by Eve Pendle
Everett shook his head silently.
“That’s what I thought.”
Here was another man who betrayed her. Samuel had never fought for her; her father had tried to sell her to the nearest lord; Rayner had forced her maid; and Everett had seduced her for money.
There was nothing more. It was over. She strode to the door and yanked it open.
“Grace, stay,” he ordered.
She didn’t turn. Her voice was harder than she intended when it came out. “You broke our bargain. You lied about your debts, and you always intended to prevent me from leaving. By claiming your ‘husbandly rights.’”
A crash made her jump. She jerked around to find Everett inches from her, brows low, muscles taught, eyes blazing.
“What of your promises?” he shouted. He kicked the door shut and his voice descended to an abrasive undertone. “You think the servants didn’t notice you all but ignoring me? They all know. You decimated our bargain before I could.”
Her heart thudded, and she fought the urge to step backward. “It’s not comparable. Your conditions were intended to trap me, and more crucially my dowry, here.” She hadn’t thought much about their promises since that day, but now it was horrifyingly clear. All the things he’d made her promise had been ways to ensnare her. Pretending to be in love; staying with him for six weeks; not leaving if she was pregnant. They were all things that increased her likelihood of staying, whether she wanted to or not. “What you were really asking was whether I would be liable to fall in love with you and give you my dowry. And I was.”
“I turned out to be the one more prone to falling in love, I think.” There was resentment in his words, and despite everything, it sliced at her.
She fought back. “You were willing to manipulate me to get my money. My conditions were intended to ensure I could protect my brother from a man who is only concerned with his own selfish lust, and who is allowing my brother to be beaten as we speak.”
“That’s ridiculous, he wouldn’t do that.” Everett shook his head. “Henry is a young heir to a large fortune. Rayner will do everything to look after him and be beloved to him. I’d never allow him to stay with Rayner if I thought otherwise.”
Her mouth dropped open in astonished fury. “If you’d known my cause was sensible enough, you wouldn’t have tried to steal money from me? Who made you saint enough to be the judge of whether causes are worthy? A woman wanting to live independently might not be socially acceptable, but that doesn’t make it morally wrong. I didn’t try to con you out of your half of the dowry when I heard about your father’s bad investments.”
“Grace.” His expression was pained.
The words were like daggers in her mouth. “You would have tried to seduce me even if I’d refused to make the pledges you asked for, but I wouldn’t have married you if I’d known.”
The words hung in the air like choking London smog. A muscle in Everett’s jaw twitched. He seemed on the edge of his control. “You knew I needed money.”
True, she just had not known he needed more money than she had offered. But surely… There was a thin crack of hope. “Default on the debt. A gambling debt is hardly honorable. Just refuse to pay.”
“It’s not that simple. A gentleman pays his debts. I cannot let the Westbury name be synonymous with vice and mismanagement any longer.”
A gentleman. A gentleman wouldn’t act thus, putting his wife after every other consideration. “I didn’t know you’d prostitute yourself to keep up a silly notion of family pride.”
“Is that what you thought of our lovemaking?” His voice rose with anger and something else that Grace didn’t recognize. “That I treated you like a whore?”
“No.” She looked straight into his steely eyes. “I was the gullible young punter, believing in your false declarations and calculated touches.”
He drew back slightly, as though she’d hit him, and his eyes closed. When he reopened them, they seemed opaque. “There was nothing false about what we shared. I tried to make something good from this farce.”
He reached for her hand and she swiped it away, behind her back.
“It is good.” His gray eyes looked straight into hers.
Her heart squeezed. They had made something wonderful. Briefly. She wanted to believe that it was real. Ignoring the impulse, she shook her head. “I surmise you are trying to delude yourself, as you aren’t fooling me.”
This time, he didn’t try to stop her leaving.
Chapter Nineteen
Grace didn’t leave. She asked Letty to pack a bag for a trip to London, saying she was considering a visit to friends, then collapsed into one of the chairs next to the cold fireplace. When Letty was done and asked if she wanted a carriage to take her to the station, her throat closed up. She must have managed to croak out some reply, because Letty discreetly absented herself. Grace sat there, staring at the mantelpiece, unable to move.
Everett’s devastated face kept appearing in her mind, then the letter, and a wash of icy fury went through her.
How could he? How had she been so stupid as to fall for it?
She didn’t cry, and the pressure built up in her head like water behind a dam. Eventually, she slumped forward, hands holding her cheeks and over her eyes. Everything hurt. The ache permeated into her whole body as she sat. Her rational mind knew it was probably cramp, but it felt like the malaise of lies.
Through the anger at Everett burned another anger. Ultimately, this situation was neither of their doing. It was Lord Rayner, her father, and Peter Hetherington who were to blame for this situation. Her father could have prevented this; he could have respected her wishes.
She had no idea how much time passed, but eventually, Letty returned and tentatively suggested she could dress for dinner.
They sat in silence through chicken broth, venison and cabbage with potatoes, and an excellent apple pie. Grace thanked the footmen for each item, and Everett dismissed them as soon as he could. But eventually, they couldn’t avoid the twenty thousand pounds that sat between them like a boulder.
