“I understood that Devereux means nothing to you,” he said harshly.
“He means less than nothing to me,” she quickly denied.
His eyes roamed her face. “Then why this exaggerated response when you hear that he keeps a mistress?”
“I could not care less if he keeps a score of mistresses,” she hissed. She breathed deeply and found her control. “It was vulgar,” she said in a lowered tone. “Do you think I like to be an object of pity? Do you think I like to have my name coupled with a rake like Devereux! Those glances! Those snide smiles! I feel unclean.”
The harsh lines on his face gradually relaxed. “Devereux is a fool,” he said. “He deserves to lose you. You’ll think about what I have said? You will press for an annulment?”
She nodded her acquiescence.
On the drive home to the house in St. James Square, the temperature inside the coach on that warm April evening was frigid. It was plain that Uncle Rolfe was out of humor. Emily braced herself to receive the sharp edge of his tongue. But it seemed as if that honor was largely reserved for her sister.
“I should like to know, miss,” said the marquess, addressing Sara, “what was in your head when you allowed Peter Benson to partner you for no less than four dances? Let me tell you, the whole world now expects the announcement of your betrothal.”
Eyes snapping, Sara tossed her blond ringlets. “Perhaps I shall marry Peter. I must marry someone. Why not him? He is handsome. He comes from good stock. Peter will do as well as anyone.”
“Over my dead body! The man is a fortune hunter. You are the biggest matrimonial prize on the market, leastways as far as fortune goes. How many times must I remind you? You are an heiress. Your stepfather, not to mention your own father, left you and your sister both so well placed that you can buy and sell your poor guardian ten times over. Peter Benson knows it. He is up to his neck in tick. All he wants is to get his hands on your fortune. When he does, he’ll soon go through it. He lost the fortune his father left him. He’ll do the same to yours.”
“Thank you,” said Sara with scathing politeness.
“Now that is going too far, dear,” Aunt Zoë remonstrated. “Sara has more than fortune to recommend her. She is the toast of the ton. And it’s not only because of her beauty. She is a popular girl, and quite rightly so, in my opinion.”
“Thank you, Aunt Zoë,” said Sara in a very different tone from the one she had employed with her uncle.
“All I am saying is this…” The marquess was visibly striving for reasonableness. “When you marry, your husband will have the management of your affairs. I have no qualms about Emily’s husband. Leon understands finance. He has never risked Emily’s capital unless he had good reason. On the other hand, Peter Benson thinks that money is to be spent, not invested with an eye to the future.”
“Oh, very good,” stormed Sara. “I see how it is. All my suitors must pass a test in bookkeeping before they have your blessing. For all you care, they may be as dull as ditchwater.”
“No! That is not what I am saying.” Seeing that he was making heavy weather of the matter, the marquess tried to inject a little humor into the conversation. “Take William Addison, for example. He’s not as dull as ditchwater. And he has money of his own. The worst thing you did was let your sister steal your beau. Why don’t you employ all those feminine wiles of yours to get William back? Now there is a gentleman I would be happy to see you wed.”
Aunt Zoë interjected, apropos of nothing, “Did I tell you that I had received a letter from young Rolfe? He has found a new friend, Lord Barton’s boy. He seems to be quite enjoying school now. Isn’t that nice?” Rolfe was Zoë’s youngest, and still very much the baby of the family.
No one was deflected by this non sequitur. Huffing, Sara said, “Emily did not steal William away from me. I made her a present of him.”
That remark gave the marquess a new direction. “Emily, I wish you would not encourage the attentions of William Addison, or any particular gentleman. You have a husband. Try to remember it.”
Emily heard the reproof and ignored it. Her thoughts were occupied with a remark that had been dropped some time before. “Are you saying,” she said, frowning, “that Leon has the management of my affairs?”
“Naturally.”
“But…but…the fortune my father left me, and my stepfather? You are my guardian, Uncle Rolfe. Surely you have the management of my affairs?”
“My dear child, the day you married Leon was the day I ceased to be your guardian. The law is very precise on this point. Your husband has full control of your fortune. You should be glad of it. Leon put your money to good use. It has made him a rich man ten times over.”
Emily could hardly draw breath for spleen. “It has made him a rich man?” she said faintly.
“Very rich.” Her guardian laughed easily. “I can tell you, for a time there, he had me worried. Leon thinks that nothing is to be gained by money sitting in the bank drawing interest. No, that young man was in a hurry to recoup all that he had lost because of the Revolution. And he has done it! In five short years, by Jove, he has done it!”
Emily strove to hold on to her patience. “I understood his American brother-in-law, Adam Dillon, helped establish Leon in the New World.”
“Certainly he did. But we are talking substantial wealth here. The modest loans that Leon received from his relations, together with what he salvaged from his father’s financial holdings in France, were very modest, relatively speaking.”
“Not to be compared to his wife’s fortune?” said Emily, smiling through her teeth.
“You were quite an heiress,” agreed her uncle.
Emily was speechless, but only for a moment. “And now I am a pauper,” she burst out.
The heavens chose that moment to open. There was the crack of a thunderbolt and the rains came driving down, bouncing off the roof and sides of the coach like pellets from a shotgun.
