Duchess of Seduction (Hearts in Hiding Book 3)

by Beverley Oakley

  Yet all her cousin could manage was, “Oh, Cressida!” as she took a step forward, no doubt prepared to stop Cressida physically from leaving.

  “So now that I am weary to the bone of listening to you tell me how to make my marriage as miserable as yours,” Cressida went on, “I am leaving this very minute to go back to Justin.” She gave Catherine a challenging look. “And to show him what a loving wife he has, now that I have power like no mother, aunt, sister or cousin ever told me was possible.”

  Catherine took a very slow, deep breath and a measured step toward Cressida, who was now halfway to the door. Her lips were a thin line in her gaunt, bitter face, like a smear of plum juice over a piece of grey leather.

  “You’d do better collaring Madame Zirelli and forcing her to admit everything,” she hissed.

  Cressida cocked her head as she contemplated the idea, one hand on the bell rope. “The trouble with you, Catherine, is that you always believe the worst. Someone is always to blame. Except you, of course. I used to pity you, married to philandering James.” She sighed. “Now I pity James. But, yes—why not? I wi! take your advice and pay a call on Madame Zirelli, despite the late hour. I’m dressed for the occasion, after all, and Wednesday nights at Mrs. Plumb’s are always most intriguing.”

  Chapter 13

  Madame Zirelli had long since retired to her bed, but in her dimly lit little sitting room she graciously—and with little surprise—received her visitor. She’d thrown a thick paisley shawl over her nightgown, and now in her muslin nightcap with her dark hair braided over one shoulder, she looked very kind and motherly and very different from Catherine —or any kind of mistress.

  “I thought—no, hoped—I’d see you before the night was through,” she said as she knelt by the grate to build up the fire. “I gather you’ve been held hostage by your ghastly cousin. At least, that’s how Justin described her.”

  Cressida took the seat Madame Zirelli waved her into, and considered the woman whom Catherine would have her believe was the great threat that stood between her and her husband. Madame Zirelli might once have been Justin’s mistress, but regardless of whether she now was or not, the real barrier in Cressida’s marriage, Cressida realized, was not just her own ignorance but her lack of courage.

  It was strange, but the truth was, she felt more at home with this woman in these surroundings than she had when she’d been with Catherine.

  With a modest fire sending out a weak heat, her hostess eased herself into a chair opposite Cressida, clasped her hands in her lap and said, “I gather you’ve come to me for help and information, just as three weeks ago, I sought help and information from Justin. Information which he supplied and which tonight has brought me both joy and sorrow.” Her enigmatic smile brought mystery and youthful beauty to her face. She sighed and leaned back in her chair, regarding Cressida with interest. “So you see, it has been a momentous night for both of us. Do not apologize for disturbing my slumber, for I’ve been unable to sleep, on both your account and mine. I did so hope you’d come,” she repeated, adding with renewed energy, “for Justin’s sake.”

  “Justin’s sake?” Cressida bit her lip, accepting now that she was about to be severely shamed. “Please tell me,” she asked softly, “why Justin was here?”

  When she found the courage to meet the woman’s eye, she saw only concern.

  “You do know I was his mistress before he met you?”

  Cressida nodded and twined her fingers together, a sudden fear overlaying her previous acceptance. She could forgive Justin, she told herself. She just wanted to hear the truth. Softly, and awkwardly, she admitted, “I thought he’d returned to you when he found so little love from his wife at home.” She felt the color tickle her cheeks as she amended, “I mean, of the bedroom variety. I’ve always loved Justin and hoped he’d know it.”

  Madame Zirelli smiled. She looked tired and careworn yet sympathetic. And motherly. “Of course you’d have assumed the worst. I should have insisted Justin acquaint you with the nature of the business with which I charged him for fear of such a scenario as has played out tonight.” She raised her hands, palms outward in that peculiarly expressive Gallic gesture, adding, “but I was afraid you’d inadvertently reveal it to your cousin Catherine, or to Mrs. Luscombe, who are both on the board of the Sedleywich Home for Orphans.”

