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Authors: Kate Moore

BOOK: To Tempt a Saint
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Cleo’s stomach clenched. She waited for Xander to deny it.
It was Evershot who went on speaking. “As you know, Mr. Tucker testified before the Consistory investigators that you did not make all the necessary answers during the marriage ceremony.”
“Tucker already testified against us before the investigators?” She was looking at Xander.
As you know
rang like an alarm bell in her head. “You knew?”
His gaze confessed it. His face bore the self-contained expression of that first day.
Cleo gripped the edge of the desk to steady herself. He knew the court was turning against them. From the beginning she had known that he married her for her money, but he had seemed willing to take her with it. Now it was clear he meant only to use and discard her. He had been kinder to Miss Finsbury than to her. But she had been a hundred times the fool. Her stomach clenched in a sick knot.
He had resisted consummation while she begged for it. He had never intended a real marriage. She had presented herself to him, a pigeon ripe for the plucking, in this very room. She had pursued humiliation with her knife and her nakedness. Images of their night together burned in her.
Evershot misread her distress. “Now, Miss Spencer, as the advances from your own trust have been modest, most of the trust remains intact for when you do reach thirty. Your uncle and I will resume our charge of your moneys and insist that Sir Alexander repay you, as well.” He looked from her to Xander, obviously ill at ease.
Her husband’s gaze did not waver. His lack of alarm at March’s tactics made sense now. He was careful. He had probably calculated down to the day how long he had the use of her money.
Evershot cleared his throat. “Regrettably, as a banker, my hands are tied. I can advance no more funds.” He shot a sharp glance at Meese, who scooted for the door.
Abruptly Xander moved, sidestepping Evershot, aiming for Cleo. “The devil, Evershot. You set us up.”
Evershot backed away, his voice rising shrilly. “Writs have been issued, you see. One from the Chancery Court, stopping the disbursement of funds from your trust, Lady Jones, until the hearing.” He paused. “And one for . . .”
Xander reached Cleo and pressed her cloak into her hands, taking her arm and tugging her toward the door, but Meese, his weasel eyes gleaming, admitted two beefy constables, who made an effective wall before them.
Cleo’s heart pounded
. Jail
.
They were going to jail
. Her uncle knew right where she was, knew Charlie was home without her, without a clue of any danger. She had to get to Charlie. She tried to yank free of Xander’s hold on her arm.
“My hands are tied,” Evershot muttered.
One of the pair of ox-like constables held up a huge hand. “A writ has been issued for the arrest of Sir Alexander Jones on grounds of fraud.”
Xander pulled her close. “No writ for Lady Jones?”
The man shook his head. “Our orders is to keep you here, sir, not the lady.”
“Where’s the arresting officer?” he asked the constable who had spoken.
“Coming, sir. Expect ye have to wait some.”
Cleo pulled against Xander’s hold. “Charlie.” Her voice was a plea. “Let me go to my brother.”
“Cleo, we are married, no matter what Evershot says. The court has not ruled against us.”
“Are we? You counted on Uncle March’s suit from the beginning, I think.”
His look did not deny it, but he did not release her.
Cleo waited for him to say that their lovemaking had changed things. She could hardly breathe for the sharp pain in her chest, and still the pull of him, in her breasts and shamefully low in her belly, made her ache. She looked away. “I forgot Charlie. Forgot him as if he didn’t exist, as if you, this . . .”—her breath caught—“. . . were everything.” She could barely get the words out. “He only has me, and I forgot about him, forgot my whole reason for marrying you. It was for him. I cannot abandon him for what we had . . . last night.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Last night was only . . . desire.”
He released her, his eyes as cold as she’d ever seen them. “Don’t leave the house.” He turned away.
Cleo had only his back to plead with. She had to see Charlie safe before she could help her husband, if he was her husband.
Chapter Eighteen
M
ADAM.” Amos greeted her. “You have a caller.” Cleo froze at his expression. “Police?” Cold air blew in with her entrance, chilling the hall. She shed her bonnet and gloves, ignoring Amos’s start and trying to think what to do if Uncle March had sent constables after her.
Norwood. She would seek Norwood’s help.
“A gentleman.” Amos was at his most inscrutable. All her mornings at home had yielded no visitor until today. No one had come round or written or left a card. It was laughable that she had a caller now with Xander arrested. Xander Jones, who had married her in haste in the smallest of churches, with no credible witnesses, no celebration. She had had a long carriage ride to see the duplicity that should have been plain to her from the beginning. Make a bargain with the devil, but read the fine print.
“Where’s Charlie?” She shivered a little in the chill, struggling with the strings of her cloak.
“In the kitchen.”
“Keep him there. Keep him safe. Isaiah will tell you what’s happened.” She handed Amos her cloak and squared her shoulders. She could not get Xander Jones,
her betrayer
, out of her head. Where would they take him? Would he go before the magistrate in the dock to hear his crimes read like a common criminal while her uncle looked on?
Her caller stood at the drawing room windows gazing out into the street, but Cleo knew that broad-shouldered, arrogant stance. The Marquess of Candover turned at her entry.
“Lady Jones.”
“My lord.” Cleo made her curtsy, controlling her start at the powerful resemblance of father and son. Xander obviously got his height and bearing from his father.
