Love's Reward (6 page)

It wasn’t fair!

Something rattled at the door, followed by a sharp knock.

Lord Tarrant spun about, rage in every line of his taut body, his hands still gripping Joanna by the arms.

A maid stepped into the room carrying a tray with cups and a silver tea service. Precariously balancing the tray, she dropped a curtsy.

Joanna stared up at her captor, her lips bruised and her blood on fire.

The wild, high song of the Sirens echoed in her veins, waking her to something new and infinitely desirable, so that she would never be content again.

Why? Why had he done that to her?

“You ordered tea, my lord?” the maid asked nervously. “For your brother’s wife?”

“This lady is not his wife,” Lord Tarrant replied in chilling tones. “She is our sister.”

“No, she is not,” a man’s voice said from the open doorway. “She is mine.”

The tones were flat, hard, and filled with a virulence that Joanna could hardly believe came from her brother. She watched him, tall and blond, step into the room.

Richard closed the door behind the fleeing maid. A deep line was etched between his brows. He was tired, obviously. It was a long ride from Acton Mead, and no doubt he had ridden fast on horseback as he had traveled so often in the Peninsula.

“What the devil fool start is this, Joanna?” he asked coldly, ignoring Lord Tarrant entirely. “Get your things together. I’m taking you home.”

She hated to wound him. Joanna loved Richard dearly. But she had no intention of being returned in disgrace to her family, or worse, to Miss Able’s Academy.

“I can’t come, Richard. I’m sorry.”

Viscount Tarrant had already released her. He leaned casually against the mantel. He was unarmed. Quentin’s pistol in his pocket had already been discharged, and he had earlier claimed to be carrying nothing to defend himself. Joanna had no doubt that her brother would be carrying a loaded weapon, but Richard would never shoot at an unarmed man.

Quite simply, Lord Lenwood had too much honor.

The demon lord could hardly know that, yet he smiled with cool sarcasm.

“Your sister, my dear Lenwood, intends to marry my brother, Quentin. That’s him over there on the couch—sadly insentient.”

“I do not!” Joanna said with emphasis. She sat down.

“Alas, she will not allow me to soften the blow. In fact, she intends to live with him in sin. It must be delightful for you to find me here to witness that.”

Richard dragged his gaze from Joanna and focused on Tarrant, almost as if he had to force himself to look at Medusa.

“It is not, sir. It is far from delightful. I had hoped never to have to speak with you again.”

His voice was quiet, even courteous, yet every line of his body betrayed loathing.

Tarrant turned and strode to the window.

“No, I can see that. Indeed, I am sorry enough about the whole bloody business myself. Nevertheless, I am here. And Lady Joanna is right. She cannot simply go home as if nothing has happened. If you would like to take off your coat and gloves and sit there by the fire, we may have tea. It would be a shame to allow it to get cold. Mine host has had it made with freshly boiling water.”

“I would rather leave now. Joanna?”

She couldn’t bear to see Richard look at her like that. Although Joanna would always be closer to Harry, Richard was the eldest and she had looked up to him with something close to awe throughout her childhood. His wife, Helena, had been more than kind to her when she had been an unhappy and awkward fledgling one strange and magical Christmas at Acton Mead.

“I can’t, Richard, truly. Go home to Helena and baby Elaine. It’s too late. Lord Tarrant is right.”

Richard tore his dark eyes away from her. His rigid control barely masked some deep sorrow, yet he was also very angry.

“Very well. Pray, tell me the worst, Tarrant.”

The other man stood in silence for a moment. Then he spun about and crossed the room to sit by the fireplace. He poured tea and handed a cup to Richard. It was taken in stiff fingers, but he also dropped into a chair.

“Lady Joanna and my brother have just spent the entire night together. Nothing can change that. Alas, Quentin gave no thought to concealment. My father’s crest decorates the panel of their carriage. When they arrived he announced his own and your sister’s names without compunction in the public rooms.”

Richard set down his tea without tasting it. “For God’s sake!”

“Indeed. He was very foxed, I understand. Innumerable respectable travelers are thus privy to the sad facts. Among that busy number, so mine host informed me, are Lady Pander and Mrs. Charlotte Clay, two ladies of execrably slow wit and fast tongue, who were enjoying breakfast together. Such a delicious piece of scandal was no doubt welcome spice to add to their curried eggs and Bedfordshire muffins. By tonight, all of London will know about this imprudent elopement. By tomorrow, all of England will revel in the gossip. An immediate marriage is the only possible outcome, whether you mind so very much or not.”

