by Mary Balogh
Ah, yes. Righteous indignation was denied him. Yes, this was something he might well have done. It was rather clever actually. And had obviously worked like a dream.
“Gabe,” his friend said, frowning, “if you did not write it, who did? It makes no sense.”
“Someone who wanted to embarrass me,” the earl said. “Or someone who wanted to ruin Miss Winwood.”
“It makes no sense,” Sir Albert said again.
“Actually,” the earl said, smiling rather grimly, “it makes a great deal of sense, Bertie. I believe I have just been outplayed in a game over which I thought I had complete control.”
Sir Albert looked his incomprehension.
“It is time you were in your bed,” Lord Thornhill said. “Staying up all night and tripping the light fantastic through much of it can be ruinous on the complexion and the constitution, you know, Bertie.”
“I may be a fool and a dupe, but I believe your denials,” Sir Albert said. “However, it does not change the fact that she is totally ruined, Gabe. She will never be sent another invitation. She will never be able to show her face in town again. I doubt that her father will be able to find her a husband even in the country. It is a shame, I rather like her. And if you are to be believed, she has done nothing to bring on her own ruin.”
“Sometimes,” the earl said, indicating the door with one hand, “these things happen, Bertie. I need the rest of my beauty sleep.”
“And you will not be able to show your face here either,” Sir Albert said, moving toward the door.
“Now that,” the earl said as his friend was finally leaving, “I would not count upon, Bertie.”
Very cleverly done, he thought grimly, alone again at last. He did not bother to move back into his bedchamber. He knew that there would be no more sleep for him tonight.
Very cleverly done indeed.
WHEN VISCOUNT NORDAL’S BUTLER opened the library door the next morning to announce the arrival of the Earl of Thornhill, the viscount at first refused to see him and instructed his servant to throw him out. However, when that nervous individual reappeared less than a minute later with the news that the earl intended to stay in the hall until he was admitted, the viscount directed that he be shown in.
He was standing behind his desk when the earl strode in.
“I have not a word to say to you, Thornhill,” he said. “Perhaps I should have sent you a challenge this morning. You have brought ruin on me and my whole family. But fighting a duel with you would suggest that I was defending my daughter’s honor. As I understand it, there is no honor to be fought for.”
“I will buy a special license today,” the earl said curtly, wasting no time on preliminaries, “and marry her tomorrow. You need not concern yourself with a dowry for her. I have fortune enough with which to support her.”
The viscount sneered. “Not quite what you anticipated being forced into,” he said, “when you have been enjoying the pleasures of the marriage bed without benefit of clergy and expected to go on doing so. Is it possible that you care enough for the opinion of your peers to do the decent thing, Thornhill?”
The Earl of Thornhill strode across the room and rested both hands flat on the desk before leaning across it to address himself to his prospective father-in-law. “I will make one thing clear,” he said. “To my knowledge Miss Winwood is as pure as she was on the day her mother bore her. And if I am to marry her, I will meet anyone who wishes to assume otherwise. Yourself included.”
The viscount bristled. “Get out!” he said.
“Your daughter’s name and honor seem to mean nothing to you,” the earl said, “except as they reflect upon your own. Very well, then. The only thing that can happen today—the only thing—is for her to affiance herself to me, for us to marry without delay. With your daughter safely and honorably married, you will be able to hold your head high again, Nordal. And eventually so will she.”
Viscount Nordal looked back at him with silent loathing.
The earl removed his hands from the desk and took a step back. “It is early for a lady to be up and dressed the morning after a ball,” he said, “but I do not imagine Miss Winwood has been troubled by too much sleep. I will see her now, Nordal, before I leave about other business. Alone, if you please.”
Viscount Nordal’s hand went to the bell rope behind his left shoulder.
“Have my daughter sent alone to the rose salon,” he told the butler, who appeared almost immediately. “While we wait, Thornhill, I believe we have a little business to discuss. Have a seat.”
The Earl of Thornhill sat, both his expression and his mood grim.
12
JENNIFER AWOKE FEELING SOME AMAZEMENT that she had slept at all. In fact, she seemed to have slept quite deeply and dreamlessly. But she awoke quite early without any of the illusions one so often has that the unpleasant events of the day before were merely dreams. Perhaps it was the soreness of her back and derrière when she moved. Sam’s tears and pleadings and Aunt Agatha’s admonitions had had their effect on Papa. He had not sent to the stables for a whip. He had used a cane instead and bent her over the desk in the library just like a naughty child while he did so.
It was all over. Everything that made her life worth living. Over when she was still only twenty years old. There was nothing left to make the rest of it worth living and never would be. Curiously, this morning her mind still had that strange detachment of the night before. She knew what had happened and she knew what the consequences were and what they would be for the rest of her days. But only her mind knew. No other part of her had begun to react to them yet.
She sat up gingerly, moving her legs over the edge of the bed. He had done it one more time and this time had ruined her completely. She had trusted him despite all the evidence and all the warnings from older, more experienced people than she. And he had done this to her. Lionel was lost to her. There was to be no more betrothal, no marriage. No more Season.