“I should have told you.” He clattered his dessert spoon and fork onto the table.
“Yes. Yes, you should have,” Grace said into the silence.
“It was a mistake at first.” His voice was rough, as though his throat was sore. “Noisy ballrooms, secondhand information. I thought once we were…”
“Don’t you see.” He was obtuse. “It isn’t to do with why it happened. It isn’t really even that you tried to cheat me and were so callous as to think that I’d fall in love with you if you could seduce me. The issue is, if we imagine I can forgive your intentions and your deceit—”
“Can you?” His eyes lit up.
She wasn’t certain enough to say yet. “If we say that for a moment the question remains of how to deal with the money. I said I could contribute, but twenty thousand…” She shook her head.
“I can’t let Mr. Lawson down. He’s just a tailor and his business is in trouble. Some lordling friend of Peter’s gave him Peter’s gambling debt as payment for a bill he’d run up. He was told Peter was good for the money. Misinformed, I should say.” He sighed deeply. “If I squirm out of this debt, I’m as bad as Peter and his friend. My duty demands that I repay him.”
“Your duty?” She pursed her lips. He spoke as if this man she’d never met was more important than Henry. “Doesn’t your duty include protecting my brother?”
“You know what the reality is.” Everett leaned toward her, as though those several inches would help him persuade her. “The Chancery case isn’t going to succeed.”
“It has a chance.”
The alternative was unthinkable. It would be difficult to get Henry allocated as their ward. But it was possible. Moreover, she had to know for sure she wasn’t just a check to him. He had to put her needs, and the happiness of her little brother, first. Then maybe she would believe he was sincere. She could trust him again if he put her first.
“The soli
citor was absolutely clear that both of our reputations have to be pure,” he said gently. “If my mother has heard gossip about you, it’s common knowledge in town.” He hesitated. “I’ve heard the same gossip from my brother, too.”
“It’s still possible.” But it was a long shot. Clearly, Rayner’s slander had been effective. And if she kept her money, Everett could not pay his debts and would be discredited across London, reducing her chances of success. But then, if she paid his debts for him, there would be no money to pay for the prime barristers who could win the case. She would definitely lose Henry. Yet again, she was tied by circumstances beyond her control.
“It is a gamble.” Everett shook his head wearily. “It would be spending all of your half of the dowry on a chance in a million. Whereas there is a 100 percent chance of being able to pay off my brother’s debt.”
“A chance in a million is better than no chance at all. How else are we to get Henry back?” Perhaps he had an idea. The hope she shouldn’t allow crept in.
Everett didn’t say anything and disappointment sank into her. She had been desperately hoping he’d thought of a way to get her brother back without Chancery. But it seemed he had managed no better than she had. That left them no options. “I have to get my brother away from Rayner. If Chancery is my only way, I must take it.”
“I don’t want Henry to stay with Lord Rayner, either, but we have to be practical. Maybe we have to trust your father’s judgment of Rayner? Men who kick cats sometimes dote on their hounds. Henry will be all right.”
“Leave him?” she said incredulously. “Leave him to grow up with a man who lets him be beaten, who deserts his responsibilities, and who abuses and then discards women like they are so-much rubbish? Even if he doesn’t abuse Henry, what will he teach him? What will my brother grow up into? What of all the employees of Alnott Stores? You’ve met Anna. How could you allow this?”
“I don’t want that. But I don’t see how we can prevent it,” Everett said, his voice rising with frustration.
“We take the chance.” She wanted him to put her first. She willed him to tell her that they could manage it and find a way to do both. If he just told her that he would sacrifice anything to get Henry back.
After being second with her father and Samuel, she desperately wanted her husband to show that what she wanted was as important as what he wanted. If he could just say it, she would stay with him and follow him, to the end of time.
“It makes no rational sense to pursue something with such a low chance of success. Sometimes, you cannot do what you really want. That is part of life. We should pay Peter’s debt and drop the case in Chancery. When Henry is older, he can fight his own battle to come to us.”
By then it would be too late. Henry would have lost his sweet childishness and taken on the attitudes of the adults nearest him, as all vulnerable boys must.
“I can’t agree to that.” The hurt pushed up to the spot in her forehead, making her eyes water. She closed her eyes to block it.
He sighed. “Think about it. It’s getting late. We can talk more tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. He was assuming she was staying.
She wanted to. She wanted it to be as it was yesterday, before their deal had ended and this awful tangle had been revealed. She wanted it to be earlier today, when they were a true couple for the first time, united in their beliefs and confident in each other’s affection.
But they couldn’t go back to that, and if she stayed, he would wear her down. He would persuade her that she ought to give up Henry, and she couldn’t let that happen.
She looked down at the delicious apple pie congealing on the plate. There was nothing remaining to say. “I think it’s best I leave tomorrow morning.” She rose to go upstairs.
“What if there are consequences?” His voice was hoarse.
Consequences to their exquisite lovemaking. That was all it had been to him, just a way to trap her into staying, so he could get her money.
