Heartless (13 page)

•   •   •

He
could not accept the fact that he had been hurt by the knowledge that she loved the man who had had her virginity. Hurt? In what way? He had made himself invulnerable to pain.

He had had to get to his feet and walk away from her to the window when he had seen the lost, deeply pained look in her eyes, which usually sparkled so brightly, and when the tears had welled in them.

She loved the man whoever he was, God damn his soul. Her face and her unshed tears had spoken far louder than words could have done.

It was only his pride that had been hurt, not his heart. He had no heart. He knew, conceited as the admission was, that any one of his French lovers and any one of the countless women who would have been his lovers if he had given the slightest encouragement, would have jumped at the chance to be his wife. He had chosen a brightly happy woman, a woman of purity, and he had been duped. Not only had she been touched, but her heart was given elsewhere. Or so her reaction to his question strongly suggested. She had refused to speak.

He did not care about her heart, he told himself as he stood at the window, his back to her and to the room. But by God, no other man would ever touch her body again. Not unless he was prepared to make it his final act in this life.

And so he walked back across the room to tell her just that. And he realized something else as she looked up into his eyes when he commanded her to do so. He realized that the smiles, the sparkle, the flirtatious ways had all been an act. He realized that she was a woman who had worn a mask during the week of their acquaintance.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was overreacting. He was not even sure why he hoped he was mistaken since he had just established his ownership of her and she had accepted reality.

He turned to walk back around the desk and sat down behind it again. He had felt the need when they had come from the breakfast room to set some distance between them, some formal distance. The width of a desk was impersonal and indicated a symbolic separation between master and servant.

She was not his servant. She was his wife.

“Anna,” he said. She was looking steadily back at him, her face pale, no trace of her earlier smiles remaining. “'Twould be as well if there were plain speaking between us. There already has been some despite the secret you have refused to tell and I have refused to insist upon sharing. Let there be more so that we may begin our marriage with no misunderstandings, no false expectations. Tell me why you married me and I will tell you why I married you. The full truth even if it may seem hurtful. Tell me.”

He thought she was going to remain silent again. He sat waiting. This was something he would insist upon. If they left the room now and went their separate ways for the rest of the day, they might never be able to establish a working relationship. But she spoke finally without further prompting.

“I am five-and-twenty years old,” she said. “Since my mother's death, and even before it to a degree, I have been mistress of the home into which I was born. No longer. My brother is now master there and will be taking home a bride later this year. I preferred to marry than be a spinster sister in their home. I had a chance to marry you, a man of high rank and comfortable fortune. I took the chance.”

And did you connive at it?
he wanted to ask her. Was that what the flirtation at Lady Diddering's ball had been all about? But did it matter?

“That is all?” he asked.

She hesitated. “My sisters,” she said. “I spoke with you about them before. But I did not mention that my youngest sister is—is . . . My brother does not have the gift of handling her though he is fond of her, I believe. And his betrothed has expressed her concern over having Emily live in her home.”

“What is the matter with Emily?” he asked.

“She is a deaf-mute,” she said. “It is difficult to communicate with her. And she—she wanders. She does not behave as other young girls behave.”

“You married me partly so that you could give her a different home, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He wondered what else she had kept from him, this uncomplicated woman he had thought he was marrying, this woman he had thought he could trust. A lover whom she loved but for some reason had been unable to marry—perhaps the man was already married. A deaf-mute sister. Did she have any more secrets?

He waited for more and wondered if he could ever now trust this woman—his wife—to tell him the full truth.

“I have been away from my home and family for ten years,” he told her when she said no more. “I had no intentions of ever returning to either, even after the death of my brother two years ago presented me with the unwelcome burden of my title. But responsibilities cannot be so easily ignored, it seems. Problems are clamoring at me in the form of every one of my family members and my chief property, Bowden Abbey. It seems altogether likely that I am going to have to go there sooner or later. When one is a duke and has all the responsibilities that come with the title, one can no longer follow inclination even in one's personal life. I needed a wife.”

