He shot a look at Mallory. She hadn’t moved from where he’d left her. Her breathing was deep and regular, too deep, considering the circumstances.
She’d been drugged!
Or had she taken the drug willingly?
Or was this another of his father’s machinations? Was there no area of John’s life where he could be his own man?
With a fierce shout of frustration, he threw the decanter at the stone mantel, where it smashed into a thousand shards of crystal, a dark stain spreading there. His sweet young wife slept on, lost in the oblivion of drug-induced sleep.
John pushed his hair back from his head. His father had told him about the barbaric sheet ritual when he’d informed John that he was to be married. Of course, that had been the night before the wedding. Until that moment, John hadn’t had any idea why he’d been ordered down from school and told to meet his father at a place called Craige Castle.
Worse, on the morrow, his father expected John to return to his tutors and studies for the Church, to bury himself in learning scholarly rites and dogma. Years ago, his father had decided the time had come for the Barron family to increase its influence in England by allying itself with the Church. He’d decided his son should fulfill the role, and John’s feelings over the matter were of little importance—just as John’s desire not to marry someone he didn’t know had been unimportant.
His gaze drifted toward his sleeping bride. Had his father had a hand in drugging her? Would the man really go so far?
And did he believe John could commit such a cold-blooded, dishonorable act of lust and take his child-bride while she was unconscious?
For what seemed like hours, John sat as if turned to stone. He relived past events and situations in his mind. He’d spent his life trying to fulfill his father’s need to prove John was his true son and not merely symbol of his mother’s infidelity. John’s whole life—even this, the sacrament of marriage—was nothing more than a sham to hide the secret of his birth.
The answer to his prayers came in the wee hours right before dawn. His wife wanted to be the mistress of Craige Castle. She’d been born here and had sold herself into a loveless marriage to stay and serve as its mistress. John took in the cold walls and ancient furniture and wished her happiness with it.
Meanwhile, his father wanted his son to be accepted by society, to be acknowledged as a legitimate heir without the whisper of scandal.
John could understand a man needing a son, even though, in truth, he and his father had never been close. Affairs of state had often kept Sir Richard away from England, and John had spent his life in a succession of public schools being “prepared” for his future.
Exactly how much did John owe this man? The question had plagued him ever since their argument last night.
In a vanity drawer, John found a small knife. It was a lady’s tool, carved from fine silver, but with a sharp, wicked tip.
He sliced the pad of his thumb and watched with fascination as a bead of blood appeared. Silently he walked to the bed.
Mallory slept as if the very demons of hell would never wake her. All the loneliness John had known in life welled up inside him. Gently he reached over her sleeping form and wiped his blood upon the sheet.
Minutes later, he slipped unnoticed from the room.
In the early hours of a clear dawn, John Barron stood on a fallen log beyond the castle’s aged walls and looked up at the window of the room where he’d spent his wedding night. The torrents of rain from the night before had washed the world fresh and new. For the first time in his life, he felt hope.
At that moment, in a ritual followed by the Craige family for centuries, the bridal sheet was hung out the window of the stone tower for all the tenants to witness. From this distance, no one could see the bloodstain on the sheet—but they would understand it was there, proof that John Barron, the future Lord Craige, had done his duty. He had claimed his wife.
Suddenly, John began running through the woods, faster and faster. His lungs filled with air. His feet threw up clods of wet, newly turned earth as he crossed a farmer’s field. He ran until pain and cold air ripped through him and he couldn’t draw another breath. He ran until he finally collapsed at the roots of a huge oak tree. For long moments, there was no sound in his ears but the mad beating of his heart and the ragged unevenness of his breathing.
The world swirled over his head and then ever so slowly steadied. A squirrel leaped from one branch to another, its claws scratching against the bark as it worked to build a nest. The sky beyond the oak’s strong, long limbs was a light, clear blue. A mourning dove called, its plaintive call disquieting, questioning.
He rose to his feet and looked toward Craige Castle, its gray stone tower still visible above the trees. For a moment he hesitated, thinking of an innocent young girl, her honey-gold eyes so full of apprehension that she had made him feel like a monster. Worse, he remembered the feel of her breast beneath his hand, the pounding of her heart against her throat, and the smooth warmth of her skin.
John shut the memory from his mind. She belonged to this castle. Here she would be safe and protected. For all intents and purposes, she was Lady Craige. That was how her people thought of her and how she would remain. She could have the ten thousand a year he received from his mother’s estate and live happily ever after, as in one of the German fables so popular with children.
John had other plans. He turned away from the castle tower and, finding a path through the forest, made his way toward the coast. He wasn’t a churchman, a husband, or a lover.
What he wanted was to be a soldier, a warrior-saint like St. George, who had led England to glory and destroyed her enemies. With God’s help, he would live that dream.
And so it happened that the day after a wedding that had linked two important ancestral families and delivered a great estate into his father’s hands, John Barron escaped to create his own destiny.
Chapter 2
First be kiss’d me,
Then he left me
Bid me always answer No.
O No, John! No, John! No!
“O No, John!”
London
Seven years later
He was determined to be a hell-raiser of a nobleman.
