The Chadwick Ring (22 page)

“So what? He was my mother’s husband, and he drove her away!” The boy’s voice rose. “Ginnie, you don’t know the kind of man he is. Even since you’ve been married he’s been seen in bordellos of the lowest sort. He likes to ... to debauch women, to turn them into whores. Why, that Frenchwoman was virtuous before he seduced her!”

Ginevra snorted, “Who told you that—
her
?”

The sulfurous light could not disguise the bright color that painted his cheeks as he mumbled, “I ... I met her today, Ginnie. In the park. At first I could not believe that she would dare to approach me, but when she did, I found I could ... could not turn away.” His voice grew firmer, more steady, and Ginevra listened in amazement as he spoke. “Madame de Villeneuve is a very beautiful woman,” he said seriously, “and a greatly wronged one. When she spoke to me, I ... I thought at first that she was trying her wiles on me, yet it soon became clear that her sole concern was for you, Ginnie.”

“Me?” she choked, uncertain whether to laugh or scream. The woman’s audacity was incredible, surpassed only by the boy’s gullibility.

“Yes, Ginnie, you! Madame de Villeneuve told me frankly that she knows it is too late to save her, but she is much concerned that you should not suffer the same fate. She says she knows how easy it is for a young girl to be bewitched by the man’s charms, and something must be done to save you from him now, before you are irretrievably lost.”

Ginevra shook her head impatiently. “Oh, Bysshe, you idiot, can’t you see what she is doing? She has told you only what you wanted to hear. Women of her ... her profession are very good at that. But I am surprised at you. How can you believe such lies?”

His soft mouth hardened into a sneer of distaste. “I might not have believed her—had I not seen you come home last night.” Ginevra blanched. He said, “I could hear the pair of you even before he carried you up the stairs. You were giggling like some drunken bawd, your clothes were half off, and your hands were all over him, and you ... you practically reeked with the smell of him!”

Ginevra felt violated. She bit her lip and screwed her eyes shut to still her trembling. Tears spilled from beneath her silky lashes. Suddenly her patience with the boy disappeared like mist burnt away by the scorching, blinding anger that ignited in her, and she gritted, “Damn you, Bysshe Glover, damn you to hell! How dare you spy on something that was private and personal and ... and beautiful—”

“Beautiful?” he exclaimed in horror, and he grabbed her shoulders and shook her as if to convince her of his sincerity. “Oh, Ginnie, can’t you see? If you are so lost to all decency that you can think—”

She jerked her left arm free of his grasp and slapped him hard across the mouth.

The sound of that blow seemed to echo over the quiet, moon-drenched fields surrounding them. The two horses stirred uneasily in their harness. Bysshe lifted his hand to his face and touched his mouth gingerly; his fingertips came away stained with blood from where the stones on her betrothal ring had sliced his lip. His brown eyes narrowed and he took a deep, rasping breath.

Ginevra said, “Take me home, Bysshe. Take me home now.”

Slowly he shook his head. “No, Ginnie. I must get you away before it is too late before his hold on you becomes unbreakable.”

She was beginning to think she had stumbled into some nightmare, some drug-induced fantasy that stubbornly refused to dissolve in the face of reality. She pleaded desperately, “Bysshe, I beg you—you must understand. It is already too late: I love him and I carry his child.”

All color drained from his face, leaving behind in the dim jaundiced light a parchment mimicry of his features, like a death mask—the death of Bysshe’s youth. Helplessly Ginevra watched his bloodied lips gasp for air. She wondered if he would faint. Then as she gazed at him, mesmerized, suddenly the color returned, flowing under, his skin in waves of yellow, pink, red, until his face blackened with rage. All at once she became aware of the hazard of her position, her vulnerability, and she tried to retreat, moving backward across the leather seat until she was brought up sharp against the low armrest. Defenselessly she watched as Bysshe exploded, “
You bitch
!”—and when he raised his hand to strike her down, there was no place she could flee.

