Virtue v-1

by Jane Feather

  10

  Marcus could hear Judith's voice through the door connecting their bedchambers, talking with her maid as Millie dressed her for the evening. The afternoon's unpleasantness had left him with a sour taste in his mouth. He was perfectly entitled to keep a close hand on his wife's pursestrings, but he couldn't rid himself of the feeling that he wasn't behaving like himself. What difference did it make what she spent? It would take more than one lifetime of extravagance to run through his fortune. But disillusion had soured his customary generosity. This wasn't about Judith's spending habits. He wanted to punish her. It was as simple as that. And as disagreeable as that.

  He inserted a diamond pin carefully into the snowy folds of his cravat. "You needn't wait up for me, Cheveley."

  "No, my lord." The valet turned from the armoire where he was rearranging his lordship's wardrobe with loving care. "If you say so, my lord," he said woodenly.

  "I do," Marcus affirmed, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Cheveley's sensitive dignity was always seriously affronted at the slightest hint that his employer could manage without him. "That cough of yours needs a hot toddy and an early bed, man."

  Cheveley's thin cheeks pinkened and his stiffness vanished at this solicitude. His lordship was a considerate and just employer, quick to notice signs of discontent or ill health, and quick to act upon both. "That's too good of you, my lord. But I'll be right as a trivet in a day or so."

  "Yes, I'm sure you will. But you don't want to take any chances with that weak chest. Leave that now, and take yourself off to bed."

  He waited until the valet had left the bedchamber, then opened the door onto his wife's apartment. Judith was sitting at the dressing table, watching critically in the mirror as Millie threaded a gold velvet ribbon through her ringlets.

  "Good evening, my lord." For form's sake, Judith offered him the semblance of a smile in the mirror, but didn't turn to greet him.

  "Good evening, Judith." Marcus sat down in a velvet chair beside the crackling fire in the hearth. Millie turned her attention to the row of tiny buttons on the tight sleeves of the gown of pale-green crape. It was a color that suited his wife's vibrant coloring to perfection, Marcus reflected, and the thin silk cord circling her waist emphasized her slenderness.

  "Did you wish to speak with me?" Judith asked after a few minutes, wondering what could have brought him to her bedchamber in this conjugal fashion. They were hardly in charity with each other at the moment.

  "Not about anything in particular," he said, observing without due consideration, "that's a delightful gown."

  Judith's expression registered complete disbelief. She blinked and dismissed her maid. "Thank you, Millie, that will do very well. You may go."

  The maid curtsied and left. Judith turned on her stool to survey her husband. He was impeccably dressed as always in black satin knee britches and white waistcoat, his only jewelry the diamond pin in his cravat and his heavy gold signet ring, now returned to him. His black hair was brushed d la Brutus and there was a distinct frown in the ebony eyes, but it didn't seem to be directed at her.

  "Did I hear you aright?" she demanded, raising her eyebrows. "You approve of my gown, sir. Well, that's fortunate, since I daresay you'll be seeing it on many occasions over the next few years. I shall wear it until it falls off my back in shreds. That is what you intend, isn't it?"

  "Don't be silly," Marcus said. He'd come in with the vague intention of making peace, but it looked like a forlorn hope. "You know perfectly well that was not what I meant this afternoon. Your allowance won't be ungenerous."

  Judith swung back to the mirror. "Your kindness overwhelms me, my lord." She licked her finger and dampened the delicate arch of her eyebrows, struggling to calm herself… Losing her temper again would play havoc with her equilibrium and she needed a cool head tonight, if she was to win for Sally.

  Marcus sighed and tried a new tack. "I thought I would accompany you to Cavendish House this evening." Judith knew how he loathed such social engagements; she would surely understand the sacrifice as the peace offering it was meant to be.

  He had expected her to be surprised. He had not expected to see a flash of shock in her eyes. It was replaced almost immediately by something that looked unnervingly like calculation.

  "Such gallantry, my lord. But quite unnecessary." She laughed lightly, continuing to examine her reflection critically in the mirror. "It would be a sure way to ruin my evening… or perhaps that was your intention."

