Inveterate pacing threatened to flatten the grass alongside three boxes of the nasturtiums, edging the roses acquired from the king’s garden. The roses that had, each and every one, left bloody thorn wounds in various locales on his person. His fingers, running unevenly through his hair to avoid going anywhere near a rose bush, dislodged the riband holding the blond length off his face.
“Damn and blast!” He threw the errant cord onto the garden path, then kicked it under a rosebush like a wild dog trying to bite him. “What do I do now, Huntleigh? Wait for her to serve my proposal to me for supper?”
As he turned, his tails caught on a thorn, ripping the fabric and almost pulling the bush from its moorings.
“She’s already done that,” Huntleigh chortled, “or were you not paying attention?”
Unhooking the thorns from his coat, he crouched down to make sure the shrub’s roots stayed well buried. The last thing he needed now was to destroy one of the new roses. As he leaned forward, a thorn dragged across his cheekbone and would have put out his eye, had he not yanked himself away, lost his balance, and fallen on his backside again.
This attempt to remain upright ended in a yelp, as he snatched at one of the spiky branches. The plant barely survived the episode, but his palm and cuff did not, both now covered in blood. “Heavens to Hellfire!” He was forty years too old to be sprawled across the garden with scraped hands and a bruised posterior.
As Nick dragged himself to his feet twice in a quarter-hour, this time much the worse for wear, he snapped, “If you have nothing useful to say, you can bloody well go back inside.”
Huntleigh laid his cane across the bench, turning the silver globe handle between his palm and thigh. “What shall I say, Wellbridge? You are the master of seducing men’s wives, not I. By all accounts, you should be better at handling her.”
“Handling her? Handling her?” Nick stopped his pacing to kick the bench. “Can you jolly well handle her?”
“I can.”
His toe recoiled against the ironwork. “The Devil you can!” He hopped a few times on the foot he hadn’t just wrecked, and almost fell into Bella’s experimental seedbed, quite the worst plants in the garden to crush. Huntleigh half-stood on his bad leg to snatch Nick away from that horrifying consequence.
Once Nick had his balance and Huntleigh fell back into his seat, the old man stunned the younger with a look more fatherly than ten combined fathers.
“Of course, I am old enough to be her grandfather, and she responds as such. When I tell her to control her temper, she does so, as I can tell you to restrain your language, and you will. You will never have that luxury with her, so you had better find another way. Now sit, before you kill one of her plants and are forced to explain that, too.”
Nick dropped onto the bench. “I’m sorry, Huntleigh. Insufferable to storm around your garden screaming like a madman.”
“Indeed. Now, if you intend to act more reasonably, we can adjourn to my study and discuss the best course of action while you have a drink or two.”
“Or ten.”
“Or ten,” Huntleigh agreed as he pulled himself up. Refusing Nick’s arm, he leaned heavily on his walking stick. “I am sure Bella is in her sitting room cursing us both roundly by now, so you should be safe walking upstairs in my company.” Huntleigh laughed wryly, “If need be, you may hide behind me, and I shall protect you from anything she might hurl at you.”
“Bloody Hell,” Nick sighed.
Chapter 16
Bella had been pacing her sitting room so long she was surprised there were no holes through the new Turkish carpet. The lovely, finally finished room, which had brought her so much joy until she faced more pressing concerns, might as well have been invisible.
Charlotte had tried to distract her cousin from the frustrated anger by complimenting the moss-green walls and silver gilt accents, making much of the tapestry-covered Robert Adam chairs that had replaced the fussy French rococo. For the last half-hour, though, she had been playing Patience at Bella’s roll-top desk, the shuffling of cards playing counterpoint to the raindrops running down the window, the tapping of her fingernails on the table keeping the rhythm of Bella’s mad ranting.
“They are monsters! Expecting me to do their bidding because I am a weak-minded woman and they the wise, all-knowing gentlemen. Gentlemen! Ha! Gentlemen do not sell their wives! I am no longer a child to be given to some man to line my father’s pockets!”
