The Cold Earl's Bride: A Historical Regency Romance

by Audrey Ashwood

  St. John and his servant had secretly transported a corpse into the house.

  Chapter 10

  Without paying close attention to what she was packing, Annabelle threw her things onto the bed. She had to get away from here as quickly as possible! Marcus St. John was a murderer. She could not stay under his roof for a second longer. Her parents would take her in, Annabelle was sure, but… disheartened, she sank onto the bed.

  In that case, she would be obliged to tell her parents the whole truth. Neither her mother nor her conservative father would forgive her the scandal of returning back to their home if she did not give them good enough reason. An excuse, like a quarrel between newlyweds, would not suffice. If Annabelle told them what she had seen, namely the transportation of a dead body, it would only be a matter of time until the authorities were notified.

  Why did the possibility of seeing St. John convicted of murder caused her so much sorrow? She ignored the painful squeezing in her heart and tried to approach the problem in a logical way, as she did with anything else. Assuming that she packed a few things and ran away – what would happen? What kind of difficulties would she have to face?

  First of all, she had to refrain from using the carriage. She couldn’t drive it herself across Eaton Square and all the way through the dark streets to her parents’ house unnoticed. However, if she walked, she might be the victim of a robbery faster than she could blink. Since she did not cling to the belongings that had become her property on the day of her wedding, leaving dresses, jewellery and the dispensable accessories behind was not a problem.

  A much larger problem, though, arose from her status as a married woman. Having to give testimony in court against the man to whom she had given her hand in marriage was simply not possible. If they believed her, which was highly questionable to begin with, her testimony would, in one fell swoop, ruin her entire family, including any future prospects for her sisters.

  Was the life and death of a human less valuable than the happiness of her sisters?

  Annabelle buried her face in her hands. Never before had she struggled in this way to maintain even a sliver of objectivity. Ever since the kiss in the garden, day after day, she lost more of her ability to think clearly, leaving the decisions to her heart. Everything in her urged her not to hurt the people she loved most in the world. Yet, she knew that she would never be able to forget the sight of the lifeless bundle. Whomever the lifeless body was, probably hidden in some corner of the house, not even receiving a proper burial, had been a living, breathing human being a few hours ago. Someone who had had hopes and dreams and plans for the future. And what about the family of the dead man? Instantly, Annabelle pictured a woman somewhere, who desperately awaited the return of her husband. Not knowing whatever had happened to the man she loved would be the hardest burden to overcome. Had he left her for the sake of another woman? Had he suffered an accident, laying somewhere helplessly by the side of the road, while his life slowly left his battered body?

  She realised that she was crying and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. It was dead quiet in the house. For a moment, Annabelle felt completely alone and as if she was the last person in the world. Then a door creaked, and with a jolt, she realized that she was feeling sorry for herself – something that she deeply despised. Fine, she thought, and sniffled one last time. What options do I have?

  She could confront St. John directly. Considering his ability to avoid her previous attempts for a conversation, this did not seem like a promising option. Besides, what was she even thinking – how smart would it be to confront a man who had just hidden a body in his house without her knowledge? Having said that, she did not believe that St. John was an entirely evil person. However, he was a man caught up in a very tense situation, that much was clear. Once he lost his nerve and killed someone, the second murder came easier. Or was his gloomy servant, Finch, the one responsible for the skeleton in the closet? If so, why would St. John help his servant get rid of the body? Annabelle recalled the familiarity that the two men shared, which was making her increasingly disquiet. No, as much as she wished, she could find no solid arguments for St. John’s innocence.

  A second and just as dangerous option would be for her to intensify her attempts to discover the truth. Up until now, she had refrained from searching through his papers or spying on St. John. Annabelle had hoped that an open discussion between them would be possible. But now that she had seen with her very own eyes what her husband and his servant were actually capable of, she no longer needed to feel guilty about stooping to underhanded means. Somewhere in this house, there had to be proof – or at least a hint – of her husband’s intentions. If Annabelle was honest, she had not the slightest idea of what Marcus St. John had in mind with his erratic, irrational, volatile, and sometimes even dangerous actions. He acted as if he were a man searching for danger and that was… she bit her bottom lip. Wait a second. Breathe deeply, Annabelle, she reminded herself and sank back until she lay flat on the bed, in the midst of her clothes. A thought had formed in her head, one that might be worth pursuing.

  She closed her eyes to stop staring at the irritating pale-blue canopy that reminded her of his bright blue eyes. What did a man do when faced with danger? He ran away. That would be the sensible thing to do. Annabel could not imagine St. John running away from anything, or anyone. He had tilted at the punching bag hanging up in the attic with a rage that screamed the word attack. Annabelle held her breath. Marcus St. John would take the initiative to beat his… enemy… to the punch.

  That was the conclusion that felt right for Annabelle. She snorted quietly, still with her eyes closed. Feeling, she thought with silent self-loathing.

  Who was threatening him? Annabelle did not believe that it was Viscount Greywood alone who was sickening her husband. There had to be more to it than a single man – even though St. John hated the viscount with a frightening intensity.

