The Heart of a Scoundrel

by Christi Caldwell

  Silence rang in the grand space and she quietly closed the door behind her with a soft click. She scanned the empty room. The mahogany Chippendale furniture and broad, immaculate desk in their deep, cherry hue perfectly suited Edmund’s dark personality. Phoebe took a cautious step forward and then another. Crimson velvet curtains hung closed, as though her husband barred the passersby below even a glimpse into his world. She skimmed her fingers along the leather button sofa and the cool of the fabric chilled in an otherwise warm space. She came to a stop at the foot of his desk and rested her palm along the surface.

  The room for all its costly pieces of furniture was otherwise devoid of life and cheer. Dark, cold, sterile. Phoebe moved around the desk and claimed her husband’s tall, leather, winged back chair. She shifted in the seat testing the folds of his chair and then laid her palms on the smooth surface. In a distracted manner, she rubbed them back and forth along the cool wood.

  “So this is where you see to your business, Edmund Deering,” she said into the quiet of the room.

  The familiar silence of the room echoed as her only response. Phoebe ran her gaze about the office again. For a man who evoked terror in the hearts of most gentlemen, there was something rather ordinary about this space that he made his. She made to rise and then stilled. With the tip of her finger she played with the gold latch on the long desk drawer. It really wasn’t her place to snoop through her husband’s affairs.

  Phoebe looked to the closed door and then back to the drawer. But then, neither had he given her much choice in the matter of their marriage. Surely one as ruthless and relentless as her husband would not object to such behavior in his own wife? Guilt niggling at the back corner of her mind, she thrust aside those misgivings and pulled out the drawer.

  She stared disappointedly down into the meager contents. Though she didn’t know what she’d truly expected to find, there had been the sliver of hope that there would be some piece of his business that gave a glimpse into who he was and what he did. Not unlike the book and the breakfast and now the childhood painting. But for a small, black leather ledger and a handful of pens and a sheaf of parchments, there was nothing personal or at all distinctively Edmund’s.

  Absently she pulled out the book and fanned the pages, admiring his neat, meticulous scrawl. There was a boldness and power to even the ink markings he left upon his pages. She flipped through the small ledger and then blinked slowly as the words inked upon those pages registered. The leather seat groaned in protest as Phoebe sat forward in the chair. With trembling fingers, she brought the book close to her face and buried her nose in its loathsome pages as she rapidly scanned the words in her husband’s hand.

  Lord Exeter. Weakness Faro and French mistresses. Debt one thousand pounds.

  Nausea turned in her belly.

  Lord Donaldson. Weakness diddling his servants. Whist. Debt country cottage in Devonshire.

  She quickly worked her gaze over the names of men and women indebted to Edmund in some way.

  Miss Honoria Fairfax?

  Bile climbed up her throat.

  Miss Phoebe Barrett—weakness? Her friends and family.

  Oh, God.

  For everything she knew about her husband’s fierce pursuit of power, and his ease in taking what he wanted, and when he wanted it…seeing that ruthlessness enumerated on these pages by him, the way he might record a mundane shopping list, spoke to a depth of his hard-heartedness. Gooseflesh dotted her arms and the book slid from her fingers. It tumbled unceremoniously to the desk with a loud thump. She sat frozen, staring at the book open on its spine with her name glaring mockingly up at her. These words, they were not the words belonging to a man who carried breakfast trays and books of Wales. Rather, these black marks upon the page belonged to that sneering, snarling child who’d jeered her for daring to look at his painted likeness.

  “Have you found anything of interest in my office?” a harsh voice drawled.

  For a moment, she stared numbly at the page not understanding why the damning leather book should be speaking, in her husband’s tone no less. The office door closed with a soft click, bringing her head up.

  Edmund stood at the entrance of the room, a hard, undecipherable look stamped on the harsh features of his face. Her husband stalked over like a sleek, lethal panther, moving around the desk and stopping beside her.