  "My apologies, ma'am." He stood up, his lips thinned. "I wasn't intending to ruin your evening. Forgive me."

  Judith relented slightly. She half turned on the stool again. "I only meant that I won't be able to enjoy myself because I'll know how bored you are."

  She turned back to the dressing table and began tidying a pot of hairpins. "None of your friends will be there and mine won't amuse you."

  She didn't want his company; it was as simple as that. Marcus bowed and said coldly, "As you wish. I'm sure you know best." He returned to his own bedchamber without a backward glance.

  Oh, Lord, Judith thought miserably. Surely not even a forced marriage should be conducted in this sniping wasteland. She and Marcus were simply the wrong people to have chained themselves in this mutual bondage. The sooner she left him to his own devices the better.

  It was after two o'clock when a hired hackney drew up outside Number 6, Pickering Street. Sebastian sprang down and assisted his sister to alight. Judith smoothed down her cloak of gold taffeta and adjusted the puffed muslin collar, looking up at the tall, narrow house. So this was London's equivalent of the more genteel gaming hells. She had frequented such places in most of the capitals of the Continent and was more than a little curious to see what London could produce.

  A liveried footman admitted them, took their cloaks, and escorted them up the narrow staircase to a square hall at the head. Three brightly lit salons opened off the hall, all thronged with men and women in evening dress, flunkeys moving among them bearing trays of glasses. Above the relatively subdued level of conversation, the groom-porters could be heard calling the odds at the hazard table.

  Judith glanced up at Sebastian and he grinned down at her in instant comprehension. They were home.

  "Why, Mr. Davenport, I'm delighted you could honor us. And, Lady Carrington…" Amelia Dolby drifted toward them from the quinze table. She must be more than sixty, Judith thought, despite the heavy rouge, absurdly youthful hairstyle, and semitransparent gown. Harsh-featured, sharp-eyed, she offered Judith the piranha's smile of one welcoming a victim. Judith had received many such smiles in her life, and offered her own bland version. For the next few hours, her face would be a mask, revealing nothing.

  "What's your game, Lady Carrington?" Amelia Dolby inquired. "Hazard, perhaps?"

  Judith shook her head. She and Sebastian only ever played the dice for pleasure; there was no skill to counteract the element of chance. Only a fool would bet seriously on pure luck. "I'm not sure. What are you playing, Sebastian?"

  "I've a mind to try the quinze table," he said carelessly, slipping black velvet ribands around his ruffled cuffs to keep them from flopping over his hands.

  "Then I'll play macao." They never played at the same table; it would rather defeat the object of the exercise.

  Amelia Dolby escorted her to the macao table, introducing her to the other players. Judith was slightly acquainted with several of them. They were all hardened gamesters and accepted Judith in their midst with the unquestioning assumption that she too was a slave to the cards and dice. She wouldn't be there if she wasn't in a position to play high, and that was all that interested any of them.

  Three hours later she had won almost five thousand guineas. Enough to redeem the Devlin rubies and purchase her phaeton and pair. It was all very satisfactory and very exhilarating. She felt amazingly revivified and wondered why she'd taken so long to get back to serious play. Some pointless sense of obligation to Marcus, of course. She'd thought it
might upset him. Laughable really, in the circumstances. Everything about her upset him anyway. Except in bed…

  Swallowing that thought, Judith gathered up her winnings and excused herself from the macao table.

  Sebastian was still heavily engaged at the quinze table, where silence reigned, and most of his fellow players wore masks to hide any emotional response to the fall of the cards. Recognizing that she couldn't expect him to leave yet, Judith strolled through the salons, relaxed now that her goal was achieved, and prepared to play purely for pleasure if a place opened up at one of the other tables.

  "Lady Carrington…"A woman's voice hailed her from a faro table. "Do you care to join us?"

  "If you've a place." Smiling, Judith went over to the table. She didn't recall meeting the woman before. "You have the advantage of me, ma'am."

  "Oh, permit me to perform introductions." Amelia was at her elbow. "Lady Barret… Lady Carrington."

