Lord Ruin

by Carolyn Jewel

  “It’s on his coat-of-arms, that dog.”

  “Why did you tell no one?”

  “I told Papa.”

  “And?”

  “Papa believed Lord Thrale when he claimed he was in Lancashire. He said he didn’t come up until late the next day.” The girl’s chin firmed. “But it isn’t true.” For the first time, her voice rose with incipient hysteria. “It isn’t. How could I have awakened with that in my hand if he wasn’t in London?”

  “There must be some explanation.”

  “Even you believe him.” She gave a half sob, despairing. “But, I tell you, Thrale is a monster. That button doesn’t lie.” She laughed wildly, scrubbing a hand through her lovely curls. “He should be made to pay for what he’s done. He should pay.”

  “If it’s him, he will. Cynssyr will see to it.”

  “Yes.” She drew in a deep breath, calming herself. “Yes, he will, won’t he?”

  “He’s sworn it. I’ve sworn to it.”

  “My throat is dry. Please, if you don’t mind, something to drink.” She pointed to a sideboard on which, along with her mostly untouched supper, there sat an empty tumbler and a bottle of sherry.

  “No trouble at all.” She splashed a small amount into the glass. The rim was chipped, but after a look at Miss Dancy’s frightful paleness she added half again as much more. “Here.”

  “Thank you.” She took a small envelope from a pocket and tipped its contents into the sherry. “For my nerves,” she explained. Anne didn’t object for, poor child, she looked positively feverish. Miss Dancy’s slender shoulders heaved from the unaccustomed taste of so much alcohol, but she drained the last of it.

  “May I keep this?” Anne said of the button. “I know Cynssyr would like to see it.”

  “I meant for you to have it.” At long last, Miss Dancy stood, a bit unsteady on her feet. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Oh, my dear God.”

  Miss Dancy, unmistakably pregnant, paced before the sofa where Anne sat. “Will you tell Mama that I am sorry and that I love her?” She clasped trembling hands over her chest. “And Edward. Mr. Edward Stephens, that I love him still?” She smiled sadly. “We were to be married.”

  Too slowly, Anne understood the significance of Miss Dancy’s request. Horrified, she jumped up. “What have you done?” She raced to the door but before she got even three steps, she heard a thud as the girl fell to the floor. Anne ran back, sinking to the carpet and pulling the girl onto her lap, terrified. She screamed. “Devon! Devon, help!”

  The door flew open, but it was too late. Blue lips worked horribly. “Tell Papa I forgive him.” Miss Dancy’s hand slipped free of Anne’s. “Edward.”

  “No,” Anne raged against her inability to help and for the soul of a young woman who’d lost all hope. “No!”

  Devon dropped to his knees and bent over the girl’s chest. No breath rose. He shook his head. “Damnation,” he whispered, taking up the chipped tumbler.

  “I should have known it was poison.” A great sob tore from Anne. “I should have known.”

  “Anne,” Devon said, catching her shoulders in a firm grip. He pulled her up and turned her away from Miss Dancy. “Anne. There’s nothing we can do.” He folded her into his arms. “I’ll send for a doctor, but it’s too late.”

  She wanted to be with Cynssyr. Only Cynssyr could help her now. The need to be with him overwhelmed her, flooded through her, rushed in like water freed from a dam, carrying her wherever nature willed. And that was to one place and one place only. Her husband’s arms.

  “Take me home, Dev.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Words would not come during the drive to Queen Anne Street. Dev, Anne’s rock in this storm of misery, stayed mercifully silent, a brooding presence that lent a surprising comfort. “Is the duke home?” Anne asked when Merchant met them at the door.

  “No, your grace.”

  “Has he been home at all?”

  “No, madam.”

  Her heart fell. “Oh.” She thought of her secret valise, tucked away in her trunk, and grabbed hold of the meaning of having that particular thought at this particular time.

  “I’ll see you upstairs,” Dev said. Merchant frowned when he handed over his coat and hat, but Anne was beyond caring about Merchant’s disapproval. She opened the door to her room. Dev followed.