“I had hoped for a word with your husband.” The curl of his lip instantly altered the marquess’s face, erasing the resemblance. Cleo could no longer perceive a connection to Xander, stare as she might.
Lord Candover’s eyes were an icy blue, his nose thinner than Xander’s. The tight-fitting cut of his coat and breeches emphasized the softer, more sensuous lines of his body. Even his eyebrows curved, where Xander’s slashed straight across his face. From across the room she could tell that the marquess preferred a musk-toned cologne. His lace and jewels proclaimed the sensuality that her husband kept in check.
“My husband’s business keeps him from home at the moment. Would you care to sit?” She would not tell this arrogant man Xander’s true situation. She was absurd, wanting to defend her husband, who was not her husband, but her betrayer.
The marquess glanced at a gilded side chair as if it were a crude bench. “I thought you had more wit than to marry a man of no birth. Or breeding.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Lordship, but you can have little knowledge of me or my motives.”
“I knew your father, my girl. No doubt the irregularity of his death brought you to this.” He made a languid gesture encompassing the lovely room. “It must be inconvenient being situated here, so near to former friends, yet hearing nothing from them.”
Cleo recognized the attempt to discompose her. He knew her situation. His daughters were among her former friends. Really, he was little like his son. She offered him a smile dripping of treacle. “On the other hand, the house is lovely.”
“My great aunt owned it at one time, did you know?” He picked up a blue Venetian-blown glass globe and put it down again. “Was there a problem with your father’s will?”
He was insufferable, but he had come to his son’s house, and Cleo would endure him until she found out why. Politeness was clearly wasted on him. She would try frankness. “There were gaming debts.”
The marquess’s brows lifted. “Gaming debts? Your father? Where did you hear that tale? Your father never owed his tradesmen a shilling. Damned scrupulous fellow, good at cards, and rich as Croesus from all that copper.”
Cleo looked down at her clasped hands to conceal her surprise at the unexpected defense of her father.
Where did you hear that tale?
From Uncle March, and
she
had never questioned it.
She
had accepted her uncle’s word about her father’s debts.
Oh, Papa, I betrayed you, too.
Her knees wanted to buckle. She needed to think, but the marquess stood over her, and she could not show any weakness. In that he was like his son. “Surely, my lord, you did not call today to take me to task for my marriage. Did you have a message for your son?”
Her visitor stiffened in haughty offense. His nostrils flared a little. Cleo thought for a moment he might simply stalk out of the room without another word.
“Your husband, madam, is a fool, a dreamer. He refuses to recognize the very real world in which a man in his position must live. I am surprised his mother allowed him to develop such fanciful notions.”
“I don’t understand you, my lord.”
“Then I will be plain. Tell him to stop searching for his brother. The boy
must
be dead by now.”
Cleo could not conceal her confusion.
Who were they talking about?
“Ah. He hasn’t told you. I assumed. Ah well. There is another brother, my girl, a third son of sin, if you will. The boy disappeared three years ago this November.”
“How did he disappear?” Cleo saw in her mind the neat stack of Bills of Mortality on Xander’s desk. Her husband was searching for his lost brother in all the graves of London.
The marquess merely lifted a brow. “Other men’s by-blows are hardly my concern.”
“You are cold, my lord; would you care to step closer to the fire?”
His expression did not change. “Enjoy your cheek, Lady Jones. The boy is gone, and your husband would be wise to stop searching for him. He has powerful enemies he does not know he has.”
Cleo tried to control her tongue. She wanted to smash the brittle porcelain mask of a face. “You, sir, have forfeited any right to interfere in your son’s affairs.”
He drew himself up. “You misspeak, madam. I have two daughters, no son. Your husband is well served for his presumption in marrying above himself, and you are like to be a widow by Christmas.”
He turned and strolled toward the door, seemingly unmoved.
Cleo could not let him simply walk away. “He’s been arrested, you know.”
He looked back then, and she caught a brief flash of genuine alarm in those cold eyes. “For god’s sake, girl, the pair of you will waken all the dragons and goblins in London.”
Then he was gone. Cleo sank into the arms of a damask-covered chair. She had been wrong, out-of-time-with-the-music wrong, going-the-wrong-way-in-the-dance wrong, treading-on-her-partner’s-toes wrong. She was wrong about her husband’s gaslighting scheme, his dull friends, his reason for marrying her. All wrong.
The fire burned down. She began to pace the chilled room. Oh, Xander Jones had betrayed her. He had known March would attack their marriage, had calculated on that legal attack, and played a risky game to get her money and not get stuck in marriage, but facts shifted into place with the swish of her skirts. Her husband had a third brother, missing, lost in London, for whom he searched, for whom he married a mad girl and took on March. Millie Trentham’s gossip came back to her. What had Millie said—he
lost
his brother. Whatever the truth of the boy’s disappearance, her husband blamed himself. He had other enemies, too, unnamed by the marquess, more dangerous than March. She stopped dead.
Dear God, and she had failed him in a moment, as she had failed her papa
.
She doubted she had wounded him, as he had her. What they had was desire. He had shown her that himself. He had not given in to it as she had. He had made that plain in his refusal to take a chance on getting her with child. Oh, he wanted her. He did not deny it. She shook with the cold now, her hands icy. Heaven help her, she wanted him, and she was all her stubborn husband had to fight his enemies and find his lost brother. She turned up the stairs.

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