At supper he told everyone he would go shopping in Bath in the morning, and asked if anyone need anything special.
When it was her turn to give him her list, her eyes glowed and she shook her head.
"No thank you. I have all I need."
He took her hand and kissed it, earning a warm smile from his mother and the Clarences.
They said good night to everyone straight after supper, and retired to their own chamber to indulge each other joyously as never before. It was as if their encounter in the clearing had washed away all that was troubling them, and given them a fresh start.
But not quite, in Isolde's opinion. There was still one matter that needed to be resolved before they could move on, and she was not going to wait a moment longer.
The following morning was a Thursday. Isolde rose from the bed, and with a last lingering kiss for her exhausted husband, she donned a dark gown and ordered the carriage to take her to Bath. She was going to put her house in order one way or the other. She was tired of living in fear.
She positioned herself in the window of Sally Lunn’s and waited for over three hours. But in the end her patience was rewarded when she saw the tall dark-haired man she had been watching for stroll down the street with the petite raven-haired woman with a peaches and cream complexion and midnight blue eyes.
She felt the tell-tale pounding of her heart and fury and disappointment warred in her breast. After all they had shared yesterday….
She almost decided to turn around and go home. She even made excuses for him, saying he had only come to break it off with the girl.
But one look at the two of them, and it was clear that their regard was an abiding one. So what was she to do?
Press ahead with her plan, was the obvious conclusion, she determined as she drained her cup of tea, clinked down some coins, and gathered her possessions.
She loved Randall. He was worthy fighting for, as was their whole family. She knew what she had seen yesterday and today. If they ever had a chance to be happy, everything had to come out into the open at last.
She now hurriedly made her way to her own vehicle and told her carriage driver to follow the black and burgundy coach. It did not travel far, just to the outskirts of Bath, to a tidy eighteenth-century house with an unusual front lawn with a sweeping path and a whole series of rails from the front door down to the main road.
She saw the couple getting out of their carriage at the back of the stable block, the evident warmth and affection between them making her feel sick to her stomach. Of their own carriage there was no sign.
The estate looked well-tended, with magnificent gardens and pleasingly rich decor, from what she could see through the front windows as she headed up the steep path.
It appeared to be not just a love nest, but proper established home. She thought again about the three Stanford children, wondered if this was perhaps another widow in need whom he had felt obliged to take care of?
But the warmth of their kisses suggested far more than mere friendship, just as the comfort of the establishment suggested this liaison had been going on for a considerable time.
If that were indeed the case, why had Randall wed her? Was the woman already married, unavailable in some way? What then of all his protestations that his relations had been nothing more than a speedy cavault and departure?
Her head swam at the extent of his betrayal. Randall had lied, and lied, and she had wanted, nay, been desperate to believe him.
She gagged and ducked into a shrubbery to be ill, and it was some time before she could subdue her retching. Now she understood as never before how Randall must have felt prior to killing Francis. She wanted to blast the house to pieces, rip the two lovers limb from limb. Kill them…
Yet at the same time, she still loved her husband, still clung in her heart to her fantasy of seeing him smiling down with her without a care in the world, telling her how much he truly loved her. How she was the only woman in the world for him. Many of their barriers had tumbled down yesterday, but how could they go on with such a huge falsehood between them?
Isolde mopped her mouth with her handkerchief, which she crumpled impatiently into a ball and stuffed up her sleeve. Raising herself off her knees and out of the hedgerow, she squared her shoulders.
Glaring at the front door as though she wished she could see right through it, she stood poised on the threshold of the most enormous decision of her life. At last, she raised her fist and rapped at the door, and asked the butler who opened the portal if she could speak with the master of the house.
He let her in without a moment’s hesitation. "Mr. Avenel is in the study, Miss-"
"Miss Drake. But there is no need to announce me. I can find my way."
He sized up the young girl and decided she was no threat. "Very good, Miss. Third door on the left, in case you don’t recall."
She felt her gorge rise once more. He had so many strange young women here that the butler didn’t even bother to keep track? Just what sort of place was this?
Finely furnished and carpeted, she reflected, taking in all the accoutrements as she progressed to the back of the house. Not ornate, but certainly of the best quality, from the hall table to the pierglass to the ladderback chairs.
She came to the third door feeling as though she had run a mile, she was so winded. Her whole body trembled as she raised her fingers to grip the latch.
She halted and pressed her sweating palms together. Perhaps she ought to just leave. She was better off not knowing. Better off maintaining the pleasant fiction that they were happily married, and that Randall loved her and her alone.
She was about to draw back when instinct halted her. She had never been a coward. She had always faced things head on. And was not her marriage worth fighting for? Surely this affair posed a threat to her whole way of life.
