What did he want of Emily? Did he approach her to torture her? It must be that, for he could think of no other reason why he gravitated to her side when they clearly couldn’t stand the sight of each other. He wanted her to share his own pain, the unhealed wound of their failed marriage that still scarred his soul.
Lost in his thoughts he did not hear footsteps behind him, but he felt the cosh as it slugged into his neck at the base of his skull, and he felt the ground as he crashed to it, his trick knee folding under him like a rotten tree limb. And then he felt . . . nothing.
• • •
Even if there had been no other reason to choose the sitting room of Delafont House to occupy on a spring morning, the brilliant sunshine that streamed through the window and the fact that it faced the park opposite would have been enough. But the sitting room was lovely, too, decorated in cream and ivory, with accents in pale blue and rose. It was Emily’s favorite room in the house, and the one where she sat even when alone. But Less had said he would call.
He had been annoyingly obscure the night before, not willing to elaborate on his dramatic statement. She had not believed he was serious at first, but a restless night of thought had convinced her that her old friend would not frighten her for nothing, surely? But was this supposed threat literal or figurative? One could not always tell with Less.
Trumble came to the door of the sitting room. “Mr. Lessington,” he announced.
Emily looked up in pleasure from her embroidery. “Less, how nice to see you!”
“I told you I would come and here I am, early for me.”
Trumble closed the door and Lessington came to sit beside Emily, admiring her needlework with a critical eye.
“Lovely, my dear,” he said. “Very oriental, in the current style. What was your inspiration, for I believe I espy one of your own designs?”
“How good of you to remember my passion for creating my own work. It is my depiction of a seraglio, or will be when it is done. Unfit subject for a lady, no doubt, but the one that appeals to me at the moment. I designed it to while away a long winter in Yorkshire but have had little time for it since we arrived in London.” She laid her work aside and took her friend’s hands. She chafed them between her own.
“It must be cold out,” she commented, looking out the window at the bright spring sunshine. “Your hands are freezing.”
“You know me. I am seldom warm enough.” He shivered.
They spoke on neutral topics for a few minutes, but then a silence fell between them, and Emily waited patiently for Less to bring up the reason for his visit. His words the previous night seemed dramatic and overstated in the daylight, but he must have something to say. Why he would think she could or would help her husband was beyond her, but she would hear him out at the very least before sending him on his way with a flea in his ear.
Finally he cleared his throat and glanced up with a frankly assessing expression on his mobile face. “I need to know your true feelings about Baxter, my dear, with no anger or bitterness, no remembered hate. Just the plain mutton with no sauce.”
Her first instincts were to pour out all of her feelings about his treatment of her and how they could not be together anymore without acrimony, but that was not what he was asking for. She drew her eyebrows together and looked down at her plain rose muslin gown.
What did she feel for her husband? She still desired him, and that was maddening in the extreme, humiliating, in fact, when she knew that he didn’t—couldn’t!—share her feelings. She was angry with him. She hated him for . . . but no. That wasn’t true.
Delicately she probed around the edges of her emotion, as if it were a bruise to be hesitantly tested, until she learned just how much it was going to hurt. When Less said Baxter was in danger, her first thought had been a jolt of fear. Her husband in danger? What could she do, how could she help him, protect him, keep him from harm?
She would lay down her life to save his, if it were necessary.
How mortifying. She still loved him after everything. Even pain had not been able to eradicate the fervent, deep attachment. Did that indicate a lack of respect for herself, that she should love him still after the things he had said to her? She didn’t really think so. After all, if she had no self-respect she would have thrown herself at his feet the moment she saw him again and begged him to make love to her. But she did still love him. She looked up into Less’s kind gray eyes and could see that words were unnecessary. Her friend always did understand her.
He smiled over at her. “I thought so. Good.”
“Good?” she said, rising from the sofa and pacing the length of the room. “It most assuredly is not good. I love him, Less. I still love him, after all these years, just as if we had never been apart.”
She went to the window and gazed out at the park across the street. A black-clad nanny wheeled a pram through the gate and headed through the park with her charge. Green, tender leaves unfurled in the trees, filtering the harsh sunlight into lacy patterns on the gravel walk. It was a scene of hope and rebirth, the new season eradicating the signs of a dirty winter in the city, but she could not feel that bud of hope and renewal. She crossed her arms and hugged herself.
“I don’t know if my love is just the remains of what we had or if it still exists for the man as he now is. He hates me, Less, and I don’t know what I ever did to him. He can’t even look at me without that supercilious sneer on his face. When he sees me . . .” Her words trailed off as a couple of hot tears welled up and rolled silently down her cheeks.
Less came up behind her and put his gentle hands on her shoulders as they shook with sobs. “Please, Em, don’t cry. I did not come here to make you cry! I love you, you silly girl, and I hate to see you unhappy.”
When she half turned, startled, he said, “Not like that, widgeon! I love you in the same way I love Baxter. He is my dearest friend, and he is driving me to distraction!”