  He reached for her and she flinched. His ever-narrowing eyes took in that subtle movement and then with a growl, he swiped the book from the desk, snapped it closed, and set it back on the desk. He laid his hands on the arms of her chair, blocking escape. A vein pulsed at his right temple and her heart thumped, reminded once more that Edmund, the Marquess of Rutland, was nothing more than a stranger. “Did you think I would hurt you, Phoebe?” he jeered.

  Even with her heart aching and a void of emptiness in her chest, Phoebe managed to tip her head up. “You still have not realized that you don’t need to use your hands to inflict hurt upon,” me, “a person. You manage that just as effectively with your words.”

  They remained locked in a silent battle of wills; he seething and simmering like an angered dragon prepared to snarl flames, she proud and defiant, refusing to be cowed by him.

  Shockingly, Edmund conceded defeat. He shoved himself to standing and took several steps back, allowing her to rise. Unable to bear the heated emotion in his eyes, Phoebe looked away, peering down at the book. She ran her fingers over the surface of that vile book. “Do you know, Edmund, I am a fool.” He stiffened, but otherwise made no attempt to refute or confirm her claim. Acrimony had a bitter taste like acid on her tongue. As she fanned the pages, her skin pricked with awareness of his studious attention to her movements. “I heard everything outside of my father’s office. Your intentions for me, your plans for Margaret, your…” Pain choked off those words and she cleared her throat. “Your ruthlessness in wedding even my sister should I not relent.” Phoebe raised her eyes to his. His mouth tightened. White lines formed at the corners of his lips. “What does it say about me and the extent of my weakness and folly that I continue to believe in you?” In us. Phoebe released the book once more and dusted her hands together. “All my life I was determined to not be my mother. I would wed an honorable gentleman who’d respect me. He would be kind and he would be faithful.” The dreams of that fictional gentleman flashed to her mind’s eye. “I would dream of who he would be but he never had a face.” She drew in a broken breath and looked into her husband’s eyes. “For a while that man’s face belonged to you. No more, Edmund. You are not that man.”

  *

  Over the years, many vile epithets and black obscenities had been leveled at him that they’d ceased to matter. They hit him and rolled off his impenetrable back without leaving so much as a hint of a mark. Standing there with Phoebe’s discovery between them, her words ravaged him more than Stanhope’s blade or any of those other ugly charges to be heaped upon his worthless shoulders before.

  For standing here, staring at Phoebe with the delicate planes of her cherished face etched in grief and acceptance, whatever she might have felt for him that wasn’t loathing had clearly died with the discovery of that book.

  He dug deep, searching the dismissive response that would send her fleeing, but he did not want her to go, for when she left, after this, Phoebe would be gone in ways that he could never, ever again find her. Edmund stared blankly down at the book; a book he’d not etched a single mark in after the moment he’d put Phoebe’s name down.

  With a sound of disgust, Phoebe made to step around him. He shot a hand out, staying her movement. She glanced down at his hold upon her person with such potent disgust, he released her suddenly. “I have not written another name in that book since yours.” Since you.

  She eyed him as though he’d escaped from Bedlam. “Am I supposed to find honor in that? Reassurance?” She scoffed. “So you have not written another name in it since mine. There will be others after me. Mayhap not today or tomorrow, but you will find others. Pe
ople’s weaknesses you use to build up an artificial strength.” Her words slashed through him, powerful with their accuracy. “But you are not strong,” she said, cutting his legs out from under him. She jerked her chin toward the door. “You are that angry, scared child in the painting—”

  “I do not know any other way!” he shouted, his voice thundered from the ceiling and echoed around them.

  Phoebe placed her palms on the edge of the desk and leaned toward him, shrinking the space. “Then try. What happened to you as a child was horrid,” she said, her tone gentler, bearing more hints of the warmth usually lining her every word. “It truly was. Your parents, like my father, were rotten, horrid, dishonorable people. But that happened to you, just as it happened to me, and you need to move on from it.”