Richard crossed his booted legs at the knee. The vertical line cut deep between his winged brows.

“I am very aware that she will be forced to marry your brother. Do you think that I care because Quentin is a drunken rake? Who knows? If he loves her, he may reform. It has been known to happen.” He smiled, entirely without mirth. “Oh, no, Lord Tarrant, the reason I mind so very much is that you will become her brother.”

Joanna’s tea had gone cold. It had developed an unpleasant oily scum on the top.

“Stop it,” she said. “I do not intend to marry Quentin Mountfitchet, and I cannot be forced into it.”

Richard slammed his fist onto the arm of his chair.

“Damnation, Joanna! In law you are Father’s chattel. He may dispose of you as he wills. How the devil do you think you can stand up to him?”

She knew her color was high and she was furious that her voice trembled at all.

“Not easily, but I shall. How you men love to order the lives of females! What do you think this is about? You sit there, both of you, like avenging angels, disputing my fate as if it were yours to dispose of. You make the assumption that I am with Quentin because I am dazzled by his address, and charmed into silliness by the winks and kisses of a libertine. Am I not allowed a mind of my own, and plans, and ideas for the future that I want?”

Richard stood and took her by the shoulders. “Dear God, Joanna, and you thought that this was the way to get it? You have given Father no option, dear girl.”

Lord Tarrant leaned back in his chair and gazed up at Richard through narrowed lashes.

“You have not asked her, Lenwood, what future she wants so very badly.” He glanced over at Joanna. “Why don’t you tell us, Lady Joanna? If you are not eloping and not in love with my sodden brother, then why have you run away with him?”

Joanna gazed steadily up at Richard. “I needed an escort, that’s all. I knew there was no chance to escape by myself. When I met Quentin at the house party at Fenton Stacey, he offered to help me. So I took him up on it. He’s a fast driver and in possession of a carriage, which I am not.”

“And so he took my father’s curricle,” Tarrant said dryly. “And thus alerted the household.”

Richard dropped his hands and turned away. He seemed austere, the control back in place, his features set in lines of stone.

“If it was so urgent, you might have asked me,” he said.

“And you would have taken me?”

“That might have depended on where you were going,” her brother replied.

Joanna laid her fingers on his sleeve. “Richard, you and Helena have your own lives. You aren’t responsible for me. I’ve made up my own mind. I shan’t marry Quentin Mountfitchet, and I don’t care if all this has put me beyond the pale.” She waved one hand around the room, casually including the unconscious figure of Quentin, breathing softly on the chaise longue. “I could not stay at Miss Able’s Academy another minute. If you must know, I’m going to Harefell Hall.”

“For God’s sake!” Richard said on a sudden exhalation. “Joanna!”

“Would you mind very much,” Tarrant interrupted calmly, “telling us what the devil you expect to find at Harefell, Lady Joanna?”

She turned to face him. “A group of artists, of course. A lady, Mrs. Barton-Smith, told me about it at Fenton Stacey. I intend to paint—not silly watercolors suitable for ladies, but real paintings. The owner of Harefell Hall allows any artist to live and work there, ladies as well as gentlemen, with complete artistic freedom.”

“Dear God!” Shock clear on his face, Richard spun away.

“You didn’t know, Lenwood?” Tarrant asked. “You have so much concern for your sister, yet you had no idea that she harbors a longing to be a painter?” He turned to Joanna. She gazed at him in fury. “Rather a bold ambition for a lady—not the painting, but the desire to join the infamous community at Harefell.”

“Why?” she said. “What do you know about it?”

He stood up and stretched, then continued with a deadly edge of humor to his subtle voice.

“I have had occasion to visit there myself. I enjoyed it. Yet I don’t believe much painting or sculpture gets accomplished. In fact, I’m fairly sure that it doesn’t. But they do hold splendid, wanton, and very dissolute orgies.”

He paused for a moment, as if to let the implications of this sink in, before turning to face her with that infuriating smile curving the corner of his mouth.

“Did you know?”

