“Well, you’ve left me with no other choice, have you? I wish you the joy of your new wife, Lieutenant. I hope she turns out a proper shrew.”
With a crunching sound of boots on gravel, the Yorkshireman stalked away from Arrington. As he rounded the corner of the inn, his angry progress led him to almost crash headlong into James.
“I do beg your pardon, sir,” he said as he drew up short. “Most careless of me.”
“Not at all.” James quickly took the other man’s measure as he stepped aside to let him pass. Though his accent was not that of a gentleman, he was tastefully and expensively dressed—likely a successful merchant, or perhaps the owner of a factory or mill. James wished he could ask him for more of the particulars of all he had just overheard, but to do so would have been unpardonably rude, so he took a deep breath and prepared to confront his brother-in-law instead.
He found Sebastian in the inn yard, leaning against the wall with an expression of grim satisfaction on his face. In his school days James had learned well how to deal with taller bullies. It took speed and surprise. Before Arrington could speak, James punched him in the stomach, a hard, breath-stealing blow. Reflexively Arrington raised his own fist, but James caught it before the blow fell.
“What the hell do you mean by this?” Arrington asked.
“What do you think?” James pushed Arrington’s fist aside and stepped back so he could more easily look his opponent in the eye. “You married my sister to escape your responsibilities to another lady, and now you’ve made Anna miserable in the bargain.”
“I made her miserable? I assure you, Selsley, that the shoe is entirely on the other foot.”
“I don’t believe it for an instant, and if she had, I’m sure it would be no more than you deserve. Why didn’t you marry that man’s sister? If he had the power to ruin you but for my family, I daresay he would’ve had the power to make you as well.”
“Good God, you heard him speak. Yes, Adam Russell is rich, the devil, but as low and common as can be. His father was nothing but a blacksmith, but somehow he built himself a little empire of mills. If I’d known Clarissa was his sister I never would’ve touched her, but she had quite abandoned her family by that point, I assure you. It’s not as though I was her first keeper.”
James recognized the name. Russell had earned a tidy fortune from his mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and he was among the army’s suppliers, which would explain his threat to ruin Arrington. James normally found amusing the hypocrisy of a society that was willing to accept his new money, because it had been earned out of sight in India and had quickly been washed clean by a title, lands and a marriage alliance with an old noble family, but that sneered upon a fortune whose plebeian origins were nearer at hand. But now Anna was trapped in a dreadful marriage because Sebastian Arrington was a snob as well as a cad.
“Her brother seemed to think you bore a certain degree of responsibility,” he said.
“Well, of course! She’d avoided him for years—he didn’t even know if she was alive or dead—but when I turned her off she found herself short of funds and lacking a home, so she decided to put on a show of repentance and grovel for readmission to the family. And naturally that sort of man would love to see his sister marry a man of rank.”
“If that were all he wanted, I daresay he’d look higher than the younger son of a baronet,” James said coolly.
“Be that as it may, surely you cannot expect me to marry my mistress.”
“I’m sure there are men better born than you who would’ve hurried to marry their mistress upon learning she was Adam Russell’s sister. Arrington, you’re a fool.”
“Am I? Your sister’s fortune is greater.”
James’s fist came up again, and Arrington laughed at him. “I wouldn’t do that, unless you care to fight a duel,” he said. “I already know you’re no great shot, for Anna told me so just days after we met.”
James ground his teeth. Anna had always found his lack of prowess as a hunter, compared to their uncle and cousins, a source of amusement. “I’m considered a fair hand with a sword, though.”
Arrington smiled menacingly. “So am I, and with army training, not dancing at some fencing-master’s studio. And, forgive me, but my reach exceeds yours by a sizable amount. In any case, I don’t think we’d want such a scandal in our families, regardless of who came out victorious.”
“If it would free Anna, I’d be happy to weather such a scandal,” James said, dreaming with bloodthirsty glee of Arrington skewered on the end of his sword.
“But you aren’t guaranteed such an outcome, are you now? If you challenge me, I will choose pistols. Much good you could do for your precious sister from your grave.”
Damn him to all the torments of hell, but he was right. Beyond urging her to seek a separation—which he fully intended to do, armed as he now was with greater knowledge of Arrington’s perfidy—there was nothing he could do for Anna that didn’t carry a risk of making her plight worse. “Never forget that my sister has a family behind her,” he said. “If you continue to make her unhappy, we’ll see to it that you regret it.”
“Just how do you intend to accomplish that?”
“We’ll find a way,” James said, though he had no very clear plan in mind. “Russell isn’t the only one with power to ruin you.”
“But how can you ruin me without ruining her?” Arrington asked patiently.
“If the two of you were separated, I can’t imagine that she’d care overmuch if you failed in your career.”
Arrington’s eyebrows flew up. Apparently that possibility had yet to occur to him. “Let’s not be so hasty,” he said.
“If you want to keep my sister, make her happy. Or at the very least, cease making her so miserable.”
“Again you assume the fault lies on my side.”
“I know it does. Before this morning I would’ve said she was worth ten of you. Now the number is closer to a thousand.”
Arrington’s only response was an undignified snort.
