“Do not bother me,” Estelle called crossly in the direction of the door.
“Begging your pardon, milady, but your children are here,” said the butler, whom she was certain Roxley kept on solely to vex her, knowing how much she detested the old retainer. “His lordship left word that if he had not yet returned when they arrived, they were to be brought to you.”
Estelle wanted to scream at him to take the brats away, but she dared not, for that meddling old fool would be certain to tell Roxley that she had done so because Ashley had been with her. Generally, her husband chose to ignore her infidelities, but he would cut up stiff if he learned that she had refused to see her children so that she could entertain her lover.
Her sons, aged four, five, and six, filed into the room, looking like stair steps. They eyed her nervously, stopping well back from her billowing gown. Nevertheless, she cautioned them against wrinkling her skirt. They were handsome children, having inherited her jet-black hair and their father’s hazel eyes, but they were remarkably subdued for boys of their rambunctious age who were seeing their mother for the first time in two months. Estelle, however, saw nothing odd about this, for she demanded such polite, well-mannered behavior of them.
Her youngest, a thin, rather frail little boy, was clearly ill. His nose was red and running, his eyes, dull and feverish, and he looked perfectly miserable. She regarded him with a deep dismay that arose from concern for herself rather than for him. She had a profound fear of being exposed to any contagious illness, so certain was she that she herself would immediately contract it.
“Why must Justin always be ill?” she demanded petulantly of their nurse, a dragon-faced, middle-aged woman who had followed the children into the room.
“He’s a sickly ’un, milady.” The woman’s harsh tone proclaimed her contempt for such weakness.
“But, Mama, I cannot help it,” Justin protested mournfully in a voice so hoarse he could hardly be heard. “I don’t want to feel so awful.”
He took a step toward her, as if to seek solace from her, but she drew back in alarm, fearful for both her skirt and her health. “No, you mustn’t give Mama your sickness,” she cautioned him. “It is time Nurse put you to bed.” She ignored the two large tears that formed in his eyes and said brightly, “Now the three of you go with Nurse.”
“Yes, Mama,” they murmured in chorus, the older two looking as relieved to be going as she was to have them gone. As they turned toward the door, the eldest asked wistfully, “When will Papa be home?”
“Soon,” she said curtly. Turning back to Ashley as the door closed behind her children, she gave an artificial little laugh. “What nuisances children are. Always getting sick or in trouble. Come, darling.” She held out her hand to him, intending to lead him back to the alcove.
But he did not take it. Instead, he was studying her somberly with the oddest look in his eyes. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time.
Finally, she said irritably, “Come, we haven’t much time.”
“No time at all,” he said, a peculiar note in his voice.
“I must leave. Your children arrived early; your husband may do so as well.”
“But,” she wailed, “I—”
He cut her off, saying firmly, “No, I must go.” He turned abruptly and was gone.
Chapter 20
Three days after Abigail’s arrival at Bellhaven, she and Levisham were married privately. Caro was overjoyed by the love that glowed with increasing intensity between her father and his bride. With Abigail to cosset him, his health showed such marked improvement that Dr. Baxter remarked that the marquess might surprise them all by living to a very old age.
With her father and Abigail lost in the private world of their love, Bellhaven seemed lonelier than ever to Caro without Ashley.
Each night, when Abigail and the marquess retired to their bedchamber, Caro was reminded that although her husband had married her for an heir, he had taken no further step to attain that end. As happy as she was for the newlyweds, she could not help being a little sad, too, because it reminded her of how different her own strange marriage was.
Caro tried to ease her pain by reminding herself of how long it had taken for Abigail’s unrequited love for Papa to be returned. But this thought offered her sorry comfort when she contemplated the many wasted years. A decade to a girl of seventeen was more than half a lifetime. In short, an eternity.
She thought of her husband constantly. Lonely and miserable without him, she was convinced that he was living happily in London with never a thought for the wife he had left behind.