Frowning at the mention of Uncle Jasper, Charlotte simply let Bella’s bluster continue. After her last run of three turned up no new cards, Charlotte peeked at the hidden stack. Disappointed to find none to complete a row, she gathered up the deck to start again, shuffling it loosely through her fingers.
“Of course you are not a child. But ladies do not gainsay their husbands, and you are a lady, no matter how much you screech. Myron is right. You could do much worse than Wellbridge.”
Bella stomped her foot, setting the tea tray rattling on the side table. Once Charlotte had finished dealing for the next game, she abandoned the cards briefly to pour herself another cup, the last in the pot. Finding only a scant half-cup, she seated herself in one of the new shepherdess chairs to make more.
“I am not going to marry a man because he isn’t the worst I could do! I am not going to marry at all! For heaven’s sake, am I the only person in London who remembers I am still married?”
Charlotte dumped the dregs into the slop bowl, then measured out new tea leaves from the silver caddy. When she tipped the samovar to release the last drop of water into the teapot, she had only enough to brew another cup or two, so she strode to the bell pull to summon a maid.
Taking her lukewarm cup back to the desk, she responded, “Of course you will marry. You can’t just shift for yourself with all that money. You need someone to manage it, and you don’t want to spend the rest of your life lonely just to make a point.”
She picked up the remainder cards and turned over the first three. As she stared at the board, her brows turned down and face grew hard. Apparently deciding there was no time like the present, without looking at Bella, she delivered the coup de grace: “You might still have children.”
Bella’s face drained of all color and she abruptly stopped pacing. “Children are the very last reason I would consider another husband. I have lost six. If God were willing, I would be a mother by now.”
Charlotte dropped the cards on the table, hands shaking. “Six? I only ever knew about… you never told me.”
Bella was almost silent. “I withheld it from even Myron most often, and it was not something I wished to dwell upon in every letter.” She squared her shoulders. “In fact, I prefer not to dwell on it now.”
She proved herself by changing the subject. “I am more than capable of managing my own affairs, no matter how many men Myron would rather find to do it for me. This fortune can do no good at all if it is squandered to pay for the illicit pleasures of a rake like Wellbridge.”
“He has no need of your money to pay for his pleasures.” Only Bella would notice the cunning in Charlotte’s smile as she moved the second column to the fifth, to finish a tableau. Turning up the Ace of Clubs, she began a new foundation and opened a new column. “And you might enjoy his improper behavior, if you’d stop acting like such a widgeon.”
“Enjoy it?! I think not! I have been in the company of nothing but men all my life—first Father, John, and Jeremy, then at sea with Myron and a hundred sailors for fifteen years. There is not one so enjoyable as sitting at my own hearth in my own home making my own deuced decisions!”
“You’ll never catch a husband using filthy language and always talking about making your own decisions.”
“Is that not the point?” Bella shouted. “I will spend the next fifteen years—the next fifty!—enjoying my own society, as I am far more interesting than any man I’ve ever known. Ev—Especially Wellbridge!”
“So Wellbridge is interesting, is he?” Charlotte couldn’t
entirely erase the amusement from her voice, but she did manage not to laugh aloud.
Charlotte dropped the stack of remainder cards on the desk at a quiet knock on the door. “Come in.”
Mrs. Jemison poked her head in tentatively, so Charlotte said, “I shall protect you from Lady Huntleigh’s tempers if need be. We simply need more hot water for tea, if you please.”
Once the door closed, Charlotte asked, “I’m sure Myron has been a very nice husband all this time, but don’t you want to know what it would be like to marry for love? I mean, since you have the chance. Most women never do, you know.”
“Love. Flattery. Frivolity. Folly. An old wives’ tale designed to make women dissatisfied with their lives.”
Charlotte’s face dropped, and she lowered her eyes, quietly admitting, “I love Alexander.”
Bella sniffed and turned up her nose. “I’m sure you do, but you have grown into it, not been hit by some proverbial lightning bolt. You didn’t love him on your wedding day. You wailed like your mother was selling you to gypsies.”
