Francesca scratched her brow. “What did you do to the Duke of Ravenscourt?”
A laugh burst from her lips and she managed her first real smile. God love Francesca Cornworthy in her optimism and unaffectedness.
Gillian laid her hand on the other lady’s. “I believe she means because His Grace did not approve of her.”
“Why—?”
“The scandal,” her younger sister supplied.
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
Of course. The scandal that had sent her from London and saw her returned as the shamed, whispered about lady. It had also found her married to Cedric for it. Her stomach twisted as a sharp pain stuck at her. God help her for being a fool. Even with everything that had come to pass, she loved her husband still.
“If I may?” Francesca ventured, clearing her throat. “By your own admission, you married the marquess for matters of convenience.”
Yes, but it was different.
“Why is it different?” her friend persisted.
She started not realizing she spoke aloud. “It matters because I love him. It matters because, even as I agreed to marry him for a mutually beneficial arrangement, I cared for him then.” And I love him now.
Gillian pushed to her feet. “Isn’t it possible,” she began softly, coming over. “Isn’t it possible that His Lordship mayhap entered into your marriage feeling much the same way and that he, too, has come to love you?”
…I care about you…
Not love. It had never been about love with Cedric. Not on his end.
Even if they moved on from Lord Montfort’s party, it was what had transpired after that made their union impossible. “There are too many insurmountable challenges between us,” she said tiredly. The greatest being the child nestled in her womb. Another agonizing pain struck low in her belly. For that was just another detail about her husband she could never share with her sister or Francesca. Somehow, breathing the words about his antipathy for children would make that truth more real in ways that would shatter her. She shifted as another twinge pulled at her back.
“What is it?” her sister asked, concern underscoring those three words.
Genevieve opened her mouth, when a cramping low in her belly robbed her of breath. She shot a hand out, finding the mantel. What is wrong with me?
A slight gush between her legs wrung a gasp from her and she swayed, dimly registering her sister’s cry as Gillian caught her about the waist. She heard Francesca’s frantic calls for help. Another spasm wracked her middle as agony plucked at the corner of her consciousness. Gillian guided her down to the floor.
“Something is wrong,” Genevieve managed to rasp. Noting the footsteps of rushing servants and her sister’s frantic cries, she remembered nothing more.
Cedric had done any number of rotten, vile things in the course of his life. Never had a word uttered or a deed committed given him so much as a fleeting afterthought.
Seated at the back table of his club, with a half-empty bottle of brandy before him, he found with no little amount of shock that he was capable of—guilt and pain and every other bloody emotion he’d believed himself immune to. A pressure tightened his chest and, in a bid to dissipate it, he took a long swallow of his drink. Alas, the dulling power of the spirits had long ceased to have any effect.
…I do not want to be part of your life, Cedric. I do not wish to be part of any of your world…
She didn’t want him in her life. And why should she? He stared into his drink. He’d proven himself unworthy of her time and time again. He’d married her for the worst of reasons and last night, he’d inadvertently pulled her into the ugly world he’d dwelled in; a world she had no part in. She was goodness and purity. And after last night, with the revulsion and horror in her eyes, he’d instantly shattered whatever fragile happiness they’d built between them.
…I love you…
She loved him. His gut clenched. Or she had. That gift he had no right to.
Aside from heartache and pain, what had he to offer her? Nothing. It was why he was his father’s son. He was undeserving of love and incapable of giving it. Wasn’t last night proof of that? The memory of her trickled in as she’d stood at the center of that ballroom, with an innocent smile on her generous lips. And the moment that innocence had died. At his hands. A groan lodged in his throat and he rubbed at the dull ache in his chest. To no avail. It continued to throb. Just as it had since Genevieve had walked away from him last night.
Following her retreat, he’d sat in the silence of his office contemplating the man he was. He’d been a rake, a rogue, and a shiftless bounder. He’d wagered too many good funds and fleeced other gentlemen out of theirs. Through all those years of inanity, he’d sought to lose himself in a mindless existence that prevented him from accepting the truth before him—his life was an empty one. He ran a tired hand over his face. She deserved more than Cedric Falcot, worthless Marquess of St. Albans. And yet, stuck with him, she was.
God help him for being a selfish, grasping, self-centered bastard. Even with her hating him as she did, he wanted her anyway. Throughout his life, he’d disavowed marriage. So when threatened by his father, Cedric could have easily found an equally ruthless, heartless lady who’d be Cedric’s perfect match in every way.
He went still.
Yet, he hadn’t. He’d wanted Genevieve. Nay, needed her. Even as he’d convinced himself the offer he made was one born of necessity for the both of them, now, with only his miserable self for company, he at last accepted the lie he’d perpetuated against himself. Against the both of them—he’d wanted her. He wanted her in every way. Not because he required a wife. Not because he wished for an empty marriage where he was free to carry on with countless whores and widows.
He wanted her because she’d reminded him what it meant to smile; not the practiced, false grin she’d easily seen through the day he’d offered her marriage, but rather, a smile borne of happiness. He wanted her because she celebrated his love of art and did not mock him for that interest as his father and friend had. When the world, when his own family, had seen nothing but the self-centered, worthless rake, Genevieve had seen more. Seen more, when he’d never been deserving of her faith.
