The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  He opened the door for her.

  “I will send for the doctor in the morning if your fever persists,” he said, “and for a physician from London if we get no more satisfaction than we did in the winter when you were so ill.”

  “I don’t need anyone but Dr. Hartley,” she said petulantly. “Why did you send Thomas away, Adam? I will never forgive you, you know. And I am glad he has come back. Glad!”

  She whisked herself inside the room and closed the door hastily. He could hear her coughing behind it.

  He turned back with a sigh to the daytime apartments.

  FLEUR HAD NOT AT FIRST been sorry to be woken up. The face bent over her, the body that was causing her such tearing pain and such eternal humiliation, was Daniel’s. His handsome, pleasant features were distorted by raw carnal lust so that she hardly recognized them. But she knew they were Daniel’s.

  He had been calling her whore while hurting and hurting her.

  The maid who had been sent to her room told her, wide-eyed, that she was to dress immediately and present herself to the company in the drawing room.

  He had told everyone, she thought, as she dressed herself hastily and with trembling hands. He had decided to tell everyone, and now he was going to confront her with her crime in front of the whole gathering, for the amusement of all.

  Her day of reprieve was at an end. And she was indeed his puppet on a string. And would be for the rest of her life.

  She felt weary to the marrow of her bones by the time a footman opened the doors into the drawing room and she stepped alone inside to be confronted with light and sound and the sight of a large number of people. But she would not show it. If it was the last thing she was ever to do, she would carry this off with dignity. Neither Matthew nor anyone else would have the satisfaction of seeing her grovel or beg or break down and cry.

  And then his grace was standing before her informing her very briefly that the reason she had been called from her bed at midnight was that he wished to display her talents before his guests. She was now to pay for the privilege she had been granted of practicing alone each day in the music room.

  Or so she interpreted the few words he did speak.

  She looked into his harsh and shuttered face, she looked at the disfiguring scar, and she hated him. Not only did she feel a fear of him and a physical shrinking from him. She hated him. She hated the fact that he could grant what seemed like free favors and then demand payment for them purely for his own pleasure. She hated him for claiming to care for and protect his servants while using them as slaves to cater to his whims.

  She remembered their ride, the exhilaration of their race, the splendid sight of him galloping alongside her on his black stallion, surging ahead of her, leaping over the gate in the wall, laughing at her as she came after. She remembered her own laughter, her own happiness, her own strange forgetfulness, just as it had happened when she had waltzed with him.

  And she hated him.

  She spoke only to Lord Thomas Kent, who always smiled at her with open friendliness, and who had spoken up on her behalf that afternoon in the duchess’s sitting room. She would play for him since he had asked and since she did not have any real choice anyway.

  His grace stood at the door for a while and then sat down. He had betrayed her. She had played her whole heart out in his hearing morning after morning and he had never disturbed her. He had always given the impression that he listened but respected her need to be alone with her soul. And yet now he had brought her here to play like a performing monkey for people who had had too much to drink and who had no real interest in music anyway.

  Something special about those mornings, something she had not thought of or identified before, died. She was very aware of him sitting next to Miss Woodward, quiet, still, dark, and morose. Listening to her. Watching his performing slave.

  She hated him. And she was surprised by the force of her hatred. She had only feared him before.

  She had not noticed Matthew come up behind her. Amazingly, she had not noticed. But he was there. She felt his presence as soon as she had finished playing and his grace got to his feet.

  But her only friend suddenly became her greatest enemy. Lord Thomas Kent, completely misunderstanding the situation, thinking to do her a kindness, was hinting that she be allowed to escape from the drawing room with her acquaintance, Matthew.

  And her grace was agreeing with him and rescinding her command of that afternoon that Fleur hand her resignation to Mr. Houghton the next morning.

  And so she had been maneuvered into something that was inevitable anyway. But she could have wished that it were not quite so late at night, that she did not feel quite so weary and hopeless. She could have wished for time.

  But time had run out.

  Two footmen were lighting some of the candles in their wall sconces the length of the long gallery.

  “Take my arm, Isabella,” Matthew said. “If we are to stroll, let us do it in a civilized manner.”

  The footmen closed the doors behind them when they left.

  “Why is it that you succeed in looking beautiful even when dressed so plainly?” he asked.

  She slid her arm from his. “What do you want, Matthew?” she asked. “If we are not to leave immediately, if you are not to drag me off to prison, what do you want? Do you want me to lie with you here at Willoughby, become your mistress here? I will not.”

  He sighed. “You make me appear so very uncivilized, Isabella,” he said. “Those were your suggestions, not mine.”

  “Tell me, then,” she said, “and stop playing games with me.”

  “I want you,” he said. “I have for a long, long time. Is that so reprehensible?”

  “And for a long, long time I have told you that I am not interested in your protestations,” she said. “If you had loved me, as you always claimed to do, Matthew, you would have respected my feelings. You would not have interfered between me and Daniel.”

