Jane Feather - [V Series] (43 page)

She nodded. “As children we spent some time in similar establishments … but that’s another story.”

“You must tell me sometime,” he commented calmly. “You didn’t stay very long tonight, I gather.”

“No, I put mustard in my wine and made myself very sick,” she said. “It’s a trick I’ve used before to get out of a ticklish situation.” A gleam appeared in her eye, a hint of the customarily mischievous Judith. “I’m afraid the earl was rather put off by the results.”

The Earl of Gracemere’s disgruntlement was now explained. Against all the odds, laughter bubbled in Marcus’s chest. “You vomited?”

She nodded. “Prodigiously … mustard has that effect. It’s also very wearing,” she added. “I still feel weak and shivery.”

Marcus asked his most important question. “Am I to be told why you’ve been cultivating Gracemere despite our agreement that you would hold him at arm’s length?”

Judith bit her lip. This was where it became tricky. “There is something I wasn’t intending to tell you—”

“Dear God, Judith, you have more layers than an onion!” Marcus interrupted. “Every time I think I’ve peeled away the last skin and reached some core of truth and understanding, you reveal a dozen new layers.”

“I’m sure you’ve never peeled an onion in your life,” Judith said, momentarily diverted.

“That is beside the point.”

Judith sighed. “I know that it was Gracemere who took Martha from you—” Marcus’s sharply indrawn breath stopped her for a minute, but when he said nothing, she continued resolutely.

“Gracemere told me, as an explanation for why you held him in such enmity. I wanted—” She paused, casting
a quick look up at him. His expression was impassive, neither encouraging nor threatening.

“I wanted to know something about Martha,” she rushed on. “You wouldn’t talk of her … except that once in the inn at Quatre Bras, and then you said you never wanted to talk about her again. You said she was my antithesis in every way, and I wanted to know what she was like—what that meant. It was almost an obsession,” she finished, opening her hands in a gesture appealing for understanding.

Marcus stared, for the moment unable to respond. Feminine curiosity! Was that all it was? Judith simply wanted to know what her predecessor had been like? The simplicity of the answer confused him. It seemed too simple for someone as complex as Judith. And yet it was perfectly understandable. He had been adamant in his refusal to discuss that aspect of his past.

“I’ve never liked Gracemere, Marcus,” Judith said when he remained silent. She was thinking fast now, and the distorted truth tripped convincingly off her tongue.

“I’ve never trusted him either, which is why I took the mustard. But I didn’t think it would do any harm to cultivate him long enough to satisfy my curiosity. He was playing with me. I knew that. And I thought, so long as I knew it, I’d be able to play along without anything serious happening. I’d find out what I wanted and that would be that. I didn’t intend to hurt you … I … oh, how can I convince you of that?”

He scrutinized her expression for a minute, then nodded slowly. “I believe you. Did he satisfy your curiosity?”

Judith shook her head. “There wasn’t time. Once I realized what he was up to this evening, I had to move quickly.”

Marcus turned to the fire and threw on another log. When he spoke, his voice was businesslike.

“It’s true that Martha fell in love with Gracemere. It’s true I think that had I been more attentive, she wouldn’t have done so. I grew up with her. Her family’s estates marched with my own, and it had always been assumed, from the cradle almost, that we would unite the two estates. I saw no reason to question the plan, but neither did I see any reason to pay Martha any particular attentions on that account.”

A log slipped in a shower of sparks, and he kicked it back with a booted foot. “I amused myself in the manner of most young sprigs with too much money and not enough to occupy them. Martha was a meek dab of a girl, a little brown mouse.”

He glanced across at Judith, who was all burnished radiance and luster despite the events of the evening. “You and she are chalk and cheese,” he said. “Both physically and in temperament. Martha was meek and easily influenced. The perfect prey for someone like Gracemere, whose pockets were always to let and who spent his time dodging bailiffs and the Fleet prison. But he’s of impeccable breeding, has considerable address and a honeyed tongue when it suits him. They eloped, putting me in the guise of a loathsome suitor forced upon an unwilling woman.”

