by Jane Lark
Jane looked about the sitting room. “Your mother told me he joked that he keeps you locked up.”
“He likes to annoy Mama and Papa.”
Jane sighed. “Would you like me to stay with you awhile?”
“He really does not chain me up, Aunt Jane.” Mary laughed at the foolishness of it, although it was a dry sad sound.
Jane did not laugh.
“But nor does he make you smile…” Her aunt noticed the broken chessboard and her gaze stayed on it.
“If you must know, if you promise to say nothing to anyone else, things were good between us until the day of the Caldecotts’ ball. I insisted he take me to meet his parents. He did not wish to go, he said they would not want to see him, or me, but I persuaded him to take me. He was right of course, he knows his own family.
“When we returned he went into a rage. I think it humiliated him to be turned away in front of me. That is when he broke the chessboard. He knocked the table over, just in case you think he threw it at me; he did not.
“He went out then, and did not come back in time to escort me, but his friend, Lord Brooke called and offered to take me. That too was a nail in my coffin.
“I have not been forgiven for allowing Lord Brooke to escort me. Andrew is polite. He is not ill-treating me. He’s paid for a lady’s maid and a carriage since then. He has meals sent up, even though I am not here to eat. But he does not share the bed with me. He will not touch me, and he does not speak to me, or spend time with me…” Her words dried, as pain cut deep, but she forced them out.
“And now there is another woman, and I suppose it never really was fine at all, and Papa and John were always right, and I was just another silly young woman, with my head in the clouds.” Mary crumpled into a chair, her head pressed into her hands, the headache throbbing in her temples.
She’d forced herself to smile through the false goodbyes.
She could not smile anymore.
Her aunt rubbed her shoulder. “Oh Mary, we all so wanted a happy-ever-after for you. My first marriage was not a good one; it was arranged and I had no family to fall back on, I could only endure it. You do not have to. Do not spend your life tied up in a mistake. Walk away, with your head high. You can come and live with Robert and I in Yorkshire; if you wish to escape. He would not mind at all, you know he would not.”
“What is this?”
Mary stood, she had not heard Andrew open the door.
“A witches’ coven… But there are only two of you. You need three to turn me into a toad.” He pulled his gloves off. “I presume, I am the mistake.” His dark gaze penetrated her as he gripped his gloves in a fisted hand. “Are you leaving me then?” Anger and accusation made his pitch heavy. “Did you realise you had not quite shut the door. Were you intending to tell the whole building you’re leaving me before you do?”
“Lord Framlington.” Her aunt stood, going into battle.
Mary did not move. She hurt too much. Let him rant, he’d already found another woman.
“If Mary leaves, it is because you are selfish and heartless.”
His lips twisted and his hand gripped his gloves tighter. He wanted to argue. She recognised the signs of his growing anger. If she let this go on it was not going to be short.
“My niece is loved by her family! We will not let her suffer like this!”
Andrew’s gaze turned to Mary, and the fight seemed to suddenly drop out of him.
Mary stood. This was enough, her head hurt too much to listen to them argue.
“I know—” her aunt began.
Mary gripped her arm. If anyone confronted him about his mistress it would be her. “Aunt Jane, thank you for bringing me home. I will speak to you tomorrow.”
Jane’s green eyes were alight. “If you are sure?”
“I am.” Mary’s voice held little conviction, she was too tired. All she needed now was sleep, her head hurt so much.
Jane hugged her, and kissed her cheek, then left without another word to Andrew.
“Good-day Lady Barrington, it was good of you to call and beg my wife to leave me!” He said before the door shut in her wake.
“So are you?” Andrew turned to her once the door had shut.
“I hate you, when you’re like this.” Mary turned away and sought peace and silence in their bedchamber.
“You are then… you’re leaving me!” He followed her.
“You seem very keen. I suppose this is what you hoped for?” Her speech slurred a little as her vision became a screen of shifting zigzag patterns. Her hand clasped the doorframe. She’d not had the headache like this for years, not since she’d been a child.
“Hoped for?”
“You have pushed me away from the moment we wed.” Her vision was so confused now she could see nothing beyond a muddle of shifting colours.
Her arm stretched out, searching for the bedpost as she crossed the room, nausea rolling over in her stomach, and heat racing over her skin. If she could just reach the bed and lie down.
“So they still think I was only after your money. I suppose that is what she said.”
“Were you not, then?” Anger and bitterness burned her throat. He had another woman! Her fingers touched the bedpost. Then the floor tilted suddenly and the colours faded to black as a hot sweat raked over her skin, and she went down heavily, falling into the darkness.
She must have fainted. He was lifting her on to the bed. “I do not feel well.” Mary gripped his arm as the colours danced before her eyes. “Andrew, I am going to be sick.”
The mattress was a soft comfort, and then she heard him place the chamber pot on the chest beside the bed, but she could not see it to reach for it.
“I cannot see!” The desperate sob escaped her lips.
The chamber pot was pressed into her hands.
She was horribly sick, before a man who did not love her and did not care about her, who did not even like her. She could not be more humiliated. Could one cry and vomit all at once. Yes.
