Mary vividly remembered the life draining out of her as she sat at the breakfast table and stared at the printed words, reading them five times before they fully sunk in.
She never saw or heard from him again. Not even a letter attempting to explain.
Her father, trying to remain optimistic, had promised there would be other chances and other gentlemen, but unlike George she could not simply adjust her plans to new circumstances and replace one face with another. Men had turned out to be much less trustworthy than expected. Her naiveté, innocence, and a certain amount of self-confidence, was lost along with hope.
As she had remarked to Ransom Deverell, people had a habit of leaving her life, one by one, whether intentionally or by death.
Not long after George's surprise marriage, Uncle Hugo was arrested and so the storm over their heads grew even darker, until there seemed no chance of a break in it.
Poor, dear Hugo, who had only ever wanted to be happy on his own terms.
Some of it was kept out of the papers. What was put in alluded to his "crime" in the vague terms used so as not to offend anybody's moral sensibilities. It was still enough to make her father go white as a lily when he read about it. He'd known about his brother's love life for a long time, of course. How could he not? But seeing it in print, put out for public consumption, was another matter.
"I suppose Lord Stanbury congratulates himself now at narrowly escaping such an association," was the only comment he made to Mary on the matter. And that came out as if he momentarily forgot where he was and who she was.
She was not supposed to understand the details, of course. Being a well-raised, maidenly creature, she should not be aware of such things. Sex and anything related to it was never talked of in frank terms and if she was ever to know anything about it, she would be told on her wedding night, by her husband. But Mary was far from stupid, and she was not blind or deaf. She knew of her uncle's preferences and how they were forbidden, considered a criminal offense. She also understood that his long relationship with Thaddeus Speedwell was something more than two confirmed bachelors living under the same roof, even though it was never talked of.
At first she had found it difficult to understand. She adored her uncle, but Mary would have loved the companionship of an aunt, especially after the death of her mother. For a long time, she wished he could simply follow the established path and not be stubborn. But she came to see what a selfish thought that was. She also understood that when one was lucky enough to find true love— like a glorious, chocolate-covered, French cream pastry— one must never let it out of one's sight.
Love was a precious rarity and not everybody would be fortunate enough to find it, so why should Uncle Hugo be forced to give up his treasure and his happiness?
And so Young Mary had come to a tentative acceptance that secretly grew stronger over time. Her love for her uncle was too deep at the root to be disturbed. As her father had said— and as Violet had recently reminded her— when Mary loved she did so with her whole being.
Thaddeus Speedwell was a very gentle, reserved gentleman who never raised his voice, but Hugo had an effervescent character that could not be tamed or quieted. He was outspoken in his rebellion, his own sense of pride and determination just as strong as that of any Ashford. And he possessed three other things that were sure to get him into trouble— a quickly roused temper, an acutely felt abhorrence for injustice, and an extreme aversion to letting anybody else tell him how to live. Or die.
But this unapologetic flouting of convention made him few friends in high society and one day he crossed the wrong person for the last time. Hugo's enemies had him arrested for "acts of indecency", and he was sent to prison where he contracted pneumonia and died.
In typical Uncle Hugo form, as he lay dying, he dictated a long confession to several crimes that he could not possibly have committed, including the murder of an art critic— a gory, unsolved crime that had plagued authorities on both sides of the English Channel for months.
"Weep not for me, Mary my kitten," he'd written to her. "They would have preferred to put a noose around my neck, because I am not like them and refuse to be so. They are angry that I shall die now, before they can have that opportunity. But I shall go out with style and take responsibility for something I would dearly love to have done. Better that than to have the last report of me be that I died of so insipid and pedestrian a sickness."
Thus he told a very lurid tale of stabbing an art critic— who had given his latest exhibition a very bad review— through the forehead with an oyster fork, outside a Paris restaurant. It was all very garish, overwrought and macabre.
