Owen waited.
“Mr. Barstow, Lady Darent’s first husband,” Churchward said, choosing his words very carefully, “was the godson of the noted political reformer Sir Francis Burdett.” His voice was dry. “Just in case you wondered at the origins of her ladyship’s loyalty to the reformers’ cause.”
“I see,” Owen said slowly. He remembered Tess telling him of Robert Barstow, the childhood friend who had given her security through marriage after the death of her father and brother. For the first time he felt a glimmer of understanding for her political allegiance. Tess was fiercely loyal. He already understood that. Barstow’s cause had become her cause, he thought, and a way of giving her future some meaning when she had lost everything. He was racked with pity for the girl she must have been, widowed at nineteen, losing her father, her brother and her husband within so short a time.
OWEN WA LK ED BACK THROUGH the sleet and found a letter waiting for him on his return to Clarges Street. It was anonymous, short and very much to the point:
Ask Lord Sidmouth who is responsible for violence in the reformist movement. And keep Lady Darent safe. Someone close to her is set to betray her.
Owen almost threw the letter in the fire. He detested anonymous letters and had no time for their insinuations. As far as he was concerned, Sidmouth worked to protect the rule of law, and in taking the Home Secretary’s commission he had pledged himself to do the same. Yet even as he discarded the letter, it troubled him. The reference to Tess was too specific to ignore. Only a week before he had sworn to entrap her, to play her at her own devious game. Now his ambitions had changed.
He went out again, this time to the Home Secretary’s office, where Lord Sidmouth kept him waiting a full hour.
Sidmouth was in a bad temper. There was a crumpled cartoon on his desk, a caricature of the government sitting around a long table like a row of fat suet puddings. Looking from the picture to Sidmouth’s fat jowls, so cruelly and accurately parodied, Owen found himself almost betrayed into a wry smile.
“Of course I incite the radicals to violence,” Sidmouth said contemptuously, in answer to Owen’s question. “Good God, man, don’t be so naive! I need an excuse to arrest them! The political reformers had been peaceful for years before I planted agents provocateur amongst them.” He brought his fist down on the desk with a crash that made the papers jump and scatter. “We don’t need reform here! Perish the thought!” He glowered at Owen from beneath drawn brows. “Do you want a revolution here like the damned French? Do you want to lose that pretty title of yours already and your head with it?”
Owen felt as though he had been kicked in the stomach. “Forgive me, my lord,” he said tightly, “but the only danger here seems to come from the violence that you are deliberately stirring up, if I understand you correctly.”
Sidmouth made a very rude noise. “You are too scrupulous, Rothbury,” he sneered. “A man in my position has to make accommodations and compromises to succeed.”
Owen felt his temper soaring dangerously at the sheer cynicism of it. “You do it to keep yourself in power,” he said softly. “No better reason.”
He was furious with Sidmouth for his duplicity and with himself for accepting the Home Secretary’s commission at face value. He should have known better, he thought bitterly. When he had believed he was working for a just cause he had been no more than Sidmouth’s dupe.
“I do it to keep the peace,” Sidmouth roared. “Damn it, man, we need these repressive measures or we’ll all be murdered in our beds!”
“By the men you have paid,” Owen said coldly. He picked up the cartoons. “So if you captured Jupiter, you would hang him,” he said slowly.
“Hang him? I’ll make a bloody exhibition of him,” Sidmouth said viciously. “And once I have bought Justin Brooke’s loyalty, I’ll know exactly who Jupiter is.”
A cold trickle of apprehension slid down Owen’s spine. Justin Brooke, the man the ton said was Tess’s lover. He remembered the wording of the anonymous letter. Someone close to Lady Darent is set to betray her….
“Brooke?” he said. “He’s a radical?”
“He’s one of the leaders of the Jupiter Club,” Sidmouth said with satisfaction. “I can buy him off though. He’d sell his own grandmother for political power and he’ll sell the names of his conspirators for a lot less.”
Hell. Owen could feel the net closing inexorably on Tess.
