Improper Ladies (18 page)

Then he stilled. He became as frozen as she herself felt, and even his hands felt chilled against her skin.

He lifted her foot a bit and stared at the pink scar. Caroline fought the urge to yank her foot away, to scream and cry out and run away. She made herself sit there, as still as ice, her face the cool mask she had learned to don in her lonely years at the Golden Feather.

She only wished she had one of her cloth masks to hide behind, as well.

He raised his gaze to hers. His eyes were bewildered and dazed. “How could? ... Is this? . . .” he said hoarsely. His grasp tightened.

Caroline swallowed hard. “Yes. I am, or was, Mrs. Archer.”

Justin slowly placed her foot back onto the sand. Caroline caught up the stocking and pulled it quickly back over her leg, wincing as it passed over the swollen ankle.

The pain was as nothing compared to the pain in her heart.

Justin sat back against the driftwood. The stunned look on his face ripped at her soul. “Tell me,” he said.

“What is there to tell? Lawrence died without a farthing to his name. His only legacy to me was the deed to a gaming establishment, a place called the Golden Feather. He won it, you see, in a game of chance the very night he died. So he did not have time to lose it again.”

“And you took the place over?”

Caroline nodded wearily. She found she could not go into all the reasons for that action now. She was tired and in pain, and all that seemed so far away now. As if it had all happened to another woman.

Besides, to Justin, a gentleman, her reasons would not matter. A true lady would have chosen genteel poverty over ill-gotten riches.

As indeed she would have, for herself. But not for Phoebe. Never for Phoebe.

And now they were both ruined.

“Why did you not tell me?” he said, his voice tight with anger. “All these weeks, we have spent so much time together, and you never said a word.”

“Why do you think I did not tell you? Because then you would have given us the cut direct and made your mother and brother cut us, too. All of Society would have followed your example, starting with the Bellweathers. I could not have borne that for Phoebe, never!”

Caroline feared she was about to start weeping. She turned her face away from him, refusing to look at his furious, wounded eyes any longer.

He stared at her in the heavy silence, his gaze like a hundred knives stabbing at her heart.

Then the dark spell was broken by a piercing shriek.

Caroline looked up to see Phoebe running toward them, closely followed by Harry and Sarah. She had lost her cap again, and her hair fell down in unruly curls. Her hands were bunched into fists, and she was frowning most fiercely. She looked like a vengeful little Valkyrie.

“Once again your guard comes to your rescue,” Justin muttered. “First your maid and her book, and now this, Mrs. Aldritch. Mrs. Archer.” He raked a shaking hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in wavy tufts. “Whoever you are.”

“I am Caroline,” she whispered. “I am me.”

But he did not hear her. Phoebe was upon them, shouting, “What have you done to my sister? Why is she sitting in the sand like that? Did you knock her down?”

Justin stared at Phoebe unseeingly. Then he said, “Pardon me. I must ... go. I am sorry. Harry, please see the ladies home.”

Then he stood up and walked quickly down the shore, out of their view.

Caroline watched him until he disappeared, and at that moment she could no longer help herself. The tears she had choked back, making her throat ache, came out in a great salty flood. They fell off her chin and dripped onto her clenched hands.

They were not ladylike, diamondlike tears. They were great, gulping, ugly sobs.

She had not cried like this since she was a little child. Now she could not stop, even though she knew she was creating a scene.

Phoebe and Sarah knelt beside her, patting her and murmuring soothing words. Sarah pulled out a bottle of smelling salts.

Harry fluttered about helplessly, offering handkerchiefs and saying in a quavering voice, “Oh, I say! Do let me see you ladies home or send for the physician. Or something. Anything!”

Phoebe glared up at him. “It was
your
brother who caused this, Mr. Seward!”

“No, it wasn’t,” Caroline protested through her tears. “I caused it. Every bit of it.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Phoebe soothed. “It was Lord Lyndon. Men are such beasts.”

“I beg your pardon!” Harry cried.

“Beasts!” Phoebe repeated loudly. She put her arm around Caroline’s shoulder and said, “Come, dear, let me take you home.”

