The Deception (37 page)

“And no one thought to keep his house under surveillance?” I went on relentlessly.

“Well ... no,” Lord Barbury said.

I felt s6meone move to my side and knew from the familiar fragrance that wafted to my nostrils that it was Louisa. Another thought struck me and I said to Lord Barbury, “Does Stade usually keep his yacht in the Aldeburgh harbor?”

Lord Barbury looked unhappy. “Well... no,” he said again.

“And no one thought it suspicious when his yacht made a surprise appearance in the harbor just when Stade was due to be arrested?” I demanded.

Lord Barbury was silent.

Mr. Bellerton said gently, “Stade will never be able to return to England, Lady Greystone. He will be forced to live out the remainder of his life in permanent exile. That is a formidable punishment in its own right, you know.”

“It is not enough,” I said.

Support came from an unexpected and not overly welcome source. “I agree with Lady Greystone,” Lady Mary said. “It seems to me this whole business has been sadly bungled.”

“I agree,” Louisa said firmly.

At last Adrian spoke. “I believe Lady Barbury would like us to go into dinner,” he said.

* * * *

I was in a foul mood all through dinner. It was obvious to me that the authorities had connived at Stade’s escape, and the more I thought about it the more infuriated I became. When I announced after dinner that I was going to retire, Lord Barbury visibly sighed with relief.

I looked into Harry’s room, hoping to find him awake so that I could tell him what had happened, but he was sleeping soundly. Disappointed, I trailed down the hall to the room that I was sharing in such civil discord with Adrian. I didn’t send for Jeanette but began to pace restlessly up and down in front of the fireplace.

I was still pacing an hour later when Adrian came in. I swung around to face the door as soon as I heard his step. “They let him go deliberately, Adrian,” I said.

He closed the door behind him and came slowly into the room. “Yes, I’m afraid that they did, Kate,” he replied.

“But
why?”
This was what I could not understand. “No one questioned his guilt. Why did they let him get away like that?” I had pulled the pins out of my hair when first I came in, and now I hooked the loosened mass behind my ears to keep it out of my way. “I don’t understand,” I said.

He sighed. “You appear to be the only person who doesn’t understand, Kate. It’s quite simple, really. Stade’s escape was facilitated in order to save the nobility of England the embarrassment of a trial in the House of Lords.”

I stared at him and didn’t reply.

He went on, “Perhaps you did not realize that, as a Peer of the Realm, Stade would have to be tried in the Lords?”

“I don’t care where he is tried,” I said. “I want justice, Adrian!”

He shrugged. Shrugged! “Everyone wants justice, Kate,” he said, “but precious few of us ever get it. And what Bellerton said is true. Stade will be punished enough by permanent exile.”

“Are you
defending
their actions?” I asked incredulously.

“What actions? No one helped Stade to escape,” he said. “He acted on his own.”

“There are crimes of omission as well as commission, Adrian,” I returned angrily. “Don’t try to tell me that there was no collusion involved in Stade’s escape.”

He said, his gray eyes bleak as a winter sky, “Tell your troubles to Harry, Kate, not to me. I’m too grown up to still harbor dreams of a perfect world.”

His face swam before my eyes in a haze of red. I balled my hands into fists to keep from hitting him and said between my teeth, “Are you calling me a child?”

“You do not appear to be able to grasp the realities of the situation,” he replied.

“Stade killed my father.”
I could hear the harshness of my own breathing. “I don’t want him living comfortably in Paris, Adrian. I want him
dead.”

“He tried to kill you. He tried to kill my brother. I have no pity for Stade either, Kate. But I think this is the best solution.”

He was holding himself as straight as he always did, but there was a suggestion of weariness about him that caught my attention. “Why?” I asked, my voice slightly less angry than it had been before.

He moved slowly to the mantel and stood staring down into the steadily burning fire. He said. “Because we do not need to focus the attention of the country upon a criminal who is essentially insignificant.”