She could try to ignore it, let it run its course. But could she risk it? Wait to see if Randall asked her for a divorce? She was sure if he did it would kill her.
No, it was better to have it all out in the open now, than to poison every single day and night with each other wondering, destroying any chance of love with bitterness and suspicion...
She grasped the latch decisively, opened the door, and shut it firmly behind her.
She had to give Randall credit for being so calm in the face of disaster.
"Yes?" he said, his posture and expression never once altering. Not one iota of alarm did he evince.
She took two steps forward furiously and froze. All the words of reproach and recrimination she had been about to utter jammed in her throat as she stared, wide-eyed with shock.
For though the man bore a remarkably uncanny resemblance to him, this was most certainly not her husband. His pain-lined face betokened him several years older, and his eyes were pale blue, as clear as a wolf’s. They were certainly not the remarkable lapis ones she loved so well.
Mr. Avenel. The butler had said Mr. Avenel…
"Yes?" he said again.
At last she found her tongue. "I’m so sorry to disturb you. I’m Viscount Linley’s daughter, Isolde Drake," she said, feeling a complete fool, and painfully aware of the fact that she had just stepped unwittingly into a maelstrom.
"Yes? And which charity do you represent? I’m sorry to be abrupt or obtuse, but you see, my wife Bryony usually deals with these matters."
"No charity, sir. I believe it is you I’ve come to see, although I did not know it at the time I came here."
He frowned, a slight crease marring his handsome classical features. She had thought Randall beautiful; this man was equally so, but in a much more rugged and world-weary way.
The butler had said Mr. Avenel. He simply had to be one of Randall’s brothers whom Randall had told her died in the war. But why lie about it?
"I’m sorry, sir. I should have introduced myself more fully. I’m Isolde Drake Avenel, Randall Avenel’s wife."
His gaze grew soft for a brief moment before glittering wit
h barely suppressed fury, and something more.
Fear? Yes, fear, she decided as she stared back at him with unabashed curiosity.
"I’m sorry that you’ve come here on a fool’s errand, Madam. I don’t know—"
"Aye, more of a fool than I ever dreamt," she said, slipping sideways into the chair situated in front of his desk, all pretence of calm at an end.
She rammed her hands against the seat to stop herself from sliding onto the carpet. "I’m sorry to be so overwrought, but surely you must agree that the most remarkable occurrence has taken place. Won’t you please hear me out? Or do you care so little about your family that you don’t wish to at least know how they are faring?"
His lips thinned. "I had a family once. I try not to think about them at all if I can help it."
"Forgive me, but you must be Michael, are you not? Presumed dead after the Battle of Toulouse?"
He looked surprised, but nodded.
"In that case, do you have any idea how much Randall worshipped you as a child and young man? He still talks about you all the time, even after thinking you dead so many years. He would have been quite a young man when you went off to war. I know you were estranged from your parents, but surely Randall could never have done anything so terrible to you that he deserves to be treated with such disregard and contempt?"
His expression softened somewhat. "He was ever the faithful correspondent. His letters to me kept the darkness at bay. He never failed to write, or at least not until Francis died. He still wrote after that, every week, but the joy had died in them. It was never the same again."
Isolde decided to risk trusting him. "He blames himself, just as you blame yourself for the men you killed," she guessed, looking at his grim expression.
Michael stared. "Blames himself, you say?"
Isolde took a deep breath. "I’m breaking a confidence, and entrusting you with Randall’s life. But I know the love you once bore your brother will keep you from acting upon this information in any way."
He scowled. "I give you my word, I would never harm Randall, no matter what happened in the past, or even now."
Satisfied that she was making the right decision for all concerned, she recounted the tale of Francis’s death as her husband had told it to her.
"So you see, he’s blamed himself ever since. He’s never left those stables. He was young. He made a capital error. He’s been punishing himself ever since."
"The Devil you say!" Michael barked. "Clarissa wasn’t worth it. And Francis was not blameless in all this, for he made a choice too, to roger his brother’s fiancee when any decent man would have retired from the field.
"But Clarissa was ever the little minx. She tried with me as well. In fact we are so similar in appearance that I'm fairly sure that she mistook one of us for the other. I know she wanted me because I was the heir. She was always hanging about the stables. It would have been an easy enough to make a mistake in the shadows.
"Unless she wanted us all one after the other. We were each of us wealthy in our own right. She probably thought sooner or later she would get marriage from one of us.
"In any event, she grabbed me and tried to toss me on my back, bold as you please. Told me no one would ever give it to me so good. She was undoubtedly rife with the clap, though poor Randall fell for her innocent act, I take it, for I heard they were engaged."
