Devil's Bargain

by Marlene Suson

  For a terrified instant, Tia feared that they had been saved by another highwayman who now meant to rob them.

  Then Marc, his face as grim and dark as a thundercloud, appeared in the door.

  “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

  “I don’t think so. Only bruised and shaken up.” For a moment a flicker of emotion shone in his eyes, but then his expression turned cold.

  He reached in and pulled her to a sitting position. Her bonnet had been knocked askew over one ear in the runaway flight, and he put it aright. As he retied the bonnet’s ribbons beneath her chin, his fingers were gentle against her neck.

  How his touch thrilled her. God help her, but she loved this man no matter how angry he made her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice still unsteady from the ordeal she had just been through.

  He gave her a hard look. “I should think the answer is obvious. I am saving my disobedient wife from her folly.”

  Her gaze fell away from his challenging tone, down to Freddie who was still lying on the floor crying. Gathering him in her arms, she murmured soothingly, reassuring him that he was safe now.

  Her little brother hugged her fiercely and gradually his tears abated.

  When Freddie quieted, Marc reached in and lifted him out of the landau, then helped Tia down.

  Marc’s big black stallion was snorting and pawing the hard earth beside the much-lathered pair of greys, now standing docilely still.

  Somehow Marc had managed to catch the runaway team and halt it, but Tia could not imagine how It was a wonder he had not been killed in the effort. This unhappy thought sent a shudder through her.

  When her feet were again upon the ground, he stepped away from her. “What, pray tell, is the meaning of this caper, madam?”

  Their brief truce was over.

  The forbidding set of his features made Tia rather prefer facing another knight of the road to her furious husband.

  “What a ridiculous question,” she said, affecting a bravado that she did not feel. “We were accosted by highwaymen.”

  “Why did you disobey my order to remain at home today?” he asked savagely.

  She would not allow him to intimidate her. “What you commanded, my most noble duke, was for me to forgo Lady Sefton’s musicale. Always obedient to my most noble lord’s wishes, I did so.”

  “Sarcasm does not become you.”

  “Nor you!”

  He ignored her retort. “I want to know the particulars of what happened to you since you left the house.”

  He listened silently to her account until she told how the bandits had whipped the horses into running away.

  “They made no attempt to rob you?”

  “No, it was most peculiar. What do you collect they could have had in mind?”

  “I cannot conceive. Nor can I conceive what queer start possessed you to undertake such a lunatic scheme as to drive on Hounslow Heath without proper escort.”

  She tilted her chin defiantly. “I wanted to see the heath. So did Freddie.”

  He turned his ire on her brother. “I told you that I would take you there another time.”

  “But you did not mean it,” the boy replied. The duke did not deny Freddie’s charge but instead favoured him with a look so intimidating that the child was struck dumb.

  Trying to deflect her husband’s attention from her brother, Tia asked, “How did you happen upon us?”

  “I did not happen upon you! I arrived home a few minutes after your harebrained departure. When I learned where you had gone, I immediately set out after you.”

  “Did Marie tell you we came here?” Tia was surprised that her loyal maid would have broken her promise in this regard, but grateful that she had.

  “Yes, although not willingly. Who else did you tell where you were going this afternoon?”

  “No one.”

  “I hope you are well satisfied now that you have nearly gotten yourself and your little brother killed!”

  How grossly unjust of Marc to blame her. Tia would never deliberately expose her brother to danger. She felt herself perilously near to tears. “What a dreadful thing to say.” She could not keep a quaver from her voice. “You act as though it were my fault that we were set upon by highwaymen when—”

  He cut her off. “Had you not defied me, madam, you and Freddie would have been safely at home out of harm’s way.”

  Tia hated it when he called her madam. It was always with such an odiously cold, disapproving tone.

  Furthermore, two of my servants have now been hurt because of your hoydenish behaviour. I warn you that if you disobey my orders in the future, I shall send you packing back to Rosedale immediately.”

