Candice Hern

by The Regency Rakes Trilogy

  And, of course, the real irony was that he had not after all been able to blot out Mary's memory. Though he still harbored a fierce anger for her, for her abandonment, he nevertheless thought of her almost constantly. In moments of the worst despair, Jack had relived in his mind those last days at Pemworth, trying to pinpoint exactly when things had fallen apart so badly. And yet time after time, he failed to reach any kind of explanation. He could find nothing in his behavior toward Mary to cause her to bolt like that. It just didn't make sense, which did nothing to alleviate his despair, but did everything to feed his anger.

  Though he could not forgive her, neither could he seem to forget her. He fought to drive her out of his mind. It should have been easy enough to forget such a tiny little dab of a woman. And yet...

  Every woman he used reminded him of Mary, if only by contrast. Whenever he heard a particularly delicious piece of gossip or amusing tale, he found himself almost instinctively turning to share it with her. But she was not there. Whenever he heard piano music, he followed it, expecting to find Mary at the keyboard. But she was not there. Whenever he went to the theater or drove through the Park, he found himself wanting to turn to her to point out something or someone of interest. But she was not there. She was never there.

  He had not realized how much he had come to depend on her presence, her conversation, her wit, her laughter. And nothing, or no one, seemed able to assuage that need.

  He scrubbed himself until his skin was raw, attempting to remove the filth that had become his life.

  When he joined his mother sometime later, he found her lounging on a silk chaise in her boudoir. She turned toward him as he entered and held out her hand to him.

  "Mama," Jack said, taking her hand to his lips. "I trust you are well?"

  "Tolerably."

  Jack raised his brows at her cold reply, then relinquished her hand and sat in a nearby chair. Some of the peculiar languor of grief that had been so common with his mother during the last year seemed to have settled back in. A wave of sadness gripped Jack as he recognized the role he must have played in the return of her grief. When he thought of her smiling and laughing during Mary's visit, he felt almost sick.

  But there was something else—something more tense and grim about the set of her mouth. She was unhappy, certainly, but it was not merely the maudlin sorrow of grief. She was angry.

  "What is it, Mama?" he asked. "What has upset you?"

  "Hmph!" she snorted. "You can ask such a question?"

  "I am asking, Mama."

  She turned away from him and tilted her chin up. "If this were not your home, I would ask you to leave. I have no desire to share a roof with such a wastrel."

  "Oh, Lord."

  "Yes, I know of your... activities in Town."

  "Mama, please—"

  "And I am not so stupid as to misunderstand your sudden appearance just at this time," she said. "I have not lived in Devon all these years and remained ignorant of what happens during a new moon. Oh, Jack, how could you!"

  "Mama, I—"

  "Oh, I realize it all has to do with Mary. But that does not excuse—"

  "Lady Mary Haviland has nothing to do with anything, Mama," Jack interrupted in a sharp tone. "She walked out of my life, as you may recall."

  "And you have been trying to get over it by behaving outrageously. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

  With a fierce grip on the arms of the chair, Jack held back his anger. "If it is any consolation, Mama, I am ashamed. But—"

  "Good," she said with a flash of a smile. "I am glad to know I have not raised a son totally without conscience. Now, I want you to tell me what happened with Mary? You left Pemworth before we could speak about it. Did you ever hear from her? Did you ever discover why she left?"

  "No to both questions," Jack said. "And I do not wish to speak of it in any case. Tell me about Uncle Edward and Mrs. Bannister."

  "Later, my dear. I want to know about Mary first."

  "I said I did not wish to speak of her."

  "I am your mother, Jack Raeburn, and you will do as I ask."

  Jack stared at her incredulously. He had never seen his mother so determined, particularly after last year's tragedy when she had shrunk into herself. All his life she had been calm, complacent, nurturing—never demanding. But here she was, glaring at him with the steely eye of the strictest schoolmistress, refusing to be denied. He was puzzled and did not know how to deal with this new side of her.