Joanna only knew that she was scarlet.

Chagrin burned in her like smoldering pitch. She hated her impotence in the world, and this arrogant certainty only highlighted it, forcing her to face her ignorance and naiveté, and the fact that she had just made a complete fool of herself.

“But Mrs. Barton-Smith said—”

Richard interrupted. “Of course, she didn’t know. What the devil do you think my sister is?”

“She is nothing to me, Lord Lenwood.”

Fitzroy saw the flush wash up her cheeks as she dropped back to her chair. The humiliating color stained those perfect high cheekbones, making her black eyes brilliant in contrast. They shone with unshed tears, restrained with a determination and bravery that took his breath away.

She blinked them back, leaving her long lashes damp. The gesture was painfully vulnerable, and feminine, and defenseless.

Dear God! She had ruined her future for a chimera, a dream that did not exist.

He stalked back to the window and took a deep breath.

His own brother, Quentin Mountfitchet, had not flinched from leading this innocent to her damnation, and he himself had reacted by kissing her as if she were a doxy.

Let Richard Acton shoot them both down!

Lady Joanna could not be saved, and Lord Tarrant had just spent the last hour proving that he was no better than Quentin, that they were both equally beyond the reach of grace, beyond any hope of salvation.

The bitter knowledge rose in his throat like bile. Almost blindly, he watched a coach pull into the yard below, a chaise and four with two outriders. His family crest was emblazoned on the panel.

She is nothing to me, Lord Lenwood.

His mouth twisted into a caricature of a smile. He was watching the arrival of his doom. All the many possibilities that the situation might have contained now began to collapse together into one inevitable and appalling certainty.

The veins stood out starkly on his hands as he spread his fingers over the window frame.

What the hell! What the
hell
did it matter?

He thrust his fist hard against the wood, making the latch rattle, before he turned back to face them. Lenwood sat next to his sister, holding her hand in his own with a natural tenderness. She had buried her face against his coat.

“I’m sorry about all of this, Lenwood,” Fitzroy said quietly. “It has no doubt been damnable for you to be forced into my company in such a way. But the situation is about to be taken out of our hands. The Black Earl has arrived, Lord Evenham, my father. He is descending from his carriage as we speak. He bears the rattle of wedding bells at his coattails, and the sour taste of the nuptial toast in his mouth.”

“He will make Quentin marry me?” Lady Joanna asked faintly, rubbing away the trace of tears.

“Oh, no, my dear,” Fitzroy said softly. “You are safe from that. He cannot do so. You see, Quentin is already married.”

Flat silence filled the room as Lord Lenwood gazed blankly at Fitzroy for a moment, then Joanna began to laugh.

“Married!” she exclaimed. “Quentin has a wife? Then I’m free, after all.”

“You will never be free again, after this,” Fitzroy said fiercely. “That’s what your brother has been trying to tell you. An elopement can always be covered up and turned into a respectable marriage. But for a young lady of your station to run away with a married man destroys her forever in the eyes of society.”

“But—”

“Yes. Whatever you may think or desire, your father has absolute legal control of your person. He may take what revenge he will. I’m sorry, but there’s not a damned thing your brother can do about it.”

“Would you be kind enough to tell us about Quentin’s mysterious spouse, Tarrant?” Lenwood asked, his voice cold and deadly.

Fitzroy smiled at him, a smile that he knew could only be interpreted as an insult in the circumstances.

“She’s a singer, some years older than Quentin. They met when he was nineteen. In an excess of youthful passion he carried her off to Scotland, married her, and fathered two children. Two years later she abandoned the children and left him, but unfortunately not for another swain. She turned to religion and lives a life of blameless chastity, seeking converts in the marketplaces and wynds of Edinburgh. The bawdy songs of the stage have been supplanted by ardent hymns of praise and invocation.”

“But unless she is caught in adultery, Quentin cannot divorce her,” Lenwood said flatly.

“Indeed. My father has paid for spies and set up traps, but the fervor of her faith sustains her in holy purity. Quentin could legally force her to live with him, but he cannot stand her prating company. So he sends her money, pays for care for his offspring, and drowns his sorrows in drink. Only the family knows of it. Ironic, isn’t it? Alas, we Mountfitchets don’t seem to have much luck when it comes to matrimony.”