Betina Krahn (40 page)

By the time he touched her hand, she was incapable of more than a token resistance. But he merely pressed something into her palm and curled her fingers around it. It felt small and cool and hard. She found a tiny sphere covered with fawn-colored silk lying in her palm. It was a moment before she recognized it as one of her buttons—one he had cut from her dress that day in the upstairs parlor.

Tenderness and anger and longing surged through her at once, clashing, leaving her defenseless. Feeling panicky, she pushed him aside and headed for the door.

Aunt Hermione was in the very office where Remington had laid his romantic trap. She and Paddington Carr had made use of the luncheon Antonia had spurned, and now
sat drinking wine and staring warmly at each other across the linen-clad table.

“Oh! Toni!” Aunt Hermione said, flushing at being caught indulging in a bit of romance. “We are just having the nicest luncheon.”

“Didn’t think Remington would mind … since you didn’t seem quite on your feed,” Paddington said, rocking back in his chair. He looked a bit embarrassed, but not so much so that he would release Hermione’s hand, which lay under his on the tabletop.

Antonia glowered at her aunt. “It’s time to go Auntie, if you’re
quite
finished.”

As they quitted the offices, Remington accompanied them downstairs, where he had the doorman hail them a cab. He helped Hermione into the coach, then casually mentioned that he would send his own carriage around to Paxton House the next morning to collect her at nine o’clock.

“There is no need,” Antonia protested irritably, “I won’t be coming back.”

He smiled as he handed her up the steps as well.

“Oh, yes, you will.”

His knowing look lingered in her mind, the way that small silken orb stayed in her hand, both fueling her irritation on the ride home. Her annoyance gradually focused on Hermione, who sat huddled on the far end of the seat with a petulant look. It was some time before Antonia could bring herself to say anything to her aunt on the subject uppermost in both their minds.

“You surprised me, that’s all,” she said, trying to explain her irritation at something that obviously gave Hermione pleasure. “Remington’s uncle, of all people.”

“I cannot understand what you find so horrible about my having a bit of luncheon with him,” Hermione said with an air of injury. “I’ve always liked gentlemen, you
know that. And he’s a perfectly charming man. And handsome. And so droll. He makes me laugh, Antonia, and no one has done that in a very long time.”

Antonia was hard put to come up with a reason to dislike the man, except his connection to Remington and her suspicion that this was another vile bit of maneuvering on Remington’s part.

“He fairly raised Remington, you know,” Hermione said, glancing furtively at her, then back out the window. “Remington’s mother died when he was young, and his father was … well, interested in other things. Paddington stepped in to take care of him. He’s so hopeful that Remington will marry and give him a grandniece or nephew before he passes on. He just loves babies. He didn’t get to have any of his own, and I must say: I know how that feels. You’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to a daughter.” She gave Antonia another sidelong glance. “You know, he thinks you’re very pretty.”

“That’s very … gallant of him,” Antonia responded, a bit embarrassed by her truculent attitude. She looked out the window. “I think he’s quite … dignified.”

Hermione relaxed and breathed a sigh, but a moment later she was back at it.

“You know, Remington’s not had many lady friends,” she volunteered. “Paddington worries about him a great deal … thinks he should have someone to … ummm …”

“Play
footsie
with,” Antonia supplied, leveling a disgusted look at her.

“Well, yes. And make babies with. And you know I have thought for some time that it would be good for you to … ummm …”

“Play footsie, too,” Antonia finished for her, understanding now why she had been so suspicious of this liaison. Hermione was now solidly in Remington’s camp.

“Well, yes. It’s clear that his lordship is still very much taken with you, and eager to make amends for what happened.”

“Aunt Hermione,” Antonia said tightly, narrowing her eyes.

“Yes, dear?”

“Hush.”

Because of the long spring days, the candles were not lit in the drawing room until nine o’clock that evening. Aunt Hermione was deep in the midst of telling the others about her adventure of the day, when Hoskins arrived to announce a caller.

“At this hour?” Antonia said, rising from her chair by the window.

“A man or a woman?” Aunt Hermione demanded of the butler.

“It is Mrs. Howard, ma’am,” Hoskins intoned.

