Mistress by Marriage

by Maggie Robinson

  But if Caroline was innocent—oh, not innocent, she could never be that—but had not committed adultery then, he had no basis to divorce her. Their marriage had been consummated and he was certainly not impotent. He could have a hundred mistresses and Lady Justice would remove her blindfold to simply wink at him. It mattered only if a wife was unfaithful.

  Edward couldn’t go home. He stumbled past his street and hailed a passing cab. It was much too early for Will to be at his chambers, so he gave the driver Will’s home address and settled back into the dingy squabs. All his cautiously constructed plans for his future had just been razed. He was doomed to live in limbo until death claimed him. Feeling distinctly un-Christielike, he punched a fist into the seat, releasing a cloud of dust. What had Allie said just yesterday? All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. It was just happening for him sooner than he expected.

  He paid the driver and climbed the stairs to Will’s bachelor apartments. Sir William Maclean could have afforded a house anywhere in the city, but he was snug with his books and antiquities and comfortably looked after by a valet and a daily housekeeper. It was the immaculately turned-out valet, Arbuthnot, who opened the door to Edward’s noisy pounding.

  “Good morning, Lord Christie.”

  There was the faintest reproof in Arbuthnot’s voice. Edward knew he looked unkempt and felt worse. “Good morning to you, Arbuthnot. I apologize for this early call. Is your master up yet?”

  “He is taking his breakfast in the study. If you wait here, I shall see if Sir William will receive you.”

  Edward suppressed his frustration and cooled his heels in the foyer. A bust of Pericles sat on a round table, the statesman’s marble eyes fixed on a painting of ancient Athens hanging on the wall opposite. Will had been to Greece recently, and had brought back as much of the country as he could pack in crates with him.

  Arbuthnot returned. “If you will follow me, Lord Christie.”

  Edward needed no guide to navigate Will’s rooms. Everything was located off a dark narrow hallway. He had spent enough evenings there in the past five years, and plenty before that. Will had been a friend for ages, a pillar of strength when Alice died, a sympathetic ear when Edward thought Caroline had betrayed him. The barrister had been begging him for a while to end his marriage legally, as distasteful as divorce was to both of them.

  Arbuthnot paused before the open study door. “Shall I ask Mrs. Wallace to prepare you breakfast, Lord Christie? You look as though you might need some sustenance.”

  Eggs were insufficient for his current needs, but he nodded and went into the room. Large windows bathed the space in light, causing the gilt letters on hundreds of books to twinkle and the coffee service to blind Edward with its gleam. He blinked owlishly at his friend, who was still in his striped satin dressing gown crunching a muffin.

  “Bad night?” Will asked, once he had swallowed.

  Edward poured himself coffee in a spare cup. “The night was in fact excellent. It is the morning which is proving to be a challenge. How far along are you with the divorce proceedings?”

  Will wrinkled his substantial nose. “I met with that blackguard Rossiter yesterday. An hour with him and I was forced to leave my chambers early to come home to take a bath. He was peculiarly gentlemanly on the subject of your estranged wife, but I’m sure he’ll come round.”

  Edward took a sip of bitter coffee. It was only what he deserved. “What did he say?”

  “Not a great deal. That he had known her since she was a child. And when he said ‘known,’ Edward, there was no mistaking he meant in the Biblical sense. But that was all. He sat silent throughout the rest of my proposal. Played with his hair, for God’s sake. The man has more curls than all of Carracci’s cherubs. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was flirting with me.”

  “There have been those rumors,” Edward said, amused at the thought of his oldest friend’s discomfort. If Will had not chosen the law, he would have made a perfectly terrifying fire-and-brimstone clergyman. Life was largely black and white to Sir William Maclean. Either something was good or it was evil. Rossiter clearly fell into the latter category.

  Will shuddered. “I may be a confirmed bachelor, but not for that reason. Women are impossible to please in the long run—or perhaps I am. What’s all this about, Edward? You look like the dog’s dinner. Never say you’ve changed your mind about untangling yourself from that unsuitable woman. We’ve discussed it for five years.”

