The Rules of Seduction

by Madeline Hunter

He had arrived here three days ago after his meeting with Suttonly. Or had it been four now? Time had gotten away from him. Faced with the knowledge that Suttonly had discovered Ben’s forgery and made him pay, seeing that Ben had good cause to dread returning to England, he had retreated into this private, silent home. His clerk saw he was fed, but he gave the man no other duties. Instead, he spent uncharted hours on his calculations and slept when complete fatigue overcame him.

  Early dawn’s silver light turned white as the risen sun’s rays streaked in the window. The sudden brightness shocked him into an unwelcome state of alertness. The truth emerged from the shadows of his mind, no longer obscured by exhaustion or distraction. It ripped through him like a hot knife.

  He had allowed Ben to die. The suspicion of that had haunted him for years. In hindsight, the details of that night had been blaring trumpets.

  He should have heard them. Stopped it. He should have thrashed Ben if necessary and carried him off the deck. Instead, he had allowed his anger at Ben’s goad to make him deaf and blind, and he had turned away.

  That had been deliberate on Ben’s part. He had already known what he was going to do. And Ben had not confided the truth. He did not believe he would find help if he confessed but instead only censure and a walk to the noose. Now you sound like your father. All judgment and logical superiority.

  Anger wanted to split his mind apart. Anger at himself and at Benjamin, and also at the circumstances that made this all so pitifully ironic.

  He stripped off his shirt, braced himself against the washstand, and splashed water on his face. It trickled down his chest, snaking over the long scar. A sickening memory flashed through him, one of pain and fear as a blade sliced this path. That farmhouse was not much larger than this bedroom, and just as dark. Being an English lord’s brother had meant nothing to the Turkish soldiers using him for sport.

  If not for Ben’s impulsive, mad heroics, he would have died in that farmhouse. Slowly. They had already beaten his youth out of him by the time Ben crashed through the window.

  He pulled his shirt back on and immediately went to the standing table in the next chamber. He escaped into the sublime purity of the calculations like an opium user seeking his drug. Grappling with the divine design of creation submerged him in a separate existence, one apart from the world of physical pain and chaotic emotions that made living all too profane.

  Alexia tapped the edge of the letter against the surface of her secretaire’s writing surface. Hayden’s long absence from the house vexed her. She tried not to dwell on where he might be and with whom he might be dallying. She tried not to see this as abandonment or betrayal, even if it felt more hurtful having occurred after that quiet night together.

  Her growing annoyance concerned the letter in her hand. Rose had written. Finally. The note bore the tone of a distant acquaintance. It spoke of commonplace things and never addressed their differences. The contact had come, however, and Alexia did not want the door to close before she had a chance to walk through it and attempt to reclaim her cousins.

  The good wife wanted to tell her husband. It would not do to just take that carriage and leave town. She doubted Hayden thought she should just go off whenever she wanted for days on end without his knowledge or permission.

  A discreet question to Falkner had elicited no information this morning. No one in this house had any idea where Hayden had gone. His valet indicated no baggage had been packed and he had taken his horse, not a carriage. He was somewhere in London, perhaps relieving that dark mood with someone more experienced at dispersing clouds than his wife had proven.

  She opened the letter and read Rose’s restrained sentences again. She could simply write back, she supposed. With enough polite correspondence she might achieve a rapprochement in a few months. She did not want to wait that long. She wanted to see Rose and know for certain that her cousins were not lost to her.

  She left her chamber and called for her carriage. She would make an attempt to find Hayden and speak with him about this. If he proved elusive, she would make the journey to Oxfordshire without his permission.

  She gave her card to the servant and asked to see either the marquess or Lord Elliot Rothwell. A short while later she was escorted to the latter, who waited in the library.

  “Christian is not receiving today,” Elliot explained. “It is always my pleasure when you visit, however.”

  “I have come to seek your help,” she explained. “I would like to send a message to Hayden, and I thought you might know how to do that.”

  Elliot assumed an expression of bemused curiosity. “Forgive me, but I do not know my brother’s daily appointments. Perhaps his valet…”

  “He has been gone three days now. I am sure he is in London.” She attempted to maintain a sophisticated tone. She hoped her face did not show her embarrassment. “It is important to me to at least attempt to inform him of a matter that requires I leave London for a day or two.”

  Elliot frowned. “Three days, you say.” His attention retreated into his own thoughts. “I know what you are thinking.” His brow smoothed, but his eyes remained concerned. “When my brother had mistresses, he did not stay with them. Ever. Nor was he involved in a liaison in the weeks prior to his marriage.”

  She appreciated his frankness. Relief swelled in her, but a spike of fear made it irrelevant. “I just assumed…Is it possible he was hurt, or—”

  “Unlikely. Your carriage is outside? Let us go, then.” He walked toward the door decisively. “I will speak with his valet, and then I will take you to him.”

  She hurried after him. “Truly, I only wish to send him a message.”

  “If he has gone where I think, that will not be enough. Trust me on this.”

  “You look like a prisoner on a hull, Hayden.”

