Slightly Dangerous (34 page)

They walked in silence. It was he who broke it at last—half unwillingly. He did not know what he might unleash with his question. He was not sure he wanted to know the answer—
if
she was prepared to give one. But how could he love her if he did not
know
her?

“Tell me about the years of your marriage,” he said.

She turned her face toward the lake. Looking down, he could see his quizzing glass about her neck. For several moments he thought she was not going to answer him.

“He was blond and beautiful and sweet and charming,” she said. “I fell in love with him on sight, and, incredibly, he fell in love with me. We married within two months of our first meeting, and for a while it seemed that we would live happily ever after. I loved all his family, and they loved me, even his brother and sister-in-law. I adored his nephews. Life with the
ton
was never easy, but somehow I was accepted, even welcomed—you were right about that. I even made my curtsy to the queen and was granted vouchers to Almack’s. I considered myself the most fortunate woman in the world.”

She would have been about twenty at the time—young and lovely and filled with dreams of romance and a handsome husband and happily-ever-after. He felt a wave of tenderness for the girl she must have been. If he had met her then, would he have fallen in love with her too?

“What went wrong?” he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and kept them hunched, though she did not complain of the cold.

“Oscar surprised me when I got to know him better,” she said. “For all his looks and charm and rank and fortune, he was very insecure. He leaned heavily on me emotionally. He adored me and was scarce willing to allow me out of his sight. I did not mind—
of course
I did not mind. For me, the sun rose and set on him. But then he started openly to fear that he would lose me. He started to accuse me of flirting with other gentlemen. It got to the point at which if I spoke or smiled or danced with someone else, he would be in the mopes for days. And then, whenever I went out without him—though I was always with some other lady or my maid—he suspected that I was keeping a secret tryst with another man. He even accused me of—well, never mind.”

Oscar Derrick, Wulfric realized, had been a weak man, and as such he had been possessive. He had measured his worth by the amount of attention his wife paid him. And when it had not been enough—as it never could have been—he had turned petulant and even cruel.

“Adultery?” he suggested.

She drew a slow breath. Her face was still averted.

“Eventually Hermione and Basil came to believe it too,” she said. “It must be a dreadful thing to be accused of wrongdoing when one is guilty. When one is innocent it is intolerable. No, that is not a powerful enough word. It is . . . soul-shattering. For the last few years of my marriage every last particle of joy was drained out of me. And out of Oscar too. He started drinking heavily and gaming for high stakes. We were never wealthy, but he had a comfortable competence. By the time he died he was so deeply in debt that he would never have extricated himself. I am not sure I would have survived with my sanity intact if it had not been for Justin. He was the only friend I had left, it seemed. He always believed me, always trusted me, always consoled me. But though he tried, he never seemed to have much influence with his cousins.”

She had stopped walking and was squinting out in the direction of some waterfowl that were bobbing on the surface of the water close to the island. It was a good thing for her, he thought, that Oscar Derrick had died young.

“Your husband died in a hunting accident?” Wulfric asked her.

“Yes.” The answer came quickly.

“You once told me,” he said, “that you had been accused of killing him even though you were not with him when he died.”

“He died in a hunting accident.” The words were very precisely spoken. The wind was pulling at the brim of her bonnet and sending her pelisse fluttering out behind her.

He had thought that perhaps he could get to know her better this afternoon. He had planned to take her to the dovecote, but too much time had been spent at the hill and then quarreling in the woods. Now she had told him some things that he suspected she did not tell many people, but it was obvious that she still harbored some secret concerning the death of her husband. He felt disappointed. He had wanted, he realized, to be her friend. He had wanted her to be his.

Foolish of him! He had never inspired real friendship in other people.

He walked slowly on, turning his steps up the slight slope away from the lake and back through the trees to the house.

“He was shot in a duel,” she said quickly.

He stopped in his tracks but said nothing.

