Longing for a Liberating Love: A Historical Regency Romance Book

by Bridget Barton

  She stumbled backwards, looking once again at Jonas’ leering face. His hair was longer, but he looked otherwise the same as the day he’d left her. His eyes were dark and deep, and he seemed to skewer her with his relentless gaze.

  She planted her feet, telling herself not to run away. “It’s just a dream,” she reminded herself. “He has no power over you.”

  He could hear her, in the dream, and he raised his chin as he always did when he was trying to make her feel small.

  “Hullo, dearie,” he said, his voice like icicles falling into her heart. “Did you miss me?”

  Chapter 17

  “You look tired, love.” Imogene spooned up warm potatoes onto Alina’s breakfast plate, chasing it with a piece of toast and a soft-boiled egg on its china stand. “Did the port do some damage last night? You know, you ought to drink more often, so it doesn’t affect you so terribly when you do get around to imbibing a bit.”

  Alina swallowed, her mouth feeling cottony. “I had a bad dream,” she explained, hoping the words spoken into the sunlight breakfast room would break the spell last night’s nightmare still held over her. “Could port cause bad dreams?”

  “Port, perhaps, and a troubled heart, certainly. Have some coffee, dearie, and we’ll talk about the day’s adventure.”

  “What’s port, Mama?” Jinx asked innocently, hitting his egg a little too firmly and watching the yolk burst open and dribble down the shell.

  “It’s a kind of wine,” she informed him. “For grown-ups to drink.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “No, Mama just had a bit too much, like when you drink too much juice and your stomach starts to hurt.”

  Jinx leveled a sympathetic stare in her direction. “Yikes.”

  She couldn’t resist a little laugh. “That’s right, ‘yikes.’”

  The cloud was lifting, and she ventured a tentative smile. You must allow yourself to feel happy, Alina, she scolded herself. “So, what is on the agenda?”

  “The trip to the seaside must be canceled due to inclement weather,” Imogene said with a sweeping movement of her spoon, as though she was conducting an orchestra, “but I have excellent news—there is a gallery opening in town with some magnificent artists promised to be in attendance. We can go there and fill our minds with beauty and culture.”

  Jinx looked distinctly disappointed. “Isn’t that dull, Mama?”

  “Not at all, Jinx,” she answered briskly. “Remember the beautiful crab that you found when we were playing in the cove with Mr. Theo? Well, the bottom of it was that stunning blue color, and you found that so lovely. These artists notice beautiful things like that and try to put them into paintings. It’s their way of finding treasures and showing them to the world, just like you find the crab and show it to me. You’ll like it very much, I assure you, and perhaps, afterwards, we can indulge in a hot chocolate on the square.”

  Jinx brightened. “That sounds good.”

  But it was not to be. Just as they were about to leave, a knock came on their door and the butler showed a visitor into the drawing room. Alina, who was standing by the window fumbling with the ribbons of her bonnet, stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of the visitor.

  “Matthew,” she said, a pit of dread opening in her stomach at the sneer on his face. “What are you doing here? I hardly expected you to appear in Brighton—I’m going back to London in a few days—”

  “You’re rambling, Sister,” he interrupted her, running a hand through his fine head of hair. “I think there are quite a few things you do not expect before they come to pass, and I am come to tell you about another one.”

  She laid her hand on the back of the armchair for support. “Yes?”

  “No, not here. It’s the kind of thing that is better shown than explained. I need you to come with me back to London at once.”

  She set her mouth in a thin line. “I will not be bullied by you, Matthew. Tell me what it is at once, or I will not accompany you anywhere.”

  “I think you will,” he said calmly, “for if you don’t, the entirety of your husband’s estate is at risk.”

  Alina wanted to think he was making it all up to manipulate her, but there was something in his eyes that bespoke truth, not matter how ill-intentioned. She hung her head. “Now, you say? It will take me a moment to gather Jinx and my belongings.”

  “You have ten minutes.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh, and I would leave Jinx here if I were you. I think you will find the matter isn’t fit for a young boy—it will shock his system. Have him sent to Marshall Gardens in a later carriage. That friend of yours can direct him.”

  Alina hesitated, but she didn’t know what choice she had. She wished Theo was there to demand answers, to show Matthew that he couldn’t just waltz into people’s homes and demand they follow him on wild missions across England, but she was also growing increasingly curious—the kind of horrid, pressing curiosity that makes a person keep looking at a shipwreck after it’s happened.

