Heartless (30 page)

Even if she must kill him.

The thought terrified and fascinated her.

She turned her head sharply to look over her shoulder at the empty room.

I am the air you breathe. I am as close as your heart.

•   •   •

Emily
never went downstairs for tea although she was now fifteen years old and very nearly grown up. To her family, she knew, she would never be quite an adult. She would always be different, a little strange. They loved her, Emily knew, as did Luke and Ashley and Doris, but she would always be something of a child to them.

And so at teatime she was usually outside wandering or in the gallery if the weather was bad, looking at the portraits, or in the conservatory smelling the plants and fingering the varying textures of their leaves and petals.

Today she had walked among the trees on the opposite side of the house from those that led to the river and the falls. She liked the walk on this side too. The trees led through to meadows that were always prettily carpeted with wildflowers. But she was coming back early. Ashley would be returning to his office after tea. He would be leaving soon for India and was trying to get the books in order and ready for the man who was to be Luke's steward. There was so little time left with Ashley. Emily did not care to think how little. But she would spend every possible moment of the remaining time with him.

Anna was walking in the formal gardens with a gentleman. Emily was some distance away, but even so she shrank back instinctively into the protective covering of the trees. It was impossible to see clearly from this distance who it was that walked with Anna. But Emily knew. There was something quite distinctive about his form and about his bearing. It was him. He had found Anna again. But of course he had found her. There had been those letters. But now he had come in person.

Emily felt physically sick as she hugged a tree trunk and gazed at the distant figures of her sister and Sir Lovatt Blaydon. They were moving back in the direction of the house, and a carriage was being drawn onto the terrace.

There was evil in the man, Emily knew, and evil in his presence here. His appearance would bring misery and perhaps even disaster for Anna. Emily did not know quite why she was so certain of it, but she was.

As soon as the carriage had left, taking Sir Lovatt with it, and Anna had disappeared into the house, Emily emerged from her hiding place and raced across the grass. Ashley. Oh, pray God he was back in his office. Pray God. She was sobbing with panic by the time she got there.

Ashley looked up, startled, from his books and then jumped to his feet and came around the desk to clasp her by the shoulders. “Little fawn?” he said, frowning. “What is it?”

She gazed earnestly into his face and pointed off in the direction of the formal gardens.

“Something happened outside?” he asked. “Something to frighten you?”

She nodded and pointed again.

He ran his hands down her arms and held her hands while his eyes swept down her body. “You were not hurt?”

She stared at him mutely and he searched her eyes with his own.

“Zounds,” he said, and she read frustration in his expression, “there should be a language. Some way you can talk more eloquently than just with your eyes. You should be able to read and write, little fawn. There must be a way of teaching you. You understand spoken language. If I were staying, I vow I would teach you myself.”

She bit her upper lip. No, there was no way of telling him. And even if she could do so, what then? What could he do? Tell Luke? But what could Luke do? Sir Lovatt Blaydon made Anna very unhappy and he had some hold over her, but Emily did not understand what. Even if she could explain, there was very little to explain.

Ashley cupped her face with gentle hands and touched his thumbs to her cheeks, blotting two tears that had spilled over. “Don't cry,” he said. “I will not let anyone hurt you, little fawn. You are safe now. Come here.”

He drew her against him and wrapped strong arms about her. He forgot, of course, that she could not hear him unless she could see his lips. She could tell by the vibrations of his chest that he was still talking. But she knew, even without seeing his lips, that he was murmuring soothing words to her.

How was she going to live without him? She would surely die. She would want to die.

He was holding her at arms' length again. “Better?” he asked.

She nodded. Her heart was breaking for Anna and for herself, but she smiled at him. At her dear, beloved Ashley.

“I need you to mend my pen for me,” he said, grinning at her rather sheepishly. “I have been scratching too hard with it again and ruining the nib. No one mends a pen better than my little fawn. Will you?”

Emily nodded and continued to smile.

•   •   •

Colonel
Henry Lomax was smiling as his butler closed the door of the drawing room behind Henrietta.

“Ah, duchess,” he said. “How pleased and gratified I am that you have accepted so soon my open invitation to visit Wycherly. Only an hour after my own return here.”

She smiled coquettishly and crossed the room toward him. “'Tis a face that does not need to be masked, sir,” she said, “and a form that does not need to be hidden beneath a cloak.”

“Now whatever can you mean?” he asked her as her hands splayed themselves lightly against his chest.

Henrietta pouted. “'Twas unkind of you,” she said, “to ask Anna to walk with you in the garden when I had all but offered. Was it that you wished to protect my reputation? But perhaps I do not please you any longer.”