  “Yes, I know. But there’s been a hitch. I’ve come to believe Caroline may not have had an affair after all.”

  Will dropped his fork with an alarming clink. “Are you mad? You saw them yourself. Oh my God. You’ve been seeing her again, haven’t you? And not just on June fourteenth.” He rose and began to pace the study, his eggs and ham abandoned on his plate, his finger pointing as if Edward sat on a jury. “I have told you from the first to cease from celebrating that foolish anniversary—it does no one any good. Now she’s wormed her way back in. Don’t you see, Edward? You’ve allowed yourself to be manipulated! She’s an adventuress. Lord only knows what she was up to all that time in Cumbria. You know about her brother’s life. Those house parties. No, no, man, I can’t have you change your mind now! And there’s Garrett Marburn as well. Wake up! ”

  Edward felt a prickle of anger at Will’s bluntness. His friend spoke with absolute conviction, but he didn’t know Caroline. He had never liked her. Hadn’t wiped regret from her cheek. Hadn’t seen the slant of her shoulders and her defiant chin when she sent him away this morning.

  “You know as well as I do, she had nothing whatever to do with her brother’s business. That, at least, was one thing I investigated before I asked her to marry me. No one had ever laid eyes on her until the Huntingtons’ ball. All I’m saying is that we may have been mistaken about Rossiter, not that I’m going to resume my marriage. You’ve nothing to fear there. It’s quite hopeless.”

  Will stopped marching around and examined his embroidered slippers, the gift of some poor woman who had once hoped to become Lady Maclean by demonstrating her skill with a needle. Dragons done in the Chinese style looked particularly menacing on a foot Will’s size. “Forgive me, Edward. I’ve overstepped my bounds. It’s just that you are my oldest friend. I hate to see you the victim of deception. Is she denying they were ever intimate?”

  Edward’s jaw felt like a block of wood. It was more than difficult for him to have this conversation. “No. She did not go into detail, but it’s clear they had a relationship prior to our marriage. One of long standing, not just a quick fling. Something went on after to be sure—Rossiter was in my house for a reason. He might have been using the letters to exert influence over her. I knew—well, never mind. It’s to my shame I put up with her as long as I did. Things were wrong from the start.”

  After a discreet tap, Arbuthnot entered with a plate for Edward, then left, closing the door behind him. Edward wondered just how much the valet had overheard, but it was far too late to salvage his dignity. Will settled back down in the chair and fixed an eye on the steam rising from the heap of scrambled eggs and fresh gammon steak. “I say, my food’s gone quite cold. You don’t mind sharing, do you? Mrs. Wallace must think you’re still a growing boy.”

  Edward passed the plate across the table. “I haven’t any appetite anyway. Sorry to have disrupted your morning routine.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll bill you for it.” He grinned and sliced into the meat. “Rossiter can still be useful to us, I’m sure, if we want him to be. What about Marburn?”

  Edward shook his head. “She says not.”

  “Edward, why are you suddenly so convinced of her virtue?”

  “I don’t know.” By mutual agreement, he and Caroline had never discussed the details of the day he found her with Rossiter. She had too much pride to dignify his question with an answer, and he had too much pride to ask it again.

  As Will ate his second breakfast, Edward got up and e
xamined the volumes on the shelves, reflecting on the denouement of his marriage. He had come home to Kent unexpectedly, as Parliament was still in session. It was her birthday and he’d had an unaccountable itch for his wife—or perhaps a suspicion that something was afoot. Whatever had brought him home, his peace was most thoroughly shattered. Rossiter had been in her bedroom, for Christ’s sake, and Caroline in his arms. She had been wearing that horrible poppycovered robe, its belt loose. Her hair had tumbled down over her shoulders, barely covering her breasts. Her lips were swollen from kisses, her eyes bright with tears. Guilt was written on every inch of her face when Edward walked in. Rossiter had smirked and began to recount the ways he knew Caroline far better than Edward did, than Edward ever would. To Edward’s everlasting shame, he had stood still for all of it, kept his fists at his sides, his tongue between his teeth. When it was finally loosened, he had looked at Caroline with utter indifference and asked, “Have you whored yourself out to anyone else?”