“Mrs. Howard? Do we know a Mrs. Howard?” Eleanor asked, looking at the others’ equally blank faces.

“Mrs.
Camille
Howard, madam.” He addressed Antonia.

“Camille? Our Camille?” Antonia’s heart nearly stopped. “By all means, show her in, Hoskins.”

Everyone hurried to greet Camille as she entered, but most stopped just short of embracing her. She stood there in her best frock and bonnet, her blond, girlish beauty marred by blotched skin and dark smudges under puffy eyes. Antonia paused, then held out her hands to the young woman, whose chin quivered as she took them.

“Camille, dear … are you all right?” Antonia said softly, searching the signs of distress in the young woman’s countenance with mounting dread.

Camille opened her mouth to speak, but instead of a greeting, out came a sob.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Antonia enfolded the young woman with a hug, knowing already, in her heart of hearts, what must have brought the young woman there. The others hurried to join her, speaking words of comfort as they helped her to the settee in the middle of the room. Wedged between Antonia and Aunt Hermione, in a circle of sympathetic faces she had grown to know and trust, she cried for a while before she was able to answer Antonia’s questions.

“It’s Bertrand,” she said, dabbing at her tears. “He’s a beast.”

“He ain’t taken a hand to you, has he?” Molly demanded furiously. Camille looked a bit shocked and shook her head.

“Does he holler an’ cuss an’ pitch a fit if’n the meat ain’t right or his drawers is scratchy?” Gertrude asked. Again Camille shook her head.

“Then what is it, Camille? What does he do?” Antonia asked, clenching her teeth and steeling herself for whatever would follow.

“He doesn’t do anything, Lady Toni,” she said plaintively. “He won’t hardly speak to me, except to ask me to pass a dish at supper—that is, when he’s actually home for supper. Most nights he eats at his club and then stays to do whatever it is men do at those hideous places. And he only comes home well after I’ve gone to bed. He will hardly look at me or talk to me, and he has yet to introduce me to his friends and their wives. He pretends I don’t even exist … except when …”

She dissolved into sobs again, but every woman present knew exactly when a man like Bertrand Howard acknowledged his wife’s existence: late at night, in the dark, in his bed.

“Then when I got your letter, Lady Toni, asking if I was happy and … I just couldn’t bear it anymore. I know
you said you’d call on me in a few days, but I just had to talk to someone now.”

Antonia held Camille while she cried it out. All around them her ladies exchanged sad looks and sighs. A few dabbed at tears.

“Well, you don’t have to suffer his coldness anymore, Camille,” Antonia said with a tightness in her throat. “If that’s the way he behaves, he doesn’t deserve you. You can just come back here and stay with us. Your old room is still empty, and to be honest, we’ve missed you terribly.”

Camille raised her tear-streaked face to Antonia. “Really?” she whispered.

“Really,” Antonia said with a definitive nod, which was repeated around the group. “And if Mr. Bertrand Howard doesn’t like it, he can just go hang.”

“I doubt he’ll do that,” Camille said miserably. “I don’t think he’ll even notice I’m gone.”

“Fine.” Antonia rose and pulled Camille up with her. “That will give us time to retrieve your things from your house. Hoskins! Go for a cab—”

“That won’t be necessary, Lady Toni,” Camille said, lowering her eyes. “My bag is outside on the steps.”

Antonia laughed. “Welcome home, Camille.”

Near midnight, in a set of small but tidy town houses behind Regent’s Park, Bertrand Howard fumbled to insert his key into the lock of his front door, swayed, and made a second, more successful try. He let himself into his house, hung his hat on the hall tree, and launched himself up the stairs in the dark. He had to grope his way through the bedroom door by the wisps of light coming through a set of lace curtains
she
had put up recently. Moving stealthily, he undid his tie and removed his coat and collar. Soon his shoes sat side by side, stuffed with his stockings, and his
trousers and shirt lay on the chair near the window. He felt for his nightshirt—on the seat of the chair, where
she
always left it for him—and drew it over his head.

The darkness and the quantity of whiskey he had consumed at White’s kept him from noticing that her dressing gown wasn’t hanging over the end of the bed. And it kept him from reaching for
her
as he usually did when he came home late. Tonight, his heavy eyes and limbs told him, it was just too late.

