“I am touched by your concern for my finances, my dear duke,” he said with deliberate joviality. “Your offer of funds is much appreciated, but I am quite flush nowadays.”
He watched a muscle flick in Tremore’s jaw, and since he had just been offered a bribe to go away, he could not help taking a certain satisfaction in his brother-in-law’s frustration.
“Your lack of interest in my purse astonishes me, Hammond. It fascinated you so much during the days preceding your marriage to my sister.”
“If I have been fascinated by your money, how could anyone blame me?” He gestured to the opulent drawing room of turquoise, gold, and white. “You are so superb at waving it about.”
“Hammond.” A serene voice broke in from the doorway, and both men turned to watch the duchess enter the room. “Thank you for coming to call.”
John was glad of her grace’s arrival, but he noted that Viola was not with her. In every crisis of her life, Viola always ran to her brother for help, and her brother always gave it to her. John began to steel himself for the inevitable battle that lay ahead. Tremore was a formidable opponent with far more money and power than he, and this situation was bound to become a difficult, wrenching, emotional mess. Viola knew how he hated that sort of thing, but if she thought that would make him abandon his intentions, she was mistaken.
“Duchess,” he greeted, with a bow and a kiss on her hand. “What a pleasure to see you again. But then, seeing you is always a pleasure for me.”
“I was grieved to hear of your cousin’s death. Please accept my condolences.”
He stiffened at her words, the wound still too fresh for him to react with conventional poise at a reminder of it. He swallowed hard, and it took him a moment to reply. “Thank you.”
He had only met the Duchess of Tremore a few times, but she had always seemed to him to be a sensitive, perceptive woman, and she must have seen something of what he felt. At once, she turned the conversation to trivial topics, and to John’s relief, her husband played along.
They sat down in the gilded, petit-point chairs and discussed the weather, the events of the season, and their mutual acquaintance, Dylan Moore—his marriage the previous autumn and the upcoming performance of his new symphony at Covent Garden. But when half an hour went by and Viola still had not joined them, John’s patience began to wear thin.
At an opportune moment, he turned the conversation to his wife. “Forgive me,” he said to the duchess, “but the viscountess and I must be on our way shortly. I wonder if you might have a footman take her trunks downstairs?”
“I will see if Viola has packed her trunks,” she said, and the difference between her words and John’s request confirmed his suspicion. He was in for a fight.
The duchess stood up and both men did the same, bowing as she left them. In the wake of her departure, he and the duke moved to opposite sides of the room as if by tacit agreement to keep as far away from each other as possible. Neither sat down again and neither one of them spoke. The tension in the air was thick and heavy, like the hot stillness of an August afternoon just before the storm breaks.
Nearly nine years since he had last been in this room. The windows were still topped with gold silk valances, just as he remembered. The walls were still painted white, with the same gilded moldings and intricate plaster work. Blue and green tapestries hung on the walls and the same blue, gold, and claret Axminster carpet covered the floor. Tremore was a traditional man. He never changed anything. John felt the strange sensation that he had stepped back in time.
He turned to the tall, narrow windows that looked out over Grosvenor Square. He stared through the glass, down to the oval park below, watching the carriages roll along the street that curved around the soft grass and elm trees. Opulent carriages of the ton’s most prominent families, their occupants no doubt were on their way home from an afternoon of making calls. He knew it must be nigh on six o’clock.
His own landau, open to the fine spring afternoon, stood directly below, a carriage as luxurious as any that passed it. That had not always been the case. The last time he looked out of these windows, his carriage and his circumstances had been vastly different.
Standing here now, so many years later, he could still remember the man he’d been then, a man who had inherited not only his father’s title and estates, but his father’s enormous debts as well, a man showered with the duties of a peer and no means with which to fulfill them.
Before his father’s death, he had been like most young gentlemen of his acquaintance—feckless, foolish, and so bloody irresponsible. A man who spent every shilling of his allowance with no thought to where it came from, with no idea that the funds his father sent him were all on credit.
He rested his forehead on the window glass. That London season nine years ago, he’d still been reeling from the shock of discovering that being a peer had responsibilities, ones his parent had so shamelessly ignored. Creditors that needed to be reimbursed. Drains that needed repair to alleviate the typhoid outbreak among his tenants. Animals that had to be fed, crops that had to be planted, and servants who needed to be paid the months of back wages owed them. Looking at his tenants and his servants then, he had known they were taking his measure with cynical eyes, regarding him as not much of an improvement over the previous lord.
He would never forget the desperation in his guts, the desperation that came of having so many people looking at him, being so dependent upon him, when he could see no way to provide for them.
No way but one.
The sound of footsteps approaching caused him to turn away from the window, and he watched as Viola paused in the doorway of the drawing room. The sunlight from the windows shimmered across her upswept hair and her face, crystallizing in his mind more memories of that spring so long ago.