  Elliot’s voice sounded like a cannon in the silence. It jolted Hayden out of a concentration so intense that his jaw ached. He glanced to the south-facing window that displayed the sun’s position. It was past midday already.

  Elliot carried coats and packages. He took them into the bedroom. “You are not even changing to sleep, I see. It hasn’t been this extreme for a long time. Years. Not since that bad spell right after you returned to England.”

  Elliot’s sudden arrival brought reality through the door. The world had to realign on its axis to accommodate the intrusion. While his brother tended to matters in the bedroom, Hayden adjusted to his reawakened senses. He felt like a man rising from bed after a long bout with a fever.

  He looked down at his chest and noticed how soiled his shirt was. “Did Christian send you?”

  “No.” Elliot emerged from the bedroom. “Another person alerted me to your disappearance.” He angled his head toward the door.

  Hayden opened it. Alexia stood in the anteroom. He closed the door before she saw him.

  “You could not even spare the time to send her a note?” Elliot asked. “You left her to wonder if your body was in the Thames or if you were holding a weeklong debauch in some bordello.”

  “I do not hold debauches in bordellos.”

  “She does not know that.” Displaying more anger than Hayden had seen in years, Elliot strode to the door. “I leave you to her. If I remain I might demand to know what caused this. Perhaps she will be too relieved or too ignorant to wonder.”

  “You would never demand to know. That is why I like you, Elliot. You do not exhort me or criticize. You bring me fresh shirts but are prepared to leave me to my unique form of inebriation.”

  “I do not criticize because I understand the drink that lures you too well. That does not mean I am not concerned when you drown in it, Hayden.”

  He strode out, leaving the door open. Alexia looked in. Her expression fell at his appearance. She swept past the clerk, entered, and closed the door.

  She gave him a good look, head to toe. He became too aware of how disgusting he appeared.

  “Your valet wanted to come, but Elliot forbade it. I thought the req
uest peculiar. Little did I know that he guessed what we would find.” She gestured to the bedchamber. “He was good enough to collect the necessities for us, however. I trust you keep a razor here, or should I send your clerk for a barber?”

  Hayden felt his face and the growth there. Alexia strolled around the office, taking in his private sanctuary.

  “Would you like to hear news of the world, husband? Amazing things have happened while you played the hermit. Scandals and wars and great discoveries.” Her tone edged toward a scold. “What is this, Hayden? What are you doing here?”

  He retreated to the bedroom and stripped off the foul shirt. He began to wash and glimpsed the wild man in the looking glass. Elliot was right. It had not been this bad in years. And the last time, upon his return from Greece, had been for the same reason. He had found some peace during that earlier retreat. He had forged enough ambiguity and lies out of that night’s memories to allow himself some forgiveness. Oddly enough, the honesty this time offered more relief.

  Alexia followed and perched on the bed, waiting. She did not say a word while he washed his face and torso in the morning water long gone cold. Its frigid splashes brought him further into the world.

  He found his razor in the washstand drawer and began to prepare to shave. He could see her quizzical expression in the looking glass.

  She waited for an answer to her question. What was he doing here? He could hardly blame her for wondering, but that did not mean he had to like feeling an obligation to explain.

  “My brothers and I all inherited my mother’s ability to lose ourselves in our thoughts,” he said while he tested the razor’s edge. “We do so on occasion, each in his own way.”

  “For days on end?”

  “Not usually. Several hours at most.”

  “This was not several hours.”

  “It happens sometimes. It is neither dangerous nor remarkable.”

  “That dark mood you spoke of caused this, didn’t it?”

  He paused in his preparations. He supposed this was inevitable. Married couples showed the world a formal alliance, but it was impossible to avoid the stark familiarity that emerged in the marriage bed. The physical intimacies exposed one to the other in spiritual ways, unless an effort was made to avoid it. Her curiosity was understandable, probably. He wondered what lay in those distant fields, after all.

  “Yes, that mood did provoke this. My retreat dispelled that mood, however, so it was for the best.”

  “You warned me that I should leave you to it. Are you angry that your brother brought me here?”

  “No.” Nor was he. Not really. He could have done without her seeing him like this, however. He suspected he appeared very weak right now.

  “Your mother wrote when she lost herself in her mind. What do you do?”

  He picked up the razor. “There is a table and desk in the other chamber, near the window. My work is there.”

  She left to see what he meant. He dealt with his beard, then thoroughly washed and dressed. When he emerged from the bedroom, she was still examining the sheets of mathematical notations.

  “I do not understand most of it, of course,” she said. “It is like a language where one knows the words but cannot read the sentences.”

  “Like any language, there can be poetry in it.”

  “I have sensed as much at times.” She set down the sheets. “If unending poetry awaits in these chambers, perhaps the wonder is that you ever leave them.”

  “I enjoy the world of the senses too much to give it up overlong.”

  He liked the way she nodded, as if he made perfect sense. He did not doubt that she also appreciated the discipline required to move from one realm to the other and how circumstances might defeat him for a while.

  His day had begun in that rarefied consciousness, but now it was totally ordinary and physical. The only unique note was Alexia’s presence in this office.