Caro was wrong, however, on both counts. Ashley was far from happy. Despite his and Mercer Corte’s diligent efforts to locate the one-eared man in the back slums of St. Giles, they were unsuccessful. Without him, there would be no hope of building a case against Henry in William’s death.
Meanwhile, Ashley’s concern about his cousin’s intentions had been heightened when, a week after his return to London, he had run into Henry at White’s.
“It would be very wise of you, dear cousin,” Henry had told him, “to cease your forays into St. Giles, especially since they will gain you nothing.”
“Are you threatening me?” Ashley asked coldly.
“I believe it is felicitations on your marriage that are called for,” Henry replied blandly. “Or are they? I understand that you have not seen fit to let London see your bride. She remains at Bellhaven with her father.”
Henry’s pointed reference to Caro’s whereabouts sharply increased Ashley’s anxiety about her. He had thought that she would be safer at Bellhaven, but now he wished that she were at his side where he could keep his eye on her.
He redoubled his efforts to find the one-eared man, repeatedly visiting the alehouse where Mercer had seen him. Although he was certain that the individual he was seeking was well known to the tavern’s habitués and proprietor, all professed to have not the slightest notion as to whom he could be. Even the generous reward Ashley offered failed to loosen their tongues. It quickly became clear that no one dared to betray the man he sought.
He and Mercer widened the search for information about the man, spending night after night in the Holy Land, but his identity and whereabouts continued to elude them.
One night, after weeks of fruitless effort, they left a stinking sluicery where the gin amply deserved its nickname of blue ruin and turned down a crooked alley. There they were accosted by a runny-eyed, wheezing-voiced man dressed in shabby nankeen trousers and a coarse, much-mended shirt. He had clearly been waiting in the dark recesses of the alley for them to emerge from the sluicery.
Ashley had become sufficiently familiar with St. Giles’s Greek, as the slum’s cant was called, to understand that the man was offering them information about their one eared quarry for a price and on the condition that they never identify its source.
“It’ll cost a score o’ beans,” the stranger warned them. “Oi ain’t such a chub that Oi don’t know ol’ Chester would tuck me up with a spade ifn ’e found out. ’E don’t miss with that barkin’ iron of ’is, ’e don’t.”
“Twenty guineas it will be if you tell me the rest of Chester’s name and where I can find him,” Ashley agreed promptly.
The man responded in a torrent of St. Giles’s Greek that left Mercer staring at him blankly. Ashley, however, had understood him well enough to make out that Moking was the surname of the man they sought but that their informer did not know his present whereabouts. The wealthy man for whom Moking occasionally worked had paid him a large sum of money to disappear from London for a few months.
When Ashley asked for a description of Moking’s benefactor, the informer gave one that fit Henry, concluding admiringly, “ ’E’s a well-breeched swell, ’e is. Gave old Chester a pile of rhino to go away, ’e did. Oi saw ’im ’and it o’er with me own eyes.” A shrewd look came into the man’s watery eyes. “Methinks the swell’s afraid of riding the three-legged mare.”
After they left the man, Mercer remarked, “I cannot fathom how a man could ride a three-legged mare or why he would want to.”
“Rest assured, he would not want to,” Ashley replied. “It’s the gallows. I wonder where Henry sent Moking.”
“What will you do now?”
“Continue to offer a large reward for word of Moking’s whereabouts. Someone must know where he has gone, and I pray that his greed will outweigh his fear of him.”
But his prayer went unanswered, and Ashley grew increasingly anxious. More than Caro’s safety was troubling him. Unpleasant rumors were circulating in London about his marriage. According to the story making the rounds of the ton, Vinson, that prime catch, had inexplicably shackled himself to an anecdote.
The ton had been assured that this was so by no less an authority than Sir Percival Plymtree, who had the advantage of actually having seen her. His cruel tongue had found a way to repay Caro for what he held to be her grievous insult to him, and he made the most of this opportunity.