Nine years, yet it might have been yesterday when he had last come calling here. The queer feeling of having stepped back in time grew stronger, for Viola looked as golden and lovely standing in that doorway now as she had then. No wonder she’d had suitors lined up outside her door that season. Time had left only one perceivable difference in her countenance. The face of the girl in the doorway had always lit up like a candle at the sight of him. The face of the woman never did. His fault and hers, he thought.
She entered the room and turned to her brother. “Anthony, I would like to speak with Hammond alone if I may.”
“Certainly.” Without a glance at John, the duke strode out of the drawing room, and Viola closed the doors behind him.
She did not waste time on preliminaries or polite conversation. “I am not going with you.”
The fight, it seemed, was on. “Good thing for me I outweigh you by at least seven stone, then,” he answered pleasantly.
“Is it your intent to carry me out of here?” Scorn came into her face, not surprising since scorn and contempt were the only things she felt about him these days. “Would you really do something so barbaric?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“How like a man to use brute force when all other methods fail.”
“It does come in handy from time to time,” he agreed.
“Anthony would never let you take me against my will.”
“Possibly, but if he opposes me, I will petition the House of Lords for your return to my household, and Tremore will have no choice but to hand you over to me. No doubt he has already told you this.”
She did not confirm or deny his conclusion. “I could petition the House myself. For a divorce.”
“You have no grounds, and after a horrible scandal that would forever ruin you in society, and cast shame on your brother’s family as well, you would lose. The only grounds for divorce a woman has are consanguinity and impotence, neither of which are relevant here. We are not related in any way, and as for the other, no one would believe it.”
“Not given your reputation!” She made a sound of disgust. “How unfair that if I had lovers, you could claim adultery to divorce me, yet your
adultery is well-known and I can use no such grounds.”
“You know as well as I the reason why that is so. A man has to know his heir is his own. Women do not have that particular uncertainty.”
“Then perhaps I should be like you and have affairs.” She lifted her chin, her pose coldly defiant, the queen being led to the Tower. “Would you divorce me if I took a lover?”
That, he could not even pretend to find amusing. His eyes narrowed and he moved toward her. “Don’t try it, Viola.”
One elegant eyebrow lifted. “Worried, Hammond?”
“The censure heaped on you for taking a lover without having first produced an heir would be unbearable for you.”
“I am already criticized for not producing an heir. I might find it worthwhile to endure a bit more of it.”
“‘Hell hath no fury,’” he shot back, stung. “Is that it?”
“‘Like a woman scorned,’” she finished the quote. “At least you admit that much culpability.” She stepped around him and walked away as if she could no longer bear having him so close to her.
“And a man scorned?” He turned. “What of that, Viola?”
She stopped halfway across the drawing room, and he watched her square her shoulders. She turned her head, and in her profile was all the considerable feminine pride she possessed. He could see it in the tilt of her chin and the determined set of her jaw. He knew there was no way she would ever admit that it was she who had turned away first, she who had given up first, she who had said the first bitter words leading them down this road.
Even as those thoughts ran through his mind, even as he felt a sense of righteous anger surging within him, he knew none of that mattered now. He didn’t need to be right, he just needed a truce, one long enough to have a son.
He moved to stand behind her, and he put his hands on her arms. She jumped at the contact, but he tightened his grip to keep her from moving away from him again. Through the moss green silk of her dress, she felt like stone under his fingers. “Divorce is not an option, Viola,” he said as gently as he could, “so it serves no purpose to wish for it. Besides, I would not dream of putting us through that. I know you would not, either.”
“You seem very certain of what I would and would not do.”
“In this case, I am certain. Your love for your brother is stronger than your acrimony toward me. You would never bring that sort of shame down upon him or his wife and son.”
“I could still petition for legal separation. After all, we have already been separated for years. It would be nothing more than a formality.”
She was running out of ideas. He could hear desperation creeping into her voice. “I will never consent to such a separation, and without my consent, there it not a chance of it happening. Nearly every peer in the House of Lords is a married man who has no intention of giving his own wife a legal precedent on which to do the same to him.”
“Men!” She jerked free and turned to face him. “You have complete control over our lives because of laws you make, including the law that says only men can make the laws! How convenient life is for your sex.”
“Well, yes,” he agreed. “We men do like things our way.”
“Anthony is in the House, and he is very powerful. He would fight for me.”
“Even the Duke of Tremore is not powerful enough to change marital law. No doubt he would go through hell and back if you asked him to do so, but in the end he would still be forced to turn you over to me. You are my wife.”
She took several steps back. “I could run away. Go to the Continent.”
“Hide?” That surprised him. It also concerned him. It was a possibility that had a remote chance of working. Tremore could keep her in funds wherever she decided to go, and he would have to run all over the world chasing her down. If she could succeed at that tactic long enough, she could put herself past the ability to have children, and he would never have a legitimate heir to supplant Bertram.
