What a Lady Requires (15 page)

It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Emily Marshall was simply being a vicious shrew. From Emma’s first foray into polite society, Miss Marshall and her cronies had viewed Emma as an interloper, one to be put in her place.

And that place was not a fashionable townhouse in Mayfair. It wasn’t in the ballrooms of the
ton.
If Miss Marshall could create discord in Emma’s marriage, Emma might retire to the country, as happened with any number of wives whose marriages had run sour. No more inconvenient merchant’s daughter to contend with.

Despite the advantage to which she’d been born, Miss Marshall was just as desperate as Aunt Augusta to establish her position in society. Heaven forbid that she ever be lower than an outsider like Emma.

In a sense, Miss Marshall was Emma’s direct rival, though not for a specific suitor. No. The battle was all about rank.

But this sudden insight into Miss Marshall’s character didn’t make her venom any easier to stomach.

“I won’t allow her to run me out,” Emma vowed.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

Emma turned to find Mary hovering near the tea cart. She hadn’t even heard the maid come in. “Nothing. You may remove the refreshments and inform Grundy I will receive no more callers today.”

Mary bobbed a curtsey. “Very good.”

“Tell him I wish no one admitted, unless it’s a runner bearing a letter for me.”

Emma needed to find a place away from the servants to puzzle out this situation unobserved. She wandered into the passageway, and all the while doubt intruded on her denials. She couldn’t set aside Henrietta and Cecelia’s hints of something gone wrong between her husband and his old friend. For that matter, she couldn’t set aside her own husband’s reaction to the knowledge she’d spoken with the new Lady Lindenhurst. If there was any truth to Miss Marshall’s insinuations, that would certainly explain the underlying animosity.

Oh, good Lord, what to do? She couldn’t confront Battencliffe, as he’d gone out yet again. After yesterday, she’d begun to hold out hope that this marriage might turn into something more than a battleground.

He stayed by you while you were ailing. He wished to flirt with you. He wants to take you places. He made love to you last night.
Yes, those were points in his favor against a potentially deep, deep deficit. And he was the only person who could tell her what really happened, since Lady Lindenhurst was no longer of this world.

Lady Lindenhurst, who, according to what Emma had read in the journal, loved her husband. Goodness, could she have left a clue behind in those pages?

Emma ascended the stairs to her chambers. The journal lay in its hiding spot in the writing desk, untouched since the last time she’d consulted it. She thumbed past the first entries, skimming until she reached a date a few days after Lydia’s wedding. There, an account stopped her cold.

It is done. I have married Lindenhurst, and in doing so, I fear I have made a grievous error. My husband informs me of his intent to purchase a commission and do his part in the battle against Napoleon. My mother would have me commend him for his patriotic spirit and his desire to serve his country.

I had expected to spend the weeks following our wedding getting to know each other more intimately, the possibility of conceiving an heir. Now I only think of the long months I must spend alone, of the uncertainty of the future. Perhaps I should have taken Mr. Battencliffe’s suit more seriously.

Hours later, Emma slammed the journal shut. She could not stomach another line. As it was, the last sentence she’d read remained etched in her memory—permanently, she suspected.

Mr. Battencliffe has become a great comfort to me in my despair. But for his calming presence, when it comes time to peruse the casualty lists, I think I should go mad.

Great comfort, indeed. In the wine cellar, Emma had become intimately acquainted with Battencliffe’s preferred means of comfort. So there it was—ample proof of Miss Marshall’s insinuations, and not just that final line, but throughout the journal’s pages.

Once she’d read a few more recent entries, Emma had turned back to the beginning to be certain. No, she hadn’t been mistaken. Upon her marriage, Lydia Lindenhurst’s tone had changed, gradually at first, but the longer her husband’s absence stretched, the more clearly Lydia’s resentment leaked into her words.

I am too young to play the widow and mourn. I have not even fully experienced the joys of marriage and motherhood. Am I now to set those hopes aside unfulfilled?

Or perhaps she’d never been as assured in her choice of husband as she initially appeared.

I can confide here. I can open my heart and bare it as I cannot elsewhere. I have discovered a hiding place where I can be sure no one will discover these writings.

Whatever else Lydia had intended, those words told Emma one hard fact. Lydia had written the truth in these pages as she had perceived it, at least in later entries. If she was sorting through her feelings for her eyes alone, she’d no reason to lie.

Emma removed her spectacles and scrubbed the sand from her eyes. The candle she’d lit as dusk fell had burned low. What to do? Could she pretend she’d never learned a word of this? It might be better, in the end, for she could do nothing about the fact of her marriage. She was well and truly shackled to Battencliffe for the rest of her days.

And now she’d known peace with the man. He’d done his utmost to warm her down in that cellar, sacrificing his topcoat to her need, and he’d stayed by her bed the entire time she was ill. Heaven help her, she even preferred his horrid excuse for humor to arguing with him, but now she was considering breaking their unspoken truce.

