‘Really, Miss Osborne, I did not expect to be received with so much hostility, and I cannot imagine why. You speak as if I have done Lettie harm—which is not the case, I can assure you.’
‘No? As a result of her association with you Lettie has been—poorly,’ she told him. It was not for her to tell him what Lettie had done. She must do that herself. All she wanted was for him to be gone from her home. ‘I would like you to leave at once,’ she insisted, her utter contempt for him manifested in her narrowed eyes and the disdain that curled her lip. ‘You are not welcome in this house.’
Jack’s eyes narrowed curiously. ‘Lettie has been ill?’ he prevaricated. ‘Why was I not informed?’
‘Why should you be, Mr Cunningham?’
‘I am sure you know by now that Lettie is carrying my child. I have every right to be informed if she is not well. I insist on seeing her,’ he demanded impatiently. ‘I will not leave this house until I have done so. Kindly go and fetch her.’
‘You have no rights.’ A deep voice spoke from the doorway, causing Jack to spin round and face Grant Leighton, who was striding towards him. ‘You crawling bastard,’ Grant hissed, his fists clenched at his sides. ‘Do you think that by coming into Miss Osborne’s house and raising your voice you can terrorise her into submission? You will not see my sister. I will not allow it.’ His voice was implacable, his manner implying that it would give him a great deal of pleasure to throw him out.
Jack appeared not to mind. He smiled smugly. ‘I am here on perfectly legitimate business, and I would be pleased if someone could tell Lettie I am here,’ he persisted.
‘By God, Cunningham, I’ll see you dead and in hell before I let you get your filthy hands on her again.’
‘Even if I say that I will do the decent thing by her?’
‘Decent!’ Grant’s voice was pure venom. ‘You are even more of a lecherous swine than I thought you were—not to mention liable to legal sanctions for all your corrupt dealings. But no matter. Decency requires sufficient imagination to see beyond one’s acts to their consequences.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Leighton?’
‘Please stop it, Grant. I fight my own battles.’
The quiet voice cut off Grant’s angry tirade. They all turned as one to see Lettie standing in the doorway. At once Jack Cunningham was the smooth charmer, bowing his head and smiling a slow, charismatic smile which was meant to tell everyone present that he wouldn’t harm a fly.
Lettie was dressed with her usual elegance in a soft lemon-coloured gown, her hair brushed back smoothly into a meshed net. As she moved farther into the room she looked at Cunningham directly. Her face was white and so were her lips, and her glittering eyes were ice-cold.
‘How dare you come here? You had no right. How did you know where to find me?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. Do I need an invitation to see you, Lettie? Will you not spare me a few minutes so that we can talk in private?’
‘She’s going nowhere with you, Cunningham,’ Grant growled. ‘You have violated my sister, and you expect her to continue being your whore.’
Adeline flinched at Grant’s choice of word, which she knew would hurt Lettie. But he could be as hard and exacting as any man, and Jack Cunningham’s offensive intrusion was making him increasingly furious.
Lettie drew herself up, her face set, her eyes flashing. ‘My brother is right. We have nothing to say to each other, Jack. Please go.’
‘Lettie,’ he wheedled, holding out his hands to her. ‘Come back to me. What we have is good—’
‘No, Jack. It’s over. I never want to see you again. Ever.’
‘Come now, Lettie. My intentions are entirely honourable. I want you to marry me—to be my wife.’
‘Wife!’ Lettie’s indignation and fury rose, choking and hot. ‘You have a warped sense of honour, Jack. What do you intend doing with the wife you already have?’
Adeline and Grant stood there, looking at Lettie for the one awful, drawn-out moment it took them to recover from her shocking revelation. It was enough time for Lettie to draw enough breath back into her lungs, to look at Jack and say with appalled breathlessness, ‘Or don’t you remember, Jack?’
Caught off-guard, Jack looked at her a long time without bothering to open his mouth. Lettie saw the truth in his eyes. His face changed. His smooth, masculine good-looks departed as everything in his countenance pinched and tightened, and for the first time she realised how mean he looked, how hard.
