And when his release came, it was heat, fury, and a powerful, almost rapturous, oblivion.
* * *
Her breaths fluttered his hair. Her heart beat against his chest. Her hands sought his in the dark and laced their fingers.
A closeness that cocooned and shielded him.
Yet perfect peace eluded him in that drowsy warmth. Something was wrong. Perhaps everything was wrong. He did not want to think.
Night was now his refuge. Beyond dawn, chaos reigned. But in the dark there was only her embrace.
He murmured a thank-you, and let sleep overtake him.
* * *
It dawned like any other morning in the country: birdsong, the lowing of dairy cows in the pasture behind the house, the snipping shears of his gardeners, already at work.
Even the sounds he himself made were peaceful and domestic. Water falling and splashing in a washbasin, drawers opening and closing softly, curtains pulling back, and shutters released for the day.
She was still comfortably ensconced in his bed. Her breaths were slow and even. Her hair, the color of sunrise, fanned out on the pillow. One of her arms was outside the bedspread; it was slung across the bed, as if reaching for him.
In her sleep she seemed entirely harmless, almost angelic, the kind of woman who inspired uncomplicated devotion. He lifted her exposed arm and tucked it back under the cover. She snuggled deeper into the bedding, her lips curving in contentment.
He turned away.
With his back to her, he snapped his braces into place over his shoulders and donned his waistcoat. He rummaged in the tray atop his chest of drawers and selected a pair of cuff links. Then, abruptly, he was aware that she was awake and that she was watching him.
“Good morning,” he said, without turning around, his fingers busy with the fastening of his cuff links.
“Morning,” she mumbled, her voice still thick with sleep.
He said nothing else for a while, but continued to dress. Behind him the bed shifted and creaked: She must be getting into her nightdress, which he’d found under his person this morning, along with her hair ribbon—a slender pastel reminder of what had transpired in the night.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said, shrugging into a tweed coat—still without looking at her. “You are welcome to join me if you’d like.”
What he was about to say to her he wanted said far from his home.
“Yes, of course,” she answered. “I’d be delighted.”
The barely suppressed excitement in her voice was a whiplash across his conscience. “I’ll wait for you below.”
“I won’t be long,” she promised. “I just need to dress and have a word with the nurse.”
He paused at the door and glanced at her at last. After today, he would not see her again thus, glad and hopeful.
“Take your time,” he said.
* * *
Elissande dressed in record speed, looked in on her still sleeping aunt, and spoke to Mrs. Green, the nurse she’d hired on Mrs. Dilwyn’s recommendation after coming to Devon. Mrs. Green assured her that she would see to Mrs. Douglas’s breakfast and bath, and then have her take a turn in the garden for exercise and fresh air.
Mrs. Green was a very kind woman, but firmer than Elissande. Under her supervision, Aunt Rachel could already walk a short distance unsupported, a feat that was nothing less than miraculous.
Now, to complete Elissande’s happiness, her husband had made love to her. And he’d invited her to come with him on his walk.
They didn’t speak. But they did not need to. His company was enough. That she was by his side was enough. This was their new beginning.
They crossed the River Dart at the market town of Totnes, where they had tea and a quick breakfast, then continued north, walking along country lanes that were entirely new to her, past rolling fields and several tiny hamlets, into a dense copse, and emerged from the trees onto the grounds of a ruined castle.
It must have been a good five miles. She would have thought herself exhausted, but she was only exultant.
“Do you ever talk?” she asked finally, panting a little from the climb up to the castle.
“I believe the general consensus is that I talk and talk and talk.”
She took off her hat and fanned herself. “I mean, when you are not playing your role.”
He didn’t answer, but looked east toward the sea—the castle was situated on a sharp rise of land that gave a panoramic view. She again wondered why he led this double life. But she’d had her reasons, and she assumed his reasons must be equally strong and compelling.
“Tell me something,” he said.
She was terribly flattered. He so seldom asked her anything. “What would you like to know?”
“You inquired into Capri when you met Mrs. Canaletto. You mentioned Capri again when you wanted all of us to leave England and hide somewhere. And from what you said last night”—he thrust one hand into his pocket—“obviously you’ve thought a great deal about Capri your entire life.”
“That is true.”
“But I don’t see you making any plans to visit Capri, now that you can. Why is that?”
She had never thought of it before. But the answer seemed so obvious that she was surprised he had to ask.
“Because what I’ve loved all along is not Capri the physical entity—it could have been any beautiful, faraway place. What mattered was the hope and solace it gave me when I was a prisoner in my uncle’s house.”
He looked at her, his eyes very severe. Perhaps he did not understand her entirely.
She tried again. “Think of a raft, if you will. When a river is too wide and swift to cross by swimming, we need the raft. But once we have reached the farther shore, we leave the raft at the water’s edge.”
“And you have reached the farther shore.”
She trailed her fingertips over the silk flowers ornamenting her hat. “I have crossed the river. As fond as I always shall be of my raft, I don’t need it anymore.”
