Autumn Rain (32 page)

He heard her, for she shouted for him as she rode up, and he came to the door, totally unprepared for what he saw. She was pale, disheveled, her wet hair dripping, her eyes wild.

"What the—?" He stepped forward to dismount her, but she pulled Mignon back.

"I have to know, Luce!" she cried hysterically. "Did Arthur ask you to do this? Did Arthur ask you to get a babe of me?"

"It isn't what you think, Nell!" Again he moved toward her, and again Mignon backed away.

"Tell me, Luce!"

"Yes, but—"

He lunged for her, catching her reins, but before he could stop her, she'd raised her whip. She brought it down with all the force she could muster, cutting open his nose, striking him again and again, marking his cheek, screaming at him that he'd used her and that she hated him for it. He had to close his eyes and duck. Grabbing blindly, he managed to wrest the whip from her hand, nearly unseating her. But she kicked at him, then kicked Mignon hard. The horse, unused to the violence, bolted.

He was on foot, but he ran after her, shouting for her to stop, shouting that she didn't know the whole, but the wind and rain seemed to carry his words away. Blood dripped from his nose and cheek, and when he ran his hand over them, he could see his red, wet palm.

She rode as though hell pursued her, this time taking the road, and there was no way to catch her, no way to explain. So the old man had told her, casting him in the worst possible role. He felt sick, as though his stomach had knotted and lay like lead within. His mind working feverishly, he knew he had to see her before something terrible happened. He did not think she could stand Charley and this.

He turned and walked back to Langston Park to get his horse. If he had to kill Kingsley, he was going to see her.

"Yer lordship'll take yer death," a stable boy told him, but he didn't care. Rather than waiting for someone to do it, he saddled his big bay himself. And as he turned down the road toward Stoneleigh, he was afraid. Not a praying man, he nonetheless begged the Almighty not to let her do anything rash.

Two mounted men were waiting for her, and between them, they boxed her horse. One leaned to take her reins, the other steadied her. Neither knew what to expect for Lord Kingsley had told them that her mind had snapped, that her grief for Charles had finally taken its toll. But she did not resist, and when they reached the yard, she slid numbly to the ground.

Under Mrs. Peake's cold stare, she was carried upstairs, where Mary chafed her cold hands, stripped her wet clothes, and put her to bed. She did not even protest when Agnes brought her toddy. She wanted to be insensate now, she wanted to forget what a fool she had been. Her gorge rose, and she was afraid she was going to be sick again, but somehow she managed to swallow and keep it down.

Too miserable for speech, she drew up her knees and rolled into a ball, kneeling beneath the covers. She wanted to cry, to rid herself of the wellspring of bitterness inside, but she could not. She felt used, betrayed, and worthless, an empty shell. Her love for Longford had been cheapened by the knowledge that Arthur had had him breed her like a mare.

"Is she all right?" she heard Arthur ask somewhere in the distance.

"Aye," Mary muttered.

"I have decided to leave anyway. The change will do her good." He looked down at Elinor, her shivering body crouched beneath the heavy coverlet. "Bundle her, and Jeremy and one of the others will carry her down."

"She ain't in no case fer a journey," the maid protested. "Be a wonder if she ain't taken her death as it is."

"I've ordered hot bricks," was all he said.

When Lucien rode up, he carried his dragoon pistol, ready to force his way inside. Instead he was greeted by Peake, who informed him stiffly that "Lord and Lady Kingsley have but left, I'm afraid. You missed them by a scant quarter hour."

"Where? Out with it, man! Where?" His hand snaked out, lifting the butler by his coat "Damn it—where?"

"He did not tell me, my lord."

"I could choke it out of you!"

"It would do no good, for I do not know."

He released the man and stepped back. Water ran in rivulets from his face, his hair, his cloak, dripping onto the polished foyer floor. "Is it London?" he demanded, wiping his wet face.

"I told you—I was not made privy to his lordship's plans." Straightening his coat and his dignity, the butler turned to the silver tray on a small table. "But he said if you were to come, I should give you this."

Lucien's fingers tore at the envelope's seal, opening it to reveal the bank draft and a single sheet of paper where the old man had written in his own spidery hand, "For services rendered." And he knew why Nell had turned her whip on him. Not even in battle had he ever wanted to kill anyone as much as he wanted to kill Kingsley now.

