Tiger's Eye (41 page)

“Don’t bother trying to think up a lie,” he snarled, coming away from the door with a lunge and crossing the room with two long strides to grab her by her upper arms and give her a shake. “I know where you’ve been: you’ve been with a lover. Who is he? By God, you’ll tell me that!”

He spat the last words in her face, holding her on tiptoe so that her face was only a few inches below his.

Terrified by the white fury that blazed from him, she said nothing.

“Who is he? Who is he?” he hissed. “By God, to think that I’ve been cuckolded by a gray little mouse of a chit who never had two words to say for herself! I—”

There was a knock at the door. Isabella had never been so glad of an interruption in her life. As Bernard looked toward the solid portal, Isabella made up her mind there and then that, whoever it was, she must ask for help. Bernard was beside himself with rage. She felt herself in terrible danger.…

“What is it?”

“Bernard? You in there? Let me in!”

“Charles!”

Isabella’s mouth closed with a snap. She knew that voice.

“Papa!” she cried, her knees weakening with relief. Her father had never cared for her overmuch, but he would not stand by and see her murdered in cold blood. She need no longer draw each breath in fear of her life.…

Bernard, shooting her one last murderous look, released his grip on her arms by shoving her away from him so hard that she stumbled backwards. He strode to the door. As he turned the key in the lock, Isabella steadied herself by holding on to the corner of a table. The best way to safeguard herself would be to lay the whole story before her father, who would know how to protect her. Perhaps the marriage could be dissolved.…

“Papa!” she said again as he stepped into the room. Hurrying forward, smiling at him with relief and affection, she would have thrown herself into his arms. But the expression that came over his face as he beheld her made her falter and stop while she was still some feet away. Crossing his arms over his chest, her father fixed her with a look of utter loathing.

“So it was true,” the Duke of Portland said bitterly. “That a daughter of mine could so disgrace our name—I cannot credit it. I would not have believed it did not my own eyes give me the evidence.” His eyes shifted to Bernard. “I make you my apologies, Bernard. The gel wasn’t raised to be a whore.”

“Papa …” She addressed him almost piteously. Both men ignored her as completely as if she weren’t even present.

“I take it that you, too, received a letter informing you of where, and in what circumstances, our prodigal could be found.” The violence had left Bernard’s face, to be replaced by nothing more threatening than cool good breeding as he looked at the duke.

“Indeed I did! I didn’t believe it, of course, but it was strange, arriving out of the blue like that when I’d just brought Sarah up to London. So I took it around to your place only to have your man tell me you’d left this morning for the Pelican in Tunbridge Wells. Figured you must have got something of the same, because Tunbridge Wells is too close to Horsham for it to be a coincidence. Figured if you took it seriously enough to travel here out of season, I should come along too. Not that I expected there to be anything to it, of course. Isabella’s never been much to look at, but she was a good, biddable gel. Who would have thought she’d bring this disgrace upon us all? I suppose it was true? She was with a man?”

Bernard nodded. “At least, I never saw the man—not that I don’t mean to; I’ll call the whoreson out for dishonoring my wife—but I wanted to get Isabella out of it first, without any trouble. I didn’t really expect to find her, you see, so I wasn’t armed. But there she was, right where my anonymous correspondent said she’d be, walking as merrily as you please along a lane outside a place called Amberwood. Rothersham’s seat, you know, sold to a Cit or some such a few years ago.” Bernard deigned to look at her, his eyes dark with anger. “Don’t tell me you’ve sunk so low as to take a Cit as a lover. Gad, I can’t even call the fellow out! Take a horsewhip to him, more like.”

“Papa!” Isabella clasped her hands in front of her, ignoring Bernard’s slander as she looked at her father beseechingly. “Papa, you must listen. I—”

“Be silent,” the duke said coldly, hardly bothering to glance at her. “Now that you’ve got her back, what do plan to do with her?”

“I see no recourse to a bill of divorcement.…”

The duke had a round, rather florid face topped by a shoulder-length fall of crisp, snow white curls. Hearing that, his face went almost as pale as his hair.

“I would greatly oppose any such action. A divorce is unthinkable! The scandal would ruin us all! I know the gel deserves to be ruined, but you would be tarred with the same brush. So would we all, Sarah and my innocent children included.”