“Your methods make my hands feel dirty, my lord,” he said very politely. “I am afraid I have no choice but to resign your service.”
“Go, then.” Sidmouth waved a dismissive hand. “Knew you’d turn native. Damned revolutionary! That’s the trouble with you Yankees—don’t know when you should be grateful.”
“On the contrary, my lord,” Owen said. “I never felt more grateful to be an American than I do now.”
He went out into the cold afternoon and drew several appreciative breaths of cold winter air. Sidmouth’s cynical manoeuvring left him feeling sick, but Justin Brooke’s potential to betray his colleagues troubled him more. Now more than ever he needed the truth between himself and Tess. There was no one else who could protect her.
He went directly to Bedford Street, but Tess was not there. Once again she had left him no note and no direction. This time Owen was not remotely amused. Urgency and fear drove his steps; he returned home to throw on his evening clothes and took the carriage to Lady Marriott’s ball.
Tess was not there. Fortunately Merryn and Garrick Farne were, and it was Merryn who remembered that Lady Dalton was also holding a rout that evening.
“You may find Tess there,” she said dubiously, “but I cannot be certain. She is something of a law unto herself.”
“She is indeed,” Owen said, with a touch of grimness. He gritted his teeth as the carriage rattled and pushed its way at a snail’s pace through the busy streets.
He felt the atmosphere as soon as he walked into Lady Dalton’s ballroom, the flutter of comment as people noticed him, the flash of a fan hiding a smile. The reason for their interest was not far to seek, for across the vast acreage of polished floor Owen could see Tess and, beside her, Justin Brooke. Tess was wearing scarlet tonight; a scarlet gown, scarlet slippers and a scarlet ribbon threaded through her curls. Beside her Brooke looked tall, handsome and arrogant, presumptuous in a manner that Owen found deeply offensive in a youth whose entire life was a testament to privilege. Justin Brooke, Owen thought, had had everything he wanted served up to him on a silver platter.
Everything, it seemed, including Teresa Darent.
For as Owen watched, Brooke bent his head and whispered intimately in Tess’s ear and a moment later Tess left his side and slipped out of a door on the opposite wall. Brooke waited only a second before following her.
It was blatantly, breathtakingly indiscreet. Owen could barely believe it.
Slowly, carefully, he stalked around the edge of the ballroom, acknowledging the greetings of his acquaintances, pausing to exchange a word here, a smile there, wondering all the time just what these people could read on his face, knowing they thought him a cuckold before the marriage lines were even written. He could feel the fury seething inside but he kept a cool head. There might, of course, be some rational explanation as to why Tess had chosen to behave with such indiscretion when she had promised him only ten days before that she wished to reform her reputation. On the other hand, he could not imagine what it might be.
He reached the door that Tess had gone through and slipped out of it to find himself in a smaller hallway; from there a passage ran down to a garden door at the end, and halfway down, almost obscured by an arrangement of ferns and foliage, stood Tess and Justin Brooke.
Tess’s auburn curls were brushing Brooke’s shoulder. His dark head was close to hers as he spoke to her. Owen could not hear the words but sensed the urgency and the intimacy. Brooke had a hand on Tess’s arm and as Owen watched he slid that hand down to take hers and press it between both of his in a heartfe
lt gesture. Tess smiled up at him. Brooke drew her closer and kissed her cheek, his lips lingering as though he wanted to do a great deal more.
Shock and anger punched Owen in the gut. Tess showed none of the physical reticence with Brooke that she had done with him, no reluctance for his touch. What a fool he had been to believe her when she had told him that she and Brooke were not lovers. He had imagined them no more than political allies. He had been more than a fool, in fact, since he had been utterly duped into providing not only security for Tess against Sidmouth’s investigation but also cover for her affaire. He had sought her out tonight, anxious to have the truth out between them, prepared to offer her his protection because he despised what Sidmouth was doing to entrap her and he admired her for her loyalty to her cause and he had thought her sincere. Yet instead of binding her closer to him he had found her with her lover. And of course Brooke would never betray her to Sidmouth. She was his mistress and whatever political advancement he received, he would take Tess with him.
