by Karen Ranney
“I loved her with all my heart,” he said then, before turning and staring at the altar again.
Was it possible for eyes to betray so much emotion? Bleak acceptance, despair, pain so acute that Mary Kate could almost feel it herself.
“The moment she drew breath, it seemed as though she were my shadow. My playmate and my friend. Then my eternal love.”
“But she was your sister.”
“No. I learned, a little over two years ago, that she and I were not related, Mrs. Bennett.”
“And so you told her.” If she had known him better, she would have laid her hand upon his sleeve, so much in need of comfort he looked. Instead, she only folded her hands upon themselves and concentrated upon the altar.
“Yes.”
“You believe she’s dead, don’t you?”
He turned surprised eyes to her. “How do you know that?”
Because I think she loved you with all her heart, just as much as you loved her and wanted you protected against harm. Words she could not utter to James Moresham, a certain knowledge she could not share. His stepmother was a zealot who would not hesitate to denounce her as a witch, or worse. And besides, she could not find the words to tell this young man that his worst suspicions were also her own.
“She was going to leave the earl, Mrs. Bennett. We had planned to emigrate. I would teach the pianoforte, Alice would take in sewing. It didn’t matter what we did, as long as we were together.” His eyes mirrored grief and some other emotion it took Mary Kate but a moment to identify. Rage.
“She felt guilty, can you believe it? After all the games Fate had played on us, she felt sad for St. John.”
In the next moments, he told her of their planned meeting. Then a few minutes of silence, during which Mary Kate could hear nothing but the sounds of their breathing.
“And then?” She could not tolerate the suspense any longer. “What happened then?”
“Nothing.” A small shrug, a motion of shoulder beneath cape. “She never appeared, Mrs. Bennett. Not that whole day.” There was a pause as he took a deep breath. She should have been prepared for his next words, but somehow was not. “It is my belief that Archer St. John murdered Alice, Mrs. Bennett.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I know it sounds fantastic, but I have proof.”
“Proof?” For weeks she’d been certain Alice St. John was dead. No one had believed her. No one had listened. Now this young man with his soft, earnest voice uttered the words. How odd that her chest seemed frozen, as if her blood had turned to ice.
“She never loved him. She married him because we couldn’t wed.”
“Is that your proof?” A small smile wreathed her lips. An admission, then, of her relief? “There are thousands of marriages in which one or the other partner does not enthusiastically enter into the arrangement, Mr. Moresham.”
“You do not want to believe him guilty, do you, Mrs. Bennett?” He turned and studied her, the grief in his gaze muted beneath a sudden and surprising anger. “In your eyes, Archer St. John’s innocent.”
“I find it almost impossible to believe that he murdered his wife, if that’s what you’re asking.” She remembered too well the stricken look on Archer’s face when she had asked him that question. Why had she? Not belief, surely. Pique? Or jealousy? He’d spoken of Alice as his wife and she had not been expecting the pain of that word. It’s not as if she’d never heard it. Not as if he had not spoken it before. The question had come in such a rush of feelings, confusion, anger, envy that she’d wanted to hurt him, to punish him in a way that would mimic what she’d felt. The admission was not easy, the truth of it stared her in the face, silent, accusatory. The startling bitter taste of envy had shocked her.
“Alice was carrying my child, Mrs. Bennett.” A declaration made with pride and more than a little sadness. “St John knew that it was not his. Is not pride enough of a reason for St. John to kill her?”
Chapter 33
Archer stood at the window, watching the slash of lightning across the sky. This night storm enhanced his odd mood.
The room had been his father’s, a sterile atmosphere of punishment. He’d been summoned here as little more than an infant, to be chastised, to be beaten, to be molded into an earl.
Once this room had become his—the day Sanderhurst and the earldom had become his at the unripe and unready age of eight—he’d closed it off and never entered the room again until he’d become an adult.
