“Now, I must present you to Gervaise’s new countess! Dawn, this is my sister Frances, otherwise Lady Torridon. Frances, this is Eleanor, though we all tend to call her Dawn.”
Frances smiled, going forward alone to meet her. “How do you do? I know there is a story behind these names that I only know part of. You must tell me all, if you please!”
They had barely touched hands before a deafening rustle of silks announced the arrival of the dowager countess.
“Mama!” Frances went to her at once, kissing her cool cheek.
Her mother, who rarely betrayed emotion although she felt it keenly enough, gripped her tightly for a moment before releasing her and searching her face. Her eyes narrowed. “You have been up to mischief.”
Frances choked on a laugh. “I have and I owe both you and Eleanor a special apology.”
“Don’t I get one?” Gervaise inquired, strolling into the room.
“No, for you didn’t recognize me either!” Frances retorted, hugging him.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Alice blurted. “The lady who sent us inside away from those stupid men?”
“Well, once an oldest sister, one never loses the bossiness,” Frances said vaguely, with a quick frown at Alice in passing before the girl betrayed herself further. “Oh, and I danced with your husband, Serena, and I like him excessively.”
She knew the instant Torridon entered the room, but she would not look at him. Behind the pleasure of being once more in the center of her family, guilt for what she had done rose up from her toes along with shame at what her husband had witnessed, what she had said to him, asked of him… dear God, she had even let him kiss her, though thank God she had sent him away…
Yet among all of that, indignation simmered into anger. He had been playing with her, manipulating her—which, perhaps, she deserved. But more than that, he had been testing her. And that made her feel… unclean. Somehow, the shock of him being the Russian made everything worse rather than better, crumbling all her elation in the retrieval of the rubies, and eating away at the pleasure of her family reunion.
“It’s almost time for luncheon,” Serena said at last. “Shall we postpone our walk until after that? Oh, and we shall have guests for dinner tonight.”
“You still have guests who came north for the ball?” Frances asked.
“Oh, no, they have all left already. Apart from Sylvester, Tamar’s brother, who is travelling south with us tomorrow. No, these are local people, particular friends of mine and Tamar’s—a farewell dinner.”
“But you won’t be gone forever, Serena,” Helen said anxiously.
“Of course, I won’t,” Serena agreed. “And when you go to London with Mama, I’m sure she’ll bring you to stay at Tamar Abbey, too. Come on, Frances, I’ll help you with your things before luncheon. I have so much to tell you.”
Frances, anxious to avoid a tête-à-tête with her husband until everything stopped churning inside her, leapt at the chance of Serena’s company. He still stood by the door, as if refusing to be part of her welcoming family.
He raised his arms. “Let me take Jamie for now.”
“Oh no, he will want to be fed again soon, and I want to show him off to Serena.”
Torridon made no objection, merely let his arms fall and strolled further into the room.
Frances felt the urge to have her old bedchamber, but Serena began walking at once toward Torridon’s, which had been redecorated for both of them on their marriage. To avoid fuss, Frances complied. Besides, everything was such a muddle, she had no idea how she felt about sharing his rooms, let alone his bed.
Frances laid Jamie in the center of the huge bed and she and Serena sat on either side of him. Serena tickled his cheeks to make him smile and talked nonsense to him for a little. Then she lifted her gaze to Frances. “I am expecting a child, too,” she blurted.
Frances smiled. “I thought there was something. Is that what you’ve been trying not to say in your last letters?”
“I wanted to tell you in person. There was even some scheme to come and see you, but somehow it never happened.”
“I am so pleased for you,” Frances whispered, as tears started to her eyes. “And Tamar is so right for you.”
“As Torridon is for you?”
Frances looked away. “Of course.”
Serena stroked Jamie’s soft hair while her perceptive gaze remained on Frances. “Have you quarreled?”
“How did you guess?”
“Intuition,” Serena said with a half-smile. “And the fact that he has clearly been worried sick waiting for you while you have been in Blackhaven all this time making no effort to see any of us.”
