Unveiling Love: A Regency Romance (A London Regency Romantic Suspense Tale Book 2)

by Vanessa Riley

  Amora's gaze never strayed from the orchard.

  His pulse slowed. No longer sure of anything, he hesitated to enter the house, but powered inside. They would begin again no matter what.

  The aroma of baking crust filled the entryway. Apples must be baking in a pie. Proud Mr. Tomàs, God rest his soul, he loved this land and proclaimed his pippin fruit trees made the best desserts. Barrington's mouth watered, but not enough to wet the desert called his soul. The old pharaoh would soon confirm Amora's lies. She'd strayed with Charleton. They were too cozy last night in the garden. He'd punch the man again for tempting her.

  Mrs. Tomàs peaked out a window facing the portico. "She looks well. It's been so long since I've seen her, not since the wedding breakfast here. Five years is a long time."

  Barrington tapped his boot. He and this woman weren't friends, but if Amora wanted her she could've sent for her. "Show me the papers. Then tell me why you allowed her to marry me without disclosure. That could be thought of as a breach of an implied contract."

  Dark eyes, smaller than Amora's stared back at him. Her lip trembled, but then she flicked her stubborn chin up. "If you are here to give her back, I'll take her. I'll care for her, much better than you ever could."

  For better or worse, Amora was his. Even if she lied, even if she still refused to admit the truth. "The papers, madam."

  "Wait here. They are in Mr. Tomàs's study."

  She disappeared down a hall.

  Barrington swiveled his head from side to side, taking in the drawing room. There were three garniture vases on the mantle, which Mrs. Tomàs called oinochoes. Dark mystical vessels, maybe taken from the foot of the pyramids, probably where she stored her excess hate.

  Barrington paced across the square tapestry filling the floor, just as he'd done as he'd waited for Mr. Tomàs to grant Amora's hand in marriage. He claimed to like Barrington, but he surely made him stew, sitting as silent as stone, puffing on his pipe, listening and weighing the reasons he should allow his youngest daughter to become engaged to a soldier bound for war.

  Barrington rubbed his hand on the back of Tomàs's Chippendale chair that still sat close to the fireplace. For a moment, the air filled with the scent of missing tobacco. He stared at the hall waiting for Tomàs's big hat with the foot-wide brim to materialize. The house lay too quiet without the big man's laughter. It must've been a terrible time for Amora and her mother when the big-hearted Tomàs passed.

  Putting a hand to his hurting eye, Barrington shook his head. This place steeped in sadness wasn't for his wife. It felt unhealed, almost deathly. Maybe the grieving never vanished from these walls.

  Dropping onto the large brownish divan, he released a clogged breath. Every muscle hurt. His head throbbed. Riding in a cold carriage for hours made the aches worse, all because he allowed his jealousy to devour his logic, devour his discipline. No more.

  He'd take Amora away to Cornwall, immediately. There, they had nothing but pleasant memories, walks along the white cliffs, waltzes in the sweet sea air. There she'd be able to tell him the worst, even admit her unfaithfulness with Charleton. Barrington would forgive her, and she'd forgive him for dragging her here.

  She'd been faithful to him for five years. Nothing else mattered. They'd recommit and begin anew. If he hurried they could get pretty far before the storm gave its worse.

  Prying from the too comfortable chair, he walked to the door, purposing to scoop Amora up, apologize, and do so all the way to Cornwall.

  "Mr. Norton? You're not leaving." The pharaoh's voice sliced through him, making him feel stupid. "You came for these?"

  With his hand latched onto the knob, he took a breath and turned the brass. Freedom and forgiveness, his and Amora's future stood on the portico.

  "You can't leave yet. Amora asked me to give these to you. I have to do what she wants. I can't fail her again. You must look at these papers. You'll know everything. All the facts."

  Mrs. Tomàs's tone tugged at his scales of justice, resetting and swaying his innards, everything that made him what he was, a man who fought for truth.

  "These will tell you what happened. You come unannounced and now you want to go away without seeing them?"

  Of course, he craved ripping through the thick folds of paper resting within her fingers, but was there more barrister in him than husband, more law than love? He leaned against the door, his head poised to ram the painted wood.

