“Is it the woman in the paintings?” she asked as they passed through the rose garden.
Ice-cold stabs of misery prickled his skin. He tensed to the point where his movements turned stiff as he walked.
“Who was she?” Angelica asked on.
Mark couldn’t have answered her if he’d tried.
Strangely, though, she let the question drop, as though they’d passed a dead, mangled animal on the side of the path, she’d commented on what could have happened to the poor thing, then marched on, her face tilted up to the sun with an appreciative smile. A few more yards down the path and Mark realized she wasn’t going to press the issue. She’d made a bid to peel back the lid he kept on his past, and when that lid proved to be fastened tight, she’d abandoned her efforts and moved on. Without teasing him. Without mocking him. Without bullying him. It was extraordinary.
“How do you propose to retrieve your painting from Lord Shayles?” she asked as they reached the bend in the path that followed the bank of the river.
“I’ve written to his solicitor repeatedly, but to no avail,” Mark said.
Angelica hummed, her brow knit in thought. He expected her to scold him into trying again, to deride him for being a coward. Instead, she asked, “What kind of painting is it?”
“It’s a painting,” he mumbled, flushing hot and staring at the river to avoid coming close to meeting her eyes.
“It must be valuable,” she went on, biting her lip. “Judging by what I’ve seen of your collection—you have a brilliant and impressive collection, by the way.”
“Thank you.” His shoulders unbunched a bit. “It has been the work of my lifetime.”
“Have you ever thought of lending some of the pieces to museums?”
“I have been asked to and on occasion I have, but the thought of letting any of my acquisitions out of my sight for long makes me anxious,” he answered honestly before he could stop himself. A blink of an eye later, he wondered if she’d asked the question purposely to draw him out.
Angelica merely hummed thoughtfully and went on. “Lord Shayles must have an extremely valuable piece,” she said. “Perhaps a Gainsborough or a Turner? One of the Dutch masters? Or, no, I bet it’s even better than that. It’s a Caravaggio, isn’t it? A Michelangelo? Or, no, it’s a da Vinci. You have acquired the Mona Lisa and Lord Shayles has it. The piece in Paris is a copy. That must be it.”
A flash of irritation pushed Mark to look at Angelica, ready to make some sort of defensive comment, but the way she was smiling at him—teasing and yet tender, playful and joyous—dried up the tart comment on his lips before he could make it. She looked so damned happy that he was bowled over in an instant.
“It’s not the Mona Lisa,” he said. “I keep her in a locked safe in the attic.”
Angelica laughed. The sound washed over him like a waterfall of diamonds. He’d made a joke. He’d made her laugh.
“That’s what that box was,” she said in a jovial tone. “And the urn beside it must hold the Venus de Milo.”
“No.” Mark shook his head. “I only collect paintings. I don’t have an eye for sculpture.”
“You must make a study of it, then.” She nodded. “We could study it together.”
The warm feeling that had been growing in Mark as they strode through the sunlit morning turned slippery. If she wanted it, he would transform himself into the world’s leading scholar on sculpture of all kinds. He would sprawl at her feet and suck on her toes if she asked him to.
“What a weakling,” Shayles’s voice rang in his head along with the derisive laughter of their friends and her crying. “You’d do whatever I told you to do, wouldn’t you? Well, you will if you know what’s good for you.”
Angelica yanked his arm, throwing Mark off balance just as the cold grip of his memories slithered up his spine and grabbed hold of his head. The jolt was so jarring that he completely forgot what he’d been thinking about.
“What was that for?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
But instead of confirming his suspicion that she’d seen him slipping off, she pointed to a crumbling section of wall halfway across the meadow. “We need to repair that wall,” she said, dragging him off the path.
“It’s been like that as long as I can remember,” Mark said, not quite a protest, but failing to feel the same sense of urgency Angelica clearly did. “I believe it marked the boundary between the original extent of Blackmoor Close before my great-grandfather bought up more land.”
“It’s an eyesore,” Angelica said. She tromped through the high grass of the meadow as if it were a manicured lawn, letting go of his arm but grasping his hand to drag him along.
For all of three seconds, Mark worried about his trousers and shoes before tossing thoughts of grass stains and scuffs aside. He was suddenly ten again, adventuring across the meadow in short pants, his wooden sword at his side. A lightness filled him as they reached the wall and Angelica let go of his hand. She planted her hands on her hips for a moment, surveying the rubble.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” she said with a satisfied sigh, then set to work.
At first, Mark simply watched as she lifted a rock that he would have sworn was too heavy for her and laid it on top of the wall’s remaining foundation. Once that one was in place, she studied the rest of the rocks, picked one, and heaved that one into place as well.
“Are we Scots training for battle again?” he asked, unbuttoning his jacket. He shrugged out of it, tossed it aside, and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
“We’re always training for battle,” she said with a wry, sideways grin.
Mark had the sudden, creeping sensation that she was being serious. He bent over to lift a large rock all the same. Its weight strained his muscles, but the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. He followed Angelica’s lead, piling rocks on top of the remains of the wall.