  "I only arrived in town the other day," Agnes Barret said. "My husband has been indisposed and it delayed our return from the country." She gestured to the chair beside her at the table. "Do, please… I was hoping for an introduction at Cavendish House," she went on as Judith sat down. "But you were so surrounded by admirers, my dear, I couldn't come near you." She held out her hand with a laugh.

  "You flatter me, ma'am," Judith demurred, taking the hand. As Lady Barret held her hand, she regarded Judith with an intensity that seemed to exclude the rest of the room. Judith's skin crawled and her scalp contracted. The buzz of voices, the calls of the groom-porters, faded into an indistinguishable hum; the brilliance of the massive chandeliers dimmed, became fuzzy.

  It was as if she were held in thrall by some species of witchcraft. And then Lady Barret smiled and dropped her hand. "So you're a gamester, Lady Carrington. Does your brother share the passion?"

  Judith forced herself to respond naturally, wondering what on earth was the matter with her. What kind of fanciful nonsense had gripped her? "He's at the quinze table," she said, laying her rouleaux around her selected cards.

  Faro was essentially a game of chance and, in general, if her luck was out, she would move on to something else. But it was impossible to concentrate and she lost far more than she'd meant to risk before she realized it. Cross with herself, she made her excuses and rose from the table.

  "Oh, your luck will turn, Lady Carrington, I'm sure," her neighbor said, laying a restraining hand on her arm.

  "Not when the devil's on my shoulder." Judith quoted her father's favorite excuse when the cards weren't falling right.

  A flash shot through Lady Barret's tawny eyes and her color faded, highlighting the patches of rouge on her cheekbones. "I haven't heard that said in a long time."

  Judith shrugged. "Is it unusual? I thought it was a common expression… Oh, Sebastian." She turned to greet her brother with relief. "I don't believe you're acquainted with Lady Barret."

  She watched her brother as he smiled and bowed over her ladyship's hand. Could he feel that strange, disturbing aura too? But Sebastian seemed quite untroubled by Agnes Barret. Indeed, he was exerting his customary powerful charm with smiling insouciance. The lady responded with an appreciative glint in her eye and a distinctly flirtatious little chuckle.

  "It's late, Sebastian," Judith said abruptly. "If you'll forgive us, ma'am…"

  Her brother gave her a sharp glance, then made his own farewells rather more courteously. Once out of earshot, however, he observed, "That was a bit precipitate, u.

  "My head's beginning to ache," she offered in excuse. All her previous exhilaration had dissipated, and she wanted only to leave the hot rooms, overpoweringly stuffy with the cloying scents of the women and the heat from the massive candlebra. "And my luck was out and I wasn't watching my losses."

  This disconsolate confession earned her a disapproving frown. "You should have been concentrating," he reproved. "You know the rule."

  "Yes, but I wasn't thinking clearly." She wondered whether to tell him about her weird sensation with Lady Barret, then decided against it. To blame her clumsy play on a peculiar reaction to a fellow player would sound lunatic. "At least I've covered the rubies. And I've enough left for the horses."

  She glanced over her shoulder. Lady Barret was standing talking to her hostess. She was a most arresting woman, tall and slender, strikingly dressed in an emerald-green gown of jaconet muslin with a deep d6colletage and a broad flounce at the hem. In her youth, she would have been beautiful, Judith decided, with that massed auburn hair and the high cheekbones and chiseled mouth. The vivid color of her gown was one of Judith's own favorites. She made a mental note never to wear the color again, and then instantly chided herself for such childish fancies.

  Dawn was breaking when the night porter let her in to Devlin House. She went light-footed upstairs to her own chamber. Knowing how late she'd be, she'd told Millie not to wait up for her, and the fire was almost out, the candles guttering. She threw off her clothes and stood for a minute at the window, watching the roseate bloom of the sky.

  "Where the hell have you been?"

  Judith spun round at the furious voice. Marcus lounged against the jamb of the connecting door, as naked as she, and his body seemed to thrum with the tension of a plucked violin string.

