Jane Feather - [V Series] (32 page)

She knew only that she could no longer stay under the same roof as Marcus. Leaving him so precipitately would ruin everything with Gracemere, but she could see no option. Sebastian would understand and they’d come up with an alternative plan.

But never had she felt so desolate, or so at a loss. She couldn’t stay with him, but why then was leaving him as agonizing as peeling away a layer of skin?

Delicately she turned the key and let herself out of the room. In the corridor, where a dim light came from a single candle in a wall sconce, she paused, listening. The only sounds were the creaks and rustles of the sleeping house. She crept down the stairs, still hunched over the dragging pain in her belly, and turned down the passage leading to the book room. This was not an exit to be made through the front door.

She opened the French doors and stepped into the garden, closing them quietly at her back. The gate in the wall led into the mews. Horses whickered, hooves shuffled on straw as she moved in the shadows across the swept cobbles of the yard. The stablehands wouldn’t start
work for another hour and Judith had the sense of being the only human awake in the whole of London town. It occurred to her that it was perhaps foolhardy to walk the streets alone in the dark hour before dawn, and her hand closed over her pistol.

It was less than a ten-minute walk, however, to Albemarle Street, and she saw no one. Sebastian’s rooms were on the ground floor, and she stood on tiptoe to tap at the window. If she had to use the knocker the landlord would answer the summons and it would be hard to explain herself at such an hour. She raised her hand to tap again, when the front door opened.

“Come in, Ju,” Sebastian whispered.

“How did you know it was me?” She slipped past him into the dark passageway.

“Somehow I was expecting you,” he replied, picking up her valise and gesturing to the sitting room.

“I didn’t wake you, then.”

“No, I was waiting for you.” He set down her valise and examined her carefully. “You look the very devil. Brandy?”

“Please.” She threw off her cloak and drew off her gloves. “Thank you.” Cradling the glass in her hands, she went to the hearth, where the ashy glow of the embers of the dying fire put out a modicum of heat.

Her brother took kindling from the basket beside the grate and tossed it onto the embers. A reassuring hiss and spurt of flame resulted. He straightened, regarding his sister with sharp-eyed concern. She sipped her brandy, stroking her stomach in an unconscious gesture he recognized as the fiery spirit warmed her cramping muscles. “You’re not feeling too well,” he stated.

She gave him a wan smile of agreement. “To add insult to injury.”

“So, what did he do?”

“How did you know …? Oh, did you tell him?”

“He wanted to repay me for your turn-out. I told him you’d paid for it yourself. He made the correct deduction. Carrington’s no fool, Ju.”

“I never took him for one,” she said. Bleakly she recounted the scene in the book room, leaving nothing out. Sebastian listened in grim silence. It occurred to him that his brother-in-law had shown about as much sensibility as a herd of rogue elephants.

“So where do you want to go?” he asked, when she’d fallen silent.

“Some small hotel, perhaps.”

“In London?”

“Yes, but in an unfashionable part; somewhere where I won’t run the risk of meeting anyone I know on the street.”

“Kensington … Bloomsbury?”

“Either … look, I know this ruins everything, but—”

“Not necessarily,” her brother said. “We’ll work out something. But at the moment, you’ve got to sort yourself out. We’ll find somewhere for you to stay first thing in the morning.” He put down his glass. “You can have the bedroom, I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“No, I don’t mind sleeping in here.”

“Oh, Ju, don’t be a bore.” He picked up her valise. “Apart from the fact that you’ve got the bellyache, there’s no need to be so tiresomely independent with me. You’ll sleep in the bed and I’ll be perfectly happy on the sofa. We’ve both slept in many more uncomfortable places in our time.”

Judith gave him a ruefully apologetic smile. “Sorry. I seem to have lost the power of cool thought tonight.”

He smiled and kissed her cheek. “Hardly surprising.”

Judith followed him into the bedroom. “I suppose it’s possible Marcus might knock on your door at some point.”