  Imogene stepped into the room, her hands busied with a parcel, and froze when she saw Matthew. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “But you recognize me, don’t you Mrs. Fairfax?” He smiled a wide, hideous smile. “I’ve been told I look a lot like my brother, and most people who have met him can pick me out as his kin in one sighting.”

  “You have a worse face than his,” Imogene pointed out bluntly. “And that’s saying something.”

  Alina winced, but Matthew seemed to find the insult amusing. “Mrs. Hartley’s coming with me now,” he announced abruptly. “You will need to send the boy in a later carriage, but directly to Marshall Gardens.”

  “No,” Imogene said, planting her feet. “You’re not taking Alina anywhere.”

  “You don’t get any say in the matter. Alina has already agreed.”

  Imogene turned a worried look to her friend. “What?”

  “It’s true,” she responded with a worried sigh. “I think it is a pressing matter surrounding Jonas’ estate, and I am convinced of Matthew’s honesty in this matter.”

  “In this matter alone, I assume,” Imogene said drily. “Well, if you’re certain, then you may go, of course. I will pack Jinx’s bags and have him at Marshall Gardens by tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Alina said.

  From there, it was a matter of pitched speed and frantic, stuffed suitcases. Willa went through the motions with remarkable calm. Unlike the previous weeks, she didn’t protest or throw attitude. She seemed to take the suddenness of the events in stride, and when they were packed up and preparing to head into the carriage she gave a little curtsy, promising to care for “Master Jinx,” and waved farewell in good spirits.

  As they rattled out of town, Alina caught a slow, crafty smile spreading across Matthew’s face.

  “Can you tell me now?” she asked, trying to sound coaxing and to keep the vile disgust she had for him out of her tone.

  “Of course not, but we can speak of other things. Perhaps you can tell me what you’ve been up to during your stay in Brighton.”

  “I hardly think I owe you such an explanation,” Alina answered coldly.

  “Oh, I think you do. I’ve heard tell that you were quite the belle of the ball in your widows’ weeds, parading around the dance floor to catch the eyes of rich gentleman. Heard you even had a colonel well in hand—don’t know how you managed to fumble that, but the brokenhearted chap was happy to spread his ill will around for all who would listen.”

  Alina pursed her lips and looked out the window.

  “Come on,” Matthew prodded, clearly attempting to get a rise out of her. “If I am not allowed to know who my sister-in-law is replacing my brother with, who is?”

  “I am not looking for a replacement for Jonas,” Alina snapped. She thought about leaving it there, but she had to admit that Matthew had, at last, gotten under her skin. She turned to him with a flashing anger rising in her chest. “Your brother was a hard man, and he made my life m
iserable. I have no desire to link myself forever with another like he, the kind of man who thinks only of greed and is willing to sell his soul just to obtain a few more pounds of flesh from his competitors. You are like him—more like him than you know. It’s a pity I couldn’t see those qualities when we were first courting.”

  “You speak as though it would have made a difference,” Matthew drawled. “My brother always got what he wanted, Alina. He wanted you, for whatever social reason he had at the time, and you he received.”

  “I could have said no to his suit,” she retorted angrily. “I wish I had. It was my own ignorance and naïveté that left me trapped in his web.”

  “You had no choice in the matter. Jonas knows how to play a sale. You were naïve, and so he chose to be gallant and idealistic until he had what he wanted. If you’d been older and more intelligent, he would have pretended to be clever and kind until he had you in his bed. That’s just the way he is, with all women.”

  “The way he was, you mean,” Alina corrected sharply.

  Matthew looked at her with a sideways grin. “Of course.”

  They rode for a time in silence, and then Matthew began speaking again, that same annoying drawl strangling her will. “I remember when he first started after you. I thought you were a pretty thing myself, although no more remarkable than the women of the night in the middle of London. At least those women aren’t teases who deny their husbands.”

  “I am not speaking about this with you,” Alina informed him, her voice shaking.

  “But you,” Matthew went on, “you liked horseback rides and flowers and such. It was nauseating, listening to you go on and on about nature and love, as though Jonas was capable of understanding such things. I would have been a much better conversation partner.”

  “Like you are now?” she snapped. “If I could escape this conversation, I would.”

  He sighed and leaned his head back against the carriage, closing his eyes as though wearied with the world in its entirety. “Do you ever grow tired of being so infernally pious?” he asked at last. “You must wish you could embark on an affair, just as he did.”

  “I wished no such thing,” Alina said. “I was faithful to him.”

