The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  Her chin was high, her face very calm. She looked as she had looked when he had sat down and ordered her to remove her clothes. And she had removed them with quiet dignity, folding them neatly and laying them beside her.

  Fleur!

  He closed his eyes briefly. “Will you?”

  She hesitated. “Yes, your grace,” she said.

  Adam, he wanted to tell her. My name is Adam. He wanted to hear her say it.

  “I will not keep you, then,” he said, striding across the room toward her. “I will have Pamela sent to you.”

  She stood to one side, away from the door. “Thank you, your grace,” she said.

  Her eyes strayed downward. He was still limping, he realized. He closed the door of the schoolroom quietly behind him. That damned Sidney! Was he losing his touch? The pain in his side and leg was like a gnawing toothache. He made an effort to control his pain as he called at the nursery and bent to kiss his daughter, and as he went downstairs to keep another appointment.

  Lord Thomas Kent was already in the library, sitting with a drink in his hand despite the early hour, one booted ankle crossed over the other knee.

  “That was another thing Papa used to do,” he said with a grin, holding up his glass in a salute as his brother entered the room. “Do you remember, Adam? He would have us summoned here and then keep us waiting for perhaps an hour. We dared not stand anywhere but directly in front of his desk, and we dared not move a muscle or speak to each other because we never knew the exact moment when the door would come crashing open. It was almost worse than the thrashing we knew very well would come at the end of it, wasn’t it?” He laughed.

  The duke went to sit behind the very desk before which he and Thomas had quailed as children.

  “Tell me,” Lord Thomas said, “are you going to bend me over the desk, Adam? And are you going to use a cane?”

  “She is in love with you,” his grace said, looking at the desktop. “She always has been. She bore your child, Thomas. And must you now come back to play games with her and with me?”

  “Ah,” his brother said, raising his glass to his eye. “This is not to be chastisement, is it, but a serious talking-to. How dreary. And do you still dote on her, Adam?”

  “I married her,” the duke said. “She is my wife. I owe her my care and protection.”

  Lord Thomas laughed. “She hates you,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Are you sleeping with her?” his grace asked, looking very directly at his brother.

  “With my brother’s wife?” Lord Thomas raised his eyebrows. “You surely cannot believe me capable of such perfidy and, ah, poor taste, can you, Adam?”

  “Are you?”

  His brother shrugged.

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “A foolish question,” Lord Thomas said, getting to his feet and examining the mosaic above the mantel. “How can I be in love with my brother’s wife?”

  “If you are,” the duke said, “perhaps I can begin to forgive you. Perhaps you made as much of a mistake in fleeing more than five years ago as I made in not insisting that Sybil listen to the truth. We all act hastily at times and must live forever after with the consequences. But then, nothing is written in stone either.”

  His brother turned in surprise and grinned at him. “Are you offering to exchange bedchambers with me for the duration of my stay?” he said. “Very sporting of you, I must say, Adam.”

  “If you truly love her as she loves you,” the duke said, ignoring his brother’s tone, “then something must be arranged.”

  “You are considering a divorce?” Lord Thomas continued to grin. “Imagine the scandal, Adam. Could you live with it?”

  “There can be no question of divorce,” his grace said. “I would not do that to Sybil.” He paused and drew a deep breath. “There may be the possibility of an annulment. I would have to make inquiries.”

  His brother came across the room to set both hands on the desk and lean across it. He looked closely at the duke. “An annulment?” he said. “There is only one really viable ground for an annulment, is there not?”

  “Yes,” the duke said.

  “Am I to understand …?” The grin was back on Lord Thomas’ face. “Am I to understand that in more than five years you have never enjoyed Sybil’s favors, Adam?” He laughed. “It’s true, isn’t it? Good Lord. Did you play the part of noble lover to the end as she pined for me? Or did she reject you? You weren’t unwise enough to display your wounds to her, were you?” He laughed again.