  Mrs. Tomàs came to his side and shoved the pages against his palm. His index finger automatically curled onto a corner.

  "There you go, Mr. Norton. These are the physicians' accounts of Amora's condition when she escaped and…" She took a big gulp of air as if something wrapped about her throat strangling her, "and their harsh treatment of my poor girl."

  Escaped? Treatment? Seizing the paper, he turned and moved deeper into the room, stopping under a brass sconce. The light made the ugly words plain. He shuffled through record after record and almost punched the wall as he'd done Charleton's lip. "They pushed her off a table? Tied her to a bed." He couldn't read any more. His shaking hands couldn't hang on to the paper. They dropped, dusting the floor like ugly snowflakes. "Why would they do this? Why did you allow such cruelties? Why?"

  Mrs. Tomàs, the stone pharaoh, cried loud, throaty, noisy sobs. "I didn't know they'd do that. My husband's cousin, he said he'd handle things. He said it was a safe place out of the public eye for her to have the baby."

  Baby?

  Amora had Charleton's child.

  Barrington clutched at his chest as if that would hold his heart inside, but nothing would. He wiped his mouth against his sleeve. "What happened to the infant? Did you foist Amora's only living baby onto some relation to stave off shame? I'd have taken her and the by-blow, you miserable shrew."

  "There was no baby." The pharaoh crumbled into Mr. Tomàs's throne. "No baby at all. Amora babbled when she crawled onto the portico. So swollen from the salted pig scraps her abductor fed her, we all thought she was with child. So he…we sent her away to protect her reputation."

  All Amora's difficulties in carrying a child to term, could it arise from this barbarism? "What type of woman are you? Is there no Christian decency in this family?"

  "Is it Christian for you church goers to look down on the ones who made a mistake? Is it Christian to label the babes, by-blows?"

  He put a hand to his floundering cravat wishing to wring his neck for such poor words. It wasn't right what he'd said. It was a common slur to slap folks into a box. He of all people should know better.

  Mrs. Tomàs took a lacy handkerchief from her pocket. "You know the stigma of having a baby out of wedlock. My husband was gone. His cousin said she'd go through the laying-in there, and then he'd bring her and the child back, but Amora wasn't pregnant. We let those English witch doctors hurt her. They tortured my girl all over again."

  Barrington's thoughts and stomach churned as he analyzed this new evidence. An abused Amora with a shaky testimony led to her being sent away at the cousin's urgings. Perhaps Charleton wasn't the villain. He hid his aching fist, the one eager to punch again, behind his tailcoat. "Where is this cousin? Perhaps he abducted Amora and used your grief and naivety to cover his crimes."

  "He's dead. Died this time last year. Amora refused to come back to Clanville for his burial."

  Barrington's mind flashed to a moment, twelve months prior. He'd caught Amora crying, shivering in her chambers with a note scrunched up in her hand. She said it was nothing. She'd said nothing of a funeral or this.

  He rubbed his brow trying to remember dates. Hadn't her nightmares become more frequent last November? The headaches surely started. He thumbed his temple. "Don't defend a beast to protect the Tomàs name. He should've been made to pay."

  "It wasn't him. He was in Spain, then the Indies when Amora disappeared. I had him picked up from the docks a week or two before she escaped and made it back to this house. Couldn't have been him."

  The pharaoh's head sho
ok so hard it might fall off. "No, it wasn't him. And I don't blame him anymore for what I let happen to Amora. But I swear, Mr. Norton, if I had known, I would never have allowed her to be put in that asylum. If I'd been stronger, I could've been a better help to her."

  His hatred of his mother-in-law melted a little at the agony in her sobs, the rushes of water pouring from her eyes. He folded his arms trying to hold together his shattered logic.

  "I did wrong, Mr. Norton. I should've believed her and found another way to help." She dabbed at her face again. Maybe even a crocodile could shed real tears.

  Yet, if it wasn't the uncle who had taken Amora, who was the fiend? Too much training at the Lincoln Inn swirled in his gut, and Barrington swiveled to his first conclusion. The beginnings of his wife's disappearance had to be a seduction and according to the law, any consent would set the villain free, the poor woman blamed. "You were always pushing the Charleton brood on Amora. Admit it was one of the dowager's sons."