She realized suddenly what had woken her this early. Through the half-open door into her dressing room she could hear her maid and someone else moving about, opening and shutting doors and drawers. They were packing her trunks. She was to leave some time today for the country. But she was to go home only temporarily. Only until Papa could make arrangements for her to take up residence in some suitably remote location with a lady companion. The lady companion, she had understood, was in reality to be her jailer.
Wherever it was he banished her to, she was to spend the rest of her life there.
Her maid had set a plain morning dress over a chair in her room and a bowl and jug of water on the dresser. Jennifer got to her feet and washed and dressed herself. She brushed her hair and twisted it into a simple knot at her neck. And then she sat down on the edge of the bed again. She could not go down to breakfast, she had just remembered. She was confined to her room until the carriage was ready for her.
She had not been given any chance to defend herself, she realized. But it did not matter. The truth mattered little in such circumstances. The fact was that for reasons of his own the Earl of Thornhill had written that letter and Lionel’s father had read it and then exposed her and turned her off publicly. The fact was that she was ruined beyond redemption. Nothing could change that. There was no point in exerting herself to try to get someone to listen to her.
There was a tap on the dressing room door, the murmuring of her maid’s voice and a footman’s. Perhaps it was her breakfast tray, she thought, wondering if it would hold nothing but dry bread and water. Or perhaps they were ready for her. Papa doubtless wanted to get her on her way as soon as possible.
“You are wanted downstairs, Miss,” her maid said, appearing in the doorway, looking nervous. The servants doubtless knew the whole story. Servants always did. “In the rose salon without delay.”
It was not the carriage, then. And the summons was not to the library. Of course, that did not necessarily mean that she was not to be caned again. Perhaps Papa had sent for the
whip after all this morning. Perhaps she should weep as soon as she saw it and every time he used it. He had been incensed last night when she had remained quiet during her beating. It was not that she had not felt every stroke. It was just that her mind had been too numb to react.
The rose salon was empty. She walked across to the window and gazed out onto the square beyond the railings. She had loved London. There was a sense of energy and excitement here that she never felt in the country, though the country was where she thought she would prefer to do her day-by-day living. She supposed now it was as well she felt that way.
She wondered what Lionel was doing at this precise minute. Viscount Kersey. She no longer had the right even to think of him as Lionel.
And then the door opened and closed behind her. She did not turn. She was not sure she would not grovel when she actually saw the whip. She was still very sore from the cane.
“Miss Winwood?” The voice came from close behind her.
She spun around, eyes wide, all the numbness and passivity of the past hours gone without trace. “You!” she said. “Get out. Get out!”
He looked cool and elegant, booted feet set slightly apart, hands clasped behind his back. She hated him with such intensity that she would have killed him if she had had a weapon.
“I have come to save you from disgrace,” he said. “We will marry tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened further and her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You have come to gloat,” she said. “You have come to mock me. Well, gaze your fill, my lord. I have not looked in a glass this morning, but I would guess that I am not a pretty sight. This is what you have done to me. Enjoy the sight and then get out.”
“You are unnaturally pale,” he said, “and have shadows beneath your eyes. Your eyes are wild and unhappy. Apart from that, I see the same beauty I have admired since I first saw you. I will procure a special license today. We will marry tomorrow.”
She laughed. “Yes, you mean it,” she said. “Of course. It is the only explanation. For some reason you decided that you wanted me. I was unavailable because I was betrothed. But that was not going to stop you. You stalked me and preyed upon my innocence and gullibility and gradually compromised me more and more until last night that lying letter, which you fully intended would fall into the wrong hands, completed your scheme. You are diabolical. We were right to call you Lucifer, the devil. It is an irony beyond humor that you have the name of an angel.”
He watched her steadily. She had not even shaken his calm. She itched to take her fingernails to his face.
“I did not write or send that letter,” he said.
She looked at him incredulously and laughed. “Oh, did you not?” she said. “It wrote itself and sent itself, I suppose. And I suppose you did not lie with your stepmother or father her child or abandon her in a foreign country in order to return here for fresh prey.”
“No,” he said.
His calm infuriated her. “And I suppose you did not deliberately set out to free me from my betrothal,” she said.
He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.
“So that I would marry you.” She glared at him scornfully. “Did it not matter to you that I was to marry the man of my choice? Did you imagine that I would gladly give him up for you? Or that I would happily accept the replacement once it was made? Did you imagine that I could ever do anything but despise and loathe you?”
“No,” he said.
“But it did not matter,” she said. “The state of my heart does not matter to you. My happiness does not matter to you. Possessing me is all. You must very much like what you see, my lord Gabriel.”
His eyes moved down her body and up again. She was very much aware of her large breasts and generous curves.
“Yes,” he said.
“I suppose it did not occur to you,” she said, “that with Lord Kersey lost and my reputation in shreds I would refuse you.”