  “Do you love her?” the duke asked.

  “I have always had a soft spot for Sybil,” Lord Thomas said. “She is lovelier than almost any other woman I have clapped eyes on.”

  “That is not what I asked,” his brother said. “Would you marry her if you had the chance to do so?”

  Lord Thomas stood up and looked down at his brother assessingly. “You would do that for her sake?” he said. “Or would it be for your own?”

  “I would do it,” the duke said, “or at least inquire into the possibility of doing it, if I were convinced that Sybil would have the happiness that you and I between us have deprived her of.”

  “And Pamela?” Lord Thomas said. “If there were an annulment, the world would know that Pamela is not your child.”

  His grace spread his hands palm-down on the desk and looked down at them. “Yes,” he said. “Could I have your answer?”

  “This is sudden.” Lord Thomas strolled back to the fireplace and resumed his examination of the mosaic lion. “I will need some time to consider.”

  “Of course,” his grace said. “Take it. But as long as you are in this house under present circumstances, Thomas, Sybil is my wife and I will punish any disrespect shown her.”

  “Bent over the desk with the cane on the backside after all?” Lord Thomas said. “Have you perfected the art of swishing it in the air before bringing it down on target, Adam? That used to make me almost lose control of my bladder.”

  “I will expect your answer within the next week,” the duke said. “If it is no, I will expect you to leave immediately—and forever.”

  “I take it I am dismissed,” Lord Thomas said, turning to look in some amusement at his brother again. “Very well, Adam, I will take myself from your presence. I believe I am being awaited for a fishing trip anyway.”

  The duke continued to stare at his hands after the door had closed behind his brother. And he was being seduced by his own bluff, he thought a few minutes later.

  In his imagination he was living through the events that his words to his brother had seemed to make possible—a speedy annulment, Sybil gone, himself free. Free to explore his attraction to Fleur. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands on the desk.

  It had been bluff, pure and simple. Never in a million years would Thomas agree to marry Sybil. Had he thought for one moment that Thomas would, his grace thought, then of course he would not even have made the mad suggestion that he had just made. For though such an arrangement would undoubtedly be as satisfactory to Sybil as it would be to himself, there was Pamela to consider. And Pamela must always come first, before her mother’s happiness and before his own. She was an innocent and defenseless child.

  No, he knew Thomas well enough. He had always liked him when they were boys, when his younger brother’s mischievous ways and cheerful lack of principle had brought consequences no more drastic than a thrashing or a serious talking-to. But Thomas had never grown up. He had never passed beyond the irresponsibility of youth. In his one year as supposed Duke of Ridgeway he had put severe strains on Willoughby’s considerable resources so that it might well be ruined by now had he continued to be its owner.

  Thomas, he firmly believed, was incapable of deep feeling. Doubtless he would have married Sybil had he remained duke, and perhaps it would have been a reasonably successful marriage, but he would never have loved her as she loved him. Had he loved her, even to some small degree, he could not have ab
andoned her when he knew her to be with child.

  The duke knew that Thomas would continue to harass him and amuse himself with Sybil for as long as it pleased him to do so. And that might be a very long time. The only way to frighten him off was by making it seem possible that he could be stuck with his toy for a lifetime.

  Thomas would be gone by the time the week was out. The duke was quite sure of it. So sure that he had risked Pamela’s future on a bluff.

  But, God, it was a sweet, seductive idea. He got to his feet and glanced toward the fireplace and the chair beside it where Fleur had sat the night before. It was just there they had stood.

  She had stopped shaking at his bidding. And she had lifted her face for his kiss and opened her mouth to it. Her arms had come up about his neck and her fingers had played in his hair.

  For a few minutes, at least, she had forgotten her fear of him. She had wanted him, as he had wanted her. As he wanted her.

  Guilt gnawed at him. He had been outraged at the impropriety of the embrace Sybil and Thomas had been sharing in the long gallery. And yet he had engaged in his own not two hours later with the governess.

