Candice Hern (32 page)

Grace was finding it difficult to breathe, but she managed to say, "That is quite enough, Margaret."

"What a fool you have made of yourself. I should have thought you had more strength of character than to be susceptible to a bit of flattery from a horrid man like that. You know what he did to Serena Underwood last year. He is a blackguard and a cad, and yet you let him ... Dear God in heaven, have you no shame? If not for yourself, at least for staining the memory of the great man whose name you still bear? Don't you realize how much your behavior reflects on him, on all of us? Selfish, foolish woman!"

Grace had to leave. She could not listen to any more of this. A hint of dizziness put her off balance — dear God, don't let her swoon! — but she called upon every reserve of calm within her. She tried to collect herself, tried to put on that cloak of cool reserve she wore so well. But she could not do it. She was too disjointed, frazzled, shattered in too many. She was uncollectible.

After a deep breath, she was able to slowly turn and make her way out of the room.

"You will go straight to hell for this!" Margaret called out from behind her. "Straight to hell! Harlot! Wanton! Whore!"

Margaret's taunts filled the air as Grace stumbled out the front door. A footman guided her into the carriage and shot her a concerned look as he closed the door. She fell heavily against the squabs, limp as a rag doll, and utterly dumbfounded.

It had all been for a wager. He had never cared for her in the least, never truly desired her.

Margaret was right. She had made a fool of herself, had fallen right into Rochdale's trap, lured by his seductive charm and his pretense of friendship. How he must have laughed at her, the prim, inexperienced widow who knew nothing of physical passion. And what an easy mark she had been, ready to break free, ready to experience all that her friends had described.

She groaned aloud and clutched her chest as she recalled Newmarket and how happy she had been there. He had become much more than a friend to her. She had fallen in love with him. She loved him. And there had been moments when she thought he loved her a little, too. But all that gentleness and compassion, all that understanding and consideration, had been nothing more than an act to get her into bed.

Because she was a challenge worthy of a wager. A woman immune to seduction. A woman so prudish and proper that Lord Sheane thought she could never be seduced.

And yet, somehow Rochdale had believed he could do it. And he was right. All the times when he had been encouraging her to find her own way, to make her own identity, had been a part of the seduction. All the times he allowed her to see a hint of something good in him had been a part of the seduction. The donation to Marlowe House, the display of compassion for Toby Fletcher, had all been a part of the seduction. By heaven, the man was skilled. A master of the game. He had known exactly how to play her, to make her want him.

Even that scene in Newmarket the first night, when he said he couldn't go through with it and left her, even that had been a part of the plan. And Grace had done precisely what he'd expected. She had stripped bare and invited him to make love to her. What a brilliant move on his part. He could claim that it was Grace who had done the seducing. Oh, what a devil he was!

And what had he won? No, what had she won for him? What had Lord Sheane offered that was worth the challenge?

Suddenly, she remembered the brief conversation between Rochdale and Lord Sheane at Newmarket.

A fine horse
, Lord Sheane had said about Serenity.
It would be a shame to lose her, would it not?

Had that been a reference to their wager? Was he talking about the possibility of Rochdale losing Serenity to him? That must have been it. Why else would he talk of losing her?

So, Rochdale had been arrogant enough to offer Serenity as his stake in the wager. He must have been damned sure of himself, for that horse meant the world to him and Grace knew he would never do anything to lose it.

He cared more for the horse than he did for her. He had never cared for her at all. She ought to have known such a man could never have a genuine interest in her, a woman so opposite him in every way. Despite what he had so often said, he had not, after all, wanted her for herself, for Grace Marlowe, that new woman he had coaxed out of her with his charm and his kisses and his false friendship, but had in fact wanted the Bishop's Widow. The tight-laced, virtuous, oh-so-proper widow of the famous man.
She
was the challenge.