"Much like my work on canvas, according to the blackguard's review," he'd said.
When her father read an account of this deathbed "confession" in the newspaper, he was silently furious, veins bulging from his neck.
Some thought Hugo Ashford was mad, unhinged. Kinder folk called it eccentric. Mary suspected it was much simpler than that. She came to believe that her Uncle Hugo confessed to murder because he thought, in some odd way, that a killer in the family might be less shameful to his brother than the truth of why he was really imprisoned in the first place.
In actual fact, to her deep sadness, he was right. The Ashford pride was so deeply ingrained in her father that his brother's "unnatural love" for another man was far worse than murder.
Her father died not long after Hugo and so, in the space of a few years, she went from being a young debutante with everything in her future— quite content to pass up a French cream pastry, certain there would be many others— to a perennially hungry spinster, struggling to manage her sister.
One by one all the people she loved had left her. Now all she had was Violet. And even Violet wanted to vanish and become 'Violette'.
Perhaps, one of these days, Mary thought morosely, staring at the streaks of muddy puddle water that stained the hem of her skirt, she would be the one who got to escape reality. She could call herself Marietta and take up fortune-telling.
She pressed a hand to her heart and closed her eyes. If only she hadn't laid eyes on Elizabeth Grosvenor Stanbury tonight she would not have been forced to feel all of this misery again. All the loss and the frustration at not being able to stop any of it from happening. Wasted feelings that did nobody any good. Revisiting the past was only for people who liked to dwell on painful memories and wallow in self-pity. How many times had she said that to her sister? She should heed her own damned advice. But the sudden sight of Elizabeth had acted like a door opening on that past, taking her back there.
The last time she saw Elizabeth— before tonight— was the morning of her uncle's confession in the newspaper. Mary, trying to keep up appearances that day, was in Mayfair on her way to visit Raven, when she passed Elizabeth in the street.
No acknowledgement was made on Elizabeth's side, although Mary stopped, prepared to greet her politely. Instead Lady Elizabeth Stanbury passed her without stopping, commenting loudly to her companion, "I'm surprised she can show her face in public. I should have died of shame."
It hadn't helped that the painting above Ransom Deverell's mantle tonight happened to be one of Uncle Hugo's early works, jolting memories of him too. Of happier times, when he laughed a great deal, and used to let her daub paint on an old canvas beside his while he worked. Those were the days when he was funny and light-hearted, before he became louder, angrier and more obstreperous in old age. Before he started telling fanciful tales and believing them.
Struggling against the potent sadness that seemed to have found a violent grip on her heart that night, she brought her mind back to the present. To Ransom Deverell— an effective, colorful, and noisy distraction for which she was grateful. She whispered his name to herself a few times and found that, after a while, it began to sound like "Handsome Devil." Very fitting.
Oh, pork chops with apple sauce and possibly a pudding! Almost as tempting as the man who offered them. Alas, the sacrifices one must make for t
he good of one's impressionable younger sister.
Chapter Thirteen
"But I do not want to marry your brother." Lady Stanbury's blue eyes gleamed briefly with cool amusement. "Why would I leave my wealthy husband and settled life for scandal, exile, and uncertainty with a twenty-four-year-old, restless, unpredictable boy?"
Ransom felt something sinking in his chest, leaving a hollow. Ah, he should have realized, but Damon had seemed so certain. "He has not mentioned marriage to you?"
"Certainly not. We never spoke of such a thing."
"But my brother is under the impression that you want a divorce from your husband, madam. He's making plans for a new life with you and the child."
She laughed curtly. "Then he should have consulted me instead of you. I certainly never encouraged such an idea. What can he be thinking?"
Elizabeth Stanbury was a handsome woman with sharp features, ivory skin and a long, swan-like neck. Everything about her was slender— willowy he supposed was the right word—and perfectly arranged. Even the ringlets on each side of her face were identically balanced. He could see what had attracted his brother Damon, who always sought the prettiest, fastest, most expensive and newest— whatever he thought others would say he shouldn't, or couldn't have. Especially if somebody told him he was not entitled to it, being only a bastard Deverell.