Their work was largely pointless and artless. The rocks they stacked looked no more like a wall than his jacket did lying in the grass. But there was an odd sort of satisfaction in stretching his back, feeling the burn in his arms and thighs as he lifted and hefted. The sweat that he worked up felt warm and honest as opposed to the cold sweat of fright that had struck him at breakfast. Best of all, his mind and his memories switched off. It was as though his muscles had commandeered all of his energy, leaving none to fuel the underlying terror of being alive.
“There,” Angelica panted at last, stepping back, chest heaving, to study the wobbly, uneven structure they’d created. “I’d say that’s a job well done.”
Mark studied her. Stains had formed under her arms and across her back, but he couldn’t think of anything that would make a gown seem more attractive. Her hair had come loose from its style and pieces stuck up at odd angles. Her face was flushed and shone with perspiration. And he wanted to kiss her. Violently. Desperately. His whole body ached with the simple need to hold her close, to press his lips against hers. That was all he wanted, just a kiss, nothing more. But the panic that feeling brought with it kept him frozen to his spot.
“I’m hungry,” Angelica said at last, turning to face him. “Are you hungry?”
“Famished,” he answered, stumbling over the single word.
“Let’s go back to the house and see if luncheon is ready.”
She took his hand and started back through the field. Mark was happier than he remembered being in ages just to follow. He swept up his jacket as they passed it, draping it over his arm and remaining silent as he walked with her. Walked with his wife through a sunny meadow in his shirtsleeves, dripping with sweat. Content. It was something he could barely comprehend.
By the time they reached the house, his courage had grown by leaps and bounds. They entered the house the same way they’d left, through the conservatory, and headed into the hall. Before they reached the breakfast room, however, Mark tugged Angelica gently to a stop.
“Angelica,” he began, his heart thumping even faster than when they
’d been walking.
“Yes?” She faced him with a smile, her cheeks rosy from sunlight and exercise.
Mark stepped closer to her. His stomach flipped. He was fast approaching fifty, dammit. He should not feel like a green lad of sixteen. He took her other hand, staring at her fingers entwined with his, working up the nerve to glance up at her. His sheepishness was absurd. She was his wife, after all.
“Would you mind if I….” He couldn’t squeeze the words out, fool though he was.
Instead, he gazed into her eyes at last, finding nothing but patience there. His blood pumped harder, and for the first time in what felt like forever, the rush of arousal that flowed through him didn’t instantly inspire revulsion. He dropped his gaze to her lips. They were soft and half-parted. He held his breath, leaning in closer, his body buzzing with expectation and elation. The scent of her skin intoxicated him as he battled aside the last of his inhibitions. He could do this. Nothing bad would happen. Everything would be—
“My lord, the post has arrived.”
Baxter’s deep voice was like a splash of cold water breaking a spell. Mark leapt back, withering with embarrassment. Exactly as a sixteen-year-old boy would if his father had caught him kissing a maid.
“Oh.” Baxter seemed equally nonplussed as he stumbled to a halt, holding out a letter. “I’m terribly sorry, my lord, your ladyship. I didn’t realize…I should have…it is unforgiveable of me.” The man’s face was beet red.
Mark cleared his throat, pushing away from Angelica, as stiff as ever. “Never mind, Baxter. What do you have for me?”
“A letter, your lordship,” Baxter said with a new kind of anxiety. He approached swiftly, holding out the letter as though it were poison. “From Newgate Prison.”
Mark’s heart dropped to his gut, which quickly filled with acid. His icy demeanor snapped back into place as he took the letter from Baxter and nodded in thanks. He couldn’t have formed the words to thank Baxter or send him about his business if he’d tried. All he could do was study the envelope with trepidation. He knew the handwriting of the address too well.
“Newgate Prison,” Angelica said, stepping forward and grasping Mark’s arm with both hands. “That’s where Lord Shayles is being held, isn’t it?”
Mark nodded, words still escaping him. He inserted his thumb into the envelope’s flap and ripped, too anxious to fetch a letter opener from his study. In the nearly six months that Shayles had been imprisoned, not once had he written to Mark directly. Every correspondence had been filtered through Mr. Lloyd the solicitor. A direct letter couldn’t have been good news.
The letter itself was short and to the point.
“Dear Gatwick. The time is growing nearer for my release, but I would very much like to see you before then. Visit me here on Wednesday the thirteenth at ten in the morning. I shall make arrangements on my end. We have much to discuss.”
The letter was signed with Shayles’s grandiose signature, though Mark noted that it was shakier than the last time he’d seen it.
“What are you going to do?” Angelica asked.
Mark refolded the letter, staring at it for a moment. “I don’t know,” he answered. The thought of returning to London, of walking into a prison and facing Shayles after everything that had happened filled him with dread. But staying where he was, hiding in Hampshire behind the closed walls of Blackmoor Close, would make him the worst sort of coward.
He surprised himself by pivoting and glancing to Angelica. “What do you think I should do?” he asked.
Her beautiful face hardened with resolve. “I think you should march into that prison with your head held high and tell that bastard to give you back your painting.”