Her tears forgotten, Emily turned and took Less’s hands in her own, chafing them again. They started to warm under her plump, pink hands.
“How the ton would stare to hear you speak like that! They all think you are a heartless dilettante, like Brummel. But what are you talking about, Less? What’s wrong with Baxter?”
“Two things. He is deeply unhappy, my dear; I think he still loves you.”
“You start to sound like the dowager. Only she doesn’t speak of love, just the succession,” she said, pulling her hands away.
“No, you promised to hear me out. That is just one thing.” He took her hands back, trapping them between his own.
The warm beams of sunshine streaming through the window picked out threads of silver in Less’s hair, and Emily thought irrelevantly that her friend was terribly young to be turning gray. And yet he often spoke as if he were her senior, not a few years her junior. Perhaps he was an old soul.
“I will hear you out,” she agreed, speaking softly.
Less stared out the window as a carriage clattered past on the cobblestones. It pulled up in front of the home next to them and disgorged a tumultuous family: a rotund country squire, his tired wife, a girl who appeared to be their daughter, and a host of other children. A small sweeper boy begged pennies from the groom in exchange for cleaning the gutter where the family had stepped down.
“Baxter is in danger,” he finally said through tightened lips. “He won’t tell me what he is up to, or what he has been doing, but it is dangerous, I feel it in my bones!”
“You sound like my superstitious Tante Hélêne,” Emily joked. Then she saw the serious expression on Less’s face. “You really are afraid for him!” she exclaimed. “You should know that Baxter can look after himself, whatever he is involved in. I never knew a more capable man, nor a cleverer, more judicious one. What could he possibly be doing that would bring him danger?”
“I don’t know,” Lessington said, his face haggard in the harsh light. His eyes narrowed and his lips pursed as he stared grimly out at the innocuous sc
ene.
“Less, you’re scaring me! What are you talking about? Tell me everything.” She led him back over to the couch and they sat together.
Trumble opened the door again and Emily feared another visitor, but it was just the footman bringing tea. As he set the tray down, Emily said, “Please, Trumble, I am not at home this morning, if anyone else calls. And no interruptions, please.”
“Very good, my lady,” he said and withdrew, closing the door discreetly behind him.
“Now, what are you talking about?” She noted dispassionately that her hands were shaking and made the conscious effort to still them. To distract herself she poured tea, leaving the cream pitcher and sugar in front of Less as she sipped her own black.
She had never seen Less so serious. Even when she was crying on his shoulder he had been breezy, predicting that she would get over Baxter and take a lover. He had forced her to stop looking at things with such a bleak outlook and hope for healing in the future.
“This is not widely known, and Baxter would kill me if he knew I was telling you, but someone tried to murder him a month ago.”
“But I thought he was still on the Continent a month ago.” Emily’s cup rattled as she set it hastily in the saucer.
“He was. It was there the attempt was made.”
Emily breathed a sigh of relief, wondering at her own spurt of fear for her husband. “Well, then, the danger is left behind. What was it, brigands out for his purse?”
“No, Em. He has not left it behind. Another attempt was made last night.”
Emily gasped. “When? How? Is he going to be all right? But, how could it have happened last night? I saw him at the ball, and he never said anything.”
“It happened on his way home from the ball after I told you I was worried about him. This is the third such incident that I know about! Someone tried to do him in on the packet from Calais, as well; that was just last week. I saw him this morning, and he will survive with nothing more than a knot the size of an egg on his skull. Luckily a good Samaritan found him before the blackguard could finish him off.” Lessington’s face was gray. He sipped his tea.
Emily tried to absorb this news. Three attempts on his life? A shiver coursed down her spine and trilled out into her limbs. Baxter, in danger! She felt an almost unconquerable urge to fly to his side, to nurse him as she had during their marriage when he hurt his knee in a fall from a horse and when he had suffered a bout with fever. “What is he into? Why is someone trying to kill him?”
“He won’t tell me.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because you love him. And because you might be able to help.”
“How?” Emily traced the outline of the handle of her teacup. “How can I help him when he can barely stand the sight of me? Even if we were close as we once were, what could I do to stop some bloodthirsty murderer from getting his hands on him?”
“The main problem, as I see it, is that Baxter does not have anything to live for.”
“Oh, fustian!” exclaimed Emily, looking up at Less with her wide brown eyes trained on his face, looking for signs that he was cozening her. “Nothing to live for? The man is gorgeous, well to grass and has a beautiful mistress! What more does a man need?”
“His wife!” Less’s expressive voice throbbed with intensity. He set his cup down on the table with a jarring clank. “He needs his wife, whom, though he will not admit it, he still loves, desperately!”
“Oh, my dear friend, if I could believe you for a second . . . but I don’t. You didn’t see him that time at Brockwith. There was pure, raw venom in his eyes when he looked at me. My love for him is for what was, not for what is. And his love for me is . . . gone.”
Less’s face sagged in desolation. “I thought you would want to help.”
“If I could, I would, but how? What can I do?”