“We will marry in the morning,” he said, “and attend the theater in the evening. We will drive in the park the following afternoon and attend Lady Truscott’s ball in the evening. We will face down this scandal before I take you to my estate in the North.”
“You must be mad.” She was whispering. “All this smacks of insanity. I will not marry you. You must be insane to think that I would.”
“Consider the alternative,” he said.
The alternative was imprisonment in some remote part of the country for the rest of her life. Her earlier numbness gone, the prospect was suddenly terrifying. Her father would do it, too. She had no illusions about him. No sentiment would persuade him to relax the sentence after a year or so and bring her home to the country.
He was going to cut her hair before she left. She had a sudden memory of that detail. He had said it after the caning. And he had meant it. For some reason it became in that moment the most terrifying detail of all that was facing her.
“He is going to have my hair cropped close to my head.” She had said the words aloud. She could almost hear the echo of them. And his eyes had lifted to her hair.
“There will be no company,” he said, “no pretty clothes. No marriage. No running of a home and attending to those less fortunate than yourself. There will be no one less fortunate than you. There will be no children.”
She fought panic and clenched her fists, trying to convert it into fury against him again.
“We will marry tomorrow morning,” he said.
It would be worse. A thousand times worse. She looked at him in some horror, at his tall figure, at the breadth of his shoulders, at his dark hair and eyes and aristocratic features. She reminded herself of the villainies of which he was guilty, of the fiendish way he had stalked her and brought her to ruin just so that he would have her for himself. And yet all she could see and feel and hear was the scissors, cold against her head, chopping through the thickness of her hair.
She bit her lip hard.
Her hand was in both of his suddenly, cold and limp in his warm, strong ones. And he was on one knee in front of her. She watched him in shock, her feelings numb again.
“Miss Winwood,” he said, “will you do me the great honor of being my wife?”
He gazed up at her, his expression quite unfathomable. Looking handsome and romantic and quite as if he could not possibly be guilty of any of the fiendishness she knew him guilty of beyond a doubt.
The alternative was the scissors. It had all boiled down to that almost farcical triviality. The scissors and the sight of her hair falling in heavy locks to the floor to be swept up and burned. She fought a wave of nausea.
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. She was not quite sure she had spoken the word aloud.
But she must have. He was on his feet again and squeezing both her hands very tightly. “I will make it my life’s work,” he said, “to see to it that you will in time be glad of your answer.”
“It would be a waste of your energy,” she said, looking deliberately into his eyes. “After tomorrow morning you will possess my body, my lord. It seems to be important to you. You will never possess my heart or my respect or my esteem. I will hate you every day for the rest of my life.”
“Well.” He kissed the back of each hand in turn, squeezed them again, and released them. His manner was brisk. “There is much I must do today. You will remain at home. I am sure you would not wish otherwise. You will—” He paused suddenly and looked into her eyes. “Were you harshly treated after your return home last night?”
She smiled. “My father is a stern man, my lord,” she said. “You brought great humiliation on him.”
He frowned. “Did he touch you?” he asked.
“With his hands? No.” She was still smiling. “He used a cane.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I will leave instructions,” he said, “that you are to be gently treated for the rest of today and tomorrow morning. After that you will be under my protection.”
“Do you have a cane too?” she asked. �
�It is a very effective weapon for imposing discipline, my lord. I am still sore this morning.”
“It is the last you will ever feel,” he said. “My word of honor on it.”
She laughed. “I am enormously comforted,” she said. “Your honor, my lord?”
He looked at her steadily for a few moments and then made her a formal bow. “Until tomorrow morning,” he said. He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Well, Jennifer thought. Well. But she could not—or would not—force her mind past the single word. She stood where she was until the door opened again several minutes later to admit both Aunt Agatha and her father.
“Well, Miss,” her father said. “It seems that total disgrace is to be avoided after all. Though how I am to hold up my head today when I leave this house I do not know.”
“Well, Jennifer.” Her aunt was smiling rather stiffly. “We have a busy day ahead of us. We have a wedding to prepare for.”
A wedding. She was to be married. Not in a month’s time in St. George’s with half the ton in attendance. Tomorrow in some obscure church—she did not know where. And not to Lionel, to whom she had been promised for five years, whom she had loved and longed for for five years. To the Earl of Thornhill.
She was to be the Countess of Thornhill.
His wife.
“Yes.” She moved across the room toward her aunt.
THE EARL OF THORNHILL received much the same reception at the Rushford mansion as he had at Nordal’s. Except that this time, when he sent the message that he would remain in the hall until he was admitted, he immediately broke his own vow by following the butler up the stairs, despite that servant’s protest, and was at his shoulder and able to walk past him when the door to the earl’s private apartments was opened by a valet.
“No,” he said for the benefit of the servants and both astonished men in the earl’s dressing room—Kersey was with him there—“I will not be turned off.”
The Earl of Rushford, thin-lipped and furious, nodded his dismissal to the servants, ignoring the apologies of his butler. Viscount Kersey stood where he was and sneered.
