The Accidental Mistress

by Tracy Anne Warren

  “I am not doing it for you. There is someone I love as well. Elope with Amelia, so that all of us might be happy.”

  Moments later, Hocksby was pumping Ethan’s hand in gratitude and saying yes, demanding to know how soon he might speak with his beloved.

  Convincing Amelia to defy her father had taken a bit of doing as well, but once she heard about Ethan’s offer, and stood inside the circle of Robert’s loving arms, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse the chance to be his wife.

  After that, Ethan and Tony had made all the arrangements, even helping the lovers flee in the dark of night. The plan had proceeded without difficulty, in part because Ethan had been careful all the previous week to act the dutiful fiancé. He’d wanted no possibility of suspicion, especially on Sutleigh’s part, that he was planning to do anything other than proceed with his engagement to Amelia.

  With that problem now resolved, he was once again free to return to Lily and show her he’d meant what he said. First he would have to convince her to trust him again. Once she did, he would persuade her to put aside her fears and agree to be his bride. He’d already known that he loved her, but these past few days apart had only intensified his feelings, showing him that nothing less than a lifetime of loving her would do.

  Setting the letter on his desk, he turned to go upstairs to refresh his attire so he might depart to see Lily. Glancing up, he discovered his butler standing on the threshold.

  “A Mr. Ross is here to see you, my lord,” the older man announced.

  Ross! Good heavens. In all the recent upheaval, he’d completely forgotten about the request he’d made of the other man. Well, Ross’s timing could not have been better, since Ethan would be able to learn something of Lily’s husband before he returned to plead his case. Surely, the extra knowledge could only do him good.

  “By all means, show him in.”

  Ross strode into the study less than a minute later, looking harried and disheveled, as usual.

  Ethan moved to shake his hand and offer a warm greeting. “I was not expecting you, but very glad you have come. Have a seat and let me get you a drink.”

  “No time for drinks, Vessey,” Ross said as he sank down into the chair.

  Ethan leaned a hip against his desk. “Well then, what news have you for me?”

  “Some of the rather unexpected kind, I believe you will agree. Actually, the search took me a great deal longer than planned.”

  “Oh,” Ethan said, lifting a brow. “And why is that?”

  “Principally because this fellow you sent me to look for—this John Smythe—well, the long and short of it is that he does not exist.”

  “What? But that is impossible. There must be some mistake.”

  “And so I thought initially. But after checking the records and coming up empty-handed, I took the initiative to write to all the commanding officers who lost men at Vittoria. To a man, not one of them ever served with a ‘John Smythe.’”

  Ethan felt his mouth drop open. How is that possible? he questioned. It made no sense. Yet his friend Ross was sharp and meticulous in his work, and not the sort who was prone to making mistakes. If he said there was no John Smythe, then there was no John Smythe.

  “Are you positive of the name?” Ross inquired.

  “Yes, of course, I am positive. Lily has mentioned him any number of times.”

  And yet, when he really considered the matter, she had always been strangely reticent to talk about her husband, providing scant details about his background and her time with him. She’d never even said how they met, come to think of it. In the past, he had always attributed her silence to grief, resisting the urge to press for specifics. But what if her reserve stemmed from an entirely different cause?

  No, it could not be, he told himself. Thoughts tumbled through his brain like rough stones, the edges being smoothed and polished as ideas and suppositions fell into place. A single, niggling fact presented itself, one he’d convinced himself to dismiss long ago, but which had never really made sense. Lily Smythe was a widow, and yet she had come to his bed a virgin.

  An odd tingle ran over his spine like a mocking laugh.

  Lord, it could not be, could it? Even considering such an idea seemed preposterous, and yet the notion suddenly made perfect sense. She’d told him her marriage hadn’t been consummated because there had not been the time. But what if there had been no consummation because there was no groom! The more he considered the possibility, the more the wild idea began to make sense.