‘Yes, he has a wife. Her name is Molly,’ Lettie heatedly told Grant and Adeline. ‘She is in the asylum, where she has been incarcerated for the past ten years, after being delivered of a stillborn child—her third, I believe. Unable to forgive her inability to give you a living child, you put her there—didn’t you, Jack?—letting everyone believe she was dead. The loss of her children and her freedom drove her insane. Do you dare to deny it?’
Jack looked at Lettie and his face was like stone, as were his eyes. A blue vein twitched on his temple, and a creeping chill slithered down his spine when he thought of his wife. ‘How did you find out?’
‘I have ears, Jack. I listen. I went to see her—in a place that must surely be as close to hell on earth as is possible to get. In the course of my work I have seen all kinds of things, but this is different—the terror, the inescapable certainty of death, helpless and without dignity. How could you do that to your wife?’
The eyes Jack fixed on his accuser were filled with loathing for the woman he had locked away from the world. ‘No, not a wife—a madwoman who should have died when she bore another dead child and rid me of her burden. She ceased to be my wife when the asylum door closed on her. As far as I am concerned she is as dead as her stillborn children.’
‘You have a wife—a living wife—which the law recognises even if you do not,’ Lettie whispered, truly appalled. ‘You are despicable. And you would have entered into a bigamous marriage with me—knowing your wife still lives. How could you, Jack? How could you? Have you no compassion for her at all? She is ill.’ Lettie was unable to believe how uncaring this man could be.
‘Aye—an illness that grew into insanity and violence with each day.’
‘If she became insane then you drove her to it—you and that place you put her in.’
Grant saw an instant of pity in Lettie’s eyes when she looked at her lover. Because she recognised his horror of the disease that had consumed his wife. He also saw that Cunningham had lost Lettie not solely by his deceit, but in her contempt—that awakening of disgust which was the end of love between a man and a woman.
‘I find your obsession with having a child strange,’ Lettie remarked coldly, ‘when I think of the small victims who pass through your hands to satisfy the appetites of the customers in your brothels. You disgust me.’
‘Enough,’ Jack hissed, his eyes blazing. ‘Shut your mouth.’ Her unflinching stare seemed to increase his fury two-fold.
Grant stepped forward. ‘Why should she, Cunningham? Lettie has every right to speak freely in this house—although I had no idea she was as aware of the extent of your sordid dealings as myself. The very nature of your other business, which brings about its own secrecy, makes you unfit to associate with decent, respectable society.’
Suddenly chilled by what she was hearing, and the realisation of what it implied, Adeline felt twin sensations of horror and disgust rise like bile in her throat, forming a painful obstruction as she stared at this evil that had entered her home. Too stunned to act, too sickened even to comment upon what she was hearing, she remained motionless.
‘How I choose to make my money is my affair, Leighton—and so is Lettie and the child she is carrying. It is mine, and as its father I have rights.’
‘There no longer is a child, Jack. So you can forget any claim you might have had,’ Lettie threw at him, almost triumphantly. ‘I didn’t want it. I don’t want anything of yours.’
He frowned. ‘No child?’ Suddenly comprehension dawned. It hur
t him, and he could not conceal it. His body went rigid, his right hand flexed and unflexed, and the muscles of his jaw twitched in reaction. ‘I understand you have been ill. Have you miscarried?’
‘No, Jack. When I found out just how vile you are, I realised I could not bear the child of a monster.’
Shock and grief registered in Jack’s eyes, and for the first time there was an emotion in him quite different from anger. But it lasted only an instant. ‘Good God! You got rid of it.’
There was utter silence for a second, then Jack’s face went white as he truly understood what he had heard. ‘To satisfy your own whim, you deliberately killed our child.’
Lettie wrapped her arms around her waist and nodded. ‘Yes—yes, I did. I’m not proud—but, yes. I made a choice—the right choice for me. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving birth to a child of yours.’
‘You bitch.’
Lettie’s face was tense, and pale also. She raised her brows very slightly. ‘Really?’ She shrugged. ‘Think what you like. Now, please go—get out. You sicken me. I don’t want to see you again, and that is my final word.’