His throat worked spasmodically. Then, in one faulty, unforgiving misstep on his part, he’d destroyed all of that. Her innocence. Her smile. And more, any hope of happiness between them. A cold emptiness filled him. To drive away the coldness, he tossed back the remaining contents of his glass and glanced across the club.
His gaze automatically narrowed at the familiar figure cutting a path through the club—a man he’d called friend. Odd, he’d known the Earl of Montfort for almost twenty years and Genevieve for less than three months, and she had been more a friend to him than the faithless bastard striding over to him now.
“St. Albans, my good man. How are you?” the earl asked with boisterous cheer as he swiped the bottle of brandy and motioned for a servant.
Cedric studied the other man’s lazy movements; the way he poured himself a snifter full and then searched around for an available whore. Montfort caught the eye of one woman and the young beauty sauntered to their table. “How much?” Cedric asked quietly.
The earl blinked several times.
“How many silver pieces does it take to betray one’s friend?”
The beauty he’d previously summoned stopped before the table. “Not now, love,” Montfort murmured, his gaze still locked with Cedric’s.
Fury thrumming through him, Cedric concentrated on the safe, hollow sentiment, for it prevented him from thinking about the only person who truly mattered. The only woman who’d ever meant anything to him. “You bastard,” he seethed.
Montfort rolled his shoulders.
Cedric curled his fingers into hard fists to keep from bloodying the other man senseless. How had he ever called him friend? “Nothing to say?” he asked coolly when the other man remained silent.
“I gather you’re speaking about my involve
ment with your father?” With an infuriating calm, Montfort shrugged. “I didn’t do anything different than what you yourself would have done had you been in my shoes.”
Cedric surged forward, rattling the glasses on the table. “I called you my friend,” he bit out. Other gentlemen peered over in curiosity and he lowered his voice to a furious whisper. “I confided in you things I shared with no one. And knowing all of that, about the man I hate, you betrayed me, anyway?”
The earl tightened his mouth. “Oh, how difficult it must be for you,” he spat. He swiped his hand in Cedric’s direction. “You speak as though your life has been a rotten one. Why? Because you had a nasty father?” He leaned forward shrinking the space between them. “We all have miserable fathers. Children serve but one purpose. To advance our lines. Yet, you,” he peeled his lip back in a mocking sneer, “you act as though your father is somehow different. Hate him all you want.” He lifted his glass in salute. “But the man has built a fortune you’ll one day inherit, whereas men such as me are left in near dun territory because of my sire’s recklessness.”
Cedric sat unmoving, staring across the table to the man he’d called friend. How had he failed to see the ruthlessness in him? He’d long considered himself cut of the same proverbial cloth as the Montforts of the world and yet… “I do not even know you,” he said to himself, puzzling through a twenty-year friendship in the midst of one of the most scandalous clubs in London. “You knew about my fears and the goals I had and it mattered not at all. All you cared about was the coin dangled before you.”
“Oh, come,” the earl scoffed. “With your indignation and holier than thou attitude, you of all people would take me to task? You?” He placed a mocking emphasis that deepened Cedric’s frown. “You can hate me all you want and act the offended party for me having placed my own needs before yours.” Montfort jerked his chin in Cedric’s direction. “But you are the same as me.”
“I am nothing like you.” The denial sprung easily to his lips. “I would have never put my interests before yours.”
“No.” Montfort propped his elbows on the smooth surface of the table. “You’d only put yourself and your happiness before that of your wife.”
The air left him on a slow hiss and he opened his mouth wanting to refute those mocking words. To lash out with the truth that he was nothing like the Earl of Montfort or the Duke of Ravenscourt. And yet… His throat constricted so that it was painful to draw breath. Genevieve was proof that he’d always placed his needs and desires before anyone else’s.
“You see that I am correct,” Montfort observed. The too-casual earl picked up his glass and reclined in his seat. “You thought about your need for coin and saw the Farendale chit as the easiest way to fill your coffers while maintaining your dissolute lifestyle.” With every word uttered in truth, the blade of guilt twisted all the deeper. Montfort flicked his hand. “There is nothing wrong with that decision. Nor is there anything wrong with the lifestyle you live.” There had been everything wrong with it. Too many errors to now count. Too many sins he could not undo. Genevieve’s once smiling visage flashed to mind and pain wracked his heart. “You merely did what any gentleman would do.” Montfort held his gaze. “Just as I did. But allow me to buy you a drink and the comforts of a beautiful whore to make up for the ill-will.”
Bile singed the back of his throat. Cedric was everything like this man…and yet, at the same time, nothing. A commotion sounded at the front of the club, momentarily distracting, and he glanced past Montfort’s shoulder just as a servant pushed through the two men who stood as sentinels at the front of the club. A liveried servant. He furrowed his brow. His liveried servant.
What…?