He’d never cared about her at all.
The world spun, and she grasped out to the table. Immediately, there was the sound of a chair scraping on the floor and Everett was next to her, steadying her. She forced herself to look up at him.
A child with his gray eyes and generous mouth. She’d been so caught up in the delight of their passion, she hadn’t thought much recently of the conceivable outcome. A shot of longing went through her; a child could be growing inside of her right now. Or it might not, and one further bit of seed might create a life from their love.
It would create a life in another sense, too. She’d vowed that any child born of their liaison should stay at Larksview. She’d made the commitment too blithely, given her attraction to him. She would never leave any child, and they both knew it. This was another way of bending her to his will. Her lips tightened.
“I’m good to my word, Everett. If there are consequences, I will return, and the child and I will live here. I promise.”
…
Everett sat with a glass of brandy, twenty-seven and a quarter miles from his wife, or so far it might have been, for all the use it made. The ache in his chest made it feel like he was going to split into two, which was evidently what was going to happen to his heart when Grace left tomorrow. But what was the option? He had responsibilities.
He longed to go to her. The wish to force himself onto her and pleasure her until she couldn’t leave for sheer weakness made his fingers twitch. He wouldn’t go to her. He had promised not to claim the rights of a husband. It was the least he could do now, to keep that promise. But every moment he didn’t go to her was a physical effort.
He’d known he should never have fallen in love with her, hadn’t he told himself when they first met that an advantage of the match was the lack of messy feelings. Certainly, he ought not to have given his love so entirely. Unequal love always ended in disaster, and in the intoxicating dance of their six weeks together he’d forgotten that as well as gaining her trust, he needed to guard his heart. He’d begun to think he was cleverer than either of his parents. Because he didn’t share his mother’s frivolous concerns, he’d thought he didn’t share her propensity for falling in love more deeply. But he’d fallen into that trap, and Grace was leaving for London.
If he were truly her husband, he would go to her. He would catch her arm, pull her into a tight embrace and tell her that they could not be separated again. He would whisper in her ear that in his dark world she was a beeswax candle, sweet and warm and bright. He would tell her that without her, he would lose himself altogether. He would tell her that she wasn’t allowed to go. But he didn’t have any husbandly right to do so.
He was a confidence trickster caught by his own trap. He loved her so thoroughly that he couldn’t disrespect her request to not claim her as his own. Like his brother, he was a gambler who’d lost everything, except where Peter had lost money, Everett had lost his heart. He was a Hetherington and a Westbury through and through.
There was one thing, though, one small thing he could do better than his family. After breaking their bargain, the least he could do was keep it now and let Grace go. He didn’t deserve her. She was better off without him.
…
Grace’s bed was as wide as the rough British channel. She’d been proud, thinking she had outsmarted everyone. Jerking her legs down to the bottom of the bed, she felt the space to the side of her. Only last night, she had thought she had escaped her father’s will, gambled in marriage and won. She had been convinced they would overcome Lord Rayner. She had thought Everett loved her and all she was waiting for was the right moment to say she loved him.
Now, she had nothing but sleeplessness. Her mind wouldn’t give her rest, churning everything Everett had said. He wanted her to give up on Henry and stay at Larksview, living out a Faustian existence in the knowledge that she’d failed her brother, her mother, all the many Alnott Stores employees, and herself. How could she be happy, however much she loved him, when her soul ached for how she
’d let everyone down?
He hadn’t put her first. If he loved her, he would have understood that she couldn’t abandon her brother. Her throat clogged up and she had to scrunch up her eyes to prevent the sting behind her eyelids turning into tears.
He’d lied to her about his debts. One of their promises she’d thought were as binding as marriage vows. Like a fool, she’d thought he’d loved and wanted her, when he’d been lying to her all the time. Deception was no basis for a marriage, not even a six week one like theirs. It had only been six weeks and everything had changed, and yet nothing had. She wasn’t loved. No one cared for her for herself. A sob welled up in her chest and she covered her face, elbows pressed to her chest as if to hold it in, even as the tears seeped between her fingers.
Her brother was just about the only person who cared about her, and she was going to do everything to look after him. Living independently of her husband wouldn’t help her appear responsible in the eyes of Chancery—Rayner had seen to that. She could battle on solo, but there would be even less chance of success without Lord Westbury by her side. It would be a lonely and futile pursuit.
She shifted onto her side and looked at the door between hers and Everett’s rooms. That closed door had meant safety only six weeks ago. Now it was a looming symbol of her loneliness and everything she’d lost. She’d go to London tomorrow. Talking with the solicitors directly rather than via letter would help the case for Chancery. But more than that, remaining with Everett when he’d deceived her so utterly would betray herself.
Chapter Twenty
There was an emptiness in Everett’s chest even before he fully surfaced from sleep, though the sky was bright blue through the window. Clarke’s expression as he came in, uncharacteristically carrying a cup of coffee, confirmed it.
Swinging his legs out of bed, he took the proffered drink. He’d never wanted to stay in bed or drink to oblivion in the morning. He’d never felt like his life was worthless. Today was a first.