  “Did you go to Elliot because you were concerned?”

  “I only wanted to send a message to you. I thought he might know how to do so.”

  A small disappointment stabbed him. She had not speculated about the worst or worried over him. Nor would she have questioned him upon his return. She expected nothing from him, least of all explanations.

  “What message?”

  Her posture subtly straightened. Her eyes reflected the low, angry lights he had seen so often since they met. That always meant one thing.

  “Rose wrote to me. I intend to make a small journey to see her. I thought I should inform you, so you would not think me devious.”

  “Did you write to her again, Alexia?”

  “Yes. Twice.”

  “You directly disobeyed me. Your concern about being devious is a little late.”

  “I did not disobey you, if we are particular about the details of that command. I was not disloyal to you in my brief notes to them. In fact, you were not mentioned at all. You promised when you proposed that you would not interfere with my friendships, and I took you at your word.”

  Annoyance prodded at his temper, and not only because she had parsed his words to her convenience. He doubted she could see the Longworths, or even think about them, without hating him. Fifty years hence, the mere allusion to them would probably still cause that expression in her eyes.

  “Has your cousin invited you to visit?”

  “If I wait on that I may grow old first. She has at least admitted I am still alive, and I will go anyway. If she refuses to see me, so be it. I do not think she will.”

  This meeting was inevitable. Eventually, Alexia would reclaim them. He did not want to deny her that, but he would be damned before he gave them unfettered influence over her.

  “I will not forbid this journey, Alexia. However, I will join you on it. We will go down to Aylesbury Abbey for several days, and you can meet with your cousin while we are there.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  A damp haze hung over the town of Oxford, creating a watercolor of muted, misty tones. University scholars walked by the old stone buildings in little packs, their youthful faces displaying a joy and lightness that seemed inappropriate amid the formalities of the colleges’ architecture.

  Hayden’s carriage rolled up St. Giles’ Street, leaving the university’s territory behind. Here shops and inns strung out as in other country towns, and the mood was less rarefied. They stopped across the lane from St. Giles’ Church.

  Alexia began to move. Hayden’s hand firmly covered the door latch, stopping her. “We will wait here in the carriage until she arrives.”

  “I would prefer to wait in the church. I do not want her to leave if she sees you.”

  “If she requested you meet her here and not call at her house, if she is paying to hire the conveyance to get here, she will not leave. It is not my intrusion she fears but her brother’s.”

  Alexia was not so sure. Rose had responded quickly to the letter suggesting they meet. Perhaps she guessed that if she did not comply, Alexia would turn up at her door anyway. That had been the plan. She had sent a note when she arrived at Aylesbury Abbey, asking to be received, but had fully intended to call and risk a door being slammed in her face.

  She peered out the window, looking for the approach of a hired carriage that Rose could ill afford. “Will you at least allow me to greet her alone?”

  “The coachman will hand you down. She may not even realize I am here.”

  They spoke in flat tones. Yesterday, when Rose’s response had arrived at Aylesbury Abbey, they had argued about his accompanying her to Oxford. She had itemized the sensible reasons why he need not and should not. He had proven uncompromising.

  Neither of them had raised a voice, but the air had been full of silent anger. The debate had centered on her safety and protection, but she suspected the argument was really about other things. Her cousins’ situation remained an unhealed wound between them. He did not like that she was doing this.

  He sat with her now, his
expression the remote one that made the world think him cold. His distance caused a worry to tremble in her heart.

  “If your brothers had cut you off because of your choice of wife, would you not attempt to build a bridge back to them?”

  “That would depend on what they expected me to do to placate them and the cost of that compromise.”

  “There is no cost to me in attempting this rapprochement.”

  “Nor would there have been one to me in building the bridge you describe.”

  His meaning slowly unfolded in her mind. He was not anticipating that she would be made to pay a price as a condition of success with her cousins. He thought their expectations would have to do with him and would compromise her loyalty to the “horrible Lord Hayden.”

  A silence fell, one heavy with the anger he did not show. She feared if she said a word he would order the coachman to drive away.

  A humble gig rolled to a stop in front of the church. Rose, wearing the fur-trimmed pelisse that Alexia had borrowed for her first visit to Easterbrook’s house, alighted. She did not acknowledge the presence of the fine coach across the lane but walked to the church and disappeared through its portal.

  The coachman opened the carriage door and set down the steps. Alexia looked through the opening. A clear path led to Rose. Her heart filled with joy at the promise the day held, but confusion shadowed her happiness.

  She hesitated in taking the coachman’s hand. Would there be a cost? A compromise? Would again embracing her cousins bring grief to her new life?

  Hayden’s distance and anger pained her. Physically pained her, in her heart. She felt chilled, as if a warmth that bathed her had been withdrawn. She had not noticed its importance, but now its absence frightened her.

  She looked at him. When had that warmth spilled out of night’s hours? When had she begun waiting for him so hard and found such comfort and peace in merely embracing him? He had not come to her last night, and her disappointment had been so intense, so sad, that she had not known what to do with it.