  Fleur. She was coming to dominate his thoughts by day and haunt his dreams by night. He was coming to live for the moments when he could see her, listen to her music, listen to her voice, see her eyes on his. She was beginning to give light and meaning to his days.

  In her he was beginning to glimpse the precious pearl that he had once expected of life.

  It was a hard life he had dedicated himself to—a life of celibacy for the past six years, with the single exception of that one brief, dispassionate encounter in London.

  With Fleur. With a thin, pale whore who had turned out to be a virgin, who had quietly obeyed his every command and had suffered his penetration of her body with only that small guttural sound and the biting down on her lips. Even such a sordid scene she had played out with dignity. She had been a victim who had sunk to the depths but refused to allow her spirit to be broken.

  And he must never hold her again. Never kiss her again. For last night had been a moment for one time only, something that he had not planned. Now that he knew it possible, he would have to guard against its ever happening again. For though his marriage was a heavy burden on him, it was nevertheless a contract he had entered into freely and one he would remain faithful to as far as human frailty would allow.

  He might yet have to move Fleur to another post somewhere else, he thought. He was not sure that it would be possible to live in a house with the woman he desired almost more than anything else in life and with his wife, whom he had once loved and with whom he had never lain.

  She had cringed from him on their wedding night, screamed at him to get out of her bedchamber. He had told her about his wounds, and of course the disfigurement of his face was there for all to see. He had left her and made no attempt to go to her again until after the birth of Pamela. He had tried to make a friend of her.

  But of course, she had believed him the villain who had sent her lover away and then forced her into marriage with himself. What a foolish hope it had been that he could bring her to love him.

  The same thing had happened when he went to her two months after Pamela’s birth—the same hysteria and look of deep revulsion. He had talked to her about it the following day and she had told him in her usual breathless, sweet manner, tears swimming in her large blue eyes, that if he ever again tried to touch her she would return to her father’s house.

  It was probably at that moment that his love for her had begun to die a rapid death. He had seen finally, and had admitted the truth of what he had seen, the cold selfishness that was hidden only just behind the angelic exterior.

  All that was left after his love had died was a deep pity for her. For clearly her love for Thomas had been a monumental passion that she could not kill, even if she had tried. And of course, she had not accepted the truth, and believed that only his own cruelty had separated her from the man who loved her as dearly as she loved him.

  The duke sighed and turned to the door. At last, he thought, he could proceed with the day he had planned. At last he could put his own problems behind him for a short while and concentrate on listening to other people’s.

  It was only when he was striding toward the stables that he realized he had not eaten breakfast.

  And it was only much later that he realized that calling on Duncan Chamberlain was not the thing to have done if he was seeking forgetfulness. For Duncan had asked him how he would feel about losing his governess if she could be persuaded to accept a marriage offer, and he had been forced to smile at his friend and shake his hand and assure him that the whole thing was entirely a matter between him and Miss Hamilton.

  He wondered how Chamberlain would feel if he knew how perilously close he had been to having a fist planted right between his eyes.

  PETER HOUGHTON ARRIVED BACK from his holiday three days later and regaled Mrs. Laycock, Jarvis, Fleur, and the other upper servants, as they sat at luncheon, with stories of the christening.

  “A headful of curls at the age of two months?” Jarvis said, interrupting the speaker. “Is that not unusual, Mr. Houghton?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Houghton said. “My cousin’s wife says that it runs in her family.”

  “Teeth?” Mrs. Laycock said with a frown a minute later. “At the age of two months, Mr. Houghton?”

  “Yes,” Houghton said. “Unusual, is it not, ma’am?”

  “What was the christening robe like, Mr. Houghton?” Miss Armitage, the duchess’s personal maid, asked.

  The duke’s secretary decided that it would be advisable to cut short his luncheon despite the fact that his grace was from home. There must be a great amount of work piled up on his desk, he mumbled, regretting the lost dessert.