John Barron, the new Viscount Craige, took off his hat and handed it to Titus, the butler of his latest mistress, Lady Sarah Ramsgate. Sarah’s drawing rooms were filled with the extravagant, self-indulgent members of the ton who enjoyed the sort of wicked entertainments that could be found at her soirées. The smell of spirits and smoke hung in the air. The doors and windows of the house were open to the summer night, and the sounds of laughter and conversation drifted out to the line of carriages and horses waiting in the street.
The daughter of an actress, Sarah had purchased respectability by marrying a very rich, very ancient lord who turned a blind eye to his wife’s indiscretions and spent most of his time in the country. It was a good thing he did. John couldn’t imagine Lord Ramsgate would be pleased to see three actresses dancing on his dining room table while musicians played in hand-clapping time. One sweet young thing was already naked, while the other two were working their way to that state, urged on by the shouting admiration of male and female guests alike.
The Prince Regent, or Prinny, as he was called by his friends, held court in the main salon, laughing with other members of the dissipated Carleton House set—Brummell, Alvanley, and a portly lord named Applegate, an avid gambler who depended on John to cover his debts. The men were laying wagers on who of their party could roll a marble across the fireplace mantel and knock off a very expensive vase sitting on the edge. They took to the task with the enthusiasm of small boys and broke out into gales of laughter when Alvanley’s marble sent the vase crashing. Wine was called for as another vase was found and set on the mantel edge. Applegate caught sight of John and called him over, hiccupping after every word.
John pretended not to hear. With the restless energy of a caged animal, he wove
his way through the glittering crowd, his tall presence commanding respect.
He wasn’t dressed for a night on the town but wore his riding clothes, doeskin breeches, a dark blue coat cut of the finest stuff, and polished boots sporting a single spur. He’d spend the day at Tattersall’s auction house buying new bits of horseflesh that he neither needed nor wanted. It had been something to do, something to spend money on, something to break the terrible monotony of his days, now that he’d been “retired” from the active military life he’d loved.
“John!” Sarah’s husky voice came to him over the noisy crowd.
Her extraordinary blonde beauty stood out in the circle of people around her. She was the reigning queen of this extravagant, self-indulgent group and loved the drama of her role. She moved toward him slowly, her walk a study in seduction. The gauzy muslin of her dress left nothing to the imagination. Sapphires sparkled in her hair, on her hands, and around her neck, while skillfully applied cosmetics ensured that she retained her youthful bloom.
What all that artifice couldn’t hide was her possessiveness. John had started their affair because he’d expected her to make no demands upon his time or person. He’d discovered the opposite to be true and found her almost insane jealousy boring. He’d come this evening with the express purpose of breaking off their liaison.
He’d have to postpone their discussion until tomorrow, since he anticipated her throwing one of her infamous tantrums over his rejection. A diamond collar worth a king’s ransom rested in a velvet-lined box inside the pocket of his coat jacket to ward off any unpleasantness.
He forced himself to smile, a smile that turned genuine when he recognized the man who was coming toward him behind Sarah.
Major Victor Peterson was one of his oldest friends. The two had served as ensigns together in India before both were ordered to Portugal. Blond and elegantly handsome, Victor wore the blue and red uniform of the Royal Artillery, the same company John had led before he’d been ordered home. Ignoring Sarah, John clasped his friend’s hand warmly. “When did you arrive in London?”
“Only this afternoon. I stopped by your house earlier but you weren’t there. Then I ran into Applegate at the club and he said you’d be here.” For a second, Peterson’s gaze lingered on the generous expanse of cleavage over Sarah’s bodice. “You lucky dog.”
Sarah laughed, her voice deep and throaty, and started to take John’s arm, but the managed to slip away. “Come” he said to Peterson, “let’s go where we can talk.”
Sarah stepped into their path. “And leave me?” Her lower lip pulled out in a pout, but there was a hint of warning in her voice. “You just arrived, John. You can’t leave—not yet.” She lifted her eyes to Peterson. “My John has been hard to domesticate. I fear he still prefers the battlefield and hard living to soft beds and his late father’s fortune.”
“Prefers them even to your bed?” Peterson murmured gallantly, lifting Sarah’s hand to his lips.
John rolled his eyes while Sarah basked in the glory of a new conquest. “Can you imagine it?” she asked, lightly touching one of the gold tassels decorating the chest of Peterson’s uniform.
“No, my lady,” Peterson answered warmly. “A man would be a fool to prefer French bullets to you. However, you must remember that John is one of our more decorated heroes of the war. He saved my life more times than I care to admit.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “Everyone knows he was not happy when Prinny ordered him to return to London after his father’s death. I have done my best to make him happy, but see? He shows up late even for my soirees.”
Peterson “tsked” over John’s perfidy. Sarah moved closer to him, shooting a look over her shoulder to see if her attention to Peterson was making John jealous.
John shook his head. He’d never be jealous of Peterson. He loved the man like a brother, and the could have Sarah and her expensive tastes with John’s best wishes.
As if reading his thoughts, Sarah took a step back. The smile on her face turned brittle. “Major Peterson, I pray that you may convince him to relax and enjoy his good fortune. I fear I have little influence.”