“How very silly of me, was it not? You might grow into it, too.”
“With that man? I think not.”
“From where I sit, you already have.” Charlotte wisely hid her face in her teacup, finishing the last, then took up the cards again while Bella’s mouth opened and closed, trying to find words adequate to her rage.
“In love with him? I was never in love with him! He is a thick-headed jackanapes with more muscles than sense, and I hate him!” Furniture shook at the impact when she stomped her foot. Charlotte just smiled and played a red four on a black five.
“Is it something Wellbridge has done? Has he somehow been cruel? Is he dividing his attentions between you and some other woman? Truly, I haven’t heard anything of the sort.”
“He’s conspired with my husband to control my life! Is that not enough?”
Charlotte found the Ace of Hearts and topped it with the two, three, four, and five. “Don’t be silly, Bella. There is no controlling you.” She turned three more cards, finishing a tableau, but found no more new cards for her foundations. “So, does that mean you are done with him?”
“The only way I could be more finished with Wellbridge is if I’d had the chance to cut his heart out!”
“So you don’t mind if some other woman wants a dalliance?” Charlotte added the six and seven to the Hearts pile, and the eight and nine of Clubs in the next.
“Some other woman is welcome to him. More luck her!”
“Excellent. I have had my eye on him ever since we met that day at Gunter’s, but I didn’t want to push in. He is so very handsome and has a reputation for stamina.”
“Charlotte!”
“Yes?” Before Bella could give voice to her indignation, Charlotte continued, “You don’t want him, and I’ve heard the most wonderful things from Rowena Astewithe. She says he’s quite splendid.”
The trajectory of Bella’s pacing shortened, and all of the things she now wished to say piled up on her tongue like stalled London traffic.
“So you will start fluttering your fan at him?” Bella finally retorted. “You just said you love Alexander.”
“Well, of course, but he’s so busy with The Lords, and just between us, after sixteen years of marriage and two children, the lovemaking is a bit stale. I could do with some variety, and everyone agrees Wellbridge is the perfect man for that.”
Bella felt heat rise from her rapidly beating heart to the tingling of her hair standing on end, but Charlotte just continued on, paying no notice to anything but adding the ten and knave to the Hearts foundation. “A girl needs a bit of attention. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, after fifteen years of Humdrum Huntleigh.”
“I see what you are doing,” Bella hissed.
“And what is that?”
Stopping in her tracks, Bella lowered her voice and said, “You never would.”
Charlotte played the King of Clubs and set the pile aside, then finished the foundation of Spades, adding it to the stack. Bella’s head twisted from Charlotte to the logs in the fireplace and back again. Twice. Then she repeated, “You never would.”
“Why not? You have no need of him.”
“But—”
Charlotte played the King of Diamonds. “But what? You say you aren’t in love with him. Why should I not go find him now?” She finished her game with the Queen and King of Hearts, then stacked the deck. “It’s early enough in the day that he will still be abed. Perhaps he would like company.” She stood.
“Charlotte!”
“Yes?”
“You cannot!”
“Why ever not?”
Bella sat suddenly on the sofa, her face stricken. “Because…” She stood again, her arms folded, staring with watery eyes at the Italian marble, as though it had been cut from a quarry filled with the incomprehensible language of love.
“No reason at all.” She waved her hand behind her, then dashed the tears away. “Go then. Go warm his bed. And I don’t want to hear one more word about it.”
“If you say so, my dear.” Charlotte began to gather up her things. “I expect I might not see you for a day or two. I’m sure once he’s started…”
Bella swallowed a gasp and a whimper whole, but only sat watching Charlotte pull on her gloves. Charlotte strode to the door and opened it, halfway through before Bella said, “No, stop.”
“Yes?” Charlotte shut the door quietly, one eyebrow raised, hand motionless on the knob.
“I do love him.” The tears now fell in earnest, her breath becoming a sobbing wheeze.
Charlotte came over and rubbed Bella’s shoulder until her cousin turned into her arms.
