Ever His Bride (45 page)

“I love you, Hunter.”

His face was shadowed, lending an enigmatic
glint to his eyes. “And that, my dear, makes you the most
remarkable woman I have ever met.”

“For loving you?”

She was altogether certain that he loved her,
even if he couldn’t tell her so. It just wasn’t his way. But he’d
begun to court her as if she were the most important thing in his
life. He’d made a desk for her in his library; left her sweet
notes, and blush-making ones. She found fresh flowers in her shoes,
and a ready partner to walk the grounds in the evening and listen
to her plans for the knot garden and the herbarium.

“I am not loveable, Felicity. Ask anyone in
London.” He nodded in the direction of the three thousand other
people packed into the theater, as if they knew him and would
agree.

“Let them ask
me, Hunter.
I’m the
expert.”

Not so long ago, Hunter would have been
terrified by the thought; now it pleased him to his soul. She knew
him intimately, as no one ever had, and yet she loved him still. He
wanted to confess his heart to her, the love for her that teemed
there, would do it now, but he didn’t really know how to form such
an elemental thing into words. She was the electrifying tumult that
banged around in his chest; she had become his pulse and the
substance of his days. But he grew hopelessly tongue-tied whenever
he set out to explain himself to her. Yet she seemed to know
already, seemed to find some amusement in his hesitation, as if it
added to her estimation of him. Another secret she held against
him.

He prayed for her patience, and would have
swept her into his arms just then, but the first act of the blasted
opera seemed to be finished and the gaslights had begun their
annoying hissing toward brilliance.

“Well, I’m disappointed, Hunter! The woman
turned down the tenor and sent him on his way. Poor man, he must
feel awful.”

“He’s an incompetent fool.”

“Hunter! How can you say that about a man in
the throes of love?” She was frowning deeply, nearly pouting.

He had little patience for men, fictional or
otherwise, who didn’t know their own minds. He lifted his wife’s
fingers to his lips. “If the blighter really loved the woman, he’d
have simply offered her the choice between marriage and jail.”

“What a . . .” She looked startled for an
instant, then her entire face softened in a smile that spoke of
miracles.

He had tipped his heart toward her in the
space of a second, and it seemed to fill up and spill over again
immediately. “In fact, my love,” he said as she cupped his cheek
and whispered his name against his mouth, “I recommend it
highly.”

“Oh, Hunter, I love you.”

His heart hammered, and his breath caught up
in his throat. He kissed her softly, though he yearned to wrap her
in his arms and sing his love into her hair. But they weren’t
alone; the galleries above and the boxes on either side were thick
with people tonight. “We should take a tour of the lobby, love.
Before I make a fool of myself here in the box.”

She laughed quietly, and touched his mouth
with her fingers, hiding a secret from him, he was sure.

“Yes, we’ll wait till we get home, Hunter.
Some things are best said in private.”

Inflamed but in control of his passions,
Hunter led her from the box into the crowded lobby, exhilarated
from his near-confession. Another few moments alone with her and he
might have been on his knees, babbling love words like a poet gone
lunatic. Even now she was close enough to whisper to, her lovely
ear framed in wispy curls and inviting his mouth. And he wanted her
to know how much he cared, how much he loved her. “Felicity—”

“Look, Hunter, there’s Lady Oswin, calling me
over. Would you mind if I spoke with her?”

Hunter took her hand and kissed her wedding
band. “The woman makes my ears ache.”

“It’s probably about the academy. She’s very
enthusiastic. And she’s thinking of giving us a new coal
heater.”

“If I promise you two heaters, will you stay
here with me?”

“Hunter, you’re incorrigible.” Yet there she
was, with her fingers tucked into his waistcoat again, tugging at
him.

He didn’t give a fig for Lady Oswin; he
wanted to corner his wife and fill her with words of love. He could
see down the front of her bodice, where the sleek, black satin
draped precariously across the rise of her breasts, tempting him to
explore. And her eyes, flirting and ever faithful, tempting him to
love her all the more. But there would be time enough later, in the
private box and in the brougham, all the way home and for the rest
of his life.

“Certainly, my love.” He caressed the small
of her back and snuggled a kiss against her ear. “I’ll bring you a
champagne.”

