Heartless (28 page)

Her whole family was there, and all of them happy. Agnes, the new Lady Severidge, seemed lit from the inside with excitement and happiness and nervousness. Even Emily was in the ballroom, seated beside Charlotte, whose husband pronounced her unable to dance because of the interesting state of her health. Emmy gazed about her with bright and wondering eyes, but eyes that nevertheless grew even brighter on the occasions when Ashley came to her for a few minutes at a time and talked to her, an indulgent, brotherly smile on his face.

But what made the evening magical for Anna was that Luke played with her again the game of flirtation they had always played in London. Although they danced the opening set together, their position as host and hostess of the ball forbade them to spend any more of the evening in each other's company. It might have been a disappointing fact but was not. Anna danced all evening with a variety of partners. So did her husband. And neither neglected to converse with their partners or to circulate among their guests between sets. And yet they contrived to look at each other almost constantly, Anna with bright smiles, Luke with deceptively lazy eyes.

And she shamelessly used her fan, fluttering it when she caught his gaze across the room, raising it to her nose when she had his full attention. And he used his, waving it indolently before his face as his eyes did shameful things to her body.

It was ridiculous, she told herself several times in the course of the evening. If they were observed—and Luke's appearance tonight, more gorgeous than he had yet appeared in the country, doubtless ensured that they were—they would be thought to be out of their wits. They had been married for almost a year. They had a two-month-old child in the nursery upstairs. And yet they were flirting with each other as if they had just met. It was ridiculous. And wonderful beyond imagining.

“Faith, child,” Lady Sterne said to her at one point in the evening, linking her arm through Anna's, “whose wedding day is this, pray? I vow that anyone who was not sure would swear it was yours and Harndon's.”

Anna flushed. So someone really had noticed. “Aunt Marjorie—” she began.

But her godmother squeezed her arm and interrupted her. “It does my heart good, child,” she said. “I promoted the match. Theodore and I between us. But I have worried about it. You were set against marriage. Harndon was set against it. It does my heart good, I vow, to see the two of you so deep in love.”

Oh, it was not quite that way, Anna thought wistfully. There was love on one side, and flirtation and perhaps a little affection on the other. But even that fact was not allowed to dim her enjoyment of the evening.

After supper, before the dancing resumed for another couple of hours, the bride and groom left for Wycherly, William's carriage streaming with ribbons that Ashley and a few of the other young men of the neighborhood had attached to every conceivable projection. Everyone spilled out of doors to give them a rousing farewell.

Anna hugged a rather tearful and clearly nervous Agnes and then a blushing and hardly less nervous William. He would not have been her choice for Agnes, she thought, but clearly it was a love match. Her second sister was safe and headed for happiness. Her vision blurred as Agnes was assisted into the carriage by her new husband, and she felt a small hand creep into her own—Emily's—at the same moment as a larger, warmer hand came to rest on her shoulder—Luke's.

Perhaps neither of them realized fully just what it meant to her to have her brother and sisters safely established in life. Perhaps both of them thought that her tears resulted from mere sentiment. She squeezed Emmy's hand and smiled at her husband.

And then the dancing resumed. Anna stole away to give Joy her night feed, but was able to dance the last two sets, one with Ashley and the other with Lord Quinn.

“Egad,” Lord Quinn said, “I will never forget that night when I had three lovely ladies to escort and only two arms. And now two of those gels are wed and have deserted me.”

“But not Aunt Marjorie, Uncle Theo,” she said, smiling.

“Zounds, no,” he said, chuckling. “You are in the right of it there, lass.”

Anna had the very improper suspicion that her godmother and Luke's uncle enjoyed a relationship that was somewhat closer than mere friendship.

And then the ball was over, far too soon, it seemed, though it had extended well past the normal hour for such entertainments in the country. Luke and Anna saw all their outside guests on their way and bade good night to their houseguests and then returned to the ballroom to commend their servants on a job well done and to direct them to go to bed and leave the cleaning up until morning.