  “Daniel Booth,” he said scornfully. “A smiling, gentle maid. He could not have made you happy, Isabella.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said. “But the choice should have been mine. Why did you arrange things so?”

  “So?” He raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

  “Your mother and Amelia going away to London,” she said impatiently, “and leaving me alone with you. It was so very improper, and they must have known it, and would have done something about it too if they had had any feeling for me whatsoever. And then refusing to let me go to Daniel’s sister to stay when she asked me, and refusing to let me marry Daniel by special license. You planned it so, didn’t you? So that with no options open to me and no reputation left, I would have no choice but to become your mistress. So that you would have the chance to overpower me even if I refused.”

  He stopped and took her hands in his even though she tried to pull them away.

  “It was more than time for Amelia to go to town for her come-out,” he said. “And of course my mother wished to go with her. It would have seemed cruel to send you with them, Isabella. The three of you could never agree.”

  “It is hard to agree or disagree with someone when you are almost totally ignored from the age of eight,” she said bitterly, “except when you are being criticized and scorned.”

  “However it was,” he said, “I thought it kinder to keep you at home where you belonged, Isabella. And it was never my idea to be your guardian, you know. It was your father’s will and my father’s death that did that—until your marriage or until the age of twenty-five. I did not make those terms.”

  “Until my marriage!” she said. “I could have been married to Daniel. You could have been free of such a burdensome responsibility.”

  “It was not burdensome,” he said. “But I could not in all conscience consent to your marrying such a milksop, Isabella.”

  “It was better to make me your mistress,” she said.

  “You are the only one who has ever used that word,” he said.

&
nbsp; She laughed. “I suppose you wanted to marry me,” she said.

  “Wrong tense,” he said, holding her hands more tightly. “You are a lady. Isabella, daughter of a baron. How can you suggest that I was out to ruin you?”

  She laughed again. “Strange that you never thought to mention the honorable nature of your intentions before,” she said. “How delighted your mother would be, Matthew. And I suppose the seduction that evening was to put the stamp of your possession on me before the ceremony.”

  “Seduction?” he said.

  “I was leaving the house,” she said, “despite the lateness of the hour and the coldness of the evening. My trunk was in the gig. Miriam was waiting for me at the rectory. But you would not let me leave and berated me for my disobedience. And you were not about to send me to my room, Matthew. You were about to take me to yours. Or perhaps not even that. Hobson was to hold me, wasn’t he, right there in the library, while you raped me.”

  He released one of her hands in order to pass a hand over his forehead. “What strange notions you have, Isabella,” he said. “You were screaming at me and fighting like a demented creature because I would not allow you to elope with a man I had refused quite lawfully to allow you to marry. Hobson stepped up behind you to prevent you from tripping over the hearthstone and hurting yourself. And you turned and lashed out at him too and caught him off-balance. It was a crime of passion pure and simple.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I suppose a judge would see it that way—once you had explained it to him.”

  “It is a pity that the jewels made it seem all rather premeditated,” he said. “Though doubtless I was your intended victim.”

  “The jewels?” She had gone very still.

  “Those too costly for my mother to take to London,” he said. “They were found in your trunk after you had run away in a panic.”

  She stared at him. “Found by someone other than you, I gather,” she said at last.

  “By your maid,” he said.

  She smiled at him.

  “But it must all have been done impulsively,” he said. “It must have been hard for you, Isabella, to lose your parents at a young age, to see my father and us come to the house and take over the property and possessions that you had grown to believe were yours. But they can be yours again, and your children’s.”

  “Our children’s,” she said. “Are you really serious about marrying me, then, Matthew?”

  “I love you,” he said. “You cannot imagine how I have suffered in the last two and a half months, Isabella, not knowing if I would ever see you again. You must marry me.”

  “Must being the key word, I take it,” she said.

  “I would never have forced you,” he said. “You must know that you were wrong about that.”

  “My answer is no,” she said.

  “You will change your mind,” he said.

  “No, I will not.” She smiled at him. “When you leave here, you will leave alone, Matthew.”

  He raised his hands and set them loosely about her neck. He lifted them to her chin, tightened them slightly, and jerked upward.

  “I have heard that very skilled hangmen can do their job in such a way that death is instantaneous and painless,” he said. “Unfortunately, not all are skilled.”

  Her smile faded. “Thank you,” she said. “I have finally had my answer. I marry you, then, Matthew, or I hang. How long do I have to decide?”

  But he had no chance to answer. The doors at the end of the long gallery opened to admit the Duke of Ridgeway.

  “You are still here,” he said. “It is easy to lose track of time amid so many paintings, is it not? But my daughter’s governess needs her sleep, Brocklehurst. Perhaps you can continue the viewing some other time. You may return to your room, Miss Hamilton.”

  But Matthew walked along the gallery with her so that all three of them soon stood in the doorway. And the duke looked assessingly at Matthew and held out his arm to her.

  “I will escort you upstairs,” he said.