“Highly likely, I would have thought,” her brother agreed with a dry smile. “He can hardly pretend you never existed.”

“No, but I expect he wishes he could.”

Sebastian shook his head. “I admit it looks bad at the moment, but things change with time and distance.”

“I can’t go back,” she said, pulling back the coverlet.

“No,” he said neutrally. “I suppose not.” He took her hands. “You’re worn to a frazzle, love. We’ll work something out.”

“Of course we will. We always do,” she assented, with a conviction she didn’t truly feel. She reached up to kiss him. “Thank you.”

“Sleep well.”

Judith crept into bed and, despite unhappiness and uncertainty, fell instantly into the deep sleep of total, emotional exhaustion.

M
arcus slept fitfully and woke leaden with depression. He lay in the big bed contemplating the bleak prospect of his marriage. After such a confrontation, after the things that had been said, he could see no possibility of anything other than a frigid, armed truce between them from now on. He knew that he would always be suspecting her of some ulterior motive, of employing some strategy to take advantage of him. He’d never again be able to trust in her responses or in her emotions … not even in bed. And he would watch her like a hawk. He would control every aspect of her life as it impinged upon him. And Judith’s bitter resistance would fuel the vicious circle of mistrust.

He dragged himself out of bed in the cheerless dawn and padded softly to the connecting door. The handle
turned but the door was locked. It didn’t surprise him, but it angered him. He intended from now on that her life should be open to his inspection at all times, and he would not tolerate locked doors.

He went out into the passage to the outside door. This one opened, but the room when he stepped into it was empty. He stood in disbelief for a minute, trying to order his tumbling thoughts and a sudden morass of responses that couldn’t yet be named. The bed had not been slept in, drawers stood open, their contents disturbed as if someone had gone through them in haste. The armoire was open. Judith’s hairbrushes were no longer on the dressing table.

She had gone. At first, the stark recognition made no sense. His mind couldn’t grasp the fact that Judith had left him. He caught and hung onto the simplest aspect: the public consequences of such an action. The response to this was equally simple: a surge of renewed anger. How dare she do such a thing? Put him in such a position? How could he possibly explain his wife’s dead-of-night flight to the servants? How could he possibly explain her absence to the rest of the world? It was a piece of cowardly avoidance, something he would never have expected of Judith.

Furiously he unlocked the connecting door and stormed into his own apartment, pulling the bellrope for Cheveley.

“Her ladyship has gone into the country,” he said curtly when his valet appeared. “She had news of a sick aunt and was obliged to leave immediately. Inform Millie of that fact, will you?”

“Yes, m’lord.” Cheveley was far too good at keeping his feelings to himself to show the slightest surprise at this extraordinary information. He assisted his lordship into his clothes and stood patiently with a large supply of
cravats in case the first attempts were unsuccessful. But the marquis seemed easily satisfied this morning and spent less than five minutes on the intricacies of cravat-tying.

He slipped a Sevres snuff box into his pocket and stalked downstairs to the breakfast parlor, throwing over his shoulder, “Gregson, have my curricle brought around.”

Gregson bowed at the terse instruction.

The marquis marched into the breakfast parlor, closing the door with a controlled slam. He poured himself coffee, helped himself to a dish of eggs, fragrant with fresh herbs, and sat at the table. Slowly the conflicting emotions wrestling each other for precedence began to sort themselves out. He sipped coffee, staring sightlessly across the table, his eggs cooling in front of him. He had to find her and bring her back, of course. Whatever lay between them, whatever future they might have, she was still his wife, whether she liked it or not. Devious, scheming adventuress or not, she was his wife, whether he liked it or not. And by God, when he found her …

He pushed back his chair abruptly and went to the window. It was a bright morning, a hoar frost glittering on the grass. He was furious with her for putting him in this situation, but there was more to it than that. Yes, she had to come back. The scandal otherwise would be unthinkable. But he had felt more than anger when he’d stood in the doorway of her empty room … a room out of which all the spirit seemed to have been leached. Even the house felt different, as if it had lost some vital presence that gave it life. Slowly he forced himself to name what he had felt as he’d stood in the doorway. He had felt the terror of loss. He felt it now, pushing up through the anger. There was no other way of describing it.