I stiffened when he used the word
insignificant,
but I said nothing. After a minute, when he saw that I was not going to erupt, he turned to face me. “The fabric of our society is already so badly damaged, Kate, and a trial in the House of Lords will only divide the country even more. The reformers will see a chance to attack the nobility, and the government will grow even more defensive than it presently is, and it will pass laws that are even more restrictive. Nothing good can be gained from such a trial, and much that is bad is likely to result.”

I stood in front of him and had no reply.

He gave me the ghost of a smile. “Mind you, I am not claiming that these were the motives which caused Barbury to allow Stade to escape.”

I was quite sure they were not. Lord Barbury and his ilk simply wanted to avoid a scandal.

I hung my head. “I had not thought of... of all you have said.”

“I realize that.”

My hair came tumbling loose from its mooring behind my right ear, and I raised my hand to push it back. I bit my lip, said, “Adrian,” and looked up at him once more.

His narrowed eyes were looking at my breast. I glanced down involuntarily and saw that a single ebony strand of hair had been caught inside the low-cut bodice of my evening dress. I looked up again at his hard, intent face and felt the heat of an answering desire surge through me.

I don’t know which one of us moved first, but our bodies came together and I felt the fire of his kiss on my breast. My head was tipped way back, and the full length of my body was pressed against his. I could feel every hard line of him against me, and my love for him was like a river flowing inside me, surging strongly through every part of my being.

His mouth moved from my breast to my mouth and I parted my lips to receive him. After a long, dizzy time he lifted his head and said in a hoarse, unsteady voice, “Kate, let’s go to bed.”

We had gotten quite adept at shedding our clothes in a hurry, and it was not long before I was lying beneath him naked on the bed. His mouth was all over me, and I buried my hands in his hair, pressing him against me, breathless with the excitement his mouth was stimulating in all the nerves of my body. I ran my hands up and down his bare back, pressing first my fingers and then my nails into his skin. I repeated his name with increasing urgency.

He knew exactly what I wanted, and I shivered with pleasure as I felt the powerful surge of him come up inside of me, penetrating deeply. Our mouths met and I shut my eyes tightly as I concentrated on the feel of him within and without. Again and again I ran my hands up and down his back, over the smooth skin, the hard muscles, the strong bones.

His mouth moved to my cheek, my ear. “Kate,” he said. “Kate.”

I held him tightly as he drove deeper and deeper inside of me. If he went any deeper, I thought, he would touch the baby. His hair brushed against my cheek and inside I felt my flesh softening, yielding, letting him come still more deeply inside.

He drove me up the bed until my head was pressed against the mahogany headboard. He filled me utterly, and when the consummation finally rocked through me, the pleasure of it was so fierce that I thought I could not endure it. I felt the vibration of his own release, and we hung on to each other to keep from shattering into a million pieces and floating away.

I pressed my face against his sweaty shoulder and thought that it was only in moments like these that I felt truly married. Lying here with him like this, our union was deep and complete and profoundly fulfilling. I wished the morning never had to come.

* * * *

The next day dawned as it always did, however, and Adrian and I went back to acting like courteous strangers. We left for Greystone late in the morning, Harry in the coach with me and Louisa, Adrian and Paddy riding on horseback. It was a long and tiring drive, but Harry insisted that he did not want to stop over on the road. By the time we got him into bed in his own room, he was exhausted. So was I.

After we had been home for two days, I took Louisa over to Lambourn Manor and introduced her to Mrs. Noakes. The three of us partook of tea in the kitchen and had a lovely time gossiping about the neighborhood. I was greatly relieved. If Mrs. Noakes had not taken to Louisa I don’t know what I would have done. But when I confided in the housekeeper that Louisa was probably going to be her new mistress, she seemed actually to be pleased.

We had been home for exactly one week when I decided to drive into Newbury to pick up a book I had ordered. Before I left I went into the library to ask Harry if there was anything I could get for him while I was in town.

He was lying on the sofa in his dressing gown reading the
Morning Post.

“I say, Kate, look at what appeared in the engagement announcements this morning,” he said.

“You poor thing, you must be really desperate for amusement if you are reduced to reading the engagement announcements,” I teased. But obligingly I picked up the paper and looked. Printed there, in starkest black and white, was the notice that a marriage had been arranged between Lady Mary Weston and Mr. Richard Bellerton.