  “Ah, but he was not faithful to you. You don’t even know the extent of his wrongdoing, my pet. You would blush to think of the places he’s been and the women he’s seen. Why, I’m sure you’ve already wondered, at all those parties you used to attend, how many of them had been part of the betrayal.”

  Alina felt tears spring to her eyes, and she looked out the window so as to not give Matthew the pleasure of witnessing her pain.

  “Yes, you’re so noble, bearing up under the shame of it all. You should give in to your own base desires just once, Alina, to show him that he doesn’t have power over you.”

  “Didn’t,” she reminded him softly. “Didn’t have power over me.”

  “Of course,” he said again.

  The rest of the carriage ride passed in silence, and when they arrived in London, they paused only briefly to unload her luggage at Marshall Gardens before continuing on into the heart of the city. She was surprised to find their destination was a sick bay at one of the finer London hospitals. Usually the Hartley men avoided such places. Once, Alina had heard Jonas say that the sick bays in London were the pit of hell itself, and if one was too close, one ran the risk of catching a deadly illness.

  She’d served at this particular hospital many times, on the lower levels where the poor were lined up on shallow cots with only thin blankets covering their brittle bones. But they didn’t go to the lower levels.

  Instead, Matthew took her rather firmly by the arm and led her through the hospital courtyard and up three flights of stairs. Here, the hospital was far finer, made up of large, well-lit rooms with neat, uniformed men and women walking about administering drugs and helping the patients be more comfortable.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  “How tedious that you insist on questioning me on a topic I have made clear is better seen than explained,” Matthew replied, but a wicked, unsettling smile curved his mouth.

  At the end of the hall they turned left, going down another small hallway lit with only tiny windows then turning left again at the end of this hall. There was a tapestry hung over the door before them, and Matthew pulled this aside to reveal a bed with a form lying beneath the covers and a nurse at a table.

  “Is he well?” Matthew asked, adopting that elegant affectation of kindness that Alina had seen on more than one occasion from Jonas.

  The nurse looked up with surprise, her eyes leaping from Matthew to Alina. “Mrs. Hartley, a pleasure to meet you, my lady.”

  “Could we see him?” Matthew pressed.

  A sick dread was building in Alina’s stomach.

  “Of course, you can,” the nurse said, rising with a pretty curtsy and moving to the still form of the man on the bed. She laid her hand upon the man’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Sir, there are two people here to see you.”

  The man rolled over and Alina took a step backward in shock, the world spinning around her. There, lying in the bed, his hair long and matted, his beard untrimmed, was her husband, Jonas Hartley.

  “It’s not possible,” she said cautiously, raising a hand to her mouth. “How can you be alive?”

  The nurse turned a worried look on Alina. “Are you well, ma’am? You look as though you might be blown away by a stiff wind.” She frowned at Matthew. “Didn’t you tell her beforehand?”

  “I thought it might be a pleasant surprise.”

  “The shock of it is destroying her, can’t you see?”

  Alina felt hands guiding her to a settee, a hand pressing water into her own grip, and the refreshing smell of salts near at hand. She gritted her teeth, refusing to faint. “Please, tell me—“

  Snippets of explanation came from the nurse, with interjections from Matthew. There had been a shipwreck, yes, with no survivors—or so they’d thought. But they had been wrong. A fishing boat, yes, a fishing boat had found poor Jonas Hartley floating on a spar in the middle of the sea.

  They’d rescued him, pulling him from the waves and helping him recuperate until they could make it to shore. Why so long? Well, he’d taken some time crossing the country, and he had no money or title that was recognized in those waters. In the end, it had been months before he could charter a trip back over the ocean to his beloved’s side, and even then, he’d been trapped in the lower hold like a commoner…

  All this information went into Alina’s mind like senseless facts. Her full attention was drawn to the eyes of her husband, which lay unblinking and constant before her. He would not release her from his gaze, and when the whole of the explanation died off, he opened his mouth in that familiar, mocking smile.

  “Hello, my love,” he said hoarsely. “Did you miss me?”

  Chapter 18

  Verner paced the floor outside the courtroom, his nerves evident on his face. “I don’t think it will work,” he said under his breath so their client couldn’t hear. “They’ll never try the Duke for his servant’s mistake.”

  Theo took the bundle of papers from his friend and looked through them, more out of habit than necessity. “They did in the case of Ormond versus Payne—the Prince was held liable for his coachman’s drunken spree.”