  She stared at him in shock. He was talking to her

  as though she were a disobedient child instead of his wife.

  Tia heard the sound of footsteps running toward them. It was the frantic groom, panting heavily after his long run across the heath.

  Marc ordered him to ride the big black while he himself drove the landau in search of the wounded Gunther. The groom looked fearfully at the unruly stallion but one glance at his master’s face instantly convinced him that he preferred to take his chances with the big black rather than with his master’s temper.

  When they found the wounded coachman, trudging across the heath, Marc jumped down from the box. “Let me see your arm.”

  “‘Tis only a flesh wound, Your Grace,” replied Gunther, horrified at the idea of his noble master tending him.

  But the duke insisted. After he had satisfied himself that the wound was indeed minor, he wrapped it in his clean white handkerchief.

  Then, over Gunther’s protests that, he could manage the landau one-handed, Marc drove it back to town.

  The sight of the Duke of Castleton on the box of a closed equipage, guiding it down Piccadilly, for the second time in less than a day gave rise to rumour that the nobility’s latest fancy was to dispense with their coachmen and drive themselves.

  Inside the carriage, Tia considered the two attacks upon her in as many days and wondered whether there could be a connection. It was difficult to see how there could be, but she wanted to discuss it with Marc when they reached home.

  However, that was not to be.

  Marc stopped at Castleton House only long enough to tell Tia, “I have pressing matters to attend to, and I want your promise that you will remain here while I am gone.”

  She gave it to him, reflecting that she was too upset and tired from the events of the past two days to want to go anywhere.

  “Nor will we be going out tonight,” he said in a voice that clearly said he would brook no argument. “I am persuaded that after your ordeal you need a quiet evening at home.”

  Tia agreed, happy at the prospect of spending the night tête-à-tête with her husband.

  Upstairs, a tearful Marie greeted her mistress with profuse apologies for having betrayed her whereabouts to her husband. “I did not want to tell him, but he told me that he would turn me out without a character and see that I never worked again if I did not. And he meant it.”

  “I’m glad you told him,” Tia assured her. Had Marie not done so, both Freddie and herself would be lying dead in the wreckage of the landau.

  The quiet night with her husband that Tia had envisioned never materialized. The hours ticked away and he did not return. She read Freddie a bedtime story and tucked him in for the night, then ate a late, solitary dinner.

  At midnight, Marc still had not returned. Tia gave up waiting for him and went to bed. But exhausted as she was by the events of the past two days, she could not fall asleep. She was increasingly certain that he must be with his lovely Jennie.

  It was past one when she heard Marc’s footsteps pass her chamber on the way to his apartment. She waited expectantly for the door between their rooms to open.

  But she waited in vain.

  She could hold back her tears no longer, and her pillow was soon soaked with them.<
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  The moment her wretched face had betrayed her love for Marc, he had changed from a warm, charming husband dancing attendance on her to a cold, disapproving authoritarian who avoided her company at a time when she sorely needed his succour. If he had any feeling for her whatsoever, he would be with her now, comforting and cosseting her after the two attacks instead of ignoring her.

  The memory of the triumph in his eyes when she had revealed her feelings for him tormented her. She had foolishly thought that she was winning his affection but now she was convinced that he had merely been toying with her.

  Chapter 15

  When Tia appeared in the deserted breakfast parlour the following morning, she learned that for the second day in a row her husband had already eaten. Until yesterday, they had breakfasted together every morning since their marriage, but now he was avoiding her.

  Bitterly hurt, she struggled to get down a few bites from the elegant repast of eggs, sausages, muffins, and fruit spread out on the sideboard. Then she went wearily back up to her apartment.

  There, in a corner of her dressing room, she found her maid sobbing as though her heart would break.

  Tia, who was very fond of Marie, rushed to her, wanting to know what was wrong.

