Cressida's Dilemma (15 page)

“Please, stop… We need to talk about this.”

She ignored him, still too confused to know what to say. She’d exposed herself in a way she’d never believed possible, and he’d egged her on all the way, only to reject her at the end.
Revenge? Tit for tat? He really didn’t know it was her?

Oh God, she should remove her mask this minute. Reveal her identity and uncover the truth, except that Justin’s reaction had been so unexpected she couldn’t help but think she’d missed something gravely important and had just made of herself the biggest fool ever.

“Please wait!”Still she ignored him, blinded by hot, mortified tears as she finally turned the key.His hand grazed her arm but she knocked it aside as he cried out, “Why come here if not to torment me? I have precautions, but we cannot proceed without them.”Dear God, so he
was
prepared to make love to a stranger, she thought wildly, pulling open the door then slamming it upon his hand so that the last sound she heard was his cry of pain.At least that might act as a dampener in case the next available widow was only five minutes away, she thought bitterly, as she ran down the passage.

“Cressida!”

The sound of her name stopped her mid-flight, and she sagged against the wall. Squeezing shut her eyes, she dragged in a deep breath and forced reason to the fore. She looked down at her hands, balled fists, and tried to control her trembling. Justin had just called her by name. What a fool she was. Her brain had been trying to assimilate the worst-case scenario, when of course she should have known that Justin had everything under control.

He knew exactly who she was and why she was here. Somehow he’d cleverly guessed, without her telling him, that her greatest fear of intimacy was conceiving again. He’d merely wanted to halt proceedings to protect her.

Joy surged through her. She nearly wept with relief.

Of course
Justin knew who she was, just as he’d known last Wednesday. He’d allowed her to proceed with her outrageous seduction at her own pace, hinting though never alluding directly to it in his loving letters of this past week to her in Bath.

Still mortified but quickly filling with hope and excitement, she waited for him to come to her, reflecting with shame upon her cool response to Justin’s flood of correspondence while she’d been tending impossible Great-Aunt Jane. She’d been too blinded by her own fears and lack of self-confidence to read between the lines and properly interpret his letters as an attempt to reason out her confusion.

Raising her head, she smiled at him, happiness radiating through her like treacle through her veins.

“Oh, Justin, I’m so sorry—” she began as her wonderful, beloved husband strode up the passage toward her, his masquerade mask now discarded, raking his hands through his disheveled brown hair.

She put her hands up to untie her own mask, excitement mounting at the thought that in seconds, their stupid charade would be at an end and she’d be where she should have been for the past ten months—in her husband’s arms. They’d waited far too long. Now, within minutes, they could be right back in that room, or, better still, in their own bed, finishing off the wonderful business that had brought them here.

As she clutched at her wildly beating heart, Cressida saw her own hopes mirrored in the expression on his face, and her heart surged with love and longing.

“Justin!”

They both turned at the cry, checked by its note of desperation, and Cressida felt her joy turn to confusion as the figure at the end of the passage ran toward her husband and Miss Mariah threw herself into Justin’s arms.

“Oh, Justin!” Just two simple words but uttered in such heartfelt tones that Cressida needed to be a fool not to understand that some deep emotion bonded the two of them.

Justin did not push the woman away. He did not unclasp her fingers, which gripped him behind his neck. He did not step politely away. No, his expression changed from passion to something curiously deeper in a response that quite clearly conveyed to Cressida how much this woman meant to him. Miss Mariah.
Madame Zirelli
. The woman who had been Justin’s mistress before he’d married Cressida.

In the moment that the truth revealed itself, Cressida traded hope and happiness for the sorrow of all the world’s betrayed women. She would have preferred anger to the heartbreak that consumed every hope for their shared future she’d ever allowed herself. What a fool she’d been to have missed the truth that had been staring her in the face. The woman to whom Justin had turned during these long months when Cressida had not wanted him had indeed been his old mistress, as Catherine had insisted.

“I always knew I could rely on you!” Miss Mariah wept. Cressida’s stomach roiled and she felt the bile, excoriating and bitter, burn her throat.

