by Darcy Burke
She approached the warden. “I need to see my husband.”
The man grunted and looked her over. “Ten minutes,” he said, turning the key in the lock. “Keep your skirt down.”
She had no time to for a scathing reproof. Too, insulting as he’d meant it, she would gladly make love to Constantine if he asked. She didn’t imagine him asking. Even with his back to her when he’d stood at the bar, she’d recognized his anger and disappointment. Not just his—all of the Alexanders had hated her.
She would never forgive herself for subjecting them to public humiliation. Or for keeping a piece of vital information from them.
As for Con… If she were in his place, forgiveness would not be easy. Or, perhaps, possible.
A sob caught in her throat.
No. She couldn’t crumble, as she’d done so many times before. She’d let her father bar her from her family. She’d let Captain Moore leave her. She’d let Nicholas cast her out. She couldn’t keep giving up. Con was her husband.
She’d never give up.
She entered the bail dock. Three men besides Con awaited their fate here. They regarded her with glazed, fearful expressions. The same look she’d seen on Con’s face when he’d entered the courtroom.
He sat on a bench with his elbows braced on the table, his hands clasped and pressed to his forehead. Her heart went out to him. She’d done this. She took a step in his direction.
He looked up, and the venom in his eyes made her recoil.
“Guilt doesn’t become you, Elizabeth.” He rested his hands on the tabletop. He didn’t move to rise. As if he preferred having the table between them. She was almost afraid of him, and the hateful way he looked at her. “How long did you know?”
She didn’t want to admit how long she’d deceived him, yet he deserved to have the truth even if she couldn’t go back and do things differently. She hugged herself. “A week.” She hated the fact that she was guilty. She had no defense for her decision, aside from her terror he’d leave her. A conviction that now felt ridiculous in light of everything he’d done for her.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice broke as she choked back a sob. If only she’d known how it would all turn out, she would never have kept the letter from him.
The crease between his brows deepened. His blue eyes looked at her with incredulity. “I do hope you have more to say than that.”
She went to the table and seated herself across from him. The wooden slats smelled of mold and a rent sounded at her hem, but she hardly noticed. She reached and placed her hands over her husband’s. He yanked his hands back, then folded his arms across his chest. “Well?” he demanded. “What have you to say?”
She swallowed. How to explain when she had no excuse? None that withstood the test of time. “I meant to tell you,” she said feebly. “I planned to tell you, after you proposed. I wasn’t keeping it from you on purpose—” She pressed her lips together lest she lie to him again. “I did keep it from you. I felt I had to. I didn’t know you were going to propose. You’d just been arrested on my account. I thought you’d surely leave, and we’d never see you again, and I’d lose my baby and you both, all at the same time…” She bent her face into her hands because she couldn’t stand the stony expression on his face. “I couldn’t lose either of you. Not again.”
She took several deep breaths. Then she wiped her eyes and looked up. Con gave no appearance of softening toward her. He said nothing, silently seething, and watching her with those hard blue eyes. “You didn’t trust me.”
“How could I?” Her voice broke at the hurt that flashed across his face. “I should have. I should have. I didn’t know you would propose. How could I think you would? I’ve given you no reason to believe I’d bring you anything but trouble.”
He offered her no comfort. She didn’t deserve any. She was the worst possible wife, one who deceived her husband. Not at all the partner she wanted to be. Her shame caused her to ramble, as if the reasons tumbling from her could ever explain how frightened she’d been, or how wrong she felt now. “I didn’t think you’d want to marry me. I didn’t think you’d stay. But when you did, I wanted to tell you. So that—this—wouldn’t happen. Then you were set upon, and Lord Bart told me not to upset you—”
“He knew?” The words ripped from Con. Anguish darkened his eyes.
