Lady Lyte's Little Secret (17 page)

“Did you?” A lively challenge sparkled in Felicity’s eyes.

“Of course not!” Thorn lofted his reply toward her. “Lady Rose paid for her carnal curiosity when she lost her footing and tumbled down the hill into the water.”

Thorn began to chuckle. “If you knew my sister, especially as she was then.” He shook his head. “Very beautiful and elegant. Not to mention overly conscious of her dignity. I wish you could have seen her cartwheeling down that riverbank, then plopping into the water!”

“The poor child!” cried Felicity as Thorn’s laughter gathered momentum. “Was she hurt?”

“Only her vanity.” Thorn gasped for breath. “But that took a terrible bashing. All her perfectly curled hair sodden and bedraggled around her face and her dress a ruin. It’s a wonder Merritt and I didn’t drown. We were laughing so hard, we kept falling down into
the water. Rosemary flounced off with her nose in the air and refused to speak to either of us for a week.”

“I’d have made it a fortnight,” insisted Felicity, though she appeared more amused than indignant on Rosemary’s behalf. “What else did you do for entertainment in the summers, besides cavorting naked in the brook and laughing at the misfortunes of your poor sister?”

“Let me think. Battledore and shuttlecock matches when the wind was calm. Ivy and I played against Merritt and Rosemary. Sometimes we’d pack up a lunch and go off picking berries. Endless card games and chess matches on rainy days, or each curled up with a book in the sitting room, reading the best bits aloud to each other.”

With a jolt, Thorn roused from his reminiscences. “Sounds tedious, doesn’t it?”

Felicity shook her head. “Not at all. I’d have given most anything to be part of such goings-on when I was that age. Tell me, did you ever go to parties?”

“Once in a great while the girls would coax us to squire them to the Assembly Hall in Lathbury. And I seem to recollect Sir Edward Faversham hosting a grand fete at Heartsease.”

“Heartsease?”

“A big estate not far from Barnhill. After Sir Edward died, the place went to some distant relation of his who put it on the market.”

His voice trailed off. Happy as he’d been when Merritt Temple had come to Lathbury and bought Heartsease, Thorn had hated to see it pass out of the Faversham family.

Might the same thing happen to Barnhill one day, if he had no sons?

Chapter Twelve

“T
here’s something I still don’t understand,” said Felicity a while after she and Thorn had taken over her coachman’s accustomed perch. “How did your brother-in-law come to own a large estate like Heartsease? I thought you said he hadn’t any money.”

“He hadn’t when we were young.” Thorn kept his gaze on the horses and the road before them. “At least not much. Enough to put himself through school and buy a modest commission. However, my old friend returned from his time in Spain with General Wellington something of a hero. As a result of his fame, he caught the eye of…”

For an instant Thorn’s hesitation puzzled Felicity. Then she understood. “A lady of fortune? Your friend married an heiress?”

Thorn nodded.

“Pity.” Her stomach clenched. “I had rather liked the sound of your Mr. Temple…until now.”

“Merritt did not wed the woman for her fortune, if that’s what you presume.” Thorn’s hands tightened on the reins. “He loved her…or thought he did. At first.”

A Royal Mail coach overtook them just then with
a great clatter. It must have been behind schedule, for the maroon-liveried coachman did not spare his whip. Two young men, who occupied the cheapest places on the outside of the vehicle, shot curious looks at Felicity, perched up on the driver’s seat of her carriage. She barely resisted the childish temptation to stick her tongue out at them.

The mail coach finally gained a great enough lead that Felicity could hear herself speak. “I take it the first Mrs. Temple failed to meet your friend’s expectations.”

When love died in a marriage, no amount of money could provide a remedy. Unlike Merritt Temple’s first wife, at least she had survived her marriage to reclaim her independence. The thought of having gone to her grave unwept by her husband, then having him use her fortune to attract a second wife made Felicity’s gorge rise along with her temper.

They rode on for a time, an awkward silence falling between them until at last Thorn broke it.

“The truth is, Merritt failed to meet his wife’s expectations. He has never said an ill word about the first Mrs. Temple in my hearing, but Rosemary has let the odd remark slip. And I know my friend well enough to guess what his first marriage must have been like.”