  She placed her hand on his arm and did not look back to see what Matthew did. She removed her hand as soon as they had passed through the archway to the staircase. She ascended the stairs as close to the inside wall as possible.

  He did not turn back at the top of the stairs as she had expected, but walked along the corridor to her room. And he set his hand on the doorknob. She watched it, the long-fingered, beautiful hand that she so feared.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly.

  “Sorry?” She raised her eyes to his face, dark, harsh, and angular in the dim light of the hallway.

  “For all this,” he said. “For getting you from your bed. For allowing you to be made into a pawn. I will not let it happen again.”

  She would not lower her eyes from his.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Or harass you in any way?”

  “He is not the one who hurt me,” she said.

  He opened his mouth as if to say something, and closed it again. He looked at her with set lips and tightly clenched jaw. And she wondered, too weary to feel instant terror, if he would open the door soon, usher her inside, and order her to remove her clothes again.

  And she wondered if she would obey.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and she watched in horror and fascination as his eyes dropped to her lips and his head drew closer.

  He opened the door suddenly and motioned her inside.

  “No!” She stood where she was and shook her head slowly from side to side. “No. Please, no. Ah, please, no.”

  “My God!” He stepped into the doorway and took both her shoulders in a bruising grip. “What do you think of me? Did you think I intended to come inside with you? Did you imagine that I could apologize to you in one breath and seduce you with the next?”

  She bit down on her lip and stared at him.

  “Fleur.” His hands gentled. “Fleur, I did not take you against your will that one time. I would never take you against your will. And I would never again take you with your will, either. I am a married man who has had one lapse in fidelity in five and a half years of marriage. I will not have you afraid for your safety with me.”

  She was drawing blood from the inside of her upper lip.

  He looked into her face, into her tense, horror-filled eyes, made an impatient sound, and drew her into his arms. He held her hard against him until she stopped shuddering and sagged forward. And she turned her head and set it against his steadily beating heart, and closed her eyes.

  “You must not fear for your safety with me.” His voice was low against her ear. Those fingers were stroking lightly over the back of her neck. “You are the very last person on this earth whom I would want to hurt, Fleur. My God, tell me you no longer believe what you just believed.”

  “I don’t.” She pushed wearily away from him. Had the day really been quite as long as it had seemed?

  “Well, then.” He released his hold on her and took a step to one side, looking down at her uncertainly. “Good night.”

  “Good night, your grace.”

  She stepped inside her room and closed the door. She set her forehead against it and took several deep, steadying breaths. She had nothing to fear. He had been alone with her and could have taken her with ease. He could have muffled her screams so that even Mrs. Clement would not have heard. He had not taken her.

  He would never do so against her will, he had said, or even with her will.

  She had nothing to fear. Yet she could feel his arms straining her against his hard-muscled body. And she could feel his fingers against the back of her neck. She could hear his heart beating, and she could feel herself sagging against him, surrendering to his warmth and his strength. To the illusion of comfort.

  She thought very deliberately about who he was and what he had done to her—about his powerful male body and his scars. About his hands.

  And she felt fear. Fear because when he had finally touched her, she had forgotten h
er repulsion—as she had when she had waltzed with him and when she had ridden with him.

  HIS MASTER WAS IN A BAD MOOD AGAIN, PETER Houghton noticed as he entered his office the following morning—five minutes late, as ill fortune would have it. The duke was standing looking out of the window, his bearing military, one hand drumming a tattoo on the sill.

  It must be true, then, what was being said belowstairs about her grace and Lord Thomas, though everyone knew that all was not right with his grace’s marriage anyway. And then, of course, there was that report about the duke’s ladybird strolling in the long gallery with Lord Brocklehurst after midnight the night before.

  Though Houghton had wondered since his return to Willoughby Hall if the governess was after all his master’s ladybird. He liked the woman, despite a predisposition not to do so. She was always quietly courteous belowstairs and did not put on airs at Mrs. Laycock’s table, even though every word and gesture marked her as a lady born and bred.

  “Where the devil have you been?” his grace said, confirming his secretary’s suspicions.

  “Helping Mrs. Laycock with a small problem in balancing her housekeeping books, your grace,” he said.

  “How would you welcome a holiday?” the duke asked.

  Houghton looked at him suspiciously. Was he about to be handed a permanent holiday? For being five minutes late at his desk?

  “You are to go into Wiltshire for me,” the duke said. “To Heron House. I am not sure quite where it is. You will, no doubt, find out.”

  “To Lord Brocklehurst’s, your grace?” His secretary frowned.

  “The same,” his grace said. “I want whatever you can find out about an Isabella who lived there until quite recently.”

  “Isabella?” Houghton looked inquiringly. “Last name, your grace?”

  “Unknown,” the duke said. “And you are to be invisible and mute while finding the answers. Do you understand?”

  “Just Isabella, your grace?” Houghton said. “Do you have no other description?”

  “Let us say she looks remarkably like Miss Hamilton,” his grace said.