Rothbury appeared not to have noticed her insensitivity. Tess was vastly relieved.
“Do you enjoy the country?” he was asking.
“I try never to go there,” Tess said. “I grew up in the country. That was enough for a lifetime.”
Rothbury laughed with genuine amusement. “Is that true?” he enquired. “Or just another of your fashionable statements?”
“It’s true enough,” Tess said. “The country bores me. All the hunting and shooting.”
“But surely,” Rothbury said, “that is the height of fashion? And as a leader of society it is your duty to set an example by killing as many foxes as you can.”
“You are teasing me,” Tess said. “Fox hunting is no pursuit for a lady unless she is some dyed-in-the-wool country squire’s wife. Which is fortunate, since I do not share society’s passion for maiming and killing furry and feathered creatures.”
“Well, as to that I cannot see it is sport,” Rothbury agreed. His tone hardened. “There is sufficient killing without adding to it for fun.”
Tess stole a glance at him. This was a man, she reminded herself, who had been a professional soldier and sailor, who had seen action in a number of campaigns and had been a prisoner of war. She wondered what marks his experiences had left on his mind as well as his body. No wonder he sounded bitter when speaking of the violence and cruelty of killing.
“So you never visit Darent Park?” Rothbury asked.
Tess shook her head. “The house is closed. Mr. Churchward administers the estate until Julius reaches his majority.”
“But you see your stepchildren?” Rothbury persisted. “You visit them?”
A very hard knot formed in Tess’s chest, stealing her breath. “No,” she said. It sounded stark, a mirror of the pain inside her. She tried to find the words, words that would explain her situation without giving away too much emotion.
“Julius is at Eton,” she said carefully. “And Sybil is at school in Bath.”
“But during their holidays—” Rothbury said.
“They stay with their aunt,” Tess said in a rush, “my late husband’s eldest sister.”
She could feel Rothbury looking at her but she did not turn her head to meet his gaze. The brightness of the day stung her eyes. There was a hot burn in her throat.
“So you never see them?” Rothbury repeated. There was a very odd tone in his voice.
“I told you yesterday,” Tess said, “that you ask too many questions.”
“Forgive me—” he sounded impatient “—but I want an answer to this one. Your late husband entrusted the administration of his children’s affairs to you and to his lawyer and yet you never see them?”
Tess thought about the harsh words that had been exchanged when Lady Nevern had discovered that her brother had not only cut her out of his will but had also left the sole running of the Darent estates to his widow and his lawyer. Legally, Lord and Lady Nevern had had no claim on the Darent twins, but Celia Nevern had known Tess’s weakness. She had asked in the sweetest possible tones whether Tess thought that her less-than-savoury reputation could possibly be an asset to the Darent twins in their future. Would it not be far more politic for her to leave the upbringing of her stepchildren to their blood relatives?
“We agreed that it was for the best,” Tess said. She knew she sounded wooden. She felt as though she was shrinking inside, curling up in an effort to hide and protect herself from the pain she always felt when she thought of the loss of her stepchildren. It was like missing a step in the dark, a jolt, and her heart would stutter before she found her way forward again.
“Best for whom?” Rothbury’s words cut like a knife, straight through her pitiful defences. Then, as she did not reply: “Best for whom? Look at me, Teresa.”
It seemed inordinately difficult to do so because in looking Rothbury in the eye and telling him about her stepchildren, Tess found that she was accepting the truth for the first time. She had always skirted around it before with evasion and falsehood, claiming that Julius and Sybil were better off living with their aunt, uncle and cousins, pretending that she did not care. People assumed that she had packed the twins off to school and never saw them because it interfered with her social commitments. The reality was a great deal more painful.
She felt Rothbury’s gloved hand smooth against her cheek, raising her chin so that she was forced to meet his eyes. His own cool green gaze was unflinching, demanding the truth.
“Well?” he said softly, with an expressive lift of his brows.