“Baxter is involved in something. When he was on the Continent the government was using him as a courier, or something like that. Nothing formal, I believe, which is all the more dangerous for him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think the very informality of the arrangement allows the government to give him much riskier assignments, for if he is killed no blame will be attached to them as there is no way to tie him in with the work.”
“How do you know all of this? Or are you guessing?”
“Some of it is conjecture,” Less admitted. “But some of it is based on . . .” He sighed and shook his head. “I have a very close personal friend in the government. Highly placed. He would not confirm it but hinted that I was right.”
“You still haven’t said what I can really do to help.”
“As I said, Baxter doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies. He is liable to take more risks if he doesn’t care. I know he cannot quit what he is doing for the country, but I am convinced he could be doing it more carefully. Somehow, he has exposed himself, or there would not be assassins after him.”
Emily tried to take it all in. Baxter in danger! And Less, convinced she was the only one who could convince him to take more care. She turned back to her friend.
“Why don’t you go to his mistress, Less? Surely she can charm Baxter into being more careful?” The hint of ice in her voice betrayed her own feelings on the subject of the mistress, but with Less she did not worry about the naked nature of her pain. He would understand.
Less shook his head. “She is a child, Emily, without the worth of your little finger. Baxter doesn’t care about her; she is just a pretty toy. He picked her up on the Continent, and with his overdeveloped feeling of responsibility cannot shake her from his side now. Please, say you will think about it.”
Emily paused. It seemed to her that Less was mistaken in his reading of Baxter’s feelings toward her, but was that any reason to deny her help if it would make a difference? “Before I make up my mind, I need to see him again,” she said. Unless they could get past the bitterness and come to some kind of understanding, there was no point in even thinking about trying to help. “Take me to him, Less. Take me to my husband.”
Chapter Five
His face a perfect mask of indifference, Sedgely’s butler announced, “Lady Sedgely and Mr. Sylvester Lessington.” He then bowed and departed.
Emily nervously smoothed the rose muslin down over her hips and entered the room on Less’s arm. She was surprised to find three faces turned in their direction. Of course Baxter was there, but there was also a young man of startling beauty and impeccable tailoring, and a lovely girl of not more than twenty, a vision in white silk and silver lace, a dress wholly unsuited to afternoon visiting.
The young man stood as they entered the room, but Baxter remained seated, his foot up on a stool, where the girl sat.
“Less!” Baxter said. “How nice of you to join us. Emily, I really didn’t expect the pleasure of a visit from you.” His voice was as urbane and smooth as ever.
Only by inflection could Emily catch his meaning. He was not pleased to see her.
“When I told Emily about your little . . . accident, she would not be kept from your side.” Less quirked a cocky smile at his friend, as though daring him to scold him for bringing Emily.
Baxter nodded. “Excuse me for not getting up. I seem to have twisted my ankle in last evening’s little set-to, as well as getting a bump on the head. Emily, Less, this is my rescuer from last night, Vicomte Etienne Marchant, and this charming young lady is London’s newest rage, the actress and dancer Belle Gallant.”
Emily felt her welcoming smile freeze on her lips. Baxter’s mistress, brazenly visiting his house as if she had just as much right as anyone else! She felt Less stir at her side and heard his whisper: “I didn’t know she would be here. My apologies, dear heart.”
The girl had bounced to her feet and stood staring at her lover’s wife with a saucy grin on her face. But the young French nobleman, sweeping back his thick chestnut hair, advanced first, hand outstretched. He shook hands with Les
s, but when he took Emily’s gloved hand, he bent low over it and pressed a kiss to the silk.
“Enchanté, Madame.” His eyes were a deep, soulful brown, and as he gazed into Emily’s, they lit with the golden fire of admiration. “Pardon, but are you . . .” He hesitated and glanced back at Baxter. “The butler, he say you are the marchioness, no?”
“Yes,” Emily said, her voice low and trembling. “I am the marquess’s wife.”
The air in the room became charged with a current, as the air before a lightning strike. The vicomte still held her hand with his own, and he led her to a seat on the same divan he had been seated upon. Less, a look of unholy glee on his expressive face, took a seat where he could observe everything.
Belle, her movements exaggeratedly flirtatious, moved to stand in front of Emily. Her face had a hard expression of brittle dislike as she stuck out her hand. “As the veecompt has monopolized you, I’ll have to force the introduction. As Baxter said, I am Belle Gallant.”
Emily took her hand, and with a smile, shook it. Never had her innate composure been more needed than at that moment, to keep her grip light and her voice steady. A surge of jealousy pounded through her veins, but she suppressed it and smiled. “I must say, reports don’t begin to do you justice, Miss Gallant. I have only seen you from my box at the theater, and that is too far to judge, but now I can see that you are even more beautiful than they say.”
Belle’s smile became hesitant, and she glanced over at her lover before giving a little curtsey and saying, “Thank you, my lady.” She retreated to her stool, where she sat by Baxter’s propped-up foot like a chastened child.
Married to a Rogue Page 4
