The Heart Denied (27 page)

She sprang from her chair, and for a moment he thought banishment was in the offing. Instead she used his favorite ploy, crossing swiftly to the window to escape his perusal. "
No one
knows of it," she said in a stony voice. "At least, no one did. I've taken great pains to see to it."

"Why?" He took his feet off the stool, rose from the chair.

"Do you really think," Caroline scoffed, her back to him, "that I could possibly have made the two marriages I have, were it known to Whittingham and Horace that I was sibling to a
stableman
?"

"You might have been spared some suffering, had Lord Whittingham known," Thorne observed, slowly approaching her. "And Horace eventually learned the truth. Still, I doubt it would have mattered." He stopped just behind Caroline.

She moved to the next casement. "Indeed. And what makes you so certain they'd have married me despite my humble beginnings?"

Thorne stared at the silky tendrils grazing her nape. "I cannot be certain," he said quietly. "I only know it would not have stopped me."

* * *

Caroline drew a long breath to slow her rapid pulse. "How did you find me out?"

"There were clues all along. I just today put them together."

She turned to face him. "Why today?"

Thorne smiled. "I've spent a fair amount of time in the stables. The odor is unmistakable--and it lingers. I'd wager my stableman was let out the back entrance as I was let in the front."

Caroline tossed her head. "I should boot
you
out the back, this very minute, right on your bum."

"You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I, though?"

"And what would the servants say, seeing their mistress cast a nobleman out into the alley?"

"They would say 'good riddance' if they knew how you torment and abuse me!"

Thorne chuckled. "There are two sides to
that
coin, Mistress Sutherland." He sobered. "I'm told you and Hobbs had a heated discussion in the stables just before my wedding...that he struck you."

"I struck him first. Who told you?"

"Why did you strike him?"

"He insulted me."

"I see. And for that you paid him cash?"

She scowled. "Who the deuce was spying on me? Never mind, you won't tell. I paid him to pretend he and I were strangers."

"Yet today he was in your drawing-room."

"He was here to plead his case for my maid," she lied, her thoughts racing. How would Thorne react if she told him Toby had come to beg her help making peace with Gwynneth? For what reason, Caroline hadn't a clue.

"So, he's truly interested in Ashby! I'm pleasantly surprised."

"Nothing will come of it. Toby isn't a man to settle for one woman."

"Aye, he's proven that," Thorne agreed with an edge to his voice, but before Caroline could take issue with him went on to ask, "Your maiden name is Hobbs?"

Sighing, she tapped her foot. "Yes."

"You and Hobbs are paternal siblings, then."

"No, we shared only a mother. She gave my father's name to Tobias to avoid gossip. My father had been dead for some time before Toby was conceived. Mother made the mistake of confiding that to the vicar's wife, and thereafter in Birmingham, Toby was tormented for being a bastard."

"Ah. Perhaps that explains his combative attitude."

Hardly
, Caroline wanted to say. She shrugged.

"Gwynneth once mentioned that Hobbs' mother--your mother--was employed at Wycliffe Hall, some two decades ago."

"Yes." It was nearly a whisper. Caroline stopped tapping her foot.

"In what situation?"

She elevated her head slightly. "She was a chambermaid."

"And where were you?"

"I lived in Kettering at the time, with my mother's sister."

"Pennington's birthplace," Thorne murmured before going on to ask, "When did your mother leave my father's employ?"

"I was seven, perhaps eight years of age."

"Where did she go?"

Damnation, would his curiosity never be appeased? "First she came to collect me," Caroline said shortly. "Then 'twas off to Birmingham. Toby was born a few months later."

"So your mother was with child when she left Wycliffe Hall."

Caroline nodded, her heart beating so hard she feared Thorne would hear it. "Mother worked several years for a seamstress while I tended Toby. When he was old enough, we trotted off to school. I was probably seventeen, Toby nine or thereabouts, when Mother took him to Wycliffe Hall. There your father's steward kindly put him to work in the stables."

Thorne smiled. "How like Arthur. And you and your mother, where did you go then?"

"Mother returned to Birmingham. By that time I had done with school and was helping her with the piecework she brought home at night. With Toby gone, she and I opened a shop not far from our home. But I tired of the place, and Birmingham in general. I advertised for a situation." Caroline smiled without humor. "Which is why Lionel Stanford Hargrove, eleventh Earl of Whittingham, took me on as seamstress at Hargrove Hall--and two years later convinced me to marry him. Soon after we wed, he discovered my father was
not
a prosperous shipping merchant in Plymouth, that he was actually a deceased miner from Newcastle--and that there would be no inheritance. 'Twas then the perversion and the beatings commenced."