Only then had he begun his reform of the place. He’d banished the marble that made of this room a cold and sepulchral tomb, replaced the mantle with a carved Adams work of art, had lined the walls with bookshelves fashioned of mahogany. Upon their shelves resided novels, treatises, and tomes he’d actually read. On the floor lay one of his father’s priceless Persian rugs, and on the available wall the art Archer preferred.
From a place of impossible dimensions, he’d scaled it down to human warmth and proportion, creating from his memories something that had never existed, a haven. He’d wanted this refuge so badly he’d invented it in his adulthood to appease the child he had been.
Yet he could never replace his father, and memory refused to soften Gerald St. John’s implacable cruelty. All the St. John men were blessed with it, that little gem of distilled wickedness that fed the warped nature of a man born every generation or so. Archer St. John, deprived of his father’s love as a child, of belonging as a youth, of acceptance as an adult, would have been one of those men, except for one overriding character attribute.
He was determined not to mimic his father.
The trait was there, however, insidious and lurking, waiting for the propitious moment in which to mature and become full fledged. Over the years it had become more active, this internal monster, feeding on the disappointments of his life, taking sustenance from the bitterness he felt over his wife’s defection and wide-eyed, self-admitted adulterous posturing.
For nearly a week, he’d remained in London, encapsulated in his rage and hurt. Feeling that obscene thrust of betrayal. Time had not diminished it. But neither had it lessened his hunger for Mary Kate. A fool. He was a bloody fool. And yet he had returned, soothed and quiescent now that he knew she lay asleep above him. He felt as though he were a starving puppy and she a juicy steak. Feed me, Mary Kate.
The rain lashed against the window. He extended his hand and flattened against the pane, as if to absorb the coldness of the glass.
Was she right? Had he truly hated Alice? Once, perhaps. But still? A thousand times in the last week he’d asked himself that question. The answer was both complex and exquisitely simple.
One night, when Archer could not sleep, he’d heard her crying in her room, adjacent to his. Perhaps a wiser man would have simply doused the sound of her sobs with brandy or a pillow, but he’d found himself compelled by the very real grief in the sound to cross the boundary of the door that separated them. He sat on the edge of her bed, awkwardly patting her back.
“Alice, what is it?” He whispered the question, a gentleness he could not prevent and an empathy that disturbed him too much making his tone soft, an oddly fitting counterpart to her grief.
“Leave me alone.” Such directness was not like Alice. She was a creature of soft looks and sweet smiles. She had her maid inform him of her inability to join him for breakfast, sent notes via Jonathan when she was to visit her relatives—visits that he had consistently declined from attending with her. She deliberately avoided confrontation with him. At this moment, however, she did not seem too distressed to issue commands.
He withdrew his hand, but remained where he was, perhaps kept floundering there by a sixth sense that compelled him to stay and offer comfort.
“Go away, Archer. Please.”
“I but wished to comfort you, Alice,” he said, noting the stiffness of his own voice, hearing it and wishing that he could have sounded less cold and abrupt. This was not the way to comfort crying wives.
“Is ther
e something you wish? Something I could fetch you?”
“Nothing.”
“Is there something I could have cook prepare for you to tempt your appetite?”
“No.”
“Shall I schedule the dressmaker?”
“I do not worry about my attire, Archer. It is the least of my concerns.”
Desperate now, he’d offered her a pet. “One of the hunting dogs has given birth to a healthy litter. Shall I fetch one of the puppies? It might amuse you.”
“No.”
“Are you hurting anywhere? Shall I summon a physician?”
Perhaps it was because she seemed so disconsolate, perhaps because the hour was late and he was more distressed by her tears than he wished to be. Archer spoke all these blandishments in a voice he would later recognize as that of a fond uncle. To his undying horror, it seemed he was more naive than he had ever believed of Alice.
