The Secret Pearl (33 page)

Fleur was good for her. She should have children of her own.

Pamela was tracing the line of his scar with one soft finger and singing under her breath. “How did it miss your eye, Papa?” she asked.

“Someone must have been looking after me,” he said.

“God?”

“Yes, God.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes, I suppose it must have,” he said. “I don’t remember much.”

She resumed her quiet singing as she ran her finger along the scar again.

He was feeling guilty. Duncan had spoken very briefly with him as he was leaving.

“It seems you are not in imminent danger of losing your governess after all, Adam,” he had said.

His grace had been looking ever since his arrival for some sign of what had happened. They had been alone together somewhere just before his arrival, but their expressions and behavior had given nothing away during tea.

“You changed your mind?” he had asked.

His friend had grimaced. “Rejected,” he had said.

Duncan Chamberlain was his friend. He wished for his
happiness. Four years before, he had lost a wife of whom he had been very fond. Fleur would be the perfect second wife for him and stepmother for his children. He should have been sorry to hear that she had rejected Duncan.

But he was feeling guilty. He had felt a surge of elation. And then more guilt. Had she felt forced to refuse because of what he had done to her and made her into? Of course she would have felt forced.

But there was that other, too. He must talk with her. He would have done it that morning, but had not wanted to risk doing anything to spoil the day Pamela had been so looking forward to. He must talk with her the next day.

“Did you kill anyone, Papa?” Pamela asked.

“In the wars?” he said. “Yes, I’m afraid so. But I’m not proud of it. I cannot help thinking that those men had mamas and perhaps wives and children. War is a terrible thing, Pamela.”

She nestled her head against his chest. “I’m glad no one killed you, Papa,” she said.

He hugged her to him with one arm.

The carriage was drawing to a halt on the terrace as he and Pamela walked from the stables.

“Miss Hamilton,” he called as she was about to disappear through the servants’ doors.

She stopped and looked at him inquiringly.

“Attend me in the library immediately after breakfast tomorrow if you will,” he said.

She turned a shade paler. Perhaps she had heard that he had a tendency to conduct any unpleasant business in the library.

“Yes, your grace.” She curtsied and continued on her way.

Perhaps he should have said nothing, he thought, staring at the closed servants’ doors. Perhaps he should have just summoned her when he was ready for her. Probably she would worry all night about what she had done wrong.

“Tiny will be sad,” Pamela said, tugging on his hand. “She has been without me all afternoon.”

“Let’s go and see how happy she is to see you, then,” he said, smiling down at her.

T
HE DUCHESS HAD TAKEN
to her bed in the middle of the afternoon after a prolonged coughing spell, with chest pains and a fever. She blamed the ride she had taken that morning with several of her guests. She did not ride very often, considering it a dangerous and generally unhealthy activity.

Lord Thomas Kent let himself into her bedchamber an hour before dinner and dismissed her maid. He sat on the side of the bed and took her grace’s hand in his.

“How are you, Sybil?” he asked.

“Oh, better,” she said, smiling at him. “I am just too lazy to get up. I will come to the drawing room after dinner.”

He raised her hand to his lips. “So beautiful and so delicate,” he said. “You do not look one day older than when we were betrothed. Will you look as young the next time I see you, I wonder.”

Her eyes flew to his face. “The next time?” she said. “You are not going away, Thomas? Oh, no. This is where you belong. You can’t go away again.”

“I have promised Adam,” he said, kissing her hand again and smiling gently at her.

“Promised Adam?” She gripped his hand. “What have you promised?”

“That I will leave within the week,” he said. “I cannot really blame him, Sybil. It is not like the last time. You are, after all, his wife.”

“His wife!” she said scornfully, sitting up and looking directly into his eyes. “I am his wife in name only, Thomas. I have never let him touch me. I swear I have not. I am yours. Only yours.”

“But in the eyes of the law you are his,” he said. “And there is Pamela to consider. She must never know the truth. It would
be too hard for her to bear. I have been ordered to leave, Sybil, and leave I must. In all conscience, I must leave.”

“No!” she cried, gripping his hand even harder. She turned her head aside to cough. “Or if you must go, take me with you. I’ll leave him, Thomas. I cannot be away from you ever again. I’ll come with you.”

He drew her against him and kissed her lips. “I can’t take you,” he whispered against her ear. “I would not expose you to that sort of scandal, Sybil. And you could not leave Pamela without either of her parents. We must be brave.”

She wrapped her arms about his neck. “I don’t care,” she said. “I care only about you, Thomas. Nothing else matters to me. I am going to come with you.”

“Hush,” he said, rocking her in his arms. “Hush, now.”

And as she quietened down he kissed her again and fondled her breasts through the satin of her nightgown.

“Thomas,” she moaned, sinking back against her pillows. “I love you.”

“And I you,” he said, slipping the satin down over her shoulders and lowering his head to kiss her throat.

He straightened up when a tap at the door was succeeded by its opening.

The Duke of Ridgeway closed the door quietly behind his back. “You are feeling better?” he asked, his eyes on his wife. “I just heard from Armitage that you have been ill again this afternoon.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said curtly, turning her head away from him.

“You will wish to dress for dinner, Thomas,” he said. “You are in danger of being late.”

His brother smiled at him and left the room without a word.

“I have sent for Dr. Hartley to call on you tomorrow morning,” his grace said. “I can send for him to come immediately if you wish.”

“I have no need of a doctor,” she said, her face still averted.