I stared at it for a long time in silence. Then I gave the paper back to Harry and asked quietly, “Has Adrian seen this?”

“I showed it to him earlier,” Harry reported, “but it came as no surprise. He already knew. Evidently Lady Mary told him about the engagement while we were still at Harley Hall.”

I stared at Harry blankly.

“Kate?” Harry said. “You still there?”

“She told him?”

“That is what he said to me this morning.”

“At Harley Hall?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say exactly
when
she told him, Harry?”

He rolled his eyes.

“It’s important,” I said tensely.

“Well, he did say something about her telling him in confidence at that confounded dance.”

“Did he by any chance say that they were out on the terrace?” I asked breathlessly.

“He might have,” Harry said.

“Good God,” I said.

Harry folded the paper and put it down on the footstool that had been pulled up next to the sofa. “Would you care to tell me what this inquisition is all about?” he asked.

“I think I have been very stupid,” I said.

Harry grinned. “Nothing new there.”

I moved the
Morning Post
to the floor and sat on the footstool myself. This put my face on a level with Harry’s, and I gazed at him solemnly and said, “I have been very angry with Adrian because I saw him kiss Lady Mary’s hand when they came in from the terrace. I thought he was still in love with her, you see. But now I think that perhaps he was only making a gallant gesture in response to her telling him that she was getting married.”

Harry looked back at me and said, “You thought Adrian was in love with Lady Mary? Are you insane, Kate?”

I bristled. “It was a perfectly reasonable thing to think, Harry. After all, Adrian wanted to marry Lady Mary before he was forced to marry me. Why wouldn’t I think that he was still in love with her?”

Harry said distinctly, “Adrian is in love, all right, but not with Lady Mary.”

I stared at Harry like a hopeful puppy. “Do you think that he might perhaps love me?”

He gave me a look that said he must be dealing with an idiot. “Kate, the man can’t keep his eyes off of you. He is clearly bewitched. I can’t believe that you didn’t know.”

I sat in a dazed silence, wondering if Harry could possibly be right, hoping that he was, and afraid that he wasn’t. “I’m afraid that he is very angry with me, Harry,” I confided. “He is angry that I almost got you killed, of course, but he was irked with me even before that. We should have told him about our murder investigations. He was excessively annoyed that we kept him in the dark.”

Harry said, “You are exaggerating, Kate.”

“No,” I said gloomily. “I am not exaggerating, Harry. When I asked him to come to the Jockey Club hearing, he wouldn’t. He said that we didn’t need him, that we appeared to have managed very well without him.”

Harry rubbed his perfectly chiseled nose. “Well, if that don’t clinch things, then I don’t know what does.”

“What do you mean?”

“Great heavens, Kate! Think of what you just told me. Adrian has never sounded petulant in his entire life. That is what you have reduced him to.”

As I thought back to our quarrel, another idea struck me. I said thoughtfully, “Do you know, he even sounded jealous of you?”

Harry gave me a startled look.

I bounced a little on my footstool. “He said that we were as thick as thieves,” I said. “And then, when I was complaining to him about the way Lord Barbury let Stade escape, he said that I should take my childish complaints to you, that he was too grown up to take them seriously.”

Harry rubbed his nose again. “Considering that I have spent almost my entire life being jealous of Adrian, that is a pleasant turnaround.”

“You aren’t jealous of Adrian,” I protested. “You love and admire him. It isn’t the same thing at all.”

“Of course I love and admire him.” Harry cocked an eyebrow. “But he sets a hard standard, Kate.”

I said, “I once told Adrian that you wanted to be like him but you didn’t know how.”

Harry slanted a sideways look at me. “What did he say to that?”

“He said, ‘He shouldn’t want to be like me. He should want to be like himself.’ “

Harry’s smile was rueful. “How like him.”

“He meant it, Harry. And he is right.”

“I know that.”

I bit my lip. “Being Adrian isn’t as wonderful as you may think it is,” I said.

Harry’s look was skeptical.

I stared at the
Morning Post
at my feet and said a little gruffly, “He once asked me if I knew how many deaths he was responsible for.”