“
I’ll
see you ladies home,” Harry offered again.

“We have our own carriage, thank you, Mr. Seward.” Phoebe and Sarah helped Caroline up between them and supported her on her injured ankle as they left the sandy shore.

Harry trotted along behind them all the way.

Justin hardly knew where he was walking. He only knew he had to get away, to escape from the nightmare his life had suddenly become.

He walked blindly down the shore, unaware of the waves lapping at his boots or the birds wheeling overhead. He rubbed his hand hard over his brow, but he could not blot out the vision of Caroline, Mrs. Aldritch/Archer, staring at him with wide, dark eyes in her pale face.

What a blasted, stupid fool he had been not to see what was right before him all these weeks! Of course he recognized Caroline when he first met her, but not because of some mystical union of souls. It was because he had called on her once in her very own gaming house.

She must have laughed at him so behind her hand. The fool who didn’t recognize her, who hung about all the time like a love-struck puppy. How easily he had fallen in with her, let her use him for her social ends.

Justin sat down on a large chunk of wood to stare out at the sea, at the white-capped waves that danced and flowed endlessly. He knew it had been insufferably rude of him to leave her and the others alone on the shore, but he
had
to get out of there, to be alone. To think.

He had thought of himself as much changed by his years in India—older and wiser. In truth, he was as silly as Harry, taken in by a pretty face and a sad air.

What a fine actress she was. Her talents were wasted in owning a gaming house, and especially in matronly respectability. She should be treading the boards.

He picked up a stick of wood and tossed it into the water, watching it sink beneath the waves. He should have been thinking of the future all these weeks. He should have followed his mother’s original advice and courted and married Miss Bellweather, even if she did prefer digging about in the dirt to matrimony. She never would have made him feel this way, angry and hollow inside.

Because he had truly fallen in love with Caroline, whoever she was. He had never given his heart to any woman like this before, but she touched him with her quiet grace and understanding. He had wanted to take away the sadness in her eyes, to make her life full of nothing but happiness.

It had all been false. All a lie.

But even as he castigated himself for a fool, he could not forget the way she had looked under the moonlight while he kissed her.

 

 

“Tell me, Caro, please! Tell me what happened,” Phoebe beseeched. She sat on a chair in Caroline’s bedroom, watching helplessly as her sister lay in bed, tears still trickling down her cheeks.

Caroline shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened, or anything else. She just wanted to stay here in bed and forget. As if she would ever be able to forget at all. She would see Justin’s shocked, betrayed face in her mind forever.

She rolled onto her side to stare out the window. She could just barely see the edge of the house next door.

“At least let Mary and me help you into your nightdress,” Phoebe said desperately.

Caroline looked down at herself to see that she still wore her sandy bathing costume. She sat up and reached down to pull at her stockings, taking them off and throwing them onto the floor.

Her scarred ankle was still there. It hadn’t been erased.

Phoebe gasped. “Caro, you’re hurt! Did Lord Lyndon do that?”

“Of course not. It is an old scar.” Caroline rubbed at it furiously with her palm, wishing that it would vanish, and with it all the past.

Her fingernails scraped across the swollen skin there, making it bleed.

Mary, who had just come into the room with a glass of brandy-laced milk, cried out, “Stop that, madam! You are making your injury worse.” She rushed over to pull Caroline’s hand away and look at the scratches.

“It cannot get any worse,” Caroline murmured. “It’s all over.”

Phoebe’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “Caro, you are scaring me. You are acting just like that Lady Macbeth.”

Caroline looked over at her, a faint beam of surprise penetrating the fog of her mind. “Lady Macbeth?”

“Well, don’t look at me like that. I do sometimes read things other than novels, you know. I am not completely ignorant.”

Caroline laughed at that, and Phoebe and Mary exchanged relieved glances.

“Miss Phoebe, go and fetch some warm water and bandages,” Mary instructed. “And you, madam, will change out of those dirty clothes and drink every drop of this milk. It will help you rest.”

