The Deception (17 page)

They were still on their feet. “Good night, my lady,” they chorused. I nodded and retreated to my room.

Lucy was there waiting to help me undress. I thought,
I
must remember to ask Adrian if he sent anyone to Charlwood to look for Rose.

Then I thought that it might be weeks—months even— until I saw Adrian again. I probably wouldn’t even see him again tonight. He probably would rather talk to Lieutenant Staple than make love to his unwanted wife.

I had worked myself into a fine state of gloom by the time I was in my nightgown and in my bed. I dismissed Lucy and picked up
The Wealth of Nations,
which I was now reading for the second time. It seemed to me that Adam Smith had an important message and that I had missed half of it on my first go-round.

I looked at the pages of my book, but what I was really doing, of course, was listening for sounds on the other side of the connecting door. Lucy had drawn the drapes across the bedroom window, but I could still hear the rain drumming against the glass panes.

I had read one page over at least four times when my listening ears picked up the murmur of voices from next door. Adrian, talking to his valet. My heart began to slam and the book trembled in my grasp. I looked down at the page, but it was a blur. I kept looking anyway, but all my senses were focused intently on that connecting door. He had to come.

And at last, he did. I heard the door open. I looked slowly up from my book. He was closing the door behind him. He said, “If you are not feeling up to it, Kate, I can go away.” He was wearing a dressing gown.

“Don’t go away,” I said.

He came toward the bed. I closed my book and put it on the table next to me, hoping that he would not notice how my hand trembled. He sat on the bottom of the bed and looked at me. “I have some bad news,” he said.

I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. “Bad news, my lord?”

“Just before we went into dinner the groom I had sent over to Charlwood returned. It seemed that the girl you wanted to have as your maid is dead, Kate.”

I blinked, trying to adjust to a topic I had not expected. “Dead?” I echoed. I frowned. He was looking very grave. “What happened?” I asked sharply.

“She tried to get rid of the child she was carrying,” he said. “She bled to death.”

I pressed my knuckles against my mouth. “Dear God,” I breathed.

“I’m sorry, my dear. It is not a pretty story.”

I slammed my fist into the mattress. “Damn him, Adrian!” I slammed it again. “Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!”

His big hand settled over mine, stilling my futile pounding. I took a long breath to steady myself and told him about the time I had seen Rose come out of my uncle’s bedroom.

He listened, and when I had finished there was a white line around his mouth. He said in an unusually clipped sort of voice, “Charlwood has never had any sense of honor.”

My husband is one of the few men I have ever known who can use the word
honor
and you know it means something.

“Harry told me he tried to elope with your sister,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said, his enunciation still very clipped. “Charlwood Court is but ten miles from here, and the summer Caroline was sixteen, Martin came down from Oxford. He persuaded her to meet him secretly. She was unhappy at home and it was easy for her to fancy herself in love with him. It ended up in an attempted elopement.”

He was looking at his hand, which still covered mine on top of the blue wool blanket.

“Harry said you stopped it.” I was still whispering.

“Yes. I would never trust my sister’s happiness to a man like that.” He raised my hand, turned it over, and kissed the palm. His eyes met mine. “You were right to be afraid of him, sweetheart. But now you are safe with me.”

I felt the touch of his lips all the way down in my stomach. His mouth moved to my wrist and lingered there. He had to be able to feel the hammering of my pulse. He lifted his lips and fingered the ruffle at the edge of my nightgown sleeve. “This,” he said, “is a nuisance.”

“Perhaps I ought to remove it, then,” I said unsteadily.

“Mmmm.” His hands were already at my throat, undoing the first of three pearl buttons.

He lifted my nightgown off, tossed it to the floor, then stood to strip off his own dressing gown. The bedside lamp was still lit, and in its glow I could see the puckered red scar that lay along the right side of his rib cage. I thought of the injury he had concealed at Waterloo, and when he came back to the bed I leaned toward him to trace the line of the scar, first with my forefinger and then with a rain of little kisses all along its length.

He said my name and I lay back upon the bed and lifted my arms to him.