  “The Sedleywich Home for Orphans?” Cressida repeated. This was an odd departure for the conversation, and seemed not at all related to this evening’s dramas.

  “It was because I’d just learned Justin was on the board that I contacted him,” the other woman said. “That’s what started all this. I wanted information.” She glanced about her, then spying the brandy decanter, rose and poured them each a glass. “A panacea in difficult times,” she said with a sigh as she handed one to Cressida. She took a sip and for a moment was silent as she stared at a painting above Cressida’s right shoulder. Then, returning to her chair, added in a brisker tone, “You must know that until three weeks ago I’d not seen Justin for eight years.” She sank into her chair. “ Nor did I intend to rekindle our friendship. That is, until a shock sighting of a young woman whose distinctive looks convinced me I was looking at my lost daughter.”

  “You...have a daughter?” Cressida couldn’t help the shock in her tone when the basis for seeking out Madame Zirelli for information had been her supposed childlessness.

  Why had she lied?

  “I had a daughter many years ago but she was taken from me.” A challenging look crossed Madame Zirelli’s face, quickly swept away by sorrow. “You do understand under what circumstances these things happen, naturally?”

  Of course Cressida did. Madame would not have been in a position to keep a child born out of wedlock.

  “And my husband has been helping you to locate your child?” Cressida, who’d finished her brandy rather quickly, clasped her hands together and gazed at the woman across from her, not sure what she felt. “Because Justin is patron of the Sedleywich Home for Orphans?” she clarified.

  Madame Zirelli nodded. “The Sedleywich Home for Orphans was where my baby had been sent a few days after her birth. I wanted Justin to look at the records and discover for me what had indeed happened to the child. Did she still live? Was she in desperate need? Such questions have tormented me.”

  Cressida imagined how tormented she’d be if any of her children had been taken away. Cautiously, she asked, “Has he found answers?”

  The other woman hesitated. “Justin has been assiduous in his task and a kind and understanding friend when I could reveal my secret and suspicions to no one else.” She closed her eyes briefly. Then, sighing heavily, she said, “What you witnessed in the corridor at Madame Plumb’s earlier this evening, Lady Lovett, was my gesture of gratitude toward your husband, who had just confirmed that my daughter still lives”—there was a catch in her voice as she continued—“but that, as a loving mother with her best interests at heart, I was barred from making contact with her.”

  Cressida’s own breath hitched in her throat, her fears escalating. Madame Zirelli had had a child years ago? Madame Zirelli had been Justin’s mistress years ago?

  “Why did you tell me you had no children?” Cressida studied her trembling hands. Vague uneasiness had taken root and was fast growing into full blown suspicion. What might have motivated the woman opposite her to have kept such a secret from Cressida?

  Madame Zirelli’s next words banished that fear. “My daughter is eighteen years old now, and her father, Robert, was the love of my life.”

  Immediately, Cressida knew she’d been foolish. Justin had been helping Madame Zirelli as an old friend, not with a vested interest.

  “I’m sorry.” What else could Cressida say? She felt foolish for, surely, she should have known a practical reason existed for the relationship between Justin and his old mistress. He’d neither have sought out, nor been otherwise complicit in the kind of clandestine relationship Catherine was so keen to suggest.

&
nbsp; Discovering the identity of Madame Zirelli’s daughter was what had preoccupied Justin the past three weeks—coupled, of course, with his, no doubt, very real confusion over Cressida’s erratic behavior.

  A heavy silence had descended upon them. Cressida studied the woman in the glow of the fire. She looked a different person when leached of both sympathy and vibrancy, her eyes filled with such pain and sorrow, Cressida could not fail to consider their respective situations. Both had known Justin in the most intimate way. She had to acknowledge that; and yet, she felt neither disgust nor anger.

  “What happened?” Cressida finally asked. It was none of her business, and yet it was very much her business when discovering the truth was the basis of what had nearly driven Justin and Cressida asunder. “If you want to tell me, I will listen.”

