Her Husband’s Lover (36 page)

‘Darleston went first. He and his brother drove away with Lady Darleston last night.’ Her horror must have shown, for Amelia scuttled around the bed to her. She knelt by Emma’s side. ‘I don’t think he wanted to go. He tried to get in here, but Father set the footmen on guard.’

‘I never heard anything.’ Emma jumped up, too agitated to remain still. Darleston simply couldn’t be gone. She needed him. He was her backbone. Without him, she was not nearly so brave.

‘Father had something put into your tea. He made me, Emma. He said you needed your rest. I swear I didn’t know what he was going to do. He had Grafton put something into mine too. I slept like a log for twelve hours.’

If it was not lack of sleep that had ringed her sister’s eyes, then what was it?

‘He dismissed Harry. He’s dreadfully angry, Emma.’

Why did she keep twittering on about Harry Quernow? ‘Did the fight go badly, then?’ Emma asked.

Tears tracked down her sister’s face. Amelia rubbed at her eyes, making their redness all the more lurid. ‘No. Jack won. It was an overwhelming victory. He sent Harry away because he knew I loved him. Harry made a bet upon the fight. He hoped it would give him enough independent means to support me. Father never even gave him the chance to ask for my hand. He just packed him off with all the other guests.’

Emma braced herself with her hands on the footboard. There was so little clarity at the moment, or maybe she simply refused to see the truth. ‘I still don’t understand why he’d dismiss Lyle’s valet. They’ve been with each other for years. He had no authority to do that.’

Amelia clambered to her feet once more, her conservative dress now thoroughly rumpled. ‘I don’t believe Father thinks he’ll survive.’

Emma shot a quick glance at her husband. Lyle’s condition was by no means good, but to have already dismissed him as if he were gone – that stung. She had never believed her father a callous man, and he had always got on so well with Lyle.

‘Emma, in his head I think he’s already buried him.’

All she could do was pace and shake her head. How could he think that? Nay, even if he thought it, to precipitately send the healers away was madness. ‘I need to speak to him.’

‘Emma.’ Amelia backed towards the door, successfully blocking her exit. ‘He knows what you’ve done. What you and Lyle have both done. He said some frightful things before I came up here. I can’t believe that they are true. Tell me they’re not true. I know I said some things, but I only meant to vex you. I never truly believed them.’ She swallowed hard, and then burst into a fresh bout of tears. ‘I can’t see a season or anything else to look forward to now. Father means to punish us. He says we’re both a disgrace.’

Emma idly patted her sister’s shoulder while her thoughts reeled. She knew the bond that Lyle and Darleston shared was not one accepted or even tolerated by society. She’d always known that if Lyle’s proclivities were revealed she’d have to forfeit her life with him, but she’d never expected her father to act so cruelly as to wish her husband dead. ‘What did Father say?’

‘That Darleston incited you both to lewd practices. He made me read from the Old Testament, but I can’t believe any of you did such wicked things.’

They had, though she wasn’t about to confess to it. Besides, letting a man die without fighting to save him was a far worse sin than loving one, or even two. ‘I’ve done nothing of which I’m ashamed,’ she said. She grasped Amelia’s hands tight. ‘My husband is not dead. Help me, Amelia. Help me save Lyle and my life. I’m not allowing him to die because Father thinks it’s just punishment for some imaginary sin. Love isn’t wrong. It will distress me far more to lose him than whatever ills father believes we have done will harm him.’ She handed Amelia a handkerchief to dry her face. ‘Drummond said we should use maggots if the wound became infected. I think it might be. The bandages are wet when they should be dry.’

Amelia gazed at her, her face alight with wonder behind her uncertain frown. ‘You’ve changed. Knowing Darleston has changed you.’

‘He opened my eyes.’ She refrained from giving any more details. Amelia didn’t need to know the complexities of the triangular relationship she, Lyle and Darleston and formed. All she needed to understand was that it was something worth fighting for.

‘You don’t deny that you made love to him?’

‘We can ask Beattie to help, and her daughter. They both know about poultices and compresses. So it was Harry all along that you were making eyes at?’

‘I liked him from the very first day that Father employed him, but I didn’t know for sure that it was more than that until the other gentlemen arrived and I had something to compare him to. It’s no good now, though. Father won’t hear of it. And don’t lie to me that he will.’