  Her thoughts kept bringing her back to the viscount. Her sister’s unexplainable behaviour and her husband’s disgust revolved around him. And there was one more thing Annabelle had overlooked until now: Rupert Greywood had been there when her father had caught Marcus and her kissing in the garden. It could not be otherwise, he had a leading role in all the secrets, she concluded.

  She decided to visit her sister first thing in the morning and take her to task, and this time, she would not give in until she had gotten a satisfactory answer from Felicity. After that, she could decide if she wanted to pay Greywood a visit and confront him directly, or if she would take a different path altogether. In any case, it could not go on like this. She had been willing to sacrifice her own happiness for that of her sister, but a murder changed everything.

  At least as important as the question about the who was the question of the why. There was something or someone that was so important to her husband that he defended it to the bitter end – or protected, Annabelle did not know what. It was not Lady Madeline. She knew with almost absolute certainty that St. John did not feel enough for the Frenchwoman to commit murder for her sake, at least not enough to easily take someone’s life. Or was she deceiving herself because she no longer had her feelings under control?

  Which brought her back to her starting point. With a heavy sigh, she sat up and started to put her dresses back into her wardrobe. She did not care what Clarice would say of the mess, or even if she would tell her master, St. John. He kept his secrets to himself, so, in return, she also had the right to keep some things from him. Should he ask what she had done with her dresses, she could simply answer that she had searched for a dress that she liked but had not found it. The only thing that was important was that her husband did not learn anything about her observations. Even Marcus St. John would be unable to deduce the disarray in her wardrobe from an abandoned escape plan.

  Those were her last thoughts before Annabelle fell into a deep sleep.

  “… and then she laid down and fell asleep,” Clarice reported to him and looke
d over to Wickham, who had accompanied her into St. John’s study.

  “Thank you, Clarice, that is all,” Marcus dismissed them, wondering what horrors the young woman had experienced. Clarice was making progress, but it was so minimal that only a skilled observer would have noticed any changes. In the beginning, even a smile from him had caused a panic, and she had barely been able to look at another person. She was gradually losing her fear of beatings and maybe worse, which was due to Wickham’s rare patience, Marcus thought, as he stretched out his tired limbs. He had already sent Finch to bed, and all he longed for was the silence of his bedchamber and a dreamless, undisturbed night. But the latter would probably have to wait.

  Clarice’s report had clearly told him that Annabelle had watched him and Finch transport the dead body. He had thought he had noticed a movement from upstairs before they carried the corpse down into the basement, but he had not been sure. Unfortunately, he was not mistaken. He could probably consider himself lucky that Annabelle had not alarmed the guards or, God forbid, the Runners. That is all I need, he thought, as he rose from behind his desk. The massive piece of furniture was one of his father’s few heirlooms that meant something to him, and it had taken a considerable effort to have it transported from Grandover Hall to London.

  He sighed quietly as he remembered his predecessor’s magnificent manor. Over the last twelve months, he had been unable to make time to check on the property. It was one more thing that he urgently needed to take care of. Sometimes he wondered what would be left of him once he had reached his goal. For over a year now, he had been chasing after the string puller of the men responsible for the murder of his fiancée. The money he had invested in the search, which had mostly been used as bribery, meant nothing to him. Yet, the more time passed, the more drained he felt. There was hardly a minute of day he did not spend picturing the moment when justice was served. Only every so often, when he happened to look in a mirror and wonder for a split second who the hard-eyed stranger was, would he feel doubt and question the point behind his search.

  Rarer still was his wondering if he could ever fill the void inside him with anything other but hate. Since that fateful day, when Matilda’s dead body had been sent back to him inside her own carriage, it was rage and an all-consuming search for justice that drove him. The thought that one day he would repay the unknown perpetrators with the same coin gave his days meaning as nothing else could. Too many times he had envisioned what he would do to that man once he knew his identity.

  He would take away his most precious possession.

  Did it not say exactly that in the Bible – “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”?

  And yet… a thought continued to stir inside his heart… that he was increasingly confusing justice with revenge. His moral compass had lost its focus, he had become cold and unscrupulous. In his deepest self, Marcus knew full well that not much was separating him from the fine, barely visible, border his opponent had long passed. The best example was his suspicions towards Annabelle.

  And still, there was a residue of mistrust that he could not completely ignore. A part of him, which had not yet been devoured by the gloom, insisted on her moral integrity. After all, she had warned him against the attacker, had she not? Why else would she have started to pack her things after seeing a body wrapped in the sheet? Fleeing, as Annabelle had intended, was always the result of fear, and fear did not suit the scheming spy he had made her to be in the first few days of her marriage. Wishful thinking, sneered a mocking little voice inside his head, placing a weakling right behind. Marcus slowed his steps as he climbed the stairs.

  He could still turn back. He had not spoken to Annabelle yet, confronting her, giving her the opportunity to reveal herself to him. What if she was indeed a virtuosic actress and just wanted to lull him into a false sense of security by pretending to save him from the attacker? Did she only obey Greywood’s instructions?