  Devil take me, but I think widow Lily Smythe is no widow at all! And if she is not, then…

  Fury spread through him like drops of ink splashed onto a blank page, bleeding outward in ever-widening circles until all that remained was black. Eyes narrowed, he fisted his hands at his sides. What a dupe I’ve been! he raged. What a cretin! And to think how easily he’d fallen for her stories of tragedy and grief, her tales of love lost and how she couldn’t bear to ever wed again, when in truth she’d had no husband and no man to mourn. Later he might be glad to know her heart had never belonged to anyone else, but right now, he was too irate to care. Why, the little conniver! When I next lay hands upon her, she might do well to run, he fumed inwardly, ideas of paddling her backside black-and-blue dancing in his brain.

  “Vessey, are you well?” Ross asked, an inquiring frown on his brow.

  Ethan startled and looked across at the other man, having forgotten Ross was even in the room. “I am fine.”

  As for Lily, he couldn’t vouch for how she would be once he’d finished with her.

  Ethan was in a rare lather by the time he rapped on the front-door knocker of Lily’s Bloomsbury townhouse. Nearly two hours had passed since Ross had arrived at Andarton House and shattered every assumption he’d ever held about Lily. If his suspicions proved correct—and he was convinced they would—then she had a great deal of explaining to do, along with an enormous amount of groveling and begging for forgiveness.

  To think she had the nerve to castigate him for lying! What he’d done was minuscule compared to the extent of her own apparent falsehoods, and at least his omissions had not been done with the deliberate intention of deceiving. Whatever her reason for masquerading as a bereaved widow, it had better be a good one. He was just waiting to hear, and hear he would, since he meant to have things out with her. As for the paddling, he was still debating that. Whatever occurred, once their confrontation was finished, all the lies between them would be over—for good.

  As soon as the door opened, he stepped inside without waiting for Hodges to invite him to enter. But instead of the butler’s usual polite greeting, he saw what looked like alarm on his face.

  “Oh, my lord,” Hodges said in a rush, “I am so glad you have come. Perhaps it is not my place, but Mrs. Smythe…she…she…”

  Part of Ethan’s ire fell away, a trickle of uneasiness replacing the emotion. “Yes? She what? Where is Lily?”

  “Gone, my lord. She departed yesterday afternoon with a pair of men, who arrived quite unexpectedly.”

  The trickle of disquiet became a surge, his throat squeezing tight. “What pair of men? And why would she leave with them?”

  “The one said he is her stepfather and that he had come to take her home.”

  With difficulty, Ethan forced himself to stay calm. “And the other one?”

  Hodges glanced away, obviously reluctant to meet his gaze. “He claimed to be her fiancé. Madam did not appear to agree, but said little on the subject. I got the distinct impression that she disliked the man quite a lot. I don’t believe she much liked her stepfather either.”

  Ethan did not doubt that, although until recently, he hadn’t even realized she had a stepfather. What had she called him? A vile serpent disguised in a pretty skin? And what was this about a fiancé? Preposterous!

  “And she went willingly?” he demanded.

  The other man glanced away again. “She left, although ever since she departed, I have wondered if it was of her own
free will. She did not even take her lady’s maid.”

  “What were their names, these men? Do you remember?”

  “Her stepfather announced himself as Chaulk. Yes, that was it. Gordon Chaulk. As for the other man, I only heard his first name. Edgar, Chaulk called him. Big fellow, he was, reminded me of an ox.”

  A big scary ox and his reptilian associate, who had terrified Lily enough to force her from her home.

  “Oh, and he said something curious, my lord.”

  Ethan glanced at the servant. “Yes? And what was that?”

  “Chaulk remarked that she looked awfully fit for a dead woman. What could he have meant by that?”

  Yes indeed, what had he meant? Had Lily been playing a corpse? Had she pretended to be dead for the same reason she had assumed the identity of a widow? Good heavens, in what sort of danger is she? And how am I going to get her out of it?

  “She left yesterday, you said?”

  Hodges nodded. “In the early afternoon. Mrs. Smythe went upstairs with her stepfather and returned carrying a portmanteau. Susan wanted to accompany them, but she was refused.”