Caroline obediently stood up and unbuttoned the top of her bodice. “I can’t rest now. We have to start packing.”

“Packing? Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. Italy maybe, or America. Somewhere far away.” Caroline dropped the last of her clothes and turned back to look at her reflection in the mirror. She looked thin and pale in her chemise, almost like the ghost she felt. “Something terrible has happened, Mary. We are ruined.”

And her heart was shattered.

“Ruined, madam?” Mary’s voice held only mild curiosity. After four years at the Golden Feather with her mistress, she could hardly be shocked anymore. She dropped a clean nightdress over Caroline’s head.

The soft cotton folds enveloped her, sheltering her. “Yes. Justin—Lord Lyndon—discovered the truth about Mrs. Archer.”

Now Mary
did
look shocked. Her hands froze on the pearl button she was fastening at Caroline’s throat. “Oh, no, madam. Did he threaten to expose you?”

“Not exactly.” He had not said much of anything. That was the worst part. If he had shouted, she could have shouted back. But he had just walked away. “You know he
will
tell, though. We will no longer be accepted into the Sewards’ house, and people will want to know why.”

“Oh, madam!” Mary cried, her lower lip trembling. “I thought we were going to be
normal
now.”

“I thought, so, too. But it seems my life is doomed to drama, no matter how much I might wish it otherwise.” Caroline pulled a valise out from under the bed and limped to the wardrobe, not even noticing the pain in her ankle as she reached in for an armload of clothes. “I want Phoebe to be affected by this as little as possible, so we must leave at once. Tonight, if possible.”

She balled up a lacy petticoat and thrust it into the valise. Then she picked up a pink silk spencer.

“Here, let me do that! You are wrinkling everything.” Mary caught the spencer out of Caroline’s trembling hands and folded it neatly. “If we have to leave, then we have to leave. You know I will follow you anywhere. Though I must say I do like it here in Wycombe.”

“So do I, Mary,” Caroline answered wistfully, sitting back down on the bed.

She had never been so happy anywhere in her life before.

Phoebe appeared with a basin of water, which she almost dropped when she saw the open valise. “What are you doing? Where are we going?”

Caroline turned to her sister and held out her hand. “Phoebe, darling, come over here and sit down beside me, so we may talk.”

Phoebe backed up, water sloshing from the basin onto her bright green muslin gown. “It’s Lord Lyndon, isn’t it? He hurt you, and now we must leave to get away from him! How vile he is. I should not have invited him to our outing; then none of this would have happened.”

“It isn’t like that at all.” Caroline had thought to make up some tale for Phoebe about why they were leaving Wycombe. But now, as she looked into her sister’s desperate eyes, she knew she had to tell her the truth. She was done forever with lies and half-truths. All they had ever brought her was pain.

Caroline took the basin from Phoebe and placed it carefully on a table. Then she drew her over to sit down on the window seat. She pulled the curtains against the sight of the Sewards’ house.

“Now, Phoebe,” she said, taking Phoebe’s trembling hands in her own, “I must tell you something. We
are
leaving because of Lord Lyndon, but it is not his fault. It is mine.”

“Yours, Caro? How can that be?”

Caroline took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “After Lawrence died, I told you I was working as companion to his elderly aunt. Remember?”

“Yes. That is why we could only see each other a couple of times a year.”

“I fear I lied to you.”

Phoebe looked confused. “Do you mean you were not working for Mr. Aldritch’s aunt?”

“No.” Caroline closed her eyes so she could not see her sister’s reaction to her words. “I-I owned a gaming establishment, called the Golden Feather. Lawrence won it in a game of chance right before he died, and I took it over.”

She steeled herself for the storm, for Phoebe to rail at her for her lies.

Instead there was . . . silence.

Caroline cautiously opened her eyes. Phoebe was watching her, a rapt and fascinated look on her face.

“A gaming establishment,” she breathed. “Truly, Caro?”

Caroline nodded. “I fear so.”

“Oh! It is just like
A Gamble on Love
. You must tell me all about it. What fascinating people you must have met!”