Harlequin Historical February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Major's Wife\To Tempt a Viking\Mistress Masquerade (67 page)

‘Just before Marguerite's ball, dearest? How could I do that? I thought it was best for all the attention to be on your sister than on your distress over your late husband's scandal. Could you have concealed it? I doubt it. I had to prevent Mytchett declaring himself somehow, for I know you'd have accepted him in the excitement of the moment, only to regret it later.' To her credit, she did not add, as she could have done, that there would have been no need to take matters into her own hands if she could have obtained Elmer's attention. At that time, they had almost stopped discussing anything and certainly nothing personal or domestic, although she had tried. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing,' she whispered through her tears, ‘but I see now that my plan was flawed from the start. In the end, we were all hurt, weren't we?
Do
forgive me. I've missed your papa and his funny ways so much and I've never stopped loving him.'

The hairs on Annemarie's arms prickled as her mother voiced the same unsound scheme of getting a man to commit and then leaving him, which she, too, had thought of in her secret heart, except that Verne was no villain and had done nothing to deserve such shabby treatment. Nor would it be money he'd be left without, but her love, newly found and unconditional, a far more precious and rare commodity. How strange that their strategy had been so similar, and stranger still that they were doomed to failure. The startling news of Sir Richard's mistress had been a shock, but less than it might have been if their marriage had been as sweet as her relationship with Verne. That would have been unbearable. ‘Don't weep, Mama,' she said, weeping herself. ‘Please don't weep. If only we'd known. Could you not have sent us a message?'

‘I was ill for weeks, dearest, and terribly ashamed. I pleaded with Isabella not to say where I was until I'd had time to recover. I knew what you and papa would be thinking, that I didn't care about my loved ones, that I'd wrecked Marguerite's big day and that I'd stolen the man you loved.'

‘I did not love him, Mama. I didn't know what love was, then.'

Lady Hertford intervened. ‘I wanted to let you know she was safe, my dear, but I had to respect her wishes. I knew there would come a time.'

Lady Benistone looked fondly at her friend. ‘She and Francis have been Good Samaritans,' she said. ‘I could not have been better cared for.'

Annemarie's spontaneous admission that she now knew what it felt like to be in love was received by Verne with something like jubilation. In one respect, he thought it was a pity that it had taken such heartache within a family to expose the direction of her gentle heart. But such was the way love appeared. ‘Lady Hertford,' he said, ‘could you not assure Lady Benistone that her family would gladly receive her with open arms just as her daughter has done? You and Hart have showered her with kindness, nursed her back to health and brought her up here for safety. Mytchett can have no more interest in her now.'

‘Lord Verne,' said Lady Benistone, ‘I know you mean well, but I have stretched the generosity of my family too far. Too much time has passed for me to expect forgiveness from them. I've done too much damage by my foolishness. People talk. The scandal will take years to die down. As for thinking Sir Lionel will let matters rest where they are...well...he won't. It's a matter of pride. He'll make a nuisance of himself and my darling lord must not be any further humiliated or harassed than he has been already. Ragley Hall is safe. London isn't.'

On the last point, Annemarie was obliged to agree. Both Ragley Hall and the Hertfords
were
safe. No longer could she assume that the Marquess had designs on her mama's virtue. Sadly, she had been guilty of misjudging almost everyone involved in this heartbreaking episode. She had learned that her parents adored each other and that it had taken this to remind them of it.

The talking continued far into the evening with so much to tell, so many misconceptions to untangle, so many hurts to salve. Eventually, when stifled yawns made conversation difficult to follow, they went their separate ways although, for Annemarie, too much had emerged for her to let go of it easily in soothing sleep. No sooner had Samson and Evie been dismissed than she began a series of questions that soon began to sound more like protests. ‘You knew about Mama being here, didn't you? You knew before we set off. Lady Hertford told you, didn't she, and she had promised Mama not to betray her confidence. You could have told me, to spare me the shock.
Couldn't
you?'