  "We will speak of her, Jack," she said, "for, you see, I had grown very fond of Mary. I had already begun to think of her as my daughter. I miss her," she said, her voice softening. "I must understand what happened."

  Jack slumped back in his chair and said nothing. This was the last sort of conversation he wanted to have with his mother, but there seemed to be no stopping her.

  His shoulders lifted in a frustrated shrug. "I know no more than you, Mama. I do not know what happened."

  "All I know," his mother continued, seeming to ignore his words, "is that she would not have left without good reason—at least, what would have seemed a good reason to her. I know you do not wish to hear this, my dear, but I suspect it must have been something you said or did that scared her away."

  Jack placed his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. "Don't you think I have considered that, Mama? Don't you think I have gone over and over every word spoken, every gesture, every nuance—but to no avail. The last I saw her was at breakfast the day before she left. She was as cheerful and radiant as ever."

  Jack recollected that morning with vivid clarity. It was the last time he had seen Mary. When he and Bradleigh had risen from the table, announcing their intention to ride out to some of the tenant farms, she had smiled at him—that wide, brilliant smile that could light up an entire room—and their eyes had locked for a moment, a kind of spark passing between them as each seemed to recollect the particularly passionate embrace they had shared the previous evening. And then, quite unexpectedly, she had winked at him.

  Surely, there had been nothing between them at that moment to suggest there might be a problem. For God's sake, she had winked at him!

  "Nevertheless," his mother continued, "I am convinced it has something to do with you, my dear. She was still fairly vulnerable after all those years with her father. I am afraid her spirit was more fragile than we thought."

  "Mama, what are you talking about? What fragile spirit? Mary was one of the most intrepid, most confident women I ever met. She was so unaffected and open, yet so vivacious and gay. That is why everyone in the ton adored her."

  His mother gave him a quizzical look. "My God," she said, and her brow furrowed in concern. "You do not know."

  "Know what?"

  "About Mary."

  "Know what about Mary?"

  And so Jack listened while his mother told him everything she had learned from Mary about her life of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her father.

  Chapter 22

  "I had finally convinced her," the marchioness said, "or so I had thought, that her father had been wrong to suggest that no man would ever want her for herself alone. She was sure that you had not known of her fortune, and so she had reluctantly begun to believe that her father was wrong."

  Oh my God. Jack brought a hand to his mouth. The thought of sweet little Mary brutalized by that madman caused the bile to rise in his throat. And to have bullied her into believing she was ugly and worthless, that only her fortune mattered—

  Oh my God, Mary.

  Thinking he might truly become ill, he took deep gulps of air.

  His mother glared at him through narrowed eyes. "Was her father wrong, Jack?"

  "No. Yes! Oh, God. What have I done?" He dropped his head into his hands. In a muffled, anguished voice he told his mother everything. He told her the truth about his finances, how he had determined to marry an heiress, how he discovered that Mary, a woman he knew well and liked, was worth a fortune, and h
ow he had more or less seduced her into accepting his offer.

  "And selfishly believing in my own irresistible charms, it did not seem such a bad bargain at the time," he said. "But then, after a time ... then, dammit, the money no longer mattered. I had fallen in love with her."

  And though he now recognized the depth of his love for her, the irony was that she probably felt nothing but hatred for him, for she must surely have discovered his original motives somehow.

  He had loved only two women in his long, wicked life. The first, a woman whose affections had been false and whose ultimate betrayal had taught him never to trust. The second, a woman who had taught him, briefly, to trust again, but who must now despise him for what he had done to her. The pain of Suzanne's disdain, though, was nothing compared to the agony of Mary's hatred. Was he destined forever to love women who did not want him?

  "Why did you not tell me, Jack?" His mother's soft voice interrupted his reverie. "I had guessed there was somehow less money than before, but I had no idea ..."

  Jack reached across and took his mother's hand. "You had suffered enough, Mama. I did not wish to add to your grief."

