The Earl's Untouched Bride (21 page)

He should never have kissed her. That had been his greatest error. Now that he knew what she felt like under his hands, his mouth, he could more readily imagine his brother's hands shaping her breasts, his brother's mouth plundering her soft, responsive lips.

A strangled cry escaped his throat as he whirled away from the reflection of a man whose blood was infected with a form of madness. For no sane man would experience such rage, such despair, such self-disgust! Where was the cool, untouchable man who had always believed that to give way to strong emotion was a sign of weakness?

He flung himself into his chair, dropping his head to his hands. He had to get a grip on himself.

Straightening up, he drew several long, deep breaths through flared nostrils.

He
must
look at this situation dispassionately. The facts were these: his wife, for whom he felt more than he had ever imagined he could feel for any woman, did not return his affection.

Second, in spite of his forbearance, she had decided to humiliate him by taking a lover before providing him with an heir.

Decided? He shook his head. Heloise was too impulsive a creature to decide upon such a course of action. She had just followed her heart. She had been brought up by parents who had eloped in the teeth of opposition, and had applauded her sister for jilting him for the sake of her 'true love'. She had not meant to betray him. In fact, letting him know she was going to that masquerade could have been a cry for help. She had known she was on the slippery slope to adultery, and her tender conscience had been troubling her.

But as for Robert... His fist clenched on the arm of the chair. Robert was getting the perfect revenge. Cuckolding his despised brother under his own roof, secure in the knowledge there would be no divorce to expose him for the scoundrel he was. And if Heloise fell pregnant Robert's child would inherit the property from which he had been excluded. For Walton would be obliged to acknowledge the bastard as his own if he wanted to shield Heloise from disgrace.

And he did. He lowered his head, his face contorted with anguish. He would not permit her to run off with Robert and live a hand-to-mouth existence as the whore of an invalid on a meagre army pension.

He got to his feet and strode to the door. He must tell her, and tell her now, that he would not permit that. Though she might not think so, she would do far better to give up her foolish dreams and accept her lot. She was staying with him!

He took the stairs two at a time, flung open the door to her suite, and crossed the darkened sitting room to her bedroom.

When she saw him, her eyes widened with apprehension. It infuriated him to see her draw the sheet up to her chin, as though he were the villain of the piece! Losing control of the ragged edges of his temper, he strode to the bed, ruthlessly yanking the covers from her fingers.

'You are my wife
—
' he began.

'Yes, I know, and I am so sorry! I never meant to
—
'

He laid his fingers to her lips, stopping her mouth. He did not want to hear her confess what he had already worked out for himself. She had only followed where her heart led.

'I know you couldn't help yourself.'

Beneath his fingers, her lips parted in surprise. 'You are not angry?' Had Robert told him everything after she had left? 'Oh, Charles,' she sighed, tears of remorse slipping down her cheeks. 'Can you forgive me?'

Cupping her face between his hands, he brushed those tears away with his thumbs. Could he forgive her? Wasn't that asking rather too much? With a groan of anguish, he gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her hair.

And suddenly he knew, with blinding clarity, that if he could have her once
—
just this once
—
then his future would not be so unbearable. For he could make himself believe that any child she bore might be his.

And so he pushed the nightgown from her shoulders, grating, 'Just this once. Just tonight.'

'Yes,' she sighed, winding her arms about his neck and sinking back into the pillows.

It was her guilt that motivated her to offer him this comfort, he was sure. But he was desperate enough to take whatever he could get. Swearing to himself that he would never take advantage of her in this manner again, he followed her down and for the next few moments let his hot need of her sweep aside all his scruples. He forgot everything but Heloise: the sweetness of her lips, the softness of her skin, the heat of her breath pulsing against his throat.

And then, searing his soul like a whip cracking into naked flesh, the sound of her agonised cry as he took her virginity.

Charles could not credit that he had been so wrong about her.

'I beg your pardon,' he said lamely. Where was the rule of etiquette to cover an occasion like this? 'If I'd had any idea you were a virgin...'

She had been lying beneath him with her eyes screwed shut. Now they flew open, full of disbelieving hurt, as though he had struck her.

'Of
course
I was a virgin!' How could he think she would break her marriage vows? Didn't he know she would rather die than be disloyal to him in any way?

The shuttered expression on his face only added to her feeling of humiliation. She had imagined that he had finally come to her bed because he had begun to find her desirable.

Instead it had been an expression of his contempt. He thought she was the kind of woman who...

'Ooh!' she cried, pummelling at his shoulders. 'I hate you! I hate you!'

He reared back, appalled at the mess he had made of things.

Pausing only long enough to snatch up his clothes, he fled from her bedroom, chastened, sickened and shaken.

He might just have destroyed whatever slim chance there had been to make something of their marriage.

He sank to the floor, his back pressed to his bedroom door, his clothing bundled up against his chest.

'Heloise,' he groaned. 'My God, what have I done?'

Alone in the dark, Heloise rolled onto her side, drew her knees up, and let the tears flow.

He must have heard rumours about the places she had been, the company she had kept, and jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

And why wouldn't he? It was only what Lord Matthison had deduced within minutes of meeting her.

Dawn found her gritty-eyed from weeping. When Sukey came in with her breakfast, her throat was so hoarse she could barely croak a dispirited dismissal.

How could she eat anything, when she'd just had her last shred of hope ripped from her? And what was the point of getting dressed and going out, acting as if her life had meaning any more? He had come to her bed. For whatever reason, he had finally decided to make her his wife in fact as well as in name
—
and what had she done? Lashed out at him. Told him she hated him. Driven him away.

