by Lynne Barron
The last thought to skitter through her mind as she cried herself to sleep was a fervent wish that she’d never wished to be wicked. She just wasn’t cut out for it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Come, Bentley, it can’t be as bad as all that.”
Jack looked up from the tumbler of whiskey in his hands to find Easton regarding him with unconcealed concern. He ought to be concerned. Hell, Jack was concerned. He was drowning his sorrows alone at a table tucked into the dim corner of Lady Marley’s card room. In the distance he could hear the sounds of an orchestra playing in the ballroom down the hall and laughter and conversation raised above it.
Somewhere in that ballroom his wife was dancing with some gentleman or other, working her magic, seeing that his family was invited to all the best balls, dinners and picnics that would round out the end of the Season.
“I’ve made a bloody mess of it,” he admitted before downing the contents of his glass in one long, fiery swallow. “Ruined my marriage before it even began.”
Easton made no reply, merely sat down across form him and waited with his customary patience.
“I convinced her I wanted a proper lady for a wife,” Jack said. “And that’s just what I’ve gotten. The too perfect, too damn proper Lady Bentley.”
“And that’s a problem because?”
“Because Olivia isn’t that lady. She’s sassy and curious and stubborn.”
“Are we talking about the same lady?” Easton asked with a chuckle. “My cousin, the shy little lady with a warm heart who rarely nay-says anyone?”
“Olivia is so much more than that,” he growled in response. “Or she was until I lost my head in the stables and lambasted her for something that wasn’t her doing at all, until I told her I’d had every intention of marrying her long before I even knew her.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Easton asked. “You’ve known Olivia since she was a girl. And what does your folly in the stables with Elizabeth have to do with the muck you’ve made of your marriage?”
“Everything,” he muttered, not bothering to explain which folly in the stables he’d been referring to. “It all started that day. Did you know that your aunt set a trap for me that day?”
“Aunt Hastings?”
“The one.” Jack ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “She thought to save her daughter from my dastardly clutches. I don’t know how she lured Elizabeth to the stables. But it wasn’t happenstance that we were found together.”
“Why would she think Olivia needed saving from you?”
Jack felt heat wash over his cheeks and ducked his head.
“She was a child,” Easton grumbled.
“She was sixteen, nearly seventeen,” Jack argued. “Nothing happened between us but you saw how she followed me about. Hell, you teased me unmercifully. I felt like the lowest cur lusting after your cousin.”
“All those years ago,” Simon murmured. “You wanted her even then.”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Jack hesitated, not at all certain he wanted to admit the entirety of his idiocy to his wife’s cousin.
“You want her,” Easton said. “She loves you. Sounds like a match made in heaven.”
“It’s bloody hell,” Jack replied warily. “She may have loved me once, but no longer. I made damn sure of that. Not only does she not love me, she doesn’t even want to want me.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“We haven’t…not since our wedding night…she won’t…ah, hell. She doesn’t want me in her bed.” It hurt to say the words aloud, to admit them to his closest friend and to himself.
“Olivia has barred you from her bed?” Easton asked in surprise.
“Of course not. She’s the perfect wife. She’d no more keep me from her bed than she’d argue with me over when to return to Sedgefield or whether she’s to be called Lady Bentley or Mrs. Bentley.”
“She has a choice?”
“Apparently.”
“And she’s chosen Lady Bentley and that bothers you.”
“It’s not her choice that bothers me,” he corrected. “It’s the fact that she didn’t make it. She allowed me to make it. Or rather when I voiced no opinion she made the choice for Justine’s sake, because she thinks I married her to raise my daughter high.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No. Yes. I thought I wanted a proper wife and mother for my daughter, one with the right connections. And I did. What father wouldn’t? But then I got to know Olivia, to really know her, and now I don’t want that lady at all.”
“Let me see if I understand you,” Easton replied, his voice laced with unmistakable irony. “You married my cousin, the daughter of a peer of the realm, a woman who was raised from the cradle to be a lady, and now you are complaining because she is a lady?”
“I’m not complaining,” he groused. “What do I have to complain about?”
“You tell me.”
“Olivia never argues with me,” he replied. “She never loses her temper. She spends every day making plans for Justine’s future, talking endlessly about schools and desirable friends and the bloody marriage pool. She takes my stepmother around with her every afternoon to make calls, to introduce her to the right ladies. Do you know she hosted a dinner last night for gentlemen who might want to contract with the mining company for ore?”
“It sounds to me like you’ve found the perfect wife,” Easton replied with a wry smile.
“She welcomed me to her bed and then tried to hide her passion, clutching at the bedcovers instead of me,” Jack continued doggedly. “She didn’t ask me for the dirty words. She certainly didn’t give the words to me. She smiles that damn countess smile all day long and wishes me a pleasant sleep each night.”
“I’m not sure I want to know the significance of any of that,” Easton muttered.
“She is the perfect wife. But I don’t want her to be perfect,” Jack growled. “I just want her to be happy.”
“And you don’t believe she is?”
