Deceived (v1.1)

by Mary Balogh

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Historical Note

  SHE COULD NOT FORGIVE HIM—OR FORGET HIM

  Beautiful Lady Elizabeth Ward had been young and innocent when she wed the man she loved, Christopher Atwell. She thought his love matched hers—until she found him in the arms of another, learned of his guilt in murder and worse, and saw him flee abroad.

  But now Christopher was back in England to claim the title he was heir to and plead innocence of all evil. He was back to claim Elizabeth as well.. .as if the past were a lie and only his lips on hers told the truth. But how could Elizabeth forget the pain of betrayal even as passion pulsed within her again? How could she trust her heart and happiness to this man who had so cruelly deceived her once and now was doubly dangerous the second time he pledged his love and cast his sensual spell?

  He had the advantage of her, for the fall she had suffered had wiped all memory of the past away. All Elizabeth knew was what Christopher told her. They were husband and wife. They loved each other. She had to prove that love. She could not yield to the panic she felt in his arms.

  “I want you, Christopher,” she said. “I need you.”

  Christopher raised himself on his elbows and looked into her eyes, his own filled with such yearning that she caught her lower lip between her teeth. And then she closed her eyes as he caressed her.

  All doubts fled. All foolish doubts. This was the way it was, the way it should be. . . .

  “Yes,” she whispered to him without opening her eyes. “Yes, Christopher. ...”

  Deceived

  Mary Balogh

  Onyx, Penguin Group

  Copyright 1993

  Chapter 1

  LONDON looked strange from the deck of the ship that was making its slow passage up the River Thames. Strange because it looked no different from the way it had always looked. One somehow expected that after almost seven years it would have changed, though the traveler who stood at the ship’s rail, watching the banks of the river and the wharves and warehouses slide past and the city itself loom ahead, realized that the thought was somewhat foolish. Seven years, which had seemed more like seven decades to him, were a mere moment in time for a city like London.

  “Sacré coeur!” his companion said at his side, profound awe in his voice. “It is a city to end cities, m’sieur.”

  “Yes.” The traveler squinted his eyes and gazed ahead to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. “New York and Montreal really have nothing to compare with it, do they?”

  Antoine Bouchard had grown up believing that Montreal must be the hub of the world. He had reacted to New York much as he was reacting now to London. He ought not to have been standing on deck as he was, his thick-set arms resting on the rail, his short sturdy legs splayed on the deck to keep his balance, though such a stance was no longer necessary now that they were in the smooth waters of the River Thames. Since he was a servant, he ought to have been below packing his master’s trunks and preparing to leave the ship.

  But then Antoine was not quite like any other servant. Indeed, he did not even call himself that. He had saved his present companion’s life five years before when the latter had been a clerk with the Northwest Company of Canada trading furs far inland on the American continent and he had been a lowly voyageur or laborer with the company.

  He had sunk a knife into the belly of the native who had been about to do the same for the clerk. And since then he had attached himself to the man he had saved even when the latter left first the interior and then Montreal for New York. And now he was coming to England too as servant, valet, companion—it was impossible to define in quite what capacity he came.

  “Sometime perhaps you will have a chance to explore the city, Antoine,” the traveler said. “It is a marvel not to be missed. But not this time. Now we will merely pass through. We will stay here for one night and then purchase horses and a carriage and be on our way.”

  “To Pen’allow,” Antoine said, pronouncing the word with such a heavy French accent that it sounded quite unfamiliar.

  “Yes,” his companion said. “To Penhallow. To Devonshire.” To the reason for his return. He had sworn when he left England that he would never set foot on its shores again. He had gone below as soon as he had boarded the ship on the Thames, and he had not come on deck again until there was nothing to be seen all around but ocean.

  “Good-bye, England,” he had whispered to the eastern horizon.

  He had felt a little theatrical, though there had been no one close by to overhear him. But the pain of emptiness inside him had made the gesture necessary. “Good-bye ...” But he had not completed her name. He had closed his eyes in a vain attempt to stem the flow of scalding tears. “I’ll never come back.” He had merely mouthed the words.

  His lip curled now into a smile half of contempt and half of sympathy for the foolish, impressionable, cowardly boy he had been.

  And “boy” was an appropriate word even though he had been twenty-four years old at the time. There had been trouble, trouble that he could not have foreseen and that he had found himself quite unable to handle. Everything in his life had been spoiled and he had been able to see no way to unspoil it. He had spoken the truth but no one had believed him. And he had seen no way of proving that he did not lie.

  And so he had fled. Turned tail and run. Left the field to those who had proceeded to destroy even what little of his life he had left behind.

