Harlequin Historical May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Elizabeth Rolls

  Chills skittered through her as she picked up her embroidery bag and deliberately chose a small single chair so that no one might sit beside her. She watched Hetty, the absolute centre of attention, lovely and glowing with triumphant joy. Shame flooded her. She loved Hetty. How could she begrudge her this?

  But always, always they had promised each other that when they were married there would be long visits. Naturally, being the elder, Hetty would marry first.

  ‘And then I shall present you to all the nicest, wealthiest men, Psyché darling! Just see if I don’t!’

  She saw now how useless it would be for Hetty to attempt such a thing, if Aunt Grace would even permit it...if she even wanted it for herself. There would be endless evenings like this one, knowing herself to be an outsider, an oddity, an exotic creature from afar to be viewed with wide eyes and caution like the beasts at the Royal Exchange.

  ‘Oh!’ Hetty fanned herself. ‘’Tis so hot in here! Dearest Aunt, please may we stroll in the garden before the dancing?’

  Aunt Grace frowned, but Uncle Theo patted her hand, chuckling. ‘A short stroll for the young people will do no harm.’ He signalled to the footmen who moved to open the doors to the terrace.

  Psyché sat quietly as the other younger guests strolled out. Hetty glanced across with her hand resting lightly on Charles’s arm.

  ‘Do you not come with us, Psyché?’

  She managed a smile. ‘No. I shall remain here in case I am needed.’

  ‘As you are.’ Lord Huntercombe smiled at her. ‘That is, if I am to be indulged with Scarlatti.’

  She smiled back, unspeakably grateful. ‘Of course, my lord.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She played Scarlatti and Mozart to a ripple of applause and surprised murmurs.

  ‘So clever, some of them...’

  ‘Quite extraordinary what a good account she gives of herself. You would hardly credit her unfortunate origins, were they not so apparent...’

  Her skin prickled. They made it sound as if a Black woman playing the piano well was next thing to a divine miracle. And they seemed also to believe that she was deaf, both physically and mentally. Or perhaps her feelings were not considered quite so human as her musicianship. The anger and resentment burned.

  ‘Thank you very much, my dear.’ Lord Huntercombe, who had turned her pages, offered his hand as she rose from the piano bench. ‘Your music always gives me great pleasure.’ Quite as if her playing was simply the playing of an ordinarily talented young lady who took the time to practise, rather than something to be marvelled over as if a monkey had rattled off Mozart’s ‘Rondo alla Turca’.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The revellers in the garden returned as the small orchestra tuned up, with Hetty and Charles in the rear of the group, flushed and laughing.

  ‘Quite brazen, the way she thrusts herself forward. Poor Staverton, to be so sadly taken in!’

  Psyché flinched at Lady Harbury’s soft voice directly behind her, the blade delivered straight between her shoulder blades. She moved blindly towards Aunt Grace, wanting only to escape.

  Aunt Grace was frowning at Hetty. ‘My dear, where is your shawl?’

  Hetty’s lips parted in surprise. ‘Oh, goodness! I must have left it under the loggia. We...we were sitting there, and it must have slipped off. Lord Harbury, would you—?’

  ‘I’ll fetch it.’ Psyché clutched her own shawl closer. ‘Which bench, Hetty?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, dearest.’ Hetty smiled at her. ‘The one closest to the lily pond.’

  Aunt Grace frowned. ‘Psyché, dear, one of the footmen—’

  ‘I should like to go, Aunt. Just a little fresh air.’

  Aunt Grace smiled. ‘Very well. But straight back, my dear.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt.’

  ‘And I shall hope you have a dance for an old friend!’ Charles’s caressing smile nearly choked her.

  Psyché slipped out past the returning stragglers. She’d return the shawl and ask Aunt Grace’s permission to retire for the night. There were limits to her self-control, and if Charles asked her to dance she could not refuse.