He walked a few steps away. “So you are happy with your life and need no further bolstering?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Perhaps I could use just a little more bolstering.”
“What would that be?” he said without inflection.
She’d thought she’d require more fortitude to confess her attachment. But when he’d kissed and held her at night, when he’d walked five miles beside her this morning, he’d made it easy to speak the word. “You,” she said, her voice not at all hesitant or wobbly.
“How will I accomplish this admirable deed?”
“By doing what you have done already: walking with me and making love to me.” She flushed only a little as she said those last few words.
He walked farther away. Skittish, her man.
She followed him into the keep. A mansion had once stood in the bailey but now only stone walls, archways, and empty window frames remained. The morning sun streamed through the breaks in the walls; the interior of the ruins was cool but not gloomy.
She laid her hand on his arm, the Harris tweed of his coat pleasantly woolly against her palm. When he did not remove her hand, she grew bolder and pressed a kiss on his cheek, and then another on his lips. There she lingered, until she coaxed him into parting his lips.
All of a sudden he kissed her back, hard, making her head spin.
And just as abruptly, he pushed her away.
* * *
Never in his life had Vere botched anything so thoroughly as he had his should-have-been marriage in name only.
He didn’t know what was wrong with him.
Or perhaps he did and simply couldn’t bear to acknowledge it.
She was not the companion he wanted—hadn’t the issue already been settled again and again? What he wanted was as different from her as the Isle of Capri was from Australia. He wanted milk and honey; nourishing, sweet, wholesome. She was laudanum; potent, addictive, occasionally helpful in forgetting his troubles, but dang
erous in large dosages.
She was also a liar and a manipulator—he still had the note she’d written Freddie that night, a physical manifestation of her intent to lure Freddie into her clutches, to deprive him of his happiness with Angelica for her own gains.
And yet here, out in the open, where at any moment an omnibus of tourists could pull up, he had nearly lost control once more. And this time without any excuses of tears, alcohol, or nightmares. It was a bright, brisk day, she was cheerful, and he’d thought himself grimly determined to speak the ugly but necessary truth.
He took several steps away from her.
If he didn’t say it now, he would not be able to do it ever: She radiated such gladness he was on the verge of forgetting that she was the last thing from the sunny simplicity he needed to drive the darkness from his own soul.
He forced out the words. “Once your uncle has been sentenced, I would like an annulment.”
She had been smoothing her sleeve and peering at him, her expression puzzled but still hopeful. She stilled; the color on her cheeks drained. She turned her gaze more squarely toward him.
“I’ll make a generous settlement on you. You will have enough to live wherever you like in ease and luxury. On Capri itself, if you should desire.”
“But an annulment is not possible,” she said. His conscience contorted at the complete, almost naïve confusion in her voice. “Once the marriage has been consummated, it is not possible.”
“With enough money and enough lawyers, it is not only possible, but has been achieved repeatedly.”
“But…but we will have to lie.”
She was so disproportionately bewildered that he considered for the very first time the likelihood that she was not as worldly as he’d thought. That she’d truly believed they were married for good.
“Both of us lie brilliantly. I don’t see any problems at all.”
She looked up into the rectangle of blue sky above them, framed by the manse’s dilapidated walls. “Has this always been your intention?”
“Yes.”
Her hand dug into her skirts. Her shoulders bunched tight. The ache in his heart turned into a sharp pain.
“I would like my own freedom,” he said, intentionally heartless. “You should understand that.”
Equating their marriage and her virtual imprisonment had the desired effect. A grim anger replaced the heartbroken bafflement in her eyes. Her gaze turned hard.
“So this is a straightforward transaction,” she said. “You give me money for your freedom.”
“Yes.”
“Am I correct in assuming that because of what happened last night, your freedom costs more today than it did yesterday?”
“Perhaps.”
“So I’m a whore in my own marriage.”
Her words were a kick to his stomach.
“I’m paying for my lack of control.”
“Oh, my, Lord Vere, why didn’t you say so sooner?” she said bitingly. “Had I understood earlier that making you lose control more frequently was going to net me a larger fortune, I’d have devoted my days to your seduction.”
“Be thankful that I have enough scruples to compensate you for the use of your body. And that I will keep silent on how you entrapped me—and how you meant to entrap Freddie.”
She flinched. His callousness took his own breath away; he was using her one great act of desperation as justification for his utter selfishness.
She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I’ve always known that I’m no prize, but I thought you were,” she said. “I thought the man behind the idiot would be fascinating. I thought he would understand what it is like to act a part all the time. And I thought he would have some sympathy for me, because it is not an easy life. I was wrong: You were a better man as the idiot you played. He was sweet, kind, and decent. I’m sorry I didn’t properly appreciate him when I had the chance.”
See, he thought. This was precisely why he needed a milk-and-honey companion, one who would never grasp that he was not sweet, not kind, and not always dependably decent, but only love him tenderly, blindly, unquestioningly.
It was as much a castle in the sky as her whimsy of a wild and empty Capri. Like her, he had held on to it through his darkest days, this unlikely vision of domestic haven. But unlike her, he was not ready to abandon something that had sustained him this many years, for a woman he did not want to love, except when he was drunk, lonely, or otherwise unable to control himself.