  While she tried to light a lamp, he built up the fire. “Oh, blast it.” She gave up on the lamp. Her fingers trembled too hard to manage even the most basic of tasks. He turned from the hearth and went to her. “Here,” she said. She pushed the lamp to him and burst into tears.

  He gave her his handkerchief and said, “Come now, Anne. All will be well.”

  “Cynssyr said he would be at Lady Prescott’s. He would have to come home to dress for that, and he hasn’t.” She felt massively insecure. Jealous and adrift. Envious even of whatever woman he’d decided to seduce tonight. “I wonder where he is.” With the lovely Caroline North? Mrs. Fairchild? Or some other woman capable of fascinating him? Perhaps he had at last returned to Katie and the arms of the woman he came closest to loving.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not? You’re his best friend,” she joked. Her attempt to inject levity into the mood failed. She looked around for a chair and then for a basin. Lord but fatigue leached her very bones, and she was feeling ill again.

  He shrugged helplessly. “That doesn’t mean I know where he is every minute, Anne.”

  She sniffled and blew her nose. “You are right, of course.” Devon could take her to Cornwall. The idea flashed over her. He could, and he would. Only, she could not get the words past her throat. They lodged there with stunning firmness. For a moment, he stared at her, sensing her unsettled state. The air thickened, some phantasmal smoke caught her breath and made her disturbingly conscious of Devon’s powerful body, aware for the first time since she knew what such feelings meant, of Devon as a man. But she felt none of the heat that overtook her when she was with Cynssyr. No shiver of arousal. But, Dev was a man, and she rather thought he had spent his share of time between a woman’s thighs. Devon would be an excellent lover. Thoughtful. Caring. Distracting, even.

  He drew a breath. “Come, walk with me to the door, Anne.” The sinister, crooked smile she had grown to think of as rather dashing appeared. “I dare not stay any longer, you understand.” He laughed softly. “Merchant will have my head if I do.”

  Still off kilter, she did because she thought she might yet find the courage to ask him to help her. The courage never came. She bid Devon good night at the bottom of the stairs. Again, they looked at one another. She saw the question in his eyes, the invitation he would never speak aloud. If she was to seek his aid, it must be now. The thought of Cynssyr with another woman struck like a blow, sharp and painful. As she reached for Devon, Merchant came into the hall.

  “His lordship is leaving?” he asked in a hopeful tone, handing over the hat Devon had left at the door.

  “Yes, Merchant,” he said with wry amusement. “His lordship is leaving.” Devon released her hand, and the moment when she might have begged him to rescue her vanished. He seemed to feel the opportunity passing, for he hesitated before slowly saying, “Good night, duchess.”

  “Good night, Devon.” She watched his broad-shouldered retreat.

  “If you need anything,” he said, turning back after only a few steps, “anything at all, you know where to find me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Send someone with a note. Or come yourself.”

  “All right.”

  He hesitated. “Good night, Anne.”

  “Good night.”

  When he was gone, she climbed the stairs to her room. She didn’t call Tilly to help her undress. She was used to fending for herself, and she did not want to discuss the evening with her inquisitive maid. Once in bed, she tossed restlessly, images of Miss Dancy in her head, her awful story and the tragic, senseless ending. She wanted to tell Cynssy
r what had happened, and his absence was a physical ache. That ache would be with her forever. Whatever happened to her, whenever it was he set her aside in his heart, she would never ever be free of him. She threw off the covers and, barefoot, headed for her dressing room and her trunk of gowns from Bartley Green. Devon would help her.

  Voices in the hall stopped her before she reached the trunk. A line of light appeared under the door that connected her room with Cynssyr’s. Her pulse jumped. The murmur of conversation continued. “You may go, Dobkin,” she heard him say. For a moment, silence. Then the door slowly opened. “Anne?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?” He stared into the darkness of her room, one arm high on the door jamb.

  “Of course,” she said. But the words choked her. She was so relieved to see him it broke her heart. She stifled the reaction. The last thing a man like him wanted was a teary-eyed woman clinging to him for comfort. He’d said as much before, and more than once.

  “Come here.”

