Summerset Abbey (36 page)

LONDON, NOVEMBER 1899

“What the devil are you saying, Imogen?” The Honorable Charles Riverdale stared at his fiancée across the cozy salon, his eyes darkening with anger and confusion. Rain drummed against the long windows that opened onto a small walled garden in this quiet London street of tall, terraced houses, and the gas lamps in the room were already lit to combat the afternoon gloom, a coal fire burning brightly in the grate. As brightly as the anger in his betrothed’s clear gray eyes.

Imogen Carstairs held his stare, resolution now superseding the anger in her gaze. “It’s a simple enough question, Charles. Is it true that Mrs. Symonds has been your mistress for the last two years, throughout our betrothal? And do you have a one-year-old child by her?”

“And just where did you hear this?” Charles regarded her closely, no longer confused.

“I’m not on the witness stand, Charles,” Imogen snapped, “so don’t try your barrister tricks on me. I asked you a question and I’d like an answer.”

They were like two angry bears facing each other over a newly killed carcass, Esther Carstairs thought from her position hidden behind the concealed door that led from the small salon at the back of the Carstairs’ mansion in Stanhope Terrace into a private cabinet that their father had used as his study. She had gone in to fetch some visiting cards from the secretaire and suddenly found herself on the outskirts of what sounded like a major row between the betrothed pair.

Neither of them knew she was there and, indeed, she had not intended to eavesdrop. She should have crept away and ordinarily would have done, but this conversation was too startling, too dramatic to ignore. Her sister had never mentioned the possibility that Charles had a mistress, so how on earth had it blown up just three days before the wedding was due to take place? Gen was as hotheaded as her fiancé, and they were often at loggerheads, usually about politics, but this subject was something of another order altogether, one that didn’t sound as if it could be solved by their usual route to reconciliation or compromise.

“I would still like to know where you heard this.” His tone was clipped.

He was playing the barrister, using his courtroom voice and demeanor to intimidate her as Imogen had seen him do so often in court. “
Damn it,
Charles, don’t use that voice with me.” She stamped her kid-booted foot on the gleaming copper fender as she stood sideways to the blazing fire. Her hand, resting on the carved mantel, curled into an unconscious fist around the base of a silver candlestick. “Are you asking where I heard a tissue of lies, a piece of malicious gossip, or the truth?”

Charles considered his options, watching her fisted hand warily. He knew his betrothed too well to hope that she might be deflected from a train of thought once embarked upon, and while a sin of omission could be brushed aside, a sin of commission certainly could not. He opted for a reasonable approach, saying mildly, “I’ve been friends with Mrs. Symonds for a long time, Gen, it’s no secret.”

“That was
not
my question, as you damned well know,” she stated. “Is this woman your mistress?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But it’s not unheard of for a man to have a mistress, Gen.” It was a mistake, he realized, the minute the words were out of his mouth.

“What’s that got to do with anything? I’m talking about
us
.” Imogen felt her temper slipping its reins, although she had sworn to herself that she would keep her emotions in check, stick to the facts, ask the questions in a straightforward manner. But Charles’s specious responses seemed to make light of a situation that was unendurable. “You kept a mistress throughout our betrothal. Isn’t that true?”

“Even if it is, it’s not unheard of either,” he returned, his own anger building anew. He was more used to interrogating than being interrogated, and he didn’t care for the role switch in the least.

“And as of this day, Mrs. Symonds remains your mistress?” She spoke very slowly now, separated the words as if to be certain he understood the question. All the while her gray eyes, now the color of arctic ice, were fixed upon his countenance with a closeness that unnerved him, made him conscious of every twitch of a cheek muscle, flicker of an eyelid.

“We are both agreed that our liaison must come to an end on my marriage,” Charles responded crisply, trying once more to take charge of the discussion. “There’s no need for you to become prudish about this, Imogen. It’s a perfectly common fact of life—”

“
Prudish,
you dare to call me prudish?” Imogen’s complexion paled as it always did under extreme emotion. “We have been lovers for the last year, and you’re admitting that throughout that time you kept Mrs. Symonds as your mistress?”

“My dear girl—”

“I am not your
dear girl
,” Imogen declared, her voice full of scorn. “And believe me, Charles, I never will be again. You are a liar, a deceiver, a betrayer of every honest principle, and a hypocrite of the first water.” Her voice shook with outrage as she added the coup de grace, unconsciously lifting the silver candlestick from the mantel.

“A hypocrite? How so?” His voice was now low and there was a dangerous gleam in his dark brown eyes, fixed upon the upraised candlestick.

Imogen ignored the danger signals. “You practice in the divorce courts, you prate about making the laws of marriage fairer to women, and yet you always side with the husband, and that’s what you’re telling me now. That for a man to commit adultery is a mere peccadillo, an established fact of society, but for a woman it remains criminal and immoral.”