  The girl was crying so hard that her mistress had difficulty understanding her. Finally, however, Tia comprehended that after she had gone down to breakfast, Marc had dismissed the girl, ordering her to be out of his house within a half hour. Worse, he was turning her out without a character reference—a terrible fate for a servant. Without it she would have enormous difficulty finding another position.

  Not only that, the girl sobbed inconsolably, she would be separated from her great love, Robert, the footman,

  Tia was stunned that her husband would have sent her maid packing without so much as consulting her. And for no reason whatsoever, so far as she could divine. Marie had been an exemplary maid, and Tia did not want to lose her. She was so outraged by Marc’s arbitrary action, as high-handed as it was unwarranted, that she went in search of him.

  She located him in the small room off the library that his secretary, George Stanley, used as an office. It was a windowless cubicle barely large enough to hold George’s oversized walnut desk.

  As Tia entered, Marc, in buckskins and riding coat, was sitting on a corner of the big desk, giving instructions.

  She asked to talk to him privately.

  “Very well,” he said coldly, rising to his feet. The warmth that used to be in his eyes when he saw her had vanished. He led her into his library and closed the door.

  When she asked him why he had fired Marie, he replied, “I have told you, madam, that I am answerable to no one for my actions in this household.”

  “Surely I should be allowed some say in my own maid. I like Marie. She is excellent, and I want to keep her.”

  “An excellent maid would not have permitted her mistress to go off unaccompanied to Hounslow Heath and then been so insubordinate as to try to conceal your destination from me.”

  “She did so only because I made her promise not to tell you.”

  “And why, madam, did you do that?” he asked in that tone Tia loathed.

  She struggled to hold her own temper in tight rein. To lose it would only hurt Marie’s cause. “Because you made me so irate ordering me about without explanation that I decided I owed you no explanation either.”

  “I will not tolerate a defiant wife, madam. I made that very clear when I made you my offer.”

  “Is it defying you to wish to keep a maid who has given no cause for dismissal?” she asked angrily.

  But her husband would not relent. He told her bluntly that the matter was closed. “I am persuaded Marie lacks the experience to make my duchess look as elegant as she ought.”

  “I was unaware you were displeased with my appearance,” Tia said stiffly, much wounded. She thought of the compliments he had paid her and wondered if they had all been Spanish coin. “So both I and my maid fail to meet your approval.”

  His mouth tightened. “I did not say that, but Marie did not do you justice. I have engaged another maid for you.”

  “You hired her without so much as letting me meet her?” Tia cried indignantly. “What if I find her unsuitable?”

  That look of icy hauteur she so hated descended on his face. “It does not signify: I have determined that Doris is suitable.”

  “You interviewed her?” Tia asked in surprise.

  “No, I have not personally met her, but she is an experienced lady’s maid and comes highly recommended to me by a man whose judgment I trust implicitly. Now, if you will excuse me, madam, I am late for my ride.”

  “Pray do not hurry back,” Tia muttered under her breath, furious at him for his treatment of Marie.

  When she went back to her apartment, the maid was gone. Her allotted half hour had already expired.

  Forty minutes later Tia was informed that Lady Mobry awaited her in the drawing room.

  As Tia entered that room, she guessed from the stern set of her aunt’s face that this would not be a pleasant visit, and it wasn’t. Lady Mobry chastised her niece at length for her bacon-brained scheme of taking Freddie driving on Hounslow Heath.

  “You should never have done such a stupid thing without even telling your husband.”

  “He has threatened to send me back to Rosedale,” Tia confided.

  “After yesterday’s episode, he would be well justified in sending both you and Freddie there.”

  Tia stared at her aunt in shock. She had always regarded the marchioness as her staunchest ally, but now her aunt was siding entirely with Marc.

  When Tia worried aloud to Lady Mobry that the two attacks on her, so close together, might not have been random occurrences, her aunt ridiculed her concern.