  Refusal never crossed her mind. She walked straight into his arms. When she rested her head against his solid chest, her arms went around him, touching his shoulders. He felt so right, but she didn’t dare tell him so. What she wanted from him, she wanted too badly to take such a risk.

  “I came as soon as I heard about Miss Dancy.”

  “What a hideous waste.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this what you felt like during the war? So helpless and, and horrified?”

  “Eventually you stop thinking about it. You must.”

  “She was a child. Like Polly Withers. Like Emily.” She raised her head, and he used his thumb to brush away a tear. “Emily might be next. Or Lucy. Or even Mary.”

  “I know,” he said in a cool voice.

  “She was with child, Cyn. That poor girl was going to have a child because of what they did to her.”

  Ruan drew a sharp breath. In that moment, he hated himself. Hated all his gender. “Are you able, Anne, to tell me about Miss Dancy? Or would you rather wait until tomorrow?”

  “Now.”

  Rather than lead them into her room he turned to his, assuming she would follow. Disposing of her surprise, Anne did. He had, in the meantime, poured a glass of port from a bottle Dobkin had decanted in anticipation of a nightcap. The escritoire she’d seen at Corth Abbey sat on a tabletop at the side of the room.

  “Have a seat.” He held his port in one hand, warming the bowl with his spread fingers. She looked tired. Drawn. And dear to him. If anything should happen to her, he would never recover. He stepped close, intending to embrace her again.

  She covered her mouth. “Ugh. Please, Cynssyr, no.”

  He took away the glass. “Are you unwell?”

  “I cannot abide the smell.”

  “At least sit.”

  Dutifully she sat on a plush armchair, curling her legs beneath her. Her stomach settled. A fire leapt in the grate, fueled by a fresh measure of coal. The one time she’d been in the room, she’d not been in a state to notice the decor. Not the dauntingly masculine room she’d imagined all this time. The main color was blue with silver accents. Here and there a blaze of color startled the eye; a vase of frigid green on the mantle, a small rug of ivory and crimson lay crosswise over a Turkey carpet of ocean-blue and silver. On the table by her elbow a gold bookmark glittered on the pages of a book, waiting for the duke to pick up where he’d left off. Not translated but in the original Greek. The contrasts of color and beauty made the room far more interesting than it might otherwise have been.

  Ruan sat sideways on another armchair. He wore only dark trousers and a shirt open to mid chest. Nothing else. He was barefoot. His boots lay on the floor by the chair. “Every word you can recall.” And she did tell him. Everything, leaving Miss Dancy’s accusation of Thrale for last. “Mm,” he said when she’d finished. “I’d like to see that button.” He stopped her from sliding off the chair to fetch it. “Later, Anne. You may show it to me later. It’s nearly dawn, and you must be exhausted.”

  “Is Mrs. Jacobs blonde?”

  He nodded. “Why?”

  “Miss Dancy. Mrs. Withers. Mrs. Featherstone. Miss Leander. Now Mrs. Jacobs. All of them blonds.”

  “Not all of them.” He hesitated, wishing there were some way to stop feeling.

  “They are all blondes, Ruan. Every one. That we know of at any rate.

  “No.” He tugged on his shirt sleeve, then wrestled with his cufflink. “Not all.”

  “Who else, Cynssyr?”

  He lifted his head as if it weighed ten stone. “Katie—” He licked his lips. “Anne, Katie—She was one of the first to be taken.”

  Her heart shriveled in her chest. Mrs. Forrest. The beautiful, dainty Mrs. Forrest who was his mistress. After a bit, when she could trust her throat to work, she said, “I think, Cynssyr, that I am very tired tonight.”

  “I know I ought not speak of her to you.” He jumped up, swinging his arms and taking short steps first in one direction, then a halt and a stride in another. “I would not hurt you for the world, and yet not to tell you everything in my mind and my heart is unnatural. I would not hurt you, but I will not lie either.” He came to within a foot of her and stopped walking. His arms ceased their frantic motion. “I’ve seen her tonight.”

  One half of his cufflink dangled from his sleeve, and Anne reached for it, pushing the bit of burnished gold back through the sleeve while he spoke in a rapid almost staccato rhythm and his fingers curled around her wrist, holding her.