“He knew where I was,” Frances said in a hard, little voice. “He always knew. He simply chose not to tell me or you. But let’s not talk of that nonsense. Tell me how you’ve been?”
“Apart from a little sick in the mornings, I’m very well. Dr. Lampton is pleased with me, at any rate.”
They talked of pregnancy, Tamar Abbey, and the friends who were coming to dinner that evening.
“Gillie and Wickenden will be there, of course. And the Grants and the Benedicts. The famous Captain Alban and Lady Arabella—who is also increasing!—and Lord and Lady Daxton.”
“Daxton?” Frances said, startled, as she lifted Jamie to her breast for feeding. “Is that a good idea, Serena?”
“You mean that nonsense last autumn?” Serena said disparagingly. “It was a storm in a teacup. Though to be frank, I am very glad of it, for if my engagement had not been broken over it, I would never have been able to marry Tamar and then I would have been miserable. Besides, Dax is an old friend of Tamar’s. They were at school together. You’ll like Lady Dax, too.”
“Hmm, tell me about Eleanor, whom you all call Dawn.”
“Ah, now that you must hear!”
As Serena told her the amazing story of how Gervaise had met and married his countess, Frances listened, rapt, until the door opened quietly and Torridon came in.
Serena broke off at once.
“Ignore me,” Torridon said mildly. “I only came to change my boots.”
“No, no,” Serena said, jumping up. Frances had to prevent herself seizing her sister’s arm to make her stay. “I was going anyway. We have gossiped long enough, and we can talk more over luncheon.”
Torridon courteously held the door for Serena, who fled with a vague smile. For the first time, it struck Frances that Serena was not on the same easy terms with Torridon as she was with most people. Torridon, of course, was a difficult combination of reserved and intimidating. It was his sheer presence that had first drawn Frances to him. Amongst the light-weight fashionable fribbles of London society, he had risen up before her like a Colossus. A serious man with laughing eyes. A man of sense as well as wit. Her protector, her lover. Or so she had thought…
He closed the door behind Serena and walked to the bed, his eyes on his feeding son. For the first time, she felt exposed in this position. Blood seeped into her face.
He stroked his son’s head, which disturbed Jamie not at all. It was a familiar touch.
Torridon said, “You are shocked.”
“You meant me to be.”
His lips twisted. “I hoped it would be a pleasant surprise.”
She raised her indignant gaze to his face.
He sighed and perched on the bed facing her and Jamie. “We should talk, Frances. You wanted to talk to me, remember?”
“There is no point now,” she retorted. “You already know everything.”
“I know what you chose to tell a stranger,” he said steadily. “Start at the beginning. Why did you bolt from Torridon without a word?”
“Because if I had spoken that word, you and your servants and your mother and her servants would all have conspired to stop me.”
A frown twitched his brow. “But what was behind it? Why did you wish to go so badly?”
Because I could not bear to be trapped a minute longer.
Because I need to live. Because you never cared for me. Because I won’t be just another part of your estate. She swallowed the words back, pride refusing to let her admit her hurt.
“Were you so unhappy?” he asked.
She would not look at him, merely nodded. She wished he would shout at her, scold her, argue so that she could shout back. She wanted to hit him.
And yet, the tension in his shoulders told her this was difficult for him. He was not a man who easily discussed his feelings. He took a breath. “I am not so silly as to believe that one quarrel made you so. But you told him, my alter ego, that you loved me.”
She stared fixedly at Jamie’s blurred head, daring the tears to fall.
“Is there nothing you want to ask me?” he asked softly.
Do you love me? Did you ever love me? The words stuck in her throat.
“Yes,” she drawled. “Would you please ring for a maid to watch Jamie? And we’ll need a cradle for him.”
Laying the sleeping baby in the center of the bed, she covered him with a shawl with one hand, while she covered herself with the other.
