A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal (36 page)

Then her face hardened. “You talk a pretty game,” she said. “I’ve never doubted that.”

“But you doubt me,” he said.

“You’ve no idea what it means to be poor. Without a penny to your name—your
affection
for me would be the first thing to go, I warrant.” A little noise escaped her, poisonous. “For all that it’s worth.”

He sat back, briefly speechless. “I suppose you’re right,” he said at length. “I’ve no idea what poverty means.” God knew he liked wealth very well, though. His mind shied at any thought of how he might support them—the notion of teaching music to the whey-faced daughters of the middling classes was laughable.

“But I would find a way,” he continued slowly. “God help me, but if it came to that, I would figure out something.” A million uncertainties could be balanced, couldn’t they, by a single certainty? “You and I …” he said, and then trailed off, unable quite to find the words to persuade her that he saw a hundred reasons for hope in her, and a thousand more for his future with her. These thoughts were new to him; they surprised him as much as they would have done her.

But now that they were unfurling, he found himself riveted by the revelation. Alone, before, he’d never had cause to think ahead, or taken any joy in imagining what the coming years might hold. It had all been today or tonight, the sick rush of immediate pleasures, the empty mornings afterward.

But she had brought a new temporality into his life. Now he thought about tomorrows.

Now, when he sat at the piano, he did not play music for the company the notes provided him. He played the music so she might hear it, and come a little closer to him as she listened.

With dawning amazement, he looked at her and realized that since she had come into his life, he had never once felt alone.

“I would figure out a way,” he said. “But it won’t come to that, Nell. Daughtry feels certain we’ll prevail. The christening spoon only aids us further.”

She looked away from him. Evidently this made no difference to her. Or perhaps it weakened his argument to admit that he’d no belief they would need to face impoverishment together.

He tried a different tack. “An annulment is a legal device. Not a secret plot I fomented against you.
Think
on it, Nell. When we met, you threatened to kill me. You spoke like a criminal. I knew nothing of you apart from your willingness to commit murder and your miraculous resemblance to a woman I very much dislike. Of course I inquired about ways to safeguard my future, in the event that you and I should fail to deal well together. I thought you—”

The glance she sent him glittered suspiciously. His breath caught. Were those tears in her eyes? “You thought me an animal,” she hissed. “Yes, that was very clear.”

The urge to take her in his arms was nearly undeniable. Only the suspicion of how little she would welcome it held him in his seat. “
Listen
to me,” he said. “I should have made clear to you that the marriage could be dissolved. I admit that my reasons were cowardly, and I beg your forgiveness for it. But you cannot behave as though my past actions tar the present.”

“You tell me,” she said, “why I should believe your words now, when I was wrong to believe them before.” She tipped up her chin, looking down her nose. “Tell me,” she said, “why I should put my faith in the claims of a man who takes pride in advertising that he cares for nobody’s good opinion. Such an accomplishment, St. Maur—tell me why it should recommend you!”

Her aim was true and her scorn sliced through him like a blade. “What do you think, then?” he said hoarsely. “That I would cast you back into the rookery? Is
that
what you think of me?”

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I think you lied because it was convenient for you. Because you knew that otherwise, I’d refuse to share your bed.”

He took a sharp breath. “That is the most
insulting
piece of vitriol I’ve ever—”

“What other explanation do you have?”

“You were skittish.” Christ, that did not sound convincing even to his own ears. He raked a hand through his hair, helpless, frustrated.

The coach slowed, the wheels thumping in a more regular pattern as they entered the flagstone paving of his mews.

“I’ll have my money,” she said at length. “And then”—a hitching breath interrupted her—”we’ll see who wants to end this marriage. An annulment can
work for a woman, too. Perhaps Daughtry will advise me on how to be rid of
you
!”

A cold laugh escaped him. Brilliant. This was bloody brilliant. Not six hours ago, she’d been giggling into his neck, and now she was plotting to leave him. “He’ll advise you of no such thing.”

She slammed her hand onto the seat. “Who are
you
to stop me!”

He leaned toward her. Anger he could match. Anger was far easier.
“Your husband, the Earl of Rushden.”

She stared at him. “And I am the countess,” she said faintly.

“Quite so,” he said. “No matter whom the court decides you to be, that will not change. I’ll still be Rushden, and you will be my wife. And if you think that does not give me every advantage in the world over you, then you’re more naive than I ever imagined.”

A pulse became visible in her throat. “I’m the last thing from naive,” she said. “I see you for what you are, now.”

“Oh? And so you think you cannot trust me? And yet,” he said, “from the moment you first stepped foot into my house, I might have done a thousand things to you far worse than ask you to marry me. So easily, Nell,
so easily
I could have misused you. You were nobody—nameless—threatening to kill a peer of the realm. My staff would not have helped you. The law would not have aided you. You
knew
this, once upon a time. You were not so naive then. But you stayed anyway—and why is that? Because you
did
trust me. You had faith that I wouldn’t abuse you. Did I betray that faith? Did I ever lift a hand to you or make you feel my power?”

Her face was losing color, her eyes widening. “What? I’m meant to admire you for not playing the devil?”

“No,” he said sharply. “You never admired me. But you counted on your faith in me, and you still do—even at this very moment, though you refuse to admit it. This coach in which you ride—this house to which you return—the locks on your bedroom doors—the very clothing on your body—they are
mine
. I could take them all away, or I could turn them against you; I could turn the locks and order the servants to forget your existence; I could do
anything I liked
. And yet I do not see you trembling for fear!”

