Ruined by Rumor

  The dowager countess sighed again. “Yes, that sounds like something he would say.”

  At the doleful note in her voice, Roxana hastened to change the subject. “Well, then, enough about running Broadslieve. In all the confusion of the wedding planning, I’ve been sadly out of touch. What gossip have I missed?”

  The countess reached for the teapot. “Your marriage was the talk of the neighborhood, of course, but there’ve been a few other happenings. I expect you’ve heard Miss Hammond has disappeared?”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes. Her mother says she’s run off to marry the baby’s father, leaving nothing but a note.”

  How could she have missed such a dramatic development? “I hope the father really has married her. I know what Miss Hammond did was wrong, but I feel quite sorry for her.”

  The countess nodded. “So do I, my dear. It seems unfair she should be left to bear the blame alone. Let’s see, now, what other news is there? Ah, yes. One of the Coles’ tenants, the Bells, had a fire in their barn. They were able to save the cattle, but lost everything else. The innkeeper and his wife had a great row, and she’s left to live with her sister in Derby. And Major Wyatt went to see his colonel about rejoining his regiment, but after looking at his shoulder, the Master Surgeon told him to take more time to convalesce.”

  “His shoulder seemed fine to me,” Roxana said, and immediately wished she could take back the words. After letting the Bells’ fire and the Trasks’ separation pass unremarked, she’d sounded far more interested in George than she’d intended. And perhaps she was too interested, for as she’d toured Broadslieve that morning she’d found herself wondering why he’d come to her window on the night before her wedding, and how he felt about her marriage to Ayersley. For that matter, she doubted she would ever stop wondering what had made him break off their engagement.

  The countess said nothing, though she looked pensive as she poured their tea.

  Embarrassed, Roxana made another anxious bid to change the subject, launching into a story of Harry’s latest escapade—getting his finger stuck in a bit of iron scrollwork in Miss Truitt’s garden gate on the day before the wedding. Harry’s finger had become lodged so tightly it had required goose grease to free him.

  The countess chuckled. “Kit did much the same thing when he was a boy. Only it was not Miss Truitt’s garden gate, but the keyhole of his father’s desk.” She shook her head, a nostalgic smile on her face. “Kit was always into some kind of devilry, from his first days to his last.”

  Her voice held the same fond note Roxana’s mother’s held whenever she spoke of Roxana’s father. Sir Charles Langley had died shortly after Harry was born, nearly five years ago now, but Roxana still missed her father keenly—his dry humor, his restless energy, his fiercely protective streak. If he were still alive, he would have given her away at her wedding.

  It never completely went away, the ache of losing a loved one. How the countess must long to reminisce about her elder son. “I remember Lord Kittridge being very handsome.”

  A gleam lit her mother-in-law’s eyes. “My, yes, he was certainly that. Too handsome for his own good, I sometimes thought. He had his father’s smile and his grandpapa’s clever manners. That boy could charm the birds out of the trees.”

  “My brother Tom says Lord Kittredge was the best shot he ever saw.”

  “Oh, Kit loved to go shooting. I can picture him now, striding out the door with his gun on his shoulder and a dog at his heels. ‘I’ll be back with tomorrow’s dinner,’ he used to say, and he nearly always was. He was a fine rider, too, though I believe Alex may have ended up an even better one. They used to race their horses across the park, and whoever lost had to pay some kind of forfeit—walk backward all day, or speak only in Latin, or inform the next young lady he met that he rode like a sack of turnips.” Lady Ayersley laughed. “Alex had quite a talent for thinking up penalties to knock Kit down a peg.”

  “Alex? Ayersley did that?”

  The countess blinked at her. “You sound surprised, my dear.”

  Roxana set her cup in its saucer. “I suppose I am, a little. I don’t usually think of him as being playful in that way.”

  “Alex was always the more bookish of the two, but he was a good deal more carefree back before Kit died. You don’t remember?”

  “I remember he and my brother Tom used to make each other laugh a great deal, but they were only boys at the time.”

  The countess nodded. “He did laugh more, and he talked more too. He wasn’t so critical of himself in those days.”

  “Do you think Ayersley is critical of himself?” Roxana said doubtfully. “I rarely hear him criticize anyone or anything.” How odd—it was true, in spite of George’s contention that Ayersley thought her frivolous and provincial.

  “He’s never been one to let his every feeling show, but I can see it in his eyes. There was even more of a change in him after his father died. I never knew whether it was the grief or the responsibility or just a process of growing into manhood, but he turned so serious, it’s as if he became an entirely different person.”

  “Well, he seems a very good sort of person.”

  “Sometimes I think he’s a little too good, if such a thing is possible.” The countess knit her brow. “He works too hard, and he’s so strict with himself. It’s almost as if he can’t admit to enjoying anything but duty.”

  “Surely he’s not so joyless as all that, ma’am.”

  The countess brightened perceptibly and patted Roxana’s knee. “Well of course not, not now that he has you. I’m so grateful to you. I know he can’t have been happy the way he was. Thank heavens he has you now to bring him out of his shell.” She smiled at Roxana, looking for all the world as if her new daughter-in-law were the answer to her prayers.

