Lady Caro (12 page)

Chapter 16

It would have astonished Caro to learn that Ashley was looking forward to seeing Lady Roxley with trepidation, not eagerness.

He had not confided to her his father’s insistence that he wed. Her hatred of Bourn for having prevented her from marrying his son had intensified over the years until Ashley was reluctant to mention his father’s name in Estelle’s presence. So she had had no notion that his real reason for going to Bellhaven was to look over a prospective wife.

He had bid her farewell as a bachelor with no hint that this status might soon change. Indeed, he himself had had not the slightest suspicion that he would return a married man. He desperately wished that he could have had the opportunity to break the news to her before the knot had been tied, but he had not, thanks to Levisham’s insistence on an immediate wedding.

Ashley’s lips compressed as he thought of the marquess’s amazing “recovery.” The viscount was growing increasingly certain that he had been gulled into a marriage that he had not wanted. But, oddly enough, he did not feel bitter about it. He would not have married Caro otherwise, but now that he had, he was not displeased with the match. He did, however, resent Levisham’s insistence on keeping his daughter with him and his causing her so much needless anxiety with his feigned attack. In retaliation, Ashley had considered demanding that Caro return to London with him, but he had abandoned that notion because it would only have caused her more unhappiness.

Vinson had delayed publication of the notice about their marriage until he could break the news to Estelle in person. Although he dreaded this task, at the very least he owed her that courtesy rather than writing to her of it or, worse, having her see the advertisement in the
Gazette.
On reaching London, he resolved to see her as quickly as possible and get the unpleasant task over with.

He knew that Estelle would be angry and displeased by his marriage, even though she was the one who had rejected his offer in favor of her husband’s. But Ashley thought that she would come around quickly. After all, she belonged to a society whose members often had to marry for reasons other than love and was herself a sophisticated woman of easy virtue. It had been she who had initiated their present affair, and, although she pretended otherwise, Ashley was certain that there had been other lovers before him.

He sent a note asking her to meet him that afternoon at the home of her bosom bow, Lady Brush. The lovers met there frequently under the guise of calling on her ladyship. Once both had arrived, their understanding hostess would obligingly disappear, leaving them alone for a happy interlude.

Ashley decided to visit Henry Neel while he was waiting for Estelle’s answer. The viscount had always been friendly with his cousin, the only member of the Neel family who was. Before Ashley went in search of the one eared man, he wanted to give Henry a chance to rebut the evidence against him. The viscount sincerely hoped that Henry could offer a less sinister explanation for his actions.

Vinson discovered that his cousin had recently moved from his modest rented rooms to a far more fashionable house in Chesterfield Street, where Henry received him in the drawing room. He was a muscular man with hard gray eyes that revealed nothing. Ashley suspected that those eyes were his cousin’s chief asset at the gaming tables. He looked every one of his forty years, but his face was still handsome despite the dissipated lines that were becoming more pronounced. His habitual cynical expression gave way briefly to astonishment at the sight of his cousin, and he inquired sarcastically, “What momentous reason has prompted your illustrious lordship to call on your poor relation?”

“Come now, Henry,” Ashley chided gently. “Have I ever been so high in the instep as to deserve that greeting?”

‘No,” his cousin agreed. “That was churlish of me. You were never like that pompous brother of yours.”

Ashley stiffened imperceptibly at this contemptuous reference, although he would be the first to admit that Henry had reason for bitterness. William had made it abundantly—and very publicly—clear that he considered his cousin too far beneath his touch to notice.

“What do you think of my new home?” Henry asked. Ashley looked about the expensively furnished room. “An elegant house at an elegant address. You must be doing well at the tables.”

“It has been some years since I was under the hatches, and I do not expect to be there again.”

Ashley wondered whether that was because Henry also anticipated inheriting the Bourn fortune. “What prompted you to take a house?”

“I desire respectability. The Neel family will have to find another black sheep to look down its collective nose at.” Seeing Ashley’s startled look, he said bitterly, “No, don’t deny that’s the way they feel about me. You were the only one who was even civil to me.”

“Merely civil?”

Henry smiled. “No, a good deal more than that. I haven’t forgotten how you helped me out from time to time when my pockets were all to let. You took quite a risk doing so. If that sanctimonious brother of yours had ever learned of your loans to me, he would have insisted your father cut off your funds. I often wondered why you bothered with me.”

“I liked you.” And that was the truth. Henry never pretended to be more or better than he was, making no excuses for himself, his gambling, or his exploits in the petticoat line. He was as apt to turn his mocking sense of humor against himself as anyone else.

“Liked me, did you.” Henry snorted. “To be sure, you were the only Neel that ever did. That puffed-up brother of yours made it very plain that I was an embarrassment to the exalted family name.”

“I never thought you cared a whit what William thought,” Ashley said in surprise.