‘Lady Hertford,' said Verne, lounging half-naked across the end of the bed, ‘promised not to tell your family. Well, she didn't. She told me instead. And what would
you
have done if I'd told you beforehand? You'd have dashed straight round to your family and told them. Wouldn't you?'

‘Of course I would. They...'

‘Which is exactly what Lady Benistone wanted to avoid. So.' He ducked as a sandal hurtled towards his head.

‘So don't be so damned
logical
!' she said crisply. ‘I can't stand it when you're logical at this time of the night. And I expect you knew about the mistress, too,
didn't
you? Don't prevaricate.'

‘I was not going to prevaricate. I did know, yes.' Turning the sandal over in his hands, he appeared not to be taking her question seriously enough. ‘Can't imagine how you keep these things on your feet. It looks more like a—'

‘I
thought
as much.' The second sandal flew, was caught and held against the other. ‘And you might put those
down
when I'm talking to you.'

Lazily, he placed them on the floor and then, without the slightest warning, swooped across the space and picked her up like a feather, falling back with her in his arms into the soft embrace of a very large easy chair. Trapping one of her arms behind him, he caught her other hand before she could use it as a lever. ‘All right, that's enough, my beauty. You're upset and angry, and you're quite entitled to be. But not with me. Be still now!'

Wearing only a fine silk nightgown, her loose hair half-covering her tear-stained face, she struggled against the indignity and the severity of his command, thinking that a sympathetic hearing would have been more welcome than reasoning, at this late hour. But she was held in an iron grip with tears of helplessness and relief rolling off the end of her chin. Eventually, she buried her face in the smooth warm skin of his chest as she had wanted to do all evening, sobbing out things she could not have said before. ‘Poor...poor Mama...suffered so much...and we didn't know. And...all for my sake...she's not well...so thin and sad. We must get her home, Jacques. She needs us and we need her.'

‘She'll need time to get used to the idea, sweetheart. This is as much a shock to her as it is to you, remember. She can't have known long that we were coming.'

‘I feel so...so
stupid
,' she whispered. ‘Why could I not...?'

‘Not what?'

‘Not have seen what a money-grabbing scoundrel the man was. And Sir Richard. What on
earth
was I thinking of not to know about...her? I've been so naïve, Jacques. And everyone laughing at my stupidity. And Mama and Cecily not telling me because they thought I was in love and not able to handle the truth. And I wasn't. I only wanted to be married, with a house, and children, and...'

‘Hush now. No more weeping. You can stop berating yourself. I dare say most women desire those things without knowing what love is. Most men, too. But if it's taken all this to show you how it really feels, then none of it was wasted, was it? Do you know how it feels now?'

The mass of black shining hair nodded below his chin and he felt the warmth of her lips upon his skin as she kissed his chest, sending vibrations tingling into his heart. ‘Good,' he whispered. ‘That's all right then.'

‘How did you find out....about her...the Mytchett woman?'

‘Barracks' talk. Soldiers have little to do but gossip and her husband had been one of them. I hear what goes on.'

‘I wish you'd told me.'

‘There was no need for you to know at the time. It certainly would not have done
my
cause any good to malign your late husband. Your mama had a reason for telling you. I didn't.'

‘What cause?'

‘To make you mine, my beauty. What else?' he said, stroking back a sheet of hair from her face. ‘I told you at our first meeting, but you were not listening.'

‘I
was
listening, but I assumed it was bravado. You came for the bureau.'

His deep groaning sigh made her lift away from his chest to look up at him, but when she saw the twitch of his mouth at the corners she sank back again. ‘Tch!' he said. ‘There's nothing for it, is there? I shall simply have to take an axe to that damned bureau before we can get it out of the reckoning. Can we establish here and now, my darling girl, that after my first glance at you that day, I decided that you were going to be mine and that the bureau was no more than an excuse to stay close? And if you need it any plainer than that, I intended there and then that the title of Lady Verne would suit you better than Lady Golding. Since that moment, I've been crazily in love with you. Truly. So can we now forget the bureau and its contents? Good grief...you're not weeping again, are you?'

