Heartless (23 page)

Where was Anna going? She was hurrying through the trees with a purpose and yet she was too far from the drive and the gates to be going to the village. There was an old cottage close by, Emily knew. She had discovered it during her wanderings and had thought it would make a cozy little hideaway in which she might sit and think on chilly or damp days. But the door was locked and though it was an old and dilapidated building, she had been afraid to break one of the small windows.

It was Anna's destination, she saw to her surprise, though Anna did not find it easily. She wandered about for a few minutes before she came upon it. Emily hid behind a tree and watched as her sister walked hesitantly up to the door, looking almost as if she expected to be shot at from a window or from the surrounding trees, and then stooped down quickly to lift one corner of the heavy stone that lay on the doorstep.

There was something underneath, Emily could see. It looked like a piece of paper. Anna picked it up, looked hastily about, and fumbled beneath her open gown to reach through the slit in the side of her petticoats to the pockets taped about her waist beneath them. But she brought something out in place of the paper, stooped down again, and stuffed it beneath the stone. She stood up, turned away, and half ran back in the direction of the house. Emily pressed herself close to the tree so that she would not be seen, but she saw Anna's face. It was pale and frightened.

Emily's heart sank and she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the trunk for a moment. It was true, then. It was all going to start again. She felt it.

Her first instinct was to hurry over to the cottage to find out what it was that Anna had put beneath the stone. But she hesitated and caution made her stay where she was. She was glad a couple of minutes later that it had. A man stepped out of the woods opposite—a stranger—and hurried to the cottage, where he stooped down on his haunches, lifted the stone, drew out what was beneath it, and inspected it. Emily could see that he was counting money that he had tipped out of a small cloth bag. He stood up, slipped the bag into a pocket, darted a quick look about him, and disappeared again into the trees.

Emily returned her forehead to the trunk and closed her eyes again. She felt sick. She felt like crying. She had been so happy here. Anna had been so happy. But it was starting again. And though she had never before seen the man who had collected the money, she knew that somehow
he
was behind it all as he had been behind all of Anna's misery. Emily had always known it even though she did not understand why it was and even though everyone else appeared to like him.

She wanted Ashley suddenly. She wanted his strong hand holding hers, his tall man's body close beside her, keeping her safe. If only she had some way of telling him. He would make things all right. Or Luke. He would make things all right for Anna.

But she had no way of telling them.

•   •   •

Ashley
was not the only one who sometimes sought out the falls for the sense of peace the seclusion of the wood and the rushing of the water brought. Luke liked to go there too. On that particular morning he had been on his way home after spending an hour with one of his newly satisfied tenants when he had paused on the bridge and looked down into the water and succumbed to the temptation to steal a further hour for himself. He had turned his horse's head along the riverbank and had been lost to sight among the trees by the time Anna emerged from the house.

He tethered his horse to a tree and stood looking into the falls, one foot raised on a rock, his arm draped over his leg. He breathed in peace and the coolness of autumn and the special smell of damp autumn leaves, which could always evoke a whole host of boyhood memories. He must bring Anna here soon, before the trees lost all their leaves. She would like it here. They could be alone together for a short while. It was difficult to find time alone together outside their own private apartments.

He turned his head when the snapping of twigs warned him that someone was approaching. Perhaps she had found the place for herself and was coming there now. He had left her in bed, but that had been more than two hours ago.

But it was Henrietta.

“Oh, Luke,” she said, stopping, a hand to her heart. “You startled me. I thought you were out on business. You like to come here too?”

No, not again. It was one too many times. One too many contrived meetings. He had made one of the saddest—and one of the most relief-bringing—discoveries of his life during the past month. He no longer loved her. There was nothing except a certain nostalgia for what had been and what might have been. And a certain pity for what she must have suffered and still seemed to suffer.

He had put aside strong emotions ten years ago—very successfully, it seemed. He was content with his life as it had become—strangely, unexpectedly content.

He returned his foot to the ground and turned to face her. “No, Henrietta,” he said, “you did not think I was out. You saw me and followed me here.”

She flushed and bit her lip. “Oh, Luke,” she whispered, and tears welled in her eyes.

“It will not do,” he said. “I will escort you back to the house.”

She closed her eyes. Her face was pale in the shadows of the trees. She looked youthfully, delicately beautiful. He felt nothing but pity.

