by Sophia James
God, what would it be like to live with a woman who did not use every waking hour to plan the next gown or soirée as his sisters and mother were prone to, their constant gossip and ever-present fits of displeasure marring this day and then the next one.
Simple. Uncomplicated. Truthful.
When Gabriel Hughes came towards them with his sister and mother in tow, Daniel frowned. Charlotte looked as beautiful as ever, but she no longer held any sway over him. Tonight he could not even see what her attraction must have been.
‘We meet again, Lord Montcliffe. It is becoming a habit, though of course your marriage notice in the paper was a decided surprise. To a lot of people, I expect, your mother included. I can’t imagine she was pleased.’ Her voice was hard, an edge of anger upon it and another thing that he could not name.
Amethyst was listening, as was Christine, though Lucien was trying to make a decent fist of a conversation with them to give him some privacy.
With her blue eyes flashing Charlotte Mackay used her words like swords, the sharp point of meaning aimed true. She knew Janet Montcliffe had always favoured an alliance between them, two pre-eminent families of the ton melded into an ordained partnership. Any association with the world of trade was as offensive to Charlotte as it was to his mother and she made no attempt whatsoever to conceal her feelings.
Gabe and Lady Wesley looked less sure as to the purpose of such an outburst. Indeed, her mother was trying to pull Charlotte away, her teeth set in a rigid smile of fluster, but her daughter was having none of it.
‘I should like to ask Miss Cameron a question if I may, my lord.’ The silky tone of her words signalled danger and the group around them fell into silence. ‘I would like to ask her if she knew a man called Mr Whitely?
* * *
The bottom fell out of Amethyst’s world, a single terrible thump of something breaking into a thousand shards of shame and all the more dreadful because it was so unexpected and public.
‘Mr Gerald Whitely?’ She hated the way her voice sounded as she echoed the words back, but she needed to give herself a moment to think.
‘Your husband, Miss Cameron, or should I say Mrs Whitely. The man you married. Surely you remember him?’
‘Oh, you have it very wrong, Lady Hughes, for she is not spoken for. Miss Cameron is about to be married in the next few weeks to Lord Montcliffe and I think...’ Christine’s sentiments broke across the growing silence, petering out as she realised with amazement that the accusations could actually be true.
‘Gerald Whitely? The name is familiar.’ Lord Ross’s voice came through the fog. ‘Was he not the one who set up a company early last year to swindle wealthy investors out of their funds?’
‘Amethyst?’ Daniel spoke now, the timbre in his voice drawn, and when she looked up his pale eyes were icy.
‘It...is a...mistake.’ She could barely get the words out.
‘Then perhaps the ton would like to hear why a married woman should insist on using her maiden name when her true one might elicit howls of derision.’ Charlotte’s tone rang with victory though it hollowed as her brother bundled her up and pulled her away, his mouth grimly set.
‘You have said your piece, Charlotte. It is now time to leave.’
Christine had stepped back too, the distance between the Howards, Francis St Cartmail, Daniel and her widening by the second. Further away others began to take note of the emotion and the exchanges, a whisper of question circling the room.
‘Could I t-talk with you...alone?’ Amethyst needed to get away from here, to get outside. Her breathing was strange and the world was beginning to waver. Shock, she thought, and guilt. Every single part of her felt torn.
But Daniel did not move. Two seconds and then three. Both Lucien and Francis on either side of him looked at her strangely, an immobile trio of disbelief mixed with disdain.
‘I n-need to explain.’ The lies. The omissions. She swallowed and thought she might be sick, here in the grand ballroom of the ton, all over her golden foolish dress. ‘Please.’
Daniel finally stepped towards her, but he said nothing as he took her arm, a passage of empty space opening as they made their way to the staircase and then down it. Amethyst tried her best not to meet one single person’s glance as they went, though she could hear the undercurrents of disparagement all around.
‘Trade, of course.’ ‘Blood will always tell.’ ‘To think she imagined to hide a husband.’
It was over. Everything. She should have explained to him before now. Lies upon lies upon lies and this is where it got you. Here. The complete disintegration of her name and her character and the derision of the ton.
Taking their cloaks and hats from the butler, Daniel strode out to hail his carriage. Any contact had long since gone and he made no effort at all to meet her eyes or to talk.
‘There are th-things you need to...’
‘Wait until we are alone.’ The quiet cold indifference in his voice was far worse than any anger.
A minute later his horses were moving, much faster than she liked, racing towards Grosvenor Square, careening around the corners of the dark London streets.
‘Now perhaps you might tell me the truth. Were Lady Mackay’s accusations about your marriage to Whitely false or not?’
‘It was not as you think...and it was never...’ Her attention was caught by the speed the carriage was gaining, fast, much faster than she was comfortable with. The old fear came at her out of nowhere, robbing breath and sense as she lunged for the door handle, peeling her gloves off and keening.
‘God.’ The Earl’s voice came through a melted screen of light. ‘What the hell is wrong with you now?’
His discarded cane was in her hand without conscious thought, smooth and warm as she belted the roof as hard as she could, once and then twice before he snatched it away.
