Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  He had to credit her with perfecting the art of silence. She did not say a word. He knew no women and very few men who had the nerve to let the silence run and refuse to break it. He had thought that over the past ten days he had learned all her secrets. But then he remembered the moment in the carriage on the way back from Hampstead Wells. He had asked her if there was anything else he should know and she had denied it. But here it was, something so vivid and painful and deep that he sensed she was fighting it with all her strength. But he had to know.

  “Well?” he said.

  There was a knock at the door. “The food, my lord,” Houghton said, peering into the library as though he half expected to be stepping into a pitched battle. He came forwards reluctantly and placed the tray on the table between them. “There is pigeon pie and beetroot salad and ham and cheese.”

  Owen looked at him and he fell silent. “Thank you, Houghton,” Owen said. He had lost his appetite and it seemed Tess had too. She was looking at the beetroot with barely concealed loathing.

  “Well,” he said softly, shifting his attention back to Tess as Houghton exited the library with indecent haste.

  “Perhaps we should have spoken of this before.” Her steely composure was still in place. “Now it is too late. Unless …” She paused. “Can I persuade you to see my point of view? A marriage in name only has certain benefits.” She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You could keep a mistress with my blessing.”

  Owen drew a short breath. Well, hell. It was his wedding night and his wife was suggesting he take a mistress. Some men would be gratified to have married such an understanding woman. He was not one of them.

  “Such a tempting offer,” he said, his voice loaded with sarcasm. He saw Tess wince. “You are all generosity, madam. But,” he said, and shrugged, “I am afraid I wish to sleep with my wife, not with a mistress. Unfashionable of me, I know, but there we are. Besides, a mistress cannot give me an heir to Rothbury, can she?”

  Tess rubbed her forehead. “There I cannot help you, my lord. I fear you will have to divorce me and remarry in order to gain the heir you clearly desire. Or—” her gaze slid over him and lingered on his pantaloons “—perhaps an annulment would be more appropriate, given the circumstances.”

  “I am sure that would enhance my fictitious reputation greatly,” Owen said. “No, thank you. I am not encouraging further debate about my supposed impotence.” He shook his head. “You move very fast, madam. From marriage to divorce without stopping for a wedding night in between.”

  Tess shrugged. Every muscle was tight with tension now. It seeped from her skin; for all her assumed nonchalance she could not disguise it. Owen knew she wanted him to stop questioning her. She wanted him to leave her alone. But he was not giving up until he learned the truth.

  He could feel his temper rising. Could she not see that they had had an opportunity to build something that could become tender and precious if only she gave it a chance? Was she truly as shallow as she had always pretended? The Teresa Darent he had started to know was a very different woman, generous and loyal with the capacity to love deeply. The thought of her denying that, denying him, made his heart ache. Yet she sat there with so unyielding an expression on her face he did not know how to penetrate that facade and he was not sure he even wanted to try anymore.

  “There will be no divorce,” he repeated. He stood up to leave.

  She put out a hand to stop him, caught his sleeve in urgent fingers. “But we will be married in name only,” she said. “You would not force me to consummate—” She came to an abrupt stop.

  Owen’s temper shattered. “Dear God,” he said cuttingly, “what sort of a man do you think I am?”

  He felt Tess shudder. Her face went completely blank as though in that moment she had utterly absented herself, not only from him but also from the power of her own thoughts. There was the oddest silence Owen had ever experienced, then something snapped in his mind, and the words, the memories, the images reformed, and he felt the shock hit him for a third time that evening, with jarring force. He looked again at Tess’s pale, frozen expression. Whatever it was she was blotting out of her mind had nothing to do with him. It was some other man she was thinking of, some other situation that was intolerable to her.

  “You’re afraid,” he said very slowly, and saw the confirmation of his suspicions in the terror that leapt in her eyes.

  “No!” Her denial was instantaneous, forbidding him to trespass. She curled up even more closely like a tightly closed flower.