  The duke had been from home most of the day. He had taken the gentlemen guests on a ride about some of his farms during the morning after giving his daughter another riding lesson, and he had taken her visiting to the rectory after an early luncheon.

  It was late afternoon by the time they returned, and Pamela ran upstairs ahead of him, eager to tell Fleur about the rocking horse at the rectory, which had been broken during her last visit. It was interesting to note, the duke thought, removing his hat and his gloves in the hall and handing them to a footman, that it was her governess, not her nurse, who was to be the recipient of Pamela’s confidences.

  “Mr. Houghton has returned, your grace,” Jarvis informed him, bowing stiffly from the waist.

  “Good,” his grace said briskly. “Is he in his office?”

  “I believe so, your grace.”

  The duke turned in that direction.

  “Well,” he said, standing in the doorway, “you took your time about returning.”

  “Christenings and babies and relatives all wanting to entertain me. You can imagine how it was, your grace,” Houghton said.

  The duke stepped inside and closed the door. “It is just you and I, Houghton,” he said. “And I have enough of charades during the evenings. Well?”

  “The lady in question is Miss Isabella Fleur Bradshaw, your grace,” his secretary said, “daughter of a former Lord Brocklehurst, now deceased, along with his wife, Miss Bradshaw’s mother.”

  “He was succeeded by the present Lord Brocklehurst?” his grace asked.

  “By his father, your grace. His lordship died five years ago, leaving a wife, a son, and a daughter to mourn him.”

  “And their relationship to Miss Ham … to Miss Bradshaw’s father?”

  “The late baron was his first cousin, your grace,” Houghton said.

  “The late and the present Lords Brocklehurst were and are her guardians?” his grace asked with narrowed eyes. “What are the terms of guardianship? She must be past her twenty-first birthday.”

  “Such information is not easy to come by when one is pretending to just idle curiosity, your grace,” his secretary said stiffly.

  “But I am quite
sure you came by it anyway,” his grace said. “Yes, I know it must have been difficult, Houghton. I fully appreciate your talents without your drawing my attention to them. Why do you think I employ you? Because I like your looks?”

  Peter Houghton coughed. “She will come into her dowry and her mother’s fortune when she is twenty-five, your grace,” he said, “or when she marries, provided her guardian approves her choice. If he does not, then she must wait until her thirtieth birthday before inheriting.”

  “And her present age?” the duke asked.

  “Twenty-three, your grace.”

  The duke looked at his secretary consideringly. “All right, Houghton,” he said, “those are the facts, and you must be commended for discovering them. Now tell me all the rest. All of it. I can tell from the look on your face that you are fair to bursting with it. Out with it, without waiting to be prompted.”

  “You may not like it, your grace,” Houghton said.

  “I will be the judge of that.”

  “And it may reflect on my judgment in hiring her,” Houghton said. “Though,” he added with a cough, “we are talking about Miss Bradshaw, are we not, your grace, and not about Miss Hamilton.”

  “Houghton.” His grace’s eyes had narrowed dangerously. “If you would prefer to tell your story with my hand at your windpipe, it is all the same to me. But you might be more comfortable as you are.”

  “Yes, your grace,” Houghton said, coughing again. But hands at windpipes would be mild in comparison with what might happen after the duke had heard all about his ladybird, he reflected, beginning to speak.

  There was only one particular thought in the duke’s mind. He was glad her name really was Fleur, he thought. It would be difficult to have to start thinking of her as Isabella. She did not look like an Isabella.

  He stood at the window, his back to the room, listening. He did not interrupt often.

  “Do you have a single source for all these details?” he asked at one point.

  “A servant from Heron House, your grace,” Houghton said, “a gentleman who liked to frequent the taproom at the inn where I put up, and the curate and his sister. Particularly the sister. I gather she was a friend of Miss Bradshaw’s. The brother was more reticent.”