Ever His Bride (46 page)

“Hunter, I—”

He turned to her then, his face wintery and
the light gone from his eyes. “And I can no longer afford
you.”

“No longer . . .” Her heart paused in its
racing. “What do you mean?”

“Branson will be here momentarily to pick you
up. You will pack your things and be gone from Claybourne Manor in
the morning.”

“Gone, Hunter?” Her throat thickened and
failed in a sob. “And that’s it? Our irrevocable marriage?
Gone?”

“I gave you every warning—”

“You’re a coward, Hunter!” He had just
discharged her, simply and cleanly. Now he was looking through her,
all his connections efficiently severed. Shaking with anger and
nearly hobbled by the pain in her chest, Felicity held out the
magazine.

“You, above anyone, can do something to stop
this barbarous practice, Hunter. You should condemn it! Meath’s
part in this foul business is indefensible.”

He glanced away from her and went back to his
traffic-watching. They might have been strangers waiting for
separate hackneys.

“You’ll be amply provided for, Miss Mayfield.
Separation papers will be delivered to you as soon as you forward
your new address to my solicitor.”

“Separation.” Felicity put her hand to her
stomach, a shield for the child that might be growing there. “And
love counts for nothing, Hunter?”

He only nodded toward his carriage as it came
around the corner on Bow Street. “Branson’s here. You’ve become a
liability to me, Miss Mayfield,” he said flatly. “A risk I can no
longer sustain.”

He turned without a glance, and walked back
into the theater.

Her desolation pushed her backward against
the pillar and pinned her there, trembling. The pain in her chest
was so hot it burned away the tears before they got to her
eyes.

“You’re wrong, Hunter.” She had struck him a
terrible blow, but he was wrong. Her disappointment in him blazed
as fiercely as her loss.

If Hunter couldn’t stand up to Lord Meath, a
man who built his trade on the backs of helpless children like Andy
and Giles and Betts, then she could have nothing more to do with
him anyway, no matter how much she loved him. She would continue
her fight for the children as long as she could draw breath.

Branson hadn’t seen her yet, and he was
climbing the steps on the far side of the portico to take her back
home to Claybourne Manor.

Home?

She slipped into the shadows of Bow Street
and left the Royal Opera House. She had a new home now—with Gran
McGilly and the children at the Beggar’s Academy.

H
unter had stormed
back into the theater intending to find Meath and make a start at
repairing the damage. But his focus was blurred, and dangerous. The
image behind his eyes wasn’t Meath’s seething anger; it was his
wife’s look of absolute despair, her sea-misted eyes, her lower lip
caught fearlessly in her teeth: a too-recent ghost that would not
be shaken.

And now he sat starkly alone in his private
box, neither listening to the music nor plotting his next meeting
with Lord Meath. He was trying to control his quaking. How the
devil could he talk coherently and convincingly with Meath when his
hands were quavering, and his throat was closed off to all but the
shallowest breath?

She had betrayed him. He’d begun to believe
in her lies, in her gallant beliefs.
Save the child and you will
save the man.
Well, he didn’t need saving, damn it. He’d been
perfectly fine all these years. He would be so again. He would
bleed, but he would heal.

And now he’d had no choice but to rid himself
of her. He couldn’t risk the next headline, his low-born past
thrown up at him: pickpocket, thief, scoundrel. Old habits die
hard, they would say.

Already he would be years repairing his name
and his reputation. Protecting his clients had been his doctrine,
the bedrock of the Claybourne Exchange. He had survived personal
terrors and financial setbacks of all kinds, yet he’d always come
back stronger and wiser than ever. He would again this time.

He couldn’t let one impulsive young woman
tear down his empire. Not even if he loved her more than he loved
himself. Not even then. The fact had no bearing on the matter of
his fortune and his future.

He was in no mood to think, or to plot, least
of all to see Lord Meath. So he sat in the hissing darkness of the
theater, dismissing the scent of lavender, with the aching pressure
of her gloves still lodged against his heart. He rose before the
end of the final scene, unable to recall the name of the opera or
even a single melody, and made his way onto Bow Street to hire a
cab.

Branson met him at the portico.

“I waited two hours, Mr. Claybourne, sir, and
your missus didn’t show up.”

Hunter glanced around, half-expecting to see
her scowling from behind a pillar. “You didn’t take her home?”

“Never saw her, sir. I thought she’d decided
to stay.”

“That decision wasn’t hers to make.” Hunter
fought a groundless panic. It didn’t matter. Felicity Mayfield was
gone from his life; he would teach himself not to care. “She must
have found her own way home.”

“Yes sir.” But Branson was frowning.

Hunter rode all the way to Claybourne Manor,
having convinced himself that she had taken her own cab home just
to spite him. He expected to find her stalking the foyer with a
well-rehearsed diatribe against him and his breed. Heartless
magnate, purveyor of poverty, thief.

Let her come at him with her accusations. He
was ready for her. He would not bend. She was a pariah to him, and
nothing she could say would soften the truth or his determination
to be rid of her. It couldn’t possibly. This time the truth was
undeniable.

But she wasn’t in the foyer or in his
chamber, or hers. She hadn’t used her own room in since the night
he’d returned after the train accident, except to dress in when she
needed more light and a longer mirror. And now her chamber looked
as it had when they’d left it for the theater, the bed in disarray
from their lovemaking. He smoothed his hand across the rumpled
sheets. He’d caught her here in her dressing gown and had stripped
her of it. As ever, she was eager and inventive, and had wrapped
him in her selfless splendor. And afterward they had talked of
children—

Children.

