Kathryn Smith (35 page)

She tossed a pair of stockings into the trunk. “Lord Braven, I have no desire to stay under a roof where I’m not wanted.”

Her words were like a boot to the belly. “You think you’re not wanted here?”

“I know I’m not.” Her voice was sharp and crisp.

“Well you’re wrong!” This was ridiculous! He moved toward her, coming up behind her to rest his palms on her shoulders. “Rachel, what the devil is the matter?”

She twisted free of his grip, pushing his hands away with her arm. “I
heard
you. I was coming to invite the three of you to take tea with me and I heard you and your friends talking about why you married me, that it was all because of
her
.”

Oh God. Brave’s heart stilled. How much had she heard? Obviously not enough or she’d know that he planned to confess all to her. She’d know that Miranda no longer mattered.

“Rachel—”

“I asked you about it before, remember? I asked you if our marriage had anything to do with her, and you said no.” She jabbed him in the chest with her finger. He grunted. “You lied to me! It had everything to do with her! God! I can’t believe I was so incredibly stupid!”

She turned back to her trunk, but not before Brave saw the tears in her eyes. “Rachel, just let me explain.”

She whirled around again. “I don’t want to hear it! There’s nothing you could say to me right now to make me believe you! Do you know that I was foolish enough to think I was in love with you? And I was even more foolish in hoping that you might someday come to love me! But you’re in love with a memory, and I can’t compete with that. I don’t want to.” She sneered, twisting her usually soft features into something harsh and angry.

“You don’t understand.”

She laughed, a harsh and bitter sound. “Oh, I understand better than you think. You know, if you had been honest with me right from the start, I would have been better prepared. I wouldn’t have dared to believe there was anything between us, that you cared for me.”

He hated the anguish in her voice. The anger he could handle, but not the pain. “I do care for you!”

“Oh?” Her dark eyes, wet and bright with tears met his. “Tell me, Brave, if you were thinking of Miranda when you married me, did you think of her at other times as well?”

A cold tremor ran down Brave’s spine. Was she implying what he thought she was? “What do you mean?”

Rachel’s face went white. She didn’t want to come out and say it, but he wanted to hear the words on her lips. They’d come too far to hold back now.

“Who were you making love to, Brave? Me or her?”

God, but it still hurt to hear her say it. Did she really think so little of him that she could suspect him of using her in such a way?

“Rachel—”

She held up her hand. He was becoming heartily sick of her cutting him off. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear any more lies right now, Brave. At least I was honest about why I married you. I trusted you, and I feel as though you’ve betrayed that trust.” She shut the lid on the trunk. “I need to be away from you for a few days. I need to think, and I can’t think with you so close.”

Brave supposed that was a backhanded compliment, but it didn’t do much to warm him at the moment. He felt cold, colder than he had in a long time. She’d shut him out, just as he’d been doing to her since the day they were married. He was losing her, and it hurt. It hurt more than Miranda’s rejection and suicide combined. It even hurt to breathe.

“How long will you be gone?” He could scarcely hear his own voice.

She shrugged as she stared at the trunk. “As long as it takes.”

A voice inside his head screamed at him not to let her go. “You’ll send for me if you need anything?”

She nodded. He saw a tear slip down her cheek. “If I need anything.”

And Brave knew Rachel would rather go without than admit to needing anything, let alone needing him.

R
achel never thought she’d be so happy—no
relieved
—to be at Tullywood again. The house held so many unpleasant memories that she could scarcely turn a corner without remembering something awful from the years she spent within those walls. But still, she would rather be there than at Wyck’s End with the man who had made a complete fool out of her.

She should have known a man like that would never marry someone like her out of the goodness of his heart. She should have known he’d have a reason other than begetting an heir. Any woman could give him children. Only Rachel had been able to offer him penance.

At least David had only wanted her for her body.

“Where do you want this, Lady Braven?”

Rachel looked up from wrapping her mother’s porcelain figures. Janie, one of the chambermaids at Tullywood was packing some of her mother’s personal items from her dressing table. The girl held a delicate emerald ring in her palm.

It was the ring her father had given her mother the day he proposed. Her parents had known true love. Her father never would have used her mother to replace another woman.

No, her father had been betrothed to another woman while he courted her mother.

“I’ll take that, Janie, thank you.”

The maid gave her the ring, and Rachel slipped it on her finger. It was cool against her skin, and much more suitable than the large Wycherley sapphire Brave had given her when they married.

Everything about them was so ill suited. So why did it hurt so much to be away from him?

She wasn’t angry—not anymore. She’d had twenty-four hours to think about things. Her first thought had been to run as far away from Brave as she could, but she knew that wasn’t possible. And even if it were, she didn’t want to leave him. Even though he’d lied to her, perhaps even used her, she could not leave him and she couldn’t stay angry. Because she loved him. And because she understood what it was like to feel so responsible for something you’d do almost anything to fix it.

No, she didn’t approve of his methods; but she certainly couldn’t blame him for them.