‘Oh, Jacques,' she said, sitting up. ‘Doe. I'b dot weeping. But this was dot supposed to happen and dow my plan isn't going to work.'

‘Ah, the plan. Do you want to tell me about it?'

‘It's dot a very dice one.'

‘I gathered as much. Tell me anyway. I promise not to co-operate.'

‘Doe. I suppose I hoped you might dot. I was dot intending to fall in love with you, you see, and—'

‘No one
intends
to fall in love, sweetheart.'

‘No, I know. But I was intending
not
to fall in love with you.'

‘Oh, I see.'

‘And now I have. So I can't walk off and leave you, which is what I planned to do, without hurting myself very badly. And you were not supposed to fall in love with me for months.'

‘Months?' he exclaimed. ‘As long as that?'

‘Yes, by which time we'd have got the house up and running and you'd have invested a lot of money in it and in me, too, and you'd have been hurt and angry, and then I'd have been revenged for
my
hurts.'

‘And that was the plan? To say goodbye and go back to Montague Street or your house in Brighton?'

‘Well...yes.'

‘You and your mama are more alike than I thought. I have to say, my love, that as plans go, they don't come much dafter than that. Quite addle-brained, in fact. Was that really the best you could come up with? Eh?' Tipping her back again into his arms, he kissed her soundly until she cried to be released.

‘It's not going to work, is it?' she said, lamely, touching his lips with her fingertips. ‘Do you really want me to be your wife instead of your mistress, Jacques?'

‘Could you ever doubt it, sweetheart? Your plan never stood a chance. And as for this need for retribution, I think you may have to let it go. You cannot punish the whole of mankind....well, me anyway...for the sins of other people. What's done is done and one has to put it down to experience. I went along with the mistress thing because I could see from the beginning what that was all about. After all the resistance, it could only be about wanting my commitment and raising my expectations, and then the pleasure of ruining them. I could see your jealousy, too, sweetheart. That told me quite a lot.'

‘I'm ashamed, Jacques. I thought love would be sweet and comfortable, but it can be painful, can't it? I've never felt jealousy like that before. It was much worse than having Mama go off with that man. I felt humiliated by that, but it was nothing like the black despair I felt after the theatre débâcle. And I knew then that I adored you. Don't ever leave me, Jacques. Please. Don't hold this against me. I want to be your wife, but I don't deserve you.'

‘My tigress!' His hand slipped beneath the loose silk and found the soft fullness of her breast, holding it possessively as he bent to kiss her again, dispelling any lingering doubts about who deserved who most. In her lover's embrace, the heavy blanket of foreboding and uncertainty that had already begun to slip away now faded like a wintry fog, leaving her heart to overflow with a new lightness. Not knowing how, when, or even if she could safely readjust her plans for their future, she had kept all indications of her adoration concealed from him as far as she was able, not being as sure of his feelings as she would like to have been. Now, her doubts had flown. He loved her, wanted her and would be faithful to her. Of that she was sure. He had been waiting for her capitulation and who could blame him after all that defiance? His tigress, he had called her.

Even so, he refrained from teasing her about her earlier resistance for he knew of the reasons, and there was so much more to content them than the abolition of problems. His loving that night was careful, slow, and perfectly tailored to her needs, her overworked emotions, her readjustment to personal security and the relief of the reunion with her beloved mother. She did not reach a climax of the same previous intensity, but he knew by her sighs and caresses that her enjoyment was in no way diminished when there were untold years of loving to look forward to. Sleep overcame them long before the list of urgent topics could be discussed, most of them to do with Mama and her return to the family who needed her. But their last words before sleep, mumbled into hair and against warm moist skin, were of a more personal nature, all the more treasured for being withheld on so many other occasions. Liberated, Annemarie's sleep consoled her for all her foolishness while Verne's dreamless sleep was more like a reward for his confidence and tenacity.