Everyone else had gone to bed long before Anna finally climbed the stairs, her arm on Luke's. There was a tension between them. Surely the night could not be at an end. She did not want it to be over. Not yet. She wondered if only she felt the tension.

But he paused outside her dressing room and bowed over her hand as he had done at the start of the evening.

“You are tired, Anna?” he asked.

Oh, yes, but not too tired. “A little,” she said, smiling at him.

“I promised you privacy and freedom,” he said, “for another two months.”

“Yes.” She scarcely heard her own whisper.

“Do you wish me to honor my promise?” he asked, his eyes looking very keenly into hers.

“No.”

He raised her hand to his lips. “I may come to you in a short while?”

She nodded and he opened the door of the dressing room. Penny was waiting inside. Anna stepped in without another word or a backward glance. Drawing breath into her lungs took a conscious effort.

•   •   •

Except
for her wedding night Anna had always waited naked for her husband. She wore her nightgown tonight and felt as nervous as a bride. She spared a brief thought for Agnes, but Agnes would be a wife by now. And she loved her William and he her. All would be well with them.

She stood at the window and turned to watch Luke when he tapped on her dressing room door and came inside. He was wearing a blue silk dressing gown. His hair had been brushed free of powder and had been left to fall free about his face and shoulders in long, dark waves. She was glad he did not follow the fashion to shave his head and wear a wig. She loved his hair.

“Anna.” He took her hands and squeezed them. “You will be thinking me a devil of a nuisance keeping you up later than late.” And yet his eyes wooed her.

“No,” she said. She did not even try to hide the naked love and longing in her eyes.

He drew her hands down against his sides so that she had to take a step forward. She touched him from breasts to hips to thighs. She could feel that he was already aroused. He set his mouth, opened, over hers and parted her lips with his tongue. It had been such a long time. Ah, it had been so long.

“I have missed you,” he said.

“And I you.” The touch of his tongue had sent raw desire shooting downward into her breasts and into her womb.

“It was to be for duty and pleasure, this marriage of ours,” he said. “There has been too much of duty and too little of pleasure lately, Anna.”

“Yes.” She longed for a third dimension to be added to their marriage. She longed for him to talk of love. But he wanted pleasure of her, and it was enough. She had feared that perhaps he would not look for it with her ever again.

“Will it give you pleasure to be kept awake and hard at work until dawn?” he asked her, his eyes gazing lazily into hers. “Or will the pleasure be mine alone?”

He was wooing her with words. By now he must know her answer beyond any doubt. But words could be as erotic as lips or hands or body. That downward stabbing of desire had reached her knees. “It will give me pleasure,” she said. “I never did mean for you to go away entirely, Luke. I never meant that. My bed has felt empty.”

He kissed her again, pushing his tongue inside her mouth for a few moments. “Perhaps, madam,” he said, “we should lie down on it and discover if it feels more occupied tonight.”

“Yes, your grace.” She smiled at him.

It felt simply filled and wonderful. They both agreed to that after the first swift, lusty coupling. The bed really did not feel empty at all any longer, she admitted to him after the second skilled, agonizingly slow yet thoroughly satisfying lovemaking to which he subjected her. It was an infinitely more comfortable bed than his own, he told her after the third leisurely, almost languorous joining of bodies and sharing of pleasure—warmer and softer.

“I could be persuaded to spend all my nights here for the next fifty years or so,” he said, his breath warm against her ear. “And some of my afternoons too.”

She sighed sleepily against his throat. “How might you be persuaded?” she asked.

“By your promising to spend those nights and those afternoons here with me,” he said.

“So it is not just the bed?” she said. “'Tis the woman in it too?”

He blew into her ear. “I believe 'tis entirely the woman, madam,” he said. “You might have a straw pallet dragged in here and I would be none the wiser, provided the woman was the same.”