For the first time in her life Emma embraced her youngest sister. ‘I won’t, but that doesn’t mean it has to end badly. If Harry’s still true to you, you can elope.’ Amelia’s eyes lit with hunger. She dried away the last of her sniffles. ‘But not yet. Not until Lyle is healed. Help me, and I promise I’ll help you.’

Few turned out to witness the interment, only the diehard barnacles and those unfortunate and desperate enough to have no other social engagements. A funeral simply didn’t hold the same appeal as a coming-out ball, several of which had already been announced for the coming season, and while the rumours about Darleston’s preferences had quieted over the summer, the scandal surrounding him hadn’t been entirely forgotten.

He stood by the graveside nodding his acknowledgements to the other attendees. His father, the Earl of Onnerley, had come, as had Neddy, bearing condolences from Giles Dovecote and some others of their set. Most surprisingly, Oxbury had dragged himself out of the woodwork to pay his respects, but then, considering how often he’d shared Lucy’s affections, perhaps he felt he owed her that much. Littleton, on the other hand, remained notable by his absence.

Only one buffoon was foolish enough to suggest he start hunting for a new wife. Darleston immediately cut him. One marriage was plenty for any lifetime. Let his brother produce an heir for the title, or let it fall to some distant cousin. He didn’t care either way. No woman would ever shackle him as Lucy had done. He’d watched her suffer these last nine weeks and regularly wondered if he ought to have taken up the pistol she’d used to maim Lyle and turned it upon her. It certainly would have been a swifter, more satisfying sort of justice. Instead, he’d watched her become stick-thin apart from that swollen, tender belly. She’d maintained it was his child even with her dying breath.

Neddy fell into step with him as they walked from the graveyard back to the waiting carriage. In their muted black ensembles, they were perfect duplicates, their red hair luridly bright against the dark velvet. Only their stocks and shirts were white. Yet they remained steadfastly different. Few saw it, but little things separated him from Ned, small but fundamental things.

‘How badly has she left you off?’ Neddy asked as the crested landau pulled away from the cemetery gates. ‘I know her creditors have been circling like vultures.’

Rumours of Lucy’s illness had spread surprisingly fast, considering they’d kept themselves confined to the Onnerley estate. All manner of folks had washed up at his door demanding their dues. ‘Nothing too colossal, and only her mantua-maker made any fuss. The poor woman hadn’t been paid since Lucy and I married, but she was too worried about losing custom to risk making a fuss prior to her death.’ She’d been the first to arrive with a bundle of logbooks and receipts in hand to substantiate her claim. He’d paid her extra just to be rid of her and out of fear over who would turn up next. If news of Lucy’s illness had spread, rumours of her involvement in Lyle’s injury would surely follow. But they never did.

‘Still no word?’ Neddy asked, accurately interpreting the direction of his thoughts.

‘Nothing substantial, only what Drummond’s managed to glean from the locals.’ Lyle’s valet had come to him in despair after Hill dismissed him without warning or references and for no discernable reason. The man had done his best for Lyle, which made his treatment all the more abominable. The best Darleston could do was offer him a position – one that predominantly involved keeping tabs on the goings-on at Field House. Things had been overly quiet there for far too long, although the residents had been stirred up somewhat over the last sennight.

Damn Lucy to the eternal pits of hell, she’d given him naught but anguish and taken from him the only good thing of recent years. No matter how much he longed for it, he wasn’t sure he’d ever see Lyle or Emma again. His only consolation was that there’d been no similar entry to Lucy’s in the newspapers, announcing Lyle’s interment also.

‘You could have gone back and insisted upon seeing them.’

Darleston turned his head to the window and watched the green field rolling past. If only it were as simple as Neddy made it all sound. He’d known when his carriage left Field House that there’d be no returning; to insist upon it even now would only provoke a scandal. Lucy might be dead, but he doubted whether Hill’s outrage over the unlawful conduct in which he and Lyle had engaged themselves had calmed in the least.

‘What are you going to do, Rob?’

‘Wait. I don’t see that there’s anything else that I can do. I don’t even know how they feel about me after what happened.’