  "It is true. I wanted Amora with one of them. Not being English in England is hard. You need a fortified stomach."

  He ran a hand over his brow, adjusting his lenses. "What on earth are you speaking of, woman?"

  "You care too much to please them, you know?"

  "And you don't?"

  "When I came from Carthage with Mr. Tomàs, I saw how things go here. I did everything to keep a spotless reputation, but nothing more. I don't eat at their trough, but they seek mine out. No one has apples like the Tomàs's. I know my worth. You don't. That's why you are in here now, and not with Amora."

  The woman knew how to shove a knife in the soft spot betwixt his ribs, inflicting the most damage. Leaking fury with each breath, he whipped up his court voice, loud and strong, the one that boomed over the juryman's ruckus. "While this treatment is abysmal, it doesn't prove Amora was abducted, only what happened after she returned and how horrible of a mother you are."

  He bent and picked up a few pages and rolled them within his fist. "Tell me what you know. With whom had she become smitten? Tell me of her lover. I won't be angry with Amora not with all she's been through. I can even understand her not telling, not wanting to relive a minute of this. I just need the truth. Was it Mr. Charleton or his brother, the earl?"

  "Mr. Norton, you're not listening. My sweet habibi, my poor heart didn't run away. I tried to get her to like the Earl of Clanville, but he became reclusive after his carriage accident. His brother, the jovial Mr. Charleton never captured Amora's attention, not even for a minute. She never betrayed you."

  Thunder cackled as Mrs. Tomàs came closer. Her eyes wide. "My youngest daughter didn't run off. Someone took her and locked her away for weeks in a very dark place."

  "Darkness? Amora's fear of the dark, her need to burn a thousand candles? This is from being imprisoned by an abductor?"

  "Yes, just like the other girls."

  Others? Blood rushed to his ears. Light-headed, he backed against the wall. His legs shook. Every organ inside his body slapped and twisted as truth broke free. "Others?"

  Mrs. Tomàs tugged her shawl tighter across her limbs. "They'd found a milk maid dead a day or so before Amora returned. The girl had been tampered with. I mourned, sent my condolences, but didn't think more of the sadness. Then I heard the whispers about another girl, Clara Milton. Her story was the same as Amora, taken, kept in chains in a dark place. That's when I knew Amora had been taken."

  A dead girl. Another witness. Similar stories. His brainbox slipped into a drunken dizziness as his thoughts spun. Every unnecessary disagreement about thrift and spent wax, three hour or eight hour candles, were all a cry for help. One Barrington never seemed to hear. "Why? Why didn't you tell me? When I came to redeem her? When we said our vows, you could've warned me."

  "I wanted it all to go away. Amora was home and seemed in control of herself. It should be forgotten."

  "But the rumors of her with Charleton?"

  Mrs. Tomàs clasped her hands and dipped her head, hiding her wet black eyes. "I did nothing to explain her absence to Clanville. I didn't need too. They still bought Tomàs apples. You didn't believe her either. Isn't it easier to accept a lie than the horrible truth?"

  The aches in his head, in his soul, raged. Amora wasn't seduced. He'd let Cynthia's gossip and his own jealousy ignore his wife's protests.

  He adjusted his spectacles as if the motion would make the truth clearer, easier to accept. Amora was abducted, no euphemism. Cold hard fact.

  And he'd swallowed a lie.

  "The only good thing about sending Amora away was that they kept her restrained from suicide. The other girl took her life, not more than a month later. My heart weeps at Amora's pain, living through such horrors and not being believed by those close to her. Betrayed by her own mother."

  His own heart dropped past his knees straight to the floor. The organ, a mere pebble now, lay atop his boot, ready to be kicked and trampled to a deserving death. "I didn't believe her. If only she'd told me straight away. I'd--"

  "I told her not too, Mr. Norton. That kind of thing didn't happen to a Tomàs. I should've gotten out of my sick bed and saw to her care. I should've held her through her nightmares. That's what a good mother would have done. Like you said, I'm not a good mother. With her older sister eloping and never returning to visit, you can see how well I've done."

