Regency Innocents (56 page)

‘Should I—?'

‘No! No need for you to tag along,' he snapped. ‘Take the day off. I shall be among friends.' He did not want Linney to know, quite yet, what Deborah was up to.

‘If you are sure …?' he began doubtfully, glancing at Deborah.

Deborah gave him an encouraging nod, as her husband disappeared into his room to fetch his hat, and a brand-new ebony cane with a chased silver handle.

‘For getting into and out of the boat,' he explained.
‘I told you I would not need you, Linney. For even if I should slip and fall into the water, there will be half a dozen muscular young chaps ready to haul me out.'

Suddenly, Deborah understood why Mrs Samuels had assumed he would not be going on such an excursion. Why could she never remember he was not in top physical form?

It was not until they had got into the cab that she rather haltingly confessed she was going to collect Susannah.

He made no verbal response, but she could tell by the tightening of his lips that he was not looking forward to coming face to face with the woman he had loved and lost.

‘I will come in and pay my respects to your mother,' he said when the cab drew to a halt outside the rented house. ‘It was remiss of me not to have performed that duty sooner.'

‘I am sure she understands completely,' said Deborah sympathetically, when his frown deepened. Her mother had felt so sorry for him when Susannah had turned to Percy Lampton.

‘She could have called on us,' he reflected, as he descended from the cab. ‘Have you said anything to make her suspect she might not be welcome?'

Rather taken aback, Deborah said, ‘Of course not! If you must know …' she took a deep breath, steeling herself to be the one to break it to him ‘… Susannah is taking Mr Lampton's defection extremely hard. She barely goes out, and, when she does, she
droops
apparently. And my mother does not like to leave her in the house on her own.'

Captain Fawley flinched. ‘I should have thought she would think herself well rid of that toad.'

‘Well, she does not. I think she really l—'

She could not tell her husband Susannah had fallen in love with his worst enemy. He already had quite enough to contend with.

She tried to keep a smile pasted to her face while her husband paid the formalities to her mother. She wished now she had warned him exactly what her plans had been at the outset, so that he need not have come. He could hardly withdraw now.

She felt so guilty for having put him in such an awkward position. He was plainly so uncomfortable at being cooped up in the hired cab with both the woman he loved and the woman he had married, that her own insides began to churn in sympathy.

By the time they reached the wharf, though, it had become plain that he had mastered his own roiling emotions, and compressed them into an iron-hard resentment, which he aimed directly at her. And then, later, at the young officers who dared to flirt with Susannah.

Deborah had no defence against the piercingly sharp glances he continually darted in her direction. She did not even try. She felt she deserved his contempt for forcing him into this excruciatingly painful position. From the moment a pair of his robustly healthy comrades handed him into the boat with the same tender concern they had shown the ladies, she wanted to curl up and weep.

Susannah sat across the thwarts from him, twirling her parasol, completely oblivious to the pain that racked him every time one of the shirt-sleeved oarsmen coaxed
a smile to her lips, while Deborah's conscience smote her afresh, every time she glimpsed him moodily repelling all attempts to draw him away from the fringes of the rest of the day's activities.

She was relieved when at long last, they deposited Susannah back at her house, and his ordeal was at an end. She was not surprised that he did not speak a single word to her in the carriage home. His embittered look said it all. By keeping him in the dark about her plans to help Susannah get over her heartbreak, she had caused more for him. He had been obliged to watch her gradually unfurl and blossom like a bud under the adulation of his peers, while Susannah had not spared him one glance.

He slammed the door of their rooms shut with unnecessary force, striding across to where she was removing her bonnet and spinning her round by her upper arm.

‘You are my wife, damn it!' he growled.

Oh, yes, and how he must wish she was not. Especially when he'd had all day to compare what he had wanted, with what he had ended up with. Tears sprang to her eyes, even though she knew the last thing he wanted from her was sympathy. Indeed, even as she opened her mouth to speak her heartfelt apology for making this day such hell for him, he brought his lips crashing down on hers, silencing her in a kiss that spoke of loss and anger.

Though she fully accepted he could not help being angry, at length she had to try to break away from his determined possession of her mouth. She could hardly breathe. Her head was beginning to spin.

It took him a moment or two to realise she was struggling, but as soon as he did, he broke away, to glare down at her with all the resentment that had been growing steadily throughout the day, blazing from his eyes.

‘Oh, Robert,' she gasped, raising her hand to his cheek.

He caught it before it reached the puckered skin, his grip on her wrist bruising.

And before she knew it, he had tugged her into the bedroom and pulled her down on to the bed beside him.

Her heart soared as he kissed her more passionately than he had ever done before.

But then he closed his eyes as he pushed up her skirts. Buried his face in her neck as he freed himself from his breeches. And as he entered her with no further preliminaries, he gave a groan that reminded her it was not passion driving him, but pain. Pain that Susannah had caused. Oh, he might be seeking solace in her body, but
she
was not the one who had wrought him to this pitch.

A sob welled up and shook its passage through her throat as she did the only thing she could do for him. She wound her arms round his neck, her legs round his waist and let him pour all his grief and suffering into her, absorbing it with a shuddering desperation of her own. For even though she was convinced he was only using her, she could not stop her body responding to his wild mating as it always did. Need was soon driving them both, raw and agonising in its intensity. She pulsed around him the very second he emptied himself into her, tears flowing unchecked down her face and into her hair.

‘I am not sorry,' he panted hoarsely into her ear. ‘I do not care if I hurt you.'

‘I know,' she whispered, letting her arms fall limp against her sides. ‘But you did not hurt me.'

‘No, you liked it, didn't you?' He raised himself up, looking down at her with searing contempt. ‘You like it hard, and fast, like the cheap slut you are.'

He rolled off her then, flinging his arm over his face, as though he could not bear the sight of her.