  "Oh, Jack." She pulled him onto the chaise and took him in her arms. "To save me from suffering, you took all this upon your own shoulders, without a word to anyone. All alone, with no one to help you. My poor boy. My poor, wonderful boy. But some good came out of it, after all. You found Mary and fell in love with her."

  Jack pulled back from her embrace. "I did," he said. "How could I not? When I came back today, it almost broke my heart to see Pemworth again, to remember how joyful and happy it had been when Mary was here, and to think that it might never be so again. Oh, God. What am I going to do?"

  Jack rose from the chaise and began to pace the room. Was it possible Mary had somehow, despite all his cautious circumspection, discovered that he was a fortune hunter? Had she convinced herself that he cared only for her money?

  Oh, Mary.

  But it seemed the only logical answer if what his mother told him was true. It appeared he had inadvertently wounded that sweet, lovable woman where she was most vulnerable.

  Oh, Mary.

  The further irony—and this whole situation was altogether too full of irony for his taste—was, of course, that she would be right. He had wanted her for her money. That was all he had wanted from her. At first. But not anymore. No, not anymore. And yet he had played straight into her most deep-rooted doubts and insecurities, unintentionally reinforcing them.

  "Why didn't she tell me, Mama?" he asked in a choked voice as he continued pacing the room. "Why didn't she tell me about her father? I knew about her elopement—she felt obligated to tell me that, I suppose. But not the rest." He stopped pacing for a moment as a thought struck him. "Come to think of it, there were some hints of her unhappy past, if I had but paid attention. From Bradleigh and Emily and Uncle Edward. But I... I disregarded them as meaningless, believing Mary so bright and high-spirited that nothing really bad could have ever happened to her. Oh, God!"

  His mother rose from the chaise and came to his side, placing a hand on his arm. "She did not tell you, I think, because she was ashamed. It was difficult enough for her to tell me. She seemed to think it reflected badly on her that she did not fight back, that she allowed her father's abuse. To admit such a thing to a man she cared for... well, that would have been unthinkable."

  "But it was not her fault."

  "Of course it was not," his mother said. "But she would not see it that way. I suspect most children of abusive parents must believe it is somehow their own fault, that they are deserving of such treatment. Mary must surely have felt that way. Having been so isolated and alone, she would have had none but her father to influence her behavior."

  "Oh, my poor Mary," Jack said, blinking furiously against the moisture welling up in his eyes. "My poor, sweet Mary. I must go after her."

  His mother threw her head back with a loud sigh. "Jack, my dear boy, I have waited six weeks to hear those words."

  Jack gave his mother a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek and then bounded out of the room toward his own suite. He had to find her. He had to find Mary. He had to make it up to her, somehow. He had to make her believe him. He wanted more than anything to convince her that he loved her—for herself, not for her money. He should have known his Mary was not like Suzanne or all the rest. Blast it all! He should have gone after her right away. If only he hadn't spent the last six weeks wallowing in dissipation, she might even now be safely in his arms. And so now he had to present himself to her with an even more tarnished life. He could only hope that she would forgive him.

  If he could find her.

  Jessop was dumbfounded to find that Jack was leaving before tomorrow's clandestine shipment was safely received and secreted in Pemworth's underground caverns.

  "You stay and take care of it, Jessop. I have something much more important to do."

  Jack had no idea where to begin his search. After six weeks she could be almost anywhere. He knew she had a home in Bath, so that was to be his first stop. But when he arrived at her Queen's Square house, he found the knocker off the door and no answer to his insistent pounding. He sought out Mary's man of business, but Mr. Fleming was either unable or unwilling to give out any information on his client.

  Jack traveled from Bath to London, remembering her announcements in the London papers and thinking she might have been there all along. But the house she had let on Upper Brook Street was now occupied by a young baronet and his new family, and the lending agent had not heard from Mary since she had left for Pemworth.