She lay under a black cloud of despair until noon, when Sukey came back, bearing yet another tray of food.

'I told you to leave me alone,' she sighed wearily.

'Begging your pardon, my lady, but His Lordship insisted you had something to eat when I told him you wasn't getting up today.'

His feigned solicitude ground her spirits still lower. Even though he regarded her as an infernal nuisance, he

would always fulfil his responsibilities towards her in the most punctilious fashion. Appearances were everything to Charles.

He would not want the servants to know there was anything amiss between them. He most definitely would not want her confiding in Sukey that she wished she had never set eyes on him.

Forcing her lips into a parody of a smile, she murmured, 'How thoughtful,' and propped herself up on the pillows so that Sukey could place the tray across her lap.

For appearances' sake she picked at the food while Sukey drew back the curtains, tidied the room, and poured water into her washbasin. The sound made her aware of how sticky and uncomfortable she felt. She could at least cleanse herself, put off her ruined nightgown and dress in clean clothes.

In some ways, she thought some time later, sitting down at the dressing table so that Sukey could comb out her tangled hair, this would be the perfect time to go to him and confess what a scrape she was in. It was not as if he could possibly think any worse of her.

Could he? Her heart twisted into a knot at the prospect she could sink any lower in his estimation.

No, she would not tell him about the bracelet. Somehow she would get it back. She lifted her chin and met her own eyes in the mirror. He would not divorce her. Robert had been adamant about that. So she had a lifetime to reverse the poor opinion he had formed.

And, judging by the way things had gone between them so far, a lifetime would be how long it would take.

Still, Robert was so much better. She need not go anywhere with him again. Though most of his friends were completely respectable, if not of her husband's elevated status, women like Mrs Kenton hovered on the fringes of his world. She had no intention of locking horns with her again. She would just stay in her rooms if Charles did not require her presence at his side. If she grew really bored she would take the occasional walk in the park, with Sukey. And a footman for good measure. She would put Mrs Kenton
right out of her mind, and concentrate on being such a model of rectitude that even Charles would be able to see he had misjudged her.

And in the meantime she would cudgel her brains until she came up with a way of raising enough money to pay off her gambling debts and recover the bracelet. Before Charles noticed it had gone missing.

She dismissed Sukey, needing to be alone to think. After pacing the floor fruitlessly for a while, she went to her desk and pulled out her supply of paper from under the layers of petticoats in the bottom drawer. 'Five hundred guineas', she scrawled across the top of a fresh sheet. How on earth could a woman honestly raise such a sum without going to money lenders?

As her mind guiltily replayed the way she had accumulated the debt, her hands instinctively began to portray that fateful game of whist. She drew herself first, as a plump little pigeon, being plucked by a bewhiskered gamekeeper with a smoking gun at his feet. In the background she added a caricature of Percy Lampton as a pale-eyed fox, licking his lips from his vantage point in a hedge whose leaves bore a marked resemblance to playing cards.

Suddenly she came out of that reverie which often came over her when she was sketching. People
—
artists like Thomas Rowlandson, for example
—
made a living by selling cartoons. She had seen them in bound copies in Charles' library, and lying around the homes of Robert's bachelor friends. Depictions of sporting heroes, or lampoons of political figures were very popular. She recalled how amused the ladies from the embassy in Paris had been by the sketchbook that Charles had forced her to burn.

Her heart began to beat very fast. She dropped to her knees and scrabbled through the second to bottom drawer, where she stashed her finished works. Whenever she returned from an outing with Charles, she sketched the people who had particularly amused or annoyed her. Politicians, doyennes of society, even the occasional royal duke had all fallen victim to her own very idiosyncratic interpretation of their foibles. If only she could find someone to publish them, she was sure she could make money from her drawings!

She pulled them all out and rolled them up together, then went to the fireplace and tugged on the bell to summon her maid. She would need string, brown paper, and a cab. She was most definitely not going to turn up at a prospective employer's door in the Walton coach, with her husband's family crest emblazoned on the panels. Not only would that advertise her predicament, but his driver would be bound to report back to Charles where he had taken her. She hoped Sukey would know where to find a print shop, so that they could give an address to the cab driver.

Oh, Lord, she was
still
engaged in activities of which he would disapprove. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, taking a deep, calming breath. It would not be for much longer. Once she had paid off this debt she would never do anything Charles might frown at. Never again.

Charles twirled the pen round in his fingers, staring blindly at the rows of leatherbound books which graced the wall of the library opposite his desk. He had never felt so low in his life. Until now he had always been sure that whatever he did, no matter how harsh it might seem to disinterested observers, was the right thing to do.

He could not understand now, in the clear light of day, what had driven him to act in such a reprehensible, nay, criminal fashion last night.

If only he could go to her and beg her forgiveness. Wrap her in his arms and at least hold her while she wept. And he knew she was weeping. Sukey had whispered as much to Finch, the youngest of his footmen, when she had taken the untouched breakfast tray back to the servants' hall. He could not bear to think of her lying up there alone, with no one to comfort her. But he was the very last person she would wish to see this morning.

At midday he had insisted Sukey check on her again. To his great relief Heloise had nibbled on some toast and drunk most of a cup of chocolate. She had then risen, washed her puffy eyes in cold water, and donned her long-sleeved morning gown with the apricot lace flounces. Finch had yielded this information to Giddings, who had informed His Lordship when he brought a cold collation
—
which Charles had not ordered
—
to the library, from where he could not find the energy to stir.