Miss Mariah was apparently unaware of Cressida standing a few yards farther up the passage, her limpid gaze encompassing only Justin as she clasped his shoulder, pulling him down for her kiss, her greeting revealing a depth of feeling between them that went beyond friendship.

Or anything a wife would condone.

Heaving in a wrenching breath, Cressida brushed the tears from her eyes and picked up her skirts, ignoring her husband’s imploring call as she gathered speed, all but running along the corridor and out into the street where her carriage was waiting.

As she pulled in her trailing skirt, she heard his desperate cry from the top step of the portico.

“Cressida, come back!”She rapped on the roof, signaling impatiently for the coachman to go.“Cressida, it’s not what you think. Talk to me—!”He was at the carriage door, grasping the handle, while she gasped her anger and outrage to John the coachman in one imperative command that he obey
her
and whip up the horses. Hunched up in the carriage, numb and trembling with shock, she dared not look out through the window in case the sight of Justin, pleading and confused, staring after her in the street, caused her to weaken her resolve and turn back.

She’d accepted that Justin had a very good reason for being at Mrs. Plumb’s. No, she hadn’t questioned that at all. At every turn, she’d given him the benefit of the doubt before challenging her greatest fears in order to give herself once more to him.

What a fool she was.

Justin would follow her and try to make her believe some concocted story, but right now she needed to talk matters over with someone who knew all about straying husbands.

Chapter Nine

The moment Catherine received her, Cressida realized her error.

For a start, the house was in darkness. She’d hoped to find her cousin up and playing cards or recently returned from an evening out and full of post-revelry cheer.

Instead a glowering Catherine appeared at the top of the stairs, an enormous muslin cap covering her elaborately dressed hair and a shawl thrown hastily over her nightgown.

“Good Lord, Cressy, do you know what time it is?” she demanded. “Unless Justin has thrown you out, I’ve not the patience to listen to tales of Thomas’ teething woes.”

Cressida swayed at the bottom of the stairs, the fury of her anguish over recent events turning to indecision. She’d not come for a sympathetic hearing, for there was scant kindness in Catherine at the best of times, but she’d not expected such a vituperative greeting.

Oh Lord, what had possessed her to seek out Catherine? It was Justin she should be speaking to, not her viperish cousin. She was bound to Justin for life and, if he could explain his way out of this or persuade her out of her misery enough to enable her to forge ahead, a happiness only temporarily wounded was more than most wives could hope for under such circumstances.

With a brittle smile, she half turned. “I beg your pardon, Catherine, and apologies for disturbing you. I’ve decided to return home after all.” Gathering up her skirts, she turned back toward the door, unable to shake the image of the woman she’d considered her friend, cozily making up to her husband at Mrs. Plumb’s…

For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick.

Catherine seemed only then to take in the extraordinarily daring cut of Cressida’s gown, for her eyes widened then gleamed as Cressida turned, gasping at the sound of a vehicle drawing up in apparent haste by the front door.

“My, my, Cressy, love…marital dramas!” Her cousin hastened down the stairs and took her arm, leading her back from the door. “You’ve come to the right place. I apologize for my rude welcome, but I’m never at my best when my slumber is disturbed.”

“Then I shan’t continue to disturb you,” Cressida said, dignified while she prepared for Justin’s entrance. At least he’d valued her sufficiently to make coming after his wife his priority. Recalling again the familiarity of gesture and caress between the two who, it must be borne in mind, had known each other
intimately
before Cressida had even met her husband, made her feel ill. She clenched her teeth. Not only had she been deceived, but she’d been made a laughing stock, and by a woman she’d considered her friend. It only proved how naïve and credulous she was.

When she opened her eyes again, Catherine was hustling her into the drawing room, leaving the butler to attend to the pounding on the door.

“I made a mistake. I must go to Justin.” Cressida tried to pull away, but her cousin held her firmly, pushing her down onto the Egyptian sofa and adopting an attitude of the greatest solidarity as she positioned herself close, her arm about Cressida’s shoulders.