He gave her a towel. She wiped her mouth, holding on to it as he moved the chamber pot.
She lay down and shut her eyes, longing for sleep, for escape from the pain.
Tears rolled onto her cheeks. She sniffed, pressing the towel to her nose and her mouth, and curled her knees up, wrapping herself up small. Papa had always said she slept like a dormouse when she’d been a child.
Andrew’s weight dipped the mattress beside her.
“What is it? Do you need me to fetch a doctor?”
“I would not worry, you never know, you may kill me off and be rid of me more easily.” Cruel, instinctive defence sliced through her pitch. She hated him – and loved him.
“Mary?”
But being angry would only make the headache worse – and her like him. She refused to be bitter like him. “I’m sorry. You need not worry. Thank you for helping me, but you can leave me now, I just need to sleep. It is only the headache. I always seem to have one now. Please leave me alone.”
“Let me call for a doctor.” His palm pressed to her forehead. It was the most intimate contact she’d had with him for weeks.
More tears spilled over.
“You feel hot.”
“I just need to sleep. I do not want a doctor. Please leave me alone now.”
He got up, and the sound of his footsteps walked a path from the room.
Tears ran in streams down her cheeks as she cried audibly and rolled over so she lay on his side of the bed. His scent rose from the pillow.
Then he was there again, his hand on her shoulder. “I really do not think I ought to leave you like this, sweetheart.”
Oh lord, I hurt, I hurt so much. “Don’t call me, sweetheart, please do not. Please leave me alone.” Mary covered her ears. She could not bear to hear soft words from him now she knew for certain they were false.
But the nausea rose up again and, clutching at his wrist, she groaned, “I am going to be ill again.”
A clean chamber pot was placed before h
er and Mary retched painfully, while his hand stroked her shoulder and he whispered kind words, caring words. Lies all lies!
“I’ll not go out tonight, I cannot leave you like this,” he stated when she’d stopped retching, and he’d set the chamber pot aside.
She did not argue anymore, it felt as though a farrier was banging out a horseshoe on an anvil in her head and she was too weak, too tired to fight with him.
But then he began releasing the buttons of her dress.
“Leave me alone!” She could not bear his touch.
“Mary, darling, just lie still, if I undress you, and loosen your stays, you will be more comfortable and the maid cannot do it, she is not due for hours. You’ll sleep easier if I do.”
She cried, pitifully, as he worked the buttons free and then pulled loose the lacing of her stays. Then his hands slid beneath the fabric and he stripped her garments off.
Her stomach clenched at the intimacy, her body remembered his touch. She would not know it ever again. Misery hollowed out her soul.
He bid her lift her hips and slid her dress from beneath her, before drawing off her stays. When she was clothed in only her chemise, he drew the covers out from under her then tucked her beneath them.
But he didn’t leave her then. He sat beside her on the bed, and pulled her head on to his thigh while his fingers took the pins out of her hair.
Her headache began to ease, but her heartache did not, and tears ran from her eyes onto his leg.
She wept for everything she’d hoped for as a child and lost.
* * *
Drew left Mary in the bedchamber to sleep and walked into the sitting room, leaving the door ajar in case she was ill once more. He leaned on a cabinet on which the decanter stood; his head bowed and his heart a heavy lump of cold marble.
He’d hurt her and he sensed he’d hurt her irrevocably.
She’d been stalwart, ignoring his disengagement, simply spending less and less time at home to avoid him.
Although it was not her avoiding him was it? He’d started this, deliberately shutting her out. She was simply surviving it, as Caro survived her husband’s violence.
She is going to leave… He’d succeeded, he’d pushed her away completely. Or certainly her aunt had been urging her to leave.
I cannot bear for her to go.
Standing straight his fingers gripped his nape and his head tipped back.
It hurt too much, and if it hurt for him, how much was it hurting her.
He had a feeling her illness today was his fault.
She was not normally home at this hour.
He thought she would have stayed with her parents as she felt ill. The fact she did not implied she had sought to escape their urging.
This game of tug-of-war with her family was tearing her apart.
She’d told him half a dozen times, “leave me alone”, and told him not to call her sweetheart.
Ah God.
All he’d done by shutting her out was to convince her he’d never loved her. Of course she believed it; he’d treated her horribly over the last weeks. Even told her he had lied about his love. He’d deliberately been the evil bastard people thought him.
Because that is who I am and she would see it in the end anyway. She will go now or she will go later. All he’d done was bring forward the inevitable.
But, Devil take it. I cannot lose her. I cannot let her go. I will not! I’ll make her stay.
When the maid arrived at six, Andrew sent her away and ate his dinner alone, quietly, so he did not wake Mary. Afterwards he settled into a chair with the bottle of red wine that had been sent up with dinner, beside the broken chessboard.
He picked up a pawn and toyed with it in his fingers. Then leant back and wondered what the hell he’d done with his life before he’d known Mary. But of course, he’d had friends then.
Now he sauntered his way about gambling dens alone, not gambling because he refused to waste Mary’s money but he did waste hours until he knew Mary would be in bed.
He’d been wasting the time he could have spent with her.
“Drew, stop running,” Caro had said. She had need to run. What the hell was he running from – the chance of a perfect life.
