Three Little Secrets (16 page)

“An annulment is a difficult thing to obtain,” said Merrick. “The grounds are few, and relatively inflexible.”

“I do not know how he obtained it, but he showed me the papers,” she insisted. Good God, why were they even discussing this again? “And I had heard nothing from you in weeks and weeks, Merrick. So I married Bessett. I wished to go away. I—I thought it would be adventureous to travel across Europe.”

“You had heard nothing from me,” he echoed, beginning to slowly pace the room. “And knowing, as you did, just how much your father disapproved of our relationship, it never occurred to you, Madeleine, that there might have been a reason for my silence?”

Madeleine bit her lip and said nothing. She had not enjoyed the luxury of second-guessing her father, or his motivations. By then, she had had her own motivation. She and her father both knew she carried a child. His grand plan to return her to London’s marriage mart had been hopelessly dashed, and she was of no further use to him. Indeed, he had sought the most expedient means of ridding himself of her, of getting her as far from England and as far from his precious career as was humanly possible.

Merrick seemed lost to her, and she could think only of his child, of keeping it safe at all cost. And the cost had been her marriage.

She’d grieved for her losses then as she grieved for them now. Time had altered Merrick, but regrettably, it had not altered her body’s reaction to him. His scent. His touch. The sensuous sound of his voice, with its faint Scots accent, and low rasp. It was a cruelty which had to be endured. She wished she were a stronger woman.

Madeleine moved away from the sideboard and went to the window. “It scarcely matters now,” she said, pulling back the curtain and staring out into night’s utter blackness. “I believed what Papa said.”

She felt the heat of him hovering behind her, and looked up to see his reflection, impossibly broad and tall, just behind her. “You were awfully easy to convince, it would seem,” he countered. “You had doubts about us, Madeleine. Do not deny it.”

“I
do
deny it,” she said fiercely.

He laughed. “Well before we reached Scotland, Madeleine, you were taking on a case of nerves,” he said.

“You were asking questions with every breath. Where would we live? How would we pay our bills? Could we afford servants? Would our friends still receive us?”

“Of course I asked questions!” she cried. “But questions are not the same as doubts. I was
seventeen
, Merrick. I was out of my depth.”

“You chose a fine time to start asking,” he gritted. “Halfway between York and Darlington, when it was too bloody late to turn back.”

Madeleine turned around, only to find him standing far too close. “Oh, Merrick, it was already too late to turn back!” she whispered, holding his angry gaze. “I had given my body to you weeks before. Even had I wished to turn back, I could not have done so.”

She saw a flash of raw emotion, the tightening of his face as if he were in pain. “I cannot think what stopped you,” he said, gripping her upper arms with both hands. “You were willing to leave England with another man just two months later.”

Madeleine hung her head and did not answer. She did not dare tell Merrick the truth. God only knew what he might say or do. He was half-mad, she was beginning to fear, but beautiful in his madness. The passion which he brought to his drawing table spilt over into ever facet of his life, that she had long ago learned. But tonight, his passion was ill timed.

She remembered, suddenly, the woman she had seen in his office that day. In her distress, she had pushed hastily past her, but there had been no mistaking the woman’s profession. “And what of you, Merrick?” she asked quietly. “You have scarcely lived the life of a monk, have you? I saw her, you know. That—that harlot who was waiting by your office.”

“I have not lived the life of a monk, no,” he admitted. “I have needs, Madeleine.”

“Yes,” she said. “I remember.” And she did. It was not possible to forget.

His grip on her arms tightened. “And if I have slaked my needs from time to time with women who knew what they were about, am I to be damned for it?”

Madeleine held his ice-blue eyes steadily. “It is not for me to judge you,” she said, and she meant it. “Our lives have taken different paths. We are nothing to one another now. But that woman…she looked…she looked dangerous. Depraved.”