She chuckled. It was the closest he had come to a declaration of love, and probably the closest he would ever come. But it was enough. They had loved the night away, giving and taking pleasure. She would be fortunate to snatch an hour of sleep before it was time to feed Joy again. But she would not exchange a few hours of deep sleep for what they had just shared.

She loved and she felt almost loved in return. She felt safe and warm and drowsy in her husband's arms. Perhaps part of him could not let go of the past, but she was giving some pleasure to his present. And perhaps she feared the future, but there was love and the illusion of security in the present.

It was enough. For now it was enough.

“Good night and good morning, my duchess,” he murmured into her ear.

“I am asleep,” she muttered.

“Ah,” he said and bit her earlobe until she wriggled, protesting sleepily, out of reach of his teeth.

She had descended too far into sleep to hear his chuckle.

C
OUNTRY
living could sometimes be monotonous even when neighbors made the effort to be sociable and to both host and attend various entertainments. The main problem was that one tended to see the same faces wherever one went.

The return of the Duke of Harndon with his new bride and her sister had brightened the summer and autumn months at Bowden. Then the christening of their daughter and the marriage of Lady Agnes Marlowe to Lord Severidge added excitement to the spring, bringing as they did a whole host of fashionable guests to Bowden.

And then, just when the neighborhood might have expected a return to rather dull normality, the new tenant arrived at Wycherly. Colonel Henry Lomax was a single gentleman—a point of interest to the single ladies of the neighborhood and their parents. And he was a retired army colonel and thus could be expected to bring with him many stories of adventure and gallantry. After he had been in residence at Wycherly for a day, Colonel Lomax began receiving a steady stream of callers and a warm welcome.

Luke and Anna were among the first to call, together with the dowager and Henrietta. It seemed strange, Henrietta remarked as they descended from the carriage and she looked up at the house, to be coming to Wycherly as a visitor when it had been her childhood home.

One group of neighbors was already in the drawing room with the colonel. But he rose to greet the new arrivals with a warm charm. He was a tall, slim man in his late forties, still handsome. He was fashionably dressed in brown and cream, his bag wig neatly powdered.

“I am honored indeed,” he said when the introductions had been made and he had favored his new visitors with a deep bow. “But, Harndon, 'tis unfair, I vow. Most dukes of my acquaintance are allowed only one duchess apiece. Yet you have three, all equally lovely.” His smile crinkled his eyes attractively at the corners and revealed white and even teeth. Everyone gathered in the room laughed at the witticism.

The dowager duchess was not amused by his gallantry and showed her displeasure by inclining her head stiffly and regally to the colonel, taking a seat next to Mrs. Persall, and engaging her in conversation.

Henrietta smiled and extended a hand, which the colonel took and fetched to his lips. “La, sir,” she said, “I am but a widow, a dowager though not in name. My late husband was Luke's elder brother.”

“A dowager?” he said, retaining her hand in his and seating her beside him on a sofa after Luke and Anna had sat down. “Your youth and beauty would make a mockery of the title, madam.” He released her hand.

Henrietta continued to smile at him.

He turned his attention to Anna. “I have been told, your grace,” he said, “that you have recently presented your husband with a child. A son, 'tis to be hoped?”

“A daughter,” she said.

“Ah.” He smiled kindly. “I am sure she is a treasure to you, madam, and to his grace.” He inclined his head to Luke. “Your husband already has his heir in Lord Ashley Kendrick, I believe?”

“Yes,” she said.

Conversation became general and the tea tray was brought in. The party from Bowden took their leave after half an hour had passed and more callers had arrived.

“I can see,” Colonel Lomax said with a laugh when he stood out on the terrace with them, “that I have been fortunate enough to take up residence in a hospitable part of the world. It means a great deal to me to have amiable neighbors.” He handed Henrietta into the carriage after Luke had done the like for his mother. “I shall look forward to furthering my acquaintance with all of you who have been kind enough to call.”