Colonel Lomax chuckled softly. “You wish to please me, do you, madam?” he said, grasping the skirt of her riding habit at both sides and lifting it upward. “A gentleman must bow to a lady's wishes.” He backed her toward the wide sofa behind her.

“Here, sir?” she half shrieked. “But there is no privacy.”

“Any servant who enters a room in my house unannounced is instantly dismissed,” he said. “Come, please me, Henrietta.”

He turned her so that he could sit on the sofa, and held up her skirts with one hand while he adjusted his own clothing. He drew her down astride him, grasped her hips, and pulled her down hard onto him. She gasped.

“Come whore for me, then,” he said, continuing to smile at her. “You do it with such panting enthusiasm, duchess.”

“Sir?” Henrietta looked indignant and tried to get up onto her knees away from his penetration.

But he laughed and held her hips with firm hands. “Enjoy it, Henrietta,” he said. “Everything you want will be yours soon. I will be taking Anna away before too much time has elapsed. But it may take a little while for Harndon to recover from her loss and to turn to you for comfort. Enjoy it while you may.”

He held her firmly down on him and took her quickly and ungently. Henrietta gasped and whimpered. And lowered her forehead to his shoulder when he had finished.

“But perhaps 'tis you I want and not Luke,” she said. “Perhaps I do not want you to take Anna away. Perhaps I would prefer that you took me.”

“You have been deprived too long of a man's part, Henrietta,” he said, “and have forgotten what you prize most in life—position and power. You connived for them, did you not, and still connive? You brought me all that information about Anna, who can have done nothing to offend you, in exchange for a weekly mount. No, my dear duchess, you must not lose sight of what is important to you. I have no use for you but this, and this is sometimes tedious. 'Tis not something I crave with any frequency.”

“Only with Anna?” she said bitterly, lifting her head.

He jerked her off him and dumped her onto the sofa beside him. He stood, his back to her, and buttoned his breeches. “Never with Anna,” he said. “You will not sully her name by suggesting any such filth, madam. I will have your help when the time comes. You will return here next week at the same time for instructions and each week after that until I am ready to make use of you.”

Henrietta was shaking out the skirt of her habit. Anger sparked from her eyes and sharpened her voice. “And why should I?” she asked him. “Why should I return where I have been insulted?”

He turned to look at her, his eyes amused. “I have servants, madam,” he said, “who have seen you here today, alone without maid or chaperone. I have a servant who walked into this room to see you rutting with me on that sofa, your skirts about your waist, so mindless with pleasure that you did not even notice him.”

Henrietta's eyes widened. “No one—” she began.

“And there are two or three witnesses to your lusty goings-on with a mysterious masked man several months ago,” he continued. “Witnesses who may yet recover from their embarrassment sufficiently to begin gossiping.”

“Why, you—”

Henrietta went for him with clawed fingernails. But he caught her wrists and held them.

“Besides, your grace,” he said, “you will come back if only for this, will you not?” For the first time he kissed her, hard, pulling on her wrists until she came against him, opening her mouth with his and thrusting his tongue deep inside before withdrawing his head and smiling at her. “You need it, just like a drug, do you not? I will give it to you again next week, Henrietta. The very thought has you aching between your legs, does it not?”

She stared at him mutely, anger and desire mingled in her face.

“Yes.” He smiled again. “Perhaps we will do it in a bed next week. Without the nuisance of clothes. Next week, my dear.” He stepped back from her, released one of her wrists and lifted the other to his lips. “You must leave now. We would not wish any breath of scandal to attach itself to your name, would we?”

Henrietta stared at him while he released his hold on her wrist. Then she whisked about and hurried toward the door.

She hated and feared him. Her breasts and her womb throbbed with desire for him.

C
OLONEL
Henry Lomax drew attention to himself and became a great favorite wherever he went. No dinner, no dance, no evening party was complete without the presence of the colonel. Men liked him; women adored him. Even some of the younger girls giggled and blushed when he paid them compliments, as he frequently did.

Luke found himself contemplating pleasurable and original ways to kill the man.

Wherever he went he singled Anna out for attention. Oh, never enough to cause a breath of gossip or a hint of scandal. He usually maneuvered matters so that he sat beside her at meals and then punctiliously divided his attention between her and whatever lady was seated at his other side. He always joined her group in a drawing room, and then talked more with the other members of the group than he did with her. He always danced with her at assemblies—only once—but with no one else. Yet he always spent the rest of such evenings charming all the other ladies and protesting the debilitating effects of old wounds, which prohibited him from dancing as much as he would like. He always smiled in such a way when he talked thus that the ladies never believed that those wounds also detracted from his virility.

There was nothing improper in his behavior to Anna. Luke found himself wishing that there were. He would know how to deal with any man who made indecent advances to his wife. There was nothing indecent about Lomax and his attentions could hardly be called advances.