  The moon hung low, bright and joyous in a sky quivering with stars. She wished it were cloudy, pouring with rain to match the weeping of her heart. But, no, she scolded herself. That was selfish. People did fall in and out of love and Hetty was so happy. She should be happy for her. Above all, Hetty must never suspect the dreams she had cherished.

  She stepped into the shadows of the loggia and waited for her eyes to adjust. Sure enough there was the shawl on the bench closest to the pond, in the deepest shadows. Had Charles grabbed Hetty’s breast here in the shadows—would Hetty have allowed it because they were betrothed now? And what if she had not known enough to stop Charles last summer?

  She sat down with the shawl a silken tumble in her lap. Just a moment to steady her thoughts, her resolve. Maybe she could see out the evening rather than returning to her room like a little girl. She wanted to draw the shadows around her, to hide while she gathered her courage.

  The music floated across the lawns and she imagined the dancers forming their prescribed patterns. Where did she fit into society’s patterns? For the first time she wondered if, as an adult, she could fit into the world she had been raised in. How had she deluded herself into believing that Charles, heir to a barony, could seriously wish to marry her? Or even if he did, that society would accept the match? A match that would break the pattern.

  She should go back, not sit here being melancholy on the evening of Hetty’s joy.

  ‘Aha! Were you waiting for me?’

  Charles’s smiling voice made her jump up, clutching the silken shawl in front of her. ‘No. Of course not!’ Had she been? Oh, God, she hoped not.

  He strolled towards her, confident as ever. ‘Dear little Psyché—’ That caressing tone seemed sticky now, the delicious thrill of last year gone. Had she been deaf to the condescension before?

  She rose and edged past him towards the light. ‘Excuse me. Aunt Grace will worry.’

  ‘Will you not stay a moment?’

  A year ago she would have stayed for ever. But now for ever yawned between them.

  He continued, ‘Who knew a woman could keep a secret so well?’ He gave that boyish laugh that had always enchanted her. It had become tinny. ‘I made sure Henrietta would tell you.’

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’ He held out a hand. ‘I could see it was a shock to you.’

  Damn. She kept her fingers tightly laced.

  ‘She promised Uncle Theo,’ she countered. ‘We were taught to keep promises.’ But she gathered her courage. ‘Why, Charles?’ she demanded. ‘Last year you asked me to wait for you.’

  ‘Ah.’ His smile was charming. ‘I should not have done so, but I was carried away by my sensibilities. But surely you knew, even if I did not, romantic boy that I was, that it was all quite impossible.’

  Why should she at sixteen, have known what he, at twenty, had not? Why should she be responsible for educating his romantic sensibilities? The same way she had been the one to halt things last year?

  She was wiser now, but she was damned if she would be the one to say it. He should say it.

  ‘Why impossible, Charles?’

  He blinked. ‘Why?’

  Anger surfaced, subsuming the hurt. He even sounded shocked.

  ‘Yes. Why?’ She kept her chin up. ‘Is there some law that prevents such a marriage?’

  ‘My darling Psyché—’

  ‘I am not your darling.’

  He looked as startled as if Nyx had bitten him. Then that momentary bewilderment vanished, replaced by a gentle patronage. ‘I had hoped not to have to say such a thing to you, but in short, Psyché, your breeding precludes marriage to any gentleman.’ He sighed. ‘Marriage must always be a matter of b
reeding and fortune allied. Yes, you have a respectable fortune, but that and affection alone are not enough for marriage between us.’

  Affection? Had he ever felt true affection for her?

  ‘And if my fortune were greater?’ she demanded. ‘Could my illegitimacy be brushed away then?’

  ‘Your illegitimacy? Perhaps. But—’ He tugged at his cravat. ‘You are making this deucedly awkward!’

  She waited. Why should she be expected to make it easy for him?

  ‘Damn it! I cannot marry a...a mulatto. I did my very best tonight to show you how society must see such a match!’

  He had done that on purpose? Paraded her around as though he considered her no more than a tame beast on a leash? Deliberately exposing her to ridicule?