After a moment, Torridon rose and pulled the bell. She took the opportunity to try and slip past him, but at the last moment, he caught her wrist and spun her back against him.
God, she remembered his body, all heat and hardness. How had she not known the Russian was him? Had it really been so long? She should have recognized his expressive, dark eyes, the sensual mouth which had kissed her so intimately. Or perhaps some part of her had known. Why else would she have trusted him so quickly? Why else would she have been so attracted, so tempted?
“Don’t shut me out, Frances,” he whispered. “We have a chance to make this better, to make it right. Talk to me.”
She stared at him, her throat aching once more. “You deliberately manipulated me, provoked me, tested me,” she burst out. “How do I forgive that?”
Something flashed in his eyes, something that changed and resolved into neither anger nor shame, but the predatory stare of the hunter. Her breath caught. There was only his muscular body against her, his fingers on her galloping pulse, his parted lips only inches from her own, and the flare of sweet, hot desire.
And then a knock at the door made her whisk herself free as a maid came in. “Ah, Kitty, it’s you,” she babbled, recognizing the girl who had been with her family for years. “This is Jamie, our son. Will you sit with him until the others bring down a cradle for him? Thank you.”
Even as she hurried along the passage, she knew she was fleeing her husband again, though this time for different reasons. Suddenly, he seemed so much more than she’d ever imagined, a man of layers and complexities, an elusive man so far beyond her reach that it was frightening.
*
Torridon knew he had shaken her, and while her reaction was not what he had expected, he hung onto two things that gave him hope. She had told “the Russian” she loved her husband, with a genuineness he couldn’t doubt. And when he caught her in the bedchamber, though she bridled like a skittish colt, her pulse galloped under his fingers. Her quickened breath did not come from fear. She was not immune to the desire that flared between them. He needed patience, as he always had with Frances.
And so, he did not take the place next to her at luncheon, but sat by Serena instead in order to give his wife space to get used to his presence once more. Since the children were present—unusual in a great family—there was a good deal of chatter and laughter. The dowager countess was disposed to be tolerant and seemed much more human among them.
Torridon found himself thinking of his own mother, whom he’d seen very little of, growing up. In fact, she had never been around so much as in the last year, after he had married Frances. Protecting her own position, he thought unkindly. And immediately felt uncomfortable, not because the thought was unfilial, but because it had the ring of truth.
For the first time, Torridon began to question his reliance on his mother for advice during Frances’s pregnancy and her lying-in. And after. Frances had been galivanting around the country, caring for the child without an army of servants, and both she and Jamie appeared to be thriving.
He shoved the thought aside for later, and instead, let himself be drawn into several conversations at once—with Braithwaite and Tamar on the newest land improvement schemes, with the girls about visiting Scotland, and the current loyalty of the Scots to the king, and with Eleanor, the young countess whom he rather liked, on her fascinating life before she had come to Blackhaven.
“You have settled in as though you have always been here,” he observed under cover of other chatter, for it struck him that Eleanor’s position as a young wife with a domineering mother-in-law was quite similar to Frances’s. “You have no… disagreements with the dowager.”
Eleanor laughed. “Oh, we have many. But we have reached an understanding. The armed truce between us is now close to friendship.”
Across the table, Frances was listening to Serena’s over-excited chatter about her new home at Tamar Abbey. His wife’s face was focused and thoughtful, and her sheer beauty made his heart turn over.
He dragged his gaze back to Eleanor. “And how did you reach this understanding?”
Eleanor lowered her voice. “I asked her for help when I needed it. I still do, and from the understanding I learn from her, I am finding my own way.”
Torridon glanced from the young countess to the old. A new respect for his mother-in-law formed alongside the knowledge that his own mother was incapable of such flexibility. There was only her way or the wrong way.
Serena seemed to have calmed a little under Frances’s influence, losing much of the hectic anxiety that had characterized her during Torridon’s stay. Frances laughed at something Sylvester Gaunt said, quickly drawing Serena into the joke.