She had turned and sat up, brushing her golden hair away from her tear-stained face. Her eyes had glistened with moisture—or rage?—her mouth swollen out of their borders, her nose pink. His timid Alice turned on him like a Valkyrie.
“Will you summon my love to me, then, Archer? Tell him how bitterly I regret marrying anyone but him. Tell him that I long for him in my bed each night. Tell him that he’s given me a child, who lies nestled in my womb even now. Is that what you’ll do for me, my great Earl of Sanderhurst? If so, do it quickly, because I feel as though I’m dying for love.”
Archer was a master of verbal dueling, of the artful cut. He’d learned to protect himself by any means necessary and it had been absolutely essential, more often than not, to use his tongue as a swifter sword than any forged by man. He could level with precision anyone who was derisive of him, could smile with a fierce duality while shaming those daring enough to verbally fence with him. His weapons were his quick wit and barely tamed temper, his protection an armor of indifference and an air of ennui.
At that particular moment, however, he could not have framed a complete sentence, let alone cultivated a disinterested air.
His body seemed stiffened by starch, he could feel his eyes blink as they stared at Alice. Yet none of his bodily impulses or compulsions seemed to free him. He had the oddest thought, in that moment—and in subsequent moments when he’d recalled it—that he was being given a rare glimpse into Alice’s soul. That who she was and what she wanted were exposed to him in full measure in this moment, as pure as crystal, as brilliant as gold.
And none of that knowledge seemed to fit within his preordained opinion of her. It was as if, quite simply, she’d stepped out of the chrysalis in which she’d metamorphosed and become a new creature, one alien and unknown to the man who remained seated on the side of her bed.
“Will you set me free now, Archer? If you have any decency in your body, you will. If you prize your honor above all things, you will let me go.”
Still, he could not speak. Words seemed to be weighted in his throat, upon his tongue, wedged in his brain, yet they did not disgorge themselves easily from his lips.
She watched him as if he were a newly trapped wild animal, dazed and disoriented. He wanted to reassure her that he was not dangerous, but he did not know that to be the truth. The emotions surging through him were unlike anything he’d ever felt before and yet were strangely reminiscent of the times in which he’d stood in front of his father, small and terrified and desirous of his mother’s protection.
How softly she had said the words to plummet him into a mind-numbing fog of disbelief. His Alice? The sweet, shy Alice who disliked the deed so much she prayed during it, had willingly gone to another man’s bed? Was with child?
He was a man of complexity, a trait he understood about himself. And while it would be no great feat to believe himself justified in hating the fact that his wife was an adulteress, the truth of the matter was that he had been prepared to forgive Alice for that, quite willing to overlook her foray into adultery in order to build a bridge between them. He should have cared, perhaps, about her lover, but found that he could not even summon enough interest for that. He found that he did not want to know, the first time he’d consciously sought oblivion in ignorance.
He had not been, however, able to forestall that one swift knifelike thrust to his heart. Such ventilation was not good for hearts, it left them weak and gasping, but they healed with armorlike rigidity.
At first, perhaps he’d hated her, but then he’d only felt a sense of envy that she’d discovered love and he was still trapped in a limbo created by her disappearance. Given the opportunity, he would have released her from their marriage, wished her well. He had wanted to feel some happiness in his life, some enthusiasm with which to greet each day. Instead, he had been left with regrets, and suspicion, and an odd feeling that there were more acts left to this absurd farce.
Chapter 34
When Mary Kate awoke, it was the deepest part of night, without the moon to lure a sleeper to the windowsill, a dreamer from a nighttime vision. An arm extended to her side, but she found nothing there. She was alone, then. Was that why she’d awakened? No. She’d slept alone often enough.
She turned her head. The pillow smelled of flowers; this dark room held tight with stygian blackness smelled of a field of them. To delight the senses, to entice the dreamer unawares. The sound of the door opening between their two rooms was loud in the darkness. It was as if she’d summoned him here by her longing.