  She kept her head high. ‘Mulatta. I believe marrying a man would indeed be impossible for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m female. Mulatta.’

  He scowled. ‘You know what I mean!’

  ‘Now, yes. But not last summer. You asked me to wait.’

  ‘Oh, Psyché!’ His caressing tone churned her stomach anew. ‘That was badly done of me. I admit it without reservation. But all does not have to be at an end between us.’

  She tried, and failed abysmally, to make sense of that. ‘What are you saying?’

  He smiled. ‘Henrietta wishes you to stay with us after we marry. And, of course, she will need...a companion. You would not be expected to go into society. No need to fear a repeat of tonight.’ His voice took on a tone of reproof. ‘It was unkind in Staverton to hide the truth from you so well.’

  He was criticising Uncle Theo? For protecting her? And he thought she wanted to be a companion in his household?

  ‘We will be very discreet. No one will know.’

  Know what?

  ‘It will be our secret,’ he went on, his voice as tender as a girl could wish. ‘We can still be together as we dreamed.’

  A few short hours ago she had thought herself quite grown up. Now she was grown up.

  ‘I could be your mistress?’ Somehow she kept her voice even.

  He smiled. ‘Yes, you can still belong to me.’

  Belong. The very word stained the air. Unable to help herself, she clenched her fist over the place, hidden by her deliberately modest gown, where hot iron had burned into her. Belong. Like a favourite bitch or mare. As Mam had belonged to the father.

  ‘What about Hetty?’ Did he think Hetty so stupid that she would not notice?

  He dismissed that with a shrug. ‘What concern should it be of hers?’ He strolled towards her. ‘As my wife she must do as she is bid. Never fear, my sweet. She won’t be able to send you away.’

  It sickened her that he considered a potential mistress a chattel. That he could also think of his wife as a creature who must do his bidding, even if that was to turn a blind eye to his affair with her cousin, enraged her.

  She stood quite still, let him get close. His cologne was overpowering as he took her in his arms. ‘Dearest Psyché, I knew you would—’

  She slammed her knee upwards, exactly as the stillroom maid had described. And even Molly’s description—‘Dropped him cold, it did’—did not do justice to the wheezing gurgle as Charles collapsed at her feet.

  ‘No,’ she said clearly. ‘I won’t.’ And she walked back to the house.

  * * *

  Psyché lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. The girl who had floated down the stairs a few hours ago would have cried. But that girl was gone and in her place was the girl who had walked back to the house alone, handed Hetty her shawl, danced with her great-uncle and a few other old friends, and remained to smile and pretend she was overjoyed. This new Psyché had known only cold satisfaction when a very pale Charles finally reappeared, moving as though he’d been kicked by a horse.

  She knew now that words were cheap. Cheap and easily spoken. Charles had taught her that and something else that chilled her heart.

  In marriage a woman had no say, no right to protest should her lord and master take a mistress. She must obey: it was in the marriage vows. She could even, according to law, be physically chastised, beaten, to ensure her submission. A married woman could own nothing: all was her husband’s, even her body. She had known all that, but she had never really thought about it. Believing in love, she had never considered that for a woman the terms of the marriage contract put her completely in her husband’s power.

  Now, with Nyx’s comforting weight on her feet, she understood. Marriage, for any woman and especially for her, was potentially a gilded trap that men baited with lies about love.

  Not all men. And not all marriages. Not even most marriages. She knew that. She had only to look at Uncle Theo and Aunt Grace. Or Lord Huntercombe. His wife had died several years ago and still he grieved for her.

  But how could you know that you were making the right choice? A safe choice.

  She had a respectable fortune. But what man of whom Uncle Theo would approve would look past her illegitimacy and her skin colour to really see her? How could she be sure it was not merely her fortune that made her acceptable? And how could she ever be sure that a husband would not come to resent her and everything she was? If that should happen, she would have no protection.

  You can’t know.