Bernard’s eyes took on a sudden gleam that Isabella, watching him with growing horror, thought might be described as cunning. She had never considered the possibility that her father might refuse to hear her side.

“I’ll not keep a wife who’s played me false. Why, she might be with child! A bastard child, to be foisted off as my heir! We’ve been cronies a long time, Charles, and I’m sorry for it, but you must understand when I tell you that I can’t keep an adulteress as my countess. Every feeling is offended.”

“Papa—”

The duke shushed her with an impatient gesture. “I know it’s a hard thing I’m asking, but I’m willing to pay to get what I want. You keep my gel as wife, and help me hush up any scandal, and I’ll make you settlement enough to keep you in funds for the rest of your life. I’m prepared to be generous about this, Bernard.”

“Well …” Bernard pretended to consider. Isabella knew it was pretense because she had at last been able to put a name to the gleam in his eyes: it was greed, pure and simple. But her father could not, or would not, see. His vision of Bernard was forever clouded by what he thought a gentleman born and bred should be. Desperate, she walked up to her father, and shook his sleeve determinedly.

“Papa, he was behind my kidnapping. He paid a gang of men to kidnap me, hold me for ransom, and then, when it was collected, kill me. He meant to have me murdered in cold blood! He’s had losses at the gaming table, huge losses, and he used what was left of my marriage settlement to cover them. With the money gone, I wasn’t worth anything to him anymore, so he decided to kill me and wed another heiress. I’m sure he already had someone in mind.”

Isabella repeated the story that Molly had told her, and Alec had amplified on, coldly, clearly, her eyes steady on her father’s frowning face. She was rewarded by the sudden riveting of both men’s attention on her.

Bernard recovered first. His face, which had gone white, crimsoned. “Why, you lying little … So that’s how you think to cover up your fornicating! Pray don’t think your father—or anyone else!—is fool enough to swallow such a tale as that!”

Isabella’s eyes never left her father. “It’s true, Papa. I swear on my mother’s soul it’s true!”

The duke’s mouth tightened, and his pale blue eyes glittered icily. Before Isabella knew what he was about, he lifted a hand and slapped her hard across the face.

She staggered back, her hand flying to her cheek, tears springing to her eyes. That he could so contemptuously dismiss her without even considering what she had to say hurt more than the blow. “ ’Tis the truth! He paid them to kill me.…”

“What bloody poppycock!” her father snorted, and shook his head at Bernard. “I don’t know where she comes by it. There’s no bad blood on either side of the family that I know of it. Her mother wasn’t much, but she was good
ton.”

“I don’t hold you to blame, Charles, you may be sure.” Bernard, with a single glinting look at Isabella, reassured the duke almost affably. Helplessly Isabella cradled her abused cheek and looked from her husband to her father. Neither had as much care for her as they might have for a stray dog.

“You’ll put aside the notion of divorce? Beat her a dozen times a day if you have to to keep her true, but spare the rest of us the scandal. I beseech you.”

“Papa, you must listen! I—”

“One more word out of you, and I’ll take a stick to you. ’Tis what you deserve, with your fornicating and your lies.”

Bernard lifted the back of his hand as if to strike her while her father looked on, if not with approval, at least without objecting. Isabella took an instinctive step backwards. Further pleas obviously would be useless. There was no persuading her father to her cause. He had never cared for her overmuch, and now he was completely on Bernard’s side. But at least, with her accusation of attempted murder made public, Bernard would not be likely to try again … would he?

As her legal husband, he could treat her however he wished. He could beat her, lock her in, starve her, rape her—and the law would be on his side. Only if he actually murdered her—and it could be proven—would a kind of justice be done. But then, of course, it would be too late to do her any good.

It was a hard lesson, but Isabella learned it in those few moments. If she wanted to save her skin, she had best meekly accept whatever plans these two hatched for her future until she could discover an alternative. Or until Alec could arrive to save her.…

“You must take her to Paris,” her father was saying. “All the world’s there, now that Louis has got his throne back. Who’s to know that she hasn’t been there all the time, when you bring her back to England at last? Nobody ever saw her in town anyway. There was some rumor about the gel being missing—fellow actually had the gall to ask me to my face at White’s if my daughter’d shown up yet-but with Boney exiled and all the excitement, it’ll be forgot in a trice. What a blessing that you held off on sending that death notice to the paper, eh, Bernard? I told you not to write the gel off so fast.”