"Her ladyship—how is her ladyship?" His voice was harsh. "I've got to know—damn it, but I've got to know!"

Before the man could answer, his wife stepped from the saloon door. And there was no mistaking the contempt in her face as she told him, "Her ladyship has lost her mind."

The image of Elinor being put away in some asylum to languish as punishment for what they'd done came to mind, but then reason reasserted itself. He looked down at the bank draft, seeing the sheet of paper, and he cursed Kingsley.
For services rendered.
It could only mean that she was with child, and Arthur had taken her away from him.

Very deliberately, he put the draft back in the envelope with the note, then tore the whole in half. Handing both pieces to the bemused butler, he turned to leave.

Passing a curious footman, he declared, "I'll match the amount to any who will tell me where Lady Kingsley has gone."

The fellow waited until he was gone, then looked to Peake. "How much is it?"

"Ten thousand pounds."

"Gor! It's a bloomin' fortune, the likes o'which ain't neither o' us like ter see!"

"Well, his lordship did not tell me!" Peake snapped.

As Lucien rode back to Langston Park, he felt utterly, completely defeated. The idyll was over—she was gone.

CHAPTER 31

For a time, Elinor did not care if she lived or died. She was despondent, bitter, and utterly disinterested in the Irish countryside. But most of all, she was
bitter,
for she'd finally come to realize that despite years of dreams, there was in truth no love in this world for her. And the hardest death for her mind to take was the death of dreams. It was even worse than the loss of Charles, because now she no longer believed in hope.

With Longford gone, Arthur treated her solicitously, taking great care to see that she ate properly, took the Irish air, walked the paths through the picturesque valley that ran through his Irish estate, but she did not care as one day faded into another... and another... and another. Indeed, but it was as though he were devoted to her, that his purpose in life was now to amuse her, to tend to her. And not since that night at Stoneleigh had he ever mentioned the earl's name. It was as though he studiously sought to dispel the notion that anything had ever happened.

Outwardly, she maintained a semblance of calm, perfunctorily going through the motions of living, but inwardly she hated as she'd never hated before. She hated Arthur and everything he did for her, but most of all, she hated Longford, for he'd allowed her to dream, then betrayed her.

At first, her pregnancy had not set well with her, and she'd been too sick to eat the delicacies that Arthur had sent for, but finally that had passed. But still she resented—no, that was not nearly a strong enough word for what she felt—she
hated
being a brood mare for Kingsley's ambitions. But one day, while unenthusiastically enduring yet another dogcart ride with her elderly husband, she felt the babe within her move. She sat very still, thinking she'd imagined it, and then it happened again.

That night, she'd lain awake, hoping to feel it, pressing against her slightly rounding stomach. And there it was. There was life within her, and it no longer mattered that it had been put there by Longford. It was hers.

Arthur no longer slept with her at all, saying she needed her rest, so for a time she did not even have to share the wonder of her discovery. It was hers. Not his. Not Longford's. Hers. And now, finally, she had something to live for,

Arthur was pleased by the change in her spirits, and with characteristic self-centeredness took credit for it. When spring came, and with it the news that Longford had returned to London, he determined it was time to go home, for his son should be born at Stoneleigh. It was as though he went home in triumph, his young wife's body swollen now with child, a condition he was also determined to take credit for. He even told her he considered her rounded belly quite pleasing.

What she could not stand as her pregnancy progressed was his habit of laying his hand upon her stomach to feel the movement of "my son" within. In company, despite the fact that females in interesting conditions were usually rather discreetly absent, Arthur showed her off. She was, much to her chagrin, proof of his supposed virility. Privately, she imagined there were any number of people who laughed behind his back about his "miracle."

"You know," he told her one day, "I do not believe you are eating sufficiently to sustain the babe."

"I am as fat as a pig," she protested. "Mary must put on my stockings and roll them for me."

"Yes, well, I am told that calves' brains are conducive to intelligence, so I have ordered—"

He got no further. "I have not the least intention of partaking of any brains," she declared flatly. "Nor do I wish for any more pork jelly. Both of us are quite well, thank you."

"Still, one cannot be too careful, and—"

"Arthur," she snapped with asperity, "I am growing a babe, not a cabbage in need of fertilizer. I daresay that whatever looks it possesses, whatever intelligence, has already been determined."

"Not 'it,' my dear—
he."