  * * *

  Will only realised his hands had knotted into fists when she laid a gentle hand on one. He drew a breath, turned his hand under hers and held it as much to steady himself as anything else. ‘And Staverton let that...that bounder marry your cousin?’ He wanted to hit something, pound something—or rather someone—to a bloody pulp. Charles, Lord Harbury, to be exact.

  Psyché shrugged. ‘I never told him about it. How could I? And it was not his decision. Lucius is Hetty’s father. He was delighted with the marriage.’ She went on painfully. ‘I thought about telling Hetty, but—’

  ‘Would she have believed you?’

  Her smile was bitter. ‘She was in love. What do you think I would say to someone who came to me and told me something like that about you?’

  He managed a smile. ‘I’d like to hope that if it was someone you knew loved you and cared for your interests, like Staverton, Selbourne or Huntercombe, that you would pay them heed.’

  She laughed. ‘Perhaps. I’m not eighteen, though, nor was I ever quite as sheltered as Hetty. I told myself it could do no good. Charles can be very convincing. He would have told her I had read too much into a little flirtation. Or that I had offered myself.’ She met his gaze. ‘At the time I thought she would have wanted to believe him. Besides, Lucius wanted the connection. He would not have brooked opposition and I doubted Hetty would have had the backbone to defy him.’

  He thought about that. ‘All probably true.’

  ‘But I was a coward, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Apart from the rest, I feared exposing myself to humiliation. I didn’t want Uncle Theo and Aunt Grace to know that my folly made it possible for Charles to make me that offer.’

  ‘You made it possible? You think you invited that insult? Because you trusted the bastard when he asked you to wait for him?’ He felt sick at the narrow escape she’d had—Harbury must have truly feared Staverton’s reaction. Otherwise he might well have asked a trusting young girl for a great deal more. Or simply taken it.

  ‘Both times I was alone with him in the garden at night.’ Her tone was level. ‘Many would have said I invited it.’

  He hated that hypocrisy. That a woman must always be guarded and protected because if she were not a man could consider it an invitation to help himself. It shouldn’t be like that. ‘Your uncle’s garden and Harbury was a trusted visitor. I don’t think we have to make his argument for him. He’s a wart.’

  ‘That was the point when I started to think about ways of making my own way in the world ra
ther than relying on any man to give my life purpose. And I told Uncle Theo I wanted to use Abeni—my mother’s name for me—as part of my surname.’

  ‘All that?’

  She chuckled. ‘Not quite immediately. But I started to think perhaps no one would want to marry me—’

  ‘Sweetheart—’

  ‘In distinction to my fortune.’

  I don’t want your damned fortune! For a shattering instant he thought he’d actually spoken aloud.

  ‘Then Aunt Grace died a year after Hetty married. That changed everything.’ She bit her lip. ‘I knew that I couldn’t stay for ever.’

  Will waited. It was not for him to ask. If she wished to tell him...

  ‘For ever could only be until Lucius inherited the title,’ she said quietly. ‘Once that happened I would have been out on my ear anyway. I preferred to leave well prepared, at a time of my choosing.’

  ‘But you were provided for.’

  Her smile was slightly cynical. ‘Very well provided for. Uncle Theo persuaded my father to leave me the bulk of his fortune and he set up a trust to ensure that it remained mine no matter what.’

  So he’d been right—Huntercombe had modelled the trust to protect Kit on the trust that protected Psyché’s fortune.

  He remembered something else, too. Something Psyché had once said...

  ‘Once a woman is married, she no longer owns her own body, let alone anything else. She has no rights beyond what her husband chooses to grant her.’

  ‘But by then you had decided against marriage, had you not?’

  ‘Not exactly. I knew I couldn’t be part of the world Uncle Theo and Aunt Grace raised me for, so I needed to make something else.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m really not suited to sitting about in ladylike seclusion watching the world happen. I wanted to be in the world.’

  ‘And marriage would preclude that?’

  ‘How many men want a wife who is running her own business?’

  Not many. But—‘You might find one who didn’t mind.’