  "To Cavendish House."

  "I went to Cavendish House myself four hours ago, intending to escort you home. You were not there, madam wife." And for the last three hours, he had been lying awake listening for the sound of her return, imagining any number of scenarios, from footpads to an illicit tryst. Everything he knew of her lent itself to the worst possible construction, and within a short time, he had ceased to be able to think of any sensible explanation.

  Judith tried to think quickly, aware of her mental fatigue after the hours at Pickering Street. She shrugged and asked coldly, "Were you spying on me, sir?"

  He had gone to Cavendish House with the best of motives, determined to paper over their differences in the only way he knew how: a lover's insistence on seduction. But at the cold, sardonic question, all good intentions vanished. "It seems I have cause. When my wife is not where she's supposed to be and disappears God only knows where for the greater part of the night, it's hardly surprising I should feel a need to check up on you."

  Abruptly Judith changed tactics. The last thing she wanted was for Marcus to decide to dog her footsteps in public. It would play merry hell with her gaming plans. She offered him a conciliatory smile, and her voice was quietly reasonable. "I was with Sebastian, Marcus. We haven't had the opportunity for a comfortable talk for some time."

  Marcus knew how attached they were, how strong the bond was between them. He looked at her closely, frowning. It was distracting. The closer he looked, the more he saw of Judith in her nakedness. He felt his body stir, begin to harden. Judith's eyes flickered unerringly downward and she came toward him, extending her hands. "But since neither of us is asleep in the dawn, I can think of any number of diversions."

  He took her hands, holding them tightly, examining her face, telling himself she had given him a perfectly understandable explanation for her absence.

  "So can I." He drew her to the bed and fell back, pulling her with him. "Were you at your brother's lodgings?"

  Judith froze beneath the stroking hand. "We had a great deal to talk about." Rolling over, she kissed his nipples, her tongue lifting the hard buds, her hand drifting down his body.

  Marcus caught her hand in mid caress. "I don't think you've answered my question, Judith."

  Hell and the devil. He was going to force her to lie. Or course.

  Was she lying? What reason had he for believing her? The perverse prod of disillusion drove him onward down this destructive path. "Why do I have the feeling you're being less than straightforward?" One hand still held hers, his other caressed her back in long, slow strokes.

  "I can't imagine why." Her voice was muffled, buried in his skin. She still had the use of her lips and tongue, but that use didn't seem
to be creating the hoped for distraction.

  "If you're lying to me, my dear wife, you're going to discover that my patience and tolerance have certain limits. You are my wife, and as such the guardian of my honor. Honor and untruths make uneasy bedfellows."

  "Damn you, Marcus!" Judith sat up, glaring at him. "Stop threatening me. Why would I lie?"

  "I don't know," he said. "But by the same token, why wouldn't you?"

  Judith closed her eyes on the hurt… a hurt she wasn't entitled to feel because she was lying. But whose fault was that?

  Marcus hitched himself up against the pillows, regarding her through hooded eyes in the dim, gray light of dawn. He could feel her pain as he could feel his own, and he tried to find the words to put this mess into perspective, to salvage something out of the night.

  "Judith, I can't have you running around in secret pursuits at all hours of the night, with or without your brother. It may be what you're used to doing, but your position is different now. The Marchioness of Carrington, my wife, has to be above reproach… whatever Judith Davenport may have done. You know that damn well."

  "And why are you assuming that I was doing anything that was not above reproach?" she snapped. "I told you I was with my brother. Why isn't that enough?"

  "You seem to forget I know what you and your brother get up to. Fleecing gulls with fan play…"

  "Not anymore," she interrupted, flushing. "You can no longer have any justification for such an accusation."

  "I trust not," he said. "Because let me tell you something, Judith." Reaching out, he caught her chin, his eyes and voice as hard as iron. "If I ever find that you and your brother have performed your little duet again, by the time I've finished with you, you will wish your parents had never met. Do I make myself clear?"

  Judith jerked her head free of his grip, her voice frigid. "Such a statement would be impossible to misconstrue, sir."