He had intended to be honest, not brutal. When she lowered her eyes for a moment before raising them again, he realized what he had implied by his words. But they were spoken now, and they were the truth. If he had for a brief moment imagined himself in love with her, then the feeling was gone without trace.

“It was desirable to choose a bride of no lower rank than earl's daughter,” he said. “I told you before that fortune was of no importance to me. I have two, one that I made for myself, and one that I inherited. You were recommended to me by my uncle as a woman of suitable rank. I did not see any point in looking farther.”

Her eyes dropped before his.

“It is not a good situation for brothers to be heirs to one another once they have passed a certain age,” he said. “It has become clear to me that fathering sons is my main duty to my position. I needed a wife to bear those sons for me. If I prove capable and you fertile, I will be keeping you with child with suitable intervals between for the recovery of your full health until there are at least two sons in our nursery. Daughters will not be unwelcome, but I will want sons.”

“Yes.” She was still not looking into his eyes but at the desk between them. “And so will I, your grace.”

He got to his feet again and came around the desk to hold out a hand for hers. He was feeling relieved, as if some burden had been lifted from his shoulders. They had spoken openly to each other and now had something practical on which to base their marriage. It seemed unimportant now that he had been enchanted by her warm vivacity and that after years of cold cynicism he had forgotten the lessons of ten years ago so far as to hope that there might be more than practicality between them. That had been fantasy. This was reality. And not such a very dreadful reality after all. She might love her secret lover, but she was his duchess and would be true to him and capable in the performance of her duties. Her training had been a thorough one, according to her brother.

“Anna,” he said as she rose to her feet. He kept his hold on her hand and took the other one, too. “I know this is an hour you have not enjoyed. But 'tis as well that we have spoken frankly to each other, that we have got to know each other a little better. We did marry rather in haste, did we not? If we always practice openness and honesty with each other, I believe we will deal well together. 'Tis as well too that there is no deep sentiment between us. Sentiment leads inevitably to pain, as I discovered years ago.”

Something flickered in her eyes. Yes, she had doubtless discovered it too, else why was she not married to the man she had loved and lain with?

“I have always found that a better guiding principle in life is pleasure,” he said. “Although we were strange to each other last night, I believe we found pleasure together. I found delight in your body, and I have had enough experience with women to know that you found delight in mine. We will aim, then, for the performance of duty by day and for the indulgence of pleasure by night—as well as duty. I will teach you to satisfy my needs and you will teach me to satisfy yours.”

“Yes,” she said.

He held her hands a little tighter. “And I would see you happy again,” he said, “and smiling again. The smiles were not all artifice, Anna? I liked them. I would see them again.”

“Yes,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“But not now,” she said. “Later, your grace, but not now. I would be alone if I may.”

He raised her hands one at a time to his lips and looked closely into her wide, green, unsmiling eyes. He inclined his head to her and released her hands. He strode across the room to open the door for her and closed it quietly behind her.

Was she regretting, he wondered, that she had given up love, even an unhappy love, for rank and wealth and duty and pleasure?

Well, if she was, the problem was hers. Perhaps she had not yet learned the lessons of love, but she would. He would give her and her sisters the home they needed. He had already given her the dignity of married status, which was obviously important to her and the security of rank and fortune. And he would give her pleasure, so much pleasure that she would forget the foolish love that had put the sadness into her eyes a little while ago and made it impossible for her to smile.

He would fill her nights with pleasure. And his own too.

Yes, despite the discovery he had made last night and her refusal to be completely open with him this morning, he was not sorry he had married her. Perhaps he was even glad that he had learned so soon that even in his marriage he was essentially alone. That he was to expect no real love, no real trust. He had learned the lesson too early in his marriage to feel betrayed by the knowledge.

Luke got restlessly to his feet. He would go to White's and endure all the bawdy remarks that would doubtless greet him there. He needed something to dispel the inexplicable depression of spirits that had not quite lifted despite a thoroughly frank and satisfactory talk with his wife.