Owen saw Brooke gesture slightly with his head towards the garden door. He went out. A few seconds later Tess came back down the corridor and passed Owen so closely that he could smell her jasmine scent. Her scarlet skirts brushed the statue of Apollo he was hiding behind. She went through into the hallway and headed for the ladies’ withdrawing room. A second later she emerged, cloaked and hooded, and slipped away out of the front door and into the street. There was a clatter of hooves on the cobbles as a hackney carriage pulled away. Brooke evidently had had one waiting.
“Rothbury! Capital stuff!” Rupert Montmorency accosted Owen as he was hurrying towards the door. “Already paid my compliments to the lovely Lady Darent.” Rupert winked. “She seemed to be leaving in a hurry—”
“Not now, Rupert,” Owen said. “I have to go—”
“Frightfully bad ton to interrupt your future wife with her lover,” Rupert said. “Give them an hour. Or perhaps two to be on the safe side,” he added thoughtfully.
“Thank you, Rupert,” Owen said tightly. He was aware that a number of people had emerged from the ballroom and were watching him, eyes avid and scandal tripping from their tongues. Tess’s departure had not gone unnoticed, then. The gossip was already starting to filter through the ball, rippling around the edges of the room and sweeping inwards like the tide.
There was a light touch on his arm. “I imagine you are thanking God now that you are such a cool hand at cards,” Alex Grant said, in his ear. “I assure you, no one looking at you would realise you wish to break Brooke’s neck and I only realise it because I know you so well.”
“I’m not sure that his is the neck I wish to break,” Owen said grimly. He was remembering again Tess’s claim: Justin Brooke is not my lover….
What sort of fool had he been to believe her?
“Are you going to let her get away with it?” Alex asked, with an expressive lift of his brows.
“What do you think?” Owen beckoned to the footman. “The carriage for Lady Darent,” he said. “Where did it take her?”
The man’s face was completely blank. “I’m sorry, my lord—”
Owen swallowed a curse. “Lady Darent and Mr. Brooke,” he clarified. “Where did they go?”
The man’s face cleared. He looked inordinately relieved to be able to help. Owen realised that such was his anger the man probably thought he would strangle him if he could not answer the question. He strove to bank down that anger and moderate his tone.
“It was an address in Hampstead Wells, my lord. Belsize Terrace,” the footman stuttered.
“Thank you,” Owen said, and the man shot away as though his life depended on it.
“That’ll take you the best part of an hour,” Alex said.
“I don’t have anything better to do,” Owen said drily. “Hampstead Wells,” he added. “Where is that?”
“North of town, very genteel, very respectable,” Alex said, a little grimly. “Good luck, old fellow.”
Luck, Owen reflected, was not precisely what he needed. Better judgement when it came to women might serve him well in future. Nevertheless he would see Tess Darent and have the truth out with her before he broke their engagement and abandoned her to her sensual excesses with her young lover.
The journey out of town did indeed seem interminable, endless ill-lit streets giving way to darkened roads along which the carriage jerked and jolted. Finally Owen alighted in front of a small row of cottages. The footman had only heard a partial address. Impossible to tell which of these houses held his errant fiancée, but perhaps he could start with the one that still had candlelight showing behind the shutters.
His knock brought a housemaid scurrying. She looked terrified. No wonder. Owen was not at all sure what was showing on his face now that he did not have to conceal his feelings and since he had had the best part of an hour to dwell on them. He had never been a possessive man, or so he had thought, but now he felt every drop of the white-hot fury a man would feel when he caught his woman with a lover. He felt as though he cared. It angered him that he had been deceived; it angered him that his name had been dishonoured and, more than anything, it angered him that it mattered.
“Is Lady Darent here?” he demanded, when the door opened to his peremptory knock.
The housemaid, mute, eyes wide as dinner plates, nodded.