“She’s not in the house, sir.” Branson stood
at the door alongside Mrs. Sweeney, both of them looking confused
and lost.

Mrs. Sweeney cuffed Branson. “You louts have
misplaced our girl!”

Branson started away. “I’ll go back to London
for her, sir. We can’t leave her to—”

“No, Branson.” The sooner the break was made,
the sooner his life and the house would return to normal. “Have
this room cleaned and closed up tomorrow,” he said abruptly. “Mrs.
Claybourne won’t be back.”

“Won’t—”

But Hunter dismissed their fallen faces with
a scowl and brushed past them into his own chamber.

The windows were open and the breeze tucked
itself in and out among the folds of the drapes. Felicity likened
fresh air to sleeping in the wild, and had promised to show him the
delights of the Lakes. That was impossible now, seemed a bleak and
desolate notion without her. He closed the window and drew the
drapes.

He’d find no sleep in this room tonight.

He made his way to his library and sat at his
desk, pen in hand, ready to devise a scheme that would bring Lord
Meath and his cohorts around. The man would need something of great
worth to make up for the loss of business. High profits and little
risk. He’d also have to pay for the loss of integrity that Meath
and the others were sure to suffer at the hands of the press, when
Felicity’s story made the
Times.

He hadn’t known of Meath’s investments in the
apprentice schools, but the truth didn’t matter now. Wouldn’t have
mattered then. It was simple commerce; he couldn’t let it
matter.

But he could wonder if Felicity was sleeping
tonight on a bench in Euston Station—if he would ever see her
again.

He had given her the power to ruin him and
she had wielded it with precision, even when she had promised she
wouldn’t. He had no choice but to take that power back from
her.

He set aside Lord Meath’s scheme and forced
his pen to write the words that would begin his separation from his
wife. The phrases swam in front of him. He blinked them clear, and
blotted the page where the ink now ran salty.

He would
not
weep for the woman. Her
sweetness had been most seductive; he had slipped his hand into
hers, had rested his heart inside hers, had raised his hopes and
renewed his dreams . . .

But he was nothing without his name and his
fortune.

And so he would learn to live without
her.

Felicity spent the night on a narrow bench in
the schoolroom, and awoke from a dream where Hunter loved her and
she was wildly contented, where a child slept in her arms and it
was his, and he was smiling down on them both with a love that
would endure any hardship.

And her arms still ached from wanting
him.

The impossible sweetness followed her through
the morning. The children had hugged her and begged for her
stories, and she had worn herself weary with their energy. She had
changed from her gown into a clean but tattered brown skirt and a
high-collared bodice, whose blue had long ago faded to gray. She
needed to return the expensive gown to Hunter before the lush black
satin was ruined by little handprints or stolen by hungry fingers.
And since the sewing parlor at Claybourne Manor was filled with
goods that actually belonged to the Beggar’s Academy, she would
need to make arrangements for their return.

And she was still wearing the pearl necklace
he had given her. Worth ten times the price of the Beggar’s
Academy, it was too precious to keep on the premises, and it would
only serve to remind her of
him
.

It seemed she had business at the Claybourne
Exchange, and the sooner done, the better. Felicity left the school
at noon with the gown and the pearls, and by the time she reached
Cornhill Street, her temper was heated to the boiling point. She’d
married an arrogant, hard-hearted man. Then she’d gone and fallen
in love with him. And now, she probably had his child tucked
beneath her heart.

The doorman smiled when he recognized her,
but raised his eyebrows at the reduced state of her clothing. “Good
afternoon, Mrs. Claybourne.”

“Miss Mayfield,” she corrected as she passed
him.

She kept up a strong head of steam as she
climbed the pristine staircase, for fear of losing the momentum she
would need when she met Hunter face-to-face.

She plowed through the outer office. “Good
afternoon, Tilson.” And threw open the doors of Hunter’s
office.

He was alone. Peering out the drape-darkened
window, his finger caught in the velvet folds.

“Hunter.” His name came too softly to her
lips, tasted bittersweet.

He turned his head: a glacial precipice in
motion, yet firmly rooted in the earth. She wanted to run to him,
but he looked monumentally unapproachable.

“Yes?” he said, no more interested than if
she were a client about to inquire into the state of her business
affairs. God forgive the man his coldness.

Felicity closed the door behind her and
stepped resolutely into the room.

“I’ve come to return the gown I wore last
night,” she said, draping the dress over a chairback.

“It’s yours, Miss Mayfield. Keep it.” His
voice was so relentlessly solid, it settled like a lead weight in
her chest.

“Then I leave you to burn it, Hunter.” She
bit back her tears as she withdrew the string of pearls from her
pocket, and let the strand clatter into a loose pile onto the
table. “These are yours, too.”

He turned away then, back to the window.
“Keep them. Sell them, if you wish. They mean nothing to me.

“They’ve meant a lot to me, Hunter, because
they were a gift from you, my husband. But I have no use for the
money or the pearls now. However, there are clothes and unfinished
projects in the sewing parlor at Claybourne Manor, that belong to
the academy—”

“Take the lot of it, Miss Mayfield.” He left
the window and went to his desk. “Strip the house bare, if it
pleases you.”

“I’ll have to arrange—”

“Speak with Branson about it.” He unlocked
the top drawer and drew out a sheaf of papers. “Anything else, Miss
Mayfield?”

She absorbed the smell of leather, paper, and
ink, the arid aroma of commerce, and she felt stronger for it, able
to see past some of her grief and into the business at hand.

The breaking of her heart away from his.

“I’m returning your name to you, Mr.
Claybourne.” She saw him pause in his paper-shuffling.