•   •   •

The
note had been brought by personal messenger, the butler informed Anna with a bow as she turned to hurry upstairs to her own apartments, with strict instructions that it was to be delivered into the hands of no one but her grace. The butler had taken the liberty of persuading the man that he himself would see to the matter.

Anna took it upstairs into her private sitting room to read. A premonition of disaster set her hands to shaking as she unfolded the single sheet of paper.

“This was very naughty of you, my Anna,” he had written. “It saddens me to know that perhaps you are having to endure a severe beating this morning. Your duke has a reputation as a proud and a ruthless man. I allowed the marriage to proceed—you looked more beautiful in your white and gold than I have ever seen you look—and will do nothing for a time to interfere with it. But Anna, you are merely on loan to the Duke of Harndon. It would be a grave mistake to become attached to him. I will come for you when the time is right and take you home. You will be happy there eventually and for the rest of your life. My promise on it. Your servant, Blaydon.”

She folded the letter slowly and carefully into its original folds and stared down at it in her lap, dry-eyed, for a long time.

“Why did you not stop it?” she whispered at last. “Oh, why did you not stop it?”

H
ENRIETTA
had written again. She wanted a fountain constructed in the formal gardens—George had approved it before his death but had not had time to implement his decision. Mr. Colby was unwilling to allow her to proceed without his master's permission. It was too bad of the steward to behave in such a high-handed manner, she had written. He frequently got above himself and forgot that she was still the Duchess of Harndon.

But the tone of the letter changed just when Luke was being given the unpleasant impression that the years must have changed her into an imperious, peevish woman.

“Come home, Luke,” she had written. “In truth, I care nothing for altering the house or building a fountain or for the tyranny of Mr. Colby. They are merely excuses to lure you home. Ah, how can I be anything but honest when lures have not brought you thus far? Come home. It has been a dreary lifetime since we saw each other last. Do not punish me longer for a single wrong decision I made ten years ago. I suffered for it, Luke, both before and after.”

Henrietta, Luke thought as he set the letter down on the desk and sat back in his chair, had obviously not heard about his marriage. Will had returned home the day he proposed to Anna and so had not carried the news with him. Not that the marriage would make any difference in anything. Not as far as the two of them were concerned, anyway. Of course, it would take all semblance of power away from her. He was not sure how badly affected she would be by that.

She regretted her decision. Her feelings for him had not died over the years as his had for her. Perhaps she had not made the effort to kill them that he had made. Poor Henrietta—losing the child must have seemed unusually cruel. And now she wanted him back even though she must know that they could not marry. The law was clear on that point.

He had killed his feelings for her. They were dead. Why, then, did he dread going back to Bowden Abbey? Why did he dread seeing her again?

But he was going to have to go home, Luke thought, drumming his fingers slowly on the desktop. Sometime. Sometime soon. He had made that inevitable when he married. There was no possibility now of returning to Paris and his life there. And he could not live in London indefinitely with a new duchess. He had taken only a three-month lease on this house. Once he had Anna with child, she would need to be in the country.

Yes, it was something that would have to be faced sometime soon.

But not too soon. He wanted to enjoy the pleasures of London with Anna for a while yet. And they were to be enjoyed. He had expected yesterday after his talk with her and after the manner of her leaving him that she would stay alone in her rooms for the rest of the day. He had assumed that they would have to cancel plans to attend Mrs. Burnsides's rout in the evening, that it would be a long time before he saw her smile again.

But she had appeared at dinner, gorgeously clad in a deep pink satin sack dress he had not seen before, her hair tightly curled and powdered, her cap all frivolous lace and ribbons, its lappets reaching halfway to her waist. She was obviously ready for the rout. And she had glowed, her cheeks flushed becomingly—he was glad she wore no cosmetics—her lips smiling beguilingly and eagerly, her eyes sparkling with what he had always interpreted as happiness.

And perhaps it was happiness too, he had thought, watching her appreciatively and listening to her witty and quite frivolous chatter as they dined. Perhaps she had thought over their talk and had concluded that they had worked everything out very satisfactorily. Perhaps it was a relief to her, as it was to him, to have had plain speaking between them.

