For her sake and for his own, he would return her to her brother at the first possible opportunity. If he was to maintain any sort of honor, that was the only option.
Chapter Seven
The Right Honorable Mr. Albert Hamilton entered the house at Number 27 Royal Crescent and was unsurprised to find the lower floors dark. With only a handful of servants on staff, it was frequently so. But that was a necessity. The best way to maintain a secret was to ensure that as few people as possible knew it. Servants gossiped. It was a fact of life for the aristocracy but, in this case, gossip could very well ruin everything. All that they had worked for would be for naught. It might anyway, he thought bitterly.
He slammed the door behind him, much harder than necessary. A small painting, a hunting scene he’d never much cared for anyway, fell from the wall and crashed to the floor. The frame separated at the corner, bits of the elaborately carved trim splintering over the marble tiles, and he gave a satisfied smirk. Cold fury was pushing him, pressing in on him in ways that he had never experienced before. While he lacked the ability to lay claim to any sort of righteousness, his current mood could only be described as righteously indignant.
All that he’d worked for, all that he’d suffered while tolerating Harrelson’s pettiness and insults was now gone—ripped from him by that charlatan, Madame Zula. In one fell stroke, she’d destroyed all of them and had shuffled off the mortal coil herself in the process to avoid any punishment for her own crimes and misdeeds. And now, he would have to face her. While he adored every licentious and wicked beat of her cold heart, he had little doubt that she’d take more than a pound of flesh from him in the process.
Climbing the stairs, he entered the master bedchamber and surveyed the chaos within. She was growing restless being locked away, but it would not be for much longer.
“Helena,” he said. It was all he had opportunity to say for she turned then, whirling, and flew into his embrace, kissing his face wildly and enthusiastically.
“My darling,” she breathed. “Oh, how I’ve missed you! I’ve been so terribly lonely here! And that butler… I want him fired, Albie! He’s horrid. An atrocious man. Always skulking about and spying on me!”
Hamilton sighed. It wasn’t the first time she’d made such an accusation. Sometimes, he wondered if Helena wasn’t half-mad. Even as a girl, she’d been all but convinced that people were plotting against her for various reasons. “My dear, he is not spying on you. He is spying for you. It’s his job to be certain that no one from outside can come inside. It would spoil everything! Don’t you see?”
“I want to go outside!” she shouted, stamping her feet much like a child. “I want to shop and take the waters and gossip. I want to ride down Milsom Street in a fast carriage and watch the old biddies gasp with horror at the sight! I would never have agreed to this ridiculous plan if I’d known I’d be a prisoner for more than a year! You said it would be over quickly! You and Harrelson both said they’d hang him and then it wouldn’t matter!” She was in a full tantrum now, dudgeon high, and every object within reach was hurled at him.
Hamilton sighed wearily. He didn’t even bother ducking as Helena’s aim was notoriously poor. He simply allowed her to smash all of her pretty things and waited for her to tire. They’d had this same argument before, far too many times to count if the truth of it were told. Of late, they were having it much more frequently. He did not remind her of one very important fact as to do so would ensure that things would go very poorly for him, indeed. All of this, the ruse of her death, going into hiding with the belief that eventually Wolverton would either be hanged for the crime, or be so downtrodden with the gossip and ensuing poverty that he would do what any other nobleman would in his shoes and end his miserable life – it had all been her idea. “We had no way of knowing that two of the gentlemen Harrelson had blackmailed would die before the trial! With the loss of our majority we simply had to take what we could get! Isn’t it enough that he’s as poor as a church mouse?”
“Then he should have found something to blackmail them with! That’s what all of this was, after all! He’d sell them a girl or a boy or a grown woman and then use that very sale as a means of controlling them forever! Half the exalted men of the ton obtained their unwilling mistresses and paramours from him! He’s ruined everything! It’s all been for naught!”
Hoping to defuse her temper, he said softly, “I didn’t come here to argue with you about this, Helena. I have news.”
“What is it?” she snapped. “Has my honorable, upstanding and deadly bore of a husband remarried, then, and gone about the business of finally producing an heir? An heir to what? A worthless title and a shambles of a rotting house is all he has left!”
“No, he has not married. And likely will not. We all know that your husband’s rather firm grasp of honor would not allow such a thing. It’s the only reason he hasn’t put a pistol ball in his brain,” Hamilton replied dismissively. “No. This is news on another front. I fear it is not good news, my dear.”
She turned then, eyes flashing. “What is it then? What has occurred?”
Taking a fortifying breath, he summoned all of his courage and confessed in a rush, “Harrelson is dead. Poisoned by one of his compatriots.”
She gasped, her eyes widening with terror. “I was right. It has all been for naught!” she cried. Falling to her knees on the floor, she began tearing at her hair in the same manner she had as a child. “This is all falling apart! Without Harrelson, I won’t be able to produce an appropriately aged heir apparent once Alex is dead! If he’d only gone to the gallows or taken his own life instead of being so ridiculously moral about everything!”
“But darling, our plan was solely so that Harrelson would be able to get his hands on Alex’s entailed estate. Now that Harrelson has gone, we can abandon it altogether. We must only think of how to come out of this in the best way for ourselves! And I have a plan,” he offered with a cool smile.