The Marquess of Chadwick felt young, younger than he had in years. He alit from the carriage with a spring in his step that had been missing since ... Sweet Jesus!—could it really have been since Maria? He dismissed the coachman and strode up the shadowed walkway toward his front door. No, he decided, he refused to believe that his life’s mood could have been dictated for almost twenty years by that travesty of a first marriage. Rather, he judged, his discontent must have settled upon him at about the same time that he started his stint as uncredentialled diplomat. Cynicism was inevitable when a man saw the future of Europe decided frequently not on battlefields but in brothels, the deaths of a thousand brave men as nothing compared to the charms of a whore with suitably exotic talents.

But all that was behind him now, he thought with relief as he reached for the massive brazen handle that gleamed in the glow of the porch light. He had at last kept the vow he had made to himself and had tendered his resignation, had resisted the blandishments of those at the ministry who urged him to stay on, and now he was going to devote his energies to the growing of crops and the welfare of his tenants. Times were hard and he had neglected them shamefully. In the brief time he and Ginevra had been married she had shown more concern for the people of Queenshaven than he had in all his years since acceding to the title.

“M’lord!”

His hand froze and he jerked his head around to peer blindly in the direction of that furtive hiss. The voice seemed to arise from the penumbral depths of the shrubbery lining the walk.

“M’lord!” came the call again, and as he watched, a small shape wrapped in a plain dark cloak of a servant crept out of the shadows and approached him timidly, with the stiff labored gait of one who had been waiting for hours. When the hood of her cloak fell away to reveal the face of a young girl of no more than twelve or thirteen years, he recognized her vaguely as one of Amalie’s maids, one of the anonymous figures that had moved about dimly in the background of that sultry erotic fantasy that had been his affair with the Frenchwoman. It occurred to Chadwick that he ought to know the child’s name because he had probably been paying her wages.

The thought of Amalie annoyed him, and he demanded irritably, “What do you want?” The girl shrank back. After a moment she stepped forward again to offer him a pale green envelope that reeked of patchouli even at a distance. His mouth thinned, and he refused to take it. She held the note closer and implored, “Oh, please, m’lord! If I didn’t deliver her note my mistress would...”

He looked down at her wide, frightened eyes, and he
shook his head impatiently, sighing. “Very well. Far be it from me to bring down Amalie’s wrath on someone smaller than she is.” He accepted the envelope, grimacing at the smell, and he asked, “Is there supposed to be an answer?”

The girl said, “No, m’lord. My mistress was just on her way out of town when she gave it to me. We don’t know when she’ll be back.”

Chadwick received this news with an inscrutable expression. “That’s a relief,” he murmured, and he produced a coin and handed it to the maid. “Here, child,” he said with a commiserating smile, “you’ve done as you were bid. Now, hurry home, it’s much too late for you to be abroad.”

“Thank you, m’lord.” The girl bobbed a quick curtsy and fled into the shadows.

When Chadwick stepped into the brightly illuminated entryway, he discovered Susan huddled in anxious conference with the butler. In his surprise he forgot the note. In Chadwick’s experience household servants were as territorial as cats, and the maid’s presence downstairs in what was chiefly the butler’s domain was unusual enough to make him faintly disquieted. “Is something amiss?” he asked when the butler scurried over to retrieve his hat and gloves.

The man smiled imperturbably. “I expect Susan is exaggerating, as is the wont of young women,” he said. “I’m sure there is nothing to be concerned about.”

“Yes there is!” Susan interrupted, crowding roughly between the two men. Ignoring the butler’s squawk of outrage, she clutched at the marquess’s lapels with trembling fingers and pleaded, so agitated that she stuttered, “M-my lord, y-you must do something! Oh, please, I know something dreadful has happened!”

Chadwick caught her wrists gently and put her away from him, studying her grey face as he did so. Beneath her neat cap the girl was shaking with fright. He said in quiet, soothing tones, “Compose yourself, Susan. I shall help you in any way I can, but before I can do so, you must try to calm down.” He watched her struggle to regain her self-control, and when she seemed to have herself in check, he asked, “Now, girl, what may I do for you?”