“And now,” James said with the coldest, most sarcastic imitation of civility he could muster, “I bid you good day. My wife will be wondering what has become of me.”
Arrington turned a slightly deeper shade of red, and James wondered why a simple allusion to Lucy had angered him more. But, “Give Lucy my greetings,” was all he said, his civility as forced as James’s own had been.
It was James’s turn to snort as he turned his back on his brother-in-law and stalked off to the stables. By the time Ghost was resaddled, Arrington had disappeared from the inn yard.
As soon as he was out of town, James urged Ghost to a gallop. Though the mare clearly enjoyed the run, her head held high, her every springing stride filled with the simple joy of a creature performing the task it had been born for, the speed only increased the storminess of James’s emotions. All he could think of was getting home to tell Lucy. It might grieve her to hear such a tale of her cousin, but James knew she took Anna’s part in the newlyweds’ quarrel. Perhaps she, with her greater knowledge of her cousin, would be able to think of something to do.
Lucy had her morning meeting with Mrs. Ellis and rode Barbara on a brief circuit of the gardens and orchards immediately surrounding the house before she would allow herself to go into the library and seek out the book James had mentioned. Before she sat down at his desk, she selected another book, an innocent collection of poetry. If anyone entered the room unexpectedly, she wanted to have something else at hand so she could close and conceal this book that was so shocking it must be kept under lock and key.
With the volume of poetry within easy reach, she took the key James had given her, unlocked the third drawer and drew out a heavy tome. The dark leather cover was embossed in a script she did not recognize, and she felt a chill run down her spine at the sheer mysteriousness of the thing.
She set the book down and opened it, carefully, for it looked old and fragile. She sighed with curiosity and wonder over the colorfu
l illuminations on the opening pages, where sloe-eyed women in saris conversed and cavorted with equally exotic men clad in turbans and robes.
But at first she could not understand what was so scandalous about it, nor why the way James had looked at her when he’d mentioned it had made her wish they could return to bed that instant. As she paged through the opening sections, the beautifully detailed illustrations showed men and women engaged in the affairs of public life in a great house or perhaps a royal court—dancing, hunting, dining, flirting—interesting for the similarities and differences to English life, but nothing that she could not have shown with perfect propriety to her little brothers or young Miss Cathcart. Studying the images, Lucy wondered if she could reproduce the technique in her own drawing, different as it was from anything she had seen before, and, idly, how it would feel to wear a sari.
She continued paging through the book. The illustrations grew more amorous, though still nothing even as suggestive as the mostly nude Paris in the David painting upstairs. Fully clothed couples kissed and embraced.
And then she turned past several pages dense with the text she could not read and came face to face with a lavish, full-page image of a couple, well, coupling. Lucy’s face heated—and not merely her face. She shifted restlessly in the chair.
Faintly embarrassed but wholly aroused, she kept going. Ah, here was a couple standing up, the man supporting the woman against a pillar as she wrapped her legs around his waist, and Lucy closed her eyes for a moment, imagining. Yes, they must try that, perhaps even tonight. She turned the page.
Dear God. If James did that to her, how on earth was she to concentrate well enough to do it back to him at the same time? Surely the thing was impossible. Speaking of impossibilities, if they tried the position in the next illustration after that, Lucy was sure her spine would snap in two. But the next picture, oh yes, that looked pleasurable indeed. She smiled to herself. The very instant James arrived home, she was leading him upstairs, and if the servants thought their behavior scandalous and gossiped about them all throughout the countryside, so be it.
Familiar footsteps sounded outside in the entry hall—James, and James in a hurry. Could it be he was eager for the same cause as she? She sprang to her feet as the door opened.
Words of eager welcome died on her lips as she took in the anger and anguish on her husband’s face. To give herself time to gather her thoughts—and to ensure the thing wasn’t left out for the servants to find—she quietly closed the book, set it back in its drawer and turned the small key to lock it safely away. By then James had reached the desk, and she stepped around it to meet him, instinctively reaching out to clasp his hands in both of her own. Her mind raced with possibilities—bad news about a friend or relation? Some drastic political or financial setback?
“What is it?” she asked. “What has happened?”
James was fairly shaking with anger, his nostrils flaring with each breath. “I saw Lieutenant Arrington in town,” he said. “And I happened to overhear a most interesting discussion before he caught sight of me. I discovered why he married Anna.”
“Oh?” Lucy was bewildered. Hadn’t he married her because he was madly in love with her—or at least madly infatuated—with the added lure of her great fortune to stave off his own family’s impending ruin?
James took a deep breath, released her hands and paced back and forth, as if only motion could keep his outrage in check. “Rather,” he amended, “why he was in such a hurry to marry her. It turns out he was keeping a mistress, got her with child and cast her off.”
Lucy’s mouth fell open. Sebastian, with a mistress? Sebastian, the idol of her childhood, casting off his pregnant mistress? Was this why he had sought an engagement with her? But it made no sense. “But why would that induce him to marry in haste?”