  Madame Zirelli glanced at her, then closed her eyes. “Robert was the youngest son of a well-connected family in the local village.” She smiled, as if remembering happier times, opening her eyes to add, “My father had been employed as singing master to Robert’s older sisters. After my mother died, he’d taken up the offer of this illustrious Englishman and so we left Spain and came to live in a quiet English village. A very different life from the one we’d known.”

  Cressida nodded. Madame Zirelli looked very foreign to her eyes with her raven black hair and Castilian features.

  “Though I knew Robert by sight, it wasn’t until I was sixteen that we spoke for the first time, after he offered me a lift in his carriage in the midst of a snowstorm.” The memory transformed her face. “After that, we found many opportunities to meet. We were in love, but Robert was just nineteen. We were too young and powerless to direct our own lives so while Robert wanted to marry me, of course his father refused, while mine was furious at what he considered my trying to rise above my station.” Madame Zirelli glanced at Cressida, her gaze falling to the smooth silk of Cressida’s gown, to the curve of her belly, and her expression became bleak. “I tell you this to bolster the case that I was more than qualified to speak to you of the miseries we women face when we cannot control our ability to have children.”

  Cressida understood. How many times had her heart battled with her fears of the consequences of succumbing to what she’d wished could be confined to an act that brought her husband and herself so close.

  An act of loving intimacy that made them as one, as ordained by the church—and yet which so often meant...more than one.

  Cressida said nothing. Oh, but she understood.

  Madame Zirelli’s voice wavered. “For the sake of my father and, I believed at the time, Robert, I was coerced into not revealing to Robert that I was carrying his child, and I was sent away. Under directions from his mother, I told Robert I was taking up a position as a governess.” Her voice thickened with emotion. “Robert swore that in two years’ time, when he was twenty-one and of age, he would gallop into the grounds of my employer on a great white charger and whisk me off to the nearest church to get married. He said if I loved him enough to be patient for just two years, all would be well.”

  Cressida bit her lip. “But all was not well. You were carrying his child.”

  Bitterly, Madame Zirelli responded. “Robert’s mother, Lady Banks, arranged everything. I had no mother who could even tell me what to expect, much less forewarn me of the consequences of intimacy with Robert, and my father was the great family’s minion.” The fire crackled and a breeze rattled the windows. She took a painful breath. “For five months, I was all but imprisoned with a cottager and his wife, who gave me food and who had clearly been directed to monitor all correspondence. I wrote to Robert, begging him to help me, but I knew my letters never reached him and that his would never reach me. We were both minors and powerless against the will of his parents.”

  Wearily she went on. “My daughter was removed from me when she was a few days old. Once again, Lady Banks arranged everything.” Her tone became bitter. “Robert’s mother had great plans for the illustrious match her son would make and I was not a contender. When I returned home to nurse my father, who was now very ill—from the trauma of my disgrace, I was told—Robert had joined his regiment on the peninsula. I never saw him again.”

  Cressida shook her head. She’d heard tales of heartbreak like this before, and she knew the impossibility of a single woman keeping her infant under such circumstances, yet she had to ask the question. “Why seek information about your child now?”

  Madame Zirelli thrust out her chin. “I was told my child had died. And even though I only half believed it, I knew there was little to be gained by tormenting myself when I had no means to support myself, much less an illegitimate child?”

  “Your father—?” Cressida ventured.

  Madame Zirelli’s eyes narrowed. “My father was very ill, but his employer graciously agreed to let him remain in the cottage they’d rented for him, on the condition all ties between us were cut. Father died three months later.”

  Cressida glanced at the few meager possessions around the room, contemplating a woman’s vulnerability when she had no protector. Fortunate women like herself did not tend to dwell on such matters but rather to dismiss fallen women like Madame Zirelli as arbiters of their own fates, she thought guiltily .

