“Back at the tables, I see,” Starkly said as he took Daniel by the arm and began leading him off toward the bar, “and doing quite well, from what I hear.”
“Leave me be,” Daniel muttered, attempting to free himself from the earl’s grasp.
“I just want a word with you, that’s all,” Starkly muttered, the low timbre of his voice piquing Daniel’s interest.
“Two brandies,” Starkly told the bartender as he tossed some coins on the counter and turned to Daniel. “I understand you’re a married man now, Neville. Word has it that you stole Lady Rebecca from under Grover’s nose. My felicitations to you and your lovely wife. I must admit, I’m rather jealous myself.”
“And so you should be,” Daniel said. He was well aware that Starkly had shared an interest in Rebecca at the Kingsborough Ball. Starkly eyed him with deep contemplation for a moment before saying, “Well, I thought you should know that I’m not the only one. All things considered, it’s no wonder the old bastard wants revenge—your wife is beautiful, Neville. Grover’s never going to find a woman to match her attributes again.”
Daniel frowned. “What exactly do you mean by revenge? From what I understand, the duke has admitted defeat and has withdrawn from Society.”
Starkly chuckled. “You don’t honestly believe that a man like Grover, a duke, mind you, would allow an untitled rakehell such as yourself to elope with his fiancée and not want retribution? His honor demands it, for Christ sake. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill you for it—that’s what I would do.”
Bloody hell!
When Daniel’s uncle had told him that he’d convinced Grover not to duel, Daniel had thought the matter settled. He’d never once considered that the duke might resort to more devious methods, though he should have, considering the sum the duke had offered the Griftons in exchange for Rebecca. Daniel cursed himself. He was a fool to have thought that Grover would leave him in peace. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked. “Why not let Grover do his worst and rejoice in my demise? You and I have never liked each other—I see no reason why you’d want to help me now.”
“Let’s just say that I have my own demons to live with and that I will take whatever chances I get to redeem myself. Besides, I don’t think London would be as much fun without you.”
“Hmph!” It was a vague reason, but probably the best one Daniel was likely to get from the earl, he realized. “In that case, thank you. I shall take your warning under advisement and strive to be more careful.”
“I would suggest you avoid walking after dark. Take a hackney instead. Here, I’ll walk you out, just in case.”
Chapter 17
Rebecca stared down at her husband’s sleeping figure as the morning light illuminated his skin. He’d told her only yesterday that he had no intention of taking a mistress, but more importantly, he’d promised Rebecca that he would not lie to her. And yet he had, without the slightest hesitation. When he’d left their bedroom last night, the sound of the door closing had woken her. Finding Daniel gone, she’d risen, put on her dressing gown and followed him out, intent on asking him if he wanted her company. But rather than go to the library, he’d exited the front door. The truth had struck her with startling force as the blurry memory of him returning to their bedroom on the previous evening had filled her mind. He hadn’t been reading in the library, as he’d claimed, but had gone out instead. Why else would he have gotten fully dressed after taking his bath?
The betrayal hurt. Not because she’d expected him to be faithful to her but because she’d wanted to believe him when he’d told her that he had no interest in other women anymore. Of course it was possible that he’d simply been to visit one of his clubs, but if that was the case, why would he have lied? She’d stupidly ignored her earlier misgivings because of what his promise had meant—that he cared for her and that she meant more to him than any of the other women who’d come before. She should have known better though and listened to her instinct instead of allowing her pride to cloud her judgment. The man was a charmer, and he had done what he did best, seducing her into his bed with exceptional skill until she’d been willing to give him everything, including her heart.
Anger spread like ivy within her until she felt she might suffocate from it. She wasn’t sure which part of his deception was worse—that he’d deliberately lied to her or that he thought himself capable of getting away with it. No, the worst of it was that like the idiot she was, she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him, and she knew herself well enough to know that she’d passed the point of no return—she’d given herself completely to a renowned scoundrel.
Feeling just about as stiff as a tin soldier, Rebecca took a calming breath and tried to convince her body to relax. She’d always hated conflict and generally chose to try and avoid it, but this was a situation that demanded confrontation. The last thing she wanted was a marriage filled with deceptions and people sneaking about in the middle of the night. And since a tiny part of her still clung to the hope that she was wrong in her assumption and that Daniel had had a legitimate reason for his dishonesty—though she couldn’t fathom what that might be—she intended to find out the truth, to preserve her own sanity if for nothing else.
Determined not to wait another instant, and not being in the most loving mood at the moment, Rebecca leaned forward and snapped her fingers together right next to Daniel’s ear. He groaned and swatted her away with his hand, so she did it again, and this time, he opened his eyes just enough to peek out from beneath his lashes. “Unless there’s a fire that you wish to warn me about, do you think perhaps you could just let me sleep?” He closed his eyes again and yawned.