  Ethan’s gut clenched. Had Lily been threatened? Is that why she had left without a struggle? “Did they say where they were headed?” he asked.

  “She did, and rather distinctly, as if she were anxious for me to remember, now that I think upon it. She said she would be traveling to Bainbridge Manor near Penzance, and that if any of her friends should call for her, I was to tell them to come visit her very soon. Her stepfather gave her a fearsome glare; then the three of them were out the door, driving away in his coach.”

  A cry for help, Ethan thought, if I ever heard one. Good for you, Lily. But why had she not tried to contact him? Perhaps, given their recent troubles, she had thought she could not. If only he had resolved matters with Amelia a day earlier, maybe he could have prevented Lily from being forced to leave London. Well, he was going after her now, and he would not return without her.

  At that same moment, many miles distant, Lily picked at her dinner of boiled beef and cabbage, the precarious nature of her situation leaving her very little appetite. Chaulk and Faylor suffered from no such difficulties, contentedly eating the meal provided to them by the proprietors of the coaching inn where they had stopped for a change of horses and a bite of dinner.

  Situated on the main road that led west from London, the inn was similar to many others along the route, the cramped common room bustling with noisy patrons, a pungent mixture of beer, onions, and tobacco smoke scenting the air. On their arrival, the innkeeper had offered them the quiet comfort of a private parlor, but Chaulk resented paying for anything he considered an unnecessary expense—and “expensive private parlors” fell into that category. To be honest, though, Lily was just as glad to be among a crowd, worn already by the hours she had spent closed inside the coach with the two men.

  “Eat up,” Chaulk advised, gesturing with his fork toward the uneaten portion on her plate. “We’ll not be stopping again for food until daybreak. Should you find yourself hungry, it shall be your own fault for being too stubborn and choosy.”

  Choosy, am I? Nauseated, actually. Or has he no conception of how thoroughly I detest him and his unctuous cohort?

  Agreeing to leave London with them had been a huge mistake, she realized now, but at the time her options had seemed extremely limited. Particularly when Chaulk told her he would summon the authorities and have her arrested for thievery. As her legal guardian, he had sole discretion over not only her person, but her wealth. Galling as the reality might be, as an unmarried female, she had no right to spend her inheritance without her stepfather’s express consent. And not only had she staged her own death and run away—probably crimes in their own right—but she had been living under a false identity during her time in London. Even worse, she had been doing so as a married woman. She knew that Chaulk was by no means exaggerating when he said the law would take his side should he decide to file an official complaint. In the eyes of the court, she belonged to him.

  She’d been stunned when she had come down her townhouse stairs to find him and Faylor standing in her front hall. All she could think in those first few moments was that the bullnecked man at the fair those many weeks ago really had been Faylor. Still reeling, she had allowed herself to be bullied into doing as Chaulk ordered—at the time seeing no other means of escape, not with him literally dogging her every step. She’d consoled herself with ideas of fleeing later, but the farther she traveled from London, the more unlikely such an opportunity appeared.

  Oh, God, she bemoaned, what if he succeeds in forcing me to return home? Worse still, what if he manages to marry me off to Faylor?

  Her stomach literally churned at the idea, a shiver raising goose pimples on her skin when she glanced up to find Faylor leering at her breasts. Slowly lifting his gaze to hers, he licked a glossy bit of beef fat off his thick lips as if he were imagining tasting her instead. When she visibly shuddered, he laughed, then ate another forkful of his dinner.

  “Enough of that for now, Edgar,” her stepfather admonished in an even tone. “You’ll have plenty of time to woo my daughter once the pair of you are wed.”

  “I would as soon marry a goat!” she said, unable to contain the words.

  Chaulk’s handsome face grew hard and without so much as a glimmer of warning, he reached across the table and brought his palm down hard across her cheek.

  She gasped, her ears ringing while a fiery blaze of pain engulfed the entire left side of her face. Trembling, she lifted her hand to cover the wound, sniffing back the tears that rose automatically to her eyes.