“Lord and Lady Nevern, Darent’s sister and brother-in-law, thought it best that they should have responsibility for the twins when they were not at school,” Tess said. “I agreed.”
In the end she had been browbeaten into it by Nevern’s threats to bankrupt the estate by contesting the will in court. And there had been only one of her against a barrage of Darent’s siblings, all of them siding with Lord and Lady Nevern. Tess had often thought it a shame the marquis’s parents had been so fecund. It meant that there were so many more relatives who disapproved of her.
Even so, her capitulation shamed her. She wished she had stuck out longer for the right to see Julius and Sybil sometimes. She had been so very fond of them and they of her. She missed them terribly.
“Your stepchildren had grown accustomed to seeing you as a mother,” Rothbury said, and there was a barely concealed edge of anger beneath the silk of his tones now, “and your late husband trusted you to run the estate and care for them, yet his sister thought she knew better?”
“We both knew that my poor reputation would reflect badly on my stepchildren,” Tess said, erasing all bitterness from her voice, “and so it has proved.”
Rothbury’s fingers brushed the line of her jaw in something perilously close to a caress. Little shivers of sensation cascaded over Tess’s skin. He was still watching her and she saw anger in his eyes but knew it was not for her. She saw understanding there too and once again felt the tug of a dangerous affinity that threatened to undermine her completely.
Rothbury’s hand fell. “So even then you were sacrificing yourself for the children’s sake,” he said, “and tacitly agreeing with their relatives’ judgement that you were a bad influence.” He tightened the reins. The horses checked.
“Sometimes,” Tess said, “one needs to recognise the odds one is fighting against.” Her voice strengthened. “Besides, Lady Nevern is a most respectable matron with a spotless reputation. In a few years she will bring Sybil out, and since I shall be married and behaving like a pattern card of propriety there will be nothing to dim the future prospects of my stepdaughter.”
There was a taut silence between them.
“You are very generous,” Rothbury said gruffly. “More generous than your late husband’s odious relatives deserve.” His voice warmed a little. “A respectable matron with a spotless reputation, eh? She sounds like a ghastly judgemental harridan to me. One can only hope she will do something shocking before she chokes on her own virtue.”
Tess gave a spontaneous burst of laughter. “Now, that I would like to see.”
“I am always suspicious of those who profess the greatest morality,” Rothbury said. “Usually they are shockingly perverted.”
“What a ridiculous generalisation!” Tess said, still laughing.
“Isn’t it?” Rothbury agreed cordially. He set the carriage in motion again and as they moved off a barouche swished past in the opposite direction, the ladies inside raising their lorgnettes to peer at them.
“Lady O’Hara,” Tess said, shuddering. “She is a frightful old gossip. I did not expect to see her out so early but maybe she cannot endure to lie late abed in case she misses the latest on dit.”
She remembered that once, when Lady O’Hara had cut her dead at a musicale, she had drawn a couple of extremely cruel but accurate caricatures of her and had affixed the pictures to the supper room doors. The expression of utter horror on Lady O’Hara’s face when the en
tire assembly had gathered around the anonymous portraits had been a sight to gladden Tess’s heart.
But there would be no more of that sort of thing. No more little revenges for the slights she had suffered. She glanced sideways at Rothbury. There would be no more reforming politics either and no more Jupiter cartoons. If she was good, if she was lucky, she might just get away without being unmasked. But her life would be eminently the poorer for it. She would have no purpose. She would be a wife locked into another fashionable marriage of convenience. It was what she had thought she wanted and yet for a second Tess felt frighteningly empty and unsure what she was going to do with her future.
The park was filling up. A gentleman cantered past on a roan gelding, then a pair of dashing young bucks who raised their hats to Tess as they passed and were almost unseated by their mounts as the horses started to prance and pirouette. The bucks disappeared in a welter of curses and flying hooves.
“Restless stallions,” Tess said. “So difficult to control.”
“I imagine you must have some trouble with them,” Rothbury agreed. There was a small frown between his eyes as he watched the two gentlemen out of sight.