She had continued to sparkle at the rout and had appeared to revel in the fact that she was the main focus of attention there, since it was her first appearance in public as his duchess. His mother, at her regal best, had taken Anna about, presenting her to people who were strangers even to Luke. He had found himself watching his wife quite as closely as he had during the week before their marriage, enchanted by her beauty and vivacity again.

Mainly duty by day, he had told her, and mainly pleasure by night. Luke absently set Henrietta's letter to one side, on top of a small pile of other letters and cards of invitation, and sat back in his chair again, his arms on the rests, his fingers steepled before him.

She had been waiting for him, naked, in bed. And she had given him a night of vigorous pleasure. There had been very little sleep. He had even woken late for his ride in the rain this morning. She did not possess many skills—or she had not at the start of the night, anyway. Luke had wondered briefly about her lover, but he had suppressed the thought. He had to forget about the lover. But what she had lacked in skill she had made up for in an eagerness to please and in a willingness to allow him any liberty he chose to take; he had taken a few but had decided to be patient, leaving for another night some of the delights that might shock her most deeply. And she had displayed, too, a willingness to be pleased and to show her pleasure.

It was a night he had thoroughly enjoyed, a night he looked forward to repeating, though before too many more nights had passed they were going to have to think of getting enough sleep to carry them through the following day. He was not accustomed to sacrificing sleep for sexual gratification.

Of course—he tapped his forefingers against his chin—there was nothing to stop him from taking his wife to bed during the afternoons, was there? He laughed softly. Yes, this morning he was feeling well pleased with his marriage.

But his larger family was clamoring for attention, and they were the reason for his return to England, the reason for his taking a wife. His butler announced Lord Ashley Kendrick. Ashley had been sent for and came striding into the room, looking a curious mixture of confidence and wariness. Luke ruefully remembered certain interviews with his father, the man always seated behind a large desk and he immediately became conscious of where he himself now sat. It was still difficult to adjust his mind to the fact that he was now the figure of authority in his family. He got to his feet, came around the desk, and extended his hand.

“One remembers England as a country of green grass, leaf-laden trees, and colorful flower gardens,” he said, shaking his brother's hand and motioning him to a chair. “One forgets the infernal rain that makes it all possible.”

“Good old England.” Ashley flashed his boyish grin and sat down.

He was nervous, Luke noticed, turning back to the desk and picking up the paper that lay beneath Henrietta's letter. He might as well dispense with the small talk, which they would both know was just that. A man might be invited to make an afternoon call. He was summoned to make a morning call. This was morning and Ashley had been summoned.

“You will doubtless have an explanation for this,” he said, handing the paper to Ashley. “It came yesterday after the others had all been paid. Perhaps it came late? As you will see it is the bill for a rather extravagant sum in payment of a . . . ah, emerald bracelet. A gift, perhaps, for our mother?” He seated himself and crossed one leg over the other.

Ashley laughed. “For Mama, as I live,” he said. “That is a good one, Luke. 'Twas for a lady who likes baubles. For a lady I like to please.”

“A
lady?”
Luke raised his eyebrows. “The same one for whom you have rented a house and hired servants? The same one you clothe in the finest silks and satins?”

“She is worth it, Luke,” his brother said. “Word has it that you always had the loveliest women in Paris. And you have taken one of the loveliest women in London to wife. 'Tis merely that I am keeping up the family tradition, you see. And I have never had a better woman on the mount.”

“I feel constrained to inform you that she is too expensive, my dear,” Luke said.

“Zounds!” Ashley exclaimed, his face paling, his jaw setting into a hard line. “But you are no different from Papa and George, Luke. I am two-and-twenty. Am I to live like a monk? And don't call me ‘my dear.' You sound like a damned . . .”

“I assume,” Luke said after waiting politely for a moment to allow his brother to complete the sentence if he wished, “that there are reputable whorehouses in London as there are in Paris, where one may be assured of finding satisfaction for one's needs with girls who are both clean and skilled and who are not encouraged to wheedle silks and jewels out of the more naive of their customers.”