  Desperate, Jack dashed off notes to all those friends of Mary's he could recall, and called on those still in Town. He was received coolly in every case, which he supposed he deserved, but in the end no one knew where Mary was.

  Jack kept thinking of the announcement in the newspaper. Perhaps she had not come to London, but had sent it from somewhere else. It was a long shot, but worth a try. He first visited the offices of the Morning Post. They were willing to admit that the announcement was legitimate and had been submitted by Lady Mary Haviland herself. Any further information was strictly confidential. However, after some judicious hints of potential lawsuits over misuse of fraudulent information, delivered in his best Superior Marquess manner, Jack was shown the original letter from Mary, still on file. It had been sent from Bath, on the same day they had discovered her missing from Pemworth.

  So, she had been to Bath. Frantic and sick with worry over what might have become of her, he traveled once again to the famous spa. He would try to trace her trail from there. He returned to Mary's house on Queen's Square, where the knocker was still removed. He pounded on the front door, and this time it was opened by a housekeeper who eyed him warily. When he identified himself, her eyes widened and she stepped aside to let him in.

  "Her ladyship is not here," the housekeeper said, "but perhaps you should speak to Mrs. Maitland, who is here just now. Wait here in the morning room, my lord, and I will send her to you."

  Mrs. Maitland? Good lord, Olivia Bannister was here. Well, thank God for it, for perhaps she would know something of Mary's whereabouts. He paced impatiently as he awaited her arrival.

  "Lord Pemerton!" The door swung open to admit a radiant and smiling Olivia. She offered her hand.

  "Mrs. Bannister," Jack said, kissing the air above her fingers. "I beg your pardon. It is Mrs. Maitland now, is it not? Or perhaps I should simply call you Aunt Olivia?"

  Olivia laughed. "Why not just call me Olivia?" She seated herself on a settee near the window overlooking the square. Jack followed suit and sat in an armchair across from her.

  "I am sorry, Olivia, but I have not yet offered you my felicitations on your marriage. You are most welcome to the family."

  "Thank you, my lord."

  "I think you may be permitted to dispense with the 'my lords' and call your nephew Jack, my dear. Is Uncle Edward with you?"

  "Yes, we are staying a few day
s at the White Hart," Olivia said. "I needed to return to Mary's house to pack those of my things that were still here."

  "Olivia," Jack said in a quiet voice, "can you tell me where Mary is?"

  She looked at him for a long moment, her head cocked to one side as if weighing what she should say. "I am afraid I do not know," she said at last.

  Jack closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He had been so sure Olivia would know. "Are you certain?" he pressed. "She was here for a time, at least."

  "Yes, I know," Olivia said. "She must have come here straight from Pemworth. She must have known I would return here eventually. She left a letter for me here, and .. . and a year's salary."

  "She did not mention where she was going?"

  "I am afraid not."

  "What about the servants?" Jack asked in an almost frantic voice, his stomach in knots as he considered that he might never find her. "Might they not know where she has gone?"

  "I have asked them myself," Olivia said in a patient tone, "and they have no more idea than you or I. She took her maid and coachman with her, but neither said anything belowstairs about where they were going. Perhaps they did not know. Anyway, they left after only one day and have been gone ever since."

  Jack ran his fingers through his hair. He had never felt so helpless and frustrated in all his life. He was desperate to find Mary, but the only trail he had seemed to lead nowhere. Well, if Olivia could not help with Mary's whereabouts, perhaps she could at least shed some light on her departure.

  "Olivia," he said, "you must have been the last person at Pemworth to see Mary. Can you tell me anything to help me understand why she ... why she left like that?"

  Olivia's eyes narrowed as she studied Jack. "You are in love with her, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  Olivia sighed. "Edward told me as much. I must apologize for misjudging you at first. I had thought you a heartless cad and a shameless flirt, but at Pemworth I had begun to change my mind. I could see in the way you looked at her that you cared very much for Mary."