  “Yes, you are,” Owen said. “You are terrified of intimacy.” At the back of his mind he could hear the echo of her words, like a ghost:

  Darent was laudanum and drink, and Brokeby was lechery and drink. And gambling. And laudanum …

  She had given him all the clues, Owen thought, whether she realised it or not. She had wanted a marriage in name only; she had turned to ice in his arms when he had first kissed her and she had been too shy to broach directly with him the issue of his supposed impotence. She had said that Robert Barstow had been her best friend and that Darent had entrusted her with his children’s futures.

  She had never spoken about Brokeby.

  Others had. Even his aunt Martindale had said Brokeby was no gentleman, but Owen, like everyone else, had read the situation the wrong way round and imagined that Tess had been a willing participant in Brokeby’s wild and licentious ways. There were the paintings to prove it. Those pictures that Tess had destroyed that very afternoon.

  “I tried to pretend it had never happened….”

  He remembered the stories he had heard of Tess’s gambling and drinking and wild ways in the wake of Brokeby’s death. Not indulgence, but a desperate attempt to forget….

  A feeling of sick horror slid between Owen’s ribs like the blade of a knife.

  “Brokeby,” he said slowly. His voice was heavy and harsh. “What did he do to you?”

  Tess made a broken little sound of distress. Owen took her hands in his. They were frozen, trembling. He thought that she might resist and draw away from him but she did not.

  “He can’t hurt you anymore,” Owen said. “You’re safe now.”

  Tess shook her head. “It’s too late,” she said. “It’s too late. It’s inside my head.” Her face crumpled and Owen thought she was going to cry again, but she took a deep breath and steadied herself, and then she began to talk quickly, urgently, the words tumbling out in an unstoppable tide that once started could not be quelled.

  “I didn’t know about the paintings,” she said painfully. “There was a house party. Brokeby and I were newly wed and he had taken me to the country along with a group of his cronies and some of their mistresses. It was all very disreputable and I thought it strange when we were on our wedding trip, but I was young and naive and a little lonely, and so I said nothing….” A frown puckered her forehead. “Anyway, Brokeby must have given me something, in my food, my wine, I am not certain. But I remember feeling very unwell and then everything became very confused.”

  Owen felt a shiver ripple through her. “I knew I was not asleep,” she said, “and yet I dreamed—” She stopped. Her voice was thin. “Horrible nightmares, waking nightmares. I could not tell the dream from the reality. I remember I was dressed only in my shift and sometimes … sometimes I was wearing nothing at all. I remember the cold on my body, and sometimes the heat of a fire, and there were shadows about me, hands on me, people touching me, displaying me.” The despair shuddered in her voice. “It was grotesque, almost impersonal, as though I were some sort of exhibit. I realise now that Melton was sketching me in different poses, but at the time I did not understand….” Her voice caught. Owen saw her swallow very hard. “I wanted to break away, to escape. I tried, tried to run, but I could barely stumble as far as the door. I saw a crack of light and reached for it, but someone laughed and closed the door in my face….” She turned away from him. “After that I had no strength to fight. It was too difficult, so
in the end I gave in to it. I let it claim me, let them do what they willed. I never wanted to wake again.”

  Owen tightened his grip on her hands. He focussed solely on her. The emotions inside him, the dark, turbulent anger, the violent rush of protectiveness, the primitive need for revenge, those feelings could wait. Tess was all that mattered now.

  “Eventually I did wake, even though I did not wish it.” She was speaking very quietly now, her gaze on their clasped hands. “I found I was alone, in my bed.” Her gaze was blind, inward looking. “Brokeby came to me then,” she said. “He had not bedded me before.” She stopped. “I was a virgin when I wed him and I think that in some twisted way he saw me as his trophy. He was excited and he had come to claim me. At the least,” she said drily, “it was over quickly and after that I was not so innocent and I learned to deal with it.”