The look on his face when she’d asked him if he’d been making love to her or Miranda had cut her to the very bone. No matter what other lies he’d told, she knew the answer to that question as surely as she knew her own heart. At the time she’d been too hurt and angry to realize it, but now that she’d had time to go over things in her head she was certain Brave had been telling the truth when he told her he cared about her.

“What about this?” This time it was a cameo Janie held out for inspection. It was the fourth time the girl had asked about a specific piece in the last ten minutes.

“Tell you what,” Rachel said, rising to her feet. “Why
don’t you finish packing these figurines, and I’ll take care of the jewelry?” She should have been the one to pack her mother’s personal items to begin with. If she hadn’t had her head full of thoughts of her husband and how much she missed him, she wouldn’t have assigned Janie to the task.

Switching spots with the maid, Rachel perched herself on the stool in front of her mother’s vanity and started sorting through the leftover jewelry. Some pieces her mother would no doubt like to take with her, others would be stored away.

Part of her still felt abandoned by her mother, but another larger part was happy her mother was going to experience such a grand adventure. The past few years had brought her mother so little happiness, so little time out in society. Now, she would accompany the dowager countess to numerous soirees and parties befitting the widow of a baronet. There would be no more whispers behind her back—or very few anyway.

And as for Rachel herself, she would no longer have to face the giggles of the debutantes or the sympathetic remarks from those who remembered her father.

No, she’d only have to face those who guessed that her husband didn’t love her. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

As she separated her mother’s jewelry, Rachel surveyed the barren room. Empty spaces stood out in the dust where knickknacks and trinkets had stood.

“At this rate we’ll be finished packing by evening, Janie.”

The maid looked up from the trunk of cloth-wrapped figurines. “Will you be leaving then, Lady Braven?”

Rachel shook her head. “No. I won’t be leaving for another day or two.” She could go. She could return to Wyck’s End and have dinner with her mother, Brave, and their three guests instead of eating alone at Tullywood, but she wasn’t going to. She needed time alone, time to get used to being on her own, without her mother, and possibly without Brave.

Oh, she had no intention of leaving him. There was no
point to that. She’d promised to give him an heir, and she would keep her promise. But she meant it when she told Belinda that she had no intention of making the best of a bad situation.

She would make her own life as Countess Braven. Now that she knew what was expected of her, she would do what she could to make Brave see that his life hadn’t ended when Miranda’s had. She would do her best to make him happy. She would be his friend and his lover if he required it. But she would depend on no one but herself for her own happiness. If she was miserable, it would be because she wanted something she couldn’t have, or of her own doing.

If she and Brave did have children, she would find happiness in motherhood, and maybe someday Brave would see her for herself and not as a substitute for someone else. And if he didn’t…well that was his concern.

Perhaps if she kept thinking it, she would eventually believe it. She didn’t want to live her life like that. She wanted her husband to love her—
her
. She wanted to earn his love, and if she couldn’t, then she didn’t want to be with him.

Many
ton
couples lived separate lives; surely she would be able to do so as well.

Staying alone at Tullywood was simply practice. Yes, that was it. It wasn’t that she was afraid to face him. He’d had a day to think things over as well. Did he miss her, or was he realizing just what a mistake marrying her had been? Perhaps she wouldn’t be welcome at Wyck’s End when she did return.

No, she couldn’t imagine Brave turning her away. He was too noble for that. No doubt he’d see remaining married to her just another kind of homage to Miranda.

Was it possible to hate a woman one had never met before? It had to be, for Rachel despised Miranda Rexley almost as much as she had despised Sir Henry.

And so she hid at Tullywood, not willing to face the ghost
of her husband’s dead love, not wanting to face her husband after that embarrassing scene the day she left. She reacted like a madwoman. Like a woman in love.

In wasn’t in her nature to be such a coward. Hadn’t she always faced Sir Henry? If he hadn’t broken her, surely that said something for the strength of her character. But she hadn’t cared about Sir Henry. She hadn’t loved him. He’d had no emotional power over her. Brave did. And wounds on the inside sometimes took longer to heal than those on the outside.

She would do what she always did when she ran into adversity. She would fight and plot and find another way around, but no more would she make impulsive decisions. She would think before she acted, because impulse was telling her to run back to Wyck’s End and demand to know how Brave felt about her, and that was just asking for trouble.

And so she wasn’t going back until the day her mother and Annabelle left for London. They would stay in town for a few weeks to give Marion extra time to heal and purchase clothing befitting her station. Then they would journey on to France and spend the winter somewhere warm. Rachel hoped she might see her mother again before they sailed.

She hoped Gabriel and Julian would be gone by the time she returned. It wasn’t that she disliked Brave’s friends, but it made her uncomfortable having Miranda’s brother in the house. For all she knew, he could be encouraging Brave in this foolish obsession of his. When the time came for her and Brave to discuss their future, she didn’t want anyone else adding their opinions.