“But you feel it too,” she said. “I know you do, Luke. You pretend to have no heart because you do not want to admit even to yourself that the past is not over. But you feel it too.”

“No,” he said. “No, there is nothing, Henrietta. You must realize that. And these contrived meetings must end. What happened was painful to us both. We were both victims of—of fate. But it is long in the past.”

“You swore you would love me forever,” she said, tears standing in her eyes.

“Yes.” He sighed and reached for his snuffbox, which he had not brought with him. “But it has proved not so, Henrietta.”

“You love Anna,” she said, the tears spilling over onto her cheeks. “And I am sure I cannot blame you. She is lovable and blameless. I am sure she has never done anything you could possibly censure. I love her myself. Have you told her you will love her forever?”

“My marriage is a private matter between Anna and myself, Henrietta,” he said as gently as he could.

She spread her hands over her face and he stood where he was, his hands clasped behind his back. He would not go to her. She might misconstrue such a gesture.

“You have been stronger than I,” she said. “And wiser. I suppose, then, Luke, I must look elsewhere for admiration and love. I have been lonely, you know.”

“Yes,” he said. “There will be worthy men willing to love you, Henrietta.”

She lifted her head. “There is one . . .” she said.

“Is there?” He smiled.

“But he will never be you.” She gazed wistfully at him. “I wonder if you had not married Anna . . .”

“No,” he said firmly.

Her chin came higher. “No,” she said. “You would not forget that I was George's, would you?”

He did not answer. He offered her his arm and they strolled through the trees in the direction of the house. He led his horse with his free hand.

As they emerged from the trees, they could see Anna hurrying, head down, across the long lawn in the direction of the house, looking rather as if she thought herself pursued. She was alone. She did look up and see them as she entered the formal gardens and hurried onward, but she bent her head again and seemed to increase her pace.

Luke frowned.

“I shall leave you,” Henrietta said, “and go and take tea with Anna. I am sorry, Luke. I am sorry that I had less self-control than you. Forgive me?”

But she did not wait for an answer. She hurried across the lawn toward the house while he turned with his horse in the direction of the stables.

Where had Anna been, he wondered, so uncharacteristically alone? Why had she been in such a hurry? And why had she not smiled and changed direction to come toward them?

He was disappointed. He had missed their morning ride together.

T
HEY
were to take tea at the Wilkeses': Luke and Anna, the dowager, Doris, Henrietta, and Agnes. It was no informal afternoon call. An invitation had been issued and accepted. The Wilkeses had cousins from London staying with them.

Luke's mother, then, showed open annoyance when one of their number had still not come downstairs ten minutes after they should have been on their way. To the dowager duchess punctuality had always been an important attribute of good breeding.

“I do not like to be kept waiting, Lucas,” she said. “Your wife must learn that in this part of the world we do not make ourselves deliberately late merely to convince people that we are of superior rank. Perhaps where she comes from . . .”

“The world will not end, madam, because we are a few minutes late,” Luke said. “I shall go up and see what is keeping her.” He had been five minutes late himself. In Paris it was considered almost a mark of ill breeding to be early or even on time. Being early was a sign of overeagerness and one must never show oneself to be overeager.

But it was unusual for Anna to be late.

There was no one in her dressing room, he saw in some surprise, and no one in her sitting room. He tapped on the door of her bedchamber and opened it. She was standing at the window looking out. She was wearing a silk morning gown wrapped simply about her with a sash at the waist and no hoops. Her hair had not been dressed but hung loose and unpowdered down her back.

“Anna?” He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. “Have you forgotten that we are to take tea at the Wilkeses'?”

“No.” Her voice was quiet and toneless. She did not turn from the window.

He crossed the room toward her.

“Go without me,” she said. “I want to be alone.”

She sounded quite unlike Anna. Her voice was lifeless. Her shoulders were slumped.

“What is it?” he asked, frowning.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just do not feel like going out.”

“You are unwell?” he asked. A glance down at her body showed him that she was not wearing stays. She was quite noticeably losing her slim figure.

“No,” she said.

He continued to frown. “You are absenting yourself from tea for no apparent reason after we have accepted the invitation?” he said. “Is it not somewhat discourteous, madam? And discourteous, too, to leave my mother and my sister and yours downstairs without informing them that they need not wait for you?”