  Roxana did her best to smile back, but she couldn’t help picturing Ayersley at breakfast, fresh from their wedding night, somberly reading his newspaper. And she was supposed to bring him out of his shell?

  Taking in the hopeful look on her mother-in-law’s bright, piquant face, Roxana had the sinking feeling she was doomed to disappoint.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We pardon in the degree that we love.

  —Francois, duc de la Rochefoucauld

  It was still barely three o’clock when Roxana left the dower house. She paused on a grassy rise to admire the prospect before her—Broadslieve, its silvery-white limestone fairly gleaming in the afternoon sun, its vast wings with their evenly spaced windows stretching out on either side of its columned portico. How strange to think she was mistress now of such a house.

  A distant movement caught her eye, and from her hilltop vantage point she spied a rider on a black horse setting out across the park—Ayersley, on his way to the home farm. Her mother-in-law had been surprised they were spending the day apart. What would Ayersley think if she rode out to join him? Whatever they had agreed over breakfast, they were newlyweds.

  Roxana hurried down the hill and back to the house. A scant twenty minutes later, she had donned her riding habit and was being handed up onto the neat gray filly Ayersley had bought her as a wedding present.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like one of the lads to go with you, my lady?” the head groom asked as he rechecked the girth on her saddle.

  It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. Having been plain Miss Langley all her life, she had not yet grown used to being called my lady.

  Roxana tilted her head to one side, considering. Admittedly, she wasn’t much of a horsewoman, but she didn’t intend to ride very fast or very far. A groom would only be de trop once she met up with Ayersley. “Not this time, thank you. I’ll be on Broadslieve land most of the way.”

  The groom touched his cap. “As you wish, my lady.”

  She started off in the direction of the home farm. As she left the stables behind, a heady sense of freedom overcame her. Her mother had never let her ride about the countryside unattended, always
insisting she take a groom or companion of some kind with her. Now, as a married woman, she had no one to answer to except Ayersley, and he was hardly a tyrant.

  No, Ayersley was no tyrant. She smiled to herself. Sharing a bed with him that morning had been so much more exciting than she’d anticipated—the taste of his kisses, the satisfying weight of his body pressing hers into the feather mattress, the thrill of pleasure his touch had evoked. Only a single detail marred the memory, those four words he’d said when it was over. It will get better. What had he meant?

  It had already been astonishingly good. But then, she’d never lain with a man before. As the more experienced half of the equation, Ayersley had clearly expected more. She wished she were not too ignorant to know precisely how she’d disappointed him, or too embarrassed to ask for instruction. She wanted to please him—and besides, she looked forward to trying it again.

  How often did husbands visit their wives’ beds? Was there a chance she could expect him again tonight?

  Lost in thought, she rode her filly through the trees fringing Broadslieve’s wide sweep of park and down a gentle slope to the road. In just six or seven hours it would be time for bed again, and then—

  “Roxana!”

  At the masculine voice, she turned her head, and for a split second surprise held her frozen. George was driving up the road toward her in his phaeton.

  She stared in openmouthed dismay. What was he doing here?

  He looked as dashing as ever, nattily dressed in a buff-colored coat and brown inexpressibles, his beaver hat cocked at a confident angle. Compared to Ayersley’s lean build, however, George’s sturdy figure seemed broader and stockier than she remembered it.

  He smiled a faint, slightly mocking smile as he drew his phaeton to a stop alongside her. “Hullo, Roxana—or should I say Lady Ayersley?”

  She was rarely at a loss for words with George, but while Ayersley had made the unsettling leap from near-stranger to new husband, George had made the equally disconcerting switch from ardent lover to near-stranger. She nodded to him. “George. What are you doing on this road?”

  At her less-than-welcoming reception, his brows rose, though he still wore the faintly mocking smile. “People use this road all the time.”

  Fear made her pulse race. Not because he might harm her physically—she knew George would never do that. No, she was afraid because she had no control over the riot of emotions stirring inside her. Seeing him again, she was angry and excited and confused all at once.

  Despite her galloping pulse, she willed herself to sound casual. “Ayersley’s tenants use this road, but what business could you possibly have out here?”

  George’s smile faded. “It’s a public road. It’s not as if I need your husband’s permission to use it.”

  The jealous emphasis he’d placed on the words your husband surprised her—and perhaps thrilled her, too, for it suggested George still had feelings for her. “I never said you did.”

  “Good, because I’m dashed if I’m going to go truckling to that dullard when everyone knows you married him purely out of spite.”

  Spite? Roxana gaped at him. She must have heard him wrong. “I did not marry Ayersley out of spite!”

  “No, of course you didn’t. I’m sure you fell madly in love with him the very night our engagement ended—the dreariest bore in Christendom, a man with all the address of an undertaker’s mute. I’ll say one thing for you, Roxana, you certainly know how to land on your feet. You not only put me in my place, you nabbed yourself a title and fortune into the bargain.”

  “You—I—you have no right to say such things to me!” How could he think so little of her when she’d devoted herself to him for years? “I didn’t betray you, you threw me over.”