She considered suggesting that she might carry a daughter, but she knew he would not hear of it. And the London physician he'd had travel to examine her had declared that "given the babe's position, it's most certainly a boy." Indeed, even Mary was positive of it, saying that the intensity of her earlier illness was proof of a son. And Mrs. Peake, attempting to please her employer, had remembered that a midwife had once told her that a babe carried high was always male. And Elinor carried her child high, so much so that she could scarce breathe when she sat down.

"Your lordship, the workmen are here," Peake announced as they sat in the front saloon, Arthur with his paper, she with the latest novel from London.

She looked up. "Workmen, Arthur?"

"I thought perhaps to refurbish the chamber next to mine for a nursery," he responded.

"Babes cry," she reminded him coldly. "I cannot think you would wish to be disturbed."

"Nonsense. I mean to see he is precisely what I would have him."

She felt a chill, for those had been the very words he'd used when he'd offered for her. It was as though he were telling her that he meant to take over her child also. And his next words confirmed it.

"Tomorrow I have arranged for you to interview wet nurses," he continued mildly. "The London agency I have contacted assures me that each girl is of the highest quality—and possessed of excellent morals."

"If they are moral, how is it that they are able to nurse?" she inquired acidly.

He shrugged. "Among the lower classes, babes are more inclined to die, my dear."

"Thank you, but I should prefer to do it myself."

"I would not ruin your looks, my dear."

She knew he meant to have it all—a wife to be envied for, a son to carry on the Kingsley name. Only now instead of having merely one to manipulate, he meant to have two. And it did no good to think he might not live to do it, for if anything, his health seemed better than ever. Ireland, for all that she had hated it, had suited him. No, she would not be surprised if he lived well into his seventies.

When she said nothing, he changed the subject slightly. "Did you see the cradle I commissioned?"

"Yes."

She disappointed him by not praising it, for he had gone to great lengths to have a replica of Princess Charlotte's made for his heir. Even the linens had been ordered of finest lawn hand-embroidered in Switzerland, as had the babe's christening gown, eliciting her tart observation that it must surely appear that he awaited not the birth of a Kingsley, but rather of a king. To which he had replied as though she'd not said it that he would have preferred to have acquired the babe's linens from Flanders but the Flemish were still prohibited from trading with England, so the Swiss workmanship would have to do.

"I thought perhaps an Aubusson carpet," he mused, "for there are yet some to be had for a price in London."

"For a babe?" she said incredulously.

"For my son."

It was as though Longford had never existed. "Arthur—"

"He must not smell of the shop, Elinor. He must have all that I can give him—the finest of everything. I'd not have him suffer as I have done, my dear. I'd have none remember whence came his fortune."

She bit back saying that more were likely to wonder at his blood, but then she knew that no longer mattered. As long as Arthur acknowledged the babe, as long as there was no scandal, for all that everyone would know that she'd lain with someone else, her reputation was intact. To them, unaware of what she had suffered, she'd played the game by society's rules, and given the age of her husband, she was not to be blamed for presenting him an heir of questionable parentage.

The more he talked, the more he planned, the more loath she was to have the child come out. For now, it was hers, wholly hers. But once it came into the world, it would be Arthur's.

"I think I should like to have my mother," she admitted.

In the ordinary way of things, he did not care much for her family. Despite the fact that her blood was better than his, he considered Thomas Ashton and the rest of her family beneath him. But just now he meant to humor her, for he'd have nothing go wrong.

"By all means—if it pleases you, send for her. You may even offer her the carriage as a means of conveyance." He could not resist one small barb. "It's a pity Ashton had to lose his."

"Yes."

"A man ought not to drink and game, particularly not an unlucky one. And when you write to her, you may add that I have not the least intention of increasing his allowance. It's like pouring money off a bridge into the Thames."

"Do you have no vices?" she snapped, irritated by his superior tone.

He appeared to consider for a moment, then nodded. "Vanity, my dear—it's the only one." He leaned across the table to lift her chin with a long, thin finger. "And for all that you behave as a petulant child, you feed it."

"I am told she is back, and those who see her say she appears well," Leighton had written him, drawing Lucien home to Langston Park. What he had not said, but what nearly everyone in the neighborhood had speculated, was whether Lady Kingsley's interesting condition could be blamed on Viscount Townsend or the Earl of Longford.