“No! No, he just warned me to be good to you.” Even that sounded foolish to her ears. She tried again, realizing too late what Lord Bart had meant for her to do. “It was my own perverseness that confused what he meant. I thought he wanted me to keep you from any notion of my perfidious nature, but in retrospect it was a warning. He and Montborne…” She looked at Con. “They have a sense of who I was. If I’d done anything to wrong you, he wanted me to tell you so we could start anew, with no deceit between us. I should have. I’m not that person anymore, Constantine. I love you. I would never want to hurt you.”
He looked away.
She glanced around the holding area and saw nothing but gray stone and the despondent faces of the other prisoners. She turned back to Con, redoubling her efforts to convince him of her earnestness. “Even if Montborne had come into a fortune a week ago, he wouldn’t have wanted to give Lord Darius a shilling. You would still have been set upon. We would still be facing this trial, because my father has been ruthless in proving to me just how little he cares for me. If I’d have told you about the letter, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
He slammed his fist on the table. His eyes were cold steel. “It would have changed me.”
The guard entered the bail dock. “Time.”
She looked back to her husband. Her empty fingers scrabbled at the rotted boards. She wouldn’t see him again for months. They couldn’t end things like this. She wasn’t even sure what this was. “I regret what I did. Constantine, look at me. I wanted to trust you, but I was scared. I would give anything to make it right. But I don’t regret our marriage. I can’t.” She reached toward him. Her fingers curled around air. “I love you. You are the only man I know who would have done what you just did.”
“Stupidity,” he ground out. His gaze stayed on her. He watched her hungrily, even as his body and his words kept her at arm’s length.
“Bravery. Kindness. You,” she stretched her hand toward him again, “you have become everything to me. Without you, I have nothing.”
He glared at her. “I wish you would have thought of that before you decided to turn my life into your own personal drama. We’re through, Elizabeth. I cannot be married to a woman who would so thoroughly use me for her own gain.”
Her stomach fell to the floor. She leaned forward, doubled over both by her belly cramping and by reaching for him at the same time. He couldn’t be serious. He was just angry—
“Our marriage is a lie.” He looked with disgust at her hand straining toward him. “It’s built on a lie. Any feelings you claim to have for me are a lie.”
She couldn’t help but cling to a thread of hope. He didn’t say his feelings for her were a lie.
“Time,” the guard said again, more forcefully. He tapped the glass face of his pocket watch for emphasis.
“Go home,” Constantine said. “There is nothing more you can do for me here.”
Elizabeth stared at him tearfully. Go home? Without her husband, or her son? To what end?
Con rose. Without a backward glance, he crossed the bail dock and sat down at a different table, his back to her. There was truly nothing more she could do here without distancing him even further.
How would she live with herself now?
Chapter Twenty-Four
ELIZABETH VOWED NOT TO GIVE UP, as she’d done with so many impossible-seeming situations before this one. Cutting her losses and walking away, pretending she wasn’t affected, wasn’t possible. Con was her husband, and she’d ruined him. She wouldn’t rest until she found a way to make it right.
She prayed she could make it right.
For two days, she haunted Lord Bart�
�s offices across from the Old Bailey. He refused to see her. Just as she’d feared when she’d chosen not to tell him about the quarry…though she’d never know now if he’d have been more sympathetic to her plight had she confessed before he was ambushed with the information in front of his peers.
She waited outside of his door in a heavy mantle. She was getting adept at skulking about on stoops and knew just how long she could linger before the constable came and chased her away. Finally, Lord Bart stepped from his offices. As with the other times, he looked down his long, patrician nose at her and stalked past without saying a word.
She grabbed his sleeve. “Wait! Please. There must be a way—”
He stilled and looked over his shoulder at her without yanking his arm back. “Why? Why does there have to be? Because your conscience tells you so?”
“Yes.” Her voice, weak and broken, was still strong enough to give him pause.
She dropped her hand from his sleeve, confident he’d talk to her, at least for a time. “Prisoners can be pardoned, can’t they? There’s such a thing as clemency. We could have his sentence commuted, or…” She searched his face for any spark of hope.