“So I was right?” The edge of prurient interest was greater than the sympathy for which Catherine obviously strove as she pursed her mouth and patted Cressida’s knee, saying, “My poor love, I thought you were the lucky one, and that nothing could touch the magic that seemed all too apparent between you and Justin. Now you see he’s like all the rest, and you have to learn that sorrow is a woman’s lifelong companion.”

Her words were cut short by the drawing room door being thrown open over the whispered admonitions of Catherine’s butler that Justin wait to be announced.

“Evening, Catherine. I’d like to see my wife, alone.” His glance did not even encompass his wife’s cousin. The tightness around his mouth and the flare in his eye as he rested his gaze upon Cressida indicated the storm raging within. Never had Cressida seen Justin so discomposed.

Despite the raw hurt that scored deep into her heart, there was no denying Cressida’s pride at being allied to such a handsome man, or her admiration as she raked her gaze over his tall, determined form. Certainly these were cosmetic, but it had always given her a thrill to know that Catherine—and others like her—envied Cressida her husband for his outward charm, good looks and obvious intelligence, in addition to his pocketbook. Catherine must indeed be curious as to the extent of Justin’s manly attributes, which only Cressida—well, of the two of them, anyway—was in a position to know.

As Cressida’s eyes met Justin’s, the intensity of his look sent her stomach lurching. In an agony of anticipation, she watched him rake back his hair and draw in a breath…to apologize? Beg her forgiveness?

Relief made her weak and she nearly succumbed to tears on the spot, despite the suspicion of his infidelity and the guilty knowledge of her own part in pushing him away.

But Justin wanted her. At least, he wanted her more than he wanted his old mistress, and if Cressida valued her happiness, she must show the good sense to sweep everything under the carpet and simply forgive and forget. They were bound to one another for life and, if he’d strayed, it was only because she’d denied him his marital rights for longer than any red-blooded male could reasonably be expected to survive.

She started to go to him. Justin was her world. She belonged with him.

As long as he didn’t cast her as the credulous fool in front of Catherine, the wife who could be relied upon to turn a blind eye to future peccadilloes, she could put all this behind her.

She patted her cousin’s hand, which had swooped up to stop her, whispering, “It’s all right, Catherine, I’m going with Justin.” If there was more resignation than joy in her tone, she needed to convey her acceptance of the situation so she could simply depart. Justin’s confession could wait.

Catherine thought differently. “Let Justin say what he came to say, first,” she responded, gripping Cressida’s skirt and pulling her down, hissing in an undertone, “Be strong, Cressy. If you meekly accept everything he tells you, he won’t respect you.”

Justin glared. Damn, but how could Cressida resist a man who incorporated everything her heart desired—determination, charm, good looks, a desire to see to her happiness and that of their children? She sucked in a wavering breath. If he’d strayed, he regretted the pain it had caused her. She still came first in his world. She had to believe it, or
her
world was nothing but dust.

He spoke quickly, holding out his hand before Cressida could reply. “Please, Cressy, I need to speak to you alone.”

Justin could always make him want her. Even now she felt her desperate need for him override every other painful emotion she’d endured during the past week. He could put her through nameless torments and she’d still want him. The knowledge threaded its way uncomfortably through her veins.

Should
she accept everything he said so meekly? Catherine was right. There came a time when, for her own survival, it was incumbent upon her to stand up for herself.

With another short, sharp tug, Catherine forced Cressida to resume her seat on the sofa beside her while she took the initiative, saying in her thin, superior voice, “Cressida came to me because she was deeply upset by recent events.”

Although Catherine had had no direct confirmation that Cressida had ventured into Mrs. Plumb’s sinful establishment, her words suggested a knowledge that went far deeper than any confidence with which Cressida had entrusted her. Catherine’s capacity for interference suddenly frightened her. Justin would not, could not, deny the existence of Mariah Zirelli, but now was not the time for such a confession. Catherine would be like a dog with a bone. She would use Justin’s guilt for her own ends. His remorse, and the torture Catherine would put him through, would go some way toward alleviating the pain caused by Catherine’s own husband’s painful lack of any finer feelings, but it had the potential to destroy Justin in his own eyes.