  Well, that ship had sailed. Greywood would not give anyone any more orders.

  Speaking of Greywood – he could not leave him in his basement for long. Fortunately, thought Marcus, he had built an ice-house for the cook, Olive, when she had grown too old to go up and down the steep steps to the cellar. The thought of Olive, who had led the regiment in his parents’ kitchen, bumping against a corpse down there wasn’t necessarily pleasant. He hoped that Greywood’s disappearance quickly provoked the intended reaction and the string puller came out of cover.

  All of a sudden, he had a thought that filled him partially with discomfort and partially with relief. Greywood’s death had brought him a personal satisfaction, but he could use his passing in another way, namely during his upcoming conversation with Annabelle.

  Over the last few days, Marcus’s impression had been that one of his wife’s most outstanding qualities was her loyalty to the people she loved. After all, she had agreed to marry him to protect her sister. He had previously nourished the hunch, but after tonight, he knew for sure. The events that had led to Greywood’s death left no other conclusion. He noticed that he was smiling and immediately put on a stern face. Now, he needed to find out if Greywood had shared his knowledge about her promiscuous younger sister with the man who knew so well how to stay hidden in the shadows. If that were the case, his wife would remain a threat to him – although Greywood was out of the way. Whatever kind of power the dead man held over her, there was always the possibility that the string puller also used the same method to bend Annabelle’s will to his needs.

  Marcus felt a drop of sweat trickle down his temple. He had reached a crossroads where there were only two directions: trust or hate. Coldness or the distant hope of warmth. A reason to live or perhaps, just perhaps, even more than one. Was he becoming weak? Had Annabelle fogged his mind with her beguiling blend of intelligence and kindness?

  There was only one way to find out. He had to talk to her. Now.

  Should she be, contrary to his expectations, in cahoots with his enemies, then fate had served him a trump card on a silver platter after the events that had unfolded tonight.

  He swallowed dryly and raised his hand to knock on Annabelle’s door. Did the good cause that he stood for justify the use of unfair practices?

  Or was he not a whit better than the man whose identity he was trying to discover?

  Chapter 11

  The first thing Annabelle saw when she opened her eyes, was his face.

  She screamed.

  It was not so much that St. John was in her bedchamber and she was only wearing a thin nightgown, but much more the fact that he had blood on his hands. In the figurative sense, of course, for when he held up his hands to calm her, she could see that his fingers and palms were immaculately clean.

  “Don’t be scared,” he soothed her and sat down on the farthest corner of her bed. It reassured her somewhat that St. John made himself comfortable, because if he had wanted to kill her – as well, a panicky voice whispered in her head – then he could have done that while she was still asleep. “We need to talk.”

  Oh really, Annabelle thought sarcastically and pondered whether to stay in bed or get up. Undoubtedly, the bed had some merit, since she could pull her sheets up to her chin and stay warm. Nevertheless, she got up, shoving the shame of her own husband seeing her in this nightgown, and quickly slipped her feet into her slippers and pulled on her dressing gown. As she was tying her hair back, so that it would not tickle her face, she noticed that St. John was watching her with a peculiar expression, one which did not really match his normal coldness.

  “What time is it?” she asked and added another question, whether he, too, fancied a cup of tea.

  “I would actually prefer something stronger,” he replied. “Let’s go downstairs into the parlour. I will ask Wickham to bring you tea.”

  “Do not worry,” Annabelle said with a wave of her hand. “You do not have to wake him up for me.” She did not want to give St. John the opportunity to postpone the debate again. If she waited for the butler to get
dressed, set up the kettle in the kitchen, and make tea, most likely something else would happen that demanded his immediate and undivided attention. Out of the question. She followed him into the parlour and sat down in the least uncomfortable chair. St. John sat down across from her and looked at the wall coverings with an intensity as if he were seeing the flocking herons on the blue background for the first time.

  Annabelle cleared her throat, all at once as lost for words as he. How best to tell the man one had married that one would like to know what body he had brought into the house? Cynical laughter started to rise in her chest as she remembered the marriage counsel booklet that her governess, Miss Squintock, had so fondly cited from. “Should the husband stow an undesired dead man in the basement of your home, a good wife shall abide the incident with a smile and serve tea.”

  “Is everything all right?” St. John’s voice tore Annabelle from her imaginary dialogue with Miss Squintock.

  “Nothing is all right,” she replied, leaning forward. To her dismay, she noticed tears welling in her eyes. “You… I…” The lump in her throat grew thicker and thicker. Without a word, St. John stood up, poured a fingerful of sherry into a glass and handed it to her. Annabelle rolled the glass in her hands as St. John seated himself again. Oh well, who cares, she thought, downing the drink, regardless of the early hour. This was not the first time that she drank alcohol, but what she had thought, in her naivety, to be sherry, turned out to be something significantly stronger – whiskey perhaps? Now the tears really did start running down her cheeks, but after half a minute she felt how a pleasant warmth spread from her stomach to the rest of her body. St. John had indulged in a more generous portion of the drink, and just as she was about to say something, he spoke first.

  “What did Greywood have on you?”