He turned his back to the room, leaning his arm along the mantelpiece, staring down into the rekindled fire as the memory of that time flooded his mind as vividly as if it were yesterday.

Martha’s father had been a sick man, and she’d had no brothers. It had fallen to the hand of the jilted fiancé to go after the fugitives and bring Martha back before they joined hands over the anvil. He’d found them very
quickly. Gracemere had had no intention of immediately taking Martha to Gretna Green.

She’d been a battered, gibbering wreck when he’d come up with them. Her lover, desperate to ensure there would be no possibility of annulment, had raped her within a few hours of their flight. Ruined, and possibly pregnant, Martha had had no option but to accept as husband the only man likely to offer for her.

“I backed out of the engagement with as much grace as I could muster,” he said in the same level tones, giving no indication of the violent swirling of the age-old rage—a rage that had led him to thrash Bernard Melville to within an inch of his life.

“And nine months later Martha died giving birth to a stillborn child. Gracemere inherited her entire fortune except for the estate which her father left to a nephew. He was determined that Gracemere shouldn’t take that … for which I can only be grateful, having been spared such a neighbor.”

He looked up, his eyes unreadable. “Does that satisfy your curiosity, lynx?”

Judith nodded. But in truth the curiosity that had been a convenient fabrication was now reality. Marcus was leaving something out; she could hear the gaps in the story as if he’d underlined them. And she could feel the deep currents of emotion swirling behind his apparently bland expression. However, she had no choice under the circumstances but to accept what he’d said without question. The ease with which she’d managed to deceive him was somehow harder to endure than the deception itself. He now trusted her enough to believe her lies.

“I don’t know why I needed to know so badly,” she said. “It happened a long time ago, after all.”

“Yes, when you were a little girl of twelve,” Marcus responded with a dry half smile.

“Are you very angry?” Judith regarded him somberly. “You have the right, I freely admit it.”

Marcus frowned, pulling at his chin. Her confession seemed to have made all the difference to his feelings. “No, I’m not angry. You put yourself in a highly dangerous and compromising situation, but you managed to extricate yourself neatly enough. However, I’m disappointed you didn’t feel able to ask
me
your questions. I would have thought matters were running smoothly enough between us for that.”

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
, Judith thought, hearing the hurt in his voice. She couldn’t possibly enter into any discussion about why she hadn’t felt able to share her invented curiosity with him. She offered him a slightly helpless shrug of acceptance that he acknowledged with a resigned shake of his head.

“What are we going to do if Gracemere does decide to create a scandal?” She changed the subject.

Marcus’s expression hardened. “He won’t.” It was a sharp, succinct statement.

“But how can you be so sure?”

“My dear Judith, don’t you trust me to make sure of it?” he demanded in a voice like iron. “Believe me, I am a match for Gracemere.”

Judith, looking at the set of his jaw, the uncompromising slash of his mouth, the eyes like black flint, didn’t doubt for a minute that her husband was more than a match for Gracemere, or anyone else who might decide to meddle in his affairs.

And where did that leave his wife? His lying, conniving trickster of a wife. A shudder ripped up her spine, and she crossed her arms, hugging her breasts, staring up at him in silence.

His expression abruptly softened as he saw her shiver. “You need to be in bed,” he said. “An evening
spent hanging over the commode is enough to exhaust anyone.” A smile tugged willy-nilly at the corners of his mouth as he imagined the scene. He could almost feel sorry for Gracemere. He picked up her discarded wineglass and handed it to her, saying lightly, “Be a good girl and finish your port, it’ll warm you.”

Judith’s responding smile was somewhat tentative, but she obediently finished the wine and found it comforting in her sore and empty belly.

“Upstairs now.” Marcus took the glass from her. “I’ll come up later, when you’re tucked in.”

“I seem to need to be cuddled,” Judith said in a voice that sounded small.