  Well, he thought, he had not done badly for himself. Fate, in the form of the first ship to be sailing out of the Thames when he had needed one, had taken him to Montreal in Canada, where he had taken a gentleman’s job with the prosperous fur trading company that had its headquarters there. Three years in the rugged interior had toughened him physically and given him back purpose in life. When he had almost lost his life, he had realized that it was after all precious to him. And his four years in New York, working his way up to partnership in another fur trading company, had toughened him mentally and given him a sense of his own worth.

  The shy, uncertain, bewildered boy who had fled London almost seven years before no longer existed. His personality perhaps remained in the man who had taken his place. There was not much one could do to overcome a natural reticence of manner, an inability to make easy conversation with others or to speak from the heart to any but the closest of friends. And it was hard to teach oneself charm or even the art of smiling frequently when one was already past boyhood and had never learned either. Outwardly perhaps he had not changed. But inwardly . . . Oh, yes, he had changed. If all that had happened seven years ago were to happen now, he would not run. Not one inch. He would even take one step forward and he would force the truth on all those who had not believed him—on the whole world if necessary.

  His jaw hardened. And now that he was back, he would find out the truth too. He would unravel the whole sordid mess even though the trail was cold by almost seven years. And then
he would see her and throw the truth in her teeth. He would watch her as she realized all that she had thrown away through lack of trust and weakness of character. Yes, he would watch her. Her face had always been more expressive than that of anyone else he had ever known.

  But not yet. First he wanted to go to Penhallow, his now since the death of his father as well as the fortune that came with it—at a time when he had been making his own fortune in America. Strange, he reflected, that he had never particularly thought that one day this would force him back to England. He wondered if all sons imagined that their fathers would live forever. His own had not even lived beyond the age of sixty.

  Antoine leaned over the rail, absorbed with watching the ship come to anchor. His employer still stared off toward the city though he was not really seeing it. His hands rested lightly on the rail, not gripping it. They were long-fingered, beautiful hands, though the nails were now cut short and the palms were callused from hard work. Perhaps the strength of the hands added to the beauty they had always had.

  He was a tall man, several inches taller than his small, sturdy servant, and slender. Though there was a breadth of shoulder now and a solidity of arm and thigh muscles that proclaimed him splendidly fit and strong. His lips were compressed into a thin line in his rather narrow face with its strong aquiline nose and high cheekbones. He had won the nickname Hawk in the early years of his fur trading, when he had been considerably thinner. And perhaps it was a suitable name. There was no weakness in his face, no sign at all of softness. Only strength and determination and perhaps even harshness. It was a weather-bronzed face beneath thick dark hair, which would doubtless be far too long for London fashions. The eyes that stared unseeingly at the dome and towers and roofs of London were a startling blue.

  “ ‘Ow does one know where to go, m’sieur?” Antoine made a sweeping gesture toward the city with one arm. His voice sounded almost nervous.

  “We take a hackney coach,” his companion said, returning his attention to his surroundings. “To the Pulteney Hotel in Piccadilly. The best hotel in London. And then tomorrow—Devonshire.”

  “Mais oui,” Antoine said. “Only the best for the Earl of Trevelyan. And only the best for ‘is man.” He chuckled.

  “I think it would be better to postpone being the earl until after we have left London tomorrow,” his companion said. “I don’t want it to be generally known yet, Antoine, that I am back. Tonight I will be simply Mr. Christopher ...”

  “Bouchard?” Antoine suggested.

  “Christopher Bouchard,” the Earl of Trevelyan said, nodding in agreement.

  Antoine grinned and went below to deal with the half-packed trunks strewn untidily about his master’s cabin.

  “They ‘eard we were coming,” Antoine said. “And so the celebrations, m’sieur. Non?” He looked at his employer with a grin, very white in his weathered face.

  “Heaven forbid!” Christopher said. But he returned the grin. The mood in the London streets did seem rather more festive than he remembered its being on a normal day. And there did seem to be an unusual number of flags flying from almost every building, including the Pulte-ney.

  “There is something unusual happening in London?” he asked the receptionist at the hotel after he had taken a suite of rooms for the night for himself and his servant.

  The receptionist looked at him with blank incredulity. “You do not know, Mr. Bouchard?” he said. “You are French? An émigré perhaps? An exile?”

  “French Canadian actually,” Christopher said. “My man and I have arrived just today from New York.”

  The receptionist nodded as if the strange mystery of the newly arrived guest’s ignorance was explained. “France has been invaded,” he explained, “and Paris taken by the Allies. Wellington has come in from Spain in the south. Bonaparte has abdicated. The wars are over at long last, sir. The victory is ours. The news was brought from Paris yesterday.”