But Ransom could also see that this well-maintained lady was not likely to throw herself whole-heartedly into a love affair that meant abandoning her status in life. She was far too composed and orderly, a woman with everything she wanted.
Almost everything, apparently.
"I am thirty-four," she said, "and my child-bearing years are not infinite. After eight years of marriage my husband had begun to despair of producing an heir, but now at last he will have one."
"You've told your husband about the child then?"
"Of course. He is overjoyed. We both are. It is a miracle."
He stared. "Madam, if you imagine Damon will give up his child, and sit quietly by to see it raised by another, you must not know him very well at all."
"What would your brother want with a child?" she scoffed. "He is not much more than one himself."
Ransom studied her through narrowed eyes, his anger and disgust quickly mounting. The longer she talked the less attractive her face became. Miss Ashford's calm, quiet poise, even in much less fashionable attire and lacking a few of those willowy inches, was more pleasing to the eye. "Yet Damon was old enough to share your bed."
She did not blink or blush, merely kept her glassy gaze fixed to his, unashamed. There was a hint of weariness in her tone now when she replied, "Every marriage encounters a difficult patch occasionally. Boredom sets in. Wives, as well as husbands, have been known to seek recreation outside the marital bed. In some cases an affair can rejuvenate a tired marriage."
"So my brother relieved your ennui. I don't believe he realized that was his sole purpose. From the way he spoke to me, he thought a great deal more of the affair and of you. He thinks he's in love, madam."
"Love? Surely you do not believe in that any more than I do?" she sneered. "Your reputation precedes you, Ransom Deverell."
"Yes. I am irredeemable. My younger brother, on the other hand, is an optimist and something of a romantic. Life has not yet crushed that out of him. Not quite."
"Then perhaps this will stand as a lesson for which he will thank me later."
Suddenly the room felt very cold. He had instructed Smith not to bother lighting a fire in the study because he didn't intend to make Lady Elizabeth feel too welcome, and he seldom used this room anyway — most of his business matters were taken care of at the club. But now the chill crept into his bones and he wished they did have a fire. It was almost as if this woman emitted her own frost.
Ransom's mind flashed to an image of Miss Flora Pridemore, smug and spiteful— his own uncomfortable lesson in the cruelties of mercenary female cunning. He wished he could have spared his brother that pain. Now he understood the frustration his father must have felt as he watched his sons making these mistakes. A litter of young men all insistent on finding out for themselves. All thinking they knew better than the man who came before them.
"I cannot be held responsible for any expectation or misunderstanding on your brother's behalf," the woman added. "I never led him to think there could be anything more between us."
Now she reminded him of how he had ended his affair with Belle Saint Clair. Christ, he had been an ass. Perhaps he had wanted her to find those other women in his bed. He thought he had forgotten the date of her return from France, but it was possible that somewhere, in the depths of his mind, he had known that she was becoming too possessive, outstaying her welcome. He took the easy path out, like a coward.
"So you have no feelings for my brother at all," he muttered. "He was merely a plaything to break the monotony of your life."
"Yes, he made a change from my husband's inattention, and I was thankful for the diversion. Damon was a very good lover...although rather too demanding of my time and too often in a jealous temper. But I'm afraid he overestimated his place in my life if he thought this was love."
He turned away, one hand on the back of his neck. Suddenly he caught his reflection in the mirror above the dark fire place. Was that him? He did look tired. There were more creases across his brow than he remembered the last time he looked.
Maybe his mother was right and he did need to get away from town, but how could he when he had so much to do? Besides, he much preferred London, the noise, the activity and the crowds. The country was too quiet. Like a silenced scream.
His head began to feel tight and heavy when he thought of what he must say to Damon. The boy was not going to take this well at all.