“Pox on it,” Ashley said, “I do not want a whore, Luke. I want a mistress. I am brother and heir to the Duke of Harndon, deuce take it, and have your reputation to live up to.”

“Ah,” Luke said softly, “you are very young, my dear. Pardon me. I forget that I am in England where men must be men and live in terror of suggesting femininity by word or deed. But to continue. One has nothing to live up to except one's own expectations. Especially when one is free of responsibilities. Are you bored? Do you have any other plans for your life apart from living up to my reputation? And that might not be quite what you think it is—I have never employed a mistress and I have touched alcohol only rarely since my twenty-first year.”

“You do not need to keep mistresses,” Ashley said with bitter sullenness. “'Tis said that ladies of highest quality rush to your bed if you but look at them and raise an eyebrow. 'Tis said that the Marquise d'Étienne came to London to—”

“Have a care,” Luke said quietly. “The lady moves in the highest court circles. She goes where she wills. What are your plans?”

“Not the army,” Ashley said firmly. “That was Papa's plan for me. George for the title, you for the church, me for the army. I am no coward, Luke, but I have no fancy to be fodder for enemy cannon whenever statesmen take it into their heads to quarrel. And not the church, either, though George and Mama were keen on the idea after you disappointed them. I go to church when I have to, and I give alms whenever anyone appeals to me in a good cause, and I have not stolen or murdered as far as I can recall, but I don't fancy being a clergyman, even with the prospect of being a bishop one day through the ducal influence. So do not try to force either of those on me, Luke, there's a good fellow.”

“And yet,” Luke said, “you seem to be a man of energy and one who chafes against restraints, Ashley. You have an independence, but you live beyond it. Will you enjoy having to come, cap in hand, to me or to my steward for the rest of your life?”

“As I live, no,” Ashley said, surging to his feet. “You are the worst of the lot, Luke. At least they would rant and rave. You sit there, striking an elegant pose, your eyes as cold as ice, calling me your dear as if I was a girl. Sometimes I believe that you must have killed my brother Luke ten years ago and taken his place. Sometimes you do not even look like him. The Luke I knew was warm and generous.”

“You may leave that bill on the desk,” Luke said, getting to his feet too. “I will settle it. But pay heed, Ashley. It will be the last of such bills I will pay. If you must satisfy your sexual appetites with an expensive mistress, you must do so within the bounds of your allowance. 'Twill not be easy even with the increase I will implement next quarter. 'Twould be much better to let her go and follow my advice. Indeed, I will amend what I just said. You may wish to make some settlement on the woman. You may bring me the bill for that settlement.”

“Zounds, but this is insufferable humiliation,” Ashley said, clearly not hearing the library door opening behind him. “Cold eyes and cold, cold heart. I wish you had stayed where you were, Luke. No, I wish more. I wish you had taken yourself to the devil instead of coming here.”

“Good morning, my dear,” Luke said over his brother's shoulder to his wife, who was standing, startled and embarrassed, in the doorway.

Ashley spun around and strode toward her. “Madam,” he said, making her a hasty bow and taking her offered hand to raise to his lips, “your servant. From the bottom of my heart I pity you.” He hurried from the room without looking back.

“Come inside, my dear,” Luke said.

Anna looked after Ashley before hesitantly obeying. “I am sorry,” she said. “I did not know there was someone with you. I should have had myself announced or found out that you had company and gone back to my rooms.”

He crossed the room to close the door behind her. He set his hands on her shoulders and kissed her continental fashion, first on one cheek and then on the other.

“This is your home, madam,” he said. “You may go wherever you will in it, without asking anyone's permission, my own included. Did you sleep well?”

“I slept far too late,” she said. “The morning is all but gone.”

“If you had not slept late,” he said, “you would not have slept at all.” He enjoyed watching her blush. The other women with whom he had been intimate had been far too blasé about life ever to blush. “Thank you, my dear, for a night of great pleasure.”