Annoyed by his calm composure, Rebecca went to the dresser, yanked open a drawer and pulled out a clean shirt, her hands crumpling the fabric as she flung it on the bed. She found a pair of breeches for him next, which quickly landed on top of the shirt. “There’s something that I would like to discuss with you, Daniel.” Now, she wanted to say, because really, she just couldn’t wait any longer to find out what it was he was hiding. She needed to know, no matter what the truth turned out to be.
“Can’t it wait until later?” he asked, his voice still slurry from sleep, and then he reached out his arm and tried to grab hold of her. Rebecca did a quick sidestep, avoiding his touch completely. Daniel frowned. “Come on, Becky, why don’t you climb back into bed?”
“Because I need to have a word with you.” The last thing she wanted right now was for him to start kissing and touching her, for in spite of her temper, she didn’t trust herself not to melt in his arms. “So get dressed and meet me in the parlor in half an hour.” Turning her back on him, she went to the door and exited the room.
By the time Daniel finally appeared in the parlor as she’d requested, Rebecca had gone over every possible scenario in her mind once again. She’d also spent a lot of time considering what she would say to him, until she’d been quite satisfied with the little speech she’d rehearsed in her head. But the instant her eyes met his, she knew that would never do and that she would have to get straight to the point if she wished to state her case, for the disarming smile upon his face and the sparkle in his eyes was enough to make her want to forgive and forget everything else.
Doing so however—ignoring what he’d done and going on as they had before—was not something she could live with in the long run, so the instant the door was closed behind him she bluntly said, “Where were you last night?”
She watched as the smile fell from his face and his eyes filled with a mixture of concern and dismay. “I—”
“And don’t you dare tell me that you were reading Gulliver’s Travels in the library, for I know that you weren’t. You didn’t do so the day before that either, did you? I was too tired to realize it at the time, but last night when I saw you leave the house, I remembered how odd it had been that you would have gotten formally dressed after taking your bath and f
inding me asleep if all you’d been doing was reading a book in the comfort of your own home.” She tried to keep her voice steady, since the last thing she wanted to sound like was a railing shrew, but the task was proving difficult.
“You saw me leave?” he muttered, his voice sounding unusually detached.
Rebecca nodded, took a deep breath to rein in her emotions and quietly said, “I would like an explanation, please.” Well done, Rebecca, she congratulated herself. She actually sounded quite sensible and magnanimous.
Daniel stared at her while the clock on the mantelpiece ticked away three seconds. Eventually he said, “I went gambling.”
Rebecca blinked. “Are you serious?”
He nodded, sincerity marring his features, and she realized with undeniable surprise that he’d told her the truth. “What on earth were you thinking? Your uncle made it clear to you that you must refrain from such things if you wish to keep your monthly allowance. What if he finds out? Heaven above, he’ll cut you off. He’ll cut us off, and that’s without considering what a poor player you are. I hope your game of choice was something other than vingt-et-un.”
Rebecca’s mind was churning with the implications of what he’d just told her. Gambling. Did that mean that he hadn’t been with a mistress or some other woman? She knew that gambling hells were not the sort of place a proper lady would ever set her feet in, and she was now wondering if it wasn’t precisely the sort of place where loose women went in search of protectors. What if he was telling her only half the truth?
“About that,” Daniel said, halting Rebecca’s line of thought, “my uncle has already withdrawn all financial support.”
Rebecca’s jaw dropped. “He’s cut us off,” she muttered as she stared back at her husband. “Why wouldn’t you tell me this, Daniel? Don’t you think I have a right to know?”
“I wanted to protect you, Becky, and—”
“Why?” she asked, dumbfounded that he had lied to her not only about where he’d been at night but also about the state of their finances. He’d offered her pin money, for heaven’s sake! “So I could live in a fantasy while the world crumbled around me? So I could go on living in comfort, oblivious of the truth until waking up one day and discovering my life in ruins? Why would you do that to me, Daniel, when all I ever asked of you was honesty?”
“Because I wanted to prove myself capable of taking care of my family on my own,” he said, his voice rising with steely determination. “Because I didn’t want to accept handouts from anyone, least of all from you.”
“Handouts? My dowry belongs to you, Daniel. Without a settlement, the entirety of it became legally yours to do with as you please the instant you married me.”
“Don’t you see, Becky? I don’t want it. My entire life I’ve relied on other people for support. I’ve never once done anything useful or anything that I or anyone else might be proud of.” He shook his head. “I need to find a way to make this work on my own, and I need to do so without using your dowry, Becky. I want that money to be yours, the way it would have been if a settlement had been drawn.”
Rebecca could feel her resolve weakening, and she made an effort to strengthen it once more. She still had questions that needed answering. “If your uncle cut us off, then where did you find the money to gamble?”
“He left us a hundred pounds in the safe,” Daniel confessed. “Just enough to give us a chance to work something out.”
“Well, you certainly found yourself an occupation worthy of the aristocracy,” Rebecca muttered.