  “There’ll be worse than that if you do not behave,” Chaulk told her in a voice made all the more menacing by its restraint. As though he had not just struck her in plain view of an entire room of people—people who she noticed were doing nothing to help her—Chaulk patted his lips on his napkin, folded the cloth neatly, and set it aside. He fixed a pair of gimlet eyes on her untouched meal. “If you are finished, we should be continuing on our way.”

  I cannot just leave, she realized. There must be something I can do, some way to save myself even now. No matter the danger, I have to try.

  “V-very well,” she said, deliberately casting her eyes downward in a show of obeisance. “But first, I need to use the necessary.”

  He sighed. “Yes, all right. I shall accompany you.”

  “To the ladies’ water closet? How indiscreet!” She once more lowered her gaze to emphasize her supposed embarrassment.

  Her stepfather said nothing for a long moment, then leaned back and chuckled. “Such delicate sensibilities! Go on, then, but if you aren’t back in five minutes, Edgar and I will come looking for you and you won’t like it.”

  “I will return,” she promised, giving him a compliant little smile.

  Gripping her reticule, which by some miracle they had allowed her to keep, Lily made her way out of the common room and down the hall to the ladies’ necessary. In case one of the men had followed her and was watching, she went inside and latched the door. But instead of tending to the call of nature, she opened her handbag and drew out a small, silver-cased writing tablet and pencil. Thinking fast, she composed a message, one she’d had no time nor opportunity to write before leaving home.

  Ethan,

  I am in trouble and beseech your help. Come without delay to Bainbridge Manor near Penzance. I promise to explain everything later.

  Anxiously awaiting your arrival,

  Lily

  Folding the paper in half, she quickly inscribed Ethan’s name and address on the outside. She’d made a point of telling Hodges where she could be reached, but she had little hope that Ethan would call at her London townhouse anytime soon. And despite her request for a “visit” from her friends, she was doubtful any of them would realize she needed their assistance, especially considering that none of them knew of her present distress.

  Palming a guinea coin, together with the not
e, she cracked open the door and peered out. With no evidence of Chaulk or Faylor in sight, she eased out of the room. Her palms grew moist, her heart beating in her throat as she hurried along the hallway in hopes of locating one of the inn’s staff. She would have to be quick though, or else risk being missed by her stepfather.

  Just then, a maid emerged from the kitchen. Lily raced toward her. “Please,” she murmured in a hushed undertone, “you must help me. I am in terrible difficulty. Pray see that this note is delivered with utmost speed. Here, take this note and say you will see it on its way.”

  Eyes wide, the servant girl stared. “A-all right, miss, but is there naught I can do?”

  Lily shook her head. “No. Say nothing to anyone. Please just promise you will make certain this missive is sent at the first opportunity.”

  When the girl nodded her agreement, Lily reached out to press the paper and coin into her palm. Before the exchange could be completed, though, a large male hand descended like a claw and snatched the note from her grasp. The gold guinea popped free as well, bouncing and spinning across the wooden floor.

  “And what have we here?” Chaulk demanded.

  A shiver stole through her as she glanced up and met her stepfather’s cold blue gaze. Opening the note, he gave the message a quick perusal, then folded the paper again. With apparent calm, he tore the page into little strips, then crushed the whole inside his palm. “You will have to excuse my daughter,” he said, turning to the servant girl to give her his most charming smile. “She is rather prone to hysterics.”

  Lily’s heart sank as she watched the young woman respond to his handsome countenance and practiced guile, the girl casting her an uncertain glance. If only she realized that his seemingly pleasant exterior hid a core of malevolence and deceit!

  “She is always imagining things,” Chaulk continued, “making up stories of danger and mayhem where none exist at all.” Striding across the hallway, he bent to retrieve the coin. “Here,” he said, holding it out to the servant. “Take this and let us forget all about the incident. I do my best to care for my dear daughter, you know, but some days she can be a trial.”