Of course, they upset Henrietta.

“I am surprised,” she said to him one evening at the Pierces', when he was dancing with her and Anna was dancing with Lomax, “that you of all people will put up with it, Luke.”

“Madam?” He raised his eyebrows and focused his gaze on her.

“'Tis very clear,” she said, “that he fancies her. And she does naught to discourage him.”

No, she did not. That was part of what made him feel murderous. But then there was nothing to discourage.

“I assume you speak of my wife and Colonel Lomax?” he said. “You are out of line, Henrietta.”

“You cannot see it, can you?” she said. “She married you for your fortune, Luke, but she is not above taking a lover, I vow. She told me that first day he visited that she found him irresistibly charming and handsome. And she warned me that if I thought to flirt with him myself, she would give me competition. La, as if I would flirt with a man of such indiscriminate tastes!”

Luke's look was so icy that she faltered to a stop and lowered her eyes. “You will say no more, madam,” he said from between his teeth. “You have already said too much.”

She had become a bitter and a spiteful woman, he thought with some regret. She had seemed perfection itself once upon a time. And perhaps she had been. Poor Henrietta. Life had not been kind to her.

Luke waited in some impatience for a reply from his uncle to the inquiries he had made about Lomax. It came finally and chilled him to the heart, though it was the answer he had anticipated. The army had no records of a Colonel Henry Lomax. It seemed that the man did not exist, at least not in any military capacity. And Theo, with all his considerable connections, had been able to find no trace of him in any nonmilitary capacity either.

Colonel Henry Lomax, it appeared, since he was a very real flesh-and-blood man, was living at Wycherly under an assumed name.

He was someone from Anna's past. Someone who had known about her wedding plans and had come to watch from afar. Someone who had followed her to Ranelagh and had taken the first opportunity that had presented itself to walk apart with her there. Someone who had written to her several times during the first six months of her marriage and even drawn her into clandestine meetings. Someone who had gone to the trouble of making Will's acquaintance, perhaps of talking him into taking his bride on an extended wedding journey, and of persuading him to lease out Wycherly for a year.

Someone whose feelings for Anna were so powerful that he could not let her go.

Her secret lover.

Luke sat at the desk in his study, absently turning his uncle's letter about and about on its surface while staring into space.

And what about Anna? Was she finding it equally hard to let him go—Lomax, or whatever his name was?

She was not being unfaithful. Luke did not know why he was so sure of that since he did not spy on her and could not account for her every move during every hour of every day since he had married her. But he was sure nonetheless. One could not live intimately with a woman for a year without being certain of some facts about her. Anna was a faithful wife. And a devoted mother.

But what of her inner feelings? What had her distress after Ranelagh and after her receipt of that first letter indicated? Fear at the renewal of an acquaintance she did not want renewed? Fear of her own feelings? Had she clung to her husband and made love to him with such desperate passion out of guilt? Guilt over the fact that she did not love him but did love another man?

He remembered—he could never stop remembering—the look in her eyes and her tears on the morning after their wedding when he had asked her if she loved the man who had taken her virginity.

Luke crumpled the letter almost viciously in one hand and got abruptly to his feet. One thing was certain. The time for secrets was past. He was going to find out the truth. Not from Anna—he doubted he would get it from her. But he was going to find out the truth. Himself.

Not Theo this time, but himself.

•   •   •

Luke
and Ashley were out riding. They had no particular destination but somehow they ended up at the top of the slope a few miles behind the house and stopped by unspoken consent to turn their horses' heads and look down on the panorama of park, gardens, and house. It was Ashley's last day at home.

“I will think of this when I am in India,” he said, “and wonder what the devil I am doing there. 'Tis said that Englishmen always appreciate their own country best when they are out of it. Did you find that?”

“I had reason not to want to remember England,” Luke said quietly. “You have not changed your mind, Ash? 'Tis not too late.”

Ashley laughed. “When I am packed to leave for London tomorrow and to leave for India within the week?” he said. “No, I have not changed my mind, Luke. Thought of the future excites me. 'Tis just that I will miss all this and all of you.”

“Fox comes here well recommended,” Luke said. “But he cannot do a better job than you have done, Ash. Any time you want to come back . . . But no matter. I will miss you too—my only brother.” They had grown close again in the months since Joy's birth.

‘There was another brother,” Ashley said. “Have you even been to see his grave, Luke?”

“No,” Luke said curtly, “and 'tis not a topic I wish to pursue, Ash.”

“There is something you should know,” Ashley said abruptly. “Mama said 'twas something no one should ever know except her and Henrietta and me. But it has troubled me, especially now that I am leaving. You have the right to know.”