He smiled appreciatively at Henrietta and turned to Anna, hand extended. But she already had her hand in Luke's and ascended the steps and seated herself with his assistance.

“I shall also look forward to meeting your young daughter, your grace,” he said. “I am inordinately fond of children.”

Anna inclined her head to him but said nothing as Luke seated himself beside her and their coachman closed the door and climbed up to his seat again. Colonel Lomax smiled and raised a hand in farewell as the carriage started on its way back to Bowden Abbey.

“Oh, la.” Henrietta laughed. “I cannot say I am sorry William has taken Agnes on a wedding journey. I vow the colonel is a most charming man. Would you not agree, Mother?”

“A little too free in his manners, perhaps,” the dowager said. “But he made an effort to make himself agreeable. When he returns our call, Lucas, you must invite him to dinner.”

“You may be sure I shall do all that is correct, madam,” Luke said.

Anna smiled brightly. “What a beautiful day it is,” she said. “And what a shame that we have had to spend a part of it inside a carriage and paying a call.”

“Duty is something that must be done regardless of the weather or one's personal inclinations, Anna,” her mother-in-law reminded her.

Anna smiled warmly at her. “Yes I know, Mother,” she said. “That is why I am here. I wonder where Agnes and William are at this very moment. They were going to Paris first? You gave them introductions there, Luke, did you not? But 'twould not surprise me at all if neither of them calls on anyone you recommended to them.”

“Madam?” He raised his eyebrows.

“They will take fright, imagining that any friend of yours must be alarmingly grand,” she said. “And I daresay they would be right.” She laughed at his look of surprise and chattered brightly for the rest of the journey home.

•   •   •

At
first Henrietta had not been sure. It had seemed too incredible. But there had been no mistaking those intent eyes and that perfect smile and the distinctive smell of his cologne. And he had squeezed her hand more tightly than a stranger would have done.

She brimmed over with excitement. He was a wonderfully handsome man. More handsome than she had imagined. And charming. All the other ladies there had devoured him with their eyes. While he had devoured her with his.

And Anna had known him. Oh, yes, indeed she had, clever as she had been at disguising the fact. She had known him yet not acknowledged the acquaintance. There had been fear in Anna, well contained but quite visible to Henrietta's eyes.

It was all a glorious mystery, which was to be uncovered at last.

He had come back. And somehow—she had no idea how—he was going to destroy Anna. And perhaps Luke too.

Suddenly the world seemed a brighter place again.

•   •   •

Normally
Anna would have made haste to the nursery after returning from an afternoon call. Joy was usually awake at this time of day even though she was not due for a feed for more than an hour yet. She had started to smile, though she was usually more willing to oblige for her father than for her mother. And she was a good child, placid and cheerful.

But today after excusing herself and hurrying upstairs, Anna did not turn in the direction of the nursery, but rushed instead into her sitting room and closed the door firmly behind her. She leaned back against it and wished there were a lock on the door, but it did not matter. Luke never came there now, and it was unlikely that anyone else would call on her there for a while. They would all assume she was with Joy.

Her hands were cold and clammy. She held them out in front of her and watched them tremble out of control. She was so breathless that for a few moments she was afraid she would not be able to suck in enough air to keep herself conscious. There was a coldness and a buzzing in her head. Her knees felt as if they would buckle under her at any moment. She sat down heavily in the nearest chair.

She might have expected it. Why had she not expected it and prepared herself? She had thought of it, of course, when William had first mentioned at Christmas that he was going to lease his house to a tenant, but she had been instantly reassured by his mention of the man's name. She had gone to Wycherly today quite unsuspecting. She had entered the drawing room with a smile on her face.

Oh, dear God, dear God, dear God. She spread icy, shaking hands over her face and lowered it into her full, hooped skirt. Dear God. But there was nothing particularly dear about God to her these days. He had not helped her at all in the last three years unless it was in the gift of Luke and Joy. It was a cruel gift—one that had brought illusions of happiness and security. One that was about to be snatched away from her.