“You must see him anyway,” he said. “Perhaps he can give you some new medicine that will cure you of that troublesome cough once and for all.”

She turned her head suddenly to look at him. “I hate you, Adam,” she said vehemently. “How I hate you!”

“For caring about your health?” he said.

“For not caring about me at all,” she said. “For ordering Thomas to leave again. You know we love each other. You know we always have. I hate you for ruining our lives.”

“He told you that I have ordered him to leave?” he asked.

“Do you deny it?” Her voice was sharp.

He looked at her for a long time, at the woman whom he had loved so passionately once upon a time and whom he could now only pity.

“I suppose that is what my words to him amounted to,” he said.

She turned her head away from him again. “I am going with him,” she said. “I am leaving you, Adam.”

“I doubt that he will take you,” he said quietly.

“You know him well,” she said. “You know that he would not hurt me for worlds. But he will take me when I have finally convinced him that I will be far more miserable here with respectability and you.”

“I doubt that he will take you,” he repeated. “I think perhaps this time you will have to face the truth, Sybil. I am sorry. I shall make your excuses to our guests for this evening. I shall come to see how you are later.”

“Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to see you, Adam, not tonight or ever.”

He pulled the bell rope next to the bed and waited in silence until the duchess’s maid appeared.

“Her grace will need you, Armitage,” he said, and left the room.

F
LEUR STEPPED INSIDE THE LIBRARY WHEN A footman opened the doors for her without either knocking or announcing her. The man closed the doors quietly behind her.

His grace was writing at the desk, though he put his pen down immediately after she came in, blotted carefully what he had written, and got to his feet. He looked at her with that piercing dark gaze that she always found so disconcerting.

She stood very still, her chin held high, her shoulders back. And she wondered, as she had wondered all through a disturbed night, if he was merely going to reprimand her for some unknown offense—but then, why the formal summons to the library?—or dismiss her or try to seduce her again. Or perhaps there was nothing momentous about the occasion at all. She waited.

“The Honorable Miss Isabella Fleur Bradshaw,” he said very quietly, “of Heron House in Wiltshire.”

Matthew had taken her seriously two days before after all, then. He had told everything. She raised her chin a notch higher.

“Jewel thief and murderer,” he said, “or so the suspicion goes. Every suspected criminal is innocent, of course, until proved guilty.”

Her eyes did not waver from his.

“Are you?” he asked. “A thief and a murderer, I mean?”

“No, your grace.”

“Neither?”

“No, your grace.”

“And yet your cousin’s most costly jewels were found in the trunk that you were to have taken with you had you succeeded in leaving as planned.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“And there was a death.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“You fled,” he said, “when your cousin caught you in the act of committing the murder—to London, with nothing but the clothes you were wearing. A blue silk evening gown and gray cloak. And in London you hid and survived in any way you could.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“But you did not steal there?” he said. “Or even beg?”

“No.”

“You sold only what was yours to sell.”

“Yes.”

He came around the desk and crossed the room to stand a few feet in front of her.

“Will you tell me your story?” he asked. “We might be here all day if I have to ask questions and have monosyllables for answer.”

She continued to stare at him.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I will not be believed,” she said. “When all this is told in a court of law, Lord Brocklehurst will tell the version he has told you, and he will be believed, as you believe him. He is a man and a baron. I am a woman and a governess—and a whore. It is not worth my while to waste my breath.”

“I have learned nothing from Brocklehurst,” he said. “All I know, I have learned independently. I heard him call you
Isabella. You yourself called your former home ‘Her—.’ I sent Houghton to Heron House to find out what he could about an Isabella.”

“Why?” The word was whispered.

He shrugged. “Because your past has always been shrouded in mystery,” he said. “Because I knew, unfortunately too late, that only extreme circumstances could have forced you into becoming what you became in London in my company. Because I saw the terror in your face when you first set eyes on Brocklehurst in my drawing room. Because both of you clearly lied about the degree of your acquaintance. Because I care.”

“Perhaps it is as well,” she said. “You have tried to make a liar and a thief and a murderer into your mistress.”

“Is that what you believe of me, Fleur?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Even though I sent you to bed rather than accompany you to your room that night for fear I would not be able to let you go?” he said. “Even though I have not come near you since, except to apologize?” He passed a hand over his brow and sighed. “Come and sit down.”

“No,” she said.

“Fleur,” he said, “will you turn around and open the door?”

She looked at him warily and did so.

“Close it again,” he said. “What did you see?”

“The footman who let me in here,” she said.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “He is Jeremy.”

“Do you know him well? Do you like him?”

“He is always friendly and courteous,” she said.

“He is to stand there,” he said, “until you emerge or until he is summoned or until I send him away. If you were to scream, he would rush in here to your rescue. Come and sit down.”

She preceded him straight-backed to two upright chairs
close to the window and sat down on one. She folded her hands in her lap.

“The man who died was your cousin’s valet?” he said, taking the other chair. But he did not wait for her answer. “Did you have anything at all to do with his death?”

“Yes,” she said. “I killed him.”

“But you do not call yourself a murderer,” he said. “Why not?”

“He was a great strong man,” she said. “He was going to hold me while Matthew ravished me. I pushed him as he came up behind me. He must have been off-balance, as we were very close to the hearth. He fell and hit his head.”

“And died?”

“Yes,” she said. “He died instantly.”

“Had your cousin expressed his intent?” he asked.

“He said that before I left the house again no other man would ever want me,” she said. “I believe I was screaming and fighting. I saw him nod to Hobson.”