The deeds to Caro’s cottage would be signed over to him in a week and then he planned to move her. She would be free, but he doubted she would be happy.
And himself? “Do not spoil what you have, make it good, Drew.” Was he capable of making it good? It was probably already too late.
She’ll find happiness some other way, without me.
Yet he was not so sure she would anymore.
She was deeply distressed, not happy, and he was a heartless bastard, who’d stolen happiness and contentment from her, and brought her into his world of misery.
Heaven to hell, he’d said to her once.
What am I doing? Neither of us are happy.
Perhaps it was not too late to make it work? To try.
He could not lose her. He was not willing to let her go.
He would try.
He drank the wine in his glass setting down the pawn on the broken chessboard one place forward, just as a knock struck the door.
What were the odds it was Marlow or Pembroke prepared to call him out? He stood, a malicious grin on his lips.
But it was the other man who had good reason to call him out. “Peter.”
Peter’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you going to ask me in, or am I no longer welcome?”
“You may come in,” Drew stepped back, holding the door.
“But am I welcome?” Peter’s hands slipped into his pockets as he walked in.
Drew did not answer, he was unsure how he felt. “Would you like some wine, or brandy?”
Peter sighed. “Brandy. I need it. I thought you’d send me an apology but you are clearly too pig-headed to send it, so I have come here to have it from your lips.”
Drew turned with a full glass in either hand. Peter stood beside him. He took one, meeting Drew’s gaze.
Peter had been Drew’s best friend since school, but the image of Peter’s gloved fingers resting on Mary’s back hovered in Drew’s head. Even now the thought made him nauseous.
Peter’s eyebrows lifted, as though he read Drew’s thoughts. “It was a waltz. Before three hundred or more people. It meant no insult. None ought to have been taken.” His free hand rubbed his jaw. “Remind me to keep you off my face at Jackson’s, your right hook is a demon. I prefer you on my side as you were at school. So does it warrant an apology or am I still to be cut.”
“I am hardly cutting you, I poured you a drink.” Drew moved away and dropped into a seat.
“But you are still angry with me…” Peter sat down too. “As I thought; seeing as you’ve not been near the club. Harry and Mark blame me. They think I broke some unwritten law they’ve invented about touching each other’s wives. I personally think if we are to stay friends when, and if we settle, we ought to make friends of our friends’ wives, which is what I’d intended. Clearly you think her beneath my friendship.”
“Hardly that,” Drew’s gaze lifted to meet Peter’s then fell back to his glass.
“You could have said you were marrying for love of the girl, as much as money. We would not have judged you for it.” Drew met Peter’s penetrating gaze.
It was a bloody joke, a rake of his reputation falling head over heels for a debutante. But that was just the thing, his reputation had never really been earned and Peter knew it.
Peter sighed and leaned forward, drinking some of his brandy, then resting his elbows on his knees.
He looked at Drew.
“Drew, seriously, you are my friend. I would do nothing to take her from you. She was anxious, pacing about the room. I merely offered to escort her to a ball to meet her family. It was no more than that.”
“So she said.”
“But you did not believe her?”
“Of course I believed her. It was just a bad day. I did no
t have a clear head. You became caught up in it. I’m sorry I hit you.”
“Ah, at last, the apology.” His friend lifted his glass in the form of a toast. “So we are still friends then. And your wife?”
Drew lifted his hand and let it slide across his face, then grimaced. “Hates me…She’s asleep in there.” His hand indicated the bedchamber.
“I’ve seen her a lot about town. With her family,” Peter added pointedly. “And before you ask, or think it, I’ve not spoken to her. I was looking for you. Your absence has been noted you know. Society thinks your marriage already on the rocks.”
“It’s no one’s business.”
“I am merely saying what I’ve heard. It’s not my opinion. I only came tonight because I thought she’d be out and hoped you’d be here, seeing as I have not seen you anywhere else.”
“Mary’s unwell. That is the only reason she is here.”
“Unwell? And you? Where have you been?”
A bitter sound of amusement broke from Drew’s throat. “Here, there and nowhere, and tonight I am here because my conscience has kicked. She is leaving me, I think. I overheard her aunt persuading her to go.”
“You will let that happen… Have you been spending any time with her? Or have you been hanging on to this damned grudge against the both of us, for dancing one dance. I know how stubborn you are.”
Drew’s hand ran through his hair, then fell. “It is not that.”
Peter drank his brandy, then stood and walked over to collect the decanter. He brought it back and filled Drew’s glass then his own. “You love the woman, does she not know?”
“She does not believe it. I have a certain reputation you see…” Drew lifted his glass in a salute and gave Peter a wry grin.
“And you have a certain temper, and a streak of pig-headedness as strong as iron.” Peter set his drink down and then caught Drew out; leaning a hand on either arm of the chair Drew sat in, his face hovered before Drew’s. “What do you think of Kilbride?”
“What?” Drew looked into his friend’s dark brown eyes with bewilderment.
“Do you agree with the way he treats Caro?”
“Of course not. You know I do not.”
“Then what the hell are you doing?
“What?” Drew had no idea what Peter was speaking of.
