The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  But they were his guests.

  Of course, he owed something to Pamela too. She was a child and entitled to his time and company. He had been giving her both while Sybil was preoccupied with entertaining her guests and enjoying herself. At least, that was what he had told himself earlier.

  He was going to have to stay away from her more often. Or else he was going to have to take her out more—it was high time she learned to ride, though she had always shown a reluctance to do so.

  What he was really going to have to do was stay away from the schoolroom. If he was strictly honest with himself, it was not just—or even mainly—Pamela who was drawing him there, or to the library at the crack of dawn each morning lest he be too late and miss her.

  Sidney had commented only that morning, as the duke rose from bed, yawning after the late night, that he must be touched in the upper works to rise so early. Perhaps Sidney was right.

  And he had woken up suddenly in the night and caught himself in the act of dreaming about waltzing on a deserted path with a woman whose eyes were tightly closed and whose fire-gold hair was loose and spread like a silken curtain over his arm.

  It would not do. It just would not do. He should have had Houghton send her elsewhere. It had been madness to have her sent to Willoughby.

  The door of his dressing room opened suddenly, without warning, and the duchess stood there, one hand still on it, looking lovely in pale pink lace and considerably younger than her twenty-six years.

  “Oh,” she said sweetly, “are you still busy? Is it possible for Sidney to leave?”

  The valet looked to his master with raised eyebrows, and the duke nodded.

  “If you please, Sidney,” he said, rising to his feet. “What may I do for you, Sybil?”

  She waited for the door to close. “I have never been so humiliated in my life,” she said, looking at him with large hurt eyes. “Adam, how can you do this to me, and in front of our guests, too?”

  He looked steadily at her. “I gather you are referring to the incident with Miss Hamilton,” he said.

  “Why did you bring her here?” she asked, clasping her slim white hands together at her bosom. “Was it to hurt me beyond endurance? I have never complained about your long absences in London, Adam. And I have always known why you must go there. I have borne the humiliation without reproach. But must I now endure having one of your doxies in this very house? And in close communication with my daughter? You ask too much of me. I cannot bear it.”

  “It is a shame you have no audience beyond me,” he said, his eyes fixed on her. “Your words are very affecting, Sybil. One might almost believe that you cared. We were coming from the long gallery into the great hall. Does it not seem peculiar to you that we would have chosen such a very public setting for a clandestine rendezvous?”

  “It pleases you to use sarcasm,” she said, “and to walk roughshod over my feelings. I suppose it will please you to lie too. Do you deny that you are having an affair with Miss Hamilton?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But you have already labeled me a liar, Sybil, so your question was rather pointless, was it not? Would it be so surprising if I did take a mistress?”

  “It is what I have learned to expect of you and to accept,” she said. “But though your love for me is dead, Adam, I thought there would have been some remnants of respect left for the fact that I am your wife.”

  “Wife.” He laughed softly and took two steps toward her. “I would not need a mistress if I had a wife, Sybil. Perhaps you would like to protect your interests more actively.”

  He set one hand beneath her chin and kissed her lips. But she turned her head sharply to one side.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, please.”

  “I didn’t think that idea would have much appeal to you,” he said. “Don’t worry, Sybil. I have never forced you and am unlikely to start doing so now.”

  “I feel unwell,” she said. “I still have not recovered fully from that chill.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I can see that you are right about that. And you have lost weight, have you not? Did your visit have any other purpose?”

  “No,” she said, her light, sweet voice shaking. “But I know you are lying, Adam. I know you have been with Pamela’s governess. No matter how much you deny it, I know it is true.”

  He had a sudden and unwelcome mental image of blood—on Fleur’s thighs and on the sheet where she had lain.

  “It seems,” he said quietly, looking steadily at his wife, “that we are both ready to go to the drawing room to make ourselves agreeable to our guests. Shall we go together?” He extended an arm for her hand.

  She laid a hand on his sleeve without gripping his arm at all, and walked beside him in silence. A small and fragile and beautiful woman who looked as innocent as a girl.

  It was difficult sometimes, his grace thought, to accept the fact that this was his present and his future, the marriage he had dreamed of as a young man. Except that all the dreams were dead and there could never now be any others to take their place.

  Just perhaps unwary dreams at night.

  He thought again of Fleur, of his first sight of her standing quietly in the shadows outside the Drury Lane Theater, and of his unexpected need for her. The need to spend a night sheltered in the arms and body of a woman who would accept him without question. The need to sleep with his head pillowed on a woman’s breast. The need for some peace. The need to soothe his loneliness.

  And he thought again of the blood and of her hand, which had been shaking so badly after he had violated her that he had had to hold it while putting the wet cloth in it. And of her hunger and the self-discipline that had held her back from wolfing down the food set before her. And of her humiliation when he had set the coins in her hand, payment for services rendered.

  He paused outside the doors into the drawing room while a footman opened them, and entered with his wife on his arm. He smiled and was aware of her bright glances for those of their guests already assembled there.

  FLEUR PRACTICED IN THE MUSIC room in perfect privacy the following morning. The door between it and the library remained closed.