“Go away,” she said.

His eyes glinted dangerously for a moment. But he had heard about the various maladies that could accompany pregnancy, moodiness among them. Anna had been so remarkably well that sometimes he forgot that her body and her mind were having to cope with unfamiliar changes and functions. He reined in his temper.

“Come and lie down,” he said, setting his hands lightly on her shoulders. “You need rest, Anna. I will send for your maid to bring you a hot drink. I shall make your excuses to Mrs. Wilkes. Your condition is generally known, I believe.”

She shrugged her shoulders, pulling free of his hold. “Go away,” she said again. And then she was shrieking at him. “Leave me alone. Is this not my own room? Is there no privacy to be had anywhere?”

He had never seen Anna in a temper. He gazed at her in some amazement for a few moments, eyebrows raised. And he had never tolerated temper tantrums in any woman. A few of his women had tried and had found themselves swiftly and firmly cast off. He turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

“Luke!” Her voice stopped him as he was turning the handle. It was no longer shrieking, but sounded almost panicked—and shaking. He turned slowly and looked across the room at her, his own expression cold and haughty. “Don't leave.” The words were whispered. Her eyes were tightly closed.

He walked slowly back toward her and she opened her eyes and looked at him. They were large with unhappiness. There was something wrong, and it was not her health.

“What is it?” he asked. “Tell me what has happened, Anna.”

She shook her head slowly and reached for him. “Nothing,” she said as he took her in his arms. She shivered. “Nothing. 'Tis just that I am not feeling well. I am tired and lacking in energy.”

It was not that at all, he knew, but clearly she was not going to tell him what it was. “You must lie down, then, and rest,” he said. “I have to go. The others are awaiting us downstairs and my mother is less than pleased by the delay. Come, let me help you off with your gown.”

But she grabbed for him when he would have let her go. “Don't leave me.” She pressed herself against him. “Don't leave me. Don't leave me.” She whispered it over and over again as her arms came tightly about his neck and her eyes closed and she sought for his mouth with her own.

He gave it to her and tightened his arms about her again. There was a familiarity. She had been like this before. It did not take him long to remember. She had been like this in the carriage on the way home from Ranelagh Gardens, intensely, almost wildly amorous, throwing herself at him, so that he had been persuaded to the almost incredible indiscretion of coupling with her inside an unlocked carriage on the public streets of London. And she had been as wild and as clinging after they had got home. It was the night she had told him she was with child, the night she had begged him to bring her home to Bowden.

He kissed her opened mouth deeply, opening his own, thrusting his tongue inside, leaving it there while she sucked inward on it and while her hands tore at the ribbon holding back his hair and closing the silk bag that held the length of it at the back. He felt his hair spilling over his shoulders and about her face. He thought about his mother waiting downstairs even as he felt himself harden into arousal.

“Make love to me.” Her lips were rosy and swollen, her eyes heavy with desire. “Make love to me, Luke. Please. Please make love to me.” Her body was taut with desire, taut with desperation.

“Come.” He led her to the bed, untied the sash of her gown, and slipped it from her shoulders. She was wearing only her shift beneath. She lifted her arms as he removed it, and reached for him as he drew back the bedcovers and lowered her to the mattress. But he did not join her there immediately. He crossed the room to lock both the door into the corridor and that into the dressing room. He shrugged out of his heavy silk coat and stepped out of his buckled shoes but did not stop to remove the rest of his clothes. He unbuttoned his breeches and went down into her reaching arms.

He could read well the needs of her body. He had carefully taught himself the skill many years before. And he was familiar with Anna's body after more than three months of almost daily intimacies. He knew that foreplay was not what she needed now. She needed to have him inside her. He freed himself from the fabric of his breeches and put himself there, firm and deep. She sighed and almost immediately relaxed beneath his weight and his penetration.

She needed him in her for as long as he could keep himself there. He could sense that need. In some strange way she was not aroused and did not want or need to be brought to climax. She needed his body, his closeness. His body instinctively recognized her need and set about satisfying it. He stroked into her slowly, reaching deeply and carefully inside her—he had been loving her with shallower strokes lately, conscious of her pregnancy. But he knew that she needed depth today. She moaned with every inward thrust.