He jerked his gaze away. “Perhaps she is both,” he rasped. “Perhaps she has crossed that fine line between—oh, I hardly know what. I ought not even speak to you of such things, Madeleine.”

“Does she…do things that you enjoy?” Madeleine whispered. “Things that please you? Are you happy with her?” She touched him lightly on the face, and turned his eyes back to hers.
Tell me something,
she silently begged.
Tell me something that will make me not want you.

He closed his eyes entirely. The apple of his throat went up and down. “I—I do not know,” he said in a voice of quiet confession. “It is not a matter of happiness. I have known a score of women like her. And I am not sure I know what pleasure is.”

“Nor do I,” she whispered.

Suddenly, and a little sadly, Madeleine realized that she felt more alone than ever, even though Merrick’s wide, strong hand still gripped her arms. She felt as if she belonged nowhere, and to no one. Whatever Merrick had once been to her, he was that no longer. He had changed into a man she no longer knew. And yet there was enough of the man she had once loved to tempt her. To make her angry. To give her a foolish, foolish hope. To remain near him threatened everything.

She had come so far in the years since Bessett’s death. She had remade herself in the mold of a strong, confident woman. For the first time since those few passionate weeks of Merrick’s courtship, she had been…almost content. No, more than that. Only her fear for Geoffrey had kept her from unalloyed happiness. She could not go back. She
would
not. She would never again be the doormat daughter her father had dragged back to Sheffield and packed off to the continent.

She had moved to this place with a warm spot of hope in her heart, but seeing Merrick again had ruined everything. The yearning was like a knife in her heart. His eyes. His touch. God could only ask so much of her. And Geoffrey—well, there was no help for him here. Of that, she was increasingly certain.

The heat from Merrick’s body still warmed her, though he touched only her arms. Madeleine stepped a little away. He let her go, watching her almost warily.

“I think you should leave now,” she said quietly. “It is very late.”

He gave a twisted smile. “Yes, I must be up early,” he answered. “I have villages to pillage and businesses to rape.”

She tore her gaze from his, and to warm herself, set her own hands where his had been. “Do not make a joke of it, Merrick,” she whispered. “Please, not with me. Let me remember the young man I once adored.”

“I am that man, Madeleine,” he said. “I have not altered.”

“Have you not?” she said quietly. “Then perhaps I have had a fortunate escape.”

“Perhaps you have, after all.”

She left him standing by the parlor windows and went to the kitchen to get his coat. When she returned, he was by the front door, his fingers already curled around the handle.

She draped the coat over his arm. “I have been meaning to tell you,” she said awkwardly. “I have decided—” She paused to swallow hard, and to consider one last time. “I have decided against the house. Indeed, I have decided I made a mistake in coming to London altogether.”

He held her gaze, his blue eyes ice-hard and glittering. “Is that right?”

She nodded, and clasped her hands together, then, realizing the childishness of the gesture, let them go again. “I have found I do not care for Town after all,” she said, going to the desk in the corner of the room. “And Geoff is to go up to university before long. I—we—we have decided to move to Cambridge so that I can be near him. Indeed, we ought to have done so from the start.”

She finished shuffling through the desk until she found what she sought. She returned to the door, and handed it to him. “Those are Mr. Rosenberg’s papers,” she said. “Will you be so good as to return them? Or—or simply burn them? I never signed them, nor did I take him the money. You—you will not hold me to my contract, will you?”

He shook his head. The fire had gone from his eyes. “Only the heart can bind a person, Maddie,” he said. “To a home. Or to anything else that truly matters. A piece of paper with a signature is otherwise meaningless.”

She dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yes, perhaps,” she said. “So…so we are finished, then, are we not?”

Merrick nodded. “Yes, Madeleine,” he responded. “We are finished.”

He put the papers in his coat pocket and took his hat from the hook by the door. She held the door wide for him, and he limped out into the night without another word. She watched until he was halfway down the lane, until the wind and rain had soaked her hems. Until her face was wet with tears.