She nodded. "That’s right. He admits now he is fairly sure she did mistake him for another, for they never actually, um—"
"Yes, just so," he said with a wry twist of his lips. He was silent for a time. "How did Randall kill him? I mean, I understood there to have been a riding accident."
"Francis was carrying on with her in the stables. He caught them together, saw them copulating. He sawed through the girt strap of his saddle. Francis fell at a huge jump and was killed"
"I see."
"Randall’s hated himself ever since. He thought he didn’t deserve happiness. He’s been raking to try to prove what a low person he really is, not entitled to be loved and treasured. Never hoping to have a family of his own."
"My God, the poor lad." He shook his head pityingly.
A quiet voice from the doorway observed, "Then Randall's not so very different from the eldest boy in the family."
Michael’s eyes lit up. "My wife, Bryony. Bryony, this is Isolde, Randall’s wife."
She smiled at her husband, and said, "Michael also felt he didn’t deserve love or happiness because of all the men he killed during the war. He hasn’t come back to you all because he feared contaminating the family. And because he was badly injured. Not to mention because he and his father quarrelled. He felt he could never be accepted on his own terms after all he'd suffered.
"So he’s made a new life for himself here in Bath, here with me and our new family. It’s taken a lot of time, and there’s been a great deal of heartache."
Michael smiled at his wife. "But now there’s such joy, too, I would never want to go back to my old way of life."
"Is that why you still haven’t come back after all this time? Because you’re afraid all the quarrels will start all over again? They won’t. For one thing, so much has changed. All of the people in your family have changed. In fact, very few of the ones you left behind are still alive."
"I know about my father’s embezzlement, if that’s what you mean," he said shortly. "But he won’t want any pity from me."
She shook his head. "No, he won’t. He’s dead now. Your fourth brother Mark too. Randall is the Earl now," she revealed bluntly.
Never had she seen anyone’s face transformed so quickly from aloof detachment to raw passion. "No, no! It can’t be!"
She nodded. "I’m sorry. And your mother has been an invalid ever since. I went to London to become her nurse. Randall and I fell in love and were married. She’s all he has left, and he’s devastated. It’s been a series of crushing blows, and I’m not so sure Randall is strong enough to withstand them."
"And let me guess. You came to the house, took one look at each other, and you’ve been saving Randall ever since?" he said dryly.
She stared. "Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but yes, for the most part." She sighed. "Except I don’t think I can ever be enough for him. I found you quite by accident, you see. I’d been shopping to Bath a few times, and saw you and your wife. From a distance you're so like Randall, that I, well, er—"
"Go on," he urged.
"Well, the truth is, I thought it was he having an affair with another woman."
"So you followed me to do what, exactly? Have it out with him?" he rasped.
She nodded. "That was the plan, yes," she said baldly. "I love Randall. I think he’s worth fighting for. And while I might have been wrong about you and your wife, the truth is, there are places he goes in his head and heart that I feel the children and I can never reach."
"The children?" he asked in surprise. "How long have you two been married?"
She clarified her situation quickly. Then she said, "I would adore having a child of my own with him. But so far as I'm concerned, the eight of them would be equally ours as any child of my body."
"You are a good woman, exactly the type to keep Randall in line. He’s no fool. If he married you, it’s because he loves you."
She laughed derisively, and shook her head. "I'm the means to his salvation. But love? It was all a mistake. He thought I was a prostitute."
Bryony’s brows shot up even higher than her husband’s. "What on earth?"
Over tea she recounted the story of how they had met.
Michael laughed at the end of her tale, and said, "Well, nothing in your life has ever been smooth since the two of you met. I can see why you would have so many misgivings. But Randall has a good heart, for all he has made that one dreadful mistake and damaged his own soul."
They were silent for a time, until she asked, "How long have you been at Bath?"
"Since 1815."
"You are friends with Blake and Arabella San
derson, are you not?"
"All the Rakehells," he confirmed.
The light of understanding dawned in her eyes. "So that’s why they’ve been acting so oddly at times. Not to cover up Randall’s infidelities, but to conceal your existence. But your brother needs you now! Do you not think we might be able to bring about a reconciliation?"
Michael sighed. "They’ve been asking me the same thing. But don’t you see, he’ll want to give up being Earl, and I don’t want it. I never did. Especially not after all my injuries. I’m a lot better than I was before Bryony came into my life, but I’ll never be completely able-bodied."
"He doesn’t care about the title. All he wants is love and friendship. Yet even when he gets it, he pushes it away, feels it is his penance for what he did to Francis."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection #4 Page 40