It was the next morning before Bertrand Howard squinted at the other side of the bed and saw it was smoothed and tucked as if it hadn’t been slept in. He glowered and padded into the hallway in his bare feet and nightshirt, thinking of calling to her but deciding against it. It was something of a relief to be able to dress and make it downstairs without encountering her and her doleful morning-after looks.

But when he reached the dining room, there was no pot of coffee, no morning paper, no scones or griddle cakes or fluffy eggs, and none of that marmalade he loved so well. In the kitchen he found their maid-of-all-work lolling about beside a cold stove. “Where the hell is my breakfast?” he snapped.

“Wot?” The maid looked up at him with a disagreeable expression. “Ye be wantin’ somethin’ to eat, after all?”

“Of course I want something to eat!” he snapped. “Where is she?” When the girl looked a bit puzzled, he clarified: “My wife … Mrs. Howard …”

The girl shrugged and pushed to her feet, annoyed. “I ain’t seen ’er. Figured you wasn’t to home, either. I cain’t read minds, y’know.” She reached for an iron skillet and smacked it down on the stove. “It’ll be a spell a’fore the stove gets hot. Ye’ll just have to wait.”

He snorted. “Don’t bother—I won’t have time.” Irritably, he stalked through the house, looking for
her
, calling
her name. There was no answer. And as the silence loomed and reverberated around him, it finally registered: she wasn’t there … probably hadn’t been there last night when he came home. He straightened, alarmed.

Rushing upstairs, he discovered that the little table where she kept her hairbrush, mirror, creme pots, and jewelry was empty. With mounting disbelief he went to the bureau and opened a drawer. Bare wood. He threw open the wardrobe they shared and found her things gone, except for two hatboxes tucked away on top. He looked around in shock. There was hardly a trace of her left in the place.

Rushing downstairs, he searched the parlor and dining room and came to a lurching halt in the entryway. Caught between anger and guilt over having wished for this very thing—that he would wake up one morning and she would be gone—he missed seeing the envelope bearing her handwriting on the hall tree. It fluttered to the floor when he grabbed his hat, and he snatched it up and tore into it. There was her girlish script—neat little rows and rounded letters—telling him she couldn’t bear his coldness and silent censure anymore. The truth slowly sank in. She had left him.

He read and reread the part of the letter stating that she had gone to stay with a friend and that he needn’t trouble about her ever again. And each time he read it, he felt a wrenching and unexpected sense of loss deepening inside him.

Promptly at nine o’clock the next morning, the Earl of Landon’s stylish black carriage rolled up before Paxton House and sat waiting, while Antonia stared down at it from the window of Aunt Hermione’s bedroom, and everyone else in the house clustered by the front windows to
have a look. At length she sent Hoskins out to tell the driver to move on. The driver shrugged and said he was under orders to wait for the mistress of the house. She sent Hoskins out a second time, instructing the driver to carry a message to the earl that she wouldn’t be going to his offices—not today, not ever. But the fellow just shrugged and said that he had all day. The carriage didn’t move.

By ten o’clock Antonia was pacing and wringing her hands. She asked Hermione to go for her and deliver her message. Hermione politely declined, then offered to accompany her if she decided to go herself.

By eleven o’clock the house was full of whispers, some of which were aimed at Antonia. Her ladies had clearly taken sides in the matter, and hers was not the side they had taken. But the final blow to her determination came when several men in checkered wool coats and tasteless bowler hats appeared and began quizzing the driver. His answers to their questions caused them to grin at each other, whip out their notepads, and stare expectantly at her front door.

News writers, she realized with no small alarm. What on earth were they doing at her door again? She had no way of knowing what might have brought them down on her this time, but she did know that the longer she delayed the inevitable, the more vultures would gather. This was all Remington’s fault, curse his hide.

She sent for Aunt Hermione, went for her hat and gloves, and strode furiously out the front door. The driver hurried them into the carriage, then climbed onto the box and set off for the City at a fast clip, leaving several news-hounds running down the street after them, shouting questions.

“I’m going to give him a royal piece of my mind,” she informed Hermione.

“Of course you are,” Hermione said with an ubiquitous smile.