Merrick MacLachlan never looked back.

Every man can guide an ill wife weel,
save him that has her.

“I
t seems, old friend, that you are in luck,” said Merrick to Lord Wynwood over a pint of ale the following week. “If you still wish to have the pair of houses atop Walham Hill, I am now in a position to oblige you.”

The earl looked at him incredulously. “I thought that sort of treachery was beneath you, old fellow,” he said. “Surely you would not renege on your contract with your—your—well, you know whom I mean.”

“Yes.” Merrick gave a bitter, inward smile, and pushed his empty glass away with the back of his hand. “But she who shall remain nameless has changed her mind. And I have assured her I would not enforce the contract.”

“Good God, the Black MacLachlan is going to leave money on the table
and
show mercy?” The earl shoved his chair from the trestle table and stared at the flagstone floor. “Let me make sure the earth is not going to crack open and swallow us whole.”

“You look in vain, for I am not leaving money on anyone’s table,” said Merrick. “I am going to sell the house—and the one adjoining it—to you, Quin. And at a premium, too, by the time my joiners and carpenters have finished all the renovations which your bursting brood requires.”

Wynwood grinned. “This calls for two more,” he said, motioning for the serving girl. “Vivie will be thrilled. With a little luck, we can move in before the child is born, do you not imagine?”

“I daresay you might,” agreed Merrick in an even tone. “Let’s see—you were wed mid-January, so that would be what? Late October, or thereabouts?”

The earl’s eyes flashed with chagrin. “You wretch!” he said. “You are worse than the old tabbies back in Buckinghamshire.”

“Ah!” said Merrick knowingly. “The child plans to arrive a little early, does it? When, then, old fellow? I merely wish to know what force of nature my carpenters are up against.”

“More like late September, I collect.” There was just a hint of a blush settling over Wynwood’s cheeks. “Whenever it is, it won’t be soon enough to suit me, and the old tabbies bedamned. Still, a man in my position cannot be too careful.”

“September I can manage,” said Merrick as the serving girl set down two frothing tankards and swept the others away. “Though the haste and inconvenience might drive up the price a tad.”

Wynwood’s mouth twisted into a dry smile. “I feared as much,” he said. “A chap is always paying for his pleasures, isn’t he?”

Merrick tried to laugh. “That has been my experience, yes.”

Suddenly, Wynwood’s expression shifted to one of seriousness. “What happened, Merrick?” he asked quietly. “With Madeleine, I mean?”

Merrick cleared his throat a little roughly. “It seems the lady has had a change of heart ab—”

“Yes, that has happened before, hasn’t it?” Wynwood interjected sourly. “I admit, she does not look quite the fickle creature I had imagined her, but still, one oughtn’t be surprised.”

“Perhaps not,” said Merrick vaguely.

Wynwood seemed to be indignant on his friend’s behalf. “What did she imagine, anyway?” he asked, pushing a little away from the table as if disgusted. “Did she think she could just trot back to London when it suited her and never be called to account for her actions?”

“It was a safe assumption,” Merrick countered. “I do not plan to call her to account. Indeed, what would one do if one wished to?”

Wynwood’s eyes flared with outrage. “Why, sue her for restitution of conjugal rights!” he said. “Females do it all the time.”

“Yes, if they have been abandoned and left to starve, what course is left to them?” he said.

“You are in a precarious legal situation, Merrick,” said his friend. “Her debts are your debts. Her contracts are your contracts. Indeed, it could legally be held that her child is yours. You have no private separation deed. Think of the financial liability. What if she realizes how wealthy you have become and decides that perhaps you are her husband after all?”

“I would not have her.”

“No, but you would have her debts,” warned his friend. “You might have to furnish her a home. Indeed, you are lucky you are not now in the position of enforcing your own contract of sale and paying yourself for your own bloody house.”