Jack looked frightening. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a snarl, but his body was trembling. There was hate in his eyes. He glared at Grant. ‘I congratulate you, Leighton. Your digging into my private life has given you what you wanted. But if you imagine you can do that and get away with it you are mistaken.’
When it looked as if he would argue further, Grant strode towards the door and opened it. ‘You heard what my sister said. Get out. If I have the least suspicion of you attempting to see Lettie, even indirectly, I shall know how to set the story of your squalid affairs circulating round town which will bring the full investigation of the law down upon you. Since both moralists and police alike have been clamouring for a London clean-up since the beginning of the decade that’s bound to happen sooner rather than later anyway. I’m only surprised you’ve got away with it for so long, and that your establishments have remained free from searches by the police.’
‘Not every policeman is honest, Leighton.’
‘It takes more than a nod and a wink, Cunningham. On the whole the police are virtually incorruptible, and proud of the work they do. I know there are those who can be bribed, but I promise you I will do everything I can to bring you down.’
‘By God, Leighton,’ Jack breathed, his voice intense, ‘you’ll pay for this.’ His gaze flashed to Lettie. ‘Both of you.’
Never had Adeline seen such hatred. The pure, naked, terrifying hatred of Grant. And why? Because he had got the better of Jack Cunningham.
‘There will be no recriminations if you know what’s good for you—if you don’t want to spend the rest of your days behind bars. You, Cunningham, are scum.’
He had spoken quietly, too quietly for Cunningham to muster up words to reply. Grant held his eyes with a steady, unflinching stare. There was no pretence between them.
‘And one more thing. If marrying Lettie and buying Westwood Hall was your way of insinuating yourself into respectability you can forget it. Diana’s luck has turned and she has repaid her debts. Westwood Hall is no longer for you. Now, get out.’
Without saying another word Jack Cunningham left the house.
Grant hoped it would be the last they saw of him, but somehow he didn’t think so. Cunningham wasn’t the sort of man who would simply walk away without trying to wreak some kind of vengeance. There remained the threat that he might reveal what Lettie had done, and in so doing bring her down with the scandal.
When the door had closed, Grant went to his sister, who looked shaken by the whole unpleasant episode. Adeline rang for tea. She was troubled by everything she had just heard, and Jack Cunningham’s shock at the loss of his child had had a ring of sincerity she had not expected.
‘Lettie, did you go to the asylum by yourself?’ Adeline asked curiously.
‘No. Alice was with me.’
‘Alice?’
‘Jack’s sister—the woman you saw outside the Phoenix Club. She’s fond of Molly, and does what she can.’
‘So—all that talk about a charity clinic wasn’t true?’
‘No. I’m sorry, Adeline. I couldn’t tell you what she wanted then because I didn’t know myself—only that it was of a serious, secretive nature. I met her afterwards and she told me how Jack had cast his wife off as he did his family when he began to prosper. To protect her from his wrath, I didn’t tell Jack it was Alice who told me. The poor woman has approached him several times for money to make Molly’s life easier, but he refuses to support any member of his family.’
‘Then he truly is a monster, and you are well rid of him.’
‘I know that now. Imagine what it must have been like for Molly—the man she trusted, maybe even loved, threw her aside like so much rubbish when she most needed him. Sadly she remains imprisoned—not only in that place, but in her mind—beyond all human help.’
The situation was so tragic there was nothing Adeline could say. Grant seemed to be preoccupied. She watched him pour himself a large brandy, then look at it a long moment, seeing the light burn through its amber depths.
What was he thinking of? she wondered. Or who? She recalled Frances telling her that Diana was in trouble financially, but she had had no idea she was in so much debt that she was forced to sell Westwood Hall. And Jack Cunningham had been hoping to buy it. Grant must have found out about the transaction and, loath to have Jack Cunningham as his neighbour, bought it himself—which testified in Adeline’s mind to the close relationship between Grant and Diana Waverley.
Chapter Ten
When Grant arrived at Eaton Place on the evening of the party, he looked up automatically and saw Adeline coming down the staircase in a gown of gold-spangled satin, which hugged her slender curves and left her arms and shoulders bare. With a rope of white diamonds around her throat, and her hair curled up and secured with diamond and emerald combs which flashed as she turned her head, she looked glamorous and bewitching and captivating—and also lovely, soft, and eternally female.