Susan cried desperately, “But, my lord, it’s not me! It’s her ladyship. She’s gone!”

He stared at her blankly. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

“She went for a drive and she said she’d be back within the hour—”

The butler, offended that a maid had bypassed his authority, interposed, “My lord, I’m sure the wench has merely misinterpreted Lady Chadwick’s instructions.”

Susan turned on him furiously, spitting with indignation. “No I did not, you old fool! I warned her ladyship she must be careful now, and she promised she and his young lordship would only be gone a short while—”

The butler yelped, “Don’t get high in the instep with me, missy! I was here long before—”

“Quiet!” the marquess bellowed, and the squabbling servants fell silent instantly, quailing before the cold light of command that blazed in his blue eyes. “That’s enough,
both of you!” He took a deep, shuddering breath and said in a strained voice, “All right, I wish to have this clear: you say my wife left the house this evening and has not returned?”

“Yes, my lord. She went for a ride with his young lordship.”

“I see. Who drove them?”

Susan looked at the butler, and he shrugged. She ventured, “No one, my lord. Her ladyship said they were taking a curricle.”

Chadwick scowled. “My stable does not include a curricle.”

“No, my lord,” Susan agreed, “but that is what she said.”

Little sparks of alarm began to shoot off in the back of Chadwick’s head. He asked carefully, “And at what hour did they go out for this drive?”

Again the two servants glanced at each other, and the butler said, “I am not sure of the exact time, my lord, but it was not long after the doctor departed.”

Silence loomed up between them. At last the marquess groaned, “My God, I think I must be surrounded by half-wits! Why was the doctor here? Why was I not informed at once?”

After another awkward pause Susan said quietly, “It was her ladyship’s wish, my lord. She wanted to be the one to give you the news herself.”

Suddenly Chadwick felt as if his breath had been punched out of him. “The news?” he echoed hoarsely.

“Yes, my lord,” Susan said reluctantly. “Her ladyship is ... is increasing. Forgive me for going against her wishes by telling you. I would never have done so, except...”

Chadwick turned away, his harsh features pale under his tan. “I see,” he rasped. “Thank you, Susan. You were quite right to let me know.” He stared down at his hands, amazed to find them steady. How fair she was, Ginnie, his beautiful child-woman, now gravid with child herself.

Susan called, “My lord, ought not someone go search for them?”

He blinked and looked back at the girl, surprised to discover that his feet had carried him across the gleaming marble floor almost to the door of his study. After a moment’s hesitation he said with forced casualness, “I think perhaps it is too early to send out runners. After all, if there had been an accident, I am sure someone from Bow Street would have informed us by now; it is not as if her ladyship and Lord Bysshe were strangers to the city. I expect what has happened is that they called on my mother and lost track of time.” Even as he spoke Chadwick realized how lame that explanation sounded. To conceal his growing apprehension he said firmly, “Susan, go you to her ladyship’s room and lay out her night things. She will undoubtedly be extremely weary when she comes home.”

He saw the look that flashed in the girl’s eyes, and he thought she was going to protest, but after the briefest of pauses she muttered, “Yes, my lord,” and trudged toward the staircase, her steps weighted with disillusion. He felt a twinge of exasperation. Damn the chit, daring to condemn him for not rushing headlong into the streets like some latter-day knight-errant to rescue his ladylove. Just what did she expect him to do, where did she think he should go? At this point no one even knew for certain that a “rescue” was necessary. As he had suggested, Ginevra and Bysshe might very well be with his mother. Or at the last moment they might have decided to attend the theatre, or they might yet be driving, or ... or...

Sternly he refused to consider alternatives. He was not some moon-minded adolescent to fall into a jealous panic whenever his lady was out of sight. At the door of his study he glanced at the butler, whose face was more stony than usual, as if to atone for that gross breach of etiquette that had allowed him to be discovered quarrelling with the maid. Chadwick snapped, “Inform me instantly my wife returns,” and he slammed the door behind him.