Her problem was his demand for complete faithfulness. Not that she was considering breaking any of her marriage vows. No, it was the fact he’d voiced the requirement in the first place. As if
she
were out to lure some unsuspecting gentleman into her bed. Just for that, she ought to confront the hypocrite.

Only one small problem there. He’d gone out. Again. Simply left her in the early afternoon to the tender mercies of her callers, and she’d never heard him come back. But for the few days during her illness, he spent more time at that blasted club of his than he did anywhere—or so he claimed.

A shiver of doubt crept up the back of her neck. He could stray. In fact, it was a given that he
would,
eventually. That was the way of the upper echelons of society—arranged marriages, where both partners ended up taking their pleasures elsewhere once their duty to the succession was fulfilled. Completely acceptable, as long as all parties were discreet. But for him to begin so soon…

No, she didn’t know for certain. She needed solid proof. All she had were a whirl of nagging questions and a journal that confirmed her husband did not take anyone’s marriage vows seriously.

Perhaps one of the servants knew something. At any rate, she still needed to reprimand the butler over the missing wine. Not good. Not good at all. Emma prided herself on her attention to detail. She could not afford to let her standards slip.

With a sigh, she pushed her chair back from the writing desk and stood. Taking up the candle, she made her way into the passage and down the stairs to the main floor. The house was dark and quiet. Blast, was it so late the servants had gone to bed?

But no, someone was up. A line of yellow flickered beneath the door to the study. What on earth? Who could be in there at this time of night? Certainly not Battencliffe. A cold shiver raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Lady Pettifer still hadn’t replied to her query. Could Hendricks have sneaked into the house to make good on his implied threat?

But he couldn’t know he was caught.

She strode the length of the passage and yanked open the door while gathering a lungful of air. If she screamed loudly enough, she might well raise the roof. The sight on the other side of the threshold stole her breath, and her cry burst out as a surprised
oof.

Her husband lay slumped across the desk, facedown in an open ledger, snoring softly. An open pot of ink stood by his cheek, and a quill sat just beyond his relaxed fingers.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, but the scene did not change. “Good heavens,” she muttered.

Battencliffe did not so much as twitch an eyelid.

She rolled her lips into her mouth. What should she make of this situation?
At least he’s come home,
a tiny voice at the back of her head reminded her.

But what was he doing here? Tinkering with the books? And what if his professed ignorance of accounts had all been an act? Not to mention all the tenderness he’d demonstrated over the past few days? No, she wouldn’t let herself think about that. Not when she ought to wake him and confront him—over his presence here and Lydia—before he shook off the cobwebs of sleep.

“Not without proof,” she reminded herself, even though the last time she’d thought those words, she’d lived to regret them.

She padded to the desk and eased the ledger from under his cheek. Not a single blot or smudge marred the entries. By the light of the candle flickering on one corner of the desk, she scanned the columns, comparing them to the mental image she held in her memory. Nothing looked out of place. Her fingers skipping down the page proved the ink dry.

He hadn’t had time to change anything. But if that was his aim, how on earth had he managed to fall asleep over an activity that would only have taken him a few moments to perform?

She had no choice but to ask. Reaching out, she prodded his shoulder. With a jerk, he raised his head, blinking slowly the same way his brother did out of habit.

“Good Lord, I seem to have drifted off.” His gaze shifted to the ledger in Emma’s hands. “No shock there, I suppose.”

“What are you doing down here? It’s the middle of the night.”

He glanced away. It was hard to tell in the low light, but his cheeks may have colored. Certainly his expression changed. He looked for all the world like a little boy caught in the gardens snipping roses for the neighbor’s daughter. And wasn’t that an odd image, especially given what she’d just learned? But she couldn’t shake her mind free of the notion of a lost child.

“This is the last place I’d expect to find you,” she prompted. “And over the books, no less.”

He nodded at the ledger. “Believe it or not, I thought I could make heads or tails of all those numbers.”

For some reason, she wanted to see his easy grin spread across his face. If he smiled, it would be easier to believe he was making light. Teasing, as was his wont. Perhaps even lying.

But he remained dead serious. “I thought if I tried hard enough, went over everything enough times, it would all finally manage to sink in. It hasn’t.”

“What?” She shouldn’t let him distract her from her purpose, but the bleakness in his voice prevented her from forging ahead. “Why now when you’ve resisted my every attempt at teaching you?”

He lifted one shoulder in what he doubtless meant to be a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps I decided that if I can understand this, I might come to understand you, eventually.”

“Oh.” This was not at all going the way she’d planned. Instead of a confrontation, he was giving her a confession. And when he spoke so plainly and honestly, the last thing she wanted to do was provoke him. Rather, she wanted him to go on speaking to her in just this way—without seduction or charm or artifice. Open honesty was the most she could ever ask of him, and through some miracle, he was giving it to her.

“So now you see me as I am. A failure.”

“Failure…” Lord help her, she nearly tagged a
ridiculous
onto her response. Some sense of his complete and utter belief in what he was saying stopped her. Instinct told her scorn was the opposite of a helpful reaction at the moment, no matter that she felt
failure
to be rather exaggerated.