Marcus put his arms around her, holding her tightly against him, feeling her fragility. “I’ll hold you all night,” he promised into her fragrant hair. “I’ll come as soon as Millie’s helped you to bed.”

He held her throughout the night, and she slept secure in his arms, but her dreams were filled with images of things cracked and broken under a tumultous reign of chaos.

A
few days later, as he sat over the breakfast table, Marcus received an invitation from his old friend Colonel Morcby of the Seventh Hussars, requesting the pleasure of his company at a regimental dinner in the company of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington; Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher; and General Karl von Clausewitz, at eight o’clock in the evening of Wednesday, December 12 at regimental headquarters on Horseguard’s Parade. December 12 was the night of the Duchess of Devonshire’s ball.

Marcus drank his coffee, wondering how Judith would react if he cried off from the ball. It was the high point of the pre-Christmas festivities, and all fashionable London would be there. Would she feel neglected if she had to go alone? But her friends would be there, and her
brother, he reasoned. It wasn’t as if he’d see much of her all evening, even if he did escort her. Besides, Judith was not a woman to demand her husband’s company when he’d received an invitation so vastly more appealing. He didn’t doubt she’d understand the appeal of the invitation from Colonel Morcby.

He left the breakfast parlor and went upstairs to his wife’s chamber. The atmosphere in the room was steamy and scented. The fire had been built as high as safety permitted and heat blasted the room, augmenting the steam wreathing from a copper hip bath drawn up before the hearth. Marcus blinked to clear his vision and then smiled.

Millie was pouring more water from a copper jug into the tub while Judith stood beside the bath, one toe delicately testing the temperature. Her hair was piled on top of her head and she hadn’t a stitch of clothing on.

“Good morning, sir.” She greeted him with a smile. “I think that’ll do for the moment, Millie. But perhaps you should fetch up some more jugs from the kitchen for later.… I’m taking a bath, Marcus,” she informed him somewhat unnecessarily.

“So I see.” He stepped aside as Millie hurried past him through the doorway, carrying empty jugs.

“I intend to spend the entire morning luxuriating in hot water,” she informed him, stepping into the tub. “It’s a pity you can’t join me.”

“Who says I can’t?”

“Well, no one.” She let her head fall back against the rim, drawing her legs up so that her dimpled knees broke the surface of the water. “I simply assumed, since you’re dressed for town, that you were not in the mood for beguilement.”

“Sadly, I’m in the mood but unable to indulge,” he said. “I’m on my way to Angelo’s.”

“Ah,” said Judith, sitting up suddenly, slopping water over the edge of the bath onto the sheet spread beneath it. “I should like to learn to fence.”

“You amaze me,” Marcus said, shrugging out of his coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves. “I didn’t think there was anything you didn’t know how to do. Weren’t you able to find an admirer to teach you?”

“Sadly, no,” she said, sitting back again, regarding his preparations through narrowed eyes. “Perhaps you would like to take on the task.”

“It’ll be a pleasure.” Marcus picked up the lavenderscented cake of soap from the dish beside the bath and moved behind her. “Lean forward and I’ll do your back.”

“You’ll ruin your pantaloons, kneeling on the floor,” she pointed out, remaining with her back against the tub.

“They are knitted, my dear, and mold themselves to my wishes,” he observed. “Unlike my wife, it would seem.” He slipped an arm around her, bending her forward so that he could soap the smooth plane of her back with firm circular movements, occasionally scribbling down her spine with a tantalizing fingernail.

Judith arched her back like a cat beneath the hard hands, bending her neck for the rough exploration of a fingertip creeping into her scalp.

“Oh, I was forgetting,” Marcus murmured, sliding his hand down her back beneath the surface of the water on a more intimate laundering. “I’ve received an invitation to dine in Horseguard’s Parade on Wednesday. Would you mind if I don’t accompany you to the ball?” Gentle pressure bent her further over his encircling arm, and the sudden tension in her body, the ripple of her skin, he ascribed to its obvious cause.