The man, gasping and out of breath, skidded to a stop before his table with the hulking brutes racing after him. “My lord,” he said, panting from his exertions. He held out a note. “It is Her Ladyship.”
He cocked his head, not making sense of the words. “Her Ladyship?” he repeated dumbly. Unable to process. Not wanting to process. The world hung suspended in an unending moment of humming silence and then it resumed in a whir of noise. He ripped the sheet from the man’s hands and skimmed the words. His heart stopped.
“St. Albans?”
Montfort forgotten, Cedric surged to his feet so quickly his seat toppled over with a loud thwack. He sprinted from his club.
Heart pounding a frantic beat, Cedric raced outside, searching for the youth whom he’d turned his mount over to. Finding the boy, he rushed across the street, dodging past a quick moving phaeton. He concentrated on his every movement or else he’d descend into a level of madness that he’d never be able to climb back from.
Her Ladyship is unwell.
His pulse beat loudly in his ears, muting sound. The handful of lines that said everything and nothing. Throwing a purse at the lad, Cedric swung his leg over his mount and kicked it forward into a breakneck speed that earned him furious stares and shouts.
He nudged Wicked ahead faster.
Why had he gone out?
Because she had no wish to see me. Because I was too much a coward to remain in the same townhouse with her and be reminded of the weight of my sins.
Terror licked at his senses as his ride stretched into forever. At last, his townhouse came into focus and he urged Wicked onward past other lords setting out in their carriages. He jerked on the reins and his mount reared, pawing at the air with his hooves. Cedric swiftly dismounted and a servant waiting outside hurried to collect the reins.
In wait, Avis pulled the door open.
“Her Ladyship,” he rasped as this moment unfolded in an eerily similar way of last night’s hell.
“Her ch-chambers, my lord.” He briefly noted the ashen hue and the tremble to the man’s words and it fueled his panic. “I summoned the doctor. He arrived a short while…” Letting those words to go unfinished, Cedric surged up the stairs, taking them three at a time.
He stumbled and then righted himself at the top landing and then tore down the hall. Sucking in ragged breaths from his constricted lungs, he staggered to a halt. Two ladies lie in wait outside his wife’s chambers. Tears stained the cheeks of his sister-in-law and terror anew licked at his every sense.
“Oh, Cedric,” Gillian whispered as he rushed over. She placed herself between him and the oak panel. “She is not well.” His heart lurched and he sought words. “I’ve summoned my mother.”
Incapable of words, he made to step around her just as a maid came out.
His stomach revolted at the bloodied rags she carried. The young woman averted her gaze. “You should not go in there, my lord.”
In a daze, Cedric stepped past his sister-in-law and entered the room. He froze in the doorway. A dull buzzing filled his ears and an inky blackness played at the corner of his eyes. Genevieve lay at the center of the bed, moaning. He shot a hand out to steady himself. The old family doctor who’d long served the St. Albans family looked up and said something to a young woman at his side.
“You should not be in here, my lord,” Dr. Craven murmured, rushing over. The doctor took him by the arm and steered him away, but not before Cedric’s gaze snagged on the crimson towels.
Blood. So much of it. An agonized groan ripped from his throat. “Genevieve,” he roared. What had she done? What did I make her do?
“Come, my lord. It will not do Her Ladyship well to see you like this,” the physician said with the same firmness he’d used when he scolded Cedric as he’d cried over his broken nose as a boy of eight.
“My wife,” he managed to rasp as the doctor closed the door behind him. His wife’s two loyal sentinels retreated, allowing Cedric his privacy. He dragged a trembling hand through his hair as his world threatened to ratchet down about him. “Will she l—be all right?” There was no life without Genevieve in it; no life that was worth living.
The doctor removed a kerchief and mopped at his damp brow. “Your wife will live.”
He slid his eyes closed on a prayer.
“And you may rest assured, my lord, there will be others.”
Cedric opened his eyes and gave his head a shake. “Other what?” he demanded gruffly.
Surprise stamped the other man’s weathered face. “You did not know?”
“Know what?” The entreaty ripped from him.
“Her Ladyship was with child.”
Chapter 26
Genevieve was restricted to her bed, cared for by Dr. Craven, and suffering through the wrenching pain of her loss. An agony that defied the mere physical pain ripping at her insides, Genevieve found herself fixing on the ceiling to keep from going mad.
Except madness was a powerful thing. It licked at the corner of her mind, until all logic and reason disappeared under the cacophony of pain and despair. When insanity nearly dragged her under, she fought to stave it off.
It was then she’d first noticed the twelve cherubs in the mural above her bed. She’d come to notice one peculiar, particular detail each time. That particular number continued to surface.
From the doctor, to the maids, to her only two friends in the world, and even her mother, there were twelve people who’d alternated their presence over the course of the sennight.
It took Dr. Craven twelve steps to reach her bed and another twelve to march the same path out of her chambers.
There were twelve cherubs in the mural overhead.
And twelve letters in the name Cedric Falcot. Twelve more in Lord St. Albans.
And it had been twelve hours.
Twelve hours was all it had taken for her life to come apart.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 57