“We were at Winwood Abbey,” she told him, her hands balling into fists at her sides, he saw when he looked back toward her. She had turned to face him. “Hermione and Basil were away for a few days, and Oscar had gone to play cards with a neighbor. Another neighbor called on him when he was gone, a young, single gentleman. He and Oscar had been friends since they were boys. I met him outside, but he would not come in because Oscar was not there. I walked back down the driveway with him, since I had gone out for exercise and he had come on foot. And then, at the end of the driveway, we met Justin—he often came to stay for a few days. He knew Mr. Boothby too. He dismounted, and the three of us stood there talking for what I suppose was quite a while. Justin had just remounted and I was waving Mr. Boothby on his way when Oscar came riding into sight. I can still remember what Mr. Boothby called out to him, laughing as he did so—
There you are, Derrick,
he said.
You have been neglecting your wife, and I have been entertaining her this past hour or more. And here is your cousin arrived to catch me with her. And now you.
”

“Ah,” Wulfric said. “Not a wise joke to make to any husband. A disastrous joke to make to a
jealous
husband.”

“He would not believe either my protestations of innocence or Justin’s assurance that he had been there to play chaperon almost the whole time,” Christine said. “That same evening Oscar rode over and challenged Mr. Boothby, dragging poor Justin with him, and the next morning they fought it out with pistols. It was dreadful, horrible.” She shivered. “Mr. Boothby said that he aimed for Oscar’s leg and shot him there. But he hit an artery and Oscar bled to death since they had not taken the precaution of having a physician on hand. Hermione and Basil arrived home just as he was being carried into the house. They . . .” But she waved a hand in his direction suddenly and turned her back. “I am sorry. I cannot . . .”

She was obviously fighting tears and memories.

“They would not believe you either?” Wulfric said after a while.

She shook her head. “He looked so beautiful . . . so peaceful. I . . .”

But she could not go on.

Inclination told him to go back down to her and gather her into his arms. Instinct warned him that she probably needed to stand alone. If Oscar Derrick still lived, he thought, he would be very tempted to pound some sense into his head.

“Have you told anyone this story before?” he asked her.

She shook her head again. “It was agreed that we all say it was a hunting accident,” she said. “Mr. Boothby avoided trouble with the law that way, and we avoided disgrace.”

“But you were innocent,” he said.

“Yes.” She looked back at him, then over her shoulder. “I cannot believe I have told you of all people. But you cannot know how I have longed to tell
someone
.”

He gazed back at her. Oscar Derrick’s reaction to events he could perhaps understand. The man had been a jealous fool, doubtless weakened by drink and disastrous debts. It was harder to understand the part the Elricks had played in the story. They seemed like sensible people. But then, of course, Derrick had been Elrick’s brother. One could not always see events or people objectively when one’s siblings were involved. Blood, as the old saying went, was thicker than water.

“Thank you,” he said at last, feeling strangely gifted by her telling him the true story. “Thank you for telling me. You can trust my discretion.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

She walked toward him, her hands clasped behind her, his quizzing glass swinging on its ribbon about her neck. They walked back to the house side by side and in silence.

Never become emotionally involved with any other person.

Never seek to know or share the emotions of another person.

Remain aloof.

Deal with facts.

Always seek out the reasonable course of action in any situation, avoiding impulse and emotion.

They were all rules that had been drilled into him by the two tutors his father had hired for him when he was twelve. And eventually he had learned and followed the rules, made them his own, lived by them without conscious thought. Aloofness and reason had become second nature to him.

He had just broken the rules. He had entered the emotional life of another person. And—God help him—he was very much emotionally involved with her.

“S
HE THREW HIS
glass up into a tree, I tell you.” Alleyne stretched out on his back on Aidan and Eve’s bed, set the back of one hand over his eyes, and gave way to a gust of laughter. “She must have done. Wulf certainly would not have tossed it up there and it did not get up there by itself. They were definitely quarreling.”

“Oh,” Morgan said, perching on the side of the bed and clasping her hands to her bosom, “I like her. She is really a creature after our own hearts, is she not?”

They had all crowded into Aidan’s room after returning their children to the nursery, Alleyne having indicated after his return from galloping about the woods with Beatrice that he had something of great import to share with them.

