by Jaimey Grant
Verena’s eyes flew to meet Lady Charteris’s gimlet gaze. More shocking than the countess’s vulgar comment was the fact that Verena had no idea that she was responsible for producing the future heir. The thought dimmed her newfound happiness. What if she never overcame her fear? The whole family would be affected.
“Excuse me?” she finally answered faintly. She directed her question to Lady Denbigh who looked a little confused.
“Surely Connor told you that Beverley has adamantly refused to marry? Nothing my husband or I say will sway his determination so it is up to Connor to secure the succession. Verena, are you all right? You appear quite ill.”
Lady Denbigh’s voice seemed to fade and grow distant as if coming from somewhere very far away. Verena willed herself to breathe, to repress the sudden feeling of panic that threatened to consume her. Warm moisture dampened her palm and she knew without looking that the cuts she’d so recently sustained had broken open again. Within moments, the blood would soak through her glove, alerting her companions to her injury.
In a voice that was amazing for its very calmness, Verena said, “I am not feeling at all well, your grace. I would like to return, please.” Then she blocked out all the concerned murmurs and gazed at the landscape through unseeing eyes. All she could think about was how upset everyone would be when she failed to conceive; how disappointed Connor would be if she couldn’t overcome her fear.
Before, she had felt that even if she failed in her quest, she would still have a chance at winning Connor’s love. Now, she was unsure of everything. Everyone expected her to produce an heir to a grand title and considerable fortune. If she failed…
Verena was beginning to feel just as pressured as she had when her father announced his intentions of selling her into marriage to Percival Winters. She had solved that problem by simply running away from it.
This problem was not so easily solved.
That evening, Connor found his wife curled up in the window seat in her bedroom. Sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head on the cold glass windowpane, she resembled a child trapped in a daydream. Her blue-black hair hung in loose waves down her back like the finest of Chinese silk.
As he admired her from afar, she turned, her face a mask of abject misery. Earlier that afternoon she had seemed almost happy. Now…
What could have happened in the few hours he had been away from her side?
“Doll, whatever is the matter?”
Tears that had once lain pooled in the amethyst depths spilled over wan cheeks to make tiny little marks in the dark green silk of her evening dress.
He approached her quickly but carefully, sat down beside her, and pulled her into his arms. This gesture of comfort seemed only to increase her distress.
She soon stopped sobbing, her sniffles echoing in the stillness of the room. Connor silently dried her face with his handkerchief, then handed it to her. She blew her nose very delicately and clutched the square of cambric.
“You are become quite the watering pot, love,” Connor remarked lightly.
Verena just sniffed again and continued to stare at her clenched fingers.
Feeling the glimmerings of alarm, Connor gave her a little shake. “Talk to me, Doll. Tell me what’s wrong. Are you ill?”
Without a word, she rose to her feet and asked him very quietly if he would leave her.
Connor, too, rose and made a gesture of supplication. However, she had turned her back to him. If she’d even seen his outstretched hand, she gave no indication. Connor threw one last look at his wife’s bowed head and walked to his room.
At the door, she stopped him. “Please make my excuses for me, my lord. I find I am not feeling well.” Connor gave a rather jerky nod and left.
*
Eleven
Autumn moved into winter, the vibrant colored leaves falling from the trees to lay sadly on the ground where no one cared enough to mourn their passing. The sounds of the recent harvest dimmed to near silence. The air had a chill bite some days and was warm as spring on others. Weeks came and went and still Verena was unable to drag herself from the mire of hopelessness into which she had fallen.
How odd that she succumbed now to melancholy. Surrounded by new friends and family who cared for her, a husband that evidenced every possibility of one day loving her, all the luxuries a life of privilege could offer…she should have been supremely happy. But it all had the opposite effect. She sincerely believed that she deserved none of it. In her worst moments, she wanted to die.
Her days seemed to consist of reading much, eating little, and sleeping less. She avoided the family and locked her doors at night to prevent her husband from trying to see her. Bridgette, being the only one allowed in, was constrained by the worried family to report on her mistress if only to reassure them that she still lived.
She lost weight and her clothes hung loosely on her spare frame. Never having had an excess of fat even as a child, Verena now more closely resembled a wraith than the healthy young woman she had once been.
All the servants tried various ways to help, as well, but nothing seemed to have any sort of effect. Verena rarely left her room. She sat curled in the window seat and stared out the window at the lonely countryside, feeling lost and alone. Sometimes she saw her husband ride by as if pursued by the devil. Or she’d curl up in one of her new and very comfortable wing chairs—so far the only change that had been made to the somber room—by a crackling fire and read.
She had expanded her knowledge by reading novels as Jenny had suggested—and had found a wonderful place where she could go to forget her problems for a time. Even the, in her opinion, insipid stories of Ann Radcliffe helped. While they were as farfetched as Jenny had said, they were farfetched enough to raise at least a modicum of interest.