  Caroline had turned away and gone to the window, her fingertips pressed white against the pane of glass. Alice’s gardens were in bloom below. He had forbidden Caroline from making any alterations, planting anything new, cutting so much as a blade of grass. Perhaps he had not been wise there, setting her in the long shadow of his late wife. Even Allie had something to say about that the other day.

  If Caroline had been ice until Rossiter slunk away, Edward was a glacier, immovable. Quite treacherous beneath the surface as well, planning how to make her suffer for her betrayal. She expressed no emotion as he divested himself of her until the very end of his chilly speech, and then it was an insincere and frankly unbelievable suggestion that they begin anew. As if forced tears and a half-swallowed sob would have any effect. Edward had her packed and thrown out of the house by sunset, banished to the dower house and away from the children until he could make other arrangements.

  When he returned to London, he made a lucky purchase of the Jane Street house. Deeds passed rarely and through exceptional circumstances. His luck was another’s misfortune. Guy de Winter had been shot dead by his wife right in the bedroom of Number Seven, his mistress, too. Guy’s young son was anxious to rid himself quickly of the reminder of his parents’ foolishness, and Edward was at hand, seated opposite with a bottle of port and a sympathetic ear, trying to drown his own sorrows. If the new Lord de Winter had thought it odd the paragon of rectitude and reason, Edward Christie, had need of a love nest, he did nothing but affix his name to a sales agreement.

  De Winter’s murder had resulted in the security detail that was to be found at the end of the street every evening, lest other wives become emboldened like poor, mad Eloise de Winter. Edward had thought Caroline safe and properly identified as the whore she was. He knew she had no choice but to live there—her cousin and his wife would never take her back, and she was absolutely penniless save for the few trinkets he’d purchased for her during their year of marriage. Jane Street had seemed heaven-sent, but now Edward wondered if he had not condemned his wife to her own little corner of Hell.

  He realized after a moment that all sounds of chewing and chomping were over. Will was staring at him, avid speculation in his dark eyes. “So, sit back down, Edward. Another cup of coffee?”

  Edward looked into what was left in his cup, half filled and cold like the current state of his heart. He shook his head.

  “What do you want me to do? You know as well as I we can still proceed. With those letters and Rossiter’s need for filthy lucre, we can cobble together enough of a case.”

  “It would be built on a lie.”

  “Damn it, man! Your marriage was built on a lie.”

  Caroline had never verbally claimed to be a virgin. Hell, they’d barely said any significant words between them before he snatched her off the Marriage Mart and wed her by special license. He had felt rather heroic, rescuing her from the drudgery of the Cumbrian cousins. And smug, as his suit prospered over the salivating young bucks.

  “I think it best to put everything on hold.”

  Will’s saturnine face displayed his displeasure, but he voiced no objection.

  “I’m sorry you had to endure that interview with Rossiter. Where did you find him?”

  “At the Albany, if you can believe it. In one of their lesser sets, however. It’s said very quietly that the Everdeens foot the bill. They claim him as a cousin of some sort.” It was clear Will didn’t believe any of that.

  Edward tamped down his revulsion. George and Laura Everdeen were simply names to him, but if Rossiter was in their orbit, he wouldn’t want their friendship. People who would tolerate his sexual amorality—

  A cold chill descended upon him. Rossiter had lived with Nicky and Caroline Parker for years. Caroline had been seduced by him when she was barely out of the schoolroom. But what if she were not the only Parker under his spell? He tipped his coffee cup over in his haste to rise.

  “What the devil’s come over you?”

  “Sorry, Will. I’ve got to go.”

  He found himself on the street again, the June sunlight filtering through a haze of coal smoke and clouds. London was a filthy place, and he was stuck there for the foreseeable future. But it would give him time to sort out what had really ruined his marriage. And if he couldn’t talk to Caroline, he had an idea of who to ask.