Aunt Zoë smiled brightly. “In England it never rains but it pours,” she said.
Rolfe’s sigh was long and audible. He removed his neckcloth and threw it over the back of a chair. “I’m only in my forties,” he said. “I feel like a hundred. Those girls are driving me to an early grave.”
Zoë was sitting up in bed braiding her dark, glossy hair. To her way of thinking, her husband had scarcely aged in their sixteen happy years of wedlock. It was the thick pelt of blond hair, she decided, which gave that impression. At Rolfe’s age, many gentlemen had silver wings at the temples. If Rolfe had one gray hair in his head, she had yet to find it. He was more than ten years her senior. She hoped she would age as gracefully as her husband.
Another long sigh was exhaled on Rolfe’s breath. “Those girls are a handful, and that is putting it mildly.”
“I hope our own girls are not going to give us so much trouble,” Zoë observed.
Rolfe blinked. “What girls?” he said. “Last I counted, we had five boys, and after tonight, I thank God for it.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” said Zoë, her mischievous grin giving her the look of a woodland nymph.
Rolfe’s eyebrows lowered. “I don’t know if I want any girls, thank you. I don’t think I’m up to it.”
“Don’t be crude, dear.”
“What? I wasn’t being crude!” He saw that she was mocking him. Chortling, he joined her on the bed. “You have changed, do you know? There was a time when a comment like that would have sent roses to bloom in your cheeks. What makes you so bold?”
“Living with a man will do that to you.” She planted a lingering kiss squarely on his lips.
After several minutes of pleasurable activity, Rolfe said, “I can’t seem to put a foot right with those girls. What did I do wrong?”
Zoë made a small sound of commiseration.
“No, I mean it,” said Rolfe. “Really. You can tell me. I won’t bite your head off.”
“I think you know yourself,” answered Zoë with wife
ly diplomacy.
“I’m too dictatorial.”
“There is that.”
“I should talk less and listen more.”
“I could not put it better myself.”
“I know it. I just can’t seem to do it. That damnable temper of mine keeps getting the better of me.”
“Your nieces know it, dear, and they delight in testing it.”
“What?”
“It’s a game. And you never fail them. You always rise to their bait.”
“Well, it’s a damn dangerous game, let me tell you.” Rolfe rolled from the bed and began to strip out of his garments. “Peter Benson!” he said testily. “A known fortune hunter! And Emily—getting up a flirtation with William Addison! I thought the girl had more sense. I thought William had more sense. Nothing can come of it.”
“You don’t suppose Emily is serious about William, do you?”
Zoë’s words arrested Rolfe as he was reaching for her. His hands dropped away. “How can she be serious about William? She is married to Leon.”
“It’s not much of a marriage.”
“Not yet, it isn’t.”
He returned to the bed and set his fingers to unplait his wife’s hair. Zoë grasped his wrists, stilling his movements. “Something is going on. I wish you would tell me what it is.”
“You are imagining things.”
“Oh? Then why have you been on edge for months past? There is something troubling you, something to do with Emily. What is it, Rolfe? What scrape is she in now?”
For a moment it seemed that he might shrug off her suspicions. One look at the determined set of his wife’s little chin warned him of the futility of evasive tactics.
Propping his back against the pillows, he linked his fingers behind his neck and stared into space. “Emily comes of age in another month,” he said.
Zoë was tactfully silent.
Sighing, Rolfe went on. “Before Leon and Emily were wed, your brother made me a solemn promise. Emily was so young. She wasn’t ready for marriage. And then, of course, she had developed this childish aversion to Leon.”
“I understand,” said Zoë. “What was the promise?”
“That he would give her time to come round to the idea of marriage.”
“But she hasn’t come round,” Zoë pointed out. “And they have been married for almost five years.”
“Yes, and that’s the damnable thing! You see, Zoë,” he turned his head to study his wife’s expression, “Emily’s time will run out on her birthday.”
At Zoë’s appalled look, Rolfe’s shoulders came away from the pillows. “Darling,” he said, “it was inevitable that one day Leon would come and claim his wife. You must have known it.”
“I suppose. I just never thought about it. What is more to the point, I’m sure that Emily does not know it.” After a considering silence, she observed, “Perhaps we are worrying about nothing. Perhaps Leon won’t come for her.”
“He will come for her. You may take that as given.”
“She needs more time.”
“No.”
“You can’t expect…”
“It’s not me we have to consider. My hands are tied. Leon is her husband.”
“Perhaps if we both talk to him…No, that won’t do. When Leon makes up his mind to something, he is positively immovable.”
“Don’t you think I am aware of that?” Rolfe groaned. “She won’t accept this without a fight. She will try to get round me. She will use every weapon in her arsenal to wear me down. She knows that I am putty in her hands. Leon is immune to her threats and blandishments. She knows that, too. She will never believe that I must stand aside, if only for her own good.”
For a time they were silent as each considered Emily’s unhappy plight. At length, Zoë said, “It’s strange that she never outgrew this childish antipathy to Leon. It leads me to wonder if there is not something there, something between them that we know nothing about.” Her eyes anxiously searched Rolfe’s face. “You are sure Leon didn’t…what I mean to say is—”
“Of course he didn’t ravish her,” he interrupted. “How could you think such a thing about a man of Leon’s character?”