It was Neddy’s turn to peer out of the window. Although accepting of his foibles, Darleston knew his brother still found the topic uncomfortable. Ned thought nothing of hopping into bed with another man providing they had a maid to share, but exchanging affections with another man beyond some playful ribbing was a step beyond his comprehension.

Regardless, Darleston pursued the topic. He needed to vent, and Neddy was the only one prepared to listen. ‘They’re everything I want, Neddy. Lyle always was. I just never dared think about what might have been after he’d been packed off to India. There seemed no sense in making an issue out of something that I’d already lost.’

Neddy’s gaze remained steadfastly set upon the sheep outside. ‘I know how much it hurt. I heard you sobbing through the night. It’s why I brought you together. I didn’t know if you’d still feel the same way but, when I saw Lyle again, he was carrying that same sort of lonely shroud I’ve seen you wear. I never anticipated you making Emma part of it. I’d heard the rumours about her iciness.’

Darleston stared hard at the back of his twin’s head until Neddy turned to face him.

‘I don’t have any answers, Rob, other than for you to walk away and start afresh somewhere else now that you’re free of Lucy.’

‘You don’t mean me to do that.’

Neddy bowed his head. ‘No, but someone had to state it as an option. You’ve wasted years of your life already, waiting for something that was never going to happen. I don’t want to see you stagnate like that again.’

‘It won’t happen.’

The flicker of irritation that briefly furrowed the space between Neddy’s brows betrayed his doubts over that, but Darleston chose to let it go. He had no intention of allowing things to carry on like this indefinitely. At some point either Emma or Lyle or both would appear in public, and then he’d be there. Hill could warn him off, but he couldn’t prevent them meeting outside his territory. His main fear, however, was not Hill, but that it had been Lyle and Emma’s decision to shun him. They hadn’t spoken after the shooting. He had no way of knowing how much that one incident had influenced their thoughts. Perhaps they saw him now as a passing summer folly, something best forgotten and never spoken about. It would kill him to hear that, but one way or another he had to find out.

* * *

Two weeks later

‘We’re leaving, Father. It doesn’t matter how much you object to it. Lyle is recovered now and we have our own property to tend.’ That was explanation enough for their departure, without bringing up the myriad other reasons why they were so keen to hurry away. He’d kept them here as virtual prisoners for nearly three months. For much of that time she’d had no choice but to weather his scrutiny and disdain. He’d only softened his censure a little when he saw how much effort she’d put into saving her husband’s life. He’d been genuinely pleased to see Lyle recover, so she guessed he’d shuffled all his low opinions onto Darleston’s shoulders. It was easy to blame someone who wasn’t present and already had a reputation as a fiend. She hadn’t heard a good word spoken about the entire Darleston clan since the day they’d left Field House.

‘Your sister is missing. How can you even think of going home?’ Mr Hill blocked her path across the hallway, though there was still room to flit past him.

Emma looked up at her father’s wrinkled brow and saw his fears and loneliness. ‘Amelia is not missing, father. She’s eloped. I’m sure we’ll hear from her in a week or so.’ Her sister wanted nothing more than to be able to return home a wedded woman and show off her new husband.

‘And this elopement doesn’t bother you?’

‘No. I’m afraid it doesn’t. It was her choice, her mistake to make, if that’s what it turns out to be, though I don’t believe it shall.’ She had initially wondered, just like her father, if Amelia’s interest would wane through lack of contact, but her love for Harry had remained remarkably steadfast. ‘She loves Mr Quernow. It’s who she wants to spend her life with, and you like him father, for all your grumbling.’

‘He was a fine secretary is all I said.’ Mr Hill placed particular emphasis on Harry’s former role.

‘Well, perhaps he will be a particularly fine son-in-law too. He’s more interested in your business of prize-fighting than Lyle will ever be.’ And more able too, after what had happened, she might have added but didn’t.

‘Hmph,’ her father snorted. ‘And I suppose you think I should just welcome them back without a quibble?’

‘Exactly.’ Emma walked around him. She did not want an argument to be the last words they spoke to one another before parting. For all his faults, he had tried to do his best for her. He’d been a good parent to her for most of her life. He’d done his best to provide for them, but at the moment he seemed so blinded by the horrors of his own past that he refused to imagine anything but the worst outcome for everybody.