Grant stared in stunned admiration, an appreciative smile working across his face. ‘My God! You are beautiful. You look like a golden goddess.’
Caught up in the anticipation and excitement of Marjorie’s engagement party, in the spell of his compelling silver gaze and his proud, smiling black and white elegance, Adeline found herself laughing softly. ‘I’m glad you like it. Lettie chose it. I wanted to wear something more subtle, more subdued, but Lettie wouldn’t hear of it.’
In fact, for the first time in days Lettie had seemed more like her old self as she had taken a delighted enthusiasm for the event and for making her look glamorous. Grant’s arrival had increased Lettie’s enthusiasm dramatically—which had aroused Adeline’s suspicions. Not for the first time had it entered her mind that Lettie had some romantic notion of bringing her and Grant together.
‘I never credited my sister with having such excellent taste,’ Grant murmured, his gaze settling on the swelling globes of Adeline’s breasts above the scooped bodice. ‘The gown is both elegant and daring—and perfect.’
Seeing where his heavy-lidded gaze dwelt, and almost feeling his eyes disrobing her, Adeline flushed scarlet. ‘Have you had an edifying look?’
His grin was roguish. ‘Not nearly enough—but I have all night to gaze. How is my dear sister, by the way?’
‘Well, but resting. Would you like to go up and see her before we leave?’
‘If she’s resting I won’t disturb her.’
Adeline reached for her satin cape, but Grant took it from Mrs Kelsall.
‘Allow me,’ he offered.
Scarcely breathing, Adeline waited as those strong, lean hands draped the cape over her shoulders.
‘Mmm,’ he breathed from behind her, his mouth close to her ear. ‘You smell nice, too.’ He smiled, sublimely confident and pleased. He was going to enjoy tonight.
Adeline turned her head and looked at him. Th
e amusement in his eyes was slowly replaced by a slumbering intensity. ‘I think we’d better go, don’t you?’
‘Your carriage awaits, my lady,’ he teased, then with solicitous care escorted her out to the waiting coach.
Once inside, Adeline cast an apprehensive eye at Grant as he settled himself beside her. How handsome he looks, she thought, as she stole a glance at his disciplined, classical profile. Just being with him made her heartbeat quicken. Reminding herself that, desirable and charming as he might be, he was still seeing Diana, and that if she wasn’t careful she was in danger of forgetting her vow to keep him at arm’s length, she knew it was imperative that she keep her head tonight.
It was only a short distance to Stanfield House, which was ablaze with light. The street was crowded with vehicles, each depositing its resplendent occupants at the front of the house. Adeline could hardly breathe for admiration as they climbed the steps and entered a hallway as large and echoing as a church. A curving staircase swept down from the landing to the marble floor.
They were met by Lord and Lady Stanfield and the engaged couple, their faces wreathed in smiles.
‘Adeline, Grant—I’m delighted to see you!’ Lord Stanfield said, his florid face between bushy mutton chop whiskers alight with geniality. ‘How is dear Lettie? I’m sorry her illness has prevented her attending the party. Allow me to present Lord and Lady Henderson.’
When greetings had been made, and they were moving on, Grant bent his head close to Adeline’s.
‘The engaged couple look well matched.’
Adeline glanced back at Marjorie and Nicholas and laughed lightly. There was no denying the melting look in their eyes when they looked at each other, and Nicholas had his arm about Marjorie’s waist, hugging her to his side as if she were a flower he wished to preserve. ‘They are. Perfectly. It’s a match made in heaven and Lady Stanfield is very happy about it. But then who wouldn’t be? Marjorie is marrying a title, and noble titles are neither to be ignored nor laughed at.’
Not impervious to the stir they were creating—for when they had entered together a whispered murmuring had descended on the guests in the hall, and every eye had turned in their direction—Grant took her hand and, tucking it possessively in the crook of his arm, proudly led her towards the principal reception room. It was a singularly possessive gesture that somehow added to Adeline’s wellbeing.
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