He turned toward her. His dark head cocked slightly to one side and his chin tilted down so that he regarded her with handsome incredulity. “Do you think I haven’t considered that? Of course Montborne—and Tony, I might add—have seen the Regent. Do you think His Royal Highness gives a tinker’s damn if another rotten Alexander has got himself tossed in the clink?”
She flinched at his vehemence. “They must try again.”
Lord Bart straightened his shoulders and made to walk away. She darted in front of him. The exasperated look he cast her would have made her laugh, weeks ago. But there was nothing funny about their antagonizing each other this afternoon.
“I’ll try,” she said boldly.
He shook his head, again seeming unable to believe her gall. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
She wished she were being silly. She wasn’t proud of her past, not anymore, but she’d use it to her advantage if she could. “He may remember me.”
Lord Bart’s eyebrow arched. “How will that look in the papers, do you think? Pardoning one of his whore’s husbands? Forgive me the epithet, but that’s what will be said. Even Prinny wouldn’t be so reckless with his reputation.”
Who else could they turn to?
“We need someone who has his ear, then,” she mused aloud. She stepped deftly to the right when Lord Bart made to go around her from that direction. “I must know a few men who fit that description.”
“But will they be willing to save your husband’s hide?” Lord Bart moved toward her left.
She blocked him again. “The trouble is, men who would help me are likely at their hunting boxes. It could take another month to locate one, bring him back to London and secure an audience with the Regent. We need a person who is already here and barely requires permission to approach the throne.”
Lord Bart gave her a long, considering look. “You mean a man like your father?”
***
Elizabeth’s father might not need much in the way of an invitation to see Prinny, but he’d made it very clear to her that she required an invitation to see him. With shaking hands she penned a note and sent it by way of a footman, along with instructions for the lad to wait for a reply.
In the interim, she walked the few blocks to Nicholas’s house. Her mantle kept her warm. In her hands she carried a basket filled with needles, threads, a round pillow, and two small hoops stretched with cloth. She’d never been much for embroidery as a girl, but she must have something to do while she sat in silent petition for the right to see her child.
She used the knocker to alert the household of her presence, as she’d done now for days. No one bothered to open the door. She pulled the pillow from her basket and set it on the topmost step, then turned and sat upon it. The wrenching sound of a baby’s cry muffled through the closed window. It tore at her until a teardrop wrenched from her eye. She both hated the reminder of Oliver and relished it at the same time. Here, she could still hear him, even if she couldn’t be with him.
Two hours later, she gathered her half-finished embroidery and tucked the pillow back into her basket, then rapped on the door twice and returned to her house. She would have stayed longer, but for her father’s response. She hoped he’d given it.
The instant her foot crossed her threshold, her footman ran up. “His lordship said you should come, madam,” Tom told her. “I would have come to tell you earlier but Mr. Rand said we’d cross paths and I was to stay here.”
She handed Tom her basket without a word, then immediately turned about and walked back into the street. She remembered her father’s address. It was a number burned into her brain like the quantity of her lovers or the price of her first dalliance.
Mayfair. A much longer walk than the distance to Nicholas’s house, but she’d expire of impatience before the carriage could be brought around. In the city, too, a carriage could be more of a hindrance than a help.
Her parents’ brick façade mansion took up half a block. She’d forgotten its massiveness. The ugly gargoyles serving as sentries on the gutters didn’t discompose her as they used to. She moved beneath them without pausing, determined to see her father without delay.
A butler she didn’t recognize led her from the entranceway to a small parlor directly off of the library. She hoped Mr. Victors had been pensioned off, and wasn’t kicking his heels on the other side of the Pearly Gates, instead. She tried not to notice the other changes here and there: a chair turned at the wrong angle, the new, puce paper covering her mother’s sitting room walls.