In the five months since last he'd seen her, he'd thought he'd driven her from his mind. God knew he'd tried, throwing himself into a number of brief, unsatisfying liaisons with exquisite, willing opera dancers and demireps. He'd gambled recklessly, winning shamelessly, and he'd drank enough port, madeira, and brandy to fill a river, Leighton told him. But none of those things had done anything for the void in his soul.

At first, as his face healed, he'd thought he'd go mad, but gradually, in order to save his sanity, he'd progressed from despair to a semblance of indifference. Finally, he'd nearly convinced himself that he hated her for doing this to him, for not letting him explain, for running away. Until Leighton's letter had come.

He knew his return had occasioned more comment than he wanted, but he could not help it. In the beginning, he told himself he had but to see her from afar, to know she was all right, but after a few distant glimpses of her at church, glimpses that he dared not publicly pursue, he knew she was as much an obsession with him as ever. And it did not make it any easier when he saw her swollen body, bringing home to him that she did in fact carry a child he could not claim.

It had been a mistake to come back, and he knew it, for now he knew even less peace, and once again she haunted both his dreams and his waking thoughts. He was torn between wanting to see her again and by knowing that for both their sakes, he ought to leave well enough alone. Finally, he sent Leighton as an emissary.

She sat wrapped in a large shawl, her legs drawn up into the chair, absorbed in Jane Austen's latest, when the viscount was announced.

"No—no, no need to rise," he assured her. "I quite understand."

"How kind of you," she murmured, unfolding her legs and covering them with the shawl. "I am a bit awkward, I'm afraid."

"But lovely," he offered gallantly.

"Spanish coin, my lord." Nonetheless, she smiled. "I shall however accept it." She looked up at him. "Do sit down, sir. Arthur—"

"Actually, it's you I am come to see, Lady Kingsley." He dropped into a chair, then leaned forward. "Lucien would know how you fare."

For a moment, she gripped the arms of her chair, then it was as though she had turned to stone and even her face hardened. Finally, she said coldly, "I hardly think it matters."

"He is returned to Langston Park."

"Has he now?" Despite the question, her eyes betrayed not the least interest. "I should rather think he ought to have remained in London, for I am quite certain there is more sport to be had there." Laying aside her book, she reached for the bellpull that Jeremy had attached to her chair. And when the footman appeared, she inquired coolly of Leighton, "Do you stay to tea, my lord? Or perhaps a glass of brandy before you go?"

He was failing miserably, and he knew it. "Brandy would be fine," he murmured. "And you?"

"Oh, I shall take nothing. Arthur would have nothing pollute his son." For the briefest moment, her bitterness showed, then her amber eyes were once again distant, impersonal.

He waited for his brandy, took a sip to fortify himself, then inquired casually, "And when is the interesting event to occur, dear lady?"

"In early July—or so Dr. Moreston believes."

He was surprised to learn she'd chosen a prominent London physician. "So you will travel to the city, then?"

"No. Arthur has arranged that Dr. Moreston will come to me. Foolish, isn't it? Particularly when one considers that females have been doing this for centuries without much assistance."

"I understand Moreston is the best. Arthur must be quite concerned for you."

There was almost a glimmer of the old Elinor Kingsley as a faint smile played at the corners of her mouth. "My dear Leighton, you are unfortunately mistaken—it is rather that nothing is too good for his heir. I am merely the means of the arrival, you see. If babes came by carriage, I should be decidedly
de trop."

"You undervalue yourself, Lady Kingsley."

"Do I?" The smile broadened ruefully. "My lord, if you knew but half the preparations my husband has made for one small babe, you should be astounded."

George heard Kingsley's voice as he spoke with someone outside, and he realized he had to speak up for Longford then or not at all. Manfully, he leaned forward again, this time possessing her hands.

"What can I tell Lucien to reassure him you are quite well? That you—" He got no further. She pulled her hands away and rose awkwardly, standing above him.

"You can tell him I shall see him in hell."

"Lady Kingsley, I assure you he—"

"And if he would know, let him ask for himself." She started to leave him sitting there, but she was too late. Her husband stood in the door.

But if he'd heard, he gave no sign. Instead, he walked in, crossing the room to her. Bending slightly, he brushed a cold kiss against her cheek. "You look a trifle peaked, my dear," he chided her. "Perhaps you ought to be abed."

"I am fine, my lord." She turned back to Leighton. "Now that Arthur is here, I really must see to supper. Good day, sir."