  “What of the others?” Owen said. His voice was so rough he barely recognised it. He did not want to know the answer to his question but he knew he would have to bear it. If he was to help Tess he needed to know the whole truth, no matter how painful. But she was shaking her head. She did not pretend to misunderstand him.

  “Brokeby was a jealous man,” she said, “so although he wanted his cronies to see what he possessed and to envy him for it, he was not prepared to share me. Not then. Maybe when he had tired of me.” She smiled but there was no amusement in her eyes. “Lucky for me he died before that happened.”

  “How long?” Owen said. He was so angry he was not sure he could even get the words out. “How long before he died?”

  “Two months,” Tess said, “but mercifully he was up in town for one of those.”

  Dear God. She had spent a whole month with a whore-mongering, libidinous bastard like Brokeby. Owen felt his throat close with despair for her.

  “I ran away whilst Brokeby was in London,” Tess said. “I went back to my uncle and aunt’s house, but my uncle was a most God-fearing vicar and he said I was breaking my wedding vows. He took me back to Brokeby in person to make sure I could not run again. I should have gone to Joanna,” she said bitterly, “but she had difficulties of her own. She and I had a talent for choosing the wrong husbands.”

  “You have both made up for it now, though,” Owen said, and just for a moment he saw a smile filter like sunlight into her eyes and he felt a fierce desire to bring that laughter back into her life and banish the shadows for good.

  “Maybe we have,” she said slowly. The smile vanished from her eyes. “After Brokeby died I found some of the portraits in his effects and destroyed them. It never occurred to me that there would be more. Foolish of me, but I was not thinking clearly and—” She gave a shrug. “I tried very hard to not think about it at all. I tried to wipe Brokeby from my mind, obliterate him.” Her eyes clouded with pain. “You will have heard that I was very wild. I tried everything in order to forget—gambling, drinking … But no lovers.” Her gaze snapped up to meet his again. “I could not bear anyone to touch me.” The words, so desolate, dropped into the silence of the room. “Darent found me in the gutter one night after I had drunk too much at a ball. He was a kind man.” She smiled faintly. “We came to an understanding. His health was ruined through the laudanum.” She made a slight gesture. “I was … safe … with him.”

  “He did not want to bed you,” Owen said.

  “No.” Tess shifted, sighed. “After Darent died I made my home with Joanna and Alex, but the damage was done in terms of my reputation. And then Melton mounted his exhibition—” again Owen saw her hands clench “—and ruined me all over again. I tried to pretend it was not happening. I never went to see it. But the knowledge of it burned at the back of my mind all the time. I could not escape it.” She made a slight gesture that had a wealth of hopelessness in it. “So you see, my lord, why I wished for another impotent husband. I can never be a true wife to you.” Her eyes begged for his understanding. “It truly is for the best that we should part.”

  No.

  Owen’s reaction was an instinctive refusal. He did not speak the word aloud but he was never going to accept it. What damage had been done, and it was terrible damage, hideous violation, could surely be undone with enough time, patience and care. He had to believe that because he wanted it to be true.

  “We’ll discuss this in the morning,” he said gently.

  It was late—almost dawn—and she looked exhausted, every nerve stretched tight. She was translucently pale. He could not leave her here in the library, for the fire had gone out and she would be chilled to the bone within minutes. She was already shivering, though Owen doubted that was entirely with cold. Tiny shudders racked her.

  Upstairs there was a room that had been prepared for her to occupy. All her portmanteaux had been sent round from Bedford Street. He had seen them earlier, standing in serried rows, waiting to be unpacked. He wondered whether it would comfort Tess to have her belongings around her or whether it might simply send her running back to the place she probably thought of as home, a place where perhaps she felt safe. He could imagine her climbing out of the window and running off into the night, driven by desperation and despair.

  Perhaps his room might be better. There were no bulging suitcases there to remind her just what a lonely stranger she was in this house.

  Well, she could not stay here, whatever the outcome. He scooped her up in his arms to take her upstairs.