Caroline saw Thorne's mouth tighten in profile.

"Mother stayed on in Birmingham. I sent her money when I could. She died of consumption just two years ago."

"I'm sorry."

"You needn't be. Her death was a relief, she could barely draw breath toward the end." Caroline cocked her head. "Enough about me. You've yet to tell me why you've come today."

Turning to see her curious gaze, Thorne shrugged. "Perhaps I wanted the company of a woman who doesn't shut herself up like a hermit," he said quietly. "One who can talk
to
me, instead of
at
me, and who isn't so much inclined to speak of saints and feast days, Rosaries, the Mass, and sin...particularly sin." He chuckled, but without humor, his expression hardening before he looked away. "Especially as I seem, these days, to be at the brink of hell. I only wonder if I'll be pushed into it...or leap of my own will."

From the garden, a mockingbird pealed off several shrill, discordant notes.

"If the very pit of hell can tempt a man to leap," Caroline ventured softly, "chances are his present existence is already a sort of hell."

Thorne turned to look at her intently. "But what if that man, despairing of the hell behind him, takes the leap and finds he's entered an even worse hell?"

Caroline's gaze did not falter. "If he has already leapt from one hell, he can leap yet again from another."

"And into a third," Thorne murmured.

She shook her head. "Not necessarily. He generally has a choice. There is right...and there is left."

He smiled briefly. "I thought you were going to say 'wrong'. So, you don't believe a man can back himself into a corner."

"No. Nor can a woman." Caroline's own fleeting smile went unanswered as Thorne stared at her lips.

"My good friend Townsend," he said slowly, "believes I am already in the pit. And that if I but beckoned...you would follow."

His eyes met hers.

For a moment she forgot to breathe. Only a stupid woman could fail to comprehend his words, and only a silly one would pretend otherwise. She was neither.

"Thorne...are you asking me to be your paramour?"

She waited, barely hearing the mockingbird's song over the sound of her pounding heart...and then, from two blocks away, the bells of Saint James Church ringing the Angelus on the clear November air.

She read her own thoughts on Thorne's face, and silently cursed those tolling bells.

"I must go," he said.

She felt her head jerk in what passed for a nod. "Gilbert will show you out."

Flinching, she listened to Thorne's steps pound across the room and fade away down the hall.

The mockingbird, perched on the garden gate, tilted its head and looked at her with knowing eyes. "Yes, he is angry," she said softly, as if to the bird. "But not with me...though I think it will be some time before we see him again."

She knew Thorne was on the run again from his demons, knew that today they had almost caught up with him, indeed had very nearly shoved him into the pit he sensed yawning at his feet. She also knew that Townsend was right.

She would have followed.

Gwynneth glanced up from her embroidery. "I thought you'd gone out for the evening."

"I'm flattered you noticed. Yes, I was out. I've just had word from the palace. The invitation to Christmas at White Lodge has been rescinded."

"What?" Gwynneth dropped her work in her lap.

"Not to worry, you haven't fallen from the queen's favor. All invitations have been withdrawn. She won't be in residence at Richmond Park this Christmas, nor will any of her family."

"Her family." Gwynneth looked blank. "The king, and who else?"

"The prince. Young Frederick has been summoned to Court by His Majesty. It seems our future king has been up to some political maneuvering of his own, but his scheme was discovered before it came to fruition."

"What scheme?"

"Marriage to Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia."

"Good heavens!"

"The king had a similar reaction," Thorne said with a dry chuckle. "Frederick was landed without ceremony at Whitechapel quay and driven by hack, no less, to the palace--where he was received instead by the queen."

"No doubt she hoped to prepare him for the king's wrath," Gwynneth ventured, then glanced warily at Thorne. "So, you and I are to spend Christmas here? Perhaps Caroline would join us."

That startling thought made Thorne's tone firmer than he'd intended. "I'd like to be home for Christmas."

"But Christmas in London could be fun!"

"We'll make it fun at Wycliffe Hall, I promise. I've stayed away the last four Yuletides, but this year I feel less haunted by old ghosts. And since you've refused to see a doctor here in London, I want you to see Hodges as soon as we arrive home."

"For my stomach? 'Tis nothing, Thorne, I told you! Merely a case of nerves over life at Court."

"All the more reason to leave. I'd like to go in two or three days."

"Very well." Gwynneth took up her needlework with a long-suffering sigh. "You shall have your Christmas at Wycliffe Hall."

* * *

"Allow me to be the first to offer congratulations, Milady," John Hodges said. "Your husband will be a happy man today, happier still in six months or so."

Gwynneth's face slowly drained of color. "You...you cannot mean...?"