“Thank you,” she said as she entered the little room where she and her sisters used to pretend to be great ladies serving tea to valiant knights.
The butler nodded before exiting.
Her father entered the room. “Demanding to see me, and in my own house, no less. You’d better have a good reason for this.”
“I thought because you agreed, you approved.” She closed her eyes briefly. Being smart with Wyndham wasn’t going to help.
His white side-whiskers quivered with indignation. “You need to think less and mind convention more. Now, what is it? Your mother will be back from her shopping soon and I won’t have you here when she arrives.”
Elizabeth drew a deep breath. She’d have liked to have talked to her father more, but… She ought to know better. “It’s about Lord Constantine. But before I explain, I need to apologize. I was a thoughtless, headstrong girl. I see now how close my actions came to ruining our family. I—”
“Hold your tongue. I won’t be won over by sweet words said far too late. You’re here for your husband. Say that, then, for I don’t have time for nonsense.”
She stared at him in mute hurt. Her fists clenched. She jammed them under opposite arms, hugging herself, then realized she must look defensive. She dropped her hands to her sides, then changed her mind and made a jabbing, pointing motion with her finger toward her chest. “I am a lady. I won’t be addressed like a spoiled child.” She took a step toward him. She arched her finger to point it at him. “And you won’t turn your back on me again. I love you. I love Mother and Sarah and Ellen and Oliver.”
She drew a breath, savoring the look of astonishment on his face. Then she plunged ahead. “I know which one of us ran away. Me. You did your level best to keep my horrendous actions from ruining the rest of our family. I see that now. And I know exactly how I fared. Poorly. All the money and fame in the world cannot bring back my lost innocence. But I’m no longer that selfish, scared little girl who trusted the wrong men all of her life. I can imagine the unrelenting pain I must have caused you and Mother when I left. I see now that Sarah and Ellen were lucky to escape the scandal with their reputations intact. I know what it means to be a parent, because I have a child of my own. I’m deeply aware of the catastrophic mistake I made then because every day, I live with the reper
cussions. I lost all of you. Yes, you lost me, but the difference is that you weren’t worth losing, while I…was.”
She raised her hands in supplication. “I’ve learned. Twenty times over, I’ve learned. I have a husband now, and a son. You took both from me. Please. Leave me with something.” She took a step forward, reaching her hands halfway toward him. “Don’t take away everything I have.”
He stepped forward then, faster than she could stop him, and leaned toward her so that his face was mere inches from hers. “I told you not to waste your breath. I won’t waste mine. Get the hell out of my house.” With that, he whipped away from her so fast, a cool breeze blew in his wake. He stopped in the doorframe. “And Elizabeth? Never, ever try to use my grandson against me again.”
***
Two days of freedom did nothing, in Con’s mind, to erase a month of stench from his person. It permeated him. No matter how often he traded his coat for a clean one or how hard he scrubbed at his newly shorn hair with lemon soap, everywhere he went, that putrid stink clung to him.
Then there were the night terrors.
And the ravenous hunger.
The retching whenever he thought of his cell.
He’d lived through his sentence, the part that hadn’t been commuted. He still didn’t fully understand why he’d been set free.
Why had the man who’d ruthlessly seen him into the clink helped him to get out?
Con did know it was Elizabeth’s doing. Bart had told him the story of how she’d thrown herself on her father’s mercy and begged the earl to request Con’s offense be pardoned. But Con would have sworn her father hadn’t the heart.
And yet, he was standing proof that Lord Wyndham did have it in him to pardon. Whether he’d pardoned Con’s crime or Elizabeth’s, Con might never know. But the fact was, the earl had intervened enough that Con had been commuted. He ought to be overjoyed—he was. And yet, his sentence wasn’t over. The hulks wouldn’t let him be. Their ghosts followed him everywhere, even to Merritt House, until he went near mad hearing their creaking, groaning boards, and the constant shuffle of men unable to get comfortable.