She touched a blissful kiss to his cheek, and
he watched her glide through the crowd toward Lady Oswin.

Temptation. Yes, she was that. A temptation
to believe that nothing else mattered but her love for him, and the
home she’d made of her heart. Dear God, it was comfortable there,
and sheltered. He could look out onto her goodness and feel that
some of it was his. Her benevolence had become his conscience, his
penance, and it had begun to fit him very well.

A temptation to believe in redemption.

“Damn you to hell, Claybourne!”

Hunter turned from his reverie and found Lord
Meath at his elbow. The man looked apoplectic: red-jowled and
irrational. He had calmed Meath more than once when one of the
man’s unadvised investments had gone awry. What the devil could be
wrong now?

“Lord Meath. What is it?”

Meath only got redder. “Don’t act the damned
fool, Claybourne. It doesn’t become you.”

Hunter felt suddenly, inexplicably, shoved to
the edge of a towering cliff, and he was terrified. Meath’s
goodwill meant everything to him: legitimacy and the assurance that
his fortunes would thrive.

“Sir, you have me at a disadvantage—”

“I’ll bury you, Claybourne!” Sputtering in
his whispered rage, Meath yanked a folded magazine from his breast
pocket and waggled it in Hunter’s face. “And don’t tell me you know
nothing about it.”

Mercantile Weekly.
Hunter calmly took
the magazine, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he leafed
through it, page by page. “And what am I looking for, my lord?”

“Your wife’s handiwork, damn you!” Meath
slapped the next page.

“My wife—”

Hunter saw her name then—his own name, the
one he’d given to her.
Mrs. Hunter Claybourne
. His hands
went cold. He tried to keep a steady focus, but the letters only
blurred in his efforts, and he discovered himself a child again
unable to make sense of the scratchings. “I hesitate to say, Lord
Meath, that I don’t know what is contained in here.”

“‘The Tragedy of Workhouse Children?’ Can’t
you guess?” Meath hushed his voice and threw a brief glance around
them at the crowded lobby. “Half my fortune, Claybourne, and my
business, my very
legal
business—denounced as evil, and
slandered by your wife in a trade magazine! There for all the world
to see!”

The words in Felicity’s article focused and
then blazed past Hunter’s eyes as he read snatches of the piece.
The foulness. . . the wretched wraiths. . . the cruel masters. The
woman had spared no detail, and his fear reached up into his
throat. And there, in the list of the buyers and sellers of these
slop-trade goods, was the Harling Street Emporium—owned by Meath’s
vast holding company.

Damn it, Felicity! What is this?

“Seven irreplaceable orders canceled today
alone, Claybourne. Seven! Thousands and thousands of pounds gone
elsewhere!”

“My humblest apologies, sir.” He knew before
he’d said them that such words meant nothing to a man like Meath.
How could they? Where was the profit in apologies? He’d have felt
the same if his own name had been dragged through this particular
muck.

“Damn your worthless apologies, Claybourne!
My name has been irrevocably linked to workhouses, to labor
scandals! And all because of you! That’s the end of it! If you
can’t control your wife, I doubt you’re capable of maintaining
control as a Commissioner of Railways.”

“Sir.” Everything inside him hardened. A
roaring rushed into his ears, built up against his temples and
began to pound.

Damn you, Felicity!
She’d been nothing
but trouble to him from that moment in the sponging house. And he’d
walked right into it, blinded by her sunlight and by her reckless
promises. He gathered his focus and his resolve and fixed them both
on Meath.

“Sir—”

“Do you hear me, Claybourne?” The man was
still squawking, an insignificant parasite, preying on anything
that got in his way. Wives and children and reputations. And now he
was holding the name Hunter Claybourne in his fat, unscarred
hand.

“I do hear you, sir.” He could hear little
else. “I understand completely.”

“Good. Because I will block your election,
Claybourne! Your nomination will be pulled immediately. And you can
damn well expect a great migration from the Claybourne Exchange. As
you can see from your wife’s libelous misrepresentations, there are
others involved here, others affected—”

“Lord Meath, I—” But Hunter stopped himself.
He wouldn’t beg, though his guts had twisted up on themselves and
sweat ran down his back. He hadn’t begged since he was a boy, and
he wasn’t about to start again now. He would fix this with Meath
somehow, and with the others. But it wouldn’t come from his
begging. The fix would start elsewhere.