He loved her. God almighty, when had that happened? But there it was. He, Mark Pearson, Earl of Gatwick, was completely besotted by his fiery, American wife. It was a total disaster. If Shayles found out, it would be the end of him, the end of everything.
“I suppose we’re going to London, then,” he said, feeling the last bit of control he had over his life slipping.
Chapter 8
Mark’s nerves were taut as he and Angelica rode through the streets of London in the carriage Templeton, the butler in his townhome, had arranged to pick them up at the train station. It felt as though he hadn’t been in London for decades…and it felt as though he’d never left. The heavy scent of refuse and smoke irritated his nose and the constant din of carriages, people, and commerce grated on him.
“I had no idea London was so big,” Angelica said, her eyes wide as she all but pressed herself against the window, looking out at the city. “New Orleans is growing by leaps and bounds, but this is impressive.”
“You came through Portsmouth and not London when you arrived,” Mark said, uncertain how else to make conversation when his feelings on the matter were clearly so different from hers.
Angelica hummed affirmatively in answer but continued watching the world outside the carriage.
Mark watched her. The line of her neck as she stretched toward the window was intoxicating. Her hand resting on the seat between them, long fingers splayed to provide balance as she leaned was mesmerizing. She’d piled her hair on her head in a gravity-defying style once again, which showed off the line of her jaw and her cheekbones.
He wanted to paint her. The thought hit him out of nowhere, sending an itch down his back. He’d only had one subject for his paintings for nearly twenty-five years, but suddenly his hands twitched to have another. The picture Angelica made right at that moment, staring eagerly out the window at a whole new world, would inevitably be a masterpiece. If he could do it justice. Which he doubted he could.
The carriage turned the last corner onto Hill Street, where his townhome sat, and Angelica swayed away from the window, pivoting to face him. “You must think I’m foolish for becoming so excited over a place you probably know well.”
“I could never think you were foolish,” Mark answered. The line would have sounded suave and debonair if he hadn’t been stiff with anxiety. He was the fool in their current situation.
Angelica sent him a wry grin. “I can be exceptionally foolish when I put my mind to it. Grandpa Miles used to tell me I had the sense of a mule when it came to putting myself in untenable situations where business was concerned.”
“Oh?” Mark leapt at the chance to have her talk about herself and not him.
She laughed, stirring his heart. “I had a bad habit of barging into meetings of shareholders and causing proceedings to grind to a halt.” She leaned closer to him. “Men in business do not appreciate a woman interfering with their affairs, especially when the woman in question knows more about the business than they do.”
“Men are ignoramuses most of the time,” Mark agreed, once again too nervous about where he was and why he was there to sound casual.
Angelica’s expression pinched as though his anxiety wasn’t lost on her. “Lavinia hinted that you haven’t been back to London or away from Blackmoor Close since Lord Shayles’s trial in the spring,” she said.
“I haven’t,” Mark answered honestly.
He waited for Angelica to ask why or to scold him or laugh at him for being a coward, but she merely studied him for a moment longer, then turned to glance out the window when the carriage came to a stop.
“Is this your townhouse?” she asked, the awe returning to her expression.
“Yes,” he answered, scooting around her toward the door to be ready when the driver opened it. As soon as he did, Mark hopped down, then turned to offer Angelica a hand. “Gatwick House has been in the family since it was built shortly after the Great Fire.”
“Wasn’t that almost two centuries ago?” Angelica blinked at him, then up at the massive Georgian edifice. “It doesn’t look that old.”
“It was remodeled in the time of George II,” he explained. “It needs renovating again to add modern conveniences.”
He tucked Angelica’s hand into the crook of his arm and escorted her
up the front steps. Templeton was waiting to open the door and welcome them in and take their coats, and his entire staff—several of them new faces that had been hired after the trial—was lined up to greet him.
“Good day, my lord, my lady,” they each said, one after the other, bowing deeply or curtsying. Mark saw nothing but masked contempt in their too-tight smiles or too ingratiating attitudes.
“Would you care for tea in the parlor, my lord?” Templeton asked.
Mark turned to Angelica, who nodded.
“Yes,” he said, then whisked Angelica on to the back of the house.
The staff disbursed as they walked past, and within moments, Mark and Angelica were blessedly alone in the flowery parlor his mother had decorated when she was a new bride.
“They all seem so nice,” Angelica said with a smile.
Mark turned to her, his brow lifting in surprise. “Who, the staff?”
“Yes, of course.”
He shook his head. “They despise me, I’m sure.”
Angelica’s expression crumpled into confusion. “They most certainly do not. Did you not see the looks of respect they all gave you?”
“Because I pay them, no doubt,” he said. “I can’t imagine that any of them think highly of me.” Not after witnessing him playing the part of Shayles’s lap dog for years. Why, he’d had a devil of a time keeping young maids in his employ after the way Shayles would accost them whenever he and his hangers-on would throw parties at Gatwick House. It had gotten to the point where he’d instructed Mrs. Lewis, his housekeeper, to only hire unattractive girls to work upstairs. Although most of the maids that had just greeted them were new.
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