He knew he could not afford to give her an inkling of his worry at this moment. As impulsive and strong-minded as his wife could be, if he showed any sign of concern over her threat, she’d be off to France within an hour. “I would always find you,” he said with far more assurance than he felt, “and if I may say so, hiding is a course of action very unlike you. I never thought you could be a coward, Viola.”
That hit a nerve, and she scowled at him. “Having the English Channel between us is a notion I find quite appealing.”
“It would be a lonely life for you. To evade me, you would have to conceal yourself in some remote place, change your name, hide your identity. You would have no company. Knowing your love of society, it would kill you by inches to be so isolated, to be without your friends. And never to see Anthony and Daphne again? You could not bear it.”
Her shoulders slumped a bit at his words, and when she spoke again, he knew she would not be running off to Europe. “I am surrounded by impossibilities,” she whispered, and all of a sudden, she looked so forlorn and lost that if he had not been unjustly judged as a brute and a cad and the entire reason for her present state of misery, he might have felt sorry for her.
“You are making this situation far more difficult that it needs to be,” he said.
“Really?” she countered, anger flaring again. “So you expect me to make it easy? I should just lie back passively and do my duty by my lord and master as other wives do?”
He gave a shout of laughter. “You? I might just as well wish for lightning to strike me dead. The odds are better.” He could tell from her outraged expression that she did not share his amusement about that, and he stifled it. “First, since you were never passive when making love, I can’t imagine why you would start now. Second, I would like to think you would not only appreciate the necessity of creating an heir, but also remember the pleasure of it.”
His words made her blush. Eight years had not destroyed all her memories of their marriage bed, it seemed. John chose to see that as a good sign. “This situation will be as easy or as difficult for you as you choose to make it.”
“And if I choose to make it difficult?” she countered. She stiffened and looked at him. Behind the soft, mossy, green-brown of her eyes, he saw something else, the unmistakable glint of Tremore steel. It was a look he knew well. “If I refuse to do my wifely duty? What are you going to do, Hammond? Drag me to bed? Throw me down and force me?”
Of all the women in the world, he had married the most stubborn one of all. “I have never forced a woman in my life,” he answered, “and you should know that better than anyone. Many a time, I could have beaten down the door you locked between us.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Damned if I know. Perhaps it was that habit you got into of bursting into tears when I touched you.”
“Finding out my husband lied to me and deceived me was a good enough reason to weep, I think!”
“Or,” he went on as if she had not spoken, “perhaps it was because you started throwing accusations in my face when I tried to kiss you. Or because your fists started hammering me when I tried to take you in my arms. Forgive me, but being made to feel like a cur for touching my own wife took all the pleasure out of it for me.”
“You never loved me. How do you think it made me feel when I found that out?”
Christ, have mercy. Were they going to talk about feelings again? He’d lose that battle for certain. He always did. He folded his arms and said nothing.
“How do you think I felt when I learned you’d been keeping a mistress before our marriage? The whole time you were courting me, whenever you kissed me or touched me or told me you loved me…” Her voice trailed off, choked by her rage. Her hands balled into fists. “Right up until our wedding day, you were bedding Elsie Gallant. Even after we were married you—”
“Not after we were married, Viola. Not after!” He’d already explained that whole mess about the necklace and paying off Elsie’s contract. More than once. He wasn’t going to do it ag
ain. He gritted his teeth.
“Five mistresses since then, Hammond, and God knows how many other women that I know nothing about.”
He would not justify his affairs after being turned out of her bed. A man never had to justify something like that. “Been paying attention, have you?”
“It is hard not to do so when the society papers and the gossipmongers tell me all about them in lurid detail. I had to sit across from Lady Darwin and take tea and pretend to be polite, knowing all the while you were between her sheets. When Lady Pomeroy was your lover, I had to endure her smirking smiles of triumph and her veiled innuendoes of your lovemaking prowess at card parties.”
“Viola—”
“I had to listen to people at the theater rave about what a lovely creature Jane Morrow was,” she interrupted, her voice cold, her hands balling into fists at her sides, “and how her lack of acting talent didn’t matter because she was such a stunning beauty and charming hostess. I heard the compliments at musical recitals about what a lovely singer Maria Allen is, and the bawdy asides of how prettily she sang in your bed until her husband shot you for it! Good for him, I say! And Emma Rawlins is the woman of this season, the one whose beauty and talents and lovemaking prowess I have had to hear about.”
“I am not with Emma Rawlins, and have not been with her for three months. Your recount of the gossip is a bit behind the times.”
“You care nothing for the humiliation I have endured at your hands.”
“I took my pleasure where I could find it after you turned me away,” he shot back, hating the way she made him into a villain for fulfilling masculine needs that were natural and just when she had been unwilling to do so. “For God’s sake, I’m a man, Viola! What did you expect me to do? Come to your bedside and beg? Become a monk for eight years? Wear a hair shirt and flog myself daily because I did what I had to do?”
Guilty Series Page 60