He began to pace the parlor, trying to work out what this meant. Did it mean that her deceptions didn’t matter? Did it mean he was willing to endure being used, if it was the price of her presence in his life? Or did it simply mean he was willing to rescind the punishment if Judith would offer her own compromises? Could they start afresh? What was he terrified of losing—the potential for love or the certainty of lust?

He heard her laugh—that wicked, sensual chuckle in his head—and the sound winded him. He felt her body under his hands, as if in some sensuously vivid dream. He could smell the delicate, lavender-scented freshness of her skin. The burnished copper head, the great golden-brown eyes, shimmered in his internal vision. But it wasn’t just that, was it? It was Judith herself. Judith with her tempestuous spirit, her needle wit, her acerbic tongue, her delicious sense of humor. Judith of the lynx pride and ferocious independence. It was the woman who carried a pistol, who didn’t buckle under adversity, who didn’t think twice about slaving amid the gory detritus of a battlefield, who took responsibility for herself.

It was the woman he had thought he needed to lash into submission. The foolishness of such a misguided intention now brought a sardonic curve to his mouth. Whatever she was, whatever she had been, she belonged to him. And for some perverse reason, despite the scheming and the deceit, she seemed to be what he wanted. And if that was the case, then he’d have to try to modify the bad with rather more subtlety than he’d shown so far, and what he couldn’t change he’d have to accept.

But first he had to retrieve her. The initial step was obvious. If it failed, the next was less obvious.

Gregson announced that his lordship’s curricle was at the door. “Thank you. Lady Carrington has gone into the country to visit a sick aunt.”

“Yes, my lord, so I understand from Cheveley. Do we know when her ladyship will return?”

“When the sick aunt is recovered, I assume,” Marcus snapped, thrusting his arms into the many-caped driving coat held by Gregson.

He drove to Albemarle Street. It was eleven o’clock, hopefully too early for Sebastian to have left his lodgings. He was right, to a certain extent, in that his quarry was seated at breakfast, having returned to his lodgings after an early-morning journey to Kensington.

“Good morning, Marcus.” Sebastian rose from the table as his servant announced his brother-in-law. “Breakfast?” He gestured to the laden table.

“No, I’ve already breakfasted. Where is she, Sebastian?”

“I thought that was probably the purpose of your call.” Sebastian resumed his seat. “You don’t mind if I continue …?”

Marcus slapped at his Hessians with his driving whip. “I haven’t got all day, Sebastian.
Where is she?”

“Well, there’s the difficulty,” his host murmured, taking up a tankard of ale. “I can’t say, you see.”

“She came to you, of course?”

“Of course.” He took a draft of ale.

Marcus glanced around the room. If Judith was anywhere in the vicinity, he would know it, would feel it in his bones and through his skin. She had that effect on him, and it was getting stronger the longer he lived with her. He knew she was no longer in her brother’s lodgings.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem to have been rather unsubtle,” Sebastian observed, spearing a deviled kidney.

“I’m willing to concede that,” Marcus said. “But the provocation was overpowering.”

Sebastian frowned. He’d been thinking things through for many hours now, ever since his sister had fallen asleep. He hadn’t said anything to her, but he had come to the conclusion that a degree of interference might be in her best interests. Of course, putting Judith’s marriage together again would be in his best interests also. He couldn’t destroy Gracemere without her help, and until Gracemere was dealt with, he couldn’t make a formal offer for Harriet. He’d had to wrestle with the issues for a long time before he satisfied himself that what he was going to do would be certainly as much for Judith as it would be for himself.