  Move on from it. There was something seductive in those four words. Move on… He’d spent the course of his life with manacles holding him to the past. As she’d said, a child hurt and wounded nursing those hurts in a bid to never be hurt again. He wanted to be more. And yes, he wanted to be more for her because that is what she, at the very least, deserved, but for him.

  Silence stretched on eternally between them and then Phoebe pushed away from the desk. With resigned steps, she walked away from him.

  “I want to change,” he called out, staying her as she reached the door. “I want to be more.” For you.

  Phoebe wheeled slowly back, her face curiously expressionless. “Unfortunately, Edmund I’m not entirely sure you can.”

  Long after Phoebe had gone, Edmund stood fixed to the spot. He stared at the wood panel, clenching and unclenching his fists into painful balls at his side. Then, moving behind his desk, he sat down. With slow, methodical movements he flipped open the familiar book and then pulled open his desk drawer. Dipping his pen into the crystal inkwell he etched one more name onto the pages and stared blankly down at the name marked there.

  Chapter 22

  Later that day, Phoebe stared up at the façade of a familiar stucco townhouse. Her skin pricked with the gazes trained on her by rabidly curious passersby. She rapped once on the front door. In light of this latest betrayal by Edmund, surely she should feel some great torrent of emotions. Except, she didn’t think she could shed another tear for her husband, the Marquess of Rutland. She raised her hand to knock again, when the door was suddenly opened.

  Surprise wreathed the old butler, Manfred’s face, reminding her of another loyal, devoted butler. “Miss Barrett,” he greeted with a smile and then remembered himself as she stepped through the doorway. “My Ladyship,” he amended.

  Phoebe shrugged out of her cloak and handed it off to the waiting servant. “I daresay a dear family friend who knew me when I was putting rose water in my father’s cologne is permitted calling me by my Christian name, still.”

  “Did you now?” A twinkle lit his old eyes. “I do not recall you as anything but perfectly behaved.”

  She managed her first laugh that morning and then looked about.

  “Her Ladyship is in the Pink Parlor,” he said correctly interpreting the reason for her visit. He motioned with his hand. “If you’ll allow me to—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said with a murmur of thanks. “I’ve been gone but two days,” which felt like twenty years. “I still remember my way about,” she assured him.

  Manfred grinned and inclined his head. “As you wish, my lady… Miss Phoebe,” he said when she gave him a pointed look.

  With a last small smile for the servant who represented a tie to her past, she made her way through the quiet townhouse, onward to the Pink Parlor. She came to a stop at the open doorway. Her mother sat at the edge of a mahogany shell chair. Head bent over an embroidery frame, she attended the stitchery in her hand, pulling the needle through the stark white fabric.

  “I did not expect a visit so soon after you’d been married,” her mother welcomed, not picking her head up from her work.

  “Mother,” she greeted. Phoebe stepped into the room, hesitated, and then pulled the door closed behind her. That soft click brought the viscountess’ attention up and her wide smile withered and died on her lips.

  “What is it?” She tossed aside her frame, work forgotten, and climbed to her feet.

  There was such a gentle, maternal concern in that inquiry that if Phoebe hadn’t already cried every last possible tear for Edmund and their future, she would have dissolved into an empty puddle of weepy nothingness at her mother’s feet. Phoebe gave her a shake and motioned to the chair she’d just vacated. Wordlessly, she claimed the seat opposite her mother. She drummed her fingertips on the arm of her chair, examining this woman who’d smiled through so much darkness. “How did you do it?”

  Her mother angled her head.

  Phoebe ceased the distracted tapping. “Marriage to Father. How did you do it all these years and smile? Why aren’t you…?” She closed her mouth.

  The viscountess picked up her embroidery frame. “Why aren’t I…?” she prodded, setting her stitch work on her lap.

  “Unhappy? Bitter? Angry?” Everything Phoebe herself was this moment.

  Her mother furrowed her brow. “What do I have to be unhappy about?”

  “Come, Mama,” Phoebe chided. “Surely you know what I speak of?” She glanced at the silver needle dangling from the frame. “You can’t possibly be happy wedded to Father.”