Chapter Eighteen
Her legs ached, her feet hurt, and her hands itched to slap him. For some time on the long road home she marched ahead of him, until she took a wrong turn and he had to call her back. After that she walked with him within her peripheral view, his silence steadily feeding the anger inside her.
Why had she believed she could find safety and contentment with someone who led a double life? No one embarked on such a path without duress. Had she thought about it, she would have realized that behind the idiot there must be a man as secretive and warped as herself.
She was such a fool.
Wrapped in a haze of fury, she almost did not see the footman running toward her until he stopped and then fell into step beside her.
“Milord, milady, Mrs. Douglas, she is gone!”
His sentence made no sense whatsoever. She passed her hand over her eyes. “Say it again.”
“Mrs. Douglas, she is gone!”
“To where?”
“The station at Paignton, mum.”
Why in the world would Aunt Rachel go to Paignton Station? She had no place to visit that required a train ride.
“Where is Mrs. Green?” No doubt the nurse would tell her that the footman was raving.
Mrs. Green, too, came running, her eyes wide, her face red. “Mum, Mrs. Douglas left by herself!”
Elissande walked faster. Surely by the time she arrived at Aunt Rachel’s room, she’d see that the latter was safe and sound. “Why did you not go with her, Mrs. Green?”
“We took a turn in the garden in the morning. Afterward she said she wanted some rest. She looked unwell, so I took her back upstairs and tucked her in. I looked in on her an hour later and her room was empty.”
“Then how do you know she’s gone to Paignton Station?”
“That’s what Peters says.”
Peters, the coachman, had by now also come alongside Elissande. “Mrs. Douglas came to the carriage house herself and asked me to take her to Paignton Station. So I did, mum.”
Elissande stopped at last. Her entire entourage, too, stopped.
“Did she say why she wanted to go to the train station?”
“Yes, mum. She said she was going up to London for the day. And when I came back, Mrs. Green and Mrs. Dilwyn and everyone else were up in a right panic.”
The story overwhelmed Elissande. She could not make heads or tails of it, and part of her still believed that it was an elaborate April Fool’s joke played on the wrong date.
Almost without thinking, she glanced at the man who was still her husband.
“Did any strangers come by the house today?” he asked, still his cool and competent self.
Her heart sank at his question.
Mrs. Dilwyn had by now joined them also. “No, sir, not that I know of.”
The coachman and the footman both shook their heads. Mrs. Green, however, frowned. “Come to think of it, sir, there was this vagrant. He was loitering in the lane before the house when Mrs. Douglas and I were in the garden. I tried to shoo him away but Mrs. Douglas—her heart is too kind—she had me go to the kitchen and fetch a basket of foodstuffs. And when I brought out the basket, the vagrant, he fell to his knees and thanked her. I didn’t like him clutching her hands, so I gave him a nice shove. He scampered off after that.”
Elissande had thought her husband had driven a stake through her happiness. How wrong she had been. This, this could shatter the very foundation of her new life.
“The vagrancy law is too lenient t
hese days, I always say,” declared Lord Vere, now fully back in character. “And was that when Mrs. Douglas started looking ill, Mrs. Green?”
“That’s right, sir. It was.”
“She is too delicate a lady to be in such rough company.” He shook his head, then took Elissande by the elbow. “Come along, Lady Vere.”
Back at the house, Aunt Rachel’s room was as empty as a robbed tomb. Elissande swayed and caught herself on the doorjamb. A racket erupted downstairs. She took the steps down two at a time. Aunt Rachel had been sighted and everyone was clamoring in relief—it had to be that. It had to be.
But it was only a telegram addressed to Elissande that had been found, among the post that had arrived during the lord and the lady’s absence from the house.
My Dearest,
I have experienced an unexpected yearning for the oyster au gratin served at the Savoy Hotel and have therefore decided to travel to London and stay overnight.
Please do not worry about me, Elissande. Just know that I love you very much.
Your loving aunt
Lord Vere took the cable from her numb hands and scanned its contents. He then read the telegram aloud for the gathered servants.
“See, nothing to worry about,” he claimed. “She’s gone to London, as she said was her plan—and she’ll be back tomorrow. Return to your posts, everyone. Mrs. Green, you may have yourself a cup of tea and consider this a day off.”
“But—”
Lord Vere gave Elissande a look. Elissande unclenched her hand and smiled reassuringly at Mrs. Green. “Her decisions do get a little erratic from time to time, Mrs. Green. We live with it. She will be back on the morrow if she says so.”
Mrs. Green curtsied and went in search of her tea. The other servants also dispersed. Only Lord Vere and Elissande remained in the entry hall.
“Come with me,” he said.
* * *
He took her to his study, closed the door, and handed her another cable. “This one came for me. You might want to read it.”
She glanced down at the telegram. The words lurched and staggered, refusing to coalesce into properly structured sentences. She had to close her eyes and then open them again.
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