By the time the carriage arrived at Portland Place, Grace was stricken with despair. Ignoring the butler's indication of a tray of receiving cards and a maid's offer to have tea prepared, she climbed the stairs to her suite of rooms, went into the bedchamber and locked the door. She carefully removed her bonnet and pelisse and put them away so that Kitty would not fuss at her, then flung herself facedown on the bed and wept.

* * *

Grace did not leave her bedchamber the rest of that day or the next. She accepted meals brought to her on trays, but found she could eat very little. Most of her time was spent in bed, sleeping a little, crying a lot, and generally feeling sorry for herself.

She had never felt so betrayed, so abominably used. The love she had begun to feel for Rochdale in Newmarket, that affection she hadn't been ready to name, had developed into a full-blown romantic passion. And because he hadn't cared for her at all, she decided her heart had been irrevocably broken. She wallowed in the pain of it.

She came to realize, while lying in bed and staring at the underside of the canopy, that she ought never to have tried to be something she was not. She was the wife and widow of Bishop Marlowe and always would be. It was something to be proud of, not to be discarded. It had been a terrible mistake to sacrifice that comfortable, important identity for something new and mad and thoroughly improper.

Between bouts of self-pity and tears, Grace considered how to put her life back together. She could not undo what had taken place between her and Rochdale. But she could go on as though it had never happened. She would became the most proper Christian woman who ever lived, and her reputation would be salvaged.

Just as she became convinced she could do it, she fell into despair again at the thought that her good name could never be rehabilitated. She was lost. She was miserable. She was heartbroken.

And the cycle of hope and hopelessness continued.

By the morning of her second full day in bed, Grace had become tired of despair, tired of tears, tired of self-pity. Overnight, despondency had turned to anger. She bounded out of bed and pulled the curtains back from the windows to relieve the gloom she'd been living in. By God, she would not let him do this to her. She refused to be turned into some sort of pathetic, woeful creature. Grace Marlowe had never given in to weakness in her life, and she would not start now.

She rang for her maid and began pulling clothes out of the press, muttering to herself, chastising herself aloud. She would not allow that scoundrel Rochdale to turn her into a wounded weakling, not after she had made so many positive changes in her life. He had endlessly provoked her and challenged her until she discovered the core of the real woman beneath the public persona of respectable widow and do-gooder. And damned if she didn't like this new woman better than her former self.

How dare Rochdale give her a new outlook on life, and then negate it all by using her as the means to win a bet. How dare he treat her with such insolent disregard. How dare he manipulate her.

If he thought he was going to get away with it, he'd better think again, for Grace Marlowe, strong and independent and proud, was not going to let him off the hook that easily.

The door opened and Kitty walked in, looking wary. "Are you feeling better today, ma'am?"

"Much. Send up hot water, if you please. I need to wash. And a pot of tea as well. And bread and jam. Perhaps some eggs. A bit of ham, if there is some. Then come and help me dress. The new sprigged muslin and the pink sarsnet spencer with the Maltese buttons."

"You are going out, ma'am?"

"Indeed I am. I have to see a man about a horse."

"What is it, Parker?"

Rochdale's butler looked uncharacteristically flustered as he stood in the door of the breakfast room."A lady to see you, my lord."

"A lady?" Surely not. Ladies did not come to a gentleman's house in the bold light of morning, if at all. And if she did, chances are she was no lady.

"A Mrs. Marlowe, my lord. I have put her in the drawing room."

Good God, Grace was here? Was she mad? Someone might have seen her. Rochdale rose so quickly he almost knocked his chair over. She had been adamant about maintaining discretion here in London, even more so than in Newmarket, for she was well known in town and could hardly run around in a disguise in order to be with him. Perhaps she had grown too impatient for their evening at the theatre tomorrow and her famous decorum had deserted her. But it was sheer madness to come to his town house at this hour when all the world might see her.

He, too, had been waiting, rather impatiently, for tomorrow night, and had made enormous efforts not to seek her out and carry her into some dark corner and have his way with her. He wanted her badly, desperately. But not here in this house. Not in this den of iniquity, where so many of his worst debaucheries had taken place. The thought of Grace even stepping foot on the same carpet where other less respectable feet had trod — where various couples had rolled and frolicked with abandon when his gambling parties had disintegrated into orgies — made him feel rather ill.