“For a start, we are not talking about adultery here,” he pointed out sharply. “We are not yet married, my dear. The fact that you and I have anticipated marriage has nothing to do with the fact. I will pledge my fidelity to you at the altar and swear to you I will keep that pledge.” He took two rapid steps toward her and grasped her wrist, twisting the candlestick from her grasp and setting it back on the far end of the mantel. “I don’t like threats, as you should know by now.”

Her flat palm cracked across his cheek. “And you should know by now that I don’t make idle threats.”

Charles reeled backward a step, his hand lifted to the scarlet mark of her hand. He took a deep, steadying breath and Imogen closed her eyes for a moment, cursing her lack of control. Without that control, against Charles she became a spearless, shieldless gladiator confronting one of Nero’s well-armed favorites in the arena.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said softly.

“Chance would be a fine thing,” Imogen retorted. “I don’t ever want to be in the same room with you again. You’ve lived a lie with me for the last two years. I have never been less than open with you.” She stepped away from the fireplace, turning her back on him. “I cannot marry a deceitful philanderer . . . and I certainly couldn’t marry such a hypocrite.”

“Don’t walk away from me.” He took a step after her. “We are to be married in three days, Imogen. Three hundred people in St. George’s, Hanover Square.”

“Then I am afraid they will be disappointed. Would you send a notice to the
Times,
please, Charles?” Imogen walked from the room, her long stride unfaltering, her shoulders ramrod straight, and as soon as she reached the hall, she gathered her skirts and raced up the stairs to the seclusion of her bedroom, fighting back the tears. Anger at Charles’s appalling betrayal had buoyed her so far, but now, in the aftermath of that climactic scene, she felt drained of all emotional strength. The previous day, before she had learned the truth, seemed to exist in a different life, one where there was a future full of love and excitement, and now there was only the ugliness of deceit, of broken promises, of the feeling that she had been a pathetic naïf not to have seen what kind of man he was, the man she thought she loved so deeply.

Charles Riverdale stood stock-still for a few minutes in the small salon, staring sightlessly around the room. It was a particularly attractive room, he had always thought, furnished by the late Lady Carstairs as her own private salon. An easel with one of the lady’s own paintings, a delicate still life of the garden in spring, stood in front of the windows onto the now winter-bare garden. The chaise and chairs were as delicate and gilded as the lady herself had been, at least physically. Lady Carstairs, who had suffered from a weak heart all her life, had died three years earlier, but her frailty and diminutive stature had belied a formidable intellect, a determination and a powerful sense of what was wrong with the social world, qualities, if they could be called such, inherited by both Imogen and Esther. Although Esther was rather quieter in her passions than her sister. A great deal more restful. But then when had he relished restfulness? Charles reflected grimly.

How stupid he had been to imagine that Imogen wouldn’t have found out about Dorothea eventually. It had been on the tip of his tongue to tell her so many times, and yet every time he’d shrunk from the prospect of her reaction. Imogen was no prude, and he’d been a fool to accuse of her such, but she had a very powerful moral compass. She was a passionate champion of the issue of women’s unequal treatment under the law, and while he had taken her position seriously, and had been more than happy to debate it with her, it had never occurred to him that her attitude would drive her to such extreme action. It wasn’t possible that she was prepared to call off their marriage three days before they were to stand at the altar in front of three hundred guests—surely it had just been a threat born of hurt pride?

He went to the door, hesitating with his hand on the latch, wondering if there was any point going in search of her and starting again. But maybe it would be wise not to stir the waters any further. He would return this evening. He picked up his hat and went into the marble-floored hall.

Sharpton, the butler, was overseeing a parlormaid as she trimmed the sconced gas lamps above the front door. He turned as soon as Charles stepped into the hall, and while his expression was one of smiling impassivity, Charles thought he could detect a watchful, knowing air about the man. He wondered how much the butler had heard of the scene in the salon, and guessed that he had heard most if not all of it. It was always impossible to keep a family’s secrets from its household.

“Your hat, Mr. Riverdale.” Sharpton solemnly passed Charles his hat. “Your umbrella, sir. Should I send a lad to fetch a hackney for you?”

Charles shook his head. “No, thank you, Sharpton. A little rain never hurt anyone.” He nodded a brisk farewell as he stepped out through the front door into the wet and gloomy afternoon.

Esther slipped from the cabinet and hurried up to her sister’s bedchamber. She knocked tentatively. “Gen . . . Gen, may I come in?”

Imogen herself opened the door. She was very pale, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, and without further thought Esther wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, you poor darling, I’m so sorry but I heard everything. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, truly, but I was in the cabinet and—”

“It doesn’t matter, Essie,” Imogen interrupted, drawing her sister into the room and kicking the door shut behind her. “It saves me the trouble of explaining it all. Has Charles left?”