“And how do you guess it must have been?” Her question came out in a sharper tone than she had intended.

Thorn shrugged and slanted a fleeting glance toward her. “The lady assumed she’d purchased him. For his fame, I suppose, and perhaps for his looks. From an ill-fed youth, Merritt had matured into quite a handsome fellow. His wife probably thought she had a right
to order him around like a servant or some sort of lapdog.”

If Thorn had turned and thrashed her with the coachman’s whip, which he hadn’t once touched to the horses, Felicity could not have taken a deeper cut. She had never treated Percy the way Merritt Temple’s wife had treated him. Had she?

Did Thorn believe she would treat him in that high-handed fashion if he was fool enough to wed her?

Pulling her cloak tighter about her, she stared off at the Midland countryside where the county boundaries of Shropshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire got hopelessly mixed up.

Almost as mixed up as her emotions.

“Unequal fortunes can place a grave strain on a marriage.”

Was she trying to excuse her past actions or to caution Thorn and herself against flirting with dangerous fancies? Felicity hardly knew.

Thorn’s shoulders appeared to slump a degree or two—or had she only imagined it? “Merritt told Rosemary much the same thing when he first returned to Lathbury with his infant son, after his wife died.”

Those words gave way to a wry chuckle—the last sound Felicity had expected to hear from Thorn just then. “The poor fellow almost ruined his chances with my sister then and there. He had no idea how our fortunes had fallen in recent years, and Rosemary was too proud to tell him. When he finally found out, Merritt assumed the worst—that Rose had kept the truth from him intentionally while she pursued him for the fortune he’d inherited.”

“How awful!” Felicity’s heart warmed in sympathy for both Merritt and Rosemary. In either of their
places, she might have done or believed just as they had.

“A bad business, keeping secrets,” said Thorn. “Especially from those we love. Somehow whatever we’re trying to hide always comes out at the worst possible moment. Then it makes the situation ten times worse than it was before.”

All the air seemed to rush out of Felicity’s lungs, as though she’d been clouted by a low-hanging tree branch. For a moment she feared she might pitch off the carriage.

How would Thorn react if he found out the secret she’d been laboring to keep from him?

That wasn’t hard to guess. He’d hate her for not telling him, but that wouldn’t stop him from insisting they wed—for the sake of respectability and duty. As grounds for a lasting union, those would be as inadequate as the exchange of wealth for fame or title that she and Merritt Temple had endured in their first marriages.

She must have swayed or given some other subtle signal of her distress, for Thorn gathered the carriage reins in his left hand, then slipped his right arm around her shoulders.

“Is something the matter?” He held her steady, with both his firm grip and his tone of fond concern. “I know the height and the motion can set one dizzy. Shall I stop and let your driver take over again?”

“I’m fine,” Felicity insisted, praying she sounded sincere. “I only thought how awful for Mr. Temple and your sister. How did it all work out in the end?”

“I had a hand in that as a matter of fact.” Thorn tugged on the reins to slow the horses as they approached
a village. “The most devious bit of thinking I’ve done in my life.”

He sounded touchingly proud of himself. “I knew that neither Merritt nor Rosemary could abide the slightest suspicion that she had wanted to wed him for his fortune, so I suggested he pretend to have lost his money in bad investments.”

“That
was
devious.” A week ago, Felicity would not have believed him capable of hatching such a scheme. But since the night he’d stormed into her town house in search of Ivy, Thorn Greenwood had proven himself a man of hidden depths. “Did your sister believe him?”

“Why would she doubt it after what had happened with our father?” Thorn spared Felicity a quick sidelong glance. “Just as I’d hoped, Merritt’s pretended loss of fortune did nothing to lessen Rosemary’s feelings for him. They were married shortly afterward and have been happy ever since. I’d be dead envious if I didn’t love them both so well.”

The wistful craving in Thorn’s voice echoed one that gnawed at Felicity’s heart.

“What did Rosemary say when she discovered her husband had lied to her about losing his money?” Felicity asked. “Wasn’t that every bit as bad as her keeping the secret of your family’s financial reversal?”