“It will be better this time,” he murmured in my ear. “I swear it will be better.” He kissed my ear, my temple, my cheek, and then, finally, he reached my lips. A hot drenching surge rose within me, and I opened my mouth to him. His hand caressed my breasts, and when the nipples were standing up hard, it moved lower to my stomach and my hips. He kissed me, and I quivered in his hold as his hand moved lower still. The fire crackled, the rain beat against the windows, and I surrendered my body completely to mindless desire.

It was so wonderfully sweet, so hot and sweet, my blood, my juices all running hot and molten under his touch. Everything between us felt so natural, so
right,
but when at last he started to enter me, my body remembered last night’s burning pain and tensed in anticipation.

“Relax, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Relax and it won’t hurt.”

I tried. I shut my eyes, willed my thigh muscles to relax, lay perfectly still, and let him in. Deeper and deeper he came, so slowly, so carefully, and there was pressure but no pain. I let out my breath shakily and looked up into his hard, intent face. He said huskily, “All right?”

I nodded, and lifted my legs, and my body closed around him.

As if from a long distance, I heard the rain begin to drum heavier against the window. Then he drove, coming up into me like a powerful surge of water, wave after wave of it, irresistible, and my body shook with his coming, racked with shocks of such intense pleasure that I think I actually cried out.

It wasn’t until long afterward, when we were lying together quietly, my head pillowed in the crook of his shoulder, that the fear moved in. This emotion that I felt for him was too strong, too all-encompassing, too powerful. It wasn’t safe for either of us.

He went to sleep still holding, me, and I lay quietly so I wouldn’t disturb him. His skin was warm against my cheek, his chest rose and fell with reassuring regularity, but these physical things could not brighten the bleakness of my thoughts.

I
love him, but I must not make the mistake of expecting him to love me.
This was the anguishing thought that was tearing at my insides and keeping me awake this storm-tossed night.

Now you are safe with me.

He had said that, and he had meant it. He was a man whose instinct would always be to protect those who were weaker than he. He had shielded his younger brother and sister from the rage of their father. He had married me because he had seen that I was afraid of my uncle. He had been kind with his lovemaking because of this protective instinct that was so much a part of his nature.

I was safe with him. The question was: was he safe with me?

This feeling that I had for him was not tepid. It was passionate and it was possessive. If ever I gave it free rein it would smother him, and destroy me.

He had blown out the bedside lamp before he went to sleep, and the room was dark. I lay awake for hours, listening to his breathing and to the sound of the rain, the storm that raged in my heart fiercer by far than the storm outside the window. When finally the rain ceased just before dawn, I had accepted what it was that I must do.

I could not burden him with a love he had not asked for and could not want. I must hide my feelings from him; I must leave him free.

I thought painfully that it would be much easier to do this if I were his housekeeper and not his wife.

Chapter Twelve

Adrian departed early the following morning with Lieutenant Staple, and I saw him off with a resolute smile. Paddy left shortly thereafter, with promises to report back to me as soon as he had some information.

I felt deserted after they both had gone, and to distract myself I went down to the stable and rode Euclide. Harry came with me, and he and several of the grooms hung on the fence while the stallion and I went through some exceedingly pretty canter pirouettes and a
passage
that would be magnificent when he got a little stronger. He was a wonderful horse.

After I finished with Euclide, I had Elsa saddled up and Harry and I went for a ride. He took me on a tour of the estate, and as we rode I told him about my conversation with Paddy. “He has left for Ireland to see what he can discover,” I concluded.

“Hmm.” Harry’s brow was puckered. “Have you told Adrian about this, Kate?”

“No.” I was looking directly through Elsa’s ears at the road ahead. “There wasn’t time.”

“Hmm,” Harry said again. I felt him looking at me, but I refused to turn my head. Instead I lifted my eyes to the clean blue sky,

It was as if last night’s storm had washed away the last of winter, so clear was the sky, so fresh and pure was the air. I drew in a deep breath and looked at the empty winter fields that lay on either side of the dirt lane. Harry said, “A few days of weather such as this and the farmers will be getting out their plows.”