  “It’s over Anne,” he said.

  Life and hope came crashing to an end. Her heart stilled in her chest, the blood in her veins slowed to nothing, breath stopped. One thought only remained to her. Thank God, thank God in heaven he did not know he had the power to turn her to dust.

  “Katie and I go back years. Before the war. I went to her come-out, a raw boy, full of myself and my own importance. Had I any sense, I’d have married her back then. But I hadn’t any. I let her know it was hopeless for us, and she married someone else. Then, after the war, well, I’m afraid I behaved very badly, which you know. I have come to regret my behavior in those days. She wasn’t happy in her marriage. She once told me she’d done it just to spite me. We became lovers.”

  “All this time, you’ve kept going back to her.”

  He took a breath. “More than anyone else.”

  She swallowed hard and by some miracle managed to speak. “How you must regret those lost years.”

  “No.” He stared hard at her, his eyes like green ice. “I regret nothing,” he said. “Not my years with Katie. Not even the other women, and I understand now that I often made Katie unhappy. Nor do I regret Corth Abbey.” His voice, though low, strengthened. “I regret nothing because all of that brought me here. To this moment.”

  Turning her back to the fire, she stared at her husband, thinking that when he spoke in the Lords, this must be just how he looked and sounded. Tall and fierce. Determined to have his point admitted and his way his own.

  “What of you, Anne?” he said. “I know you have regrets, that you hoped for some other husband than me. But has it been all bad? Can you say nothing redeems our marriage?”

  “I cannot say that.”

  “But naught else.”

  She closed her eyes and while she saw nothing behind her lids but blackness, she drew a deep breath and shut the door to feeling. When she opened her eyes, she found she could safely look at him. “I should like to go to Cornwall.”

  “Anne.”

  “Please. Please, just let me go.”

  He threw himself onto his chair, legs sprawled, arms dangling over the sides. “I can’t. Or, more to the point, I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Ruan looked away and said, “Because I am in love with you, Anne.”

  CHAPTER 29

  There wasn’t any taking back the words. For one thing they were true. But, he’d said them too soon, he could see that by the way al
l the color drained from her face, as if he’d just confessed murder. Lord Ruin would have done something to gloss over the awkward confession, make light of it, or, if he were feeling particularly the fiend, continue with feelings fabricated from air, perhaps inspired by some wretched poetry about bedewed bluebells draped about alabaster shoulders. He didn’t do any of that. He didn’t know what to do. The immensity of what he’d just said paralyzed him.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I have never lied to you, Anne.” He held onto himself, fighting the impulse to go down on his knees and beg her to believe. “You’ve made me feel again. I ought to hate you for that but instead, I love you. I look at you and see reflected back everything that is wrong with what I became.”

  “I make a poor mirror.”

  He reached for his port. “You are kind, and I have not been. You forgive weakness. I never have.”

  “What of Mrs. Forrest?”

  “You are tolerant. I am not. I’ve always thought myself an honorable man, but where was my honor when I came to Corth Abbey? I acted on my basest impulses and have been rewarded beyond measure. I won’t send you away.” He gripped his glass. “Still, I show you no honor, for I won’t ever send you from me.”

  “You love me.”

  “I’m the boy who cried wolf. Now that it’s really happened, I’m not believed. Well.” He drained his port to the last. “I cannot blame you.”

  Anne left her chair, slowly walking to him until she stood directly in front of him. “Why?” She accused, and he wondered which question he should answer, why he would say such a thing or why he loved her.

  “I don’t know why.” Her spectacles glinted in the light, and he felt a surge of both desire and tenderness. “I just do.” He sat straight, empty glass in hand. “I just do,” he echoed with a sort of numb hopelessness. He threw the glass against the far wall where it shattered into tiny pieces. “If I knew,” he whispered, “maybe I could do something to stop it.”

  It was but a measure of his weakness that instead of sending her away, he pulled her onto his lap and kissed her. And Anne, sweet, lovely forgiving Anne kissed him back. Because she was too kind to hurt him with the truth. It was a convenient and effective way to gloss over their impasse.