“Indeed,” Tess said. “Men are always trying to get into my …”
Rothbury raised his brows.
“Bank deposit box,” she finished. She smiled demurely. “And my bed as well.”
“A stern husband should be a fine deterrent,” Rothbury said, with a twitch of the lips.
“Very true,” Tess said. “I doubt any amorous libertine would risk getting on the wrong side of you, my lord, by making advances to your wife. Is it correct that you once snuffed the candles on an entire chandelier with a brace of pistols?”
“No,” Rothbury said. “That would be a pointless waste of bullets.”
“How prosaic you are,” Tess said. “And the story that you sailed into Cadiz under the cover of darkness and captured three Spanish ships?”
Rothbury sighed. “Wasn’t that Sir Francis Drake?” he said. “You are several centuries out.”
“Are none of the stories about you true?” Tess said plaintively.
“Perhaps,” Rothbury said noncommittally.
“But you do not have anything to prove,” Tess said. One would not catch Rothbury boasting in his cups of his adventures as a privateer, she thought. There was something so self-contained about him and yet so formidably confident.
“The story about me winning fifty-thousand pounds and a maharajah’s mistress in a game of chance was true,” Rothbury said, a smile tilting his lips.
“What happened to the money?” Tess asked.
“Spent.”
“And the mistress?”
His smile deepened. “She preferred someone else.”
More fool her.
The thought ambushed Tess, surprised her. Hot on its heels came a second thought: what must it have been like for a man like Rothbury, a virile man, a man who had no doubt known plenty of women in his time, to lose the ability to take sexual pleasure? She felt a sharp pang of regret for him, followed by a very pleasant feeling of relaxation. It was delightful that this was one man she need not worry would try to bed her. She snuggled further down beneath the blankets, matching her emotional comfort to the physical warmth of the fur-lined rugs.
“I’m hungry,” she said, surprised.
Rothbury laughed. “You had no breakfast.”
Tess realised she had not and that her stomach was rumbling. They turned out of the gates and Rothbury pulled the curricle over, jumping down to purchase muffins and buttery crumpets from the baker whose barrow was on the corner. Tess stripped off her gloves. The butter ran between her fingers and she laughingly licked it off, looking up to surprise an expression in Rothbury’s eyes that she could have sworn was desire. For a second she felt afraid as her heat bumped against her ribs and panic dried her throat, but then he smiled.
“Is that enough,” he said, “or would you care for some milk and cake?”
“You sound like my nurse,” Tess said, and the patter of fear in her stomach faded away and the day was bright again and the crumpet was warm and the butter salty and it tasted better than anything she had ever eaten before, because of course Rothbury did not desire her. The idea was absurd, and there was absolutely nothing she needed to fear.
WHITE’S CLUB WAS QUIET, opulent and shockingly reverential. At first the club servant had seemed disinclined to allow Owen entrance because he was not a member, but Owen had explained very courteously that he was there to see Lord Corwen on behalf of the Home Secretary. The servant had considered Owen’s height, breadth and general air of polite danger and had stood aside. He had recognised him as Viscount Rothbury and had known that whilst he was not a member in his own right, preferring Brooks’s Club instead, he was a friend of several most influential members of the nobility. Decidedly it would not be a good idea to throw him out.
Owen followed the man up the wide wrought-iron stairs to the landing above, along several thickly carpeted corridors and through a heavy wooden door into a room where five men sat at play. The servant approached one and bowed deferentially, bending to murmur a few words in the peer’s ear. Owen waited. He could feel his muscles tense beneath the skin.
This was for Tess. From the moment she had told him of Corwen’s squalid blackmail he had been determined to make the corrupt peer see the error of his ways. When Tess had told him that morning that she was estranged from her stepchildren, Owen had become doubly determined she should suffer no more shame from Corwen’s malicious tittle-tattle. He had felt Tess’s grief when she had related that she no longer saw Sybil and Julius Darent. It was a small private tragedy but it had hit him in the stomach like a blow. Tess had given up her stepchildren because she was perceived as a bad influence. She did not wish to damage their future. It was a most selfless act from a woman branded as selfish and manipulative.