Torridon’s heart twisted. The sisters had missed each other. And that they had been so much apart was largely his fault. Frances glanced up and met his gaze. She turned away almost immediately, a hint of color seeping into her face.
After lunch, everyone who was choosing to go, prepared for their walk.
“I’ll bring Jamie,” Frances said, and then glanced at Torridon with defiance. Which surprised him until he remembered his mother’s views of exposing infants to the damp and cold of outdoors. “Just let me dash off a quick letter and I’ll fetch him.”
“I’ll fetch him while you write,” Torridon said and went upstairs to relieve Kitty the maid, who wrapped Jamie in two shawls, much to Jamie’s annoyance, before passing him to his father.
Jamie stopped crying and gave him a toothless grin.
“I should think so, young man,” Torridon observed. “Now, one for Kitty, if you please, to apologize for your ill manners.”
Kitty laughed, tickling the baby’s cheek, and Jamie grinned at her, too. Torridon bore him off, with his great coat over his free arm. He found his wife alone in the smaller of the downstairs reception rooms, seated at the spindly desk where she was folding a letter.
Again, there was a hint of defiance in her expression as she glanced up. “I am writing to Mrs. Marshall since I did not see her when I left.”
“Very proper,” he replied. “Where is everyone else?”
“Oh, they will all gather eventually. Or follow. Organizing any expedition from this house is like herding cats. Ah, John,” she added, as a footman appeared at the door. “Would you have this delivered to the hotel?”
“Of course, my lady. A Mrs. Marshall has called for you.”
“Oh!” Halfway across the room, she halted in surprise. “Well, never mind the letter then. Show her in, John.” As John turned to do her bidding, she glanced at Torridon. “Give me the baby, if you wish.”
“Oh, no,” Torridon said, “We are quite comfortable.”
He bowed as Mrs. Marshall rushed in crying, “Oh, Frannie, thank goodness! Listen, I have been thinking and—” Mrs. Marshall broke off, apparently flabbergasted by the sight of him. She’d always known he was her
e, so he could only suppose she hadn’t been expecting him to inhabit the same room as his wife.
“My lord,” she greeted him coolly enough with a slightly ironic curtsey.
“Madam.” He sat down with Jamie and dangled his pocket watch above the baby’s head. Jamie made a grab for it with his fat little hands and dragged it toward his mouth. Torridon drew is back.
“I’m so glad you came,” Frances said warmly. “I have just been writing to you. Are you going to stay in Blackhaven?”
“Lord, no, I’m on my way south as we speak, only I have been thinking about your wretched … problem and … why don’t we take a walk?”
“Oh, don’t mind your tongue in front of Torridon,” Frances said. “He knows everything.”
Mrs. Marshall blinked. “He does? Then he probably agrees with me that we should involve the authorities after all. I think I know who took them and it is just silly to—”
“But we don’t need to worry any more, Ari,” Frances interrupted. “That’s what I’ve been writing to tell you. We have the rubies back. Torridon got them.”
Mrs. Marshall’s gaze flew to his face. “Did he?” If the news shook her, she hid it very well.
“But who do you think took them?” Frances demanded, drawing her friend onto the other sofa beside her.
Mrs. Marshall sighed, firing a warning look toward Torridon. “I very much fear it was the supposed gentleman who called on me. I confess I left him alone for a few minutes while you were out. To be honest, I really don’t see how anyone else could have got into our rooms, so though it pains me, Frannie, it must be him. What you do about it is your own affair, of course, but there, I have said my piece and must go.” She rose to her feet once more. “Goodbye, Frances. Write to me and no doubt I’ll see you in London one day.”
“Frances!” came Lady Maria’s voice from the stairs.
Frances rose and embraced her friend. “Goodbye, Ariadne, and thank you for everything! Let me see you to your carriage.”
“Frances!” Lady Alice added her voice to the growing cacophony.
The Wicked Wife (Blackhaven Brides Book 9) Page 12