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Too...fast.’ Mouthed now as she could not even whisper the words. The carriage would turn over as it had before, she could feel the wheels leaving the ground and lurching sideways. Her heartbeat made her head ache and the old sweat of fear broke out all over her. Then all she knew was a spiralling fog, like snow at night and cold, tunnelling in. She did not try to fight the darkness.
Chapter Seven
They were at Dunstan House and the curtains across the French doors of her room were billowing wide. Like the sails of the Cameron ships on the wind as they raced for the Americas, cargos laden and a blue horizon seen in every direction.
Her father sat in a chair reading, his glasses perched on his nose and a bright floral cushion on his lap. Amethyst’s mind searched for an answer as to why they were here and why she was in bed at this time of the day, half a dozen vials of medicine lined up on the table beside her.
Of a sudden the room spun in small and rapid circles, making her blink. Squinting, she reached out, hoping to find balance. Something was not right just beyond thought, the time, the place or the company.
‘Papa.’ The word was thick in the dryness of her mouth, but her movements had alerted him and, dropping the book on the floor, he reached over to take her hand.
‘How do you feel?’
Daniel. He was gone. The ball. Gerald. The wild ride in the carriage home. Too fast.
‘How long...since the ball?’
‘Three days. This is the first time you have known me.’
‘Only...you...here?’ Her eyes perused the corners of her chamber, searching. When her father nodded Amethyst allowed the heaviness of her lids to close and she slept.
* * *
She knew she was calling his name in the dark and through the night. But Daniel Wylde, the sixth Earl of Montcliffe, would not come because he no longer trusted her, no longer cared.
A cold compress was pressed to her forehead and she touched her father’s hand.
‘Tired.’ She could barely keep her eyes open. ‘I feel so tired.’
‘Then I will stay with you until you sleep and when you wa
ke up again I shall still be beside you.’
His words were quietly spoken, yet were so very genuine. She could not remember a time when her father had let her down or failed her. ‘I love you, Papa. You have always been here.’
‘And I always will be, my jewel. Don’t worry. Everything will turn out just exactly as it should, I swear that it will.’
The dizziness was back, hovering at a distance, but closing in. She needed him to know something, but it was hard to think what it was now.
‘Daniel?’
‘Shush.’
‘He makes me...happy.’
The tears fell of their own accord, welling in her eyes and running warm across her cheeks.
‘And now...I have lost...him.’
‘No.’ All the reassurance in the world in that one simple word and as she fell back into sleep she smiled.
* * *
The next time she awoke it was dark and two candles on the mantelpiece laid a circle of light across the bed, the white of the counterpane so bright it hurt her eyes to look at. Holding up a hand to dim it, she was surprised by a small cut on her wrist, the blood around the wound dried and powdered. Her father was still beside her, in different clothes now and without the book.
‘They bled you. The doctors. I asked them if it was truly necessary but the humours are tricky things, they said, and the melancholy needed to be released from your body.’
Her father looked both exhausted and worried.
‘Lord Montcliffe?’
‘He left as soon as he brought you home from the Herringworth ball and I haven’t heard from him since.’
‘Did he tell you...anything?’
He shook his head. ‘Maisie and Mick were delivered the next morning and I brought you here the day after that.’
‘I see.’ And she did. Charlotte Mackay’s accusations played on her memory as did the speed of the carriage as Daniel had taken her home. She had acted appallingly, but high emotion, guilt, shame, shock and fright had played their parts, too.
‘The doctor administered laudanum to calm you down, my dear, but I do not think it agreed with you. I stopped the dosage the day before yesterday.’
That was why she felt nauseous then and slightly removed from the world. Her mouth was so parched she could barely swallow but all she could think about was the sense of betrayal in Daniel’s pale green eyes.
And the hurt.
The sick feeling in her stomach worsened. He must think her mad and deceitful, a woman who held no regard for honesty or manners; the wife of a man at the centre of a scandal that had rocked all of London. The kiss they had shared came back with full force: a moment in her life she would never forget, a gift of what it might be like to be with a man whom you truly loved.
She turned her face into the pillow and sobbed.
* * *
Daniel knew what the lawyer would say. He knew it before the legal retainer even opened his mouth and began to speak.
‘I am acting on behalf of the Honourable Reginald Goldsmith. He has instructed me to call in the loan your brother took out against your family estate and he would like the sum paid back in full by the end of this month.’
‘I see.’
Smythe shook his head and lifted a yellowing page. ‘I am afraid you do not, my lord. The sum is enormous.’ Turning the document so that it could be read with more ease, Daniel was stunned.
Five thousand pounds. A king’s ransom. So much more than he’d imagined Nigel to have gambled; a fortune that he had no way of getting his hands upon now that Amethyst Cameron had disappeared into the countryside with her father.
‘Is there any way I could stretch out the payments?’
‘Perhaps for a few months if you were lucky.’
‘But no more?’
The lawyer shook his head. ‘My client is taking ship to the Americas in twelve weeks because his only daughter has settled in Boston. He wants a clean break and he is more than hopeful that the debts should be discharged before he goes. Completely discharged,’ he emphasised the words again and wiped his brow. ‘Is there a problem with this, Lord Montcliffe?’