  “After struggling to support myself through my singing,” Madame Zirelli resumed, “I found myself, several years later, in the power of another man. Lord Grainger was my employer, to whom I gave myself willingly and recklessly one night, which meant”— she gave a small, ironic laugh—“that I was now to bear his child. The thought of being forced to give up another child I could not support was intolerable. I sought the offices of a woman who apparently”—her mouth quivered as she uttered the word—“dealt with such matters. A woman whose brutal butchery nearly killed me and left me scarred and infertile. An irony, since Lord Grainger made me his wife shortly afterward, then divorced me because of my inability to provide him with an heir...compounded by his fury at learning of what I had done.”

  Cressida gasped.

  Madame Zirelli gave an eloquent shrug. “For years, I have lived alone, accepting that my daughter was lost to me until, by chance, three months ago, I saw her. The resemblance to the Castilian side of my family was remarkable. So certain was I that I had seen my own daughter, and so horrified by the circumstances, I sought out your husband in the hope he would be able to trace her back- ground and confirm my suspicions.”

  She indicated the table in the corner of the room by the window. Upon it was a small, portable writing desk. “All the answers to your questions are there,” she said. “You are free to examine any correspondence...anything at all...if it will satisfy you that your husband’s relationship with me has been purely on a business footing.”

  Cressida did not argue. The hour was late and Madame Zirelli wanted the catharsis of knowing Cressida believed in and trusted her.

  “Take the whole box,” Madame Zirelli directed. “There is other correspondence which little Dorcas, the maid, slips in when it arrives, and which may not be relevant, but the document prepared by your husband and various letters pertaining to the matter are all in there.”

  Cressida rose slowly. She’d finished her drink; she’d finished her business here, too, it seemed. All that remained was for her to verify what the other woman had said, though it seemed hardly necessary now. After such an evening during which she’d experienced every emotion from the greatest of despairs to the heights of hope, she was exhausted. She would put the box away in a cupboard and she’d embrace her husband with all the joy and hope her encounter with Madame Zirelli had fostered.

  When Cressida was halfway to the door with the writing box under her arm and the interview at an end, Madame Zirelli detained her with a languid wave of her arm and a sad but encouraging smile. “Lady Lovett, your husband severed contact with me eight years ago...the very day after he first set eyes on you, in fact.” Her smile was warm rather than burdened by her personal sorrow. “Few women have the power ove
r their husbands you appear to wield. Go to him, my dear. Use the knowledge I have given you. And be happy.”

  Cressida was borne home by a very wearing looking John the coachman and let into the house by a rather crumpled looking housemaid. She’d never been out so late on her own, but while she felt guilty, she felt not the least bit tired.

  Nervous energy and anticipation bolstered her. She hurried up the stairs and, at the landing, hesitated as to whether she’d turn right to Justin’s apartments or left, to hers.

  She was still clutching Madame Zirelli’s little writing desk. She needed to put that down somewhere. Also, she wanted to make some discreet improvements to her appearance because...

  It mattered.

  The details of Madame Zirelli’s story were not important. Not right at this moment, because Madame Zirelli’s tragedy had occurred in the past, and neither Justin nor Cressida could help her, though Justin had done what had been asked of him. Cressida was saddened and moved by the woman’s sadness and grateful, too, that Madame Zirelli had shared it with Cressida in order to help her. Now it was time for Cressida to help herself. Madame Zirelli had given her the tools.

  Moving the candlestick that her maid had lit from where it sat beside her bed to her dressing table, she took a seat. She’d told the girl not to wait up for her, assuming when she left for the night that Justin could perform the necessaries of undressing the lady of the house.

  Though there’d been a hitch in proceedings, he still could, she thought with a fizz of exultation as she reflected on the fact that she had all the joy she could wish for ahead of her while Madame Zirelli had only a dried up future and the sorrow of discovering a daughter she could never acknowledge.

  Just up the passage, Justin lay sleeping. He’d been crushed by her disloyalty earlier that evening, but Cressida had to think past that to all the ways she could atone.