  He glared at her, all his earlier mocking charm gone in a look of poisonous acrimony. “I may have been the one who cried off, but I didn’t do it to hurt you. Quite the opposite, in fact. No matter how it may have started between us, I honestly fancied you. Whereas you picked the one man in all England I can’t stomach, and then threw yourself away on him just to teach me a lesson.”

  “What?” She stared at him for a moment in open-mouthed shock. Was that what he thought—that she’d married Ayersley just to hurt him? And what did he mean, No matter how it may have started between us?

  Then fury at the injustice of the attack asserted itself, overcoming her confusion, and with a cry of outrage she turned away and urged her horse into motion. Of all the cruel, undeserved accusations…

  She had ridden only a little way when George called after her. “Roxana, wait!”

  She kept riding, but he brought his phaeton up abreast of her horse again, nearly crowding her off the road. Her mount shied, leaving her little choice but to pull up.

  George likewise drew to a stop, twisting on the seat of his phaeton to face her with an imploring look. “Gad, I’m sorry. I was a perfect brute just now. I don’t know what came over me.”

  His voice was different—fervent, winning, reminding her of the man she’d fallen in love with when she was seventeen, the one who’d asked her to dance when Ayersley wasn’t interested. He was looking at her differently now, too, melting admiration in his eyes. She’d preferred the jealous sarcasm. She had never been good at standing up to George when he was at his most charming. “Let me by—”

  “You gave me a turn, that’s all. When I saw you riding out of the trees a moment ago, more beautiful than ever, it was as if I’d conjured you up out of my thoughts. If you only knew what a leap my heart took, seeing you. And then I remembered you’d married that blockhead Ayersley, and jealousy got the better of my good sense.”

  “You shouldn’t say such things. Not now.”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, still in that tone of silken persuasion. “That’s what I was doing on this road. I’ve been driving back and forth for two hours now, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. Foolish, I know. I realized it was probably futile. But a man in love does foolish things.”

  He’d really been driving back and forth, just hoping to see her? Roxana squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to remain levelheaded despite the heat in his voice. “You’re not a man in love. You jilted me, remember?”

  “Ah, but I do love you. I love you madly. On the night before your wedding, I came to plead with you not to go through with it—did your brother tell you? I realized what a mistake I’d made, letting you go. Devil take it, you’re all I think about!”

  It was a moment she’d longed for, even fantasized about in her weaker moments. The man who’d thrown her over was gazing at her with hopeless, heartsick love, telling her how much he regretted his mistreatment. Yet now that she was Ayersley’s wife, it left her more shaken than triumphant. “Only a month ago, you said it was over between us.”

  “And only a month ago, you were begging me to marry you.” His voice dropped lower. “I’m sorry, Roxana. I thought I was doing the right thing, calling off our engagement, but I realize now what I mistake I made. When I heard you meant to marry Ayersley of all people, it was like a knife in my back. And I know you still have feelings for me, too, or you wouldn’t be staring at me now with that lost-little-girl look in your eyes.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I feel,” she said wretchedly. Oh, why was he saying this now? “I’m Ayersley’s wife.”

  At her mention of Ayersley, his charm slipped and the silken tone was gone. “And you believe you should be unhappy for the rest of your life, just because in a moment of weakness you cut off your nose to spite your face? You’ll never be able to stand living with that insufferable stick. Why, we used to laugh together at the way he—”

  “Don’t talk about him that way!”

  Her angry outburst surprised her—and surprised George too, apparently, for he quickly backed down. “All right, all right. I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers. But for God’s sake, the man’s as stirring as a head cold. If you were my wife, you’d have better ways to occupy your time on the first
day of our marriage than riding about the countryside unaccompanied.”

  His changing mood puzzled her—first angry, then charming, now simply nettled—but before she could work out what it meant, the implications of better ways to occupy your time sank in. A vivid recollection of what she and Ayersley had done in bed that morning popped into her head, making her cheeks heat. She looked away. “I’m on my way to meet him now.”

  George must have noticed her blush, for he scowled. “Just wait until the novelty of being married wears off,” he muttered under his breath.

  Her anger flared again. “And then what, I’m going to wish I’d become an old maid, nursing a broken heart for the rest of my life? You jilted me.”

  George’s green eyes narrowed. “Fine. I’ve already admitted I was the one who cried off. But now that you’ve given yourself to Ayersley, we’re even.”

  What a strange and incongruous way to put it—as if the three of them were playing some game, and he wouldn’t have minded her giving herself to any other man, just not to Ayersley. “We’re not even. I’m a married woman.”

  “Don’t you think I know—” He broke off and swore under his breath.

  A figure was riding toward them on a dark horse.

  Ayersley.

  Watching helplessly as he approached, Roxana wanted to be anywhere but there in the road. What would he think, discovering her alone with the man she’d once hoped to marry? And George had been saying wildly improper things to her. She prayed she did not look half as guilty as she felt.

  Ayersley joined them, his eyes flickering from her to George and back again. “Roxana,” he said in a measured tone. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I came looking for you.”

  Ayersley turned his head to examine George. “And Major Wyatt,” he said stiffly. “I suppose you were just offering my wife your best wishes on the occasion of our marriage?”