She felt something inside her die. Hadn't he always assured her that he liked the fact she always responded to his advances with a passion to match? Now he was telling her it was no such thing. And it was too late to try to explain that she could not help it if she responded the way she did. He would think she was making up excuses to try to justify her behaviour, if she told him she loved him after what had just taken place.

He had taken her loving, free offering of herself, twisted it into something nasty and sordid, then flung it back in her face. She slid off the bed and staggered from the room.

But it was not far enough. She could not stay in the same house as him—no, not for one second longer.

Picking up her bonnet from the side table by the door, she let herself out quietly, and stood irresolutely on the front step for some minutes. A cab swept round the corner, disgorging its passengers outside a house three doors down.

She hurried along the pavement, intent on seeking the only sanctuary she could think of.

‘Could you take me to Half Moon Street, please?' she asked the driver.

She needed her mother.

* * *

It was ridiculous to be holding this ball, thought Deborah some ten days later, to celebrate the marriage of two people who barely spoke to one another any more. She stood pale and trembling to receive her guests, beside Robert's stiff and taciturn form, though only Lady Walton seemed to have noticed anything was amiss. She had taken one look at their set faces at the dinner preceding the ball, and leaned across to whisper to her,

‘The first few weeks of marriage are horrid, are they not? But once you get past all that silliness, I am sure you will be as happy as Charles and me.'

Deborah very much doubted it. Though given to extreme formality in his dealings with most people, the Earl of Walton was clearly very much in love with his wife. He revealed it in a dozen little ways. A touch of his hand to the back of her waist as he escorted her into a room, or a glance and a smile that spoke of shared thoughts.

Robert never smiled at her. Nor could he bear to touch her any more. Not since the day of the picnic, when he had expressed his contempt for her in such a way that even she could no longer cling to any hope that he might one day grow fond of her.

He had even argued with his brother upon the subject of this ball. Though it was to be held in honour of his marriage, he saw no reason why he should be obliged to dance at it.

‘Do you think I want to make a spectacle of myself capering about a slippery floor while the guests are laying side bets as to how long it will take for me to fall over?' he had snarled.

Deborah had wanted to curl up and die. He would not be raising any objection if he had married Susannah. He had begged and pleaded for a dance with her, pursuing her from one event to another. And he had not looked as though he cared in the least what Lord Lensborough's guests had said or thought, when she had finally capitulated.

‘Why do you not open the ball with a waltz?' Heloise had suggested. ‘Rather than a really long set of country dances?'

‘Not exactly the traditional opening to a ball, but I think it would serve,' replied the Earl, looking proud of his wife's suggestion.

Robert had simmered down, his grudging agreement twisting the knife a little deeper. ‘I will dance part of one waltz with my wife, and that is my limit.'

He would have walked across hot coals for Susannah, but he did not even want to perform one sedate waltz with his plain, despised wife.

Yet dancing a waltz required that she take hold of his left hand, the false hand, the very prospect of which had made Susannah squeal with disgust.

Saddened, she looked over his left shoulder as the musicians struck up the first chord, remembering the defiant tilt of his chin when Linney had buckled it on earlier before helping him on with his shirt. Like a knight, being armoured by his squire, ready to go into battle. She felt that it would have been an honour to take that hand now, and demonstrate to the world that nothing could ever come between them, if only he was not so reluctant to have her in his arms.

A fine sweat broke out on Robert's brow. Damn it, perhaps he should have just gone along with the set of country dances, and put up with the pain all that capering about would have brought to his severed limb. It could not have been worse than the agony of having so many people watching him stumbling about the floor with a woman whose face was rigid with distaste. He could hardly blame her. What they were doing was not so much dancing, as walking very carefully in time to the music. Once upon a time, he would have relished sweeping his dance partner into a spin turn at the corner of the dance floor, taking the opportunity to pull a pretty woman a little closer to his body than was strictly allowed. Now, he dreaded coming across any kind of obstacle that would require him to attempt anything more than the most basic step. Thankfully, after a few bars of excruciating embarrassment, the Earl led his wife on to the floor, Lord Lensborough followed with his, and soon, so many partners were twirling around him that he felt safe to abandon the pretext of dancing at all, and headed straight for the nearest open door.

‘Thank God that's over with,' he said, letting go of Deborah's arm.

‘I suppose you will be spending the rest of the evening in the card room?' she said stiffly, as he subsided on to the nearest chair. Since the picnic, this had become the pattern of the few events they had attended together. He had escorted her, introduced her to a few of his friends, then abandoned her to their care while he strolled off to watch the play.

He got to his feet, and gave her an icily polite bow
before stalking away, leaving her entirely alone. On other evenings, it might have been excusable. But could he not have pretended just this once, on the night they were supposed to be celebrating their marriage, that he did not regret having done so, quite so much?

Was he deliberately trying to humiliate her?

She squared her shoulders, and raised her chin before stepping back into the ballroom. She would not let anyone know that she cared. She would not become the object of anyone's pity. And so she acted as though she was perfectly happy to dance with other gentlemen, and that she did not feel acutely distressed by the way her husband publicly shunned her. Her dance card was soon filled by Robert's friends, who jokingly commiserated with her for being shackled to such a dull dog of a husband. One or two of the Earl's political cronies, who would not have deigned to so much as nod to her when she had been Miss Gillies, seemed to feel it was appropriate to notice her at her own ball, as well.

At length, she calmed down enough to stop thinking only of herself. She knew she ought at least to make sure Susannah was coping. She had noticed her dancing with the Earl at one point, but not looking all that happy to be doing so. Now, she was nowhere in sight.

She went to the chaperons' benches, to ask her mother if she knew where she was.

‘She went out on to the terrace to try to compose herself,' said her mother, ominously.