“Quin, have you any notion how idiotic that sounds?” asked Merrick. “You don’t even seem to know whether you wish me to separate from the woman or force her to reside beneath my roof. Now be so good as to drop this conversation. I do not want the woman, and she does not want me. And there will be no debts or contracts to trouble me.”

“Then you are more trusting than I.”

“I trust no one,” he said grimly. “Madeleine thinks our marriage was annulled.”

“What—?”

“She claims her father showed her some papers which dissolved our marriage,” he said. “She thinks she has an annulment.”

“But—but—that is just not possible. Is it?”

“I cannot see how,” Merrick agreed. “It is more of Jessup’s treachery, most likely. But be that as it may, she does not perceive herself as a bigamist, and since I do not give a damn, where, Quinten, is the harm?”

Lord Wynwood eyed him skeptically for a long moment. “About that ‘I do not give a damn’ part, old chap,” he said, “why do I sometimes get the feeling that you give a much bigger damn than you might like me to believe?”

“I once loved unwisely, Quin,” he said quietly. “And I paid a price for it. Beyond that, I really have no wish to discuss it.”

“The trouble is,” said the earl, “you can go neither forward nor backward with your life. She has trapped you in a sort of purgatory. Otherwise, you might have a wife—a real wife—and a family by now.”

Merrick snorted. “Spoken like a newly married man,” he said. “Talk to me of purgatory in another ten years, my friend!”

Wynwood took no offense. “In ten or twenty years or fifty years, nothing will have changed for me,” he said. “With some people, you just know that that is so.”

How strange it seemed to hear such words from another. Merrick had once said something very similar to Alasdair, when his brother was in the process of attempting to talk him out of pursuing Madeleine. Like Wynwood, he had simply
known
. Madeleine was the only one for him. And she had been. She still was—or rather, having had her, he now knew that no other would ever do.

He was not fool enough, as Quin had once been, to convince himself that another wife might do as well—or at least do well enough. There was a hole in his heart where his love for Madeleine had been, and to alter his existence now would be like trying to fit a round peg into the proverbial square hole. The hole was Madeleine’s. He no longer loved her, but he could love no other. He knew it instinctively, as he had always known it. Her leaving him had stripped away the larger part of his character. The best part, perhaps. He really did not know.

In one of his raving missives, Chutley had once called him a soulless bastard. The insult had not greatly wounded Merrick. He felt soulless. And he had found that to seek out the sort of women who were much like himself was the only way to survive. Women who were apathetic inside. Women who did not cast back the reflection of a dark and gaping chasm where one’s better nature should have been. That was in part why he had been so glad to get rid of Kitty Coates. She had been kind, and innocent in a way he could not explain.

Wynwood had taken out his silver vesta box, and was flipping it open and shut almost nervously. “I have been thinking of something again, Merrick,” he said a little oddly. “Something—something from our past.”

“The past?” Merrick gave a grunt of disgust. “God help us.”

“I mean the recent past,” Wynwood clarified. “Do you remember that day last September when we all went to that boxing match down in Surrey, and the gypsy told our fortunes?”

“She told us no such thing,” said Merrick. “She took our money and rattled off a lot of balderdash.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought, too,” said Wynwood musingly. “But remember how she told me that I had ruined my life by acting rashly? And how she claimed…well, she claimed that there was a wrong I had done because of it and that I had to make amends for the wrong before I could be happy. I think, Merrick, that she was talking about how I had treated Vivie.”

“Hardly a surprise, old fellow,” said Merrick. “After all, what man has not acted rashly where women are concerned?”

Quin muttered an oath beneath his breath. “No, honestly, Merrick,” he pressed. “I treated her shabbily all those years ago. And I
did
commit a wrong against her. A grievous wrong. I shan’t go into the details, but—”

“Aye, spare me!” Merrick interjected. “And make your point, man.”