“Of course you do, darling.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Bella sobbed. “I’ve never loved anyone before, and he can’t possibly want—”
“No one has ever seen him act the way he does with you. In truth, Lady Rowena is so jealous she’s spitting andirons. Everyone knows a lady who speaks of an affair with Wellbridge has never had one. What did he say when he asked you to marry him?”
Rather than answer, Bella hid her face in the rouleaux of Charlotte’s morning dress. She might be angry enough to take a short knife to both men, but the reasons for their plotting were humiliating enough to never want to repeat. And her heart was so raw, it might bleed outright given further attention from a certain duke.
“Nothing. He said nothing,” she sniffled.
Charlotte set her chin on the top of Bella’s head and patted her back the same way she had when Nigel Tarkinton and the rest of the village boys took up Bella’s brothers’ tease when they were children, chanting wherever she went, “Is’na Bella! Is’na Bella!”
“Well, of course he said something, or you wouldn’t be ready to cut out his gizzard with that awful dagger.”
Bella sniffed and tried to bring her crying under control, almost whispering, “He never asked, just said he and Myron thought it best he protect me and my money from fortune hunters.”
“He and Myron thought it best?” Charlotte squawked. “He used those words?”
“Yes. The beef-witted lobcock.”
“Sapscull,” Charlotte agreed.
“Hulverhead.”
“Shall we continue in this vein?” Charlotte’s question sounded sincere, but her face was now rife with amusement. “Or will you tell me the rest?”
“Nick-ninny.” Bella giggled weakly at the absurdity, before the laughter was hindered by a new surge of crying. She tried to slow the sobbing, choking and coughing out, “He said I wouldn’t have to follow fashion, which means he thinks I’m ugly.” She hid her face again in Charlotte’s shoulder. Far easier to call herself unattractive than to hear it from someone else, especially a man pretending to flirt with her.
“Don’t be absurd. He has never pursued a woman who’s in fashion—why he’ll never want Lady Rowena—and I won’t believe for one minute he thinks you ugly. He said nothing of loving you
?”
Bella’s tears swelled again. “No. Because he doesn’t. Myron’s only talked him into this. My husband is paying him to take me in.”
“The gossips say he is mad for you.”
“The gossips are wrong. He has said his whole life he’ll never marry. Why would he suddenly decide to wed the ugliest woman in England? He is in league with my husband, because Myron is afraid a mere woman will lose his fortune buying dresses.”
“That doesn’t sound at all correct.”
“They are unspeakable cads, and I cannot allow them to win.” Another wave of tears flowed onto Charlotte’s dress, wet blotches on the long-since-ruined silk. Still, she contained this rash of tears more quickly, perhaps even for the last time today.
Charlotte chuckled, rubbing Bella’s shoulders the way she did with Jewel on the back end of a temper tantrum. “Of course not. That would be an awful precedent.”
Mrs. Jemison slipped in through the servants’ door and set down the tea tray as quietly as possible, leaving before either woman could require anything else.
Bella was now sniffling and rubbing a sulky face with her sleeve, so Charlotte took a handkerchief from her pinner pocket and pushed it into her hand, adding, “We shall make the silly men rue the day. And win you Wellbridge into the bargain. Why don’t I pour and we can work out a plan?”
Bella sniffed again, her tears still starting and stopping, but with considerably less frequency. Shoulders hunched, face long, she dragged her feet to the sofa and sat, mutely watching Charlotte perform the ritual of preparing and serving them both tea.
Three more bouts of crying, two screeching outbursts, and six cups of Ceylon later, they had a plan. Staring into the fireplace, wondering if she could actually manage to perform the extremely difficult tasks ahead, Bella was still not convinced her time with Wellbridge hadn’t been a well-conceived plot.
He must have his pick of any woman in London—no, England—no, the entire world. No matter what Charlotte said, a little bit of conversation wasn’t nearly enough to keep the attention of a man like him. And even if Charlotte were right, and he did want her now, it wouldn’t be long before he lost interest. If they were married when it happened, it would break her heart daily the rest of her life. With a clean break now, she might eventually recover.
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