He hurried to the drawing room, but came to a halt when he reached the door. Grace stood in the middle of the room, looking as stiff and grave as a statue. All of the cheerful brightness that had shone from her eyes in Newmarket, and on the drive back to town was gone. Instead they glared at him, hard and cold as chips of gray agate. Her eyebrows knit together in a frown so tightly that they formed deep furrows above the bridge of her nose.

Something was wrong. A knot of anxiety began to twist in his gut.

He ignored it and walked into the room, hands outstretched to take hers. "My dear Grace, I am delighted to see you." And he was. It had only been a few days, but it felt like forever.

She did not take his hands, but kept hers tightly clenched at her sides. "You bloody bastard."

He gave a start and took a step backward; it was such a shock to hear the words from her lips. Despite the naked passion they'd shared, she was still a proper lady who never used profanity.

The knot in his belly tightened.

"Perhaps you had better sit down," he said, indicating a nearby settee. "You are upset."

"I am beyond upset."

She made no move to be seated, so he simply stood before her, hands behind his back, waiting to hear what heinous thing she had learned about him. The choices were legion, though there was one particularly loathsome act he hoped she had not discovered.

"A rumor has been passed along to me," she said in a voice as brittle and sharp as a sliver of broken glass. "A particularly unpleasant rumor, related to me by a member of my own family."

Oh, God. Please let it not be what he suspected. Please let it be something else. He did not speak, but lifted his eyebrows in a reluctant invitation for her to continue.

"I want to know if it is true."

He maintained his silence, but kept his gaze steady on hers, even as the knot grew thicker and more twisted in his gut.

"Did you make a wager with Lord Sheane that you could seduce me?"

Rochdale closed his eyes as the pain in his belly — or was it his heart? — became a punishment. Hell and damnation. How was he to face her? How was he to open his eyes and look into hers? What could he possibly say to make it any less hurtful? Of all the women he'd ever known, she was the one, the only one, he never wanted to hurt. He had not felt that way about her at first, of course, when this wretched business had begun. He hadn't cared about her at all then, hadn't cared if he caused her pain, because she was just a woman like all the others. Or so he had believed. But she was not like anyone else and did not deserve what he had done to her. And it was too late to do anything about it.

He blew out a breath and opened his eyes. There was only one answer he could give her. "Yes."

Her face collapsed into a mask of pure misery, then she covered her mouth and turned away, as if she might become sick. He moved closer, but she waved him off with her other hand.

"Oh, Grace, my dear Grace, I cannot tell you how sorry I am. Yes, it started out as a wager, but it became something else entirely. At Newmarket —"

She whirled around, and rather than the anguish he'd expected, her eyes blazed and her face was pink with fury. "How
could
you? How could you be so vile? Oh, but of course. You are the notorious Lord Rochdale, the famous debaucher of women, the callous rake, the unscrupulous libertine. Why should I have ever expected otherwise from you? Oh, you are heartless, my lord. I was a decent, respectable woman before you entered my life. But you were so smooth, so charming, a practiced seducer who knew exactly know to manipulate the prudish widow into your bed. No wonder you were so quick to accept Lord Sheane's wager. You knew how to break me, you knew where I was vulnerable, and you poured your poisonous charm in all the right places to insure my capitulation."

Rochdale wanted to explain that the wager didn’t matter now, that he had come to care for her, but she was riding her fury and did not allow him to interrupt.

"The bishop warned me. 'You are a beautiful woman,' he said, 'and men will covet you. Unscrupulous men who will flatter and beguile and try to coerce you into wicked behavior. But you must stand firm against them, for your very soul is at stake.' And he was right. You have robbed me of my soul, my dignity, all for the sake of a horse. A horse! How could I have been so stupid to allow you to make me distrust
everything
the bishop taught me when he was obviously right on at least one count."