He had been aided in this endeavor by Olive Kelsie. In her rage at having her plans thwarted, she had written Plymtree that she had heard from Ashley’s own lips that he had married Caro only because she had agreed never to interfere with his affair with his true love, Lady Roxley.
“Dearest Caroline is so besotted with him that she would have agreed to anything to shackle him,” she had written. “Silly child. He found her so boring that he fled from Bellhaven to London and his mistress within a fortnight of the nuptials, leaving the poor thing behind.”
With malicious delight, Sir Percival broadcast the contents of this letter far and wide, and all of London was soon talking about poor Lady Vinson.
Her husband tried to kill this cruel story by making a point of confiding to several of London’s most notorious gossips that he had married so hastily because Levisham, who was on his deathbed, had wanted to see Caro wed before his demise. And, dutiful daughter that she was, she could not now leave her dying father to come to London.
But Vinson’s explanation was soon made to seem ludicrous by a notice in the Gazette, which announced that his dying father-in-law had married Abigail Foster a week earlier. It was the first inkling Ashley had of the marriage, and he was furious. It confirmed to him that he had been tricked into marrying Caro and then into leaving her behind at Bellhaven. Strangely, he was far more upset by the latter than by the former. As the days since his return to London became weeks, he found that he missed his wife more than he could ever have suspected he would.
Within ten minutes of reading the Gazette announcement, Ashley had posted an angry letter to Levisham, announcing that he would be coming to Bellhaven to bring Caro to London in order to quiet the unfortunate rumors about her and their marriage.
“Do not try to fob my request off by saying that Caro is not yet ready to be presented to society,” he wrote bluntly, trying to anticipate in advance the arguments Levisham would raise against her leaving Bellhaven. “Although Caro lacks conduct, I have asked my mother to come to London to take her in hand and help to launch her. Mama and I will contrive to get her through this ordeal as painlessly as possible.
“I permitted my wife to remain at Bellhaven because of your plea that you did not want to die alone. But, since you have now married, you are clearly no longer alone or dying. I know that Caro does not wish to come to London, but I have every confidence that you will find a way to convince her that she must, just as you found a way to hoax us into marrying.”
Having vented his anger in his message to his father-in-law, Ashley wrote a second, calmer letter to his mother, asking her to come immediately to London.
When the viscount’s letter reached Bellhaven, Levisham read it with consternation. For the first time, he confessed to Abigail the full story of how he had gotten Ashley to marry Caro.
“Now he realizes you tricked him, and he is enraged,” Abigail said, frowning. “I pray he will not take it out on Caro.”
“I pray not, too. How often I have wondered these past weeks whether I made a dreadful mistake in arranging this marriage,” the marquess said grimly. He told his wife of Vinson’s humiliating insistence that Caro swear to him she would never vex him about his mistress.
Abigail was appalled by the bargain her husband had struck with Vinson. The viscount clearly cared only for his mistress. Furthermore, Abigail knew Vinson’s taste in women, and Caro could not have been more different from the kind of woman he would have been expected to marry. Levisham had never seen Lady Roxley, but Abigail knew what an irresistible creature she was to men. No wife could ignore such a ravishing rival unless she had no feeling at all for her husband. But this was not the case with Caro. Her affections were more engaged than perhaps even she herself suspected.
Abigail knew firsthand the heartbreak of a woman who must live for years with the knowledge that the only man she would ever love was obsessed with another woman. The only way to survive with dignity was to pretend, as Abigail herself had done, that one did not care. She thought old poor Lady Yarwood, hanging so desperately, so pathetically on to a husband who did not want her. Caro had to be warned against doing that.
“She will not want to go to London,” the marquess fretted. “If I tell her that Vinson insists on it, she will tease him to let her remain here, and that will further anger him. I shall have to tell her that it is I who insists she go.”
Summoning Caro, Levisham told her, “I have ordered your husband to Bellhaven.”