  And she found herself more self-conscious than on any other morning. Was he there? Was he lurking behind the closed door, listening? Was he about to fling it open at any moment to criticize some error in her playing or to tell her that she was no longer welcome to use that room? Or was he not there at all? Was she indeed as alone as she seemed?

  She could not concentrate on the pieces she was learning. She could not lose herself in the music she already knew and could play with her eyes closed. Her fingers were stiff and uncooperative.

  She smiled at herself without amusement as she left the room five minutes before her hour was at an end. Could she relax more, knowing that he was close, than she could when he was absent—this dark, hawkish man who terrified her more than anyone she had ever known, even including Matthew, and whose physical closeness always made her want to turn and run in panic?

  All morning as she taught Lady Pamela a variety of lessons, she listened for the sound of a firm tread outside the door and of the doorknob turning.

  But they were left in peace. And peaceful the morning seemed, Lady Pamela unusually quiet and docile, until she suddenly snatched up the scissors without warning while they both embroidered and cut first the silk thread with which she had been sewing and then the handkerchief itself with deliberate and vicious slices.

  Fleur looked up in amazement, her own needle suspended in the air. She was in the middle of telling a story.

  “She said I could go down,” Lady Pamela said. “She said! And he said some other time. He said he would remind her. He said it ages ago. I’ll never be let to go down. And I don’t care. I don’t want to go down.”

  Fleur set her work quietly to one side and got to her feet.

  “And now you will tell them that I have been bad,” the child said, making one more cut with the scissors, “and they will come to th
e nursery and scold me. Mama will cry because I have been bad. But I don’t care. I don’t care!”

  Fleur took the scissors and the ruined handkerchief from the little hands and stooped down in front of the child.

  “And it’s all your fault,” Lady Pamela said. “Mama said I was to go down, and you would not let me. I hate you, and I am going to tell Mama to send you away. I am going to tell Papa.”

  Fleur gathered the child into her arms and held her tightly. But Lady Pamela flailed at her with one free arm and kicked at her with both feet. She broke into loud shrieks as Fleur scooped her up into her arms and sat in the window seat with her, cradling her, rocking her, crooning to her.

  The door opened and Mrs. Clement came bustling in.

  “What have you been doing to the poor child?” she said to Fleur, her eyes glinting. “What is it, poor lovey?”

  She reached out her arms to take Lady Pamela. But the child shrieked louder and clung to Fleur, her face hidden against her bosom. Mrs. Clement disappeared again.

  Lady Pamela was crying quietly when the door opened again several minutes later. The Duke of Ridgeway closed it quietly behind him and stood looking for a few moments. Fleur had one cheek resting against the top of the child’s head. She did not look up.

  “What is happening?” he asked, advancing across the room. “Pamela?”

  But she continued to cry quietly in Fleur’s arms.

  “Miss Hamilton?”

  She raised her head to look at him. “Broken promises,” she said quietly.

  He stood there for a while longer and then slumped down onto the window seat beside them, half-turned to them, one of his knees brushing against Fleur’s. He reached out to run one finger along his daughter’s bare arm as it circled Fleur’s neck.

  And Fleur looked at him to find him staring back bleakly, his scar starkly noticeable in the light from the window on his weary face. It was once a remarkably handsome face, she thought, remembering his portrait, despite the blackness of hair and eyes and the prominence of his nose—perhaps because of those features. But it still was handsome, the scar somehow enhancing rather than detracting from the strength of his features.

  If she had not met him under such terrifying circumstances, if she could but rid her nightmares of the image of that face bent over her while he did painful, humiliating things to her body, perhaps she would always have seen him as handsome.

  He shifted his gaze to his daughter. “What can I do, Pamela?” he asked her. “What can I do to set things right?”

  It felt as if he were talking to her, Fleur thought with an inward shudder.

  “Nothing,” the child said, pausing for a moment in her crying. “Go away!”

  “Mama promised that you could meet the ladies someday, didn’t she?” he said. “And I promised to talk to her and remind her. But I have not done it yet. I’m sorry, Pamela. Will you forgive me?”

  “No!” she said against Fleur’s bosom.

  He sighed and laid his hand over the back of her head. “Will you give me a chance to put it right?” he asked. “There is to be a picnic at the ruins this afternoon. Shall I arrange for you to come too?”

  “No,” she said. “I want to stay with Miss Hamilton and learn French. She is to teach me this afternoon.”

  “Please, Pamela?” he said. “If we persuade Miss Hamilton to postpone the lesson until tomorrow?”

  Fleur kissed the child’s hot temple. “We will learn French tomorrow, shall we?” she said. “It is such a lovely day for a picnic. I expect the ladies will all be dressed in their muslins and have pretty bonnets and parasols.”

  “And there are to be lobster patties, so I have heard,” the duke said. “Will you come, Pamela?”

  “If Miss Hamilton comes too,” Lady Pamela said unexpectedly.

  Fleur’s eyes locked with the duke’s.

  “But Mama and Papa will want you all to themselves,” she said.

  “Miss Hamilton will be glad of a free afternoon,” he said at the same moment. “She does not have many.”

  “Then I won’t go,” the child said petulantly.

  He raised his eyebrows and Fleur closed her eyes.