  A dawning understanding lit the other woman’s eyes. “Ahh,” she said, settling back in her chair. She sighed and glanced over at the closed door as though ascertaining there was no one at the entrance, before then returning her attention to Phoebe. “No,” she said softly. “My marriage has not been a happy one, but my life has been a great one.”

  Phoebe wrinkled her brow. “That seems a contradiction,” she scoffed. How could one not preclude the other?

  Light danced in her mother’s blue eyes. “Does it? Is my marriage to your father a happy one?” She shook her head once. “No, it isn’t,” she said with more candor than Phoebe ever recalled. “It is not the marriage I imagined for myself.” Those words an echo of Phoebe’s earlier thoughts ran through her, tightening the pain. Yet there was no spiteful resentment deserving one such as her mother. Her mother began tugging her needle through the frame once more. “My life is a happy one, Phoebe, and I’d have it no other way.” She glanced up and must have seen the disbelief on her daughter’s face, for she smiled. “You think I lie?”

  Phoebe shifted. “No…I…” At the knowing look, she settled back in her seat with a sigh. “Yes,” she mumbled, feeling like a recalcitrant child. “Surely there must be a lie.”

  “Oh, there is no lie,” her mother said instantly. “Perhaps regret, yes. But not a lie. My life is a happy one.”

  Filled with a restive energy, Phoebe jumped to her feet and began to pace. “How did you do it? How do you go through life with a smile and laughter?” When Phoebe herself thought she could never smile again. She spun back, pleading with her eyes for an answer.

  Her mother set aside her frame again and then came to her feet. She came over and took Phoebe gently by her shoulders. “How can you not know why I smile and laugh? I have you and Justina and Andrew. My heart is full because of you three and someday, when you are a mother, you will understand that,” she said giving her shoulders another slight squeeze.

  Phoebe’s throat worked spasmodically. “That cannot be the same as having a husband’s love.”

  “No, no it is not.” Her mother brushed a kiss on her forehead. “I would be lying if I didn’t say there was a void, but you and your brother and sister, you fill that.”

  She drew in a shuddery breath and a strand of hair fell over her brow. The viscountess brushed it back and tucked it behind her ear. “This is about your Lord Rutland.”

  And because Phoebe would wager her very life that Father didn’t speak to his wife on any matter, even the topic of her own children, she told her the truth. “He won my dowry in a game of cards against Father.”

  He
r mother stilled her soothing caress. “And?”

  “And he would have wedded Justina if I did not marry him.” That part stung more being breathed aloud so that she resisted the urge to rub her hand over her aching chest.

  Mama snorted. “You believe Lord Rutland would have wed Justina, to what end?”

  Phoebe opened and closed her mouth several times and then frowned. Odd, until this moment, she’d not truly considered how Justina fit into his madcap scheme. Or…for that matter, why he even wanted Phoebe. After all, marriage to her had effectively quashed his plans for Honoria.

  “Do you know what I believe?”

  She shook her head, wishing someone had answers to put her world to rights.

  “Your husband cares for you. When he looks at you, there is no other person in the room.” She stroked her hair. “No, that man would have never wed Justina.” Her lips turned in a wry smile. “I am not excusing his behaviors, but I am saying there is more there than your modest dowry.”

  Hope stirred at her mother’s words and, for an instant, she willed them to be accurate and true. Then she recalled that blasted book and her name scratched casually upon the pages as though she were any other person he’d use in his scheme of life. “Edmund doesn’t care for anyone,” she said tiredly. She drew in a breath and before her mother could debate the point with her, she hurriedly said, “I should return home.”

  “Yes, you should.”

  Phoebe kissed her mother on the cheek. “I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  She started for the door when her mother called out stopping her. “Phoebe?” Phoebe glanced over her shoulder. “Lord Rutland is not your father,” she said simply.

  Phoebe managed a smile and with that, left. As she made the short carriage ride back to Edmund’s townhouse and entered her new home, her mother’s words danced around her mind. Wallace opened the door granting her entry and she paused in the foyer.