He had his faults, certainly, the same as any man. He’d made his mistakes, some of them colossal. But not even what he’d done with Lydia made him deserve this harsh a judgment.

“Yes, failure.” His gaze hardened into a challenge. He expected an argument. Little surprise there, given their past interactions.
Unless wine is involved.
But even then, they’d begun at cross-purposes.

Yes, but he treated you with care while you were ailing.

That last thought gentled her voice when she replied. “I hardly think—”

He shot to his feet, the force knocking over his chair. “Don’t you? Good God, you’ve seen the state of my finances. And isn’t that your measure of a man?”

“No.” Before her marriage, that single word would have been a lie—one of those acceptable fibs one told to avoid sticky social situations. But she’d seen enough other facets of this man, both good and bad, that she refused to judge him solely on his business acumen. “You are far more skillful at negotiating society than I will ever be. You always know the right thing to say. You know when to smile. You know how to be charming.” The display of the waltz, as he termed it.

“Only because I had the fortune to be born into the right family. None of that is anything you’d term an accomplishment.”

Not a proper masculine accomplishment. But Miss Conklin would have been ecstatic if Emma had mastered such feats. “And yet, no matter the state of your finances, you will always be accepted, in a manner I never will.”

He waved a hand, and she recognized the gesture for what it was. He was brushing her argument aside. “You don’t know the half of it.”

The words settled like a cannonball in her belly. “What haven’t you told me? Are there creditors I don’t know about yet?”

“Nothing like that.”

“What else could there be?”

He turned his gaze toward the desk, fixed his eyes on the expanse. “If I’ve failed at anything, it is on the most fundamental level possible. I did something, the repercussions of which still haunt me. You must have asked yourself by now how I’ve only managed to fulfill my marital duty but twice. Why I’ve never visited you in your bedchamber beyond our wedding night.”

Emma had to remind herself to breathe. Now that she knew he was willing to make it, she wanted to stop his confession. She did not need to hear the details of what had transpired between him and Lydia if the telling was going to be this painful for him.

But she sensed his need to unburden himself, and so she remained still and silent.

“This house used to belong to a close friend of mine.” He said that bit casually, as if he were remarking on something as mundane as the weather. “Viscount Lindenhurst—since he removed to his country estates, he rarely comes to Town.”

“I told you his wife paid me a visit. You were not happy to hear it.”

“No, I wasn’t. You’d think a pair of old friends might get together for some drinks and talk about old times. Only Lindenhurst and I won’t be doing that.” A hint of regret tinged his words. “Did you realize Lindenhurst was the one who attempted to ruin me?”

“No.” At least not until today, but now wasn’t the best time to reveal what Miss Marshall had told her. Best to let Battencliffe tell his story.

Rowan could barely credit what he was on the verge of confessing, and to his wife, no less. Beyond the earlier conversation with Sanford, he had never talked about what had happened between him and Lydia. Granted, he’d forgotten some of the baser details, thanks to a bottle of brandy or two consumed on short notice, but he could fill in the blanks well enough.

“It all started with a social call.” An ill-advised one, but at least he remembered this part. “Viscount Lindenhurst and I were good friends in our younger days. Not long after his marriage, he bought a commission. When he didn’t come back after Wellington’s victory with the rest of the army, naturally we feared the worst.”

“You and Lady Lindenhurst.” Damn, but Emma made that sound like an accusation.

“I considered Lydia a friend, as well.” Judging from Emma’s expression that was the wrong thing to say, but Rowan held up a hand. “Please let me tell this. The hellish part was the lack of confirmation.”

He’d scanned every casualty list he could get his hands on. Lind’s name had never appeared on any of them. “Months passed without word. Lydia and I both attempted to contact other men from his regiment. That is how we learned he’d been at Quatre Bras. He’d sustained horrific injuries, according to some accounts. I made a habit of calling on Lydia. Every Monday we’d meet and pore over the lists. Maybe we’d come across something we’d missed.”

“By that time, there couldn’t have been many new casualty lists.” Of course Emma sounded skeptical. She’d every right. Nothing in what he was going to recount exonerated him in the least.

“No, but the habit remained, and I held on to a certain hope the army would notify Lydia of his whereabouts. That one way or another she’d received word and I could properly mourn a friend or rejoice in the news he would eventually return.”

Rowan looked away for a moment, staring at the ceiling. This was Lind’s study, little changed from the old days. How many hours had Rowan spent in here, squinting at the tiny typeface listing name after name of men who weren’t coming home? But for Emma’s presence, it might have been seven and more years ago.

“The worst part was the not knowing, more so for Lydia. I imagine she felt as if she were consigned to limbo, damned to wait, unable to mourn, unable to plan for the future.”

God, and why was he giving Lydia so much credit? It certainly wasn’t helping his case with Emma. Not the way her eyes narrowed behind the lenses of her spectacles. But even now, he had to explain to himself how events had played out. He had to assign
some
form of motivation to Lydia’s actions that day.