“Maybe I should be,” she whispered.

“Then decide,” he bit out. “Which is it? Will you tremble? Am I a villain who deserves none of your trust? Or are you the villain, here—a coward grown too afraid to own your own feelings, though I have proved to you that I deserve your faith?”

The vehicle rocked to a stop. Silence pressed down between them.

He said,
“Which is it?”

Her lips parted, then folded into a mutinous line.

“Fine.” He sat back. “Very well. Let me remove the burden of cowardice from you. I’m glad to play the villain. You will
not
be leaving me, Cornelia St. Maur. I am going to keep you, whether you wish it or no.”

The door opened. Her eyes remained locked on his, her face a blank mask. She made no move to rise.

“Go ahead,” he said curtly. “Go into the house. You know now that I mean to keep you there. You have no choice in it.”

A shudder moved through her. Then she burst to her feet and slipped down the stairs. Simon waved
off the footman waiting to help him out and stared blankly at the spot where she’d sat.

The rage evaporated. It yielding on a sickening jolt to disgust.
The Earl of Rushden
. Quite right, he thought blackly. Never until this moment had he felt so akin to his predecessor. His own words might have come from old Rushden’s mouth.
You have no choice in it
.

Was this tyrannical act what she required from him? Did her long familiarity with bullies lead her to trust his threats more than his apologies? Would he do better never to mention love, and to speak instead of lust and possessiveness only?

God help him. He
did
love her. If she’d listened carefully enough, she would know that. He liked his wealth too well to give it up for anything less.

The humorless smile slipped away as he shut his eyes. After all, he was
not
like Rushden before him. He would never use his power to bend someone’s will.

But Nell was his
wife
. Whether or not she believed he meant to keep her made no difference. He
did
mean to keep her.

And if that made him like old Rushden, so be it. He was not letting her go.

That night, Nell woke to the sound of piano music—some soft, delicate melody so muffled by the walls that at first she thought she was still dreaming. Fairy music, she thought muzzily. Achingly sad, like the dirges old sailors sang when remembering the sea.

She lay adrift on it for minutes, grief seeping through her, until she had to know. To see his face as he played. She slipped off the bed and into the hallway.

Through the window at the end of the corridor she saw the full moon against a sky mottled with midnight
clouds. Down the wall, the stone profiles of busts froze in three-quarters profile, their bony noses and sculpted wigs casting strange shadows along the carpet.

The strains of music flitted down the hall like ghosts, drawing her toward the atrium.

In the eyes of the law, she was the mistress of this household. Tonight, it made no difference. She felt as though she were stealing through someone else’s home, breathless, terrified. Every shape in the dark caused her to flinch.

Nearly to the broad balcony, at the very last door, she found the music. Peering around the doorjamb, she saw Simon seated at the piano, his hands, pale in the moonlight, moving fluidly over the keys.

His back was to her. He hadn’t lit lamps or the candlestand at his elbow. She couldn’t see his face. But his posture as he played bespoke a man lost in music sad enough to poison a soul.

She’d never heard this piece before.

It made the other etude sound like a lullaby.

She lingered there a long minute, speared by the notes, riven by impulses she couldn’t obey: to walk over and touch him. To curl up and weep.

The music explained something to her that she didn’t wish to know. Deeper than the level of words, it told her of his pain. If he was lost in it, then he must be hurting as much as she.

What was she to do with such knowledge? It could not help her. It only made her ache more sharply. She’d come so near to giving him everything in her; to trusting him as she’d never trusted anybody—maybe not even herself. And all of it had been based on a promise that was false. He’d always known he could leave her if plans didn’t go as predicted. He’d even planned for it.

Now he said he wouldn’t leave her, but why not? Katherine’s enmity had made plain that they couldn’t count on an easy road to reclaiming her birthright. She might never have what was owed to Cornelia—in which case, nobody would blame Simon St. Maur for ridding himself of a penniless, gutter-bred wife.

The thoughts laid bare a hollow inside her blacker than any hunger she’d ever endured.

I deserve your faith
, he’d said.

But she was the one with everything to lose.

To stand here and long for him … to keep hoping for him when he’d already laid plans to arrange for her loss … It might truly kill her.

When the first tear fell, she took a long breath and gathered her skirts for the lonely walk back down the hall.

T
he next morning, Nell woke with a headache that only sharpened as the light grew stronger. She ordered her breakfast to be brought to her room, then picked at it listlessly as the clock in the hallway counted out the painfully slow march onward into the day.

Sylvie offered to accompany her for a walk. But the thought of being chased by journalists did not appeal. She did not want company at all. She felt too inclined to burst into tears.

Finally she took herself down to the library in search of distraction—braced, at every turn, to run into Simon. But the hallways were empty and so, too, the library. Inside, in the murky light shed by the cloudy sky without, the still air smelled of paper and old leather. She walked along the shelves, through a silence that seemed to thicken with every footstep. She grew strangely conscious of the accumulated words in the volumes all around her, the restless thoughts of men long dead, each soundlessly begging for attention.

“Any of them will do.”

She gasped and turned. Simon sat in a wing chair in the far corner, the white cravat at his throat catching what little light the room retained, cutting a precise and ghostly shape in the shadows.

Her mouth went dry. She made herself attend to his remark. “Am I disturbing you?”

He placed a bookmark in the volume in his lap and
retrieved a glass from the table beside him. Some quality in his movement—a cold, unhurried efficiency—set her heart to drumming. “My wife asks if she disturbs me,” he murmured. “How remarkable.”