  The wars. They had affected both America and Canada, of course.

  But he had been almost unaware of them. He had forgotten. It was April 1814, and the wars were over. He had unconsciously chosen a good time to come home.

  “The celebrations went on all last night,” the receptionist said, “and will continue tonight, I do not doubt. Enjoy them, Mr. Bouchard. You have arrived in England at the perfect time.”

  And yet he had no wish to go outside the doors of the hotel to participate in any merrymaking, though the thought was attractive.

  No one knew how to make merry quite like the English. And yet he would not go out. He had found himself looking through the windows of the hackney on the journey from the river to the Pulteney, not at the buildings, but at the people. He had looked in something almost like dread for familiar faces. It was very unlikely that he would see any.

  He had lived most of his young life at Penhallow and only a year of it in London. And yet he found himself even now fearing that perhaps in the hotel he would meet someone he had known.

  He was not ready for that. Not yet. It was not that he was afraid.

  He was certainly not. Just unready. The time would come. In the summer maybe. Or in the autumn. But not now.

  He would have eaten dinner in his private suite, but he was no coward any longer. Unready as he was, he would not cower in his rooms out of fear of being seen and recognized. And so, though he would not go out to witness the early victory celebrations, he did go downstairs to the dining room. And he nodded amicably to the gentleman who occupied the table next to his, exchanged comments on the weather with him, and made no objection when the gentleman invited himself to take dinner at his table.

  “Seth Wickenham,” the gentleman said, extending a large hand before seating himself at Christopher’s table. “Most people are out enjoying all the illuminations and basking in the glory of the victory. We might as well at least share a table in an empty dining room.”

  Christopher agreed and returned the handshake. And so he told of some of his adventures during the past seven years and in return learned some of the details of the allied victory and the decisive part the British had played in it, opening the back door into the Continent by taking first Portugal and then Spain from the French before penetrating into France itself. The new Duke of Wellington, it seemed, was the hero of the hour.

  “A good time for a wedding too,” Mr. Wickenham said when all the more important topics of conversation appeared to have been exhausted.

  Christopher looked inquiringly at his companion for an explanation of this apparent non sequitur.

  “Grand ton wedding tomorrow at St. George’s,” Mr. Wickenham said. “Hundreds of guests, so I have heard. Everyone who is anyone will be there. And half of the rest of Londoners will hang about in the square to gawk. The victory celebrations will just whet their appetites for more pomp.”

  “Yes, probably,” Christopher agreed. “The bride and groom are of some importance?”

  “Well, now”—Mr. Wickenham looked up, caught the eye of a waiter, and nodded to him to bring more wine— “Lord Poole is the groom. Baron, you know. He is one of the leading members of the Whig party, which puts him on the wrong side, so to speak, especially now that victory will boost the popularity of the Tories. But we need both sides in a free country like ours, don’t we, sir? Or so I always say.”

  Christopher remembered Lord Poole as a rather dry old stick.

  Though he was not so old, either. He could be no more than forty now. His bride, whoever she was, must be marrying him for his title and fortune, poor woman.

  “He is marrying Chicheley’s daughter,” Mr. Wickenham added.

  “Who?” The air felt cold suddenly. Sounds seemed to come from far away. Christopher’s table companion seemed to be at the end of a long tunnel.

  “Chicheley,” Mr. Wickenham said a little more distinctly.

  “The Duke of. Lady Elizabeth Ward.”

  Ward. Lady Elizabeth Ward. Christopher spread a hand over the top of his empty wineglass and shook his head. �
�No more, thank you,” he said. “I must return to my room and have an early night if you will excuse me. It is not so easy to find one’s land legs after weeks at sea.”

  Mr. Wickenham chuckled when Christopher stumbled as he got to his feet, though the stumble was neither feigned nor due to his inability to find his land legs.

  “Good night,” Christopher said abruptly. “Thank you for the company and conversation, sir.”

  Mr. Wickenham returned the greeting and refilled his wineglass.

  Christ! Oh, God. Christopher realized only when he was out on the street an indeterminate number of minutes later that he was wearing a cloak and a hat and carrying a cane. He could not remember returning to his room, but he must have done so. He did not know where he was going. He watched unseeingly as fireworks illuminated the sky from the direction of Hyde Park.

  Elizabeth. He drew in a deep breath of the cool, rather smoky evening air and released it very slowly.

  Elizabeth. She was nothing to him now. Not any longer. Nothing at all. Let her marry whom she chose. Even Poole. Especially Poole.

  She deserved him. By God, she deserved him. His knuckles tightened on the knob of his cane. He could not have devised a better fate for her if he had been given the choosing of it. Someone dull and respectable. Someone without humor.