The doctor's smile faltered. "Aye, you and his lordship are to be parents-" He broke off at her strangled sound and snatched up a small basin. "Where
is
Lord Neville? Awaiting you in the coach?" He leaned over her, holding the basin under her chin.

"He's with his steward today."

"I should think he'd want to be with you for this visit."

Gwynneth stared at him. "I--I did not tell him I was coming today, and I only thought it was an upset stomach! My maid is in the coach."

Frowning, Hodges gave her hand a reassuring pat. "Hold the basin and take deep breaths while I fetch her."

Gwynneth's head spun. How could that single, brutal, selfish encounter with Hobbs turn into something as sacred as conception?
Do not panic
, she cried silently as she retched into the basin.
The child must be Thorne's, if only in his mind. Think!

She blotted her tears and then her mouth on her handkerchief. By the time Hodges produced her ecstatic maid, the solution had dawned. Gwynneth managed a trembling smile for them both.

"Oh, Milady, what blessed news! We must get ye into the coach and find his lordship."

"No!"

Gwynneth blushed hotly at the bewildered stares of her doctor and her maid. "No," she said more calmly. "I shall tell his lordship in due time. He must be prepared for such an announcement."

Hodges shook his head. "But Milady, he is more than prepared, he is-"

"I shall tell him in my own time," Gwynneth cut in sharply, "and in my own way." Fear brought anger; anger brought strength and resolve. "Give me your vow, each of you, that you will say nothing to
anyone
."

"Very well, my lady, I'll keep word of your good fortune under my hat until I hear it from your husband or until you tell me the secret is out." Hodges, accustomed to the whimsy and changing moods of expectant females, assumed the bland manner of professionalism. The maid looked dubious.

"Byrnes?" Gwynneth arched her brow.

"Aye, Milady," the woman agreed with obvious reluctance. "I'll keep mum 'til ye give the word."

"You had better, your situation depends upon it," Gwynneth snapped, then gazed into the doctor's eyes with all the warmth she could muster.

"For the present, John, let us say I have a nervous stomach, for which you have prescribed such things as soda bread and peppermint tea--which are all I can tolerate these days at any rate." She made her smile rueful and charming, and saw by the doctor's suddenly ruddy cheeks that she'd successfully drawn him into collusion.

He gently cleared his throat. "Aye, Milady, you do indeed have a nervous stomach. Soda bread and peppermint tea are my very recommendations."

Her smile turned radiant, the doctor's cheeks more rosy.

"Come Byrnes, I've much to do."

Throughout the coach ride back to Wycliffe Hall, Gwynneth mentally steeled herself to use a talent she had never cultivated. And though she despised the very notion, it would mean survival and security for herself and her unborn--and would after all involve only her husband. Her mate in the eyes of God.

You will do it
, she told herself firmly. As repugnant and humiliating as it would be, she must seduce Thorne.

The sooner, the better.

* * *

"What the deuce...?" Thorne squinted into the shadows. What he saw there made him spring out of bed, forgetting his own nakedness. His eyes pierced the gloom.

The diaphanous form moved slowly toward him. It had nearly reached the open curtains of the dividing arch when the firelight struck its face.

"Gwynneth!" He halted, baffled.

"Oh, Thorne." Her voice broke as she ran to him like some nude nymph from the wood. "You
are
here! I dreamt...oh, 'twas horrid!" She threw herself against him and shuddered.

He clasped her to him out of mere reflex, nor did his body respond as he would have feared, despite Gwynneth's near-nakedness and his own lack of clothing.

He relaxed then, and held her as she wept. She clung to him as her tears abated, only tightening her hold when he tried to set her away.

"Sshhh," he soothed her, then lifted her and carried her to the bed, where the warmth of his body still lingered. He covered her, then donned his dressing gown and secured it, all the while discreetly perusing his wife's body through a transparent rose-colored shift and wrapper he'd never seen. She might have been carved from marble if not for the patch of coppery curls amid all that milk-white flesh. He could swear her coral-tipped breasts had grown larger. A hollow sadness overcame him as he realized that despite her ripening femininity, the sight of Gwynneth's body no longer stirred his own.

He sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed Gwynneth's fevered brow. "You dreamt I wasn't here?"

"Yes." She sniffled piteously. "You'd gone away. You can't imagine how frightened and how alone I felt...because that hideous man Lord
Whittingham
had come to stay!" Shivering, she hugged herself, her breasts pressing together in wanton fullness.

Thorne chuckled, albeit grimly. "That was no dream, my lady, 'twas a nightmare. But Lord Whittingham is at least a half-day's ride away, and I am very much here."