  “Nonsense,” she exclaimed. “They were pure coincidence precipitated by your own foolish actions. You have not yet collected what a truly dangerous city London is. If you had, you would not have placed yourself in such obvious danger as you did on both occasions.”

  “But it is very odd,” Tia protested. “The two men yesterday did not attempt to rob us.”

  “Of course not. Once they saw the landau was occupied only by a girl, unadorned with jewels, and a little boy, they knew that the booty would be so small it was not worth their while to dismount. Instead they sent your equipage hurtling across the heath, no doubt in the hope of hearing your shrieks of terror.”

  “But the previous night that footpad told me he wanted my life more than my rubies,” Tia persisted.

  Her aunt frowned. “He was merely trying to frighten you.”

  “He succeeded,” her niece confessed.

  Lady Mobry said sternly, “You are refining too much upon two random incidents, Put them from your mind.”

  When Tia complained of Marc’s arbitrary firing of Marie, her aunt did not share her indignation in that matter either. “I am certain that you will be well satisfied with any maid of Marc’s choosing.”

  On this last point, however, her aunt could not have been more mistaken. Tia’s first misgivings, which were clearly shared by the startled Coles, came when her new maid arrived for work.

  She was the tallest woman Tia had ever seen. Her unusual height, big angular body, and thick, flat features gave her the unfortunate appearance of a man in skirts. Her hair, the colour and texture of straw, stuck out at odd angles from beneath a bonnet that had been out of fashion these past twenty years, and her ill-fitting dress was none too tidy. Never had Tia seen a woman who looked less like a lady’s maid.

  Nor did she act like one. Upon being introduced to her new mistress, Doris attempted a curtsy so awkward that she nearly fell on her face. In Tia’s apartment, she fingered the brocade of the bed hangings as though she had never felt such fabric before. Her protruding eyes looked as though they would depart their sockets when she saw the elaborate, intricately embossed silver toilet set on Tia’s dressing table.

  “Gor blimey,” s
he exclaimed, rubbing her fingers reverently over the embossed flowers on the perfume bottles, brushes, and cosmetic jars of varying sizes. “Real silver, it is. Oi heard the swells lived high as coach horses.”

  Her clumsiness soon proved to be a hazard to everything in her way. The first casualty was a Sevres vase. Doris bumped into the table holding this treasure, and it fell to the floor, smashing into smithereens. Next to go was the silver jewel casket on Tia’s dressing table. The maid caught it with her sleeve, sweeping it off, and its costly contents tumbled out in a jumble upon the Aubusson carpet.

  Doris stared at the jewels in stupefaction for a moment before she fell to her knees and began picking them up, crying, “Gor blimey, a king’s ransom, it is, awaitin’ to be snabbled.”

  The third casualty was Doris herself. She tripped over the tripod base of the fire screen and went sprawling upon the carpet.

  When it came time for Doris to help Tia get ready for that night’s assembly at Almack’s, she objected to her new mistress watching her in the silver- framed mirror on her dressing table.

  “Now, then, Oi never done for a duchess before, and right nervous it makes me to have yer peepers fixed on me like this,” she complained, insisting that Tia turn her back to the mirror.

  Her mistress did so with considerable misgivings that grew with each passing moment. Doris was fascinated by the array of silver jars on her mistress’s dressing table. Marie had never resorted to using the contents of most of them, but Doris seemed to be happily dipping into all of them.

  “I was told you were an experienced lady’s maid,” Tia said uneasily.

  “Well, and so Oi am,” Doris said proudly. “Oi worked for Madame Theroux.”

  Tia, unversed in the famous names of the London demimonde, did not recognize it.

  “Oi did for all her girls.”

  Doris made it sound like her former mistress had a large number of daughters, and Tia asked her how many girls she had.

  “Nineteen,” Doris replied.

  “Nineteen!” Tia echoed, horrified. The poor woman must have been exhausted from childbearing, and Monsieur Theroux must have been very rich to provide for so many daughters.