He rubbed a hand along his jaw where it ached from grinding his teeth. "Why did you tell him about the baby? Now he knows, it's going to be much harder on him. You should not have told him."
"Yes, I rather regret that, but I was indisposed one morning in his company and he guessed the cause before I did." There was not a quiver of guilt or pity on her face. If he stuck her with a pin he suspected she wouldn't move. "Soon I leave for Kent. I will spend my confinement there. I do not want your brother to follow, or try to see me. That's why I agreed to come here and meet with you."
Meanwhile, Damon was making plans to take a second job and become a doting family man. If Ransom didn't care so much for his half-brother, it might have been amusing. But there was nothing humorous about the way this would all end. He always knew it was a mistake to care, of course, but he couldn't prevent it. The devil knew he'd tried.
"What if your husband finds out that the child you carry is not his?"
She drew herself even taller, as if to face a firing squad, and said firmly, "I have never said it is not my husband's child." Again her eyes were coolly superior, daring him to argue.
There was a pause. He thought he could see the breath in front of his mouth. "I see." So that was the way she meant to play her game. "Damon will be very angry when he learns that you have used him."
She opened the small, beaded reticule that dangled on a string from her thin wrist. "You can persuade him against any nonsense. I have seen him talk of you, and I know how he looks up to you. Give him this if it will help." Holding out a folded bank cheque, she added, "This should be a satisfactory fee for any inconvenience he might suffer."
Rather than take the note, he put his hands into the pockets of his riding breeches. That was better, get some warmth back in his fingers. "Inconvenience, madam?"
"Of giving up any foolish claim he might try to make."
"Damon is certain he sired your child, and he won't be persuaded otherwise."
"That's a pity," she snapped, "because if I say the child is not his he has no evidence to the contrary."
Ransom nodded his head at the bank note in her hand. "That looks like a stud fee to me, madam. Proof enough, surely."
She stuffed the note back into her
reticule, drawing the string tightly closed. "Very well then. Perhaps you're right and to go away will be enough. But I want you to make it clear to your brother that this is over with. It is done. I do not want to hear from him again."
"Would that not be better coming directly from you, madam?"
"I have tried." Her shoulders softened, rounding almost imperceptibly. For the first and only time, he saw a glimmer of sadness in her pale eyes, although whether she felt it for Damon or herself was debatable. "But I found it challenging to be firm. He can be...persuasive."
Ransom shook his head.
"I am told all Deverells are the same," she added. "It was a mistake to become involved with one."
"But now you bring another one of us into the world."
The woman looked down at herself only briefly, her pale lashes sweeping quickly back up again. "This child is a Stanbury, heir to a title and an estate, not the offspring of a bastard Deverell."
She was lying; he was sure of it. Lying to the tips of her ice-blonde hair.
Now, however, the visit was ended. Like a grand empress who had benevolently granted him an audience, she slipped back into her cloak and fastened the frog clasps at her throat. With a cold, distant smile, she said suddenly, "Was that not Mary Ashford I saw leaving as I arrived? Mary Ashford once of Allacott Manor in Somersetshire?"
He pulled his hands from his pockets. "No. It was a basket of cabbages."
She squinted. "It was Mary Ashford. I am certain. What on earth was she doing here with you?"
"I daresay she wondered the same of you, madam."
"Gracious, I did not expect to see Mary in this part of town," she sneered, pulling up her hood. "The years have not been kind to her. I can see why she did not want to admit I knew her."
Ransom thought of the way Mary had bowed her head and hurried into the Hansom cab. "Perhaps she did not want to admit she knew you, madam. She may have thought to spare you the embarrassment of being seen and recognized at my door. Miss Ashford strikes me as the rare sort who worries more about the comfort and well-being of other people than she does about herself." He knew that about her already. Indeed, he felt as if he'd known her forever. "Very different to dark, jaded, selfish souls like you and I."
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