“I’ll announce myself,” Owen said, pushing the door wide and striding into the hall. The house was tiny, the corridor so narrow he felt as though the walls were closing in on him. His fury needed more space than this. He felt hemmed in and could feel the anger boiling up in him. He exerted absolute control to keep it down. No point in frightening the maid. She was already trembling and her face was pale as milk.
He strode down the passageway. The house was very simple; plainly decorated, a couple of good quality paintings on the wall and a thin strip of carpet woven in bright colours. He would have expected that Tess would wish for a great deal more luxury from her love nest than this. Surely she would want a deep feather bed and plump pillows, and smooth satin against her naked skin?
The image was unexpectedly erotic and did nothing to sooth his temper. Devil take it, Tess Darent was his betrothed, not Brooke’s, and he had treated her with absolute respect. He had not even kissed her yet. More than once in the past week he had wondered why not. His desire for her had not diminished. If anything it had become keener because he had started to know her and to like her very much. He had no longer lusted after Tess simply because she was beautiful, a physical embodiment of some sinful fantasy. The real Tess Darent had seemed quite different from the dream, sharp and sweet, strong yet vulnerable, a woman of decided opinions and determined will. He had admired her very much. He had wanted her very much.
Owen was not a man accustomed to delayed gratification where women were concerned. Generally he took his pleasure as he saw it. His liaisons had been enjoyable but in the past they had lacked the depth to hold him. With Tess it had been different—or so he had thought.
He could hear voices from a room to the left. At least if they were talking he would not catch them in the act of making love, though it was not going to be pretty. He could imagine it all: Tess in a state of undress perhaps, her bodice undone to give a glimpse of the curve of her breasts beneath, her hair unbound in all that glorious red-gold profusion. Brooke would be lying back against the pillows with that curst youthful arrogance of his and beckoning her to come to his bed….
Owen opened the door.
And realised that he had made a monumental mistake.
The first thing that he noticed was that there were three people in the tiny parlour and they were all fully clothed. Furthermore they were drinking tea from bone china and could not have looked more respectable had they been at a vicarage garden party.
Tess was seated in an elegant old wing chair before the fire. There was a sketching pad with pencil drawings open on the table beside her. Opposite her was a young lady of strikingly pretty appearance who overset
her cup when Owen burst in and sent tea cascading onto the worn rug in front of her. A fair proportion of it showered Justin Brooke, who had been kneeling in front of the fire toasting crumpets.
Toasting crumpets … Owen had rushed in expecting to find his fiancée in flagrante and instead found her alleged lover toasting crumpets. A faint sense of the ridiculous possessed him. He could not help himself.
Tess got to her feet with exquisite, unruffled calm. Or perhaps she was not so calm, Owen thought. Certainly she was very careful to surreptitiously cover the sheets of sketches as she moved forwards to greet him.
“Good evening, my lord,” she said, as though Owen’s precipitate appearance was both expected and extremely welcome. “I am so happy that you could join us.” Owen doubted that, but Tess was already turning to the young lady. “May I introduce Lady Emma Bradshaw?” she said. “I believe you are already acquainted with her brother, Mr. Brooke.”
Brooke gave Owen the very slightest and most awkward of bows. “Rothbury,” he said.
“Brooke,” Owen said coldly. Whatever the situation here—and clearly he had misjudged it somewhat—this was a man for whom he had absolutely no respect and he did not trouble to pretend otherwise.
Brooke’s face took on a deep flush. Sensing Owen’s blatant hostility, Tess once again threw herself into the breach.
“Lady Emma,” she said, drawing the girl forwards. “This is my fiancé, Viscount Rothbury.”
Owen found himself the subject of a very frank gaze from Lady Emma’s enormous blue eyes. It was evident from a single glance, he thought, who had inherited the strength of character in the Brooke family.
“I hope,” Emma said, “that you are good enough for Lady Darent, my lord.”
It was not a concept that Owen had ever considered before. He cast a glance at Tess and saw her lips twitch as she tried to hide a smile.
“I am not certain that that is the thought uppermost in Lord Rothbury’s mind at present, Emma,” she murmured.
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