“I would not have given him that satisfaction,” Henry retorted bitterly.

Ashley felt suddenly chilled. “You hated William, didn’t you?”

“Detested him,” Henry replied bluntly. “I don’t adhere to that rubbish about not speaking ill of the dead.”

“Did you detest him enough to murder him?” Ashley asked with equal bluntness.

The color faded from Henry’s face. “What?” he demanded hoarsely.

“Did you kill my brother?”

Henry winced. For a fraction of a second, his eyes broke contact with Ashley’s, betraying him.

The viscount stared at his cousin in shocked disbelief. “Good God, Henry!”

Recovering himself, his cousin said, “I did not murder William!”

For a moment, the room was as silent as a tomb as the two men’s gazes locked. Henry looked away first, saying sharply, “You have no evidence against me.”

“What about the one-eared man that Mercer Corte saw sneaking from the stable the night before the race?”

Henry shrugged. “What about him?”

“Who is he?”

“How should I know?”

“Are you in the habit of meeting with men you do not know in the back slums of the Holy Land?”

His cousin glared at him in sullen silence.

“Why, Henry? Is it the title that you want?”

“I told you, I did not murder William!”

“You don’t know how much I wish I could believe you.”

“No, I don’t!” Henry said bitterly. “You cannot wait to unjustly convict the family’s black sheep on the flimsiest of evidence. And I thought you were different from the others.”

“And I thought you were better,” Ashley said, his disillusionment echoing in his voice.

“What do you mean to do now?”

Ashley rose. “Expose the truth. If you were responsible for William’s death, I swear to you that I shall see you in Newgate.”

He turned on his heel and went to the door.

Henry called after him, his voice as ominous as a sudden thunderclap, “I warn you, Vinson, leave well enough alone, or you will regret it!”

Chapter 17

When Ashley returned to Bourn House from his visit to Henry, Estelle’s frigid reply to his note awaited him. If he wished to see her, he could call on her at her home in Hertford Street. Both the tone of her message and the location she had chosen for their meeting told him that he was in her black books even before she learned of his marriage.

Riding to Hertford Street, it occurred to Ashley that not only was he dreading this meeting with Estelle, but that he had not missed her nearly so much as he had expected to during his absence at Bellhaven.

Lady Roxley received him in her drawing room. After her note, he was not surprised that her greeting was as cold and formal as the room itself, with its stiffly arranged furniture. She remained seated on a Sheraton settee that was placed against the far wall, forcing him to cross the room to her.

As he did, he observed, as he had so often, what a jewel of rare loveliness she was. Indeed, he always thought of her in terms of gems: her eyes were a unique and startling violet that reminded him of a pair of flawless amethysts; her lips were ruby red against a complexion as creamy and lustrous as fine pearls; her raven hair shone like jet. Legions of besotted admirers had likened her to Aphrodite.

She did not rise to greet Ashley and extended no invitation for him to sit. He remained standing before her while she eyed him coldly, making clear her displeasure with him. At last she silently offered him a slender hand, its fingers weighted with costly rings. As he brought it to his lips, she petulantly demanded why he had been so tardy in returning to London—and to her.

“I fear that being my father’s heir entails certain onerous duties,” he said with a rueful sigh, “one of which I was obliged to discharge.”

Only slightly mollified, she asked coolly, “What was this time-consuming obligation?”

“Marriage.”

A startled gasp escaped her lips. “I do not find such a joke amusing!”

“I do not joke. I have married Levisham’s daughter. But it need have no effect on our connection,” Ashley hastened to reassure her. “Duty need not interfere with pleas—”

A torrent of fury, more ungenteel than anything Ashley had heard even from the most inelegant of the muslin company, erupted from Estelle’s beautiful ruby lips like a volcanic eruption.

It was several moments before she regained sufficient control of herself and her tongue to realize that her lover had dropped her hand and was staring at her in appalled silence. Recognizing her error, she gave him a beseeching look, asking in brokenhearted accents how he could have betrayed her love for him so cruelly by marrying another.

“Why are you so distressed that I have acquired a wife when it was you who foreclosed the possibility of our marrying by spuming my offer and wedding another man?” he asked her, not unreasonably.

When Bourn had said he would cut his younger son off without a penny should he marry her, Estelle had preferred to be rich Lady Roxley to penniless Mrs. Neel. But she had been far too clever to tell Ashley that. Instead, she had assured him that although she loved him wildly, she could not bear to be the cause of an estrangement between him and the earl, thereby cunningly assuring the very break between father and son that she had professed to want to avoid.

Now, she wanted to scream at Ashley that she had rejected him when he had been a second son who appeared to have no chance to inherit the Bourn title or fortune, but she could not tell him that. Instead, she asked in her most wounded tone, “How can you treat me so cruelly when I love you so?”

