I can’t rightly say that he’s staying here. He’s not here now, and his bed’s not been slept in since he’s come.”
Jerome’s jaw clenched so hard at this news that pain radiated up his cheek. In a suddenly hoarse voice, he asked, “Do you know where he is spending his nights?”
The man frowned. “Can’t rightly say. He rides off each night down that path.” He pointed toward a narrow, winding track that meandered northwest through a beech wood.
Jerome could think of nothing in that direction but Royal Elms Dower House. It had been built by the seventh Duke of Westleigh for his mother with whom he had feuded most of his adult life. He had located it as far away from the main house as he could in an isolated section of the park that bordered on the Hextable property
Since both the tenth and eleventh dukes’ wives had preceded their husbands to the grave, the Dower House had been empty since the death of Jerome’s great-grandmother, the ninth duke’s widow. It had been locked up and neglected until the past year when, in an attempt to keep some of the additional servants he had hired busy, Jerome had begun having it cleaned once a week.
Isolated and hidden, it was the perfect place for a tryst. Was his faithless wife meeting her lover there?
Rachel awoke that evening from a long nap. With each passing day, she had becoming increasingly certain of what she had suspected when she had left London. She was pregnant.
That would explain why she was so sleepy, as well as her nausea in the mornings.
It might even help explain why she tended to be so weepy. But the lion’s share of the blame for that could not be laid upon her pregnancy, but upon her unborn child’s father.
She missed Jerome dreadfully. Not the hard-eyed stranger who had banished her to Royal Elms. She did not know that man. No, she missed the tender, loving husband who had shared her bed. Rachel wanted to lay in his arms and discuss the child that was growing within her.
She had thought that Jerome would not be able to remain away, that after a day or two his temper would have cooled, and he would come to her.
But eight days had passed now, and he had not come.
Rachel was convinced that Tony had to have been the source of her husband’s supposed “proof” of her infidelity, that he must have lied to Jerome about her. Any man who would accept the disgusting wager that he had from Lord Birkhall could not be trusted.
Mrs. Needham came in, carrying a tray of food beneath a white linen napkin.
“I am not hungry,” Rachel protested.
“No matter, you must eat for two.”
Rachel coloured. “You guessed.”
“Aye, and I will not allow you to starve the next master of Royal Elms.”
After the housekeeper left, Rachel forced herself to eat for her child’s sake. It should not suffer, as she was suffering for sins she had not committed.
Rachel had just finished her dinner and put the tray aside when her door flew open and Jerome strode in, looking dusty and travel-worn but still unbearably handsome in his brown riding coat and buff breeches that accentuated his strong, muscled body.
At last he had come to her!
She was so overjoyed to see him that she threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around him. As she did, she saw the fire leap in his eyes and knew that he was as delighted to see her as she was to see him. He had missed her as she had him. She pressed herself against him, feeling the hard evidence of his desire for her.
“Thank God, you have come!” Rachel tried to kiss him, but he evaded her mouth an
d moved back a step, his arms at his sides instead of returning her embrace.
“What do you think brought me?”
His voice was cool, and she could feel him slipping away from her again. She could not let that happen. Surely if he knew about their baby, he would soften toward her. “I have the most wonderful news for you.”
She felt him stiffen a little. “What is that?”
“You are going to be a father.”
“Am I?” The words came out like the growl of a savage beast. He thrust her away from him, glaring down at her. “Pardon me, madame, but I doubt that very much.”
She stared at him blankly. “What do you mean? Sweet heaven, are you saying you do not believe I am going to have a baby?”
“Oh, no, I am quite willing to believe that you are pregnant.” He looked at her as though she were a repulsive, loathsome creature that had just climbed up from the depths of the earth. “What I doubt very much is that I am your child’s father.”
It was more -than she could bear. She heard an anguished cry of someone in terrible pain and realized that the sound had come from her own throat. Her legs turned to mush, and her knees buckled. Had she not grabbed the carved walnut bedpost and clung to it, she would have collapsed.
Jerome stepped forward to catch her. His hands grabbed her arms and steadied her. Then he drew back as though she burned him.
“How can you say that to me? I have never been with any man but you. I swear it.”
His eyes hardened into blue-gray flints. “You liar,” he growled. “Explain why Anthony Denton has suddenly seen fit to visit this neighbourhood where he has never come before?”
“I do not know why Tony is here.”
Her husband’s face did not soften. “Are you telling me that he has not come here to see you?”
“He came, and I sent him away.” She could tell from Jerome’s expression that he did not believe her. “Ask Morgan if you do not believe me. He was here when Tony came.”
Jerome sneered. “So you gave one of your magnificent performances for my brother.”
Midnight Bride Page 28