He had behaved exactly as he had always behaved at Elm Court and in its neighborhood. He had behaved with warmth and charm and had made everyone like him and feel an eagerness to have him return their calls, to have him become part of their social life. He had looked exactly as he had always looked there—handsome, fashionable, virile, attractive. Henrietta had fallen under his spell. Even Luke's mother had thawed noticeably after that first and only mistake he had made in trying to flatter her.

Anna sat up again and set her head against the cushions at the back of the chair. It was all going to start again in earnest, then. It was going to be just as it had been at Elm Court. There would be the visits and the demands for money in payment of her father's debts, as there had been by letter in the months following her marriage. And perhaps demands that she help him in other ways—help him to cheat and steal from her neighbors and friends. No. She gripped the arms of the chair tightly. Not that. Never that again. There at least she would draw the line.

What was she to do? Her instinct at this very moment was to go to Luke and tell him everything, every sordid detail. She tried to imagine the overpowering relief she would feel at being able to unburden herself to her husband. To the man she had grown to love more than life. She tried to imagine it, but all she could see behind her closed eyelids was Luke's face, first disbelieving, then disdainful, and then cold and thin-lipped. And she pictured him taking their daughter from her and hiring a wet nurse. And having her carried off to a magistrate elsewhere, far away, so that the scandal would be somewhat lessened.

Her breathing quickened again. She would never see them again. Ever.

The imaginings were ridiculous, she thought. Luke would never react that way. She was his wife. Lately he had made her his friend. He felt . . . surely he must feel some affection for her. Surely he would listen with sympathy. Surely he would help her.

But she thought of how he had reacted on a previous occasion to someone who had offended and hurt him. His brother George. Not only had he never forgiven his brother in this life, he would not even go near his grave.

Oh, no, she could not risk it. She could not risk losing everything. The stakes were so much higher now. There was Joy now as well as Luke.

But she was going to lose everything anyway. She felt that the final denouement was somehow near. At some time, perhaps soon, perhaps far in the future, he was going to take her away—away from Luke, away from Joy, perhaps away from England. Was she going to go meekly? Or was she going to fight? But how would she fight? Tell Luke? If she was going to tell him when the time came, why not tell him now?

Why had she not told him that day he came to propose marriage to her? Or better still, why had she not just refused his proposal? By now she would be with Sir Lovatt wherever it was he planned to take her. She would know what he had in store for her—as his mistress, as his wife, as neither. But at least she would know. And she would not have allowed herself the treacherous luxury of happiness. And hope.

Anna's mind teemed with conflicting thoughts and emotions and decisions. Her body fought against the urge to send her hurtling into her dressing room to vomit.

•   •   •

Luke
was in the library, thumbing through a book he had drawn from a shelf but not really seeing it. He, too, would normally have gone up to the nursery at this time of day. The lure of playing with his daughter when she was awake was usually irresistible. Under other circumstances he would probably have suggested that he and Anna take her outside for a walk. It really was a lovely day.

But he had come to the library instead and shut the door firmly behind him.

Colonel Henry Lomax was a gentleman of some refinement. He had presence and conversation and a fashionable appearance for an Englishman. He had displayed an easy amiability toward his male guests and charm toward the ladies. He would doubtless be much in demand through the summer until the novelty of his presence in the neighborhood had worn off, and perhaps even beyond that. Henrietta had been noticeably drawn by his charm. That at least was a promising sign.

Luke frowned and snapped the book shut. But what the devil had the man been doing standing half hidden behind a tree in the middle of the square outside the church on the day of his wedding to Anna? Had it been pure coincidence that he had been there and curiosity that had held him there to watch? But if that were so, would he not have commented this afternoon on the strange fact that he had seen the duke and duchess on the day of their wedding? There had not been a flicker. of recognition in his eyes when they had entered his drawing room.