“What?” she gasped, her heart leaping at the thought of seeing Ashley again. “Why?”
“So that he may take you back to London with him.” Caro’s happiness dissolved. She doubted that Ashley would even come, but if he did, what would his reaction be to having his unwanted wife foisted off on him so soon? No doubt he had expected her to remain at Bellhaven for many weeks.
“I do not want to go to London!” she protested vehemently. “I want to stay here at Bellhaven with you.”
“It is your duty to be at your husband’s side. He was kind enough to let you remain with me when I was so ill, but I am much improved. We can no longer use my illness as an excuse to keep you here. Furthermore, I now have a wife to care for me.”
Caro, struggling to hold back the tears that threatened, was wounded to the core that her father was so anxious to be rid of her now that he had remarried. That was why he was sending her to a husband who did not want her, either. Never before in her life had she felt so useless, lonely, and unwanted.
Her sensibilities suffered another wound when her father proceeded to lecture her on how she was to behave in London so that she would not give her husband a disgust of her.
“I fear I have been too easy on you, Caro, excusing your unladylike behavior, but now you must act like a young matron of the first respectability. You cannot embarrass your husband.”
“I—I would never deliberately embarrass Ashley, Papa,” she stammered, “but I do not know how a matron of the first respectability acts.”
“First, you must learn to mind your tongue, pet. As for the rest, Vinson has asked his mama to take you in hand and teach you. See that you obey her in everything she says.”
Caro’s heart sank. Knowing what a stiff high stickler his father was, she could only assume that his mama was cut from the same cloth and would be even more rigid in her expectations of Caro than Aunt Olive had been.
A frightening thought struck her: Would life with Ashley’s mother be any great improvement over that with Aunt Olive?
Later, when Abigail asked Caro if she was happy that she would soon be seeing her husband, she replied dejectedly, “If he comes.”
“But of course he will come. You are his wife, and he wants you at his side.”
“I am not the wife he wants,” Caro said unhappily. Fearing that Caro was right, Abigail did not dispute this. She would not raise false hopes in her stepdaughter’s heart. Instead, she gently explained that Caro must always treat her husband with the utmost amiabil
ity and politeness but must take great care not to hang on him tiresomely. There was nothing more pathetic than an unloved wife making a fool of herself over her indifferent husband.
“When you are in London, observe Lady Yarwood, and you will understand what I am talking about,” Abigail said. “You must not expect your husband to dance attendance on you, and above all, never take notice of his other connection.”
Tears welled up in Caro’s eyes. “I am so miserable when I think of Ashley with Lady Roxley.”
Abigail hugged her comfortingly. “Of course you are! But you must remember your promise to him and not plague him about her.”
Caro nodded unhappily. She sincerely doubted that Ashley would even heed her father’s summons to come for his unwanted wife.
Three days later, Caro was reading quietly in the library when she heard the butler greet Ashley. The sound of his voice sent tremors of excitement and happiness through her. He had come! He had come! She tossed her book aside and ran into the hall, where he stood in his brown traveling coat, his curly black hair ruffled by the wind, smiling that irresistible smile of his. It was hard for Caro to believe that such a magnificent creature was her husband. Her eyes sparkled with pleasure at the sight of him.
Suddenly he held out his arms to her. In her excitement at seeing him, she rushed into them and they closed around her, making her feel as though she were in heaven. His lips descended on hers in a long, tender kiss that took her breath away. Even after he lifted his mouth from hers, she continued to hug him so fiercely that finally he said dryly, “I do believe, elfin, that you are happy to see me.”
She pulled away from him, looking up at his smiling face, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment at her foolish display. “I cannot imagine that the same is true of you,” she observed candidly, a hint of bitterness in her tone.
Looking startled, he hugged her to him again, retorting gallantly, “I did not think you had such a paltry imagination, elfin. Of course I am happy to see you.”
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