“Ravish? That was not what I was thinking! I hope I know my own brother better than that! No. What I was thinking was that Leon might have made love to her a little. Well, you know Leon. He always had an eye for the girls, and it seemed to me that his youthful aversion to Emily was too exaggerated to be credible.”
“He didn’t lay a finger on her. He gave me his word on it and I believe him.”
Zoë studied Rolfe’s expression. “Do you know, it has always struck me as something wonderful that you accepted my brother as though he were an ordinary boy?” To Rolfe’s questioning look, she answered, “You knew the kind of life he led during the Revolution. Yet it did not seem to affect your opinion of Leon’s character. Most people would have shunned him.”
There was a grimness to the set of Rolfe’s mouth when he replied. “As they would no doubt shun me if they knew the half of what I had been forced to do as an agent behind enemy lines.”
Zoë’s eyebrows winged upward and Rolfe shook his head. “No, kitten. There are some secrets I could never share, not even with you.”
Her look was very tender. “Stupid man,” she said lovingly. “My opinion of your character could never alter.” After a moment, she went on. “Are you saying that your experiences and Leon’s experiences create a bond between you?”
“That’s exactly what I am saying.”
She smiled. “I am glad. But to get back to Emily—”
“Leon has been more than patient with her,” he cut in brusquely.
She eyed him curiously. “I’m right, aren’t I? There is something between them, something that has given Emily a thorough disgust of Leon?”
Rolfe’s expression was unrevealing. “Shall we say that Emily’s disgust is natural to any chaste young girl who discovers that the male of the species has a carnal appetite which need not involve the finer feelings.”
Zoë’s brow puckered. “Carnal appetite? Are you suggesting that Emily discovered that Leon kept a mistress?”
There was an imperceptible hesitation before Rolfe replied, “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Zoë made a moue of distaste. “Men!” she said with patent loathing.
“Quite.”
She shook her head. “Poor Emily. Still, I suppose if that is all it was, there is hope for them yet.” Her dark eyes danced. “Well, look at us.”
Rolfe chuckled. “Yes, let’s look at us, shall we? Now where were we? Oh, yes, you were upbraiding me for our lack of daughters, and I was itching to run my fingers through your glorious mane of hair. Mother Nature has worked things out wondrously well, has she not? We shall both of us get what we want.”
“Yes,” Zoë agreed breathlessly. She could not breathe when his hands possessed her so intimately.
Rolfe pulled back as a thought struck him. “What if we have another boy? It’s possible, you know.”
“Will you be disappointed?”
“Lord, no! Boys are no trouble at all.”
“Give them time,” murmured Zoë, pulling Rolfe’s head down to renew the embrace.
Chapter Two
The following morning everyone slept late, everyone, that is, except Emily. She was too keyed up, having spent a restless night working out in her mind exactly how she would word her letter to her husband. The time for prevarication was long past, she told herself. The humiliation she had suffered last night was only a portent of things to come. Leon Devereux would soon be notorious on both sides of the Atlantic. She would not put up with it.
There were a million things she wanted to say to him. She wanted to unbraid him for the lecher he was. She wanted to tell him of her mortification the night before when he had been the subject of the most salacious gossip. But more than anything, she wanted to hurl abuse at him for using her funds to lavish jewels and the Lord knew
what else on his string of women. That was what galled her the most. She was supporting not only him, but his bits of muslin. The very thought made her gnash her teeth together. The man was a parasite!
She wrote none of those things for the simple reason that Leon held the upper hand. She was the one who was pressing for the annulment. If it killed her, she had to be diplomatic. Leon was a dangerous man to cross swords with, as she had learned to her cost over the years.
Dawn had hardly begun to chase the shadows from her chamber when she was up and at her escritoire, sharpening her pen. It took her the better part of two hours and a score of balled sheets of paper before she was satisfied with the letter she had composed. She wrote simply:
Dear Leon (and how she agonized over that Dear),
The time has come for us to seek an annulment. I am holding you to your promise. There is someone else. May I leave everything in your hands? Naturally, I shall expect the return of my fortune.
Emily
After due consideration to the last sentence, she added two words, with interest. Leon Devereux was not the only one who understood high finance!
The most logical thing would be to seek out Aunt Zoë and put the letter into her hand. There would be no eyebrows raised. Aunt Zoë was religious in writing to her brother at regular intervals. For appearance’s sake and as a sop to Aunt Zoë’s sense of what was fitting, Emily would obligingly contribute a one-page missive. There was never anything personal in her letters. She wrote about the one thing that she and Leon had in common: Zoë’s children. She left it to Sara to keep him informed of the trivialities of their daily round. When Leon bothered to write, which was not often, he wrote only to Aunt Zoë, but there were messages for all of them included in his letters to his sister.
Without thinking about the matter too deeply, she set the letter aside, and wandered down to the breakfast room. Sara was sitting right there at the table. Their conversation was vague until the servants had withdrawn.
“You have an ink stain on your finger,” observed Sara.
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