Sarah was apparently more astute than John had given her credit for being. Perhaps ending their affair wouldn’t be so difficult, after all.
“Did you know we call him the Dark Prince?” she asked Peterson.
“No, I hadn’t heard,” Peterson said. “On the battlefield, we had a host of other, more colorful names for him. How did you earn such a romantic sobriquet, John?”
Sarah answered, “Because he is so different from his father. Richard Barron was the confidant of kings, a complete politician with unparalleled power. Our John prefers to entertain the court jesters.” She nodded toward Prinny, terribly fat and overstuffed in his tight clothes. At that moment another vase fell to the floor. The men drained their glasses in one gulp, laughing uproariously.
“I didn’t know you paid attention to politics, Sarah,” John said softly.
“I pay attention to everything that concerns you, my Lord Craige.” She titled her head up at Peterson. “John has held the title for six months. In that time he has established a reputation as a lion of society and a rake of the first order. Did you know, there are women who send him things, personal things like their gloves, ear bobs….” She paused before adding in a considering tone, “And perhaps even more intimate items?”
“Whyever would they do that?” Peterson asked.
“To gain Lord Craige’s attention,” she answered matter-of-factly. “He has captured the imagination of the female populace. There are women who idolize him more than they do the current poets.” She leaned closer to John, the cloying scent of her heavy perfume stinging his nostrils, and added in a voice only the two of them could hear, “And not without good cause.” Her ungloved hand ran down his arm, feeling the muscle beneath the cloth.
Peterson laughed. “It has ever been that way, Lady Ramsgate. In Spain, the other officers and I used John and his handsome face to shamelessly attract women. My wife was the only woman I’ve met who looked at me before John—and for that I dropped to one knee and proposed.”
“Oh, so you are married, Major Peterson?”
The laughter in Peterson’s eyes vanished. “I was. She died.”
John shared his friend’s sorrow. Liana Peterson had been his only female friend, the first woman he’d trusted. In fact, she’d died in childbirth in his arms. Peterson had been away on special duty at the time. It had fallen on John’s shoulders to sit beside her, praying for a miracle that had never come. One of the hardest task he’d ever performed had been breaking the news to Peterson. The man had been inconsolable for months.
“How sad,” Sarah said, in a voice that expressed no sympathy.
John had had enough of Sarah. “Come, Victor, let us go and have a drink. I’m hungry for news from the war. Has Horton turned out to be as great an ass as we feared?” he asked, referring to the man who had taken over John’s command.
“Worse,” Peterson answered, and he would have elaborated, except that at that moment a man’s voice bellowed John’s name from the hallway.
John thought the was hearing things until the man shouted again. “Craige! Where are you? Come out and face me!”
The music stopped abruptly and voices hushed. Conscious that all eyes in the room had turned to stare at him, John calmly nodded to Sarah and Peterson. “You’ll excuse me for a moment, won’t you?”
As Sarah’s guests stepped aside to clear a path, John walked out into the hallway. Sir Everett Carpenter, an older man, stood weaving unsteadily near the front door. Titus had his hand on the man’s arm, as if he were prepared to physically eject him from the house. The party guests gathered around the dining room and drawing room doorways, avidly watching the confrontation.
“Yes, Sir Everett, what can I do for you?” John asked, nodding for Titus to take a step back.
Sir Everett’s face beneath his balding pate was flushed from drink—Joh
n could almost smell the fumes of the man’s breath from where he stood—but his eyes burned with intensity. “I want my wife back. I want you to release her.”
John lifted an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand what you mean.” He searched his mind. “I don’t remember having had the honor of meeting your wife, let alone holding her in some way from which she needs to be released.”
“You lie!” Sir Everett cried, and raised the hand he’d been hiding inside his coat. He pointed a small pistol squarely at John. Their audience pulled back from the doors with a collective gasp of surprise.
“You danced with my wife at Lady Cogswell’s rout a week ago last Tuesday,” Sir Everett accused. “Since that day she thinks of nothing but you.”
Conscious that the man could blow off his head at any moment and was endangering the lives of those around them, John calmly brushed an imaginary piece of lint from his dark superfine jacket before repeating politely, “I am sorry, Sir Everett, but I don’t remember having the pleasure of meeting her.”
“She writes you every day. She goes to the park hoping to see you, hoping you will notice her, and when you don’t, when you ride past without so much as a nod in her direction, she is broken-hearted. She no longer speaks to me. She’s unhappy. I’m unhappy.” His hand holding the pistol shook as he declared, “Tonight she told me she’s leaving me.”
John started walking toward the man, his steps measured and deliberate. “I’m sorry she is unhappy. But she belongs with her husband.”
Sir Everett nodded. “That’s what I told her; but she won’t listen to me. The only way I can have her back is if you are dead!”
John heard a movement behind him and knew Peterson was coming forward in his defense. Keeping his gaze locked on Sir Everett’s, John held up his hand, a signal for Peterson to stay back. “Let us go outside, sir, and talk this over as gentlemen.”
Falling in Love Again Page 3