She had become a liability and he knew better
than any of them what to do with a liability.

“There’s your wife now, Claybourne. If you
know what’s good for you, you’ll keep her locked up. You’ll be
hearing from my solicitors.” Meath disappeared into the crowd.

Locked up, locked away? Yes, that would have
been the right choice from the beginning. It was what he had always
done with thieves and liars.

Trust me,
she had said.
Whisper
your secrets to me, Hunter and I will keep them. I love
you.

And so he had trusted her, unconditionally,
with everything that had ever been dear to him.

How easily she had betrayed him.

“Hunter?”

He turned sharply away from the hotly
familiar hand on his arm. He didn’t want to look at her, not yet.
He needed strength to stand against her and her all- deceiving
righteousness.

“Hunter, you look pale. What’s wrong?”

Felicity had missed him even in the short
minutes they’d been apart. She sought her husband’s eyes when he
finally turned; but they had never seemed so shadowed and
inaccessible, nor so stingingly fixed on hers. A chill poured off
him, coating her in icy fear and making her hug her wrap around her
shoulders.

“What’s happened, Hunter? Have you and Meath
quarreled?”

He seemed to lose focus for a moment, lifted
his hand and stumbled a step toward her, as if he had wrestled a
terrifying violence and had caught himself. She watched words form
on his lips and then disappear in disgust, as though they tasted
vile on his tongue.

“Hunter—”

“Come!” His deep voice shook with bottled
rage. He stalked away, toward the Bow Street entrance.

“Hunter!” A sinking dread crept over her, a
torn seam left unmended and now splitting wide. She hurried after
him, across the emptying lobby. He was already through the iron
gate and down the four steps of the deserted portico when she
reached the exit door. He was barking for his carriage when she
reached his side.

“Tell me what’s happened, Hunter. You’re
frightening me. Is there trouble at home? At the Exchange?”

“Trouble?” His face was granite and his eyes
as brittle as spun glass when he looked down at her. “It’s a bit
late for you to worry about that, Miss Mayfield.”

“What are you talking about?” She touched his
elbow and he shook it off with a wild gesture.

“Don’t!” He climbed back up the stairs to
stand beside one of the thick stone pillars, watching the street,
his arms gone rigid at his side.

Frightened to death by his cold anger, she
followed him up the steps. “Why are you so angry? What happened in
there?”

“It happened in
here,
Miss Mayfield.”
He brandished a tightly rolled magazine, then threw it backhanded
to the ground. It skidded across the portico and stuck beneath the
bars of the iron gate.

Suddenly fuming at his unwarranted hostility,
Felicity retrieved the magazine.

“You have no right to treat me this way,
Hunter, no matter what had happened between you and Lord Meath.”
She unrolled the cover as he stood his watch over the street. “The
Mercantile Weekly?
What is this? I’ve never heard of
it.”

“Liar.”

Furious and frightened, she took a step
toward him. “Hunter, I’ve never seen this magazine before.”

“Then who the hell is the Mrs. Hunter
Claybourne on page nine?”

Her hands began to shake as she found the
page, a blur of black ink and pulp white; “The Tragedy of—” This is
Dolan’s doing! He must have started another weekly.

“I don’t understand. It’s my workhouse
article, Hunter.”

His eyes were unyielding obsidian when he
turned to her. “And one of Meath’s most profitable businesses you
reviled, in your little broadside. And I’m the one who must pay for
your folly.” He stuck his fists into his pockets and paced to the
edge of the portico, dismissing her as he looked out onto the noisy
traffic.

The Commission! The endorsement of all his
achievements. Dear God, what she had done to him! “Hunter, I’m so
sorry to put you in this position! I didn’t know about Meath. He
wasn’t on the list. I wouldn’t have . . . I’m so sorry—”

He barked a laugh, but didn’t spare a look at
her. “Feeble words, those. ‘I’m sorry.’ I tried them myself—Meath
wouldn’t have them. He doesn’t trust me any longer. And I don’t
blame him. Finds my name and my reputation objectionable. He’s
taking his business elsewhere and slapping me with a liable suit.
Well, I can’t afford that, Miss Mayfield.”