“To Paris?” Bernard frowned, then nodded. “That might serve. Though it will be costly, and my funds are tied up at present. I foresaw an opportunity to make a good investment, now that the Bourbons are back on the throne, and I daren’t withdraw the funds yet. They’re just starting to increase.”

“I’ll stand the nonsense,” the duke interrupted gruffly. “And make the settlement I spoke about besides. Paris is the answer. Sarah and I will join you, to give the gel a bit more countenance. We’ll take her about a bit so that she’s seen and everyone knows she was in Paris with her family. Then in a couple of months you can send her back to Blakely Park, and all this will be forgotten.”

The duke held out his hand to Bernard, while Isabella, feeling sicker by the second, watched.

“By God, you’re a game’un, sir!” the duke exclaimed, and shook his son-in-law by the hand.

LVI

N
ot more than twelve hours after Alec had driven cheerfully away from the Carousel, he was bursting back through the front door in a rage fueled by sheer terror.

“Get out o’ my way!” he snarled at the obsequious Sharp, who tried to hold the door open for him. Eyes widening, the butler stumbled back just in time to keep from being hit by the door, which crashed into the elegantly papered wall behind it.

“Where’s Mr. McNally?” Alec barked, the glittering menace in his eyes frightening the old butler so much that he blanched.

“Uh, uh, with Miss Pearl, in her rooms, sir,” Sharp answered.

Without giving him a chance to say another word, Alec turned on his heel and strode furiously down the hall.

“Sir … sir, wouldn’t you rather I fetched him for you?” Sharp quavered with a desperate air, almost running as he tried to keep up with Alec and at the same time gesture frantically to the half dozen footmen on duty. This early in the evening, the gaming rooms were thin of company, but the few patrons who had decided to try their luck looked around at the commotion. Alec no more saw their speculative stares than he saw the glowing candles or the fine gilt mirrors or the high-polished floor. A horrifying sense of urgency drove him, making him blind to anything that was not connected with his objective.

“Go on about your business, you blathering idiot!” Alec ordered over his shoulder, and dismissed with a murderous glare the footmen who had started to close in on him. Hired partly to provide protection for the establishment and its mistress, they recognized the Tiger and fell back. Sharp, apparently realizing that he had as much hope of detaining Alec as he did of stopping the sun from rising in the morning, shrugged fatalistically and returned to his post by the door. Alec reached the door to Pearl’s suite, turned the knob, found it unlocked, and burst through it without ceremony. It bounced back on its hinges, crashing into the wall with a resounding bang.

From the bedroom beyond the sitting room came a man’s curse and a woman’s scream.

Alec saw nothing more of the sitting room than a blur of white, and then he was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking into the mouth of a pistol pointed at his head by his best friend.

“Alec!” Paddy sounded both dumbfounded and relieved. Alec saw without any interest at all that his friend was stark naked, and that Pearl, sitting up in the wide bed in which Alec had passed many a pleasant hour, was naked too. Paddy lowered the pistol, and shook his head. “ ’Ave you lost your bloody senses, man? I could’ve done for you!”

“I need your ’elp. It’s Isabella. She’s gone.” His voice had an odd rasp to it, probably because he could hardly talk around the lump in his throat.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone, disappeared, vanished! Someone’s taken ’er! A groom saw ’er walking along the lane in front of the ’ouse, and then when ’e looked again, all ’e saw was a carriage turning back the way it ’ad come! ’E’d already set men after ’er when I got there, but they never found a trace. Not a trace! Oh, God!” Alec broke off, fighting not to give way to total panic as he tried for the hundredth time in an hour to imagine who could hate him so much—and know him so well—that they would attack him through Isabella.

How many who knew him, or of him, were even aware of her existence?

“Rothersham, do you think?” Paddy asked tersely, laying the pistol on the bedside table and reaching for his breeches, which were crumpled on the floor beside the bed.