“Well, do you remember how she said we were all wasting our lives?” asked Quin. “I mean, I
knew
Alasdair and I were wasting our lives. We were doing it quite intentionally, and enjoying ourselves pretty damned thoroughly, too. But you—well, I never thought of
you
in that light.”

“In what light?” Merrick was growing impatient.

Quin’s brow furrowed. “The wasteful light,” he said. “I mean, it seems as if you are doing great things, but what if, after all is said and done, you are wasting it? She said that you were a great artist, but that excessive pride and a bitter heart had hardened you.”

“Oh, thank you, Reverend Wynwood!” snapped Merrick. “My day wanted but this—a tidy little lecture about wasting my life.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Now, if you will pardon me, I must go piss away a bit more of it down at Wapping, where I am about to complete another twelve thousand square feet of dockside warehousing. Or perhaps that, too, is just another figment of my imagination?”

“There are many ways a man can waste his life, Merrick.” Quin looked a little wounded. “Just sit back down, for pity’s sake.”

For the sake of peace, Merrick obliged him. “Quin, I do not even remember what that woman told me,” he admitted, his tone more conciliatory. “Whatever it was, it cannot possibly have any bearing on reality.”

Quin leaned urgently across the table. “Do you believe, Merrick, only in what you can see and hear?” he asked. “Can you not accept that there might—there just
might
be things we cannot yet understand? That perhaps there are some people who—who know things the rest of us do not?”

Merrick hesitated. The question left him oddly uncomfortable. It was the curse, he thought, of a Scottish upbringing. He had grown up having the dour Scottish doctrines of hard work, pragmatism, and thrift drilled indelibly into his young mind, and yet all around them had been the strange lore of the Highlands, which was anything but pragmatic. His grandmother MacGregor was a perfect example of that bizarre dichotomy. But he was not about to discuss his grandmother with Quin.

“I do not know, Quin,” he said. “Those considerations are for greater minds than mine. I am a simple man. I build things. I believe only in brick and iron and strong, straight lumber. Those are the things of which my world is built.”

Quin looked resigned and pushed back his chair. “Well, all the same, Merrick, you ought to think about that pride issue,” he warned, as they rose from the table. “You ought to at least ask yourself if you have let your pride get the better of you, and consider if perhaps you have let it stand between you and something which your—well, which your
soul
might need. I can’t think what—I cannot pretend to know what is inside you—but…well, you ought to just think about it.”

To placate him, Merrick nodded and set a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “That is good advice, I daresay, for any man,” he agreed. “Yes, Quin. I shall try do as you ask. I shall try to give a little thought to such serious matters. Thank you.”

Quin gave a skeptical grunt, and tossed a few coins onto the table. “I collect I am being humored,” he grumbled. “Well, come on then. Walk with me up to Walham Hill, and let us speak of more exciting things—like wall covering and draperies.”

Madeleine was in the garden attempting to persuade a particularly recalcitrant rose to go up its trellis in a more orderly fashion when she heard the door knocker drop. In her rush, she pricked her finger and gave a little yelp. Wrapping one corner of her smock about the fingertip, she hastened through the house. Mrs. Drexel had needed to make a last-minute dash to the butcher’s, and this was Clara’s half day.

She was surprised to see Lady Treyhern standing on her doorstep in a red riding habit. Behind her, a groom held the reins of two dashing gray horses.

“Helene!” she said, sliding out of the dusty smock. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

Actually, it was as much a relief as a pleasure. In the week since their unfortunate dinner party in Mortimer Street, Madeleine had heard nothing at all from her new friend.

The countess was blushing faintly. “I thought if I called round fourish, you and Geoff might be persuaded to give me a spot of tea.”

“I am so sorry,” she said. “Geoff is not here.”

Lady Treyhern was already removing her hat. “Perfect. Then we may gossip with impunity.”

Madeleine laughed and gave instructions to the groom, who led the horses away. “Now, just let me find Eliza, and ask her to fix tea.”