  “Do you like lobster patties, Miss Hamilton?” he asked quietly.

  “They always were my favorite picnic fare,” she said.

  Lady Pamela jumped down from her lap and pushed untidy strands of hair away from her flushed and puffed face.

  “I am going to find Nanny,” she said. “I am going to tell her to put my pink dress on me and my straw bonnet.”

  “Ask her, Pamela,” his grace said. “It is better than telling.”

  He got to his feet as his daughter whisked herself from the room, and looked down at Fleur. “I’m sorry,” he said, “that you had to cope with that alone. Nanny sent Houghton running for me with the news that Pamela was screaming and you half-throttling her. I have been greatly at fault in hoping that she would forget her desire to meet the ladies.”

  Fleur said nothing but gathered up the ruined remains of the handkerchief.

  “I will make the arrangements for this afternoon,” he said. “If it is any consolation to you, Miss Hamilton, I would say that your pupil is becoming attached to you.”

  But she did not want to go on the picnic, she thought in some alarm as he left the schoolroom. She would do almost anything to get out of going—except break a promise to Lady Pamela. And so she was stuck with having to go.

  She looked back with considerable nostalgia to the first two weeks of her life at Willoughby, when she had been happy despite the disapproval of the duchess and Mrs. Clement.

  How she wished that the Duke of Ridgeway had not turned out to be who he was. But of course, she had realized before now, she would not have her post at all if he had not. She would be in London, living in her bare little room, a seasoned whore by now.

  She supposed that, after all, she owed him some gratitude.

  And if it were true that Lady Pamela was developing something of an attachment to her—though she was not at all convinced that it was so—then it was equally true that she was developing an attachment to the child. Petulant and stubborn as she could be, Lady Pamela had very real feelings and needs. And she needed Fleur, however little she might admit it. It was good to be needed.

  It seemed that she had to prepare for a picnic that afternoon.

  THERE IT IS,” THE DARK-HAIRED, HANDSOME GENTLEMAN said to his companion, leaning close to the carriage window as it crossed the bridge and left the lime grove behind and the house came into sight. “Impressive, wouldn’t you say?”

  The fair-haired gentleman traveling with him followed his gaze. “Very,” he said. “I can see why it is so frequently admired. And it was all yours for a few months, Kent.”

  “An amusing experience,” Lord Thomas Kent said, “suddenly to be everyone’s property just because I was the owner of it all. Almost as if the property owned me instead of the other way around. I thought never to see it again.”

  “You can be sure,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “that when your brother told you never to return he spoke in the heat of the moment. He will receive you with open arms.”

  Lord Thomas looked amused. “I wonder,” he said. “But I am not sorry you persuaded me into coming, Bradshaw. It will be priceless to see their faces—Ridgeway’s, all the servants’. And it will be interesting to see my sister-in-law once more. They were not married when I left, you know.”

  “Magnificent!” Lord Brocklehurst said as the carriage drew to a halt and he gazed up at massive Corinthian columns and the great pediment, which hid the dome from that vantage point. “Quite magnificent. It was good of you to persuade me to accompany you here.”

  Lord Thomas laughed. “Since it was you who talked me into returning,” he said, “it seemed only right that you be witness to the touching reunion.”

  The look on the butler’s face as he came out onto the horseshoe steps to greet the unexpected visitors must have been everything Lord Thomas
could have wished for. His wooden butler’s expression deserted him for the whole of three seconds as he watched his grace’s younger brother descend from the carriage and look up at him with a grin.

  “Jarvis!” he said. “So you did get the promotion after all. Are you going to stand there and gawk, or are you going to send someone down to carry our trunks into the house? Is my brother close at hand?”

  Jarvis had himself under control. He bowed stiffly from the waist. “His grace is at the ruins with her grace and their guests, my lord,” he said. “I shall have the carriage and your bags seen to if you would care to come inside.”

  “I certainly have no intention of standing outside here until permitted to enter by his august grace,” Lord Thomas said with a laugh, turning back to Lord Brocklehurst and ushering him up the steps. “Drinks in the saloon, if you please, Jarvis. What the devil are they doing at the ruins?”

  “They are picnicking, as I understand, my lord,” Jarvis said, directing the guests with a bow into the saloon.

  “How long have they been gone?” Lord Thomas asked, looking about him. “Nothing has changed, I see.”

  “About one hour, my lord,” the butler said.

  “An hour?” Lord Thomas frowned. “I’ll have time to do the honors and show off all the state rooms to you, then, Bradshaw—after we have refreshed ourselves with a drink and a change of clothes, that is. Have my old room made up for me, Jarvis, and have the housekeeper prepare another room for Lord Brocklehurst. Is it still Mrs. Laycock?”

  Jarvis bowed.

  “Take yourself off, then,” Lord Thomas said. “The drinks first, though.

  “So,” he said, “we are to kick our heels here for a few hours and feel the suspense mount. I wonder if Ridgeway would be choking on his chicken bone and his wine if he knew I was standing in the middle of his saloon at this very moment.” He laughed.

  “I am glad to be here, anyway,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “I have wanted to visit Willoughby Hall for some time now.”