Corwen threw down his cards with a bad-tempered slap and rose to his feet. His gaze, more than a little inebriated, rolled over Owen.
“Who the devil are you?” he demanded, despite the fact that Owen knew the servant had given his name a second earlier. “And what the hell do you mean by interrupting my game?”
“Careful, Corwen.” One of the other players looked up. He looked like a country squire with a nose as red as the port in his glass and a certain arrogance in his bearing. “Don’t forget he outranks you,” the man said.
Corwen gave a dismissive snort. “I won’t be outranked by a damned Yankee pirate.”
“It is not something you have any control over, my lord,” Owen said very politely. “I am and you are.”
The other man laughed. “Join us in a game, Rothbury?” he asked, gesturing to the table. “I hear you play a fine hand, with all that experience gained in gaming hells around the world.”
“You flatter me, sir,” Owen said. “Thank you for the invitation but I am merely here to speak to Lord Corwen about his marriage plans.”
An odd ripple went around the table like the movement of wind through corn. Two of the other players—the third was insensible with drink and nodding over his cards—looked up and then quickly down at the cards in their hands. The squire, inured to the atmosphere either through insensitivity or port, laughed. “Told you that you should have been more discreet, Corwen.”
Corwen’s eyes darted from his companions back to Owen’s face. “What’s it to you anyway, Rothbury?” he demanded. “Do you have a fancy for Lady Sybil Darent yourself?”
Owen felt a flash of violence ripple through him. He itched to take the peer by the throat and throttle him with his own cravat. He kept his hands clenched tightly at his side. He could not allow himself to be provoked. Deep within him, buried but not forgotten, was a thread of violence that had haunted his past.
“My sexual preferences are not for children,” he said coldly. “I am betrothed to Lady Darent and as such I have to tell you that any threats you make against her or her stepchildren are my business and
I shall deal with them.” He paused. “Do you understand me, Corwen?”
“I understand that you are nothing but a fool to betroth yourself to Darent’s widow,” Corwen sneered. “Could you not find yourself anything less shop-soiled, Rothbury? The virtuous ladies all spurn a foreigner?”
Owen smiled. “Don’t give me further cause to hit you, Corwen,” he said silkily. “I want to do it very much.”
“You wouldn’t do it here,” Corwen said contemptuously.
“You mistake,” Owen said. “I’d do it anywhere.” He shifted. “Another word against Lady Darent, Corwen, or against Lady Sybil, and the whole array of your sexual misdemeanours will be paraded before the ton. Lord Sidmouth has quite a file on you, I assure you.”
Corwen paused, the blood leaching from his face, his eyes narrowed. “All lies,” he hissed.
Owen shrugged. “Maybe so, maybe not. But who would care when the gossip would be so much more piquant than the truth anyway? Was that not what you said to Lady Darent, Corwen?” He took a step back and saw Corwen’s shoulders slumped with pitiful relief.
“My lawyers will contact you about the payment of Darent’s debts,” Owen said. “In the meantime remember what I said about Lady Darent and Lady Sybil.” He smiled. “I think that you will find that your estates require your attention, Corwen. For a good, long time.” He nodded to the others. “Gentlemen …”
The slumbering card player awoke just as Owen was strolling out of the door.
“Who the devil was that chap?” he heard the man say. “Damned cool hand.”
Once out in the night air, Owen stopped and took a deep breath, feeling the icy cold sweep away the heated anger from his body. The violence in his blood died away. He had restrained that aggression for his entire life. Violence had dogged his steps since his youth but he had learned the hard way to keep a grip on his temper; only once had he lost that icy control. Once, fatally, in an incident never to be forgotten, a shame buried deep in his past. He had dishonoured his profession and shamed his family and as a result he would never again fail them.
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