Luke turned his horse again and proceeded down the far side of the hill. “If it concerns George,” he said, “I have no wish to know.”

Ashley came after him. “He killed himself,” he said.

Luke stopped so abruptly that his horse reared and it took a few moments to bring it under control. By the time he had done so, his face was deathly pale. “What?”

“He fell on a knife,” Ashley said, looking equally pale. “Deliberately. Fortunately—I suppose it was fortunate—there was some cholera in the village and we put it about that it was of that he died. He would not have been given a Christian burial if the truth had been known, Luke.”

Luke felt that buzzing in the head he had felt once before. “But why?” he asked.

“He could never forgive himself, I suppose,” Ashley said. “He loved you. He sent you money once, did he not, and you sent it back? He drank for two weeks without stopping after that. Even Papa could do nothing with him.”

God!

“She got what she wanted,” Ashley said. “Can you see her clearly enough by now, Luke, to know that it was all her doing? She put him through hell. He could do nothing right. She even blamed him for the death of the child. They hated each other. I think she perhaps had feelings for you, Luke, but you were only a second son and George was available. Ironic, is it not? He used to take her to London and she had affairs and flaunted her lovers before him. I heard about it when I was at university. And then he killed himself.”

“God, Ash.” Luke rode onward, neither knowing nor caring which direction he took.

“He wronged you,” Ashley said, “but as I live, Luke, he suffered for it a thousandfold.”

I sent back the money,
Luke thought, unconsciously increasing his horse's pace to a canter.
I
sent back the money. I sent back his peace offering.

“Perhaps I should not have told you.” Ashley sounded miserable. “But you did have another brother, Luke. And I loved him.”

And now Luke was about to lose the other brother too. Not so cruelly or so permanently. But it would be a loss. He eased back on the reins and looked across at Ashley. “You did right, Ash,” he said. “Thank you.”

Ashley shrugged. “Let me ask something of you,” he said. “I am going to be in the devil of an emotional mood tomorrow morning. I want to leave as if I were running an errand into the village. I do not want you and Anna on the terrace hugging and crying all over me and waving me on my way.”

Somehow they were close to the stables. Ashley must have been steering their course.

“I'll stay out of the way, then,” Luke said reluctantly. “And I will ask Anna to do likewise.”

Ashley breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said, grinning. “I'll write, Luke.”

“See that you do,” his brother said, leading the way into the stables. “Orders from the head of the family, Ash.”

•   •   •

It
had not been easy to say good night to Ashley just as if it were any other night and not to wring his hand as if to crush every bone in it or hug him closely as if to break ribs. Luke had been away from his family for ten years and had neither expected nor wanted to come back to them. And yet now, knowing that his brother was going far away for an indeterminate number of years, he mourned those last years. Ten years, or some of them anyway, in which he might have known his brother.

Anna did not have as much fortitude. After excusing herself early from the drawing room in order to go up to the nursery to give Joy her night feed, and after bidding Ashley her usual warm and cheerful good night, she had turned back at the door, rushed back across the room to him, and given him all the hugs and shed over him all the tears he had hoped to avoid in the morning.

Ashley had emerged from the embrace looking sheepish and damp-eyed.

Luke breakfasted early and left the house before Ashley came down. He had had a sleepless night and had even wandered into his own bedchamber so as not to wake Anna. He had renounced his family, all of them, and had lived with deadened emotions for ten peaceful years. Now they were back, his family and his emotions. He loved Doris and Ashley. He was still hurt by his mother's rejection—he would admit it now. He still hated his father and George.

George. George had thrown himself on a knife and killed himself.

Luke left the house early, saddled his horse himself, and rode slowly and reluctantly to the only place he could go. He had a visit to pay, a long overdue visit.

He had always liked to wander in the churchyard as a boy. It had fascinated him to know that his own ancestors from generations back and those of the neighbors and villagers he knew were buried there. It had not been a morbid fascination. He had felt all the mystery and wonder of the continuation of life.

But he had come this time to see two particular graves, ones he had not seen before. He stopped at his father's first. His father had been a stern man. There had been love in him too—love for his boys and his girl. But clearly there had been limits to that love. Luke had passed those limits. The twenty-year-old Luke had been bitter about his father's rejection. The thirty-one-year-old Luke finally found it more understandable. He had tried to shoot his brother—or so it would have seemed—and had very nearly succeeded.

Luke wondered if his father had felt any regrets during the final five years of his life.

Father,
he said silently. But there were no words. Only a suddenly remembered image of his father teaching him, with endless patience, to ride his first pony.
Papa.

There was a small grave for the stillborn child. He had even been named: Lucas.

Luke stared at the little headstone for a long time, perhaps afraid to take that one more step to the side that would bring him to the other, most recent family grave. But he finally took the step.