She read every book written by the author of Sense and Sensibility and wondered whom the lady of Quality was who seemed to know the vagaries of society so well. Waverley had been recommended to her by one of Connor’s many cousins and she read it as well, then moved on to read Guy Mannering, a novel that had just been published and was written by the same author, again anonymous.
She wondered a trifle crossly—the first show of any emotion other than despair in nearly a month—why everyone insisted on anonymity when writing a novel.
She read Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake and Marmion. It struck her suddenly that Walter Scott had the same writing style as the anonymous author of Waverley and Guy Mannering. She decided she would have to look into the possibility. It failed to register in her brain that she was slowly coming back to life.
Then she saw her own Lochinvar in her husband, which only served to increase her belief that he deserved far better. He had done so much for her and she repaid him by locking herself away, refusing everyone but Bri and doing little more than read. But she couldn’t seem to break free from her state of mind. Her melancholy deepened.
Connor tried every day to see her, even going so far as to beg for just one minute of her time. Verena was tempted to see him but she just couldn’t bring herself to speak to the one person she loved more than life. So he would go away and return the next day with the same request for one minute of her time.
This pattern continued for two weeks before he finally stopped coming. Verena came out of her book-induced fantasy world long enough to shed a few tears over the fact that her husband seemed to have stopped caring. Then she stopped crying and returned to that world of unreality where her feelings were only superficial.
Her fantasy world cracked when Bridgette returned from a foraging expedition to the library empty-handed.
“I am no longer allowed to fetch books for you, Doll. His lordship has ordered the library locked and all keys left with him.” While the maid’s expression suggested no opinion on the subject, her tone said otherwise.
Verena felt a moment of panic. With no more books to take her away, she would be forced to ponder her sorry situation. It was not something she was ready to
do.
“Can you not convince him, Bri, to change his mind?”
The maid snorted disrespectfully. “He is your husband, Doll, not mine. You convince him to change his mind,” she said as she collected the books already in the room.
Verena watched her maid, dismayed at the turn of events. “Whatever are you doing?”
Bridgette was on her hands and knees, peering under the bed where a rogue book had taken up residence some days prior. Her muffled voice floated back to her mistress. “I am under orders to return all books to his lordship.”
A spurt of angry annoyance ignited in her breast. “And if I should prevent you from taking them?”
Bridgette rose to her feet, brushing a lock of dark red hair from her face. “I am to burn them.” Her expression challenged Verena. “Do you think you can stop me, my lady?”
The anger dissipated. “I cannot bear the reality of my situation, Bri,” she cried out. “I cannot change how I feel and I cannot be the wife Connor needs. What am I to do?”
The maid studied her for a long moment. Then, with a great sigh, she took Verena’s hand and urged her to sit. In a magnificent breach of decorum, she sat beside her.
“I will not advise you on a situation I do not understand. I do feel, however, that you should speak to your husband, as he seems far better than most men. I am sure you can agree upon some course of action that is satisfactory to you both.”
“It is easy for you to say. You are not in my situation.”
Bri nodded once. “True. I am not. Now. I probably never will be. We are not alike. You are so mild, you frighten easily. You believe men should protect women. I am headstrong and easily angered. I believe men only use women. Gentlemen are the worst. They claim to protect while abusing in horrid ways.”
“How can you urge me to trust a gentleman when you have found them to be so untrustworthy?”
Bri stood. “As I said, your husband is far better than most. He seems to genuinely care for you and he is even polite to me, a mere servant. If that does not recommend him, I am not sure what does.”
Verena stared at her dearest friend for a long moment, then nodded. “I will think upon what you have said. Thank you, Bri.” Bridgette curtsied and left her mistress to her thoughts.
She pondered suicide, thereby releasing her husband…and discarded the idea almost immediately. It was too cowardly an answer.
Her only other option was to somehow convince Connor to get a divorce so he could marry again to secure the succession. She could not rely on her ability to overcome her fears.
It was true that divorce was a rarity but having a powerful and well-admired duke for a father surely had some benefits. Connor should take advantage.
She spent the next two days pondering her decision. She thought about it so much that she finally convinced herself beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was the right thing to do. Anything less would be dishonorable in the extreme.
She only hoped now that she would be able to convince her husband that she was right.
Connor had very definite views on right and wrong. He’d never hesitated to rescue someone or something if he thought it was the right thing to do. He had rescued her. She was sure that his feelings for her were not the deep feelings that she harbored for him and he could therefore redirect his affections to a worthier lady of his choice.
First she had to make him see that she was right.
Startled by a vigorous knocking on the door leading to the sitting room, Verena jumped to her feet. Connor hadn’t tried to visit her for more than a fortnight. And she knew it was him—no one else would come to that particular door.
It was time, she told herself with grim determination. She opened the door. Hand raised as if to knock again, his haunted blue eyes no longer laughed. With the appearance of the sleep-deprived and that of a man who made a habit of running agitated fingers through his hair, Connor looked no better than her.