She was going to have to be honest about her feelings. She was going to have to tell him how she felt. No more lies, no more deceptions. If they were to have any kind of real marriage, that was the way it was going to have to be. And if Brave rejected her…well, the next forty or fifty years were going to be somewhat uncomfortable for both of them.

“What do you want me to do with this, my lady?”

Rachel finished packing a delicate wrought-iron brooch and turned to Janie. She held a miniature portrait in her hand. Rachel took it, holding it up to the fading sunlight coming through the window so she could better discern the features.

It was Sir Henry, painted for his marriage to her mother.

A chill slipped down Rachel’s spine. Her mother had spent a very uncomfortable number of years with this man. How many more would she have had to endure if Brave hadn’t walked into their lives?

Rachel didn’t want an uncomfortable marriage. She wanted a real one. She wanted what her parents had had. She deserved no less, and if Balthazar Wycherley wasn’t the man who could give it to her then…then…well, he was just going to
have
to give it to her. It was all or nothing. She would not settle for less.

“Burn it,” she said, handing the portrait back to Janie. Her mother was starting a new life; she wanted no reminders of her old one.

As she watched her stepfather’s face go up in flames in the fireplace, Rachel decided it was time she took control of her own life as well.

He was a simpleton. Possibly even an idiot.

For only a man with a weak brain would allow his wife to walk away from him. Only a man with some stupid, twisted desire to punish himself would stop himself from going after her out of a sense of honor. He wasn’t to blame for Miranda’s death. He knew that now. It had taken Julian’s anger and a lot of soul-searching to allow himself to believe it. It wasn’t his fault, but Rachel’s leaving was. And he could attribute it to one thing and one thing only.

Stupidity.

He should have been honest with her when he had the
chance, but he’d been so afraid of her rejecting him that he hadn’t seen that he was building a wall between them.

Standing in one of the windows that lined the wall of his study, Brave stared toward the lane, sipped a brandy, and waited for Rachel to return. He’d been waiting since the moment she left two days ago.

The house seemed empty without her in it, even with the servants bustling about their usual chores and his mother and friends milling about. His mother, when she wasn’t gazing anxiously at him, was always in Marion’s room or one of the parlors discussing their upcoming trip. He could only listen to their plans for so long before his mind drifted. He played billiards with Gabe and Jules or read to occupy the time, but even the company of his friends became tedious after a while. They treated him as though he was made of glass—one wrong move and he’d shatter.

Did they think he was going to drown his sorrows in liquor? Perhaps throw himself into a fit of rage and despair? They were going to be heartily disappointed if they did.

Brave had no desire to dull the pain. He wanted to feel it. He wanted to think about what he had done wrong and wish he had done it differently. He wanted to miss Rachel. He wanted to hope that she would come back to Wyck’s End soon.

That she would return to him.

Twice, he’d gone out for a ride, only to turn around when he found himself within a stone’s throw of Tullywood. He’d been tempted to ride up to the doors and demand she come home with him. But he didn’t. He didn’t want to pressure her. So he waited.

If she’d only heard the whole of his conversation with Gabe and Jules, she would have known how his feelings had changed since he first proposed to her. If she’d only let him explain, perhaps she would be with him now. But she’d been too hurt, too angry to listen to anything more he had to say.

After a year and a half of little company other than his
own—and liking it that way—the Earl of Braven found that he craved attention. His wife’s attention, anyway. And if she—
when
she came back, he wasn’t going to let her go away ever again.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Brave didn’t turn. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Gabriel’s boots thudded against the carpet with every impatient step. Brave smiled. He didn’t know which one of his friends was more disgusted with him, Gabe or Julian.

“It looks like you’re being a complete ass, is what it looks like.”

Definitely Gabriel.

“I’m waiting, Gabe. I’m giving her the time she wanted. What would you have me do?”

Gabriel’s gray eyes flashed. “Go after her, you stupid fool!”

Brave smiled ruefully. “She doesn’t want me to come after her.”

The expression on his friend’s face was nothing short of stupefied. “What difference does that make?”

“I have to respect her wishes, Gabe.” Turning back to the window, Brave squinted at the road, looking for a sign of a carriage—her carriage.

“The only thing you have to do is get the woman you love back in your bed where she belongs.”

Brave chuckled. “What do you know of love?” He meant the remark to be teasing, but he regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.

“Gabe, I—”

His friend cut him off. That had been happening to him a lot lately. “This is one time when I know exactly what I’m talking about, my friend. You know it’s been almost eight years since I last saw Lilith.”

“I didn’t know it had been so long,” Brave remarked with sympathy. “It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.”

“It certainly doesn’t feel it.” Gabriel stared out the window now as well, but Brave doubted it was the landscape his friend was seeing.

They hadn’t spoken much of what had happened between Gabriel and Lilith Mallory over the years. Brave only knew that Gabriel had been one-and-twenty, had loved her, had planned to marry her and that she had disappeared completely. Rumors circulated that her parents had found out about her and Gabriel and had sent her away. Others said Lilith was pregnant by someone else and had fled to the Continent to escape disgrace. Brave didn’t know if even Gabriel knew the truth.