“Hell no, she isn’t happy. I’ve made her miserable. Every bloody thing she told me she wanted, needed, I’ve stripped from her.”
“Such as?”
“Her freedom. Somebody promised her freedom and I took it from her. A house…no, a home. And I’ve got her living in a bloody cramped little space where the children can’t run about because they’ll knock over one of a million baubles.”
“I’ve wondered why you don’t reside at Palmerton House.”
“In that mausoleum? Livy hates that house. I thought to hurry back to my estate but I’m afraid she’ll simply disappear in the country. Without her family to amuse her she’ll never laugh again. So we stay in Town, but she’s so busy opening doors to my family that she’s given up finding a home for us. She’s even given up her violin lessons.”
“Olivia was learning to play the violin?”
“She wanted a pretty little curricle to tool about Town in so I bought her one. But she just smiled and said Lady Bentley could hardly be seen whipping through the streets.”
“You bought Olivia a curricle?”
“She wanted to gamble all night. Instead we attend one ton entertainment after another where she can cram my father down every gentleman’s starched neck cloth, finagle my stepmother invitations to every garden party and pepper her conversations with references of her lovely stepdaughter who will make some lucky man a wonderful wife someday.”
“Why don’t you just tell her to cease and desist already?” Easton asked.
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Jack replied. “Olivia only smiles that damn smile that isn’t a smile at all and reminds me that this is why I married her.”
“What rot. Why would she think such a thing?”
“She believes that she trapped me into a marriage in which I will never have what I most want and she must make up for it.”
“What does she think you mos
t want?”
Jack looked away, regretting he’d allowed himself to so much as hint at the truth. If Easton didn’t know, he could not enlighten him. It was not his secret to tell, after all.
“Children?” Easton finally answered his own question. “You want children, a son. And Olivia is unable to bear you one. Did you not know before you married her?”
“Of course I knew,” he muttered indignantly. “Olivia would hardly marry me with that secret between us.”
“Then why does she feel she must make it up to you? You chose her knowing of her barren state.”
“Actually, the choice was taken from me when Johnston opened that carriage door.”
“And you only found out after…”
“After I’d offered for her,” he confirmed. “Olivia only told me after I’d spelled out what sort of wife I wanted, how I’d planned to marry her as soon as I heard she’d been widowed, how I’d mistakenly held her responsible for my marriage to Elizabeth.”
“You have made a bloody mess of things,” his friend said, his voice rusty.
“All she wanted was a bit of adventure.” Jack poured himself another glass of whiskey. “Affection and passion and dark alcoves. But she won’t allow herself those things now. I’ve not even attempted to visit her bed since our wedding night. I can’t forget the way she struggled not to respond to my touch, the way she turned from me afterward, the way she cried silent tears into her pillow.”
“Bloody hell.” Simon grabbed the whiskey decanter, splashed two fingers into his glass.
“She’s hidden her true self away from me. I’m afraid I’ll never get her back.”
They sat in together, silently getting drunk, until Easton’s wife found them an hour later.
“My lord, I believe I am ready to return home,” Beatrice called out cheerfully as she rounded the table to lay one gloved hand on her husband’s shoulder.
“Yes, my love,” Easton answered, rising unsteadily to his feet.
“Are you foxed?” she asked with a giggle.
“It is entirely possible,” her husband agreed, spacing his words precisely in the way that drunk men do.
“Bentley, shame on you.” Beatrice waved one finger at him as if he were a naughty child. “How do you intend to see your wife home if you can’t see two feet in front of you?”
“I could only be so lucky as to have my wife two feet in front of me,” he replied as he staggered to his feet.
Beatrice dropped both her hand and her eyes and Jack realized she knew. Olivia had told her sister that he did not visit her bed, that she did not want him there. Rage and humiliation rushed over him in a wave of searing heat, nearly toppling him as he lurched back, his legs hitting the chair behind him and sending it sailing across the floor to crash into the wall.
“Steady there, Bentley,” Easton said with a chuckle, blind to the danger written across his friend’s face.
Not so his wife. “Don’t do anything you will regret,” Beatrice warned as Jack pivoted toward the door and the ballroom beyond.
“What’s got into him?”
Jack heard Easton’s question, missed whatever reply his wife made. He walked as slowly and carefully as he could manage, circling card tables and dodging around loitering gentlemen until he was in the wide hall that ran the width of Lady Marley’s Mayfair mansion.
Jealousy coiled low in his belly when he spotted his wife standing just inside the ballroom surrounded by pretty boys and distinguished gentlemen and one decrepit old duke. He raked his gaze over her, taking in the pale-blue gown she wore with its square neckline and wide gray ribbon cinched around her waist. Her skirts hugged her round hips before flaring out around her long legs.
Her hair was swept away from her face and held back by a strand of pearls that wound through the curls piled atop her head and dangled down along the back of her neck before circling around and around the slender column. The end of the long strand dipped into the shadowy valley between her breasts. More than one man’s eyes were riveted to that strand of pearls.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Jack mumbled as he pushed his way between them to stand before Olivia.