Helena glared at her lover, a man the world thought to be her half-brother. He’d been a young boy when her mother married his father and then cuckolded him with half the men in society. None of the four children produced during that marriage shared a father and not a single one of them had been sired by her mother’s husband. There was not an ounce of blood shared between them and yet, in so many ways, they were alike. Albie understood her as no one else ever had. And the world judged them for it, calling them all manner of things. Unnatural. Incestuous. Scandalous. The whispers had been endless, until marrying her prig of a husband had been the only way to salvage anything. Even then, it had failed, because try as she might, staying away from Albie had been impossible for her. She craved him as others craved opium. “What is your plan then?”
“It may sound mad, but you must hear me out, dearest. What if you were to return to your husband?”
She laughed bitterly. “Return to him? You’re an absolute fool! The entire world believes me dead and most of them think he’s the very culprit who did me in! I cannot return to him. Besides, all of this was so that you and I could be together!” Suddenly, her face crumpled and she looked much like a child denied a treat. “Have you grown tired of me, then? Do you wish to be rid of me, Albie? After all that we’ve endured to be together, would you send me away so cruelly?”
It was their only option. He knew that and had to find some way to make her see it. Harrelson had left them all but penniless, all his promises of wealth and prestige going to the grave with him. Approaching her cautiously, he knelt before her until they were eye to eye. “I will never tire of you. I will never not desire you. We are the same, you and I. Wicked to our very souls and better for it together.”
“How on earth can we be together when you want to send me back to Wolverton? He despises you and he’s utterly repulsed by me!”
“We will be together, my darling, just not immediately. I don’t intend that you should have a happy and longstanding reunion with him, my sweet Helena. Only that you return for now.
We’ll find some excuse for your absence and have the court reverse its decision and return all of Wolverton’s significant wealth to him! After a suitable period of time has passed, Alex can succumb to an unfortunate fever. There are numerous poisons that will produce just such a death!”
“After all this, after all that we did so that I would never again have to endure his touch,” Helena sobbed. “You would send me back to him. You don’t love me anymore. You no longer desire me for your own!”
“I do, my dearest,” he said, taking her into his arms and soothing her. “But this is the only way. We have no money. Harrelson took everything. I bribed the clerk that works in his solicitor’s office and he’s left everything to that toad, Freddy. All the money. Even this house will be given to my blasted brother!” Even thinking of it infuriated him. Oh, Freddy had toadied to Harrelson just as he had, but when it had come time to do the really dirty work, it had been he who had risked the bitter end of the gallows for their schemes.
“Freddy! Oh, I hate him so! And how dare Harrelson do this to us! It was all to come to you! He said so!” Helena protested.
“And Harrelson was a liar and a criminal. It’s hardly surprising that he’s broken faith with us… but we are not without hope. If you return, alive and with some reasonable excuse for having been gone so long that your husband was tried for your murder, then perhaps the conviction and sentence will be overthrown. It is the only way, my love!” he finished imploringly.
She threw her hands up in the air, pacing the room in a fury-driven haste. “And when we kill him and I have no child in my belly—what then, Albie? Because all of that lovely money you are so very concerned about will go to someone else altogether!”
“There could be a child in your belly, Helena. And if we postpone your return just long enough, it could be mine,” he urged. “All you have to do is stop taking that little herbal potion I get from that vile creature at Burrow Mump.”
She pouted. “I’ll grow fat and hideous and you won’t love me anymore. You’ll abandon me to rusticate there at that hovel of an estate of his!”
“You will never be hideous, my darling… but we must all make sacrifices if we are to have the kind of life we desire. Harrelson was too tightfisted when he was alive for us to amass the wealth we needed from assisting him. He kept the lion’s share and forced us to live in near poverty. That was likely his plan all along, to keep us leashed to him like poorly behaved pets,” he mused. “But never again. Never again. You will bear my child and raise it as the heir to the Wolverton Earldom. It’s the perfect revenge, don’t you think?”
“Against Alex? It isn’t vengeance, Albie. He’s too much of a gentleman to have ever done anything warranting vengeance! If we’re to do this, let us at least be honest about our motives. We hate him because he’s a bore, and because I was forced to marry him by Freddy and Harrelson so they could get their hands on his money and his lands! And you, too. You were right there with them insisting it was the only way!”
“And it was, my darling. We had to bury the gossip about us because you behaved imprudently, Helena. Let us not forget that! No one would have ever suspected that our relationship was anything more than familial had you not made such a scene when I proposed to that horrid Landers girl!”
“She was ugly. I won’t be thrown over for an ugly woman!”
“You weren’t being thrown over! I was going to marry her, get her fortune, and then see her dead before the year was out! But you cannot control that vile temper of yours! Between your temper and Harrelson’s greed, I’m still living on the pitiful allowance my father threatens to cut off every time I displease him! Which appears to be with every other breath! And now with Freddy getting Harrelson’s wealth and lands… what else are we to do, Helena?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you certain it was the psychic who got rid of him, after all? Given that he was your friend and your partner, you don’t seem overly heartbroken at his demise!”