"Yes, you are." Her eyes fluttered downward; he heard her swallow. "I dare not go back to my chambers, I have foolishly risked a chill already in coming here so...so little dressed. But come, husband." Her eyes met his briefly, shyly, before closing again. 'Tis your bed and I am your wife, you needn't sleep elsewhere."

He waited for her to pull the covers to her chin, but she only lay still with her eyes shut tight.

He slipped the belt of his dressing gown, shed the garment at the other side of the bed, and slid in beside her.

* * *

As the mattress moved beneath Thorne's weight, Gwynneth's skin fairly tingled. She told herself it must be fear. She recalled Thorne's caress as sinfully pleasant, but fresher in her mind was the brutal touch of his stable master.

She prayed for strength, for endurance. Finishing, she heard her husband's breathing--deep, slow, and regular, it came from where he remained, on the far side of his wide bed.

He was asleep.

She brushed away sudden tears. She'd no notion what to do now. No doubt Thorne was tired, she'd awakened him in the middle of the night. Come morning, he'd see her lying in his bed with her feminine charms all but laid bare--for even if she had to freeze all night with those accursed windows open, she would not cover herself.

* * *

Drowsing at the blush of dawn, Gwynneth became aware of a warmth and comfort she had lacked throughout the night. Her eyes fluttered open to see woolen blankets piled atop her. The draperies were parted, the shutters open, but the sashes were closed and latched. Fragrant applewood burned steadily in the grate.

Thorne was nowhere in sight.

* * *

Bridey entered the kitchen, where Hillary was already pumping the bellows at the huge hearth. The old cook lumbered into the larder, humming to herself, then stood still, frowning, and shook her head. Twice she backtracked to the kitchen and looked about, then headed to the larder again.

"By the saints," she said, pique in her voice, "I left fried chitterlings in a bowl here, covered in cheesecloth...so where's it gotten to?"

"What's going on, missus?" Hillary called out.

"More like what's going
out
...
food
is what's going out 'round here, right out of the kitchen...what's going
on
is
thieving
!"

"The deuce ye say!" Hillary gasped, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

"Aye, ye
should
be covering such a foul hole," the cook scolded, wagging a finger.

Hillary ignored the lecture. "But thieving, missus? Who'd be a-thieving in a God-fearing house such as this?"

"Nobody," Susan contended, coming from the creamery. "Not a soul within would steal from this larder."

Bridey's old eyes flashed. "Then, 'tis a soul without."

"What? Who'd come creeping in the night for our scraps?" Susan demanded with a chuckle.

"Scraps my arse!" Now the cook covered her own mouth. "Well, pardon an old lady for getting her dander up," she sputtered at the giggling maids, "but there's more than scraps disappearing from 'neath our noses! A thigh here, a wing there. A keg of cider a week past, two jars of preserves and a Cornish hen since. And speaking of hens, the laying hens have been a mite stingy of late--could be there's more than one person gathering eggs! This morn 'tis chitterlings...and the bloomin' crock besides! And what of my cayenne pepper? That's the first thing turned up missing."

Susan hooted with laughter. "That box of cayenne was missing long before all this food started to disappear! If our thief made meals off
that
, then I say he deserves whatever he can find!"

"Well, lass, why don't ye just make up a basket for the little villain?" the cook huffed, hands on her ample hips. "Whilst ye're at it, tie a pretty ribbon on it and meet him at the back door to save him a step or two!"

"Now, missus, I was only having a little fun. But how can we bag the scoundrel without laying low all night on watch?"

"I've held off saying anything to Her Royal Prissiness in there," Bridey mumbled, nodding toward Priscilla Carswell's office. "But I suppose there's no help for it now, I reckon we'll be bolting the doors this day hence." She shuffled off toward the great hall, shaking her head.

"Who do ye think it is?" Hillary stage-whispered to Susan.

"Deuced if
I
know," Susan replied in kind. Hand over yon' butter mold."

Hillary passed it to her, then attacked the stone basin with coarse ashes and a brush. "Well I don't envy the pitiful wretch if her ladyship gets a hold of him. She'll have him wearing a hair shirt and saying Hail Marys for a year!"

"Hush now, we've work to be about." But Susan's twitching mouth and twinkling eyes gave her away.

* * *

Arthur brought a tray of tea and cross buns to the worktable in his kitchen. "Cook's ailing," he explained.

"Ah," Thorne said in a wry voice. "I thought perhaps you were priming my pump."

"No sense pumping a dry well." Arthur pretended not to notice Thorne's glare. "How fares her ladyship?"

"Generally, or particularly?...now that you're pumping."