Despite family issues, Meechum still performed his duties to the best of his ability. A bottle green example of Weston’s fine tailoring stretched across her husband’s broad shoulders without a wrinkle, a plain white waistcoat covered his torso, and doeskin breeches showing off muscular thighs were tucked into topboots polished to a mirror shine.
She concluded that had he lost any weight, it wasn’t enough to worry about. His clothes still fit him to perfection.
Connor stared at her for a long minute before he moved further into the room. Verena knew she had to say something or she would soon lose her nerve. She couldn’t read the expression on his handsome face, but she plunged in anyway.
Assuming a defensive stance, her back straight as a board, her hands clasped behind her, and her chin raised in certainty, she spoke. Her voice was steady and sure, she was pleased to note, despite her quaking insides.
“Connor, I have been thinking a good deal and I feel a divorce would be best for us.”
*
Twelve
While his wife spent her lonely hours lost to the world of fiction, Connor tried to lose himself in other ways.
He spent the first few days the same way any man would: riding hell-for-leather across the countryside, interspersed with daily tapping at his wife’s door.
Connor tried every day for nearly two weeks to see his wife. Every day, Bridgette turned him away with a look of regret and little more reassurance than to say Verena still lived. He finally gave up attempting to visit her. Instead, he conferred with Adam on another matter entirely.
“I have need of your secret sleuthing skills,” Connor said without preamble, placing the barest amount of stress on the word secret.
He found his friend holed up in the library, avoiding the mothering of the duchess, who often considered Adam more her son than the absent Beverley. Hence, she tended to treat him with the same gentle nagging that she used on Connor. Adam had far less patience for it.
Adam’s face quirked ever so slightly with genuine humor. “Not much of a secret now, is it?” he remarked, setting aside the book he was reading.
Connor noted ironically that Adam’s choice of recreational reading material was Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise on Police of the Metropolis.
“Haven’t you memorized that by now?”
“Of course not, you clunch. It’s nearly 700 bloody pages long.”
“How much merit do you actually attribute to the man? Where does he get his criminal estimates? I mean, really, fifty thousand prostitutes alone?”
One dark brow quirked cynically. “Of course fifty thousand is inaccurate. Colquhoun’s estimate was over twenty years ago. Besides,” he pointed out reasonably, “how many have you personally noted yourself when visiting London? They’re everywhere and even more so in the East End.”
Connor held up hand in defeat. “I concede. I didn’t search you out for a political debate. I need your help.”
They moved to sit by the fire, a chill wind blowing outside that seemed to find its way into the room. Adam paused to pour two tumblers of brandy, handing one silently to his friend.
Once seated, Connor began, “Do you remember Verena mentioning her brother?”
“Of course. Jeremy Westbridge, Viscount Bainbridge.”
Connor affected surprise. His features quickly slid into lines of irony. “I see you have been poking your nose into that already. What else have you found?”
“Only that he was not beloved of his father and fled to war as soon as he was able. He disappeared at Waterloo.”
“I don’t suppose you happened to have met him?”
“Not that I recall. I heard of him. Brilliant man.”
“How did you not know of his relationship to Verena?”
Adam shrugged. “I’m not omniscient.”
“Can you find him?”
Adam studied his friend intently. “I can attempt it. Is she worth the effort?”
Connor scowled. “Of course she is, you bloody fool. If you’re worried over money, I’ll pay you,” he added nastily, kno
wing Adam would find the issue of payment vulgar in the extreme.
He was rewarded with a short laugh. “It is not the money but the time involved that concerns me. I do have other…things…to find.”
Connor just stared at him, his look telling Adam that the subject would be brought up over and over again until he agreed. Releasing a sound of utter disgust, Adam capitulated with little grace, “Very well, you jackanapes. I’ll see what I can do.”
Shortly after his discussion with Adam, he sat down with his father and mother and tried to devise some way to draw Verena out.
In an attempt to better understand what had caused her isolation in the first place, he queried his mother on the events of the carriage ride with Lady Mari.
Lady Denbigh frowned. “I do not recall anything of import, my dear. Lady Mari and her mother behaved in a vulgar manner but it did not seem to bother Verena. In fact…” She brought her fingers up to her lips. “Verena asked to return after learning of Beverley’s refusal to sire an heir.” Head shaking, she asked, “I don’t know what that has to do with it. Perhaps she is increasing?”
Connor stared at her in shock, ignoring her hopeful question. All his efforts to ease Verena’s fears were destroyed by one casual comment, an undeniably true one, made by his mother.
Lady Denbigh shared a glance with her husband, then leaned forward, touching Connor’s hand in a very motherly gesture of concern. “Darling? You’ve gone quite pale.”
“It’s not your fault,” he muttered automatically as he bowed to his parents and left the room, deep in thought. He should have told her the state of affairs from the start. But surely then she’d have refused his offer of marriage!
What a silly, ridiculous mistake! He wanted to break down her door, take her in his arms, and assure her that he understood, that none of it mattered, that he would love her even if she decided never to come to his bed.