She seemed quite oblivious to the fact that someone came into her dressing room and knocked quietly, first on her sitting room door and then on the bedchamber door. She did not even seem to hear when Henrietta called her name softly and then tried the handle rather hesitantly. He set his mouth wide over hers to absorb the sound of her moans until he heard the outer door of the dressing room close again.

He gave himself to her for as long as he was able before his control went and he spilled into her with a sigh. But he kept his arms firmly about her after he had turned her onto her side against him and lifted the bedclothes so that they almost covered her head. She pressed her face into the silk of his waistcoat at his shoulder and wrapped an arm about his waist. He smoothed one hand lightly over her hair and felt her slipping slowly and deeply into sleep.

He stared over the top of her head at the window.

Something had happened. Just as something had happened at Ranelagh. At the time he had concluded that it must have been a combination of factors—her anxiety over Doris, the violence of his confrontation with Frawley, which she had witnessed, her new awareness that she must be with child. He had looked no further. That last fact had seemed to explain her pleas to be brought home.

Could there possibly have been something else? As there was something now, today? He frowned and cast his mind back to that evening. He had not spent a great deal of time with her after that long walk outside the rotunda with her in the gardens. But then it was not the thing to spend all one's time with one's wife when out in company. But he had watched her when she had danced with other men. She had sparkled with gaiety and vitality as she always did; it was that brightness in her that always drew his eyes to her even when he was surrounded by other beauties. Apart from the few minutes during which she had run back to the pavilion for his mother while he stayed at the gate with Doris, he had scarcely taken his eyes off her all evening. Nothing could have happened.

Except . . . he remembered now that he thought more carefully. Except that when he had returned from seeing his mother and Doris on their way home, Anna had been strolling with the dark-cloaked, dark-hooded masked man who was a neighbor of hers from her home. The man had not brought her all the way back to him. She had made no attempt to introduce the two of them. Was that not strange if he was a neighbor, father to one of her personal friends? It had not struck him as strange at the time. It did now that he was looking for something strange in that evening.

There had been something rather sinister about that man. But of course they had been at a masquerade. Everyone had been masked. And she had not appeared at all upset when she had returned to him. Except that it was at that moment, was it not, that she had asked him if they might leave? He had assumed that the upset over Doris and Frawley had taken the enjoyment from her evening as it had from his.

And perhaps that was all it had been about.

Except that he knew there had been something else.

And what about today? What had happened to bring on the misery, the flash of temper, the clinging, the almost desperate need to have him as close to her as it was possible for him to be? It was so unlike Anna. She was a passionate and an uninhibited lover. There was no form of intimacy she would not allow or show delight in. But she liked her pleasure to build slowly and to climax explosively, as he did. And she never initiated lovemaking, only eagerly accepted it when he did so. Never except on two occasions, that was.

What had happened? Henrietta? Had she seen them together coming from the trees that led to the falls? Had she imagined that it was a clandestine meeting? But no, it wasn't that. It was something that had preceded that. He remembered that she had been hurrying homeward. He remembered his surprise that she had not waited for them or come to meet them. And his surprise that she had been walking alone when there was always someone clamoring for her company. It had not been a pleasure walk. He knew that now.

Was it anything to do with the letter she had received by special messenger? He had met the man at the gates while on the way to his tenant's house and had offered to make his delivery for him. But the man had explained that he had received strict instructions to deliver the letter only into the duchess's hands or into those of her personal maid. Luke had raised his eyebrows and ridden on without comment.

Was there a connection between the letter and the walk and this mood of hers?

And yet when he had asked Anna about her letter after luncheon, before she had disappeared upstairs, presumably to get ready for tea with the Wilkeses, she had smiled brightly and told him all the news and gossip Lady Sterne had sent her. Lady Sterne's letter had come with the regular post—he had seen it himself. She had made no mention of the other letter and he had not questioned her further. It had seemed unimportant at the time. It had been from one of her new lady friends in the neighborhood, he had assumed. She had several. Anna was well liked wherever she went.

Luke drew her naked body even more snugly against him and she sighed against his shoulder. He must find out what it was that had so much power over her emotions. So much negative power. He did not like it when the sunshine went out of her. Some light died in him, too, when she was unhappy.

The thought, consciously worded in his mind, brought a frown to his face. No, that was not true. It could not possibly be true that his mood was affected by that of his wife. That would mean that she had some power over him, some control over him. That in some way he was dependent on her.