  She bent and started picking up the rest of the fallen pages. "The thought of you… It was the only thing she'd brighten for. Now you too have made her feel low."

  The sound of Mrs. Tomàs's broken speech, her tortured confession drum, drum, drummed into his thick skull. It was as if Justice Burns pounded his gavel. Amora had truly been abducted. Others had been abducted as well.

  How cruel Barrington must've seemed to Amora. This was worse than not holding her hand and comforting her when she miscarried.

  And it wasn't God's fault.

  Only Barrington's.

  Making his obstinate hip obey, he rushed to the threshold and turned the knob as he should've done minutes ago. Amora must forgive him. She had too.

  He thrust the door open. Out on the portico, his nostrils filled with the clean scent of rain. Oh, God. Give me the right words to say.

  He whipped his head to the left, then to the right toward the stables.

  Vacant.

  Amora had disappeared.

  Chapter Two: Fleeing the Pain

  Another roar of thunder sounded. The small sun escaped from behind a cloud and shone brightly as water poured from the heavens. Amora scanned the rare sight, a celestial war in the clouds. Something to behold from Papa's oak.

  The tree stood a few miles off on the far side of the orchards.

  When was the last time she'd climbed it? Maybe ten or twelve years ago. From its boughs, she'd first spied Barrington. He was rescuing his friend Gerald Miller from the wrath of some older boys. She knew then he'd grow up to defend his friends.

  Just not his wife.

  She wanted to cry, but she'd done that enough. Wasn't there enough rain trickling down her cheeks to suffice?

  Needing to be as close to Papa as possible, Amora trudged deeper into his orchards. Being amongst the Pippins, she almost made out Papa's laugh blending with the thunder, almost felt him leading her forward. Memories of apple picking with him, of singing about his oak covered her broken heart. "Papa, you loved me. Do you love me still?"

  The wind picked up chilling her face, tickling her chin. She breathed the fresh, sweet air in and out. Away from the house, Barrington's hoarse complaint of doesn't prove Amora was abducted could no longer be heard. What did he need, to find her dead at the monster's hands?

  She ripped off her gloves and let the water hit her palms. The rain didn't feel cold anymore. Swirling a pinkie and then an index finger around her palm, she painted the lines. If only her hand exposed a map, something to indicate where to go.

  The path couldn't lead to Mother or Barrington, anywhere her word wouldn't be believed. She knew that now.

/>   With arms outstretched, she savored the richness of the fresh air, the wet pines. The green fingers of bittercress plants waved, shedding light petals, kisses in the breeze. Pink-tinged flowers of anemones flopped upon her slippers. Water leaked onto her stockings. She plucked a leaf, rubbed it between her finger and thumb. It oozed sticky jade pigment but the paint washed away with the rain.

  The shower meant nothing. It wouldn't impede her love of this place. She was home on Tomàs land. Papa was so proud of the rich earth. Wouldn't his oak look glorious today, whipping its boughs in this storm?

  She yanked off her bonnet and let the rain kiss her countenance. Sprinting, far and fast, deeper into the orchard, she followed this true love, dancing upon the sloppy leaves squishing beneath her feet. Nature, the only god whose love was constant, called her home.

  A mile or two in the mud quickly passed, faster than counting the days hoping to feel secure within her marriage, or awaiting Mrs. Gretling's confirmation that enough months had passed to know Amora was increasing with Barrington's babe. Barrenness should be preferred to loss.

  Her low heart moaned. Her cold teeth chattered to the rhythm of the pianoforte playing in her mind.

  The weight of her bland redingote now sodden with water slowed her steps and trapped her arms. Nothing would trap her again. Not the expectations of her mother or the demands of being Barrington's perfect wife. Nothing mattered anymore. She shook free, leaving the coat to the mud.

  Thunder's percussion accompanied Haydn's Symphony, the last duet she played with Papa the night before he died. Oh, Papa. I'll always miss you. If only you were here.

  Her wet chignon began to unravel. The silver pins popped out, sending soggy tresses down her back. Amora didn't care. She took a few steps, then a few more up the ravine where the oak stood.

  "Papa!" She parted her lips, and yelled again at the top of her lungs. She drank the sky's nectar.