I had never lived in one place long enough to follow the farm year, so it was with real interest that I asked him what crops were planted on the estate.

Harry, who had grown up here, replied easily, “Mainly corn, of course—barley, oats, and wheat. The land you are looking at is leased, along with the cottages. Most of our tenant families have leased the same land for generations.”

We had been riding gently uphill for the last half mile, and now we reached the crest of the hill and started down the other side. Fields stretched out before us on both sides of the path, separated by neat lines of hedgerows. Midway down the hill, to the right of the road, was a small cottage with a thatched roof. As we drew closer I could see that it had a fenced-in yard next to it, with a shelter that was obviously meant for a pig. A man was hammering at the shelter’s roof. Last year’s pig had doubtless been slaughtered the previous autumn for winter eating, and the accommodations were being readied for this year’s resident.

“Hi there, Blackwell,” Harry shouted jovially as we came abreast of the yard.

“Mr. Harry.” An unremarkable-looking man, of middle age, middle weight, and middle height, came to the fence. “Feels like spring,” he said amiably.

“That it does.” Harry turned to me. “Kate, this is one of our tenants, John Blackwell.” He looked back to the farmer. “Blackwell, make your bow to her ladyship, the new Countess of Greystone.”

The man did not look at all surprised. Probably nothing that happened at Greystone was long a secret from the earl’s tenants. He smiled at me, showing a badly chipped front tooth, and tugged at his forelock. “Pleased to meet you, my lady. Welcome to Greystone.”

“Thank you, Mr. Blackwell,” I said.

“His lordship went to London this morning, Blackwell,” Harry said. “He asked me to tell you that he will find an eye specialist while he’s there and make an appointment for your daughter.”

“Thank you, Mr. Harry,” the man said fervently.

“Not at all. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve heard from his lordship.”

The man thanked Harry again, profusely, and Harry replied amiably and then we rode off.

“What is wrong with his daughter’s eyes?” I asked when we were out of earshot.

“She’s almost blind,” Harry said. “Blackwell asked Adrian recently if he knew of a doctor Blackwell could take her to.”

“How old is she?”

He shrugged. “About nine or ten, I should say.”

A thrush flew up suddenly from the field on my right and Elsa jumped in surprise. I patted her neck and asked Harry, “Why hasn’t her father done something before this?”

Harry shrugged again. “A man like that has no way of finding a specialist, Kate. And while my father always kept the cottages in good repair, he was not the man to concern himself with a tenant’s daughter’s eyesight.”

I thought of Adrian’s comment about privilege and responsibility and wondered where he had learned that particular lesson. Certainly it had not been from his father. I opened my lips to ask Harry some questions about his mother, and remembered in time Adrian’s remark that she had died in childbirth when he was seven. She must have died while giving birth to Harry. I said instead, “Well, it seems that the Greystone tenants will be much better off under your brother than they were under your father, Harry.”

He nodded a little curtly.

I said, “I’ll race you to the bottom of the hill.”

* * * *

The days passed. The workers’ march that had so worried Lord Castlereagh petered out before it reached London, but Adrian wrote that there were things for him to attend to pertaining to funds for the Army of Occupation and that he would have to remain in London for a few more weeks. I tried not to wonder if Lady Mary Weston was in town, but of course the more I tried not to think about that, the more I did.

I distracted myself by riding Euclide and Elsa, by visiting the Noakeses, and by buying three adorable spaniel puppies. I also turned my dressing room into a sitting room so I would have someplace comfortable to inhabit.

The biggest distraction of all proved to be the arrival of Cousin Louisa in the Greystone coach, complete with a dressmaker and multitudinous rolls of satin and tulle and velvet and muslin and kerseymere and silk.

I happened to be in the house when my cousin arrived, and I raced down the front steps to give her a hug. “Louisa! Why didn’t you write to let me know you were coming?”

She hugged me back. “There was no time,” she said. “Greystone arrived at my brother’s house two mornings ago and told me to pack. By early afternoon we were on our way to London. I hired Miss Runce the next day—yesterday, Kate!—and Greystone saw us off this morning.” There was color in her cheeks and her green eyes were shining.