  As soon as he touched her, her body went rigid as a board and he heard her breathing escalate to a pant of terror.

  “Calm yourself.” He spoke very soothingly, as he would to a frightened horse, and held her with impersonal gentleness. “I won’t hurt you. I’m just taking you upstairs so that you can get some rest.”

  He could hear the frightened flutter of her breath and feel the erratic rise and fall of her chest against his. Her entire body was stiff with dread. If she could not bear him even to touch her, Owen thought grimly, they were in deeper trouble than he had ever imagined. But after a moment her breathing slowed a little and some softness came back into her limbs. She relaxed against him, her head brushing his shoulder, her hair tickling his cheek. She made no further protest as he carried her up the stairs and into the warmth and light of his room. Her head lifted from his shoulder; she looked at the bed and he felt her give a slight shudder.

  Hell. He sat her down on the side of the bed and drew off her evening slippers.

  “I’ll call your maid,” he said. “You need to undress. Your gown is covered in paint.”

  Tess nodded slightly. She already looked more than half asleep.

  The maid came so quickly Owen wondered if all the servants had been listening at the door. Very probably they had. The events of his wedding day would have circulated halfway around London by now, he was sure. The maid was a thin, plain girl, but she looked practical and there was a fierce light of affection in her eyes when she looked at Tess.

  “I’ll look after her, my lord,” the girl said. “You can trust me.”

  Owen nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Mallon,” the girl said. “Margery Mallon.”

  “Thank you, Margery,” Owen said. Regardless of convention, he hated calling servants by their surnames and would even have called Houghton by the name of Harold had he not thought that the butler would have expired with disapproval to be so addressed.

  “Come and find me when Lady Rothbury is asleep,” he said. “I want to stay with her to ensure she is safe.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Margery’s gaze was quick and approving. She went over to Tess and talked to her gently, easing her from the paint-spattered gown. Owen watched Tess lean back against the pillows and heard her give a tiny sigh, as though she felt safe at last. He looked at her. Tess, his beautiful, damaged bride. It all made perfect sense to him now; the way that she had helped Harriet Knight and Emma Bradshaw and all those other women who had been lost, broken and betrayed, how she had given away money to the charities that saved women and children ruined on
the whim of men, her utter determination that Sybil Darent would never be sold into marriage with a middle-aged lecher…. Tess had known the desolation of such a life and had resolved to do everything she could to prevent that misery ruining the lives of others.

  The fury that had possessed Owen earlier flared back into vivid and vicious life. It was fortunate for Brokeby that he was already dead. But the others, the men who had been there at that fateful house party … He wanted to hunt them down and kill them one by one with all the anger and violence that was in his soul, especially the man—whoever he was—who had so cruelly, so carelessly, closed the door and trapped Tess in a world of misery and fear. Owen felt something very close to despair twist his gut. Only once before, on the night he had almost killed a man, had he felt such fury fill his entire being. Now he was not sure that he could control that anger. White-hot and vicious, it seeped into every corner of his being. He would find them, every last man of them. And he would make them pay.

  TESS SLEPT FOR A WHILE OUT OF sheer exhaustion but woke on the edge of a nightmare, uncertain where she was. For a second she felt the darkness and the nameless fear bear down on her and a gasp rose to her lips, but then the room swam into view, the candle burning low, the fire a glow of comfort in the grate. In the faint light she could see the outlines of the room. It was bare and plain, the sort of chamber that belonged to a man who took only what he needed and was accustomed to travelling lightly and moving on. She was in Owen’s chamber. She could smell his scent on the sheets and it pierced her with desolation. Earlier, all she had wanted was to be free of Owen, to run away from him and from her fears, to be alone again because that was the only way she knew. Now she realised that she needed him. She needed his strength and his comfort and his reassurance, but she had no right to claim them because she could offer him nothing in return.

  The ragged edges of the nightmare taunted her again. Despite herself, a little sob broke from her lips. She tried to stifle it but the fear pressed closer, smothering the air in her lungs.