“I was coming to that,” James said through gritted teeth, and she saw that his hands were balled so tightly into fists that his knuckles were white. “It turned out the woman in question wasn’t quite so alone and friendless as he thought. She had a brother, a man of some means, though too lowborn for Arrington to consider worthy of a marriage alliance. But he had enough money and army connections to make threats, and it seemed Arrington decided the best course was to make it impossible to marry his mistress by marrying elsewhere as quickly as possible. That Anna happened to fall in his way was simply his good fortune, and her misfortune.”
Lucy’s knees wobbled, and she leaned against the desk for support. Suddenly everything fell into place, and she spoke before thinking. “Dear God. So that’s why he wanted to marry me.”
Chapter Twenty
Lucy clapped a hand to her mouth in horror the instant she realized what she’d said. Oh, to be able to undo it, to pick out those words like misplaced stitches in her embroidery. She’d broken her word to Sebastian—and in doing so revealed to James that she’d been breaking her promise of honesty to him since the very day she’d made it.
James stopped his pacing and spun to face her. Lucy instinctively shrank back, though he looked more bewildered than angry. “What?” he said. “When was this?”
She swallowed and tried to blink back tears. She had to tell him now. Now that the truth was in the open, there was no point in concealing its details. “He offered for me just before we left Swallowfield to come here.”
James shook his head. “But, why did you refuse him? When we first met I thought you were in love with him, or at least infatuated. It must have seemed a good match at the time, since you didn’t yet know your elder cousin’s troubles.”
Now her tears flowed freely, and she couldn’t meet James’s eyes. “I didn’t refuse him,” she said.
“What?”
Lucy quailed from the harsh, incredulous note in his voice, but she made herself explain. “Of course I accepted him. You’re right. I loved him—or thought I did—and it was an eligible match, better than I’d ever expected to make.”
“But you never said anything. Why?”
He was leaning over her now, looming over her, and she turned her face aside so she wouldn’t have to see the fury and bewilderment in his eyes. “I never wanted it to be a secret, but my aunt forbade us to announce it until Portia was safely married. I—I suppose she thought it would anger her. Portia’s temper is so difficult, you know, and perhaps Aunt Arrington didn’t want to draw Lord Almont or Lady Marpool’s attention to me or my background, and—”
“But Arrington started courting Anna almost the instant he arrived in Gloucestershire, and you didn’t so much as give a hint.”
She looked up, goaded to anger. “How could I? I’d given my word.”
“You could’ve hinted!”
“You yourself told me to ignore them.”
“I didn’t know you were engaged to him.”
“Would you have had me tell you, on the very day we met, when I’d promised to keep silent?”
He blinked and leaned back a little. “No. Not so soon as that. But when was the engagement broken?”
She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “Directly after Anna accepted his offer.”
“After. Why, that—” James sputtered off, incoherent in his fury.
“I’d tried to release him a few days before, since it was obvious he preferred Anna, but he said no. I understand now. I suppose he thought it would be better to marry me than his…his mistress.”
“You said nothing, even after being so ill-used?”
“Would you have had me tell the whole world I’d been jilted? Cast aside? I would’ve been a laughingstock.”
“Of course I wouldn’t have had you tell the whole world. But why didn’t you tell me?”
“What purpose would it have served?”
James swung around until they were nose to nose, his arms on either side of her pinning her against the desk. “What purpose? Why, so I could’ve prevented him from marrying Anna, of course! How could you, knowing what he was, consign her to such a fate?”
“But—I thought
they were in love. I thought it would be wrong of me to spoil their happiness.”
“Not to mention spoil the fortune that was coming into your family through the marriage.”
Lucy gasped. How could he say such a thing? Did he really think that was why she’d kept her secret? “No! That had nothing to do with it. I swear, it was only that I’d given my word to keep silent, and that I thought they were happy together.”
He pushed off from the desk and stepped back. Lucy should’ve felt relieved, but the look of cold disgust on his face terrified her.
“Happy!” he spat. “My sister could never be happy with a man so utterly lacking in honor and honesty. And now she must endure a lifetime of misery with your cousin because you lacked the integrity and courage to speak out. You promised me honesty, and yet you concealed something of this magnitude all along. How am I ever to trust you again?”
There were so many things Lucy wanted to say that she couldn’t say any of them. She wanted to defend herself. She had only been doing what she thought right and best at the time. But Anna was unhappy, and Lucy could have prevented it. That much was undeniable. Yet how could James have expected her to look into the future, and to discard all her habits of loyalty to her own family, all her old affection for Sebastian? It wasn’t her fault—and yet it was.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
Helplessly she shook her head.
He spun on his heel and began walking toward the door. “I can’t bear the sight of you now.”
“But, James! I’m sorry.”
He stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “You’re sorry? This is the rest of my sister’s life. Sorry isn’t enough.”
The door slammed behind him.
Lucy sank to her knees there on the library rug, wracked by sobs, her hands gripping the edge of the desk and her forehead pressed against its smooth wood. Every misery she had experienced in her life before paled compared to this agony. She had married James, put her trust in him, learned to delight in his company and finally offered him the absolute, abject surrender of her body. She’d loved him. She loved him still. But now he despised her, and she couldn’t blame him. She despised herself.
A Marriage of Inconvenience Page 27