  Chapter 9

  The tabbies of the ton called him The Thief of Hearts, but in truth, he had not one of his own to steal.

  —The Thief of Hearts

  Andrew Rossiter was stealth itself. He slipped from the bed in the darkened room, glancing back at Sir George and Lady Everdeen, both sated, both snoring. There would be a cuckoo in the Everdeens’ nest if he’d been successful tonight, not that he cared. They paid him enough just for his pleasure. To be a sort of conduit, a job he’d had much experience with, the only job he’d really ever had. When he took up with Caroline and Nicky Parker, they’d put him on his crooked path, although that had not been their intention. He had discovered his dual nature in pleasing them both and decided why limit oneself to only half the population? Andrew looked like an angel with gold curls and October sky eyes, but knew he was the devil himself.

  Except—yesterday he’d had a most discomfiting interview with a stiff-necked barrister informing him he was about to be sued by stiffer-necked Edward Christie. A substantial sum had been offered for his cooperation, but he’d suddenly discovered he had some scruples. Caro was unaccountably dear to him, rather like a first or second love if one were to be so maudlin, and he wasn’t sure it was in her best interests to perjure himself. Certainly he’d fucked her, and certainly he’d tried to fuck her after her marriage to that dead bore Christie, but it wasn’t the same thing. As far as Andrew knew, despite his concerted efforts, she’d never broken her marriage vows. The poor girl was simply desperate to become like everybody else, saddling herself with a cold fish, three brats, and a house in the country. Poor Caro. It was like snuffing out a bright-burning candle.

  He’d made her life worse—out of pique. If he were the sort to feel shame about anything, it would be the day Edward Christie caught them in their negotiations. Andrew had not cared for the man’s attitude or assumptions. He had said some things that were better left unsaid. The packet of letters he tossed Christie out of spite was the final nail in their dead marriage’s coffin.

  The letters were conveniently undated. Not so convenient for Caro. She’d been plunked down on Jane Street almost immediately but refused to see him. His name would never be on the famous list the guards kept to ward off undesirables, and Andrew was as undesirable as they came. He’d spent the past five years insuring that.

  Now it seemed Caroline Christie’s happiness rested in his dirty hands.

  Andrew got dressed in the dark, let himself out of the Everdeens’ townhouse and walked to his bachelor lodgings. He preferred accommodations in his clients’ houses, but the Everdeens paid his rent, so he was going home to think, not a commonplace occurrence. Best not to, wh
en thoughts would turn to Nicky Parker and that last night.

  Poor Nicky, he hadn’t even gotten killing himself right. He’d lived a week, sightless, deaf to his sister’s cries, a permanent look of childlike wonder on his face until the end. Andrew had done the right thing, the humane thing. Caroline didn’t blame him for it. She knew he did it for her.

  It meant he’d lost both of them that night, something he thought he could live with. Most of the time he managed, and managed well. He had the morals of an alley cat and, like a cat, the ability to land on his feet. He wasn’t so sure about the nine lives—he fancied he’d exceeded that limit already.

  He ambled down the street in the gray dawn, perfectly at home as the nightwalkers disappeared from corners and sought their beds. The decent city was just waking as the indecent craved sleep. The echo of his footsteps joined with the jostling of carts on the cobbled streets and the raising of windows to let what passed for fresh air in. He caught sight of a pretty red-haired maid through the glass of a second story window and tipped his hat. He still had a weakness for redheads.

  Andrew let himself into his rooms and stripped off his neckcloth. Fucking for a living was surprisingly arduous work, and he treated himself to a brandy for breakfast. The Everdeens’ generosity had not included the services of a valet, but Andrew didn’t mind much. He could be himself in his comfortable rooms, no need of posturing or propriety. His library, what there was of it, had recently been enhanced with a purchase of part of an amazing collection from a notoriously wicked baron. The illustrations provided Andrew with enough fodder to get him through the mechanics of coupling—make that tripling—with George and Laura Everdeen.