“Forgive me, Archer.” It was a humble apology bereft of any flowery sentiments. The night, the blackness, seemed to call for truth without embellishment. Another moment, an eternity of time frozen in an instant. “Please, Archer. You will strangle on the words. Say you release me from my stupidity. Tell me you forgive me.”
Were his eyes dark with emotion? Desire or rage?
“I have not spoken to you for a week and yet your first words are ones of entreaty. What man in his right mind would refuse?” He sat next to her on the bed, the mattress sinking beneath his weight. He didn’t speak as she moved forward, didn’t say a word as she neared him, reached out a hand and touched his where it rested on the sheet.
“A man too stubborn for his own good, perhaps.”
“Do not beg with one hand while you swat with the other, Mary Kate.” There was a note of humor in his voice.
“Do you wish the candles lit?”
“No, I find my mood enhanced by darkness.” He seemed to sigh, a soft sound in the night.
“I’m not without faults, Archer. I freely admit it. I sometimes say exactly what I think before I’ve reasoned it out.”
“What exactly, are you apologizing for, Mary Kate? Alluding to the fact that I’ve the character to commit murder, or pretending that you can see what mortal eyes cannot?”
“I had no desire to be a party to this,” she said. “It has complicated my life more than I can say, coming to Sanderhurst.” How much he would never know. “I was simply trying to find my family, Archer. Surely that was not such a grievous sin against heaven. Not enough of one to deserve being haunted.”
“Why are you innocent, when you claim the most outlandish circumstances and I immediately guilty when I have done nothing?”
“I remember claiming the same, Archer.”
Silence seemed to eat at their thoughts, so much so that they did not speak for long moments. She wanted an end to it, finally.
“Would it matter if I told you I believe you incapable of such an act?” She moved closer, only the stiffening of his body stopped her from enfolding her arms around him.
“Only if it is the truth, and not another momentary expulsion of words. Think on them slowly, then tell me.”
“I have thought of them. Ever since the moment I accused you of killing Alice, I’ve known you could not.”
“Besides the fact we both know she is alive, what is it about my character that makes me innocent of all nefarious deeds?”
“Innocent of all nefarious deeds? You are not that pure, Archer. Yet
I truly believe that you do not know where Alice is. I simply cannot envision you creating a circumstance in which you are without control.”
“It is not my character, then, that acquits me. Nor my charm.”
She was grateful for the darkness that shrouded them. He could not see her smile. “All those things you have in abundance, yes. But it was not the deciding factor.”
“How damn astute of you, Mary Kate. I dislike feeling powerless.”
She reached out one hand and touched him with trembling fingers, feeling the hardness of dormant muscles beneath the fabric of his sleeve.
He didn’t speak, didn’t move as she started to explore him, with first fingers, than palms, sliding her hands down the length of his chest as if she had never felt or touched, or experienced anything like it before. Finally, he moved, laying down full length upon the bed, pulling her so that she was resting against him, her back to his chest. His right arm reached over her, following the touch of her arm to her hand. He linked his fingers in hers. His left arm braced her head, acting as pillow.
“Why did you stay away so long?” A whisper, an entreaty that did not betray the shyness of the woman who asked the question.
“Is it not enough that I’m here now? Besides, my mother reminded me that you are without protector, privy to my whims, a prisoner.”
“Who travels around the countryside in a glorious barouche and sleeps in a bed designed for a princess and wears clothing bartered for in China. I like your way of imprisonment, Archer.”
“I should have known you would be just like her. Both of you hoydens.”
“Shall I summon one of the footmen to my chamber?”
“Do, and you’ll find him dismissed,” he said.
“The cook?”
“He’s much too temperamental; he should find a post more suitable to his emotions.”
“The stable master?”
“He’s too heavy-handed with the horses. Let him work for Moresham.”
“The earl?”
“A moody sort, given to too much introspection.” He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “They say he killed his wife. Or failing that, frightened her away.”