“There is only one person who will ever have a place in my heart… that is you,” he cooed at her. “Now, we must come up with a reasonable story for why you have been gone for so long.”
“Why not use Harrelson? Maybe he’s kept me prisoner in his house for these past two years… abusing me horribly for his own perverse pleasure?” Even as she asked the question, she was disrobing, allowing her already sheer dressing gown to fall to the floor, baring the matching confection of lace and silk beneath.
Hamilton smiled. “My sly, little fox… what a criminal mastermind you are!”
“If I’m to submit myself once more to Alexander’s touch, then tonight, my love, I would know yours,” she said. “Take me, Albie, as a man should!”
His heart beat faster in anticipation. Helena would never be content with a man who would simply make love to her. She could only find release in violence, in domination. Her greatest satisfaction came in the form of pain and degradation. That their desires so closely aligned, his need to inflict pain and her ability to receive absolute pleasure from it, had been the basis of their relationship to start. But it had been her utter lack of morals, and her willingness to involve herself fully in the flesh peddling enterprise that he and Harrelson had used to shore up the flagging finances of their estates, that had truly made him worship her. Never in his life had he had the pleasure of being with someone so completely avaricious. If he’d believed in such a thing as soul mates, he might have thought she was his.
“Kneel on the bed and present your lovely arse for a spanking, Helena. You’ll need to be adequately punished for your wickedness,” he said.
She shivered, her nipples pebbling beneath the satin of her gown, but she quickly moved to do his bidding. Crossing the room, he opened the wardrobe and removed the item that always elicited the most excitement from her. A single cane, the ends of it wrapped in soft leather so it would not cut her skin, hung from a hook inside it.
“Tell me how naughty you’ve been, Helena,” he urged.
“I yelled at the servants. And I shouted at you,” she admitted, her voice quavering slightly. “I’ve challenged your authority shamelessly.”
“Is there more?”
She looked up at him through lowered lashes in a position of mock submission. It was belied by the fire of passion that burned so brightly in her eyes. “So very much more.”
“We’ll start with that for now… and then see if you require further discipline.”
“As you wish, my lord,” she replied meekly.
She was a harlot with the manners of a lady, and he adored her for it, he thought. Raising the cane, he brought it down hard on the soft, supple flesh of her bottom. She cried out, but not from pain or fear. It was excitement and they both knew it.
Hamilton smiled as he raised his arm to deliver the next blow. She was maddening, difficult, often obstinate, childish and unabashedly selfish. But for him, she was perfect.
Chapter Eight
Mary had not slept at all. She’d burned the single candle by her bedside until it was down to the barest nub as she consumed the pages of his journals. The first one, from his youth, had prompted smiles and even a bit of laughter. He had not exaggerated when he’d told her of his painful attempts at poetry. They were utterly atrocious, but sweet because they’d been completely heartfelt. At dawn, she’d risen and moved to the window, and used the sun to continue her exploration of his musings and memories.
There was one passage in particular that she had read and reread. She found herself returning to it over and over again. With a guilty flush, she flipped back to that page once more. It was dated just a few days after Lord Ambrose’s letter and dealt with what he had learned from his friend regarding his wife’s alleged infidelity.
I had no romantic inclinations at the prospect of marrying Helena. I was charmed by her beauty, as was any man who met her. But I was not swept away by her and, perhaps, if I had been wiser, I would have refused for that reason. One should be swept away with a passion for the woman he
marries. It’s a foolish notion, a romantic one that I can ill afford and yet, I think now, that I would rather have married by standards some would deem poor, meaning that there were no financial gains from the union and have, if not happiness, then at least contentment.
We have been wed for two years. There are no children from this union and given the disappointment that is our marriage bed, I cannot see that altering in the foreseeable future.
Wolfhaven is colder and lonelier than ever. Looking back at my parents, at their arranged marriage and how wonderfully it had turned out for the both of them, at least until my mother’s death and my father’s unending grief at her loss, my belief that such an arrangement for myself and Helena might also give way to romantic feelings and devotion was foolhardy and rather naïvely optimistic. I think that, perhaps, Helena does not wish to be happy. Her mood shifts like the wind, always capricious. Her good humor is the most precarious thing I have ever beheld. Perhaps it is my fault, for whenever she has wished to go to London or Bath, or even her family’s estates, I confess that I am happy to see her go, happy to have a moment’s peace without tempers and tantrums and tears. And yet all of that is followed on her return by stony silence and an iciness that makes me question whether I ever witnessed an outburst from her at all.
There are whispers now, sly and sidelong looks, and the occasional laughter when I go into the village. I know why, of course. The time she has spent at Harrelson’s estate, under the guise of visiting with her uncle, was nothing more than a ruse to allow for her infidelity. Her misbehavior in London and now in Bath has reached far and wide it seems. The rumor of her unnatural relationship with her brother, Albert, has once more reared its ugly head. The only thing saving her from total ruin is that everyone knows she and Albert do not actually share any parentage. Her mother, his stepmother’s infidelity, is legendary.
The Mystery of Miss Mason (The Lost Lords Book 5) Page 10