“Perhaps so.” He considered for a moment. “Rosemary may have decided that Merritt’s innocent deception set them even. I gather she forgave him most readily.”

Thorn’s sheepish grin ripened into a rather devilish one. “Or perhaps it was because he told her the truth just after he’d made love to her on their wedding night.”

“Indeed?” Felicity found herself laughing, though a quiver of unease went through her at the same instant. Was there anything she might not forgive Thorn if he asked during the lazy weightless warmth after lovemaking?

Only half in jest, she inquired, “What if I was to tell you I’d lost
my
fortune?”

Thorn greeted her question with a hoot of laughter. But after a moment’s reflection, his answer sounded as solemn and sincere as Felicity had ever heard. “I would tell you what Rosemary told Merritt and just as truly. It would make no difference to me.”

Easily said under the circumstances. But how she longed to believe him.

“Wait,” said Thorn. “Let me amend that. It
would
make a difference. I would prefer you without a great fortune. For then you could be certain my feelings are genuine. And there’d be no odious gossip about me wanting you for your money or you having to buy a husband.”

He made the calamity of losing her fortune sound almost appealing. Except that it would also mean the loss of her hard-won independence. Felicity could not give that up.

“And what if I told you the matter of my inability to breed was all a mistake and that I was quite capable of bearing children after all?”

The instant those words left her lips, Felicity wished she could take them back. The question had seemed to ask itself against her will. “Would
that
make any difference to you?”

She held her breath as she listened for Thorn’s answer. If only it did not matter so much to her…

“I wish I could assure you otherwise, my dear.”
His arm tightened around her for an instant, then he drew it back to grasp the reins more securely. “But I’m afraid that
would
make a difference.”

To Felicity, it felt as though her heart had fallen beneath the carriage wheels and been ground into the unyielding surface of the road.

It was all well and good for Thorn to preach about the folly of keeping secrets, as if her conscience didn’t trouble her enough already. Even putting aside the whole distasteful question of fortune, she could never again wed a man who valued her only as a broodmare on whom to sire offspring.

Not even if his offspring was growing in her womb that very moment.

He had hurt her.

Not that it was easy to tell with Felicity, for she didn’t pout or pine. Instead she donned a mask of mocking amusement, keeping up a steady banter about their mutual acquaintances in Bath. If he hadn’t known better, Thorn might have thought he was conversing with Weston St. Just.

Early in the afternoon, they had stopped in Wolverhampton to tend the horses, after which Mr. Hixon and the young footman had resumed their posts, looking somewhat better for their improvised nap. Thorn and Felicity had returned to the relative comfort and quiet of the carriage box for the final leg of their journey to Trentwell.

Thorn had started to relate another story about the escapades of he, Merritt, Rosemary and Ivy during their summers at Barnhill, but Felicity had been quick to divert him with talk about Bath.

He could not escape the sense that she was pushing
him back to arms’ length, after having made the mistake of allowing him to get too close.

The subtle rebuff stung him at first, even as he found himself laughing at her tart quips.

Gradually, however, he began to pay less heed to her words, other than to nod or chuckle when Felicity appeared to expect it. Instead, he drank in the sparkle of her eyes and the rich, dark lustre of her hair. The way she held her head when she spoke and the graceful manner in which she moved her hands to emphasize what she was saying.

Each of these touched him with a fond familiarity that had grown over the weeks since they’d begun keeping company. They also touched him with a sweet sadness when he realized they might soon be nothing but an elusive recollection, slipping from his memory the harder he tried to hold them.

A week ago, her present performance might have fooled him. But the time and confidences they had shared since setting out on this journey had given him fresh insight. What he’d said, about her barrenness making a difference, had wounded her. Now she was creating a diversion to cover her retreat. She could not risk allowing him close enough to strike another blow.

“Was I wrong to tell you the truth?
” Thorn wanted to protest.

Another man might have reassured her with a diplomatic evasion or an outright lie. He had never mastered the knack of deception. Besides, he cared for Felicity too much to offer her anything but the truth.