“Mr. Bentley,” she greeted, that damn smile gracing her lush lips. “I believe you are acquainted with the Duke of Ridgeway and his grandson Lord Belmont. This worthy gentleman is Lord Casterbury…”
But Jack was no longer listening, had ceased hearing her words through the blood roaring in his head.
“Belmont?” he barked.
“At your service,” the blond boy replied with a dimpled smile and a slight nod.
“Cocky little shit,” Jack muttered.
Olivia sucked in a surprised breath, her gloved hands fluttering about before falling to disappear into her skirts.
“I beg your pardon?” Belmont asked, his smile barely slipping.
“I believe he said he’s having a coughing fit,” the Duke of Ridgeway bellowed.
“My husband has caught a terrible cold.” Olivia latched on to the explanation. “I’d best get him home to bed.”
“Hah, as if you’ve any idea where my bed is,” Jack growled.
“I…what?” Olivia blinked in confusion, or perhaps shock.
“So this is the boy you were to marry?” he demanded with a nod at the too handsome young man who watched him with a lopsided smile, his pale-blue eyes twinkling. “He might have been a better choice.”
“Stop this,” she hissed, taking one small step toward him.
“He’s likely too young to know what he’s missing,” Jack continued relentlessly, ignoring the jab of his conscience.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Belmont argued so jovially that Jack turned to glare at him. “I’m not so young that I can’t appreciate the plum that nearly fell into my hands.”
“Plum?” Olivia repeated, her eyes narrowing as she pivoted to face the young man who might have been her husband. “Did you just call me a plum?”
Her haughty disdain accomplished what Jack’s anger had not. Belmont stepped back, the smile falling from his lips.
“I’ll thank you to refrain from comparing me to fruit,” she told the boy, her voice dripping scorn. “And furthermore, there was never, never any danger of my falling into your soft, pale hands.”
“She’s a peach,” Jack growled as lust hit him square in the belly and sunk deep into his groin. “Luscious and juicy and ripe.”
She spun around and shot him a withering scowl. As he watched two bright spots of color appeared on his wife’s otherwise pale cheeks. Her eyes took on a fierce light, glittering silver, as she glared at him. The strand of pearls shook as she sucked in a stuttering breath that pushed her breasts up, up, up.
“There she is,” he said, hope and anticipation rushing through him.
“There who is?” Belmont asked.
Olivia made a concerted effort to rein in her temper. Jack could see it in the grimace that he supposed was meant to be a smile, in the flare of her nostrils, in the trembling of her body as she expelled a soft, hissing breath.
“Do you gentlemen know that my wife, Lady Bentley is possessed of a remarkable temper?” he asked.
His question was met with laughter and denials all around. Jack paid the gentlemen no mind, his attention focused on his wife whose mouth had dropped open.
“Oh yes, quite remarkable,” he insisted. “She’s got quite a mouth on her, my wife. I never know what’s going to come out of it.”
“If you gentlemen will excuse us.” Olivia dipped a quick curtsy, her hands clenched in her skirts. “I believe Mr. Bentley has taken a fever. He’s quite insensible.”
“Quite foxed more like,” the Duke of Ridgeway corrected in his booming voice.
“Or what she might do with it,” Jack continued, ignoring her attempt to smooth things over. He didn’t want smooth. He wanted bumpy and wild and unpredictable. He wanted sassy and carnal and…
“Improper,” he said, undaunted by the sudden silence that surrounded them. “Lady Ben
tley is an improper wife.”
“Jack,” Olivia warned as she took another step toward him, her chin jutting in the air.
“She only pretends to be London’s Darling.” Jack matched her step, took another and another until he was towering over her. “In truth she’s a wicked woman with a penchant for carriage rides and tall towers. Sometimes she even leaves off her—”
Olivia smacked a hand over his mouth, then added the other just to make sure she’d silenced him. Her gloves were cool, just as they’d been the night she’d seduced him senseless in her carriage.
She looked up at him with some unknown emotion shining in her eyes and her forehead wrinkling.
Jack placed his hands on her waist, felt her shiver at the touch.
“I am going to remove my hands,” she whispered so softly he had to strain to hear her. “And when I do you will apologize to these gentlemen. Then we are going to quickly and quietly remove ourselves from this gathering before you make even more of an ass of yourself.”
With that she removed her hands, dropped into a flawless curtsy, and without a word strode through the open doors and disappeared down the hall.
“My apologies, gentlemen,” Jack muttered, feeling like the chastised boy he was.
“We’ve all been there,” the Duke of Ridgeway replied with a grin that showed remarkably straight white teeth. “I can’t say as I ever compared my duchess to a piece of fruit, though.”
“Actually that was me, Your Grace,” Belmont reminded his grandfather before meeting Jack’s bleary gaze. “Please accept my sincerest apology, Mr. Bentley.”
Jack nodded once.
“You’d best be after your lady,” the duke suggested. “Before she goes running home to her mother.”
“Not bloody likely,” he replied before turning to follow in his wife’s angry wake, a grin tugging at his lips.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What were you thinking?” Olivia demanded the moment her husband’s head cleared the door to their carriage.