“I have no other talent,” he said.
This got her attention, and she found herself dismayed by the truth that shone in his dark brown eyes. “You won,” she whispered, and he nodded with a smile. “How much?”
“Just thirty pounds so far,” he said, looking slightly bashful, “at vingt-et-un—my game of choice.”
Rebecca just sat there, stunned. “You devil,” she finally exclaimed. “You let me win!”
“Guilty,” he confessed as his smile broadened to a grin.
“I have a sudden urge to throttle you, Daniel,” she said, unsure of whether to laugh or cry. She frowned instead and leveled him with her most serious stare. “Were there women at this . . . venue you visited?”
“Yes, Becky, there were.”
“Did you speak with any of them?”
“I did.”
That surprised her. She hadn’t expected him to be quite so candid. “And?”
To his credit, he didn’t feign ignorance or attempt to insult her intelligence by pretending not to know what she was asking. “I saw one of my former mistresses there,” he admitted, and Rebecca felt a sudden urge to be ill. “She wanted to know if I would like to invite her back into my bed, but I told her that I have no intention of slipping back into that way of life—that I’m married now and plan on remaining faithful to my wife.”
Rebecca didn’t move, because she feared that if she did, she might slip from the sofa and land on the Persian carpet. He’d completely disarmed her with his honesty, and she adored him for it. Still, she could not allow him to think he’d gotten away unscathed, so she kept quite still and said, “I understand your reasoning, Daniel, and I forgive you, but you should know that if you ever do something like this again behind my back, I will walk out the front door of this house and disappear from your life forever. Do you understand?”
A muscle twitched at his jaw as he nodded. “In that case, there’s something else you ought to know.”
The strain in his voice made her wary. “What is it?” she asked.
“Starkly approached me last night to warn me about Grover—says he’s contemplating revenge.”
“What?” She swallowed hard, while her heart slammed against her chest. The duke was not the honorable sort. If he wanted Daniel gone, he’d probably pay some thugs to put a bullet in his back and toss him in the Thames. She shuddered.
“Don’t be too alarmed,” Daniel told her. “For all I know this could be a bunch of nonsense concocted by Starkly with the sole purpose of putting me on edge. But it doesn’t hurt for us to keep our guard up and to stick to more populated areas whenever we venture out.”
“Well . . . thank you for telling me,” Rebecca said, still stunned by this bit of information. She met his gaze. “Regardless of our reasons for getting married, I want us to work as a team, Daniel. I have no other friends, in case you weren’t aware, and since you and I have to live together, I just want us to be able to trust each other. Our marriage will be unbearable otherwise.”
“I agree,” he said, looking sheepish and far too adorable for someone who’d just been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.
“I’m so glad you think so,” Rebecca said, smiling brightly, “since you’ll take no issue with me joining you this evening then.”
“I beg your pardon?” Daniel asked, eyes widening with disbelief.
“Tonight when you visit that gambling hell of yours, I have every intention of coming with you.”
“You can’t be serious.” Daniel shook his head as if to clear it. “Of course you are. You’re always looking for a bit of adventure, aren’t you?”
Rebecca smiled. “It keeps life interesting, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s madness if you must know,” he said. “A place like that is completely unfit for a lady such as yourself—for my wife, to be precise. And that’s without considering the potential threat from Grover.”
“He won’t try to do anything to either of us in public. If anything, I’d be more afraid of staying home alone than I would be of joining you at a gambling hell. Besides, if the place is all right for one of your mistresses, then it’s all right for me too,” Rebecca said, knowing that she was making a ridiculous point, but if Daniel was going to be in the room with such women, then so would she, no matter what Grover might be plotting.
“No,” Rebecca said, “but I would like to see where you spend your evenings at least once.” What she hoped was that in doing so she’d prevent herself from sitting at home and imagining the worst, which, for starters, would include Daniel playing cards with a courtesan on his lap. What she might envision him doing with the imaginary woman once he’d finished gambling was not something she wished to dwell on.
“You don’t trust me,” he said. It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact.
She tilted her head and pondered that. He’d told her everything when she’d confronted him, and she believed he’d been truthful. She also believed that he wished to keep his word and remain faithful to her, but would he be strong enough to resist temptation? If Lady Vernon could so easily kiss him in a deserted hallway, then what might not happen after a few drinks when he was surrounded with loose women? It wasn’t a concern she dared to share with him for fear that he might see the contents of her heart. “Of course I do,” she said, “but as I’ve said before, I don’t want us to have any more secrets.”
“And with everything that I’ve just told you, there’s hardly anything secret about it anymore.”
“Still, I think that seeing the place for myself would give me some peace of mind.”
“And I think you’re just looking for an excuse to go on another adventure, unless of course your real concern is for the courtesans that are bound to be present.” He stared back at her, his eyes intense, as if searching for something. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
The Scandal in Kissing an Heir Page 19