The viscount’s eyebrow raised. “Yes, you loved me so much that you married Roxley instead,” he said dryly.

“Surely you are not jealous of him. You have no reason to be.”

“No,” he agreed amiably, “I do not.”

She stared at him uneasily, uncertain of how to interpret his answer.

“You know that I must marry for an heir,” Ashley said softly.

Estelle, who had hoped to be the mother of that heir, felt as though she would choke on her own frustration. She had been certain that her boring, clutch-fisted husband, twenty years her senior, would meet the early demise he deserved, freeing her to marry Ashley and become the countess of Bourn. “Roxley will not live forever, ” she snapped.

“Neither will I,” Ashley retorted coolly.

His unexpected attitude worried Estelle, and abruptly she switched tactics. Burying her face in her handkerchief, she cried, “You have broken my heart. You are the only man that I have ever loved, and now you have played me false. Marrying behind my back without even a word to me. Go away, you heartless creature.”

“Estelle,” he began, putting his arm about her shoulder. “Pray, do not—”

But she jerked away from him, crying dramatically, “Go away at once! I cannot bear the sight of your perfidious face!”

To her astonishment, instead of pleading with her to let him stay, he rose, saying abruptly, “As you wish.”

Estelle watched him move toward the door of the drawing room, certain that he was expecting her to stop him. But she would not. Instead, she would let him worry that he had lost her. She would bring him to his knees, and he would pay a handsome price to be restored to her good graces—and to her boudoir. She would see to that.

Already she could envision the ruby and diamond necklace that she had admired last week at her favorite jeweler encircling her swanlike neck.

Caro had known that she would miss Ashley, but she was unprepared for how much. Unprepared, too, for how lonely she was without him. She had become shockingly accustomed to his cosseting of her, and she missed spending her days with him. Touching her lips, she remembered his kiss and yearned for more. How right Emily had been.

Three days after Ashley’s departure, a discreet announcement of their marriage was published in the
Gazette.
Its appearance was followed the next day by the arrival of Olive Kelsie at Bellhaven. The newspaper notice had wiped out in one stroke her two most cherished dreams, and she had set out posthaste for Bellhaven to assure herself that the announcement was a malicious, libelous error.

Remembering the marquess’s ban on her appearance there, she asked to see Caro, telling the butler, “Do not bother the marquess. My business is only with his daughter.”

The servant nodded enigmatically. He had no intention of sending the marquess into a pelter.

When Caro confirmed to Olive that she and Ashley were married, her aunt could not contain her rage and venom. “No doubt you think yourself quite the thing to have hooked such a prime catch, but you are a prime fool!” Olive’s eyes glittered malevolently. “He has a mistress with whom he is wildly in love.”

“Yes, I know,” Caro replied with her characteristic honesty.

This answer deflated her aunt momentarily, but she recovered quickly. “He married only because his father ordered it. I myself heard Vinson proclaim that it did not matter in the slightest to him whom he married because he could not wed the woman he loved. With my own ears, I heard him say that he would happily accept any woman who would turn a blind eye to sharing him with his mistress.”

Her aunt’s words stabbed Caro like a rapier blade. So that was why her father had been so emphatic that she give Ashley her word she would not object to his mistress. Caro recalled again with burning clarity Ashley’s answer when she had asked him the day they met why he was not married:
I have known no lady as complaisant as you.

“My own daughters refused to accept him on such insulting terms,” Olive continued, ignoring the fact that, despite her best efforts, neither of her daughters was given a chance to do so. “Have you not a shred of pride that you would agree to such a demeaning bargain? No, of course you do not.” She laughed contemptuously. “Such an anecdote as you cannot afford pride. You were far too happy to catch a man to care what the terms might be.”

But Caro had a great deal of pride, too much to let her aunt know how devastated she was by her revelations.

“Where is your bridegroom?” Olive demanded.

When Caro told her, Olive jeered, “So, after less than a fortnight of marriage, he has fled from you for London and Lady Roxley! No doubt you think that in time you can lure him away from her. What a fool you are! She is the most beautiful woman in England, and he has been mad for her for years. You will never take Vinson away from her.”

“I do not care,” Caro said with as much dignity as she could muster in her pain. She was determined not to let her aunt know how very much she did care, and her chin tilted proudly. “I have always said that the only marriage I would consider was one like Lady Fraser’s, and now I have it.” Yes, she did, God help her!

“If you are such a fool, your father is not. What could he have been thinking of to permit such a humiliating union?”

Humiliating union!
Her aunt’s cruel words goaded Caro into replying, “He felt, as I do, that
anything
was preferable to being forced to marry your odious son.”

Olive was speechless at the revelation that Levisham had divined her ambition and outwitted her just when it seemed within her grasp. Then her rage overcame her, and she screamed, “You impertinent chit! I promise you that you’ll rue the day you made such a devil’s bargain with Vinson.”