“I cannot imagine anyone having the temerity even to
touch
one of Wulfric’s quizzing glasses, let alone wrest it from him and toss it,” Gervase said, laughing. “This is marvelously diverting.”

“And did he send her up to get it?” Joshua asked. “Lady Renable told me at the beginning of our walk that last year Mrs. Derrick climbed a tree in a churchyard and left half her dress behind when she jumped down again—in full view of most of the Schofield houseguests. Wulfric was the one who went to her rescue.”

“I like her more and more,” Freyja declared. “When I saw her rolling down the hill I knew she was the very one for Wulf.
Did
she go up the tree after the quizzing glass, Alleyne?
Do
answer in your own good time, after you have stopped guffawing.”

“No, she did not,” Alleyne said. “Wulf went—and then sat on a branch glaring down at her while they resumed their quarrel.”

But the mental image of their eldest brother climbing a tree to rescue his quizzing glass and then sitting in the tree to conduct a quarrel was too much for the Bedwyns and their spouses. They were convulsed with merriment for a few minutes.

“I did not eavesdrop,” Alleyne assured them all when he had recovered a little. “It would not have been sporting and I daresay Bea would not have cooperated. All I actually heard was Wulf saying that she was the very opposite of any woman he would choose and Mrs. Derrick saying with the utmost scorn that of course he would not think of marrying when he had two mistresses.”

There was a fraction of a second of silence and then laughter again.

“Dear Wulfric,” Rachel said, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “He must be in love if he has been goaded into being so dreadfully discourteous.”

The men found the idea of Wulfric’s being in love cause for more hilarity, but the ladies clearly agreed with Rachel.

“I simply must have her as a sister-in-law,” Freyja declared. “I will not be thwarted.”

“Poor Wulfric,” Joshua said. “He does not stand a chance, sweetheart.”

“Poor Aunt Rochester!” Rannulf said with a grin. “She is so determined to have Wulf for Rochester’s niece that she can scarcely see the nose on her face—which is saying something for a Bedwyn by birth.”

“We should go down to the drawing room for tea,” Eve suggested, “or we will be thought unsociable—and poor Amy will find herself on a sofa, tête-à-tête with Wulfric.”

“We must make an effort,” Judith said, “to see to it that he and Mrs. Derrick are thrown together more often.”

“I believe they can safely see to that on their own, Jude,” Alleyne told her, sitting up on the bed.

“Not so,” she said. “They would not have been together this afternoon if Morgan had not had the presence of mind to say she had agreed to talk to Amy about her presentation. And, if they had not been together, they would not have had the chance to quarrel.”

“Which, according to female logic, is a good thing?” Rannulf asked, grinning fondly at his wife.

“If I had thought I would ever be part of a conspiracy to matchmake for Wulfric,” Aidan said sternly, opening the door to usher everyone out, “I would have shot myself on some battlefield and blamed the French.”

But of course it was the Bedwyns who persuaded Christine, despite all her protests, to go riding with them the next morning. Since some of the other houseguests were going too, they trusted that Wulfric’s duties as a host would impel him to accompany them.

T
HIS WAS NOT
something she ought to have let herself be talked into, Christine thought as she set her foot in Lord Aidan’s cupped hands and allowed him to toss her up into the sidesaddle.

The Bedwyns, without exception, all looked as if riding came as naturally to them as walking. So did Miss Hutchinson. And Christine knew that Melanie, Bertie, and Justin were excellent riders.

She was not.

For one thing, she did not possess a riding habit but wore a dark green carriage dress and hat instead. For another, she had to humiliate herself by asking in the hearing of them all for the quietest horse in the stable—something lame and half blind would suit her admirably, she told Lord Aidan, who was making the selection. And, for yet another, once she was in her sidesaddle, she sat there tense and grimly determined not to fall off. She clutched the reins, which she knew would not have saved her anyway, as if they were the only things that kept her safely suspended above the ground. Naturally enough, her mount, which was neither lame nor blind, but which Lord Aidan had assured her was as docile as horses come, was skittish from the first moment.