‘No.’ The glint in Smythe’s eyes was full of conjecture.
‘Your marriage to Miss Cameron should help. I have heard that the family is extremely wealthy. Timber, is it not?’
Daniel stood. He did not wish to hear any conjecture on his own personal life from a man for whom the words ‘appropriate’ or ‘confidential’ appeared to mean nothing. Taking his leave, he was glad Smythe did not engage in further conversation.
He walked along the river in a light rain, the water winding along with him, full of the noise and movement of commerce. Perhaps one of the Cameron ships was docking at this moment, ready to be discharged of its heavy cargo.
Amethyst Cameron.
He no longer knew what to make of her, the shifts of emotion exhausting. He had deposited her at home with her father after the ball and left immediately, her behaviour in the carriage so very deranged and Charlotte’s truths still ringing in his ears. The next morning he had sent back the greys. Even to save Montcliffe he could not be for ever tied to a mad and lying wife.
Gerald Whitely, at least, was dead. He had found out that through an investigator he had employed to make sense of it all. But still the whole ending had been maudlin and awkward.
Swearing, he conjured up her face on the night of the ball, her lightened hair showing up the velvet gold in her eyes. Beautiful and crazy. He had not heard a word from the Camerons since and on enquiry found that they had packed up the London town house and headed for their country estate of Dunstan House somewhere up north.
Good riddance, he should have thought, the whole episode so public and brutal. A lucky escape from a woman who was both deceitful and unstable. Yet underneath other thoughts lingered. Amethyst’s thinness. The way she smiled. The dimples that dented her cheeks and the careful diction of her words.
He had not made a public statement about anything though the ton was, of course, abuzz with the happenings. His mother had caught him in the breakfast room that very morning and made her opinions quite clear.
‘From what I have heard you are well shot of Mrs Whitely, Daniel, and you can now concentrate on the search for a far more suitable match. The Earl of Denbeigh’s wife, Lady Denbeigh, has been most direct with her wishes for her daughter’s future. From all accounts the young lady appears to be a well brought-up, softly spoken girl with an admirable fashion sense. Trade needs to marry trade and those from the ton should find a partner within the same ranks. It is these unwritten laws of society that keeps it all working, you see, and if you seek to change it for whatever reason there are always complications and sordid ones at that.’
She twirled the end of a light-brown curl around her finger. ‘Your man said you no longer have the greys stabled here in London. Are they at Montcliffe?’
‘No. I sent them back to the Camerons. They were part of the wedding settlement.’
‘But I had heard that they were worth a fortune.’
‘They are.’
‘Then I should have kept them if I were you. It would have been some payment for all the humiliation we have suffered since.’
The loud shout of a street pedlar brought Daniel back into the moment, an unkempt fellow playing a wooden flute and touting for a few pennies as he finished. Digging into his pocket, he dropped in an offering.
How the hell could he rescue Montcliffe? The edges of his world were flattening out and he was in danger of falling off the end of it unless he could come up with something.
A pawnshop sign opposite caught his attention and, checking to see that no conveyance was bearing down upon him, he walked across the road towards it, pulling off the heavy gold signet ring from his little finger as he went.
* * *
‘I think you should send back the greys, Papa. Lord Montcliffe can’t wish for the agreements to continue as they were, not after...what has happened, but we do need to ensure his dis
cretion.’
Amethyst finally felt better today and had dressed to come down to the dinner table with her father, who watched her with a growing frown upon his face.
‘You won’t fight for your reputation, then, or for Lord Montcliffe?’
‘He was never mine to fight for, Papa. Surely you can see that?’
‘The first man who has made you live again and smile again and you give him up on a sigh? Your mother would have been disappointed in you.’
‘Why? Because I can understand that in the distaste of the ton lies a way to complete devastation? Daniel Wylde wanted me as little as Whitely did. The pair of greys arrived from him before a new day had dawned properly. Even Gerald gave me a few months.’
‘A few months of hell.’ Robert stood, his voice louder than she had ever heard it, ‘and the scars to prove it. The worst thing about it all was that I could do nothing as Whitely systematically wore you down into a daughter I didn’t recognise any more. After him you looked over your shoulder with a fear of life, love and happiness.’
He held up his hand as she went to speak. ‘Montcliffe gave you back something whether you admit it or not, Amethyst. For the first time in a long while you have seemed...happy. You took risks, you lived.’
She began to laugh because anything else was too awful to contemplate. ‘I agreed to the terms because I thought that was what you wanted, Papa. The doctor said you needed to be relaxed and rested if you were to survive your failing health and you have looked more robust since.’
‘I do not think your agreement to marry him was all about me, my dear. You called for Daniel Wylde when you were sick, again and again, and you begged for him to come back.’
‘It was the laudanum.’
‘No, it was the truth.’
‘What are you trying to say, Papa?’
‘That the Earl was the best thing that has happened to you in a long time and if you don’t do anything to make him understand the situation as you know it you will never be accepted into polite society again. That really would kill me.’
A gathering dread made her feel cold.
‘We will introduce better conditions.’ Her father’s voice held no question as he continued on.